Feet of CO2?

Does Al Gore have feet of CO2? Apparently, he and Tipper live in a 10,000 sq ft mansion that eats up lots of energy. According to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research:

"The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average. . . . Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359. . . .
Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year."

Gore's response:
Vice President Gore’s office told ThinkProgress:
1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.
2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets {emphasis mine} to offset the family’s carbon footprint. Gore’s office explains: What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

I admire Al Gore for the work he's done on behalf of global warming and for his refusal to hide in a corner and pout after the Presidency was stolen from him. But I'm disappointed in his dependence on a lame scheme like carbon offsets to minimize his environmental footprint. All of these types of schemes, whether they're used by individuals or corporations or countries, are nothing more than the rich avoiding the hard facts and choices necessary to cut energy consumption. In Gore's defense, both he and his wife work out of their home and it's an older home that they're renovating. Presumably, when the renovation is complete, the house will be more energy efficient.
Now, let's take a look at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. Founded by 24 year-old Drew Johnson in 2004, it is an obscure conservative think tank. Johnson began his career at the tender age of 22 at the American Enterprise Institute (aka the George Bush-Exxon Mobil Bedfellows Institute)! Who funds TCPR? I'm sure someone (i.e., some blogger) is looking into that even as I write.
In the meantime, Al, get that house updated and start saving energy!

An Inconvenient Truth Wins Award!

An Inconvenient Truth, the movie of globetrotting Al Gore's powerpoint presentation on climate change, won an Academy award last night. Gore has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize, according to several websites. Him and 180 other individuals and organizations!
I admire Gore and hope he makes the most of all this attention and adulation he's receiving right now. Makes the most of it for the environment--i.e., the planet and you and me--and for himself.
Go Al!

Carbon Cost Labels

Peter Martyn of the Toronto Star writes about "a small idea to fight climate change" (2/25). His idea is to create labels that list the carbon cost for every consumer good. The cost--in carbon emissions--of the manufacture, transport, marketing and distribution of every product available for purchase would be front and center on the product.
Would you be so determined to buy that SUV if the precise cost to the environment was pasted on the windshield next to the sticker price? Maybe a hybrid might be a better choice. Or public transportation.
The next time you're in Starbucks, imagine the menu labeled with the environmental and social cost of each $5 cup of coffee. The last time I checked, Starbucks used very little Fair Trade coffee. You overpay for a product that Starbucks pays pennies to acquire from the farmers who grow the beans. But I'm getting far afield here.
Martyn's idea takes Bill McKibben's "local food" idea a step further by labeling everything with an environmental sticker so people know exactly what kind climate havoc--or climate healing--they're causing when they make a purchasing decision.
He also has an idea how to get started with the project by using college students and their professors to compute the formulas and supercomputers to back them up.
Food for thought!

Diseases Spread to New Territories

The L.A. Times (2/25) carries an article about the small, very small, effects of climate change. Small referring the organisms that cause disease. Germs are on the move. Environments that were previously too cold for them to survive are now warmer and the preferred destination for pathogens on the move. Vibrio, a bacteria in oysters that causes the runs in people who eat them, used to be confined in temperate waters in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2004, it turned up in Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska.
Encephalitis-carrying ticks are moving further north in Sweden and up into the mountains of the Czech Republic. "This shift of the ticks is clearly connected with climate changes," says Milan Daniel, a parasitologist the Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education in Prague.
Malaria is turning up in the cool, mountainous regions of Africa. The villages of formerly snow-covered Mt. Kenya are now warm enough that germ-laden mosquitos are able to advance up the mountain.
Diseases spread by many methods: with the movement of people, by developing resistance to medications, breeding in environments with poor sanitation, etc. If bacteria or parasites are carried into a hostile environment they won't survive. But if they are able to colonize a newly hospitable site, they surely will. Like the mountain pine beetle ravaging Canada's spruce forests, diseases will soon lay waste to populations that have never before experienced them.

Exxon CEO Can't Make Up His Mind

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson is at it again. NYT reports on a speech he gave at an energy conference organized by Cambridge Energy Research Associates in which he said that “the scale advantages of oil and natural gas across a broad array of applications provide economic value unmatched by any alternative."
Tillerson predicted that carbon-based fuels would dominate other forms of energy as energy demand grows by as much as 40 percent in the next quarter century.
Saying that he hasn't read the IPCC's latest report published earlier this month, Tillerson said that “my understanding is there’s not a clear 100 percent conclusion drawn.” However, he seemed to acknowledge the severity of the problems caused by climate change: “So, despite the uncertainties, it is prudent to develop and implement sensible strategies that address these risks.”
But then he warned that "precipitous" policy decisions could damage the global economy and make future generations pay for hasty actions taken now.
Mentioning that Exxon scientists are working on a specific type of ethanol, Tillerson then said that he doesn't see a role for Exxon. In developing alternative fuels or what?
His comments seem to go from wanting to be perceived as being "sensitive" about climate change (see previous post) to defending the corporation's unchanging position as a unrepentent carbon fuel dinosaur.

Exxon Mobil "Misunderstood"

Saying that "the appropriate debate isn't on whether the climate is changing but rather should be on what we should be doing about it," Exxon Mobil VP Kenneth Cohen claims the oil monster has been misunderstood all these years. The Post reports that the statement is an "evolution" of Exxon's former position that global warming is not affected by human activities. Former Exxon CEO and unrepenant climate foe, Lee Raymond, considers GW a hoax. According to the Economist (12/24/05), Raymond's view of GW is "heartfelt and extreme scepticism about climate science." This would require that the man has a heart--he is after all the force behind the paltry sum of $300,000 paid out to Alaska citizens affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. And 17 years later, Exxon is still trying to avoid paying out $4 billion in punitive damages to Alaska fishermen.
Back to the poor, misundestood corporate behemoth. Post staff writer Steven Mufson writes that Exxon is no longer funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, cynical base of GW obfuscation. And Exxon has given $100 million to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project.
So is Exxon doing an about face? Between the rock of dwindling oil supplies and the hard facts of climate change, one might expect Exxon and the other oils companies to throw themselves and their enormous resources into finding alternative energy sources. Wouldn't they rather be known as Exxon Mobil Energy Corp? (Yes, I'm an optimist!)

New IPCC report in the news

The Post's Juliet Eilperin reported findings of the new IPCC report released on 2/2/07. The report states, with a 90 percent certainty, that humans are responsible for global temperatures that will propbably increase by as much as 4.5 degrees F by 2100. This will result in melting polar ice sheets and the extinction of huge numbers of species--events that could be irreversible. More extreme weather, such as droughts in the US southwest and heavier rains in the northeast, are to be expected.
NYT carries the basically the same reporting on the publication itself, then reports that some scientists believe the IPCC is too conservative in its forecasting. Cornelia Dean reports that scientists researching sea level rise are particularly unhappy with the IPCC's latest warnings. Quoting a US scientist as asserting that "the observed sea level rise has been tracking the upper range," Dean reports that with a 2005 cutoff for research findings, the panel didn't take into account the fact that ice sheets appear to be melting at a more accelerated rate than had been expected.
Newsweek.com also weighs in with a pre-release article that criticizes the IPCC for being too reticent. Based on some of the same information as the NYT article, Newsweek also quotes a German scientist on the speed of ice melting. The problem of conservative estimates is blamed on the requirement for unanimous agreement on report language by representatives of 154 countries.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. I'm a first-time blogger and my interest is in environmental issues and climate change specifically. I'll be monitoring the mainstream media to see what they're reporting about the environment and climate change. I'm interested in the mainstream media because that's where many Americans still get their news. I'll be looking primarily at print media and occasionally television news.
If you share these interests, please drop in from time to time to see what's new--and what's news!