Climate Change

  • How Meat, Especially Beef, Contributes to Global Warming

    Ralph Maughan

    Those who write for this blog don’t think, “beef, it’s what for dinner.”  If you care about the future of humankind, at least it shouldn’t be. This from the Scientific American. How Meat Contributes to Global Warming: Producing beef for the table has a surprising environmental cost: it releases prodigious amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.…

  • How Will the Stimulus Affect Energy?

    Ralph Maughan

    This article suggests the energy stimulus will be mostly green and decentralized- I’m not sure how the author of this article (Richard Martin) knows this, but he says the part of the stimulus directed specifically at energy will consist mostly of community based activities, retrofitting, energy efficiency and the like. I add that this kind…

  • Obama to Take Steps On Car Fuel Efficiency

    Ralph Maughan

    Announces two policies that will speed efficient and less CO2 emitting vehicles- Obama to Take Steps On Car Fuel Efficiency. By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson. Washington Post Staff Writers

  • Another "Burrowing" Bush Loyalist

    Ken Cole

    Kathie Olsen, a Bush climate change denier in the National Science Foundation “burrows” into a civil service position. A Loyal Bushie Burrows Into Obama’s System By Elana Schor Talking Points Memo

  • In Obama’s Team, 2 Camps on Climate

    Ralph Maughan

    Want a relatively inexpensive method of removing carbon with small economic impact? Remove livestock from the vast acreage of public lands- Story in the New York Times. Two camps. By John Broder  (story doesn’t mention the above because Obama team is unaware of how much cattle and sheep reduce the amount of carbon rangelands can…

  • Increasing Agreement on Carbon Taxes — Goodbye 2008 Conventional Wisdom

    Ralph Maughan

    Huffington Post Analysis says carbon taxes work better and more feasible politically than cap-and-trade- The argument that cap-and-trade has always had going for it was political feasibility, but maybe a revenue neutral carbon tax is more feasible. Economic theory would predict a more rapid response to a tax than to a market in pollution (or…

  • Plan approved for drilling 18,000 gas wells in Montana

    Ralph Maughan

    Every well pad disrupts from 5 to 20 acres- Leaking gas is a potent climate changer. Disrupted soil does not sequester carbon. Native vegetation at the well site is almost impossible to restore. Coalbed methane wells produce huge amounts of saline (generally unreusuable water). Story by Matthew Brown. Plan approved for gas wells. AP

  • Idaho is a manure gold mine. Methane can be captured from the state's pile of muck

    Ralph Maughan

    Potent greenhouse gas (methane) from mega-feedlots could become fuel rather than fueling global warming- Idaho’s energy czar wants to harness power of manure. By The Associated Press Southern Idaho is full of vast stinky livestock feedlots (dairy and beef). Here is one way to amelioate the situation

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‎”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”

Edward Abbey

“The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans.”

Jim Fowler

“Our forests offer much more than just beautiful landscapes and wildlife. Each one has a different story to tell.”

Raveena Tandon

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