Researchers at MIT have unveiled a new type of silicon solar cell that could be much more efficient and cost less than currently used solar cells.
The design combines a highly effective reflector on the back of a solar cell with an antireflective coating on the front. This helps trap red and near-infrared light, which can be used to make electricity, in the silicon.
Lake Mead could not be described as my favorite place on earth, but it is the take-out for many of us who consider the Colorado River run through the Grand Canyon our favorite place. Most runners will avoid Lake Mead and take-out up river a bit, but those who have seen it will testify, it is one, big body of water. Winds will whip over it raising white-caps and overturning small boats. It is the pleasure capital of the South West for those who love big boats, big motors and smoky air. Well, folks, it’s about to disappear. This is one more hurry-up among many that have been popping up like the unseasonable tornadoes in the South.
Lake Mead, the vast reservoir for the Colorado River water that sustains the fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, could lose water faster than previously thought and run dry within 13 years, according to a new study by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“We were really sort of stunned,” Professor Barnett said in an interview. “We didn’t expect such a big problem basically right on our front doorstep. We thought there’d be more time.”
He added, “You think of what the implications are, and it’s pretty scary.”
Or, to put it another way, a-fuckin-mazing!
And just in case you think that McCain is green enough, that allowing him in wouldn’t be all that bad:
…while McCain claims that climate change is one of his top three issues, his agenda the subject is pretty much non-existant. McCain won’t stand up for mandatory caps (despite the fact that his own bill on the matter amounts to a mandate), and supports emissions reductions that are significantly lower than those that Obama and Clinton support. His idea of good climate legislation is more in line with the Lieberman-Warner bill, which calls for less than a 70 percent reduction of emissions by 2050. The Democrats, meanwhile, have stood up in favor of emissions reductions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 — the kinds of reductions current science says we need.
And both Clinton and Obama have outlined cap and trade plans that would auction off 100 percent of pollution permits and invest the proceeds in clean energy technologies that will reduce carbon emissions. But the Lieberman-Warner bill currently on the table, which is closer to McCain’s preferred approach to cap-and-trade, only auctions a small percentage of credits, giving most of them away to the very industries responsible for global warming. The Democrats also support subsidies and tax incentives to help develop a green economy, which McCain doesn’t support.
The window to get a grip on the serious threat of climate change and the serious response we must make is said to be about 10 years. Ten effing years! That doesn’t mean the water in Richardson Bay swells over the shoreline and races up to the Depot in Mill Valley ten years from today — though it certainly might get to the Redwood High playing fields given the right conditions. It does mean that the wagon we are sitting in will have crested the hill and begun to pick up speed on the long terrifying ride down.
And of that ten years one year is completely lost because the idiots are still in charge. So what should Obama/Clinton do upon arrival in the White House? Chris Mooney, [Storm World, and The Republican War on Science] one of the dependables when it comes to global warming, the science and the policy, offers this.
…the time is right for a new president to sweep into office, define climate as a first-tier priority, and bring about a sea change — at least a figurative one in policy to stop a real one in the oceans. The initiative should start with a major speech in the first 100 or 150 days in which the president calls the nation to a historic challenge and lays out a plan. Dealing with global warming will not spell the end of the economy, but there will assuredly be costs — costs, that is, to avert even greater costs. We will be raising the price for some forms of energy use because they bring with them dire consequences (like the ultimate inundation of Florida). But by beginning to move away from carbon-based energy sources, we will also create many new economic opportunities, while also preventing intolerable and irreversible changes to the Earth. On any ledger sheet worth reading, dealing with global warming leaves us well in the black.
Even before the speech, the president will need to appoint a team committed to the endeavor. As New Hampshire’s Carbon Coalition has outlined, that means an Environmental Protection Agency administrator, a presidential science adviser, an Office of Management and Budget director, and a Council of Economic Advisers chair who all know what’s coming and are ready for it. It also probably means a high-level international climate envoy — preferably someone with a household name. (Guess who.) Hillary Clinton has further promised to create a National Energy Council in the White House, parallel to the National Security Council and headed by a top energy adviser. The council would coordinate both the federal response to climate change and the necessary accompanying energy policies.
