One of the many dirty little secrets about oil shale is that it will take huge amounts of energy to turn rock into a product we can put in our cars and trucks.  That's because the currently proposed technology for producing oil shale involves using what amounts to glorified curling irons underground, heating them up to hundreds of degrees and melting the "kerogen" into something that can be sucked out of the ground and could be refined into a useable product.

To heat all those curling irons could require 10 or more new coal-fired power plants, making oil shale one of the dirtiest source of energy per unit in terms of greenhouse gases.  This production process would also be incredibly thirsty - producing one barrel of fuel from shale may require 3 or more barrels of water.

Talk about a great Earth Day present! Florida Power and Light and Kitson & Partners made a stunning announcement April 9, saying they plan to build the nation's first solar-powered city—a cluster of homes, offices and factories less than 20 miles from Fort Myers on Florida's Gulf Coast.

What a turnaround. Just two years ago, we were fighting FPL's proposal to build America's largest coal-fired power plant in Glades County, near the Everglades. We celebrated when the Florida Public Service Commission rejected FPL's plan, citing concern about global warming pollutants for the first time.

Now it looks like Florida could become the "Sunshine State" for real.

When the going gets tough, call the PR department, and ask it to come up with a spiffy new acronym. It's a recognized ploy with a long history.

Here we go again.

The bold, ambitious plans to push solar power plants, windmill farms, and other green facilities is causing a major backlash among industries used to having their way with government policy -- coal companies, oil companies, the usual suspects.

The latest effort is being led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with three million members nationwide (some of those members are almost certainly very uncomfortable with what's coming; maybe there will be a mutiny; one can only hope).

On the front page of The New York Times today, Elisabeth Rosenthal takes an in-depth look at a global warming problem you may not know much about: black carbon, commonly known as soot. Carbon dioxide is the main culprit in global warming, but recently scientists have found that soot may be responsible for up to 25 percent of global warming, particularly in the Arctic.