Week in review – energy and policy edition

by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.

.@BjornLomborg: Why wind and solar power cannot be a major solution to climate change [link]
IEA: UN pledges will cause dramatic slowdown in energy emissions by 2030 |  [link]
Cautionary tale of Finland’s #nuclear power: [link]
US Congress To Investigate NOAA’s Temperature Adjustments [link]
Factcheck: The steel crisis and UK electricity prices | [link]
Matt Ridley: The myth of basic science [link]
Knocking down Florida Power & Light obstruction – Court Clears Hurdle For Solar Power To Flourish [link]
US Opposition To Climate Finance Stalls UN Climate Talks [link]
It’s time to rethink America’s corn system. [link] …
Minecraft for Energy Wonks: This Game Puts You in Control of America’s Climate Headaches. [link]
Climate Change Slams Global Economy in a New Study From @Stanford and @UCBerkeley [link] (an angle on this i’ve not seen before)
Senator Whitehouse on RICO – Time to wake up: a touched nerve [link] …
Why biofuels and marginal lands for biofuels are a lot less promising than you may have heard [link] …
Interesting essay: “Carbon dioxide: the good and the bad, the right and the wrong” [link] …
Some diesel cars have pollution emissions (NOx) that are higher than buses. [link] …
Climate change is adding to hurricane damage costs, new study suggests | [link]
New poll: “Only 39% who believe that the climate is changing indicate that the warming is caused by human activity” [link] …
Staying below 2°C increasingly brutal US, Europe, China will use up carbon budget by 2030 [link] …
 
“India and China have already won and the Paris climate conference has become irrelevant” [link] …
British Steel’s Green Death [link]
Game changer? Useful blog @chinadialogue detailing #China’s ambitious new policies toward ‘ecological civilization’ [link]
Insight into Indian views on climate change [link]
Seasteading could be the answer to sustainably feeding 9 billion people. [link]
Arctic offshore lease sales halted, no extension on current leases: Interior Dept [link]
The Revolving Door Between GMO Companies and US Government Agencies [link] …
Chinese Academy of Sciences: Global Warming May Be Very Good For China [link]
The Atlantic: Interview with Bill Gates on the Future of Energy [link]
Conventional fuels are the key to India’s #energy future [link]
Gov’t Watchdog Investigates If EPA Is Being Honest About Ethanol’s Environmental Impacts [link]
Vox:”Europe’s love affair with diesel cars has been disaster..green policy gone horribly wrong” [link]
The pending Paris accord: not your father’s #climate agreement [link]
Matt Ridley: Some policies to fight climate change have done more harm than good [link]
IEA: Southeast Asia fossil fuel energy boom to last for decades [link] …
EU drafts new heating strategy to favor #renewables via heat pumps, geothermal and co-gen. [link]
The carbon intensity of the global economy fell 2.7% in 2014 but a decline of 6.3% a year is needed for climate goal [link]
Carbon capture plant removes CO2 from atmosphere, turns it into fuel [link]
Joyashree Roy, IPCC Lead Author, urges West to stop trying to force India onto low-energy, renewables-only path. [link]
“Japan is financing high-efficiency coal-fired power plants for developing nations”  [link]
UK Parliament: Unintentional Bias in Courts [link]Filed under: Week in review

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