August 29, 2008

Sarah Palin: Why Can't Polar Bears Just Leave Those Poor Oil Companies Alone?

Oh, Sarah Palin. I'm sick of hearing your name already. But I'll say it once more because there is evidence that Ms.Palin may be a global warming-denier. Palin has said that she's "unconvinced" human emissions are contributing to global warming. "Science will tell us," her spokesman said. "She thinks the jury's still out." If by "jury" she means "the Bible," then yes, the jury is still out. But if "jury" means scientific consensus, then Palin needs to check out the IPCC's site or pick up an issue of Nature.

Though Palin may not believe in global warming, she does believe that polar bears are just fine, thank you very much. She sued the federal government in an attempt to derail their delayed listing of polar bears as an endangered species. In addition, Palin is in favor of drilling vital polar bear habitat in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, maybe in part because her husband works for BP. I don't know if Palin is motivated to support oil companies for love or for money. Either way, with her as Vice President, life will look even bleaker for those ice-dependent polar bears.

Slow Food Nation Comes to San Francisco

This weekend, Slow Food Nation is taking over San Francisco's City Hall with food vendors, conferences, workshops, and farming demos. All last month I got to watch as hearty volunteers turned the stinky, pigeon-befouled strip of concrete in front of City Hall into an amazing herb and vegetable garden. It reminded me of the sustainable, organic backyard garden I grew up with in Oregon, long before "green" was hip. There were the same kinds of vegetables—squash, cucumbers, tomatos, corn, beans—as well as flowers to attract birds and bees. The garden was such a welcome respite from the hot concrete surrounding it, I wondered, Why can't we do this more often?

Slow Food Nation is attempting to answer that question, among others, via its many panels and workshops. I just got back from a roundtable on local foodsheds where I learned it's basically impossible, and impractical, for San Franciscans to subsist entirely on foods grown within a 100-mile radius, as much as they might like to. The San Francisco Bay Area has a long growing season and a mild Mediterranean climate, but it is much better suited to producing fruits and vegetables than wheat or pork. It doesn't make any sense to try to produce everything locally. If the Bay Area (which produces 20 times as much food as it consumes) were to convert its fruit orchards into wheat fields, the nation might not be too happy about it: the cost of strawberries, peaches, and lemons would spike.

So as much as I would like to be a total locavore, it ain't happening anytime soon. And as one audience member today from the panel pointed out, just because your food is local doesn't mean the people picking it are. Some of the many migrant farmers who work California fields in have been subject to exploitation and even slavery. But with so little transparency in the food process, it's hard to know where your strawberries even came from much less who picked them. So I had to take it on good faith that the two rosy-cheeked young women who sold me a pint of tiny, sweet strawberries still warm from the sun weren't enslaving anyone. At very least, I knew the berries were local and organic. And, as it turned out, totally delicious.

Photos courtesy Slow Food Nation on Flickr.

August 27, 2008

Turtles Saved By New Hooks

Here's the recipe for saving sea turtles from drowning in the longline fishery. Switch out the classic J hooks for circular hooks. Add a little training and the tools to release turtles accidentally hooked.

A new report by the World Wildlife Fund and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) finds the new hooks dramatically reduce the bycatch of marine turtles without impacting fishing activity. They analyzed 4 years of data from 8 Eastern Pacific countries: Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They found up to 89% reductions in the marine turtle bycatch per thousand hooks, and that 95% of all turtles caught in longline fishing were recovered alive. Circle hooks performed as well as J hooks in the catch rates of tuna, billfishes and sharks fishery.

Okay, well the tuna, billfishes, and sharks fisheries compose a whole other thorny issue. One as deserving of solutions as the sea turtles. The big fish of the sea are in superserious trouble and also need a reprieve from the hooks, like, right this second. . .

But in terms of this sea turtle story. . . "Our goal is to reduce the incidental catch of marine turtles from the long-line fishing operations without affecting the fisheries activity which is a main source of food and income for local communities," explained Martin Hall, Principal Researcher for the IATTC.

So, thumbs up on the turtle hooks. Thumbs up on helping local communities with food and income issues. Big thumbs down on continuing to overfish the big fish.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 26, 2008

Polar Bears Found Swimming 60 Miles Offshore

An aerial survey has recently found at least nine polar bears swimming in open water far off Alaska. One was at least 60 miles from shore. All could have difficulty making it back to land and are at risk of drowning, particularly if bad weather strikes.

