Latest Articles

Build your stockpile of gas now!

Gasoline supplies right now are plumbing historic lows, just as May and the "summer driving season" are about to roll around. This fact has the industry types at the WSJ's Energy Roundup abuzz with predictions of $4/gallon gasoline, should the inevitable disruption (refinery fire, hurricane, Iran war) occur. As in years past, areas with higher cost gasoline, mostly the blue states along the oceans and Great Lakes, will see the highest prices.

Crazy quotes from everyone’s favorite skeptic

Climate skeptics love citing MIT prof Richard Lindzen, probably because, well, there aren’t many other semi-legitimate skeptics left to cite. (And how many of the dead enders can bamboozle their way into Newsweek?) But lately, it seems like Lindzen is more and more openly losing his cool. A quick survey of today’s news, for instance, […]

Why we should ban compressed chemical dusters

I have an untidy habit of eating while I'm working on my computer. Heck, I'm eating a doughnut while I write this post.

Unfortunately, my habit inevitably results in little crumbs of sandwich or potato chips or whatever making their way onto my computer keyboard. Every once in a while I look down at my crumb-ridden keyboard, get disgusted, and embark on a cleaning frenzy. And as many office workers may know, one of the easiest ways to clean a keyboard is with those compressed chemical canister thingies (pictured above). So the other day, while I was merrily blasting away at my keyboard I decided to read the contents. Big mistake.

My little 10-ounce canister contains 100 percent tetrafluoroethane, a greenhouse gas that's sometimes known as HFC-134a (meaning it's a form of hydrofluorocarbon). Before your eyes glaze over, just keep in mind that over a 20-year period, HFC-134a is roughly 3,300 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Nice.

So unless I missed something in the number crunching, using up my 10-ounce can of cleaner will have the same climate-changing effect over the next 20 years as burning at least 100 gallons of gasoline. With that much gas I could drive my trusty Honda Civic from Seattle to New York City. And then back to Chicago. And I would likely still have plenty of fuel left over for side-trips.

All that, packed into a canister retailing for $10.99 at the Office Depot around the corner.

This is not a good idea.

And it strikes me as an instance where the best remedy is pretty simple: just ban it.

Wax on, wax offsets

Gristmill’s sizable contingent of carbon offset hataz will find the latest from Joel Makower music to their hatin’ ears.

Bad news from down south

Scientific and observational data from Antarctica are driving home the message that we have entered a period of consequences.

Most recently, scientists have discovered ice streams hiding bigger reservoirs of water in West Antarctica. The evidence has "major implications for glacial melt rates and associated sea-level rises" and the rate of warming.

Poll results!

The NYT has a bucketload of important poll results. Here’s the full poll; here’s the summary: Americans in large bipartisan numbers say the heating of the earth’s atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects, the latest […]

Senators demand Congressional participation in Endangered Species Act changes

On Wednesday, several key Senators sent a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne expressing concern about an Interior Department proposal they say will weaken the Endangered Species Act. The letter states that draft revisions to the act have suggested a major overhaul of the act is under consideration and demands that the Bush administration include […]

From Flushing to Flooding

As a matter of fact, no, she can’t spare a square This turn of events was made for Grist Listin’: A suggestion to tear with care made Sheryl Crow the butt of many, many jokes this week. But did you hear how she wiped the smile off rapmaster Rove, tellin’ him climate change won’t do […]

The new NYT piece does not disappoint

I can’t believe no Gristian has yet commented on the latest Michael Pollan piece in the NYT. What, is saying “Pollan has a new piece and it’s awesome” getting tedious? This one focuses on the farm bill and how it makes us fat: A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced […]

And their PM is still in denial

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is in a sticky, yet dry, situation.

Even though a drought has caused Australia's agricultural production to fall 25 percent in the last year, Howard may have to ban irrigation so that urban centers can have drinking water.

The targeted river basin, the Murray-Darling, is known as Australia's "food bowl" because it houses 72 percent of Australia's farm and pasture land. If insufficient rain continues through the next few weeks, this year's harvest will be devastated and cities will need to implement water usage restrictions.

Prime Minister Howard doesn't accept the connection to global warming, but scientists and farmers disagree, saying "this drought has the fingerprints of climate change all over it." In climate models, Australia is predicted to be one of the first areas seriously impacted.