That would be the proper title for the story just released today by Reuters, based on recent statements from NASA scientists.  But the title, perhaps predictably, was “Greenland Ice Sheet Shrinking Fast.”

Once again, let’s do the math, based on NASA’s own data, as reported in this story:  During the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, NASA scientists estimate 41 cubic miles of ice melted along the periphery of Greenland, while 14 cubic miles of new ice were deposited via snowfall in the interior of Greenland.  This is a net loss of 27 cubic miles per year.  Does that sound like a lot?  It isn’t.

Given that there are 139 million square miles of ocean, adding 27 cubic miles per year of ice melt from Greenland to this surface area equates to a rise in sea levels of 1.2 inches per century.  This amount is consistent with calculations based on other recent press releases from the scientific community, as noted in our posts “Antarctic Ice” and “Greenland’s Icecap.”

If you don’t make these calculations, and most reporters and most concerned citizens do not, then you would only base your conclusions from this story on its title, and on the quote from NASA scientist Scott Luthcke, who noted that Greenland’s ice melt now constitutes ”an annual net loss of ice equal to nearly six years of average water flow from the Colorado River.”  Need we add that at an annual flow of 4.5 cubic miles of water, by volume, the Colorado is a relatively small river?

We’ve ran two feature stories in the last month by the eminent atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT.  Unlike many of his critics (and supporters), Dr. Lindzen voices his skepticism regarding global warming in a measured and reasoned tone.  Anyone who is serious about learning more about whether or not there is a basis for global warming alarm should read Lindzen’s ”Global Warming Facts,” and “Climate Catastrophe?”

Finally, we encourage anyone who believes we should do whatever we can to reduce global warming because the steps we may take are good things anyway to read our recent posts “Deforestation Diesel” and “Filthy Air With Less CO2.”

Nobody knows for sure how low conventional manufacturing costs are for photovoltaics, since at the wholesale price of $4.00 per watt they are being sold, everywhere, as fast as they can be made.  Demand has exceeded supply for photovoltaics for several years, and even with incremental decreases in cost and increases in supply, this will continue.

But the revolution is here.

Thin film photovoltaics use far less silicon ingots, which dramatically lowers costs.  In fact - “thin film” is a catch all term - some thin film photovoltaics use no silicon at all.  There are several companies pursuing thin film technology, Nanosolar, Miasole, Konarka, Heliovolt, and Innovalight.  And we are getting very close to seeing the proof in the pudding:  As we reported on September 29th in Miasole Photovoltaics, they expect to have their production line up and running before the end of 2006, producing 25MW of output per year.

Nanosolar has even more ambitious plans and they aren’t far behind.  As we reported on September 21st in Nanosolar & Conergy Group, within the next two years they intend to have a production line up and producing 430MW of output per year!  Both of these companies claim they can replicate these factories all over the world, and both of them claim their manufacturing costs, compared to conventional processes, could drop by a factor of 10x or more.

They aren’t alone.  The heavyweights who are already in this business - BP Solar, Energy Conversion, Evergreen Solar, Kyocera, Mitsubishi, Motech, Q-Cells, Sanyo, Sharp, Sunpower, Suntech, and Shell Solar - are working feverishly on thin film technology.

There’s more.  While photovoltaics easily provide adequate energy per square foot of array - we prove in Power the World with Photovoltaics that it would only take 600 square feet of area per person, worldwide, for photovoltaics to replace ALL energy currently consumed by the human race - the efficiency of photovoltaics may be poised to make a huge leap.

Currently the Atwater Reserch Group at Caltech in California is working on “nanorods” and “optical micro-concentrators” which will dramatically increase the surface area of photovoltaic receptors within a given square foot of photovoltaic array.  Partnering with them in this effort is BP Solar.  If this development ever comes to fruition, photovoltaic panels won’t just be on rooftops, they might actually start appearing on the skin of electric cars.

The entire photovoltaic manufacturing output in the world in 2005 was a paltry 1.6 gigawatts.  The entire installed base of photovoltaics in the world is only about 10 gigawatts.  This is going to change overnight.  If thin film technology is proven commercially, and we may know this within one year, the worldwide output of photovoltaics will go up by orders of magnitude.  If that happens, the promise of cheap, abundant, clean and renewable energy will be well on its way to being realized.

One might assume that after nearly 12 years of publishing strategic information about green technology and environmental issues we would know everyone, but it’s a bigger world than that.  Today we found www.eco-web.com and want to report this as perhaps the best organized and current compilation of green technology companies we’ve ever seen.

Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Eco-Web’s so-called “Green Pages” provide information on over 7,000 companies in nearly every country in the world.  Their classification system is pretty good; the primary categories they’ve created are:

Environmental Information
Waste Water Treatment
Water Supply & Purification
Air Pollution Control
Waste Management
Recycling
Soil Preservation
Noise Protection
Power Generation
Energy Efficiency

Within each of these categories are several sub-categories, and you are also able to cross-reference by nation.  For example, when we search under Power Generation, the first result we get is Photovoltaic Solar Cells, and on that page we get 84 listings.

