Cross-posted from EcoGeek

The most near-term, cost-effective solar solution is undoubtedly solar thermal. While photovoltaics, which convert light directly into electricity, can have a significantly smaller footprint and higher efficiency...solar thermal has generally proven that it can create electricity at a lower cost.

With that in mind, the U.S. Department of Energy has decided to spend $60 million over the next five years developing low-cost concentrating solar thermal technology (like the parabolic trough pictured from Schott Solar.) They plan on making between 10 and 20 awards to industry and universities working on increasing the efficiency and decreasing the costs of solar thermal power.

They will also be funding projects related to "advanced thermal storage." At first this might seem slightly unrelated. In fact, what they're looking for is a way to store the heat captured during the day so that they can continue to generate electricity throughout the night. This is another possible advantage to solar thermal technology. If the heat can be stored in some medium, say molten salt for example, then that medium could, in effect, make the solar plant a giant battery. Photovoltaic plants, on the other hand, would require some other form of backup energy to keep the juice flowing at night.

Via Cleantech

For more than two decades, Bill McKibben has been at the forefront of the fight against global warming as an author, educator, activist and grassroots organizer. His award-winning books include The End of Nature, Wandering Home and last year's best-seller, Deep Economy. He founded Step It Up 2007, which organized hundreds of rallies in support of curbs on carbon emissions. His latest project is the 350 Campaign, an international undertaking aimed at further raising awareness about global warming.

Bill was nice enough to answer a few of our questions about the new campaign, environmental policy and the ongoing presidential campaign:

EW: Given how much we've heard about the 350 campaign, it surprised us to see that the site has yet to officially launch. Why the soft opening? What are some of your short-term goals once the full campaign launches?

BM: It's kind of a large job, trying to build a global grassroots campaign. First task is to get the website really right, and scalable/translatable. June 9 or thereabouts looks like the day. In the meantime, we have an interim site, and despite ourselves momentum has begun to build, with cool actions starting here and around the world--bicyclists in Salt Lake City, surfers in Maui, quilters in Kentucky--and organizers in Rwanda, in Sweden, in Mongolia, in a hundred other places. We're also busy building the human infrastructure--a team of people, mostly young, all over the world.

EW: Specifically, what will the campaign be doing over the next 18 months in the lead-up to Copenhagen and a post-Kyoto agreement?

BM: It will be trying to spread that number--350, as in ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, as in what the scientists are now telling us is the max. safe concentration. We want every human being to know that number--and we'd settle for half of them. If they know nothing else about climate, they need to know that 350 symbolizes a kind of safety. If we can do anything like that, it will nudge those international negotiations in the direction of the science.

EW: What is the best-case (but realistic) scenario that you see coming out of Copenhagen in December 2009?

BM: An agreement that realizes the need to quickly phase out coal in order the preserve the possibility of returning to 350--and to quickly ramp up a Marshall Plan for carbon that will allow us to help developing countries develop while leaving the coal in the ground

"I have a aggressive goal of reducing carbon emissions, and coal is a dirty fuel right now." -- Barack Obama, on last Sunday's Meet The Press.

Well this kind of undoes a lot of the praise we've heaped upon Barack Obama over the past few weeks for refusing to go along with John McCain and Hillary Clinton's inane gas tax holiday proposal. It appears Obama can indeed pander for votes without shame. Just look at that big smile in this campaign flyer! He's a real working-class kind of guy.

We initially thought this was a forwarded joke, but as Grist reported this morning, it is an actual mailer from the Obama campaign in Kentucky, which by the way is one of four states yet to hold its Democratic primary.

There's a lot not to like about this flyer, starting with the fact that "clean Kentucky coal" is a total oxymoron. Yes, there are coal plants that use Integrated Gasification Combine Cycle (IGCC) technology to capture and store emissions underground. The problem is there isn't a single carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant in all of Kentucky.

Obama has always walked a fine line on coal, especially given that this home state of Illinois is such a large producer. But this flyer makes it clear he's willing to say one thing (like two days ago on Meet The Press) while giving a not-so-subtle wink to states where the industry still booms. We know the country still depends on coal for 50 percent of its electricity -- we just don't like the mixed messages.

Perhaps Obama needs to take his stump speech to eastern Kentucky next week, where he can see the mountaintop removal, polluted streams and rivers, and sick children firsthand. And then someone can ask him about his definition of "clean."

We've cringed quite a bit over the past few weeks while watching John McCain and Hillary Clinton take political pandering to a new level with their gas tax holiday proposal. Now, thanks to the folks at Greater Greater Washington and Gas Tax Scam, we can laugh at one of the best political parodies we've read in ages:

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir:

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

You can read the rest of the letter here. It only gets better.

The letter is of course modeled off the Nigerian 401 scams, which still manage to find their way into our junk e-mail from time to time.

