Latest Articles

From Rowing to Rhymes

Northern exposure Ways to raise climate-change awareness: Walk 1,000 miles. Skateboard across Canada. Row the Pacific. Swim the North Pole, the Baltic, a polluted river. Or, pose nude atop a Swiss glacier. Now that’s the way to highlight shrinkage. Climb every mountain man While answering the call at Live Earth, Cammie Dee got a call […]

Making energy efficiency possible for cheapskate homeowners

Apropos of my recent realization that if I had bought a new furnace on credit rather than waiting to save up the cash I'd have saved a bundle of money over the last 5 years, here's something I've been meaning to write about for months: a Vancouver developer that came up with a smart -- I mean, diabolically smart -- financing scheme to build a super-efficient condo complex. (Proving, I suppose, biodiversivist's point that spreadsheets are, in fact, wonderful things.)

Welcome Back, Potter

Final Harry Potter tome is “greenest book in publishing history” Feel that crackle in the air? That’s millions of Harry Potter fans trying not to fidget as they wait for the book’s midnight release. (Or trying not to freeze, in the case of an Australian fan who was rescued after diving into a frigid lake […]

All Kinds of Sickening

Congress grills FEMA on toxic post-hurricane trailers The media have reported for at least two months that the trailers used to house refugees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita have been giving off fumes that are making some people sick. Now it seems the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has fended off those accusations, has known […]

Too, Too Sullied Flesh

Meat production spews more greenhouse gases than a three-hour joyride The next time you chomp a hamburger, think of this: the process of getting that beef to your bun may have spewed more greenhouse-gas emissions than leaving all your house lights blazing while taking a three-hour joyride in your car. Researchers looked at beef production […]

It’s not optimal, but he says he’s serious about it at least

As you’ll recall, a few weeks ago Rep. John Dingell said in an interview that he plans to introduce a carbon tax bill, "to see how people really feel about this." He expressed doubt that the American people are willing to pay what it will cost. Reaction from progressives was swift and vicious. Everyone assumed […]

It’s easy being not green

In an effort to keep expanding the flow of oil, companies such as BP have been trying to extract oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, which is like trying to drink coffee after you've dumped it into sand. The process is so energy-intensive that there is talk of putting the world's largest nuclear power plant on top of the tar sands in order to heat them up enough to use them, and lakes of toxic water have been created there.

And where will that goop go to get processed? BP has decided that it would like to process much of it on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, at its huge refinery, and they have been given a waiver by Indiana and the U.S. EPA to expand their pollution dumping, according to the Chicago Tribune:

The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery -- already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes -- can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

Good times

Good times. He must miss them. Apparently he’s given up entirely and just started posting gibberish. (h/t reader MR) Update [2007-7-20 8:5:14 by David Roberts]: Seems they’ve taken the gibberish down. Or rather, they’ve taken that specific piece of gibberish down. Gibberish like this lingers on.

Just when you thought it was over

Spreadsheets are wonderful things. Rhett Butler has put together a really nice cost analysis comparing the value of tropical peat bogs to palm oil. In a nutshell, this chart shows how much money the owners of these peat bogs could make in the next thirty years, depending of course on the future prices of palm oil and carbon offset credits:

Mystery ads

There’s a series of very strange political videos out recently on YouTube. They parody Republicans, but purport to be campaign ads for Rudy Giuliani. Nobody knows who’s making them, or why. So mysterious! This one’s mildly amusing on global warming and oil: (h/t: reader KW)