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Cook With the Sun: Solar Oven Recipes

by SunnyCorin33131 Posted on July 2, 2019

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Sweltering summer temperatures can be a serious drag, but here at Earth911, we try to look at the glass half-full. An unseasonably warm summer may lead us to crank our air conditioners more than usual, but it can also hold the secret to energy-free cooking. We’ve put together five solar oven recipes to help you kick start your solar oven cooking.

You may be familiar with solar ovens from whipping up s’mores other camping treats, but you can actually use these sun-powered wonders to cook just about anything — without using a single kilowatt-hour of electricity. Check out these five tasty recipes for a solar oven, and take advantage of summer heat by cooking with the power of the sun.

Solar ovens consist of a system of reflectors and a cooking pot. The rest is up to your imagination! Once you have assembled or purchased your solar oven, you can use it to prepare hot meals in the backyard, at a campground or wherever your heart desires — even a sunny beach. Photo: Flickr/EBKauai

Choosing & Using Your Solar Oven

Basically, a solar oven consists of a system of reflectors and a cooking pot. The setup coverts the sun’s rays into heat energy to bake, boil, or steam your next meal. In a solar oven, you can cook anything that you can cook in a conventional electric or gas oven and many meals that you can cook on the stove.

As an added bonus, heading outside to use a solar oven makes cooking your meals a fun-filled event for the whole family. The young (and young-at-heart) will love watching lunch slowly cook under the sun’s rays, and your meals will be even tastier after you’ve had to work a little for them. Solar ovens are also easily portable, meaning you can cook a hot meal at the beach, park, campground, or wherever your heart desires.

If you’re the DIY type, you can easily make your own solar oven out of items like cardboard, a thermometer, foil, glass, and black spray paint. Use these step-by-step instructions from Instructables, or check out this how-to video from aysproject to build your oven.

You can also opt for a store-bought solar oven. As you may expect, purchased models will cost a bit more than DIY alternatives, but they tend to heat up faster and reach higher temperatures. If you’d rather purchase a ready-made oven, check out the GoSun Sport or the Sunflair Mini Portable Solar Oven.

No matter which model you choose, the cooking method for your solar oven remains about the same. Start by placing your oven in direct sunlight, and allow the internal temperature to reach at least 200 degrees Fahrenheit before placing your meal inside.

Think cooking with the sun takes all day? Think again. If you refocus the oven to follow the sun’s rays every 30 minutes, your cooking time will be similar to cooking with a conventional oven or stove. You can also use a solar oven for recipes you’d use in a slow cooker (like a Crock-Pot). If your cooking pot does not have a lid, you may want to create some sort of makeshift cover to keep heat from escaping the pot, which can greatly increase cooking time.

Keep in mind that browning is unlikely in a solar oven due to lower temperatures and lack of air circulation. On the bright side, this means that you don’t have to worry about your food getting dried out or burned. On the not-so-bright side, you probably won’t achieve the crispiness or caramelization you could expect from a conventional oven. So, choose your recipes accordingly to avoid surprises.

As for the best solar cooking vessel, a dark, thin-walled pot with a lid works best, according to Solar Cookers International. Dark pots change the sun’s rays into heat energy, while shiny aluminum pots cause light to be reflected outward, reducing the oven’s temperature. Glass casserole dishes with lids will also do the trick.

5 Solar Oven Recipes

Photo flickr/Megan

1. Mediterranean Flatbread Recipe

What you’ll need:

1 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Six pieces of flatbread
3/4 cup Kalamata olives, chopped
1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
2 cups arugula, roughly chopped

For hummus:

1 can chickpeas, ½ cup liquid set aside
1/4 cup tahini
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

How to make it:

1. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, and thyme. Salt and pepper to taste. Set your vinaigrette in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before cooking.

2. Meanwhile, start preparing your hummus spread. Add chickpeas, reserved chickpea liquid, tahini, salt, pepper, and garlic to a food processor or blender. Pulse lightly while drizzling in olive oil until smooth, about two minutes.

3. Arrange your flatbread pieces in the bottom of a large metal casserole dish with a lid. Spread about 2 tablespoons of hummus on each flatbread piece. Top with Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese.

4. Cover the casserole dish with a lid, and place it in a pre-heated solar oven for about 20 minutes, or until cheese is fully melted.

5. Top with a small handful of arugula and a drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette before serving.

Solar cooking tips:

This simple preparation is ideal for your sun-powered oven. As is usually the case with solar cooking, it’s best to eyeball it or use a thermometer rather than sticking to a designated cooking time. This recipe should take 20 to 30 minutes in your solar oven, but cooking time will vary based on outdoor temperatures and sun exposure.

For best results, allow your solar oven to heat up to at least 250 degrees Fahrenheit before putting your flatbread inside. Check on your meal regularly, and remove it once the cheese is fully melted.

Keep in mind that your flatbread pieces will be warm and tasty, but you’ll have a hard time making them crispy in a solar oven. If you crave a crispy texture, brush your flatbread pieces with olive oil, and sear them in a cast-iron skillet on your stove for about a minute on each side before putting them in your solar oven.

Photo Flickr/Alan Levine

2. Whole Bean Enchiladas Recipe

What you’ll need:

16-ounce can of whole black beans
16-ounce can of sweet corn (or two cups of fresh corn)
3/4 cup of red onion, diced
1 large tomato, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
2 teaspoons olive oil
16-ounce can of enchilada prepared sauce
Six whole wheat or corn tortillas
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

How to make it:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine black beans, corn, red onion, tomato, cilantro, and olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Allow your mixture to marinate in the refrigerator for at least an hour before cooking.

2. When you’re ready to cook, retrieve your filling from the refrigerator, and add half of the enchilada sauce. Stir to combine.

3. Scoop your filling into a tortilla, about six tablespoons at a time. Roll up the tortilla and place it into a medium-sized glass casserole dish with a lid. Repeat until you’ve filled all six tortillas.

4. Pour the remaining enchilada sauce on top, and cover with cheese. Cover the casserole dish with a lid and place it in your solar oven for about 30 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the filling is warmed through.

Solar cooking tips:

The one-pot nature of this tasty vegetarian recipe makes it perfect for solar oven cooking. For best results, cover your enchiladas with a lid before putting them in the solar oven. Place your oven in direct sunlight, and refocus as needed to keep it out of the shadows.

Ideally, allow your solar oven to heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit before putting your enchiladas inside. If using a DIY model, allow your unit to get as hot as possible (probably between 250 and 300 degrees Fahrenheit) before you start cooking.

To make sure your meal comes out right, keep an eye on your enchiladas and take note when the cheese begins melting. When you suspect they may be finished, use a fork to gauge done-ness. Your tortillas should be soft, the cheese should be fully melted, and the filling should be heated through.

Although it may be tempting, avoid lifting the lid on your casserole dish too often; allowing heat to escape your cooking vessel will increase baking time.

Photo by weightwatchers.com via thedailymeal.com

3. Slow-Cooker Lentil Soup Recipe via The Daily Meal

What you’ll need:

2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups dry lentils
3 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
8 cups canned chicken broth (substitute vegetable broth for a vegan treat)
4 ounces Canadian-style bacon (optional)

How to make it: View full instructions and tips at The Daily Meal.

Solar cooking tips:

Slow-cooker recipes work wonderfully in solar ovens. To set-it-and-forget-it, simply position your oven in a clear area of the yard, place covered soup inside and allow it to cook all day. Your soup should be ready for dinnertime in about six hours using this method (the same as a standard Crock-Pot).

For a slightly speedier meal, refocus your solar oven throughout the day to follow the sun’s rays, which should shave at least an hour off your cooking time.

