Canada’s tar sands may to be just too dirty
Capturing and storing some of the carbon that would be released in the processing of Canada’s tar sands may not clean the industry up. To turn the vast but dirty resource into useable oil, Canada will have to spew vast amounts of greenhouse gases.
That’s the conclusion of a new study on the potential of so-called carbon capture and storage technology to reduce carbon emissions from tar sands operations.
Of Alberta’s Oil Sands and ‘Harmonizing’ Canadian and U.S. Climate Policy
In the run-up to December’s global climate change meeting, fissures are emerging between Canada and the United States over how to deal with the internationally contentious issue of Alberta’s vast oil sands projects, which have been responsible for a sharp increase in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Replace Harvest With Penn West
The prescient oil specialist and investment banker Matt Simmons, author or Twilight In The Desert, thinks OPEC has almost no spare capacity. The role of the monetary metals, particularly gold, is to perform mental calculations of value; pricing. The sooner you begin to calculate value in terms of real things the sooner you will be able to understand the relationship between gold, oil and your stomach. Provident living principles include having excess energy; a monkey that gets margin called starves to death.
The United States, consuming 400% more than it produces, needs a reliable source to feed its addiction and Canada is the perfect candidate.
Oil Price Drivers Are Complex, Obscured… but Perhaps Irrelevant
However, regardless of causation, OPEC may not alter supply at all. Kuwaiti oil minister Sheik Ahmad al-Sabah recently said he doubted that oil supply would increase in December, later calling such an increase “impossible.”
Some believe al-Sabah isn’t referring to a political impossibility, but a geological one. The specter of Peak Oil is much debated, but one fact isn’t: OPEC’s largest oil fields are all in decline, or fast approaching it.
$80 oil on the way to $100 by the end of 2009
Oil is now flirting with $80 per barrel. In January, while many other analysts were predicting $40 to $60 oil, I predicted that oil would soon be back at $100.
There are obvious and real underlying reasons for the escalating oil prices. But news headlines have ruled the price of oil since at least 2004. There was no real rational economic reason for oil to reach almost $150 (which for people with short memories may seem to have happened last century – it happened in July 2008) nor was there any reason for below-$40 oil, which happened right after the economic crisis hit last fall.
Why the world will never run out of energy
Oil remains so abundant that it is unlikely the world will ever run out, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.
Economist Julian Simon, former professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was famous for taking a contrarian position on energy resources, arguing that our perception of scarcity was not validated by the current or historical factual record of energy abundance.
In an essay titled “When Will We Run Out of Oil? Never!” Simon argued against Malthusian fears that peak oil theorists were right and sooner or later the pumps would run dry, as environmental alarmist Paul Ehrlich frequently argued.
Book Review: Crude World by Peter Maass
There are lots of reasons to look for alternatives to oil and to use less of the stuff; the two main ones you hear about in America are climate change and energy security.
But there is another story, another problem with oil- the disruption it causes in communities that are unprepared to deal with the sudden wealth that comes from sitting on top of it. Peter Maass has visited those parts of the world, some of them places that very few people would dare to go, and has written about them in Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.
Why has the price of gas jumped 18 cents a gallon?
Why are gasoline prices going up so much? I suppose I should be happy I am paying only $2.69 a gallon for mid-grade, instead of the $4.10 I paid in 2008. But it seems like the economy is not booming and oil supply exceeds demand, which would suggest oil prices — and hence gasoline prices — should be dropping. But they’re not. And the reason is the same as last year — speculators.
Arson or accident? FBI, ATF investigate fuel depot fire in Puerto Rico
San Juan, Puerto Rico (CNN) — Investigators don’t know if the massive fire at a fuel storage facility near San Juan was deliberately started or was an accident, the agent in charge of the FBI’s San Juan office said Monday.
So where are all these green jobs? The Clean Edge study lists 15 metropolitan areas that are “current hotbeds of clean-tech job activity,” based on the number of existing green jobs, the amount of green investing going on, and clean-tech employers’ growth projections.
The first session will hear evidence from the Light Rail Transit Association, the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, Confederation of Passenger Transport and representatives from the Ultra Light Rail sector. It will cover issues around peak oil, climate change, health impacts and the role of innovation in light rail. Future sessions will hear from a wide range of witnesses, including existing and aspiring tram promoters (including Nottingham, TfL and the PTEs) as well as lobby groups like Campaign for Better Transport, and private sector perspectives from the light rail industry and business representatives.
