A severe drought that has parched corn and soybean fields across the Southeast has also scorched marijuana crops, leaving plants that should be 10 feet tall so puny that Roberts and his deputies simply pull them up.
(Hat tip waterblogged.b)
Biofuels Troubles
According to an Ernst and Young analysis, things are getting a little gnarly out on the biofuels frontier. From Platts:
The global biofuels industry has seen a slowdown in growth over the third quarter of 2007, caused by rising feedstock prices and a rapid expansion in capacity that may outstrip demand, according to an Ernst & Young report released Friday....
The industry is also being hampered by the high-profile debate over the potential conflict of first-generation biofuels on food prices and sustainability concerns, the report said.
This Week in Petroleum
TWIP this week explains the disconnect between the rise in the price of oil and the rise in the price of gasoline:
The main reason for the surge in gasoline prices over crude oil seems to have been unusually extensive U.S. refinery outages, which also pushed the limits of gasoline import availability. In the face of rising demand for gasoline and distillate products (e.g., diesel fuel and heating oil), supply was not able to keep up, thus drawing product inventories down, while the price differential to crude oil widened.
Measles Drop
This is happy news:
Improved routine immunization programs and huge national drives to give children a second dose of the inexpensive measles vaccine have contributed to a stunning 91 percent reduction in measles mortality across Africa, with deaths plunging to 36,000 last year from 396,000 in 2000, the World Health Organization and Unicef reported.
U.S. Greenhouse Emissions Drop
A shift from coal to natural gas for generating electricity contributed to a 1.5 percent drop in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 as compared to 2005, according to an EIA report out today. We’re 15 percent above 1990.
- Platts story (which I have read)
- Full report (which I haven’t read)
update: from the comments, Andy Dessler, thoughtful academic that he is, actually reads the report:
The report says the drop was “due to favorable weather conditions; higher energy prices; a decline in the carbon intensity of electric power generation that resulted from increased use of natural gas, the least carbon intensive fossil fuel; and greater reliance on non-fossil fuels.”
Natural gas was part of this, but my reading of the report was that other factors were more important. In particular, it was a really, really hot winter and a slightly cool summer.
Wiring the Desert
Nature has a story on a massive Sahara-based solar energy proposal to be presented to the European Parliament in Brussels tomorrow (Thursday Nov. 28). The price tag mentioned in the story sounds enormous: US$595 billion. The political complications sound vexing. But hey, couldn’t be any harder than retrofitting coal plants for carbon capture, could it?
Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan was scheduled to present this green-energy idea, dubbed DESERTEC, to members of the European Parliament in Brussels on 28 November.
The vision is ambitious: it would require roughly 1,000 100-megawatt power plants, using mirrors to concentrate energy from the Sun’s rays, throughout the Middle East and North Africa to meet the region’s projected energy needs. A high-efficiency electricity grid, yet to be built, would then ferry the power around and across the Mediterranean Sea and northern Europe.
Roger Sr. Returns
I am happy to note that Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog is back.
Climate Change As Seen From Nairobi
Per capita income in Kenya is $1,200. Climate change does not currently rank high on the list of pressing concerns of the residents of Nairobi, according to a new study by Meleckidzedeck Khayesi and Chris Shisanya in the journal Climatic Change.
The global concern about climate change appeared like a mere drop in the oceanic context pervaded by problems of poverty, unemployment, crime and corruption, etc. which Nairobi faces, as does Kenya as a whole. Our conclusion is partially reflected in the priorities of the Kenyan government, which focus on poverty alleviation, the fight against crime and graft, improved access to education, and on addressing health problems; it also poses a challenge to the climate change community to find ways to making interventions relevant to local socioeconomic reality facing a developing country city like Nairobi. There may be a need to reconsider ‘whose reality counts’ (borrowing from Robert Chambers, Whose reality counts? Putting the first last, Intermediate Technology Publications, London, p 122, 1997) in addressing climate change: should protracted Kyoto protocol negotiations be given priority or should a long lasting solution be sought to socioeconomic problems facing developing world cities such as Nairobi? We recommend that the ongoing efforts at integrating climate risk management, as components of climate-sensitive sustainable development, be studied in many settings, with a focus on the developing world which is the most vulnerable, in order to inform decision-making and development of intervention measures.
Wasting Time
Roger Pielke Jr. points to a nice example of why all the energy so enthusiastically devoted to arguing about the hurricane record or fighting those pesky Climate Audit guys and the other “science wars” activities is such a colossal waste of time. On Prometheus, Roger points to comments by both James Hansen and David Victor on the issue of coal. Both care deeply about climate change. For Hansen, coal is likened to the holocaust. For Victor, it offers a potential route to solution. Roger notes:
That David Victor sees coal plants as part of the solution to limiting greenhouse gas emissions and James Hansen does not illustrates how widely experts who agree on the need to limit emissions disagree on energy policy.
There may be fun fights to be won over the hurricane record or the latest thermometer in a parking lot, but actually dealing with climate change is a genuinely hard problem.
On Buying Locally In a Desert
Kelsey has some nice thoughts on what it would mean to actually try to buy locally:
Globalization seems to favor our desert city sticking to high technology at discount rates, with low land costs and lots of intellectual capital. Farming is mostly done elsewhere already, and the city is supported by the Labs, the Base, and Intel. Agriculture’s place in a truly global economy is uncertain, but I can almost guarantee that it isn’t in Albuquerque. Not when Albuquerque water has a much higher value sustaining the city as is.