First off, it is very important to address the fact that Earth is not the only planet to be experiencing climate change in our solar system currently. In fact, many astronomers have announced that Pluto has been experiencing global warming, and suggested that it is a seasonal event, just like how Earth’s seasons change as the various hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun. We must remember that it is the Sun that determines our seasons, and thusly has a greater impact upon the climate than we could ever even try to achieve. In May of 2006, a report came forward revealing that a massive hurricane-like storm that occurred on Jupiter may be caused by climate change occurring on the planet, which is expected to raise its temperatures by 10 degrees. National Geographic News reported that a simultaneous rising in temperature on both Mars and Earth suggest that climate change is indeed a natural phenomenon as opposed to being man-made. The report further explains how NASA has reported that Mars’ carbon dioxide ice caps have been melting for a few years now. Sound familiar? An astronomical observatory in Russia declared that, “the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun”. They further point out that both Mars and Earth have, throughout their histories, experienced periodic ice ages as climate changes in a continuous fashion. NASA has also been observing massive storms on Saturn, which indicate a climate change occurring on that planet as well. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has also been recording massive climate changes on Neptune’s largest moon, Triton. Triton, whose surface was once made up of frozen nitrogen, is now turning into gas. The Associated Press has reported that satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight have been recording an increase in the sun’s temperature, meaning that the sun itself is warming up. Even the London Telegraph reported in 2004 that global warming was due to the sun being hotter than it has ever been in the past 1,000 years. They cited this information from research conducted by German and Swiss scientists who claim that it is increasing radiation from the sun that is resulting in our current climate change.

      Claude Allegre, a leading French scientist, who was among the first scientists to try to warn people of the dangers of global warming 20 years ago, now believes that “increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena”. Allegre said, “There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled." He is convinced that global warming is a natural change and sees the threat of the ‘great dangers’ that it supposedly poses as being bloated and highly exaggerated. Also recently, the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus said, when discussing the recent ruling by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is man-made, “Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment.” And if you are about to ask why no politicians here seem to be saying this, Klaus offered up an answer, “Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice”. Nigel Calder, the former editor of New Scientist, wrote an article in the UK Sunday Times, in which he stated, “When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works.” He further stated that, “Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis”. And in reference to how the media is representing those who dissent from the man-made theory he stated, “they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies”, which is exactly what I believed up until I did my research. He also wrote, “Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages”.

      For those who saw Al Gore’s “documentary”, it was very convincing of its hypothesis that global warming is a man-made phenomenon that has the potential to kill us all and end humanity. After all, the film was filled with graphs and charts, so it must be true. Let’s just get something straight here, Al Gore is not a climatologist, meteorologist, astronomer, or scientist of any kind; he is a politician. And as we all know, politicians always tell the truth. However, as Al Gore’s popularity grows and with his recent winning of an Academy Award for his movie, the issue has spiraled into massive push for quick action and stifled debate, forcing many scientists to speak out and challenge the political status quo. A group of scientists recently stated that the research behind Al Gore’s film and in fact, the concept of greenhouse gases causing global warming, is “a sham”. They claim that in fact, there is very little evidence to prove that theory, and that the evidence actually points to an increase in solar activity being the cause of climate change. In Gore’s movie, he presented evidence that was found in the research done on ice core samples from Antarctica, which he claimed is proof for the theory of CO2 being the cause of rising temperatures. However, this group of scientists state that “warmer periods of the Earth's history came around 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels”, meaning that a rise in Carbon Dioxide follows a rise in temperature, rather than increasing temperature following rising CO2 emissions. And not only that, but it follows behind the rise in temperature by about 800 years. The group also mentions that, “after the Second World War, there was a huge surge in carbon dioxide emissions, yet global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.” They also claim that the report given by the UN, which said it was backed by over 2,000 of the worlds leading scientists, “was a ‘sham’ given that this list included the names of scientists who disagreed with its findings.”

      Timothy Ball, one of the first Canadian doctors in climatology, recently wrote an article addressing the issue of why no one seems to be listening to scientists who claim that global warming is NOT man-made. He starts by writing, “Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science”. He continues, “We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification.” Then he mentions how Environment Canada is spending billions upon billions of dollars on “propaganda” which defends an “indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.” Then Dr. Ball brings up a very interesting point that everyone should take into consideration, citing that 30 years ago, in the 1970s everyone was talking about “global cooling” and how it was the defining issue of our lives, our species, that our very survival depended on what we did it about it. Interesting, sounds like every Canadian politician. Ball continues to explain that climate change is occurring, but that it is because it is always occurring, it is a natural change that is a result of the changes in the Sun’s temperature. He explains that we are currently leaving what was known as a Little Ice Age and that the history of Earth is riddles with changes in the climate. That’s what climate does and is always doing, changing. Dr. Ball claims that “there is nothing unusual going on,” and that he “was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as [he was] to the threats made about Global Warming.”

