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A roundup of news snippets

• Barack Obama talks about timber and liquefied natural gas in Oregon. • The culling of Yellowstone bison rises ire. • Malthusian fears are bubbling up again, says a front-page Wall Street Journal article. • Illegal trade in polar bear skins may be rising in Russia. • The FDA relied heavily on industry studies when […]

Plans for Indiana BioTown face obstacles, but sputter on

In 2005, Reynolds, Ind., was deemed the world’s first “BioTown,” as agricultural officials unveiled a plan to power the 550-person burg entirely with corn, hog waste, sewage, and other energy sources in ready local supply. Three years and many obstacles later, the ambitious proposal is far off track. A significant private investor dropped out; construction […]

NASA’s Hansen responds to NYT’s Revkin

This post ends with an exclusive look at James Hansen's response to NYT journalist Andy Revkin's piece commenting on Hansen's (draft) article on why we need a CO2 target of 350 ppm. But first the backstory.

Revkin used me as the "balance" for his piece:

Some longtime champions of Dr. Hansen, including the Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, see some significant gaps in the paper (it is a draft still) and part ways with Dr. Hansen over whether such a goal is remotely feasible.

I complained directly to Revkin about the first part of that characterization. I was going to let it go at that, but then I got e-mails from people directing me to a media interview of Hansen (and Mark Bowen, whose new book is Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming). The reporter cited Revkin's quote directly to Hansen to argue the paper is "controversial."

Well, obviously, the reporter should have called me directly, rather than taking some hearsay characterization from another member of the media. But that just isn't the state of journalism today. [Note to media: You don't need to cite me in order to call a paper saying we need to go back to 350 ppm "controversial" -- it's kind of obvious, given that we're at 385 ppm, rising 2 ppm a year, and not currently doing anything to stop emissions from rising, but I digress.] Anyway, at that point, I felt obliged to write Hansen an email titled "I don't see 'significant gaps in the paper'":

Clothing from Britney’s guest role to be auctioned for NRDC

Fallen popstar Britney Spears has a guest starring role on tonight’s episode of How I Met Your Mother. And despite evidence that would predict otherwise, reviews suggest she pulls off the role fairly well. After the show, she’ll be pulling off her clothes … For charity, that is. Her wardrobe from the appearance — including […]

Voting is open for the Orion Readers’ Choice Award

Read a good green-themed book lately? The editors of Orion have, and in advance of their award of the annual Orion Book Award next month, for an outstanding book exploring the interaction of people and the natural world, they've just posted all the nominated books here for voting in a "people's choice" contest.

From The World Without Us to Blessed Unrest, it's an impressive list that makes me realize how many books I want to crack open. But after looking them over, I did at least take the time to vote for my own favorite of 2007. Hope you will, too.

New York’s new governor supports congestion pricing

Brand-spankin’-new New York Gov. David Paterson has announced his support for a controversial congestion pricing plan. The proposal, put forward by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and supported by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, would charge $8 to drivers entering Manhattan during peak hours. Said Paterson in a written statement, “Congestion pricing addresses two urgent […]

Interesting research findings on wealth and happiness

University of British Columbia researchers have put a price tag on happiness. The good news: It's available for the low price of $5.

The better news: You can't spend that money on yourself. Instead, to get the most smiles per dollar, you have to spend money on other people.

Dr. Elizabeth Dunn at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and colleagues found that [experimental subjects] report significantly greater happiness if they spend money "pro-socially" -- that is on gifts for others or on charitable donations -- rather than spending on themselves.

The researchers apparently looked at three different kinds of studies: a nationwide survey, a specific study of how employees spent their bonuses, and a controlled experiment on psychology undergrads. In all cases, the evidence showed that giving money away made people happier. In fact, donating as little as $5 was enough to boost happiness on any given day. But the amount of money people spent on themselves had no appreciable effect on how happy they were.

In short, new research confirms an old adage: it really is better to give than to receive.

But, on a somewhat more dismal note, there's another route to convert money into happiness: choose friends who aren't as wealthy as you are.

Do humans deserve to find life on other planets?

An explosion in our ability to detect planets in other solar systems has made astronomers increasingly confident that it's only a matter of time until we discover life on other planets. Astronomers just discovered methane on a planet 63 light-years from Earth -- a sign that life just might exist. Here's what Carl B. Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, said following the discovery in this fascinating Washington Post article by Marc Kaufman.

There are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and probably a hundred billion other galaxies with as many stars as ours, so it seems highly unlikely that there are not Earth-like planets orbiting some of them out there, waiting to be discovered.

I find the idea of life on other planets enormously uplifting: life is a miracle. But the idea of our civilization finding life on other planets fills me with apprehension. After all, civilization "discovering" new worlds teeming with life is nothing new to us: we've been doing it since agricultural civilization started expanding from Mesopotamia millennia ago.

But for as long as we've been discovering these new worlds, we've been destroying them, whether it was the Clovis people slaughtering the woolly mammoths, mastodons, and giant beavers that used to make North America home, the Sumerians turning wetlands and forests into wheat fields, or our own civilization slaughtering everything from the dodo to the bison to (just last year) the Baiji dolphin formerly of China's Yangtze River. And now we're turning our attention to the world's remaining tropical forests.

Truckers slowing down to increase fuel efficiency

You think filling up your car is a pain in the wallet? Try being a trucker. Most big rigs get less than 10 miles to the gallon, and diesel fuel is hovering near $4 a gallon in many places. “For every one-penny increase in the price of diesel, it costs our industry $391 million,” says […]

Umbra on toxic yoga mats

Dear Umbra, I own a yoga studio and our mats are wearing out and in need of replacement. What’s the best alternative for buying new mats? And if I do get new mats, what’s the best option for disposing of the old ones: donate to one of the many organizations that provide yoga for people […]