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Nine Nobelists on the big problems

Saw a good DVD this evening, after what seemed like several weeks where all the worst things were unfolding faster and faster and I was looking for something not quite so grim as the current headlines.

Nobelity is worth a look. Two ideas of special note for Gristies.

The film starts off with a discussion with physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, whose Nobel was for figuring out the electroweak force that unified two of the four fundamental forces in nature. He talks about (among other things) climate change. In a very matter of fact way, he makes a hugely important point that pertains to all the so-called skeptics (paraphrase):

Border wall brings peace in the Middle East

Fighting the border wall, that is.

Listen to ‘Ohio’ by Damien Jurado

Listen Play “Ohio,” by Damien Jurado While we all wait.

Clinton v. Obama on SNL

Medium funny:

Oil and the status of women in the Middle East

I'm not sure this falls under my "campus news" beat for Grist, but I heard it at a seminar at a college campus, and it's compelling enough that I'm going to say that because it falls within academia, it counts. Michael Ross is a political scientist at UCLA who was published in the February 2008 American Political Science Review with the assertion (PDF) that much of the gender inequality in the Middle East relative to the rest of the world can be explained not by traditional Islam, but by the presence of oil.

The quick version is that Ross makes a strong case that women are hurt by a previously unappreciated effect of the infamous "resource curse" that imperils democracy in countries with abundant fossil fuels.

EPA attempt to ban bird-killing pesticide runs into opposition

The U.S. EPA has proposed a ban on a pesticide lethal to birds, but is running into resistance from the company that produces the chemical. The pesticide, carbofuran, is typically used on crops such as corn, alfalfa, and potatoes, and has been linked to the dieoff of 558 separate bird flocks since 1972. A manager […]

View the winners of the ’60 Seconds to Save the Earth’ ecospot contest

The Alliance for Climate Protection and Current TV had a contest for provocative ecospots: short video messages to motivate friends, community, and government to get involved in solving the climate crisis. The winner created a great visual metaphor:

Rufus Wainwright’s energy campaign

Popera sweetheart Rufus Wainwright has done Judy! Judy! Judy! and now he’s doing Blackout Sabbath — emphasis on the out. This newest venture isn’t a tribute album; it’s an energy conservation campaign. Inspired by the NYC blackout in 2003, Wainwright is proposing we all turn out our lights and unplug appliances for 12 hours starting […]

Western states look into building new dams

Concerned about climate-caused drought, officials in at least six Western states are looking into building new dams to create rain-capturing reservoirs — even as dams across the country are being torn down over environmental concerns.

Can we trust carbon labeling?

About a year ago, I was cautiously bullish on British supermarket giant Tesco's pledge to start putting carbon labels on its food. But I think that their progress so far -- which I'll get to in a minute -- suggests an important lesson about the policy risks of treating a fuzzy exercise as if it were completely reliable.

Tesco's idea was that the chain and its suppliers would pay for objective, comprehensive reviews of the greenhouse-gas emissions from the foods on the store's shelves. The analyses would cover all major steps in bringing food from farms to the checkout line -- everything from running farm machinery, to food processing, to transportation, to refrigeration. Then, each item in the store would be labeled with the climate-warming emissions that could be traced to that particular product.

This sort of exercise is called "life cycle analysis," and it's been used for decades to great effect, to shed light on all sorts of questions: paper vs. plastic (for bags), cloth vs. disposable (for diapers), hybrids vs. hydrogen (for cars), and a host of others.

Last week, a nifty article by Michael Specter in The New Yorker reported on Tesco's progress so far. The results? There's still only one product on the shelves with a carbon label -- a single brand of potato chips, or "crisps" in British parlance.

You see, as it turns out, life cycle analysis can be really, really difficult. And to make matters worse, it may be that the whole enterprise is chock full of uncertainty.

Where carbon is concerned, it can be hard to trust the label.