Climate Change and Energy

From Geeky Chic 2.0, bad news about the Arctic Ice. It's melting, and it may be too late to save it.

Which reminded me of a link from Rhinocrisy a while back, that Nick reminded me of--the Siberian peat moss is melting and yielding climate change supervillain methane into the air.

Remember folks, one carbon atom in a methane molecule is 23 times worse for climate change than the same carbon atom in a carbon dioxide molecule. We are much, much better off burning the methane than we are letting it escape.

That's is why Strauss Family Creamery's Methane Digester and the Rwandan Prison Waste methane harvester are so great. I try to buy Strauss Family Creamery products anyway because they're organic and tasty, but I've redoubled my efforts after reading about their methane harvesting.

Nick also sent me a couple of articles about Hydrogen storage advances from the Pacific Northwest Lab and Denmark. This is good news because if we move to a hydrogen based transporation economy now, a) we can produce the electricity to make the hydrogen in powerplants, which are more efficient and easier to regulate than cars, and b) when someone does come up with a good way to produce hydrogen cleanly, there will be less delay in switching over, since the switchover will be more centralized. 1 power plant will have to change instead of hundreds of car-drivers. It's not such good news though because we still have to produce the hydrogen, probably with electricity, and most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels.

There's always good info at Anup's American Automobile Fuel Consumption Debate, and Climateboy and Rhinocrisy frequently blog on these subjects.