As part of his budget, President Obama has proposed mandatory caps on greenhouse gases and a system for auctioning permits to companies that emit them.

Geothermal energy is increasingly contributing to the power supply world wide. Iceland is world-leader in expanding development of geothermal utilization: in recent years the annual power supply here doubled to more than 500 MW alone in the supply of electricity. And also in Germany, a dynamic development is to be seen: over 100 MW of heat are currently being provided through geothermal energy.

Experts worry that cities aren’t ready to oversee the energy-efficiency money coming their way.

PHILADELPHIA (February 26, 2009) — The holidays are behind us and gifts of new electronic devices ranging from cell phones to televisions are making us smile. This year as broadcast television switches to an all digital broadcast format, TVs were at the top of many gift lists

An experimental fire that was deliberately set in Portugal has provided researchers in the Netherlands with the first information about the soil erosion that occurs after forest fires. A research team set fire to 10 ha of heathland under controlled conditions. The experiment is not only important for areas in the Mediterranean that have burned or are threatened with fire, but also for Australia, where it is expected that the drinking water supply will be threatened following the recent forest fires.

With a new 3D-model for energy simulation scientists from Bochum and Huntsville, USA, are studying the ‘physical mystery’ of the Voyager. Over 30 years ago the spacecraft detected particles in solar wind which were ‘hotter’ than they should have been according to the existing theory expounded by the mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov in 1941. The Bochum plasma physicists Prof. Padma Kant Shukla and Dr. Dastgeer Shaikh from the University of Alabama are thereby the first to verify by means of computer simulation that the non-linear characteristics of turbulences in the plasma carried by the solar wind differs from the familiar model for dynamic fluids. The scientists have published their results in ‘Physical Review Letters.’

(Yale University) Global climate rapidly shifted from a relatively ice-free world to one with massive ice sheets on Antarctica about 34 million years ago. What happened? What changed? A team of scientists led by Yale geologists offers a new perspective on the nature of changing climatic conditions across this greenhouse-to-icehouse transition — one that refutes earlier theories and has important implications for predicting future climate changes.

(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) The US Environmental Protection Agency will be studying water, reefs and marine habitats in the Caribbean Sea around Puerto Rico.

(American Geophysical Union) Globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate pollution into the air as the total amount released by cars, according to a new study published on Feb. 25, 2009 in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Atmospheres, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Ship pollutants affect both the Earth’s climate and the health of people living along coastlines.

In the attempt to shape the public’s views on climate change, hyperbole is a temptation on all sides.