Energy Probe

'Cut back on carbon emissions," the Third World is lectured. "It's for the good of the planet and it's for your own good, too. Don't point fingers at the West's carbon emissions. Don't protest that you'd like your share of automobiles and air conditioners. Don't tell us that you know what's in your own self-interest. Just do as your told, or we'll punish you."

These threats are sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, always arrogant. Carbon has become a club with which to discipline the Third World.  read more »

In yet another sign that the Earth could be heading in to a period of global cooling, NASA reports that the solar wind is now at a 50-year low, the lowest that NASA has seen. This change in solar activity, which began to occur about a decade ago, coincides with the end of the climb in global temperatures that had been underway for decades.

"What we're seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s," explains Arik Posner, NASA's Ulysses Program Scientist in Washington DC.  read more »

With energy prices soaring, is this the right time to lock into a fixed-rate gas contract or should you stick with the floating rate offered by your utility?  read more »

The public debate on oil sands fails to recognize that restoration is possible and not that expensive.  read more »

Russia's energy supplies enabled their aggression, Canada's supply could be the placating alternative.

"When it comes to action over Georgia, Russia has the European Union over a barrel. In fact, 1.2 million barrels. That's how much Russian crude is pumped westward every day down the Druzhba pipeline to fuel Europe's economies."  read more »

Wikipedia, the community-edited encyclopedia that anyone can revise, is one of the Web's biggest success stories. What you may not know is that it also has become an important player in the political world.

Started in 2001 on a shoestring budget, Wikipedia now ranks as the ninth most popular Web site in the U.S., according to Internet ratings company Alexa.com, outpacing such "old media" stalwarts as CNN, ESPN and the New York Times. (It's even more popular worldwide, where it is currently the seventh most-read site.)  read more »

Oil imports are destroying the U. S., say a rising tide of alarmists in the U. S., chief among them T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil man turned wind power developer. "It is a clear and growing threat to our national security, and our national economy," he testified to the U. S. Senate. "It has to be stopped. We are on the verge of losing our Super Power status."  read more »

Those who view the Sun, and not CO2, as a driver of temperatures on Earth look to various measures of solar activity for explanations of climate change. For one such measure -- radio waves from the Sun, or solar flux -- they look to Canada's Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in the Okanagan valley, near Penticton, British Columbia. What they find supports the view that another Little Ice Age could be coming.  read more »

India loves the UN's climate change policies and so does India's representative at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri.

Why the love-in? The Indian government's new "National Action Plan on Climate Change," which Pachauri helped craft, plainly explains why: The UN formally establishes that global warming is a matter of secondary importance to India, allowing the world’s largest democracy to pursue its own best interests.  read more »

Ontario is delaying by three months a decision on which company will build a new nuclear plant at Darlington to give bidders -- including Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. -- more time.

A radioactive part was missing for almost two months at the Bruce nuclear plant before a worker walking through an area called "the vault" discovered the problem after his radiation detector went off.  read more »