Latest Articles
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Friday music blogging: The Cinematic Orchestra
Of late, I have become obsessed with the soundtrack to a French Disney nature film that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t come out yet. I don’t know if it will ever come out in the states. It’s called Les Ailes pourpres: le mystère des flamants, which a little bit of online translation tells […]
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Resistance grows to increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline
The ethanol lobby may still be reeling in the subsidies, but it doesn’t seem to be having any luck dealing with their other obsession, the so-called “blend wall,” i.e. the legally prescribed limit to the amount of ethanol that can be mixed into gasoline. The NYT has a nice summary of the mounting scientific and […]
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Electric cars get better mileage
From a study published in this week’s Science Express ($ub Req’d): Bioelectricity produces an average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol… Given the limited area of land that is available to grow biofuels crops without causing direct or indirect land use impacts, bioenergy applications should […]
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Uncomfortable facts about the swine flu outbreak
You’re testing my patienceDon’t associate U.S. pork with the swine flu outbreak — you can’t catch it through pork. Plus, no pigs on U.S. CAFOs are infected with it. That’s message the industry and the USDA are straining to get across, anyway. Except … you can catch swine flu from pork, according to the World […]
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A bad idea, plus lots of cash
What’s that in your gas tank?This is a blog post about the intersection of a bad idea and lots of cash–your cash. The bad idea is this: growing crops to ferment and distill them into ethanol for internal combustion engines. A few days ago, the EPA revealed that by its calculations, use of corn-based ethanol […]
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A climate-news poem for the week of May 4
Don’t miss last week’s dubious bit of doggerel. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso with Obama earlier this year.White HouseMonday seemed so hopeful, when Aso came out strong: Japan and other powers must act before too long. “Hear, hear!” cried U.S. leaders, “We put it in this draft! To mumblemouth on climate would really be quite […]
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Olympia Snowe on GOP losing enviros, everyone else
“We’re excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice — the list goes on. … To the average American who’s struggling, we’re in some other stratosphere. We’re the party of Big Business and Big Oil and the rich.” — Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, on the Republican Party
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Selling out the polar bears … or smart climate politics?
In upholding the Bush-era decision on polar bears, is Obama shrewdly pushing a larger climate agenda?iStock PhotoThe Obama administration will uphold a controversial Bush-era decision that limits protection for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today. Polar bears will continue to be considered a threatened species because their […]
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The non-survivalist’s guide to stocking up for hard times
Dear Lou,As a resident of South Mississippi, I think it is officially time to stock my swine flu/tornado/hurricane/foreign invasion pantry. How do I do this without filling it with a bunch of processed crap, but still manage to stock away flavorful and nutritious staples? Kelly S. Dear Kelly,This particular swine flu pandemic–which may or may […]
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Bolivia’s 18,000 year-old Chacaltaya glacier is gone
”Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists,” said Dr. Edson Ramirez, head of an international team of scientists that has studied the glacier since 1991. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, the world is melting — and fast. The University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service reported earlier this year, “The new data continues […]
