Thomas Friedman can't believe that Sarah Palin isn't CO2-phobic

[Friedman] The northern edge of Alaska is melting off into the ocean and she doesn't believe mankind has anything to do with climate change. I'd just have to ask her a very simple question: "Have you studied this issue? Have you read the literature? Have you talked to a climatologist in your own state about it? Or is this simply a political mantra that you've gotten because it's convenient and fits with your expedient political needs of the moment? On what basis are you making that claim? We have the intergovernment panel on climate, the world's 2500 top climatologists who have concluded that mankind is indeed interfering with the climate. Do you have science to the contrary?"

The point is not global warming. The chapter in the book on climate is called "global weirding," which is a term coined by Lovins, because I think that's a much better description of what's going to go on. The weather is going to get weird! It isn't just going to get warm. What happens with climate change is that you get extremes: hotter hots, longer droughts, wetter wets, more frequent and forceful hurricanes, tornadoes showing up in cities where they've never shown up before... That's what's going to happen. To this it's this gentle, little global warming -- that's not what's going to go on. The weather's going to get weird and, in case you haven't noticed, the weather's getting weird!

The Chilling Effect | Where's the actual evidence that coal is "killing us"?

Sen. Joe Biden flatly stated that coal is killing you, just months after Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it’s making us sick. So what about it? Is coal killing us?

We doubt anyone would suggest huffing coal particulates for kicks and giggles, and if they did, it would be best not to heed their call. But here’s something that Senators Biden and Reid may have missed, probably because they are not on the Senate committee overseeing the Department of Health and Human Services.

Here’s a little factoid: Our life expectancies are at an all-time high...

Prometheus » Blog Archive » An Insider’s View on RGGI

[The below was submitted as a comment on an earlier post, and seems well worth highlighting. It is an insider's view on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) of 10 northeastern states. The idea that speculators could enter the market to drive up the value of the permits is very intriguing. RP]...