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Maybe I’m Amazoned at the Way I Really Need You

Drought could turn Amazon into desert, researchers warn The Amazon rainforest — soon to be called The Artist Formerly Known as the Amazon Rainforest, and then just some weird little symbol — appears to be undergoing a second year of drought, and that has researchers seriously alarmed. Starting in 2002, scientists at the Woods Hole […]

Reps Gone Wild

House approves new wilderness areas in California, Oregon, and Idaho The U.S. House yesterday unanimously approved bills that would create over 1,000 square miles of new wilderness areas and protect 47 miles of rivers in California, Oregon, and Idaho. A bill to ban drilling in New Mexico’s Valle Vidal also passed. All of the bills […]

I’m goin’ back to Noonan, Noonan, Noonan

I am drawn, like a dazed witness to a bloody car wreck, back to Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal last week. If you haven't read it, you really, really should. It is a marvel.

(As an aside: Noonan is a fixture of the Romantic wing of the conservative movement. She feels conservatism deeply. How deeply? She once said, "Bush the Younger would breastfeed the military if he could." She said the great truth of 9/11 "is not only that God is back, but that men are back. A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country ..." That's how deeply she feels conservatism.)

Noonan's short snippet on global warming contains a superabundance of dimwittery. There is dimwittery in every paragraph, every line, virtually every word. The syllables, the phonemes ... there is cluelessness at the molecular level.

Let us begin.

She laments ...

... how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers?

Peggy, welcome to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an extensively peer-reviewed report from hundreds of scientists in over 120 nations. When you're done browsing there, please visit the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. EPA ... oops, Bush got to that one.

Is it possible that Peggy's simply not aware of the IPCC, probably the most cited scientific body in the history of scientific bodies? That she lives in an ideological world so hermetically sealed she never stumbled across so much as a mention of any of the major scientific reports on global warming? If that is the case, the WSJ seems almost cruel for broadcasting her cry for help. Were she capable of embarrassment ...

Then, as so often, Noonan veers from plaintive to addlepated:

The hurricane problem

A group of 10 scientists who've disagreed with one another in the past about the influence of climate change on hurricanes has come out with a collective statement saying that the media is obsessing over the climate debate at the expense of the more immediate truth, about which there is widespread consensus: vulnerable places are being overdeveloped, and the U.S. government is subsidizing it.

We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of the current controversy over the effect of climate change on hurricanes. But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention. We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices, and insurance, land use, and disaster relief policies that currently serve to promote an ever-increasing vulnerability to hurricanes.

Needed to be said.

Some quasi-philosophical blather

I can't bear to get back into the news just yet, so let's discuss this a little bit.

Are human beings part of the environment? You can answer in two ways.

If you say no, they're not, then you're stuck with the pernicious dichotomy between humans and nature that has bedeviled Western intellectual history and led to the illusion that we can dominate or control nature. Humans are rational creatures, in touch with some sort of Platonic realm beyond the grubby, irrational, violent chaos of nature -- that kind of thinking. Much of environmentalism has been devoted to trying to knock down that false dichotomy.

But if you say the environment does include human beings, then you're left with nothing that the environment doesn't include. "The environment" is thereby synonymous with "everything." But then the term is useless. Saying something is good for the environment becomes tantamount to saying it's good for everything. And that doesn't make any sense.

What can we learn from all this?

Back

Well, I'm back from the pony show. It went well.

Now I return to find a) so much stuff has happened that I couldn't possibly begin to blog about it all, and b) nobody outside the environmental community noticed, or likely cares about, any of said stuff. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm back in the saddle and will try to post on a few things that happened in my absence shortly. I know you're all relieved.

Leave your car(e)s behind on vacation

Dreaming of getting away in August? How about getting away from your car? Xtracycle, a maker of "cargo bike" kits, offers up "car-free vacation tips" so you can fill your vacation with "clean, affordable, soulful transportation," whether in town or exploring the wilderness. Among the hints: plan ahead, choose your destination wisely, combine modes, and travel light.

Jellyfish invasion in the Mediterranean

If you've never felt the stinging sensation of a jellyfish, count yourself lucky. It's like lemon juice in a paper cut, but longer lasting. The only thing worse than a jellyfish sting is ... hundreds of jellyfish stings.

Scientists recently announced a jellyfish bloom on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, and the crew onboard Oceana's Ranger is witnessing the invasion firsthand.

What's causing the massive increase? Glad you asked:

• An increase in "nutrients" (aka ocean pollution),
• an increase in water temperature (aka, global warming), and
• a decrease in predators (aka overfishing).

For all of you right-brained people, get a sense of the situation through this new video.

Asphalt blues

"With the continuing escalation of global fuel prices, many State DOTS are beginning to experience unprecedented construction cost increases." - USDOT

Over the last year, the price of asphalt has gone through the roof, and it's hurting local road repairs and construction. I haven't seen much about this outside of local articles (examples here, here, and here).

If oil prices keep their steady march upward, road repairs are going to become a ballooning problem for local communities and state governments. Some communities are already cutting back on paving projects, or are using less cover material to stretch resources further. But as one DOT rep stated, "With paving, you can't let it get ahead of you, or you're never going to catch up ... It may not hurt you in the short term, but we're going to need to get more money to pave in the future."

What is a “free market”?

I have written a few pieces over the past week about economic policies that would greatly benefit the environment. A major contention that keeps coming up on the comment threads is that I use the term "markets" or "free markets" too loosely. So it's time for a quick summary of what the market system is and isn't.