Author's posts

5 million pepperoni pizzas recalled (updated)

General Mills has announced they are recalling ~5 million frozen pizza products due to possible E. coli contamination. Also, information has surfaced through congressional testimony that the FDA is not inspecting ~two-thirds of drugs from foreign manufacturers.

See this link for the recall list and further information.

more below the jump…

Oops, they did it again [White House gets caught editing climate change report]

Hasn’t the White House learned anything?  Apparently not, since they’ve just been caught editing yet another scientist in their effort to minimise the dangers of climate change (not Jim Hansen this time).

Who was it?  Dr. Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC, who had her fourteen page strongly worded report on the dangers of climate change to your and my health censored edited by the Bush administration to six milquetoast un-post-consumer-recycled pages…

More below the jump.

Everything but the Oceans’ Sinks

Cross-posted from The Environmentalist

Amidst alarms raised about the loss of ice in the polar regions, the extreme droughts across the US, the floods in the UK earlier this year, the increasingly unstable nature of the weather worldwide, a new concern has been raised about the Southern Oceans’ inability to absorb and store CO2:

The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported on Thursday.

Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming. The phenomenon wasn’t expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain. “We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so,” she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide.

more below the jump…

Morning Environmental News Roundup

From some of my favorite sites around the web (my way of thumbing my nose at that Global Warming denier that showed up here yesterday…argh…):

1. The Environmentalist:

a) NCDC: Drought Spreads across 43% of the US

The National Climate Data Center reported this week that the drought parching the south and the west has now spread to the mid-Atlantic states…

b) The Plight of the Bumblebee

With all the focus on the disappearance of the honeybee, there has been little discussion about the plight of the bumblebee, one of the hardest workers in the wild world of agriculture…

2. Real Climate

a) Convenient Untruths

Last week, a UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools. The judge, Justice Burton found that “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”…

b) The ‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet (yes/no)’ questionnaire

I got an email Climate Expert Survey today from DemandDebate.com, a creation of Steve Milloy. Milloy has practiced to deceive before in the climate arena, and his junkscience.com, claiming to debunk the junk science of others, is actually a terrific source of specious deception in its own right…

More below the jump…

$100 Oil on the Horizon? (Blog Action Day Essay)

In honor of Blog Action Day, this year focused on the environment:

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

I’m going to throw cold water on the future with news of possible, impending, $100 oil (that’s £48.97, 70.49 EU) on the horizon, if oil companies don’t move soon pull to back on their current policies. 

Is it because of supply and demand?  China and India?  The Kurds and the Turks?  The mess in Iraq?  All of the above?

Well… Yes and no.

What are the oil companies citing as their next reason for raising prices?

“Lower Profits”

(Now, now, try to not to spit on the screen in laughter)

More below the jump.

US tells Turkey to stay out of Iraq

Uh oh.

A short except as I don’t have permission for a full cross-post – (I’ve put in a request to site editor – if that comes, I’ll update):

Turkey and America’s strategic partnership is at risk because of the tension growing between the Turkish army on the border of Iraq and the ~3,000 outlawed PKK Kurdish fighters said to be using the mountainous region as a base from which to strike inside Turkey:

The Turkish government is seeking parliamentary approval for a possible cross-border military operation to hunt down Kurdish separatists in Iraq.

Here’s a link to the story.

International Blog Action Day – 0ctober 15

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

International blog action day — this year it will be for the environment — is set for October 15:

On October 15th – Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.  This year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment. link

More below the jump…

NASA’s James Hansen’s New Climate Warning

Climate scientist James Hansen has issued a new draft report on climate change with a warning that we are “dangerously close” to tipping points.

The paper, entitled: Global Warming: East-West Connections, co-written with Mikiko Sato, is important for both its predictions and its validation of the current climate conditions vis-a-vis the climate through both history and from a global perspective.

Some analysis below the jump…

U.K. judge: Gore film biased but OK in schools

An update to this earlier essay, the UK Judge reviewing AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH in response to a lawsuit brought by a Dover truck driver, as determined that the film will be allowed in schools as long as the teacher do not endorse it.

I can see it now.  ‘Hey, lads, watch this film but don’t ask me what I think of it, as I am only your professor…’

More below the jump.

British Govt sued over Gore’s Inconvenient Truth

A truck driver/volunteer school governor from Dover has sued the British government for distributing Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to their secondary schools:

The British government’s decision to circulate Al Gore’s film about climate change to all English secondary schools was challenged in court Thursday by a school governor who believes it is inaccurate and biased.

http://www.msnbc.msn…

More below the jump…

Wolf Update: NRDC vs. Bush Admin ad to hit airwaves [w/video]

An update to my essay here:

Bush Admin to Shoot Endangered Wolves

The NRDC has created the following ad that they will air to all 50 states:

More after the jump…

Bush Admin to Shoot Endangered Wolves

An urgent plea was just sent to a colleague from the National Resources Defense Council:

Tell the Bush Administration to Protect Gray Wolves!

We must stop the Bush Administration’s plan to declare open season on the wolves of Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho. If this plan is approved, Wyoming and Idaho intend to begin exterminating hundreds of gray wolves — by aerial gunning and other cruel methods — while they’re still on the endangered species list.

Link.

The signatures on earlier NRDC petitions helped to delay the hunt.  Now, the Bush Administration had moved to release the hunters by changing the wolves’ ratio to the surrounding animal populations as a way to bypass their endangered species designation. 

More below the jump…

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