The Not-Quite-Green Toyota Prius - washingtonpost.com

The Prius's reputation as a "green" car is completely undeserved. The culprit is its nickel metal hydride battery.

The nickel is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and smelted nearby, doing damage to the local environment. The smelted nickel is shipped to Wales, where it is refined. Then it is sent to China to be made into nickel foam. Then it goes to Japan, where it is made into a battery. Then it goes into cars, some of which are shipped to the United States and some of which go to Europe. All of that seaborne transport consumes a lot of fossil fuel.

CNW Marketing rates cars on the combined energy needed "to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage." A Prius costs $2.87 per lifetime mile. By comparison, an H3 Hummer costs $2.07 per lifetime mile. Then there will be the problem of disposing of the used batteries.

This is not a "green" car; it is a "brown" one. [Via Green Hell]

Blah, Blah, Blah: 20 alarmists send another open letter

New information arrives daily to confirm what many specialists have known for three decades: human-caused climatic disruption is serious, moving rapidly, and gaining momentum with every delay in correcting the trend. In 1992 more than 180 nations including the United States met in Rio de Janeiro, signed, and later ratified, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and in so doing agreed to stabilize the heat-trapping gases of the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. We, the nations globally, have not been true to our word, and climate is moving out from under civilization rapidly. Major droughts on every continent are but one current symptom of the scale of the global environmental corruption now entrained.
...
...Speaking in Germany recently, President Obama referred to climatic change as a potentially cataclysmic disaster.  We agree and believe that message must be communicated and elaborated to the American people in time to assure strong, effective Congressional action in both houses of Congress this year.
[Signers include: Donald Kennedy, Michael MacCracken,  Michael E. Mann, Steve Running, Stephen H. Schneider, and Lonnie G. Thompson]

There was a time when we were constantly told that 2,500 expert scientists were in agreement that CO2 was dangerous.  Why did only 20 people sign this letter?  [By the way, why isn't James Hansen on the list of signers?]

Flashback to July '07: Don Kennedy's Science editorial helps mark the very peak of CO2 insanity

With respect to climate change, we have abruptly passed the tipping point in what until recently has been a tense political controversy. Why? Industry leaders, nongovernmental organizations, Al Gore, and public attention have all played a role. At the core, however, it's about the relentless progress of science. As data accumulate, denialists retreat to the safety of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page or seek social relaxation with old pals from the tobacco lobby from whom they first learned to "teach the controversy." Meanwhile, political judgments are in, and the game is over. Indeed, on this page last week, a member of Parliament described how the European Union and his British colleagues are moving toward setting hard targets for greenhouse gas reductions.