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An important international conference was held last week in Nairobi, Kenya: a meeting of the 160+ countries signatory to the UN Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. The conferees did not achieve a We Are The World moment beyond a goal of halving CO2 emissions. In fact, there is a growing outcry in the international press that post-conference that not enough progress is being made, quickly or decisively enough. However, some important accomplishments were attained...

The rest of Mr_Blog's Left Turn for today, Nov. 20, 2006

This article is about the link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

Here is a press release that came my way outlining key points in California's plan to address climate change. In the next two months the state legislature, with the support of Governor Schwarzenegger, are set to enact two new laws that would make it North America's leader in addressing global warming. Key points include: * Strict targets for heavy industry, electric utilities and refineries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020. * Prohibiting all state utilities from signing long-term contracts with coal fired power plants. Tabled by the Democrat controlled legislature, the laws are key elements in addressing Schwarzeneggers commitment of bringing California to 1990 emission levels by 2020. Complete Post here: http://consciousearth.blogspot.com/2006/07/schwarze

It appears to be Iain Murray’s job over at the Corner™ to openly deny the existence of global warming for the corporate cozies. He lays his supposed smackdown thus:

There's a definite whiff of a co-ordinated scare campaign over global warming at the moment. There have been some questionable doomsday papers in the major science journals Science and Nature, complete with policy recommendations in the body of the science, front page articles in the Washington Post, cover stories from Time magazine, and a major new advertising campaign from Environmental Defense and, shame on them, the Ad Council. All these attacks seem dedicated to scaring Congress into some sort of action to force Americans to cut back on their economy-sustaining use of energy.

First of all, there is nothing new in the science to justify such alarmism. Pat Michaels has the lowdown on that here.

Well Pat Michaels says no problem so QED no problem. So I am in no way a journalist, but let’s take just a little look at the 'ole World Climate Report he links to, shall we? Here is a list of institutes that take money from Exxon , notice a little place at the bottom called World Climate Report? Here is a description:

A newsletter on global warming, ozone, "sound science". WCR is sponsored by the Greening Earth Society, a Western Fuels Association project founded to spread the "good news" that global warming is benficial for the planet. 

WCR describes itself as "the perfect antidote against those who argue for proposed changes to the Rio Climate Treaty, such as the Kyoto Protocol, which are aimed at limiting carbon emissions from the United States." (http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/overview/overview.htm) World Climate Report is a "who's who" of climate skeptics. Patrick Michaels is the Chief editor with Robert Balling as contributing editor. World Climate Report also employs the expertise of Robert Davis (colleague of Michaels' at the University of Virginia) as Associate Editor. Past contributors have included Thomas Gale Moore, resident climate change skeptic of the George C. Marshall and Cato Institutes, Mark Mills from Mills McCarthy and Associates Inc., (which produced two books for Western Fuels Association in 1997 according to 1997 annual report, including "Coal: Cornerstone of America's Competitive Advantage in World Markets") and Willie Soon, also a former visiting scientist at the Marshall Institute.

Hmm. The Marshall Institute. Interesting. Weren’t they the ones that funded the Independent Commission on Environmental Education (ICEE) to combat “bias” in classrooms about global warming? Don’t they also get money from Exxon?I wonder if you look at who was actually on the ICEE, what names might you see? Wow, what a coincidence. All three of the contributors to WCR were on that committee. What are the odds? Here are a few other tidbits on the gang leader Patrick J. Michaels:

Writing in Harpers Magazine in 1995, author Ross Gelbspan noted that "Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests. World Climate Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns, was funded by Western Fuels."-snip-Dr. John Holdren of Harvard University told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "Michaels is another of the handful of US climate-change contrarians... He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science."

Well QED indeed. Seeing that all these guys are on the Exxon payroll (and other energy companies), I am sure it hasn’t clouded their judgment at all (with billowing exhaust fumes). The word of a few contrary voices from a bunch of hacks completely compromised by funding from the energy industry does not invalidate literally thousands of climatologists around the world. It is a classic example of believing what you want to believe because the alternative is too unpleasent to deal with. The only thing coordinated is the attack on sound, conclusive science. There will be a special place in hell for those corporate shills who literally undermine the entire population of the earth with their sell-out.

(Crossposted at Pushing Rope)

America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.

George W. Bush

Perhaps this is what the President means.

Perhaps the Vice-President will now have to go cold turkey since the Washington Post obtained documents confirming meetings with Exxon Mobil Corp, Conoco, Shell Oil Co and BP America Inc. Cheney was so intent on keeping his addiction secret that he used executive privilege.

This site has some useful tips on how to spot signs of addiction.

[Ghost of Adam S]	Welcome to the Thursday Morning meeting of Imperialists Anonymous. My name is Adam and I am an Imperialist.
[All]	Hello Adam.
[Ghost of Adam S]	Will somebody be so kind as to read "Who"?
[Ghost of Winston C]	My name is Winston and I am an Imperialist.
[All]	Hello Winston.
[Ghost of Winston C]	Who is an Imperialist? Most of us do not have to think twice about this question, we know! Our whole life and thinking was centred in domination in one form or another: the getting and using of resources and finding ways and means to monopolise more. We lived to dominate and dominated to live.

For reasons of possible copyright infringement, we'll leave this meeting of IA, but it continues here.

War Against Conservativism

Let us see then if we cannot in fact eff the ineffable ~ Douglas Adams RIP

Disreputable Lazy Aliens

By way of truthout, "Environment in Crisis: 'We Are Past the Point of No Return'" by Michael McCarthy in The Independent UK. Clips:

Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again.

read the entire post at P!

From the thread "Pat Robertson says something stupid, again"

"a man this vile has a platform in the most powerful state on the planet" ~ Marduk

Don't believe the hype mate. The basis for the claim that the US is the most powerful nation on earth has been fallacious for some time. It is based on the seeming potential power of the american economy, however as recent events have proved, even the dollar's value being artificially propped up by the fact that it is the currency OPEC chose as the standard for the sale of oil (thus like a magic chequebook, in that the redeemable value would never be required to be payed by the Federal Reserve), has not prevented a massive Trade Deficit ($650 billion, i believe).

The domestic economy is in such poor shape that the President was forced to levy a %30 import tax on foreign steel imports not long ago, in an illegal (by the standards of the WTO) effort at protectionism, this despite the sheer hypochrisy of that, whilst at the same time championing 'Free Trade'.

The domestic motor industry is so unable to cope that the big 3: Ford, GM & Chrysler successfully negotiated a freeze on the application of law which would require their vehicles to meet minimum standards for fuel efficiency (so called CAFE law) for at least 3 years running, this despite that the required mpg was something like 27 point something for cars and 20-ish for light vans. Can you imagine European customers, never mind environmental lobbyists, standing for anything so piss poor?

Oh yeah, but it's ok because gasoline is so cheap in the US, right? In 2000, foreign imports of oil topped %50 as the source of domestically produced petroleum products, at a bill of a staggering $110 billion/year, at the time 1/4 of the Trade Deficit, as it was.

My latest article on Climate Change is now availible from: http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2005/11/what-is-future-of-action-on-climate.html This article is focused on possible future frameworks for action on climate change, and possible new measures to achive the greatest result at the lowest cost. With Russian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol during 2005 attention has quickly shifted to what happens next. The Kyoto commitment period ends in 2012 and no clear plan for what follows currently exists. In this article however I am not purely looking a what happens after Kyoto in terms of an international framework, rather I am looking at the spectrum of future international measures which may be used for climate change mitigation.

Biology musings: Migration How does a half-gram butterfly migrate 2000 miles to a grove of fir trees it has never seen? One thing is certain, it is NOT using a list of landmarks. Evolution seems to have over-developed the migration instinct Whales,seals,albatross,terns,butterflies,caribou. This tilted seasonal globe has hordes of animals scuttling from one end to the other. Why is major navigation so easy for animals? (animals includes insects for purposes of discussion) Metamorphosis Some diverse animals have similar larval stages, some similar animals have very different larval stages. Lyn Margulis suggests they are combinations of separate genomes. A larva that provides a safe spot for pupal germination might host a variety of adult genomes. Use divers environments, disperse via the adult stage. As Bill Hamilton pointed out, life has two basic urges reproduce and disperse. Humans are good at both. But dispersal is not migration. Magnets, polarised light, nobody knows. yet another reason why extinctions are a tragedy

 Today I went hiking. About halfway up the trail I had a moment. It happens a lot when I hike. I turn my head and see something out of the corner of my eye—a swathe of snow dotted by small yellow leaves, for example. And when I stop for a closer look, it hits me. I wouldn’t describe these moments as happy, though I certainly feel a sense of elation when they happen, and I wouldn’t describe them as sad, either, though “lacking sadness” is just as inaccurate. Neither do I feel any fear at these moments, yet my mortality is completely palpable. No doubt I’m talking about experiences of a spiritual nature, but I’m not going to assign that label without first divesting the word spiritual of all its New Age and religious connotations.