Photo Flickr/Ben Millett

4. Rockin’ Ratatouille Recipe

What you’ll need:

1 cup eggplant, chopped
1 cup zucchini or summer squash, chopped
1 cup red or green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup tomato, chopped
1/4 cup sweet onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
8-ounce can of no-salt-added tomato puree
Salt and pepper to taste

How to make it:

1. Combine eggplant, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cumin, and tomato puree in a large metal or glass pot. Salt and pepper to taste.

2. Cover and cook in your solar oven for 4 to 5 hours, or until vegetables are tender. For faster cooking, refocus your solar oven to follow the sun around your yard, which should shave at least an hour off your cooking time. Serve alone or with cooked brown rice, mashed potatoes, or quinoa.

Solar cooking tips:

Packed with vitamin-rich veggies like eggplant and zucchini, ratatouille carries troves of obvious health benefits. But it’s also a perfect energy-free entree that couldn’t be simpler to whip up in your solar oven.

For a fresh-from-the-farmer’s-market flavor, cook your ratatouille over medium-low heat (between 200 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit). Any hotter could cause vegetables to lose their crunch, and tomato sauce may begin to brown around the edges.

To maintain consistent internal temperature, refocus your solar oven to follow the sun’s rays, and avoid lifting the lid of your pot too often. It’s fine to stir your ratatouille occasionally, but removing the lid too frequently can increase cooking time.

If you plan to leave your solar oven unattended while slow cooking, you may want to place it on a table or weigh down the lid to dissuade curious critters.

Photo courtesy of Cooking Light via thedailymeal

5. Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpeas, & Olives Recipe via The Daily Meal

What you’ll need:

5 1/2 cups of cauliflower florets
10 green Spanish olives, halved and pitted
8 cloves garlic, chopped coarsely
15-ounce can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons flat leaf parsley

How to make it: View full instructions and tips at The Daily Meal.

Solar cooking tips:

Rather than racking up your energy usage to prepare this tasty roasted cauliflower recipe from The Daily Meal, pop it in a solar oven to shrink your footprint (and your monthly electric bill).

This recipe takes about 20 minutes when prepared in a conventional oven heated to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. So, expect it to take about an hour in your solar oven. Refocusing the oven every 30 minutes to follow the sun’s rays will help you cut cooking time for an even speedier snack.

Since you’d like a bit of a crunch to your cauliflower, opt for a dark-colored metal roasting pan with a lid. Dark colors draw in heat, and metal creates that sizzly effect that leaves your meal with a crisp-tender consistency.

What are your favorite recipes for cooking in your solar oven? Share them with the community in the Earthling Forum.

Feature image courtesy of Erik Burton

Editor’s note: Originally published on January 23, 2016, this article was updated in July 2019. Pictured foods are not actual prepared recipes but rather representations of main ingredients.

 

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Cook With the Sun: Solar Oven Recipes

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How & Why to Participate in a Seed Swap

by PenniLesina Posted on April 1, 2018

Seed swaps refer to the many different ways people can exchange seeds they?ve grown themselves. A seed swap can be done through a community event, online, or simply between friends. However you choose to do it, there are many benefits to preserving and sharing seeds. Let?s look at some of the reasons why to swap seeds and how to get started.

WHY IS SEED SWAPPING IMPORTANT?

1. You Save Money

If you buy fresh seeds every year from a garden center, catalogue, or other supplier, you know the costs can quickly add up. Whereas, saving your own seeds and trading them with others is completely free, other than taking a little time in the process. You will also find many unique varieties that simply don?t exist in the catalogues.

2. You Get Quality, Local Seeds

The majority of store-bought seeds come from somewhere else. And the parent plants could have grown in conditions completely different from your local environment. This makes it hard to predict how those plant varieties will fare in your garden.

Seeds you get from seed swaps are typically grown by other gardeners who live near you, which means you already know they can grow well in your local area. Also, the longer you save your seeds, you may find they?ll get stronger and better each year as they continue to adapt to your local conditions over many generations.

3. You Help Maintain Genetic Diversity

Our world is rapidly losing genetic diversity as both plant and animal species throughout the world are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. It?s estimated that farmers used to grow about 80,000 species of plants prior to industrialization. Currently, they rely on around 150 species.

The primary reason for this is to create predictable, uniform crops that can be easily harvested and processed on large-scale farms. Needless to say, this does not support plant diversity. It also creates a very dangerous situation where disease can kill off a certain variety of plant, and there are no other varieties to take its place. We need as many different varieties as possible to ensure a healthy, secure food supply for the future.

Related: Why It Matters to Buy Heirloom Plants and Seeds

4. You Support Non-GMO Seeds

A particularly insidious development in the industrialization of seeds is genetic modification. Various food crops have been genetically altered to fit into the industrial agriculture model even better. Genetically modified organisms have been linked to certain health risks, as well as adding disturbing mutations to our already dwindling gene pool of plants. Growing and sharing your own seeds is a way to keep genetic modification out of our gardens and our food.

HOW TO START SWAPPING SEEDS

1. Collect your favorite seeds

Seed collection typically involves gathering either dry or wet seeds. The easiest seeds to start with are dry seeds, which are produced by most ornamental flowers and herbs. Simply wait until the flowers have matured and gone to seed, then break open any pods or seed heads and shake out the dry seeds into a paper bag for storage.

Most vegetables make wet seeds that need to be cleaned and dried before storage. This is a straight-forward process, and you can find more details on processing wet seeds here. Once you have your seeds dried, they should be stored in a paper bag or envelope in a cool, dark location.

2. Share your seeds

Seed swapping can be as simple as trading some seeds with a few friends, or you can go bigger and attend a community seed swap near you. Ask a local garden center, gardening club, or botanical garden if they know of any seed swaps happening in town.

If you can?t find a swap locally, try starting your own. Mother Earth News has a great overview of how to organize a community seed swap. You can also donate your extra seeds to organizations like Seed Savers Exchange, who work to preserve and distribute rare and heirloom seed varieties.

3. Go online

Many sites offer online seed swapping opportunities, such as the National Gardening Association, Houzz, or Reddit. You?ll usually need to be a member of a site in order to participate, but once you?ve signed up, you can often advertise what you have or ask for varieties you?re looking for. Once you?ve made a match, you can either arrange to meet up locally or mail your exchanged seeds.

4. Start a seed lending library

A seed library works by allowing gardeners to ?borrow? seeds at planting time, and then save some fresh seeds at the end of the season to return to the library for the following year. If you?re intrigued by the idea, shareable has a great description of how to create your own seed lending library.

5. Grow your seeds

Another important step in seed saving is to keep the cycle going. Plant your saved seeds, as well as any new varieties you?ve gotten at a swap, every spring for a fresh crop. Then collect seeds in the fall again to share and grow next year.

Related on Care2

How to Share Extra Bounty from Your Garden with the Community
6 Tips for Starting Your Own Vegetable Seeds Indoors
10 Facts Why GM Food Is Bad

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How & Why to Participate in a Seed Swap

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Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

by FreyaWop772 Posted on July 3, 2016

Don’t be a wiener

Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

By on Jul 3, 2016Share

Independence Day has historically been a time to remember our forbears, to consider the spectacular achievements this country has made, and to shove approximately 155 million hot dogs down our collective throats. But, this year, I’m begging you: Say no to the weenie, the worst meat of them all.

To be clear, we’re talking about the intestine-colored, colon-shaped sticks of blended gristle that shine in the sun and slide out of the package like a wet worm, not the visually appealing pet of the same name. This is a perfect day to remember that mass-produced processed meats — besides being grotesque amalgams of unwanted animal chunks — are products of an unsustainable and harmful industry.

First things first: What’s in a hot dog? The backyard BBQ staple can contain pretty much any type of meat, but are mainly comprised of pork, chicken, and beef. Specifically, they’re made up of “trimmings”, a word vaguely defined by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to encompass “lower-grade muscle trimmings, fatty tissues, head meat, animal feet, animal skin, blood, liver, and other edible slaughter by-products.”

