GreenMonk news roundup 12/20/2008

• Oil Is Not the Climate Change Culprit — It’s All About Coal | Wired Science from Wired.com

  New climate change scenarios quantify the idea that oil is only a small component of the total global warming problem — the real problem is coal.

  If the world replaced all of its oil usage with carbon-neutral energy sources, ecologist Kenneth Caldeira of Stanford University calculated that it would only buy us about 10 years before coal emissions warmed the planet to what many scientists consider dangerous levels.

  tags: coal, oil, global warming, coal burning

• Waterfootprint.org: Water footprint and virtual water

  Launch of the Water Footprint Network: 16 December 2008!
  Download press release

  People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.

  tags: water, water footprint

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.