Caught in middle of ethanol fight | StarTribune.com

Wade Summer, a resident who commutes to Owatonna, stopped for a snack on his way to work. When asked by a reporter about keeping the $6 billion subsidy to ethanol, he wonders how much is spent in the Persian Gulf defending oil tankers. "Is $6 billion worth one life?" he asks.

That Footnote in Yesterday’s Global Warming Ruling

the Court quickly distances itself from EPA’s views with an interesting footnote:

“For views opposing EPA’s, see, e.g., Dawidoff, The Civil Heretic, N. Y. Times Magazine 32 (March 29, 2009). The Court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.”

The second line of that footnote would have sufficed all by itself to make clear that this ruling was not about global warming science. But the Court went beyond that to cite a 2009 N.Y. Times Magazine cover story about Nobel Prize-winning physicist Freeman Dyson and his skepticism about anthropogenic warming. Alarmists had been up in arms when that story was published, arguing that it would give the skeptics unwarranted respectability.

Latest Ski News - Ski Club of Great Britain

Graham Bell marks the summer solstice with a heli drop onto Switzerland's highest peak
...As soon as I got out of the helicopter, I was hit by the bitter cold of -25º, and by the lack of oxygen at 4560m. Unfortunately for us the refuge was still closed, although it was due to open later in the day. The staff, when they arrived by helicopter, had a massive task of digging out the door after the winter’s storms.

Has Ban Ki-Moon Lived Up to His Goals as UN Chief? - Global Spin - TIME.com

On some of them, he has made clear although not dramatic progress. The Copenhagen talks may have been an "unmitigated disaster," according to my colleague Bryan Walsh, but action on climate change is now a real international debate.