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Despite falling sales figures, it’s not bloody likely

... asked the title of an Agence France-Presse story in TerraDaily on Sunday.

Uh, not bloody likely.

The story cited falling SUV sales figures for August, combined with the even higher-than-usual gas-price spikes wrought by the hurricane's effect on refining capacity, and concluded, via an economist or two, "Potentially, Katrina could signal the death knell of the SUV in as much as consumers are going to find themselves once burned, twice shy to buy such vehicles."  

But that's assuming a lot, not the least of which is that consumers make their vehicle-buying -- and especially SUV-buying -- decisions based purely on economics. Ignoring the fact that many Americans go into debt or spend beyond their means to drive the vehicle they believe best defines them as a person, or the vehicle they may one day need versus what would work for them most of the time, the theory sounds more feasible.

What I'd like to see, of course, is the widespread divorce of people from their vehicles, period ... something just as likely as the demise of the SUV. Also ignoring cultural factors, this wise shift could be based solely on economics as well. With rising, largely Lance Armstrong-fueled, bicycle sales in the U.S., coupled with ever-rising gas prices, and growing frustration with insurance companies of all kinds, I forecast a two-wheeled American transportation wise-up, quick-like.

Katrina and global warming, part zillion

Some recent pieces on the perennial topic of Katrina and global warming:

• In Slate, Paul Recer makes basically the same point Chip and I did in our op-ed: The science drawing a firm connection just isn't there yet, and anyway, there are plenty more immediate concerns on which environmentalists should be focused.
• On KatrinaNoMore.com, a whole website devoted to the subject, Mike Tidwell says global warming will lead to more New Orleans-style disasters, not so much because of stronger hurricanes as because of rising sea levels.
• In The New Yorker, the inimitable Elizabeth Kolbert gets the science basically right:

  The fact that climbing CO2 levels are expected to produce more storms like Katrina doesn't mean that Katrina itself was caused by global warming. No single storm, no matter how extreme, can be accounted for in this way; weather events are a function both of factors that can be identified, like the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth and the greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and of factors that are stochastic, or purely random. In response to the many confused claims that were being made about the hurricane, a group of prominent climatologists posted an essay on the Web site RealClimate that asked, "Could New Orleans be the first major U.S. city ravaged by human-caused climate change?" The correct answer, they pointed out, is that this is the wrong question. The science of global warming has nothing to say about any particular hurricane (or drought or heat wave or flood), only about the larger statistical pattern.

If I have any criticism of Kolbert's piece, it's that she, like so many people commenting on this topic, focuses unduly on cutting CO2 emissions. But if our goal is to save lives, we could save a lot more, a lot faster, by focusing on shorter term demographic and political solutions. This is not to say that we shouldn't cut down on greenhouse gases -- we should -- just that doing so should be thought of as part of a larger package of severe-weather-disaster preparation and mitigation strategies.

(And yes, I really am on paternity leave. Pretend like this post never happened.)

Dead radioactive birds piling up at British nuclear plant

One more reason to oppose nuclear: the radioactive birds.  

Make that the dead, frozen, expanding pile of radioactive birds.

At a nuclear plant in Britain, concerned about birds potentially spreading radiation from the site, managers hired snipers -- yes, snipers -- to assassinate birds that land in the area, mostly pigeons and seagulls. Which they've been doing for a while now.

Well, problem solved then, right? Not exactly.

Now, instead of live radioactive birds that could fly away and contaminate things, there are dead radioactive birds, deemed low-level radioactive waste, that aren't going anywhere. Hundreds of them, actually, the managers guess. But unlike other, conventional forms of radwaste, the birds rot -- enough to be deemed "putrescent" -- so they must be kept out of the normal nuke waste dump.

Which means that now the Brit nuke plant has the same problem as avid hunters trying to cut down on their meat consumption -- freezers and freezers full of their kill, with more arriving all the time. And until a special nuclear-bird landfill can be built where they'll be dumped, the nuke plant's freezers will keep overflowing with the hot cold birds.

Freezer-burned nuclear gull, anyone? Yum.

Eco-vigilantes in France take on gas guzzlers, one tire at a time

Sounds like the SUV-loving citizens of France need TerraPass.

As reported by Wired: "A band of eco-vigilantes is taking a firm but gentle stand against fast-growing SUV sales in France and Europe, deflating the tires on gas guzzlers in a protest against conspicuous waste."

Why?

"We have to stigmatize SUVs by initiating a debate that will allow scientists and experts to publicly (declare) their hazards," said the spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We don't want SUVs to be seen as a sign of wealth, but something that is associated with an imbecile."

Walking It Off, Doug Peacock’s memoir, separates the man from the myth

Walking It Off by Doug Peacock, Ewu Press, 208 pgs., 2005. Think you know Doug Peacock? Think again. He was the inspiration for George Washington Hayduke, the hard-charging, Vietnam-scarred protagonist of Edward Abbey’s classic environmental novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. But there’s more to the Peacock story than just trashing bulldozers and causing trouble — […]

Logging keeps Asian elephants in business … for now

At a fork in the road, our guide points to the right. “That’s the main road there,” he says. “We’ll go on this smaller road, deep into the jungle.” A glance to the left reveals a narrow, unpaved track, which he tells us is used primarily by logging trucks. It’s the dry season in Myanmar, […]

Hog Heaven

Indiana burg to become “BioTown” The small farming community of Reynolds, Ind., is gearing up to take advantage of its ripest renewable resource: vast amounts of stinky hog poop. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) and the Indiana Department of Agriculture have designated the one-traffic-light burg as the world’s first “BioTown.” The plan is for its homes […]

Continental Wreck-Fest

Europeans adapting to the realities of a disrupted climate While Americans quibble ignorantly over whether climate change is really happening, Europeans are already adapting to it. Swedish foresters are being told to plant trees that will thrive in warmer temperatures. Planners of a new subway system in Copenhagen, Denmark, raised all structures to accommodate an […]

Price Guys Finish First

Toyota plans to cut price of its hybrids Aching for a Toyota Prius hybrid, but wilting at the thought of shelling out $3,500 or more over the price of a conventional car? Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe is thinking of you: He’s directed the company’s engineering chief to halve the price difference between a hybrid and […]

Experts look to captive breeding to slow amphibian extinction rates

According to this article in Reuters:

Amphibian experts are likely to urge captive breeding to slow a catastrophic rate of extinctions threatening a third of all species of frogs and salamanders, a leading scientist said. While a third of amphibian species are under threat, comparable rates are 12 percent for birds and 23 percent for mammals.

Not looking good. But hey, I put my recycle bin out yesterday. I used to have a cartoon pinned to my wall of a heron with a frog sticking head-first out of his mouth. The frog had grabbed the heron by the throat so he couldn't swallow. The caption read, "Never give up!"