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Geoengineering redux

RealClimate weighs in on the debate over geoengineering (which was featured in a much-discussed NYT piece yesterday). There's some technical discussion, but here's the take-home point:

... in my opinion, the proposals are unlikely to gain much traction. Maybe an analogy is useful to see why. Think of the climate as a small boat on a rather choppy ocean. Under normal circumstances the boat will rock to and fro, and there is a finite risk that the boat could be overturned by a rogue wave. But now one of the passengers has decided to stand up and is deliberately rocking the boat ever more violently. Someone suggests that this is likely to increase the chances of the boat capsizing. Another passenger then proposes that with his knowledge of chaotic dynamics he can counterbalance the first passenger and indeed, counter the natural rocking caused by the waves. But to do so he needs a huge array of sensors and enormous computational reasources to be ready to react efficiently but still wouldn't be able to guarantee absolute stability, and indeed, since the system is untested it might make things worse.

So is the answer to a known and increasing human influence on climate an ever more elaborate system to control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down?

We hold these truths to be self-evident …

With July 4th nearly here and all the Declarations of Energy Indpendence out there, it is time to ponder what American leaders of the past would have to say about energy and environmental issues confronting the nation today.

Perhaps they would like energy judged not by the color of money, but by the content of its carbon? Or maybe they would challenge us to ask not what our country could do for our cars, but what cars we could drive for our country?

Get your creative juices flowing and leave your adaptations in the comments.

Here's what I think Lincoln might say:

And even more fun if it’s recycled

This site is pretty awfully designed, but I like it because it's called news.com.com. Hee hee. Oh, and also because it brings news(.com.com) of an Israeli firm that's experimenting with extracting oil from sewage sludge.

"Sludge is a major problem in the world. Cities pay $50 a ton or more to get rid of it," [Eco Energy CEO Amit Mor] said. "And it's good-quality light oil."

A ton of high-quality sludge can produce about 30 kilograms, or 66 pounds, of such oil, Mor said. The process can also convert pulp, agricultural waste, plastics and tires into oil.

Recycling: good. Producing conventional oil: bad. Chances of this going mainstream: about as good as the chances of fighting global warming with floating white plastic islands.

When It Uraniums, It Pours

New nuke-waste plan follows license for new nuclear facility The U.S. government could store nuclear waste for up to 25 years at interim sites on federal land (including national forests) under a new proposal by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.). Over 50,000 tons of radioactive waste sit at nuclear power plants awaiting transfer to the proposed […]

Something in the Way She Moves

Umbra on moving When it comes time to transport your worldly goods, finding a green moving company is probably low on your list of priorities — somewhere below “clean out that gooey thing in the back of the crisper.” But even if you found time to think about going the eco-route, would it be possible? […]

Knot So Fast

Feds propose speed limit to protect right whales Hoping to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, the U.S. government has proposed making large vessels in the North Atlantic obey an ocean speed limit of 10 knots — about 11.5 mph — during the times of the year when whales are in the area. (If they […]

More on Inhofe press release

Via Josh Marshall, we find more background on the loopy press release from Inhofe's office yesterday:

Good Catch! Until a couple months ago, the press release writer, Marc Marono, worked for CNSnews.com where he distinguished himself by using disgraced NASA crony George Deutsch to attack NASA scientist James Hansen. Deutsch, you'll remember, was the young Bush campaign flack who was sent over to NASA to censor scientific publications, made a splash when he instructed NASA scientists not to discuss the Big Bang without considering the topic from a religious perspective and then got bounced when it emerged that he'd lied about having a college degree. Earlier, Marono wrote this beaut questioning whether Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) may have faked the wounds for which he received two Purple Hearts.

It's all one seamless web of fruitcakery.

Update [2006-6-28 8:43:38 by David Roberts]: ThinkProgress does the yeoman's work of refuting the claims in the release. For my part, I'm sick of knocking down the same zombie falsehoods again and again. The folks advancing these claims can no longer claim to be acting in good faith, so they won't get good faith responses from me. From now on, they get what they deserve: disdain and mockery. Wo0t!

Update [2006-6-28 12:26:24 by David Roberts]: And still more detailed debunking from Tim Lambert. But will the debunking stop this thing from spreading like wildfire throughout the crankosphere? I doubt it.

Second major oceans protection announcement

Two weeks ago, environmentalists' collective jaw dropped as President Bush designated 140,000 square miles in the Hawaii Islands a national monument. Not to be upstaged, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries countered today with an announcement it was protecting more than 370,000 square miles of seafloor in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

NOAA's decision establishes the largest protected area in U.S. waters, and the third largest such area in the world. This designation is the result of five years of intense work by Oceana and others to stop destructive trawling.

Now, the question remains: Can President Bush beat 370,000 square miles?

The Onion: Still funny

We Must Preserve The Earth's Dwindling Resources For My Five Children

Link dump

As always, I regret having to do this sort of post, but there's only so much stuff one man can write about (and still make time for his quest to view the entire Gilmore Girls corpus over the course of a single summer).