Chinese Energy Intensity Goals

Xinhua, the Chinese official news agency released the following item yesterday (I deleted points that are not relevant to this blog DS):February 28, 2011 Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during an on-line chat with the public Sunday answered questions concerning economic growth targets, housing prices, migrant workers, currency exchange rate reform, health care insurance, and other matters.The

Inflation in China

As a follow up to my post on consumer price inflation in the US here are trends in the last couple of years in China:Credit: CEIC.Whereas the US chart showed the levels of price indices this chart shows the rate of inflation. Inflation is China is currently at 4.9%. The fastest rising category is food, which has a much bigger budget share than the in the US, as is typical of developing economies.

Synthesizing Diesel Fuel Using Cyanobacteria

A US firm called Joule has bioengineered cyanobacteria to secrete diesel or ethanol. The picture above is from the Washington Post version of the story and shows panels containing the organisms. But as is the case with other recent inventions the economics are not yet clear. The company claims they could produce fuel at $30 per barrel - a third of the current price of crude oil. They also claim

Consumer Price Inflation in the USA

The graph shows the increase in consumer prices over the last decade for the eight subcategories in the consumer price index (CPI) in the US and energy. Energy isn't a separate subcategory in the CPI but is included in the transport and housing categories. As you can see, energy prices are very volatile but have increased by more than other spending categories over this decade. The graph gives

IAmScientist Again

I finally added a profile to IAmScientist, which I mentioned a long time ago in what turned out to be my most popular post.I was impressed by how it found links to my publications on the web. The site then generates an abstract for each publication. But it doesn't generate links to those publications on the web. You have to upload a copy to IAmScientist.Also its communication and friending

2011 Ecological Economics Reviews is Published

The 2011 edition Ecological Economics Reviews has been published. Ecological Economics Reviews is an annual special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences - a special issues only journal. This edition includes my paper "The Role of Energy in Economic Growth". There are 12 articles in total and there are a lot of Australian authors!Peter Wood (ANU): Climate change and game

Submitted Comments to the ERA Public Consultation

I submitted some comments to the consultation. Of course, I recommended JEEM and the Energy Journal both be ranked A* and that the Energy Journal actually be included in economics (as it is published by IAEE). I also recommended that History of Political Economy be downgraded from A* to B, that International Journal of Urban and Regional Research not be included in economics, and Journal of

Public Consultation on 2012 ERA Journal List Now Open

The Australian Research Council (ARC) has opened public consultation on the list of journals for the 2012 ERA exercise. A lot of people were concerned with the anomalies in the 2010 list. So now is your opportunity to make your contribution to improving the next list.

Why "Jevons Paradox" is an Argument for Stronger Action on Climate Change not Weaker

The 19th century economist William Jevons suggested that improvements in the efficiency of energy use devices could increase energy use rather than reduce it. The more efficient machines etc. would reduce the cost of production thereby increasing the amount demanded and sold and, therefore, the energy used to produce the products. The rebound effect is a modern statement of this idea: "Efficiency

Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations During Ancient Greenhouse Climates were Similar to those Predicted for A.D. 2100

That's the title of a paper published last year by Breecker et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Also see the commentary on the article). The key figure is this:The yellow band are previous estimates of atmospheric CO2 concentrations based on calcium carbonate in ancient soils. The revised estimates from this paper are marked in red and are more in agreement with

Australia's 2010 Emissions Projection Released

The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has released projections of Australian GHG emissions till 2020-30. They project that emissions will increase by 1.8% p.a. from 2010 to 2020. This is much faster growth than from 1990 to 2010. The reason is that reductions in land-clearing offset strong growth in other emissions in the latter period. And now there isn't much ability to reduce

ARC Decision Process

This looks to be good advice about how the ARC (Australian Research Council) decision process works. It's a couple of years old but I don't think there have been major changes in this time frame.

CCEP Working Papers in January 2011

We had a fairly disappointing number of abstract views/downloads this month. But we didn't put up any new papers and it is the middle of the summer here in Australia.

Researcher ID to be More Integrated into Web of Knowledge

Researcher ID allows researchers to "claim" their articles on the Web of Knowledge. Though you can view a researcher's profile if you know their ID number or they provide you with a link, this feature hasn't been integrated with the citation index.Thomson-Reuters plan to change this. The integration is pretty superficial at this stage. Only when you go to an article's full details will you see