[But what caused the stifling heat 150 years ago?]:  » Lincoln’s summer home offers a lesson in green building

ClimateWire: One hundred fifty years ago, there wasn’t much the locals could do to escape the stifling heat of this city’s August.
...
“The buildings that have really caused global warming and climate change are the existing buildings, so we have to pay attention,” said Barbara Campagna, an architect with the trust who is leading its work at the Soldiers’ Home, the site of Lincoln’s cottage.

George F. Will: How Obama Is Like Huey Long | Newsweek George F. Will | Newsweek.com

The supposed means of paying for the president's $1 trillion health-care plan include substantial Medicare cuts that will never happen, and the auction of carbon-emission permits that, instead, would be given away by the Waxman--Markey cap-and-trade legislation the House has sent to the Senate.

That legislation is a particularly lurid illustration of why no serious person nowadays takes seriously Washington's increasingly infantile bandying of numbers. The point of cap-and-trade is to impose a ceiling on the nation's greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions—primarily carbon dioxide. The legislation endorses the goal of holding the global carbon--dioxide level to a maximum of 450 parts per million by 2050. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Big Money Returns to Wind Power–For How Long? - Environmental Capital - WSJ

The cash grants make clean-energy deals more attractive for bankers. But wind farms and other projects still need to find buyers for the electricity they generate—and which costs more than juice generated by traditional power sources.

Wind Farms Set Wall Street Aflutter - WSJ.com

The strong interest echoes the $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program that provided incentives to trade in older, lower-gas mileage cars, and which was quickly overwhelmed by demand. "We are concerned that this may evolve into a cash-for-clunkers version 2.0," says a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican.

Al Fin: Spain's Solar Suicide a Warning to the Wise

Spain's economy is crashing, in part due a burst housing balloon and in part due to the Spanish government's insane overcommitment to solar energy. The Spanish treasury is being sucked dry by well-intentioned subsidies for solar installations -- $26.4 billion in commitments for one year alone. And they will get only about 450 MW of power for all that. Compare with what they could have gotten from the same investment in nuclear