[GWSG] US isolation; PETE pv; eco-quarters; Merchants of Doubt; 2009 CO2 emissions steady

[Tilley, Al]

1.  The US may find itself increasingly isolated from the world community, economically and in general, by its failure to enact a climate policy.  http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/08/03/03climatewire-overseas-frustration-grows-over-us-domestic-61456.html

2.  Most photovoltaic cells can convert only a portion of the light spectrum into electricity.  The rest of the energy is wasted as heat.  Stanford researchers have found a way to use the heat to generate electricity, too, doubling the efficiency of the cells.  Because the process uses common materials it promises to achieve parity with oil as an energy source.  As the heat rises so does the efficiency of the new cells.  That makes the discovery particularly appropriate for solar concentrating technologies.  The process is call photon enhanced thermionic emission, or PETE.   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802101813.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

3.  The new eco-quarter in the southeast of Paris joins other such energy efficient, sustainable developments in Copenhagen, Abu Dhabi, Freiburg, and many other cities.  http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ecoquarters-the-new-trend-in-city-design-2041467.html

4.  The linked story in Politico describes the campaign to keep the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40534.html  The attempt to prevent us from controlling greenhouse gas emissions has roots.  Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global warming (Bloomsbury, 2010) traces a continuity from the early days of resistance to links between lung cancer and smoking in the 1950s through the campaigns to fight government action against DDT, acid rain, and the ozone hole.  Basically, corporations fight attempts to control their activities by portraying the scientific basis for regulation as unsettled and the intervention as difficult and disastrously expensive.  Some support they just buy, but much of it comes from free market anarchists who experience any government intervention as a personal threat.  Some of these guys are scientists.  Because they view offending consensus scientific positions as fostering socialism, they do not hesitate to call the whole scientific community into question.  The media feels pressure to report their transmission of corporate propaganda but little to represent Science.  And so on to the gabblers and bayers of Fox News, and to Senators Murkowski and Rockefeller’s proposals to block action by the EPA.

The campaigns have been successful in delaying and softening action.  Too many smokers still smoke and half will still die from it; the sugar maples of the Northeast are still doomed from acid rain; we are still determinedly burning coke for power here in Jacksonville.  If we were well informed we might act differently.  Publicizing the tactics of the spokesmen for greed and bad politics is probably the best antidote.  If you would like to understand how we have come to resist protective measures against the threats of climate change, Merchants of Doubt is your book.

5.  The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has released a report that the global CO2 emissions did not grow in 2009.  While it is hard to celebrate what Paul Krugman reads as the beginning stages of a long depression, it is also hard not to celebrate.  China and India increased emissions while the OECD nations and Russia decreased.  http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/500212001.pdf