Climate Climate & Energy

Drought, Drought, Let It All Out

Drought is up, and climate change seems partly to blame, report says The proportion of the planet’s land area suffering from drought has more than doubled since the 1970s, to about 30 percent, according to a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Researchers attribute about half of that change to rising temperatures […]

Seabirds suffer as climate change unravels North Sea food web

Guillemots are disappearing … Photo: Dr. Brian Wilson, Centre for Bioscience ImageBank. On the south side of the isle of Shetland, off the coast of Scotland, there are more than 1,200 guillemot nests. Last spring, all of them were empty. No pear-shaped eggs, no downy chicks, no next generation of guillemots. Elsewhere on Shetland, the […]

Hope Against Slope

Bush admin poised to open sensitive Alaska North Slope land to drilling The Bush administration plans to open to drilling more than 400,000 acres of Alaska’s North Slope thought to be vital to migratory birds and caribou, after the Bureau of Land Management determined that drilling can be done with “minimum impact” on wildlife. Interior […]

The Terminal

Enviros gear up for international battle over Siberian oil pipeline Russia’s 2,565-mile, $15.5 billion trans-Siberian oil pipeline — currently under construction — is at the center of a major emerging international environmental brouhaha. At issue is the Pacific terminal site. Recently, the terminus was abruptly moved from Vostochny, Russia’s main Pacific industrial port, to Perevoznaya, […]

Trees: The Quicker Picker-Upper?

Study says trees can play crucial role in battle against global warming Planting forests to remove carbon dioxide from the air — a form of carbon sequestration — would be roughly as effective in the battle against global warming as conserving energy or switching to new fuels, according to a new study from the Pew […]

China

Here's a worthwhile David R. Francis editorial about China's growing demand for oil. It's another reminder that environmentalists who really care about the fate of the earth -- the entire earth, not just their favorite camping spot out West -- can do nothing more valuable than trying to make sure that China does not follow the same development path as the U.S. and Europe. This means lobbying the Chinese government not only to adopt aggressive conservation and renewable energy programs, but also to open up the free flow of information, in the press and particularly on the internet. A vigorous exchange of information inside the country can lead, through the distributed efforts of thousands of concerned citizens who experience those problems directly, to the development of innovative energy, resource, and conservation solutions. Despite the fond hopes of China's ruling elite, sustainable economic development is not feasible without the simultaneous development of an open democratic culture. Bottom-up, distributed, openly shared solutions are China's best hope of leapfrogging.

Global warming and natural disasters

What is the relationship between global warming and the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean (and natural disasters more generally)? Who is and is not drawing such a connection? Who is and is not trying to score political points around it? There's been a flurry of writing on the subject recently.

We begin with today's Muckraker ...

Free Winona! (From enviro prejudice!)

It's not like the woman hasn't paid her dues. Winona Ryder did 480 hours of community service to atone for that little shoplifting mishap (the $7,600 worth of Saks duds she lifted in 2001 -- oopsy!), and still the actress endures discrimination -- now from enviros, of all people.

Ryder says she wanted to sign a petition calling on Bush to get behind the Kyoto Protocol but was turned away because of her criminal record. No word on which green group did the spurning -- last we heard, enviros weren't rebuffing any would-be signers from their go-nowhere petitions, let alone celebs, even of the has-been variety.  

Come make your voice heard on the virtual pages of Gristmill, Winona. We won't turn you away!

Batting a Thousand

Bats dying in worrying numbers at Appalachian wind farms Unexpectedly high numbers of bat deaths at wind farms in West Virginia and Pennsylvania have caught scientists by surprise and made conservationists anxious. Whether the spinning turbines entice the bats or confuse their sonar navigation is unclear, but researchers say an estimated 1,500 to 4,000 bats […]

Umbra on wind farms

Dear Umbra, I have been reading lots in the media lately about wind farms. As a supporter of green energy, I would obviously like to see a lot more of them and have long believed that people who oppose them are just another example of the “not in my backyard” mentality: they want a constant […]