      Dr. Timothy Ball later wrote, in commenting on the problems that arise for scientists who speak out, that, “Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.” He also mentions how he “was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies.” He concludes in referencing others who have and continue to speak out against the prevailing myth of man-made global warming, such as author Michael Crichton, who’s book, ‘State of Fear’, explains the inaccurate science behind the man-made myth. Another prominent name is that of Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, who often speaks out against the man-made theory, yet no one seems to be listening to him.

      An article in the February 12th Washington Times discussed how skeptics of global warming are “treated like a pariah”. The article begins, “Scientists skeptical of climate-change theories say they are increasingly coming under attack -- treatment that may make other analysts less likely to present contrarian views about global warming.” He cites an example of this by mentioning how a climatologist in Oregon might be stripped of his position by the governor for speaking out against the origins of climate change. Most skeptics don’t claim that climate change is not occurring, they just disagree with what is causing it, and yet they are treated like traitors. A NASA funded study in 2003 found that, “Changes in the solar cycle -- and solar output -- are known to cause short-term climate change on Earth.”

      In a storm of scientists speaking out against Al Gore’s movie, an Australian professor of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory has publicly stated, "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention." In response to the use of images in Gore’s movie of glaciers breaking off, Dr. Boris Winterhalter, a professor on marine geology and former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland, said that, “The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier.” Makes sense, especially since history tells us that glaciers move, after all, that’s what helped form our valleys and reshaped mountain ranges at the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. Maybe my memory isn’t very good, but I don’t think people were driving SUVs 10,000 years ago. Another clever use of images to manipulate facts that Gore has in his movie is that of a polar bear seemingly stranded on a piece of a broken off ice berg, stating that polar bears are becoming extinct because of global warming. However, there are a few things wrong with this assessment, first of all, that according to a paper published by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov, “the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise.” Secondly, if the polar bear is in such danger according to Al Gore, then why does a recent government survey in Canada show that they are not declining, but rather rising in numbers? Thirdly, the very idea of a polar bear “stranded” on a small block of ice is in itself misleading for Gore’s argument, as polar bears are excellent swimmers and according to Sea World, “They can swim for several hours at a time over long distances [and] they've been tracked swimming continuously for 100 km (62 mi.)” Professor Carter, speaking about Gore and his personal crusade, said, “The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science.” Even if Al Gore was telling the truth about the causes of global warming, or climate change, which most evidence points to the fact that he is not, but even if he was, he would still be a hypocrite. It was recently revealed that Al Gore doesn’t exactly practice what he preaches, such as what he said in his Academy Award acceptance speech, “People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue; it's a moral issue.” Well, in that case, why is it that a recent study by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research found that one of Al Gore’s mansions uses 20 times the amount of electricity that the average American does. It was also reported that Al Gore consumes twice as much the electricity in one month that the average American consumes in one year. 

      In examining that there is more evidence to prove the basis for a conclusion that changes in climate are more related to an increase in the temperature of the Sun rather than influence of people, we must examine why efforts to expose this myth are stifled and those who speak out are attacked. In fact, there are reported cases of scientists who speak out against the man-made theory as having received death threats. There has even been talk of relating those who speak out against the currently held theory on global warming as being equal to those who deny the Holocaust. In a recent op-ed piece in the Boston Globe commenting on the report issued by the UN, Ellen Goodman wrote, “Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.” This is a very disturbing comment, not only because there is reason to scientifically doubt the man-made theory, but also because this is a scathing attack on freedom of speech, the most vital and important of all rights and freedoms.

      With the UN Panel’s judgment in, western politicians are quick to declare that the debate is over, and action must be taken immediately. What is this action that they are planning on taking? The Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, Gordon Brown, soon expected to be the next Prime Minister after Tony Blair steps down, has publicly called for a “new world order” to combat the threat of climate change. So let’s have a look at this New World Order that’s being implemented to combat the threat of global warming.  One major thing being pushed through with little, cancel that, no debate, is a UN recommendation that we impose “a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions”. Most people will hear this and think, “Good, polluters need to be taxed”. Well, this means people who drive cars will be taxed, because according to Al Gore, when you drive your car, you’re causing global warming. This is no joke, as an article in the UK’s Guardian Newspaper reported that, “The government is throwing its weight behind a revolutionary plan that would force motorists to pay £1.30 a mile to drive on Britain's busiest roads”. That is approximately $3.00 per mile. A study conducted by an expert in transportation and infrastructure found that, “a Birmingham commuter might end up paying about £1,500 a year for driving 19,000 miles.” That’s equal to about $3,000 per year. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many people who can afford that. In the European Union, plans are being made to impose an increase of taxes on diesel. The European Commission recently proposed to “raise the minimum tax on commercial diesel fuel by nearly 20% over the next seven years”. This, they claim, is to help protect the environment because it will act as a deterrent for people to drive. This is just excellent news, because as anyone who has driven in the past two years knows, gas prices are just too low. Another concern arising out of the concept of taxing people for how far they drive is how it is done. According to the Transport Secretary in the UK, “Every vehicle would have a black box to allow a satellite system to track their journey”. This has been raising concerns in the UK of an increase in Big Brother technology and government programs. Proposals currently being made in Canada recommend that, “Canadians would pay an extra 10 cents per litre at the gas pumps”, mirroring plans in the European Union. Another important recent news item is that Toronto “Mayor David Miller said yesterday he would support ‘region-wide’ road tolls”, to combat climate change.

