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As part of a routine test of a new refrigerant being used in the Mercedes-Benz B Class, engineers simulated a pinhole leak in a coolant line. When the refrigerant (now mixed with A/C compressor oil) sprayed on a hot engine, the results were dramatic. The vaporized mixture reportedly ignited on contact with the hot surface, creating what Reuters (via Yahoo News) described as a “ball of fire,” followed by a cloud of dangerous hydrogen fluoride gas. The corrosive gas then attacked the windshield, etching the glass and raising even more potential concerns about the safety of the new HFO-1234yf refrigerant....

Barely a day after the Washington State Senate voted to fund a study that would explore ways to enforce tougher greenhouse gas emission standards, a respected academic spent nearly two hours presenting scientific evidence suggesting the assumptions on which that legislation was based were wrong. Dr. Don Easterbrook, a professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University, on Tuesday told the Senate’s Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee he was relying on an old maxim in science: “In God we trust; everyone else bring data.” “Well, I’m bringing data,” he said. “You’ll hear very few opinions from me. When I’m finished,...

A new paper that recently replaced the old paper that settled the science of global warming is now out - and not a moment too soon, either. Because the new paper essentially says: “Um, guys? Never mind.� :/). Ok, they don't really say that, but actually they really do.  “Sea level rise is one of the big issues of global warming. It could potentially swamp coastal cities or make them far more vulnerable to storms, such as Hurricane Katrina,� says Science World Report, apparently a wholly owned division of Wayne’s World Publishing, operating under the motto “It Certainly Does Suck.�...

Plenty has been written about concerns over elevated levels of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, but a Kansas State University researcher has found an upside to the higher CO2 levels. And it's been particularly relevant in light of drought that overspread the area in recent months.

President Obama’s Energy secretary nominee regards a carbon tax as one of the simplest ways to move the energy industry towards clean technologies, though he notes that government would have to come up with a plan to mitigate the burden this tax places on poor people, who would pay the most. “Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store it than to release it and pay a price,” MIT professor and Energy nominee Ernest Moniz told the Switch Energy Project in an interview last year. “If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few...

**SNIP** Mr. Waxman, joined by Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, both Democrats, distributed a relatively simple proposal to impose a fee on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories, refineries and other major sources. The idea of a carbon tax, long favored by many economists as the most straightforward way of deterring pollution, has been kicking around the Capitol for years, but has never gained a broad following. The plan contains three potential per-ton prices for carbon pollution, $15, $25 or $30, and a range of annual...

Hyperia | Credit WikimediaDespite the fuss about CO2 emissions, on a global scale no one is quite sure where a lot of it ends up. Those mystery “sinks” draw in a large proportion of CO2. Here’s a big sink that just got twice as big.Science Daily  Mar. 17, 2013 — Models of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans need to be revised, according to new work by UC Irvine and other scientists published online Sunday in Nature Geoscience. Trillions of plankton near the surface of warm waters are far more carbon-rich than has long been thought, they found. Global...

When you buy a car, there are various ratings outfits in the business of calculating the true cost of owning that particular vehicle, inc. insurance, depreciation, maintenance, cost of repairs, etc. Such a comprehensive model is surely more realistic than just looking at the monthly payment or sticker price, and the customer knows if they're actually making a cost-effective, bottom-line decision. But even if you buy-into the now imploding globaloney scam, wouldn't it make sense to apply similar logic to calculate the entire environmental impact of electric vs. internal combustion cars over the full service life... esp since the actual...

Tune in Tuesday night to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. As the president speaks, he will be alert to the chorus of Hollywood stars, environmental activists, editorial writers and industry leaders who are pushing for him to make the biggest climate-change decision he can possibly make: Impose a carbon tax.

COLUMBUS, Ohio—A new form of clean coal technology reached an important milestone recently, with the successful operation of a research-scale combustion system at Ohio State University. The technology is now ready for testing at a larger scale. For 203 continuous hours, the Ohio State combustion unit produced heat from coal while capturing 99 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction. Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of Ohio State’s Clean Coal Research Laboratory, pioneered the technology called Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL), which chemically harnesses coal’s energy and efficiently contains the carbon dioxide produced before...

Sen. Barbara Boxer said she had a one word answer for why President Obama promised to act on climate change in his second inaugural address: “Sandy.” Boxer called Hurricane Sandy a turning point in public opinion on global warming, and said Washington will act to curb CO2 emissions not via legislation but through the Environmental Protection Agency. “My view is they have no choice but to act,” Boxer said, referring to a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed that greenhouse gasses are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. “The EPA has huge authority here.” ... “There may be a way to...

Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest. The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study.

h/t Speedunque

Obama quietly signs bill shielding airlines from carbon fees in EuropeBy Keith Laing - 11/27/12 02:02 PM ET President Obama has signed into law a bill that requires U.S. airlines be excluded from European carbon emissions fees. Environmentalists had framed the bill as the first test of the president's commitment to fighting climate change in his second term and urged him to veto it. Obama quietly signed it Tuesday over their objections. "The Obama administration is firmly committed to reducing harmful carbon pollution from civil aviation both domestically and internationally, but, as we have said on many occasions, the application...

Obama’s former chief economist Larry Summers thinks that one way to break America’s fall off the over-reported fiscal cliff is to raise taxes to the level they were under Clinton’s administration. Echoing Paul Krugman’s 90% tax rate nostalgia and pointing out that it was conservative icon Ronald Reagan who cut taxes to 50%, he said, “It’s hard to believe that raising the top tax rate to 39.6 percent — where it was under President Clinton — will do grievous damage to the economy.” Of course, Reagan also cut the top tax rate to 28% in his second term, but that’s...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says he wants to begin a national "conversation" on climate change. At a news conference Wednesday, Obama said his administration has taken steps to combat global warming, such as sharply increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

Barack Obama may consider introducing a tax on carbon emissions to help cut the U.S. budget deficit after winning a second term as president, according to HSBC Holdings Plc. A tax starting at $20 a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021, Nick Robins, an analyst at the bank in London, said today in an e-mailed research note, citing Congressional Research Service estimates. “Applied to the Congressional Budget Office’s 2012 baseline, this would halve the fiscal deficit by 2022,” Cap-and-trade legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate after...

A private company backed by a controversial U.S. businessman has unilaterally conducted the world's most significant geoengineering project to date. Russ George, in conjunction with a First Nations village on Haida Gwaii, has dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean in a technique known as ocean fertilization. The experiment, which is in violation of two United Nations moratoria, has outraged environmental, legal, and civic groups. The iron sulphate was dumped into the Pacific back in July, but recent satellite images are now confirming its effects — an artificial plankton bloom that's 10,000 square kilometers (6,214 square...

Obama: Carbon ‘Eating Out Planet,’ ‘A Threat to Our Children’s Future’ By Fred Lucas October 11, 2012 (CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama warned his supporters about the threat of global warming and vowed that more money to subsidize green energy firms would prevent it. “By the way, yes, my plan will reduce the carbon pollution that is eating our planet because climate change is not a hoax,” Obama said at a campaign rally at the Bank United Arena at the University of Miami. “More droughts and hurricanes and wildfires, that’s not a joke. That’s a threat to our children’s future,...

RANJIT NAGAR, India — When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system. Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions. But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity. They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits...

WE are in the midst of a natural gas revolution in America that is a potential game changer for the economy, environment and our national security — if we do it right. The enormous stores of natural gas that have been locked away in shale deposits across America that we’ve now been able to tap into, thanks to breakthroughs in seismic imaging, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” are enabling us to replace much dirtier coal with cleaner gas as the largest source of electricity generation in America. And natural gas may soon be powering cars, trucks and ships...

Plant owners and operators report to EIA that they expect to retire almost 27 gigawatts (GW) of capacity from 175 coal-fired generators between 2012 and 2016. In 2011, there were 1,387 coal-fired generators in the United States, totaling almost 318 GW. The 27 GW of retiring capacity amounts to 8.5% of total 2011 coal-fired capacity. The coal-fired capacity expected to be retired over the next five years is more than four times greater than retirements performed during the preceding five-year period (6.5 GW). Moreover, based on EIA data, the approximate 9 GW of coal-fired capacity retirements expected to occur in...

