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Overlap in supervision allows sea turtles to slip through the cracks

Ask any number of surfers, divers, and ocean-goers of all stripes what one of their favorite ocean critters is, and chances are a good percentage of them will mention sea turtles.

George Will’s latest column tests the limits of self parody

George Will pulls off a real triple axel of hackery in his latest column, taking the Stepford flimflam of Bjorn Lomborg and ladling on a glutinous serving of his own pinkie-raised pomposity. Rarely has such a poor grasp of the facts been presented with such preening self-regard … at least since the last George Will […]

Insomniac zebra fish and stranded sea-turtle babies

... in defiance of a 1959 treaty that agreed no new claims would be laid on Antarctica, press reports say Britain is poised to claim a million square kilometers of Antarctic seabed ...

... the Canadian government announced it would add six new positions dedicated to fisheries assessment in the Arctic ...

... scientists began mapping the seafloor off the coast of Ulster. One scientist said the results would show that 90 percent of the Irish Republic is land beneath water ...

Methane from Vermont dairy farms to provide electricity for utility customers

Central Vermont Public Service is laying claim to one of the fastest-growing renewable energy programs in the country: its customers can now choose to receive all, half, or a quarter of their electrical energy through the Cow Power program, which digests cow manure at participating dairy farms, captures the methane, and uses that to power generators. CVPS customers pay a premium of 4 cents per KWh, delivering another revenue stream for farmers, who are paid 95 percent of the market price for all of the energy sold to CVPS.

Friday music blogging: The Budos Band

I know next to nothing about The Budos Band, and don’t really want to. I enjoy that they’re somewhat mysterious, as though they sprung through a spacetime warp direct from the 1970s, untainted by the 21st century. Their albums are The Budos Band I and The Budos Band II. This song is from the latter, […]

Stewart on Gore

Here’s Jon Stewart (who’s got a spiffy new website) on Gore’s Nobel win:

From Playboy to Pilsner

Seeing Redford The Sundance Kid bares all in Playboy this month (hello, Mr. October!), revealing the naked truth about his dirty fetish: racing fast cars, like his low-mpg Porsche. But you knew that already, right? Because you totally read Playboy for the articles. Sims U Been Gone More proof of the far-reaching effects of global […]

From denying climate disruption to denying a coal plant permit application

Who knew Kansas and Oklahoma could be so far apart? Worlds apart.

From an interview with Inhofe:

[Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.)] also co-authored an article for the Energy Law Journal on "Energy and the Environment: The Future of Natural Gas in America."

In the interview, this self-described "one-man Truth Squad" provides a frank and candid account of the evolution of his position on global warming, from believing that manmade gases are the cause of climate change to advocating against the reduction of man-made gases at great costs.

Inhofe also provides in the interview four points in rebuttal to the global warming issue as presented in what he described as Vice President Al Gore's "science fiction movie.".

Against this: Kansas denies a coal plant's permit application -- because of CO2 concerns!

Climate change mitigation strategy could actually damage the planet

Earl Killian sends me this WSJ op-ed: "Thinking Big on Global Warming" (subs. req'd.). He sees some good news in it -- the WSJ "published a non-denier [opinion] piece."

Yes, but geo-engineering is one of the delayers' sexiest strategies -- holding out the promise of a pure techno-fix that doesn't require all those annoying regulations needed to completely change our energy system. The conservative (duh!) authors of the WSJ piece embrace trying to "develop capabilities for increasing the fraction of sunlight that is reflected outward by the upper atmosphere back into space." They claim: "We know it would work because it happens naturally all the time."

Yes, volcanoes spew out aerosols that cool the Earth, but I have previously debunked aerosol geo-engineering. The authors seem unaware of a major study that finds "doing so would cause problems of its own, including potentially catastrophic drought."

And, of course, this strategy allows unfettered ocean acidification, and as noted recently, "when CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans."

So we might temporarily stave off superheating the planet, but still bring ruinous climate change and destroyed the ocean ecosystem! The authors claim:

Do not try to sell climate geo-engineering to committed enemies of fossil fuels. Although several geo-engineering options appear to be highly cost-effective, ideological opposition to them is often fierce. Fashionable blogs are replete with conspiracy theories and misinformed attacks.

Who are these enemies of fossil fuels? I don't know such people. I know enemies of greenhouse gases. I am one of those. But we tend to like natural gas, and many of us would be okay with coal if you added permanent carbon capture and storage. Greenhouse-gas mitigation avoids catastrophic global warming with high confidence and few negative side effects (and, indeed, many positive side effects). No one has proposed a geoengineering plan that meets either of those two tests.

As food series ends, the story is just beginning

During my trip to the Midwest this summer, I saw many unsettling sights: vast monocropped landscapes lashed regularly with chemicals, insidious low-slung buildings that imprison thousands of animals and concentrate their waste. Yet I returned oddly invigorated, buzzing about Iowa’s promise as a sustainable-ag mecca. Amid the cornfields and the CAFOs, I saw thriving homestead […]