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What the meaning of ‘participation’ is

Oh, this is hilarious.

You may recall that at a recent Senate hearing, oil industry execs were asked whether their companies participated in Cheney's notorious 2001 energy task force.

They said No. That was ... what's the word? ... a lie.

Or was it? Apparently there's some dispute:

Yesterday, Marnie Funk, a spokeswoman for the GOP staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, one of the two panels that convened the hearing, said its lawyers had reached a preliminary conclusion: Based on a court decision in which two groups unsuccessfully challenged the secrecy of the Cheney task force, Funk said the executives appeared to be telling the truth.

"What we simply determined was that the definition of 'participation' was something litigated, and what the court concluded was that attending meetings, and even making presentations, did not rise to the level of fully participating," Funk said.

Gosh, it seems like, what, only one administration ago that these kinds of carefully parsed word games were considered a dire threat to the moral fiber of our children. Guess times change.

Sierra Club gets positive

As Daily Grist readers will soon learn, the Sierra Club today released "Building Better: A Guide to America's Best New Development Projects." It's just what it sounds like: A complimentary profile of "walkable, transit accessible places to live and work."

I think John Laumer's right: This is an extremely promising development. It's practically a cliche -- particularly since the Death debate -- that the environmental movement needs to offer solutions rather than just problems, to be for something rather than against everything. It's a cliche, and yet the large and lamentably inertia-bound movement hasn't really been doing it.

Perhaps because it's more of a ground-up organization, the Sierra Club has been making some nice, high-profile moves in this direction. I hope all greens will welcome it.

Character Building

Sierra Club celebrates eco-friendly building projects in new report The Sierra Club has often gone to court to stop bad development schemes, but now the venerable green group is trying the carrot instead of the stick. The group has released its first “Guide to America’s Best New Development Projects,” which gives kudos to builders putting […]

Deconstructing Hurricane

Intense 2005 hurricane season may be harbinger of things to come This year’s Atlantic hurricane season officially ended yesterday (at which point we emerged from basement bunker, blinking), having racked up a record-breaking 26 named storms. Thirteen of these became hurricanes, and three reached Category 5 strength, including Katrina. And over half the past two […]

A Current Despair

Waning of Atlantic currents could chill Europe Remember that movie The Day After Tomorrow? With the shifting ocean currents that cause sudden, catastrophic climate changes? Crazy stuff! Michael Moore territory! Well … funny story. Turns out the Atlantic Ocean currents that move warm tropical waters northward and cooler waters south have in fact slowed dramatically […]

Cause sometimes nature isn’t enough

Have y'all heard about this Grand Canyon Skywalk? WTF?

The Atlantic Ocean is going to kill you

Speaking of Oil Drum, they remind me to point to a new study in Nature (sorry, $30) showing that Atlantic Ocean currents are shifting -- which, if verified, could portend a climatic worst case scenario.

The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.

The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.

...

Harry Bryden at the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK, whose group carried out the analysis, says he is not yet sure if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend. "We don't want to say the circulation will shut down," he told New Scientist. "But we are nervous about our findings. They have come as quite a surprise."

This is potentially Very Bad News. Atlantic currents carry warm water to Northern Europe. If they stop, weather there could get mighty cold -- ice-age cold.

But as Stuart Staniford ominously notes (in quite a bit of technical detail, but fascinatingly): if all that warm water isn't going north, where ... ?

Smack into the region where North Atlantic hurricanes form, that's where it's going.

As the French say, l'eek.

Things that make you go ‘hm’

A guest poster over on Oil Drum shares, among other things, an interesting factoid.

A useful, easy-to-remember aphorism is: ONE BARREL of oil is equivalent to ONE YEAR of very hard labor by a human.

Hm.

Additions to Grist’s gift guide

You can't have too much of a good thing. This became apparent after the publication of the Grist Gift Rapt gift guide, when eager readers began inundating us with further suggestions for gifts. Hence I, one half of the brilliant Sarahs who brought you the gift guide, have taken it upon myself (at the urging of my editor, whose advice I have love to follow) to offer up more gift ideas. Because really, you can't have too many gifts! (Calm yourself, hypersensitive non-consumers, it's a joke.)

Eager reader Brad suggests International Snow Leopard Trust. ISLT is also Seattle-based, and we heart all things local.

Eager reader Susan suggests Heifer International. Surely your peeps would rather have a water buffalo given in their name than be given an actual water buffalo.

Eager reader Kent suggests Boll Organic. Organic cotton men's dress shirts, wOot!

Eager reader Becky suggests Ithaca's Gorges, an organic-chocolate company that gives a portion of proceeds to sustain land in the Finger Lakes area. Insert funny "giving them the finger" joke here.

What else, eager readers? Our gift guide, while astoundingly good, was by no means comprehensive. What eco-gifts are you getting your loved ones this season? Heck, we'll even take suggestions on what to get our hated ones. We're open to anything. Comment away!

Calming down the hybrid hype.

Treehugger mocks this, from the notoriously hack-a-rrific Wall Street Journal editorial page:

Petroleum not consumed by Prius owners is not "saved". It does not stay in the ground. It is consumed by someone else. Greenhouse gases are still released.

I'm all for mocking the WSJ editorial page, but this statement is quite true. Oil supply and demand are tightly coupled right now and are only going to get more so. Any dribble of oil you don't use will be snapped up by someone else -- perhaps one of the growing legion of Chinese drivers -- and so on and on until the remaining oil becomes prohibitively expensive and forces the market to provide alternatives.

It would be nice to think that environmental sentiment could free the world from oil, but it'll never happen.

If your goal is to save money or save oil, buying a Prius should be far down your list.

Buy a Prius, if you like, to express your values and make a statement to manufacturers that there's a market for these kinds of cars.

But let's not let the hybrid hype get out of hand.