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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).

Inhofe responds to AP with flurry of BS

Look, I know that politicians aren't anything like they were portrayed on The West Wing (see Ezra Klein and Gene Healy on the matter). I know they're not all dignified and statesmanlike. But c'mon.

Mere hours after the appearance of an Associated Press story about scientists verifying the accuracy of Al Gore's movie, the office of Sen. James Inhofe has cranked out a press release that reads like a parody of a frothing rightwing blogger (if that's even possible any more).

Have a look:

Nuclear plant licensed

This was inevitable:

ALBUQUERQUE -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its first license for a major commercial nuclear facility in 30 years, allowing an international consortium to build what will be the nation's first private fuel source for commercial nuclear power plants.

Construction of the $1.5 billion National Enrichment Facility, under review for the past 2 1/2 years, could begin in August, and the plant could be ready to sell enriched uranium by early 2009, said James Ferland, president of the consortium of nuclear companies, Louisiana Energy Services.

This is laughable:

Blog democracy scares the pants off of media traditionalists.

This ignorant blather about green blogs echoes many, many similar critiques from crusty old farts who fear the democratization of media. Without the "gatekeepers" of the traditional media, they cry, why, just anything can be published! By anyone! Even someone of ... low upbringing!

Indeed, Mr. Ladle fears that unless the onrush of rabble is tamed and domesticated, "we run the risk of creating a generation of eco-illiterate consumers and voters at a crucial time for the Earth's diminishing resources."

Yes, we wouldn't want to risk that. Why damage all the fine work the established media has done educating consumers and voters about environmental matters?

Um, actually it matters whether global warming is human-caused or not.

Yesterday, President Bush said:

There's a debate over whether (global warming) is manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary to enable us to achieve a couple of big objectives -- one, be good stewards of the environment; two, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil for economic reasons and for national security reasons.

I've heard him mention "getting beyond" that debate before, and it doesn't make sense to me. This doesn't seem like the kind of debate that can just be put aside. If it's the case that human activity is driving rapid global warming, then obviously scaling back GHG emissions should be our first priority. If it's the case that human activity isn't driving global warming -- that warming is part of a natural cycle -- then reducing GHG emissions isn't a priority at all.