Longtime readers of this blog may remember an entry I wrote back in early November discussing George Monbiot's opinion piece titled "How sport is killing the planet." Apparently Mr. Monbiot's piece has resonated through the world of motorsports. Thanks to fellow blogger and big-time racing fan Alan Reppert for sending me a hard copy of an article from the December 2006 issue of F1 Racing (not available on-line) titled F1's Green Credentials.

Seems Formula 1 racing is feeling the pressure from the green lobby and is taking steps to improve their image. Turbo engines may return by 2011 - back in the '80s, turbos were a symbol of F1 excess, but the new turbos would be a means of producing power efficiently. In addition, F1

has the potential to provide the major car manufacturers with an opportunity to develop, showcase and popularise future technologies that will help to reduce the global problem of transport emissions.

The article doesn't specify any technologies which will be focused on, but does mention the potential of energy recovery from functions such as braking.

In other sports-related news, Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah will be holding a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. tomorrow, January 9th at the Eccles Center to present the first-ever comprehensive study on global warming's potential effect on the Utah ski and snowboard industry. The meeting will include a presentation of the material from Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, followed by model results of temperatures and snowfall amounts through the remainder of the century. Park City Mountain Resort has received 97 inches of snow so far this ski season.

A couple of quick pieces to touch on this afternoon from New England. First, global warming will be on the ballot in New Hampshire. At least 50 towns will vote by ballot on the New Hampshire Climate Change Resolution, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other steps to slow warming. The towns participating use ballot voting rather than Town Meetings. This is a grassroots effort to push global warming as a major issue in the 2008 presidential primaries.

Second, I appreciated a piece on Boston.com from Cathy Young on the politicization of the science of global warming. The piece rightly points out that as many on the right are quick to dismiss global warming based on economic motives, many environmentalists are equally quick to believe the worst in order to press for their own agenda. That agenda virtually never includes what may be the easiest current technology to produce electricity without greenhouse emissions, nuclear power.

Ms. Young's piece concludes:

Most journalists and pundits have limited knowledge of science; as a result, they tend to pick whichever science best suits their political prejudices. Both science and journalism deserve better. Perhaps we can start by remembering that an ideological crusade can be as strong an inducement to bend the truth as the profit motive.

ABCnews.com has an interesting article posted about student activism and global warming. Not surprisingly, students are rallying around global warming as an issue the same way they rallied around civil rights, Vietnam, and ecological issues in the '70s. And they're making a difference. The College of the Atlantic in Maine is now carbon neutral. Middlebury College in Vermont has plans to be carbon neutral by 2012. I was a little surprised to see that the University of Oklahoma buys 100 percent wind energy - surprised because such actions seem to be occurring at small, private schools rather than at state universities.

I have mixed feelings about this story. It's great that students continue to step up and be active and be involved. Much better than spending their free time in college partying without a thought to what's in the future. On the other side of the coin, I'm reminded of a Penn and Teller piece I saw a few months ago. It was from the series they had on Showtime. In the episode, a producer went to a rally for an ecological cause with a petition to ban "dihydrogen monoxide." Yep. Good ol' H2O. And they had no shortage of signers. How many of these students are well informed, and how many are just followers?

Sir Richard Branson announced today a $25 million prize for the first person to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Obviously, CO₂ is not a pollutant in the way the toxic materials scrubbed out of smokestacks are pollutants - in fact, it's a necessary component of the atmosphere.

The prize, which Branson announced along with former Vice President Al Gore and British ex-diplomat Crispin Tickell, will initially be open for five years. The winner will have to come up with a way of removing one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years. $5 million of the prize money will be paid upfront, and the remaining $20 at the end.

How many trees would it take to remove one billions metric tons per year out of the atmosphere? YIKES.

According to Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery, 200 metric gigatons of carbon have accumulated in the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution, raising concentrations by 100 parts per million.

Will anyone step up and take this prize? It will be interesting to watch. Richard Branson continues to put his money where his mouth is on the subject of global warming, I respect him for that.

Two conservation groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Environment are suing the federal government for not doing enough to protect polar bears and walruses against the threats of oil and gas exploration and global warming.