Resource Nationalism: The Last Stand for the Oil Optimists
The price of oil has more than doubled from its nadir of $30 a barrel earlier this year. To explain the resilience of oil prices in the face of a severe economic slump, the oil optimists have turned to an old standby argument: resource nationalism.
Oil and the Future–A lunchtime address by John Hess
Our industry is at a crossroads. In the past few years, oil supply has struggled to keep pace with demand. But the financial crisis has reduced demand by 2 million barrels per day, creating excess inventories and lower prices. But once economic growth recovers, it is likely we will return to the market conditions of one year ago. The price of $140 per barrel oil was not an aberration; it was a warning.
Oil sector must think long-term
It is difficult to understand the number of reports that have emerged recently expecting or urging oil producers to go ahead with expansions and projects that have been slowed down, put on hold or cancelled.
Africa: Could regulation ease fears over land grabs?
Farmer organisations, civil society representatives and researchers at a debate at the European Development Days expressed concern about the impact of selling or leasing large tracts of land to foreign governments and companies. They fear it will harm Africa’s ability to feed itself by improving the productivity of its small holder farmers.
Bangaladesh: National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas calls for new law banning gas export
Dhaka (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) — The National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Port Saturday renewed its demand for enacting a law banning the export of the country?s energy resources.
There’s a polemical directness to Crude World, Peter Maass’s tour of big oil and its myriad vices. Each of the 10 chapter headings comprises a single word. They begin with Scarcity and end in Mirage, taking in Plunder, Rot and Alienation on the way. The industry in the US is a “carnival of sin”, he says. Maass quotes approvingly former US White House official Harold Ickes, who, in the 1930s wrote in his diary that “an honest and scrupulous man in the oil business” was “so rare as to rank as a museum piece”.
This is the spirit that informs a short, sharp book that saw Maass visit 11 countries, building on previous articles from half a dozen other “oilcentric nations”. It’s a lot to pack in to a work of 200-plus pages. The pace is sometimes breathless. But Maass – a journalist and author of a book on the former Yugoslavia – succeeds in portraying an energy crisis mostly ignored or misunderstood in the developed world.
Poll: Oil to average $74 a barrel in 2010
U.S. crude oil was expected to average $74.00 (U.S.) a barrel in 2010, a Reuters poll showed on Monday, as almost one third of analysts surveyed increased their forecasts on the back of a stronger economic outlook.
Qatar eyes China as big new LNG volumes come online
RAS LAFFAN, Qatar (Reuters) – Qatar is looking to China to absorb some of the huge increase in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies as the world’s biggest LNG exporter nears completion of its plan to double production capacity this year.
Qatar inaugurates on Tuesday the second of three giant LNG plants it has started up in 2009. The plants are the largest in the world, and were expected to help Qatar’s economic growth this year outperform oil-exporting Gulf Arab neighbours constrained by OPEC output quotas.
Uganda’s largest fuel importer, Shell, is experiencing a shortage of petrol, which it blames mainly on the stringent measures of getting fuel from Kenya. For about three weeks now, several Shell fuel Stations in Kampala have had no Petrol in their pumps although Diesel remains available.
Even before the start of a two-week ultimatum from the Tema District Council of Labour (TDCL) and the Local Union of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to the Mills Administration to supply the refinery with crude oil, over 100,000 metric tonnes of crude oil has arrived from Nigeria, courtesy of Sahara Oil.
Daily Guide learnt that a ship-load of crude oil from the Nigerian city of Warri berthed at Tema Port yesterday to douse the rising tension at the refinery and the heightened embarrassment the government had been subjected to, including the call for heads to roll in the oil sector. President John Evans Atta Mills last Thursday quickly dashed to TOR to engage the staff of the refinery in a face-to-face discussion, after which he assured them of the supply of crude oil.
Credit slowdown may haunt Saudi in 2010
RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s economic growth prospects in 2010 will partially hinge on two debt-laden private conglomerates reaching a settlement with foreign lenders, who could snub funding of major projects, analysts said.
