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Overfishing, global warming causing increases in jellyfish populations

Ahoy, me hearties! Me hopes ye've now recovered from Talk Like a Pirate Day. Turned out to be a jolly good time here at Grist HQ aboard me ship -- a good lot of pirate jokes and a few noggins o' rum and me timbers were shivered, if ye know what I mean.

Well, this week mateys, me post was inspired by the maritime adventures of a coworker shipmate during his travels in Cabo. Apparently, after a dip in the refreshing waters, his partner started to develop a large welt -- likely from a jellyfish floating stealthily nearby. The anecdote led me to mention how jellyfish had ruined many a day at the beaches where I grew up and how I thought populations were increasing due to warmer waters in recent years. Read: global warming. So I did a bit of research to find out if this is, in fact, true.

Worldwatch founder says stuff

I (w/ Lisa) had coffee this morning with Chris Flavin, president of Worldwatch Institute. He's a sharp guy, and I was thinking, hm, I wish I had my recorder, I'd interview this dude.

But look: Worldchanging already did, just yesterday. So read that.

We mostly chit-chatted about our respective organizations, but he said a couple of intriguing things.

Oldie but a goodie!

From the album Old Friends: Live on Stage, I give you Simon & Garfunkel's "Citizen of the Planet":

Movie about an eco-terrorist

This movie about eco-terrorism (or rather, about a guy who may or may not be an eco-terrorist, and his relationship with his family) looks interesting.

All smoke, no fire

Well, the "secret" NOAA fact sheet discussed in this post has now been posted in full on Roger Pielke Jr.'s site, and it contains ... nothing of any interest. It's a two-page set of talking points about hurricane science, all well-known and well-discussed. (Also read Roger's follow-up.)

It would seem, then, that Bush political appointees created this controversy out of whole cloth, by virtue of their instinct to cover things up and keep things secret -- even things that are utterly harmless.

Stupid.

Why the new “Green Revolution” in Africa may be misguided

In a bid to move “tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty” and “significantly” reduce hunger, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has teamed with the Rockefeller Foundation to launch a new “Green Revolution” in Africa. These high-profile foundations have committed a combined $150 million toward fulfilling their admirable goals. But a look […]

The connection

In the spirit of pissing off friends and foes alike, let me make the following three claims:

• Global warming is already affecting hurricane intensity, and will only do so more in coming years;
• the Bush administration is actively attempting to hide this fact from the public;
• the connection between hurricanes and global warming is not, contra conventional activist wisdom, a good argument for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Or, why the Vanity Fair treatment doesn’t do justice to food history.

It's the 1970s in Berkeley, California, and things are getting raunchy in the kitchen of Chez Panisse, where the cooks are busy revolutionizing high-end U.S. restaurant food -- among other activities:

As dealers started showing up at the back door with regularity, [one cook] and some of his acquaintances got into increasingly harder stuff. "We were doing opium stuffing," he says. "You stick it up your ass. Just a quarter of a gram, a little ball, and you bypass the alimentary canal. You don't get nauseous -- you just absorb it."

The state of play on the animal welfare question

I think it's about time to put the issue of environmentalism and animal welfare aside for the time being. It is definitely worth returning to in the future. Thank you all for your excellent comments, especially the people who disagree with me; preaching to the choir is always a waste of time. So here are what I see as the key points that came out of this weeks-long discussion:

Enormous, sprawling ‘green homes’ are not worth our admiration

In my eyes, the house pictured in this article is the embodiment of what's wrong with the green-building movement. It should be made into a "what is wrong with this picture?" poster.

The bottom line: that is a huge house with plenty of windows and cathedral ceilings built in the middle of nowhere, and it consumed a whole hell of a lot of resources. Just look at the framing that went into it. There are enough concrete blocks in that thermal mass wall to build a couple of small houses with. You can bet the two-car garage will be empty much of the time. I see no way to walk or ride a bike to anything.