Planet Earth
tfk | November 19, 2008I haven't blogged about the fight for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee because I thought it was a done deal. Rep. Dingell has been running that committee for an eternity, and he has a lot of power and support. He is also, unfortunately, in the pocket of Big Oil and Big Auto. His intransigence is partly responsible for our nation's lagging fuel economy standards, and for our slow progress on other policies that could have forced Detroit to take the initiative on hybrid cars and other alternative technologies. The Big Three clearly thought that those actions were…
tfk | September 12, 2008Yesterday, Sarah Palin demanded that Charlie Gibson:
Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that.
Except, well:
Last year, she told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity." And in an interview Newsmax magazine just released, which was conducted before she was selected as John McCain's running mate, the Alaska governor said, "A changing environment will…
tfk | August 29, 2008In a move that should've been taken eons ago, California's legislature is moving to bring civic planning under a unified framework that will reduce carbon emissions and reduce traffic:
The bill yokes three regulatory and permit processes. One focuses on regional planning: how land use should be split among industry, agriculture, homes, open space and commercial centers. Another governs where roads and bridges are built. A third sets out housing needs and responsibilities — for instance, how much affordable housing a community must allow.
Under the pending measure, the three regulatory and…
tfk | August 19, 2008Military penguin becomes a 'Sir':
A penguin who was previously made a Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army has been knighted at Edinburgh Zoo.
Penguin Nils Olav has been an honorary member and mascot of the Norwegian King's Guard since 1972.
Over the years, he has been promoted through the ranks after being adopted by Royal Guard who visited the zoo.
During the ceremony, Nils had a sword dubbed on each side of his head, where his shoulders should be, to confirm his regimental knighthood.
The Beeb also reports that "The proud penguin was on his best behaviour throughout most of the ceremony…
tfk | July 24, 2008The Washington Post checks McCain's rhetoric about and the safety of offshore drilling:
Sen. John McCain says at every campaign stop that offshore oil drilling is safe, playing down the risk of environmental accidents, even when faced with the power of a hurricane.
"I'm aware that off the coast of Louisiana and Texas there are oil rigs, as we well know, and those rigs have survived, very successfully, the impacts of hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina, as far as Louisiana's concerned," McCain said at a town hall in Michigan last week.
In an energy speech recently, McCain said that: "As for offshore…
tfk | July 20, 200839 years ago, Neil Armstrong stepped onto an elaborately constructed simulacrum of the lunar surface, the first time such a thing had ever been done in history.
Pardon me, my fact-checkers have determined that in fact, it was the actual lunar surface, and also reveal that tomorrow was supposed to be Moon Day, but the astronauts couldn't sleep, so they stepped out early.
Space is awesome, and I hope the Democratic party adds the planks we suggested last night, one of which was: The Democratic Party seeks to create a truly spacefaring society, through partnerships with private industry and…
tfk | July 14, 2008I'm a fan of Randy Olson. Don't get me wrong about that. His Flock of Dodos makes a valuable point about science communication, and goes beyond the trite standard narrative of brilliant scientists battling ignorant creationists. There's a real problem, and caricature won't solve it.
Randy set aside his career as an academic marine biologist to become a filmmaker. His decision to pursue a career in science communication is admirable, more scientists should take the time to learn how to communicate effectively and find ways to communicate with a general audience.
That said, I didn't care…
tfk | July 12, 2008Shorter Matthew DeBord: If GM stops making the Hummer, the French will win WWII.
Honestly:
…it would be a mistake for GM … to sell the brand to an upstart carmaker in India or China or to breed it as a hybrid, as some have suggested. GM desperately needs an obnoxious, attention-grabbing brand to keep from turning into a dreary shadow of its former self. And America needs the Hummer to remind us of what has always made our automobiles stand out, from the tailfin 1950s to the muscle car 1960s and '70s: swagger.
Also poor maintenance records, low fuel economy, and declining profits.
Americans…
tfk | July 2, 2008Hilzoy mocks a column in the American Spectator. A former Reagan staffer wildly speculates that:
In this Obamaland vision the state would mandate that every heating and cooling system in a private dwelling include a "non-removable" FM receiver that would allow the government to decide the temperature inside your home.
"Wow," hilzoy boggles. "This has 'emerged as a proposal in California'??! Where? In a college dorm at 2am? Maybe a cocktail party? Definitely a sign of Obama's real intentions!"
But it's worse than that! PG&E has a voluntary program (not mandatory, as the Reagan staffer…
tfk | June 26, 2008The National Academies Press is selling books at half price for the summer, meaning you can get Robert Hazen's excellent Gen-e-sis for cheap. It's perfect reading whether you're at a deep-sea vent, tidal pools or floating on the surface of the primordial ocean.
tfk | June 13, 2008We live in a truly stunning time and place. The lovely vistas in the finest of science fiction movies could never produce the simple awe I feel when I look at NASA's image of sunset on Mars:
We did this. Next time someone tells you that the government can't do anything right, point them to this.
I also think that images like this are a partial answer to the occasional gripe you hear that money spent on the space program would have been better spent fighting disease or poverty. First, it's naive to think that this is a zero-sum enterprise. We're running a budget deficit year after year…
tfk | June 12, 2008Disco. Inst. head Bruce Chapman takes a dip in denial. Global warming isn't an issue, he seems to believe, because:
We're having the coldest winter, er, spring in 100 years in the great Northwest. There's new snow in the mountain passes and even freak frosty flecks in Seattle's hilliy suburbs.
Meanwhile, the Arctic is melting at least as fast, if not faster than, last year:
As for Chapman's claim that "while mean world temperatures have fluctuated yearly, in the past ten years, overall, they've gone nowhere," I must insist: Sadly, No!
The red line is a 5 year moving average, which smoothes…
tfk | May 29, 2008Nature's Climate Feedback blog points out that the post-World War II cooling is a mirage:
The 1945 temperature drop is nothing else than the result of the sudden but uncorrected change from warm US measurements to cooler UK measurement…
That’s a rather trivial explanation for a long-standing conundrum, so why has it taken so long to find out? Because identifying the glitch was less simple than it might appear, says David Thompson of the State University of Colorado in Boulder. The now digitized logbooks of neither US nor British ships contain any information on how the sea surface temperature…
tfk | April 21, 2008
Seeing the sun set across Pinnacles National Monument, while the full moon rises out past the San Andreas fault (below the fold) is pretty awesome.
It would've been nice to see some condors, too. Though the horned lizard was pretty excellent.
tfk | March 27, 2008Drew Ryun, twin brother of equally clueless Ned Ryun, discusses:
the feeling that a vast majority of Americans share. The Democrats are not good on national defense.
Hmmm. "Next, please tell me if you think the Republican Party or the DEMOCRATIC Party could do a better job in each of the following areas:
Making wise decisions about foreign policy: R=40%, D=45%.
Making wise decisions about what to do in Iraq: R=37%, D=47%
This isn't new. Gallup found Democrats taking the lead on national security issues between 2006 and 2007, while Rasmussen found in early 2006 that more Americans trusted…
tfk | March 25, 2008Forest Service May Move to Interior - washingtonpost.com:
Among some lawmakers who hold the purse strings, there is a belief that the U.S. Forest Service is out of place.
The 103-year-old agency, which manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, is part of the Department of Agriculture. Its bureaucratic cousins -- the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, which manage 84 million acres, 96 million acres and 258 million acres of public land, respectively -- are in the Interior Department. …
At the request of the House…
tfk | March 18, 2008Via Brave New Films Tony Perkins takes on eco-friendly Southern Baptists.
Perkins says "people are told and taught to look inwardly and making sure that they are spiritually prepared to meet the End Times, not throw away the keys to your SUV and jump on the Al Gore bandwagon."
In other words, global warming is real, will hurt people, and will harm creation, but that's OK. To say that this is bad theology is trivial. It is horrific, practically inhuman, and surely indecent.
tfk | March 12, 2008Via BoingBoing, we find this graphic
by Adam Nieman/Science Photo Library. On the left, a globe with all the water collected into a tiny marble, and on the right, a globe with all the air collected into a marble.
We think of ourselves occupying the globe, but really, those two tiny spheres are all we can do anything with, and only a fraction of each is accessible. No new water is being created, and no new air is being generated (though it is stored, recycled, and reprocessed in various ways). That's all we've got, all our children will have. It's a precious heirloom, and we need to take…
tfk | February 4, 2008Via The Sierra Club:
Livestock create a beefy portion of all greenhouse-gas emissions: 18 percent, according to the United Nations. Could the answer be as simple as two slices of bread and a slathering of peanut butter and jelly? Perhaps. Compared with a burger, this classic sandwich saves as much as 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, 280 gallons of water, and 50 square feet of land--even more if you wash it down with a glass of soy milk. "You don't have to change your whole diet to change the world," says the PB&J Campaign. "Just start with lunch."
grrlscientist | December 31, 2007tags: Planet Earth trailer, BBC, streaming video
How can you not love and want to protect this beautiful, awe-inspiring planet that we live on? [4:42]