The Daily Climate: U.S. Poised to Be Globe's Climate Leader

by Emily Gertz · 2009-01-12 09:36:00 UTC
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U.S. May Take Lead on Global Warming: Europe's weak performance at last month's international climate change talks may signal that after over a decade, the continent has lost moral and political leadership in fighting global warming. Instead, with "Barack Obama’s plans to rejoin international climate negotiations, green American energy policy, and build an electricity super-grid to bring renewable energy out of the West," the U.S. could become the world's best hope to avert climate disaster. (Yale 360)

Good news, bad news: The rapid melting of Greenland's glaciers since the early 2000s may slow or stop. In a nutshell, scientists studying the retreat of the Helheim Glacier believe that a break at its "snout" in the sea caused a cascade of impacts inland. Based on modeling, they believe it will stabilize. But their modeling only went so far: "The scientists didn’t use their model to predict future melting of Greenland’s glaciers caused by global warming." (Bloomberg News)

Driving Becomes Electric: Detroit's Big Three automakers, all in the red as their gas-guzzling fleets have lost consumer appeal, are now seeing green: electric vehicles and electric/gas are the rage at this year's North American International Auto Show. Ford Motor -- the only Big Auto company that has yet to take a government bailout loan -- says it wants to put 10,000 battery-powered Fords on the road by 2011, able to travel around 100 miles on a single charge and recharge overnight. (The Globe and Mail)

Search Engine Justification: Google has rebutted claims by s Harvard physicist that doing two Google searches creates as much CO2 -- about 12 grams -- as boiling an electric kettle of water. The company says that number is much too high, with each search producing maybe 0.2 grams (so 0.4 grams for two searches) of CO2. The company points out that its data centers are among the world's most energy efficient, as well as very powerful and fast. Info tech now accounts for around 2 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to a recent Gartner study. (Google Blog; The Times, UK)

Emily Gertz
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