In the Western World when we say something is spiritual we mean that it’s transcendent—in other words, that it’s divorced from nature and from the body. This isn’t what I’m talking about. And I’m not talking about the New Age sense of being at one with the universe, either. When, and if, I use the word spiritual, I mean that I feel the full weight of existence. I feel empty yet full of longing, alone yet surrounded by company, sensual yet free of desire. There isn’t any transcendence and there isn’t any joining—just the intensity and grace of being alive at that moment. What’s more, these moments are accessible at any time. That’s something I’ve come to realize. The reason they’re accessible is that there’s nothing transcendent about them at all. They’re natural. They only seem resplendent and unfamiliar because our current way of life forbids us from indulging in them.  

In fact, I’m sure this is why the word spiritual has the connotations that it does. By calling something spiritual we essentially define it as an abstraction. In retrospect the experience is co-opted as a gift from God or from his angels and made to seem supernatural. Spirituality then becomes a euphemism to cover up a basic truth about ourselves—that we’re animals. We haven’t been trained in this culture to deal with the natural world and so we’re afraid of it. Consequently, the epiphanies we might have while hiking are either labeled and explained away as transcendent religious phenomena or avoided altogether. I think Freud was onto something when he talked about artistic sublimation, only I don’t think it explains artistic fecundity, I think it explains religious ecstasy. Because natural feeling has been made practically taboo in today’s world, we project it onto the other. We make it socially acceptable, that is, by relating it to an accepted religious or new age concept. We turn nature into culture. In turn, the experience is murdered, thus the violence civilization does to the environment is also done to ourselves and our experiences.

Consider the smugness with which people proclaim our superiority over the animals. The assumption is that our superiority has already been proven, so it hardly needs stating (just as the supremacy of whites over blacks and men over women was once proven). Anyone who challenges that assumption must have a few screws loose and hasn’t yet learned the proper uses of rational thought. After all, we are the top predators—at the top of the food chain. What is there to argue? But in the animal kingdom hierarchies aren’t as clear cut as we’d like them to be. In a symbiotic world made of finite resources it doesn’t make sense to talk about who is and who isn’t the top dog. Competition doesn’t drive evolution, adaptation and cooperation does (I’ll leave it to John Livingston and K.C. Cole to make my point on that matter). Conquest might help you to survive, at least in the short term, but it won’t make you any happier. It’s like a marriage: if you deliberately deny your partner’s happiness then you’ll deny your own happiness as well, provided you stay together and can’t seek fulfillment elsewhere. No matter how dutifully your physical and material needs are tended to, if your partner is reduced to a slave, he/she won’t be able to give you what you really want—a creative and genuine and stimulating relationship. If our only concern is to subdue and control the outer world, then we won’t have genuinely ‘spiritual’ moments within that relationship. Life will be dull. And unfortunately (for the environment, that is), in our relationship with nature, divorce isn’t an option. And neither is murder, though that seems to be the course we’ve chosen.

Climate Change is the biggest challenge facing the world today. Civilization has developed in what is now recognised and an unusually stable climatic period. We may be about to change all that. The climate change when initially responding to changes in greenhouse gases does so in a fairly predictable manner, and the consequences of this alone will be devastating. More abrupt changes are however possible when the climate system changes state i.e ocean circulation patters change. The climate system has been described as a drunk: leave it alone and it is likely to gently wobble around but push it and you increase the likelihood that it will collapse. We are performing this experiment by releasing vast quantities of greenhouse gases, preeminent of which is carbon dioxide. The harder we push and the more sudden the jolt, the more likely the climate system is to change dramatically. Many people think we should stop pushing!Govornments have responsibility to act, but so do individuals, what can we do? Many things: restrict the distance we travel, use energy efficient cars, and, importantly, reduce use of fossil fuel derived energy for running our homes.In the domestic setting is it more cost effective to reduce energy usage or produce your own green energy? Unfortunately this question doesn't have a simple answer.Case A When the 'domestic setting' is a yet to be built house there is great potential to save all the energy associated with heating. However the cost of several renewable energies is also reduced at this stage.Case B When the 'domestic setting' is an already built house built up to modern building regulation standards the opportunities for energy efficiency improvements are significant but poor when compared to the opportunities for renwables.Case C When the 'domestic setting' is an old house with little in the way of insulation there are often several cheap energy efficiency measures which are worth looking at.Case A: The DetailsThe physical structure of a house has an impact on two main energy requirements, energy for heating (or cooling) spaces and energy for lighting. Energy for heat is by far the most significant of these requirements in most situations.

• In order to keep a property at a suitable temperature the design should consider the proportion of windows on the northern and the southern side of the building, it is advisable to glaze the southern side with 70% of the total glazing when in a cold environment. This maximises 'solar gain' and minimises energy losses.
• In hot areas it may be worthwhile considering 'thermal mass' i.e rock/concrete as a significant structural element it living areas. Thermal mass stores heat but also takes a long time to warm up: during the night the living areas have time to cool down so during the day much of the heat in the air is removed warming up the mass again. If any of you have ever been in a castle before then you will know they tend to remain just cool, roughly the same temperature at mid day as at mid night.

• More traditional methods of insulation have two important factors: thermal conductivity and air tightness. In new houses both of these are important but air-tightness is a particular feature of top-end eco-homes . Reducing the number of air changes per hour down to very low levels has enabled the design of buildings that need no heating, or only very occasional heating, even as far north as Norway and Sweden! One of the best ways to achieve this air tightness is through use of structurally integrated panels (SIP). This building method involves using a layer of insulating material sandwiched between two pieces of composite board and allows very tight sealing of these components to give a more or less air tight 3D jigsaw. These building if done correctly actually need a ventilation system to be included to remove stale air! This ventilation system can be fitted with a heat exchanger so that around 75% of the warmth in outgoing air is used to heats the incoming air.

• Preventing the usual types of heat loss through thermal conduction is relatively inexpensive whatever system of building is used. There are a wide variety of alternative insulation techniques such as using straw bales, wool or recycled news paper. All of these materials however require careful consideration and there use requires consideration at an early stage of the design process. In the UK the traditional form of insulation is mineral wool, increasingly a layer of sprayed cellulose is used, this having similar thermal properties. These materials if applied to sufficient depth (>300mm for a low carbon home) do provide a good level on insulation, this thickness insulation is however not possible in all areas of buildings. Several high performance alternatives exist, including foil backed PU, this can be used at a thickness of 100mm to give the same insulating properties as 250mm mineral wool. Particular attention has to be paid to dormer windows which are often poorly insulated due to the lack of space. A specific warning should be given with regards multi-foil insulation (typically 20mm thick with numerous layer of foil) don't use it! The national physical laboratory just revealed its performance is about a qaurter what is claimed! Use foil faced PU instead

. This table gives the performance of insulating materials per thickness. Materials father to the left have lower energy losses per square meter of exposed surface at a given thickness. These are generic types of materials but catalogues usually give the proprietary names along with the material type, for example kingspan as both foil faced PU and PF products.

• The main types of renewables which can be installed at reduced cost during the construction phase are photovoltaics(PV) and ground heat. The reduced cost of installing PV is due to the fact that PV tiles can be used instead of regular tiles or slates. For this reason there is some gain from PVs as you need less regular building materials. Ground heat (as apposed to geothermal) is an increasingly common way of getting cool but not cold water out of the ground. During the winter at mid latitudes water used in households has to be heated from around 0 degrees celcius up to usable temperature. Ground heat utilises the fact that below about 1m in depth the ground is at a just about constant temperature all year round and therefore water has to be heated less. This system needs quite a bit of room and installation under the floor of buldings is ideal.

Case B: The DetailsModifications of buildings are expensive, alterations therefore have to have significant advantages over the status quo for them to be viable when compared to micro-generation. The main modifications which can be easily carried out on new buildings are 1.The fitting of a condensing boiler.2. Draught proofing 3.Increased loft insulation and 4. improved glazing (perticularly softwood argon filled low-emmisive glass double glazing).Because of the limitations of affordable modifications in this case i will take this opportunity to give a rough guide to micro-generation. The suitability of these power sources varies enormously with site but one or other of them will be practicle for most sites.

