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Slightly off topic but utterly essential

The Daily Show is a national treasure.

The Onion: still funny

"San Francisco Historians Condemn 1906 Earthquake Deniers"

Six firms agree to stop using chemical in baby bottles

WASHINGTON — The six major baby bottle makers in the United States have agreed to stop using the toxic chemical Bisphenol-A, suspected of harming human development, local officials said. “All six major baby bottle companies — Avent, Disney First Years, Gerber, Dr. Brown, Playtex and Evenflow — have agreed to voluntarily ban BPA from bottles […]

Slate tricked into publishing a parody of its own reflexive contrarianism

In 1996, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted a paper to the postmodern culture studies journal Social Text. When it was published, Sokal revealed that the paper was an elaborate ruse, a parody, filled with the most absurd postmodernist tropes he could dream up. It became known as the Sokal Hoax.

Slate has just been the subject of what future historians will likely call the Pellettieri Hoax. Jill Hunter Pellettieri wrote an article lampooning Slate's penchant for vapid, picayune, deeply privileged, self-conscious contrarianism ... and tricked Slate into publishing it!

Well played, Pellettieri. Slate, you've been punk'd!

A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow

When the science behind Gore's CO2 "hockey stick" slaps you down, there's nothing like indulging in old-fashioned denialism.

What is to be done when the world's leading experts in a field come together in the largest, most extensively peer-reviewed inquiry in the history of science and arrive at a conclusion that is diametrically opposed to your own long-held worldview? Most of us would reevaluate our ideas so they actually mesh with reality. That's called learning.

But if you are the staunchly "free market," anti-regulation think tank called the Heartland Institute and the conclusion is that humanity must cooperate to get the world out of a worsening climate crisis ... well, then what you do is simply manufacture a conclusion that is more to your liking.

Make no mistake, this is what the Heartland Institute's "International Conference on Climate Change" is all about. Set to begin Sunday in New York, the gathering's guest list includes the standard roster of "scientist-denialists" -- a large group of "experts" who have never published a single peer-reviewed study in their lives, along with a handful of fringe researchers who do (though rarely) publish in the field of climate science. The conference tagline is: "Global Warming: was it ever really a crisis?" and the conclusion is predetermined. "Was it ever a crisis?" ... as if it isn't right now.

By conception, the Heartland gathering seeks to establish itself as an authoritative gathering of genuine experts in climate science. The claim the Heartland Institute makes is pretty simple: "more than 70 of the world's elite scientists specializing in climate issues" will be there.

So, Heartland says to the unsuspecting, the experts are all coming to this event, and they all say there is nothing to worry about. That actually makes the whole charade pretty easy to unmask.

We don't have to examine every particular scientific or pseudo-scientific argument that will be advanced during the conference (that's been done repeatedly), because the whole thrust of this conference is about who is attending, not what they are saying.

Gore declines to debate Lomborg

I forgot to mention: the one "newsworthy" event at today's conference was the fact that Al Gore was directly confronted by Bjorn Lomborg and refused to debate him.

Coal River Mountain sit-in campaign blooms

Cherry Pond Mountain, Coal River Mountain, West Virginia

Photo: Nicole Motson.

As the U.S. Supreme Court continues to hear the Brent Benjamin-Don Blankenship case on the compromise of judicial neutrality from special interest lobbies -- read: Massey Energy's Big Coal grip on West Virginia courts -- five more arrests took place today in a growing campaign to stop mountaintop removal in the Coal River Valley.

If the local and nationwide momentum is any indication of a promised spring and summer campaign of civil disobedience, Coal River Mountain is destined for an extraordinary Appalachian Spring.

Earlier this week, a student campaign at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit-related school in California, won a successful victory in getting their university administration to agree to divest from their stock in Massey Energy.

Today's action took place at 1:30 p.m., at the Massey Energy Edwight mountaintop-removal site on Cherry Pond Mountain. Calling attention to the mine blasting taking place near the Shumate Dam, a mountain valley Class-C dam which holds 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge that sits a few football fields above the Marsh Fork Elementary School, five activists unfurled a banner -- "Stop Blasting, Save the Kids" -- and were cited for trespassing and peacefully escorted by the state police to jail at Pettus, West Virginia. They were released.

World Bank approves $1.3 billion for Brazilian eco-projects

WASHINGTON — The World Bank said Thursday it has approved $1.3 billion for environmental and climate projects in Brazil, focused on fighting deterioration of the Amazon rain forest and renewable energy sources. The World Bank said its board of directors approved Thursday the 1.3 billion dollar loan to the Brazilian government of President Luiz Inacio […]

Sean Hannity: Worst person in the world

Two good eco-related entries:

More perspectives on tax/auction revenue allocation

This post makes a point that I already made last Monday, but it bears repeating -- this time in the context of cap-and-trade.

Chaz Teplin gave some approximate numbers for how much Obama's cap-and-trade plan would raise energy prices (based on a $14.30/MT carbon price):

Effect of the Obama carbon price

• Petroleum fuel: adds 15¢/gallon
• Electricity: adds 0.8¢/kWh (compare to 7-10¢/kWh residential rates)
• Natural gas: adds 8¢/therm (compare to 85¢/therm residential rates)

The conclusion: "... energy prices would increase by about 10 percent. It's a start, but a very slow one." But that's not the whole story.