      The European Union is also imposing a ban on conventional light bulbs, replacing them with energy-saving bulbs. That ban would fully be in effect within two years, forcing all 490 million citizens of the EU’s member states to switch from the current conventional lights they now have. However, some problems of this plan have been raised considering that the supposed energy-efficient light bulbs “have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings. Yet Europe (and Gordon Brown) says 'green' lightbulbs must replace all our old ones.” They also are “up to 20 times more expensive” than conventional light bulbs. They also give off a much harsher light and do not produce a steady stream of light but rather just flicker 50 times a second. These special “efficient” light bulbs also need more ventilation than conventional bulbs, which means that they cannot be in an enclosed light fitting. I’m sure that this won’t inconvenience any of the 490 million who are being forced to switch. In Canada, talk is taking place of having a ban on conventional light bulbs being included in Stephen Harper’s clean air act. This discussion was recently brought about by the act of Australia taking moves to ban conventional light bulbs by the year 2010. As well as that, a lawmaker in California has introduced a bill to ban the selling of conventional bulbs by 2012, with a similar bill also being introduced in New Jersey. Royal Phillips Electronics, one of the leading corporations in producing light fixtures announced that they would stop selling conventional bulbs by 2016. This will result in a massive cost to the consumer, who is losing their free will in where they spend their money and how they choose to help the environment. Hoping to get by without buying new bulbs and sneak it by the government? Good luck. As a recent report pointed out in the UK, the government has very intrusive plans to make the UK the world’s first green economy. Part of this plan is that every home in the UK is to be ‘carbon neutral’ within 10 years, making every house updated to “green” standards. The government said they would provide the renovators, which has led many to fear that it is a method of spying on homeowners to make sure they go green. Blair Gibbs, a member of the Taxpayer’s Alliance and critic of the plan stated, “It's bad enough that politicians want to take so much of our money away in tax. For them also to intrude into our homes in order to have the ability to penalise us even further is simply unacceptable.”

      I am not saying that it isn’t a good idea to take action to help the environment, but I ask you to consider this: if the majority of scientific data points to the fact that global warming is caused by the Sun, then how will a tax on carbon emissions help to stop it? How does us driving cars cause climate change on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, Neptune and Triton? Can Al Gore please fill me in on this? If CO2 increases as a RESULT of temperature increases, then how can we hope to accomplish anything by taxing emissions? That’s like saying we will prevent the process of humans ageing by dying their grey hairs. It’s not grey hair that causes people to age; it’s ageing that causes grey hair. And nothing that you do to your hair will have any affect on how long you live. Especially since ageing is a natural process that cannot be stopped and has always occurred and will always occur. Just like climate change.

      It seems worrisome that politicians are all too eager to grab onto this man-made myth of global warming in order to make us afraid and guilty. Guilty enough to want to change it, and afraid enough to give up our freedoms and undergo massive financial expenses in order to do so. So this lie, being pushed by big money and big governments, is a convenient lie for those who want to exert control and collect money. However, it’s inconvenient for the mass amount of people who are already experiencing the problems of a widening wage-gap and fading middle class.

      If the problems we are being presented are based on lies, then how do we expect to find any true solution to helping the environment? A Global Tax won’t clean up the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez, which is still polluting waters in Alaska nearly 18 years after the spill occurred. A Global Tax won’t stop Shell from making the Niger Delta the most endangered Delta in the whole world. No, we have to first be realistic, mature, and have debate about the problems we are facing, and then, and only then, can we even hope to achieve any sort of solution.

Andrew Marshall is a 19 year old political science student at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia (BC).

The world's premier energy monitor is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency is in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world's top 400 oil fields. Its findings won't be released until November, but the bottom line is already clear: Future crude supplies could be far tighter than previously thought.

A pessimistic supply outlook from the IEA could further rattle an oil market that already has seen crude prices rocket over $130 a barrel, double what they were a year ago. U.S. benchmark crude broke a record for the fourth day in a row, rising 3.3% Wednesday to close at $133.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

For several years, the IEA has predicted that supplies of crude and other liquid fuels will arc gently upward to keep pace with rising demand, topping 116 million barrels a day by 2030, up from around 87 million barrels a day currently. Now, the agency is worried that aging oil fields and diminished investment mean that companies could struggle to surpass 100 million barrels a day over the next two decades.

The decision to rigorously survey supply -- instead of just demand, as in the past -- reflects an increasing fear within the agency and elsewhere that oil-producing regions aren't on track to meet future needs.

"The oil investments required may be much, much higher than what people assume," said Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist and the leader of the study, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "This is a dangerous situation."

The agency's forecasts are widely followed by the industry, Wall Street and the big oil-consuming countries that fund its work.

The IEA monitors energy markets for the world's 26 most-advanced economies, including the U.S., Japan and all of Europe. It acts as a counterweight in the market to the views of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The IEA's endorsement of a crimped supply scenario likely will be interpreted by the cartel as yet another call to pump more oil -- a call it will have a difficult time answering. Last week, the Saudis gave President Bush a lukewarm response to his plea for more oil, saying they were already adding 300,000 barrels a day to the market, an announcement that did nothing to cool prices.

At the same time, the IEA's conclusions likely will be seized on by advocates of expanded drilling in prohibited areas like the U.S. outer continental shelf or the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

The IEA, employing a team of 25 analysts, is trying to shed light on some of the industry's best-kept secrets by assessing the health of major fields scattered from Venezuela and Mexico to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. The fields supply over two-thirds of daily world production.

The findings won't be definitive. Big producers including Venezuela, Iran and China aren't cooperating, and others like Saudi Arabia typically treat the detailed production data of individual fields as closely guarded state secrets, so it's not clear how specific their contributions will be. To try to compensate, the IEA will use computer modeling to make estimates. It will also collect information gathered by IHS Inc., a major data and analysis provider based in Colorado, as well as the U.S. Geologic Survey, a smattering of oil and oil-service companies, and national petroleum councils.

Supply-Side Gloom

But the direction of the IEA's work echoes the gathering supply-side gloom articulated by some Big Oil executives in recent months. A growing number of people in the industry are endorsing a version of the "peak-oil" theory: that oil production will plateau in coming years, as suppliers fail to replace depleted fields with enough fresh ones to boost overall output. All of that has prompted numerous upward revisions to long-term oil-price forecasts on Wall Street.

Goldman Sachs grabbed headlines recently with a forecast saying that oil could top $140 a barrel this summer and could average $200 a barrel next year. Prices that high would add to the inflationary pressures weighing on the world economy and to the woes of fuel-sensitive industries such as airlines and autos.

The IEA's study marks a big change in the agency's efforts to peer into the future. In the past, the IEA focused mainly on assessing future demand, and then looked at how much non-OPEC countries were likely to produce to meet that demand. Any gap, it was assumed, would then be met by big OPEC producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran or Kuwait.

But the IEA's pessimism over future supplies has been building for some time. Last summer, the agency warned that OPEC's spare capacity could shrink "to minimal levels by 2012." In November, it said its analysis of projects known to be in the works suggested that the world could face a shortfall by 2015 of as much as 12.5 million barrels a day, unless there was a sharp drop in expected demand. The current IEA work aims to tally the range of investments and projects under way to boost production from the fields in question to get a clearer sense of what to expect in production flows.

"This is very important, because the IEA is treated as the world's only serious independent guardian of energy data and forecasts," says Edward Morse, chief energy economist at Lehman Brothers. Examining the state of the world's big oil fields could prod their owners into unaccustomed transparency, he says.

Some critics of the IEA, while praising its new study, say a revision in the agency's long-term forecasting is long overdue. The agency has failed to anticipate many of the big energy developments in recent years, such as the surge in Chinese demand in 2004 and this year's skyrocketing prices. "The IEA is always conflicted by political pressures," says Chris Skrebowski, a London-based oil analyst who keeps his own database on big petroleum projects and is pessimistic about supply. "In this case I think they want to make as incontrovertible as possible the fact that we are facing a real crunch."

U.S. Forecasts

The U.S. Energy Department's own forecasting shop, the Energy Information Administration, has long stuck to the same demand-driven methodology as the IEA, assuming that supply will keep up with the world's growing hunger for oil. But the U.S. agency also has embarked on its own supply study, which it hopes to complete this summer. Like the IEA, its preliminary findings are somewhat gloomy: They suggest daily output of conventional crude oil alone, now about 73 million barrels, will plateau at 84 million barrels, and that it will take a significant uptick in production of nonconventional fuels such as ethanol to push global fuel supplies over 100 million barrels a day by 2030.

"We are optimistic in terms of resource availability, but wary about whether the investments get made in the right places and at a pace that will bring on supply to meet demand," says Guy Caruso, the U.S. agency's administrator.

In Paris, analysts at IEA also fret that a lack of investment in many OPEC countries, combined with a diminished incentive to ramp up output, casts serious doubt over how much the cartel will expand its production in the future. The big OPEC producers have been raking in record profits, creating a disincentive in many countries to sink more billions into increased oil production.

Meanwhile, politics and other forces are delaying projects that could bring more oil on-stream. Continued fighting in Iraq has stymied efforts to revive aging fields, while international sanctions on Iran have kept investments there from moving forward. Rebel attacks in Nigeria and political turmoil in Venezuela have cut into both countries' output. Big non-OPEC producers such as Mexico and Russia, which have either barred or sidelined international operators, are seeing production slump. The U.S., with a legal moratorium barring exploration in 85% of its offshore waters, is struggling to keep its output steady.

The IEA study will try to answer one question that bedevils those trying to forecast future prices and the supply-demand balance: How rapidly are the world's top fields declining? The rates at which their production dwindles over time are a much-debated barometer of the health of the world's oil patch.

Depletion Rate

A study released earlier this year by the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm and unit of IHS, concluded that the depletion rate of the world's 811 biggest fields is around 4.5% a year. At that rate, oil companies have to make huge investments just to keep overall production steady. Others say the depletion rate could be higher.

"We are of the opinion that the public isn't aware of the role of the decline rate of existing fields in the energy supply balance, and that this rate will accelerate in the future," says the IEA's Mr. Birol.

Some analysts, however, contend that scarcity isn't the issue -- only access to reserves and investment in tapping them. "We know there is plenty of oil and gas resource in the world," says Pete Stark, vice president for industry relations at IHS. He says the difficulties of supply aren't buried in oil fields, but are "above ground."

Mr. Morse at Lehman Brothers notes that there are plenty of questions about supply yet to be answered. "However confident the IEA may be about the data it has, they know nothing about the resources we've yet to discover in the deep waters or in the arctic," he says.

Hybrids these days are hotter than a laptop battery, with sales up 58 percent last month. But what happens if the battery on your hybrid goes dead? After all, hybrids have been on the road in America for eight years, racking up hundreds of thousands of miles. Automakers say those big batteries under the seats are holding up well. But when they power down, replacing them will cost you thousands. That thought might have been a caution light for me, but it isn't for the growing gridlock of used hybrid buyers. On the car Web site MyRide.com, the number one search term last month was "Used Toyota Prius"—up 944 percent since January. "People are ignoring the concern about battery life," says J.D. Power auto analyst Michael Omotoso. "Their immediate concern is, 'Oh my God, gas is $4 a gallon. I need a hybrid. I'll worry about battery replacement five years down the road.'"

When hybrids first hit the road in 2000, there was plenty of fear-mongering, especially here in Detroit, where the Big Three were drunk on cheap gas and big SUV sales. Back then Motown execs warned darkly that rescue workers could be electrocuted trying to save trapped motorists who crashed in these high-voltage contraptions. And those giant batteries could cost $10,000 or $15,000 to replace once they ran down, maybe after 100,000 miles or less.

It turns out those safety fears were nonsense. But while the battery replacement cost was overblown, it is not insignificant. Philip Card of Utica, N.Y., says a Toyota dealer wanted to charge him $3,900 to replace the battery on his 2001 Prius, which had 350,000 miles on it when he bought it used on eBay this year for $4,357. Card knew the battery might be running on empty when he bought the car, but the retired engineer hoped to convert the car into a plug-in hybrid that could get 100 mpg. Before he had a chance, though, his Prius had a brownout. "It lost power drastically," he says. "It still moves around, but with no pep at all." He's decided to park the Prius rather than replace the battery. He's going to scavenge parts from it to fix up two other Priuses he owns. What's his advice for other used Prius buyers? "If they're going to take it to a Toyota dealer for service," he says, "they better have deep pockets."

The stiff cost of replacing a battery at your dealer helps explain why an underground aftermarket in Prius batteries is emerging. Since last year eBay has seen an 850 percent increase in Prius batteries changing hands. Prices for used Prius batteries—which come from junkyards and auto body shops—range from $450 to $1,700, says Famous Rhodes, director of eBay Motors parts and accessories. "As hybrid vehicles hit the tipping point in age," he says, "the demand is growing significantly."

The hard part about these cheap batteries: once you buy them you have to figure out how to install them. That's labor-intensive work for which dealers can charge $900. But Rhodes does not recommend that amateur mechanics try to tackle this high-voltage repair job. "This is not something where a DIY can just open up an installation manual and put in their own batteries," says Rhodes. "You need to have a mechanic or an electrical technician do it."

Despite eBay's booming battery bazaar, Toyota, Honda and Ford all say hybrid battery failures are extremely rare. Out of more than 100,000 Honda hybrids on the road, the automaker says fewer than 200 have had a battery fail after the warranty expired. Honda, like Toyota and Ford, covers the cost of battery replacement for the first 100,000 miles in most states and 150,000 miles in California and a few other states with tough green car laws.

Toyota says its out-of-warranty battery replacement rate is 0.003 percent on the second generation Prius that debuted in the 2004 model year. That equals about one out of 40,000 Priuses sold, says Toyota spokesman John Hanson. That's a vast improvement over the first generation Prius, which had about 1 percent of the batteries fail after the warranty expired. Hanson says today's Prius batteries are designed to last "the life of the car," which Toyota defines as 180,000 miles. (Toyota and Panasonic announced Friday that they will build a new $200 million factory to produce more hybrid batteries to meet the automaker's goal of selling 1 million gas-electric cars a year.)

For those unlucky few who have to replace their own batteries, the cost is coming down. On June 1 Honda is slashing the cost of its batteries from $3,400 (excluding installation) to as low as $1,968 on an Insight or as high as $2,440 on an Accord hybrid. Toyota also plans to substantially cut battery prices, which now stand at $3,000 (excluding installation), down from $5,500 on the original Prius. Both automakers attribute the price cuts to improved technology and lower production costs. But some analysts think Toyota and Honda are really trying to get ahead of consumer concerns about battery replacement. "PR is a very important factor in the hybrid market," says J.D. Power's Omotoso. "Honda and Toyota have the oldest hybrids on the road. And when a hybrid gets to be that old, you have to factor battery replacement costs into your purchase decision."

So far, the high cost of battery replacement isn't having much impact on the resale value of hybrids. The Automotive Lease Guide (ALG)—the resale value bible—only recently began assessing hybrids. "We had concerns about battery life," says ALG CEO John Blair. "But our analysts told us that battery life was really a nonissue. They found that the batteries have a 10-year life expectancy, which is quite reasonable."

Still, hybrids don't hold their value as well as their gasoline-powered siblings, batteries aside. For example, a three-year-old Honda Civic is worth about $12,000, retaining about 60 percent of its original sticker price of $20,000, according to Blair. But a hybrid Honda Civic holds only 58 percent of its original sticker price after three years, giving it a used price of $13,630, down from a new price of $23,500. "The new car buyer is more into bells and whistles, while used car buyers are all about value," says Blair. "If a hybrid is near the end of its warranty, what could creep into the mind of the used car buyer is, 'I still have a doubt about the battery, and it's just one more big thing that could go wrong.'"

Anytime you buy a used car, there's always a risk that something big and costly could wear out. That's why the experts recommend having your mechanic check out any used car you're thinking about buying. The problem is there aren't that many mechanics who know how to tell if a hybrid battery is running out of juice. "We're on the front edge of figuring out how this all plays out," says Rob Chesney, vice president of eBay Motors. "As a hybrid owner, you're kind of playing a game of Russian roulette." Precisely why I was happy to drive away from that seemingly good deal at the Y.

The new process, developed over two years by University of Waikato chemical engineer Dr Johan Verbeek and Masters student Lisa van den Berg, can turn animal protein waste like blood meal and feathers into a biodegradable plastic using industry-standard plastic extrusion and injection moulding machinery.

'The material we can produce has the strength of polyethylene - the plastic used in milk bottles and plastic supermarket bags - but it's fully biodegradable,' said Dr Verbeek.

'Proteins are polymers so we know they can be turned into plastics,' Dr Verbeek said. 'Plant proteins have successfully been used to make bioplastics, but animal protein has always ended up gumming up the extruder. The process we've developed gets round that problem.'

University of Waikato scientist Dr Johan Verbeek says the bioplastic created from animal protein waste can be used for plastic sheeting

He said a group of design students was drawing up a blueprint for a commercial-scale plant to assess the commercial viability of producing bioplastics from animal protein waste.

Dr Verbeek expected the bioplastic would be suitable for agricultural plastic sheeting, seedling trays, plant pots and even biodegradable golf tees, for which, he said there was a surprisingly high demand.

University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor Prof Roy Crawford said farmers faced pressure to work in an environmentally sustainable way, and this type of innovation from the university could help them.

Novatein, a company set up to commercialise the scientists' findings, has attracted an injection of venture capital from venture capital firm Endeavour Capital, through the university's commercialisation arm WaikatoLink.

The scientists' process, which is being patented through WaikatoLink, is one of four new technologies that have attracted more than $1m in investment from Endeavour Capital. The funds will be used to develop prototype products in this case.

On Tuesday, the Bits team received its first “renewable energy” e-mail fraud as a comment on one of our posts. It has all the classic elements of the older schemes: the addressee’s name is misspelled and there are frequent grammar and spelling mistakes throughout.

But instead of an appeal to simple greed, the writer, a purported Sawaskon Wapakpet, first paints a picture of his or her “Renewable Energy Technology System” saving the world: “Please look at the developing country and poor country.they have no money buy the Solar or the Hydro power plant or coal power plant or other power plant because it is expensive in the now….Everyday, every month, every years, and infinite, every climate change and this RETS is always a stable energy. This we can control the working of it and 100 percent for save and security in our planet.”