"To find so many polar bears at sea at one time is extremely worrisome because it could be an indication that as the sea ice on which they live and hunt continues to melt, many more bears may be out there facing similar risk," said Geoff York, polar bear coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund. "Polar bears and their cubs are being forced to swim longer distances to find food and habitat."

The discovery of the nine bears at sea came as the US Minerals Management Service was conducting marine surveys in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in advance of potential offshore oil development. In May, the US Department of Interior listed polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. However, the state of Alaska has opposed the listing and has sued the federal government over its decision to list the bear.

Professor Richard Steiner of the University of Alaska’s Marine Advisory Program said: "The bottom line here is that polar bears need sea ice, sea ice is decaying, and the bears are in very serious trouble. For any people who are still non-believers in global warming and the impacts it is having in the Arctic, this should answer their doubts once and for all."

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

California's Gamble: Building More So People Drive Less

In a so-crazy-it-just-might-work attempt to combat global warming, California legislators are trying to get people to drive less by building more—and more intelligently.

Acknowledging that passenger cars account for 30% of the state's greenhouse gas emissions, lawmakers want to make it easier for people to avoid using their cars by encouraging denser development.

A bill now making its way through the legislature would dole out state transportation funds—about $15 billion—only to those communities that pursued "smart-growth" development plans, such as filling in commercial strips and building new homes around existing roads and rail lines. "We know people are going to drive. We want them in their cars for less time," said the bill's author, state Senator Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). It's a pragmatic approcah to a persistent problem: Instead of preventing new development—a move that business interests say stunts economic growth—the measure would encourage cities to build responsibly.

Conventional wisdom says that if they want Californians to stop driving, politicians will have to pry the steering wheels from their cold, dead hands. But if they do this right, residents of the Golden State can have their cake and eat it too. Development isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if it means that more people can work in the communities where they live. The higher gas prices climb, the more crucial such choices will become.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from the pink sip.

August 25, 2008

Wind Turbines Decimate Bats

We know wind turbines kill birds. Now a University of Calgary study shows they kill bats in even higher numbers. And not from collisions but from a sudden drop in air pressure known as barotrauma. Ninety percent of the bats examined post mortem showed signs of internal hemorrhaging consistent with barotrauma from the turbine blades. Only about half showed any evidence of direct contact with the blades.

Because they echolocate, bats seldom collide with manmade structures. But an atmospheric-pressure drop at wind-turbine blades is undetectable. And because they're mammals, they die more than birds from barotrauma. Their balloon-like lungs have two-way airflow and flexible sacs surrounded by capillaries. When external pressures drop, the sacs overexpand and burst the capillaries. Bird lungs are more rigid with a one-way circular airflow and withstand pressure drops better.

Bat fatalities at wind turbines far outnumber bird fatalities and the majority of bats killed are migratory species that roost in trees—including hoary bats, eastern red bats, and silver-haired bats. Little is known about their population sizes. But wind turbines could devastate them. . . Simple solution. Don't run the turbines at night. And for the sake of birds-of-prey, don't run them during peak migrations.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 22, 2008

Shipwrecks Wreck Reefs

Shipwrecks on coral reefs appear to increase the invasion of alien species. A US Geological Survey study finds unwanted species completely overtake the shipwreck and eventually the surrounding reef, eliminating all native corals and dramatically decreasing the diversity of other reef organisms.

Sadly, we've been deliberately sinking ships for decades, imagining they might "anchor" healthy new reef communities. But the new study published in the open access journal PloS One is the first to document how manmade structures rapidly destroy the coral community.

The study was conducted at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the central Pacific. This remote area has seen little human activity since WWII. Scientists began surveying a 1991 shipwreck in 2004. Since then, they've observed exponentially increasing populations of a anemonelike animal, Rhodactis howesii, around the wreck. The densities decrease with distance from the ship. Although Rhodactis are rare to absent in other parts of the atoll, they're also populous around buoys.

The exact relationship between shipwreck and Rhodactis is unknown. But one possibility is that iron leaching from the ship (and mooring buoys' chains) somehow promotes the growth of R. howesii. Given the sheer speed of ecosystem changes, the researchers doubt that even the removal of the shipwreck will halt the alien invasion.

Will this be our epitaph? Veering from one tragic phase shift to another. The ship that sank was a longliner—among the most horrifically destructive technologies ever invented. . . and still deadly, even in death.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 20, 2008

Greenland's Ice, Going, Going. . .

Daily satellite images of Greenland’s glaciers reveal the break-up of two of its largest glaciers in the last month. A massive 11-square-mile piece broke off the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland between July 10th and by July 24th. That's half the size of Manhattan. Between 2000 and 2001 the same glacier lost 33 square miles of floating ice.

What worries researchers from the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University is what appears to be a massive crack further upstream. A break-up there would doom 60 square miles, or one-third of what's left of the massive ice field.

An 11 square mile area of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland (80˚N, 60˚W) broke away between July 10th and by July 24th. Petermann has a 500-square-mile floating section, the longest floating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. Photo courtesy Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University.

Meanwhile, the margin of the enormous Jakobshavn Glacier has retreated inland further than at any time in the last 4,000 to 6,000 years. The Northern branch broke up in the past several weeks, and the glacier has lost at least three square miles since 2007.

The Jakobshavn Glacier dominates the roughly 130 glaciers flowing out of Greenland’s interior to the sea, and is the island's most productive glacier, calving one of every 10 Greenland icebergs. Between 2001 and 2005, it suffered a massive 36-square-mile loss of ice that raised awareness worldwide of global climate change.

Oh, yeah, and Greenlanders are growing potatoes for the first time since the Viking Age.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 18, 2008

Living Green in Denmark

The inhabitants of the Danish island of Samsø have achieved their target of self-sufficiency in renewable power in only 10 years. Eleven wind turbines now tower over green fields and 10 rise from the North Sea. Rye, wheat and straw are used to heat the one-story buildings. Solar panels have sprouted on roof tiles, reports Planet Ark.

Samsø is home to just 4,000 people. Yet without any construction subsidies, the islanders have invested $84 million of their own money. That's $20,000 per person on average. It's a challenge their government set for the island in 1997, funded largely through local taxes and individual investments. Outside magazine calls it a muscular combination of new technologies, capitalist smarts, and old-school stewardship.

Some residents homes have opted to stay with oil furnaces for heating. Cars are still common. Yet the island has become carbon neutral because the wind turbines offset emissions from cars and oil furnaces.

From the Reuters report:

The islanders' efforts dovetail with European Union policy but have gone much further than official targets. The European Union has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a fifth by 2020 from 1990 levels, and to get one-fifth of all energy demand from renewable sources such as wind, solar and biomass. Some islanders say the renewables project has been helped by developing as a grassroots venture rather than having targets and regulations imposed by a bureaucracy. "First of all you need determination and can-do spirit, and then you need an economic foundation to make it possible," Tranberg told Reuters in the cockpit of his wind turbine.

Many islanders own shares in the onshore wind turbines, an investment that they originally hoped would pay back after eight to 10 years. A stronger-than-expected wind—blowing 10-15 percent more force than expected into the blades—cut the payback time and now Samsø Energy Academy says a share in a wind turbine generates about $100 a year in income.

Proof we don't face the labors of Hercules to retool our energy economy. And we don't need to go broke doing it. But, seriously, can the people of Samsø come here and run our world for a while?

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Primary Sources: The 1940 Census on "White"

From AP comes the news that by 2042 whites will no longer be the majority ethnic group in the United States:

By 2050, whites will make up 46 percent of the population and blacks will make up 15 percent, a relatively small increase from today. Hispanics, who make up about 15 percent of the population today, will account for 30 percent in 2050, according to the new projections. Asians, which make up about 5 percent of the population, are projected to increase to 9 percent by 2050.

What does this mean? Historically, not a damn thing.

According to the current census a white person is:

A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "White" or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.

This means that someone whose parents were born in Morocco, who looks like this, would be white. Someone with parents from Argentina, who might look like this, would not be.

But it hasn't always been that way. Race is an arbitrary classification. The first census, in 1790, broke the population into exactly three racial groups: "free whites," "other persons," and "slaves."

By the 1910 census Americans were instructed to:

Write "W" for white; "B" for black; "Mu" for mulatto; "Ch" for Chinese; "Jp" for Japanese; "In" for Indian. For all persons not falling within one of these classes, write "Ot" (for other), and write on the left-hand margin of the schedule the race of the person so indicated. For census purposes, the term "black" (B) includes all persons who are evidently full-blooded negroes, while the term "mulatto" (Mu) includes all other persons having some proportion or perceptible trace of negro blood.

The 1940 census demanded that Americans sort their identity according to the following Byzantine racial classification system:

Write "W" for white; "Neg" for Negro; "In" for Indian; "Chi" for Chinese; "Jp" for Japanese; "Fil" for Filipino; "Hi" for Hindu; and "Kor" for Korean. For a person of any other race, write the race in full. Mexicans-Mexicans are to be regarded as white unless definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race. Negroes-A person of mixed white and Negro blood should be returned as Negro, no matter how small a percentage of Negro blood. Both black and mulatto persons are to be returned as Negroes, without distinction. A person of mixed Indian and Negro blood should be returned as a Negro, unless the Indian blood very definitely predominates and he is universally accepted in the community as an Indian. Indians-A person of mixed white and Indian blood should be returned as an Indian, if enrolled on an Indian agency or reservation roll, or if not so enrolled, if the proportion of Indian blood is one-fourth or more, or if the person is regarded as an Indian in the community where he lives. Mixed Races-Any mixture of white and nonwhite should be reported according to the nonwhite parent. Mixtures of nonwhite races should be reported according to the race of the father, except that Negro-Indian should be reported as Negro.

Further immigration made this sort of distinction complicated. The US never knows how to classify new immigrants. What race are Filipinos? How about people from the Dominican Republic? How about Barack Obama? At some points in American history the Germans, Greeks, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Slavs, or Ashkenazi Jews were not considered white people.

With these definitions, only about half of my ancestors, for instance, were "white." Using the original census definitions and the assumptions underling them, whites haven't been the majority since the 19th century. Even if you're white now, your ancestors probably weren't.

The census is pretty open about this, too. The office explains that:

The Census Bureau complies with the Office of Management and Budget's standards for maintaining, collecting, and presenting data on race, which were revised in October 1997. They generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria.

So by 2050, we really have no idea how white the US population will be. It all depends on how we choose to define it.

—Daniel Luzer

August 14, 2008

Solar Superhighways

Researchers are developing a solar collector to turn roads and parking lots into cheap sources of electricity and hot water. "Asphalt has a lot of advantages as a solar collector," says Rajib Mallick of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. "For one, blacktop stays hot and could continue to generate energy after the sun goes down, unlike traditional solar-electric cells.

Plus there's already gynormous acreage of installed roads and parking lots. They're resurfaced every 10 to 12 years. The solar retrofit could be built into that cycle. No need to transform other landscapes into solar farms. Or maybe not as many.

Furthermore, extracting heat from asphalt would cool the urban heat-island effect, cooling the planet a wee bit. Finally, solar collectors in roads and parking lots would be invisible, unlike those on roofs. Cuz we all know how attractive roads are.

The team's lab tests showed that asphalt's highest absorption temperatures are found a few centimeters below the surface. So that would be the place to install a heat exchanger. When they added highly conductive aggregates, like quartzite, to the asphalt, absorption increased significantly. So too when they coated the asphalt with an anti-reflection paint.

They also tested slabs of asphalt embedded with thermocouples (to measure heat penetration) and copper pipes. Hot water running through those pipes could be used "as is" for heating buildings or in industrial processes. Or it could be passed through a thermoelectric generator to produce electricity.

Pedal to the metal.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 13, 2008

Running From The Waves in Beijing

Tuvalu's first Olympics may be it's last. The Pacific island-nation faces inundation from rising sea levels and no one knows if its nine coral atolls will still exist for future Olympics. Tuvalu's two track athletes and one weightlifter are gunning for more than gold, reports Planet Ark.

Neighbor island-nation Kiribati has sent three athletes to its second Olympics. But its atolls are also disappearing. Storm surges erode coastlines and contaminate fresh water supplies, and long before the islands go under they'll be uninhabitable.

Think of it as a sneak preview for all coastlines.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Solar Cell World Record

A new world record has been set by a solar cell that converts 40.8 percent of light into electricity. The proud parents are scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab.

