“A clearcut is about as beneficial to the climate as a new coal-fired power plant.”
- spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity
Spin consumes science
Such a sound bite is ‘spin;’ and we should not confuse such political posturing with fact. Perception trumps truth and the California Air Resources Board has caved to [...]
“When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.“- Alston Chase, author of “Playing God in Yellowstone.”
‘Redd’ is another ort in the acronym soup of climate-speak from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); it stands for “Reducing [...]
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
- Danish physicist, Neils Bohr
A few posts ago I attempted to list the top environmental stories of the last decade: the Doha development agenda stall, the 2008 economic downturn, Al Gore’s Nobel prize, and others, ending with the Credit Card Reform Act [...]
Will the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit filed against Cal Fire have the putative result of slowing global warming? Not likely, probably the exact opposite [...]
Recently, Barnes and Noble launched its own e-book reader, the “Nook,” to compete with the Amazon Kindle.[i] E-readers are handy electronic devices, they can hold hundreds of books, and use an ‘electronic paper.’ They have been heralded as alternatives to ‘dead-tree publishing.’
Without doubt, digital technology improves lives. Consider mobile phones: once isolated African fishermen now [...]
Here is my olio list of profound and profane environmental news of the past decade–the aughts.
Hurricane Katrina From the toxic sludge left behind on the land to removal of the vegetative buffers by encroaching civilization, hurricane Katrina exposed so many of our environmental shortcomings, all in one storm.
Al Gore’s Inconvenient Nobel Peace PrizeI voted for [...]
That’s the motion debated (Oxford-style) January 2009 on National Public Radio’s Intelligence Squared. The program runs about 45 minutes and was well worth my time.
FOR THE MOTION:
Peter Huber, co-author of The Bottomless Well and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Bjorn Lomborg, creator of the Copenhagen Consensus
Philip Stott, [...]
Policymakers must address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to Georgia Tech’s City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone in an upcoming paper to be published in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology.
“The role of land use in global warming is [...]
Environmentalists Say Plush Toilet Paper Wipes Out Forests
Does buying soft toilet paper really threaten the environment?
The blogosphere overflows with hyperbole saying it does. “Americans Wipe Their Butts with Non-Renewable Trees,”1 one site trumpeted. Another gushed, “Use recycled toilet paper and paper towels and reduce the demand of destroying virgin forests!”2 I’m sure she meant toilet [...]
Occam’s Razor is often interpreted as “the least complicated answer is usally right.”
The Huffington Post has a post blaming global warming for the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanja. “The increase of Earth’s near surface temperatures, coupled with even greater increases in the mid- to upper-tropical troposphere, as documented in recent decades, would at least [...]