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Farmers’ almanac

Last Sunday, the Wichita Eagle published a long front-page feature on global warming. Not on global warming as "scientific controversy," mind you, but on global warming's potential future impacts on state agriculture (more droughts, more dryland crops), native wildlife (more armadillos, altered bird migrations), and intensified tornado seasons.

Higher temperatures mean more energy in the atmosphere. More energy means more turbulence. More turbulence means greater extremes. More heat waves like last week's. More snowstorms. More thunderstorms. More tornadoes.

Hunker down, Dorothy.

They Weren’t Kidding About the “Future” Part

Feds move forward with clean coal plant — kind of The U.S. government is moving ahead with FutureGen, a $1 billion demonstration clean coal plant — and by “moving ahead,” we mean they’ve decided that it will be built on one of four sites in either Texas or Illinois. The final siting decision will be […]

Offshore drilling

The Progress Report has tons of good info and links on the subject of offshore drilling today:

None like it hot!

Here's the video about global warming (from the Futurama folks) that showed up in An Inconvenient Truth:

Fossil fuel morality II

I absolutely agree with David, and I'd just like to point to this article from a few days ago: The Bishop of London (Church of England) has said that needlessly contributing to global warming is a sin. This is the case whether you fly somewhere for a vacation, or simply fail to winterize your home.

Making selfish choices such as flying on holiday or buying a large car are a symptom of sin. Sin is not just a restricted list of moral mistakes. It is living a life turned in on itself where people ignore the consequences of their actions.

Zombie lies

Yesterday, Naomi Oreskes -- whose study on the scientific consensus around global warming is cited thither and yon, including in An Inconvenient Truth -- had an op-ed in the L.A. Times saying that, contra Richard Lindzen's recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, there is too consensus on global warming science.

Good lord this faux debate is tiring.

If Nevada hosts early caucus, presidential candidates are sure to oppose nuke-waste dump

If the Dems go ahead with their plan to hold an early presidential caucus in Nevada, it'll be another big strike against the already beleaguered plan to open a nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

Yucca Mountain has looked like a long shot for years anyway, beset by technical problems, timeline delays, and court challenges, and held at bay by Nevada's two senators, who -- like the vast majority of their constituents -- are virulently opposed to their state serving as the nation's nuke-waste dumping ground.

If Nevada's caucus becomes a key early contest, candidates will stumble over each other to swear on their mothers' graves that Yucca Mountain won't happen under their watch -- just as they now pledge undying fealty to ethanol subsidies in Iowa.

(If only they'd just rotate the early caucuses and primaries every four years, so each state's pet issues could get their 15 minutes of candidate pandering.)

Why is Inhofe so virulent about global warming?

Much has been made in recent weeks of Sen. James Inhofe's increasingly unhinged statements on global warming. He's hired a long-time movement hack, Marc Morano, to attack journalists and scientists that attempt to tell the truth about global warming (without falsehoods as "balance"). Now Inhofe's out calling Al Gore "full of crap," claiming the IPCC was based on "one scientist," and saying recent science has shown global warming to be a "hoax."

Why would a prominent U.S. Senator be out telling such flagrant lies -- lies even the White House and most far-right commentators have distanced themselves from?

Is he just a loon?

No, Inhofe's affliction is much more pedestrian. Here's all you need to know about why he says what he says:

Talking point: Fossil fuel morality

Arguments over energy tend to get technical, quickly: EROI, dollars per kilowatt, reserve estimates, capital costs, carbon lifecycles, ad infinitum.

Take a step back.

The argument against cutting fossil-fuel use is that it will cost too much. The economy couldn't take it. It's too hard.

It brings to mind something I read in Jeff Goodell's Big Coal -- a quote from an interview with author Ian Frazier, about Lincoln and slavery:

The arguments against slavery were always bumping up against this: "But it's an institution that's been around forever! What would happen if we got rid of it? How would you pay the people who lost their slaves, their valuable property? How would we harvest? It's not practical. What would we do?"

Lincoln's great moment was saying, "I don't care if it's destructive. Slavery is wrong."

You start with, "Is it right or wrong?" Then you act on that judgment. You don't say, "I'm not going to say it's wrong because it would be too impractical to undo."

Enriching despotic regimes, ravaging our landscapes, sickening the most vulnerable among us, and destabilizing our atmosphere are wrong.

So we should stop.

Period.

Do monopolies undermine the environment?

For many skeptics of the environmental benefits of market economies, the fear of monopoly control over natural resources is one of their greatest concerns. The reality is actually much more complicated; here's why.