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Joe Sherman’s Gasp! explores the history of air and finds it’s anything but empty

Oxygen may not strike you as a likely protagonist for a book. It's invisible, it's all around you, it's something you inhale 19,000 times a day and take utterly for granted. But Joe Sherman's Gasp! The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air is a masterfully inventive biography of air, weaving together geology and history, myth and science, to deepen our understanding and appreciation of life's most precious gas.

A fearful state

To all of you greenies plotting intentional, catastrophic natural disasters to call attention to climate change, your caper has been uncovered. Prepare to be exposed for the scheming revolutionaries you are in Michael Crichton's new novel State of Fear. Crichton sets out to debunk all this global warming nonsense. Michiko Kakutani shreds the book in a New York Times Books of the Times feature.

The fictitious treatment isn't enough apparently. Kakutani quotes Crichton from the book's "Author's Message" saying:

"I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them." And: "I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners" for current failures in wilderness management.

More links: Andrew Revkin asking "Is it Science?"

UPDATE: The invaluable folks at RealClimate take on Crichton's book here. It ain't pretty.

Chevron Texaco wins prestigious award

The Green Life, as part of their ongoing "take greenwash to the cleaners" series (countering corporate greenwashing efforts), has awarded Chevron Texaco their Greenwasher of the Month award. They have a fairly extensive piece comparing the company's eco-friendly advertising rhetoric with its actual behavior. Good reading.

I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Low-impact gifts can make holidays more eco-friendly This year, holiday sales in the U.S. are projected to hit $219 billion — up 4 to 6 percent from last year. That’s a lot of ties and trinkets. And while that might be good news for some retailers, it’s anything but a holiday for the earth; between […]

Another Refiner Mess

EPA brags about oil-refinery cleanups that haven’t happened “Settlements under EPA’s Petroleum Refinery Initiative have reduced emissions of air pollutants by 200,000 tons per year at 48 refineries in 24 states,” said top U.S. EPA enforcement official Tom Skinner in October. Turns out that was a lie. Oh, wait, did we say “lie”? Actually, says […]

Leavitt to Leave It

Leavitt to move from EPA to HHS President Bush announced today that he intends to move U.S. EPA chief Mike Leavitt into a new position as secretary of health and human services, ending Leavitt’s tenure of just over a year at the agency. Leavitt, a rising star in the Republican Party and a fierce Bush […]

Hybrid buses

A little while back, Seattle got a lot of "the future is now!"-type press for ordering a full fleet of diesel-electric hybrid buses, which cost $200,000 more apiece than their articulated diesel brethren. Unfortunately, according to the Seattle P-I, claims that they would get up to 40 percent better gas mileage have not cashed out. In fact, their gas mileage is roughly comparable to the old buses', although they are quieter, produce fewer emissions, and cost less to maintain. Guess the future is still in the future.

UPDATE: For a much longer and more informative take on this story -- to which there is less than meets the eye -- read what Alan Durning's got to say.

Politician instructs media on accuracy; timespace implodes on itself

You know the press is failing in its obligations when a politician has to instruct it on honesty and integrity.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg just sent a letter to the Washington Post taking them to task for bogus "he said - she said" journalism on the subject of global warming. The article in question, by Juliet Eilperin, discussed a recent study on heat waves caused by climate change. Says Lautenberg:

But the last half of the article is squandered on the views of Myron Ebell, an economist -- not a climate scientist -- whose "studies" at the American Enterprise Institute are funded by Exxon Mobil. The article fails to mention this shameless conflict of interest.

The problem with this type of reporting was highlighted at a recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Robert Correll, senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society, warned, "The trouble with a debate of this nature is you put 2,600 [scientists] against two or three or four [scientists who disagree]." Ebell is not in the same league as the qualified climate scientists who report that the climate is changing before our eyes; only the intensity and the speed of those changes are unknown. Your newspaper does an injustice to its readers by giving Ebell's caterwauling equal weight with the widely accepted views of reputable and unbiased scientists.

That's exactly right. Eilperin is an excellent reporter, and I don't know what kind of pressure she's under from higher-ups, but she -- and environmental reporters generally -- needs to take a stand and stop watering her pieces down with this sort of misleading faux-balance.

UPDATE: Well, egg on my face. Both Chris Mooney and RealClimate beat me to the punch.

Clinton, late convert to climate-change cause, now preaching up a storm

He wasn’t known as the eco-warrior president. Nor was he a visionary on energy independence. But Bill Clinton is now using his legendary charisma and silver tongue to help mobilize the shift away from fossil fuels. Bill gets heated up over climate. Photo: Clinton Presidential Foundation. “[T]he decisions we make or fail to make in […]

Kevin Doyle, environmental-career guru, answers questions

Kevin Doyle. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m one of two national program directors at The Environmental Careers Organization (authors of the new book The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference — see below). At least, that’s my current title. I’ve worked for ECO since 1984, and in that time I’ve […]