California Dreamin’: All the leaves are brown

“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 [...]

Governor Schwarzenegger, AB 32, and Global Warming: Code Redd

“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 [...]

Environmental Story Trends to Watch: Climate Change

“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 [...]

IPCC 4th Assessment Report doesn’t agree with the Center for Biological Diversity

Apparently, the Center for Biological Diversity doesn’t agree with the Mitigation Working Group Report [PDF] in IPCC’s 4th Assessment as to the best strategy for mitigating CO2.

Photo from south island on New Zealand.

“Biomass clearing and site preparation prior to afforestation [i.e. planting] may lead to short-term carbon losses on that site… Accumulation of carbon [...]

Forests and Climate Change, Not Clearcut

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 [...]

The Optimistic Environmentalist

As a child of the 1960’s On April 22, 1970, I, along with 20 million others that day, attended one of the first Earth Day celebrations. We had heard the predictions and we were duly frightened. In those days, most of us in the environmental movement worried about air pollution causing another ice age through [...]

The Top 13 Environmental Stories of the Aughts

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 [...]

Major Cuts in Carbon Emissions Are Not Worth The Cost

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, [...]

The Green Loss Effect

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 [...]

A Tempest in a Toilet Bowl – Environmentalists Say ‘Plush Toilet Paper Wipes Out Forests’

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 [...]