Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

The world’s largest solar thermal power plant went online Monday 18/03/2013—in Abu Dhabi.The Middle Eastern petro-states are the new solar-energy hot-spots. (An excerpt from an article in Quatz, by Todd Woody and from Power Engineering).

The inauguration of the 100-megawatt Shams 1 power station by Abu Dhabi renewable energy company Masdar underscores the emergence of Middle East petro-kingdoms as the new hot market for solar energy as European markets constrict and developers in the US face hurdles to building massive projects in fragile desert environments.

Masdar chief executive Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber called Shams 1 “a major breakthrough for renewable energy in the Middle East,” noting that the company now generates nearly 10% of the world’s solar thermal electricity. Shams 1 will power about 20,000 homes in the emirate.

“The Middle East holds nearly half of the world’s renewable energy potential,” said Santiago Seage, CEO of…

Climate Change Adaptation Plan(55 page pdf, Cross-EPA Work Group on Climate Change Adaptation Planning, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Jun. 29, 2012)

Also discussed here: Unable to stop climate change, EPA prepares for it( Philip Bump, Grist, Feb. 8, 2013)

Today we review a draft plan prepared by the Environmental Protection Agency to deal with the known and likely impacts associated with climate change in the USA. The document is comprehensive, touching on such diverse areas as air pollution-health issues, the impact of more extremes of temperature and rainfall on flooding in communities, the impact on waste disposal and the challenges all this means to the regulation and enforcement side of EPA’s mandate. As one commentator opined “Too bad we didn’t do more a few decades ago to keep all of this from happening.”

To see Key Quotes and Links to key reports about this post…

The Journal of Historical Geography 2012 prize was awarded to a paper by David Fedman on how maps can show the bombing of Japan in World War II. Full details and some striking images here.

Thanks to Felix Driver for the alert.