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By quite a bit

Two new polls show Republicans suddenly and dramatically gaining on Democrats. What was looking like a Dem "wave" is now looking like yet another squeaker. If we're lucky, maybe we'll get some recounts and court battles!

Trim those carbon love handles

In a clever take-off on Biggest Loser (one of the saddest excuses for television programming I've seen yet), Slate.com recently announced its Green Challenge, an 8-week carbon diet that provides a steady menu of simple "action items," urging participants to curb their energy-gobbling ways.

As of 8am, November 3rd, the challenge has attracted 22,572 participants for a collective CO2 weight loss of 28,865,784 pounds.

Here's hoping that carbon dieters view this as a lifestyle change and don't -- like many regular dieters -- quickly regain all the lost weight and then some.

The ethical and environmental dilemma of coffee

On a baking hot summer night a few years ago, some friends and I took a walk through our Somerville neighborhood. The day had been so warm that heat was still rising from the pavement even at 10 pm. A man from Central America was out tending his garden under the pale light of the street lamp. As my friends asked him about his plants, I thought I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a coffee bush. I had never seen one in real life, only in photographs, but I knew right away what it was.

"Is that coffee?" I asked incredulously. "Yes," he said with a grin, and then showed me that he grows it in a huge tub. He takes the coffee bush indoors during the winter and devotes an entire room of his house to caring for his tropical plants. He controls the heat and humidity and runs a sun lamp all winter long. He said he picks and roasts all his own coffee, just as he had before coming to the U.S.

For most of us, however, coffee is a tropical product imported from far away -- and therein lies a dilemma. Since October was Fair Trade month, I decided to check out some of the local Fair Trade businesses to see what their take is on importing tropical products.

A month’s worth of beautiful and/or fascinating astronomy photos from NASA

For your Sunday time-wasting pleasure, last month's selections from Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sobering lessons from 250 million years ago

One of the very few reasonable points made by climate skeptics is that it's hard to have a great deal of confidence in computer-model predictions of a system as complex and varied as the global climate system. It is comprised of several subsystems -- the ocean, the atmosphere, the cryosphere, and the biosphere -- each extremely complex in its own right. There is some reassurance to be had in hindcasts and other modeling successes, not the least being the triumph of model predictions over the contradictory satellite records.

But there are really so many unknowns, both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, that it is reasonable to cast a suspicious eye on a forecast of global mean temperature in the year 2100. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a climate scientist who would not admit it.

But the obfuscators and denialists fail to realize something critical: in decision-making, especially when potential futures are extremely bad, uncertainty is not your friend.

‘What about mid-century cooling?’–No one said CO2 is the only climate influence

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: There was global cooling in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, even while human greenhouse-gas emissions were rising. Clearly, temperature is not being driven by CO2.

Are the wind credit cards deceptive?

A kerfuffle has broken out in the green blogosphere. The state of play thus far:

• Steve Johnson noticed the new "Wind Power Card" from Renewable Choice Energy, available now at a Whole Foods near you. He is not a big fan:

  When you buy a card, you don't get any wind-generated electricity delivered to your home however. In fact, all you get is a card that doubles as a refrigerator magnet. Actually, you don't even get any credits, it's just a word they use to give you a sense of getting something from your money. The money you spend goes towards helping Renewable Choice Energy buy and sell electricity.
  
  The cards are not even an investment, because you won't get any material value in return. It's all going to help another company get rich. Most companies seek investors to secure capital. But in this case, RCE is asking people for free money under the context of doing your part to help the environment.

• The mighty BoingBoing (1.7 million unique visitors a day) picked it up and added some RCE bashing.
• Over at Sustainablog, Jeff responded with some umbrage, defending RCE.
• The mighty BoingBoing responded in kind, and several readers chimed in. Consensus: wind credits may be OK, but the cards are deceptive.
• Shea Gunther, founder of RCE, pointed to a post about how wind credits work, and another with pictures of how the cards are presented in Whole Foods.
• CitizenGreen has thoughts; GroovyGreen weighs in; so does Ecospree; Jeff again; Treehugger too.

What to make of all this?

‘The satellites show cooling’–No, they don’t

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Satellite readings, which are much more accurate, show that the earth is in fact cooling.

I wonder how long before this one stops coming up?

Go veggie — a poll

With Science about the collapse of the world's fisheries, I think it's appropriate once again to examine a topic that doesn't get enough attention: our diets. Not only does eating fish exacerbate the collapse of marine ecosystems and lead to the death of millions of other creatures, including turtles, dolphins, and whales, but the energy used to catch deep-sea fish is equivalent to factory-farmed beef.

Why only takings?

I have a question about these "regulatory takings" measures (which Eric is ably blogging about here, here, and here). Maybe Eric can answer it, or one of you can.

The basic idea behind these things is as follows: the government passes some new regulation that restricts land use; a landowner thereby loses some of the value of his land (e.g., he can no longer sell it to a strip mall developer); the government is obligated to compensate that owner for the lost value. Only fair, right?

Put aside the practical consequences for a moment. Instead, answer me this: