Zero carbon gasoline from yeast?

New energy options from the Environmental Defense Fund.

Website: Efforts of money interests to trump scientific inquiry demystified

The U.S. government and big industry (what's the difference, really?) are conspiring to alter the findings of scientific studies in order to best serve their own interests. They are tenacious, and their conspiracy runs deep. Trying to keep scientific truth separate from the government's version is difficult. This website seeks to unravel some of the tangled narrative:

The Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy

My Spring Peepers are disappearing

There is a small pond slightly downhill from my house that every year has been home to hundreds of frogs -- peepers and bullfrogs that illuminate the evening with a cacaphony of song. I could always count on arriving home, when after dark, and being escorted up my walkway to my house by their musical racket. In the last few years, however, there has been a steady reduction in their numbers, as evidenced by the volume of their singing, such that this year they seem to be either very late, or absent altogether. The bullfrogs seem to come after the peepers, so perhaps they haven't arrived as yet. However, an article in the current issue of Defenders magazine, from Defenders of Wildlife, points out that amphibians such as frogs, salamanders, etc., are extremely sensitive to environmental stress and change, and that many species around the world are now in serious decline.

Is the disappearance of my Spring Peepers, as well as the rest of the world's amphibians, the proverbial "canary in the coal mine", a warning to us all that climate change is real, and that it's time for some serious thought about how to protect the environment -- for the frogs' sake, and for our own? I suspect that it is.

Read the above-mentioned article here. Comments welcome.

Waste-to-energy is here! Write your Senators

The idea of waste-to-energy has been around for a long time -- at least since the time I was a budding young failure of an ethical investor, many years ago. Now, it seems its time has come; actually, its time came a long time ago, when the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere started growing at an exponential rate, but the technology was still very much in the experimental stage. Now, however, there are 89 plants online nationwide, and more in development. The time that has now come is the time for us to write our governmental officials and make sure they are on the bandwagon, for waste-to-energy is destined to become an important part of our renewable energy picture.

Today's waste-to-energy plants provide efficient trash disposal of about 90,000 tons of solid waste nationwide every day, while converting the compounds contained therein into enough methane-free electricity to power 2.3 million homes across the country. In this regard, waste-to-energy plants actually provide a reduction in greenhouse gases over ordinary landfill disposal methods. Ferrous and non-ferrous metals are also recovered in a more energy efficient method than mining virgin ore, providing a further reduction in greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide emission is also avoided by eliminating the need for the combustion of coal or oil in the energy generation process.

The Integrated Waste Services Association has just opened their Legislative Action Center, where you can contact your Senators and urge them to consider waste-to-energy as part of your state's overall energy profile. The IWSA website has far more information than I can possibly include here. Interesed people are encouraged to visit there to find out more about current trends and technologies.

Joint call from business for aggressive pollution cuts

From Environmental Defense:

Business Coalition for Climate Action Doubles

The unprecedented coalition calling for a cap and trade system to combat climate change, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), has more than doubled its membership.

In a move that transforms the political landscape, General Motors is the first automobile manufacturer to join the coalition of high-level corporate and environmental leaders. The group's mission is to urge the federal government to:

* cut greenhouse gas emissions 60-80 percent,
* create business incentives and,
* act swiftly and thoughtfully.

USCAP member companies represent industries critical to slowing climate change, including car manufacturing, utilities, chemical production and manufacturing. Twelve new companies join the original members, bringing the number of corporate partners to 22.

Read more at www.environmentaldefense.org

Karl Rove shows his true colors on the global warming issue

From Sheryl Crow and Laurie David, via HuffPo:

Last night Thelma and Louise drove the bus off the cliff or at least into the White House Correspondents Dinner. The "highlight" of the evening had to be when we were introduced to Karl Rove. How excited were we to have our first opportunity ever to talk directly to the Bush Administration about global warming.

more...

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Buy or rent Sony Pictures' Who Killed the Electric Car? and see one possible solution to our dependence on foreign oil, and what we're up against in trying to achieve it.

In the meantime, visit the website. Or have a look at what Malcolm Bricklin is up to.

New film takes aim at "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore, and liberals

Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute, a Republican "think tank", was in San Francisco yesterday introducing his new film, "An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction?" The movie goes after Gore as being an environmental extremist, but beyond that is meant to attack liberals more directly, and with a vicious slant. In doing so, Mr. Hayward displayed some of the Republican antipathy toward liberals that keeps the two parties at odds with each other.

Of those in attendance, he said:

“I don’t know how much of the enemy we have here tonight,” said a smiling Mr. Hayward, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, based in Washington. “San Francisco is usually a target-rich environment.”

"Enemy?" "Target(s)?" Are we the terrorists the country is at war with? Mr. Hayward, you agree there is a problem, and that human activity is at the heart of it. The only thing you disagree on is the matter of degree. Why not approach global climate change with a spirit of positive action, and not let the politics turn it into a federal case?

Dave