Illinois Representative John Shimkus (R, of course) thinks that global warming is a sham. He quotes the Bible as proof. Because, you know, the Bible was written by people who had a firm grip on climate science. Or something. This...
Louisiana Congressman Charlie Melancon (D) shared his thoughts on the British Petroleum oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico at a subcommittee hearing on Thursday. His brief speech and his delivery say it all: Just for fun, let's compare Melancon's...
Having lived most of my life in Michigan and Illinois, Lake Michigan has practically been in my back yard my whole life. The Great Lakes have always been an important source of water for people living in the regions surrounding...
In Orange County, CA, they've built a "microfiltration system so advanced it can turn waste water into drinking water." With a price tag of $480 million, it's the largest facility of its kind, and will turn sewage to drinking water...
On Sunday night, I posted that Neil Young was going to be on CNN's American Morning on Monday. I happened to be home that day, so I kept my eye on CNN from 6 to 9 AM, using the handy...
The IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - has issued their fourth and final report. It's much more pessimistic than the first three, and those weren't walks in the park, either. Two alarming quotes from scientists on the panel:...
Alright, people. Time to set your Tivo on stun. Neil is going to be on "American Morning" tomorrow morning (Monday, November 19), sometime during their regular 6 to 9 A.M. slot. Probably multiple times in those 3 hours. This press...
No ruling on the North Dakota hemp farming case today. The judge is postponing the decision until the end of the month. It doesn't sound good, though. The Judge - Judge Dan Hovland - sounded reluctant to rule: Isn't the...
In a New York Times piece on his new record, Chrome Dreams II, Neil introduces his plan to drive his custom hybrid car across the country: The car is a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, a 19-foot, two-ton behemoth. It...
They'd rather see a carbon tax than a cap and trade system: Economists agree that the real cost of burning fossil fuels – damage to the environment and health, not to mention the cost of replacing them as they run...
From a hot off the press AP article: The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess. "Is it...
No, I'm not talking about those lovable blonde brothers and their saccharine pop trio, Hanson. I'm talking about James Hansen, who runs the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and is one of the foremost experts on global warming in the...
My hometown, Ann Arbor, MI, will be putting 15 electric-diesel hybrid buses on the road by the end of October, and plans to add another 5 by March 2008. The long term goal is to replace all 69 Ann Arbor...
You can add "conflicts over water" to the list of resource driven conflicts to expect in the future. And it won't be just country vs. country. At least here in the U.S., it will be state vs. state. According to...
OK, they didn't exactly admit they are douche bags. But they did change their story on editing the CDC testimony on global warming. First, they said they didn't do it. Now, they're saying they did do it, but only because...
This White House has no shame. I'm sure that's not news to any of our POLJUNK readers. Or pretty much any other American. But here's something else to add to your list of censorship of science by the Bush administration....
When I heard about the September Washington Post-ABC News poll that found only 1% of Americans see global warming as their number 1 issue for the 2008 elections, I was a bit depressed. I was reminded of it while reading...
James Hansen runs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. One of the key objectives of the institute is to research and attempt to predict global climate change. An authority on climate science, Hansen has become a prominent voice on the...
The farm bill that's going to come out of the Senate Agriculture Committee is not going to be as progressive as Tom Harkin (D-IA), the committee chairman, had hoped it was going to be. He and Senator Charles Grassley -...
When Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week (along with the IPCC), I knew conservatives wouldn't be dancing in the street and sending fruit baskets to the Vice President. But I'll have to admit, I was a bit...
In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman tackles why the right has gone batty over Gore's Nobel Peace prize: They hate that he keeps being right, despite their best efforts to smear him. Also, some good comments on why the...
As people have been speculating and expecting, Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. He shares the award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations committee of over 2,000 scientists around the globe that...
Here's just another reason I hope Barack Obama is our next president: Joe Romm, one of the foremost thinkers on global warming, gives a big ol' thumbs up to Obama's energy and climate plan. Some of the things Romm highlights:...
We recently noted that Christopher Hitchens thinks Gore will win the Nobel next week. More folks (did I just say "folks"?) are thinking the same thing: "I think [Gore and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier] are likely winners this year,"...
As I blogged here recently, I've been devouring Joe Romm's book Hell and High Water. If you'll recall, I listed what Romm considers the top things we can do to reduce global warming. First and foremost, he says the rest...
From a Sept. 5th New York Times piece - What Is John Dingell Really Up To?: After the town hall meeting was over — and he had listened to a couple of hours of questions about timed traffic lights, nuclear...
In an attempt to jumpstart negotiations on what will replace the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations is holding "high level" meetings today on addressing climate change. Over 80 heads of state will be attending. True to form, though, President Bush...
From the Christian Science Monitor article Joe referenced: Researchers at the University of Chicago compared the global warming impact of meat eaters with that of vegetarians and found that the average American diet – including all food processing steps –...
Bill Maher is asking some good questions of Democratic presidential candidates in the HuffPost and Yahoo candidate mash up. Here's a question he asked John Edwards: "Senator Edwards, you've suggested that Americans should give up their SUVs for the sake...
Joe Romm is a scientist and author. He got his Ph.D in physics from MIT, and was an assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration, running the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. He runs the Climate Progress...
Back in 2004, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) asked the GAO to report on how the Department of Interior was combating global warming on federal land - parks, forests, marine sanctuaries, and so on. The report is...
Over at our parent site, Glorious Noise, our fearless leader Jake Brown pulls some choice excerpts from the New York Times Magazine profile of Rick Rubin. Rubin is now co-CEO of Columbia Records. Maybe he can save the music industry....
Since I used the form Jake linked to for complaining to BP about their plan to dump additional poisons into Lake Michigan, I'm now part of the "Dick Durbin online community." And I didn't even know it! From an email...
Leonardo DiCaprio's new environmental documentary - the 11th Hour - was released last Friday. I've been hearing about it for sometime, but haven't looked into it at all. Until I got another John Kerry email blast (signed up during the...
Here's something to celebrate. From a Chicago Tribune article: Responding to a month of unrelenting criticism from politicians and the public, BP pledged it will not invoke provisions of a new permit that allows the largest oil refinery in the...
From an AP article: U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration had violated a 1990 law when it failed to meet deadlines for an updated U.S. climate change research plan and impact assessment. [...] The...
Here's your Friday video fun. Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones does a brilliant piece on rich people (including the Kennedy's) fighting against a wind farm that might taint their Nantucket beach front views. I'm a huge fan of the Daily...
According to a Detroit Free Press article: A federal court judge dismissed a lawsuit by nine shipping companies and associations that had hoped to overturn a Michigan law requiring oceangoing ships to sanitize their ballast water to prevent the introduction...
Here's another reason why good, effective industry regulation is so important to the public interest. And why corporations like Dow and the politicians they fund will always condemn it and fight it. Dow is based in Midland, Michigan. It...
Yesterday I went to a townhall meeting put on by John Dingell (D-MI) at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School. The topic? Global warming. Dingell asserts that he has a plan to reduce carbon emissions 60% to 80% by 2050. Going...
The Climate Progress blog pointed me to a Popular Mechanics article on Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) from earlier this year. Here's some of what they have to say: Today, there are more than 230 million cars and trucks in...
A French and American joint venture is planning to bring the first new nuclear plant to the U.S. in over 20 years. This one is still in the planning stages, but if it gets approval and moves forward, it will...
Locals are fighting the good fight against Chevron in Ecuador. Texaco - now owned by Chevron - is being accused of contaminating about 1,700 square miles of Amazon rain forest with toxic sludge and other waste that resulted from drilling...
PG&E is getting ready to buy 553 more megawatts of solar energy, from Solel, an Israeli company. Solel will build a solar power plant in the Mojave desert to provide the energy - enough to power about 400,000 homes in...
Here's some good news on cars. Really. According to a new report, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), if widely adopted, could significantly reduce the country's contribution of carbon emissions. The study was done by scientists at the Electric Power Research...
About 75 dealerships are planned, and 20,000 people have put down a $100 deposit to reserve one when they arrive. I wonder how many more than that will ultimately be sold. They're small. But they are supposed to get 40...
According to a recent study by Japanese scientists, "A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home." A kilogram is equal to...
Those dirty, stinky hippies at the Union of Concerned Scientists are at it again. Scaring Americans with their "doom and gloom" outlook on the future. But as James Brown once said "reality don't ever lie." And typically, scientists don't lie....
The Honorable John Dingell (D-MI) is currently what they call the "Dean" of the House of Representatives. He is the longest currently serving member in the House, and the 2nd longest serving in the nation's history. He was a major...
We don't get a lot of these, but here's a recent letter we recieved regarding Live Earth from Paul Ebner in Indiana: I am appalled by Live Earth. I am so appalled and for such obvious reasons that a part...
This weekend, there will be 8 Live Earth concerts across 7 continents. The tagline for the event is "Concerts for a Climate in Crisis." The goal is to raise awareness of the realities of global warming, raise money, and get...
"Cave" is probably too strong a word when describing actions the White House takes that benefit the few and do significant damage to the public interest. That's just how this White House works - damn the public good, let's get...
As several other East African countries have already done, the Ugandan government is passing a law to outlaw the use, manufacture, and importation of plastic bags. They will join Rwanda in banning plastic bags (those thinner than 30 microns), and...
In advance of the upcoming Live Earth concerts, Al Gore contributes an op-ed to The New York Times - Moving Beyond Kyoto. Some short excerpts: This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue, one that affects the...
In the final Washington Post expose on Cheney, we learned that Christine Todd Whitman, Bush's first EPA administrator, was lying when she said she was resigning to spend more time with her family. It turns out, it was because of...
An editorial in the Grand Rapids Press endorses more funding and support for Amtrak as part of the solution to our energy and global warming crisis. I couldn't agree more. According to the editorial, ridership on the Grand Rapids-Chicago line...
In a Cheney-related post yesterday, I wondered if anything would come of the WashPo expose on Cheney. Probably around the same time I was writing that, 36 House Democrats - most from the West Coast - called for a hearing...
The final piece in the Washington Post's four part series on Cheney came out today. It is, in some ways, the most damning of the four. But maybe that's just my perspective. As the other pieces did, this one chronicles...
According to an NPR piece this morning, "one-fifth of all greenhouse gases comes from forests that are cut down and burned to make way for crops or pasture." That's not good - 20% of the world's carbon emissions come from...
NPR ran a piece on Morning Edition this morning about a climate change game that starkly lays out the challenges we face over the next 50 years. But there's a positive spin - part of the goal is to show...
There are a few editorials out there this weekend that call for big changes to the farm bill that will be voted on this year. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which calls out the fact that there are about $22 billion...
In Sunday's New York Times, Thomas Friedman calls last week's Senate energy bill a baby that "only a lobbyist could love." True, it's the first energy bill to raise fuel efficiency standards in twenty years, but it's still too little,...
An organization called Climate Counts does an annual scorecard of how corporations are doing (or not doing) in the battle against global warming. They use 22 different criteria for the scoring. I'm not clear on how they pick the companies...
Many in South Texas are up in arms about proposed border fencing. And rightly so. As currently conceived by the federal government, the fence will put part of the UT Brownsville campus on the "Mexican side" of the fence and...
In state news, Maine has passed a bill that will cap carbon emissions at 5.9 million tons in 2009, and reduce them by 10% by 2019. Maine is the third state to pass such a law, and Maine is also...
Last week at their annual convention, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that questions the human impact on global warming, and calls for no government limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The resolution urges Southern Baptists to "proceed cautiously in...
Also on Wednesday, a Chicago alderman - Edward Burke - introduced a resolution that calls for hearings on the concept of a "congestion fee". The idea is to charge a fee to drivers in downtown Chicago. Said Burke: Can it...
Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) - one of about 30 Democratic Senators making a bid for the presidency - has the boldest plan for addressing global warming. And he knows it. Among other things, it calls for all automobiles to get...
On Thursday, the first train in Europe powered by biodiesel (at least in part) had its maiden voyage. Virgin Trains, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, has modified a train to run on 20% biodiesel as a part of a...
This article from Business 2.0 lays out the potential for Big Solar - super powerful arrays of photovoltaic cells - by looking at a handful of companies making big moves in the industry. Get one for your backyard....
We hardly knew ye... but your parent company was too stupid to develop a hybrid that got significantly better gas mileage than the regular Accord, and they still charged more for you. You were destined for oblivion... Honda only sold...
Texas: the number one producer of carbon emissions in the country. Texas produces 1.5 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide each year. In addition to making them the number one state producer, they also beat out every other country in the...
After returning from a congressional trip to see the icesheets of Greenland, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to get a cap and trade bill through the House before the end of 2007. She was skeptical of the president's announcement on...
Bush's tepid warming plan has been met with skepticism by most, and even ridicule by some. David Doniger, climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council: The president is warming up to throw his opening pitch while business, states...
I was skeptical when I saw the headline at the L.A. Times: Bush urges goals on emissions. Bush and his administration have been, by and large, hardcore deniers of global warming and its causes. So I wasn't expecting to be...
