Sunday, November 01, 2009

Kirkwood as alternative energy lab: Ski area joins fight against global warming - Sacramento Politics
Although only a few hundred people live year-round in Kirkwood, the community is ready to spend up to $30 million to overhaul its aging, dirty and expensive power system and reduce its contributions to global warming.

It's an investment that makes self-interested sense for the remote, high-rent ski village about 40 miles from South Lake Tahoe, with a base elevation of more than 7,000 feet and about 500 inches of snowfall every year.
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Winter is typically the worst time to generate renewable power – solar panels get covered with snow and windmill blades ice up and lose efficiency – but that's exactly when Kirkwood needs the power to run its lifts.
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[comment] Anthropogenic 'global warming' is not proven. There are enough professional opinions to counter - with sound science - the Kool-Aid drinker's folly. Be more efficient, YES. But using the Al Gore 'carbon footprint' lingo is just embarrassing! This nonsense has overtaken society to the effect that investigative thinking has gone the way of bear trap bindings...
The Freakonomics duo tackles climate change -- and discovers the limits of cleverness - The Boston Globe
“At a minimum, they’re guilty of extremely shoddy scholarship and overcredulity,” says Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “At the worst, they think just being contrarian is much more important than being right.”

For their part, Levitt and Dubner dismiss the attacks as over-the-top and ideological - Levitt has called the book’s critics “the carbon crazies.”
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“If you’re the kind of person who, for political or personal or ideological reasons, is primed to dislike the economic and scientific arguments in the chapter, then of course that’s going to make you argumentative,” says Dubner.
As tropical storms ebb, climate debate kicks in | ERIC BERGER | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
What does seem clear is that what Maue calls the global “recession” in hurricane activity probably will end soon.

“I would expect the globe to pick up, because I don't think it can go any lower than it's been during the last year,” he said. “But will it pick back up to above normal activity? No one can say.”
Dems down in dumps should invest in [rent-seeking alarmist] John Doerr
If Democrats are willing to look and think outside the partisan box in their search for the next governor, here's a name to consider: John Doerr, the man the New York Times once described as "arguably the world's most influential venture capitalist."
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Bonus: As a gentleman of not insignificant resources (he's 277th on Forbes' most recent list of the 400 wealthiest Americans), he could theoretically at least mount a campaign devoid of special-interest purse strings.

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