Latest Articles
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Two solutions to global warming
Will reducing or stopping carbon dioxide emissions stop global warming? Not according to the IPCC. The Fourth Assessment FAQ, section 10.3, notes that "complete elimination of CO2 emissions is estimated to lead to a slow decrease in atmospheric CO2 of about 40 ppm over the 21st century." By going cold turkey on fossil fuels, we only get down to about 1985 levels in 92 years. The oceans will continue to heat up.
In other words, we might as well try to drive a big wood screw into hard oak with a hammer. Yet the belief that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have some leverage on the problem is widespread.
To examine our beliefs, which are often hidden from us, I offer two solutions to global warming. Both will likely work, but they are very different.
1. The Earth Bag. Many elaborate and expensive geoengineering proposals have been made, but here is the most practical.
The earth's overall temperature depends in part on albedo, or reflectivity to solar radiation. Change this by a few percent, and we change the climate.
We manufacture 5 trillion plastic bags each year. All we need to do is to make them all white and bright, and get them into the dark tropical oceans, where they will reflect huge amounts of solar radiation back into space.
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Virgin Airlines flies first biofuel-powered plane, enviros unimpressed
Like a virgin, the world’s first biofuel-powered plane flew for the very first time from London to Amsterdam on Sunday. (Well, it was a little bit biofueled: One of the plane’s four main tanks was filled 20 percent with coconut and babassu palm nut oil.) Virgin mogul Richard Branson celebrated his conquest, and deflected concerns […]
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Is There Will Be Blood a dramatization of peak oil?
In the realm of art, no interpretation of a work can be final, but intriguing hints from no less than writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson suggest that the stunning movie There Will Be Blood is actually a story not about the rise and fall of a man so much as the rise and fall of a commodity: oil.
Of course, even the intentions of the creators -- and in the case of There Will Be Blood, that means principally writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, star Daniel Day-Lewis, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and composer Jonny Greenwood -- don't necessarily prove anything. (After all, Anderson revealed in one interview that he "had no idea what we were doing" until he heard Greenwood's revelatory score.)
But consider what Anderson said in an interview bout the movie with Terry Gross:
We all know what has happened with oil, don't we? We all know the end of the story. It's a bit like Titanic, we all know the boat sinks. The fun of the story is watching how we get there.
Or what he said in an interview with Charlie Rose, in reference to the oil industry's recent fortunes:
I haven't been living in a bubble for the last six years.
Or what the great music critic Alex Ross said of the score in The New Yorker:
Greenwood, too, writes the music of an injured Earth; if the smeared string glissandos on the soundtrack suggest liquid welling up from underground, the accompanying dissonances communicate a kind of interior, inanimate pain. The cellos cry out most wrenchingly when Plainview scratches his name on a claim, preparing to bleed the land.
Too literal an interpretation of what Anderson described to Charlie Rose as "a great boxing match" between the two of the most powerful forces in recent American history -- evangelical religion and the oil industry -- would be pointless.
But when it comes to the controversial ending, we have to consider the possibility that this story is not about an individual, or even an industry. We have no choice, really, because it's only in this context that the finale makes sense.
***SPOILER ALERT*** For those who have seen the movie, or who have no intention seeing the movie but still want to consider the idea, please read on.
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Umbra on communal clothes drying
Hello Umbra! I’m a college student working to make my school greener and would like to purchase a few relatively sturdy, high-volume clothes drying racks to place in our laundry rooms so that students have an alternative to using the electric dryers. I know these racks exist because I just got back from studying in […]
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Oscars: green, but not braggy
As I reported last week, the Oscars went green(er) again this year. But if you watched the awards show last night, you might have noticed there was nary a mention of it, aside from a few jokes from Jon Stewart — quite a contrast to last year’s Al-and-Leo show. In other green-award-show news, the Independent […]
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Notable quotable
“Anybody has the right to run for president if they file sufficient papers. The job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.” — Barack Obama, on Ralph Nader’s entry into the presidential race
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Survey of ‘experts’ on genetic food tampering leaves out farmers
This is sad. Billed as a survey of what "farmers" think of genetic tampering with food crops, the survey left out one important group: farmers. Restricting itself to large-scale commodity growers, the survey is garbage in, garbage out.
I doubt that such notables as Gene Logsdon, Wendell Berry, and Joel Salatin would qualify as "experts" to these folk.
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World fisheries still in danger of imminent collapse, says U.N.
When last we checked in on the world’s commercial fish stocks, they were in danger of collapsing within decades. And, sorry to say, they still are, according to a United Nations Environment Program report ominously titled “In Dead Water.” Factor in climate change, overfishing, and pollution “and you see you’re potentially putting a death nail […]
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Notable quotable
"After all, there’s not a dime’s worth of a difference between a candidate promising tax cuts, pushing more health risk onto individuals, a re-invigoration of George Bush’s campaign to dominate the world through military force, and an industry-friendly approach to environmental issues and his rival who’s promising substantial socialization of medical risk, a 80 percent […]