The groups say the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not fully consider the effects of global warming, such as diminished sea ice, as it wrote regulations allowing for incidental harassment of polar bears and walruses by the industry in the Beaufort Sea and nearby coastal areas.

The lawsuit focuses on the legal "incidental taking" of polar bears and walruses, which is defined not just as killing an animal, but also as "harassment that disturbs and behavior."

Between 1994 and 2000, oil and gas industries reported 258 polar bear sightings and 66 instances of direct harassment of polar bears, an average of fewer than 10 per year. The number of harassment incidents did jump to 36 in 2004, however.

Does the suit bring more attention to the issues of conservation? Yes. But at what cost?

Al Gore has announced a series of concerts around the world to focus on the threat of climate change. The concerts, dubbed Live Earth, will take place in seven cities, one on each of the populated continents plus an additional concert in Asia in July. More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg and Bon Jovi. I read this and felt a little bit like I was having a flashback to the '80s, when Live Aid, Farm Aid and other large scale benefit concerts were born. The next thought that crossed my mind, as I read the list of performers, was what does Tipper think?

As I discussed previously (And the Oscar Goes to...), this year's Academy Awards went green.

With the propulsive effects of months and months of hype behind it, it came as no surprise to just about everyone that "An Inconvenient Truth," the Al Gore documentary on global warming, won best documentary feature. Said director Davis Guggenheim, as quoted in the Academy Awards wrap-up article in The New York Times, "I made this movie for my children...We were moved to act by this man."

Gore, who attended the event, equally unsurprisingly took the opportunity to proselytize on his favorite subject: "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis," he said, adding that the "will to act" was a renewable resource. "Let's renew it," he said.

More amusing (or I should say, "Amusing") was Melissa Etheridge, who won an Academy Award for the song "I Need to Wake Up," which appeared in the documentary. Referring to the Oscar in her hands, Etheridge said that it would be "the only naked man who will ever be in my bedroom."

As reported in the article, Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio "announced in the middle of the telecast that the program had offset its carbon emissions by buying energy credits" (What Price Global Warming?). "This show has officially gone green," DiCaprio said.

You'll also no doubt be pleased to learn that the Academy Awards used recycled paper for the Oscar ballots.

In the ski resort business, the weather is everything. Even if the snow doesn't fall, cold weather allows snowmaking. When the cold doesn't come, the ski season gets shortened and the profits go downhill faster than those insane skiers in the Olympics. The key in Aspen?

"To be in business," says Patrick O'Donnell, who was Aspen's CEO and environmental conscience for a decade before retiring in November, "we rely on putting down 2 feet of good [artificial] snow, good hard snow that we make the last two weeks of October and the first two weeks of November. That way, when March comes, we can still have skiing, we can still get a full rate for our lift tickets."

Aspen's been on the edge in recent years, making snow within a degree or a degree and a half of being able to. Understandably, they have more than a passing interest in global warming, and a greater sense of urgency than most of us about making the kinds of changes that could slow warming down. Aspen has made some significant changes in their business practices to reduce their emissions, and hope to have an impact on the way others live as well. Much as NASCAR could bring alternative fuels into the forefront for its legion of fans, Aspen hopes to inspire the 55 million skiers in this country (many of them affluent) to drive change by taking political action, supporting advocacy groups and making changes in their own lives to reduce their carbon footprints.

Aspen can drive change, but it may well be too late to save that one degree - even if greenhouse gas emissions dropped tremendously today, climate scientists say warming will continue for decades.

It's got to be challenging organizing any sort of demonstration to bring (even more) attention to the issue of global warming. After all, if you make people travel or use a lot of electricity, you'll have some people pointing fingers at you saying you are a hypocrite. See Exhibit A: Gore, Al. Can't wait to hear the furor over the Live Earth concerts this summer. So when I saw a headline saying Florida Governor Crist Joins Stop Global Warming Virtual March, I thought that was a pretty smart way to draw attention to the issue without expending a lot of energy. And when the "marchers" include senators, members of congress, governors, celebrities and athletes, the "virtual march" is likely to receive some attention, even if another word for "virtual march" might just be "petition."

Earth Day, that greenest of holidays - no offense to St. Paddy's! - is focused on climate change this year. The holiday has always been about things like recycling, conserving energy and resources and cleaning up the environment. Climate change is a natural expansion of the holiday's purpose.

