Earth's Net Energy Change/monitoring... Little analysis of earth's energy.

Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change

This is a serious analysis of the energy flows of the earth systems.  You simply look at energy as a budget (but hopefully not with the same budget processes as many of the countries use like the PIIGS and the USA).

You have so much energy coming in. That energy is reflected and absorbed into the earth systems (oceans mainly).

The problem is that we are missing 60 * 10^20 Jules/year (or 6 * 10^22 J/y). Apparently Trenberth is in publication of an analysis of his explanation of this "residual", aka missing energy. We may not like where we find this missing link to our (in)balanced energy budget.

?Deep ocean?

Humm...

Over-innovation-makes-us-firms-suck-at-sustainability

Interesting article. Three BIG reasons why we in the USoA companies are not being sustainable with our Over-Innovation ways.

I think the short-term focus is a Big one. Focus on the immediate sell of the immediate product is probably the underlying problem more than any other.
Article: over-innovation-makes-us-firms-suck-at-sustainability

EPA is finally going to conduct a big Environmental Study on Gas Fracking

There has been a painfully slow move to NatGas in the US, even though we appear to have centuries worth of it using new fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques.

The one holdup, kinda, is being blamed on the possible environmental impact from gas drilling. (As if it could be worse than oil with its BP Gulf and Exxon Yellowstone spills in the last two years.)

So the EPA is conducting a few big studies.

With NatGas at a price of $1 (to $2) for the equivalent of a gallon of diesel in vehicle fuel ($4/gal), many people argue that it's a "no brainer" decision for the US to switch to NatGas. But inertia and the massive interests in the current oil & coal economy seem to have us doing the “no brain” part of a far better decision than imported oil or much dirtier/deadly coal.

Check out the Utica Shale and Marcellus Shale information… The Utica Shale formation that is below the Marcellus is just now becoming commercially available using new drilling techniques that have really been worked out since about 2005.

http://geology.com