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In the passage that follows, Brian Fagan describes our best guess at the landscape of part of France about 18,000 years ago, and then describes how the landscape dramatically changed in a short period. (We usually do not know exactly how short---maybe as long as a few hundred years, maybe as short as a month.)

(p. xiv) There would have been black aurochs with lyre-shaped horns, perhaps arctic foxes in their brown summer fur feeding off a kill, perhaps a pride of lions resting under the trees. If you'd been patient enough, you'd have seen the occasional humans, too. But you would have known they weren't far away--informed by the smell of burning wood, trails of white smoke from rock-shelter hearths, the cries of children at play. Then I imagined this world changing rapidly, soon becoming one of forest and water meadow, devoid of reindeer and wild horses, much of the game lurking in the trees. I marveled at the ability of our forebears to adapt so readily to such dramatic environmental changes.

Few humans have ever lived in a world of such extreme climatic and environmental change.

. . .

(p. xvi) The story of the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons tells us much about how our forebears adapted to climatic crisis and sudden environmental change. Like us, they faced an uncertain future, and like us, they relied on uniquely human qualities of adaptiveness, ingenuity, and opportunism to carry them through an uncertain and challenging world.

Source:

Fagan, Brian. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. A17) WASHINGTON -- Like flossing or losing weight, saving energy is easier to promise than to actually do -- even if you are the Department of Energy.

Its Web site advises that choosing new lighting technologies can slash energy use by 50 to 75 percent. But the department is having trouble taking its own advice, according to an internal audit released on Wednesday; many of its offices are still installing obsolete fluorescent bulbs.

And very few have switched to the most promising technology, light-emitting diodes, which the department spent millions of dollars to help commercialize.

Many of the changes would generate savings that would pay back the investment in two years or so, according to the report, by the department's inspector general.

In one case, the Department of Energy made most of the investment by installing timers to shut off lights at night when it moved into a new building in 1997. But it got no benefit: as of March of this year, it had not bought the central control unit needed to run the system.

For the full story, see:

MATTHEW L. WALD. "Energy Department: Make Thyself Fuel Efficient." The New York Times (Thurs., July 8, 2010): A17.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 7, 2010, and has the title "Energy Department Lags in Saving Energy.")

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"Athol Klieve, an expert on cattle stomachs, with steers used for research on reducing methane emissions from belching cattle." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A14) GATTON, Australia -- To hear Athol Klieve tell it, a key to reducing Australia's enormous carbon emissions is to make a cow more like this country's iconic animal -- the kangaroo.

. . .

Australia contributes more greenhouse gases per capita than just about any other country, with its coal-fired power plants leading the way. But more than 10 percent of those gases come from what bureaucrats call livestock emissions -- animals' burping.

At any given point, after munching and regurgitating grass, tens of millions of Australian cattle, as well as sheep, are belching methane gases nonstop into the air. With methane considered 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere, the burping has given ammunition to environmentalists, vegetarians and other critics of beef while initially putting the large meat industry on the defensive.

. . .

Ruminants release methane because of the peculiar way they digest their food. Inside a cow's foregut, which can contain more than 200 pounds of grass at any given time, fermentation of the food leads to the release of hydrogen, a byproduct that would slow down the fermentation. Microbes known as methanogens help the ruminants get rid of the excess hydrogen by producing methane gases that the animals release into the atmosphere.

In other animals known as hindgut fermenters, including humans -- in which food is fermented after going through their stomachs -- methane is sometimes released through flatulence, a fact that, Mr. Klieve said, has led to misunderstanding about his work

"We've had to put up with that all the time," Mr. Klieve said. "It comes from the front end! In the cow, it comes from the front end. But if you're a hindgut fermenter, it goes the other way."

. . .

Like cattle, kangaroos are also foregut fermenters. But instead of relying on methanogens to get rid of the unwanted hydrogen, kangaroos use different microbes that reduce hydrogen by producing not methane, but harmless acetic acids, the basis of vinegar.

. . .

"It's going to be very difficult to meet the current production needs, particularly for the current global population, with kangaroo," Ms. Henry said. "You need something like 10 kangaroos to produce the same amount of meat as one steer. You can't herd them or fence them in."

Undaunted, a few kangaroo meat entrepreneurs are pressing ahead, seeing methane emissions as a business opportunity.

For the full story, see:

NORIMITSU ONISHI. "Gatton Journal; Trying to Stop Cattle Burps From Heating Up Planet." The New York Times (Weds., July 14, 2010): A14.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 13, 2010.)

(Note: ellipses added.)

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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(p. A15) First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.

Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.

Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.

The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world's largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned "A Whale," from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total--roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.

For the full story, see:

PAUL H. RUBIN. "Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow? There are obvious actions to speed things up, but the government oddly resists taking them.." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 2, 2010): A15.

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(p. A15) Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world's leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called "a nice, tidy story" of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, "nothing to see here."

. . .

One of the panel's four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)--the source of the Climategate emails--was established in Mr. Boulton's school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia "adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity."

This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others--one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State "determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."

Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking.

For the full commentary, see

PATRICK J. MICHAELS. "The Climategate Whitewash Continues; Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year's data manipulation scandal. Don't believe the 'independent' reviews.." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., JULY 12, 2010): A15.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated JULY 10, 2010.)

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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"Pumps draw petroleum from oil wells near a home." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) As oil continues to gush from BP's Macondo well and politicians posture, it is time for us to ask why we are drilling in such risky places when there is oil available elsewhere. The answer lies in the mantra NIMBY--"not in my back yard."

. . .

In early June there was a blowout in western Pennsylvania. Did you see it on the nightly news? No, because it was capped in 16 hours.

. . .

Drilling can be done with greater environmental sensitivity onshore. For many years the Audubon Society actually allowed oil companies to pump oil for its privately owned sanctuaries in Louisiana and Michigan, but did so with strict requirements on the oil companies so that they would not disturb the bird habitat.

. . .

When kids play baseball, there is a risk that windows will get broken. Playing on baseball fields rather than in sand lots, however, lowers the risk considerably. Putting so much onshore land off limits to oil and gas development is like closing baseball parks. More windows will be broken and more blowouts result where they are difficult to prevent and stop.

For the full commentary, see:

TERRY ANDERSON. "Why It's Safer to Drill in the 'Backyard'; Texas has had 102 oil and gas well blowouts since the start of 2006, without catastrophic consequences." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., June 25, 2010): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"One promising device is an oil-water separator backed by the actor Kevin Costner, right." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Two decades after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, cleanup technology has progressed so little that the biggest advancement in the Gulf of Mexico disaster -- at least in the public's mind -- is an oil-water separator based on a 17-year-old patent and promoted by the movie star Kevin Costner.

. . .

(p. A20) Ms. Kinner [co-director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire] and others cite many . . . reasons why cleanup technologies lag.

In testimony this month before Congress, Mr. Costner told of years of woe trying to market his separator, a centrifuge originally developed and patented in 1993 by the Idaho National Laboratory, for use in oil spills. One obstacle, he said, was that although his machines are effective, the water they discharge is still more contaminated than environmental regulations allow. He could not get spill-response companies interested in his machines, he said, without a federal stamp of approval.

For the full story, see:

HENRY FOUNTAIN. "Since Exxon Valdez, Little Has Changed in Cleaning Oil Spills." The New York Times (Fri., June 25, 2010): A1 & A20.

(Note: ellipses added; and bracketed words added from previous paragraph of article.)

(Note: the date of the online version of the article was June 24, 2010 and had the title "Advances in Oil Spill Cleanup Lag Since Valdez.")

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"An employee filled an oil drum in New Delhi on Friday. India's government has decided to reduce popular fuel subsidies." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

I smiled when I saw the ironic photo that appears above. It seems to imply that with government subsidies, even bicycle riders will buy motor fuel.

(p. B3) MUMBAI, India -- The Indian government on Friday reduced popular fuel subsidies, a long-delayed change that will help policy makers reduce a big budget deficit but one that will also worsen already high inflation.

Policy makers said the government would stop subsidizing gasoline. Diesel, kerosene and natural gas would continue to receive support at a slightly lower level. India spent about $5.6 billion to subsidize fuel in the last fiscal year, which ended in March. State-owned energy companies added the equivalent of an additional $4.4 billion by selling fuel below its cost.

India and other big countries committed to eliminating energy subsidies at a Group of 20 meeting last year, but policy makers here had repeatedly put off the politically difficult change.

For the full story, see:

VIKAS BAJAJ. "India Cuts Subsidies for Fuels." The New York Times (Sat., June 26, 2010): B3.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 25, 2010.)

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(p. A9) A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist says he believes most of the dead turtles that have been examined since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill died not from the oil or the chemical dispersants put into the water after the disaster, but from being caught in shrimping nets, though further testing may show otherwise.

Dr. Brian Stacy, a veterinary pathologist who specializes in reptiles, said that more than half the turtles dissected so far, most of which were found shortly after the spill, had sediment in their lungs or airways, which indicated they might have been caught in nets and drowned.

"The only plausible scenario where you would have high numbers of animals forcibly submerged would be fishery interaction," he said. "That is the primary consideration for this event."

Many times the usual number of turtles have been found stranded this year, but NOAA has cautioned from the beginning that the oil spill is not necessarily to blame.

For the full story, see:

SHAILA DEWAN. "Turtle Deaths Called Result of Shrimping, Not Oil Spill." The New York Times (Sat., June 26, 2010): A9.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 25, 2010.)

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Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) So you want to build a wind farm? OK, Mr. Bryce says, to start you'll need 45 times the land mass of a nuclear power station to produce a comparable amount of power; and because you are in the middle of nowhere you'll also need hundreds of miles of high-voltage lines to get the energy to your customers. This "energy sprawl" of giant turbines and pylons will require far greater amounts of concrete and steel than conventional power plants--figure on anywhere from 870 to 956 cubic feet of concrete per megawatt of electricity and 460 tons of steel (32 times more concrete and 139 times as much steel as a gas-fired plant).

Once you've carpeted your tract of wilderness with turbines and gotten over any guilt you might feel about the thousands of birds you're about to kill, prepare to be underwhelmed and underpowered. Look at Texas, Mr. Bryce says: It ranks sixth in the world in total wind-power production capacity, and it has been hailed as a model for renewable energy and green jobs by Republicans and Democrats alike. And yet, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the state's electricity grid, just "8.7 percent of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period." The wind may blow in Texas, but, sadly, it doesn't blow much when it is most needed--in summer. The net result is that just 1% of the state's reliable energy needs comes from wind.

For the full review, see

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH. "BOOKSHELF; The Wrong Way To Get to Green; Once you've carpeted the wilderness with wind-farm turbines, and crushed any guilt about the birds you're about to kill, prepare to be underwhelmed and underpowered." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., APRIL 27, 2010): A15.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated APRIL 30, 2010.)

The book under review is:

Bryce, Robert. Power Hungry; the Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010.

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(p. 3B) LINCOLN -- MidAmerican Energy is suing the state after state officials grounded a $1.1 million sales tax refund the company expected on the purchase of a corporate jet.

Under Nebraska's 1987 economic development act, LB 775, companies can get sales tax refunds for such aircraft.

But the Nebraska Department of Revenue rejected the refund because MidAmerican's multimillion-dollar Falcon 50EX jet, purchased in 2004, was used to transport U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., on a trip between Albany, Ga., and Omaha on Nov. 28, 2006.

Using such planes for fundraising or transporting an elected official disqualifies a company from getting the sales tax benefit, State Tax Commissioner Doug Ewald ruled, citing prohibitions in LB 775.

MidAmerican, an Iowa-based energy firm headed by Omaha businessman David Sokol, is appealing.

The company is asking the Lancaster County District Court to overturn the department's March ruling.

MidAmerican argued that a single trip taken by Nelson should not be enough to deny the refund. It also maintained that the state, under LB 775, should have based its ruling on the intended purpose of the airplane and can test that use only when the plane is purchased.

For the full story, see:

Paul Hammel. "MidAmerican Sues State Over Tax Credit on Jet." Omaha World-Herald (Friday, May 7, 2010): 3B.

(Note: the online version of the article was dated Thursday, May 6, 2010 and had the title "MidAmerica (sic) sues Neb. for refund.")

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"MidAmerican shareholders. David Sokol, Walter Scott, Greg Abel and Warren Buffett." Source of caption and photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below. (Note: bold added.)

(p. 1D) Despite recent steps to encourage wind-generated electricity in Nebraska, Omaha businessman and philanthropist Walter Scott said Thursday that nuclear power is the only economically viable way to generate electricity without carbon-dioxide emissions.

"To me, that is the ultimate answer if you want to reduce carbon dioxide," Scott told about 150 people at a breakfast session of the Omaha chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth, held at Happy Hollow Club.

Solar and wind-generated electricity require government subsidies, Scott said. And because the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, Pa., shut down nuclear energy construction in the United States, this country will have to buy its new nuclear-generating equipment from France and Japan, which dominate that industry, he said.

"Isn't that a wonderful thing?" asked Scott, who also said electric vehicles eventually will capture a significant market.

The Three Mile Island accident "shook people up" even though no one was killed and the containment vessel worked as designed by engineers to prevent radioactive material from spreading, said Scott, chairman-emeritus of Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc. and a director of several corporations, including Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Kiewit has been involved in the energy industry for decades, he noted, and Berkshire's energy division, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., has substantial wind farms in Iowa and several other states. But those wind farms are viable only because they operate under government rules that guarantee a return on investment, even with their higher costs, Scott said.

For the full story, see:

Steve Jordon. To Cut Carbon, Go Nuclear; It's the Ultimate Answer for Reducing Emissions, the Kiewit Official Suggests in a Speech." Omaha World-Herald (Friday, May 14, 2010): 1D-2D.

(Note: the online version of the article had the title "Scott: To go green, go nuclear.")

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"Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront In this MoMA show, a model by Architecture Research Office marries a wholly new landscape to Lower Manhattan's streets." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Much is in doubt about "global warming" including how much the globe will warm, and how fast, to what extent the benefits of global warming would balance the costs, and what actions (such as Nathan Myhrvold's creative plan) might be taken to counteract global warming.

But one certainty is that if governments leave innovative entrepreneurial capitalism alone, human creativity will find ways to adapt in order to increase the benefits and reduce the costs.

Few cities have displayed as much creative destruction in architecture as New York. (One book on New York architecture was even called The Creative Destruction of Manhattan"). The article quoted below describes some visions of how New York City might adapt to an increase in sea level that might result from global warming.

(p. C21) "Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront," a new show at the Museum of Modern Art, reflects a level of apocalyptic thinking about this city that we haven't seen since it was at the edge of financial collapse in the 1970s, a time when muggers roamed freely, and graffiti covered everything.

Organized by Barry Bergdoll, the Modern's curator of architecture and design, the show is a response to the effects that rising sea levels are expected to have on New York City and parts of New Jersey over the next 70 or so years, according to government studies. The solutions it proposes are impressively imaginative, ranging from spongelike sidewalks to housing projects suspended over water to transforming the Gowanus Canal into an oyster hatchery.

. . .

(p. C23) A general interest in re-examining parts of the urban fabric that we take for granted, like streets, piers and canals -- as opposed to the more familiar desire to create striking visual objects -- is one of the main strengths of the exhibition. A team led by Matthew Baird Architects, for example, has focused on a huge oil refinery in Bayonne, N.J., that, if current estimates hold, will be entirely under water before our toddlers have hit retirement age. Rather than taking the predictable and bland route of transforming the industrial site into a park, the team proposes a system of piers that would support bio-fuel and recycling plants, including one that would produce the building blocks for artificial reefs out of recycled glass.

Those large, multipronged objects, which the architects call "jacks," could be dumped off boats in strategically chosen locations, where their forms would naturally interlock to create artificial reefs once they settled at the bottom of the harbor. The jacks are magical objects, at once tough and delicate, and when you see examples of them from across the room at MoMA, their heavy legs and crushed glass surfaces make them look almost like buildings.

But here again, what's really commendable about the design is the desire to look deeper into how systems -- in this case, global systems, both natural and economic -- work. According to Mr. Baird's research, the melting of the ice cap could one day create a northern shipping passage that would make New York Harbor virtually obsolete. The manufacturing component of the design is meant as part of a broader realignment of the city's economy that anticipates that shift.

For the full story, see:

NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF. "Architecture Review; The Future: A More Watery New York." The New York Times (Fri., March 26, 2010): C21 & C23.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: The online version of the article is dated March 25, 2010 and has the title "Architecture Review; 'Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront'; Imagining a More Watery New York.")

The book I mention in my comments is:

Page, Max. The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

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(p. 79) While oxygen is the third most common element in the universe, we know that free oxygen was exceedingly rare in the Earth's initial atmosphere, until roughly two billion years ago, when an ancestor of modern cyanobacteria hit upon a photosynthetic process that used the energy from the sun to extract hydrogen from the abundant supply of water on the planet. That metabolic strategy was spectacularly successful--the organism quickly covered the surface of the planet--but it had a pollution problem: it expelled free oxygen as a waste product. During this period, now known as the Proterozoic, the oxygen content of the atmosphere exploded from 0.0001 percent to 3 percent, beginning its long march to the current levels of 21 percent. (Even today, Earth's atmosphere is actually dominated by nitrogen, which makes up 78 percent of its overall volume: other gases. like argon and carbon dioxide, constitute less than a single percent.) The massive increase of oxygen in the atmosphere triggered what has been called "by far the greatest pollution crisis the earth has ever endured," destroying countless microbes for whom the cocktail of sunlight and oxygen was deadly.

In time, though, organisms evolved that thrived in an oxygen-heavy environment. We are their descendants.

Source:

Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

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"Laying line in San Francisco for the Trans Bay Cable project, which submerged 33 miles of cable." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Generating 20 percent of America's electricity with wind, as recent studies proposed, would require building up to 22,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines. But the huge towers and unsightly tree-cutting that these projects require have provoked intense public opposition.

Recently, though, some companies are finding a remarkably simple answer to that political problem. They are putting power lines under water, in a string of projects that has so far provoked only token opposition from environmentalists and virtually no reaction from the larger public.

. . .

(p. B7) . . . , the underwater approach solves some intractable problems. In San Francisco, for example, old power plants that burn natural gas are about to be retired because a new transmission company has succeeded in running a line 33 miles across the San Francisco Bay.

Mr. Stern said his company's Neptune Cable, which runs from Sayreville, N.J., to Levittown, N.Y., on Long Island, now carries 22 percent of Long Island's electricity. His company is trying to complete a deal for a cable that would run from Ridgefield, N.J., to a Consolidated Edison substation on West 49th Street in Manhattan.

Those two cables were not motivated primarily by environmental goals -- they are meant to connect cheap generation to areas where power prices are high. Mr. Stern's company, PowerBridge, is now considering two renewable energy projects, however. One cable would connect proposed wind farms on the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Lanai to the urban center on Oahu, and another would bring wind power from Maine along the Atlantic coast to Boston.

For the full story, see:

MATTHEW L. WALD. "A Power Line Runs Through It; Underwater Cable an Alternative to Electrical Towers." The New York Times (Weds., March 17, 2010): B1 & B7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version is dated March 16, 2010 and has the shorter title "Underwater Cable an Alternative to Electrical Towers.")

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(p. A17) . . . , the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the United States, is poised to pass a roughly 5 percent rate increase on electricity use. The proceeds would be earmarked for renewable energy purchases and programs, including one that would repay people or businesses that use solar panels to contribute to the power grid.

. . .

The money would also be used to help pay for what is known as a feed-in tariff, under which the utility will pay a set rate for electricity from customers who install solar panels.

. . .

But "feed-in tariffs for solar power is not good use of money," Professor Borenstein said. "Solar power at the residential level is not close to economical. There are many things you should do before you subsidize it."

Californians have been squeezed by high unemployment and fee increases, and Los Angelenos may not cotton easily to a rate increase.

"Californians are environmentally conscious," said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "But much less so if it causes them economic difficulty."

For the full story, see:

JENNIFER STEINHAUER. "Los Angeles Electric Rate Linked to Solar Power." The New York Times (Thurs., March 11, 2010): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article is dated March 10, 2010.)

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Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) A new type of nuclear reactor--smaller than a rail car and one tenth the cost of a big plant--is emerging as a contender to reshape the nation's resurgent nuclear power industry.

Three big utilities, Tennessee Valley Authority, First Energy Corp. and Oglethorpe Power Corp., on Wednesday signed an agreement with McDermott International Inc.'s Babcock & Wilcox subsidiary, committing to get the new reactor approved for commercial use in the U.S.

. . .

The smaller Babcock & Wilcox reactor can generate only 125 to 140 megawatts of power, about a tenth as much as a big one. But the utilities are betting that these smaller, simpler reactors can be manufactured quickly and installed at potentially dozens of existing nuclear sites or replace coal-fired plants that may become obsolete with looming emissions restrictions.

"We see significant benefits from the new, modular technology," said Donald Moul, vice president of nuclear support for First Energy, an Ohio-based utility company.

He said First Energy, which operates four reactors at three sites in Ohio and Pennsylvania, has made no decision to build any new reactor and noted there's "a lot of heavy lifting to do to get this reactor certified" by the NRC for U.S. use.

. . .

(p. A16) One of the biggest attractions, however, is that utilities could start with a few reactors and add more as needed. By contrast, with big reactors, utilities have what is called "single-shaft risk," where billions of dollars are tied up in a single plant.

Another advantage: mPower reactors will store all of their waste on each site for the estimated 60-year life of each reactor.

. . .

. . . , some experts believe that if the industry embraces small reactors, nuclear power in the U.S. could become pervasive because more utilities would be able to afford them.

"There's a higher likelihood that there are more sites that could support designs for small reactors than large ones," said David Matthews, head of new reactor licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

. . .

Experts believe small reactors should be as safe, or safer, than large ones. One reason is that they are simpler and have fewer moving parts that can fail. Small reactors also contain a smaller nuclear reaction and generate less heat. That means that it's easier to shut them down, if there is a malfunction.

