Gubernatorial hopeful Beverly Perdue announces a goal to stop building coal plants in NC by cutting energy consumption by half in North Carolina, through introducing efficiencies. See Bev Purdue Energy Plan.

The plan doesn’t have any limits on population growth in North Carolina. Ms. Perdue states “Our state will grow significantly over the next 12 years, adding almost as many people as live in the state of South Carolina”.

No word on how long before the increase in North Carolina’s population means that even a 50% energy reduction has been overcome, and the net state carbon loading of today is exceeded.

Barely ten millennia ago, icebergs were probably cruising off the Carolina coast, as evidenced by sonar studies conducted by Jenna C. Hill, an oceanographer at Coastal Carolina University.

Dozens of broad furrows on the seafloor, roughly parallel to the coast, are between 10 and 100 meters wide and typically less than 10 m deep, running in a southwest to northeast direction. Ms. Hill and colleagues discovered semicircular pits at their southwestern termini, a sign she interprets as icebergs grounding and melting.

Today, those furrows stand in water from about 500 to 700 feet deep. But in the last ice age, sea levels were over 300 feet lower.