Whatever the structure of policy-making at the highest levels, the staffing mandate has to extend down the ladder and throughout the agencies. The Bush administration offers a model in reverse. It installed people in the disparate branches of the federal bureaucracy who excelled at censoring scientists and at keeping global warming off the agenda. The next administration must be staffed by people who understand and accept the science and are committed to getting to work on the problem.
I’ve long wanted a year to ruminate and write about my notion that the bottom line for human behavior, to which almost every action can be traced, is power. As soon as a three year old wails “she doesn’t want to be my friend” we are acting out the cellular knowledge that without friends we are alone in the world, and in great danger. Sexual jealousy, high-school cliques, road-rage, consummerism, on and on, are related at not too many degrees of separation to the need to be part of groups and within the groups to attain high status — to have power. Now Natalie Angier has a short, totally interesting article, in the NY Times Tuesday Science Section about animal behavior and just such behavior built on the same basic drive.
Wherever animals must pool their talents and numbers into cohesive social groups, scientists said, the better to protect against predators, defend or enlarge choice real estate or acquire mates, the stage will be set for the appearance of political skills — the ability to please and placate, manipulate and intimidate, trade favors and scratch backs or, better yet, pluck those backs free of botflies and ticks.
Over time, the demands of a social animal’s social life may come to swamp all other selective pressures in the environment, possibly serving as the dominant spur for the evolution of ever-bigger vote-tracking brains. And though we humans may vaguely disapprove of our political impulses and harbor “Fountainhead” fantasies of pulling free in full glory from the nattering tribe, in fact for us and other highly social species there is no turning back. A lone wolf is a weak wolf, a failure, with no chance it will thrive.
Following my post the other day about the lack of fire from the candidates over Global Warming I got an informative comment from a friend at the Carbon Coalition in New Hampshire. They’ve been doing dogged work to get the issue in front of the public and the candidates. These are the benchmarks the Coalition suggests for the candidates.
1) Legislation for economy-wide emissions reductions
2) Aggressive R&D for low-carbon energy technology
3) Federal planning for climate change impacts and
response
4) Picking the right team to carry the initiative
5) Cooperation with international partners
6) Reallocation of budget priorities
7) Enable/encourage citizens to build efficiency and
conservation in their homes and communities
See how the candidates measure up.
[thx S Arnold]
Is it just me or do others hear an ominous silence in the candidate camps about Global Warming?
It’s not that they don’t have positions. Some of them are sincere, and likely helpful.
John Edwards has, according to the League of Conservation Voters, “the most comprehensive global warming plan of any presidential candidate to date.”. There is good stuff in it.
* Capping greenhouse gas pollution starting in 2010 with a cap-and-trade system,
* Leading the world to a new climate treaty
* Creating a New Energy Economy Fund
* Meeting the demand for more electricity through efficiency
This and more is posted on his campaign site.
Barack Obama says climate change is “one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation.” and lists some bullet points:
* Reduce Carbon Emissions 80 Percent by 2050
* Invest in a Clean Energy Future
* Support Next Generation Biofuels
* Set America on Path to Oil Independence
* Improve Energy Efficiency 50 Percent by 2030
* Restore U.S. Leadership on Climate Change
* A new cap-and-trade program…
* An aggressive comprehensive energy efficiency agenda…
* A $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund …
And much more. More than her competitors.
So what’s got me worrying in the silence, about the silence? It is that all the policy papers and well thought out positions won’t do a bit of good stacked in boxes, posted on web-sites, carried in portfolios, tacked on to some available moment in a speech. What is ominous is that this “great moral issue” isn’t the first or at least second item in every speech. In fact it is barely mentioned. The newsies seldom ask and the candidates, with a million other things to talk about, don’t much talk about it.
