- obese people worsen global warming!

It stands to reason that larger people eat more than smaller ones, which means that it takes more agricultural production — a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions — to feed them, too.
Basic physics also tells us that it takes more energy to move larger people around in planes, trains or automobiles. And unless [...]

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- confused this Earth Day?

What, exactly, is the world coming to? How worried, precisely, should we be about the state of our climate, our energy system, our food supplies, our water, the air we breath? What really is — or might soon — be the problem with any of these?
It’s hard to keep track and easy to [...]

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- Spring is sprung (already)

Today is the first official day of Spring.
It finds Verlyn Klinkenborg, the New York Times ‘Rural Life’ columnist, in rhapsodies. He writes:
“What cheers me, though, is the thought that spring isn’t a human season, not like the seasons we create for ourselves.”
Elsewhere, however, writers fear that even if it’s not of our own creation, [...]

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– on the environment, Southern Baptists get religion

A group of prominent Southern Baptist leaders today declared that their denomination has been ‘too timid’ on the issue of climate change.
The authors take pains to note that they’re not necessarily saying that humans are responsible for Global Warming. But they do make the following observation:
“There is undeniable evidence that the earth—wildlife, water, [...]

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it’s in how you spin it.

Two stories in today’s UK press remind us that Global Warming can be spun as either positive or negative — especially if you live on an island known for long periods of gloom-inducing sunlessness.
“Climate change may kill thousands in UK by 2017,” worries Reuters.
Meanwhile, the BBC tells us that, “Global warming ‘may save lives.’”
Both headlines [...]

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Unpopular thoughts about population

The Guardian’s George Monbiot draws attention today to the discomfort that many environmentalists feel when it comes to discussing global population growth. Responses to the article take him to task for positing a false dichotomy between population and consumption, but both the article and the comments are worth a look.

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more articles about water

The new issue of Science reports on “a coming crisis in water supply for the western United States,” the Associated Press tells us today.
“Human activity such as driving and powering air conditioners is responsible for up to 60 percent of changes contributing to dwindling water supplies in the arid and growing West, a new study [...]

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“The Unquiet Ice”

Here’s a story from the most recent issue of the very mainstream Scientific American. It’s a look at the dramatic effect that newly-discovered reserves of water under the Antarctic ice sheets might have on rising sea levels.

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