"With a large reactor, the response to a malfunction tends to be quick, whereas in smaller ones, they respond more slowly" which means they're somewhat easier to control, said Michael Mayfield, director of the advanced reactor program at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Once on site, each reactor would be housed in a two-story containment structure that would be buried beneath the ground for added security. They would run round the clock, stopping to refuel every five years instead of 18 to 24 months, like existing reactors.

Jack Baker, Energy Northwest's head of business development, says he was initially skeptical about small reactors because of the "lack of economies of scale." But he says he now thinks small reactors "could have a cost advantage" because their simpler design means faster construction and "you don't need as much concrete, steel, pumps and valves."

"They have made a convert of me," he says.

Babcock & Wilcox's roots go back to 1867 and it has been making equipment for utilities since the advent of electrification, even furnishing boilers to Thomas Edison's Pearl Street generating stations that brought street lighting to New York City in 1882.

Based in Lynchburg, Va., the company has been building small reactors for ships since the 1950s. In addition to reactors for U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, it built a reactor for the USS NS Savannah, a commercial vessel which is now a floating museum in Baltimore harbor. It also built eight big reactors, in the past construction cycle, including one for the ill-fated Three Mile Island plant.

When a U.S. nuclear revival looked imminent, the company debated what role it could play.

"Instead of asking, 'How big a reactor could we make?,' this time, we asked, 'What's the largest thing we could build at our existing plants and ship by rail?' " said Christofer Mowry, president of Modular Nuclear Energy LLC, Babcock's recently created small-reactor division. "That's what drove the design."

For the full story, see:

REBECCA SMITH. "Small Reactors Generate Big Hopes ." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Feb. 18, 2010): A1 & A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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"An artist's modeling of the proposed EM2 reactor, which would be small enough to be transported by truck." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Nuclear and defense supplier General Atomics announced Sunday it will launch a 12-year program to develop a new kind of small, commercial nuclear reactor in the U.S. that could run on spent fuel from big reactors.

In starting its campaign to build the helium-cooled reactor, General Atomics is joining a growing list of companies willing to place a long-shot bet on reactors so small they could be built in factories and hauled on trucks or trains.

The General Atomics program, if successful, could provide a partial solution to one of the biggest problems associated with nuclear energy: figuring out what to do with highly radioactive waste. With no agreement on where to locate a federal storage site, that waste is now stored in pools or casks on utilities' property.

The General Atomics reactor, which is dubbed EM2 for Energy Multiplier Module, would be about one-quarter the size of a conventional reactor and have unusual features, including the ability to burn used fuel, which still contains more than 90% of its original energy. Such reuse would reduce the volume and toxicity of the waste that remained. General Atomics calculates there is so much U.S. nuclear waste that it could fuel 3,000 of the proposed reactors, far more than it anticipates building.

The decision to proceed with its 12-year program indicates that General Atomics believes the time is right to both make a nuclear push and to try to gain approval for an unconventional design proposal despite the likely difficulty of getting it certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The EM2 would operate at temperatures as high as 850 degrees Centigrade, which is about twice as hot as a conventional (p. B2) water-cooled reactor. The very high temperatures would make the reactor especially well suited to industrial uses that go beyond electricity production, such as extracting oil from tar sands, desalinating water and refining petroleum to make fuel and chemicals.

For the full story, see:

REBECCA SMITH. "General Atomics Proposes a Plant That Runs on Nuclear Waste." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., February 22, 2010): B1 & B2.

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"Inspecting a windmill in Chaska, Minn. The blades on some in the area have been stationary." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A12) For those who suspect residents in places like Minnesota of embellishment when it comes to their tales of bitterly cold winter weather, consider this: even some wind turbines, it seems, cannot bear it.

Turbines, more than 100 feet tall, were installed last year in 11 Minnesota cities to provide power, and also to serve as educational symbols in a state that has mandated that a quarter of its electricity come from renewable resources by 2025.

One problem, though: The windmills, supposed to go online this winter, mostly just sat still, people in cities like North St. Paul and Chaska said, rarely if ever budging. Residents took note. Schoolchildren asked questions. Complaints accumulated.

"If people see a water tower, they expect it to stand still," said Wally Wysopal, the city manager of North St. Paul. "If there's a turbine, they want it to turn."

No one knows for sure why these turbines do not. Officials believe there may be several reasons, but weather is the focus of much speculation.

For the full story, see:

MONICA DAVEY. "When Windmills Don't Spin, People Expect Some Answers." The New York Times (Fri., February 5, 2010): A12.

(Note: the online version of the article was dated February 4, 2010)

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"The group expressed 'regret' last month for an erroneous projection in its influential 2007 climate report that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A12) The problem: Using Mr. Briffa's tree-ring techniques, researchers in the '90s built charts suggesting temperatures in the late 20th century were the highest in a millennium. The charts were dubbed "hockey sticks" because they showed temperatures relatively flat for centuries, then angling higher recently.

But Mr. Briffa fretted about a potential issue. Thermometers show temperatures have risen since the '60s, but tree-ring data don't move in tandem, and sometimes show the opposite. (Average annual temperatures reached the highest on record in 2005, according to U.S. government data. They fell the next three years, and rose in 2009. All those years remain among the warmest on record.)

In his same 1999 email, Mr. Briffa said tree-ring data overall did show "unusually warm" conditions in recent decades. But, he added, "I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago."

In other words, maybe the chart shouldn't resemble a hockey stick.

The data were the subject of heated back-and-forth before the IPCC's 2001 report. John Christy, one of the section's lead authors, said at the time that he tried in vain to make sure the report reflected the uncertainty.

Mr. Christy said in an interview that some of the pressure to downplay the uncertainty came from Michael Mann, a fellow lead author of that chapter, a scientist at Pennsylvania State University, and a developer of the original hockey-stick chart.

The "very prominent" use of the hockey-stick chart "overrules what tentativeness some of us actually intended," Mr. Christy wrote to the National Research Council in the U.S. a month after the report was published. Mr. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, provided that email.

"I was suspicious of the hockey stick," Mr. Christy said in an interview. Had Mr. Briffa's concerns been more widely known, "The story coming out of the [report] may have been different in tone and confidence."

For the full story, see:

JEFFREY BALL And KEITH JOHNSON. "Push to Oversimplify at Climate Panel." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., February 26, 2010): A1 & A12.

Hockey stick graph is on top; more accurate, but much less publicized graph, is on bottom. Source of graphs: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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"Rajendra K. Pachauri, right, the United Nations climate panel's leader, at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony with Al Gore in 2007." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist's version of sainthood: A vegetarian economist-engineer who leads the United Nations' climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore.

Critics, writing in Britain's Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm -- a claim he denies.

They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel's landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.

The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics -- including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms -- in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.

But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri's resignation last week.

Critics, writing in Britain's Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm -- a claim he denies.

They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel's landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.

The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics -- including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms -- in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.

For the full story, see:

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. "U.N. Climate Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility." The New York Times (Tues., February 9, 2010): A1 & A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: The online version of the article is dated February 8, 2010, and has the title "Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel.")

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"The pedal-powered Christmas tree at City Hall Square." Source of caption: the print version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below. Source of photo (which appeared in the print, but not the online, version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below): http://www.chriskeam.com/blog/uploaded_images/Copenhagen-Xmas-tree-792971.jpg

(p. A16) Copenhagen has splashed out on every kind of green widget to shore up its environmental credentials as host of the world's biggest climate change conference in years. Most of the emissions-free wizardry is familiar, such as electric cars. Here's one you may not have seen yet: An extra "green" Christmas tree.

At the Danish capital's City Hall Square, 15 to 20 volunteers can sit on stationary bikes located around a massive, decorated tree and pedal away to keep it light, at least during the day. The bikes are connected to electrical tie-ups that ultimately power hundreds of lights on the tree.

. . .

Late at night, the big tree continues to sparkle--but thanks to traditional power outlets, not pedal power--once the volunteers have gone home.

For the full story, see:

Spencer Swartz. "Copenhagen Dispatches: Pedal Power: Copenhagen Lights Christmas Tree With Bikes." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., December 16, 2009): A16.

(Note: the title of the online version of the article is "Pedal Power: Copenhagen Lights Christmas Tree With Bikes" and is dated December 15, 2009.)

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. C27) People are hard-wired to be fearful of large carnivores. What's more, it's hard for the poor to see the economic advantage of rewilding. Humans don't like conservationists telling them what they can and can't do with the land that surrounds them. As one conservationist counterintuitively points out to Ms. Fraser: "Conservation is about managing people. It's not about managing wildlife."

For the full review, see:

DWIGHT GARNER. "Books of The Times; Conservation as a Matter of Managing People." The New York Times (Fri., January 22, 2010): C1 & C27.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated January 21, 2010.)

The book under review, is:

Fraser, Caroline. Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009.

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In an earlier entry, evidence was quoted suggesting that many Himalayan glaciers are growing, rather than contracting as is widely claimed. Now The New York Times reveals that a "much-publicized" U.N. prediction of Himalayan glacier disappearance by 2035, was based on an old misquoted interview with a single scientist who now repudiates the prediction.

(p. A8) A much-publicized estimate from a United Nations panel about the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers from climate change is coming under fire as a gross exaggeration.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 -- the same year it shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore -- that it was "very likely" that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 if current warming trends continued.

That date has been much quoted and a cause for enormous consternation, since hundreds of millions of people in Asia rely on ice and snow melt from these glaciers for their water supply.

The panel, the United Nations' scientific advisory body on climate change, ranks its conclusions using a probability scale in which "very likely" means there is greater than 90 percent chance that an event will occur.

But it now appears that the estimate about Himalayan glacial melt was based on a decade-old interview of one climate scientist in a science magazine, The New Scientist, and that hard scientific evidence to support that figure is lacking. The scientist, Dr. Syed Hasnain, a glacier specialist with the government of the Indian state of Sikkim and currently a fellow at the TERI research institute in Delhi, said in an e-mail message that he was "misquoted" about the 2035 estimate in The New Scientist article. He has more recently said that his research suggests that only small glaciers could disappear entirely.

For the full story, see:

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. "U.N. Panel's Glacier Warning Is Criticized as Exaggerated." The New York Times (Tues., January 19, 2010): A8.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated January 18, 2010.)

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Source of map: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below.

(p. 4A) ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Global warming has melted so much Arctic ice that a telecommunication group is moving forward with a project that was unthinkable just a few years ago: laying underwater fiber optic cable between Tokyo and London by way of the Northwest Passage.

The proposed system would nearly cut in half the time it takes to send messages from the United Kingdom to Asia, said Walt Ebell, CEO of Kodiak-Kenai Cable Co. The route is the shortest underwater path between Tokyo and London.

The quicker transmission time is important in the financial world where milliseconds can count in executing profitable trades and transactions. "Speed is the crux," Ebell said. "You're cutting the delay from 140 milliseconds to 88 milliseconds."

. . .

"It will provide the domestic market an alternative route not only to Europe - there's lots of cable across the Atlantic - but it will provide the East Coast with an alternative, faster route to Asia as well," he said.

The cable would pass mostly through U.S., Canadian international waters and avoid possible trouble spots along the way.

"You're not susceptible to 'events,' I should say, that you might run into with a cable that runs across Russia or the cables that run down around Asia and go up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea. You're getting away from those choke points."

For the full story, see:

DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer. "Loss of Arctic Ice Opens Up New Cable Route." Omaha World-Herald (Fri., January 22, 2010): 4A.

(Note: the online version of the article had the title: Global warming opens up Arctic for undersea cable" and was dated January 21, 2010.)

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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"Environmental displays in Copenhagen's City Hall Square include pedal-powered smoothies." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

I mainly liked the article cited below for the photo displayed above.

But there also was this bit, showing that beyond some silly green pretensions, not all is rotten in Denmark:

(p. A11) . . . , cracks in Copenhagen's green facade were easy to spot on Friday at the nearby Stroget, a popular car-free shopping area in the city center. In the late afternoon every shop door was propped open, sending clouds of heated air into the chilly street.

Some cities impose fines on shopkeepers who allow excess energy to escape through open doors.

But Jan Michael Hansen, the executive director of Copenhagen City Center, an organization representing shops along the three-quarter-mile-long corridor, was nonplused. A closed door keeps customers away, which is bad for business, he explained.

He seemed puzzled that the visitor brought it up. "I have never had an inquiry like this before," he said.

For the full story, see:

TOM ZELLER Jr. and ANDREW C. REVKIN. "Reporter's Notebook; Global and Local Concerns Meet in 'Hopenhagen'." The New York Times (Fri., December 10, 2009): A11.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated December 10, 2009.)

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. A25) When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.

That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.

A refereed journal, Climate Research, published two particular papers that offended Michael Mann of Penn State and Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. One of the papers, published in 2003 by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), was a meta-analysis of dozens of "paleoclimate" studies that extended back 1,000 years. They concluded that 20th-century temperatures could not confidently be considered to be warmer than those indicated at the beginning of the last millennium.

In fact, that period, known as the "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP), was generally considered warmer than the 20th century in climate textbooks and climate compendia, including those in the 1990s from the IPCC.

Then, in 1999, Mr. Mann published his famous "hockey stick" article in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), which, through the magic of multivariate statistics and questionable data weighting, wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent "Little Ice Age" (a cold period from the late 16th century to the mid-19th century), leaving only the 20th-century warming as an anomaly of note.

Messrs. Mann and Wigley also didn't like a paper I published in Climate Research in 2002. It said human activity was warming surface temperatures, and that this was consistent with the mathematical form (but not the size) of projections from computer models. Why? The magnitude of the warming in CRU's own data was not as great as in the models, so therefore the models merely were a bit enthusiastic about the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Mr. Mann called upon his colleagues to try and put Climate Research out of business. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," he wrote in one of the emails. "We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

After Messrs. Jones and Mann threatened a boycott of publications and reviews, half the editorial board of Climate Research resigned. People who didn't toe Messrs. Wigley, Mann and Jones's line began to experience increasing difficulty in publishing their results.

For the full commentary, see:

PATRICK J. MICHAELS. "OPINION; How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus; The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., DECEMBER 18, 2009): A25.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated DECEMBER 17, 2009.)

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"In Venezuela, which faces power shortages, blackouts have spurred protests like this demonstration in Caracas." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) CARACAS -- Venezuela, a country with vast reserves of oil and natural gas, as well as massive rushing waterways that cut through its immense rain forests, strangely finds itself teetering on the verge of an energy crisis.

. . .

The government has forced draconian electricity rationing on certain sectors, which could make matters worse for an economy already racked by recession. Critics say the socialist government is trying to snuff out capitalist-driven sectors with the rationing, while allowing government-favored industries in good standing to continue with business as usual.

Shopping malls, which analysts say use less than 1% of the power consumed in Venezuela, have nonetheless been a main focus for the government.

Malls have been told most stores can only be open between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m.

"In a certain way, Chávez is attacking capitalism with the orders on shopping malls," said Emilio Grateron, mayor of Caracas's Chacao municipality, a bastion of those opposed to Mr. Chávez. "By limiting the hours we can go to malls, he is trying to slowly take away liberties, to create absolute control over things such as shopping."

In Venezuela, whose capital Caracas is consistently ranked among the world's most dangerous cities, residents see shopping malls as one of few havens in the country.

The government's rationing efforts are also hitting metal producers. Their production has already been cut as much as 40%. Mr. Rodriguez, the electricity minister, said they may have to be completely closed to save more electricity.

For the full story, see:

DAN MOLINSKI. "Energy-Rich Venezuela Faces Power Crisis." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., JANUARY 8, 2009): A11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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"A delegate from China sleeps during a break in an all-night plenary meeting at the UN Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen." Source of caption and photo: http://img4.allvoices.com/thumbs/event/900/570/44914193-delegate-from.jpg.

(p. A17) COPENHAGEN -- The global effort to combat climate change is stuck in essentially the same place after a massive United Nations summit that it was before the confab: with major emitters deadlocked over how much each of them should have to do to curb the rising output of greenhouse gases.

. . .

Mr. Obama . . . left before the final vote to try to beat a snowstorm that pounded the Washington, D.C., area this weekend.

For the full story, see:

JEFFREY BALL. "Summit Leaves Key Questions Unresolved; U.N. Effort in Copenhagen Sets Stage for Further Haggling Over Emissions Caps, Funds for Poor Nations." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., DECEMBER 21, 2009): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

"A delegate sleeps during a break in an all-night plenary meeting at the UN Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen December 19, 2009." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

"A French delegate sleeps during all-night discussions at Copenhagen." Source of caption and photo: http://www.rfi.fr/actuen/images/120/FRANCECOPEN432.jpg.

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(p. A21) The saddest fact of climate change--and the chief reason we should be concerned about finding a proper response--is that the countries it will hit hardest are already among the poorest and most long-suffering.

In the run-up to this month's global climate summit in Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Consensus Center dispatched researchers to the world's most likely global-warming hot spots. Their assignment: to ask locals to tell us their views about the problems they face. Over the past seven weeks, I recounted in these pages what they told us concerned them the most. In nearly every case, it wasn't global warming.

Everywhere we went we found people who spoke powerfully of the need to focus more attention on more immediate problems. In the Bauleni slum compound in Lusaka, Zambia, 27-year-old Samson Banda asked, "If I die from malaria tomorrow, why should I care about global warming?" In a camp for stateless Biharis in Bangladesh, 45-year-old Momota Begum said, "When my kids haven't got enough to eat, I don't think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about." On the southeast slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, 45-year-old widow and HIV/AIDS sufferer Mary Thomas said she had noticed changes in the mountain's glaciers, but declared: "There is no need for ice on the mountain if there is no people around because of HIV/AIDS."

For the full commentary, see:

BJORN LOMBORG. "OPINION; Time for a Smarter Approach to Global Warming; Investing in energy R&D might work. Mandated emissions cuts won't.." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., DECEMBER 15, 2009): A21.

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"This photo taken from the International Space Station in 2004 shows the abundance of ice in the Himalayas, upon which much of the continent of Asia relies for water." Source of caption and photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1A) Two UNO professors have discovered that some glaciers in Pakistan are growing in size -- a discovery that could toss them into the center of a climate-change controversy.

. . .

(p. 2A) News of the research is beginning to leak into science publications. "Science" magazine, for instance, mentioned the as-yet unpublished University of Nebraska at Omaha research in a November story about the debate over Himalayan glaciers.

The UNO research team will attract more attention Friday, when Shroder and Bishop give their presentation at the American Geophysical Union's annual conference.

What they'll present is decades in the making: Shroder first received federal funding to study Afghanistan's geography and geology in 1977, and he has taken 20 research trips to Pakistan since then.

Using a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Shroder and Bishop and a team of graduate students trekked to a group of glaciers clustered around K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, in 2005.

What they found was startling: Their on-the-ground research and satellite images show that many of the glaciers are growing in the rugged, mostly uninhabited region on the Pakistani-Chinese border.

. . .

Shroder achieved brief fame in intelligence circles when he snuck from Kabul to the Salang Pass in northern Afghanistan in the 1980s. There, he took photos of North Korean troops who had crossed the border to support the Red Army -- knowledge that American intelligence agencies didn't have until Shroder handed over the photos.

Now the veteran professor is bracing himself for a potential backlash when the UNO team's research paper comes out in the next few weeks.

For the full story, see:

Matthew Hansen. "UNO Scientsts Pinpoint Global Warming Oddity in Himalayas." Omaha World-Herald (Thurs., December 17, 2009): 1A-2A.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article had the title "These glaciers are growing.")

Regents Professor Jack Shroder. Source of photo: http://www.unomaha.edu/glims/img/Portraits/Jack%20shroder-visa.jpg

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The author quoted below on global warming is a Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

(p. A19) Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally--such as for the last dozen years or so--it does little that can be discerned.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode.

For the full commentary, see:

RICHARD S. LINDZEN. "The Climate Science Isn't Settled; Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., December 1, 2009): A19.

(Note: the online version of the commentary is dated NOVEMBER 30, 2009.)

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(p. A6) The head of the British research unit at the center of a controversy over the disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages among climate-change scientists has stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation.

Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, said that he would leave his post while the university conducted a review of the release of the e-mail messages. The university has called the release and publication of the messages a "criminal breach" of the school's computer systems.

The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.

In a related announcement, Pennsylvania State University said it would review the work of a faculty member who is cited prominently in the e-mail messages, Michael Mann, to assure that it meets proper academic standards.

For the full story, see:

JOHN M. BRODER. "Climatologist Leaves Post in Inquiry Over Leaks." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., December 2, 2009): A6.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated December 1, 2009 and has the slightly different title "Climatologist Leaves Post in Inquiry Over E-Mail Leaks.")

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Source of photo and email images: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

One can imagine Michael Crichton looking down on us with a sad smile:

(p. A3) The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents -- posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center -- that some say raise ethical questions about a group of scientists who contend humans are responsible for global warming.

The correspondence between dozens of climate-change researchers, including many in the U.S., illustrates bitter feelings among those who believe human activities cause global warming toward rivals who argue that the link between humans and climate change remains uncertain.

Some emails also refer to efforts by scientists who believe man is causing global warming to exclude contrary views from important scientific publications.

"This is horrible," said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. "This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn't questionable practice, this is unethical."

John Christy, a scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville attacked in the emails for asking that an IPCC report include dissenting viewpoints, said, "It's disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested--but rather orchestrated."

In all, more than 1,000 emails and more than 2,000 other documents were stolen Thursday from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K. The identity of the hackers isn't certain, but the files were posted on a Russian file-sharing server late Thursday, and university officials confirmed over the weekend that their computer had been attacked and said the documents appeared to be genuine.

. . .

In one email, Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., wrote to the director of the climate-study center that he was "tempted to beat" up Mr. Michaels. Mr. Santer couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.

For the full story, see:

KEITH JOHNSON. "Climate Strife Comes to Light; Emails Illustrate Anger of Scientists Who Believe Humans Are Root of Global Warming." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., NOVEMBER 23, 2009): A3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the printed version of the article is mostly the same as the online version, but has some differences in order and content. The part quoted above is consistent with the printed version. The passages quoted are the same in both versions, except that the paragraph on the views of John Christy appears later in the online version, and the online version omits his phrase "but rather orchestrated." [I skimmed for differences, but am not absolutely sure that I caught them all.])

