Global warming

DAVOS, Switzerland--So far, wind turbines are not Sputnik. But one day they could be.

The global race to develop clean technology is not just about who can build the best solar parks or wind farms. It is also shaping up as a contest between Chinese-style capitalism and the more market-oriented approach fancied by the United States and Europe.

The question comes down to this: will China's highly capitalized command-and-control economy trump laissez-faire in a low-carbon shift that is widely portrayed as the next industrial revolution?

The failure in Copenhagen to agree to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new global climate treaty when it expires in 2012 has thrown the focus on national measures. And by almost all accounts, the Chinese are coming on strong.

Beijing's top leaders have made clear their intention to have their nation dominate this new industry, up and down the value ladder. And in their quest for the prize, they are not burdened by concerns facing their Western counterparts--such as the impact of wind turbines on landscapes, higher energy prices for consumers, or investor returns.

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Bill Gates has been providing millions of dollars to fund academic research in energy and climate, some of which touches on geoengineering, or manipulating Earth's natural systems to counteract global warming.

Citing atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira, Science Magazine's online blog on Tuesday reported that Gates has put at least $4.5 million of his own money over the last three years into university research.

Caldeira, who is an advocate for research in geoengineering, serves as an adviser in how the money should be dispensed. Caldeira also works for Intellectual Ventures, an investment and intellectual property licensing company founded … Read more

Updated at 9:25 a.m. PST, February 18, 2010: The data from the original study regarding lawn carbon emissions versus carbon capture was found to be miscalculated. The study itself has since been amended, and this article has been corrected to reflect the new data.

While parks and lawns provide solace amidst urban and suburban sprawl, well-maintained grass is technically polluting to the environment, a study has shown.

While Nevada officials and residents have long espoused the benefits of desert landscaping in lieu of grass lawns, their focus has been on water conservation. This latest study from the University … Read more

Nuclear energy is worth pursuing, wind and solar are good but have limitations, and the government is putting minuscule amounts of money into energy R&D dollars.

So says software tycoon turned philanthropist Bill Gates, who launched his Gates Notes Web site on Wednesday to share his big-picture ideas on big topics. High on his list is energy and environment, an area where he's already taken lots of notes.

In a series of podcasts, Gates sketches out what technologies and policies are likely to lead to the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to zero.

In a response to a question, … Read more

Greenpeace is using its latest green-ratings guide to press consumer electronics companies to do more than just clean up their own act.

The 14th quarterly "Guide to Greener Electronics," (PDF) which rates hardware makers on chemical waste, e-waste, and recycling efforts, now assesses each company's public efforts on environmental issues.

The report, issued Thursday, considers whether a company actively lobbies for industrywide laws that would prevent other companies from using environmentally damaging materials, as part of their corporate sustainability obligations.

Specifically, Greenpeace said companies should support a new version of the European Union's RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in electronics). The update would ban brominated flame retardants (BFRs), chlorinated flame retardants (CFRs), and PVC vinyl plastic from being used in the manufacturing of electronics. (The regulation already restricts how much lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants can be used.)

As far as who's the greenest, Nokia still ranks at No. 1, but Greenpeace reduced the company's overall score by one point for "failing to do proactive lobbying" for the RoHS revisions.

The strategy brings an interesting idea to the forefront. With the new criteria, Greenpeace is essentially attempting to harness consumer buying-power to press private industry to pressure politicians.

But does this strategy really work? When picking out a new cell phone or computer, does the average consumer's thought process include a rundown of whether a company has stopped using BFRs in their products and has lobbied to prevent other companies from using them too.

Still, if no one can use a cheap-but-polluting manufacturing material, the playing field is leveled. Lobbying for a revised RoHS could be a win-win for companies that would like to eliminate the use of certain substances but fear creating an advantage for their competition.

Greenpeace asserts there's good reason for the change.

"The use of harmful chemicals in electronic products prevents their safe recycling once the products are discarded. Given the increasing evidence of climate change and the urgency of addressing this issue, Greenpeace has added new energy criteria to encourage electronics companies to improve their corporate policies and practices," Greenpeace said in a statement.… Read more

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure.

"I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," he said in an interview with PBS Newshour.

"What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where … Read more

COPENHAGEN--U.N. climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China, and other emerging powers that falls far short of the conference's original goals.

"Finally we sealed a deal," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The 'Copenhagen Accord' may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this...is an important beginning."

A long road lies ahead. The accord--weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the "political" deal many had foreseen--left much to the imagination.

It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times--seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms, and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved.

It held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed decisions on core issues such as emissions cuts into the future.

"This basically is a letter of intent...the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change, but not in precise legal terms. That means we have a lot of work to do on the long road to Mexico," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen--a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees.… Read more

Google.org demonstrated a new platform on Thursday that, if implemented in conjunction with a proposed United Nations program, could provide a significant tool to combat climate change.

Its new "high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine" can process terabytes of information on thousands of Google servers while giving access to the results online.

The platform, which was demonstrated on Thursday at the International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, would allow anyone using the tool to monitor whether or not trees were being chopped down in a given forest. It analyzes satellite images to show forest changes over a given time … Read more

The Obama administration's greenhouse gas ruling Monday was meant to send a warning to industry, the U.S. Congress, and the world: with or without a law, Washington will tackle global warming in a serious way.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing it to put limits on emissions even if U.S. lawmakers fail to pass a law to achieve the same objective.

These are the ramifications of the long-expected decision:

• Timing: as the EPA made its announcement, negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Copenhagen to work toward a … Read more