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For those concerned about the blogger’s floor

So, last Friday and this whole weekend, I've been moving. Moving with two small kids is so fun! I wish I could do it every week! [Beats head on desk.]

Anyway, it reminded me that a while back I wrote a post soliciting flooring advice. I thought I'd do a quick follow-up for the vanishingly small number of you who care.

So we can transition to renewables without cost

You are going to see me posting a lot about ways we can increase efficiency -- for example, CyberTran and electric cars.

If you transition to carbon-free sources of energy without adding efficiency, energy as percentage of total GDP increases -- carbon-free sources of energy still cost (on average) more than carbon-emitting ones. This leaves less for everything else (food, clothing, shelter, medical care).

Sufficient efficiency improvements let us phase in non-fossil-fuel sources at no net cost. If we increase GDP per unit of energy, we can pay more for that energy.

To paraphrase Amory Lovins: We don't burn fuel for its own sake; we want warm toes and cold beer.

In homes, for example, if efficient use of power can still run appliances and provide heat and light, we sacrifice nothing and save money. That money will pay for more expensive clean energy. The price per kWh will be higher, but the electricity bill will be the same.

Even at high prices, the potential of renewable energy is great -- more than we are likely to need this century. Still, efficiency would let us take advantage of costlier sources without economic damage.

The happenings — or lack thereof — at the climate summit in Nairobi

Gary Braasch reports from the latest U.N. climate-change convention in Nairobi, Kenya. Braasch has been photographing and reporting on climate change since 1999. His forthcoming book, Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World, will be published by the University of California Press next year.

The seasonal rains have returned to southern Kenya, greening the countryside once again. But in the north and east, near the Somalian border, refugee camps set up for those who lost everything in a deep drought earlier this year are suddenly being flooded out by this season's unusually severe rains. Many see this rapid switch from drought to deluge as global warming in action -- more searing droughts and stronger rainstorms in an intensifying cycle that affects the world's very poorest.

Not far away, in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, officials and observers from around the world gathered for this year's United Nations summit on climate change. Here, the severity and urgency of global warming should have seemed clearer to delegates than it did at last year's frigid Montreal summit.

Can Sen. Warner unseat Inhofe as ranking member on Environment and Public Works Committee?

Just when you thought all the pleasant surprises of the election must be spent, one more appears in your inbox on a Friday afternoon. Senator John Warner is going to reassert his seniority on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee to be the Republicans' ranking member, forcing every polluter's favorite Senator James Inhofe into the number two position.

Warner doesn't have the greenest record in the Republican caucus, but this year he has said some interesting things about climate change. Interesting in a good way, not interesting in an Inhofe way.

British kids: smarter than the rest of us

A survey of 11-14-year-old Britons found that they are more concerned about recycling and global warming than they are about having a girlfriend or boyfriend or doing their homework.

Some 74 percent of so-called "tweens" in the U.K. were concerned about climate change, while only 41 percent noted concern over dating, or whatever you'd call it at that age. About 64 percent expressed concern about their schoolwork.

Cooties Lurgy also ranked high on the list of concerns, as did getting American adults to be half as concerned as pre-pubescent kids in the rest of the world about cataclysmic climate change.

Inhofe on Fox

Think Progress put up a video of Inhofe on Fox this morning.

I have to admit, I'm actually a little sad -- when he passes off the chairmanship in January, there will be so much less to make fun of.

Oceanographer Tim Barnet reveals the dollar amount, and other fascinating points

Tim Barnett, a leading oceanographer who just retired from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, this Monday gave a talk called Future Climate of Earth: A Sneak Preview [PDF] to a convention of fire ecologists in San Diego.

Barnett began by saying that he had seven grandkids, and he didn't like to think about the world they were going to inherit from us. He then went on to succinctly explain why we know global warming is human-caused.

Small steps made, but no real plan for post-2012

The international climate conference in Nairobi just wrapped up, and it sounds like it was a bit of a yawn. As expected, no exciting progress or big future plans.

Of course, progress is in the eye of the beholder, as we see in three different articles from MSM sources:

Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn for Reuters:

U.N. climate talks keep Kyoto on track, but scant progress

Environment Ministers kept plans for widening a U.N.-led fight against global warming beyond 2012 on track on Friday amid criticism of scant progress in aiding Africa and confronting wrenching climate change.

After two weeks of negotiations in Nairobi, about 70 ministers agreed to review Kyoto in 2008 in what many see as a prelude to widening a 35-industrial nation pact to outsiders such as China and India in the longer term.

It also agreed to aid Africa obtain funds for clean energies such as wind and hydro power. But delegates had mixed views on the outcome of the talks.

Readers talk back about elections, ethanol, respecting our elders, and more

  Re: How Green Was My Election? Dear Editor: Things are clearly not as bad now as they were before Election Day. However, we should temper our celebratory mood by considering: 1. Nancy Pelosi, the next likely Speaker of the House, supported the war until her constituents in San Francisco made it politically impossible for […]

because of the country’s decision to resume whaling.

... because of the country's decision to resume whaling.

Ah, I love it when the market works! Bottom line: you want tourist dollars, then stop killing whales.