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The Onion: still funny

"San Francisco Historians Condemn 1906 Earthquake Deniers"

Six firms agree to stop using chemical in baby bottles

WASHINGTON — The six major baby bottle makers in the United States have agreed to stop using the toxic chemical Bisphenol-A, suspected of harming human development, local officials said. “All six major baby bottle companies — Avent, Disney First Years, Gerber, Dr. Brown, Playtex and Evenflow — have agreed to voluntarily ban BPA from bottles […]

British minister Mandelson attacked … with custard

LONDON — A protester threw green custard in the face of British business minister Peter Mandelson on Friday, in a stunt to highlight opposition to a new runway at London’s Heathrow airport. The former EU trade commissioner was arriving for a London summit on carbon strategy when protester Leila Deen approached him and hurled a […]

L.A. solar not dead, regardless of final vote on ballot measure

Despite rumors to the contrary, solar is not dead in Los Angeles. Not only is the outcome of Measure B still undecided, but Measure B is only a third of the larger L.A. solar plan [PDF]. And, frankly, the vote is irrelevant. On Wednesday, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said:

I can tell you, regardless of what happens, we're moving ahead on our solar initiative.

It's clear from listening to the discussion of Measure B that both supporters and opponents support solar power. This was not a referendum on solar, this was a referendum on process. People were pissed about how the measure got on the ballot. Some unions were rightfully pissed that the measure cut them out in favor of other unions. And so on.

It seems that there was no real reason to put this on the ballot in the first place, especially with so much process-related political baggage. From his comments on Wednesday, it appears that the mayor will now do what mayors normally do: establish ambitious goals, work out all the details with stakeholders through established oversight processes, and make it happen.

Slate tricked into publishing a parody of its own reflexive contrarianism

In 1996, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted a paper to the postmodern culture studies journal Social Text. When it was published, Sokal revealed that the paper was an elaborate ruse, a parody, filled with the most absurd postmodernist tropes he could dream up. It became known as the Sokal Hoax.

Slate has just been the subject of what future historians will likely call the Pellettieri Hoax. Jill Hunter Pellettieri wrote an article lampooning Slate's penchant for vapid, picayune, deeply privileged, self-conscious contrarianism ... and tricked Slate into publishing it!

Well played, Pellettieri. Slate, you've been punk'd!

A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow

When the science behind Gore's CO2 "hockey stick" slaps you down, there's nothing like indulging in old-fashioned denialism.

What is to be done when the world's leading experts in a field come together in the largest, most extensively peer-reviewed inquiry in the history of science and arrive at a conclusion that is diametrically opposed to your own long-held worldview? Most of us would reevaluate our ideas so they actually mesh with reality. That's called learning.

But if you are the staunchly "free market," anti-regulation think tank called the Heartland Institute and the conclusion is that humanity must cooperate to get the world out of a worsening climate crisis ... well, then what you do is simply manufacture a conclusion that is more to your liking.

Make no mistake, this is what the Heartland Institute's "International Conference on Climate Change" is all about. Set to begin Sunday in New York, the gathering's guest list includes the standard roster of "scientist-denialists" -- a large group of "experts" who have never published a single peer-reviewed study in their lives, along with a handful of fringe researchers who do (though rarely) publish in the field of climate science. The conference tagline is: "Global Warming: was it ever really a crisis?" and the conclusion is predetermined. "Was it ever a crisis?" ... as if it isn't right now.

By conception, the Heartland gathering seeks to establish itself as an authoritative gathering of genuine experts in climate science. The claim the Heartland Institute makes is pretty simple: "more than 70 of the world's elite scientists specializing in climate issues" will be there.

So, Heartland says to the unsuspecting, the experts are all coming to this event, and they all say there is nothing to worry about. That actually makes the whole charade pretty easy to unmask.

We don't have to examine every particular scientific or pseudo-scientific argument that will be advanced during the conference (that's been done repeatedly), because the whole thrust of this conference is about who is attending, not what they are saying.

Who put the food companies in charge of food safety? We did.

Here's my plan to reform the food safety system -- take the asylum keys away from the inmates. The New York Times documents the absolute unmitigated disaster of our privatized, volunteer food safety system. But the first three paragraphs sum up the entirety of the problem:

When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors like Eugene A. Hatfield. So last spring Mr. Hatfield headed to the Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia to make sure its chopped nuts, paste and peanut butter were safe to use in everything from granola bars to ice cream.

The peanut company, though, knew in advance that Mr. Hatfield was coming. He had less than a day to check the entire plant, which processed several million pounds of peanuts a month.

