NASA’s Glory Satellite Will Study the Climate Impact of Atmospheric Aerosols
January 26, 2011 No Comment
Photo: NASA Better Measuring for Better Understanding NASA’s latest tool to study and understand our planet’s atmosphere is scheduled to launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Feb. 23. The Glory satellite will study how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles (aerosols) are affecting the Earth’s climate. “Glory is going to help scientists tackle one of the major uncertainties in climate change predictions identified by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: the influence of aerosols on the energy balance of our planet,” said Michael Freilich, dir… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Natural Gas Far Less Green Than Claimed – Fracking Emissions 1000s Times Higher Than Reported: EPA
January 26, 2011 No Comment
No one would argue that natural gas is a carbon-neutral or even low-carbon energy source, but it’s a whole heck of a lot better than burning coal, oil from tar sands, or oil from anywhere for that matter. That’s the conventional viewpoint. A new piece by ProPublica , highlighting new EPA analysis of the of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas, calls all that into question. At the hear… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo credit: A Girl With Tea / Creative Commons Last week the Federal Trade Commission gave the green light for Coca-Cola to proceed with the purchase of Honest Tea. Acquisitions that exceed $63 million in value require government clearance to make sure the transaction isn’t anticompetitive—if a really big company buys another really big company, there is the potential for consumer choices to be l… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image Credit Wikipedia “See-Through” is a real estate development term that originated in Houston in the 80s, when they overbuilt glass skyscrapers that were empty and you could see right through them. Eventually the new buildings filled up as people moved out of the older ones, which were then often demolished; in Dubai, there is no old stuff, just new. Consultant Jones Lang LaSalle has a radical proposal,
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The Nissan LEAF is being touted as the first affordable all electric vehicle for the mass market. Released just last month, some 20,000 eager EV drivers have already ordered a one through a unique online reservations program. Planet 100 hops in the driver’s seat to see if the hype matches the reality…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image: Rachel Cernansky Funeral services were held yesterday for three park rangers and five soldiers who were killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while trying to secure a safe public passage in the Congolese side of Virunga National Park, where the world’s only remaining mountain gorillas call home. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image: SouthwestRooms.com The InterContinental Hotels Group, which owns the Holiday Inn conglomerate and is the world’s largest hotel group (by number of rooms), announced this week that its sustainability program in existing hotels has been awarded with a LEED volume precertification, one of the first steps in a streamlined path to LEED certification for a large group of hotels. According to IHG, the program, called
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Photo: Quest Point Solar Solutions I just got off a conference call with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu , in which he discussed the vision for clean energy President Obama put forth in last night’s State of the Union address. In that speech, Obama proclaimed that this was America’s renewable energy Sputnik moment (a line he took from Chu , actually) — the juncture… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: GM Doubling Down According to “people familiar with the matter” cited by Bloomberg , GM CEO Dan Akerson is planning to increase the Chevrolet Volt’s production target to 120,000 in 2012, or twice the original number. This is good news since one of the big complaints about the Volt was that GM wasn’t making nearly enough of them to truly reduce its fleet’s carbon footprint…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
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