So much for that global “free” market.Scott the trader writes to explain that the EU “CER” credits are the ones people can buy and exchange for Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) but they have sunk to $4. The more expensive $9 EUA units that most commentators mention, are not exchangeable in the Australian market:The EU CER price is equivalent to about A$3.80  per tonne…  Almost $20 below Australia’s fixed price.    These are the products most comparable to Australia’s $23/Tonne as it will be CERs that we can surrender instead of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to satisfy an Australian Clean...

New Book: Solar Cells 23,000 Times Worse for Environment Than Carbon Dioxide Tuesday, June 05, 2012 – by Staff Report Solar Cells Linked to Greenhouse Gases Over 23,000 Times Worse than According to New Book, Green Illusions ... Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil fuel use in the United States according to a new environmental book, Green Illusions (June 2012, University of Nebraska Press), written by University of California - Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner. Green Illusions explains how the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen...

ON Sunday, the best climate policy in the world got even better: British Columbia’s carbon tax — a tax on the carbon content of all fossil fuels burned in the province — increased from $25 to $30 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, making it more expensive to pollute. This was good news not only for the environment but for nearly everyone who pays taxes in British Columbia, because the carbon tax is used to reduce taxes for individuals and businesses. Thanks to this tax swap, British Columbia has lowered its corporate income tax rate to 10 percent from 12...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed rules governing heat-trapping greenhouse gases, clearing a path for sweeping regulations affecting vehicles, coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. Handing a setback to industry and a victory to the Obama administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide is a public danger and the decision to set limits for emissions from cars and light trucks were "neither arbitrary nor capricious." The ruling, which addresses four separate lawsuits, upholds the underpinnings of the...

The economist Thorstein Veblen once quipped that "invention is the mother of necessity." That was before the age of air-conditioning, but no technology better illustrates Veblen's point. Having developed efficient cooling, we've designed homes, businesses and transportation systems that are completely dependent on it, while the resulting greenhouse emissions create the need for even more air-conditioning. (snip) We must break this feedback loop, but what does one say to someone living in one of the tropical nations where much of the increase in cooling demand is expected? Surely not that Americans are addicted to air-conditioning and can’t give it up,...

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Anthony Watts From the National Academies of Sciences News:Hydraulic Fracturing Poses Low Risk for Causing Earthquakes, But Risks Higher for Wastewater Injection WellsWASHINGTON — June 15th — Hydraulic fracturing has a low risk for inducing earthquakes that can be felt by people, but underground injection of wastewater produced by hydraulic fracturing and other energy technologies has a higher risk of causing such earthquakes, says a new report from the National Research Council. In addition, carbon capture and storage may have the potential for inducing seismic events, because significant volumes of fluids are injected underground...

BALTIMORE—A Maryland man faces trial in a $9.1 million fraud case that is shedding light on problems in a renewable energy credits program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Federal prosecutors accuse Rodney Hailey of Perry Hall of selling renewable fuel credits even though his company, Clean Green Fuel LLC, did not produce any renewable fuel. Instead, prosecutors say he pocketed the money and bought Ferraris and other luxury cars, as well as tractor-trailers, homes, jewelry and computers.

The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world. The U.N. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is defined in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. Western European countries fund energy projects in the developing world in order to obtain Certified Emission Reduction credits (CERs), tradable credits that enable Europeans to count foreign emission reductions towards their own domestic emission reduction targets. “The CDM started from a page and a half in the Kyoto Protocol,” said...

China will take swift counter-measures that could include impounding European aircraft if the EU punishes Chinese airlines for not complying with its scheme to curb carbon emissions, the China Air Transport Association said on Tuesday. The warning came as the U.N.'s aviation body expressed concern about the growing threat of bilateral reprisals. Chinese airlines, which have been told by Beijing not to comply with the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme, refused to meet a March 31 deadline for submitting carbon emissions data. A new stand-off looms after EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the carriers would have until the end...

