Latest Articles

Lesson: be careful to whom you lend your name

Forbes is engaging in some hard-hitting investigating of various companies' finances.

Their latest article considers the alleged troubled finances of Earth Biofuels, a small Dallas-based outfit trying to build a national chain of filling stations dispensing biodiesel. The company took on country-western singer Willie Nelson as a director when it licensed his name for "BioWillie®", the brand under which the biodiesel, made mainly from U.S. soybeans, is marketed.

Polar bears may be listed as threatened in U.S., and more

Read the news items highlighted in this week’s podcast: Threat Level: White Since U Been Gone Naughty and Nice Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Ed Over Heels We Got Our Kicks in 2006 Dingell Minded A Different Angle

What are you optimistic about?

Every year at the Edge Foundation World Question Center they ask a single question of a huge collection of diverse thinkers. The results are always fascinating — intellectual crack, as BBC radio has it. (I wrote a bit about last year’s question.) This year’s question is: What are you optimistic about, and why? As you’d […]

Things will fall apart

Shorter James Kunstler: Sure, things didn’t fall completely apart in 2006, but this year … this year it’s gonna happen!

The supposed ‘middle way’ is debunked

Andy Revkin produced a truly bizarre piece over the weekend: "Middle Stance Emerging in Debate Over Climate." Frankly, I’m surprised it got past the NYT’s news editors. It strikes me as a good illustration of the limits of traditional journalism, since what Revkin’s up to is not a description of a state of affairs — […]

Guaranteed true, top to bottom!

In 2007:

1. Prius sales will peak and begin a slow decline as consumers anticipate 2008 models from competitors that will have similar or better performance and therefore higher status.
2. Electric hybrid bikes will become increasingly popular as a commuting tool thanks to improved battery technology.
3. The SUV fad will continue to fade.
4. The corn ethanol pyramid scheme will continue to play out based on the canard that the use of environmentally destructive biofuels is a necessary (but in theory, temporary) evil.
5. Biofuel crops (primarily those used for biodiesel) will accelerate the loss of rainforests and other carbon sinks (and the biodiversity contained within them).
6. More biofuel will be imported than in any previous year.
7. More lifeforms will be declared extinct.
8. The number of hungry people in the world will increase (as it did this year, by 4 million).
9. Mustaches will return as an attractive and stylish fashion statement.
10. Grist will kick some serious ass.

Happy New Year.

Make your leftover Xmas sweets into something yummy

In my experience, even a calm and pleasant holiday results in a house strewn with bits of paper, empty boxes filled with styrofoam peanuts, a guilt-inducing list of thank-you notes to be written, and a fridge full of leftovers. Here are three recipes for "recycled" holiday desserts that turn less-than-enjoyable ingredients into actual treats:

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

Louisiana sliding into the Gulf of Mexico, new report says Talk about kicking a state while it’s down. A new report says swampy southeastern Louisiana isn’t just sinking — it’s sliding sideways into the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists say Mississippi River sediments are causing Cajun country bedrock to shift. While those rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged area […]

Naughty and Nice

How the energy industry spent its holiday vacation While you were whooping over your Wii, the energy industry exulted in a few holiday gifts of its own. Just before Christmas, a federal appeals court gave ExxonMobil a $2.5 billion break, slashing in half the $5 billion in damages that had been awarded to thousands of […]

Since U Been Gone

Loss of wayward ice shelf linked to climate change, scientists say You know that part in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox is holding his family photo, and the people in it are disappearing? And he feels faint, because he knows he’s next? That happened in a Canadian lab recently, only a lot […]