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Funny stuff

As the environment becomes a more potent political issue here in Canada, the denialists are coming out of the woodwork. Funny-man Linwood Barclay, in the Toronto Star, has a pair of columns this week about Al Gore's carbon-spewing ways and the importance of a second opinion, respectively.

Gore waits for the lights to change. Then, when he gets his walk signal, he proceeds across Park, strolling past dozens of idling cars and taxis and trucks that have been brought to a halt. How many tonnes of greenhouse gas were spilled into the atmosphere, just so Al Gore could cross the street?

But she owns an organic farm!

Britain's The Independent has got into the spirit of bashing celebrities for their ungreen antics ...

Liz Hurley's long-haul wedding has produced a carbon footprint so large that it would take the average British couple more than 10 years to contribute as much to heating up the planet as she and Arun Nayar have done in little over a week. It would take a typical Indian couple a massive 123 years.

According to an Oxford-based footprinting consultancy, Hurley's celebrations will result in the release of around 200 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon emissions really do mount when you charter Learjets. Only the bridal party flew by chartered jet from the Cotswalds to Mumbai -- everyone else had to go commercial. But there were seven Learjets to ferry important guests from Mumbai to Jodhpur. And then Elton John did fly his personal helicopter to Gloucestershire (sort of rhymes with Worcestershire). And the flowers and caterers were flown in too. It all adds up, I guess.

Texas renewable energy schemes

What is the most inefficient way to make electricity? Answer: power an a 15% efficient* internal combustion engine with a liquid fuel made primarily from industrial food crops to spin a generator. Someone in Houston has come up with a brilliant way to dispose of, consume, use up biodiesel. It is just a matter of time now before someone starts using biodiesel to save water by flushing toilets with it. From Renewable Energy Access:

*another screw up pointed out by commenters

Are we willing to accept global warming in exchange for cheap energy?

According to the Washington Post, Midwesterners are building a raft of new coal plants because they "see no alternative." That puts in fairly stark terms the way energy debates proceed here in the U.S. It goes like this: Rising demand is non-negotiable. Low prices are non-negotiable. Energy alternatives that accommodate sharply rising demand without raising […]

Coal-bashing is hot new trend in Congress, science circles, and business world

Is King Coal about to be deposed? Climate scientists, key members of Congress, enviros, and the progressive wing of the business world are plotting a coup d’état. Regime change isn’t likely to come soon, but this resistance movement could significantly alter the way the pollution-spewing sovereign wields its power. James Hansen. Photo: Arnold Adle/NASA The […]

Thank you from the Grist staff

A big old shout out to the kind folks at Hewlett-Packard, who through their Employee Product Gift Matching Program have helped Grist secure a new color laser printer and two new computer monitors. Grist-lovin’ HP employees made donations to our cause, covering 25 percent of the cost, and HP backed them up on the rest. […]

Cypress forests going down

A one-day phone campaign is underway today to try to get big retailers to stop selling mulch made from cypress trees.

If you would like to make a difference today, drop into this website and dial one or all three of the toll free numbers shown there. I was a little hesitant, you know, talking to a real person and all that but it turned out to be a nice experience. So, have some balls and make some calls. The operators are polite and pleasant and I have a feeling this might actually make a difference.

For a more balanced view of the situation check out this video.

AIT on Showtime

Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth will make the move to the small screen, appearing this Sunday night (8pm EDT) on Showtime. Check your local schedule.

Looking at the scope of the problem

The Global Business Network recently published a new paper -- with a new approach -- on the impacts of climate change.

Instead of beginning with carbon emissions and then calculating, with increasing uncertainty, the impacts on climate, the impacts of those changes on biophysical systems, and then the impacts of biophysical systems changes on your life, etc., down to fourth- and fifth-order effects, they take a different approach. They begin with "human and natural systems that are already in a state of dynamic tension" (i.e., vulnerable to being tipped past a tipping point) and then predict what might happen if climate change is added to these already stressed systems.

This, I think, is a better way of looking at the scope of the problem that climate change poses. But they say it better themselves. Go take a gander.

The last to react

We all know and love the "canary in a coal mine" analogy, where the canary is a first warning sign of some potential catastrophe. The Arctic is a good example of a canary for climate change, since we expect (and indeed see) the effects of climate change there first.

Then there's the anti-canary. Rather than being the first to react, the anti-canary is the last. When the anti-canary moves on an issue, you know that everyone else has already moved.

In the climate change debate, Texas is the anti-canary. With the Governor, Lt. Governor, and other senior legislators arguing that the science is not proven, Texas has been stuck in neutral on this issue while other states have taken the lead. But there are indications that the anti-canary is beginning to take climate change seriously.