MasterResource is nearing its three-month anniversary. Our total views have exceeded 50,000–not bad for a start-up, energy-focused blog. We have had as many as 3,200 views on a day and now have a base daily viewership of around 500.

We have had 111 posts (at least one per day!) from 21 different authors. Our post categories exceed 50. Nearly 500 comments from more than 150 individuals have been received, and more comments are being added to different posts. We welcome critical comments so long as they are made in good faith and in good taste.

Our most popular posts (and comments on posts) to date have been:…

Environmental protection and economic progress can and should be complementary. Innovation and deployment of naturally better technologies can enable us to be greener, wealthier, and happier.

But the politics of climate change can ruin the synergy. It becomes “environment” versus the economy. A case study is Ireland.

Ireland is a home to green politics, and, as in many other countries, the focus is on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies. While green activism has grown both through formal green political parties,and through sympathetic factions working within formal institutional structures, more important still is the ability of greens to exert pressure through coalition politics, especially in parliaments. This can imbue green parties or green-party sympathizers with considerable power to “gate keep” and control agendas.…

Cambridge University economist Dr. Terry Barker told delegates at the recent Copenhagen climate conference that if the current economic downturn persists for several years, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions worldwide could drop by 40% to 50%, the Irish Times reports. 

Dr. Barker, who is director of the Cambridge Center for Climate Research, said the Great Depression of the 1930s reduced global emissions by 35% because so many factories shut down, especially in the United States. He adds:…

In a March 4 article, writer Michael Burnham of E&E News PM (subscription required) talks about the slow down in “clean energy” investments and what this might mean for reducing the carbon peak:

Investments in new wind farms and other “clean” energy projects are slowing with the crumbling global economy, and that could make climate change’s bite harder in the decades ahead, financial analysts warned today.

With coal-fired power plants, steel mills and cement kilns producing less, greenhouse gas emissions are falling in the short term, the London-based market analytics firm New Energy Finance says in a report today. But flat investment in lower-emission alternatives in the next two or three years — presumably the time it takes for economies to rebound — could push what the analysts dub “peak carbon” back by more than a decade.