Naturally Interesting

In the Oregonian:

That movement — dispersed, diverse, leaderless, independent and incongruous in its assembly of anarchists, billionaires, street clowns and computer geeks — began, Hawken said in a phone interview, “when people looked around to see an insult to their property, their river, their forest, their future, their children or their dignity.

“Then they looked around for an institution to do something about it . . . and they find out government is corrupt. It’s either bought off or it doesn’t have the skills.

“That’s how the nonprofit world was formed. It’s not a well-oiled machine. But it’s the fastest growing movement in the world, the largest social movement in the history of humanity, and the one addressing the salient issues of our times.”

“Specifically, the shared activity of hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations can be seen as humanity’s immune response to toxins like political corruption, economic disease and ecological degradation.”

The United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated efforts to attack global warming.

In recent months, however, U.N. regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to wind farms, questioning whether the projects would produce a real environmental payoff.

U.N. regulators are also concerned that some independent auditors of these projects, who are responsible for vetting their environmental legitimacy, have been letting project developers push through ventures of questionable environmental value.

The issue is two pronged: Corporations buying carbon offsets want to get the most bang for their buck. And project developers want to build high value projects for cheap, increasing their bottom line. This creates a tremendous incentive for fraudulent, or at least cheap offset projects. Add to that the fact that many of these offset projects are in developing countries, and the administrative and oversight problems become enormous.

The U.N. says it isn’t suggesting that most of the developing-word projects are illegitimate. Evaluating whether a project would have been built without carbon-credit revenue is a complex judgment call,

The U.N. is taking a closer look at project developers, mostly Europe based companies, who set up projects to sell credits to buyers. Also facing scrutiny are the 3rd party auditing firms who inspect and certify to the U.N. that the projects are environmentally sound.

A member of the U.N. board, Christiana Figueres, expressed concern that the system may be open to what she called “collusion” between auditors and project developers to push through environmentally dubious projects.

We’ve heard the reports of political interference with scientific work before, but I had no idea how widespread it was. More that half those responding to a survey of scientists at the EPA reported they had experienced political interference in their work. To some degree this group may be self-selecting, so here are the numbers from the Union of Concerned Scientists report:

The online questionnaire was sent to 5,419 EPA scientists last summer; 1,586 replied, and of those, 889 reported that they had experienced at least one type of interference within the last five years.

889 scientists at the EPA reporting that science has been abrogated for politics! Interestingly the scientists singled out the Office of Management and Budget at the White House as one of the main sources of interference.

Skip to 1:00 for the message. Sign the petition here.

Michigan State University professor Philip Howard has documented the tangled web that are organic products today.

Have fun seeing who owns your favorite organic brand. The same sort of chart can be found here too.

A while back James Hansen, chief climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, published a paper Target Atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? I finally got around to reading it, you should too.

Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 425±75 ppm, a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture
CO2, is herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The
stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is
continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.

Mr. Hansen uses some pretty strong language, but backs it up with some equally strong data. There is also a Powerpoint presentation available here.

Hulu is a web based TV and Movie service. Here is what they say about themselves:

We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection from more than 50 content providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more to deliver premium programming across all genres and formats, television shows, feature films, and clips. Watch full-length episodes of current primetime TV shows such as The Simpsons and The Office the morning after they air, classics like Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Nip/Tuck, and others. Hulu also offers full-length feature films like The Usual Suspects, Ice Age, Three Amigos!, and The Big Lebowski as well as clips from films such as Napoleon Dynamite, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Devil Wears Prada and many more. Hulu is free and ad-supported — available anytime in the U.S.

You can find all sorts of TV shows and movies there and the quality is a lot better than Youtube. It might just make you cancel your cable subscription. I went through and tried to find all the Green shows. There were only a couple full length episodes, the rest were short clips, though still worth watching.

You can find them all here.

From Treehugger:

Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement announced yesterday that Bisphenol A would be listed as a toxic substance and banned the use of polycarbonate plastic baby bottles.

Progress. Now if I could just find Stephen Johnson’s email…

Joseph Romm on solar thermal/concentrated solar power (CSP) in Salon. Mr. Romm thinks that CSP is “the technology that will save humanity.” Actually, I’m not sure if he wrote that or if that is just the copy that Salon stuck in. Either way I hate it when such hyperbole is attached to the environmental movement. People can only hear so many Paul Ehrlich-esque The Sky Is Falling statements before they tune out and stop listening.

That point aside the rest of the article is, as usual, excellent. Here are some tidbits:

Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States.

…That means Congress and the president must renew the 30 percent solar energy investment tax credit through 2016. After all, it’s the least they can do. From 2002 to 2007, fossil fuels received almost $14 billion in electricity-related tax subsides, whereas renewables received under $3 billion. From 1948 to today, nuclear energy R&D exceeded $70 billion, whereas R&D for renewables was about $10 billion.

This is a technology that is available now. Why aren’t we pouring money into it?

It appears climate denier Lawrence Solomon (of the National Post) was trying to do some creative obfuscation editing of science historian Noami Oreskes wikipedia entry when he got caught.

From the comments at Mr. Solomon’s site:

Mr. Solomon writes an excellent article - but unfortunately most of it is significantly biased and subject to interpretation.

Wikipedia cannot take Mr. Solomon’s word that Peiser has communicated with him - or that his interpretation of Peiser is correct. That can only be established via what Wikipedia calls reliable sources. So no matter how much Mr. Solomon complains it wouldn’t matter.

Wikipedia has such a reliable source - a communication from Peiser with the Australian ABC. And we have to rely on that.

Now a bit of background here. Naomi Oreskes paper (the one mentioned here) has been published in the rather prestigious scientific journal Nature. While Peisers critique is unpublished and available on his website.

Normally this would mean that Peiser’s critique wouldn’t be mentioned at all on Wikipedia - since there is a hard rule on not allowing self-published sources. But in this case Peiser has been commented on so much, that it merits a mention on Oreskes biographical article.

Mr. Solomons edits were significantly partisan (as is his article above), and these kinds of edits are routinely reverted, especially when done on a biography of a living person - and doubly so - when the only documentation for the claims is an anonymous editors claim that “he got this from Peiser himself”. (Yes - Mr. Solomon didn’t identify himself).

Seen at DeSmogBlog.