The 40.8 percent efficiency was measured under concentrated light of 326 suns. One sun is the amount of light that hits Earth on a sunny day. The new cell will work well for space satellites. Also for land-based arrays that focus sunlight onto solar cells with lenses or mirrors.

You know, the kind we need to be building everywhere. Marshall Plan for Earth, and all that.

The new cell is grown on a gallium arsenide wafer. Then flipped over and the wafer removed. The result is an extremely thin and light solar cell with better performance and cost. Bring it on.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 12, 2008

Bush's Last War

deadBEagle3.th.jpg Bush is after the Endangered Species Act with a lame-duck vengeance bordering on the sociopathic. He's proposing a whole new way to gut the Endangered Species Act. By cutting scientific review by independent experts, reports the AP.

Normally federal agencies have to consult with scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service before building roads, dams, mines, and whatnot. You know, in consideration of any one of the 1,353 animal and plant species in danger of extinction. But, no, says Bush. Who needs science when god whispers in your ear?

Not only that, the draft rules would also prohibit federal agencies from assessing greenhouse gas emissions from construction projects. This is Bush's way of getting back at the listing of the polar bear on climate change grounds.

Senator Barbara Boxer says the draft rules are illegal. Nevertheless the new rules are subject to a 30-day public comment period before they're law. That's all. Then Bush can launch his last war against eagles, owls, whales, ferrets, manatees, wolves…

Look for the casualties in court.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 11, 2008

Can Playing Pac-Man Save the Forests?

In another effort to attract attention to environmental issues through colorful, interactive cartoons (see The Meatrix), Dogwood Alliance—an organization dedicated to protecting US forests—has basically carbon-copied Pac-Man in a game to fight excessive packaging.

"Packaging Man" is basically Pac-Man with a few new graphics. Recycling symbols replace power pellets, Blinky and the gang are "corporate executives" intent on pilfering forests with phallic chainsaws, and the protagonist is not a yellow dot.

Though surely created with good intentions—US packaging waste weighs in at 80 million tons (.pdf) and is the largest source of municipal waste—the most creative part of the game is its intro, and who sits through those anyway?

Nonetheless, the "take action" link at the end is a little more rewarding than a perfect play, and it handily fills 20 minutes. Play here.

—Brittney Andres

Photo from dogwoodalliance.org

August 8, 2008

China's 'Great Shutdown' Is Scientific Gold

What happens when you turn off the pollution? Well the Beijing Olympics are giving scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe how the atmosphere responds when a heavily populated region seriously curbs everyday industrial emissions.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography is flying unmanned aerial vehicle to measure smog and its effects on weather during China's 'Great Shutdown.' The flights start at Cheju Island in South Korea, 725 miles southeast of Beijing, and directly in the path of Chinese pollution plumes.

Data from the flights, combined with satellite and ground observations, are tracking dust, soot and other aerosols leaking out of China in atmospheric brown clouds.

Chinese officials have reduced industrial activity by as much as 30 percent and mandated cuts in automobile use by half, to safeguard the health of competing athletes.

Too bad most of Beijing's air quality doesn't have much of anything to do with its own emissions but comes from its own heavily-polluted provinces to the south. Too bad China doesn't make the Great Shutdown permanent. Too bad the whole world doesn't follow. Too bad the athletes' health is more important than everyone else's.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 7, 2008

Just Say No To Biofuels

The Kenyan courts are considering doing just that. A judicial review is weighing whether or not to halt the first stage of a US$370 million biofuel project that aims to replace up to 50,000 acres of coastal grassland with irrigated fields of sugarcane.

The project is based at the Tana River Delta on the northern Kenyan coast. It’s opposed by environmental groups Nature Kenya, the East Africa Wildlife Society, and nomadic pastoralists, reports ENN.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai doesn't like it either. "We cannot just start messing around with the wetland because we need biofuel and sugar."

Could this be the beginning of a new movement?

The Kenyan biofuels project promises to generate up to 34 megawatts of electricity a day from sugar refining. Plus up to 5 million gallons of ethanol a year from molasses.

But a report commissioned by Nature Kenya in May found that the developers' plans overestimated profits, ignored fees for water use, ignored pollution from the sugarcane plant, and ignored the loss of income from wildlife tourism.

