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Rey Snarls

Top Forest Service official may be held in contempt of court The top official at the U.S. Forest Service has some ‘splainin’ to do. Mark Rey may be held in contempt of court and possibly jailed unless the USFS follows through on a court-ordered analysis of the environmental impact of a toxic flame retardant, U.S. […]

Who’s in Barge Here?

Barge spills diesel near Vancouver Island orca habitat A barge has tipped over off the coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island, creating a diesel slick over a mile long that is threatening orca habitat. The barge, which was carrying logging equipment, including a fuel truck, was just outside the boundary of an ecological reserve when it […]

Umbra on replacing a boiler

Dear Umbra, When changing boilers for heating a house for the next 30 to 40 years, should we choose gas or electric? We have gas now and want to go from 80 percent efficient to 95 percent efficient. About 60 percent of our electricity comes from Missouri River hydro and 40 percent from coal. We […]

Interview with Utah mine owner

Crandall Canyon mine owner Robert Murray took the occasion of a short interview with AP to express just how hard this whole experience has been on him, and to bitch about the miners union, which is being a big meanie to him. Poor Bob. I bet if those nine dead miners weren’t, you know, dead, […]

A simple video about CFLs

Natalie Portman, Chloe Sevigny, and Kyra Sedgwick in a National Geographic Green video about CFLs:

Feds look into space solar

Perhaps in the future, all of our stuff will be powered by space solar. Wacky.

Bush administration complicit in lead-toy debacle

While China has endured a lot of criticism from the lead-toy debacle, the Bush administration is not off the hook. Consumer advocates say the anti-regulation administration has hindered attempts to crack down on inspection of imported Chinese playthings; in addition, critics accuse the feds of encouraging the Consumer Product Safety Commission to be less oriented to consumer safety and more focused on pleasing manufacturers. "We've been complaining about this issue, warning it is going to happen, and it is disappointing that it has happened," says Tom Neltner of the Sierra Club, which sued the U.S. EPA in December after the agency chose not to require safety studies for companies using lead in children's products. China is, of course, far from guilt-free: It's currently fighting a CPSC proposal that would reduce allowable lead levels in children's jewelry.

source: McClatchy Newspapers

And don’t piss off Pearl Jam

BP’s sludge dumpage into Lake Michigan has a whole mess of people pissed off. Including green-leaning band Pearl Jam, who performed an angry li’l ditty at this year’s Lollapalooza festival. The lyrics are pretty simple; sing it with me: "Don’t go to BP Amoco!"

Conservation organization sues feds over energy development

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has sued the Department of the Interior over the authorization of thousands of new oil and gas wells, roads, and miles of pipeline in a wildlife-rich area of Wyoming. News that an organization has sued the federal government over environmental travesties is, well, not really news -- unless it's TRCP, a non-litigious group with a largely Republican membership. The move is indicative that even the Bushies' natural allies are fed up with the administration's one-track-mind approach to energy development. Case in point: The Bureau of Land Management stated that opening the Wyoming area to drilling would "have adverse impact to suitable habitat for many wildlife species" and turn hunting grounds into "an industrial setting" -- but recommended the DOI go ahead anyway.

sources: Casper Star-Tribune, The New York Times

Read on

A study by Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab, to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR), has the deniers and doubters delighted.

"Overturning the 'Consensus' in One Fell Swoop" gloats Planet Gore, which says the study "concludes that the Earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes" and so we "should expect about a 0.6°C additional increase in temperature between now and 2070″ [0.1°C per decade] if CO2 concentrations hit 550 parts per million, double preindustrial levels.

Is this possible? Aren't we already warming up 0.2°C per decade -- a rate that is expected to rise? Has future global warming been wildly overestimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus?

Or, as I argue in my book, has future global warming been underestimated by the IPCC? This is perhaps the central issue in the climate change debate, so this will be a long post. To cut to the chase, it is not possible for one study to overturn the consensus, and in any case this inadequately researched, overly simplistic, and mistake-riddled study certainly doesn't.

Climate sensitivity expert James Annan points out key mistakes that rip the guts out of Schwartz's analysis. That is strike one. Now I'll offer my two cents.