• Solar Panels (provide hot water). The average UK emmits around 5tonnes of co2 per year. Of this around 27% is due to heating water. A typical solar panel system may aim to provide 60-70% of this hot water requirement. 100% of the hot water requirements in the summer but no more than about 25% in the winter. carbon resuctions are therefore 5 tonnes*0.27*0.65, giving an anuual saving of around 0.9 tonnes of carbon a year. The price of solar heating varies but is typically in the range of 2500-3500 pounds, in the UK grants of 400 pounds are available for these systems so the cost to the consumer is from 2100 pounds. Solar is currently the most affordable small scale renewable. In spain it has just become compulsory to install solar pannels on all new buildings, the carbon saving produced by this plan will be huge, bearing in mind the hundreds of thousands of new homes built each year. Two UK suppliers are Solar Twin and Genersys.

• Small Scale Wind (feeds directly into power supply, or used to heat water). Wind turbines intended for domestic use typically have a maximum rated value of 0.6 KW to 1.5 KW. The average UK home uses 3300KWh electricity a year (and a greater amount of gass for heating needs). Over a year these systems will generally generate as little as 800KWh and as much as 2500KWh, these values may however be radically imporved upon given an ideal location. Wind power on the west coast of scotland for example is likely to be by far the most affordable small scale renewable. The small units are designed to feed directly in to the power supply of the house, they provide the base load and less electricty is drawn from the grid. Larger units often have an optional heating element so the all the energy captured is utilised even if more energy is produced than immediately required by the household. Costs are fairly high, but significant grants are available.Two very competative systems are the 1Kw windsave and the 1.5 Kw Swift . Windsave have an agreement with scottish power that they will carry out installation. Another manufacturer that supplies 0.6 to 5kw turbines is proven energy.

These tables give a good guide to the amounts of energy that can be harnesed from affordable ammounts of wind power, 1-3Kw of gnerating capacity will generate from a qauter to a significant excess of power, depending largely on location.

• Photovoltaic (PV) is a new and still rapdily developing technology which faces significant economic problems in the UK but which has great potential in warm climates. A typical instalation would consist of two modules and produce a maximum of 2KW of power. A 2KWp system in the uk will produce atleast 1500KWhr (about half the average household consumption) and would save around 0.65Kg of carbon dioxide emmisions a year. In the lifetime of a solar cell (atleast 25 years) the saving would be more than 16 tonnes of carbon, from around 37'500 KWhr of electricity. Factors currently encouraging the uptake of PV include govornment grants of around 3500 pounds per KWp of installed capacity and the dramatic increases of oil prices (from 60 dollars a barrel when i started researching this article to around 70 now!). Like large scale wind which has reduced its prices per KWhr dramatically since the 1980s it is expexted that innovation and market scaling will cut prices drastically in the long term.

Case C: The DetailsIn old houses with poor insulation, and, of a design which dosent consider energy needs, the gains that can be made from energy efficency and renewables are largest of all. In this case i will focus on renovation.The cheapest gains are likely to come from improvements in energy efficency but investment in renwables is also required to reduce the carbon footprint of these buildings to sustainable levels.

• Energy efficency of households can be improved by changeing the appliances and heating systems being used. Use of A rated white goods and energy efficeint light bulbs are the first steps to be taken.
• More significant investment and savings can be made by using a A rated condensing boiler.
• In terms of reducing the requirement for heating the two biggest and least expensive gains can be made by increasing loft insulation and adding insulation to cavity walls. There are numerous types of cavity wall insulation that can be applied without major disruption to the house. Injected resins and foam beads are commonly used.
• Many old houses are single glazed and good qaulity double glazing achieves a U-Value of around 1.4 to 1.6 which compares favourably to 5.0 for single glazing. Secondary glazing, when appropriately fitted can be a cheaper option that results in similar improvements in energy efficiency.
• Somewhat suprisingly one of the best value investments in old houding stock is the purchase of a good central heating system which is easy to use and programable. Being able to set individual rooms at the desired temperature and at the desired times has been found to reduce the total amount of heating used drastically.
• Finally a bit of simple DIY is often very usefull, draught stripping and other improvments to air tightness can make an enormous difference to old houses.

