Gore Calls for Quick Action on Greenhouse Gas Emission Limits CQ Politics By Avery Palmer,   29 Jan 09 ormer Vice President Al Gore told senators Wednesday he was skeptical of the roles nuclear power or advanced coal technology could play in addressing global warming.Gore’s remarks may put him at odds with lawmakers in both parties who want to provide incentives for traditional sources of energy, such as coal and nuclear, in future climate-change legislation………………….he said, Congress should consider ways to provide full employment to coal industry workers whose jobs are displaced. “We must not have any more conventional, dirty coal plants that do not capture and sequester [carbon dioxide],” he said………………………..He said the most promising future sources of energy would be renewable technologies such as wind turbines, or concentrated solar plants that use mirrors to reflect sunlight in the desert…………………………..

“Our home — Earth — is in grave danger,” Gore said. “What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.”

At the same time, he sought to dispel claims that it was too hard to deal with global warming and the economy at the same time. “In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well.”

As Europe fiddles, US may take lead on climate change

ON LONE Opinion By Fred Pearce – 19 January 2009Is global climate leadership about to pass from Europe to the United States? It seems so. And Barack Obama’s plans to rejoin international climate negotiations, green American energy policy, and build an electricity super-grid to bring renewable energy out of the West could be a planet-saver.Europe’s leadership on fighting climate change seemed unassailable until just a few months ago. It had grabbed that position more than a decade ago, when Germany’s then environment minister, a former East German chemist named Angela Merkel, negotiated the groundwork for the Kyoto Protocol in Berlin in 1995. Two years later, Europe basically pushed Bill Clinton to send Al Gore to Kyoto to sign up to the first emissions targets – which were never ratified by the US Senate and subsequently repudiated by George W Bush………………………………striking are the green energy entrepreneurs tooling up in California. “If Barack Obama wins,” David Mills, the bicycling-mad boss of solar energy pioneers Ausra in Palo Alto, told me, “then it’s going to be boom time here”. He was cheering even louder with the news of Chu’s appointment.

Mills and Ausra are in the vanguard of what many believe will become the critical renewable technology for America – solar thermal energy. Unlike photovoltaics, which convert solar heat directly into electricity, solar thermal concentrates solar energy using mirrors to heat water, which is then used to drive conventional steam turbines. One of the advantages of solar thermal is that it allows the energy to be stored for when it is needed, in the form of hot water.

Mills, a Canadian, developed his system in Australia. But a couple of years ago, frustrated by government indifference there, he shipped out Solargenix to California……………………………

This is not just about the United States. The technology that drives America usually ends up driving the world. If Obama goes for a smart super-grid, you can almost guarantee that Merkel and her fellow Europeans will suddenly get more enthusiastic about a super-grid scheme quietly being promoted there to hook up to solar energy from the Sahara desert. A grander version would also tap geothermal energy from Iceland, hydropower from Scandinavia, and wind power from the North Sea.

And China? Whisper it quietly, but China is already the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines. Any industrialist sitting in China and watching the U.S. government open its wallet to rebuild the country’s energy infrastructure will be thinking contracts, contracts, contracts. China will want to manufacture the wind turbines and solar panels and superconducting cables.

Radioactive Medical Devices Could be Used to Make Dirty Bombs January 15, 2009 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer (NaturalNews) The radioactive devices used in medical centers across the country could pose an attractive target for terrorists seeking to make dirty bombs, according to a report by a panel of the U.S. National Research council.

In a report commissioned by Congress, the council suggests phasing out the 5,000 most radioactive medical devices in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the 1,300 radionuclide devices that use radioactive cesium chloride.

Cesium chloride contains the high-activity radionuclide cesium-137.

“We think it is possible to get rid of most of the 5,000 high-activity radiation devices over the next 10 to 20 years if there was a national policy to encourage it,” panel chair Theodore L. Phillips said.
These 5,000 devices, using eight different radionuclides, account for 99 percent of the highest security risk radioactivity sources in the United States, the report concluded. Of these eight radionuclides, the one of most concern is cesium-137 in the form of cesium chloride.

The report recommends that the federal government stop licensing, importing or exporting new cesium chloride irradiators, and that it provide incentives for older devices to be phased out.