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Dessler blogging

I was out of commission all last week, suffering from the latest virus passed to me by the snot-encrusted disease vectors I fondly call "my children."

In catching up, I noticed that climate scientist Andrew Dessler's new blog has come out of the gate strong, with all sorts of good tidbits.

1. The decisive answer to George W. Bush's question: whether or not we're causing global warming.
2. A brief but insightful reminder that whether one uses Dick Cheney's terrorism policy (even a 1% chance of attack requires strong response) or Bush's global warming policy (we need 99% certainty before acting), the decision of how much certainty is required for action is a matter of values, not science.
3. A pointed observation that many of the most prominent climate-change skeptics are professors emeritus, which means they, to put it gently, may not be vigorously keeping up with the latest research.
4. A finally, exposure of an email sent by a new group of evangelicals hoping to reign in the recent evangelical enthusiasm for climate sanity. They're hoping to recruit people, evangelical and otherwise, to sign on to a new "open letter" (PDF) that points to a "call to truth," (PDF) which in practice means "a call to renewed bullshit and obfuscation." Dessler sagely comments:

   From a strategic view, however, this type of campaign makes perfect sense. First, the recent emergence of an evangelical coalition in favor of action on climate change was one of the most significant events of the recent past. This represented a titanic shift in the political fault lines of this policy debate. Those opposed to action on climate change had to be terrified that they were on the brink of losing the entire policy debate. So this response makes perfect sense. Second, by arguing about science, they can drag the debate into a complete gridlock, as argued by Jon Miller. The report, with it's appearance of credibility and objectivity, leads the other side (those in favor of action) to leap to an enthusiastic defense of the reality of climate change - and the trap is sprung: the public tunes out (too boring), the media downgrade the story (too complex) and the politicians have the greatest excuse for doing nothing (let's wait until the science is clear).

So. At least somebody's out there blogging well.

Lawsuit over New Orleans landfill dropped

Last week, Wayne Curtis reported on the battle over a landfill in New Orleans. The landfill was set to close today, but a lawsuit being heard last Friday could have kept it open. Seems that the lawsuit was dropped, though, and the closure will go forward as originally planned.

Tip o' the cap to our very own Sarah Kraybill for asking the logical question, "Hey, what happened with that lawsuit?"

Conservation International chats with Stone Gossard

Earlier today, Conservation International hosted a live chat with Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. I would be blogging it just in time for y'all to send in your own questions, if it weren't for that pesky EST after the 1 p.m. (Gah!) So instead, I offer the transcript from the not-so-live-anymore chat.

Won’t You Be My Labor?

Immigration crackdown exacerbates organic-farm labor shortage Organic farmers are desperately struggling to find workers, caught between rising demand and an ever-more-severe labor shortage. More than half of the 1.8 million […]

Deliver an Inconvenient Truth

In this great Rolling Stone interview last month, Al Gore said that he plans to train 1,000 volunteers to deliver the Inconvenient Truth slide show across the country. I immediately began scouring the web looking for information on how to apply, but found nothing. Finally, I called Al and Tipper's office in Tennessee and they gave me an email address to which I summarily sent a resume and cover letter. Yesterday I received a reply.

Dymaxion vehicle

A car that seats eleven, reaches 120 mph, can turn on a dime, and gets 30 miles per gallon.

In 1933.

Now that's damn interesting.

‘Tis the Season (for cold soups and cold showers …)

"It's so hot that the terrorist alert level has been raised to Gazpacho!" -- David Letterman

Several years ago one of my male friends came up to me at a party, leaned down, and whispered in my ear: "You know, sometimes, late at night, I lie awake and think about your ... gazpacho." This particular scenario might have been slightly less annoying if it hadn't happened so many times already.

There seems to be a very strong soup-sex connection in men's souls. My father had a habit of saying mortifying things at the dinner table whenever a boyfriend of mine was visiting from college, and one night he announced to all present, "You know you're getting old when you lie down at night and find yourself thinking about soup instead of sex."

My mom looked furious (you could always tell when she was furious because her lips pressed together to make a completely flat line), but it was hard to tell exactly why she was upset. There were so many possibilities:

Fear preview

I'm busy working on a post, or perhaps a series of posts, on fear and why it is useless for environmentalists. But in my reading around, I came across this delicious bit from John Rogers that I just had to share:

Snake oil

I found this press release from Green Power on the net the other day. Some guy from Germany is trying to sell his system for converting garbage into diesel to small municipalities around the country. I saw a demo on a local news channel a few weeks ago for a community near Seattle. I had to chuckle when I heard that he is hoping to lease land for the facility from a guy whose last name is Turnipseed (seriously). Here's another one released in May of this year:

Spitzauer says that all landfill material and other waste, including liquids can be consumed. Contaminated dirt, rocks, tires, animal carcasses, plant material, batteries, even appliances, will be consumed by the full scale version, thereby eliminating waste and a need for landfills altogether.

Oh brother.

Fishing laws aren’t being enforced

I've often said in order to protect our oceans, we need better laws, but more importantly, we need to enforce the laws we already have. This article by the St. Petersburg Times illustrates this point to a T. Long-lining, a fishing technique that boosts catches, generates enough revenue to allow boat owners to hire contract crews. But contract crews are in such short supply that those that continuously break the law suffer no consequences and have no problem getting hired.

The quote of the day comes from Lawrence Divirgilio, a boat-owner who hired a less-than-reputable captain for his ship. "It's a damn shame we have to break a law to make a living."

It's time the laws protecting our oceans were enforced just like the laws we land-based creatures have to live by. What we need is simple: fishery managers around the world with the courage and will to vigorously enforce the law.