Mr. Hatfield, 66, an expert in fresh produce, was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella poisoning -- which he was not required to test for anyway. And while Mr. Hatfield was inspecting the plant on behalf of Kellogg and other food companies, the Peanut Corporation was paying him for his efforts.

1) Where's the FDA in all this and 2) how many logical flaws can you find in this system? Nowhere and lots. Food inspections are just too darn expensive -- let's have the food companies take care of it for us. And make no mistake: our friends in the food industry really, really don't want the government snooping around. Even when mild reforms are proposed, like toughening audit standards and automatically alerting federal authorities when problems arise, the food industry screams bloody murder. Which is funny tragic when you think about it, given recent events.

If you want detailed reform proposals, ask Bill Marler. But at the end of the day there are three things that will fix food safety. Cut red tape, spend lots more money, and de-privatize the food safety business. Luckily that's just the kind of reform we're good at. We are good at doing those sorts of things.

Aren't we?

Fallout from Jordan's radioactive water

Last week, I wrote on New Security Beat about startling new research that found very high levels of naturally occurring radioactivity in some of Jordan's fossil groundwater. Measurements up to 2,000 percent higher than the international drinking water safety levels were found in the Disi aquifers in southern Jordan. Duke University's Avner Vengosh and his international team published the results in the highly respected, peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Last Friday a Jordan Times story featured government assurances that all of the country's water was safe -- and tried to discredit the messenger. In a transparent attempt to raise doubt about the scientists' motives, the article points out that lead author Vengosh is Israeli-born (he is now a U.S. citizen).

Gore declines to debate Lomborg

I forgot to mention: the one "newsworthy" event at today's conference was the fact that Al Gore was directly confronted by Bjorn Lomborg and refused to debate him.

In the face of all evidence, some folks just can't see green as anything but a cost

It's always difficult to write (non-boring) posts on conferences. People come on stage, discuss wonky issues, and leave. There's rarely any "news." If people really wanted to hear my running commentary, they would do what With-It People do and follow my tweets.

So, just a broad observation on today's events. One of the earliest sessions of the day was Bjorn Lomborg, delivering his increasingly ridiculous message that we have to prioritize social spending (banal) and that spending to avert climate change just doesn't pass the cost-benefit analysis test (absurd).

Underlying Lomborg's nonsense is an assumption so common (in some circles) that it scarcely seems worth stating explicitly, much less defending: that reducing emissions is all about immediate economic costs and nebulous, distant social benefits. The question is always, do the nebulous distant benefits justify the immediate economic costs?

This mindset informed virtually all the questions the moderators asked (with the exception of Jeffrey Ball, who's very sharp). With every business or policy proposal, it was, what about the cost? Will people pay the cost? Can we afford the cost during a recession? The one-track-mindedness reached comic proportions a few times. Right after Lomborg, architect William McDonough came out, told a few stories of saving companies millions of dollars, then built his way in a poetic reverie on buildings that could be like trees, fecund and regenerative. WSJ's Kimberly Strassel paused, and then, I kid you not: "But what about the cost?"

Jaybus. I mean, A, how about having more than one thought, and B, he just told you he saved these companies millions of dollars. S-A-V-E-D. That like ... un-cost.

When WSJ's Alan Murray was interviewing Amory Lovins, he just kept repeating incredulously, "but what about the trade-offs?" "Trade-off" is code for the notion that any environmental improvement comes at economic expense. Lovins, meanwhile, was talking about building super-efficient buildings at under average cost. He was repeating, as he has so many times, that saving energy (and cutting emissions) is cheaper than buying it.

I don't know why people who were cheerleaders for an utterly pointless $3 trillion war and hundreds of billions of dollars of Wall Street bailouts suddenly become obsessive-compulsive bean counters when it comes to, oh, improving public health or saving our grandchildren from untold misery, but if you're going to count the beans, count the fracking beans.

This is the second year I've been at this conference. CEO after CEO talks about making big investments and getting even bigger returns. I have not seen or met a single businessperson who has done this stuff and says anything but, "I'm glad we did it, it paid off bigger than we thought it would, it energized my employees, it absolutely makes business sense." The only people I've seen say anything negative about greening efforts are people like Michael Morris who have resisted making them.

Why, in the face of this torrent of evidence, do some folks fail to see the profitable emission reduction strategies in front of them? Lovins later asked Gore, somewhat plaintively, "how can we change the conversation from sacrifices and costs to opportunities, jobs, and savings?"

I wish I knew. It's a peculiar sort of malady, like color blindness or something.