George W. Bush was quietly approaching US petroleum corporations and trying to do deals with the French and Russian governments and their energy companies regarding Iraqi petroleum fields in fall of 2002, according to British government documents. BP learned of these secret negotiations, and arranged for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Trade Minister, Lady Elizabeth Symons, […]
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Energy
Sea Water for Honolulu Air Conditioning
Here’s a neat, practical idea: Honolulu is going to draw in sea water for air conditioning. The system “will reduce Hawaii’s consumption of oil by some 178,000 barrels a year and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 84,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.” These are small sums, but if lots of coastal cities did this all […]
Fukushima Core Failure a Level 7 (the Worst)
It’s official. The Fukushima nuclear core failure is now more like what happened in Chernobyl than what happened a Three Mile Island, and is being declared a Level 7 nuclear emergency– one that has wide effects on human health. I was in London during Chernobyl, and I remember them telling us that children or pregnant […]
Wholesale Solar Energy Costs Rivalling Coal
Bloomberg reports that wholesale solar energy costs are falling 8% a year and may already rival coal in sunny climes like the Middle East and Japan. They’re expected to be halved in the next decade. Bloomberg writes, “Installation of solar PV systems will almost double to 32.6 gigawatts by 2013 from 18.6 gigawatts last year, […]
Green Energy in 20-40 Years?
All the power the world needs could be provided by alternative energy sources within 20-40 years if the political will could be found, according to Stanford researchers. Note that they do not include nuclear energy in their calculations. Part of their technique is to include ‘externalities’ of hydrocarbon fuels in their cost estimates, such as […]
What if? and the Meltdown Threat
If the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been a bank of wind turbines, we wouldn’t all be on hanging on every item about radiation release. The talk would just be about rebuilding the turbines. Germany is hoping to replace its aging nuclear reactors with offshore wind farms… Euronews reports that reactor number 3 may already […]
Japan Nuclear Threat, Libya Oil Crisis, Highlight Need for Renewable Energy
Fears over possible nuclear reactor meltdowns have complicated Japan’s attempt to recover from the tsunami that hit northern prefectures on Friday. Japan, which has no oil or gas of its own, gets about a third of its electricity from nuclear power as a result of a government push to build nuclear reactors after the energy […]
BP Platform Blow-Out was covered up in Azerbaijan: Wikileaks
The Guardian reports from US State Department cables released by Wikileaks that the oil and gas giant, BP, experienced a platform disaster in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan in September, 2008, very similar to last summer’s Deep Water Horizon platform explosion. BP was reported to have covered up the details of the catastrophe even from […]
Dec. 6: Top Ten New Wikileaks on Greater Middle East
Here are this weekend’s top ten Wikileaks revelations for the Greater Middle East: The US and India wanted to slap United Nations sanctions on Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and his group, Jama’at al-Da’wa, for terrorism. But Pakistan asked China to block this move at the UN, and Beijing complied. The Jama`at is widely considered a front […]