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Fee to be carbon free

Summer is upon us, unofficially at least. So to usher in the driving season, may I introduce Carbonfund.org, a new way to offset your personal carbon emissions from driving -- as well as from flying, and heating, cooling, and powering your house.

Obviously, Carbonfund.org isn't the only carbon offset program in town; Terrapass is more established and better known. But one thing about Carbonfund.org is unique: it's cheap. I mean, really, really cheap. A ton of CO2 costs just $5.50 U.S., which is, oh, about a quarter of the current price on the European Union carbon futures market, and substantially less than other carbon offset programs I've found (see here and here for a rundown).

In fact, Carbonfund.org is so cheap it made me wonder: is it for real? With some caveats, I'm inclined to think it is.

Paulson Jr. at Treasury

The big political news of the day is Bush's nomination of Henry M. Paulson Jr. as Treasury Secretary (ending an 18-month search for someone to occupy that thankless position). A couple of people have written to ask my take on this, so, uh ... I wish I had one.

Via TP, Paulson is the chief executive of Goldman Sachs. He's also chairman of the board of the Nature Conservancy. Goldman Sachs thinks we should do something about global warming (PDF). So does the Nature Conservancy. Clearly Paulson's on board the Sanity Train on this issue, unlike his future employers. For this reason, he's opposed by the wing nut lobby.

The other strange thing about Paulson, in the context of Bush admin. officials, is that he is by all accounts competent and respected.

Anyway, wish I knew more, but there it is. A smart, competent, environmentally aware adult has somehow found his way into the administration (assuming he's confirmed, which looks like a sure thing). We'll see how long he lasts.

(Sources tell me that this week's Muckraker will be about Paulson -- it shall answer all your questions!)

Memorial Day weekend movie news

What's the big movie news from Memorial Day weekend? X-Men III, opening with a record $120 million?

Nope. It's this:

Playing at four theaters, An Inconvenient Truth averaged a promising estimated $70,500 per site over the three-day weekend, the highest of the year and for a documentary. Former Vice President Al Gore's environmentalist tract has grossed $489,000 in five days, and distributor Paramount Classics plans to expand it throughout June, reaching its widest point over the Independence Day holiday.

Thames the Breaks

England declares emergency drought, mandates conservation Thanks to 18 months of below-average rainfall, English officials have declared the country to be in an emergency drought. Homes and businesses in southeastern […]

Soon We Can Just Call It the Styx

Yangtze River so polluted it’s on the verge of death The Yangtze River is “cancerous” with pollution — mainly industrial waste and agricultural runoff — according to reports in China’s […]

It’s the End of the World as We Blow It

Ecosystems don’t like hurricanes any more than we do With hurricane season approaching, scientists are voicing worries about the ability of coastal ecosystems to recover from repeated storms. Some 118 […]

Americans and Climate Change: Incentives: Politicians

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Why aren't politicians more eager to champion the issue of global warming? Why did Al Gore fail to get any traction with it in 2000? Find out below!

Bucking conventional wisdom: the new black

A couple days ago, Roger Pielke Jr. posted about "non-skeptic heretics," a group of which he and Gregg Easterbrook are allegedly a part. I left a slightly intemperate comment about it, to which Roger responded at some length. Several issues are getting run together. I'm going to take them one at a time.

The least significant in the grand scheme of things, but most personally aggravating to me, is this question of a "third way" (in general, not on climate change in particular).

It is conventional wisdom now that every issue is defined by two shrill, partisan camps, and that it is a mark of intellectual integrity to choose a path between them.

As a heuristic, this may have once had some value, but today it's become a fetish. A tic.

Let's be clear: There is no empirical significance in falling between, or even just outside, two opposing positions. A position's truth value has nothing to do with its number of adherents, or its adherents' rhetorical acumen. The desire not to be a "joiner," not to belong to a "tribe," is a matter of temperament, not empiricism.

Patrick Michaels hackery through history

As you may recall, on FOX's Hannity & Colmes, the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels plucked a quote from my Gore interview and grossly misinterpreted it to mean that Gore was exaggerating the evidence for global warming.

I called him out on it here, but for some reason the bell never rang that this was the very same Patrick Michaels involved in a legendary piece of hackery.

Paul Krugman reminds us of the sordid tale in his column:

Coal, coal, and more coal

Yesterday's critique of enviros' hopes for peak oil outcomes dovetails beautifully with this article from the NYT on what big coal is up to.

The future for American energy users is playing out in coal-rich areas like northeastern Wyoming, where dump trucks and bulldozers swarm around 80-foot-thick seams at a Peabody Energy strip mine here, one of the largest in the world.

Coal, the nation's favorite fuel in much of the 19th century and early 20th century, could become so again in the 21st. The United States has enough to last at least two centuries at current use rates -- reserves far greater than those of oil or natural gas. And for all the public interest in alternatives like wind and solar power, or ethanol from the heartland, coal will play a far bigger role.

The article presents two approaches being pursued by two big coal players, Peabody Energy and American Electric power, both of which are about aggressive development, and both of which do little to address climate change.