I finally got around to watching Thursday's edition of the Daily Show. The inauguration coverage was predictably funny, but something else jumped out at me. Joe Lieberman was the guest (pretty funny guy, as it happens). Jon Stewart asked him, among other things, what his top three priorities would be at the beginning of Bush's second term. First, Lieberman said, he would stop Bush from messing with Social Security. The crowd roared their approval. Second, he said, he would work with John McCain to persuade Congress and the president to do something about global warming. The crowd's reaction? Dead silence. …

Ed Kilgore of NewDonkey has a thoughtful post up on how the Dems might regain ground in the South. One tidbit jumped out at me. When listing the tactics used by successful Dems in the South -- "Mark Warner of Virginia (elected in 2001), Phil Bredesen of Tennessee (elected in 2002), and Mike Easley of North Carolina (elected in 2000 and re-elected easily in 2004)" -- he finishes with this: ...and most important, (d) convinced conservative rural voters that public sector activism and new technologies could create economic opportunity in regions left for dead by conventional Republican economic development strategies. …

I don't know whether to shake your hand or smack you upside the head (ahem, metaphorically). On the one hand, your letter to Newsweek (third one down) introduces a very large audience to the vital environmental issues related to the tsunami, namely that poor land-use decisions, deforestation, and heedless development removed many of the natural barriers that might have helped protect the coastlines. Kudos. But then you pin the blame as follows: "It seems our endless desire for 'progress' bears responsibility." First of all, must you put "progress" in scare quotes? Are you trying to play into the stereotypes that …

Factory farms are a major source of pollution in the Midwest, and regularly violate air quality laws and regulations.  The Bush EPA's solution? Exempt them from Clean Air Act standards. Look! No more violations! Here's a press release from the Environmental Integrity Project: In the wake of the EPA release of its CAFO Air Quality Compliance Agreement today, Michele M. Merkel, senior counsel of the Environmental Integrity Project issued the following statement today: "These EPA rules amount to a wholesale relaxation of the Clean Air Act as it relates to factory farms, which are a major source of pollution in …

Here's a great speech from Metaldyne CEO Tim Leuliette on energy independence and what a real push for a hydrogen economy would look like (PDF) (he calls Bush's $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative "a token gesture"). It's a relatively good (and short) read, but if you want the cliff notes and some juicy quotes, check out the summary at Green Car Congress.  Here's a tidbit: It's an issue we raise periodically and then put away when concerns fade from the nightly news. It's an issue we like not to talk about unless we have to. It's an issue that with …

I was medium-surprised to read that the U.S. just signed a 10-year agreement to take spent uranium fuel rods from Australia, but I was outright baffled to read that "the U.S. already accepts spent fuel containing uranium previously enriched in the U.S. from 41 countries." We do? Where do we put it?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works: global warming is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state." Awesome!

Did you know that the University of Oxford is run entirely on renewable energy? Me neither. But maybe not for long.

I'm currently writing a review of Michael Crichton's new book State of Fear (should be done and published next week, several months after anybody gives a damn). In it, smarty-pants characters who think global warming is a hoax argue against borderline-retarded characters who believe it's a real phenomenon. The smarty-pants cite many scientific papers in support of their view; the borderline-retarded do not. Setting aside the dubious literary merits of this arrangement, it raises an interesting question I think people ought to discuss more forthrightly: Why do non-scientists believe what they believe about global warming? (Warning: extended ramble ahead. Click …

The indispens... uh, hang on, let me check my thesaurus ... the necessitous RealClimate has a stellar essay up on the subject of scientific peer review, a topic that anyone who ever talks about climate change ought to know a little something about. They agree with the general sentiment that non-peer reviewed scientific papers shouldn't be taken seriously, but go on to say that peer review is not a magic bullet. It's an important process, but doesn't ensure scientific validity. The best part is a discussion of some of the many recent peer-reviewed papers that have been hyped as overturning …