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Wolverine goes green in new movie

Marvel at this: X-Men Origins: Wolverine will be an environmentally friendly production. This fourth movie based on the Marvel Comics characters is currently being filmed in New Zealand, and the producers have agreed to work with the local Queenstown Lakes District Council on a "green screen" initiative. As part of the project, the council will […]

Mayor urges Londoners to boycott bottled water

London Mayor Ken Livingstone has joined the anti-bottle brigade, exhorting Londoners to drink from the sink and declaring that bottled water served to restaurant patrons costs 500 times more than tap water and is 300 times more damaging to the environment.

Sunscreen may be contributing to coral bleaching, Lake Mead could run out of water by 2021, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Réservez, S’il Vous Plait The Lotion in the Ocean Put Your Hyde in Park Dead Mead The Velorution Will Be Incentivized Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: My Three Sins The Wonder Down Under

Seeking ideas for good green listening

For my personal benefit, and I begrudgingly suppose for the benefit of others, too, I hereby disrupt your happy Gristmillery to ask for your most highly recommended, can't-live-without podcasts (besides Grist's, of course) on the topic of anything green, anything local ag, or anything activism-related. Do leave any suggestions in the comments section, with links, pretty please.

Twenty-seven yoots arrested protesting construction of coal gas plant

A while back, Al Gore wondered publicly why young people aren’t out protesting in front of coal plants. Well, here you go: On Monday, a group of young people chained themselves together to prevent construction of a South Florida power plant — 27 of them were arrested. [UPDATE: According to Matt in comments, it was […]

Fidel Castro’s resignation may boost biofuels in Cuba

Fidel Castro’s step down after 49 years as Cuba’s leader may have implications for biofuels in the country. Castro was outspokenly critical of U.S. biofuel policy, and blocked a proposed expansion by ag giant Archer Daniels Midland into Cuba in the 1990s. But Fidel’s brother Raul, who will assume leadership of Cuba, is a biofuels […]

Notable quotable

“I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs. … I think this economy is down because we built too many houses, and the economy is adjusting.” — President George W. Bush, demonstrating his economic acumen

What happens when a group’s position statement does not reflect its members accurately?

A while back, I blogged on the huge number of scientific organizations that had put out position statements supporting the mainstream theory of human-induced global warming.

Many commenters on my post and around the internet have suggested that one can't trust a statement put out by a professional organization. They argue that these statements are not voted on by the membership, but generally drafted by an ad hoc committee and adopted by the organization's leadership.

If this small clique of members turned out to be advocates, the hypothesis goes, then the resulting statement will not reflect the overall views of the organization.

It occurred to me, however, that this is a testable hypothesis. How do we test it, you ask? We have a professional organization try to put out a statement that its members don't agree with. What would happen?

Scientists suggest transforming atmospheric CO2 into gasoline

An article published in The New York Times today describes a proposal to use carbon in the atmosphere to make gasoline. The principle itself is quite simple -- similar ideas have been proposed before. According to the article:

Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel. This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle -- equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed -- would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

The idea is purely theoretical at this point -- no factories or prototypes have been built. But even as pure speculation there's one major hurdle; the process requires large amounts of input energy. And where would this energy come from?

Confused Washington Times disses McCain and Obama on lack of carbon offsets

In a bizarre twist, the conservative Washington Times, which would normally be critical of fuzzy environmental strategies like carbon offsets, is actually attacking the candidates for not offsetting all their campaign emissions. Opening with an absurd headline, "Green crusades lot of talk," the Times writes:

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have called for strict mandatory limits to control greenhouse gases but they aren't leading by example -- each has failed to pay for offsets to cover all of his campaign's carbon emissions.

How does not taking (dubious) voluntary actions carry any implications about one's commitment to serious mandatory limits? Advocating mandatory limits is based on an understanding that two decades of the voluntary approach has not reversed emissions trends. And again and again we've seen how offsets provide at best a limited environmental benefit.

Surely the WT can find more things stories to write about. I've heard it said that Senator McCain has called for carbon limits that are in fact mandatory, but he refuses to call them mandatory. Nah, no story there ...

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.