July 20, '09: Summer 2009: Record chill | Updraft | Minnesota Public Radio

-International Falls has been cooler than average every day this month. The average temperature so far in July is 57 degrees, which will set the record for the coldest July ever (59.4 degrees in1992) if it holds the rest of the month. The Nation's Icebox has set 5 new daily record low temperatures set this month, including a low of 37 degrees Sunday.

-St. Cloud set a new record low of 43 degrees Sunday.

-Saturday set several new record cold maximum temperatures around the region, including a high of just 65 degrees in the Twin Cities.

It's not surprising to know it's been a cool summer so far. That's good news for your air conditioning energy bill, but not so good if you like a balmy dip in your favorite lake. I measured a water temperature of 70 degrees at the surface in Lake Minnetonka Sunday. That's about 10 degrees cooler than average for this time of year.

Chinese energy is greener than ours | The Australian

IT'S hard to comprehend, Martin Ferguson said last week. The federal Minister for Resources and Energy was referring to the fact that, in the next decade, China will bring on line about 1000 average-sized coal-fired power stations, equivalent to 34 times Australia's present coal-burning generation capacity.

'Wind farm may release more Co2 than it saves' - The Scotsman

RSPB Scotland highlighted that the environmental statement submitted by developers Viking Energy calculated in the worst case scenario that the "payback period" would be 48.5 years – because so much of the gas would be unleashed from peat bogs during construction.

Lloyd Austin, RSPB Scotland's head of conservation policy, said: "The lack of certainty that there would be any significant net benefits undermines the case for development. There is no point in building renewables that potentially emit more carbon, due to peatland impacts, than they save."

He also that warned nationally important populations of whimbrel, a wading bird, plus red-throated divers, golden plover and merlin could be displaced or potentially even killed by the turbines.
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John Hutchison, chairman of the John Muir Trust, said even with a payback of 14 years it was "hardly worth destroying such a special, wild place for the relatively small amount of carbon that may be saved".
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"Shetland's treeless landscape will be completely dominated by the development, with the turbines visible in a 15 kilometre radius around the wind farm."