Articles by JMG
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
All Articles
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A sound plan, or a load of manure?
Take a look at this conference on dumping iron into the oceans to boost carbon pickup.
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New book praising biofuels has an unexpected author
There are combinations that are just too weird: chocolate cake and grape juice (to steal from an old Dick Van Dyke show), or hearing the Rolling Stones' music used to market chastity belts and abstinence pledges. Or like seeing the Worldwatch Institute's name on a book praising biofuels ... the very fuels Les Brown, WWI's founder, is crusading against.
The gist of the book seems to be, "We need a completely different kind of biofuels than we have or are likely to ever see, but if that better, fairer system came along, it might be good for the poor." In other words, the Les-Brown-less WWI is now providing cover for people who don't give two burps about the poor, but sho' do love them some subsidies. And for people who will be throwing this book around the way Bush threw around Colin Powell's notorious UN speech on Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."
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Mercury moves from coal plant to fish dinner as fast as its name implies
A Scientificblogging post explains that it only takes three years for mercury emitted by coal-fired plants to travel up the food chain into fish that we eat:
"Before this study, no one had directly linked atmospheric deposition (mercury emissions) and mercury in fish," says study co-author Vincent St. Louis of the University of Alberta.
The experiment filled a major gap in scientists' understanding of how mercury moves from the atmosphere through forests, soils, lakes and into the fish that people eat.
It's immediate value is that it provides undeniable proof of a direct link, said St. Louis, who specializes in what is called whole-ecosystem experimentation.
He said it should spur policy-makers to enact regulations for more rapid reductions in mercury emissions by industry.