Green seems to be everywhere in the news lately - not just global warming as an issue, but all sorts of ecological stuff. Maybe it's a function of higher energy prices, which bring people's attention to conservation as a means of saving money. For whatever reason, it's everywhere. Discovery Communications is even launching a whole channel devoted to environmentally friendly living, replacing their Discovery Home channel with Discovery Planet Green in 2008. Discovery's stunning Planet Earth mini-series is helping to fuel interest in the new channel, according to Discovery executives. Robert Redford's Sundance Channel is devoting a weekly block of time, called "the Green," to environmental issues.

I laughed out loud yesterday when I read that mock rockers Spinal Tap will be appearing at Wembley Stadium in London as part of Al Gore's Live Earth concerts on July 7. For those who might not be aware, Spinal Tap was the subject of Rob Reiner's 1984 cult classic This Is Spinal Tap, a "rockumentary" about a fictional heavy metal band. Let me admit here that I have seen bits and pieces of the movie, but never the whole thing.

Rob Reiner has been active in environmental causes for more than 20 years, so it's understandable that he wants to be involved in this project. I question whether it's a good idea, however. I'm not an advocate of any particular position here, but I'm curious about what people think. Is this a positive for Live Earth as an event, or does the satiric nature of Spinal Tap spill over onto Live Earth as an event and turn it into a parody?

Love it or hate it, you can't argue with the clout that the world's largest retailer carries. Wal-Mart has made a commitment to go green in its stores and to push for sustainability in its product lines. All this makes good business sense - saving electricity in its stores by reducing lighting needs and shifting to LEDs (light-emitting diodes) for lighting its signs and, in test stores in Aurora, Colo. and McKinney, Texas, in refrigerator cases will save the retailer plenty of money. Insisting suppliers reduce package sizes saves materials, but also saves shelf space.

A company the size of Wal-Mart can make demands of its suppliers and get results. The most recent demand? Cut the mercury in CFL bulbs. Each CFL bulb uses a very small amount of mercury, but as the bulbs become more popular, disposing of them safely will become a more important issue. Some environmentalists have made the argument that they actually produce less mercury pollution than incandescent bulbs because coal-fired power plants produce mercury. CFLs do need to be disposed of properly, however, and that requires consumer responsibility. In my own community, collection of mercury-containing items occurs only once a year, and is a drop-off, rather than a pick-up program. Perhaps Wal-Mart could follow in the footsteps of IKEA, which offers a drop-off spot in each of its stores.

What's this? Rupert Murdoch is taking News Corp. carbon neutral by 2010. News Corporation has joined The °Climate Group, an independent, nonprofit organization "dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change."

Murdoch is planning on bringing News Corp.'s carbon footprint from 641,150 tons per year to zero through a number of initiatives, including providing incentives to employees to purchase or lease hybrid vehicles and purchasing renewable energy.

The Boston Herald reports:

It also plans to use its media properties - which include Fox, the Post, social networking giant MySpace and The Times of London - to push going green among viewers.

What say you, Fox News viewers?

In case you needed more proof that global warming is one of the hot issues in Washington right now, check out Warming's Long Green Shadow from Congressional Quarterly Weekly. This article cites numerous examples of environmental groups and environmentalists jumping on the global warming bandwagon for funding or for attention from politicians or just to feel they are part of an issue they believe overrides any other environmental issue today.

The global warming debate has "driven a lot of other people's agendas because that's where the big money is," said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program. "If you want to try and get funding for things, tying it into climate change will help you get money."

Some environmentalists are concerned that the focus on global warming is taken attention away from other environmental issues, and that those organizations that don't take advantage of the current climate (groan) in Washington are going to lose out on a significant opportunity to raise money and awareness for their projects.

You'd think wind power would be extremely popular with conservationists. After all, it's completely renewable, clean, almost silent, and carbon-free. However, wind has its fair share of critics. The turbines aren't exactly attractive, but more often, the criticism comes from people who say the turbines kill too many birds.

A brief article in this week's edition of Nature discusses wind farms' deadly reputation (this article is subscription only, and honestly - it's not worth paying for on it's own - it's very short. Read if you're a subscriber, or check your local library if you're not but are interested). The subject of this article is a report by the US National Academy of Sciences which found that it takes over 30 wind turbines to create a kill-rate of one bird per year. I believe this is what is called a meta-study; researchers examined the results of 14 studies they considered to be of good quality to reach their conclusions. American wind turbines seem to kill around 40,000 birds per year, while many fewer than are killed by domestic cats.

Wait, though - there are some caveats here. After all, your average cat is killing sparrows and other small birds, while wind turbines in California's Altamont pass has killed golden eagles.

Not too many kitties are killing eagles. Large birds have lower reproduction rates than small birds, so the rate at which they are killed by wind turbines does need to be studied. Just saying "birds" when talking about wind turbine kill rates is a little like comparing apples and bricks.

An interesting editorial appeared in the Sacramento Bee last Friday. It discusses the great divide in the United States over global warming policy, not the divide between Republicans and Democrats, but the divide between representatives of states dependent on carbon - either producers of fossil fuels or of automobiles, and representatives of states not so dependent, especially California, with its leading edge legislation on greenhouse gas emissions.

The New York Times' Science Times section today ran an interview with Barry Commoner, "the Paul Revere of the environmental movement". If you're not familiar with Commoner, a long-time environmentalist (Commoner is a spry 90 years old), the article will give you an appreciation of the breadth of his activism and influence, as he discusses, among other issues, why global warming is serving as a galvanizing force in the environmentalism movement.

A newly launched website called climatecounts.org is grading large companies on their efforts to address climate change. The nonprofit organization, funded by Stonyfield Farm, Inc. produces organic yogurt and has come up with a 0-100 point scale scorecard to see how serious companies are about stopping climate change.

College students in 100 countries have been asked to come up with a video game based on Global Warming by the "Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge". According to the show, Living on Earth, the winner will receive a 25,000 dollar college scholarship with the chance that their winning game gets to go up against all the other Microsoft Xbox Live games. The competition is hoping to reach 100,000 students.

I don't know. A game like that might be a pretty tough sell, especially to the younger crowd, who tend like games with a lot of quick, changing action. This would have to be a slow, strategy type game I would think, unless you put an accelerated hollywood-like twist to it.

Al Gore, in a 30 minute speech at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, urged top advertising companies across the world to work commercially and voluntarily on getting out the message against global warming. According to the Reuters article, the former Vice President received a standing ovation and a green lions trophy at the conclusion of the speech.

Based on the applause, perhaps we can expect to see more commercials and ads on the dangers of global warming in the near future.

Al Gore knew he could not get his message out about the dangers of global warming without some help, so he decided to recruit 1000 volunteers to help spread the word. This idea became the "The Climate Project". According to the project director, Jenny Clad, applicants were chosen on their ability to commit to doing 10 presentations and reaching unique groups of people. But, there were no questions in the application about the applicants background with meteorology, climatology or any kind of science. Once the applicants were selected, there was a training session held in Nashville, Tennessee.

A British man, trying to bring attention to climate change, and probably just as much to himself, became the first person to swim the icy waters near the North Pole. In the article from RTE News, Lewis Gordon Pugh swam 1 kilometer (~.6 miles) in -1 degree celsius (30 F) water for over 18 minutes with just a bathing suit! Due to global warming, the swim took place in a water hole where there is normally thick ice. Gordon has also swam on five continents, including the cold waters along Norway.

Also, here is a link to a video by CNN on the story click here.

According to an article from the Christian Broadcasting Network, a large number (160) of CEOs from major companies are teaming up in the battle against global warming. A few of the more notable companies taking part are Exxon, Walmart, Dupont and Peabody Energy, which by the way is the largest coal producer in the country. The group states that "collective actions" should be taken now to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. One example of this effort was Walmart, which has cut fuel usage in their delivery trucks, making them 15% more efficient. The company hopes to reach 25% by late next year. The company believes that the annual savings in carbon dioxide emissions annually will be equal to taking 68,000 cars off the road.

A side note from the moderator..... please "try" to keep the comments focused on the blog subject. I know sometimes that is hard to do, and I understand that, but a lot of recent comments have drifted away from the main subject and I have received a number of concerns about this. Overall, I think we have had some great discussion in the month that I have been moderating this blog and I thank everyone for participating and voicing their opinions. Brett.

