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SuperFreak Dubner embraces ClimateGate conspiracy theories
by Brad Johnson Cross-posted from the Wonk Room . Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of SuperFreakonomics , has embraced charges by the right wing that a handful of illegally obtained private emails means that the scientific consensus on climate ...
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Environment
Learning how to count to 350
by Rebecca Solnit Cross-posted from TomDispatch . Next month, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, the wealthy nations that produce most of the excess carbon in our atmosphere will almost certainly fail to embrace measures adequate to ward ...
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Environment
With GoodGuide scanner, PC food shopping goes point and click
by Todd Woody Last year, a colleague suggested I check out a startup with the intriguing, and so-very-California, name of Tao It. Founded by Berkeley professor Dara O’Rourke, Tao It aimed to tap a multiplicity of databases to rank consumer ...
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Environment
Food Shortage
Will Africa’s farmland become a “resource curse”?
by Tom Philpott Palm-oil trees in the making, Ivory Coast.In his Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis teases out the mechanisms of famine in British-ruled 19th century India. When a drought would wipe out a grain harvest in one region of India, ...
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Environment
George Will
Obama administration officials grateful for early spring
by Ashley Braun “The good news is spring is coming earlier and earlier [thanks] to climate change.” — An anonymous White House official , on the prospect of the Senate debating a climate and clean energy bill in the spring of ...
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Environment
Barack Obama
More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar
by Tom Laskawy The NYT’s Cityroom blog offers some hopeful news on getting more healthy food into low-income neighborhoods: Food stamp purchases at the city’s Greenmarkets have more than doubled in the last year, due in large part ...
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Environment
Food Shortage
Freeing the grid
by Adam Browning It’s that time of year again ... no, not when turduckens appear on dinner tables nationwide and it becomes somehow acceptable to call the marshmallow a vegetable. It’s time for the 2009 edition of “ Freeing the ...
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Environment
Green Grid
Oregon
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
by Jonathan Hiskes The IPCC’s prediction for average sea-level rise this century is 13 inches (if global warming continues unchecked). Today’s report from a group of climatologist ups the prediction to 33 inches. This is what the ...
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Environment
Climate Change
Kids just say no—to fossil fuels
by Osha Gray Davidson “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary…” OK, students of American History, think you know the rest of this historic American sentence? If you guessed, “... for one people to rid ...
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Environment
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
by David Roberts As I said in my last post , taking energy efficiency in buildings seriously means expanding our policy horizons beyond the blunt tool of raising energy prices. We have to think in creative ways about how to remove market and ...
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Environment
Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation
by Michael A. Livermore This Friday is the deadline for public comments on the stricter vehicle efficiency standards from EPA and the Department of Transportation. The docket is likely to be overrun with statements for and against the ...
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Environment
Energy Efficiency
Copenhagen is getting the Big Mo
by Geoffrey Lean Suddenly—and just in the nick of time—next month’s Copenhagen’s conference is starting to take off. National leaders have rushed to say they are going, elevating it to the status of a major summit. More and ...
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Environment
How to turn your turkey carcass into a spectacular gumbo
by April McGreger Turkey gumbo: the Thanksgiving centerpiece finds its true calling. All photos by April McGreger Before accepting a Thanksgiving dinner invitation, I ask my host two questions: Will you be roasting a turkey and may I have the ...
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Environment
Turkey
Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?
by Tom Konrad This article was first published on Clean Energy Wonk . California’s RETI process lends insight into the near-term prospects of solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. In September, California’s Renewable ...
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Environment
California
Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays
by Grist
Related Links:
Climate Citizen: Wyclef Jean
U.S. Senate puts off action on climate bill until 2010
George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]
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Environment
Wyclef Jean
Ohio
Climate Change
Bring on all the water news—the good, the bad and the ugly
by Daniel Moss It’s not so unusual to see water stories topping the news these days. Even when that news is very bad, that’s very good news indeed. The stories are frequently troubling; they should be. Climate change is increasing the ...
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Environment
Water Conservation
Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets
by Jonathan Hiskes Todd SternAs Dave lamented last week, most of the predicting and posturing preceding the Copenhagen climate talks amounts to little more than Some Person Guessing. You might consider the weekend news from the UK ...
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Environment
Barack Obama
Methane Gas
Treat energy efficiency like a utility
by Tom Laskawy With David Leonhardt’s piece on a new weatherization program/jobs bill nicknamed “Cash for Caulkers” generating buzz , as well as questions , it seemed a good time to resurrect a post I wrote about a year ago on ...
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Environment
Energy Efficiency
Copenhagen, U.S.: December 7
by Jeff Biggers If the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to stop the massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, can we honestly believe they will be able ...
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Environment
Environmental education in Guinea Bissau
by Tim Bromfield The Presidential Palace. The Presidential Palace in Guinea Bissau lies derelict and burnt out. You can walk amongst the shards of broken crockery, blackened banisters, and singed carpets. Its empty rooms are a fitting metaphor for ...
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Environment
Guinea-Bissau
This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!
by Umbra Fisk Courtesy AdbustersFor twenty years, the people behind Buy Nothing Day have been pleading with consumers to avoid the frenzy inherent in “Black Friday,” the no-holds-barred shop-o-rama that comes the day after ...
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Environment
Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price
by David Roberts Using energy more efficiently in buildings may be the fastest, cheapest way to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the short-term. How can we make it happen? Last week, New York Times’ David Leonhardt wrote a great ...
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Environment
Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots
by Umbra Fisk Q. Dear Umbra, Municipal and individual composting operations are gaining steam nationwide. Some obvious benefits include space-saving in landfills, and cheaper and (hopefully) “greener” fertilizer. While I am an avid ...
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Environment
Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking
by Gar Lipow Carbon Fixated has now a exposed a far greater scandal than “Carbongate.” It is time to expose the fraudulent religion that worships Issac Newton, who was even fatter than Al Gore, and his silly assertions about gravity, ...
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Environment
Al Gore
City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks
by David Turnbull As Copenhagen prepares for December, a strange combination of Christmas lights, clean energy expos, evergreen wreaths, and security barriers have begun to crop up around the city. It’s an exciting time to be in Copenhagen ...
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Environment
Merkley wants Senate jobs bill to help finance building efficiency retrofits
by David Roberts Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with the chairs of six committees that might have some hand in developing the clean energy bill. The question at issue was whether the bill should be pushed back in favor of a ...
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Environment
Energy Efficiency
Oh-oh: Tamiflu-resistant swine flu rears up in the U.S., U.K.
by Tom Philpott In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ————- Ever since evolution of the swine flu virus accelerated in 1998, virologists and veterinary-science have ...
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Environment
Will Whole Foods’ new mobile slaughterhouses squeeze small farmers?
by Tom Laskawy Jennifer Hashley processes a chicken on her Massachusetts farm. Massachusetts poultry farmer Jennifer Hashley has a problem. From the moment she started raising pastured chickens outside Concord, Mass. in 2002, there was, as she put ...
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Environment
George Will
Friday music blogging: Harper Simon
by David Roberts I have a huge, huge soft spot for Paul Simon. Simon & Garfunkel was one of the first bands I ever got into (like when I was eight) and I still love virtually everything Simon’s ever done. My musical tastes were shaped ...
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Environment
Paul Otellini
Tennessee
John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles
by Jonathan Hiskes You could make a pretty simple argument that the fate of the world rests with the United States Senate Republicans: 1. It takes 60 votes to pass a climate bill in the U.S. Senate (assuming it won’t be done through budget ...
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Environment
Skeptics claim global warming is fake after top scientists’ emails hacked at CRU
by Ashley Braun Shucks, we shoulda known!Photo courtesy Andrew Ciscel via Flickr Hackers recently broke into thousands of emails and internal documents from a leading climate research center and dumped them onto an anonymous Russian server. The ...
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Environment
Global Warming
FOX News and TrollCat agree: Global warming is BUNK!
by Brad Johnson FOX News evidently agrees with Global Warming Skeptic Trollcat (see above): Thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit were hacked recently and dumped on a Russian web server. Fox News ...
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Environment
Global Warming
Australia
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
by Tom Konrad Energy Self-Reliant States [PDF] , a flawed study on local Renewable Energy availability from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ISLR) found that 18 of the 50 states could not meet their electricity needs with local renewables. ...
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Environment
New photography project provides stark proof of melting glaciers on the roof of the world
by Joseph Romm Global warming is melting 18,000 Himalayan glaciers—the largest concentration of glaciers outside the great polar ice sheets. If the present melt rate continues, many of these glaciers will be gone by the middle of ...
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Environment
Cast your vote for the best climate journalism
by Grist The climate problem is incredibly complex. Heck, it’s unfathomably complex to most folks, as it involves chemistry, computer models, economic development, and, of course, the weather. This complexity demands strong, explanatory ...
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Environment
Climate Change
Eugene Mirman is doing what in Copenhagen?
by Grist
Related Links:
A Gristy guide to the COP15 climate talks
15 people worth watching in Copenhagen (a slideshow!)
Climate talks timeline: From 350 to Kyoto to Copenhagen and beyond
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Environment
Climate Change
The tar sands blow
by Grist
Related Links:
Rumors of Copenhagen’s demise have been greatly exaggerated
Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash
Children and riot police face off in Canadian “Moms” ...
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Environment
Ecological farms: the only real way to feed an Increasingly hungry world
by Debbie Barker Image: Tom Twigg for GristThere are those who would like us to believe that industrialized farming is the only way to feed the earth’s growing population. Disinformation comes daily from powerful industrial agricultural ...
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Environment
Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1
by Ken Ward More work than anyone imagined—watch a slideshow of the project unfolding .Leise JonesIt is worth noting that the original JP Green House budget for the first year of the project was $25k. In retrospect, this was woefully ...
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Environment
Green Grid
Slideshow: Reinventing the JP Green House
by Andrée Zaleska For the last year and a half, Ken Ward and Andrée Zaleska have been rehabbing a 100-year-old former neighborhood store in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. They’re converting it into a home for their ...
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Environment
Green Grid
Jamaica
New York
Toxic suds want to watch you shower
by Ashley Braun
Related Links:
Ask Umbra on shower caps, computers, and junk mail
Ask Umbra on climate-skeptic teachers, low-flow toilets, and more
Seventh Generation launches anti-toxics campaign with wee ...
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Environment
No to Obama’s agrichemical industry man, yes to Bed-Stuy Farm
by Tom Philpott This post marks the launch of “Plate Tectonics,” a new feature that highlights ways that citizen action can move the food system in more sustainable directions. ————————- ...
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Environment
Barack Obama
15 people worth watching in Copenhagen (a slideshow!)
by Jonathan Hiskes So who will be the real power players in Copenhagen? The official estimate for official delegates attending the U.N. climate conference hovers somewhere around a gajillion. OK, seriously, it’s a mere 20,000. Then there are ...
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Environment
Climate talks timeline: From 350 to Kyoto to Copenhagen and beyond
by Grist Whether you’ve been hitting snooze each time a global climate conference rolls around or you’re looking for a refresher before the Copenhagen climate talks this December, Grist has an interactive timeline to bring you up to ...
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Environment
Climate Change
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
by Grist For some people, climate change is a tough cause to rally ‘round—even those who understand that it’s happening and that it’s human-caused get distracted by things like eating, working, having sex, watching TV, or ...
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Environment
Climate Change
Copenhagen 101: The essentials on the climate talks
by Jonathan Hiskes Welcome! It’s not too late to get up to speed on the climate-change jamboree that begins Dec. 7. Here’s a short primer. What is this Copenhagen thing? It’s a gathering of negotiators from every United ...
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Environment
Climate Change
Inferno on Earth: Wildfires spreading as temperatures rise
by Lester Brown The following is a Plan B Update by my colleague Janet Larsen, the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute, about the connection between the increase of wildfires and rising temperature. Future firefighters have their ...
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Environment
The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success
by Eric Roston First things first: A week of anticlimaxes saw President Barack Obama conducting a less-than-exuberant swing through China, the international community conceding a binding climate treaty at the COP-15 negotiations in Copenhagen, ...
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Environment
Climate Change
Huffington Post
China
Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving
by Brad Johnson Paul Bakus in a ruined pumpkin patch.Photo: Wonk Room Cross-posted from the Wonk Room . Our increasingly extreme climate is devastating American agriculture. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, strengthened by global warming , caused ...
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Environment
A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table
by Lou Bendrick Given the ire I provoked in last year’s turkey column , it’s high time that this Grist columnist acknowledges that: A. Meat-centric holidays such as Thanksgiving can be challenging for vegetarians and evoke all kinds ...
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