We'll be interested to see whether exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina tomorrow indicate that this issue affected voters, especially given the verbal lashings Clinton has received over the past week. Meanwhile, Obama stepped up his attacks on the plan during a one-hour Meet The Press interview yesterday.

At the very least, we expect the positives from Obama's refusal to stoop low on this issue to offset any support he may have lost this week from the Rev. Wright fallout.

Lord Nicholas Stern, author of 2006’s grim Stern Review on the economics of climate change, now says he and his team underestimated the risks of global warming. He’s released a follow-up report that urges a quicker timeline to address the problem.

The new report highlights the Key Elements of a Global Deal that will need to take place in order to mitigate climate change. This report, published by the London School of Economics, is meant to help steer the conversation and prepare the international climate community for the upcoming talks at next year’s 15^th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Lord Stern explained last month that analytical foundations for discussions of a global deal are needed so that a coherent agreement can be reached at the Copenhagen meetings next December. "This paper is a contribution to that task. It offers a sense of direction and a basis for discussion and further work, rather than attempting a very formal description of a global deal" he said.

Over the next several months, EnviroWonk will be exploring the politics of Louisiana's coastal wetlands. Today's post is the first in the series.

The Army Corps of Engineers, an agency synonymous with incompetence, corruption, and superfluous work for over 100 years, may finally be held responsible for the flood damages sustained during Hurricane Katrina as a result of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (cleverly nicknamed "Mr. Go").

For years, Louisiana officials and environmentalists have asked the Corps to shut down Mr. Go due to its infrequent use by vessels, its contribution to the region's wetlands erosion, and the fact that it provides a path for tidal surges to reach New Orleans during big storms. Instead, the Corps built additional levees all around New Orleans -- we all know how well that turned out -- so flooded homeowners took their grievances to the courts.

The Corps argued that since the federal government is protected by law from being sued if a flood control measure fails (say, like levees breaking during a category 5 hurricane that starts with the letter K), the homeowners had no standing. But the federal judge rejected that argument because Mr. Go was built for navigation and not flood control, and had funding separate from that of the region's flood control projects.

Since the Corps has been re-engineering America's waterways for over 200 years, you would think by now they would have solved the nation's flood problems. A study conducted by the non-profit American Rivers collected a decade's worth of analysis of the Corps' work by the government, independent experts, and the Corps itself. We recommend you take a look at the whole 6-page report yourself, as there are too many delightfully scathing comments to include, but here are a few.

Another day, another depressing story about the influence of big business on EPA business. The most recent chapter finds Dow Chemical accused of getting Midwest EPA Regional Director Mary Gade fired for trying to force the company to clean up Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron in Michigan, where the company had dumped the carcinogen dioxin for most of the last century.

In September 2006, Gade used her authority to order the company to clean up three locations. Additional testing found more of the toxin in the soil, at concentrations higher than had ever been measured in the environment. Dow insists that dioxin, a byproduct created when making the innocuous Agent Orange, isn't as dangerous as the EPA is making out to be and therefore shouldn't be required to clean up the chemical that is found in concentrations as high as 5,900 parts per trillion in soil, when the Michigan limit is 90 ppt.

According to Dow, "There is all of this mystique about dioxin. Just because it's there doesn't mean there is an imminent health threat." Interestingly, Gade's boss at the EPA in the 1980s was forced to resign when it became public that he allowed Dow to edit EPA reports on dioxin.

After failing to negotiate with Gade for a less comprehensive cleanup, the company went right to Washington, and next thing you know, two of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson's aides are telling Gade she can quit or will be fired by June 1.

We want to applaud those aides for their excellent timing. The Chicago Tribune was about to profile Gade and her fight to get Dow to clean up its mess. So instead of letting Gade hang around a little longer and then giving her the boot, for doing her job well, they have managed to bring the spotlight of the media on Johnson, the EPA, and Dow Chemical.

You have a 1 in 708,000 chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime in a national park -- there's a greater chance that you'll be struck by lightning instead. But the Bush Administration thinks those odds are too high, and their solution is to allow you to carry a concealed firearm next time you take a trip to the Grand Canyon.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed the new regulation yesterday. It would overturn a 25-year-old regulation restricting loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges, enacted under that gun-hating liberal Ronald Reagan.

The proposal would permit park goers to carry loaded and concealed weapons if permitted by state laws in the state where the park or refuge is located. Interior officials said the change would clear up existing confusion and essentially defer to to state laws.

Seriously, what could possibly go wrong with this plan? Concealed loaded guns in national parks? Violent crimes are sure to go down.

Not exactly, say current and former national park employees. "This is purely and simply a politically-driven effort to solve a problem that doesn't exist," said Bill Wade, chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. Seven former National Park Service directors have also sent Kempthorne a letter saying this is a really bad idea.