This morning the Copenhagen Climate Conference kicked off. As I mentioned in earlier posts, the two big issues are the reduction of CO2 and the halting of deforestation. As I noted in other writings, there are Climate Alarmists and Climate Skeptics. Climate Alarmists, which Al Gore would be considered, believe that if we don’t curb global warming now, the earth will face unprecedented consequences. The climate skeptics, as Bjorn Lomborg would be considered, offer the view that the problem has been blown out of proportion or is focused on the wrong culprits. Actually there would be nothing more fun than a Lomborg/Gore debate.
On Friday, I presented a ‘skeptics’ view…today I will present an ‘alarmists’ view. For the third book review, I chose Al Gore’s, “Our Choice A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” Most people know that Gore helped to put the global warming debate on the map with his first book and movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” These efforts led to a shared Oscar and co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Gore will also be playing a major role in Copenhagen over the next two weeks.
Gore begins, “It is now abundantly clear that we have at our fingertips all of the tools we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient is collective will.”
Throughout the book, Gore uses a combination of words, graphics and pictures to demonstrate the climate change debate, detail many of the solutions and offer policy recommendations. There is one area where I think Gore did a great job, and that is explaining what the six categories of global warming pollution are: carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, sulfur hexaflouride, tetrafluoroethane, carbon monoxide, butane and nitrous oxide. To date, the biggest focus has been on carbon dioxide and Gore’s focus throughout the book is no different.
Along those same lines, Gore advocates that the most effective way to curb CO2 is through putting a price on carbon. He writes, “An effective plan for solving the climate crisis must include aggressive remedies for our erroneous reliance on deceptive market signals in carbon-based energy.”Read More
“It’s a very non-traditional approach to utilizing some public lands that are not being utilized as well as they could be,” says Utah State University researcher Dallas Hanks. It is estimated that there are some 10 million available acres of land in roadsides, airports, military bases, railroad areas and more that currently require significant maintenance cost that could be used for producing biofuel crops such as safflower and canola which could be harvested a couple times a year. The benefits include a new source for biofuel feedstocks, as well as improved aesthetics and reduced roadside maintenance costs.
“We’ve been lucky enough to get a national coalition with an executive committee and land grant universities all around the country involved in this,” Hanks said during a recent interview at the 
An Ohio biodiesel plant is among those 
This coming Friday, Dec. 11 is the deadline for Iowa schools to get in their application for two, $2,500 grants from the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association’s (IRFA) Biodiesel Backer Award Program. 
Big emitters of carbon dioxide are faced with a big problem. Industries and utilities will soon have to capture that CO2 and store it … somewhere. That’s where 
In this edition of the Domestic Fuel Cast, we talk to Carbon Sciences President and CEO Byron Elton, who explains how this process works. Basically, it’s the exact same process that changed carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons all those eons ago far beneath the surface of the Earth. But this is much more efficient and faster and could be the solution for those CO2 emitters looking for something to do with their newly sequestered product and a planet hungry for energy.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), DOE Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the selection of 19 integrated biorefinery projects to receive up to $564 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate the construction and operation of pilot, demonstration, and commercial scale facilities. Fifteen states will house these projects and help lay the foundation for full commercial-scale development of a biomass industry in the United States. 
Joining Secretary Chu, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack noted that USDA Rural Development has selected San Diego, California based Sapphire Energy to receive a loan guarantee for up to $54.5 million through the Biorefinery Assistance Program to demonstrate an integrated algal biorefinery process that will cultivate algae in ponds, and will use dewatering and oil extraction technology to produce an intermediate that will then be processed into drop-in green fuels such as jet fuel and diesel. The actual project will be constructed in Columbus, New Mexico.