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Crude substitute: The folly of liquid coal

I’m moving this back to the top — the link was broken before, but now it works. This is a must-watch. A stellar new 10-minute video from NRDC:

Similarities between the skin cancer and climate change ‘scams’

I was recently reading The New York Times and saw a fantastic ad:

Recent research indicates that the benefits of moderate exposure to sunlight outweigh the hypothetical risks. Surprisingly, there is no compelling scientific evidence that tanning causes melanoma. Scientists have proven, however, that exposure to all forms of ultraviolet light -- both indoors and out -- stimulates the natural production of vitamin D. And research has proven that vitamin D protects against heart disease and many types of cancer, in addition to providing other important health benefits.

If you go to their website, you can read all about it.

The similarities between the "skin cancer" scam and the "global warming" scam are all too clear. First, according to this website, there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer. Amazing. I thought the epidemiological data nailed that connection decades ago. Boy, was I wrong! This is similar to the fact that there is no evidence linking carbon-dioxide emissions with climate change.

Three Makah tribe members plead guilty in whale hunt

Photo: bbum Three members of the Washington state Makah tribe who were charged with killing a gray whale in the fall have pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In return, prosecutors will recommend probation instead of jail time. The men had originally declined the plea deal because it […]

Cheap at any price!

More news from the world of cheap coal: Santee Cooper said Wednesday that the first phase of its proposed Pee Dee coal-fired power plant [in Florence County, South Carolina] will cost $1.25 billion, up from its original estimate of $998 million. Even that may be under-stating it: Blan Holman, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental […]

Listing polar bears as endangered species could … harm polar bears?

Via an email from The National Center for Public Policy Research:

The ad is being released in conjunction with a National Center for Public Policy Research policy paper, "Listing the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act Because of Projected Future Global Warming Could Harm Bears and Humans Alike," by Peyton Knight and Amy Ridenour.

The paper questions the wisdom of listing the polar bear as threatened based on environmentalist organizations' projections of future global warming because:

• Listing the polar bear could have adverse affects on bear conservation efforts.

Now that we know irony is dead, let's check parody's vital signs:

Seeing through the EPA’s BS

Looking back at seven years of ever-looming -- yet constantly narrowly-averted -- GHG emissions regulations, it seems like it might have been a lot less painful to industry and damaging to the economy if the Bushies would have laid out a simple set of expectations early on and then just let us handle it from there. Even if the resultant regulations wouldn't have been nearly as stringent as most of us would have liked, industry might have benefited from the certainty.

Preferring to keep us all waiting just a little longer, however, last Thursday Bush's EPA put off any possible whining about regulations until well into the next administration:

... Last year the Supreme Court ruled, contrary to the Bush administration's wishes, that greenhouse gases were a pollutant that came under the jurisdiction of the EPA. So the EPA's scientists took a look, and they concluded that, yes, greenhouse gases contributed to global warming and ought to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The White House, of course, was not happy about this, so on Thursday EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson deep-sixed the scientific findings and opened up a "lengthy public comment period" to give corporate contributors the public a chance to weigh in on this.

To which Rep. Markey (D-Mass.) adds:

This cynical step by EPA to announce an "Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" in the coming months should be seen for what it is: an "Aspirational Notice of Procrastinational Rulemaking."

DOD panel calls out power grid disruption threat

Here's another good reason to fix a shaky and outdated power grid, from the Defense Science Board: keeping the Air Force flying during the next terrorist attack.

The military focuses much of its efforts on avoiding global petroleum disruptions. But it has not thought much about power grid disruptions that could affect its own bases, the Department of Defense (DOD) group says in a report authored by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger

The board says "physical or cyber sabotage -- or even a simple capacity overload -- could devastate U.S. military and homeland security installations and have a frightening ripple effect across the country, leaving everything from sewage systems to border security controls paralyzed for weeks, perhaps months," ClimateWire reports ($ub. req'd, but free trial available).

Investigators noted: "A long-term major power outage would have significant consequences for both DOD and the nation ... Unfortunately, the current architecture of the grid is vulnerable to even simple attacks."

Pielke labels adaptation what is actually mitigation

The wheels may be falling off the media's climate discussion, if a recent L.A. Times piece is any evidence. The piece, "Global warming: Just deal with it, some scientists say," is really an article about not dealing with it.

The L.A. Times, with the help of the delayer-1000 du jour, Roger Pielke, Jr., has brought to prominence (and fallen for) what I call the "adaptation trap":

The adaptation trap is the belief that 1) "it would be easier and cheaper to adapt than fight climate change" [as the Times puts it in the sub-head] and/or 2) "adaptation" to climate change is possible in any meaningful sense of the word absent an intense mitigation effort starting now to keep carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 ppm.

Sorry for the long definition, but as we'll see, the second part is especially critical in what has now become an important emerging policy debate, cleverly devoid of specifics. (Indeed, on his blog Pielke says he was misquoted and denies he believes the first part, which actually makes the LAT piece even lamer, as David shows). And being misquoted doesn't mean Pielke isn't very wrong anyway -- as we'll see at the end, Pielke is so confused about adaptation and mitigation that he takes the prize for the most backward analogy in the history of the climate debate, unintentionally proving just how wrong he is.

U.N. climate talks open in Bangkok

United Nations climate talks opened Monday in Bangkok, Thailand, as another step in the process of drafting a successor to the Kyoto Protocol climate-change treaty that expires in 2012. Officials admitted they didn’t expect any breakthroughs at the meeting this week, but there is hope that the countries can manage to agree on an agenda […]

Responding to a wrongheaded assault on Slow Food

The March, 2008 issue of Metropolis focuses on the overarching idea of localism and its relationship to sustainability. It is as always a beautiful and well-written issue, but in it one particular columnist, Bruce Sterling, has taken Slow Food to task -- accusing us once again of that old canard, elitism.

It is not true, nor is it always such a bad thing anyway. Bear in mind that most of the great social movements throughout history were begun by the so-called "elite" (witness abolition and suffrage, not to mention that Ghandi was a well-to-do attorney). But the places Mr. Sterling gets it wrong are so manifold it's hard to know where to start.

Let's try here:

The Cornish Pilchard. The Chilean Blue Egg Hen. The Cypriot Tsamarella and Bosnian Sack Cheese. You haven't seen these foods at McDonald's because they are strictly local rarities championed by Slow Food, the social movement founded to combat the proliferation of fast food. McDonald's is a multinational corporation: it retails identical food products on the scale of billions, repeatedly, predictably, worldwide. Slow Food, the self-appointed anti-McDonald's, is a "revolution" whose aim is a "new culture of food and life."

Actually you haven't seen these foods at McDonald's because McDonald's sells hamburgers. Here Mr. Sterling has blundered by believing that who/what Slow Food is is somehow stagnant and monolithic. If such things were true then the US would still be a few puritan slave owners dotted up and down the east coast. Or the Chicago Cubs would have been the National League power for the last century. He goes on ...

Slow Food began as a jolly clique of leftist academics, entertainers, wine snobs, and pop stars, all friends of Italian journalist and radio personality Carlo Petrini.

I've often wondered what it is about food and wine that makes those who appreciate it automatically labeled "snobs." Wine is just fermented grape juice, actually one of the simplest foods known to man. For some reason the person who appreciates the inner workings of an internal combustion engine is not a snob, but someone who likes a well-made buerre blanc is.