Archive for January, 2007
January 3, 2007 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Bio Fuel, Green Tech
With Toyota’s latest buy from the General Motors fire sale being a 5.9 percent stake in Isuzu, speculation on where Toyota will use Isuzu diesel engines has largely revolved around trucks and SUVs. The two companies just announced a joint venture to develop diesels.
“If that sounds like Toyota will integrate a diesel engine into its Synergy hybrid drivetrain, you are right,” according to Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor North America.
ToMoCo will likely employ the oil-burners as part of a multifuel hybrid strategy, including diesel, biodiesel and ethanol.
This is sweet music for us who can’t decide if we should invest in a homebased biofuel plant or go high-tech and buy a gasoline hybrid. Now we get the best from boh worlds.
January 3, 2007 at 4:58 pm · Filed under The Politics
For oil traders returning to trading pits on Wednesday, the new year begins with something that hasn’t preoccupied them in years: OPEC production cuts. After years of maintaining an open-taps policy, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has started restraining production to keep oil prices high in the face of a faltering global economy and an unseasonably warm winter in the Northern Hemisphere. With a military confrontation with Iran and other geopolitical concerns receding to the back burner, analysts say the extent to which OPEC complies with its output restraint will go a long way in determining whether oil prices stay above $60 a barrel this year after ending last year flat for the first time in five years. More
January 3, 2007 at 1:59 am · Filed under Green Tech
A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts has warned.
As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.
The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity, write the Independent. Link
January 2, 2007 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Green Tech, The Politics
I can’t open a newspaper or listen to a debate programme these days without hearing that environmental thinking is becoming a global megatrend. To quote one newspaper analytics (translated from danish):
“Because environmantalism is based upon ethical values it has the power to embrace all parts of society and become a truly global megatrend.”
First time I heard the word megatrend mentioned was in A. Giddens Runaway World. Here he was talking about globalism as a megatrend and he also mentions “the third way” in politics as a megatrend.
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