Latest Articles

Water wars!

The Georgia legislature, perhaps driven slightly around the bend by the drought battering its state, is attempting to claim part of the Tennessee River, which it claims is rightly Georgia’s based on the original border drawn between the states in 1818. Chattanooga, Tenn., says, um, no, we’ll keep the river, thanks. Can a shooting war […]

A safety valve in Lieberman-Warner is senseless

I see no point whatsoever in passing a climate bill this year that includes a safety valve. I have blogged on this before, but it bears repeating as we appear to be getting to the endgame negotiations in the Senate on the Lieberman-Warner bill. Bottom line:

If you want to get a 60% to 80% greenhouse gas cut in four decades, you just can't waste time with safety valves. We need to get to a price of $30 to $40 a ton for carbon dioxide as soon as possible -- and if it needs to go higher than that because conservatives block the progressives and moderates from legislating aggressive technology deployment strategies that would keep costs low, well, as the saying goes, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

If you just want to pass a bill that makes it seem like you're doing something while in fact doing little, then go for it! But surely a year's delay (waiting for a somewhat wiser Congress and an infinitely wiser president) is better than a pointless bill.

In an article titled "Sponsors of Senate emissions bill seek compromise on cost provisions," Greenwire (subs. req'd) reports:

Shark superhighways and radioactive fish bones

Scientists studying the sea floor near Antarctica discovered new species of fish, plankton and jellyfish. "We had some of the world's experts on Antarctic fish and they were completely, completely flabbergasted," said the leader of the expedition ...

... a researcher studying a dead zone off the northwest coast of the U.S. saw nothing on the ocean floor. "It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away had died," she said. The dead zone is thought to be a result of climate change ...

... the government of Taiwan allocated $1 million in Taiwanese new dollars to clear the shore of dead fish, both wild and farmed, that had died during a recent cold snap ...

The ‘hell’ before the ‘high water’ in the U.S.

I just wanted to alert Grist readers to an excellent post at The Oil Drum called "Fire and Rain: The Consequences of Changing Climate on Rainfall, Wildfire and Agriculture." The author points out that "Current climate change predictions for much of the West show increased precipitation in the winter or spring, along with earlier and drier summers." To summarize his post, the drier summers will have profound impacts on the forests, grasslands, and agricultural areas.

It seems that many kinds of trees are very delicately attuned to particular patterns of precipitation and temperature; changes lead to weakening, disease, and then "megafires" that are much more destructive than "normal" fires. The author discusses the biggest fires in American history, over 100 years ago, that seem to have been caused by the massive deforestation then occurring. A question I have is, is the dessication of the American West similar to the accelerating dessication of the Amazon, both the result of deforestation?

The post also discusses the plight of agricultural areas; basically, you're damned if you depend on rainfall that will be decreasing during the summer, and you're damned if you depend on irrigation, because the aquifers and mountain ice packs are decreasing. He details the effects on grains and other agricultural produce. I didn't know that potatoes, orchards, and vegetables all depend on irrigation for most of their water needs.

I realize that modeling the long-term behavior of the climate is hard enough, but it seems to me that it would be important to model the effects of those changes on our local ecosystems as well.

Friday music blogging: She & Him

I have an enormous and longstanding celebrity crush on actress Zooey Deschanel. I was a Deschanelophile way back when I saw her in Mumford, and then Almost Famous sealed the deal. My wife and I even loved Elf, the dumb 2003 xmas comedy with Will Ferrell. Some of the cutest parts of that movie are […]

Ralph Nader might jump into the presidential race

[UPDATE: Yep, Nader is officially in.] Ralph Nader is set to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday (as David noted), and that has tongues wagging. Might he use the occasion to announce that he’s jumping into the presidential race? As you already know, he ran in 2000, garnering 2.74 percent of the popular […]

California sewage makes for femme fish, says study

Chemicals in southern California wastewater are sneaking past sewage-treatment plants and into the ocean, where they can seriously wack out fishy hormone levels, according to preliminary research. Flame retardants, PCBs, residue from long-banned pesticide DDT, and other chemicals from pills and beauty products have all showed up in the water, via human pee. An ongoing […]

Mary Matalin calls global warming ‘a largely unscientific hoax’

Mary Matalin, conservative operative and wife of liberal operative James Carville, explained on CNN today why conservatives don't like McCain's views on global warming: It's "a largely unscientific hoax." Oh, well, then never mind.

Her husband takes a different view (duh): "What we need to do, as a party, is try our best to focus on those two issues, energy independence and global warming, above the other environmental and energy issues out there."

So to him, global warming is the top environmental issue. To her it is a hoax. If they can be married, why can't the Sunnis and Shiites live in harmony?

From Bottle to Bikini

Cork tease Attention oenophiles: Korks 4 Kids wants your cork. Big corks, little corks — size doesn’t matter. Your cork will go places you never imagined, until you get that all-over warm feeling that you get from … helping children. Why, what were you thinking? Photo: iStockphoto On our soapbox A Brit film fest asking […]

Massey incest redux

So, remember how two justices on the W. Va. Supreme Court have recused themselves from the Massey case? One was photographed frolicking on vacation with Massey CEO Don Blankenship on the French Riviera. The other has publicly criticized Blankenship. The latter fellow said that a third judge — Justice Brent Benjamin, who received $3.5 million […]