Regulators and bankers are grappling with up to $22 billion of debt restructuring at Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi and Bros Co and Saad Group, viewed by some experts as the biggest financial blow to the region since the global credit crisis began.
Like a lot of other observer-interlocutors, I’d like to know what folks imagine we are recovering to. To a renewed orgy of credit-card spending? To yet another round of suburban expansion, with the boys in the yellow hard-hats driving stakes out in the sagebrush for another new thousand-unit pop-up “community?” For a next generation of super-cars built to look like medieval war wagons? That’s the “hope” that our officials seem to pretend to offer. It’s completely inconsistent with any reality-based trend-lines, by the way.
Waterous Sees Pace of Canadian Oil, Gas Acquisitions Picking Up
(Bloomberg) — The pace of Canadian oil and natural-gas acquisitions will pick up next year, partly as companies such as EnCana Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. shed assets to free cash for projects, according to mergers and acquisitions adviser Scotia Waterous.
Europeans Dream of a ‘Supergrid,’ but Many Wires Need Connecting
LONDON — European energy planners have a dream: an electricity grid spanning the continent and farther, one that seamlessly blends in the sharply rising but wildly fluctuating power coming from renewable sources and, at the same time, cuts transmission losses.
From the wind and wave-rich north to the sun-soaked south, the goal is to make sure not only that the electricity is low-carbon as part of the battle against climate change but also that it gets to where it is needed, when it is needed. The ideal would be to make the connections without consumers’ being the least bit aware that one moment they are watching television powered from Scottish winds and the next from the Sahara sun.
Household Hints to Halt Heating
A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that Americans could easily cut carbon emissions by more than France’s entire output.
DB Climate Change Advisors Publishes Analysis of 270 Climate and Energy Policies
Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division (DeAM) today published research which provides investors with an analysis of climate change policies and assigns a risk rating to 109 countries, states and regions based on key government mandates and supporting policy frameworks. The report, titled “Global Climate Change Policy Tracker: An Investor’s Assessment” (Climate Tracker), was produced by DB Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA), DeAM’s institutional climate change investment and research business, working with the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University.
The “Climate Tracker” is the first publicly-available analysis of its kind. It incorporates results of a model prepared by Columbia Climate Center researchers that estimates the impacts on carbon emissions of each of 270 major climate policies, and aggregates them at country, regional and global levels. The “Climate Tracker” provides a risk rating of countries and regions based on their relative attractiveness to investors. It is designed to help investors identify the best risk-adjusted returns in climate change investment opportunities around the world.
A post-oil world gets less sci-fi by the day: Dwindling supplies and no plan B – are we heading for Mad Max scenario?
It is 30 years since the film Mad Max was made, launching the career of Mel Gibson.
The film made a big splash at the time for its terrifying view of a world without oil, where gangs of grisly looking people roam deserts in a post-apocalyptic world, killing each other to get their hands on the few drops of petrol that some have managed to produce in makeshift refineries. Social order has completely broken down.
Great film if you like that sort of thing but complete fiction, of course. Or is it? Three decades later, and I wonder if the film was, in fact, years ahead of its time.
Oil Price to Reach US$ 350 in Near Future
January 12, 2020 – Even though the oil price crossed another barrier earlier this week with US$ 320 a barrel, we have probably not seen the end of it. With the stumbling of the world’s current oil production even higher oil prices are to expect in the future. 1
When Saudi Arabia officially announced in 2010 that the oil production in Ghawar, the biggest oil field in the world, was significantly decreasing, the price for a barrel passed US$ 200. The current total world production of oil is 91 million barrels a day. To get down to the same oil price as before 2010, adjusted for inflation, an estimated world production increase of about 10% is needed.
This can only be achieved in three deposits in the world, Green River Oil Shale in the US, Athabasca Oil Sand in Canada, or Orinoco Oil Sand in Venezuela. However, all of them are extremely stressed at the moment with full capacity, which prevent them from increasing production for a lower oil price.
The $80 oil price is starting to worry me a little. Translate it into gasoline and you get somewhere around $2.50 per gallon or a little higher, depending on where in the US you fill up your tank. Add to that a little cold weather and expanding crack spreads in refineries, and the price will edge toward $3.
History-derived economic models show that the US consumer starts to change behavior as the price of gas approaches $3, and then goes into a more pronounced state of shock when it ranges higher, in the $3 to $4 corridor. The reaction is to cut spending and retrench if the consumer thinks the price is going to stay at the new higher level for a while. When the consumer thinks the price will not stay higher, he keeps on spending and buying on credit.
BUT –
That history is derived, and has been modeled, from a time period when household balance sheets were relatively solid and when credit was flowing easily and when the unemployment rate was close to 5%, not 10%. So that is why I am starting to worry.
OPEC says to raise output if oil at $100
LUANDA (Reuters) – OPEC ministers will raise output to protect the global economic recovery at a meeting in December if oil prices rise to $100 per barrel, the group’s president said on Sunday.
Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos, who is also Angola’s oil minister, said that both producers and consumers were comfortable with oil prices at between $75 and $80 per barrel and that higher prices could put a brake on the global economy.
Gas jumps nearly 18 cents in 2 weeks
(CNN) — Gasoline prices jumped nearly 18 cents over the past two weeks, the first two-week rise since early August, according to a survey published Sunday.
Goldman Keeps $85 Oil Target on China’s ‘Robust’ Diesel Demand
(Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. maintained its forecast for crude oil to reach $85 a barrel by the end of this year on “robust” demand for diesel in China, the world’s second-largest energy consumer.
“Chinese oil demand is leading the way and U.S. oil demand is lagging behind,” Goldman analysts led by David Greely said in a report dated Oct. 23 and made public today. “We are likely to see a recovery in which strong emerging-market oil demand puts upward pressure on crude oil prices.”
China oil demand in fastest growth in over 3 yrs
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s apparent oil demand rose 12.5 percent in September from a year earlier, the sixth rise in a row and the fastest rate since June 2006, as refiners operated at record rates amid a sustained recovery in economic activity.
However, the robust September rate, anticipated by some analysts, may have been inflated by a low base a year earlier when implied oil demand inched 2.3 percent as the global financial crisis began infiltrating into the world’s second largest oil market.
Chinese LNG imports hit record high
China imported 788,514 tonnes of liquefied natural gas in September, customs data showed today, the highest on record since China started its first imports of the super-cooled clean fuel three years ago.
China’s Sept. Coal Imports Rise as Economy Recovers
(Bloomberg) — China, the world’s largest coal user and producer, increased imports of the fuel in September to meet rising domestic consumption following an economic recovery.
Purchases rose 7 percent to 12.55 million metric tons last month from August and were more than triple what the country imported a year earlier, according to data from the customs office in Beijing today.
In China, one doesn’t have to look far to see the country’s commitment to renewable energy. In cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, rooftops are now covered with solar water heaters. On the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, towering white wind turbines are popping up where only cattle, sheep and herders on horseback once roamed. While coal consumption is expected to climb more than 3% annually for the next two decades, the government has also required that electrical companies add a significant amount of alternative energy to their portfolios. With the global economy languishing, China — which is not only the world’s most populous country, but also the most polluted — offers the promise that its green-energy drive can become a major source of demand for international wind and solar companies.
Aramco to start Khursaniyah gas plant soon
KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Saudi Aramco’s gas processing plant at Khursaniyah was expected to start partial operations in a few weeks, two contracting sources said on Sunday.
Delays in construction at the plant delayed the whole 500,000 barrels per day Khursaniyah oilfield development project, one of the largest in Saudi expansion plans as the kingdom boosted crude production capacity to 12.5 million bpd.
Touradji Beaten by Commodity Indexes Shows Funds Losing Edge
(Bloomberg) — Hedge fund managers are trailing benchmark commodity indexes by the widest margin in four years after copper doubled and oil surged 58 percent.
Barclays Hires Ex-Marubeni Oil Trader on Japan Hedging Demand
(Bloomberg) — Barclays Plc, the U.K.’s second- biggest bank, hired Marubeni Corp. oil trader Hiroyuki Oda to help meet growing demand from Japanese refiners and fuel wholesalers for hedging against petroleum price swings.
Sudan oil output falls short of estimates – minister
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan’s oil production averaged 470,000 barrels per day in 2008/09 below estimates of 500,000 bpd, and plans to build a new refinery in Port Sudan have been shelved indefinitely, the oil minister said on Sunday.
