Tag Archives: climate change

September 3, 2011, 4:22 pm

Thought Experiment

Suppose we lived in a world in which reporters asked politicians to explain the grounds on which they believe what they purport to believe; in which they did so regularly at press conferences and in presidential debates—

• why, for example, they are “skeptical” about the presence of climate change that virtually all scientists think is in significant measure the product of human activity;

• whether they are equally skeptical of scientific arguments about, say, genetic modification, the design of wing shapes or drone technology;

• in other words, on what basis they pick and choose their scientific arguments;

• or why (if they are Republican) they believe that jobs are produced when taxes are lowered, in the light of the fact—reported by a notorious Communist newspaper called The Wall Street Journal—that fewer jobs were created under George W. Bush’s…

July 20, 2011, 4:08 pm

Learning to Live With Carbon Dioxide

By Diane Auer Jones

American Electric Power announced recently that the company is abandoning its plan to build a full-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) demonstration plant. While the Department of Energy initially promised to fund half the cost of the project, they have reneged on their support now that the cost of carbon won’t make expensive energy production cheaper by comparison.

The problems are not all at the federal level. In addition to the loss of federal support, AEP was also informed that state regulators would not allow them to increase consumer utility rates to cover the cost of carbon-free energy production. In these tough economic times, it is hard to tell people that their utility rates will increase substantially—as much as 40 percent or more—regardless of their personal concerns about oil dependency or the environment.

Carbon capture and sequestration is a…