Eco-Web’s “Green Pages” then lets you sort by country.  We selected India, and the following companies came up:

While there are undoubtedly more than seven companies manufacturing photovoltaics in India, this is the best engine we’ve ever seen for letting people search for green companies.  It is surprising and a bit disappointing that this excellent site doesn’t have more traffic.  

One minor complaint about this site is the background is a deep green - I like green, but not that much.  Also, until you’ve figured out their layout, it’s hard to find the links from their records of companies to the actual home pages of those companies.  As it is, on each company record page, they have two small buttons, one with the “@” symbol, which will automatically launch an email to a contact email address for the company, and the other a “W” which links to their website in a new window.  Once you’ve learned how to use it, this website is a very, very effective tool to find something quick.

All in all, www.eco-web.com is a relatively undiscovered gem among the millions of green and not-so-green websites out there.  If you are looking for a green company, the Eco-Web ”green pages” are a good place to start.

Many people who question the claims of global warming alarmists are nonetheless pleased that in the process of regulating CO2 emissions we will clean up air pollution.  They could be making a bad assumption.

If you read, for example, the text of the most recent revision of California’s Assembly Bill 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, you will see that the regulation of “criteria pollutants” is almost an afterthought.  Here is the heart of the bill:

“42877.  (a) On or before January 1, 2008, the state board shall adopt regulations that will reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 emission levels by 2020, taking into account projected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from state agency programs not subject to this chapter. The emission limits shall be expressed in total tons of allowable emissions of greenhouse gases, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents, and shall include all emissions of greenhouse gases from the generation of electricity delivered by load-serving entities and consumed in California, whether generated in-state or imported. The state board shall consult with air pollution control districts and air quality management districts in the development of measures for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases that will affect emissions of criteria pollutants from stationary sources.”

As you can see, the final sentence of this section addresses the desire to coordinate reductions in greenhouse emissions with programs to reduce emissions of “criteria pollutants.”  But there are no targets set to reduce emissions of actual pollution, only CO2.  Is this really what we want?

Global warming is something that might be characterized as “low risk but high impact.”  Most responsible atmospheric scientists don’t believe that catastrophic global warming is likely, only that it is possible.  Read the BBC’s recent article “A Load of Hot Air?” for several examples of how global warming scenarios are being over-hyped.

What if it isn’t carbon dioxide, but deforestation and desertification that are the main causes of global warming?  One of the primary steps in models of the earth’s greenhouse effect is the absorption of solar heat by the land masses, which then is radiated into the atmosphere primarily in the form of infrared energy.  Over the past 150 years, the planet has gone from over 30 million square miles of forest to around 18 million square miles of forest.  Meanwhile deserts have increased by about 40% to around 8 million square miles.  In other words, of the 56 million square miles of land surface on earth, more than 25% of this land has been either deforested or desertified in the last 150 years!  Wouldn’t a desert absorb and radiate heat more than a forest?

Where is the political momentum to plant more trees in urban centers to mitigate the urban heat island effect?  Where is the political momentum to develop water projects to can reverse desertification, or reforestation projects on a global scale?  These projects, which are also good on their own merit, with or without global warming, deserve equal time.  And beware of any CO2 reduction schemes that don’t also require us to clean up noxious pollutants.

According to the Global Footprint Network, humanity started “eating the planet” on October 9th of this year.  Some background is in order.  The Global Footprint Network’s stated mission is “To support a sustainable economy by advancing the Ecological Footprint, a measurement and management tool that makes the reality of planetary limits relevant to decision-makers throughout the world.”

What these researchers do is estimate the amount of resources the planet will generate in one full year, then compare that to the speed with which human civilization will consume these resources.  And according to their findings, the renewable resources that our planet generated during the entire 12 months of 2006 were used up by humanity by October 9th.

The subjectivity of the assumptions underlying this assessment is certainly not in limited supply!  Why not consider the solar energy hitting the planet?  Isn’t that something we’re always thinking about?  In our own little study “How Much Solar Energy Hits the Earth” we calculate that in one year over 8.2 million quadrillion BTUs of solar energy hits the earth.  Since the entire human race only consumes about 400 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year from all sources, we would have to increase our energy consumption by a factor of 20,000 before we could begin to “eat the earth.”

So what assumptions are these people making?  They certainly aren’t anticipating the advances in technology that have confounded the malthusian naysayers of countless prior generations.

Do they consider that the world’s population is now predicted to level off at around 8.0 billion within 30 years, the lowest projection yet?  Do they consider that next generation photovoltaic arrays will provide cheap abundant energy to everyone in the world within that same period of time?  Do they consider that with such abundant energy even desalinization of seawater is cost effective?  Have they seen the promise of electric cars that don’t pollute at all?