But meat is only the half of what’s in a hot dog. Here’s what the ingredient list for Oscar Meyer’s “Classic Weiner” looks like:

INGREDIENTS: MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED TURKEY, WATER, PORK, CORN SYRUP, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, SALT, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, SODIUM DIACETATE, SODIUM BENZOATE, SODIUM ASCORBATE, FLAVOR, SODIUM NITRITE.

Some of other ingredients frequently added to hot dogs include: meat “extenders”, or non-meat substances containing protein, phosphates, bread crumbs, rusk, and boiled rice.

After the bits of meat cast-offs are ground into a flesh-colored paste, these additives are blended in and the mixture is piped into grillable portions. And voila! What was once a humble salad of pig head and cow foot is now an inscrutable, tubular frankenstein.

Looks aside, hot dogs simply aren’t that good for you. According to the American Cancer Society, “high consumption of processed meats like hot dogs [is] associated with increased risk of colon cancer.” One 2013 study found that participants who ate more than 20 grams of processed meats a day (about half a hot dog), were more likely to die of heart attack or stroke. And earlier this year, the World Health Organization announced that eating processed meats is directly linked with cancer, with a similar risk to cigarettes and asbestos.

Most of the 9 billion hot dogs Americans purchase each year are produced in massive factory farms. In the U.S., about 97 percent of pork — some 65 million pigs — are reared and slaughtered in factory farms. While strides have been made to improve sanitation and animal welfare at these farms in recent years, the industry is known for cramped conditions, overuse of antibiotics, and inhumane conditions. Not to mention factory farming’s contribution to climate change: According to the FAO, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions — more than all the emissions from transportation.

So this Fourth of July, take a moment to consider the hot dog — that coral-colored pipette of entrails — and maybe think twice. And if none of this convinces you, well, I leave you with this gif of hot dogs being made:

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Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

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Harry Potter implicated in first driverless car death

by LeaMichalski Posted on July 1, 2016

Harry Potter implicated in first driverless car death

By on Jul 1, 2016Share

A man died in a car crash while his Tesla sedan was in autopilot mode, the company announced on Thursday. It was the first known fatality involving a self-driving vehicle.

The accident, which occurred in on a Florida highway in May, killed Joshua Brown, 40, a former Navy SEAL from Ohio. Traffic safety regulators opened an investigation into the collision. Tesla described the accident on its website:

What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S.

Brown was an advocate for self-driving technology and maintained a YouTube page with videos of his Tesla Model S driving on autopilot. One video, now viewed more than 2 million times, shows his Tesla — which he called “Tessy” — narrowly avoiding a collision. “Tessy did great,” Brown wrote in a caption under the video. “I have done a lot of testing with the sensors in the car and the software capabilities. I have always been impressed with the car, but I had not tested the car’s side collision avoidance. I am VERY impressed.”

While Tesla recommends that drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times, even while autopilot is engaged, Brown, according to the driver of the tractor trailer, was watching a Harry Potter film at the time of the accident. “It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road,” driver Frank Baressi said in an interview with the Associated Press. A portable DVD player was found in the car after the accident.

While self-driving vehicles have been heralded by some technologists as safer and more efficient than standard vehicles, others argue that the technology could have major negative impacts on transportation systems — including by putting more cars on the road. One study found that automated technology could increase vehicle miles traveled by as much as 60 percent. As Roland Hwang, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s transportation program, put it, “There’s a utopian vision of what this looks like, but there’s also a dystopian vision.”

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Harry Potter implicated in first driverless car death

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Piano performance next to a crumbling glacier will give you chills

by Zandra23Mqghpna Posted on June 21, 2016

Ice ice baby grand

Piano performance next to a crumbling glacier will give you chills

By on Jun 21, 2016Share

The Arctic Ocean may not be a typical venue for a piano performance, but it’s a prime setting for making a point about climate change. Ludovico Einaudi, an Italian composer-pianist, performed an original piece while stranded on an “artificial iceberg” (or rather, a floating platform made of white, wooden triangles) as Norway’s Wahlenbergbreen glacier collapsed in the background.