Al-Zubeir Ahmed al-Hassan, also the minister of mining, said Sudan was witnessing a “gold rush” with commercial concessions being awarded to new companies and small-time mining exploding throughout Africa’s largest country.
“The average (output) had been expected to reach 500,000 (bpd) but the actual is 470,000,” Hassan told Reuters in an interview.
“Next year we are trying to be realistic… in the pricing and production.”
Woodside’s Pluto LNG Expansion Costs May Climb, JPMorgan Says
(Bloomberg) — Woodside Petroleum Ltd.’s plan to expand its Pluto project in Australia may cost A$3 billion ($2.8 billion) more after a potential supplier opted to feed gas to Chevron Corp.’s rival venture instead, JPMorgan Chase & Co. said.
Gazprom sees EU fully taking contracted gas
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Gazprom expects its European customers to fully take volumes of contracted gas this year thus avoiding the need to fine them for low consumption, an executive said on Monday.
The comment from Gazprom’s export chief Alexander Medvedev follows a report in The Wall Street Journal that European customers owe Gazprom $2.5 billion under take-or-pay provisions, which fix a minimum amount of gas that they must buy annually.
Ghanem returns as head of Libya’s state oil firm
LONDON (Reuters) – Shokri Ghanem has been reinstated as chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp., an unexpected return to the top oil post in the OPEC member-nation weeks after he left the job.
“Reinstated, and no other comment,” Ghanem told Reuters. He left the post in September for reasons that were never made clear and had been replaced with Ali Seghir Mohamed Saleh.
Northwest Australia May Have as Many as Six Cyclones This Year
(Bloomberg) — Australia’s northwest may have between four and six tropical cyclones this season, the Bureau of Meteorology said, potentially threatening mining operations and oil production.
UK: Utilities, Gas and Electric Fuel Poverty Expected To Hit 4.6m Homes By The End Of The Year
New figures from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have warned that the number of households living in fuel poverty in England is expected to hit 4.6 million by the end of the year.
Fuel poverty is the term given when a household spends more than 10% of its income on fuel to ensure it has enough heating for its home.
The projection comes from the latest figures, which show that the number of fuel-poor households in the UK rose from 3.25 million in 2006 to four million in 2007. The increases have been blamed by the continuing rise in fuel prices.
Hydro-Québec seeks control of N.B. corridor to U.S.: experts
Hydro-Québec has a strategic motive for its interest in NB Power, say people familiar with the industry.
Former New Brunswick energy minister Jeannot Volpe said Hydro-Québec may want to buy the utility so it can block sales of electricity to the United States by Newfoundland and Labrador from its Lower Churchill development.
The Newfoundland government wants to get electricity from that project into the U.S., he said, but it has not been able to arrange transmission through Quebec.
Who Wants To Win The Oil? is the latest satirical TV panel show where smart-mouthed comics comment on the day’s events. But there’s a twist. Who Wants is a daily show, it’ll feature big-name comedians and they’ll all be competing to win five litres of crude oil sitting in barrels in the studio. Sick and tasteless given the recent Iraq war? Well, yes, but Who Wants To Win The Oil? is actually on Iraqi television and is part of a new wave of satire sweeping the troubled country.
92-year-old’s website leaves oil giant Shell-shocked
At 92 years old, Alfred Donovan is an unlikely online campaigner. But he and his son John, 62, have been a painful thorn in the side of Royal Dutch Shell for more than a decade. The pair run one of the oldest and most effective “gripe sites”, and the oil giant’s army of well-paid lawyers do not know how to neutralise them.
US threats prompted Iran nuclear facility
WASHINGTON – The administration of United States President Barack Obama claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran’s decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 US intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program tells a different story.
The Iranian decision to withdraw from the earlier agreement with the IAEA was prompted, moreover, by the campaign of threats to Iran’s nuclear facilities mounted by the George W Bush administration in early 2007, as a reconstruction of the sequence of events shows.
What’s Behind Iran’s Nuclear Delaying Tactics
Why the delay? Iran’s leaders may simply be engaging in brinksmanship in search of further concessions over the amount of uranium transferred or the rate of deliveries. Iran’s signature approach to negotiations has been to drag them out and incrementally roll back Western red lines. Not only has Iran finally won direct negotiations with America without ever changing its own positions, but the talks are increasingly occurring on its terms. Whereas President George W. Bush had insisted that Iran could not be allowed to “master the technology of uranium enrichment,” today’s talks are focused not on the question of whether Iran can continue enriching uranium, but on how its stockpile of enriched uranium is to be used.
UK: Energy reports ‘a waste of time’
A former Tomorrow’s World presenter has branded new energy reports “insane” after purpose-built ‘eco homes’ were given a low efficiency rating.
Lindsey Fallow said Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) were made using a “glorified spread sheet” and did not recognise advanced technologies.
It comes after a firm she is involved with scored low ratings on four new homes in South Lanarkshire.
Detroit house auction flops for urban wasteland
Almost 9,000 Detroit homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay are being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded — despite a minimum bid of only $500.
Sidewalks become battlegrounds
JACKSON, Miss. — The nation’s crumbling sidewalks have disabled residents taking their wheelchairs to the streets, a potentially dangerous practice that has cash-strapped cities and disability-rights advocates at odds over how to fix the problem.
Energy Dept. Aid for Scientists on the Edge
WASHINGTON — The federal Energy Department will make good on a pledge for a bolder technology strategy on Monday, awarding research grants for ideas like bacteria that will make gasoline, enzymes that will capture carbon dioxide to counter global warming and batteries so cheap that they will allow the use of solar power all night long.
Solarworld, Phoenix Shares Gain After Merkel Retreats on Cuts
(Bloomberg) — Shares of German solar-power companies Solarworld AG, Q-Cells SE and Phoenix Solar AG climbed after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s incoming government retreated from threats to cut their subsidies.
2010 Now: Brazil Anticipates 5% Biodiesel Addition to Diesel by Three Years
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announced last week that the addition of 5% biodiesel to the diesel consumed in Brazil has been advanced in three years. The so-called B5, which was expected to start being used in 2013, will already be compulsory in 2010.
Who says it’s green to burn woodchips?
One of the most cherished articles of faith of the green movement – that wood-fuelled power stations can help save the planet – is being increasingly challenged by campaigners and conservationists around the world.
Water-demanding farms looked at as resources vanish
YUMA – Along its final miles, the Colorado River snakes through a dizzying series of dams, canals, siphons and ditches, diverted to hundreds of users in Arizona and California until barely a trickle remains.
What flows through this watery Grand Central Station could fill the needs of all the homes and offices in Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and much of Southern California.
But it doesn’t.
The water, more than a billion gallons a day, irrigates vast fields of wheat, alfalfa, cotton, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, melons and a produce aisle of other fruits and vegetables, feeding an industry tilled from the desert more than a century ago.
‘Semi-vegetarianism’ could ease global warming
More people should be vegetarians and the food outlets on campus should be offering a greater variety of options to cater to people who take responsibility for their carbon footprint. The reduced environmental impact of using recyclable bags or taking short showers, while admirable, is nothing compared to the difference you can make by simply decreasing your meat consumption.
According to the Environmental Defense Fund, if every American resisted meat consumption just one day per week, the environmental advantage would be the same as having 8 million fewer cars off the roads. There are plenty of interesting and tasty ways to adapt your favorite meals to be meatless; the meals available on campus are a truly poor representation of this.
Study: Warmed Northwest forests may yield less timber
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A new study suggests warming temperatures predicted over the next century could boost tree growth on Northwest forests, but less so at lower elevations where most of the timber is and temperatures are already warm.
Cap on Ships, Planes, to Increase Carbon Demand, Lloyds Says
(Bloomberg) — Caps on emissions from ships and planes, which account for about 5 percent of global releases, may drive up demand for carbon credits and boost prices before a climate gathering in Copenhagen, an expert said.
International shipping and aviation may increase demand for carbon credits by as much as 25 percent, with marine accounting for 15 percent to meet European Union plans, said Anne-Marie Warris, a climate change expert at Lloyds Register, which certifies ships. About 3 billion metric tons of carbon credits are traded under the EU’s carbon trading scheme, she said.
Climate targets can’t be achieved, say energy companies
Energy companies have privately warned the Government that its climate change targets are “illusory” and “delusional” as global leaders prepare to sign up to stricter guidelines at the Copenhagen climate change conference in six weeks.
