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Bird flu will enter the U.S. from the south, say researchers

While the pure panic over a global avian flu pandemic seems to have died down, the virus continues to spread. To date, H5N1 has showed up in 55 countries, but has not yet touched the Western Hemisphere. Also to date, the U.S. government has assumed that the most likely route for bird flu's arrival into the lower 48 would be through wild birds; accordingly, they've put some $29 million into surveilling wild birds migrating from Asia to Alaska and down.

Sweeping political repudiation …

... isn't going to stop Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) from being a tool.

Meetings, meetings who love meetings

Sorry for the lack of blogginess today. I've been in some marathon meetings about Grist's target audience, how to reach them, what they want, what we want to become, and how to select a concrete course out of the almost limitless possibilities in front of us. Heady stuff.

There's all sorts of interesting stuff going on out in the world, including a new report ranking carbon offset providers that has created quite a fuss in that sector. But alas, it shall all have to wait until tomorrow.

Funny video alert!

These retractable pillars are traffic-control devices in Manchester, England. People don't seem to really get them:

NASA invests … on the moon

Typically I am in the tank for investment in basic science. But it mystifies me that NASA would announce they are going to set up camp on the moon's south pole as a galactic jumping off point. Gives new meaning to the idea of forward basing -- something that isn't working out too well in practice here on Earth.

If we are going to make a super-sized investment in science, how about jumping on the climate bandwagon here at home, an area where NASA already does some good work, like here or here or here or here.

A blistering report on biofuel from the tropical south.

In today's Main Dish, Julia Olmstead surveys the environmental liabilities involved in biofuel production -- stuff you don't typically hear about in, say, an Archer Daniels Midland press release or from celebrity biodiesel enthusiasts.

One of Julia's focuses is industrial biodiesel production, which, she writes, is increasingly focusing on tropical palm as a feedstock:

Throughout tropical countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, and Colombia, rainforests and grasslands are being cleared for soybean and oil-palm plantations to make biodiesel, a product that is then marketed halfway across the world as a "green" fuel.

As if on cue, today's Wall Street Journal features (sub required) a blistering report on that very topic.

Look, he’s on the teevee!

I just got back from taping my first ever appearance on national teevee. I'm here to report that it is a truly surreal experience. There I am, sitting alone in a room, with awkwardly rigid posture, speaking to a yellow arrow above a camera in response to a disembodied voice that keeps telling me to "smile more," struggling to recall the snappy talking points I'd written down at 2am the previous morning. Totally natural!

The show is The Climate Code, a Weather Channel program hosted by Heidi Cullen (who we interviewed last year). They're interviewing five or six people about the top 10 climate stories of the year, and then they'll smoosh the whole thing down into a half-hour program, so it will probably be a blink-and-you-miss-me sort of thing.

Nonetheless, if you want to see me looking like a deer in headlights, speaking in a slightly-too-loud voice and an ill-fitting earnest tone, tune your idiot boxes to the Weather Channel on Dec. 17, 5pm EST. It should be good for a laugh.

In Sickness and in Wealth

Bush administration apparently tried to limit payments to ailing nuclear workers You know you’re in trouble when America’s bubblegum newspaper nails you. According to a memo obtained by USA Today, the Bush administration has tried to avoid compensating Cold War-era nuclear workers sickened by radiation. Under a federal program created in 2000 to pay claims […]

Zombie hens survive euthanasia

In a truly bizarre story, laying hens who have survived euthanasia have walked out alive from compost piles. Neighbors in Sonoma County dubbed them "zombie chickens."

They don’t ignore it

In order to further elucidate the role of animal welfare issues in environmentalism, let us examine mission statements from some of the top environmental organizations in the world.

Let's start with the first line of the mission statement from the World Wildlife Fund:

"Protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species."

Notice that WWF talks about protecting wild animals independently of whether they are endangered (only later do they go on to discuss the sustainability of resources).

Here's the first sentence from the mission statement for the Defenders of Wildlife: