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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, August 13, 2012

Steve Milloy: His Best Picks Today

By Rich Kozlovich

Of course the "best picks" concept is somewhat arbitrary. These are the ones I liked.

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Hans von Storch’s Klimazwiebel here posted an insightful essay by University of Bielefeld sociologist Prof. Peter Weingart titled (roughly translated): “The Limits of Science Advising Policy – Forget About the Opportunities“. Weingart cautions us against allowing an elite class of scientists to shape our public policy.

A dozen experts in relevant fields are being paid to review the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s study of how a large mine would affect Bristol Bay’s prized salmon runs.

 “Locavores” believe that food produced near final consumers is superior in myriads of ways to distant imports. While they might disagree among themselves on what exactly constitutes a “local foodshed” (a 100-mile radius or the whole state of California?), they have for the most part internalized long standing populist and romantic grievances against modern agricultural science, fossil fuels, large corporations and globalization.

The environmental community fumed this weekend when Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, condemning the House Budget Committee chairman’s crusade to slash clean energy funding while painting him as a bedfellow of Big Oil. But what greens hate about Ryan, the GOP loves.

 “An array of sun trackers on an area measuring about seven by seven miles (11 x 11 km) would generate 10 GW of power during sunshine hours – as much as a big nuclear power plant.” - One nuke doesn’t have a 50 mi2 footprint and produces power even when it’s dark (a really good time to have lights working, no?). The maintenance involved in all these tracking arrays and cooling fans plus mirror cleaning, etc. suggests economy may not be all that brilliant either.

In order to achieve the Department of Defence’s initiative to generate 25 percent of all energy demanded on its bases from renewable energy sources by 2025, the US Army has announced that it will invest $7 billion in new renewable energy projects.

Hydropower dams would get a boost, while their skeptics would get punished, under a controversial new bill backed by Western conservatives in Congress.

Geothermal: what the frack is wrong with that?

The corn fuel mandate is raising food prices and hurting the poor.

The command of Britain’s electricity supply has fallen into dangerous hands

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is out with their latest “Toxic Twenty” list…

For years we at the Institute for Energy Research have highlighted the problems with the Obama administration’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) mandate.

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