WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate is close to wrapping up talks ahead of introducing a compromise climate change bill, said a top Democratic lawmaker who discussed ideas with industry groups on Wednesday.

“We’re planning to button up our efforts somewhere I hope next week,” Senator John Kerry told reporters after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry and paper companies, Big Oil, steel, mining, electricity and others.

Kerry is working with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman on a bill to require U.S. industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

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Do we really need all the regulatory programs at the federal and state levels of government?

Do they really work to improve the quality of our air and water? Are they worth their cost in terms of regulatory burden and costs of compliance? In short, yes! To some extent, our regulatory programs are a trial and error affair. We can’t always know the ultimate effectiveness of a new program nor its ultimate costs. We can’t always predict the economic benefits of new regulations either since they invariably lead to innovation and generate new inventions and jobs.

The US has been monitoring the quality of our air and water for decades, so we can track the effectiveness of our programs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making the most recent data available. Air pollution impacts public health, the environment, and the Earth’s climate, and understanding these impacts are important priorities for the agency.

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William F. Stewart is the author of Climate of Uncertainty: A Balanced Look at Global Warming and Renewable Energy, from Ocean Publishing. He is co-chair of the climate change and energy practice at Cozen O’Connor.

CleanTechies had four questions about his new book.

CleanTechies:  You promise a balanced look in your title, and you give the global warming nay-sayers a chapter.  Why do you feel it’s important to take this approach?

William F. Stewart:  I know it is a cliché, but skepticism really is the lifeblood of science. Historically, it is through the intense questioning of conventional wisdom that advancement has been possible. Although there are certainly a lot of cynics and charlatans masquerading as skeptics, good faith skepticism itself must be embraced if we are to achieve new discoveries. (more…)

The Web has been a valuable source of information on the releases of toxic chemicals our communities, and for citizens and environmental action groups to see what companies and facilities are emitting air pollutants, discharging  water pollution, and generating hazardous wastes.

Finding the information you were looking for was not always easy, and not always free. Now things are getting a little easier, and more information is obtainable for free.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is providing Web access, free of charge, to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. This inventory contains a consolidated list of thousands of industrial chemicals maintained by the agency. (more…)

Oil supply is not infinite. Sooner or later it will run out. The interesting speculation is when that will happen. In a recent publication  of ACS Energy and Fuels, several Kuwaiti scientists have studied this matter with a multicycle Hubbert model. The original Hubbert model in 1956, accurately predicted that oil production would peak in the United States around 1970.

The model has since gained in popularity and has been used to forecast oil production worldwide. However, recent studies show that the model does not take into account more complex oil production cycles of some countries. (more…)

Is it worth spending a whole book dissectinig the writing of Bjørn Lomborg, the self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist?”  Certainly not in terms of the quality of Lomborg’s argument, which simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.  But Lomborg’s writing has been permitted to exercise a widespread and harmful influence.

For that reason, Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming represents time well and usefully spent.

Friel identifies two strains in Lomborg’s work: his “theorem” that though global warming is happening and is human-induced it is far from a catastrophe; his “corollary” that there is therefore little need to incur the costs of reducing greenhousegas emissions to the extent urged by concerned experts. (more…)

Hot, nutrient-rich water seeping from a network of deep-sea volcanoes provides a consistent source of iron for the phytoplankton that soaks up carbon dioxide, playing a key role in limiting climate change, according to a new study by French and Australian scientists.

The world’s oceans capture about 25 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say. Among the largest “carbon sinks” is the Southern Ocean between Antarctica and Australia.

Underpinning that cycle is the microscopic plant phytoplankton, which absorbs the carbon dioxide at the ocean surface and then eventually carries it to the ocean floor.

While it is well known that iron carried in dust or in coastal sediments can trigger phytoplankton blooms, the extent and consistency of deep-sea vents as a source of nutrients was not as well understood, according to the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. (more…)

More than 235 U.S. scientists, including some of the nation’s most prominent climate researchers, are recommending new procedures for the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including acknowledging errors on the organization’s website as soon as they are known.

In an open letter, the scientists, some of whom have contributed to IPCC reports, defend the quality and transparency of the panel’s research. But they suggest the IPCC should become more responsive in acknowledging mistakes and should publish an erratum online that corrects any errors discovered after publication. (more…)

According to the United Nations, an estimated 40 percent of the global population, or close to 2.6 billion million people do not have access to a toilet of any sort, even a pit latrine.

This has created a public health crisis in developing countries, both in terms of contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation techniques. More than one million children mostly under the age of five die each year from diarrhea resulting from this lack of sanitary conditions. While the technology exists to solve this problem, it is expensive and sometimes hard to install.

But Swedish architect and entrepreneur, Anders Wilhelmson is hoping to tackle the issue with his invention: a safe, affordable, biodegradable plastic bag called the Peepoo that can be used as a single-use toilet. (more…)

“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Often attributed to Mark Twain, whoever said that seemed to have quite a bit of foresight, something the mainstream cleantech community is only recently warming up to.

The fights over water use facing utility scale solar thermal projects in the desert Southwest may have a lot to do with opening the eyes of the clean-tech community, but the sector’s challenges and opportunities are much broader than that, as scores of Californians, Middle Easterners, and Australians will attest.  So why, with the problems so immediate and demand remaining strong in the $58 billion annual market for water technologies, has water investment as a percentage of venture investment declined since 2005?

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