Thanks to you all, 2008 was an unbelievable year at Ecopolitology. In June I migrated from the old .blogspot domain to a brand new domain, a new host powered by renewable energy and a shiny new flash header custom made by Aleksandar Rodic that still blows my mind every time I see it.

2008 was also a year I bumped up my posting quantity and social media presence, which had a positive impact on readership and traffic numbers. In celebration of the year that was, here are the ten most popular posts of the year as determined by total pageviews:

10. Congress Passes New Small-Wind Tax Credit: Along with the extensions of the renewable energy production tax credits and investment tax credits, Congress passed a new investment tax credit in October for small and micro wind turbines that generate up to 100kw.

9. Cape Wind Wins Another Appeal: In July, A Final Decision issued by the Director of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife upheld an earlier decision that the proposed offshore wind farm, Cape Wind does not constitute a “taking” under the state’s Endangered Species Act and that wildlife issues will be managed by the appropriate Federal Agencies.

8. 74 Percent of Republican Senators Doubt Human Causes of Global Warming:The good news? The number of Senate skeptics is down from 77% in 2006

7. Windpower 2008: A Texas-Sized Conference: Thanks to the generous support of the American Wind Energy Association, I traveled to Houston in June for Windpower 2008, the biggest wind energy conference and trade show in the world.

6. Canada’s Largest Wind Farm Goes Live, Country Still Lags: Canadian Hydro Developers announced the completion of the largest wind farm in Canada, accounting for more than 10% of the country’s entire wind energy capacity of 1,876 MW. While a landmark development for Canadian wind energy, wind only provides for 0.8 percent of Canada’s total electricity demand, largely because of the country’s vast hydropower resources.

5. The Infeasability of Oil Shale Development in the American West: In August I wrote: “The most persuasive argument against oil shale thus far, has been the high prohibitively high cost of extracting oil from rock. The technology showing the most “promise” would require simultaneous super-heating and super-cooling of the rock formation, a process requiring tremendous amounts of both electricity and water.” Especially now that oil prices have fallen sharply since I wrote this post in August, oil shale, for the time being, is not viable economically. But that does not mean it is a dead issue; just a resting one.

4. Vestas to Create 1,350 Jobs at New Colorado Win Turbine Blade Plant: Vestas Wind Systems has emerged as an anchor to Colorado’s growing presence in the renewable energy industry.

3. Oil Giant Norway to Double Spending on Renewable Energy: What is Norway using all of their oil money for? Investing in renewable energy. Well, not all of it…

2. Rhode Island Angling to Build First Offshore Wind Farm in U.S.: Since Massachusetts’ Cape Wind project has been caught up in a regulatory cobweb for the last eight years, it is fair to speculate that it may not be the first offshore wind farm in the United States. Texas, New Jersey and Rhode Island are all battling to lay claim to the country’s first .

1. U.S. Installed Wind Energy Capacity Tops 20,000 Megawatt Mark: In September the United States surpassed an impressive landmark in building a clean energy infrastructure by passing the 20 gigawatt mark of total wind energy capacity. This particular post was by far the most visited of 2008.

Thank you all again for visiting and I hope to make 2009 even better.

-Tim Hurst

After finding out that our friends at Max Gladwell gave a shout to  ecopolitology for the 4th annual Blog Day, I decided it’s only fitting to  pass on some blog-love myself.

Blog Day was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On August 31, participating blogs will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs; preferably blogs that are different from their own culture, point of view and attitude.

With that in mind, here are my five additions, listed in no particular order. While these aren’t necessarily the five I visit the most, nor are they the five that are most pertinent to the content at ecopolitology, but they are all excellent blogs written by excellent bloggers. [Read more]

Now that I am back from a whirlwind of a trip to both the American Petroleum Institute/Chevron event at Stanford and WINDPOWER 2008 in Houston, I can take some time to sit back and reflect on all of the stuff I learned, the good folks I met, and the many excellent discussions I had. In doing so, I am struck by some of the broader implications of what I saw and learned. And I’d like to share those with you now:

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This very interesting cartographic tool from L’Observatoire des Medias below creates flash cartograms that distorts the size of a particular size of a country based upon how much attention it received from various media outlets.

Fascinating stuff.