John Collins Rudolf provides an ugly, but necessary deconstruction. That it would take more than 20 years for federal regulators to finally propose toxic emissions standards for the power industry is testament to both the slow wheels of bureaucracy and the clout of the nation’s utility and coal interests, which bitterly “” and for years,…Continue Reading…
Given the politicization of climate science in the public sphere, I’m not sure it makes sense to mention climate blogs in the same breath as archaeology blogs. Still, there are familiar challenges (and rewards) to blogging for both climate scientists and archaeologists. So I advise any climate scientists lurking at my blog to read a…Continue Reading…
I found this lament by NYT columnist Timothy Egan tough to swallow, in part because his enbrace of the “frankenfish” label demonizes the complex issue of genetically engineered salmon. Additionally, Egan makes his case by juxtaposing fraught concerns over biotechnology with Japan’s nuclear disaster, which I found problematic. Indeed, one Times reader wondered if it…Continue Reading…
I’m picturing a Navy Seal-turned environmental activist turned loose in a zany Carl Hiaasen plot. I don’t know much of Peter Bethune’s background, but he sure comes off here as one righteous bad ass. Bethune’s new organisation is based on fledgling local chapters of volunteers around the world, plus a six-man mission team. But where…Continue Reading…
Rush Limbaugh is so indisputably noxious on a daily basis that one hardly needs to take anything he says out of context. Yet Christopher Mims at Grist has managed to do just that in this post, when he writes: Rush Limbaugh is laughing at Japan’s earthquake refugees. Actually, Limbaugh started out mocking a Diane Sawyer…Continue Reading…
That’s essentially what Michael Levi is saying in this smart post. His lament is that energy and related environmental issues are not viewed through a wider lens: Until we can think about security, economics, and environmental risk at the same time, we’re going to have a lot of trouble developing an energy policy that makes sense….Continue Reading…
Perhaps we should call this initiative by the U.S. military asymetric sockpuppet warfare? As reported by the Guardian, the new software being developed could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with a host of co-ordinated blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Now…Continue Reading…
A commenter sums up the media’s schizophrenic coverage of Japan’s nuclear disaster (as communicated via expert opinion) : “It’s horrible!” “It’s no big deal” “Worst thing Evah” “No, it’s minor and under control” “Run for your lives!” “You’re fine.” You can actually see the frustration on the journalists faces. “Science” says everyone’s dead and everyone’s…Continue Reading…
George Monbiot makes his case: Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally. This should be fun. George, time to crank up one of the classics:
Over at Foreign Policy, Steve LeVine puts the Japanese cataclysms in a larger context and concludes that what we’re seeing is a global energy system under severe stress. Over the last several months, we’ve learned the hard way in incredibly coincidental events that we are in firm control of almost none of our major sources…Continue Reading…