Sunday, May 3, 2009

Two Billion Cars


Or, as the subtitle rather optimistically puts it, "Driving Towards Sustainability". Sounds a bit like tree-felling towards biodiversity. Well, there are already more than 1bn cars on the planet, and these authors, energy and transport mavens, see an inevitable rise (largely driven by China and India) to 2bn in a few decades. How to minimise their impact on the climate? The twin prongs of a solution are emerging alternative-transportation developments (such as Bus Rapid Transit, platoons of buses in dedicated lanes); and alternative fuel sources for cars, a field distorted in the US by subsidies for one of the worst options, corn ethanol.

Read Ethanol comments about Sugarcane (Ethanol without subsidies).

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Something Dark Is Growing on Greenland’s Ice. And Melting It Faster. New studies show how algae grows on ice and snow, creating “dark zones” that exacerbate melting in the consequential region.

A supraglacial stream flowing over the ice in Greenland. Patches of clean ice are intermixed with ice darkened by glacier ice algae. Credi...