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There was some hot-and-heavy debate about carbon offsets on Gristmill last week. I assume that debate will only get more intense as offsets and "carbon neutrality" move into the mainstream. […]

Mine Your Own Business

Check out this video from "Mine Your Own Business" and let me know if you think it's a joke or not. And then, whether you think there is even a grain of truth in it. That's what I am interested in. Video below the fold.

And green is the new rock

Check out these 45 iPod Cases made from recycled 45 rpm records. You can choose your favorite piece of vinyl and have the case custom-made. So what’ll it cost ya […]

Cheney’s investment guy attacks Cheney’s energy policy

Here’s an amusing story about an attack on the Bush administration’s energy policies from … Dick Cheney’s investment manager: "What were we thinking?’ [Jeremy] Grantham demands in a four-page assault […]

A road runs through this issue

The Feb. 8 Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that a judge has again chastised the Bush administration for violating federal law when it overturned the Clinton-era Roadless Rule. And she has issued an order protecting 52 million acres of federal roadless forest lands nationwide from roads or surface disturbance related to energy development.

Though it's likely that feds and states will continue to litigate this good idea to death (why?), I'm going to celebrate by tucking into this great new volume of essays on the topic from intrepid roadless defenders Wildlands CPR just received at my office: A Road Runs Through It. "Road-ripping," writes Annie Proulx in her foreword, "is a meaningful ritual that seeks to reestablish the correct order of the world." Amen.

And what should that tell us?

The IPCC's official total temperature increase since 1850 has gone from .6° Celsius to .76° C (or about 1.4° Fahrenheit).

The Fourth Assessment also explains that, "For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2° C per decade is projected for a range of [emission scenarios]. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about .1° C per decade would be expected."

Their best estimate for a low emissions scenario is still a temperature increase of 1.8° C by 2100. Their best estimate for a worst case emissions scenario projects 4.0° C -- and recent research suggests that would give us sea level rise of 6 inches a decade in 2100.

Whaddya say we try to stick with the low emissions scenario?

Tell it like it is, Nancy

In her continuing effort to focus attention on global warming, Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the unusual step of appearing as a witness at the House Committee on Science and Technology's hearing on The State of Climate Change. You can read her testimony here.

It’s good

Originally (paid link) published in Z Magazine, February, 2007 Volume 20 #2. Reposted with permission.

Review: Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning

Doubleday Canada, 2006, 304 pp.

By George Monbiot

George Monbiot's Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning is a brilliant, flawed, and deeply important look at what it will take to slow global warming below a catastrophic level.

Monbiot, one of the clearest and wittiest writers about politically difficult subjects today, tackles the problem of phasing out fossil fuels without illusions. Books on global warming normally expend most of their words to show how dangerous the problem is. Then, at the last, they point to a few partial solutions and say "more like that, please." Or they simply give up on a comfortable life for everyone and turn to a kind of gloating Puritanism and say "You will have to suffer, but it will be good for you in the end." In contrast, Monbiot takes a step-by-step look at how different sectors of our economy could run on drastically less carbon.

Ugh

Yesterday the White House released a letter defending its record on global warming. I was trying to build up the intestinal fortitude necessary to say something intelligent about it — […]

Marlin Banned-O

Fisherfolk angle to keep marlin off of menus Hoping to smack down commercial fishing operations that are decimating Pacific marlin populations, sports anglers have launched a “No Marlin on the […]