With berries and bread, you can make a delectable summer pudding

For years, I’ve drooled over photos of summer pudding — a traditional British dessert that’s the same deep blue and...

Bush invokes executive privilege to shield EPA administrator from subpoena

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was set to vote today to hold U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and...

Shellenberger and Nordhaus go after Obama by recycling GOP talking points

They’re back! I’ve been bombarded by people wanting a comment on the new S&N L.A. Times piece, “The green bubble...

Review of climate change impact economics

Paul Krugman has a blog post about one of my favorite economists, Marty Weitzman. He has the central point right,...

Latest health scare exposes a frayed food-safety net

Salmonella-infected tomatoes have made headlines over the course of the last week, but there's nothing new about the problem that tainted tomatoes reveal.This outbreak has put more than 25 people in the hospital and sickened hundreds, but it is just the latest in a long line of sickness and recalls.

Salmonella in tomatoes, spinach, and lettuce, eColi in peanut butter, beef from downer cows; all throw into question the legitimacy of agency claims that the U.S. has the best food safety apparatus in the world. The facts are clear: after years of budget and staffing cuts, America's food safety net is frayed past the point of effectiveness.

Monday bummer blogging

Damn, one of the more promising ideas, biochar, seems to be a little less promising than hoped:

... a new study ... suggests that these supposed benefits of biochar may be somewhat overstated.

... They found that when charcoal was mixed into humus ... charcoal caused greatly increased losses of native soil organic matter, and soil carbon ... Much of this lost soil carbon would be released as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Therefore, while it is true that charcoal represents a long term sink of carbon because of its persistence, this effect is at least partially offset by the capacity of charcoal to greatly promote the loss of that carbon already present in the soil.

Oh, and you know that thing Al Gore talked about, where birds would emerge from their eggs only to find that their usual food had already peaked and declined because the changing climate had disconnected formerly co-evolved species? Well, caribou go next:

Climate action requires leadership beyond political ‘reasonableness’

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Let's face it: The Bush Administration has made a mess of things, as noted in "Hog heaven, part 1." It is now clear, if it hasn't been all along, that by the time George Bush leaves office, the White House will have wasted eight years of leadership on the Mother of All Issues.

If those eight years are a profound disappointment looking backward, then they are a profound tragedy looking forward. The head of the IPCC is spreading the message that the world community has seven short years to act decisively to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Dr. John Holdren is among the prestigious U.S. scientists who now say more openly that the effects of climate change already are upon us. Dr. Jim Hansen now estimates that atmospheric concentrations of carbon must level off at 350 ppm, nearly 30 percent lower than everyone thought was needed to keep climate change at "safe" levels. Anyone who's paying attention sees that the impacts of global warming are occurring much faster than predicted.

If this year's weather extremes are a sample of climate change, how much worse will they be 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years from now, as today's rising and accumulating emissions take their toll?

Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution?

The goal of carbon capture and storage (CCS), also called carbon sequestration, is to take carbon dioxide that would have...

Opening ANWR cuts gas prices $0.02 in 2025

In the climate and energy debate, conservatives continue to argue that the only solution to high gasoline prices is drill, drill, drill, especially in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This argument is false, false, false.

The Administration's own Energy Information Administration found differently in a 2004 Congressionally-requested "Analysis of Oil and Gas Production in ANWR" (see "Note to Bush, media: Opening ANWR cuts gas prices one cent in 2025"). I pointed out then that the 2004 analysis was based on low oil prices, and that higher oil prices would raise the savings.

A May 2008 re-analysis [PDF] by EIA, "Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," in fact found this: