Smacking down a bad idea

I know you've all been eagerly waiting for this (don't worry, I don't have many more rules). I got sidetracked by last week's offset hearing.

Offset projects should deliver climate benefits with high confidence -- that's a key reason trees make lousy offsets, especially non-urban, non-tropical trees. An even more dubious source of offsets is geo-engineering, which is "the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment" (PDF) to counteract the effects of global warming.

As John Holdren, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted in 2006 (PDF), "The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects."

How the nation’s breadbasket is poisoning its own water supply

In late September, the corn and soybean fields of the lower Missouri River floodplain are a lovely dull brown, nearly...

Orange You Glad We Didn’t Say Switchgrass?

Fruit may be the latest source for biofuel madness Could your kumquat power your Kia? A team of U.S. scientists...

More evidence of the link to climate change

The weather is getting more extreme thanks to human-caused climate change (as I've pointed out many times, see here, here, and here).

Now the World Meteorological Organization reports more evidence:

In January and April 2007 it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89°C warmer than average for January and 1.37°C warmer than average for April. Several regions have experienced extremely heavy precipitation, leading to severe floods. The Fourth Assessment Report of the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change (IPCC) notes an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years. IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

Newsweek’s cover story deserves Pulitzer — and global action

Newsweek's Sharon Begley and Scott Johnson should get the Pulitzer Prize for last week's Newsweek cover story, "Slaughter in the Jungle." It was the most moving story of the year and clearly based on truly intrepid reportage. More importantly, I hope it provokes action to stop this brutal global slaughter of wildlife.

Scott Johnson went into the rainforest in the war-torn Congo, home to much of Africa's remaining 700 mountain gorillas. Miles from the nearest town, he discovered and recorded the worst massacre of gorillas in more than 25 years.

The rangers found the first corpse less than a hundred yards away, in a grove of vines and crooked thicket. The mammoth gorilla lay on her side, a small pink tongue protruding slightly from her lips. She was pregnant and her breasts were engorged with milk for the baby that now lay dead inside her womb ... They have not been killed for their meat or their pelts or their internal organs. In fact, no one is quite sure why they've been killed.

Be sure to check out Johnson's astonishing photos of the gorillas. What makes them so powerful, I think, is that they capture our commonality with our fellow creatures: in life, the gorillas seem inspired by the same needs and emotions as we are; in death, their poses and deep, mournful expressions evoke a crucifixion -- in this case, they are sacrifices to human greed, violence, and apathy.

It's clear, however, that whatever the facts and the tragedy of this assassination are, the gorillas are looking extinction in the eye because of many of the same threats that are menacing wildlife around the world.

Mixing up paths and goals

RPS legislation (which seems to have recently died in the Senate, although could conceivably be reintroduced on amendment) is well-intended, but poorly constructed.

Roll the clock back 100 years, and assume you're the legislator tasked with figuring out how to get the population to go West. Which do you choose: (a) the Homestead Act, giving people land as soon as they prove that they can get there and cultivate it, or (b) a tax rebate to anyone who hitches five white horses to a Conestoga wagon and takes Route 66 west?

Dairy farmers’ organic practices called into question

Regulation might not be the best way to create greener markets, but the right sort of regulations enforced the right way can work.

That's a lesson in the organic market, which witnessed a first this week: a mega-organic dairy with 10,000 cows (3,500 "organic"), which was clearly skirting regulations, was suspended by a certifier and no longer allowed to sell "organic" milk.

Hold the applause on the administration’s

On a new blog called Terra Rossa -- "Where Conservatives Consider a New Energy Future" -- GOP consultant Whit Ayres argues that when President Bush at the G8 summit declared his willingness to "seriously consider" carbon emission reductions over the next forty years, he took a "major step" in the direction of his environmental critics. Says Ayres:

I don't think anyone could argue that conservatives are not trying to compromise on the issue. While many conservative voters, politicians, and business leaders might prefer to take no action to limit carbon emissions, they have heard the call to action and are clearly working toward a cap they can live with.

Ayres claims the President has undergone a "sea-change" on global warming, but ignores these inconvenient facts:

• No agreement to reduce carbon emissions came out of the G8 summit, despite much pressure from Germany and Europe.
• The President talks of "long-term" [requires subscription] "aspirational" goals, but has committed to nothing but discussion.
• Shortly after taking office, a White House insider admitted [requires subscription] to Andrew Revkin of The New York Times that the Bush administration intended to do as little as possible about global warming: "There's a sense in which everybody's saying the American public doesn't have the attention span or background to pay attention to this issue," the official said. "There's still a hopeful perception around the White House that this has gone away."
• Not only did the President break a reassuring campaign promise regarding carbon emissions, but just this last year told a biographer that he was a "dissenter" on the "theory" of global warming.

So we have good reason to doubt the sincerity of the Bush administration, despite the bland assurances of progress from White House environmental chief Jim Connaughton. And in fact this past week the president himself, in his own words, has let us know exactly how high a priority he gives the issue. Four recent speeches -- to a Southern Baptist convention, to a homebuilders convention, at a political fund-raiser, and at a nuclear power plant yesterday -- were put through a word processor, and the results show what is on the president's mind, and what is not:

Airliners are shaped the way they are for a reason

We took our Prius over the mountains a few weeks back. I was looking forward to testing it at the extreme end of its design envelope, with a bulky cargo carrier to boot. This gave me an opportunity to see how much highway mileage would be affected by aerodynamic drag. Yes, yes, I should have stuck to the speed limit, but by not doing so I preemptively squashed a bitching point leveled by hybrid hatas -- Prius drivers sticking to the speed limit are always getting in the way.

We nailed 40 mpg on the nose for a 260-mile trip that was 95 percent highway driving. I was pleasantly surprised. Just look at that blob on top of the car. I used the cruise control religiously and pegged the speed 5 mph over the posted limit whenever traffic allowed, which was most of the time.