Recent Activity

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  Australia named worst emitters

  Let's put everybody out of work, live in mud huts, and trade root vegetables at the markets.  Guaranteed to lower our carbon emissions.

  Posted 18 Nov 07

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  An inconvenient truth

  Hollywood can have him.  He's pretty good at fictional horror movies, I've heard.

  Posted 26 Feb 07

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  Al Gore's Son arrested for Marijuana and Speeding

  LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (AP) - Al Gore's son was arrested early today on suspicion of possessing marijuana and prescription drugs after deputies pulled him over for speeding, authorities said.

  Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway when he was pulled over at about 2:15 a.m., Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

  The deputies said they smelled marijuana and searched the car, Amormino said. They found less than an ounce of marijuana along with Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall, which is used for attention deficit disorder, he said.

  "He does not have a prescription for any of those drugs," Amormino said.

  Gore was being held in the men's central jail in Santa Ana on $20,000 bail.

  Kalee Kreider, a spokeswomen for his parents, did not immediately return phone messages to The Associated Press today.

  Posted 04 Jul 07

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  Climate change unites science and religion

  Great!  Save the Planet for Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.  I thought hot air and noxious gasses were the principal cause of global warming?

  Posted 17 Jan 07

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  Al Gore Looks Thinner

  But it sells more I-pods.  That's the point.   Apple is green, just not in the way you'd imagine!

  Posted 13 May 07

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  Blame cosmic rays not CO2 for warming up the planet

  100% ethanol.  We used it to spike the punchbowl in college.  Wasn't legal for sale in California, so we went to Nevada to get it.  Flammable stuff.

  Posted 26 Feb 07

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  El Nino is over.... now will we...

  I think there will be more press on 'climare change' as it's an election year.  It's an area where Howard is weak, so I expect Rudd to exploit it for all that it's worth.  Besides, fear mongering sells papers/increases viewers.  It would be boring if we actually had to read the facts and not the hyperbole.

  Posted 11 Apr 07

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  Let the Free Market fight Climate Change

  In just two years, the environment debate has jumped from the
  margins to the mainstream. It used to be so far down the list of priorities that
  the pollsters rarely bothered to rate its importance.

  
  

  Things couldn't be more different today. Big businesses write
  open letters to the Prime Minister calling for stronger policies. High-street
  retailers battle to out-green each other.

  
  

  The issue has mushroomed, principally because the evidence is
  mounting. Not all scientists agree on the gravity of the problem, but we're as
  close as science allows to a consensus. Nicholas Stern calculated in his report
  last year that there will be more than 200 million refugees by 2050 because of
  sea-level rise alone.

  Even Gordon Brown feels obliged to address green issues. He
  

  mentioned climate change once each year before David Cameron took over as
  Conservative leader. Last year, that jumped to 16. He's made three major
  speeches on the environment: all since 2005.

  
  

  But Brown doesn't get it. He talks about shifting the fiscal
  system away from taxing ''goods'', towards taxing ''bads'', but the actual level
  of green taxation has fallen since 1997 from 9.4 per cent to 7.7 per cent, while
  the tax take has soared. The Government's Sustainable Development Commission has
  described his use of the tax system as a ''significant failing''.

  
  

  The Chancellor's doubling of air passenger duty following the
  release of the Stern Review will have zero impact on the environment; it will do
  nothing to encourage operators to be more efficient, and can be interpreted only
  as yet another stealth tax. The fact that it was applied retrospectively to
  people who had bought tickets suggests it was not designed to discourage
  flying.

  
  

  Brown has failed to spot the opportunities presented by climate
  change. We're not going to reduce emissions without huge investment in new,
  clean technology. The transition to a low-carbon economy represents one of the
  greatest windows of all time for wealth creation.

  
  

  Crucially, where companies have invested in low-carbon
  technologies and energy efficiency, they are being rewarded. Dupont has reduced
  its emissions by 72 per cent since 1990, saving more than $3 billion.