(Note: the title of the online version of the article is: "Climate Emails Stoke Debate; Scientists' Leaked Correspondence Illustrates Bitter Feud over Global Warming.")

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Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A19) Suppose for a minute--. . . --that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.

. . .

The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the brainchild of Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold. The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years.

Could it work? Mr. Myhrvold and his associates think it might, and they're a smart bunch. Also smart are University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, whose delightful "SuperFreakonomics"--the sequel to their runaway 2005 bestseller "Freakonomics"--gives Myhrvold and Co. pride of place in their lengthy chapter on global warming. Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own.

. . .

. . . , Messrs. Levitt and Dubner show every sign of being careful researchers, going so far as to send chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to publication. Nor are they global warming "deniers," insofar as they acknowledge that temperatures have risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

But when it comes to the religion of global warming--the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion--Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."

More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another." In other words, the herd-of-independent-minds phenomenon happens to scientists too and isn't the sole province of painters, politicians and news anchors

For the full commentary, see:

BRET STEPHENS. "Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics; Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., OCTOBER 27, 2009): A19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. 12) . . . a small contingent of climate skeptics and libertarians opposed to caps on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions derided the United Nations talks.

"We want to be able to live our lives like we've always led them before -- as free citizens in free democracies," said David Pontoppidan, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Copenhagen, who addressed passers-by through a megaphone over the chatter of two helicopters hovering far above. "We want free debate; we want to be able to be taken seriously even though we don't agree with the U.N."

. . .

Leading the march from the square this afternoon, a man in blue coveralls, with vaudevillian face paint and a faux Cyrano nose, could be seen sweeping the street and peering into a rolling trash bin painted to resemble the planet. It emitted plumes of white dust and mournful musical notes.

"This is our comment on global warming," said the sweeper, Jens Kloft, a Danish performance artist. "We want to have an international compromise on global warming -- a better climate, but two more months of summer in Denmark please. Because it's too cold to be out here."

For the full story, see:

TOM ZELLER Jr. "Thousands March in Copenhagen, Calling for Action." The New York Times, First Section (Sun., December 13, 2009): 12.

(Note: the last two paragraphs quoted above are from the print version; the NYT deleted them from the online version. Also, the first paragraph quoted, is from the print version of that paragraph, and not the shortened online version. The online version of the article is dated Sat., December 12, 2009.)

(Note: ellipses added.)

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(p. A17) Getting basic sanitation and safe drinking water to the three billion people around the world who do not have it now would cost nearly $4 billion a year. By contrast, cuts in global carbon emissions that aim to limit global temperature increases to less than two degrees Celsius over the next century would cost $40 trillion a year by 2100. These cuts will do nothing to increase the number of people with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Cutting carbon emissions will likely increase water scarcity, because global warming is expected to increase average rainfall levels around the world.

For Mrs. Begum, the choice is simple. After global warming was explained to her, she said: "When my kids haven't got enough to eat, I don't think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about."

One of Bangladesh's most vulnerable citizens, Mrs. Begum has lost faith in the media and politicians.

"So many people like you have come and interviewed us. I have not seen any improvement in our conditions," she said.

It is time the developed world started listening.

For the full commentary, see:

Bjørn LOMBORG. "Global Warming as Seen From Bangladesh; Momota Begum worries about hunger, not climate change." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., NOVEMBER 9, 2009): A17.

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Graph of total electric power load and total wind power generation from the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA) for a week in late July 2009. Source of graph: http://blog.oregonlive.com/environment_impact/2009/07/real_time_wind.jpg

(p. A14) For more than a century, producing power has been a matter of flipping a switch. Need more electricity? Fire up some fuel. Need less? Dial the flame back down.

Things won't be that easy in a world that gets much of its energy from renewable sources, which come and go at nature's whim. Wind tends to blow hardest at night -- a problem, since people use electricity mostly during the day. Sunshine can lose its intensity in seconds if eclipsed by a cloud -- inconvenient for people who like their air conditioners to run steadily on summer days.

. . .

Most of the electricity in Bonneville's service area comes from hydroelectric power. To compensate for the volatility of wind, Bonneville tweaks the amount of water it lets through the dams. But that doesn't work for the most extreme shifts in wind. Sometimes, when the wind is blowing hard, Bonneville releases extra water over the tops of dams without using it to generate electricity. Otherwise, electrical wires might get overloaded. And when the wind is so strong that Bonneville can't ditch enough water, the utility orders wind turbines shut off.

"Everything changes with wind," says Bart McManus, a wind expert at Bonneville.

Sudden doldrums can be as troublesome as sudden gusts. That was the problem on Feb. 26, 2008, in Texas, which produces more wind power than any other state.

At 3 p.m. that afternoon, Texas's wind farms, concentrated in the western part of the state, were throwing off about 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve about one million households. Then a cold front blew in. By 6:30 p.m. -- when electricity demand typically peaks -- wind production in Texas had cratered to about 360 megawatts.

Exacerbating matters, Texans began turning up their heat -- much of which, in rural parts of the state, comes from electricity. So, just as wind power unexpectedly plummeted, demand for power spiked.

For the full commentary, see:

JEFFREY BALL. "Unbridled Energy: Predicting Volatile Wind, Sun
Utilities Ramp Up Focus on Forecasting When Renewable Fuel Is at a Peak to Avoid Squandering Power That Still Can't Be Stored." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 5, 2009): A14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the last sentence of the quoted passage, appeared in the print edition, but was inexplicably deleted from the online version.)

For an updated "Near-Real-Time" graph of BPA load and wind generation, see:

http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

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"The Mexican Union of Electricians protests the government's decision to liquidate the state-owned electricity company in Mexico City." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A19) Eight days ago, just after midnight on a Sunday morning, Mexican President Felipe Calderón instructed federal police to take over the operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly, Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC), which serves Mexico City and parts of surrounding states. The company's assets will stay in the hands of the government but will now be run by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), a national state-owned utility and the major supplier of LyFC's energy.

The net effect of the move is to dethrone 42,000 members of the Mexican Union of Electricians, which had won benefits over the decades to make Big Three auto workers in Detroit blush. When the liquidation is complete, it is expected that the company will employ about 8,000. To appreciate the magnitude of Mr. Calderón's decision, think of Ronald Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers--only bigger. As one internationally renowned Mexican economist remarked on Sunday, it is "the most important act of government in 20 years."

For the full commentary, see:

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY. "Mexico's Calderón Takes on Big Labor; Its state-owned electricity company was bleeding the national treasury dry." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., October 19, 2009): A19.

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(p. A13) The drought that gripped the Southeast from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming, Columbia University researchers have concluded. They say its severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns.

The researchers, who report their findings in an article in Thursday's issue of The Journal of Climate, cite census figures showing that in Georgia alone the population rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990.

"At the root of the water supply problem in the Southeast is a growing population," they wrote.

Richard Seager, a climate expert at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who led the study, said in an interview that when the drought struck, "people were wondering" whether climate change linked to a global increase in heat-trapping gases could be a cause.

But after studying data from weather instruments, computer models and measurements of tree rings, which reflect yearly rainfall, "our conclusion was this drought was pretty normal and pretty typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century," Mr. Seager said.

Similar droughts unfolded over the last thousand years, the researchers wrote. Regardless of climate change, they added, similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results.

For the full story, see:

CORNELIA DEAN. "Study Links Water Shortages in Southeast to Population, Not Global Warming." The New York Times (Fri., October 2, 2009): A13.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated Oct. 1st and has the title "Southeast Drought Study Ties Water Shortage to Population, Not Global Warming.")

The research summarized in the passages above can be read in its full and original form, at:

Seager, Richard, Alexandrina Tzanova, and Jennifer Nakamura. "Drought in the Southeastern United States: Causes, Variability over the Last Millennium, and the Potential for Future Hydroclimate Change." Journal of Climate 22, no. 19 (Oct. 1, 2009): 5021-45.

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(p. A19) In a warning often repeated by environmental campaigners, the Vanuatuan president told the United Nations that entire island nations could be submerged. "If such a tragedy does happen," he said, "then the United Nations and its members would have failed in their first and most basic duty to a member nation and its innocent people."

Torethy Frank, a 39-year-old woman carving out a subsistence lifestyle on Vanuatu's Nguna Island, is one of those "innocent people." Yet, she has never heard of the problem that her government rates as a top priority. "What is global warming?" she asks a researcher for the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

. . .

Torethy and her family of six live in a small house made of concrete and brick with no running water. As a toilet, they use a hole dug in the ground. They have no shower and there is no fixed electricity supply. Torethy's family was given a battery-powered DVD player but cannot afford to use it.

. . .

What would change her life? Having a boat in the village to use for fishing, transporting goods to sell, and to get to hospital in emergencies. She doesn't want more aid money because, "there is too much corruption in the government and it goes in people's pockets," but she would like microfinance schemes instead. "Give the money directly to the people for businesses so we can support ourselves without having to rely on the government."

Vanuatu's politicians speak with a loud voice on the world stage. But the inhabitants of Vanuatu, like Torethy Frank, tell a very different story.

For the full commentary, see:

BJøRN LOMBORG. "The View from Vanuatu on Climate Change; Torethy Frank had never heard of global warming. She is worried about power and running water." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 23, 2009): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version is dated Thurs., Oct. 22.)

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(p. B10) In 2007, Congress set a national goal of creating an advanced biofuel industry, and established a quota for gasoline marketers to blend a modest 100 million gallons of such fuel into gasoline by 2010.

. . .

The industry is likely to miss Congress's initial quota of 100 million gallons next year, acknowledging that it will make a few million gallons of the advanced fuel, at most. It could fall even further behind the 2011 quota, 250 million gallons. The quota eventually rises to 16 billion gallons by 2022.

The industry partly blames the credit crisis for its slow pace, but acknowledges that getting the conversion techniques to work is the biggest problem.

"It's certainly turned out to be more complicated technically than people thought it would be," said Brian Foody, the president and chief executive of Iogen, which hopes to build a large-scale facility.

For the full story, see:

MATTHEW L. WALD. "Industry Built From Scratch." The New York Times (Thurs., October 15, 2009): B1 & B10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 14th.)

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(p. 4A) WASHINGTON -- The four drafty buildings had been fix­tures of the Energy Depart­ment complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for more than half a cen­tury. They burned energy like 1950s sedans.


The buildings seemed like perfect candidates for a federal conservation retrofit program that relies on private contrac­tors that receive a percentage of the money they save. A deal was struck in 2001. The con­tractor reworked lighting and heating systems, among other things, and began collecting payments.


The project was count­ed among the department's "green" successes -- until auditors discovered that the buildings had been torn down several years ago, and the gov­ernment had paid $850,000 for energy savings at facilities that no longer existed.


The audit findings show the potential for waste and abuse at a time when the department is poised to launch billions of dollars more in stimulus spend­ing on an unprecedented welter of green projects across the country.

. . .

The problems are not exclu­sive to Oak Ridge. The audi­tors, from the department's inspector general's office, also determined that $565,000 had been paid over six years un­der the same arrangement to a contractor in Texas for a high­efficiency laundry that was no longer in use.


The department also paid out $3.4 million on another project without checking whether the conservation measures worked -- and $160,000 for measure­ments that were never taken.

For the full story, see:

THE WASHINGTON POST. "Audit finds 'green' projects resulted in waste, abuse; The findings point to a need for oversight as the government readies stimulus projects." Omaha World-Herald (Sun., Sept. 27, 2009): 4A.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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One of the advantages of flexible economic systems, such as capitalism, is that they can adapt to unexpected or exogenous changes in the environment (e.g., changes in the weather). In the empirical analysis quoted from below, the primary finding is that roughly half of the short-term negative effects on income from rising temperatures, "are offset in the long run through adaptation."

Almost all of the countries in the sample of 12 deviate substantially from the ideal of entrepreneurial capitalism. So the reduction by half is probably a much smaller amount of adaptation than would occur in a sample of countries that had adopted policies that allowed a flourishing of entrepreneurship.

(p. 203) Using subnational data from 12 countries in the Americas, we show that the negative crosssectional relationship between temperature and income exists within countries, as well as across countries. We then provide a theoretical framework for reconciling the substantial, negative association between temperature and income in cross section with the even stronger short-run effects of temperature shown in panel models. The theoretical framework suggests that half of the negative short-term effects of temperature are offset in the long run through adaptation.

Source:

Dell, Melissa, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken. "Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates." American Economic Review 99, no. 2 (May 2009): 198-204.

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"A German ship, following a Russian icebreaker, is about to complete a shipment from Asia to Europe via Arctic waters." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) MOSCOW -- For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming.

The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July and will begin the last leg of the trip this week, leaving a Siberian port for Rotterdam in the Netherlands carrying 3,500 tons of construction materials.

Russian ships have long moved goods along the country's sprawling Arctic coastline. And two tankers, one Finnish and the other Latvian, hauled fuel between Russian ports using the route, which is variously called the Northern Sea Route or the Northeast Passage.

But the Russians hope that the transit of the German ships will inaugurate the passage as a reliable shipping route, and that the combination of the melting ice and the economic benefits of the shortcut -- it is thousands of miles shorter than various southerly routes -- will eventually make the Arctic passage a summer competitor with the Suez Canal.

"It is global warming that enables us to think about using that route," Verena Beckhusen, a spokeswoman for the shipping company, the Beluga Group of Bremen, Germany, said in a telephone interview.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW E. KRAMER and ANDREW C. REVKIN. "Arctic Shortcut Beckons Shippers as Ice Thaws." The New York Times (Fri., September 10, 2009): A1 & A3.

"A Shortcut Across the Top of the World." Source of caption and map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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(p. A19) On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

ExxonMobil is hardly alone in running afoul of this law. Over the past two decades, federal officials have brought hundreds of similar cases against energy companies. In July, for example, the Oregon-based electric utility PacifiCorp paid $1.4 million in fines and restitution for killing 232 eagles in Wyoming over the past two years. The birds were electrocuted by poorly-designed power lines.

Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year.

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds--nearly all protected by the migratory bird act--are being whacked every year at Altamont.

Altamont's turbines, located about 30 miles east of Oakland, Calif., kill more than 100 times as many birds as Exxon's tanks, and they do so every year. But the Altamont Pass wind farm does not face the same threat of prosecution, even though the bird kills at Altamont have been repeatedly documented by biologists since the mid-1990s.

. . .

This is a double standard that more people--and not just bird lovers--should be paying attention to. In protecting America's wildlife, federal law-enforcement officials are turning a blind eye to the harm done by "green" energy.

For the full commentary, see:

ROBERT BRYCE. "Windmills Are Killing Our Birds; One standard for oil companies, another for green energy sources." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., SEPTEMBER 8, 2009): A19.

(Note: the online version of the commentary is dated September 7th.)

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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"When he was a graduate student in the 1960s working to reduce pollutants, Thomas Crocker devised a cap-and-trade system similar to one being considered in Congress." Source of photo and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) In the 1960s, a University of Wisconsin graduate student named Thomas Crocker came up with a novel solution for environmental problems: cap emissions of pollutants and then let firms trade permits that allow them to pollute within those limits.

Now legislation using cap-and-trade to limit greenhouse gases is working its way through Congress and could become the law of the land. But Mr. Crocker and other pioneers of the concept are doubtful about its chances of success. They aren't abandoning efforts to curb emissions. But they are tiptoeing away from an idea they devised decades ago, doubting it can work on the grand scale now envisioned.

"I'm skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to go about regulating carbon," says Mr. Crocker, 73 years old, a retired economist in Centennial, Wyo. He says he prefers an outright tax on emissions because it would be easier to enforce and provide needed flexibility to deal with the problem.

. . .

Mr. Crocker sees two modern-day problems in using a cap-and-trade system to address the global greenhouse-gas issue. The first is that carbon emissions are a global problem with myriad sources. Cap-and-trade, he says, is better suited for discrete, local pollution problems. "It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally," he says. "There are no institutions right now that have that power."

Europe has embraced cap-and-trade rules. Emissions initially rose there because industries were given more permits than they needed, and regulators have since tightened the caps. Meanwhile China, India and other developing markets are reluctant to go along, fearing limits would curb their growth. If they don't participate, there is little assurance that global carbon emissions will slow much even if the U.S. goes forward with its own plan. And even if everyone signs up, Mr. Crocker says, it isn't clear the limits will be properly enforced across nations and industries.

The other problem, Mr. Crocker says, is that quantifying the economic damage of climate change -- from floods to failing crops -- is fraught with uncertainty. One estimate puts it at anywhere between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product. Without knowing how costly climate change is, nobody knows how tight a grip to put on emissions.

In this case, he says Washington needs to come up with an approach that will be flexible and easy to adjust over a long stretch of time as more becomes known about damages from greenhouse-gas emissions. Mr. Crocker says cap-and-trade is better suited for problems where the damages are clear -- like acid rain in the 1990s -- and a hard limit is needed quickly.

"Once a cap is in place," he warns, "it is very difficult to adjust." For example, buyers of emissions permits would see their value reduced if the government decided in the future to loosen the caps.

For the full story, see:

JON HILSENRATH. "Cap-and-Trade's Unlikely Critics: Its Creators; Economists Behind Original Concept Question the System's Large-Scale Usefulness, and Recommend Emissions Taxes Instead." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., AUGUST 13, 2009): A7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. A20) The idea that primitive hunter-gatherers lived in harmony with the landscape has long been challenged by researchers, who say Stone Age humans in fact wiped out many animal species in places as varied as the mountains of New Zealand and the plains of North America. Now scientists are proposing a new arena of ancient depredation: the coast.

In an article in Friday's issue of the journal Science, anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Oregon cite evidence of sometimes serious damage by early inhabitants along the coasts of the Aleutian Islands, New England, the Gulf of Mexico, South Africa and California's Channel Islands, where the researchers do fieldwork.

"Human influence is pretty pervasive," one of the authors, Torben C. Rick of the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, said in an interview. "Hunter-gatherers with fairly simple technology were actively degrading some marine ecosystems" tens of thousands of years ago.

For the full story, see:

CORNELIA DEAN. "Ancient Man Hurt Coasts, Paper Says." The New York Times (Fri., August 21, 2009): A20.

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(p. A5) Some of the nation's biggest food and agriculture companies are planning to release a flurry of studies in coming weeks that scrutinize the potential impact of climate-change legislation, warning that it could lead to higher food prices.

. . .

In a letter sent last month to Sens. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, and Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the coalition said the House bill "will increase food and feed prices and reduce the international competitiveness of our businesses."

The letter said Congress "must take extreme care to avoid adverse impacts on food security, prices, safety, and accessibility to necessary consumer products." The letter also criticized the House bill for failing to provide transitional assistance to "low-income households struggling with rising food prices."

When the group's studies are released, possibly by the end of August, they are likely to reignite tensions between food and ethanol producers that have raged since 2007 when Congress passed energy legislation that gave a big boost to the corn-ethanol industry.

The food industry has complained that the energy bill pushed up prices for corn and other key food ingredients that resulted in higher consumer prices as the ethanol industry siphoned more corn to make ethanol.

For the full story, see:

LAUREN ETTER. "Food Firms Fret Over Potential Impact of Climate Bill; Coalition, Including Agricultural Giants, Plans to Draw Attention to Concerns That Legislation Could Lead to Higher Food Prices." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Aug. 13, 2009): A5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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"Wang Chuanfu, the chairman of Chinese auto maker BYD, with one of the company's cars at the automobile show in Detroit in January." Source of photo and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B5) XIAN, China -- BYD Co., the Chinese auto maker part-owned by Warren Buffett's company, is finalizing plans for an all-electric battery car that would be sold in the U.S. next year, ahead of the original schedule, Chairman Wang Chuanfu said.

. . .

One source of Mr. Wang's confidence in attacking the U.S. car market is BYD's ties with MidAmerican Energy Holding Co., the unit of Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that paid about $230 million for a 9.9% stake in BYD.

MidAmerican Chairman David Sokol, who was also interviewed in Xian, said MidAmerican is ready to assist BYD's foray into the U.S. auto market in "any way we could be helpful." MidAmerican also might invest in BYD's new initiatives in the U.S., which, in addition to automobiles, could involve solar panels and battery technology for power utilities.

Mr. Sokol also said MidAmerican hopes to boost its BYD stake if the chance arises. "If in the future there is an opportunity for us to continue to invest in BYD, we will be happy to increase our stake over time, but we will do it in cooperation with BYD," he said. Mr. Wang said an increase is "negotiable."

For the full story, see:

NORIHIKO SHIROUZU. "BYD to Sell Electric Car in U.S. Market Next Year." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., AUGUST 22, 2009): B5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. C14) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- European consumer groups and nongovernmental organizations have said they want environmentally friendly palm oil. Malaysian producers of palm oil that have made the switch are discovering that it is still a hard sell.

The price premium for palm oil certified as produced through sustainable plantation practices has been shrinking since the first eco-friendly palm oil was shipped to European markets last November, and producers say it may need to disappear if they are to regain business in the key European Union market.

Producers say the difficulty in selling higher-priced sustainable palm oils highlights the double standards of those who criticize the industry but buy the cheaper, uncertified oil that they say is harming the environment.

For the full story, see:

SHIE-LYNN LIM. "Backers Don't Buy 'Friendly' Palm Oil." Wall Street Journal (Weds., JULY 15, 2009): C14.

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"Alan Carlin, 35-year Environmental Protection Agency veteran." Source of caricature and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.

Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

For the full commentary, see:

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL. "OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH; The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., JULY 3, 2009): A11.

(Note: ellipsis in original; italics added by Strassel.)

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Robert Metcalfe receiving the National Medal of Technology in 2003. Source of photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe

The author of the commentary quoted below is famous in the history of information technology. His Harvard dissertation draft on packet switching was rejected as unrealistic. So he left the academy and became the main innovator responsible for making packet switching a reality, through the ethernet.

(He is also the "Metcalfe" behind "Metcalfe's Law" about the value of a network increasing at a faster rate than the increase in the network's size.)

(p. A15) . . . new small reactors meet important criteria for nuclear power plants. With no control rods to jam, they are far safer than the old models -- you might well call them nuclear batteries. By not using weapons-grade enriched fuels, they are nonproliferating. They minimize nuclear waste. And they're economical.

. . .

As venture capitalists, we at Polaris might have invested in one or two of these fission-energy start-ups. Alas, we had to pass. The problem with their business plans weren't their designs, but the high costs and astronomical risks of designing nuclear reactors for certification in Washington.

The start-ups estimate that it will cost each of them roughly $100 million and five years to get their small reactor designs certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. About $50 million of each $100 million would go to the commission itself. That's a lot of risk capital for any venture-backed start-up, especially considering that not one new commercial nuclear reactor design has been approved and built in the United States for 30 years.

. . .

As we learned by building the Internet, fiercely competitive teams of research professors, graduate students, engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are the best drivers of technological innovation -- not big corporations, and certainly not government bureaucracies. So, if it's cheap and clean energy we want, we should clear the way for fission energy start-ups. We should lower the barriers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the approval of new nuclear reactors, especially the new small ones. In particular, we should drop the requirement that the commission be reimbursed for reconsidering new fission reactor designs.

For the full commentary, see:

BOB METCALFE. "The New Nuclear Revolution; Safe fission power is our future -- if regulators allow it.." Wall Street Journal (Weds., JUNE 24, 2009): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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(p. A19) Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.

For the full commentary, see:

BJORN LOMBORG. "OPINION: The Climate-Industrial Complex; Some businesses see nothing but profits in the green movement." Wall Street Journal (Thurs., MAY 22, 2009): A19.

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(p. A11) I think there are two major but not fully formed or fully articulated fears among thinking Americans right now, and the deliberate obscurity of official language only intensifies those fears.

The first is that Mr. Obama's government, in all its flurry of activism, may kill the goose that laid the golden egg. This is as dreadful and obvious a cliché as they come, but too bad, it's what people fear. They see the spending plans and tax plans, the regulation and reform hunger, the energy proposals and health-care ambitions, and they--we--wonder if the men and women doing all this, working in their separate and discrete areas, are being overseen by anyone saying, "By the way, don't kill the goose."

The goose of course is the big, messy, spirited, inspiring, and sometimes in some respects damaging but on the whole brilliant and productive wealth-generator known as the free-market capitalist system. People do want things cleaned up and needed regulations instituted, and they don't mind at all if the very wealthy are more heavily taxed, but they greatly fear a goose killing. Economic freedom in all its chaos and disorder has kept us rich for 200 years, and allowed us as a nation to be generous and strong at home and in the world. But the goose can be killed--by carelessness, hostility, incrementalism, paralysis, and by no one saying, "Don't kill the goose."

For the full commentary, see:

PEGGY NOONAN. "What's Elevated, Health-Care Provider? Economy of language would be good for the economy." Wall Street Journal (Sat., MAY 15, 2009): A11.

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"David Batker with his son Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, who worried it might hurt the environment if he bought a new set of Legos." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air.

Which is one reason "The Story of Stuff," a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.

. . .

. . . many children who watch it take it to heart: riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos.

"When driving by a big-box store, you could see he was struggling with it," his father, David Batker, said. But then Rafael said, "It's O.K. if I have Legos because I'm going to keep them for a very long time," Mr. Batker recalled.

. . .

(p. A12) "There was not one positive thing about capitalism in the whole thing," Mr. Zuber said.

Corporations, for example, are portrayed as a bloated person sporting a top hat and with a dollar sign etched on its front.

For the full story, see:

LESLIE KAUFMAN. " In Schools, a Cautionary Video About America and Its 'Stuff'." The New York Times (Mon., May 11, 2009): A1 & A12.

(Note: ellipses added; the online version of the title is: "A Cautionary Video About America's 'Stuff'.")

"A section of the video on toxic chemicals and production." Source of image and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"In Beel Bhaina, a low-lying 600-acre soup bowl of land on the banks of the Hari River, in Bangladesh, land that was once under water is now full of greenery." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) BEEL BHAINA, Bangladesh -- The rivers that course down from the Himalayas and into this crowded delta bring an annual tide of gift and curse. They flood low-lying paddies for several months, sometimes years, at a time. And they ferry mountains of silt and sand from far away upstream.

Most of that sediment washes out into the roiling Bay of Bengal. But an accidental discovery by desperate delta folk here may hold clues to how Bangladesh, one of the world's most vulnerable countries to climate change, could harness some of that dark, rich Himalayan muck to protect itself against sea level rise.

Instead of allowing the silt to settle where it wants, Bangladesh has begun to channel it to where it is needed -- to fill in shallow soup bowls of land prone to flooding, or to create new land off its long, exposed coast.

The efforts have been limited to small experimental patches, not uniformly promising, and there is still ample concern that a swelling sea could one day soon swallow parts of Bangladesh. But the emerging evidence suggests that a nation that many see as indefensible to the ravages of human-induced climate change could literally raise itself up and save its people -- and do so cheaply and simply, using what the mountains and tides bring.

For the full story, see:

SOMINI SENGUPTA. "In Silt, Bangladesh Sees Potential Shield Against Sea Level Rise." The New York Times (Fri., March 20, 2009): A6.

"An influx of silt after a flood made Beel Bhaina higher." Source of map and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"RIVALS; British gray squirrels are being culled to protect beloved red squirrels." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D1) With literally millions of squirrels rampaging throughout England, Scotland and Wales at any given time, squirrels need to be controlled by culls. This means that hunters, gamekeepers, trappers and the Forestry Commission (the British equivalent of forest rangers) provide a regular supply of the meat to British butchers, restaurants, pâté and pasty makers and so forth.

The situation is more than simply a matter of having too many squirrels. In fact, there is a war raging in Squirreltown: invading interlopers (gray squirrels introduced from North America over the past century or more) are crowding out a British icon, the indigenous red squirrel immortalized by Beatrix Potter and cherished by (p. D5) generations since. The grays take over the reds' habitat, eat voraciously and harbor a virus named squirrel parapox (harmless to humans) that does not harm grays but can devastate reds. (Reports indicate, though, that the reds are developing resistance.)

"When the grays show up, it puts the reds out of business," said Rufus Carter, managing director of the Patchwork Traditional Food Company, a company based in Wales that plans to offer squirrel and hazelnut pâté on its British Web site, patchwork-pate.co.uk.

Enter the "Save Our Squirrels" campaign begun in 2006 to rescue Britain's red squirrels by piquing the nation's appetite for their marauding North American cousins. With a rallying motto of "Save a red, eat a gray!" the campaign created a market for culled squirrel meat.

British bon vivants suddenly couldn't get enough squirrel. Television chefs were preparing it, cookbooks were extolling it, farmers' markets were selling out of it and restaurants in many places were offering it on the menu.

For the full story, see:

MARLENA SPIELER. "Saving a Squirrel by Eating One." The New York Times (Weds., January 7, 2009): D1 & D5.

"Squirrel is appearing on more menus, as at Fergus Henderson's restaurant St. John, in London." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"Cooking in Kohlua, India. Soot from tens of thousands of villages in developing countries is responsible for 18 percent of the planet's warming, studies say." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Economic growth is sometimes seen as increasing pollution. But the article quoted below shows that primitive cooking methods, which occur in the absence of economic growth, cause one of the most damaging forms of pollution: black carbon.

(p. A1) KOHLUA, India -- "It's hard to believe that this is what's melting the glaciers," said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world's leading climate scientists, as he weaved through a warren of mud brick huts, each containing a mud cookstove pouring soot into the atmosphere.

As women in ragged saris of a thousand hues bake bread and stew lentils in the early evening over fires fueled by twigs and dung, children cough from the dense smoke that fills their homes. Black grime coats the undersides of thatched roofs. At dawn, a brown cloud stretches over the landscape like a diaphanous dirty blanket.

In Kohlua, in central India, with no cars and little electricity, emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, are near zero. But soot -- also known as black carbon -- from tens of thousands of villages like this one in developing countries is emerging as a major and previously unappreciated source of global climate change.

While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies estimating that it is responsible for 18 percent of the (p. A12) planet's warming, compared with 40 percent for carbon dioxide. Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming -- especially in the short term, climate experts say. Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap, while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

. . .

Better still, decreasing soot could have a rapid effect. Unlike carbon dioxide, which lingers in the atmosphere for years, soot stays there for a few weeks. Converting to low-soot cookstoves would remove the warming effects of black carbon quickly, while shutting a coal plant takes years to substantially reduce global CO2 concentrations.

. . .

Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of environmental engineering at Stanford, said that the fact that black carbon was not included in international climate efforts was "bizarre," but "partly reflects how new the idea is."

For the full story, see:

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. "By Degrees; Black Carbon; Soot From Third-World Stoves Is New Target in Climate Fight." The New York Times (Thurs., April 16, 2009): A1, A12.

(Note: ellipses added; the title of the online version is "By Degrees - Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight." )

Source of maps: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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Dyson says that the "climate-studies people" have ". . . come to believe models are real and forget they are only models." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. (The caption used here is adapted from the body of the article, and is not the caption used under the photo in the article.)

The cover story of the March 29, 2009 Sunday New York Times Magazine section was a breath of fresh air on an old hot topic. Here is a small sample of a large article:

(p. 32) FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country's most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming "out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned," as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors' letter boxes and Dyson's own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as "a pompous twit," "a blowhard," "a cesspool of misinformation," "an old coot riding into the sunset" and, perhaps inevitably, "a mad scientist." Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a (p. 34 sic) good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred "carbon-eating trees," whereupon the University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner looked through the thick grove of honorary degrees Dyson has been awarded -- there are 21 from universities like Georgetown, Princeton and Oxford -- and suggested that "perhaps trees can also be designed so that they can give directions to lost hikers." Dyson's son, George, a technology historian, says his father's views have cooled friendships, while many others have concluded that time has cost Dyson something else. There is the suspicion that, at age 85, a great scientist of the 20th century is no longer just far out, he is far gone -- out of his beautiful mind.

But in the considered opinion of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Dyson's friend and fellow English expatriate, this is far from the case. "His mind is still so open and flexible," Sacks says. Which makes Dyson something far more formidable than just the latest peevish right-wing climate-change denier. Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists -- William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him "infinitely smart." Dyson -- a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory -- not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the "high priest of string theory" whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson's. Yet instead of hewing to that fundamental field, Dyson chose to pursue broader and more unusual pursuits than most physicists -- and has lived a more original life.

. . .

(p. 36) Not long ago Dyson sat in his institute office, a chamber so neat it reminds Dyson's friend, the writer John McPhee, of a Japanese living room. On shelves beside Dyson were books about stellar evolution, viruses, thermodynamics and terrorism. "The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models," Dyson was saying. "They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models." Dyson speaks in calm, clear tones that carry simultaneous evidence of his English childhood, the move to the United States after completing his university studies at Cambridge and more than 50 years of marriage to the German-born Imme, but his opinions can be barbed, especially when a conversation turns to climate change. Climate models, he says, take into account atmospheric motion and water levels but have no feeling for the chemistry and biology of sky, soil and trees. "The biologists have essentially been pushed aside," he continues. "Al Gore's just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers."

Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still "a relatively cool period in the earth's history." The warming, he says, is not global but local, "making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter." Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious -- a sign that "the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse," because carbon acts as an ideal fertilizer promoting forest growth and crop yields. "Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now," he contends, "and substantially richer in carbon dioxide." Dyson calls ocean acidification, which many scientists say is destroying the saltwater food chain, a genuine but probably exaggerated problem. Sea levels, he says, are rising steadily, but why this is and what dangers it might portend "cannot be predicted until we know much more about its causes."

For the full article, see:

NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF. "The Civil Heretic." The New York Times Magazine (Sun., March 29, 2009): 32-39, 54, 57-59.

(Note: ellipses in top photo caption, and in article quotes, are added.)

"Freeman Dyson." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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". . . , researchers rustle up sheep behind the lab in Palmerston North, New Zealand, . . . " Source of photo and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand -- On a typical day, researchers in this college town coax hungry sheep into metal carts. They wheel the fluffy beasts into sealed chambers and feed them grass, then wait for them to burp.

The exercise is part of a global effort to keep sheep, deer, cows and other livestock from belching methane when they eat and regurgitate grass. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and researchers now believe livestock industries are a major contributor to climate change, responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than cars are, according to the United Nations.

Plenty of people, including farmers, think the problem of sheep burps is so much hot air. But governments are coming under pressure to put a cork in it, and many farmers fear that new livestock regulations could follow. They worry that environmentalists will someday persuade the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to seek to tax bovine belches. Some activists are urging consumers to stop buying meat and thus slow climate change.

All of which is breathing new life into the study of sheep stomachs. Researchers have tried just about everything, from changing the animals' diets to breeding new sheep they hope will be less gassy. They've concocted (p. A9) cocktails of clover, garlic and cottonseed oil to try to curb methane. They have even tried feeding the animals chloroform, which can stymie the production of gas if it doesn't kill the animal.

But sure as grass grows, livestock keep producing methane.

. . .

. . . , roughly 48% of New Zealand's greenhouse gases come from agriculture, compared with less than 10% in such large, developed economies as the U.S. Agricultural leaders fear their livestock-heavy economy could be at risk if there's an international move to tighten rules on animal emissions.

Kiwis tried to get a leg up on the problem in 2003, when politicians proposed an emissions tax on livestock. Farmers thought they were getting fleeced and attacked what they called a "fart tax." The idea was tabled.

For the full story, see:

PATRICK BARTA. "Silencing the Lambs: Scientists Target Sheep Belching to Cut Methane; Reducing Gas in Livestock Could Help World Breathe Sigh of Relief Over Global Warming." Wall Street Journal (Thurs., FEBRUARY 26, 2009): A1 & A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

[Researchers place sheep] "in a cart to be wheeled into sealed chambers to measure levels of the greenhouse gas methane the animals burp up."






Source of photos and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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"Dante Hesse, . . . , of Milk Thistle Farm, thinks Greenmarket rules are too hard on dairies." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. (Note: ellipsis in caption added.)

(p. D4) The basic aim of the producer-only rules is to ensure that all foods sold at market originate entirely or mostly on family farms within a half day's drive from New York City. The 10-page document detailing these rules, however, is anything but clear.

"Cumbersome, confusing and contradictory," was the assessment of Michael Hurwitz, the director of Greenmarket, which operates 45 markets in the five boroughs.

Pickle makers can sell preserved foods such as peppers in vinegar, but not processed foods such as hot sauce. Farmers, on the other hand, can sell processed hot sauce if it is made with their peppers. Dairies may purchase a higher percentage of their milk for cheese if the cheese is made from one type of milk rather than two milks, such as cow and sheep. Cider makers can buy 40 percent of the apples they press from local farmers, whereas wheatgrass juice sellers must grow all their wheatgrass.

For the full story, see:

INDRANI SEN. "Greenmarket Sellers Debate Maze of Producer-Only Rules." The New York Times (Weds., August 6, 2008): D4.

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"Statoilhydro's pioneering liquefied natural gas plant on an island off Hammerfest in Norway has encountered an array of problems." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) HAMMERFEST, Norway -- A Norwegian oil company has gone to the ends of the earth -- almost literally -- to get at some of the world's last untapped energy resources.

StatoilHydro ASA operates a pioneering venture deep inside the Arctic Circle, energy's final frontier. The company pumps natural gas from under the freezing waters of the Barents Sea, cools it into a liquid and exports it to Europe and the U.S.

The project, called Snoehvit, has taken StatoilHydro and the entire oil and gas industry into uncharted territory. Before, no one had ever produced liquefied natural gas in the Arctic -- or in Europe, for that matter.

. . .

The oil companies are being aided by climate change. Lashed by storms and strewn with icebergs, the Arctic is one of the most hostile environments on earth. But global warming is melting the polar ice cap, opening up new shipping routes and unlocking once-inaccessible mineral deposits.

. . .

(p. B4) StatoilHydro, . . . , is upbeat. The plant is currently running at 80% to 90% of capacity, up from around 60% last year, company officials say. Outages are typical for the run-in period of a big LNG project, and flaring will soon be a thing of the past. Sure, they say, the start-up period has been troubled, but this is a field with a production life of up to 40 years.

For the full story, see:

GUY CHAZAN. "Norwegian Oil Firm Goes to Energy's Last Frontier." Wall Street Journal (Fri., FEBRUARY 13, 2009): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: LNG in the quotes is the abbreviation for liquefied natural gas.)

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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"An artist's rendering of the prehistoric snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis, which was 42 feet long and lived 60 million years ago." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) Some 60 million years ago, well after the demise of the dinosaurs, a giant relative of today's boa constrictors, weighing more than a ton and measuring 42 feet long, hunted crocodiles in rain-washed tropical forests in northern South America, according to a new fossil discovery.

. . .

But the existence of such a large snake may also help clarify how hot the tropics became during an era when the planet, as a whole, was far warmer than it is now, and also how well moist tropical ecosystems can tolerate a much warmer global climate.

That last question is important in assessments of how human-driven global warming might affect the tropics.

. . .

The team examined how warm it had to be for a snake species to be that large by considering conditions favoring the largest living similar tropical snake, the green anaconda, said Jason J. Head, the lead author of the paper and a paleontologist at the University of Toronto. They concluded that Titanoboa could have thrived only if temperatures ranged from 86 to 93 degrees.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW C. REVKIN. "Fossils of Largest Snake Give Hint of Hot Earth." The New York Times (Thurs., February 4, 2009): A7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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(p. 24) Within five years of his speculative note to Collinson, lightning rods had become a common sight on church steeples throughout Europe and America. Franklin's biographer Carl Van Doren aptly describes the astonishment that greeted these events around the world: "A man in Philadelphia in America, bred a tradesman, remote from the learned world, had hit upon a secret which enabled him, and other men, to catch and tame the lightning, so dread that it was still mythological."

Source:

Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

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In honor of "Earth Day," some thoughtful comments by a co-founder of Greenpeace:

(p. A23) In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace.

But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind.

At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.

The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks - and ample benefits - from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.

For the full commentary, see:

PATRICK MOORE. "Why I Left Greenpeace." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 22, 2008): A23.

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Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) HOUSTON -- While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not.

. . .

Landfill costs here are cheap. The city's sprawling, no-zoning layout makes collection expensive, and there is little public support for the kind of effort it takes to sort glass, paper and plastics. And there appears to be even less for placing fees on excess trash.

"We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up," said Mayor Bill White, . . .

For the full story, see:

ADAM B. ELLICK. "Houston Resists Recycling, and Independent Streak Is Cited." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., July 29, 2008): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"This artist's concept shows a cloudy Jupiter-like planet that orbits very close to its fiery hot star." Source of caption and image: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A31) Astronomers testing techniques to search for extraterrestrial life have detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years away.

This carbon dioxide, though, is certainly not coming from plants or automobiles. The planet, HD 189733b, is far too large (about the mass of the Jupiter) and too hot (1,700 degrees Fahrenheit) for any possibility of life.

For the full story, see:

KENNETH CHANG. "Carbon Dioxide (No S.U.V.'s) Detected on Distant Planet." The New York Times (Thurs., December 11, 2008): A31.

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Source of captionless photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 20) . . . for the residents of the frozen island, the early stages of climate change promise more good, in at least one important sense, than bad. A Danish protectorate since 1721, Greenland has long sought to cut its ties with its colonizer. But while proponents of complete independence face little opposition at home or in Copenhagen, they haven't been able to overcome one crucial calculation: the country depends on Danish assistance for more than 40 percent of its gross domestic product. "The independence wish has always been there," says Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's minister for finance and foreign affairs. "The reason we have never realized it is because of the economics."

. . .

But the real promise lies in what may be found under the ice. Near the town of Uummannaq, about halfway up Greenland's coast, retreating glaciers have uncovered pockets of lead and zinc. Gold and diamond prospectors have flooded the island's south. Alcoa is preparing to build a large aluminum smelter. The island's minerals are becoming more accessible even as global commodity prices are soaring. And with more than 80 percent of the land currently iced over, the hope is that the island has just begun to reveal its riches.

. . .

In November, Greenlanders will vote on a referendum that would leverage global warming into a path to independence. The island's 56,000 predominantly Inuit residents have enjoyed limited home rule since 1978. The proposed plan for self-rule, drafted in partnership with Copenhagen, is expected to pass overwhelmingly.

For the full story, see:

STEPHAN FARIS. "Phenomenon; Ice Free; Will Global Warming Give Greenland Its Independence?" The New York Times, Magazine Section (Sun., July 27, 2008): 20.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"Arthur Kantrowitz, the "father" of laser propulsion, with a cone-shaped model in 1989, first suggested the use of ground based lasers to launch vehicles into orbit." Source of the caption and photo: the online version of the somewhat different December 9th version of the obituary at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09kantrowitz.html?scp=1&sq=Kantrowitz&st=cse

(p. B13) Arthur R. Kantrowitz, a physicist and engineer whose research on the behavior of superhot gases and fluid dynamics led to nose cones for rockets, heart-assist pumps and the idea of nuclear fusion in magnetic bottles, among many other things, died in Manhattan on Nov. 29. He was 95.

. . .

After receiving bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Columbia in 1936, he went to work for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, the precursor to NASA, at Langley Field in Virginia. It was there, in 1938, that he and Eastman N. Jacobs, his boss, did an experiment that might have changed the world, had they succeeded.

The idea was to harness the energy source that powers the sun, the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, by heating hydrogen with radio waves while squeezing the gas with a magnetic field. At the time, nobody had tried to produce a fusion reaction; the Manhattan Project and other attempts to create nuclear fission were still in their infancy.

Knowing that their superiors would disapprove of anything as outlandish as atomic energy, they labeled their machine the Diffusion Inhibitor, and worked on it only at night. The experiment failed, and before the experimenters could figure out why, their director found out about the project and canceled it. Physicists unaware of the Langley experiment later reinvented the idea of thermonuclear fusion in a magnetic bottle, and they are still trying to make it work.

