A Surface Nuisance...

George Carlin with a great monologue on a topic frequently seen here...

Greener, We Are...

Fascinating talk about the fact that the Earth is getting greener (more vegetation), and why...

What Explains the Rise and Fall of Violent Crime?

In the years since 1960 in the U.S., the rate of violent crime rose dramatically from about 3 per year per million people, to over 15 in 1988, and then back down to 8 last year (and still falling fast).  Why such large swings?

Kevin Drum (a journalist) reports on a theory proposing a very simple cause: environmental lead (Pb), primarily from leaded gasoline.  Before my more rabidly conservative readers explode in apoplexy: yes, I know this is in Mother Jones.  Yes, I know who Kevin Drum is.  Those two facts don't mean the man's wrong - read it; don't just reflexively dismiss it because of its source.

It's an interesting idea with some compellingly suggestive evidence (though less than proof positive at the moment).  This also suggests that renewed efforts to reduce environmental lead would be very beneficial...

Learn About Fracking...

A nicely done, fact-based documentary, just a half hour long:

Ships at the Bottom of the (Former) Aral Sea...

The Soviet Union drained most of the Aral Sea, using the water for irrigation projects.  When they did so, hundreds of ships that had sunk were revealed, like the one below.  Now you can walk among them, and find ships and camels intermixed:

That Green Thing...

Via my lovely wife:

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Oysters...

I reproduce this missive from Larry E. in its entire glory:

I read this article saying that oysters are on the decline worldwide...

Oysters disappearing worldwide

...and I'm thinking to myself.... GOOD!! 

First off, oysters are disgusting, so good riddance. And second, if they do die off, something else will fill that ecological niche. With luck, maybe that something will be a bit more tasty! 

I haven't figured out why environmentalists have have somehow, selectively, decided that this is the "Best Time in History®". The Earth is constantly changing, species constantly come and go and this has been going on for billions of years. The Earth has been way hotter than it is now, way colder, had way more CO2 in the atmosphere, oceans have come and gone and through most of its history its managed to do so quite nicely without mankind. So why is it so many think this should be different now? 

If we go out of our way to preserve a species that cannot adapt, aren't we artificially weakening the ecology by preventing that nitch from being filled by something more hardy?

I made a similar argument to a priest I met once on a long trans-Atlantic flight. He was involved in the finances for his church, particularly for charitable work in poor countries. I suggested that by providing minimal food etc. into areas that cannot sustain their population, that he might be making things worse. That it encourages the population to remain, possibly even anchors them there, in a place that cannot sustain them. Where the agriculture or economy etc. just isn't adequate. So people being what people are, they remain, and they have more children and they remain in a dependent and impoverished state indefinitely. 

He took offense of course, and it made for a particularly long flight.... for him. But the fact remains that if you artificially support a population, whether people or oysters, that cannot sustain itself, you may be doing much worse for the ecology and the population than good.

Iowahawk on Obama and the Leak...

Don't miss it.

Obama Announces Reactor Financing...

Obama is now supporting power generation by nuclear power plants.  Not said in this article (though it's certainly implied by the jobs timetable): whether he's also going to direct his Department of Energy to fast-track the plant's licensing.  This is quite a turnaround in Obama's green positioning, and it's sure to piss off some of this greenie friends...

Leading Environmental Indicators...

Steven Hayward at Pacific Research is out with the fourteenth Index of Leading Environmental Indicators.  It's a 75 page PDF packed with all sorts of interesting views of our environment, how it's changing, and how it's being reported.

The graph at right is just one randomly chosen example.  This one shows the variations in sea ice coverage in the Antarctic over the past 30 years.  This is the period for which satellite-borne instruments give us reliable coverage data.  If you've been listening to a lot of the AGW hype, what you see on that graph may surprise you...

I recommend taking an evening to peruse this document yourself.  It reminds me a bit of the Skeptical Environmentalist, in a sort of Reader's Digest form...

EPA Eviscerated?

This morning I received this email from Kristin Johnson at the National Wildlife Foundation:

Dear Friend of Wildlife,

According to leaked documents obtained by the National Wildlife Federation, the Bush Administration is planning to rollback protections for America's imperiled wildlife by re-writing the regulations of the Endangered Species Act.

If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years.

We need your help to make sure this attack on the Endangered Species Act is met with a huge public outcry!

"Do not be fooled when the Administration claims it is merely tweaking the law," said NWF's John Kostyack, Executive Director of Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming.

"The cumulative impact of these changes equals a full blown attack on America's premier conservation law. We owe it to future generations to stop this attack and continue our legacy of protecting wildlife on the brink of extinction."

