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Sir Richard to the Rescue?

Virgin founder Branson offers $25 million atmosphere-scrubbing prize Virgin mogul Sir Richard Branson is dangling $25 million for anyone who can figure out how to scrub vast amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The Virgin Earth Challenge — which Branson announced today with the ubiquitous Al Gore by his side and which we’re pretty […]

Can greed get us out?

Billionaire Richard Branson will announce today in London a prize of $25 million to the inventor of a device that effectively reduces greenhouse gas concentrations. Although the participants are under a media embargo, American climatologist James Hansen -- who will serve as a judge of the potential inventions, along with English scientist James Lovelock and Australian author Tim Flannery -- did discuss the topic of geoengineering a solution to global warming this week in front of a large crowd at U.C. Santa Barbara, as part of a lecture he gave on the dangers of human-caused climate change.

Good as usual

Elizabeth Kolbert’s latest piece in the New Yorker discusses the IPCC report and the political shift underway as the science debate dies down and the policy debate heats up. She says more or less the same things I said in my latest Tom Paine piece, only more elegantly and, you know, to about five bazillion […]

The question is, what kind of geoengineering?

Gwynne Dyer writes of James Lovelock:

If we overwhelm the natural systems that keep the climate stable, Lovelock predicted, then we would "wake up one morning to find that [we] had the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer ... The ceaseless intricate task of keeping all the global cycles in balance would be ours. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the 'spaceship Earth', and whatever tamed and domesticated biosphere remained would indeed be our 'life support system'."

I have a nasty feeling that we are almost there.

So do I.

A visual history of the industry

Avast, me hearties! Seems the landlubbers ’round here have it in for me column. But I refuse to Arrr. I. P. I’ve returned, peg-leg and all, with a quick post about the atlas resources on the fisheries pages of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. These maps illustrate tuna and billfish catches over time and […]

Vermont congressman walks the talk

Vermont Rep. Peter Welch (D) has announced that both of his offices — one on Capitol Hill and one back in his home state — will be going carbon neutral. Welch will offset 56 tons of carbon each year — the amount generated by fuel and electricity use in his two offices and travel for […]

Links

There was some hot-and-heavy debate about carbon offsets on Gristmill last week. I assume that debate will only get more intense as offsets and "carbon neutrality" move into the mainstream. Here are a few semi-related links relevant to the debate: Sun Microsystems’ enviro blog has a detailed, thoughtful series going on carbon offsets: part one, […]

Mine Your Own Business

Check out this video from "Mine Your Own Business" and let me know if you think it's a joke or not. And then, whether you think there is even a grain of truth in it. That's what I am interested in. Video below the fold.

And green is the new rock

Check out these 45 iPod Cases made from recycled 45 rpm records. You can choose your favorite piece of vinyl and have the case custom-made. So what’ll it cost ya to use old media to protect your new media? $45, of course. In other music news, green is the new rock. Seriously. When D.C. classic […]

Cheney’s investment guy attacks Cheney’s energy policy

Here’s an amusing story about an attack on the Bush administration’s energy policies from … Dick Cheney’s investment manager: "What were we thinking?’ [Jeremy] Grantham demands in a four-page assault on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president. Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, […]