Climate Culture

Denialist special tanks in the ratings

Eric Boehlert on Glenn Beck: The bad news last week was that Glenn Beck, the right-wing radio talker and self-described "rodeo clown" who broadcasts nightly on CNN Headline News, hosted a world-is-flat special about the "myths" surrounding global warming. In it, Beck rounded up the usual band of discredited, oil industry-friendly "experts" who announced that […]

Not lookin’ so good

Fancy sewer heating system notwithstanding, Vancouver Olympics organizers have been slammed by a watchdog group as they ready the city for the 2010 Olympics. According to the subtly named Impact of the Olympics on the Community Coalition, Winter Games organizers receive a D- for their preparations so far. Much of the near-failing grade concerns broken […]

There’s more to freedom than free parking

I keep seeing the phrase "social engineering" used to describe policies that don't kowtow to the car. See, for example, this inexplicable subhead about a third of the way through this Seattle newspaper story. Not only is this usage annoying, it's exactly backward (as others have noted before me).

First, let's look first at specifics. The paper reports that the city will put parking meters on some formerly-free spots in a rapidly urbanizing district near downtown Seattle. The newspaper calls this "social engineering."

I suppose that's right, at least to the extent that parking meters alter the incentive structure for parking, which ultimately may change some people's behavior. But if anything, the alternative to the city's plan -- continuing to provide public rights-of-way for exclusive, uncompensated use by a handful of private car owners -- is closer to "social engineering" than charging a small fee for the privilege. Really, the question is not whether the city will engage in "social engineering," but what kind of social engineering. And in particular, will government continue to use public resources to subsidize private cars?

Speaking more generally, just about any transportation policy -- or any policy at all, for that matter -- can be described as "social engineering." And using that inflammatory language is a game anyone can play. Consider some (slightly) overheated rhetoric: today's car-centric system is the result of Soviet-style social engineering.

Governments used the awesome power of the state to take money from the populace. Then central planners used the money with an ethic of brutalism, forcing gigantic car thoroughfares across neighborhoods, into the hearts of cities, and then out into far-flung farmlands and wild places.

In town, America's Soviet-style planning wasn't much different.

Bio Willie, make way for Jeff Parnell

Political songwriter Jeff Parnell has just composed a jaunty little ditty called "Subsidized Ethanol Blues." (Click on link to play.) As Parnell sings it: "Sacrifice the water and land, and what do you gain? Line the pockets of cronies, playing that subsidy game!"

The rest of the lyrics are found below the fold:

Material intensity in water use

(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.)

Before discussing water savings, we need to define what we mean by "use." The EPA refers to withdrawal and consumption. Withdrawal is the amount taken from surface water and the water table. Consumption refers to the amount chemically combined with something (so that it is no longer fresh water) or evaporated. Water discarded instead of consumed is referred to as "returns," because it is supposedly reusable. This does not even approximate the impact of water use.

One example the EPA gives is power plant cooling. The water is withdrawn and used to cool the plant. A little evaporates, and the rest returned (still more or less clean) to the source. This overlooks a certain amount of impact (fish killed during withdrawals, aquatic plant, fungal, and microbial growth encouraged by the change in water temperature), but is basically correct. However, they apply the same logic to water used for irrigation. With very few exceptions, irrigation water "returns" are loaded with fertilizer salts, growth hormones, microbes, and often pesticides and herbicides as well. Even runoff from organic farms usually contains salts from the manure and composts used.

So the proper way to count water is consumption plus polluted returns -- in most cases, all withdrawals.

People-powered transit makes you happy

Transportation uber-geek Todd Litman looked at studies of people's satisfaction with their commutes (PDF). The results: transit isn't all that popular, compared with a car commute:

The leftmost bar represents a car-only commute; you can see that it gets higher satisfaction ratings (the green part) and lower dissatisfaction (the orange) than both transit and car+transit commutes, which are the next two bars. (Despite the popularity of park-and-rides, there are lots of yucky orange feelings towards a mixed commute.)

But, wait! If you dive into the numbers, it turns out there's another side to this story. As it turns out, people don't have an inherent preference for cars, or an innate dislike of buses or trains. The real story is that people don't particularly like spending time in vehicles, period.

Biodiesel rage

From the Seattle PI:

More than 1,300 people -- some shouting "revolution" -- took over Fisher Pavilion at the Seattle Center on Sunday. Look what's happening out in the streets, they said: Biodiesel is coming of age. It's all the rage.

Part trade show, part strategy session, part cheerleading camp, the fifth annual NW Biodiesel Forum brought together biodiesel enthusiasts to learn about peak oil, alternative fuels, mass transit and, in a wrap-up discussion, "Biodiesel in the Northwest -- The Revolution Has Begun!"

Many of these enthusiasts are people who have purchased diesel vehicles so they can burn biodiesel in them and every last one of them has at least one bumper sticker to let you know it:

It’s like riding a bike …

What happens when a major urban freeway burns down? Chaos, right? Gridlock! Except not: Traffic congestion was down Monday and Tuesday. The amount of time drivers were stuck in traffic moving slower than 60 mph was down 8 percent around the entire Bay Area, according to Caltrans data. Congestion on Oakland freeways, meanwhile, was down […]

Excellent writing

About eleventy-hundred people have written to draw my attention to an article in the Wall Street Journal about bike living in the Netherlands and Denmark. It’s worthy of the attention — it’s rare to see biking taken so seriously and written about with such an eye for detail and color, at least in a U.S. […]

The logjam is breaking

It appears that after a long period of haggling — involving the bizarre tableau of Republican Ted Stevens pushing for tougher regulations — the Senate Commerce Committee is ready to cough up a bill that would raise CAFE standards to 35mpg by 2019 (35mpg across the fleet, including light trucks). The committee is expected to […]