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And You Were Worried!

Expert panel backs Energy Department nuke-waste transport plan An expert panel organized by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that it’s likely safe to ship tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel to Nevada for disposal. After all, what could go wrong? [Spends a moment in terrified contemplation.] The panel reviewed the […]

Have They Asked the Conservative Think Tanks About This?

Climate change really screwing things up, say scientists around the world Global warming, neither a far-off abstraction nor the myth some (still!) claim it to be, is already causing mayhem worldwide, according to the latest rash of studies on the topic. In the late 20th century, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its most sustained warm stretch […]

The Bear Necessitates

Feds to consider listing polar bears as threatened Congressional Republicans waging jihad against the Endangered Species Act may soon have a new reason to hate it: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering giving polar bears federal endangered-species protections because climate change is melting their Arctic sea-ice habitat. If the feds are compelled to […]

Food imports may force new food policies

A little over a year ago The Wall Street Journal (31 Jan 2005) reported that the U.S. would become a net food importer on a more or less permanent basis by the end of 2005. To me, this is an immense challenge to our food security, but also marks a great opportunity for the U.S. to rebuild its food markets. I'm interested in how others see it.

Pooln

Check out Pooln, a nifty web-2.0-y tool that uses a "community/social-network approach to carpooling." You plug in your home zip code and your work zip code and it tries to find you someone to carpool with -- it even has RSS feeds for zip codes, in case a new carpooler shows up. The future is now!

There's a decent interview with the proprietor of Pooln on eHub.

Deutsch determined to further embarrass self

Oh Jeebus. I haven't written much about the sad, hilarious, but mostly sad saga of George Deutsch, the late lamented NASA press aide who spent his days telling some of the world's premiere scientists to be sure to follow mentions of the Big Bang with the word "theory" and to stop being so icky-scary about the whole global warming thing, and then got called on it, and then resigned in shame, and then sunk further into shame when a blogger uncovered the fact that he didn't graduate from Texas A&M, contra his resume, and may not have graduated from college at all. Lots of other bloggers and newspapers have covered it in detail.

But this ... dude. George. A piece of friendly advice: STFU.

And the award for truthiness goes to …

Environmental Action and DeSmog Blog both got this already, but it's too hilarious to pass up:

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists presented their annual journalism award to ... wait for it ... Michael Crichton.

Yes, this Michael Crichton.

What's a satirist to do?

Finally, some real environmentalists

We've found a little slice of heaven for Jeff!

High-end book printing races to the bottom.

While we're on the topic of shocking revelations regarding high-profile green types, check out what I found out when reviewing two great, sustainable-minded books for Grist. The books, Michael Ableman's Fields of Plenty and Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio's Hungry Planet, are big, beautiful, and lavishly illustrated, with powerful photographs and printed on really, really nice paper (especially Fields). Thus I was stunned at their relatively paltry price tags: $40 for Hungry, $35 for Fields. I found the answer to this riddle inside their dust jackets: One was printed in China, the other in Singapore.

The fossil-fuel energy embedded in these books rises even as their retail price tags fall, financed by cheap labor overseas. Ah, the wonders of neoliberal globalization!

Bushies restore forest research funding

Man, journalism is hard! America is addicted to oil -- oh wait, no it isn't. Evangelicals aren't fighting global warming -- oh wait, yes they are. (And by the way, hallelujah!) The Bush administration has suspended funding for forest research that contradicts timber policy -- oh wait, no they haven't.

A federal agency restored funding Wednesday for a study that has provided evidence for conservationists opposing the Bush administration's policy of logging after wildfires.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's decision to lift its suspension of the final year of a three-year grant to Oregon State University came a day after a congressman called for an investigation of the funding cutoff.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., had asked the Interior Department's inspector general to examine whether the bureau was punishing the researchers for their findings.

Hey, I'm not complaining. Keep the good news rolling in. I'm still waiting for the front-page headline "Climate Change Not Actually a Problem After All." Maybe tomorrow? Maybe The Day After Tomorrow?