No one talks about the effect climate, dressed up as weather, is going to have on millions and millions of us with the same passion as John Edwards talks about the economy and the middle class and the poor. Not even close.
Now I don’t want to deny the poor their moment or Edwards his passion. But that passion comes from experience, reflection and life lived. Is there no one who finds in his or her gut the passion to cry out about what is coming our way? Even the super-wealthy are going to be affected. The middle class and below have seen it –if they’re looking– in the mirror of New Orleans. And yet, nothing!
Perhaps it is that climate doesn’t have an interest group. There is a citizen silence even more ominous than the political silence. No sit ins to stop the green house gasses. No methane protest attacks on the Harris mega beef ranch in California, the pig factories in Utah, the chicken acres in Arkansas. No blimps floating over big cities with pro-solar messages. Not a single march of any size demanding life as we know it to continue.
Climate is a hard thing to get hold of. We don’t have body counts from weather damage like we do for wars. It’s hard to lock onto a single act of hubris and stupidity, like invading another country, to mobilize around. We are all contributing to climate change by participating in the most ordinary of daily life events.
But we better get onto it soon.
Bill McKibben, one of our favorite environmental writers, put the issue starkly in a recent NY Times opinion piece. Citing a speech by James Hansen, that drifted off into the caverns of inattention, McKibben says that 350 parts per million (ppm) of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is the bottom line. It’s what is needed to live as our forbears have lived for tens of thousands of years. We are already at 383 ppm. The goal set to now has been 550 ppm! Seeing what has been happening in the last few years some have suggested 450 ppm was a safer target.
But the data just keep getting worse. The news this fall that Arctic sea ice was melting at an off-the-charts pace and data from Greenland suggesting that its giant ice sheet was starting to slide into the ocean make even 450 look too high. Consider: We’re already at 383 parts per million, and it’s knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways.
Over at ClimateProgress, an arm of Center for American Progress, an unsigned a piece by Joseph Romm takes issue with McKibben and “possibly” Hansen, saying 450 ppm would be hard but doable, 350 ppm inconceivable (and, so KYAG –kiss your ass goodbye…)
So even if the possibly-not-enough will be possibly impossible to reach why aren’t citizen and their future oriented leaders screaming just a little louder, on a continuous basis?
How much has your own carbon footprint diminished in the last year? Does it disturb you that climate change isn’t a much greater part of the campaigns? Where do you sense action is happening?
The California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV) has as a primary mission the education of voters in California to environmental issues. Yearly it publishes a scorecard of how the California Assembly, Senate and Governor have done on legislation for the environment. No surprise Democrats usually get high scores and Republicans get low. Somewhat of a surprise, Governor Schwarzenegger moved from 50% in 2006 to 63% in 2007.
Here’s the snapshot view. Scroll down a bit to see the historical Governors Scores. You’ll think a little more highly of Gray Davis.
The full report is here (PDF). You can go to page 28 for the detailed reckoning of the votes and vetoes. Descriptions of each of the bills precedes.
CLCV also has started a blog with a link to a Jerry Brown interview. As current Attorney General and rumored candidate for Governor, this will hold special interest.
CLCV has also done the work to provide a chart of the Presidential candidates’ positions on klimakatastrophe.
I’ve re-done it to allow comparison of Dems to Dems and Repubs to Repubs. [All work is CLCV's] You’ll be amazed and appalled at Mr. Security Giuliani’s row, and as interesting, Ron Paul’s row — since he has such high support from the geek-squad which certainly knows what is going on. On the Dem side, Bill Richardson looks like he gets it best. We are in an emergency! Of course, positions are merely sketches of what inevitably becomes a full piece of work, or work left aside. We can’t tell from this, and frankly I haven’t heard from anyone by Al Gore, the deep knowledge of what we are up against, and what it will take.
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