WASCO, Ore. — For decades, most of the nation’s renewable power has come from dams, which supplied cheap electricity without requiring fossil fuels. But the federal agencies running the dams often compiled woeful track records on other environmental issues. Now, with the focus in Washington on clean power, some dam agencies are starting to go green, embracing wind power and energy conservation. The most aggressive is the Bonneville Power Administration, whose power lines carry much of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest. The agency also provides a third of the region’s power supply, drawn mostly from generators inside big dams. The amount of wind power on the Bonneville transmission system quadrupled in the last three years and is expected to double again in another two. The turbines are making an electricity system with low carbon emissions even greener - already, in Seattle, more than 90 percent of the power comes from renewable sources. Yet the shift of emphasis at the dam agencies is proving far from simple. It could end up pitting one environmental goal against another, a tension that is emerging in renewable-power projects across the country. Environmental groups contend that the Bonneville Power Administration’s […]
BEIJING AND WASHINGTON — China and the US failed to achieve a breakthrough at their latest round of climate talks on Wednesday, raising the stakes in the global effort to fight global climate change. The two countries responsible for almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions ended three days of negotiations in Beijing. While there are still months to go until the December meeting in Copenhagen, where 181 countries, led by the United Nations, plan to work out a new climate pact, the two biggest emitters’ glacial pace towards compromise is likely to discourage others from making concessions during a pre-Copenhagen round of negotiations under way in Bonn, which is set to wrap up on Friday. Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s special envoy on climate change, tried to sound optimistic when the US delegation ended its China visit but could hardly conceal that little had been achieved. Mr Stern, who before leaving for China had said, ‘Let’s get this damn thing started [between the US and China], did his best to paper over the lack of progress. ‘In our meetings, we deepened our dialogue with our Chinese counterparts through a candid discussion of the challenges we […]
NEW YORK — The fledgling renewable energy industry has grown steadily over much of the past decade, adding jobs at more than twice the national rate, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Wednesday. Solar and wind-power companies, energy-efficient light bulb makers, environmental engineering firms and others expanded their work force by 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007, the latest year available, according to Pew. The average job growth in all industries was 3.7 percent during the same period. The entire energy sector has experienced growth in recent years as well, according to the Bureau of Labor. Bureau data shows coal mining jobs jumped 16 percent from 2003 to 2009. Oil and gas extraction jobs jumped 28 percent. The Pew study does not include employment data from the past 18 months, a volatile period for the energy industry. Since the data was collected, the government has said it would pump billions into renewable energy and effiency programs. The banking meltdown made it nearly impossible to raise cash and oil prices have collapsed. Alternative energy companies have been hit hard by the recession, with a string of bankruptcies in the ethanol industry and layoffs […]
BONN, Germany — Global warming is uprooting people from their homes and, left unchecked, could lead to the greatest human migration in history, said a report released Wednesday. Estimates vary on how many people are on the move because of climate change, but the report cites predictions from the International Organization for Migration that 200 million people will be displaced by environmental pressures by 2050. Some estimates go as high as 700 million, said the report, released at U.N negotiations for a new climate treaty. Researchers questioned more than 2,000 migrants in 23 countries about why they moved, said Koko Warner of the U.N. University, which conducted the study with CARE International and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University. The results were ‘a clear signal’ that environmental stress already is causing population shifts, she said, and it could be ‘a mega-trend of the future.’ The potential for masses of humanity fleeing disaster zones or gradually being driven out by increasingly harsh conditions is likely to be part of a global warming agreement under negotiation among 192 countries. A draft text calls on nations to prepare plans to adapt to climate […]
Researchers were stunned to discover recently that Earth is losing more of its atmosphere than Venus and Mars, which have negligible magnetic fields. This may mean our planet’s magnetic shield may not be as solid a protective screen as once believed when it comes to guarding the atmosphere from an assault from the sun. ‘We often tell ourselves that we are very fortunate living on this planet because we have this strong magnetic shield that protects us from all sorts of things that the cosmos throws at us — cosmic rays, solar flares and the pesky solar wind,’ said Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. ‘It certainly does help in some of those areas but … in the case of the atmosphere, this may not be true,’ he said. Russel and others came to this realization while meeting at a comparative planetology conference last month. ‘Three of us who work on Earth, Venus and Mars got together and compared notes,’ Russell told Discovery News. ‘We said, ‘Oh my goodness — what we’ve been telling people about the magnetic shield is not correct.” The perpetrators […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
