Photo credit: Marilyn Humphries

For those of you looking for a good clean-energy read, check out this recent article by Climate Progress’s Stephen Lacey. Lacey focuses on the common myth that clean energy and climate reduction policies will mean higher energy costs for consumers, pointing out that two recently released reports show that the implementation of cleaner, more efficient energy systems will actually save them money in the long run. The same myth has been perpetuated regarding the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) here in the Northeast. To debunk that notion, Lacey quotes CLF’s VP for Climate Advocacy and Policy Seth Kaplan:

“The fact is, RGGI is a very, very, very small piece of the overall cost of electricity. There are so many costs that are much greater. Pulling out the cost of RGGI would be like factoring in the cost of mowing the lawn at the power plant or factoring in the property taxes. Some of the claims that groups are making about the cost of the program are patently absurd.”

To hear more from Seth on the subject, read the full article here.

The post In the energy world, evidence that “clean” doesn’t mean “expensive” appeared first on Conservation Law Foundation.

Andy Revkin and Joe Romm often disagree in ways that can be grating and sometimes, less often, entertaining.   So it is striking when they converge on the same topics.

In a Dot Earth post on May 25 Revkin calls out with approval for Romm’s blog post about tornadoes and global warming quoting Joe’s conclusion that:

When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.

Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

In the same blog post Andy complements another Climate Progress blog post about the full greenhouse gas emissions associated with natural gas use, specifically discussing a new analysis from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (that is not yet peer reviewed) that, “appears to strongly undercut the widely cited conclusion by Robert Howarth of Cornell that leakage and other issues make natural gas a greater greenhouse threat than coal.”

These are two very important topics: the causal relationships that can be seen between global warming and our immediate environment, teasing apart the very real effects of climate change from other phenomena, and understanding the true environment effects of choices we make like increased extraction and use of natural gas.

The post Strongly suggested reading: Climate, tornadoes, natural gas . . . appeared first on Conservation Law Foundation.