As an example of what can be achieved Kirklees Metropolitain Council managed to upgrade 19 houses built in 1946 to a SAP (Standars Assesment Procedure) rating of 76 from 35 by simply installing a well insulated and efficient heating system with 3-4 sqaure meters of solar panels. This resulted in avergage yearly savings of 1.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide.To conclude: there are many renewable energy options and they tend to be locations specific. Basic imporvements in energy efficency of old housing should however be the first consideration. The reason for bothering is Climate Change, many of the measures will have long terms of payback but increases in comfort levels are also important. According to the latest science we each have about half a tonne of carbon dioxide to emmit a year! The earth can remove around 3 billion tones from the atmosphere and there are six billion people on the plannet and rising. So the message is get on to it, do your bit renewables and energy efficency measures will be needed (if you still want your tv/pc/washing machine/dvd player/dish washer etc...) The tables below show how much the average UK household emits (various types of housing).

This is one of my weekly articles published on Climate Change Action, all the reports used in its composition are freely available for download from Climate Change Resources

The UK has an impressive stance on carbon emissions, it is aiming for a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. This isn't due to altruism or noblesse, but out of self interest, Britain is an island, much of it low lying, we don't want to loose our capital under the waves due to thermal expansion of the seas, or a volume increase from the melting Greenland ice sheet! As The UK`s Chief Scientific advisor, Sir David King, pointed stated " Climate Change is the most severe problem that we face today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism". Tony Blair apparently agrees in a speech last year he referred to climate change as "What I believe to be the worlds greatest environmental challenge".

 

This is one of my weekly climate change related stories taken from "Climate Change Action" and all the documents used in its composition can be found at "Climate Change Resources" The reason for me looking at biofuels is simple: it is a divisive issue, even amongst environmentalists. I don't like sitting on the fence, so it was time to get reading.

A fascinating program by the BBC (Radio 4), entitled Arctic Meltdown. This program is largely concerned with the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. The program also covers the impact of climate change on the Inuit, and the local wildlife such as the badly affected polar bears.If you find the program interesting, which I`m sure you will then you may like to read this report about just how fast the arctic is changing.

My next post on 'Climate Change Action' will be on the efficency of biomass as an energy source: whole life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas emmission reductions, both direct use of biomass and use of biomass as a source of liquid fuel will be looked at.I update my other websites every day or two. Check out 'Climate Change Resources' for the documents used to compose the articles publisehd on this site, and check out 'Climate Change News' for daily updates on the world of climate change impacts and mitigation.

Evening Boys and Girls.

surrogate here.

A walk.

Looking over my shoulder to check a noise I swore I'd heard a half dozen times already during the mile or so I'd been making my way through this bit of scrub, once again I saw nothing. There was a sound though. I was sure of that. Almost like deer antlers rubbing against bark. Where I was though, I knew it was pretty unlikely that any deer at all, let alone a buck with big enough antlers to make that sort of sound, would be anywhere in the vicinity.

It was a field though! There were tons of weeds, and any number of sparse bushy mini-trees scattered throughout the fifty-acre parcel, that because of it's long thin shape, was almost two miles from one end to the other. But it was fenced - though that was to keep people out - as opposed to keeping wildlife, like those deer I was wondering about, in.

The World As They Want You to See It

The Bush administration has taken deception in politics to new levels. They have learned that ignoring the facts and denying the truth will get them everywhere. Denial gives the supporters one thread to cling onto, and they continue to no matter what the truth is.

The truth about the build up to the Iraq War has been exposed by the Downing Street Memo, but the Bush administration and the Blair administration deny it. In their world papers are not really facts. Whistle blowers have come forward and testified to the reality, and the administration calls these people disgruntled or worse. If you already believe the president what could rise to the level of giving you doubt? We have learned that the truth is relative.

Crossposted from Comments From Left Field.

Nearly a year ago I wrote about the case of Cheney vs. U.S. District Court in which two organizations, The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, were seeking the release of papers related to Cheney's energy task force. The organizations believe that those papers, if released, would reveal the extent to which energy industry insiders (think Ken Lay of Enron) played a role in shaping the Bush administrations energy policy. Unfortunately it would appear that any chance of those papers seeing the light of day has now been dashed as the result of an appeals court ruling by Reagan appointee Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Sullivan dismissed the case yesterday, in keeping with a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that stated,

If you are interested in analysis of the "peak oil phenomenon" from a progressive and academic perspective, check out The Oil Drum. (Note the new address!)

"Peak oil" is an important topic, and, depending on who you ask, it might be right around the corner. It's worth learning about.

(PS: forgive us for being complete blogwhores...we're just trying to get the word out on what we think is an important topic...and one we think is in line with the mission of the PBA.)