''It was a heartbreaking experience,'' Dr. Kantrowitz recalled. ''I had just built a whole future around this; I wanted to make it a career.''

For the full obituary, see:

DENNIS OVERBYE. "Arthur R. Kantrowitz, 95, Is Dead; Physicist Who Helped Space Program." The New York Times (Weds., December 10, 2008): B13.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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In the process of creative destruction, the industry that is being destroyed often seeks to protect itself from the new innovation:

(p. 45) In England, objectors to gaslight argued that it undercut the whaling industry.

Source:

Burke, James. The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible - and Other Journeys. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1997.

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Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A10) Leaders of the Group of Eight major industrialized economies, meeting in Japan, issued their first long-term target for cutting global-warming emissions. But their pronouncement failed to address the two toughest questions: How will the world do it, and who will pay?

The answer to the money question is clear: Consumers will pay -- at the gasoline pump, at the car dealership and on the monthly electric bill. If the campaign against global warming gets serious, it will transform today's esoteric environmental threat into a fundamental pocketbook issue for people from Boston to Beijing.

For the full story, see:

JEFFREY BALL. "As Climate Issue Heats Up, Questions of Cost Loom." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 10, 2008): A10.

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Source of map: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) McMoRan Exploration Co. is leading a renewed effort to find natural gas in a site known as one of the world's deepest dry holes.

Exxon Mobil Corp. walked away from the legendary Blackbeard prospect in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006 after drilling to more than 30,000 feet without a payoff. But high energy prices have emboldened the industry, stirring wildcatter passions and prompting companies to look anew at previously abandoned projects.

. . .

(p. B2) If industry reports, unconfirmed by Exxon, are correct, the company spent more than $200 million on the well, making it one of the most expensive dry holes ever drilled.

The industry is littered with expensive failures, but Blackbeard proved too tempting to let go, especially in today's record-price environment, where any reasonably promising prospect is worth a try. Indeed, there are more drilling rigs at work in the U.S. today than at any point since 1985, according to Baker Hughes Inc.

Mr. Moffett, the 69-year-old founder of McMoRan Exploration, is a geologist and inveterate risk taker. He discovered the giant Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesia, parlaying it into global mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. The oil-and-gas exploration company was spun off from the mining assets in 1994.

Last August, McMoRan paid $1.1 billion for a package of shallow Gulf of Mexico assets, including Blackbeard, from Newfield Exploration Co., Exxon's former partner on the well. Studying the geology, Mr. Moffett found it similar to successful wells drilled by other companies in the deeper parts of the Gulf.

He now says that if McMoRan decides to keep drilling to 35,000 feet, it will cost about $75 million.

For the full story, see:

RUSSELL GOLD "A Famed Dry Hole Gets a Second Shot." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 21, 2008): B1-B2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Photo on left is "GorillaIV, the rig drilling Blackbeard." Image on right is the Co-Chairman of McMoRan. Source of photo, image, and caption on left photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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"The Healy, shown in May 2007 in the Bering Sea, is an ice-breaking ship used mainly for science." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) A growing array of military leaders, Arctic experts and lawmakers say the United States is losing its ability to patrol and safeguard Arctic waters even as climate change and high energy prices have triggered a burst of shipping and oil and gas exploration in the thawing region.

The National Academy of Sciences, the Coast Guard and others have warned over the past several years that the United States' two 30-year-old heavy icebreakers, the Polar Sea and Polar Star, and one ice-breaking ship devoted mainly to science, the Healy, are grossly inadequate. Also, the Polar Star is out of service.

And this spring, the leaders of the Pentagon's Pacific Command, Northern Command and Transportation Command strongly recommended in a letter that the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorse a push by the Coast Guard to increase the country's ability to gain access to and control its Arctic waters.

In the meantime, a resurgent Russia has been busy expanding its fleet of large oceangoing icebreakers to around 14, launching a large conventional icebreaker in May and, last year, the world's largest icebreaker, named 50 Years of Victory, the newest of its seven nuclear-powered, pole-hardy ships.

Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, who toured Alaska's Arctic shores two weeks ago with the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said that whatever mix of natural and human factors is causing the ice retreats, the Arctic is clearly opening to commerce -- and potential conflict and hazards -- like never before.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW C. REVKIN. "A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic." The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 17, 2008): 6.

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Michael Crichton speaking on environmentalism at the Fairmont Hotel on September 15, 2003. Source of photo: Bill Adams' posting at http://www.pbase.com/bill_adams/image/21439440

The papers announced yesterday (11/6/08) that Michael Crichton had died of cancer a couple of days earlier (11/4/08).

I had mixed feelings about his stories. On the one hand, they seemed mainly to stir up unrealistic fears about technology, which I see as mainly a benefit to humanity. On the other hand, they often involved intelligent heroes who struggled against danger, and won (or at least partly won).

Crichton's best story may have been one of his last, State of Fear. In that book, he took on the environmental movement, and showed in a powerful appendix, how some scientists and scientific institutions have failed us, by creating fear that is not grounded in the free exchange of ideas and evidence.

Crichton did not have to take on this issue---it earned him vituperative enemies, and probably lost him some readers. But in the end, he too was an intelligent hero who struggled against danger---the danger of politically correct closed minds.

Michael Crichton, Rest in Peace.

P.S.: Crichton had some scientific credentials. Here are a couple of interesting facts about his life:

(p. A27) At Harvard, after a professor criticized his writing style, the younger Mr. Crichton changed his major from English to anthropology and graduated summa cum laude in 1964. He then spent a year teaching anthropology on a fellowship at Cambridge University. In 1966 he entered Harvard Medical School and began writing on the side to help pay tuition.

. . .

In 1969, after earning his medical degree, Mr. Crichton moved to the La Jolla section of San Diego and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Already inclining toward a writing career, he tilted decisively with "The Andromeda Strain," a medical thriller about a group of scientists racing against time to stop the spread of a lethal organism from outer space code-named Andromeda.

For the full obituary, see:

WILLIAM GRIMES. "Michael Crichton, Author of Thrillers, Dies at 66." The New York Times (Thurs., November 5, 2008): A27.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Michael Crichton during an April 11, 2002 lecture at the Harvard Medical School (from which he graduated). Source of photo: http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/11-crichton.html

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Source of the graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A9) The Arctic contains just over a fifth of the world's undiscovered, recoverable oil and natural-gas resources, according to a review released Wednesday, confirming its potential as the final frontier for energy exploration.

A report by the U.S. Geological Survey found that the area north of the Arctic Circle has an estimated 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- nearly two-thirds the proved gas reserves of the entire Middle East -- and 90 billion barrels of oil.

The report, the culmination of four years of study, is one of the most ambitious attempts to assess the Arctic's petroleum potential. One of its main findings is that natural gas is three times as abundant as oil in the Arctic, and most of that gas is concentrated in Russia.

The survey reflects interest in an area once off-limits to oil exploration. It has become more accessible as global warming reduces the polar icecap, opening valuable new shipping routes, oil fields and mineral deposits.

For the full story, see:

GUY CHAZAN. "Cold Comfort: Arctic Is Oil Hot Spot; Hard-to-Reach Energy Reserves Limit Potential." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., July 24, 2008): A9.

See also:

JAD MOUAWAD. "Oil Survey Says Arctic Has Riches." The New York Times (Thurs., July 24, 2008): C1 & C4.

"A Canadian ranger looks along the length of one of the gaping new cracks in the large Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, in an April photo. Climate change is opening up the region's potential for energy exploration." Source of the caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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"Sen. John McCain, center, visits the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant in Michigan. From left: shift manager Phil Skarbek, CEO Anthony Earley, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich." Source of caption and photo: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-05-mccain-nuclear_N.htm

I believe that the market is the most efficient institution for deciding the best mix of technologies for providing energy. But I am 'pro-nuclear' in the sense that the government should reduce past regulatory barriers, that have unjustifiably increased the cost of nuclear power relative to other energy technologies.

(p. A16) NEWPORT, Mich. -- Senator John McCain toured a nuclear power plant in Michigan on Tuesday to highlight his support for the construction of 45 new nuclear power generators by 2030, a position that he said distinguished him from his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an "all-of-the-above approach" to addressing the nation's energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it "safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil."

"If we really want to enable new technologies tomorrow like plug-in electric cars, we need electricity to plug into," he said in a statement after touring the Fermi 2 nuclear plant, its twin cooling towers spewing vapors used as a backdrop. "We need to do all this and more."

. . .

But market conditions have improved as demand for power has risen and the price of natural gas, a competing fuel, has jumped. Lately some environmental groups that had been critical of nuclear power have embraced it, seeing the technology as a way to meet the nation's growing energy demands without contributing more heat-trapping gases.

In addressing the nation's energy demands, Mr. Obama has focused on alternative energy sources like wind and solar, as well as conservation, which would apparently also be the main beneficiaries of the decade-long $150 billion government investment effort he promises if elected. He barely mentions nuclear power, usually just alluding to it in a sentence here or there.

For the full story, see:

MARY ANN GIORDANO and LARRY ROHTER. "McCain at Nuclear Plant Highlights Energy Issue." The New York Times (Weds., August 5, 2008): A16.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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Source of drawing: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Maybe the point of much of the urgent, contradictory eco-crusades, is not so much to save the earth as to make us feel guilty about consuming, as a way to undermine the human progress that comes from capitalism?

(p. 1) DESPITE the expense and the occasional back strain, Mary Burnham, a public relations consultant in San Francisco, felt good about the decision she made a few years ago to buy milk -- organic, of course -- only in heavy, reusable glass bottles. For the sake of the environment, she dutifully lugged them back and forth from the grocery store every week. Cutting out disposable paper cartons, she reasoned, meant saving trees and reducing waste.

Or not. A friend, also a committed environmentalist, recently started questioning her good deed. "His argument was that paper cartons are compostable and lightweight and use less energy and water than the heavy bottles, which must be transported back to a plant to be cleaned and reused," she said. "I have no idea which is better, or how to find out."

Ms. Burnham, 35, recycles religiously, orders weekly from a community-supported farm, buys eco-friendly cleaning products and carries groceries in a canvas bag. But she admits to information overload on the environment -- from friends, advice columns, news media, even government-issued reports. Much of the advice is conflicting.

"To say that you are confused and a little fed up with the often contradictory messages out there on how to live lightly on the earth is definitely not cool," she said in an e-mail message. "But, heck, I'll come out and say it. I'm a little overwhelmed."

She is, in other words, a victim of "green noise" -- static caused by urgent, sometimes vexing or even contradictory information played at too high a volume for too long.

. . .

(p. 8) . . . , as Mr. Hawken said, "even people inside the movement have the same feeling -- burnout."

For the full story, see:

ALEX WILLIAMS. "That Buzz in Your Ear May Be Green Noise." The New York Times, SundayStyles Section (Sun., June 15, 2008): 1 & 8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"At the Reeve plant near Garden City, Kan., grain is made into ethanol, and the byproducts are fed to cattle in the adjacent feedlot." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Unfortunately, the EPA rejected Gov. Paley's request, discussed in the article quoted below:

(p. C1) The ethanol industry, until recently a golden child that got favorable treatment from Washington, is facing a critical decision on its future.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected in the next few weeks.

Mr. Perry says the billions of bushels of corn being used to produce all that mandated ethanol would be better suited as livestock feed than as fuel.

Feed prices have soared in the last two years as fuel has begun competing with food for cropland.

"When you find yourself in a hole, you have to quit digging," Mr. Perry said in an interview. "And we are in a hole."

His request for an emergency waiver cutting the ethanol mandate to 4.5 billion gallons, from the 9 billion gallons required this year and the 10.5 billion required in 2009, is backed by a coalition of food, livestock and environmental groups.

Farmers and ethanol and other biofuel producers are lobbying to keep the existing mandates.

For the full story, see:

DAVID STREITFELD. "Uprising Against the Ethanol Mandate." The New York Times (Weds., July 23, 2008): C1 & C5.

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Using a Segway to deliver pizza. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B2) With gasoline prices and global warming on their minds, more Americans are getting out of their cars and riding to work -- and riding on the job -- on the once-maligned Segway.

Scott Hervey of Yorba Linda, Calif., bought one of the electric scooters on June 7 and has put 150 miles on it commuting to his custodian's job at Disneyland, about 12 miles away. He had considered buying a Segway for four years, and gasoline prices finally drove him to do it. Now he "glides," as Segway enthusiasts say, to work. "I like passing gas stations," says the 54-year-old.

The two-wheeled Segway, a self-balancing vehicle that runs on a rechargeable battery, debuted amid massive hype in 2001. Tech icons like Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.'s chief executive officer, and Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos predicted it would change the way people lived. But critics panned the high-tech scooter for its $5,000 price tag and portrayed it as a toy for geeks and the rich. Some cities banned it from sidewalks because of safety concerns.

Today, the Segway is gaining converts. It plugs into a standard electrical outlet and can get up to 25 miles per charge.

Sales at the scooter's maker, Segway Inc., have risen to an all-time high, says CEO Jim Norrod. The closely held Manchester, N.H., company doesn't release detailed numbers. (A September 2006 recall showed the company had sold 23,500 Segways.) But Mr. Norrod says he expects sales this quarter to jump 50% from a year earlier, versus a 25% year-over-year increase in the first quarter.

For the full story, see:

STU WOO. "Segway Glides as Gasoline Jumps; Maligned Scooter Winning New Fans; $5,000 Price Tag." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., June 16, 2008): B2.

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"A General Motors Corp. Chevrolet Uplander flexible fuel vehicle customized for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is shown in this handout photo taken on April 22, 2008. The USPS bought more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks and minivans from 1999 to 2005, making it the biggest American buyer of alternative-fuel vehicles." Source of caption and photo: Bloomberg.com article quoted and cited below.

I saw a great CNN video clip on 8/11/08 showing some of the specially designed Post Office vehicles that were expensive, but that were mainly running on regular gasoline because it was too difficult to fill them with the high-ethanol blend that they were converted to use.

Before I finally found the clip on CNNMoney.com, by searching for it using the TRUVEO video search engine, I discovered that a version of the story had run back in May on Bloomberg.com. I quote from the story below.

May 21 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Postal Service purchased more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks and minivans from 1999 to 2005, making it the biggest American buyer of alternative-fuel vehicles. Gasoline consumption jumped by more than 1.5 million gallons as a result.

The trucks, derived from Ford Motor Co.'s Explorer sport- utility vehicle, had bigger engines than Jeeps from the former Chrysler Corp. they replaced. A Postal Service study found the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon. Mail carriers used the corn-based fuel in just 1,000 of them because there weren't enough places to buy it.

For the full story, see:

Peter Robison, Alan Ohnsman and Alan Bjerga. "Ethanol Vehicles for Post Office Burn More Gas, Get Fewer Miles." Last Updated: May 21, 2008 00:01 EDT Downloaded on August 8, 2008 from:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&refer=energy&sid=aj.h0coJSkpw

On the CNN Money video clip:

Jason Carroll was the reporter on the CNN Money clip that was added to CNNMoney.com on August 12, 2008, under the title "Snail Mail by Ethanol," and is viewable at http://money.cnn.com/video/#/video/news/2008/08/12/news.usps.081108.cnnmoney

Reporter Jason Carroll talks with mail carrier Richard Malik, who says he has never used ethanol in his expensive mail truck that had been specially designed to use ethanol. Source of photo: screen capture from the CNN Money video clip discussed above.

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Source of book image:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61cDbDl665L._SS500_.jpg

(p. D1) SOME people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga. To them, the creamy Hutterite soup bean is too obscure and the Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled, sounds more like a sideshow act than the centerpiece of a barbecue.

But not Gary Paul Nabhan. He has spent most of the past four years compiling a list of endangered plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to save them, which often involves urging people to eat them.

Mr. Nabhan's list, 1,080 items and growing, forms the basis of his new book, an engaging journey through the nooks and crannies of American culinary history titled "Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods" (Chelsea Green Publishing, $35).

. . .

(p. C5) Some of the items on the list, like Ojai pixie tangerines and Sonoma County Gravenstein apples, were well on their way back before Mr. Nabhan came along. But other foods are enjoying a renaissance largely as a result of the coalition's work.

The Makah ozette potato, a nutty fingerling with such a rich, creamy texture that it needs only a whisper of oil, is one of the success stories. It is named after the Makah Indians, who live at the northwest tip of Washington state and have been growing the potatoes for more than 200 years.

The Seattle chapters of Slow Food and the Chefs Collaborative adopted the rare potato. In 2006, Slow Food passed out seed potatoes to a handful of local farmers and gardeners, and chefs like Seth Caswell at the Stumbling Goat Bistro in Seattle began putting them on the menu.

Mr. Caswell says they are delicious roasted with a little hazelnut oil for salads or cut into wedges to go with burgers made with wagyu beef and Washington State black truffle oil.

There have been other revivals, the moon and stars watermelon and the tepary bean among them. The effort to reintroduce heritage turkeys to the American table was a precursor to the work of Mr. Nabhan and his collaborators.

The meaty Buckeye chicken, with its long legs suitable for ranging around, is considered one of five most endangered chicken breeds. Last year over 1,000 chicks were hatched and delivered to breeders, Mr. Nabhan said.

Justin Pitts, whose family has raised Pineywoods cattle in southern Mississippi for generations, credits the coalition with saving those animals. The small, lean cattle that provide milk, meat and labor spent centuries adapting to the pine barrens of the deep south, raised by families who can trace their herds back as far as anyone can remember. There are less than a dozen of those families left, and at one point the number of pure Pineywoods breeding animals fell to under 200. In the past few years, it has grown to nearly 1,000.

Mr. Pitts, who has "90 head if I can find them all," sells New York strips and other cuts at the New Orleans farmers' market and to chefs.

"I can't raise cattle fast as they eat them," he said.

He supports the notion that you've got to eat something to save it.

"If you're keeping them for a museum piece," he said, "you've just signed their death warrant."

For the full story, see:

KIM SEVERSON. "An Unlikely Way to Save a Species: Serve It for Dinner." The New York Times (Weds., April 30, 2008): D1 & D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Reference to book:

Nabhan, Gary Paul. Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2008.

Moon and stars watermelon. Source of image: http://bp0.blogger.com/_Tyq14YRMHCI/SBlWLE9tynI/AAAAAAAAAD8/gphhc3wgK-4/s1600/purplewatermelon266.jpg

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"Senator Barack Obama last July in Adel, Iowa. His strong support of ethanol helped propel him to his first caucus victory there." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry's most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon -- and so did Senator Barack Obama.

Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country's second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.

Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.

. . .

(p. A19) Many economists, consumer advocates, environmental experts and tax groups have been critical of corn ethanol programs as a boondoggle that benefits agribusiness conglomerates more than small farmers. Those complaints have intensified recently as corn prices have risen sharply in tandem with oil prices and corn normally used for food stock has been diverted to ethanol production.

For the full story, see:

LARRY ROHTER. "Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol." The New York Times (Mon., June 23, 2008): A1 & A19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Posted by Art Diamond at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I agree with the Karl Rove's analysis below, that John McCain does not exhibit much understanding of Schumpeter's process of creative destruction. On the other hand, I have seen no evidence that Barack Obama has any such understanding either. (Nor have I seen any evidence that Rove's former boss, George W. Bush, has any such understanding, for that matter.)

And, in general, I am still of the belief that, overall, between the two of them, McCain will put fewer obstacles in the path of innovation than will Obama.

(p. A13) This past Thursday, Mr. McCain came close to advocating a form of industrial policy, saying, "I'm very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they've made, but their failure to invest in alternate energy."

But oil and gas companies report that they have invested heavily in alternative energy. Out of the $46 billion spent researching alternative energy in North America from 2000 to 2005, $12 billion came from oil and gas companies, making the industry one of the nation's largest backers of wind and solar power, biofuels, lithium-ion batteries and fuel-cell technology.

Such investments, however, are not as important as money spent on technologies that help find and extract more oil. Because oil companies invested in innovation and technology, they are now tapping reserves that were formerly thought to be unrecoverable. Maybe we are all better off when oil companies invest in what they know, not what they don't.

And do we really want the government deciding how profits should be invested? If so, should Microsoft be forced to invest in Linux-based software or McDonald's in weight-loss research?

Mr. McCain's angry statement shows a lack of understanding of the insights of Joseph Schumpeter, the 20th century economist who explained that capitalism is inherently unstable because a "perennial gale of creative destruction" is brought on by entrepreneurs who create new goods, markets and processes. The entrepreneur is "the pivot on which everything turns," Schumpeter argued, and "proceeds by competitively destroying old businesses."

Most dramatic change comes from new businesses, not old ones. Buggy whip makers did not create the auto industry. Railroads didn't create the airplane. Even when established industries help create new ones, old-line firms are often not as nimble as new ones. IBM helped give rise to personal computers, but didn't see the importance of software and ceded that part of the business to young upstarts who founded Microsoft.

So why should Mr. McCain expect oil and gas companies to lead the way in developing alternative energy? As with past technological change, new enterprises will likely be the drivers of alternative energy innovation.

For the full story, see:

KARL ROVE. "Obama and McCain Spout Economic Nonsense." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., June 19, 2008): A13.

(Note: I thank John Pagin and Dagny Diamond for alerting me to Rove's discussion of Schumpeter.)

Posted by Art Diamond at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(p. C1) Thanks to its aggressive push into renewable energies, cloud-wreathed Germany has become an unlikely leader in the race to harness the sun's energy. It has by far the largest market for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity, with roughly half of the world's total installations. And it is the third-largest producer of solar cells and modules, after China and Japan.

Now, though, with so many solar panels on so many rooftops, critics say Germany has too much of a good thing -- even in a time of record oil prices. Conservative lawmakers, in particular, want to pare back generous government incentives that support solar development. They say solar generation is growing so fast that it threatens to overburden consumers with high electricity bills.

. . .

(p. C7) At the heart of the debate is the Renewable Energy Sources Act. It requires power companies to buy all the alternative energy produced by these systems, at a fixed above-market price, for 20 years.

. . .

Christian Democrats, . . . , say the law has been too successful for its own good. Utilities, they note, are allowed to pass along the extra cost of buying renewable energy to customers, and there is no cap on the capacity that can be installed -- as exists in other countries to prevent subsidies from mushrooming.

At the moment, solar energy adds 1.01 euros ($1.69) a month to a typical home electricity bill, a modest surcharge that Germans are willing to pay. That will increase to 2.14 euros a month by 2014, according to the German Solar Energy Association.

But the volume of solar-generated energy is rising much faster than originally predicted, and critics contend that the costs will soar. Mr. Pfeiffer, the legislator, said solar power could end up adding 8 euros ($12.32) to a monthly electricity bill, which would alienate even the most green-minded. With no change in the law, he says, the solar industry will soak up 120 billion euros ($184 billion) in public support by 2015.

For the full story, see:

MARK LANDLER. "Solar Valley Rises in an Overcast Land." The New York Times (Fri., May 16, 2008): C1 & C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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The NYT ran an article on Knutson's 2004 study that claimed that global warming would result in more hurricanes. But a search (on 6/19/08) of the online NYT database reveals no 2008 articles that include both "Knutson" and "global" in their content.

So apparently the NYT does not consider it newsworthy that Knutson's most recent research (see below) finds that global warming would result in fewer hurricanes.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday.

In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.

For the full story, see:

"Study: Global warming not worsening hurricanes." MSN onllne Posted May 19, 2008 11:37 AM ET. Downloaded on 6/19/08 from: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20080519&id=8664109

(Note: the AP article appeared in many outlets, including "Warming Absolved in Scientist's Altered View of Hurricane Frequency." Omaha World-Herald (Mon, May 19, 2008): 4A.)

The reference to the Knutson article is:

Knutson, Thomas, Joseph Sirutis, Stephen Garner, Gabriel Vecchi, and Isaac Held. "Simulated Reduction in Atlantic Hurricane Frequency under Twenty-First-Century Warming Conditions." Nature Geoscience 1 (2008): 359-64.

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Source: screen capture from video clip referenced below.

Ben Stein commenting during CBS's "Sunday Morning" on July 6, 2008, delivered a wonderful tribute to the benefits of air conditioning.

The clip can be viewed at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4235362n

Source: screen capture from video clip referenced above.

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(p. A9) Washington never learns from its mistakes. In "The Worst Hard Time," Timothy Egan notes how federal price supports encouraged farmers in World War I to plow up millions of acres of dry grasslands and plant wheat. When the price of wheat crashed after the war, the denuded land lay fallow; then it blew away during the droughts of the 1930s, turning a big chunk of America into a Dust Bowl.

For the full commentary, see:

Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins. "Stupidity and the State." The Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). (Sat., June 7, 2008): A9.

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(p. B5) Even natural-gas companies can't resist the draw of $100 oil. Though prices for both natural gas and oil have risen steeply, oil fetches nearly twice the price of gas per unit of energy and brings fatter profits.

That is prompting even the most natural-gas-focused companies to step up their oil drilling in the U.S. With the biggest, easiest-to-get deposits of domestic crude oil drained long ago, U.S. energy companies in recent years have concentrated most of their domestic production efforts on natural gas. Some companies, such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. and EOG Resources Inc. devoted nearly their entire production to natural gas.

EOG recently announced it had begun drilling for oil in Colorado and Texas, including in the Barnett Shale, a vast hydrocarbon reserve that had previously been known for gas, not oil. With prices rising faster for oil than natural gas, "you're probably better off searching for oil," said EOG Chief Executive Mark Papa.

For the full story, see:

BEN CASSELMAN. "Prices Prompt Natural-Gas Firms To Drill for Oil in U.S." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., April 7, 2008): B5.

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"Nelson Brooke, the executive director of Black Warrior Riverkeeper, walked along an area of the river near Moundville, Ala." Source of the caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A12) MOUNDVILLE, Ala. -- After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant worker, hopped into his boat to follow it upstream to its source.

It turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama's first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel.

"I'm all for the plant," Mr. Storey said. "But I was really amazed that a plant like that would produce anything that could get into the river without taking the necessary precautions."

But the oily sheen on the water returned again and again, and a laboratory analysis of a sample taken in March 2007 revealed that the ribbon of oil and grease being released by the plant -- it resembled Italian salad dressing -- was 450 times higher than permit levels typically allow, and that it had drifted at least two miles downstream.

The spills, at the Alabama Biodiesel Corporation plant outside this city about 17 miles from Tuscaloosa, are similar to others that have come from biofuel plants in the Midwest. The discharges, which can be hazardous to birds and fish, have many people scratching their heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution from an industry that sells products with the promise of blue skies and clear streams.

. . .

"They're environmental Jimmy Swaggarts, in my opinion," said Representative Brian P. Bilbray, Republican of California, who spoke out against the $18 billion energy package recently passed by Congress that provides tax credits for biofuels.

For the full story, see:

BRENDA GOODMAN. "Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a 'Clean' Fuel." The New York Times (Tues., March 11, 2008): A12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: At one point, the online version of the article, as quoted above, was very slightly different (and clearer) than the print version.)

"Oil and grease from a biodiesel plant had been released." Source of the caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"The Rancho Seco nuclear power plant could generate 900 megwatts of electricity. It was shut down and converted to solar power, and today generates four megawatts." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article cited and quoted below.

(p. A11) . . . consider the story of the Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station. Opened in 1975, it was capable of generating over 900 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power upward of 900,000 homes. Fourteen years after powering up, the nuclear reactor shut down, thanks to fierce antinuclear opposition. Eventually, the facility was converted to solar power, and today generates a measly four MW of electricity. After millions of dollars in subsidies and other support, the entire state has less than 250 MW of solar capacity.

. . .

. . . : California now imports lots of energy from neighboring states to make up for having too few power plants. Up to 20% of the state's power comes from coal-burning plants in Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Montana. Another significant portion comes from large-scale hydropower in Oregon, Washington State and the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas.

"California practices a sort of energy colonialism," says James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, a Washington, D.C.-area investment group. "They leave those states to deal with the resulting pollution."

. . .

The unreliable power grid is starting to rattle some Silicon Valley heavyweights. Intel CEO Craig Barrett, for instance, vowed in 2001 not to build a chip-making facility in California until power supplies became more reliable. This October, Intel opened a $3 billion factory near Phoenix for mass production of its new 45-nanometer microprocessors. Google has chosen to build the massive server farms that will fuel its expansion anywhere but in California.

For the full commentary, see:

MAX SCHULZ. "California's Energy Colonialism." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 3, 2008): A11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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(p. A31) Most economists oppose the Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday because they can't see how consumers will benefit. In fact, "most" is an understatement; when challenged to name one economist willing to back her plan, Mrs. Clinton's response was to disparage the whole profession.

Why are economists so opposed? In the short run, the supply of gasoline is basically fixed; it takes a while to build a new refinery. The demand for gasoline, in contrast, is more responsive to price; we're already seeing greater use of public transportation and brisk sales of fuel-efficient cars. When you combine fixed supply with flexible demand, it's suppliers, not demanders, who pocket the tax cut. That's Econ 101.

. . .

When the public rejects the mundane explanations for high gas prices -- big boring facts like rapid Asian growth -- politicians aren't going to correct them. The best we can expect is for Washington to try to channel the public's misconceptions in relatively harmless directions. We could do a lot worse than the gas tax holiday; in fact, we usually do.

For the full commentary, see:

BRYAN CAPLAN. "The 18-Cent Solution." The New York Times (Thurs., May 8, 2008): A31.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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The journal Nature (along with the journal Science) is often viewed as one of the two most prestigious journals in science. The NYT article below reports that a recent Nature article forecasts that temperatures in Europe and North America will be cooler over the next decade.

After the portion quoted below, the NYT article goes on to reassure global warming true-believers that a decade of cooling would in no way be evidence against the global warming maintained hypothesis.

(p. A10) After decades of research that sought, and found, evidence of a human influence on the earth's climate, climatologists are beginning to shift to a new and similarly daunting enterprise: creating decade-long forecasts for climate, just as meteorologists routinely generate weeklong forecasts for weather.

One of the first attempts to look ahead a decade, using computer simulations and measurements of ocean temperatures, predicts a slight cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting currents and patterns in the oceans.

The team that generated the forecast, whose members come from two German ocean and climate research centers, acknowledged that it was a preliminary effort. But in a short paper published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature, they said their modeling method was able to reasonably replicate climate patterns in those regions in recent decades, providing some confidence in their prediction for the next one.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW C. REVKIN. "Scientists Work on Decade-Based Forecast for the Climate." The New York Times (Thurs., May 1, 2008): A10.

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Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) While the U.S. and others race to expand the use and production of biofuels, two new studies suggest these gasoline alternatives actually will increase carbon-dioxide levels.

A study published in the latest issue of Science finds that corn-based ethanol, a type of biofuel pushed heavily in the U.S., will nearly double the output of greenhouse-gas emissions instead of reducing them by about one-fifth by some estimates. A separate paper in Science concludes that clearing native habitats to grow crops for biofuel generally will lead to more carbon emissions.

The findings are the latest to take aim at biofuels, which have already been blamed for pushing up prices of corn and other food crops, as well as straining water supplies. The Energy Department expects U.S. ethanol production to reach about 7.5 billion gallons this year from 3.9 billion in 2005, encouraged by high prices and government support. The European Union has proposed that 10% of all fuel used in transportation should come from biofuels by 2020.

Some scientists have praised biofuels because growing biofuel feedstock would remove gases that trap the sun's heat from the air, while gasoline and diesel fuel take carbon from the ground and put it in the air. However, some earlier studies didn't account for one hard-to-measure factor: the decision by farmers world-wide to convert forest and grasslands to grow feedstock for the new biofuels.

. . .

[One] study's funding came from the National Science Foundation and the University of Minnesota's Initiative on Renewable Energy and the Environment, . . . The other paper relied on funding from various indirect sources, including the Hewlett Foundation and the Agriculture Department.

For the full story, see:

GAUTAM NAIK. "Biofuels Hold Potential for Greater Levels of CO2; Land Use for Crops May Cancel Out Benefits of Use." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., February 8, 2008): A4.

(Note: ellipses added; and bracketed word added.)

(Note: the somewhat different title of the online version was "Biofuels May Hinder Antiglobal-Warming Efforts; Carbon Emissions Could Increase As Land-Use Shifts.")

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A New York Times article spent nine paragraphs on the damage to the Arctic from global warming. At the top of the article is a substantial photo showing shrinking ice around Canada's Northwest Passage.

Then at the end of the article, there is a tenth paragraph, consisting of the following single sentence:

(p. A6) Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high.

Global warming is an important issue. So in judging the truth and severity of global warming, why is the shrinking of ice in the arctic, worth so much more attention than the expanding of ice in the antarctic?

(In fairness to the NYT, given the overwhelming politically correct pressure to be onboard the global warming bandwagon, especially among NYT readers, one might argue that what made the article notable was not that it lacked objective balance, but that the NYT had the courage to include the final sentence at all.)

For the full story, or at least the part of the full story that the NYT wants to report, see:

ANDREW C. REVKIN. "Scientists Report Severe Retreat of Arctic Ice." The New York Times (Fri., September 21, 2007): A6.

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(p. A19) MOST people view traffic with a mixture of rage and resignation: rage because congestion wastes valuable time, resignation because, well, what can anyone do about it? People have places to go, after all; congestion seems inevitable.

But a surprising amount of traffic isn't caused by people who are on their way somewhere. Rather, it is caused by those who have already arrived. Streets are clogged, in part, by drivers searching for a place to park.

Several studies have found that cruising for curb parking generates about 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts. In a recent survey conducted by Bruce Schaller in the SoHo district in Manhattan, 28 percent of drivers interviewed while they were stopped at traffic lights said they were searching for curb parking. A similar study conducted by Transportation Alternatives in the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn found that 45 percent of drivers were cruising.

. . .

If cities want to reduce congestion, clean the air, save energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve neighborhoods -- and do it all quickly -- they should charge the right price for curb parking, and spend the resulting revenue to improve local public services.

For the full commentary, see:

Donald Shoup. "Gone Parkin'." The New York Times (Thurs., March 29, 2007): A19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) Output from the world's existing oil fields is declining at a rate of about 4.5% annually, a new study concludes, depriving the world of the same amount of oil that No. 4 producer Iran supplies in a year.

Yet the study's authors, Boston-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates, argue that their assessment supports a generally rosy view of the industry's future, given that new projects in the works will make up for the decline.

Set for release today, the study, based on data from 811 fields around the world, takes aim at a growing school of thought that the world's oil production may soon hit its peak just as demand is surging in Asia and the Middle East.

"This study supports a view that there is no impending short-term peak in global oil production," the paper concludes. CERA, led by oil historian Daniel Yergin, is a prominent adviser to oil companies.

. . .

Mr. Yergin said that the huge number of projects under way in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, West Africa, the Caspian Sea and the Gulf of Mexico will more than make up for natural declines from fields now in production.

"This is a daily, hourly and minute-by-minute challenge for the world's oil industry," he said. "But for every Iran you are losing, you are gaining almost two Irans in return."

For the full story, see:

NEIL KING JR. "Slower Oil-Field Decline Is Seen." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., January 17, 2008): A4.

(Note: ellipsis added; the online title is: "New Fields May Offset Oil Drop.")

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Source of map: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. R12) The Arctic summers have grown longer, raising concerns among scientists and environmentalists that the polar ice cap is melting and that carbon emissions from oil and other fossil fuels are to blame. But for players in the energy industry, the longer summers and the retreat of the permanent ice cover are opening up new possibilities.

. . .

Energy companies already are seeing a "dramatic difference" in the amount of time they can work in the far north, says Mike Watts, exploration director at Cairn Energy PLC, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based company. On Jan. 9 it acquired licenses to explore off the west coast of Greenland, which is a self-governed province of Denmark. Greenland is also considering a sale of east-coast rights in 2012. For the moment, those waters remain choked with ice year-round, but four years from now "that might have changed," says Mr. Watts.

. . .

Efforts by GustoMSC and other offshore-drilling experts represent the first significant research push into Arctic drilling technology in 20 years. At present, only around five rigs are capable of drilling in Arctic waters more than 300 feet deep, where energy companies are increasingly turning their focus, and even those tend to operate in 2,000 feet of water or less. Rigs now under construction will be able to search for oil in waters up to 12,000 feet. But Bob Long, chief executive at Transocean Inc., the world's largest offshore driller, estimates it will be 15 years before the supply of deep-water Arctic rigs catches up with demand.

. . .

To create Bully No. 1, GustoMSC took the standard design for its latest generation drillship -- which looks like an oil tanker with a derrick on top -- and set about winterizing it. The Bully will feature the bow of an icebreaker and be constructed from an ultra-flexible grade of steel to protect the hull from shattering in extreme cold. Heating systems will be installed along every inch of piping. Special heating units will also protect ballast tanks, which use seawater to stabilize the rig and can freeze in extreme cold. Engine vents will be widened and warmed to keep ice from building up.

For the full story, see:

BRIAN BASKIN. "Producers; Northern Exposure; As the Arctic gets warmer, oil and gas producers see the chance for a big expansion. But plenty of technological hurdles remain." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., February 11, 2008): R12. & R14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

"ARCTIC EXPLORER. The Bully No. 1 drillship, now being built in Shanghai, will start work in 2010." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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(p. A16) Environmental leaders must join the 21st century, acknowledge the mistakes Carson made, and balance the hypothetical risks of DDT with the real and devastating consequences of malaria. Uganda has demonstrated that, with the proper support, we can conduct model indoor spraying programs and ensure that money is spent wisely, chemicals are handled properly, our program responds promptly to changing conditions, and malaria is brought under control.

Africa is determined to rise above the contemporary colonialism that keeps us impoverished. We expect strong leadership in G-8 countries to stop paying lip service to African self-determination and start supporting solutions that are already working.

For the full commentary, see:

Sam Zaramba. "Give Us DDT." Wall Street Journal (Tues., Jun 12, 2007): A16.

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Source of book image: http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/13180000/13180098.JPG

(p. D5) In survey after survey, American voters say that they care about global warming, but the subject ranks quite low when compared with other concerns (e.g., the economy, health care, the war on terror). Even when Mr. Gore's Oscar-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth," was at the height of its popularity, it did not increase the importance of global warming in the public mind or mobilize greater support for Mr. Gore's favored remedies--e.g., reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by government fiat. Mr. Gore may seek to make environmental protection civilization's "central organizing principle," as he puts it, but there is no constituency for such a regime. Hence even the Democratic Party's presidential candidates, in their debates, give global warming only cursory treatment, with lofty rhetoric and vague policy proposals.

There is a reason for this political freeze-up. In "Break Through," Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger argue that Mr. Gore and the broader environmental movement--in which Mr. Gore plays an almost messianic part--remain wedded to an outmoded vision, seeing global warming as "a problem of pollution to be fixed by a politics of limits." Such a vision may have worked in the early days of environmentalism, when the first clear-air and clean-water regulations were pushed through Congress, but today it cannot mobilize enough public support for dramatic political change.

What is to be done? Messrs. Nordhaus and Shellenberger want to replace the pollution paradigm with a progressive one. They broached this idea in "The Death of Environmentalism," a controversial 2004 monograph that ricocheted around the Internet. "Break Through" gives the idea a fuller exposition and even greater urgency. The authors contend that the environmental movement must throw out its "unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts, and exhausted strategies" in favor of something "imaginative, aspirational, and future-oriented."

For the full review, see:

JONATHAN H. ADLER. "BOOKSHELF; The Lowdown on Doomsday." The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, November 27, 2007): D5.

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Source of book image:
http://images.tdaxp.com/tdaxp_upload/cool_it_md.jpg

(p. D7) Standing in the practical middle is Bjorn Lomborg, the free-thinking Dane who, in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001), challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces. Mr. Lomborg is now back with "Cool It," a book brimming with useful facts and common sense.

Mr. Lomborg--"liberal, vegetarian, a former member of Greenpeace," as he describes himself--is hard to fit into any pigeonhole. He believes that global warming is happening, that man has caused it, and that national governments need to act. Yet he also believes that Al Gore is bordering on hysteria, that some global-warming science has been distorted and hyped, and that the Kyoto Protocol and other carbon-reduction schemes are a terrible waste of money. The world needs to think more rationally, he says, about how to tackle this challenge.

. . .

Mr. Lomborg cites studies showing that by implementing Kyoto--at a cost of trillions of dollars--we might be able to achieve a 3% reduction in fluvial and coastal flooding damages. If we instead adopted smart flood policies--e.g., an end to public subsidies that encourage people to settle in flood plains, a shrewder use of levees--we could achieve a 91% reduction in damages at a fraction of the Kyoto cost.

For the full review, see:

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL. "BOOKSHELF; A Calm Voice in a Heated Debate." The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, September 13, 2007): D7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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Source of book image: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41hyNtYMzmL._SS500_.jpg

(p. D8) Start with a novelist and former New Yorker magazine fiction editor living on the East End of Long Island, a sometime antinuclear activist (remember Shoreham?) and a determined organic vegetable gardener who spent her childhood in 1950s New Mexico having atom-bomb nightmares. Team her with another lifelong greenie, a man with a doctorate in organic chemistry who grew up on an Idaho ranch without electricity and whose day job, over the course of a long career, has included pioneering something called probabilistic risk assessment (the underpinnings of climate-change analysis, but that's another story). Send the pair off on a grand tour of the nuclear-power world, from dust-blown uranium mines to the depths of a pilot facility for Uncle Sam's waste deposit at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. And then wait for them to come back with the predictable diatribe against nuclear power.

Happily, you'll wait in vain. "Power to Save the World" is a picaresque, flat-out love song to the bad boy of the great American energy debate -- as good a book as we're likely to get on a subject mired in political incorrectness, general unfathomability and essentially limitless gut fears. It's also the latest plot point for one of the few unassailably positive byproducts of global-warming mania: the quiet emergence of pro-nuke greens, led by such impeccable apostates as Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand and James Lovelock, the British chemist best known for his Earth-is-a-living-organism "Gaia ypothesis."

For the full review, see:

Reiss, Spencer. "BOOKSHELF; Green With (Nuclear) Energy." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., November 20, 2007): D8.

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Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) Southwest Airlines, in danger for much of this year of losing its quirky dominance in the domestic airline industry, could soon be standing, once again, head and shoulders above the competition.

Better service? Happier and more productive workers?

Not this time. The reason for Southwest's rapidly increasing advantage over other big airlines is much simpler: it loaded up years ago on hedges against higher fuel prices. And with oil trading above $90 a barrel, most of the rest of the airline industry is facing a huge run-up in costs, and Southwest is not.

Southwest owns long-term contracts to buy most of its fuel through 2009 for what it would cost if oil were $51 a barrel. The value of those hedges soared as oil raced above $90 a barrel, and they are now worth more than $2 billion. Those gains will mostly be realized over the next two years.

Other major airlines passed on buying all but the shortest-term insurance against high fuel prices, allowing Southwest executives a bit of schadenfreude.

For the full story, see:

JEFF BAILEY. "An Airline Shrugs at Oil Prices." The New York Times (Thurs., November 29, 2007): C1 & C10.

'A Southwest Airlines worker fueled a plane. Southwest's chief said the hedges against rising fuel costs "bought us time to retool our company."" Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"The Petrobras 54 platform was in Niteroi, Brazil, last August, before its deployment." Source of the caption and the photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) RIO DE JANEIRO -- While some of the world's largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America's largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world's oil cartel.

The new oil, along with refining projects under way by Petrobras, the national oil company, could eventually make Brazil a larger exporter of gasoline as well, adding to supplies in the United States and other countries where it is all but impossible to build new refineries.

The subsalt basin that contains Tupi, the new deepwater field estimated to hold the equivalent of five billion to eight billion barrels of light crude oil, is creating a buzz among the world's largest oil companies. They have struggled lately to find global-scale projects worth investing in, even with oil touching $100 a barrel. Tupi is the world's biggest oil find since a 12-billion-barrel field discovered in 2000 in Kazakhstan.

For the full story, see:

ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO. "Hot Prospect for Oil's Big League." The New York Times (Fri., January 11, 2008): C1 & C4.

"The Tupi deepwater field." Source of the caption and the map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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Source of graphs: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) Shopping at a Whole Foods Market in suburban Chicago, Meredith Estes said food prices have jumped so much she has resorted to coupons. Charles T. Rodgers Jr., an Arkansas cattle rancher, said normal feed rations so expensive and scarce he is scrambling for alternatives. In Oregon, Jack Joyce, the owner of Rogue Ales, said the cost of barley malt has soared 88 percent this year.

For years, cheap food and feed were taken for granted in the United States.

But now the price of some foods is rising sharply, and from the corridors of Washington to the aisles of neighborhood supermarkets, a blame alert is under way.

Among the favorite targets is ethanol, especially for food manufacturers and livestock farmers who seethe at government mandates for ethanol production. The ethanol boom, they contend, is raising corn prices, driving up the cost of producing dairy products and meat, and causing farmers to plant so much corn as to crowd out other crops.

The results are working their way through the marketplace, in this view, with overall consumer grocery costs up roughly 5 percent in a year and feed costs up more than 20 percent.

Now, with Congress poised to adopt a new mandate that would double the volume of ethanol made from corn, ethanol skeptics say a fateful moment has arrived, with the nation about to commit itself to decades of competition between food and fuel for the use (p. C4) of agricultural land.

(p. C4) "This is like a runaway freight train," said Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, who complained that ethanol has the same "magical effect" on politicians as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus have on children. "It's great news for corn farmers, but terrible news for consumers."

. . .

The price increases for corn have had a broad impact, both because farmers are planting more corn and less of other crops and because livestock producers are scrambling for feed substitutes. For instance, soybeans acreage planted this year was about 16 percent less than in 2006.

Feed costs have increased 25 to 30 percent in the last year, according to David Fairfield, director of feed services at the National Grain and Feed Association. He attributed virtually all of the increase to the demands of the ethanol industry

One consequence of the higher feed costs is rising competition for malt barley between livestock farmers, who want it for feed, and brewers, who need it for beer. Mr. Joyce, the Rogue Ales owner in Newport, Ore., said he has been forced to raise prices to pay for the additional costs of ingredients.

Mr. Rodgers, the Rison, Ark., rancher, said he used to feed his cattle a mixture of corn gluten and soybean hulls. But he said he cannot get corn gluten anymore, and the cost of soybean hulls has risen to $150 a ton from about $105 a ton.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW MARTIN. "The Price of Growing Fuel." The New York Times (Tues., December 18, 2007): C1 & C4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

"Jack Joyce, the owner of Rogue Ales in Newport, Ore., says the cost of barley has skyrocketed, forcing him to raise prices." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"Environmentalists like Takuo Sugisawa say that restoring bends to the Kushiro actually might cause more damage." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) KUSHIRO, Japan -- In the early 1980s, engineers straightened out stretches of the Kushiro River, which had meandered some 100 miles under Hokkaido's big sky here in northern Japan, flowing through green hill country and rural towns, winding through the nation's largest wetland and this port city's downtown before emptying into the Pacific Ocean.

Later in November, work is to start again. But this time bulldozers will be moving earth to put curves back in a stretch of the river that had been straightened out, restoring its original, sinuous, shape.

. . .

. . . Trust Sarun Kushiro, a private environmental group that was a member of the committee that endorsed the project but voted against it, said that the reshaping would have little positive effect and that the construction itself would harm the environment. Stanching the flow of sediments from farmland and forests upstream, at their source, is more important, it argued.

And in a case of the left hand's not knowing what the right hand was stirring up, the Ministry of Agriculture had a project farther upriver that was sending mud and sand downstream, where Mr. Yoshimura's ministry is to curve the river, said Takuo Sugisawa, 61, the trust's secretary general. To rehabilitate farmland that had gradually become wetland, the ministry was draining existing land and moving earth there.

"The sediments flowing from upriver will quickly pile up where the river will be curved," Mr. Sugisawa said, adding that they would eventually bury the Kushiro wetland. To prevent that, workers will eventually have to remove the sediments that are bound to pile up in the recurved stretch, he said.

"So in the name of river management alone, they will be able once again to create public works in the form of removing soil," he said, walking along an asphalt road and across a bridge built to let trucks and bulldozers move earth for the curving project. "Public works will just keep going round and round and round."

For the full story, see:

NORIMITSU ONISHI. "KUSHIRO JOURNAL; Forced to Run Straight, a River Must Now Twist." The New York Times (Weds., November 7, 2007): A4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

A part of the Kushiro River where curves will be added back. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"Without DNA tests, the rare greenback cutthroat trout, left, and the Colorado River cutthroat fish are difficult to tell apart." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 26) DENVER, Oct. 13 (AP) -- State and federal biologists, who are smarting from research showing that they may have been protecting the wrong fish the past 20 years, are regrouping in their efforts to restore the rare greenback cutthroat trout to Colorado waters.

Tom Nesler, the state biologist, had hoped to see the fish removed from the endangered species list during his career. He concedes that might not happen if it turns out some of the greenback populations biologists thought they were saving are actually the similar but more common Colorado River cutthroat trout.

A three-year study led by University of Colorado researchers and published in August found that out of nine fish populations believed to be descendants of original greenbacks, five were actually Colorado River cutthroat trout.

The recovery effort was thought to be near its goal of establishing 20 self-sustaining greenback populations.

"Hey, science happens," said Mr. Nesler with a shrug as he discussed the findings.

. . .

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has spent an average of $320,000 annually for the past five years to restore the greenback. Most of the money has come from state lottery revenue; no state tax dollars have been used.

. . .

"Science is not about proof and certainty," he said, "it's about testable hypotheses."

For the full story, see:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. "After Possible 'Oops,' a Trout Rescue Project Regroups." The New York Times, First Section (Sun., October 14, 2007): 26.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"Looking for usable coal at a cinder dump in Shanxi Province in China. Inadequate coal in the north limited power production." Source of the caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

The article quoted below uses the word "tariff" in the sense of "price."

(p. C4) HONG KONG -- The Chinese government issued an "urgent notice" on Wednesday to the country's power generators, coal companies and railways to address an electricity shortage that has led to rationing in more than a third of China's provinces in recent weeks.

The rationing, mostly achieved by telling factories that their power will be shut off for a day or two each week, coincides with the annual frenzy of factory production to meet orders before shutting down for the Chinese New Year holidays, which fall in early February this year.

. . .

Power executives and government statements attributed the electricity shortfall this winter to a confluence of problems. Many of the problems appear to have their roots in the government's imposition of a long list of price controls in recent months in an attempt to tamp down inflation, which reached 6.9 percent at the consumer level in November.

Trucks did not deliver adequate coal stockpiles to power plants before winter snows arrived in northern China, partly because of nationwide diesel shortages. Refiners had cut back on the production of diesel because price controls were forcing them to sell the diesel for slightly less than the cost of the crude oil needed to make it.

. . .

Low electricity tariffs, particularly for residential users, have been another problem.

The central government issued an official "suggestion" to provincial governments last fall that they not allow increases in electricity tariffs charged to customers, as part of national price controls.

Provincial governments have responded by freezing tariffs, and even reducing them in the case of Guangdong Province in southeastern China, the home of much of the country's export-oriented light industry.

The low tariffs have made it uneconomical for oil-fired plants to operate, and many have stopped doing so.

"It makes absolutely no sense for anyone to run a diesel- or oil-fired plant. They're all shut down," said a power company executive in China who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of commenting on regulatory policies.

The executive added that even when ordered by the government to resume operating at a loss, many state-owned oil-fired plants had not done so, scheduling maintenance and repairs instead.

For the full story, see:

KEITH BRADSHER. "Pinched by Price Controls, Power Plants in China Scale Back." The New York Times (Thurs., January 24, 2008): C4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"Produce at the huge Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have been challenging assumptions about the carbon footprint of local foods versus those that are transported long distances."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. 

(p. 11)  The local food, or locavore, movement has so much momentum that some of the food glitterati have declared that such food is better than organic.

But now comes a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, who have started asking provocative questions about the carbon footprint of food. Those questions threaten to undermine some of the feel-good locavore story line, not to mention my weekend forays for produce. (A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact of human activities on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced.)

While the research is not yet complete, Tom Tomich, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, said the fact that something is local doesn't necessarily mean that it is better, environmentally speaking.

The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.

Consider strawberries. If mass producers of strawberries ship their product to Chicago by truck, the fuel cost of transporting each carton of strawberries is relatively small, since it is tucked into the back along with thousands of others.

But if a farmer sells his strawberries at local farmers' markets in California, he ferries a much smaller amount by pickup truck to each individual market. Which one is better for the environment?

Mr. Tomich said a strawberry distributor did the math on the back of an envelope and concluded that the Chicago-bound berries used less energy for transport.

 

For the full story, see:

ANDREW MARTIN.  "THE FEED; If It's Fresh and Local, Is It Always Greener?"  The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section  (Sun., December 9, 2007):  11.

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    Source of graph:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 19)  Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere and a quarter of a degree to inflame the fight over global warming.

A quarter-degree Fahrenheit is roughly the downward adjustment NASA scientists made earlier this month in their annual estimates of the average temperature in the contiguous 48 states since 2000. They corrected the numbers after an error in meshing two sets of temperature data was discovered by Stephen McIntyre, a blogger and retired business executive in Toronto. Smaller adjustments were made to some readings for some preceding years.

All of this would most likely have passed unremarkably if Mr. McIntyre had not blogged that the adjustments changed the rankings of warmest years for the contiguous states since 1895, when record-keeping began.

Suddenly, 1934 appeared to vault ahead of 1998 as the warmest year on record (by a statistically meaningless 0.036 degrees Fahrenheit). In NASA’s most recent data set, 1934 had followed 1998 by a statistically meaningless 0.018 degrees. Conservative bloggers, columnists and radio hosts pounced. “We have proof of man-made global warming,” Rush Limbaughtold his radio audience. “The man-made global warming is inside NASA.”

Mr. McIntyre, who has spent years seeking flaws in studies pointing to human-driven climate change, traded broadsides on the Web with James E. Hansen, the NASA team’s leader. Dr. Hansen said he would not “joust with court jesters” and Mr. McIntyre posited that Dr. Hansen might have a “Jor-El complex” — a reference to Superman’s father, who foresaw the destruction of his planet and sent his son packing.

For the full story, see: 

ANDREW C. REVKIN.  "Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight."  The New York Times, Main Section  (Sunday,  August 26, 2007):  19.

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Source of map:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6)  Previous research had indicated that human ancestors had for ages depended solely on terrestrial plants and animals. Both fossil and genetic data show that modern humans evolved 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, but archaeological evidence for the emergence of modern behavior in technology, creativity, symbolic thinking and lifestyles is sparse.

But six years ago, at Blombos Cave, near Pinnacle Point, archaeologists uncovered 77,000-year-old tools along with pigments and engraved stones suggesting symbolic behavior, a sign of early creativity. Now, at the Pinnacle Point cave site, the shellfish remains reveal another important innovation.

. . .

Forced to seek new sources of food, some of the people migrated to the shore in search of "famine food." At Pinnacle Point, the discovery team reported, they feasted on a variety of marine life, brown mussels, giant periwinkles and whelks.

So on the southern shore of Africa, Dr. Marean said in a statement issued by Arizona State, a small population of cave-dwelling modern humans struggled and survived through the prevailing cold, eating shellfish and developing somewhat advanced technologies.

For the full story, see:

JOHN NOBLE WILFORD.  "Key Human Traits Tied to Shellfish Remains."  The New York Times  (Thurs., October 18, 2007):  A6.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

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    Source of image:  online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. D1)  As part of the government's focus on energy and the environment, Americans are urged to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use only about 25% of the energy and last up to 10 times as long as traditional incandescent bulbs. Nearly 300 million such bulbs were sold in U.S. in 2007, compared with 100 million two years earlier, according to the Department of Energy.

. . .

Yet unlike traditional incandescent bulbs, these bulbs contain mercury, a metal hazardous to human health and the environment. Consumers are urged not to toss them in the trash. In some states, such as California, it's illegal to throw them away; they must be recycled. Still, many cities and towns don't have recycling programs for the bulbs, and consumers aren't sure what to do with them.

For the full story, see: 

SARA SCHAEFER MUÑOZ.  "The Dark Side Of 'Green' Bulbs Disposing of Fluorescents, Electronics Releases Toxins; Companies Tout Recycling." The Wall Street Journal  (Thurs., January 24, 2008):  D1.  

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

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   The icebreaker Healy finished a new survey of the seafloor off the northern coast of Alaska.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A16)  A new survey by American oceanographers of the seafloor north of Alaska, completed last month aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, provides fresh evidence that the United States has much at stake in the region. The sonar studies found hints that thousands of square miles of additional seafloor could potentially be under American control. That floor might yield important deposits of oil, gas or minerals in coming decades, government studies have concluded.

So far did the sea ice pull back this summer that the expedition was able to scan the bottom several hundred miles farther north than in previous surveys, said the project’s director, Larry Mayer, an oceanographer at the University of New Hampshire. The team found long sloping extensions 200 miles beyond previous estimates.

Though more surveys will be needed to firm up any American claim, countries have a right to expand their control of seabed resources well beyond the continental shelves bordering their coasts if they can find such sloping extensions.

For the full story, see: 

MATTHEW L. WALD and ANDREW C. REVKIN.  "New Task for Coast Guard In Arctic's Warming Seas."  The New York Times   (Fri., October 19, 2007):  A16.

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  Source of the cartoon:  online version of the NYT article cited below. 

(p. 1)  In the last few months, bottled water — generally considered a benign, even beneficial, product — has been increasingly por-(p. 10)trayed as an environmental villain by city leaders, activist groups and the media. The argument centers not on water, but oil. It takes 1.5 million barrels a year just to make the plastic water bottles Americans use, according to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, plus countless barrels to transport it from as far as Fiji and refrigerate it.

. . .

But even the noblest of intentions can wilt in the heat.

Dave Byers, 65, from Silver Spring, Md., discussed the issue with his wife, Pat, on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a 90-degree Saturday. “I think it should be banned, actually,” he said of bottled water.

As he spoke, he and his wife shared a bottle of Poland Spring. They said they felt bad about it, but it was hot. 

For the full story, see: 

ALEX WILLIAMS.  "Water, Water Everywhere, but Guilt by the Bottleful."  The New York Times, SundayStyles Section  (Sun., August 12, 2007):  1 & 10. 

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

  Environmentalists should salute Boy Scouts for drinking from reusable canteens.  (This is the first time I ever remember a photo of a Boy Scout making it into the Times SundayStyles section.)  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

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    "An iceberg as seen off the coast of Twillingate in Newfoundland."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1)  Up and down the rock-ribbed coast of Newfoundland in centuries-old fishing villages like this one, Americans and Europeans are taking advantage of a warming climate and a struggling regional economy to buy seaside summer homes for the price of a used SUV.

. . .  

In Twillingate, at least 17 inns and bed-and-breakfasts regularly book Americans and Europeans, up from just two a decade ago. The tourists come to watch the shimmering procession of icebergs the size of city blocks that calve off the coast of Greenland and ride the Labrador Current past town between May and July. After the icebergs are gone, the waters fill with humpback, right and fin whales that spend summer feeding offshore.

. . .

Climate change is attracting some of the tourism. The average temperature during the summers in Newfoundland and Labrador has increased by nearly four degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, says David Phillips, the Canadian government's senior climatologist. From 2001 through 2005, there were an average of 123 days when the weather was 77 degrees or warmer. In 1991-1995, it averaged just 63 days. Over the last 50 years the growing season -- the gap between winter's last frost and autumn's first -- has widened by three weeks.

. . .  

Some Americans have begun to try to flip properties. New York artist Brian Byrne (sic) and his business partner bought a waterfront, six-bedroom home two years ago for $72,000. Now they're asking $170,000. "There's a lot of potential up there for tourism," Mr. Byrne (sic) says.

For the full story, see: 

Douglas Belkin. "Property Report; More Americans Warm Up To Homes in Newfoundland." The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., August 8, 2007):  B1.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

    Brian Bryne (sic), a New York City artist, along with a partner, bought this Newfoundland house as a speculative investment.  Source of photo:  online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

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   Source:  screen capture from the CNN report cited below.

The new energy bill signed into law on Weds., Dec. 19, 2007, included a provision to force us all to fluoresce starting in 2012.  In the CNN report cited below, Dr. Sanjay Gupta summarizes recent research suggesting that fluorescent bulbs cause a significant increase in the number of migraine headaches and epileptic seizures.

For the full story, see:

Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "Eco-bulbs and migraines." CNN Report. Posted online on January 4, 2008.

   Source:  screen capture from the CNN report cited above.

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   Part of a Greenpeace ad lambasting Senator Edward Kennedy's opposition to windmills that would effect his view.  Source of image of part of ad:  online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. W8)  Behind much of the modern environmental movement lies the "do as I say, not as I do" sensibility of an aristocracy. It's not surprising when a bunch of enviro-aristos line up opposition to a new road or a shopping mall or some other development that offends them. But there is something delicious about such obstructionists raising environmental concerns -- almost all of them bogus -- to try to prevent a wind farm, one of the cleanest sources of electricity we have, from being built in sight of their summer homes.

. . .

Sen. Kennedy presented the spectacle of working hard behind the scenes to sabotage the wind farm while publicly castigating the Bush administration for its alleged failure to push environmental technology.

. . .

The real outrage here is the agonizing delay in gaining approval for Cape Wind -- all too typical, alas, of how things work, or don't, in Massachusetts. A not-in-my-backyard campaign ought to target something at least potentially unpleasant, but the "visual pollution" that so angered Mr. McCullough would be minuscule. From Sen. Kennedy's compound five miles away, a 417-foot tower appears about as tall as the thumbnail at the end of your outstretched arm. It makes you wonder how Cape Wind's opponents would react if a developer planned a pharmaceutical factory in, say, Hyannis -- civil disobedience, perhaps? Exquisitely catered, of course.

For the full review, see:

GUY DARST.  "You're Blocking My View."  The Wall Street Journal  (Fril, May 25, 2007):  W8.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

    Source of the book image:  http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51p+cPVSstL._SS500_.jpg

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(p. C3)  In the short term, global warming provides opportunities, . . . , especially in temperate zones. Warming trends have lengthened the golfing season in Antalya, Turkey, by over a month, said Ugur Budak, golf coordinator of Akkanat Holdings there.

Golfing used to begin in March. But tourists from Britain and Germany are now coming to Antalya in February.

“Winters are milder, so the effect on us for now is good,” Mr. Budak said. So far there had not been problems like water shortages that are experienced in other parts of the world, he said, “but we know we could be vulnerable in the future.” 

For the full story, see: 

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL.  "How Do You Ski if There Is No Snow?"  The New York Times  (Thurs., November 1, 2007):  C3.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

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     Vladimir Stratyev in front of a lake containing nickel dust from the nickel factory in the background.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. 

(p. A4)  NORILSK, Russia — A former Siberian gulag with a population of about 210,000, this decrepit city has some of the worst air quality in the world. It is surrounded by dead trees, as far as the eye can see, poisoned by acid rain.

But to Vladimir M. Stratyev, the eye-stinging haze is an unalloyed blessing, for Mr. Stratyev is, in effect, a miner of air pollution. For him the smog of Norilsk is a mother lode.

The smelters here produce one-fifth of all the world’s nickel, a key alloy of stainless steel, while emitting 1.9 million tons of sulfur dioxide a year, more than the entire country of France. They also spew out 10,800 tons of heavy metal particulates.

. . .

Spotting a business opportunity, factory officials have brought in a contractor, Poligon, to extract the metals from one of these deposits, known euphemistically as “technogenic sources of ore.”

Mr. Stratyev, the supervisor of a mining crew, uses a dredge and bulldozer to scoop up the black sludge, rich in nickel that once fell from the sky. He gathers it in mighty piles from a large pond that lies directly downwind from the smelters and returns it to the factory from which it came.

“They should put a monument up to us,” Mr. Stratyev said, standing in front of the dredge he just used to mine air pollution from the bottom of a pond. “We’re solving an ecological problem.”

. . .

The pollution mining began five years ago, according to Aleksandr I. Korolev, a deputy chief engineer at the factory. “It’s a year-round operation,” Mr. Korolev said of the work, which has accelerated recently because of high metals prices. “The pond does not freeze,” he said, because of the chemicals and the inflow of warm effluent from the factory.

For the full story, see: 

ANDREW E. KRAMER.  "NORILSK JOURNAL; For One Business, Polluted Clouds Have Silvery Linings."  The New York Times   (Thurs., July 12, 2007):  A4.

   Source of map:  online version of the NYT article cited above. 

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   "A wind farm near Malmo, Sweden. The use of wind power in many European countries has stagnated in recent years."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1)  Yet Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power.

For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable, if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas. More-(p. C5)over, to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must then be carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in Germany and other countries are strained and prone to breakdowns.

In the United States, one of the areas most suited for wind turbines is the central part of the country, stretching from Texas through the northern Great Plains — far from the coastal population centers that need the most electricity.

In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of wind farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of their wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes in unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.

In 2003, Ireland put a moratorium on connecting wind farms to its electricity grid because of the strains that power surges were putting on the network; it has since begun connecting them again.

In the United States, proposals to build large wind parks in the Atlantic off Long Island and off Cape Cod, Mass., have run into stiff opposition from local residents on aesthetic grounds.

As wind energy has matured as an industry, its image has changed — from a clean, even elegant, alternative to fossil fuels to a renewable energy source with advantages and drawbacks, like any other.

“The environmental benefits of wind are not as great as its champions claim,” said Euan C. Blauvelt, research director of ABS Energy Research, an independent market research firm in London. “You’ve still got to have backup sources of power, like coal-fired plants.”

For the full story, see: 

MARK LANDLER.  "Wind Power, and Resistance; Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws."  The New York Times   (Fri., November 23, 2007):  C1 & C5.

(Note:  online the title was simply "Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws.")

