Gristmill
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Americans care about global warming, but don’t see how it connects to other environmental problems
A new poll shows that Americans do care about global warming, but don’t seem to realize how prevalent it really is. This week Gallup released data from its latest poll on global warming indicating that more Americans — 41 percent, the highest number since 1998 — believe that global warming is exaggerated. This sounds like […]
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Climate policy can be fair to families all across the country
As regular readers know, we’ve done a bit of cheerleading for the “cap and dividend” concept, which is also called “Cap-and-Cashback,” since it would hand cash receipts from government-run carbon auctions right back to consumers. Cap-and-Cashback strikes me as a fundamentally fair climate policy, since it protects low- and middle-income families from the effects of […]
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The National Pork Board tries to spin Nick Kristof's MRSA column
In the wake of Nick Kristof's column on MRSA infections among hog farmers, Obamafoodorama found evidence of Big Pig (the National Pork Board) conspiring with the CDC in prepping its response. And after all that, this is the best they could come up with:
"They are making a huge leap attributing MRSA in these people to hogs," says Angela DeMirjyn, science communications manager for the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). The pork organization has been researching MRSA for some time, says DeMirjyn, and supports the CDC's statement that most community acquired MRSA infections are caused by a different bacteria than is commonly associated with pigs or pig farms.
There. Now don't you feel better? They're all over it like flies on, well, you get the point. They have, as that nameless intelligence bureaucrat assured Indiana Jones as regards research into the Ark of the Covenant, "top men working on it right now." Top men, indeed.
But wait, there's even more rhetorical emptiness waiting for you:
"We also know that MRSA is not just staph bacteria that can be found in pigs, it also can be found in horses, dogs and even marine animals. It is not a problem that is solely related to pigs," DeMirjyn says.MRSA, in fact, can be found anywhere in nature, according to Paul Ebner, a livestock microbiologist at Purdue University. While he says there has been an increase in the number of these infections and that pigs and other animals can be carriers, the vast majority of infections come from skin-to-skin contact with infected humans.
File that under "Beside The Point."
You know, I think these folks just might be panicked. Funny, Tom Philpott and I (at Ezra Klein's blog) covered the "MRSA in pigs" issue recently - it didn't get quite this reaction. I guess the Gray Lady has life in her yet.
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Friday music blogging: Neko Case
ListenPlay "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth," by Neko CaseNeko Case has the most compelling voice in popular music. Full stop. She could sing the phone book and it would sound thrilling, and beautiful, and mysterious, and vaguely threatening. Luckily, she's a really good songwriter too.
She got her start in cowboy punk bands, but drifted pretty quickly to a kind of timeless Americana, starting with 1997's The Virginian. Of course, as every indie fanboy knows, she really came to popular attention as a singer in the New Pornographers, who burst on the scene with 2000's Mass Romantic. She didn't do any writing for them, but she elevated every song she appeared on and is at least partially responsible for most of their classics.
Her army of ardent admirers (yes, yes, she's beautiful) helped make 2002's Blacklisted a big success, and every album since then has gotten richer, not to mention more successful.The latest, out this month, is Middle Cyclone. It's got guest appearances from an array of indie luminaries from M. Ward to members of the New Pornographers, but as always the focus is on that spooky, haunting, amazing voice.
This isn't the best song from the album, but given the context, how could I choose any other? It's a cover of a song from the band Sparks: "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth." Word.
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Energy efficiency saves lives
The New Yorker's Steve Coll is reading through the stimulus bill. This is interesting:
The energy-efficiency issue is the most interesting [in Title III, "Department of Defense"]. In 2008, a Defense Science Board Task Force studied the Pentagon's use of energy and how its dependence on costly (in lives and budgets) convoys hauling gasoline and jet fuel in war theatres might be reduced. The report found that one of the most fuel-sucking practices of the military is its use of generators in the field to run air conditioners to cool highly energy-inefficient tents and trailers. In Iraq alone, the report implies, more than a few soldiers have died on roads where their mission was hauling fuel to cool down tents and barracks that, if properly insulated, might not have required so much energy in the first place. There are many other fascinating findings about war-fighting and energy, if you don't already possess enough ridiculously dense and wonky material for your book club.
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Coal ash on CounterSpin
FAIR's podcast CounterSpin has a great interview with Kristen Lombardi of the Center for Public Integrity. She's the author of an important new coal ash expose featured in the March 6 show. "Coal Ash: The Hidden Story," and its map of just the known slurry dumps -- not including all the ones coal companies won't tell anyone about -- are great.
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A finger to ineffectual Democrat talkers, and a thumbs up to a possible alternative
This week the Middle Finger Flag gets waved at the Democrats. Yeah, that’s right, the whole lot of ’em. Recently Obama released a budget proposal that included a carbon cap-and-trade plan that would auction — rather than give away to polluting companies — 100 percent of the pollution credits. This is exactly what every policy […]
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Energy storage, emissions hotspots, waste-to-fuel, and feed-in tariffs again
• I wish I was as funny as The Editors.
• Interesting: AEP, one of the most coal-heavy and change-resistant utilities on the planet, is experimenting with backyard energy storage systems.
• A good piece from the Center for Progressive Reform examines the risk of "hotspots" in a carbon cap-and-trade program. Of course there's no such thing as a carbon hotspot, but facilities that create carbon also tend to create co-pollutants, so it's a legitimate fear. Author Shana Jones has some ideas for how cap-and-trade could be crafted to avoid this danger.
• Ontario recently instituted a feed-in tariff program. What happened?
So many local wind and solar developers -- as well as homeowners looking to install photovoltaic panels -- applied for Ontario’s standard offer that the government’s 10-year target cap of 1,000 megawatts was exceeded within a year.
Said one energy analyst, "The lesson is that renewable energy technology was a lot more market-ready than the energy planners thought it was." Golly, I wonder if that's true in the U.S. too?
• Biofuels Digest has an interesting report on the promise of "waste-to-fuel" companies, which take municipal solid waste -- i.e., garbage -- and make biofuel out of it:
