A Toxic Shroud: "China is choking on its own success” and endangering neighbors and American cities

 
Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times, on August 26th, produced an excellent story on China’s industrial success/toxic pollution nexus. The situation is dire, and China’s difficulties overcoming the Victorian England-like pollution troubles in order to host an Olympics palpable to the rest of the world are well known, and have been [...]

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U.S. Congress’ Climate Change Waterloo?

Steven Mufson of the Washington Post has a grave assessment of Congress’ ability to make even a dent in the dire issue of climate change:
Here’s the good news about climate change: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the perilous rise in [...]

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Anthropogenic Global Warming agnostic? Usual Suspects don’t include the Sun.

New study released in Proceedings of the Royal Society finds that over the past 20 years, despite global warming continuing apace, “all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.”
Comparing [...]

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iPhone, Xbox, PS3/2, Zune, and Saving Earth: Not All at the Same Time

According to recent reports the increased popularity of electronic gadgets threatens to undo attempts to lower carbon emissions. According to a report entitled The Ampere Strikes Back, household appliances consume 1/3 of the energy use for the average UK home. The graph below represents the increased energy consumption of various television sets. [...]

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Environment: Need for Change? Check. Kyoto the solution? Nope.

The Kyoto summit had the good and the bad. The good, its purpose. The bad, the implementation. First, the good. Contrary to all those skeptics, one fact remains clear: something is amiss and without any precedent in the last millenium’s history of climate change. Kyoto tried to address that, based [...]

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Global warming = super-allergies? U.S.Dept of Ag thinks so.

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal reports on scientific studies suggesting strongly that the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in hardier, larger, and more potent allergens from allergy-inducing vegetation. For the 35 million people in the U.S. that suffer nasal allergies, none of this is good news.

Giant Ragweed

Dr. Lewis Ziska of the [...]

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Sheryl Crow, Laurie David, and Hypocracy

As you know, I’m a die-hard environmentalist. I also believe that Thomas Jefferson spake the truth when he said “all Men are created equal.  And I also believe it’s true that ol’ TJ owned slaves around that same time.
No lingering cognitive dissonance there, most of us have worked through these historical demons of American [...]

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China passes U.S. as top greenhouse gas emitter in 2007

Or so Shai Oster of the Wall Street Journal writes today, citing comments by the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, Fatih Birol. Previously China had been expected to surpass the U.S. in emissions in 2010, but China’s burgeoning economy (increasing at more than 10% a year for the past four years) has required a [...]

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The Music Man

Last week Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, one of my favorite columnists, wrote about a little experiment he conducted in D.C. He managed to convince Joshua Bell, one of the most celebrated American violinists, to play for quarters in the D.C. Metro. For 45 minutes, dressed in jeans and a ballcap, Bell played some [...]

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SCOTUS gets Green: Massachusetts v. EPA Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court just handed down its decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (05-1120), in which it held that the Environmental Protection Agency had incorrectly refused to regulate car and truck exhausts in that state. The State of Massachusetts sued the Federal EPA, claiming that it (the State) would be directly affected by global [...]

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Harry’s Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

As the inestimable Fredregar would tell you, if you asked, it’s hard to find a more die-hard Oakeshottian conservative than H Lime. That doesn’t affect my writing of this review in an area where science trumps political belief — as it always must, for any who consider themselves children of the Enlightenment. Just [...]

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Mercedes Benz: All Future Models Available as Gas-Electric Hybrids

High time. I ditched my Mercedes because, frankly, the quality was crap. I replaced it with a Toyota Prius, and the family, to my surprise, loves the car. (The wife picked the Mercedes, so she thought it was my turn and only reluctantly initially agreed to the Prius.)
Now, assuming Mercedes doesn’t learn [...]

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Taking the toxins out of your water bottle – CNET News.com

This is nothing new–there’ve been many studies that suggested that toxins leech out of those Nalgeen bottles into your water. One purported side effect is reproductive damage — genetic defects in reproduction as a result of the chemicals. The exact extent and risk, however, is unknown. This sidesteps the issue–and why not? [...]

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