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   Global-warming concert participants Garner, Madonna, Ludacris, and Gore.  Source of photos:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

(p. B1)  . . . , celebrity efforts to curb the greenhouse effect backlash into the glass-house effect: People who own Escalades, private jets and McMansions shouldn’t recycle bromides at people who fail to carpool to work. Carbon-offsetting, the newly fashionable practice of compensating for one’s own carbon emissions by paying into a fund to reduce them elsewhere, may be better than nothing, but to some it sounds too much (p. B5) like rich men paying others to take their place in the draft during the Civil War.

That credibility gap seemed to fuel much of the skepticism and sniping along the sidelines (British newspapers which gleefully counted Madonna’s many houses and cars, discouraged readers from following in her outsize carbon footprint) and drove Bob Geldof, founder of Live 8, to question this concert’s usefulness.

ALESSANDRA STANLEY. "The TV Watch Sounding the Global-Warming Alarm Without Upsetting the Fans."  The New York Times   (Mon., July 9, 2007):  B1 & B5. 

(Note:  ellipsis added.) 

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  "Liu Jun leaving his home in Miaohe, China, near the Three Gorges Dam.  All of the village's residents are being relocated."  Source of caption:  p. A1 of print version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. 

(p. A1)  JIANMIN VILLAGE, China — Last year, Chinese officials celebrated the completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of 10 world records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world’s biggest dam, biggest power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel. Ever. Even the project’s official tally of 1.13 million displaced people made the list as record No. 10.

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China’s biggest folly. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have admitted that the dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials want to begin a new relocation program that would be bigger than the first.

The rising controversy makes it easy to overlook what could have been listed as world record No. 11: The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest man-made producer of electricity from renewable energy.

. . .

(p. A12)  The Communist Party leaders who broke ground on the Three Gorges project in 1994 had promised that China could build the world’s biggest dam, manage the world’s biggest human resettlement and also protect the environment.

. . .

(p. A13)  In the isolated mountain villages above the reservoir, farmers have heard nothing about a new resettlement plan. For many farmers, the immediate concern is the land beneath their feet. Landslides are striking different hillsides as the rising water places more pressure on the shoreline, local officials say.  . . .

. . .

Around daybreak on June 22, Lu Youbing awoke to the screams of her brother-in-law and the sickening sensation of the earth collapsing. Her mountain farmhouse in Jianmin Village buckled as a landslide swept it downhill. In all, 20 homes were demolished. Five months later, Ms. Lu is living in a tent, fending off rats and wondering where her family can go.

“We have nothing left,” she said. “Not a single thing.”

Winter is approaching, and she is trying to block out cold air — and rats — by pinning down the tent flaps with rocks. Villagers have been told that more landslides are possible. Ms. Lu lives with her second husband and their two children. They are too poor to buy an apartment in the city or to build a new home on higher ground. Local officials gave them the tent. Villagers have donated clothes.

The tents are pitched on the only available flat land — a terrace with a monument celebrating efforts by local officials to improve the environment.

“We don’t know about winter,” she said. “This is the only option we have. What else can we do?”

For the full story, see:

JIM YARDLEY.  "At China's Dams, Problems Rise With Water."   The New York Times  (Mon., November 19, 2007):  A1, A12-A13. 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

(Note:  online the title of the article is "Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs.")

   "The Three Gorges Dam is projected as an anchor in a string of hydropower “mega-bases” planned for the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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   Source of graphic:  online verion of the NYT article cited below.

(p. C1)  Jeffrey Taft is a road warrior in the global high-technology services economy, and his work shows why there are limits to the number of skilled jobs that can be shipped abroad in the Internet age.

Each Monday, Mr. Taft awakes before dawn at his home in Canonsburg, Pa., heads for the Pittsburgh airport and flies to Houston for the week.

He is one of dozens of I.B.M. services employees from around the country who are working with a Texas utility, CenterPoint Energy, to install computerized electric meters, sensors and software in a “smart grid” project to improve service and conserve energy.

Mr. Taft, 51, is an engineer fluent in programming languages and experienced in the utility business. Much of his work, he says, involves being a translator between the different vernaculars and cultures of computing and electric power, as he oversees the design and building of software tailored for utilities. “It takes a tremendous amount of face-to-face work,” he said.

What he does, in short, cannot be done overseas. But some of the programming work can be, so I.B.M. employees in India are also on the utility project team.

The trick for companies like I.B.M. is to figure out what work to do where, and, more important, to keep bringing in the kind of higher-end work that needs to be done in this country, competing on the basis of specialized expertise and not on price alone.

The debate continues over how much skilled work in the vast service sector of the American economy can migrate offshore to lower-cost nations like India. Estimates of the number of services jobs potentially at (p. C4) risk, by economists and research organizations, range widely from a few million to more than 40 million, which is about a third of total employment in services.

Jobs in technology services may be particularly vulnerable because computer programming can be described in math-based rules that are then sent over the Internet to anywhere there are skilled workers. Already, a significant amount of basic computer programming work has gone offshore to fast-growing Indian outsourcing companies like Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services.

To compete, companies like I.B.M. have to move up the economic ladder to do more complicated work, as do entire Western economies and individual workers. “Once you start moving up the occupational chains, the work is not as rules-based,” said Frank Levy, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “People are doing more custom work that varies case by case.”

In the field of technology services, Mr. Levy said, the essential skill is “often a lot more about business knowledge than it is about software technology — and it’s a lot harder to ship that kind of work overseas.”

For the full story, see: 

STEVE LOHR.  "At I.B.M., a Smarter Way to Outsource."  The New York Times   (Thurs., July 5, 2007):  C1 & C4. 

Levy has co-authored a book that is relevant to the example and issues raised in the article.  See:

Levy, Frank, and Richard J. Murnane.  The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2004.

   IBM engineer Jeffrey Taft (blue shirt) has "local" knowledge of the connection between computer programming and the electric utility business.  Here he is on-site in Houston at the offices of CenterPoint Energy.  Source of graphic:  online verion of the NYT article cited above.

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   Source of graphs:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

(p. A1)  A riddle: Why has the Toyota Prius enjoyed such success, with sales of more than 400,000 in the United States, when most other hybrid models struggle to find buyers?

One answer may be that buyers of the Prius want everyone to know they are driving a hybrid.

The Prius, after all, was built from the ground up as a hybrid, and is sold only as a hybrid. By contrast, the main way to tell that a Honda Civic, Ford Escape or Saturn Vue is a hybrid version is a small badge on the trunk or side panel.

The Prius has become, in a sense, the four-wheel equivalent of those popular rubber “issue bracelets” in yellow and other colors — it shows the world that its owner cares.

In fact, more than half of the Prius buyers surveyed this spring by CNW Marketing Research of Bandon, Ore., said the main reason they purchased their car was that “it makes a statement about me.”

Only a third of Prius owners cited that reason just three years ago, according to CNW, which tracks consumer buying trends.

“I really want people to know that I care about the environment,” said Joy Feasley of Philadelphia, owner of a green 2006 Prius. “I like that people stop and ask me how I like my car.”

For the full story, see: 

MICHELINE MAYNARD. "Say ‘Hybrid’ and Many People Will Hear ‘Prius’."   The New York Times (Weds, July 4, 2007):  A1 & A11.

   Peter Darnell describes himself as a "granola-crunching liberal."  He and his wife Karen (right) own a Prius.  Source of quote and photo:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

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Greater cultivation of crops to produce ethanol could harm water quality and leave some regions of the country with water shortages, a panel of experts is reporting.  . . .

. . .

But increased production could greatly increase pressure on water supplies for drinking, industry, hydropower, fish habitat and recreation, the report said.  . . .

The research council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issued the report yesterday. It is available at the academy’s Web site, nas.edu. It was financed by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies and foundations.

The report noted that additional use of fertilizers and pesticides could pollute water supplies and contribute to the overgrowth of aquatic plant life that produces “dead zones” like those in the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. 

For the full story, see: 

CORNELIA DEAN.  "Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production."  The New York Times (Thurs., October 11, 2007):  A18.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

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    Source of image:  online version of the WSJ article cited below. 

A new United Nations report called "State of the Future" concludes: "People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer."

. . .  

To what do we owe this improvement? Capitalism, according to the U.N. Free trade is rightly recognized as the engine of global prosperity in recent years. In 1981, 40% of the world's population lived on less than $1 a day. Now that percentage is only 25%, adjusted for inflation. And at current rates of growth, "world poverty will be cut in half between 2000 and 2015" -- which is arguably one of the greatest triumphs in human history. Trade and technology are closing the global "digital divide," and the report notes hopefully that soon laptop computers will cost $100 and almost every schoolchild will be a mouse click away from the Internet (and, regrettably, those interminable computer games).

It also turns out that the Malthusians (who worried that we would overpopulate the planet) got the story wrong. Human beings aren't reproducing like Norwegian field mice. Demographers now say that in the second half of this century, the human population will stabilize and then fall. If we use the same absurd extrapolation techniques demographers used in the 1970s, Japan, with its current low birth rate, will have only a few thousand citizens left in 300 years.

I take special pleasure in reciting all of this global betterment because my first professional job was working with the "doom-slaying" economist Julian Simon. Starting 30 years ago, Simon (who died in 1998) told anyone who would listen -- which wasn't many people -- that the faddish declinism of that era was bunk. He called the "Global 2000" report "globaloney." Armed with an arsenal of factual missiles, he showed that life on Earth was getting better, and that the combination of free markets and human ingenuity was the recipe for solving environmental and economic problems. Mr. Ehrlich, in response, said Simon proved that the one thing the world isn't running out of "is lunatics."

Mr. Ehrlich, whose every prediction turned out wrong, won a MacArthur Foundation "genius award"; Simon, who got the story right, never won so much as a McDonald's hamburger. But now who looks like the lunatic? This latest survey of the planet is certainly sweet vindication of Simon and others, like Herman Kahn, who in the 1970s dared challenge the "settled science." (Are you listening, global-warming alarmists?)

The media's collective yawn over "State of the Future" is typical of the reaction to just about any good news. When 2006 was declared the hottest year on record, there were thousands of news stories. But last month's revised data, indicating that 1934 was actually warmer, barely warranted a paragraph-long correction in most papers.

For the full commentary, see:  

STEPHEN MOORE.  "DE GUSTIBUS; Clear-Eyed Optimists."  The Wall Street Journal  (Fri., October 5, 2007):  W11.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

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   A view of part of the Greenland ice sheet.  Source of the photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) OSLO — Mainstream climatologists who have feared that global warming could have the paradoxical effect of cooling northwestern Europe or even plunging it into a small ice age have stopped worrying about that particular disaster, although it retains a vivid hold on the public imagination.

The idea, which held climate theorists in its icy grip for years, was that the North Atlantic Current, an extension of the Gulf Stream that cuts northeast across the Atlantic Ocean to bathe the high latitudes of Europe with warmish equatorial water, could shut down in a greenhouse world.

Without that warm-water current, Americans on the Eastern Seaboard would most likely feel a chill, but the suffering would be greater in Europe, where major cities lie far to the north. Britain, northern France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway could in theory take on Arctic aspects that only a Greenlander could love, even as the rest of the world sweltered.

All that has now been removed from the forecast. Not only is northern Europe warming, but every major climate model produced by scientists worldwide in recent years has also shown that the warming will almost certainly continue.

“The concern had previously been that we were close to a threshold where the Atlantic circulation system would stop,” said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We now believe we are much farther from that threshold, thanks to improved modeling and ocean measurements. The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current are more stable than previously thought.”

. . .

“The ocean circulation is a robust feature, and you really need to hit it hard to make it stop,” said Eystein Jansen, a paleoclimatologist who directs the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research, also in Bergen. “The Greenland ice sheet would not only have to melt, but to dynamically disintegrate on a huge scale across the entire sheet.”

The worst imaginable collapse would likely take centuries to play out, he said. Any disruption to the North Atlantic Current — whose volume is 30 times greater than all the rivers in the world combined — would thus occur beyond the time horizon of the United Nations climate panel.

For the full story, see: 

WALTER GIBBS.  "Scientists Back Off Theory of a Colder Europe in a Warming World."  The New York Times  (Tues., May 15, 2007):  D3. 

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

   Source of the map:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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(p. B1) What if we wait too long to act on global warming? What if nothing we do is enough? Already, scientists are working up plans of last resort: stratospheric sprays of sulfur, trillions of orbiting mirrors and thousands of huge off-shore saltwater fountains.

Each is designed to counteract global warming by deliberately deflecting sunlight, rather than by retooling the world's economy to eliminate carbon-rich oil, coal and natural gas.

Some scientists argue that such actions might be easier and relatively cheaper. Until recently though, whenever University of Maryland economist Thomas Schelling, recipient of a 2005 Nobel Prize, raised such geo-engineering ideas, "half the audience thought I was crazy and the other half thought I was dangerous," he said. As global temperatures rise and greenhouse-gas emissions accelerate, however, even wild ideas are becoming respectable.

. . .

Earlier this month, researchers at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., released the most precise computer studies yet evaluating the controversial sunshade idea. Their findings, reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that a last-ditch engineering effort to block sunlight could reverse global warming -- at least temporarily. Indeed, it could lower average temperatures to levels not seen since 1900. "Every study we do seems to indicate it would work," said Carnegie climate modeler Ken Caldeira.

. . .

For Nobel laureate Schelling, the political advantages of geo-engineering outweigh its technical risks. It may be easier to launch a climate-control project than to persuade people all over the world to stop using fossil fuels. "It drastically converts the whole subject of climate change from one of regulation involving six billion people to a simple matter of a budgetary agreement about how to manage the modest cost," Prof. Schelling said. "I think geo-engineering is going to be the deus ex machina that will save the day."

For the full story, see: 

ROBERT LEE HOTZ.  "SCIENCE JOURNAL; In Case We Can't Give Up the Cars -- Try 16 Trillion Mirrors."  The Wall Street Journal   (Fri., June 22, 2007):  B1.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

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  "White arctic bell-heather (Cassiope tetragona) in the remote Svalbard archipelago of Norway."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A12) Many Arctic plant species have readily adjusted to big climate changes, repeatedly recolonizing the rugged islands of the remote Svalbard archipelago off Norway’s coast through 20,000 years of warm and cool spells since the frigid peak of the last ice age, researchers report in today’s issue of the journal Science.

Their finding implies that, in the Arctic at least, plants may be able to shift long distances to follow the climate conditions for which they are best adapted as those conditions move under the influence of human-caused global warming, the researchers and some independent experts said.

Some experts on climate and biology who were not involved with the study, which was led by scientists from the University of Oslo, said it provided a glimmer of optimism in the face of generally bleak scientific assessments of the vulnerability of ecosystems to the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases.

Terry L. Root, a biologist at Stanford who has been involved with many studies concluding that plants and animals are measurably feeling the effects of human-driven warming, described the Svalbard research as “great news.”

. . .

Norwegian and French scientists analyzed the DNA of more than 4,000 samples of nine flowering plant species from Svalbard, a group of islands between the Scandinavian mainland and the North Pole. They said they found genetic patterns that could be explained only by the repeated re-establishment of plant communities after the arrival of seeds or plant fragments from Russia, Greenland or other Arctic regions hundreds of miles away.

For the full story, see: 

ANDREW C. REVKIN.  "Many Arctic Plants Have Adjusted to Big Climate Changes, Study Finds."   The New York Times  (Fri., June 15, 2007):  A12. 

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

For the original Science article, see: 

Alsos, Inger Greve, Pernille Bronken Eidesen, Dorothee Ehrich, Inger Skrede, Kristine Westergaard, Gro Hilde Jacobsen, Jon Y. Landvik, Pierre Taberlet, and Christian Brochmann.  "Frequent Long-Distance Plant Colonization in the Changing Arctic."  Science 316, no. 5831 (2007):  1606-09.

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My Wabash economics prof Ben Rogge used to say that rulers have always liked to spend the people's money to build pyramids intended to proclaim the glory of the ruler.  But in modern times the rulers have to be a tad more subtle than the Egyptians, so, for instance, in Brazil they build Brazilia, instead of actual pyramids. 

And according to the story below, summarized from the May 2007 IEEE Spectrum, in Africa, they build large dams.

Small dams could help deliver electricity to much of Africa's population, but since they lack the prestige of larger-scale projects, few of them get built.

. . .

In Uganda, which has plenty of rivers and streams to supply power, Mr. Zachary describes how a small water-power generator, supplied by a small nearby dam, delivers 60 kilowatts of energy to a nearby hospital. The generator would barely be enough to run a single magnetic-resonance imaging machine, a staple in Western hospitals. But it does provide enough power to light the hospital and keep basic equipment running for the 100 nurses and doctors who work there. The entire generation system cost $15,000 to build.

Still, Africa's leaders are unlikely to abandon their preference for big public works, says Mr. Zachary, since they create thousands of construction jobs and reinforce the political might of the central government. 

For the full summary, see: 

"Informed Reader; ENERGY; Small Dams Might Help to Electrify Africa."  The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 8, 2007):  B10. 

(Note:  ellipsis added; the original article in IEEE Spectrum is by G. Pascal Zachary.)

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In 2003, London put in place a £5 (about $9) a day congestion charge for all cars that entered the center city (the charge is now £8). This led to an immediate drop of 70,000 cars a day in the affected zone. Traffic congestion fell by almost 20 percent. Emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide were cut by more than 15 percent.

The negative side effects predicted by opponents never materialized. The retail sector in the zone has seen increases in sales that have significantly exceeded the national average. London’s theater district, which largely falls within the zone, has been enjoying record audiences. People are still flocking to London — they’re simply doing so in more efficient and less polluting ways.

. . .

Is London’s success a guarantee that congestion charging will work in New York? Of course not. But it is an indicator that properly executed congestion pricing works, and works well. Singapore and Stockholm already operate such programs and other cities are examining them. Given the success of congestion charging in London, this is not surprising.

For the full commentary, see: 

KEN LIVINGSTONE.  "OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Clear Up the Congestion-Pricing Gridlock."  The New York Times   (Mon., July 2, 2007):  A21.

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  One of Mark Bent's solar flashlights stuck in a wall to illuminate a classroom in Africa.  Source of the photo:   http://bogolight.com/images/success6.jpg

What Africa most needs, to grow and prosper, is to eject kleptocratic war-lord governments, and to embrace property rights and the free market.  But in the meantime, maybe handing out some solar powered flashlights can make some modest improvements in how some people live.

The story excerpted below is an example of private, entrepreneur-donor-involved, give-while-you-live philanthropy that holds a greater promise of actually doing some good in the world, than other sorts of philanthropy, or than government foreign aid. 

FUGNIDO, Ethiopia — At 10 p.m. in a sweltering refugee camp here in western Ethiopia, a group of foreigners was making its way past thatch-roofed huts when a tall, rail-thin man approached a silver-haired American and took hold of his hands. 

The man, a Sudanese refugee, announced that his wife had just given birth, and the boy would be honored with the visitor’s name. After several awkward translation attempts of “Mark Bent,” it was settled. “Mar,” he said, will grow up hearing stories of his namesake, the man who handed out flashlights powered by the sun.

Since August 2005, when visits to an Eritrean village prompted him to research global access to artificial light, Mr. Bent, 49, a former foreign service officer and Houston oilman, has spent $250,000 to develop and manufacture a solar-powered flashlight.

His invention gives up to seven hours of light on a daily solar recharge and can last nearly three years between replacements of three AA batteries costing 80 cents.

Over the last year, he said, he and corporate benefactors like Exxon Mobil have donated 10,500 flashlights to United Nations refugee camps and African aid charities.

Another 10,000 have been provided through a sales program, and 10,000 more have just arrived in Houston awaiting distribution by his company, SunNight Solar.

“I find it hard sometimes to explain the scope of the problems in these camps with no light,” Mr. Bent said. “If you’re an environmentalist you think about it in terms of discarded batteries and coal and wood burning and kerosene smoke; if you’re a feminist you think of it in terms of security for women and preventing sexual abuse and violence; if you’re an educator you think about it in terms of helping children and adults study at night.”

Here at Fugnido, at one of six camps housing more than 21,000 refugees 550 miles west of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, Peter Gatkuoth, a Sudanese refugee, wrote on “the importance of Solor.”

“In case of thief, we open our solor and the thief ran away,” he wrote. “If there is a sick person at night we will took him with the solor to health center.”

A shurta, or guard, who called himself just John, said, “I used the light to scare away wild animals.” Others said lights were hung above school desks for children and adults to study after the day’s work.

For the full story, see:

Will Connors and Ralph Blumenthal.  "Letting Africa’s Sun Deliver the Luxury of Light to the Poor."  The New York Times, Section 1  (Sun., May 20, 2007):  8.

(Note:  the title of the article on line was:  "Solar Flashlight Lets Africa’s Sun Deliver the Luxury of Light to the Poorest Villages.")

    Source of map:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

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How much of global warming is due to human activity is far from clear.  And if the current, modest, gradual warming continues, there will be winners and losers, and plenty of time to adjust.  Winners will include, for instance, those pursuing agriculture in northern regions, and shippers seeking a feasible 'Northwest Passage.'

Economic forecasting is highly inaccurate beyond a few months out, for most variables, So who can honestly claim to know that the long-term losses of the losers will be larger than the long-term gains of the winners?

And if I am right, then what Michael Griffin said below, makes sense, and did not deserve the contempt and vitriol he received from the global warming environmentalists.

(p. A21) “I have no doubt that global — that a trend of global warming exists,” the administrator of NASA, Michael Griffin, said in a taped interview that was broadcast Thursday on National Public Radio. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that is a problem we must wrestle with.”

“I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings,” he said. “I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

. . .

Jerry Mahlman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said Mr. Griffin’s remarks showed he was either “totally clueless” or “a deep antiglobal warming ideologue.”

James Hansen, a top NASA climate scientist and lead author of the research paper, said the comments showed “arrogance and ignorance” because millions of people will probably be harmed by global warming.

For the full story, see: 

"NASA Leader: Who Says Warming Is a Problem?"  The New York Times  (Fri., June 1, 2007):  A21.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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