Latest Articles

Interior Secretary Kempthorne gets award for record refusal to protect endangered species

The Center for Biological Diversity yesterday presented Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne with its first ever "Rubber Dodo" award, in honor of going a record one year and 90 days without listing a new species as endangered or threatened.

The previous record holder was Ronald Reagan's notorious Interior Secretary James Watt, who went a comparatively wimpy 376 days without listing a new species. Meanwhile, the Fish and Wildlife Service has classified 279 species as "candidates" for listing, because they're in danger of extinction, but haven't yet been given protection by Secretary Kempthorne.

"That waiting list could turn into a 'too-late' list without government action, as species in dire need of protection go extinct," the Center said in an email to its supporters.

According to the Center's Kieran Suckling, some of the endangered species waiting for Dirk to stay the hand of permanent annihilation are the elfin wood warbler of Puerto Rico, the Pacific fisher (a wolverine-like animal that prowls the sylvan coasts of the Northwest), and the red knot, an extraordinary bird whose tale of decline is one of the saddest and weirdest.

Survey reveals truth about environmental fibs

A study by (insurance company?) Norwich Union has unearthed the truth about how green Brits really are: The good news: Of the 1,580 people surveyed across Britain, more than half considered unethical living as much of a social taboo as drunk driving — or, as the Brits call it, drink-driving. The bad news: Due to […]

Interesting hydrogen-generating technology from Purdue

I hesitate to post this for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I think our fixation with maintaining automobility is going to be our undoing.

But there's no denying that if this works out as advertised*, this is a real step toward a noncarbon future that includes more energy, rather than less.

* Caveats:

1. The presser doesn't discuss the energy balance for reformulating the catalytic materials; aluminum is sometimes known as "congealed electricity" because of the energy cost of refining the virgin bauxite.
2. I have no idea how much gallium there is, although the presser suggests it's recyclable.
3. You would need to work out the energy cost of the whole process train, including the cost involved in building the windmills or PV panels needed to power the recycling process -- it's quite possible that this would turn out to be just another way to burn coal to make hydrogen, when all inputs and outputs are considered. We don't need ways to use coal to make hydrogen; we need ways to be entirely coal-free.

Magnetic cooling tech hits a milestone

Now this is hopeful: a real advance in refrigeration. Lots of potential here. How cool.

Dave’s Second Law of Sustainability Politics

Clean up coal emissions and you end up with more — and more toxic — coal ash. You get cleaner air, but you get ash that can’t be recycled (into, e.g., concrete). You breath free, but you’ve got arsenic and mercury leaching into your groundwater from coal-ash landfills. Look at this vintage coal magic: There […]

News You Already Knew

Not surprising: Rescue and recovery workers at ground zero have developed asthma at a rate that is 12 times what would be expected for adults, according to findings released yesterday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Radiation breeding of plants is way better than it sounds

Think two wrongs don’t make a right? Meet radiation breeding, a method of modifying crops by zapping them with gamma rays. While “radiation” and “modify” are unpleasant words to many, “I’m not doing anything different from what nature does. I’m not using anything that was not in the genetic material itself,” says plant breeder Pierre […]

A new study gathers 20 years of public opinion about global warming

Matthew Nisbet of Framing Science and his colleague, T. Myers, trawled through two decades of data on public opinion about global warming (sounds fun, huh?). The results will be published in the fall issue of the journal Public Opinion Quarterly.

An abstract:

Over the past 20 years, there have been dozens of news organization, academic, and nonpartisan public opinion surveys on global warming, yet there exists no authoritative summary of their collective findings. In this article, we provide a systematic review of trends in public opinion about global warming. We sifted through hundreds of polling questions culled from more than 70 surveys administered over the past 20 years. In compiling the available trends, we summarize public opinion across several key dimensions including (a) public awareness of the issue of global warming; (b) public understanding of the causes of global warming and the specifics of the policy debate; (c) public perceptions of the certainty of the science and the level of agreement among experts; (d) public concern about the impacts of global warming; (e) public support for policy action in light of potential economic costs; and (f) public support for the Kyoto climate treaty.

Unfortunately, the full text isn't available online, but Nisbet says that if you drop him an email, he'll send you a PDF. I look forward to reading it myself tonight.

Positive offset reinforcement

The Wall Street Journal has a big package … of stories on energy in their Energy Report. I think you need a subscription to see them; there’s a roundup here. I haven’t looked through everything yet, but I did like this smart, if brief, video on offsets: One of the things Gelobter’s outfit is trying […]

Feel the Glass Between Your Toes

Life’s a beach, and then the erosion gets so bad that the sand has to be replaced by crushed glass.