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]

Big ups to the good folks over at Red Orbit for naming Ecopolitology as a “Red Hot Blog of the Day” in their Technology category. Once again, I applaud Red Orbit for their impeccable taste.

From the site:

“RedOrbit.com is committed to providing stimulating, original content and presentation, with over 1,500,000 pages covering the vast ideological spectrums of space, science, health, and technology…. RedOrbit.com promotes a friendly and open environment, enhancing user loyalty and community, while advancing RedOrbit’s goal of providing the world with a virtual Utopia for intelligent, curious minds.

RedOrbit.com averages over 5 million unique visitors per month. With subject matter a bit more intellectually oriented than most…”

In a week where environmental news was largely dominated by Al Gore’s speech that called for theelimination of fossil fuels in 10 years, there were lots of other deserving stories that received much less attention. Here are a few of them:

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is shifting its shuttered coal mines into test beds for future alternative fuels, launching a program to grow switchgrass on the site of the former Broughton coal mine and pelletizing the grass for use in home heating stoves (Cleantech.com).

The state of Utah is going to a 4-day work week to save on energy costs. State employees, excluding police, university employees, prison guards, and other “essential” state employees will now get a three-day weekend and the state is expected to save $3 million annually (Maria Energia).

Compressed-air powered cars could take you over 800 miles on a single fill-up, at speeds of up to 96 mph. They should refuel in less than 3 minutes, and at speeds over 35 mph emit about half the CO2 of a Toyota Prius. Best part? You could see them in the US at the end of next year (gas2.0).

The world’s first commercial-scale tidal power turbine is feeding to the electrical grid. The tidal current turbine, known as SeaGen, has briefly generated 150kW of power onto the grid as part of its commissioning work, ahead of it achieving full capacity a few weeks from now (CleanTechnica).

The EPA released a report stating that global warming and the resulting changing climate could result in “substantial” health risks, such as heat waves, hurricanes, and pathogens in the future. The report also claims that in Eastern cities, the warmer climate will create bad air days, similar to that of California. (Greenopolis)

Photo: World Economic Forum via flickr under a Creative Commons License