Articles by John McGrath

New Hansen paper

Today the Oil Drum linked to a James Hansen released paper analyzing the impact of peak oil, peak gas, and peak coal on the likely emissions of carbon. Hansen notes that most of our emissions scenarios have thus far failed to account for whether the carbon will even be there to burn.

Plenty of graphy goodness, but what I took away was this: There's just enough oil and gas left in the ground to take us up to, or maybe a bit over, the 450 parts per million of CO2 that climatologists worry about so much. This makes it imperative that we in the developed countries immediately phase out coal, the one supply of fossil carbon that can take us right over the cliff.

Patrick Moore proves to be — gasp — a nuclear shill

We anti-nuclear folks are frequently accused of closed-mindedness. Like, you know, Chernobyl is so 1980s. Get with the here and now, man.

So I was interested to see how nuclear shill extraordinaire Patrick Moore would react to the news that the Canadian oil industry is increasingly interested in geothermal power as an alternative to nuclear in the heat-starved tar sands developments. The heat produced by obviously-feasible technology would be a perfect fit, and if those tree-hugging hippies in the oil sector are interested, surely there's something to suggest it, right?

Nope, not for Moore. It's nuclear or nothing. Talk about closed-minded.

From the guy who wrote the book on the GM EV1, literally

Michael Shnayerson, who literally wrote the book on the ill-fated GM EV1, has an excellent piece in last month's Vanity Fair about the Tesla Roadster.

Quoting is redundant -- the whole article is fun and packed with attention to personal detail. Eventually, someone is going to have to write a biography of Alan Cocconi, who seems to be at the center of all the electric car efforts of the last quarter-century or so.

Oh, Canada

So, it's an interesting time to be an environmentalist in Canada. On one hand, we have a federal government whose green policies were described as "a complete and total fraud ... designed to mislead the Canadian people" by no less than the Goreacle himself.

In this case, however, one of the sometimes-maddening aspects of Canadian politics is of some benefit. You see, natural resources (including all energy sources) are matters of provincial jurisdiction in Canada. This is problematic if you want to see a national plan on fossil fuels, because as a political reality you'd have to get all 10 provincial premiers to sign on -- and that's like herding cats. But it does have its virtues on some days, and yesterday the Toronto Star reported that the government of Ontario (Canada's most populous, most industrial province) is set to announce a far more ambitious green plan than the one announced by Ottawa.