CLEVER & Carver's Tilt Cars
Three wheelers with cabs that tilt on corners, such as the CLEVER (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport), and the Carver One, should be on the road by 2009. The metal skeleton of the car, including the cab for the driver and one passenger, tilts on corners, with the twin rear wheels remaining upright...

Suburban Sprawl & CO2
It's been a long time since land development in California was governed solely by market forces. For decades, myriad regulations and agencies have had a hand in land use decisions. Then in late 2006 California passed the much vaunted "Global Warming Act"...

Rainforest Regeneration
An encouraging bit of information has surfaced from a study entitled "No Convincing Evidence for Decline in Tropical Forests" authored by rainforest expert Dr. Alan Grainger...


Orangutans & 2007 et al.
Other than an emotionally-driven CO2 offset bandwagon, or juggernaut - unwittingly and with the best of intentions delivering oil palm planations to Borneo - and in so doing exterminating Orangutans and decimating moist rainforest - what salient bits of numerical AND qualitative data might charactarize the year just past, 2007?...

California's Deficit
For 2008, California's state government needs something like $14 billion more than they think they're going to collect. It is absurd to cut services. It is absurd to lay off workers. In the analysis we've prepared, the reader is encouraged to input their own assumptions...

GreenBuzz Newsletter

Orangutans & 2007 et al.
Other than an emotionally-driven CO2 offset bandwagon, or juggernaut - unwittingly and with the best of intentions delivering oil palm planations to Borneo - and in so doing exterminating Orangutans and decimating moist rainforest - what salient bits of numerical AND qualitative data might charactarize the year just past, 2007?...

California's Deficit
For 2008, California's state government needs something like $14 billion more than they think they're going to collect. It is absurd to cut services. It is absurd to lay off workers. In the analysis we've prepared, the reader is encouraged to input their own assumptions...

Switching to Switchgrass
Unlike oil palms or sugar cane, switchgrass will never be grown on former rainforest. Not only is the CO2 released during rainforest destruction never recovered through subsequently growing biofuel, but the thermal impact of permanently losing reflective clouds that form...

Affordable Desalination
For years the conventional wisdom among environmentalists and policymakers has been the following: Desalination is too expensive, too energy intensive, too environmentally dangerous, and not scaleable. We disagree emphatically with all of these notions. The online interactive spreadsheet "Desalination Costs"...

PV Costs to Power Car
In previous posts, “Fisker’s Photovoltaic Cars,” and “Photovoltaic Powered Cars,” we've reported on the potential for commuters to power their vehicles with rooftop PVs...

Global Warming Questions
Earlier this month we posted a feature article entitled “35 Inconvenient Truths” by Christopher Monckton. The story attracted a number of emails, but none that actually challenged the content...

Land for Biofuel
Earlier this month, in our post “Biofuel’s Potential,” we compared the best case biofuel yields today - about 10,000 barrels per square mile per year - to the best case biofuel yields in the future according to many biofuel experts - about 50,000 barrels per square mile per year. The difference between these...

Clean Energy Acts
Can California get "all electric utilities to produce 50 percent of their electricity from clean energy sources" by 2025? That should be easy if government mandates the transition and funds the right new infrastructure, and gets out of the way everywhere else...

World Encyclopedia
of Trees

Solar Thermal Storage
This past October, in our report “Ausra’s Solar Thermal Power,” we reported on this newcomer in the rapidly growing solar thermal power industry, with at least two innovations that could make them a major participant in this sector which is finally taking off. One of Ausra’s innovations is the design of their solar field - they have taken the single axis parabolic trough design, and revised it so that instead of one linear heat exchanger...

The Potential of Biofuel
If the present is problematic, that doesn’t mean the future has no potential. We have railed against the catastrophe in progress throughout the tropics, as the last rainforests are razed to grow sugar cane and oil palms. Over and over, we’ve reminded readers to beware of carbon taxes and carbon trading schemes, because European carbon offset payments are funding the destruction of Asian rainforests to grow biofuel...

Critique of New Urbanism
Our post yesterday, “Taking on Smart Growth” prompted a lengthy exchange between the author and a very well informed critic. Despite our best efforts to communicate our point of view, ultimately the critic described our criticisms of new urbanism as coming from “Wingnuttia.”...

Green Mega-Projects
When green technology delivers decentralized solutions to water and energy - from hi-tech and low maintenance, ultra-effective septic systems to affordable rooftop photovoltaics and electrical storage systems, there are a lot of public works contractors who will be looking for something to do...

Taking On “Smart Growth”
It is completely impractical to make everything “walking distance” from everything else. People like cars. The car is the most liberating personal appliance ever invented. The new urbanist war on the car is based on...

New Urbanism’s Pitfalls
To follow up on yesterday’s post, it has become more clear than ever how land use decisions are the place where every tenant of environmentalism is applied, yet the centrality of land use, like the centrality of population demographics, is rarely the focus of environmental discussions...

Land Use Debate
Not long ago I learned of an excellent service for urban forestry, www.treelink.org, which has a list-serve that is possibly the most subscribed interlink for professional arborists in the United States, if not the world. For several weeks now I’ve been reading the emails that fly back and forth between these folks who have the good fortune to make their living from planting and nurturing trees...

CO2 or Rainforests?
We have just published an interview with noted climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr., a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for dialogue and commentary on climate issues...

Life from Waste
We constantly hear about new ways to reuse and recycle waste, but not so often does our waste get the opportunity to play a direct role in creating new life. Such is the case, however, with the products about to be shipped from Fiberwood, a new company in Sacramento, California, that converts cardboard into mulch...

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