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Random thought of the day

In talking with Anthony Flint and reading Big Coal, a parallel occurred to me.

I asked Flint about the historical roots of single-use development -- the kind that separated out residential areas and led to the sprawl we now know and love. He told me that such zoning measures were originally passed by progressives, in an effort to move the dirty, disease-causing elements of urban life -- e.g., slaughterhouses and factories -- away from where people live. It was concern for the health of the underclass that led to single-use development.

Similarly, when coal turbines were first developed, one business model was to build them small and make them residential appliances (to sell machines rather than electricity, in effect). But the early turbines were dirty. So eventually, savvy businessfolk moved the turbines far out of town and made them huge.

Early on in America's industrial development, the impetus was to separate and spread out the various functions of human community, because the industrial functions were filthy and unhealthy. But we got stuck with that dissipation.

A principal part of this century's environmental fight is to reintegrate and condense the functions of human community.

Jim Hansen in NY Review of Books

In the latest issue of the The New York Review of Books (not yet online here), legendary climate scientist Jim Hansen leaves behind the cozy confines of technical scientific writing and launches into the world of book review prose. He does remarkably well.

The books at issue are Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe, and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, but Hansen mostly uses the books as a pretext to lay out the basic state of conventional wisdom on the climate issue, namely: Things are bad and getting worse, species are set to die out and sea levels are set to rise, we can either continue on with business as usual or set a new course, and we really should set a new course, because within 10 years we'll pass a point of no return. Regular Grist readers will find it all quite familiar, but Hansen does a nice job of presenting the information in a compact, dispassionate, and frightening form.

Perhaps more juicy, from a purely tabloidy perspective, are some nuggets about Gore and Hansen's relationship toward the end of the piece. To wit:

Readers talk back about organic food, eco-sabotage, canvassing, and more

  Re: The Price Is Wrong Dear Editor: Umbra asserts that “organic food is more expensive because it costs more to produce.” This is a dangerous generalization that is not supported by many scientific studies. The data argue that costs are generally comparable, only organics have a greater labor input while industrials have a greater […]

Park de Triomphe

Interior Dept. unveils new conservation-minded park policies New Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne scrapped predecessor Gale Norton’s proposed policy changes to national-park management yesterday, issuing a revised draft with much greater emphasis on conservation. Reflective of policies already in place, the new draft de-emphasizes recreation, allows park managers to consider the effects of outside pollution on […]

Red state penetration

The Courier-Journal (of all papers) out of Louisville, Ky. (of all places), is running a wide-ranging, in-depth look at global warming.

Kudos, Kentucky!

Your Adequacy

This chat between Al Gore and director Davis Guggenheim is a little silly, but it's funny that first thing, Guggenheim asks Gore what he'd like to be called and Gore says, "Your Adequacy." One of his stock jokes, but an amusing one.

Share the truth

Eric Pan contacted us recently to let us know about his new website, Share the Truth, which is set up to spread the word about An Inconvenient Truth.

You can go and 1) if you're a global warming believer, buy a ticket for a skeptic, or 2) if you're a skeptic -- or just undecided -- get a free ticket.

Extremely clever idea. Go support it!

An Ontario twofer

Ontario's really going for the gold. It's building two new nuclear plants (the first in North America in decades) and reneging on its promise to reduce mercury air pollution.

Sources say the Liberal government's recent decision to break a 2003 cornerstone campaign promise and keep open the province's pollution-spewing coal-fired generating plants well past 2009 is behind the policy U-turn.

Well done, Ontario!

Gristy Road

Dear Gristmillians,

I'm getting a little worried about some of my fellow Grist staffers. As you may know, Grist is growing in both size and ambition, and has outgrown our current office. We must move -- but to where?

We've tried cramming into a Flexcar parked behind our old space, but that is just not working out. Among other things, we can't seem to agree on one radio station. So, we're off in search of a new location where we'll hopefully have a little more elbow room. But finding cheap office space in downtown Seattle isn't easy.

Tom, Grist's web production assistant, discovered several Gristers aimlessly walking around and crossing the streets of Seattle (without looking both ways!). He snapped the (strangely familiar) photo above to document our current plight.

We have exciting plans to expand and improve Grist and need your support to make them happen. Please lend a hand and help Grist get a move on.

And since we won't be needing our Flexcar memberships, we'll be giving them away to six lucky donors who contribute $50 or more by 11:59 p.m. PDT tonight. (And yes, the bamboo bike by Calfee Design and Miōn shoes are still up for grabs as well.)

Appreciatively,

Chris Schults
Web Production Manager

Doofus bashing

There was some delectable doofus-bashing while I was away by the folks at ScienceBlogs. First, in preparation for his debate on NPR's Science Friday, Chris Mooney allowed his readers the opportunity to savage the Dean of Doofus, Tom Bethell. They mangle Bethell's climate change denialism here, his evolution denialism here, and his science policy fruitcakism here. A little like shooting fish in a barrel, but damn, those fish aren't getting up again.

While you're over there, observe Tim Lambert take his cudgel to Tom Harris, a global warming denialist (and ex-tobacco shill) that's been getting a lot of attention in the rightosphere lately: whomp 1, whomp 2.

I'm a little ambivalent about the ultimate value of debunking paid shills. Of course they're stupid -- they're paid to be stupid. And bashing them probably just gives them more attention than they deserve. But as the above links show, there's something undeniably satisfying about seeing stupidity decisively and witheringly demolished.