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Celebs stump for progressives in Calif.

The Pombo race is coming down to the wire. The national party has sent Laura "The Republican People Still Like" Bush out to pull Pombo's fat out of the fire.

The Dems are pulling out their big guns too -- their big Hollywood Elite Liberal Latte-Sipping Homo Heathen guns, that is. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner -- Bennifer II, proud parents of a beautiful 11-month-old girl -- are out in California and will appear Saturday at a Defenders of Wildlife event on behalf of Jerry "Not Pombo" McNerney. Can victory be far behind?

In other news, damn Garner's looking good for a new mother, is all I'm saying.

It’s a poor indicator of progress on global warming

A recent news article about the Stern Report contained the following gem from a Bush administration spokeswoman:

The statement from spokeswoman Kristen Hellmer said the United States is "well on track to meet the president's goal to reduce greenhouse gas intensity of our economy 18 percent by 2012."

This statement makes it sound like the Bush administration is taking on the problem of climate change head-on, with an aggressive program to reduce emissions.

But it ain't so.

A question re: fire lines and wild fires

The recent wild fires in Calif. make me wonder why fire lines (areas of land cleared of vegetation) aren't actively maintained around areas where there is housing, and even in different areas of the forest. Does it require that too much land be cleared? The labor involved has got to be less than the labor needed to fight a fire, and perhaps it could prevent firefighters from losing their lives protecting property. Does anybody know why this isn't done?

Help ’em out

Tomorrow (Wednesday), our compatriots over at Worldchanging will be officially publishing their book, with 600 pages worth of innovative solutions to the world's most pressing environmental and social problems. It's a good book, worthy of wide dissemination and discussion, filled with stories, ideas, and images that just might give you hope that humanity isn't going to commit collective suicide. Who couldn't use a little hope these days?

The publishing industry, like the movie industry, focuses intensely on the first few days' sales. If a book starts off strong, it receives media attention and publisher support. If not, it likely sinks into obscurity. The WCers have no marketing budget to speak of, so they rely on their social network for support.

More research on what kind of diet makes people healthy

Sir Robert McCarrison is not a household name, but in the 1920s this honorary physician to the King, head of post-graduate medical education at Oxford and proponent of nutrition, played an influential role in the birth of the organic food movement in Britain -- and perhaps in contemporary nutrition research as well.

‘One record year is not global warming’–Luckily, there are plenty more years to consider

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

Objection: So 2005 was a record year. Records are set all the time. One really warm year is not global warming.

Answer: This is actually not an unreasonable point -- single years taken by themselves can not establish or refute a trend. So 2005 being the hottest globally averaged temperature on record is not convincing. Then how about:

A review (and a preview) of the documentary The Great Warming

The Great Warming aims to do what other climate-change books, TV shows, and films haven’t. In lieu of purely scientific or data-based persuasion, it appeals to viewers’ sense of spiritual and moral responsibility. On that level, it succeeds. Debuting in American theaters on Nov. 3 but already making the rounds in the country’s churches, the […]

A review of Wangari Maathai’s autobiography Unbowed

October 2004 was an exciting time to be a tree-hugger in Wangari Maathai‘s home country of Kenya. When she was announced as winner of that year’s Nobel Peace Prize, many of my environmentally inclined friends and colleagues were eager to help her figure out what to do with the giant megaphone she had just been […]

BP factory accident traced to cost cutting

The Wall Street Journal:

Federal investigators said cost cutting at oil giant BP compromised safety at a Texas refinery and helped cause a deadly explosion at the plant in March 2005, in findings that significantly raise the legal and financial stakes in the disaster for the London-based oil giant.

An article on volcanoes and global warming

An article in this month's Scientific American titled "Impact from the Deep" has prompted me to write my first article on global warming. I avoid the topic because it is already covered practically every day by other commentaries. The article posits a theory that chronic and heavy volcanic activity caused some of the mass extinctions of the past, explaining how it happened along with some supporting evidence.

Today, we don't have thousands of volcanoes spewing forth massive amounts of CO2, but what we do have are billions of point sources of CO2 emissions. To give you a feel for the magnitude of our oil, coal, and gas burning, think back to the Gulf War and the thousands of oil wells that were set on fire. Look at that picture for a moment and ponder that cars in the U.S. alone emit five times more CO2 per day than those fires did at their peak -- and our coal- and gas-fired power plants emit twice as much as our cars.