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McNerney is giving Pombo a run for his money

A year ago it was virtually unthinkable that Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) — right-wing darling, fundraiser extraordinaire, champion of polluting industries, and enemy No. 1 of the environmental community — could be unseated by any Democrat, much less one with zero political experience to his name. But now, a week and a half before Election […]

Bigger than we thought

It was big news a few weeks ago when Google announced plans to put a solar voltaic system on its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The system -- the largest customer-owned system on a corporate building -- will create 1.6 MW of electricity a year.

But according to a leaked company document, that was just a small part of a much more ambitious plan.

A brief post-preamble

As David said, I am going to be reposting, article by article, my How To Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide here at Grist. Before beginning, I would like to make a correction, present a plan, offer an explanation, and make a request.

Order your heritage turkeys now (if you eat turkey)

For those of you responsible for producing a Thanksgiving meal that features a turkey, it's time to start thinking about ordering one.

You can order a heritage turkey from a local farmer in certain states. To learn more about heritage turkeys, and for contact information for local farmers, go to Slow Food's "Ark of Taste."

We need better ways to measure well-being

For a moment, let's ignore the political context of this NYT article (about how incumbents are having difficulty capitalizing on the "strong economy" in this fall's U.S. election). As ur-blogger Matthew Yglesias points out, there's something seriously amiss with reporting that describes the economy thus ...

... the economy has not looked so good in a long time. ... the Dow Jones industrial average has finally returned to its glory days of the late 1990's, setting records almost daily ... glowing economic statistics ...

... and so on, all with the subtext, "Hey, we're doing great!" -- all while burying the followng down in the bowels of paragraph 30:

A new series

We've all encountered them, shuffling across the cultural landscape like desiccated zombies: arguments about climate change that have been bludgeoned with a thousand rebuttals, but keep lurching to life, attacking again and again. Each time they appear, the search begins again for the same rebuttals, the same citations and resources. In the face of this kind of undead onslaught, even Buffy might lose her perk.

Coby Beck wants to help. Over the course of 2006, he's written a series of posts called "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic." He wanted to ...

... provide a layman's guide to defending against the assorted specious attacks that are out there, both by pointing out the basic logical fallacies they are based on and providing some appropriate reference material to avoid the typical "is too, is not" exchanges these things frequently devolve into.

Mission accomplished, as they say, almost 60 carefully argued posts and hundreds of citations later.

I'm very happy to report that Coby has agreed to join us here at Gristmill, and happier yet to report that he'll be bringing his series with him. Each entry will be updated, improved, or polished as necessary and then published on Gristmill, one per day.

Survival of the Ritziest

Threatened frogs get cushy new habitat at a Panamanian hotel Hundreds of frogs and toads can be found in an unusual habitat in Panama — Rooms 28 and 29 of the Hotel Campestre in the town of El Valle de Anton. An international crew of biologists, environmentalists, and zoo employees relocated the critters to save […]

Pace: the Final Frontier

Engineers hope to harvest human energy Scientists and engineers are looking to make use of human-powered energy. Don’t worry, they don’t want to hook you up to electrodes; the means of capturing the energy may be as unobtrusive as a matrix of pressure pads under sidewalks and floors. “When we walk along a pavement, eight […]

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

A new series gives you the ammunition No matter how many times they are bludgeoned with informed rebuttals, the same skeptical arguments about climate change keep lurching back to life like zombies. It can get tiresome searching for the same counterarguments over and over again. A new series on Gristmill aims to put all those […]

Eco-friendly Fire

British arms manufacturer producing green weapons One of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers, British Aerospace, is investing heavily in eco-friendly weapons. Soldiers and civilians may now be blown up by a recyclable explosive, hit by a reduced-toxin rocket, or bombed by a fuel-efficient fighter jet. Biodegradable land mines and their victims both turn into compost […]