Reply
Author Archives: JPierce
Another Alaskan Oil Spill
A huge Alaskan oil spill, is one of the worst on record, according to Alaskan environmental officials (Greenwire). Yet it seems to have received fairly little coverage outside of some wire stories and local press.
The leak occurred on a North Slope pipeline operated by BP, which has had other problems in recent years including the 2006 spill in Prudhoe Bay. Whatever happened to “Beyond Petroleum?”
Three Wise-Cracking Men
Opening the talks
While we still have great expectations of the upcoming talks in Copenhagen are all fine and dandy, it’s a rather elite event about a topic that touches us all. There have been efforts to democratize the discussion, such as the Museum of Science’s, “World Views on Global Warming,” but participation is still limited to those who can be physically present. Of course, you have another chance to do so at a follow-up session tomorrow (12/5) morning. MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence has also launched a new project, the Climate Collaboratorium, to allow people to share, vote on and discuss ideas about reducing emissions on a large scale.
Mass renewables redux
Cape Wind is still embroiled in politics, and CommonWealth Solar may soon be. The state’s grant program to promote solar energy is effectively bankrupt. On the plus side, if you already have a photovoltaic installation or other renewable energy system, you can now sell much more electricity back to NSTAR.
Sustainable (sea)food
New Scientist has an interesting article on the “Five eco-crimes we commit everyday.” Most are not very surprising, but the details are interesting, such as the fact that the western world wastes one third of its food!
Egregious as this waste is, the means used to produce and procure much of our food is more important. To this end, Slash Food has a brief post highlighting some better seafood choices including local award-winning business Aqua Australis.
Also released this past week, a study of food sustainability revealing that, surprise of surprises, the devil is in the details and “food miles” are an over-simplification.
Pilfered file follow-up
There’s been a frenetic flurry of discussion on the web and in conservative news outlets about the British climate research center’s files which were stolen almost two weeks ago. However, we’d rather that not lend any more credence to the so-called “Climategate” and finding them is left as an exercise for the reader. We would like to follow-up with a few considered pieces on “What East Anglia’s E-mails Really Tell Us About Climate Change” and why the “Leaked emails won’t harm UN climate body.”
Pilfered file fury
Last Thursday unknown individual(s) released 120 MB of files and correspondence from a climate research group in Britain. This has lead to a bit of fervor amongst rabid skeptics such as Hiding evidence of global cooling: Junk science exposed among climate-change believers. Never mind that last month the Associated Press reported that statisticians have rejected global cooling, or that the “incriminating files” are from a single laboratory among hundreds around the world.
The claim by those involved that selected documents were made public in order to support the skeptics views seems reasonable. Afterall, consider what an arbitrary selection of your own files and email might portray (probably pretty boring stuff about lunch plans, TPS reports, SPAM and the occasional forwarded joke) versus a set chosen by an enemy or jilted lover1. However, the leaked records may still prove to be damning, though not in the manner the hacker hoped, as they do provide evidence of slightly less than stellar sportsmanship.
For those interested, it seems you can download the files at WikiLeaks and search the plain text files at the skeptic-sponsored site East Anglia Mails.
1. “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” —Cardinal Richelieu
Green Holiday Guides
One of the coolest things about Thanksgiving? Unlike Halloween, it’s not about stuff. While Halloween wouldn’t be the same without candy, costumes, and décor, Thanksgiving celebrates giving thanks for what you already have. What a relief for your pocketbook and the planet. —treehugger
Site notes
The site now supports rating of posts and comments, though only registered users can vote at this time. We’ve also switched to a slightly more modern and nicer login system. Lastly, I recently added a link to the Archives section of the right column, which you can use to visit a random post on the site. nothing ground-breaking, but it was simple to do and it can be a fun way to kill time whilst stumble upon interesting tidbits.
Please report any problems you encounter here. Thanks!