Bob Dole and Tom Daschle are hawking a plan to reduce farm subsidies and shift that money to biofuels....
I was hanging out with a friend this weekend, and you know what he said to me? "Mike, I'm not seeing enough POLJUNK posts on honeybees lately. Can you kick it up a notch?" Al, this one is for you......
At the upcoming G-8 summit, Tony Blair had hoped to get his buddy George Bush to agree to real change to slow down global warming. Based on a draft U.S. communique obtained by Greenpeace, that ain't going to happen. Some...
On Saturday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) flew to Europe with 7 other House Democrats for meetings with European politicians and scientists on how to successfully tackle global warming. They will be making stops in Belgium, Germany, and...
And the North Dakota legislature wants them to as well. They've passed 5 bills related to the issue this year, and the governor has signed three of them. The laws basically lay out a framework for growing industrial hemp in...
The New York Times ran a piece earlier this week about Ray Anderson, who founded and runs a carpet tile company called Interface. Sounds fascinating, right? Well, it turns out Anderson had an epiphany of sorts in the mid 90s,...
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announces a plan for all hybrid cabs in NYC by 2012. Said Bloomberg: There's an awful lot of taxicabs on the streets of New York City obviously, so it makes a real big difference ... These...
Every time the debate about illegal immigration reaches a fever pitch, the call for more border fencing gets louder and more hysterical. The current debate over an immigration bill in the Senate is no exception. The compromise bill under consideration...
In a Washington Post op-ed piece yesterday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Governor Jodi Rell (R-CT) laid into the Bush administration for not doing anything to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and for blocking efforts by states like California and Connecticut...
The energy challenge in the United States is different than it is in India. While we share some of the same challenges - growing demand, limited supply - our immediate problem is less about providing energy to those who need...
India is the world's most populous democracy. And they have a problem: a growing economy and a growing middle class that have needs and wants more akin to what we see in the United States than in other parts of...
Ethanol from corn is basically a bad idea. It takes as much energy to make the ethanol as the ethanol generates. Sugarcane, though, has more sugar and it's easier to extract. Which is why Brazil has been successful with ethanol....
A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute says the U.S. can reduce energy consumption by a third in residential buildings if we increase adoption of existing energy-efficient technologies, like compact flourescents and high efficiency appliances. But as the study...
This could be huge. Yesterday, as part of the Clinton Climate Initiative, Bill Clinton announced a program to help significantly reduce carbon emissions in 16 major cities around the world. How will they do it? 5 banks - ABN AMRO,...
On Wednesday, organic farmers testified before the House Agriculture committee, asking for their fair share of the money that gets handed out every year as part of the Farm Bill - $25 billion alone to industrial farmers who grow commodity...
At a mayor's summit in New York yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the world's mayors to take the lead in fighting global warming. According to Bloomberg, the cities of the world are responsible for 80% of the world's greenhouse...
According to the Guardian, Tony Blair hopes to convince George Bush to get his act together on global warming at the upcoming G8 summit. Working with Germany, the British hope to get not only the United States, but also China...
Like a petulant child, whose parents have told him he needs to clean up his room, Bush continues to delay the inevitable. But instead of dragging his feet on cleaning his room at his parent's request, Bush is dragging his...
A Washington Post editorial praises Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) for his plan to combat global warming, which is described in some detail on his presidential campaign Web site. He proposes a carbon tax on corporations - a bold move by...
On Monday, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) made his first campaign stop in Michigan. In a speech at the Detroit Economic Club, Obama took the U.S. auto industry to task for paying too little attention to building efficient cars, and too...
If you're talking about how to provide energy to the people of Rwanda, that smell might be methane. Which Rwanda has a lot of, at the bottom of Lake Kivu, according to this BBC News article: ... the lake is...
As part of a major intelligence bill being considered in the House, Democrats have included a measure instructing the intelligence community to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on the impacts of climate change and the global risks it will create....
This is not good. Colony Collapse Disorder has spread to 27 states, with the country losing about a quarter of its honeybee population. It sounds like they're closer to identifying the culprit(s), though, and the problem is getting more attention....
An Interior Department official, slated to testify before Congress next week, submitted her resignation today. Julie MacDonald, formerly the deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, is in hot water for her role in pressuring scientists to change research...
Yesterday was Willie Nelson's 74th birthday, and there's no sign that he is slowing down. He performed at Coachella on Sunday, beat a marijuana possession charge earlier in the month, and is the most recognizable advocate for using biodiesel fuel....