The global warming alarmists - such as the group “StopGlobalWarming.org“ are also not thinking about these game changing and positive trends.  Both the “eating the planet” malthusians and the global warming doomsayers should think carefully about the consequences of the alarm they spread.  Should we deforest the planet to grow “carbon neutral” biofuel (also known as “deforestation diesel“), when deforestation could be more likely to warm the planet than the carbon?

There are obvious environmental challenges and examples of unsustainable practices.  Our practice of strip mining the oceans for seafood is a perfect example.  But while thoughtfully attempting to reform these practices, we shouldn’t forget that overall, technology has brought us to the brink of global prosperity and sustainability.

Let’s say we are experiencing global warming.  Let’s say this phenomenon is not only real, it’s something we can change, and that our survival depends on it.  Even if all of this is true, why wouldn’t the three to five percent anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions that are really creating the “tipping point” - whereby normal planetary temperature fluctuations may careen into full fledged icecap meltdown - be better credited and offset by simply planting more trees?

We have just posted an in-depth feature story entitled “Global Warming Facts” by the eminent and respected atmospheric scientist from MIT, Dr. Richard Lindzen.  It is clear from the data presented in Lindzen’s tables that global surface temperatures have not increased in around ten years.  What does this all mean?

One thing appears worth considering:  Taking drastic action to dramatically curtail CO2 emissions comes at a great price in economic growth and individual freedoms.  Is this as important as simply cleaning up pollutants?  What if this emphasis on reducing the emissions of C02, which is not a pollutant, will de-emphasize reducing emissions of genuine toxic pollutants; lead, ozone, sulpher dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulates?

In the last 150 years the forests of the world have shrunk from over 30 million square miles to around 18 million square miles.  Meanwhile the deserts of the world have grown from around 5 million square miles to over 8 million square miles.  Changes in land status on this scale, on a planet where there are only 56 million square miles of land surface, undoubtedly change the weather.  According to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, most global warming models don’t even take into account farming methods.  Furthermore, megopoli of tens of millions of people now sprawl, absorbing and radiating heat; urbanized areas easily consume 2% of the land surface of the planet.  Of course it’s hotter!  Reverse desertification, reforest, plant urban trees!

An extremely encouraging and relevant point in all this is that technology can’t be stopped.  Technology is a river, one that will always flow free; no matter how many dams, eventually the river of innovation will flow.  Inexpensive photovoltaic panels, cheap and durable batteries with energy densities approaching and exceeding 500 watt-hours per kilogram are coming soon.  These solutions will prevail.

Meanwhile let us at least not cut down the last remnants of the Congo and Amazon rainforests so enterprising local biofuel entrepreneurs can plant “carbon neutral” sugar cane and cassava plantations.

Thank God - there are powerful God fearing folks who believe we must exercise stewardship over this earth.  This earth is ours not just to use, but to nurture.  A Christian environmentalism is emerging that is recognizable to secular environmentalists.  But one must avoid jumping to conclusions as to the nature and nuances of rising environmentalist activism among evangelical Christians.

In his PBS blog, the well known journalist and commentator Bill Moyers has a favorable take on this in a recent post “Religion & Environmentalists” where he applauds a “nascent environmentalism in the evangelical community.”  But Moyers might be missing the boat in his further observations on this phenomenon…

Moyers reports “In February 2006, a group of 86 respected evangelical Christian leaders from across the nation unveiled a campaign for environmental reform and put out a statement calling on all Christians to push for federal legislation that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to stem global warming.”

If Bill Moyers believes that reducing carbon emissions to stop global warming is the biggest and most urgent environmental challenge of all time, then he is right to be pleased that some Christians have jumped on the stop-global-warming bandwagon.

If you think, however, that anthropogenic CO2 may not be the primary cause of global warming, and that global warming may not become as catastrophic as many currently claim, then what should one make of these evangelicals?

In his post Moyers all but equates environmentalism with fighting to regulate carbon emissions.  He applauds this one manifestation of environmentalism within the evangelical Christian church, and says that up till now ”evangelicals have been charging environmentalists - and those progressive Christians who support environmentalism - with idolatry for lavishing worship on ‘God’s creation’ rather than God. Moreover, they have been skeptical, if not downright hostile, toward government-mandated protection of the environment.”

Conscientious Christians search for the truth.  They don’t care what the bandwagon hypothesis may be.  When assessing the likely validity of prevailing climatological theories, Christians, perhaps ironically, may be more likely to rely solely on scientific reasoning than their secular environmentalist counterparts.  Let’s hope so, anyway.

Being a Christian, an Environmentalist, or a Christian Environmentalist most certainly does not require one to be as certain as Moyers, Schwarzenegger, Blair or Gore seem to be on the subject of global warming and how severe it is, or what to do about it.