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Jetting off to global warming

This week's The Economist (paygate, although you may be able to get a "day pass") carries a special report on aviation's contribution to carbon emissions:

... flying a fully laden A380 [super-jumbo jet] is, in terms of energy, like a 14km (nine-mile) queue of traffic on the road below ... Aviation is a relatively small source of the emissions blamed for global warming, but its share is growing the fastest. The evidence is strong that emissions from jet engines, including the streaks of cloud (called contrails) they leave behind in the sky, could be especially damaging ... You can buy a hybrid car, switch to low-energy light bulbs in your house and eat locally grown organic food. But the dozen daily decisions on which you base your husbandry are trivial compared with the handful of yearly choices about that holiday or this business trip.

Even worse, air travel demand has grown by 75% since 1980 (my brief lifetime) and shows no sign of abating: Airbus projects that in 2020, just the increase in miles flown will equal all air travel worldwide in 1969.

Grist’s Webby acceptance speech

The Webby Awards ceremony took place last night, but since Grist "only" won a People's Choice award, we were not invited.

One amusing feature of the ceremony is that winners are allowed only five words for their acceptance speech. Arianna Huffington said, "Make blogs, not war." Prince, who won a lifetime achievement award, said, "Everything you think is true." Woah.

What should Grist's five words be?

Update [2006-6-13 12:37:51 by David Roberts]: Ah. I'm told we were invited to the ceremony, and just chose not to go. Maybe we couldn't think of a good acceptance speech!

World Naked Bike Ride, take three

The Third Annual World Naked Bike Ride hit cities across the world this weekend, bringing attention to cycling, cyclists' rights, oil use, climate change, and, well, nudity for a good cause.

Eviction happening at South Central farm

Word has it that people are being evicted from the South Central Community Farm as we speak. Darryl Hannah is still up in her tree, but they're talking about bringing bulldozers in.

All you L.A. readers get down there. If you can't make it in, I'm told there's a sit-in in the mayor's office.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (and the Next Day)

Daily Grist takes a two-day break There will be no Daily Grist on Wednesday or Thursday this week. We Gristian editors are retreating to our top-secret mountaintop redoubt to plot, scheme, conspire, and lay the groundwork for our inevitable world domination (and our impending office move; more — actually, much more — on that soon […]

Lightning in a Bottle

Bottled-water companies spur fights over water rights in Eastern states Water-rights battles, long the domain of Western states, are now being fought in the Eastern U.S., thanks to the bottled-water industry. In 1980, Americans drank less than three gallons of bottled water per capita annually; today, the number tops 26 gallons. Activists worry that large-scale […]

The Electric Tide

Tidal-energy project could come to Nantucket Sound Nantucket Sound and Cape Cod in Massachusetts are awash in alt-energy proposals: in addition to two offshore wind projects (with which loyal Grist readers are all too familiar), a third developer is now considering a tidal-energy project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Seven other sites across the […]

My problems with “energy security”

I have to say I'm uneasy at the fact that the most prominent voices in favour of plug-in hybrids have been men like Tom Friedman and James Woolsey. For men like these, "energy security" is part of the wider war on terror. As Friedman is wont to say, we're at war, and lessening our dependency on oil is a necessary part of that war.

We'd like to believe that progressive causes can be made universal causes by trying to appropriate the language of national security. It would be great if we could sell the Republicans on the environment or clean energy by using their own language. But the history of this isn't great. As just one relevant example, the liberal red meat of humanitarian intervention went throught the meat grinder that is the Bush Administration, and came out Iraqi hamburger on the other end.

Inconvenient science

This is a pretty amazing story. A graduate student at Oregon State University does a little study and gets it published in Science. Good for him, right?

Well, no, because his results are inconvenient for the thuggish cabal running Congress.

You see, Daniel Donato's study showed that post-fire logging hurt forest regrowth, and Congress was busy considering legislation that would allow timber companies to salvage log after fires on federal land. This was always a sop to timber companies, but it was sold with a veneer of science: that salvage logging aided regrowth. So Donato's timing was unfortunate.

Oregon State Forestry Dean Hal Salwasser, who supported the bill, started getting grumpy emails from his extraction buddies in industry and politics:

The Mustache and GM

A while back, Thomas Friedman wrote a column blasting GM for their plan to offer SUV purchasers rebates for gas money. In rather florid language, he compared GM to a crack dealer, said the company is supporting terrorists, and said he looked forward to Toyota taking over.

GM was not happy about it, and in this blog post, Brian Akre of GM's corporate communications dept. recounts his attempts to get the NYT to publish a letter in response. Apparently the NYT was not very accommodating.

Here's the original letter (PDF) GM's VP tried to get in NYT. What do you think?