THE FADING OF THE GREENS

Only half a decade ago the future of Europe looked greener than ever before. Green parties were part of the governments of five European countries, pushing the environment closer to the forefront of policy-making. "Some had the impression that a luminous sunflower was hanging in the grey sky," wrote Juan Behrend, the former secretary general of the Green federation in the European parliament. But that era is now over.

With the cementing of a grand coalition in Germany this week, Greens have lost their last toehold in western European government, and their most recognisable figure, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, is out of office. And this at a time, says Mr Behrend, when "the current climate is asking for Green politics".

Having been ejected from government in Finland, France, Italy, Belgium and now Germany, it would be no surprise if the Greens' optimism, like the imaginary sunflower, had wilted. "These are setbacks, clearly, in every case. Greens are not now shaping policy," says Hubert Kleinert, once a German Green MP, now a political scientist. That ties their fortunes closely to the left, he says, as "it does make the parties of the centre-left very dependent on the Greens". For Prof Kleinert, being out of power gives greens a chance to rethink their allegiances, including the possibility of entering coalitions with centre-right parties like Germany's CDU. It could be a divisive debate, as "the feeling of the Greens' leaders is surely more to the middle, but the feeling of the base is more left-wing".

But other commentators say there is no need for Greens to panic. They are part of Romano Prodi's left-wing alliance expected to challenge hard in Italy's elections next year, and are likely to form part of the left-wing bloc competing in France in 2007. "Greens have shown they can be serious politicians, can hold cabinet office and can be trusted, and these will count if their time comes again," says Dr Neil Carter of the University of York.

But what about environmental policies? With no Green ministers now at cabinet tables, or at EU ministerial meetings, will there be no-one to push ecological considerations? The Green Party in Germany was instrumental in forming that country's policy of shutting down nuclear energy, and its huge increase in the use of renewable energy. Are these achievements now at risk? Prof Rootes thinks not, as these ideas are now "entrenched" in the political mainstream.

Mr Behrend says that people across Europe realise the importance of environmental protection, and they will not allow any political party to neglect that in its policy making. "Green politics and sustainability are not just post-materialistic dreams," he says. "They are hard politics that we're going to have to face in the coming years

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ELECTRICITY FROM COAL BECOMING "GREENER"

Popular wisdom is that wind power is the best choice for electricity generation, especially if the goal is to reduce the emissions of mercury, SO2, NOx, or CO2. However, in a paper published on ES&T's Research ASAP website, researchers report that consumers in Texas paid about 5.7 cents per kilowatt hour (›/kWh) more for renewable power in 2002 than if the same power had been produced by state-of-the-art coal-powered plants designed to reduce these 4 significant air pollutants.

The analysis, conducted by Katrina Dobesova from the University of Economics, Prague, and Jay Apt and Lester Lave from Carnegie Mellon University's Electricity Industry Center, examined the cost of renewable power in Texas, the U.S.'s largest power producer. The state has enacted a tough renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which requires that utilities obtain a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources. The authors focused on wind power, because it provided 87% of Texas's renewable capacity in 2002. The state also produces a lot of air pollution: In 2002, Texas was the origin of 10% of the U.S.'s mercury, 19% of its CO2, and 14% of its NOx emissions.

The study found that the same pollution reductions could be reached more cheaply with an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plant that uses carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) than with wind power. Combined-cycle plants that use pulverized coal or natural gas and include CCS could obtain achieve the same costs. There are 11 IGCC plants operating in the U.S. and 112 in the world, Apt says.

The District of Columbia and 20 U.S. states have enacted some form of renewable policy for electricity generation, the authors say. Most RPS proponents favor non-fossil-fuel energy sources, Apt suggests. Several state legislatures are debating new RPSs right now.

As part of the analysis, the researchers considered the cost incurred by utilities for "fill-in power"-the energy usually bought from coal- or natural-gas-powered plants when the wind doesn't blow. Texas wind turbines spin about one-third of the time on average, Apt explains. This means that utilities must purchase power for the other two-thirds of the time. These costs had been previously estimated at 1.1 ›/kWh, Apt says. Other factors that played an important role in their calculations included the federal wind-energy production tax credit for renewable energy, which they calculated as 1.8 ›/kWh, and the loss of power as it moves along transmission lines from wind turbines typically located far from major cities, which they peg at 0.9 ›/kWh.

In the end, Dobesova, Apt, and Lave conclude that an energy policy that is broader than an RPS might provide society with the least expensive, and least polluting, energy source. "Legislation like that enacted in Pennsylvania includes IGCC [technology] and thus addresses directly the issue of carbon control within the framework of a politically palatable mechanism," the three write.

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THE SUN "BREATHES"

Another blow at the popular misconception of the sun as invariant. A note from Oliver K. Manuel, Professor of Nuclear Chemistry University of Missouri

A new paper from UCLA and Stanford uses helioseismology data collected over a 9 year period to confirm stratification of the Sun, even at shallow depths >0.005 Ro. "We have found a variability of the "helioseismic" radius in antiphase with the solar activity, with the strongest variations of the stratification being just below the surface around 0.995 Rsun. Besides, the radius of the deeper layers of the Sun, between 0.975 Rsun and 0.99 Rsun changes in phase with the 11-year cycle."

The new paper documents that the Sun is variable and "breathes" on an 11 year cycle, with anti-correlated radius changes above and below 0.99 Ro like the anti-correlated radius changes in our chest and stomach during breathing. See here. Michael Mozina reported evidence of shallow stratification of the Sun earlier this year in images from NASA's SOHO satellite and Trace satellite programs. The UCLA/Stanford paper follows close on the heels of a paper co-authored by Mozina which posits that the Sun is a magnetic plasma diffuser with rigid, iron-rich structures (See Figs. 14 and 15) below its fluid photosphere.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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