Electric motors: Reluctant heroes | The Economist

Important story about the progress of electric motors and energy alternative possibilities …

 

“DYSPROSIUM and neodymium are not exactly the best-known elements in the periodic table, but for makers of high-end electric motors they have become vital. Both are strongly magnetic and thus …”

via Electric motors: Reluctant heroes | The Economist.

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Spending a Week With an Electric Car: Is the 2013 Chevy Volt Worth It?

Is an electric car a vehicle that you could live with? We’ve seen the pictures and read the reviews of cars like the 2013 Chevy Volt, but how do we know what it’s really like to live with

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Filed under: Blogosphere, consumers, Energy Policy, Environmental Policy, News, Oil and Gas, auto industry; saving Detroit; Government intervention saves auto industry; Obama Administration saves Detroit;, Electric car, Nitrogen vs. Electric cars

Military to Deliver Fuel to Storm-Ravaged Region – NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — As long lines persisted at gas stations in the New York metropolitan area, federal authorities moved on Friday to restore supplies, instructing the Defense Department to send 24 million gallons of fuel to the region and lifting restrictions on deliveries by …

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Nitrogen cycle: Difference Engine: End of the electric car? | The Economist

A COUPLE of dozen electric cars with fuel cells under the bonnet (in place of the more usual flat-pack of batteries beneath the floor) have been zipping around your correspondent’s neighbourhood for the past few years. Most are FCX Clarity models from Honda, all in the …

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Climate finance: He who pays the paupers… | The Economist

AMID the wreckage of the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, an agreement that rich countries would, by 2020, furnish developing ones with $100 billion a year to help them mitigate and adapt to global warming looked like a rare achievement. This commitment will also be a big talking point at the next annual UN summit, due to start in Durban on November 28th. With almost no hope of a big new pact, many expect progress on the …

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Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Presidential politics has always been a rich man’s game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of …

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Climate change: Climate scepticism is not just American | The Economist

CHRIS MOONEY has a new book out, “The Republican Mind” (here’s a brief essay-length version of the thesis), that looks from a frankly liberal standpoint at evidence that conservatives and liberals tend to have different character types and different attitudinal approaches to reality. There’s plenty such evidence, and, before half the people who read this blog go ballistic, it really shouldn’t be considered offensive to point out the …

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For Hybrid and Electric Cars to Pay Off, Owners Must Wait – NYTimes.com

Ed Moran’s new Toyota Prius was programmed by the dealer to make him feel good about his gas savings. A dashboard display compares the fuel consumption of the Prius and his 2001 Ford …

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Obama Clears Way for Measures Against Iran – NYTimes.com

President Obama said on Friday that there is enough oil in world markets to allow countries to rely less on imports from Iran, a step that could increase …

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Inching Toward Energy Independence in America – NYTimes.com

The desolate stretch of West Texas desert known as the Permian Basin is still the lonely domain of scurrying roadrunners by day and howling coyotes by night. But the roar of scores of new oil rigs and the distinctive …

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The president and the pump | The Economist

REPUBLICAN politicians do not yet blame Barack Obama personally for the recent changes in America’s weather. That would stick in the craw, given that, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence, most of them still question and many deny that man plays a role in global warming. They do, however, blame Mr Obama for the rise in the price of oil. This is odd too, especially for a party …

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Nuclear power: The dream that failed | The Economist

THE enormous power tucked away in the atomic nucleus, the chemist Frederick Soddy rhapsodised in 1908, could “transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole world one smiling …

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