To put it mildly, this is bizarre.

This is mildly amusing, that is if you have a dark, ironic sense of humor.

By Brian Mahar

Could it be that, despite their anger and frustration at high gasoline prices, Americans' actual behavior patterns tell a different story? That's what a New York Times article, citing economic research, suggests.  A few key points:

Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its first-ever annual survey on “Employment in Green Goods and Services” (GGS) in the United States. Here are a few key numbers:

What should every startup know about public relations (PR)?  Communications consultant Lindsey Green tells us in a helpful article at The Daily Muse. The key points:

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports on exciting news from Germany on the clean energy front:

By Brian Mahar

A new article at Bloomberg BusinessWeek finds that the booming U.S. solar industry is “luring cash at record rates from investors ranging from Warren Buffett to Google Inc. (GOOG) and KKR & Co. by offering returns on projects four times those available for Treasury securities…returns of about 15 percent, according to Stanford University’s center for energy policy and finance.”  A few more points from the BusinessWeek article are well worth highlighting:

The natural gas "fracking" industry can downplay or deny the potentially harmful effects of the chemicals it uses, but a new study highlights why that doesn't make them any less harmful.

By Brian Mahar

In this past Friday's Wichita Eagle, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and U.S. Senator Jerry Moran had a strong, pro-wind-power editorial which is well worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

At Forbes Green Tech, Mindy Lubber explains that investors are making money - big money - on renewable energy.

Stephen Lacey of Climate Progress has published yet another superb article, well worth reading by anyone interested in solar power. Here's an excerpt (but definitely read the entire piece):

By Brian Mahar

An article in the Sunday Washington Post discusses serious cuts being proposed for the booming solar industry in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Here's an excerpt:

By Brian Mahar

With technology like this, so much for solar power being "intermittent!"

In the March 15 New York Times, Paul Krugman effectively calls out the oil and natural gas industries on their self-perpetuated myth of dirty energy job creation. Here's an excerpt:

Despite an incessant barrage of pro-natural-gas-"fracking" propaganda coming from the industry and its political allies, a new poll indicates that the American people are not buying it.

Just a short post regarding two findings from a new poll by Bloomberg we thought worth passing along:

Today, we have yet more evidence that the mythical "cleantech bust" is actually an exciting, accelerating "boom."

Needless to say, we never believed a word the tar sands industry says, whether it relates to the supposed number of jobs created by the Keystone XL pipeline (see here for the real number), or the supposed lack of environmental harm inflicted by tar sands operations. Well, now a new study, published yesterday in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (and cited in the New York Times), demolishes the tar sands industry's "contention that its planted forests may actually be better than the boreal forest they replace." To the contrary:

The LinkedIn blog has some fascinating information we thought was well worth sharing:

According to an email from Appalachian Voices a bit earlier today, it's actually possible that "the Tennessee State Senate [will] become the first ever state legislative body to vote on banning mountaintop removal."

Is the cleantech boom about to go bust?  If you read this article in Wired Magazine by Juliet Eilperin, you might come away with that conclusion. If so, you'd be wrong. To the contrary, an article at Forbes Magazine by "cleantech market intelligence" firm Pike Research editorial director Richard Martin comes to the completely opposite conclusion.

As if the risk to our water supplies from natural gas fracking, not to mention the Scam Behind the Gas Boom," wasn't enough, how about this?

An independent study by Cornell University researchers has already shown the claims made by Keystone XL tar sands pipeline backers - more jobs, lower oil prices, etc. - to be largely, if not completely, unfounded.  Now, Bloomberg reports on yet another downside of this pipeline that you almost certainly won't hear from the oil lobby or the politicians it has on its payroll.