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Breaking: There are skeptics

A fine piece of reporting from Gannett News Service, tipping off its readers to the fact that there's a small group of skeptics who don't believe global warming is a threat.

In case readers missed that info in every single other piece of vapid he-said she-said transcription that passes for journalism on this subject.

Lawn Gone

Homeowners rethink their water-sucking lawns A “delawning” movement is sprouting up around the U.S., as a handful of homeowners switch from resource-intensive grassy green expanses to drought-tolerant, native, and/or edible gardens. “It’s about shifting ideas of what’s beautiful,” says Fritz Haeg, an L.A. architect whose Edible Estates project transforms front yards into fruit and vegetable […]

Big Brother Knows Best

House bill would keep states from setting tough toxics rules House Republicans are pushing legislation that would keep states from setting standards for pesticides and health-threatening industrial chemicals that are more stringent than federal regulations. If passed, the bill could nullify a California ban on brominated fire retardants, for example, and restrictions in San Francisco […]

Oil hits $78/barrel

Ouch.

Talking point: Climate nonlinearity

Global warming will not necessarily mean a slow, steady rise in temperature, to which we can gradually adjust. Climate history contains sudden, lurching reconfigurations. Says the IPCC, as quoted by the U.S. EPA, "complex systems, such as the climate system, can respond in non-linear ways and produce surprises."

We might be able to adapt to an incremental warming trend, but such a surprise -- e.g., the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation -- would be likely be catastrophic.

What are the chances of a sudden shift? No one knows for sure. Low, we think, for now, probably. Such things are, almost by definition, difficult to predict with any certainty. What we do know is that we increase the probability of such a catastrophe with every ton of CO2 we put in the atmosphere.

We are rolling dice with humanity's future.

Eddie Vedder to shame you with his environmental giving

Pop-superstars-turned-moody-hasbeens-turned-pop-superstars Pearl Jam recently pledged to donate $100,000 to groups that focus on climate change and other environmental concerns, as a way to offset their carbon emissions. Many of the recipients are, not surprisingly, in the Seattle rockers' home state. (Although there's at least one local nonprofit they seem to have missed ... what were they thinking?)

While the "carbon neutral" concept is trendy right now, Pearl Jam has followed this model for donations before.

Pearl Jam has aided other green causes in the past, including donating money to preserve a Madagascar rain forest to atone for environmental damage wrought by its last tour.

Vedder also recently gave an extremely large tip to his hair stylist to atone for the Mohawk hairdo he sported for their last album.

Be very afraid

An unusually forthright commentary from Lee Dye on ABC:

But how much will it change? How will that affect us? And how soon?

Those are the tough questions, and some of the answers will remain elusive for years to come. After all, predicting climate, even day to day, is foggy at best. Given the variables, it may be the most difficult science of all.

But many experts confide privately what they aren't yet ready to announce publicly: Change is accelerating at a dramatic rate.

Talking Points

Climate and energy have entered mainstream dialog. They're being discussed on op-ed pages and cable news, by ordinary people around the water cooler (do they still have those?), outside of environmental and policy-wonk circles. Hell, Rory's grandparents bought her a Prius on Gilmore Girls. Or so I hear.

This is all to the good: these are extraordinarily important issues, and every concerned citizen should be at least minimally educated about them.

Problem is, there are lots of folks out there with a vested interest in confusing people and derailing these discussions. They are armed with misleading factoids and bogus rhetorical tricks, and seek to kick up enough dust to convince the public that it's all just too complex and they should leave it up to politicians -- politicians bought by the very vested interests in question. There are massive misinformation campaigns afoot, and your average Joe or Jane is outgunned.

So, I'm starting a series of posts called Talking Points. The idea is to provide short bits of ammunition for y'all to take out into the public square. I want to collect arguments or ideas or notions or turns of phrase that might be useful when talking to people about climate- and energy-related matters. I'll try to avoid wonkiness and scientific jargon.

And of course I'd love it if you left your own talking points in comments, or emailed them to me.

Stay tuned.

Clean Automotive Technology funding

It's over a week old, but it's still worth reading Michael Stebbins' piece in Seed about the cool things coming out of the EPA's Clean Automotive Technology program -- including the nifty "hydraulic hybrid" UPS truck -- and Congress' short-sighted refusal to fund it adequately:

... between 2002 and 2006, the President's annual budget requests and Congress had tag-teamed the Clean Automotive Technology program, slashing its budget in half to $10 million per year for the 35 engineers working to reinvent the engine. In his budget request for 2007 -- released just after his State of the Union address, in which he announced his Advanced Energy Initiative to decrease our oil imports from the Middle East as much as 75% by 2025 -- the President asked Congress to cut the budget for the program to a paltry $3.6 million.

Jerks.

Not to get all grassy knoll, but …

From the I-don't-want-to-get-all-grassy-knoll-on-y'all-I'm-just-sayin' department, I offer two items buried in the business page of today's New York Times:

* On page C3, we learn that Ken Lay isn't the only businessman involved in the Enron mess who came to an untimely end. Here is the NYT:

A British banker who provided evidence to the F.B.I. and the United States Department of Justice about Enron-related transactions has been found dead in an East London park, days ahead of the politically charged extradition of his former colleagues to Houston to stand trial.

Scotland Yard, the Times goes on, "said the death was being treated as 'unexplained' and that officers from its homicide and serious crime units were investigating."