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And green is the new rock

Check out these 45 iPod Cases made from recycled 45 rpm records. You can choose your favorite piece of vinyl and have the case custom-made. So what’ll it cost ya to use old media to protect your new media? $45, of course. In other music news, green is the new rock. Seriously. When D.C. classic […]

Cheney’s investment guy attacks Cheney’s energy policy

Here’s an amusing story about an attack on the Bush administration’s energy policies from … Dick Cheney’s investment manager: "What were we thinking?’ [Jeremy] Grantham demands in a four-page assault on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president. Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, […]

Is it greener after all?

Tyler Cowen disputes the frequent assertion that Manhattanites have the smallest environmental footprints around. He says: Praising Manhattan is a bit like looking only at the roof of a car and concluding it doesn’t burn much gas. Manhattan supports its density only by being surrounded by a broader load of crud. … If you think […]

A road runs through this issue

The Feb. 8 Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that a judge has again chastised the Bush administration for violating federal law when it overturned the Clinton-era Roadless Rule. And she has issued an order protecting 52 million acres of federal roadless forest lands nationwide from roads or surface disturbance related to energy development.

Though it's likely that feds and states will continue to litigate this good idea to death (why?), I'm going to celebrate by tucking into this great new volume of essays on the topic from intrepid roadless defenders Wildlands CPR just received at my office: A Road Runs Through It. "Road-ripping," writes Annie Proulx in her foreword, "is a meaningful ritual that seeks to reestablish the correct order of the world." Amen.

And what should that tell us?

The IPCC's official total temperature increase since 1850 has gone from .6° Celsius to .76° C (or about 1.4° Fahrenheit).

The Fourth Assessment also explains that, "For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2° C per decade is projected for a range of [emission scenarios]. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about .1° C per decade would be expected."

Their best estimate for a low emissions scenario is still a temperature increase of 1.8° C by 2100. Their best estimate for a worst case emissions scenario projects 4.0° C -- and recent research suggests that would give us sea level rise of 6 inches a decade in 2100.

Whaddya say we try to stick with the low emissions scenario?

Tell it like it is, Nancy

In her continuing effort to focus attention on global warming, Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the unusual step of appearing as a witness at the House Committee on Science and Technology's hearing on The State of Climate Change. You can read her testimony here.

It’s good

Originally (paid link) published in Z Magazine, February, 2007 Volume 20 #2. Reposted with permission.

Review: Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning

Doubleday Canada, 2006, 304 pp.

By George Monbiot

George Monbiot's Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning is a brilliant, flawed, and deeply important look at what it will take to slow global warming below a catastrophic level.

Monbiot, one of the clearest and wittiest writers about politically difficult subjects today, tackles the problem of phasing out fossil fuels without illusions. Books on global warming normally expend most of their words to show how dangerous the problem is. Then, at the last, they point to a few partial solutions and say "more like that, please." Or they simply give up on a comfortable life for everyone and turn to a kind of gloating Puritanism and say "You will have to suffer, but it will be good for you in the end." In contrast, Monbiot takes a step-by-step look at how different sectors of our economy could run on drastically less carbon.

Ugh

Yesterday the White House released a letter defending its record on global warming. I was trying to build up the intestinal fortitude necessary to say something intelligent about it — something other than PUKE! — but Chris Mooney beat me to it. Just read his thing. Suffice to say, this is the latest of many […]

Gore to announce climate-change concerts around the world

This July 7, the world will rock out in the name of stopping climate change. And at the head of it, global warming’s resident rock star: Al Gore. We mentioned this waaaay back in December, but news is hitting the rest of the dinosaurs mainstream media just today. Much like the worldwide party that rocked […]

Follow-up on think tank paying writers to question IPCC

The "AEI vs. AR/4" story has gotten a surprising amount of play in the mainstream press over the last few days. Briefly: last summer conservative think tank AEI sent letters to two of my colleagues asking them to participate in a "critique" of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR/4). Oh yeah, and they offered them $10,000 to do this.

My initial blog post from July can be found here. It got picked up by the mainstream press and has been widely reported on over the last few days (e.g., here and here).

This morning I received an email from AEI, asking me to post a statement about this kerfuffle, as well as a revised description of their examination of the AR/4. I posted them on my personal blog here.

Here is my critique of AEI's new proposal to critique the AR/4.