Basin Electric Power Cooperative (Basin Electric), through its for-profit subsidiary, Dakota Gasification Company (Dakota Gas), owns and operates the Great Plains Synfuels Plant (Synfuels Plant). The Synfuels Plant is the only commercial-scale coal gasification plant in the United States that manufactures natural gas. It is also the cleanest energy plant operating in the state of North Dakota, according to a comparison of emissions data available from the North Dakota Department of Health

SHOPS and restaurants could face fines up to $1.1 million if waiters or sales staff wrongly blame the carbon tax for price rises or exaggerate the impact. And households are being warned to watch out for telephone scammers offering to deposit carbon tax compensation into their bank accounts. The prices watchdog, the ACCC, will today launch its countdown to the July 1 carbon tax with a special focus on helping small businesses understand their obligations and consumers to be vigilant for false claims. It is releasing internet videos to help business, a 16-page guide and has set up a dedicated...

The Environmental Protection Agency held 12 hours of stacked hearings in Washington, D.C. and Chicago on Thursday in favor of a regulation that analysts have concluded would kill the building of new conventional coal plants in the U.S. Among the participants scheduled to testify in consecutive five minute blocks throughout the day were multiple representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and environmental activists from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace. The proposed rule, reported by The Washington Post in March, limits the amount of greenhouse gases emitted...

Ecosystems haven’t maxed out ability to absorb fossil fuel emissions Earth’s ecosystems keep soaking up more carbon as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, new measurements find. The research contradicts several recent studies suggesting that “carbon sinks” have reached or passed their capacity. By looking at global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the new work calculates instead that total sinks have increased roughly in line with rising emissions. “The sinks have been more than able to keep up with emissions,” said Pieter Tans, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo....

(Phys.org) -- A materials scientist at Michigan Technological University has discovered a chemical reaction that not only eats up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, it also creates something useful. And, by the way, it releases energy. Making carbon-based products from CO2 is nothing new, but carbon dioxide molecules are so stable that those reactions usually take up a lot of energy. If that energy were to come from fossil fuels, over time the chemical reactions would ultimately result in more carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere—defeating the purpose of a process that could otherwise help mitigate climate change. Professor Yun Hang...

This is the video that got the maker's twitter account banned. It is very good.

Surgery bans elderly patient over her carbon footprintAn elderly woman was ordered to find a new GP because the “carbon footprint” of her two-mile round trips to the surgery where she had been treated for 30 years was too large. By Daily Telegraph Reporter 11:48PM BST 03 Apr 2012 Avril Mulcahy, 83, was told to address the “green travelling issues” over her journeys from her home in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, to the West Road Surgery. The surgery wrote to Mrs Mulcahy, telling her to register with a new GP within 28 days. The letter said: “Our greatest concern is for your...

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), which mandated a steep rise in domestic ethanol production, is causing unforeseen negative consequences for food prices while failing to live up to the desired gasoline results and other expectations, concludes a Texas A&M University research team headed by an economics professor who studies energy issues.James Griffin James M. Griffin, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy, which is part of Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Mauricio Cifuentes Soto, a graduate student assisting him, say in their report that the goal of...

The EU’s carbon agenda has launched a trade war that has China blocking purchases of Airbus’s troubled new jumbo jets; now word comes that the EU climate agenda is beginning to fall apart at home. The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. The move is the latest stage in the ignominious failure of EU carbon policy that has seen a grandiose carbon trading system bog down in a quagmire of scandal and price collapse. Europe will meet its current carbon reduction goals less because of any...

SANTA FE – The state Environmental Improvement Board voted 5-0 Monday to repeal a controversial cap-and-trade regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nullifying a struggling program before it got off the ground. A partnership of seven states originally envisioned to participate in the cap-and-trade program had dwindled to two, board Chairman Deborah Peacock said. “The intent was that all these states would be doing this cap and trading, and everyone’s dropped (out) except for California and New Mexico,” she said. “That, to me, was very significant.” The ruling reversed a 2010 decision of the previous board appointed by then-Gov. Bill...

Flying to and from Europe just became more expensive thanks to the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The ETS was instituted in January 2005, in an attempt to control greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide. Initially the scheme applied to power-generating facilities, oil refineries, steelworks, and other heavy industry in Europe. Now, as of the first of the year, the regulations have reached the airline industry, including aircraft based in the United States. Flights to and from Europe account for a third of all global air travel, thus this plan is the widest-reaching measure ever imposed by any country,...

