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Protesters head to court next week

The two folks arrested in the NOAA protest -- profiled in Mike Tidwell's piece last month -- go to court next week. Ted Glick and Paul Burman have been charged with disorderly conduct after they climbed onto a ledge over the entrance to the NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. on Oct. 23. They face up to five years, five months in jail and a $6,000 fine if convicted on Tuesday.

They don’t go well together

I've been meaning to write about a recent story in Time on risk perception -- in particular, on how badly we suck at it.

The basic theme is familiar by now:

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

And the culprit is also well-identified: a nervous system that evolved in radically different circumstances. Thanks to a jumpy little clump of tissue called the amygdala, nestled right above the brain stem, humans are finely tuned to short-term dangers. Snakes in the grass, glowering faces -- these things stimulate the amygdala and prompt a fight-or-flight squirt of hormones. That's how we survived on the savanna.

Science magazine weighs in

Yesterday I came across a head-turning new biofuels study by researchers at the University of Minnesota that found that planting a mixture of native grassland perennials produces biofuels more efficiently than corn and soybeans (no surprise) and even more efficiently than any single-grass plots (hmm, interesting).

Consumer Reports finds chicken riddled with bacteria

I didn't catch this two-day-old story until now, but it's causing me to reheat my homemade chicken broth to boiling. Consumer Reports found a stunning 83 percent of all chickens it tested harbored campylobacter or salmonella, the leading bacterial causes of foodborne disease. And that was up from 49 percent of chickens tested just three years ago.

Even more troubling, it found much of the bacteria was resistant to antibiotics. Why is this an issue? Because the Centers for Disease Control estimates 40,000 people get sick and 600 die each year from salmonella. Campylobacteriosis is estimated to affect over 1 million persons every year, or 0.5% of the general population.

A new UN report

Bjorn Lomborgian FUD aside, it's becoming clearer and clearer that protecting the environment is not an alternative to fighting poverty and disease, but a necessary prerequisite. The latest bit of evidence comes in a new UN report:

The key Millennium Goal of halving poverty in a decade cannot be met without better environmental protection, according to a new report.

Letting your electronics contribute to climate change is so offensive

If you're reading this, you probably spend a decent amount of time in front of your computer each day, hitting the refresh button in hopes there will be a new Gristmill post to light up your otherwise meaningless life. Now you can further your contribution to the world with a few more simple clicks, thanks to new software available at localcooling.com.

The Thrilla in Chip Gilla

Kick in some cash, so we can keep on kickin’ Did you think we were going to let you skate by without reminding you about our end-of-the-year fundraiser? We’ve got to win you over so we can keep the green news rolling. As part of our New Year’s Solutions package, we’re offering “New Thrills” today, […]

Owening Up to Their Mistakes

California’s Owens River runs again after nearly a century The most ambitious river habitat restoration in the West kicked off this week, as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa turned a knob on a dam and allowed water to flow through. The dam, built in 1913 to direct water into an L.A. aqueduct some 250 miles […]

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Science

U.S. EPA shifts pollutant-review process, mixing policy with science The U.S. EPA continues to suck Big Oil’s dipstick: Yesterday, the agency announced that its air-pollutant reviews, formerly conducted solely by staff scientists, will now incorporate recommendations from its political appointees. Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock insisted the shift will bring “air rule-making into the 21st century,” […]

Totally

This passage from Amanda's interview with Richard Branson really resonates with me: