As I noted yesterday, the recent fiery debate over the merits of energy efficiency is becoming increasingly acrimonious. The latest public skirmish was triggered earlier this week when Jon Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University, wrote on his blog: Over the past few weeks I’ve been engaged in an email conversation with about 30…Continue Reading…
Mark Bittman, the popular NYT food writer, has offered up a column chock full of biotech scare mongering. It’s such a half-baked concoction that I can’t imagine he’d ever serve a meal based on such flimsy ingredients. Let’s inspect just a few of the numerous questionable assertions. He writes (my emphasis): G.E. [genetically engineered] products…Continue Reading…
A fierce debate on the merits of energy efficiency, triggered last month by David Owen’s article in The New Yorker, has perhaps entered an ugly phase today, with this post by Joe Romm. And that’s too bad, because the thorny questions raised in Owen’s piece deserve to be judged on the basis of reasoned argument….Continue Reading…
It’ll be interesting to see if this new solutions-oriented documentary finds an audience. The trailer is definitely pretty cool. (I’ll go see any movie that includes a former CIA director and a one-armed Texas hillbilly.) A guy who looks like Mr. Clean in a business suit utters my favorite soundbite: This is no longer the…Continue Reading…
Anybody who remembers their wise-ass high school days will recall playing the dozens–a verbal contest of put-downs between two people (usually guys) that degenerates into an x-rated volley of insults about family members. It’s not for the meek. I’ve noticed that the raunchy tradition is alive and well on some climate blogs and presumably carried…Continue Reading…
This story in the Guardian, which reports that UK energy companies have been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists is sure to make U.S. climate activists paranoid. Of course, corporate espionage, be it employed against competitors or perceived opponents, is nothing new. If I was the head of a major climate advocacy group,…Continue Reading…
Steve LeVine at Foreign Policy discusses a near-term scenario that Big Oil deems all too plausible: Royal Dutch/Shell says that in 2020, energy supplies will be so tight that they will tip the world into a full-blown crisis in which governments will force their populations to reduce driving, use less electricity, and pay an extremely…Continue Reading…
A Republican over at Frum’s site has some advice for the GOP that will undoubtedly be ignored: if Republicans in Congress want to build on their 2010 gains, going on the warpath against environmental protections might be a flawed strategy. Recent polling and focus group work indicates that roughly three-fourths of Americans ““ including 61…Continue Reading…
A climate blogger goes down the yellow brick road: The Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has resigned, finally relenting to weeks of massive protests. Is he the latest casualty of climate change? I think I see an upside that everyone else is missing. If more oppressed populaces, inspired by the Egyptians (who were inspired by the…Continue Reading…
There’s a cosmically splendiforous spin-off to this Bill O’Reilly story from last week. H/T: Bad Astronomy