Greenpeace shipped the baby grand piano from Germany to the Arctic for the stunt, which was meant draw attention to a proposal to create a sanctuary in 10 percent of the Arctic Ocean, protecting it from oil drilling, fishing trawlers, and other exploitation.

There are no promises it will work, but enjoy the exciting performance on a stranded iceberg — no polar bears needed.

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Piano performance next to a crumbling glacier will give you chills

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A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

by VanitaTousignant Posted on June 16, 2016

A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

By on Jun 16, 2016Share

Coral reefs seem to be having a bad century, with global bleaching events and the Great Barrier Reef fading away before our eyes.

But there’s a bright spot, folks! Actually, there are 15 of them, according to a new study published in Nature.

A group of marine researchers has identified places where reef ecosystems are thriving despite environmental and human pressures. These “bright spots” are rays of hope for future conservation efforts, which may use them to apply better practices to less lucky places.

The study drew data from 2,500 reefs in 46 countries. The 15 reefs with unexpectedly robust fish populations were not necessarily in the most remote areas with low fishing activity. In fact, most of them included “localities where human populations and use of ecosystem resources is high,” the study notes. They are also typically found in the Pacific Ocean, in places like the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and parts of Indonesia.

The bright spots, it turns out, tend to benefit from responsible local management and traditional customs. For example, on Papua New Guinea’s Karkar Island, locals have the right to prevent outsiders from fishing in their particular plot of ocean. They also practice a rotational fishing system where, as in farming, they leave off fishing a part of the reef to allow populations to recover.

On the flip side are the 35 “dark spots” the study identified, where fish stocks aren’t faring too well. These are places like Hawaii and Australia where locals tend to have greater access to fishing technologies — such as nets and freezers for stockpiling fish — that aid and abet intensive exploitation. Dark spots also were more likely to be suffering from recent environmental shocks, like bleaching.

Experts hope to use the bright spots as blueprints for more creative conservation efforts.

“We believe that the bright spots offer hope and some solutions that can be applied more broadly across the world’s coral reefs,” says Josh Cinner, the lead author on the study. “Specifically, investments that foster local involvement and provide people with ownership rights can allow people to develop creative solutions that help defy expectations of reef fisheries depletion.”

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Trump will outline his “thoughts” on energy policy. Here’s what he could say.

by KaleyDevereaux Posted on May 25, 2016

Trump will outline his “thoughts” on energy policy. Here’s what he could say.

By and on May 25, 2016Share

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will speak at the Williston Basin Petroleum conference in Bismarck, N.D., on Thursday, where he’ll emit puffs of carbon dioxide allegedly on the topic of energy policy. In preparation for the speech, Trump has been chatting with energy adviser Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and he’s presumably studying up on OPEC and energy regulations, too.

We’ve collected some of the real estate developer’s past comments on climate and energy to give you some idea of what to expect to hear on Thursday:

On the basic science of climate change: “I am not a great believer in man-made climate change,” Trump told the Washington Post editorial board in March. “If you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming.”

A panel of scientists ranked all of the then-presidential candidates’ public remarks on climate for the Associated Press last November. Trump got 15 points — out of 100.

On climate vs. weather: When it was “really cold outside” last October, Trump tweeted that we “could use a big fat dose of global warming!”

On the kind of climate change he is worried about: “I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.” Interpretation: unclear.

On negotiating with OPEC: “We need one thing: brainpower,” Trump said in an interview with CNN in 2011. Oil prices “will go down if you say it properly,” he added. He also wouldn’t have minded strolling into Libya that year: “I would take the oil,” he said.

On coal: “I want clean coal, and we’re going to have clean coal and we’re going to have plenty of it,” Trump said earlier this month. “We’re going to have great, clean coal. We’re going to have an amazing mining business.”

“The miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week, Ohio and all over are going to start to work again, believe me,” he said.

(Trump endorser and coal executive Bob Murray disagrees).

On gas prices: “I will cap gas prices at $1 per gallon,” Trump told reporters in South Carolina in February. “Plus, I will take all of ISIS’s oil. I bet gas prices will be 50 cents in much of the country under my presidency.”

On liquefied natural gas: “What’s LNG?”

On the Environmental Protection Agency: “We’re going to get rid of so many different things,” Trump said in a February debate. “Environmental protection — we waste all of this money. We’re going to bring that back to the states.” But only if he can figure out what the EPA is. Trump said he would eliminate some agency called “Department of Environmental. I mean, the DEP is killing us environmentally, it’s just killing our businesses.”

On clean energy:

On clean energy when campaigning in clean energy-heavy states: Trump told an Iowa voter that he’s OK with wind subsidies. “It’s an amazing thing when you think — you know, where they can, out of nowhere, out of the wind, they make energy.”

On the Paris climate accord signed by 175 countries: “One of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in politics — in the history of politics as I know it.”

On his hair: “You have showers where I can’t wash my hair properly, it’s a disaster!” Thanks to the EPA, Trump told a crowd in December, showerheads “have restrictors put in. The problem is you stay under the shower for five times as long.”

On his hair and the ozone layer: “Wait a minute — so if I take hairspray and if I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer?’” Trump asked a Charleston audience in May. “I say, no way, folks. No way!”

This post was originally published May 3, 2016. It has been edited and updated. 

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Trump will outline his “thoughts” on energy policy. Here’s what he could say.

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Guess who produces the most oil and gas in the world?

by SylvestMccord Posted on May 23, 2016

Guess who produces the most oil and gas in the world?

By on May 23, 2016

Cross-posted from

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The U.S. led the world last year in producing both oil and gas, federal government estimates published Monday show, even as the country committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. was the globe’s leading producer of crude oil for the third year in a row in 2015. Government estimates show that crude oil production has continued to grow across the country, from nearly 8 million barrels of oil per day in 2008 to about 15 million in 2015. The U.S. produced about 14 million barrels per day in 2014.

Thanks to the fracking boom, which unlocked previously hard-to-reach shale oil and gas, the U.S. surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s leading producer of oil in 2013. The U.S. became the top natural gas producer in 2011, and has led the world in both oil and gas production together for four years in a row.

As oil prices remain low, U.S. oil production is expected to decline slightly in 2016 and 2017, falling to about 14.5 million barrels per day, the estimates show. U.S. Energy Information Administration analyst Linda Doman said the decline is not likely to mark 2015 as an all-time peak in U.S. oil production, which could pick up if and when oil prices climb again.

The uptick in crude production last year came as the U.S. helped strike the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to keep global warming from exceeding 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels. The Obama administration also killed the Keystone XL Pipeline last year, partly because the oil it would carry would worsen climate change.

Climate scientists say U.S. oil and gas production trends and the administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy, which includes encouraging fossil fuels and renewables production, don’t square well with its climate policy.

“The U.S. can lead the world in both climate action and crude oil production, but not for long,” said Jonathan Koomey, a research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. “To preserve a stable climate we need to phase out fossil fuel consumption as fast as possible, starting as soon as possible. This is why the administration’s ‘all of the above’ energy strategy is incoherent. We have to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure and start retiring existing infrastructure.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann said the U.S. must embrace renewable energy more fervently and decarbonize the economy.

“It is necessary both for avoiding catastrophic climate change and retaining our international economic competitiveness,” he said. “The good news is that we’re moving in that direction, though — as we can see with these latest numbers — the benefits of very recent climate policies enacted under the Obama administration have yet to be fully realized.”

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Guess who produces the most oil and gas in the world?

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Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on May 19, 2016

Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

By on May 19, 2016Share

Duke Energy is finally being ordered to clean up its coal-ash ponds in North Carolina — more than two years after one of them leaked 40,000 tons of toxic muck into the Dan River. But it has eight years to get the job done, and the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) hopes to give the company even more flexibility.