In this latest video, Katie Fehlinger discusses recycling and how global warming may be making your eyes water a little more than usual. In the feature topic, Katie outlines the 7-point pledge from Al Gore, which is a personal committment to combat global warming by those who sign up.

What is your opinion of the 7-point pledge?

If you are interested in taking the pledge, here is a link to The Alliance for Climate Protection

The popular Fox television series 24 plans to reduce, and in some cases eliminate their carbon emissions over the course of this new season. According to Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori, the drama will become the first Los Angeles based television series to go completely carbon neutral. How do they plan to do this? In the story posted on Canada.com, the series plans the following...............

1. Use biodiesel fuels to power generators and production vehicles.
2. Purchase all of its energy through renewable sources such as wind, solar and water.
3. Gas powered trucks and cars would be converted to low-emission hybrid vehicles.

Keifer Sutherland, who plays the invincible Jack Bauer plans to do a series of public service announcements on energy conservation. Maybe this will mean that we will see a lot less explosions in the new season.......yea right!

Here's an idea for a season plot, how about re-using those syntox gas containers from a few seasons ago and filling them with highly concentrated greenhouse gas?

By the way, I would like to thank Laura Hannon for sending me the link to this story.

Lester Brown, one of the U.S.'s most respected environmentalists and the president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank believes that civilization is in trouble due to our overpopulated and overconsuming world. He blames an economic system that rewards production without regard for environmental impact.

In the Time.com article, Brown lays out an alternate path that could save us from the worst consequences of climate change, and he calls it Plan B. Here is a sampling of Brown's Plan B..........

1. Winding down our dependence on coal and eventually phase it out.
2. Reduce global carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2020.
3. Improve energy efficiency.
4. Develop renewable sources of power.
5. Expand the Earth's forest cover.
6. Build new wind turbines with the same urgency that the U.S. produced
tanks and bombers during World War II and we could generate 3 million
megawatts of wind power by 2020, enough to meet 40% of the world's
energy needs.
7. Utilize more geothermal energy, which according to Brown is 50,000 times
more powerful than all of our oil or natural gas.
8. Phase in a worldwide carbon tax at $20 per ton each year between
2008-2020, topping out at $240 per ton.

How much would all of this cost? Brown estimates that the coast of his Plan B
would cost the world an additional $190 billion per year. He compares this to
the global military budget, which is more than $1.2 trillion.

Brown feels that all we have to do is find the political and popular will to
implement the plan, but that will be a tough sell, as the real battle over climate change is now political, not technological, and it's one that too many environmentalists tend to discount, according to the article.

There is also a podcast about Brown and his new book on the Time.com link.

Hi folks, Jesse here again. As I always do on the holidays, I curled up on the couch at my mother-in-law's house on Easter Sunday and read a paper (that's right!) edition of Wired magazine, a technological rag that I've followed since its inception in the early 1990's, AKA Ye Olde College Days. On page 25 (the online edition is not out as of this writing, check the Wired website in the near future for the article) was an article entitled "Cooling the Globe? Been There, Done That."

It was about a fellow named William Ruddiman, a retired climatologist, who says that humans started influencing the environment as early as 6,000 BC and that one of their biggest contributions was dying en masse around the year 1600, which reduced CO2 emissions by 10 parts per million.

Rice Paddies - Big Offender? (AP Photo)

Ruddiman's main points were that 1.) If we've been changing the climate that long, we should be able to steer it back on track and 2.) We should concentrate more on things like methane emissions from landfalls and rice farmers.

As many of you remember from an earlier blog, Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), and one of the leading voices about the potential dangers of man-made global warming was arrested back in June during a protest against the Coal River Mountain project in West Virginia.

A look at the Coal River Mountain facility from the air. Video courtesy YouTube. Give the video a minute or two to load up before you hit play if you wish to view it.

According to Hansen, the bigger picture, including climate change, makes it clear that mountaintop removal, providing only 7 percent of United States coal, makes no strategic sense whatever.

Anyway, Dr. Hansen gives us some detail on what actually happened at the protest. He also talks about a debate that he and the CEO of the coal removal company were supposed to have, but didn't.

Here is the link to his recent post about the protest on his Columbia University website.