Big companies keen on wind energy [National Wind Watch]

In a full-page advert in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper, 20 major Dutch companies push for wind farms to be built in the North Sea. The World Wildlife Fund has already started a campaign for wind energy at sea, in association with the power companies, Dutch Railways and the Rabobank. Offshore wind farms are apparently a hot topic for businesspeople and environmentalists alike.

WWF and its campaign partners want 6000 MegaWatts of wind capacity to be realised at sea as soon as possible. This is enough to power six million households and all the trains in the country.

Colorado not ready to crack down on carbon

Few people still debate the merits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s a lively debate about how to achieve those reductions. The debate is particularly sharp in Colorado, where there are vast stores of coal, gas and oil. Some say the state’s economy could be wrecked by a well-intentioned but impractical market mechanism that fails to recognize the role that hydrocarbons will play for decades more. Renewables such as wind and solar cannot begin to fill that gap, they say.

The Ritter administration is only observing Western Climate Initiative deliberations because it expects this and other regional efforts to be superseded by federal action.

"Everybody thinks the feds will come up with a cap and trade," says Ginny Brannon, climate change manager for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "And if it is viable, these regional initiatives will collapse into that." [Via Skeptics Global Warming]

Public Comments Push Climate Agency to Reconsider Methods | Environmental Protection

The Climate Change Research Program agreed to reconsider its "Unified Synthesis Report," which was issued in July, following comments from scientists and policy experts, according to an Aug. 21 press release from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

The government panel claimed the report synthesized 21 studies to present an alarming series of regional climate change projections. Only 8 of the 21 studies had actually been completed and released.

"The authors go to great lengths to obscure their inability to credibly articulate human influence on the climate," said Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the institute. "They do so through selectivity in research, alarmist language, failure to provide relevance or context to many of their claims, and generally throughout with transparent advocacy in tone and content."