Always realists, the editors of London’s Financial Times have come out loudly in favour of strong action by our politicians during 2007 on climate change, to ensure a successor to the Kyoto Treaty is negotiated by 2012, a successor which must include a global cap on carbon emissions.  We find nothing to disagree with in [...]

A lot of the debate over the UK Government’s Stern Report on the economics of climate change has focused on the rate at which the interests of future generations are included in the calculations.  Over at Crooked Timber, Australian economist John Quiggin has just posted this summary statement:
“In the case of the Stern Review of [...]

Greetings of the holiday season and Happy New Year to all our readers!

The US Department of Energy has announced that a new concentrator solar cell has achieved record levels of conversion efficiency:  40.7 % sunlight-to-electricity conversion performance.
“Attaining a 40 percent efficient concentrating solar cell means having another technology pathway for producing cost-effective solar electricity.  Almost all of today’s solar cell modules do not concentrate sunlight but use only [...]