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Ouch

Sen. Barbara Boxer invited the Governator to testify to the EPW committee about his state’s global warming regulations, but he … had urgent matters to attend to. “Meetings he can’t miss,” as it happens. Would you want to get stuck between Boxer and Inhofe if you agreed with the former and shared a party with […]

It’s a frenzy

Those of you waiting on the edge of your seat for the IPCC report — which will be released in about 3.5 hours — can kill time by reading Andy Revkin’s account of the last-minute negotiations going on in Paris as we speak. Everybody from scientists to industry groups to enviros to governments are haggling […]

The hype goes on

I used to follow the "eco-terrorism" hype fairly closely, before my gnat-like attention span wandered on to other things. Those of you still interested should check out this long and exemplary article on the subject by Matt Rasmussen in the current issue of Orion. It will catch you up on all the latest haps.

Small is beautiful.

Here is a fun article from The Green Wombat retelling the "solar-to-hydrogen" car story for the millionth time. I read stories like this in Popular Mechanics decades ago. The article talks about using solar panels to store sunlight as hydrogen to burn in internal-combustion-powered cars. Australia has a lot of sunlight and summers can be hot. It would be far more efficient to use that sunlight to power swamp coolers to air-condition homes than to throw 90% of that solar energy away converting it to hydrogen and then burning it in a 30% efficient internal combustion engine. Passing hydrogen through a fuel cell to power an electric car or light a home would also be a lot more efficient.

Search for ‘global warming’ to no avail

Check out a post from James Annan, who details how, out of 438 documents on Whitehouse.gov the contain the phrase "global warming," only a single one is returned when using the Whitehouse.gov search engine.

Color me stupefied. It's almost like they are trying to hide something. On purpose even. Who'da thunk it?

[Update] As most of you probably know, this may be one of those "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" moments. (see more detailed update here).

I'd have to say that in analyzing the current Whitehouse policy on just about anything, figuring out which it is, malice or incompetence, is a black art.

Of course, the end result is one and the same, from Katrina to Iraq to fiscal policies to the environment to homeland security to international diplomacy to...

Lots of stuff happening

Tom Whipple — as usual, ahead of the curve on energy issues — writes about the recent bustle of activity around electric cars. He concludes: Be it a Ford, a Chevy, or an Asian econobox, 2007 just might turn out to be the birth year for practical electric cars. URGE2, baby! (via EB)

A primer

Over on E&E News, reporter Darren Samuelsohn has a fantastic special report on the much-ballyhooed "climate stabilization wedges" notion made famous by Princeton professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala. This is something you’ll be hearing a lot more about in coming weeks and months; if you need a quick, digestible primer on what wedges are, […]

French NGO calls for 5 min. of darkness to protest against climate change.

This was just forwarded to me, concerning a grassroots protest that some European NGOs are trying to organize on the quick. It involves everybody dimming their lights between 7:55 and 8:00 P.M. tonight. I don't know whether they want everybody to do it at the same time (i.e., 19:55-20:00 GMT), or in their own time zones. In any case, it is novel.

Not well

The Fraser Institute, the Canadian version of ... I dunno, maybe the Heritage Institute, or a low-budget Cato, has had its response to the upcoming IPCC report leaked. Desmogblog has the details.

Apparently, the scientific consensus is "political." Stephen Colbert is right: the facts have a liberal bias.

Of course, I'd like to know how I, a mere dirty hippie, have provoked this response from big business.

The Illumi-nicey

New California bills would outlaw inefficient light bulbs As Thomas Edison adjusts his eternal resting position just a tad, two California state legislators plan to introduce separate bills that would effectively ban incandescent light bulbs in the state over the next decade. One of the bills, backed by California Assembly member Lloyd Levine (D), has […]