And the best part is that you, too, can be part of this dream for just an unspecified investment: “Now, the RETS have no patent for them, it is waiting you in this patent. We wish to protect the data and benefits together with you. I am pleased to invite your organization in order to apply to get the patent in your country, Your organization will be able owner in this project and patent and together. We can accomplish together.”

Needless to say, you should ignore these pitches. There are many legitimate renewable energy projects — and no doubt more than a few dubious ones like this highly publicized South African project. But no one with a truly remarkable technology will e-mail strangers promising to share huge profits for a modest upfront investment.

SAN MATEO, Calif.--Catering to a rising tide of socially-conscious shoppers, eBay this summer plans to help publicly launch WorldofGood.com, a marketplace for buying fair-trade products, according to Robert Chatwani, eBay's general manager of the project.

eBay, in partnership with a separate fair-trade company World of Good Inc., has already built a community site for people interested in goods that are made of recycled materials or produced by fairly treated workers, for example. But the two organizations plan to open a shopping site that will cater to these "social change consumers," Chatwani said here Tuesday at the Dow Jones Environment Conference.

That segment of shopper spends as much as $45 billion on green products annually, he estimated.

"Those people aren't on eBay. We believe only between 7 and 12 percent of these social change consumers are eBay users now ... so this could be accretive to the business," Chatwani said on a panel at the two-day conference.

Chatwani helped conceive of the idea for the WorldofGood.com marketplace three years ago while traveling to India with fellow eBay employees. There, they found some sustainably made artisan products they believed would sell online, and could give some money back to the creator. They tested the idea and it worked. Bay teamed up with World of Good, a group designed to alleviate poverty in third worlds by helping sell local artists' goods globally.

Chatwani said WorldofGood.com is only one project inside eBay that's focused on social change. Historically, eBay has been what he called a low-carbon company, built with more efficient online practices and an emphasis on technologies that are good for the world. But eBay also operates explicitly more charitable projects.

Those include MicroPlace, a micro-finance site for people to invest in entrepreneurs in the developing world. It also runs eBay Giving Works, a shopping site that lets buyers and sellers donate a percentage of sales to a charity. Chatwani said that that site has raised more than $120 million for charities.

For its part, WorldofGood.com will focus on giving people more information about products--where they come from, how they're made, and how they effect the environment, Chatwani said.

"Our challenge is not so much about getting people to spend more. It's about introducing alternative forms of consumption," he said.

At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Emerging Technologies Summit held here in Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, business consultants, entrepreneurs, and representatives of some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world discussed the new wave of innovation in a rapidly commoditizing industry. It basically comes down to two words: energy efficiency.

And the reason it's important? Because it can make a product stand out. And if consumers can see a real benefit to using products that are environmentally conscious, they'll buy it. And that's potential profit for vendors and manufacturers.

"Before it was something (consumer electronics companies) just said to make themselves look good. Now it's a business imperative," said George Bailey, general manager of IBM Microelectronics.

That's because flashy, visible new breakthroughs in technology in the CE space aren't providing the same profitable bump for as long as it used to. High-definition televisions are a prime example.

"TV manufacturers are troubled in terms of profit," said Bailey. "They're asking, 'How can I add value, recapture profit?' Before it was larger format LCD screen. If yours was bigger you'd make more money. Now we know that's not true."

When the big TV manufacturers come to his division of IBM he says they are all looking for greener, more energy-efficient chips that will make their TVs consume less power because that's a way they can differentiate their product from others on the shelf. New technologies include High-K Metal Gate chips that IBM is working on that "leak" less power and can power smaller devices for longer.

But green-friendly products can be more expensive, which can deter certain types of consumers. A representative from Samsung in the audience said the company has yet to see that consumers are willing to pay for products just because they are "green."

That's why you have to give them a real benefit, not an imagined one that makes them feel good, said Steve Westly, who runs the clean tech venture capital firm The Westly Group.

"You have to give customers a real value proposition. A 'green' truck that gets 16 miles per gallon? Consumers will see through that," he said. A green product "has to have an added benefit."

Even if energy efficiency doesn't attract consumers in the numbers that these manufacturers and investors hope, businesses will be forced to green their products one way or another, Westly said.

"You'll see (environmental standards) dialed up in a government-mandated way," he said. "Government regulations and mandates are only going to increase. Not just here, but globally.

The Setting

For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that the He3 fusion plants have been proved out, and folks are frantically building them, just waiting for us to show up with with tanks full of helium-3.

The Ingredients of Nuclear Fusion

The names of the ingredients for nuclear fusion reactions -- deuterium, tritium, isotopes of helium -- sound complicated, but really these are only variations on substances found in everyday life. We'll assume you understand that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons are the very lightweight, negatively charged bits that buzz around the edges of an atom. Regular chemical reactions work by trading and sharing electons among atoms. For instance, when you burn a piece of paper in air, the chemical reaction involves some carbon atoms in the paper sharing electrons with some oxygen atoms from the air. The reaction forms carbon dioxide gas while the electons give off energy, as heat and light, when they change their orbits.