Please email Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and make sure he knows that the American people will not stand for any attempts to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

And please forward this email to any friend or family member who might speak up for wildlife too!

Thank you so much,
Kristin Johnson
Grassroots Mobilization Coordinator
National Wildlife Federation

Here's the AP's report on the reason for the preceding email:

The new regulations follow a pattern by the Bush administration not to seek input from its scientists. The regulations were drafted by attorneys at both the Interior and Commerce Departments. Scientists with both agencies were first briefed on the proposal last week during a conference call, according to an official who asked not to be identified.

Last month, in similar fashion, the Environmental Protection Agency surprised its scientific experts when it decided it did not want to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The rule changes unveiled Monday would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize that the agency itself determines is unlikely to harm endangered wildlife and their habitat. Government wildlife experts currently participate in tens of thousands of such reviews each year.

The revisions also would limit which effects can be considered harmful and set a 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to evaluate a project when they are asked to become involved. If no decision is made within 60 days, the project can move ahead.

"If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years," said John Kostyack, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming initiative.

Under current law, federal agencies must consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is likely to jeopardize any endangered species or to damage habitat, even if no harm seems likely. This initial review usually results in accommodations that better protect the 1,353 animals and plants in the U.S. listed as threatened or endangered and determines whether a more formal analysis is warranted.

The EPA is beloved by radical environmentalists and many scientists because it has real teeth – exactly the kind of teeth that I and many others object to: the EPA permits (nay, mandates) the government to stop any use of private property that it deems is dangerous to endangered wildlife. The property owner is not compensated at all – his property (or the use of it) is simply taken from him. I object to this kind of government power on principle, no matter how worthy the cause. For this reason, I would like to see the EPA removed from law, or modified to include fair market value compensation for the affected property owners.

The EPA has another problem, and this is the one that the Bush administration is addressing: the government scientists currently charged with making the EPA reviews are themselves predominantly radical environmentalists. The inmates are in charge of the asylum. The decisions coming out of the EPA reviews have been tainted time and time again by deceptive “science” and even outright fraud (for example, the completely manufactured data that underlaid many of the decisions about spotted owl habitat, now freely admitted by the government scientists involved). Bush's proposed actions would take the review power away from that group and hand it to many other groups of bureaucrats. I suppose that may be a good idea, but I'm having trouble getting excited about the notion – I'd much rather see the underlying problems with the EPA addressed.

It's interesting to observe how organized science is subject to the same forces that affect the rest of humanity. Different branches of science get their funding in different ways, and this means that their incentives derive from different sources. The resulting behaviors are then (surprise!) much different. For example, materials scientists are mainly funded by companies or governmental organizations who are interested in specific results. An aircraft company might want a lighter window material; an electronics company purer silicon; an oil company cheaper refinery processes. Those scientists who can consistently produce more useful materials are rewarded – and guess what? We get more materials scientists who develop the miraculous materials we now use every day. How do environmental biologists get funded? The rock stars of that world are those who have succeeded in “proving” that species are endangered – even if in order to do that the scientist had to invent a new species (think of the Florida Panther) or invent his data (like the spotted owl) or selectively ignore populations (wolves are scare in the U.S., but common in Canada). We have a culture that encourages environmental biologists to “discover” endangered species, and to support protection for them whatever the cost to humans. Some balance would be very welcome here.

I could get very excited about a piece of government that combined compensated takings (along the lines of eminent domain before Kelo), science review (with emphasis on ecological impact rather than species impact), and economic review (to allow judgments about where mitigation dollars might best be spent). Then we Americans could collectively decide how important we thought this effort was, as measured directly by how much of our hard-earned treasure we're willing to spend on it.

But this is not what we have. Instead, we have uncompensated takings, highly biased “science”, and no consideration of the economics at all. We can hardly be surprised at the result. I'm not optimistic about any near-term reform, as this is not an issue that voters (a) understand, or (b) passionately care about in any interesting numbers...

Two Houses...

Consider these two houses:

House #1:

A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern 'snow belt' area. It's in the South.

House #2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every 'green' feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground.

The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system.. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes in to underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

Guess which home belongs to an (alleged) environmentalist, and which one belongs to an (alleged) despoiler of nature?

House #1 belongs to Al (“The Goracle”) Gore, who loudly proclaims his concern for Mother Earth at every possible opportunity.

House #2 belongs to President George W. Bush, cited far and wide in the environmentalist-wacko left as “Public Enemy Number One”.

Sounds like an incovenient truth to me!

Verified by Snopes, passed along by my mom (who is becoming source #1 for this blog!)...