Duke, the nation’s largest electric utility, has 33 sites around the state where it dumps toxic ash waste from its coal-fired power plants, and some of the sites are believed to be leaking hazardous chemicals into nearby water supplies. For a year, hundreds of households near coal ash ponds were told not to drink water from their wells, which was found to have high levels on a known carcinogen. This spring, they were told they could resume drinking the water, even though it hadn’t been cleaned up. (We wrote more about this earlier this week.)

In a proposal released on Wednesday, DEQ said Duke should excavate and close eight of the most dangerous coal ash sites by 2019, and the 25 others by 2025. But DEQ is asking the state legislature to be allowed to reconsider the timeline in 18 months. The agency has been accused of being lenient on Duke; last year, DEQ lowered the utility’s fine for the big 2014 spill from $25 million to $7 million.

Duke CEO Lynn Goode said the cost of the cleanup could be as high as $4 billion — and the company would seek to pass that cost on to the state’s residents. “It’s fair to say that if we have to excavate all of our basins, it would be significantly higher costs for our customers,” Goode said during a conference call with reporters.

Environmentalists say the DEQ’s recommendations don’t go far enough. “DEQ just ducked its responsibility and punted it into the future,” said Peter Harrison, attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance. “As usual, North Carolina’s so-called leadership has shown it lacks the courage to stand up to powerful polluters, even when people’s health is at stake.”

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New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

by hattiepullman4 Posted on May 5, 2016

New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

By on May 5, 2016Share

“I had to make a place in my heart for despair, and just keep doing the work,” climate activist Tim DeChristopher tells the camera. The statement is a perfect encapsulation of Gasland director Josh Fox’s latest documentary. But despite DeChristopher’s seemingly dreary outlook, Fox’s ode to a post-climate change world is not all doom and gloom.

The film, under the Seussian title How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, takes Fox across 12 countries on six continents. He highlights communities that are fighting back against fossil fuel extraction and seeks out the things that climate change can’t destroy — like human ingenuity. DeChristopher, for example, bid on federal leases and effectively blocked the sale of thousands of acres of canyonlands in Utah to oil development. How to Let Go is currently screening across the U.S., and Fox is touring with it to meet with activists while promoting the film’s message.

HBO Documentary Films

The film is a departure from the 2010 documentary Gasland, which earned Fox an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary and a reputation as a prominent voice in the movement to ban the process of hydraulic fracturing, bka fracking, across the U.S. In contrast to Gasland, which blew the whistle on an at-the-time unknown extraction technique, Fox’s new film takes a fresh angle on the well-known problem of climate change, and focuses, he says, on solutions.

“What does have an effect is mobilizing in the streets, disrupting the system in some way, through non-violent political action,” he told Grist. “If we had 5 percent of the U.S. population in the streets, you’d see real action.”

So what are the things that climate change can’t destroy? Well, spoiler alert: besides the good attitudes of an army of activists, not a whole lot. But the film does give audiences a crash course in climate organizing to adapt to those changes. In one of the film’s most moving storylines, a group of Pacific Islanders stage a demonstration in traditional canoes at the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle, Australia. With police boats zooming past them to kick up waves, one of the canoes capsizes, forcing its weeping rowers back to shore. But the canoe, quickly repaired, returns to blockade the 40-foot-tall coal tanker. It’s an apt metaphor for the struggle of a tiny group of people who are up against a global catastrophe.

HBO Documentary Films

“We need to win from within,” says Mika Maiava, one of the rowers leading the charge. “So even if the people look at you like you’re losing, you’re not losing, because you already won in your heart. That energy you give out will change someone else’s heart.”

Fox also interviews New Yorkers recovering from the unexpected disaster of Hurricane Sandy, mothers campaigning for their children’s health in the smog-filled streets of Beijing, and other on-the-ground climate warriors. The result is a diverse overview of what people are doing around the world to make the reality of climate change a little less painful.

“What we’re looking at right now is that we are disastrously late in addressing climate change and that extreme measures need to be taken,” Fox said. “Even that won’t stop the havoc, but we have to examine our own lives and the way Americans live.”

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New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

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