Protons and neutrons make up an atom's nucleus. In this discussion, we're concerned with rearranging the nucleus of an atom; hence the term "nuclear reaction." Generally, the neutrally charged neutrons keep the positively charged protons from fighting each other. An atom's nucleus is very tightly bound together, so when we start moving these things around, we're moving energy around in a big way.

Hydrogen is the familiar stuff used to make up water by combining it with oxygen. It's the most abundant element in the universe. Normal hydrogen has 1 proton and no neutrons. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that has a neutron next to its lonely proton.

You're familiar with helium gas as the stuff we use to blow up blimps and balloons. Normal helium has 2 protons and 2 neutrons in its nucleus, giving it an atomic weight of 4.

Now, if you kick out one of neutrons, you get helium-3. This happens once in a while in very energetic nuclear reactors, especially the sun. The sun produces helium by fusing hydrogen atoms together, but about one in every ten thousand helium atoms comes out missing a neutron.

He3 casts lustful eyes upon that neutron in the deuterium, and will grab it if it gets a chance. We give it a chance by introducing the He3 to the deuterium at a high temperature.

The Mixture

He3 is used in a reaction with deuterium to produce energy:

This is a nuclear fusion reaction. The deuterium and helium-3 atoms come together to give off a proton and helium-4. The products weigh less than the initial components; the missing mass is converted to energy. 1 kg of helium-3 burned with 0.67 kg of deuterium gives us about 19 megawatt-years of energy output.

The fusion reaction time for the D-He3 reaction becomes significant at a temperature of about 10 KeV, and peaks about about 200 KeV. A 100 KeV (or so) reactor looks about optimum.

A reactor built to use the D-He3 reaction would be inherently safe. The worst-case failure scenario would not result in any civilian fatalities or significant exposures to radiation.

Note: MeV and KeV are measures of energy, standing for mega-electron volts and kilo-electron volts, respectively. In nuclear physics, these terms are used to refer to the amount of energy in a nuclear reactor. One electron volt is the energy acquired by one electron falling through a potential of one volt, equal to approximately 1.609 E-19 joule.

The supply

Some He3 is available on Earth. It is a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons, which would supply us with about 300 kg of He3 and could continue to produce about 15 kg per year. The total supply in the U.S. strategic reserves of helium is about 29 kg, and another 187 kg is mixed up with the natural gas we have stored; these sources are not renewable at any significant rate.

In their 1988 paper, Kulcinski, et al. (see ref note below), estimate a total of 1,100,000 metric tonnes of He3 have been deposited by the solar wind in the lunar regolith. Since the regolith has been stirred up by collisions with meteorites, we'll probably find He3 down to depths of several meters.

The highest concentrations are in the lunar maria; about half the He3 is deposited in the 20% of the lunar surface covered by the maria.

To extract He3 from the lunar soil, we heat the dust to about 600 degrees C.

We get most of the other volatiles out at the same time, so we'll be heating up the rocks anyway. (To get the oxgyen out, we'll turn up the furnace to about 900 deg C and do some other nasty stuff; but that's a different story.)

The Energy

That 1 million metric tonnes of He3, reacted with deuterium, would generate about 20,000 terrawatt-years of thermal energy. The units alone are awesome: a terrawatt-year is one trillion (10 to 12th power) watt-years. To put this into perspective, one 100-watt light bulb will use 100 watt-years of energy in one year.

That's about 10 times the energy we could get from mining all the fossil fuels on Earth, without the smog and acid rain. If we torched all our uranium in liquid metal fast breeder reactors, we could generate about half this much energy, and have some interesting times storing the waste.

The Value

About 25 tonnes of He3 would power the United States for 1 year at our current rate of energy consumption. To put it in perspective: that's about the weight of a fully loaded railroad box car, or a maximum Space Shuttle payload.

To assign an economic value, suppose we assume He3 would replace the fuels the United States currently buys to generate electricity. We still have all those power generating plants and distribution network, so we can't use how much we pay for electricity. As a replacement for that fuel, that 25-tonne load of He3 would worth on the order of $75 billion today, or $3 billion per tonne.

The Payoff

A guess is the best we can do. Let's suppose that by the time we're slinging tanks of He3 off the moon, the world-wide demand is 100 tonnes of the stuff a year, and people are happy to pay $3 billion per tonne. That gives us gross revenues of $300 billion a year.

To put that number in perspective: Ignoring the cost of money and taxes and whatnot, that rate of income would launch a moon shot like our reference mission every day for the next 10,000 years. (At which point, we will have used up all the helium-3 on the moon and had better start thinking about something else.)

Reference: Kulcinksi, Cameron, Santarius, Sviatoslavsky, and Wittenberg, "Fusion Energy from the Moon for the 21st Century." 1988. Fusion Technology Institute, University of Wisconsin.