  
  

  There's a risk that clumsy initiatives will exhaust public
  appetite for green solutions. That's why the Conservative approach is so
  important. We are looking through a lens of opportunity that will see a shift in
  tax, not additional taxation. Years of stealth taxes have eroded people's trust,
  which is why the shifts we make in taxation will need to be transparent and
  honest. We also want a change in regulatory approach, away from obsessive
  policing of processes, towards a focus on outcomes. If the regulatory system is
  too prescriptive, there is no room for innovation and higher standards.

  
  

  Fundamentally, we need a new approach to market economics that
  takes into account the planet. Stern described climate change as a catastrophic
  market failure. The market is blind to the value of the environment; but the
  market is a powerful force for change, and the challenge is to price the
  environment into our accounting system so that pollution becomes a liability,
  not an externality.

  
  

  The debate on climate change will continue. But that shouldn't
  prevent action today, not least because the things we need to do to tackle
  climate change need doing even without climate change. According to the Building
  Research Establishment, basic energy efficiency measures could reduce energy use
  by a third, with capital costs being covered by savings within three or four
  years. It makes sense. So does fuel efficiency, and efforts to design waste out
  of our economy.

  
  

  If we address climate change, we'll emerge with a cleaner,
  leaner, more efficient economy. If we don't, and the scientists are right, the
  economy will be the least of our worries.

  Posted 26 Mar 07

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  Martha Stewart

  God Bless the USA!

  

  Posted 06 Mar 07

• 

  Global Cooling?

  
  

  Is China's soot print changing weather?

  Soot produced by burning coal in China and India isn't just making it harder
  

  for local people to breathe, but could be contributing to freakish weather in
  Canada and the United States, a team of scientists reported yesterday.

  The particles of pollution, known as aerosols, are responsible for the brown
  

  haze over many Chinese cities. But they drift upward over the Pacific, where
  they are causing more large clouds to form higher in the atmosphere where it is
  colder, says Renyi Zhang, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University.

  The result has been more intense storms over the ocean, he and his colleagues
  

  argue in a paper published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy
  of Sciences. More intense storms over the Pacific will change the air-flow
  patterns around the globe, they say.

  "And that is going to change meteorology everywhere," Dr. Zhang said in an
  

  interview.

  This raises the possibility that pollution is contributing to the kind of
  

  bizarre weather and storms coastal cities like Vancouver have been experiencing,
  including the December blow that devastated Stanley Park with hurricane-force
  winds, Dr. Zhang says.

  More research needs to be done to determine what impact these changes in
  

  weather pattern will have on the continental United States and Canada, he says.

  "You are probably going to have extreme weather, cold winters or warm
  

  winters. I just can't say. The impact needs to be further evaluated," he
  said.

  "The bottom line is that if you change the weather in one region you are
  

  going to change the weather everywhere and you are going to change the climate,
  basically."

  He and his colleagues reached their conclusions using satellite data
  

  collected between 1984 and 2005, as well as climate models. He says he knows it
  is controversial to suggest that winter storms may in part be man-made.

  "First we found the evidence that storms are getting stronger. Second, we
  

  believe we have made a link to the pollution in China. People may have different
  opinions."

  A walk in the clouds
  

  What are aerosols? They are particles -- either solid or liquid --
  suspended in the atmosphere. Some are natural, like sea salt. Others, like soot,
  are man-made, produced when coal is burned. They can affect how clouds form,
  what they look like and how often it rains.

  East versus West. The aerosols produced when China and India burn coal
  

  are changing the nature of clouds over the Pacific Ocean, which may affect
  global weather patterns. Scientists don't see anything similar in the Atlantic
  Ocean, perhaps because North American industry is cleaner.

  The puzzle. Clouds remain one of the least understood elements of the
  

  climate system. Aerosols in clouds may actually be helping to cool the planet by
  reflecting more sunlight back into space. So if China and India send less soot
  into the sky, it might accelerate the pace of global warming. Finding out
  more. In April, NASA launched CloudSat (right) and CALIPSO, two satellites
  equipped to investigate the role clouds play in climate. They will work in
  conjunction with three satellites already in orbit to learn more about how
  aerosols affect clouds and weather.

  Posted 06 Mar 07