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From Spooky to Spendy

Mask your excitement Are you ready for a green Halloween, boos and ghouls? Get freaky with a pumpkin keg and vegan gingerbread massacre. We’re thinking about trick-or-treating as Cameron Diaz again, but maybe we’ll actually wear a costume this year. Photo: keith rocka A history of violence The Italian mafia has turned to environmental crime […]

Berkeley, Calif., suggests innovative solar scheme

The Berkeley, Calif., city council will soon vote on an innovative scheme to front the cost of solar panels to homeowners, who would pay the city back over 20 years as a property tax add-on. The amount to be paid back would be roughly what homeowners would save on electric bills by being sun-powered. “This […]

Interview with filmmakers behind corn expose

Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing interviews the filmmakers behind King Corn:

BP settles three federal investigations

Oil giant BP settled three federal investigations yesterday. Drumroll please … In regards to the 2005 Texas refinery explosion that killed 15 workers, BP will admit it is Beyond Guilty to felony charges of violating the Clean Air Act and not enforcing safety standards, and will pay a $50 million fine. In regards to last […]

Gore, partisanship, and climate change

A Gore conservatives could love? Photo: Eric Neitzel/WireImage. One of the stranger things I sometimes read about Al Gore is that because he is so partisan, because he turns off a certain bloc of the U.S. public, he is flawed as a leader on climate change. Surely the issue deserves a prophet that’s not so […]

Says uptight libertarian wonk

I don’t understand what Steven Landsburg is supposed to be saying here. By his own admission, the position Gore advances is in line with the Stern Review. But Stern showed his work, with a few hundred pages on discount rates and risk assessments, and Gore just made a movie that got seen by tens of […]

White House spokesfolks play up health benefits of climate change

Recent Senate testimony on the public-health impacts of climate change by the director of the Centers for Disease Control was watered down because the White House wanted “to focus that testimony on public health benefits,” White House spokesperson Dana Perino said this week. She went on to state that U.S. experts are attempting to determine […]

U.S. blocks consensus at international global warming conference … 17 years ago

Does it seem to you like nothing ever changes in the world? Well, you're right, and now I have hard evidence. I was searching through the archive of Bob Park's What's New newsletter when I ran across this snippet, right above an update about the miracle of cold fusion:

At the World Climate Conference in Geneva this week, the United States blocked consensus on specific goals for reduction of carbon dioxide emission. As What's New predicted a month ago, the US sided with such backward nations as China and the Soviet Union, and oil producers like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Our traditional allies, Western European nations, Canada Japan, New Zealand and Australia, said they could cut emissions through energy efficiency measures at no net cost. A German study even concludes they can make money -- selling energy-saving technologies to backward countries like the US. John Knauss, the head of NOAA who led the US delegation, contended the revised Clean Air Act would lead to significant CO2 reductions, but a recent estimate from EPA put the reduction at only about 2%.

The date of the newsletter: November 9, 1990. Seems like it could have been yesterday. Or tomorrow.

P.S. You should subscribe to Bob's newsletter. It's required reading for those who are interested in the politics of science.

Why coal is cheaper in China

Alternatives to coal are at a severe disadvantage in China: These are the realities faced by companies seeking to make themselves more environmentally friendly in China, where coal is king. Coal-fired plants are quick and cheap to build and easy to run. While the Chinese government has set goals for increasing the use of a […]

Physical chemist on climate change

Turns out that my friend's brother is a physical chemist who has a lot of interesting things to say in response to the abrupt <a href="http://e-center.doe.gov/iips/faopor.nsf/d75c18ae2432dc898525649c005de232
/cd548f8acf0efbe28525736900689456?OpenDocument">climate change modeling grant posting that the feds just put out.

He sent this great rundown on how things look from his point of view: