Climate clippings 66
New solar PV nanotechnology There have been so many developments in PV technology it’s hard to know which will be significant. Gizmag tells us about new material consisting of tiny hollow spheres, made out of nanocrystalline-silicon. The new material is [...]
Renewable energy for all
Most policy buffs suggest that governments should not pick winners in the renewable energy or any other field. Now there is a scientific reason for narrowing the choice – any energy source other than the sun and derivatives such as [...]
The IEA’s solar energy perspective
World-wide the shipping rate of solar PV has increased by a compound rate of 65% in the five years to 2010: The graph above showing the shipping rate of solar came from the International Energy association (IEA) which has recently [...]
Climate clippings 65
I’m still stressing out over the project I’m working on and various health matters that are annoying, time-consuming but OK-ish. John D has helped as always, but don’t blame him for the fourth one, the one on Rupert’s WSJ. Australian [...]
Renewables in Germany – a paradigm shift or just a muddle?
On solar PV installations the laurels go to Germany. They installed 3 Gw of solar PV in December alone, compared with 1.7 Gw in the US for the whole of 2011 – and at roughly half the price. This is [...]
Quick link: Cattle out of Alpine National Park for good
The Victorian government’s “scientific trial” of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park has been stopped permanently by Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke under the National Heritage Act. Here’s the Ministerial press release, and here’s the formal notice of the [...]
Climate clippings 64
I’m currently working on another project, which is taking up much of my time. This week we had about 200mm of rain in one day. That could have been why my cable connection to the internet disappeared for 36 hours. [...]
The Big Dumb Number approach to fire hazard reduction redux.
I have previously posted about the potential pitfalls of framing the fire hazard reduction task in Australian landscapes in terms of simple numerical targets, which I characterised as a Big Dumb Number approach. Nonetheless, the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission decided [...]
Climate clippings 63
China report on climate change (Photo from Reuters, via The Age.) From Reuters we hear about the Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change which sums up advancing scientific knowledge about the consequences and costs of global warming for China: [...]
Climate clippings 62
Energy savings work! It had passed me by, but an outfit called the Breakthrough Institute (BTI) has been suggesting that energy savings don’t work, according to a guest post at Climate Progress. They say there is a “rebound effect” which [...]
Climate clippings 61
David Archer on methane Climate clippings 58 led with an item on Methane worries. @ 18 I identified David Archer as one who is “very knowledgeable on the matter [and] thinks the process will be chronic rather than catastrophic.” He [...]
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