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Notable quotable

"Listen, I'm skinny but I'm tough."

-- Barack Obama as quoted in a Wall Street Journal article that questions if he is too fit to be president.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory has new climate website that shows global sea-level trends

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a very good new website on global climate change. It offers a nice summary of the relevant science in a variety of areas: key indicators, evidence, causes, effects, uncertainties, and solutions. The website is a good place to send people who are uninformed on global warming, but looking for basic information.

JPL has a very nice front-page banner with pulldown menus providing data on "Vital Signs of the Planet," including Arctic sea ice, carbon dioxide, sea level rise, global temperature, and the ozone hole. Here is the expanded chart showing the recent 70 percent jump in sea level rise:

Trash becomes treasure for this freegan

We’ve written about freegans many times before, but this video shows exactly what kind of treasures are sometimes thrown out with the trash:

McCain says he trusts Big Oil over energy and economic experts

John McCain said today that he believes what Big Oil says about the amount of oil still available in the United States’ outer continental shelf, rather than estimates offered by energy experts, economists, and the government’s Energy Information Administration. A questioner in the crowd at the National Urban League conference in Orlando, Fla., asked the […]

Snippets from the news

• U.K. is delusional that it’s cutting emissions. • Canada releases climate change report, denies playing it down. • Lawsuit brought in Everglades, sugar deal. • Brazil launches fund to preserve Amazon. • Aral Sea restoration a “partial success.” • Lakota radio station installs wind turbine.

Notable quotable

"The military-industrial complex needs enemies."

-- Brian Williams, news anchor of NBC, on The Daily Show with John Stewart, July 31, 2008.

The WSJ alleges that our use of hybrids increases oil prices

The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog is a must-read. But what exactly were they thinking with this column:

So you think you're being virtuous by trading in the SUV for, say, a Prius? What if, instead, you're really sticking the next guy in line with higher pump prices?

Yes, The WSJ is revoking the law of supply and demand. Less demand translates into higher pump prices! How is this possible, you ask?

Author Claire Hope Cummings dishes the dirt on genetically modified food

One of the most encouraging things about the sustainable-food movement is how effortlessly it crosses traditional political-party, religious, ethnic, and other lines. The right to good, clean, and fair food, to borrow Slow Food‘s shorthand, seems to unite people who’d never otherwise find themselves chatting at the same party: Home schoolers and dreadlocked hippies, libertarian […]

From Pork to Poke

Eat your hat Tried to go whole hog, but still have leftovers? Haberdash over to this site to save your bacon. Because “one always looks neat, in a hat made from meat.” Crop of the Kreme Put a spring in your step with these grass-lined flip-flops, created by Krispy Kreme to give stressed-out workers a […]

Common, EPA-OK’d insecticides causing health problems

More than a quarter of all significant pesticide-related health problems reported to the U.S. EPA in 2007 involved a class of insecticides deemed safe by the agency, says a new report from the Center for Public Integrity. Naturally occurring pyrethrins and their synthetic counterpart, pyrethroids, have been touted as safe alternatives to nasty organophosphates. In […]