Backwards Progress.

I just read an article about GM's new electric/gasoline hybrid car, the Volt. They are testing batteries for an electric/gasoline hybrid vehicle 10 years after they released an all electric vehicle, the EV1. The funny thing is that the Volt only gets 40 miles per charge with the newer lithium-ion batteries, but the EV1 would go between 55 and 75 miles on a charge with the lead acid batteries. The EV1 would go between 75 and 150 miles on a charge with the nickel-metal hydride batteries. It sounds like GM is making some real progress!

Maybe things would have been different if GM didn't decide to destroy or disable all the EV1's.

America's Least Green States.

I just read this article and it ranked the "green-ness" of all the US states. The five at the bottom of the list are:

• 45 - Kentucky
  
• 46 - Mississippi
  
• 47 - Louisiana
  
• 48 - Alabama
  
• 49 - Indiana
  
• 50 - West Virginia
  

They are at the bottom of the list because they "all suffer from a mix of toxic waste, lots of pollution and consumption, and no clear plans to do anything about it." At the top of the list are:

• 1 - Vermont
  
• 2 - Oregon
  
• 3 - Washington
  
• 4 - Hawaii
  
• 5 - Maryland
  

Michigan is near the middle at number 24. Why are Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana always at the bottom of every list? Do the people of these states just not care about anything?

More On Global Warming.

This article says that 13% of Americans have NEVER heard of global warming. How is that possible? Are these people completely self-involved?

The news today is that the world's top climate scientists have said that mankind is to blame for global warming.

The scientists said it was "very likely" -- or more than 90 percent probable -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.

Even if human activities do NOT explain most of of the warming in the past 50 years, I'm sure it hasn't helped. Maybe this declaration will help shake things up in the U.S. and create some change. We can only hope.

@$$h0le5.

This article makes me angry ...and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

The article says that the Bush administration pressured scientists to tailor their findings on global warming to the administration's skepticism. Here's the absolute worst part:

Rick Piltz, a former U.S. government scientist who said he resigned in 2005 after pressure to soft-pedal findings on global warming, told the committee in prepared testimony that former White House official Phil Cooney took an active role in casting doubt on the consequences of global climate change.

Cooney, who was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute before becoming chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, resigned in 2005 to work for oil giant ExxonMobil.

Documents on global climate change required Cooney's review and approval, Piltz said.

A Few Things...

Here are a few things from the news today:

1. The Yangtze River dolphin is now extinct. I just read Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and this dolphin was discussed in the book. At the time when Adams went to China to find the dolphin, the outlook for its survival was already very bleak. It would have been a monumental undertaking by the Chinese government to save this creature, since the Yangtze River is so heavily used and completely unregulated.


2. Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life. On average, the I.Q. of a vegetarian is 5 points higher than a non-vegetarian.


3. This is a shock wave seen last week in the photosphere of the Sun that was caused by a flare that erupted from a sunspot.

There you have it.

I just read this article from Reuters about an ice core sample that was taken in the
Antarctic. Here's the gist of it:

It is from air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 percent in the last 200 years. Before the last 200 years, which man has been influencing, it was pretty steady. ...carbon dioxide today is not just out of the range of what happened in the last 650,000 years but already up 100 percent out of the range. The ice core record showed it used to take about 1,000 years for a CO2 increase of 30ppmv. It has risen by that much in the last 17 years alone.

If that's a natural occurrence, that's quite a coincidence. Even if it is natural, it still means that people need to decrease the amount of CO2 they put in the atmosphere. No matter where it comes from, too much CO2 is bad.