THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Renewable energy can't run the cloud [or much else]

[WSJ] The mismatch between the power demands of Big Data and the renewable-energy darlings of the moment are obvious. U.S. data centers are now consuming about 86 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, or about 43 times as much electricity as is produced by all the solar-energy projects in America.

"Clean energy" is a great friend for Facebook, Apple and every other energy consumer in America—as long as those consumers don't use much energy at all.

- Bishop Hill blog - Gatekeeping continues

Hans von Storch interviews Reiner Grundmann about his recent Climategate paper. It looks as though gatekeeping of inconvenient climate papers extends to some of the social science journals too:

One editor responsible for handling my manuscript was apologetic about the negative verdict, pointing out that the topic was too hot to handle for some referees in the field. He thought it was very difficult in the current situation to get such material published. I took this as a strong indication that the politicization of climate change had had an effect in STS scholarship, something which is not thematized sufficiently in the community.

Skip Horvath: Cheap and clean energy | JunkScience.com

Natural gas sparks U.S. manufacturing renaissance