Ow, that’s gotta hurt. CA’s 2006 Global Warming law – denied.Federal judge blocks California low-carbon fuels ruleChico Enterprise RecordFRESNO — A federal judge moved today to block California from enforcing its first-in-the-nation mandate for cleaner, low-carbon fuels, saying the rules favor biofuels produced in the state.The lawsuit challenging the state regulations, which were adopted as part of the state’s landmark 2006 global warming law, was filed in federal court last year by a coalition including the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association and the Consumer Energy Alliance. Fresno-based U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence O’Neill’s written ruling Thursday said the low-carbon fuel...

This guy (Headmaster Rob Benzie) has become Scrooge in England, except he doesn’t provide even one lump of coal, because, well that would mess up his “carbon footprint”. This is just too bizarre not to pass on, thanks to The Daily Bayonet who writes: A headmaster at a British school decided a great lesson in sustainability would be to turn off the heat for a day. In December: Pupils at Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, were forced to grip their pens through thick gloves and wear their coats and hats in class as temperatures dropped to 1C. The school’s...

New Mexico has already been passed over for some gas and oil projects because of regulatory uncertainties, a witness for opponents of the state’s cap-and-trade rule told the Environmental Improvement Board on Tuesday. The board, which concluded three days of technical testimony, also heard from a climate change expert who said the science is still in flux and that its impacts on New Mexico health and resources can’t be predicted with accuracy. John Christy, an atmospheric science professor and contributor to United Nations reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said cap and trade would have no meaningful impact...

Yesterday Australia passed it's $23 a ton carbon tax. Leftist activist group Get Up emailed this message to it's members from Al Gore. "This is a historic moment. Australia's Parliament has put the nation's first carbon price into law. With this vote, the world has turned a pivotal corner in the collective effort to solve the climate crisis. This success is the result of the tireless work of an unprecedented coalition that came together to support the legislation, the leadership of Prime Minister Gillard, and the courage of legislators to take a vote that helps to safeguard the future of...

Manufactured Mitt: Rare Iowa Appearances Attempt to Hide Positions on Carbon Emissions After Mitt Romney skipped a presidential forum in Iowa hosted by the National Association of Manufacturers last week, he should use today’s appearance at Dubuque manufacturing facility to answer the tough questions he is avoiding about his record of environmental activism. “Mitt Romney regulated Massachusetts electric supplies by capping carbon emissions, and now he’s trying to regulate his political risk in Iowa by capping his exposure to tough questions,” said Perry campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan. “Given that Romney has visited the state just four times in 2011, he...

California became the first state to cap greenhouse gas emissions across its major industries Thursday when air regulators unanimously approved a plan to allow companies to sell pollution credits as a way to ratchet down heat-trapping gases. The state Air Resources Board took the action almost a year after a nearly identical plan was approved, then delayed by environmentalists who demanded the board consider taxing carbon as an alternative to the cap-and-trade strategy. By 2013, refineries, power plants and the rest of the state's top 600 industrial sources of greenhouse gases will have to cut emissions on average by 10...

Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and takes on a wide variety of forms, called allotropes, including diamond and graphite. Scientists at Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory are part of a team that has discovered a new form of carbon, which is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses that were previously observed only in diamond. This breakthrough discovery will be published in Physical Review Letters. The team was led by Stanford's Wendy L. Mao and her graduate student Yu Lin and includes Carnegie's Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao, Li Zhang, Paul Chow, Yuming Xiao, Maria Baldini, and Jinfu Shu. The experiment started...

Former Vice President Al Gore threw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protests Wednesday night, arguing that the country’s elected officials have failed the public on everything “from the economy to the climate crisis.” Gore, a vocal advocate of policies to address climate change, called the protests — which have spread around the country — a “true grassroots movement.” “From the economy to the climate crisis, our leaders have pursued solutions that are not solving our problems; instead they propose policies that accomplish little,” Gore wrote on his blog Wednesday night. “With democracy in crisis, a true grassroots movement...