Beware slippery economics. They impoverish us all.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

August 6, 2008

Fact Checking John Tierney

In June 1996, the New York Times Magazine ran a story by John Tierney titled "Recycling is Garbage." In the now-infamous piece, Tierney argued that recycling was environmentally unnecessary, fiscally burdensome, and ideologically laughable. "Recycling," he concluded, "may be the most wasteful activity in modern America." Having provided comfort to millions of non-recyclers—particularly New Yorkers—. Tierney has since migrated to the paper's Science Times section, where he writes a regular column, "Findings." Despite the whiff of empiricism, the column is often a platform for his libertarian-tinged environmental skepticism.

Last week, Tierney struck again with a column listing "10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List." The article displayed the typical Tierney M.O.: Take an environmental or health issue and dismiss it with a less-than-thorough glance at the research.

His list wasn't entirely off-base—shark attacks are incredibly rare, no matter what Shark Week teaches us. And it's not really worth losing sleep over intergalactic wormholes or the potential collapse of the universe. But back on Earth, Tierney's glib dismissal of some common environmental and health issues obscured the whole story. Seven things Tierney's latest column fudged:

1. Hot dogs as health food

Tierney: Don't worry about hot dogs being unhealthy, writes Tierney, because "a rigorous experiment in Israel" found that people with a diet high in saturated fat lost more weight and had better cholesterol profiles than those with a restricted diet.

Reality check: Aside from the chutzpah of using an Israeli study to justify eating frankfurters, Tierney’s explanation is hard to swallow. The study he cites was designed to measure the effectiveness and safety of various weight-loss diets. It was not designed to look at the effects of saturated fat in general or hot dogs in particular. Beyond that, Tierney says "Low-carb, unrestricted-calorie diet consumed more saturated fat than another group forced to cut back on both fat and calories, but those fatophiles lost more weight and ended up with a better cholesterol profile." Not really, they had the most improved cholesterol profile. That's a counterintuitive and interesting finding, but it hardly means that a diet of ballpark franks is a recipe for arterial health.

2. A/C OK!

Tierney: It's okay to drive with your air conditioning blasting because "the mileage experts at edmunds.com" discovered that the drag from opening the windows undermines any fuel savings from turning off the air-conditioner.

Reality check: The Edmunds study wasn't exactly the world's most rigorous, since its tests were only performed at 65 mph, but Tierney's right here. Leaving the windows open won't save a lot of gas and the savings are so small (compared to the cost of running the car) that the overall environmental impact is minimal. But as a more thorough look at the question in Slate found, there are differences between vehicles: Sedans get worse mileage with the windows down, but blasting the AC makes SUVs' crummy fuel efficiency even worse.

3. Eat globally, not locally

Tierney: Don't worry about getting your food from abroad. Foreign food is often produced and shipped much more efficiently than domestic food. One study even showed that apples shipped from New Zealand to Britain had a smaller carbon footprint than apples grown and sold in Britain.

Reality check: Though the concept of measuring food miles is a little overrated (growing and harvesting food is responsible for 83 percent of greenhouse gases involved in food production; transportation produces 11 percent), the carbon footprint of food depends on the product in question. Yet Tierney implies that buying imported food is cost-free, even though the inefficient packaging of many American products doesn't make foreign food any greener. If you want to reduce your food's carbon footprint, the issue isn't about which foreign country to buy your produce from; the issue is whether to buy out-of-season produce in the first place.

4. Cell phone hang-ups

Tierney: Don't worry about cell phones causing cancer because his "colleague Tara Parker-Pope" wrote an article about how there is no known biological mechanism for the radiation from mobiles to cause cancer.

Reality check: Technically, he’s right. There is no established link between cell phones and brain cancer. But that’s not to say that cell phones are in the clear. Parker-Pope's article also pointed out that most cell-phone studies are not very good and that light and heavy cell phone users may have different levels of cancer risk. And, she writes, "the fear is that even if the individual risk of using a cellphone is low, with three billion users worldwide, even a minuscule risk would translate into a major public health concern." See our recent story, "This Is Your Brain on Cell Phones," for more on why this issue is still up in the air.

5. That's my bag

Tierney: Don't fret about using plastic bags because "the Environmental Protection Agency" indicates that paper bags are not better for the environment than plastic bags, which require much less energy —and greenhouse emissions —to manufacture, ship and recycle.

Reality check: Tierney's take on the agency's stance is misleading. Actually, the EPA still thinks plastic bags are evil; it just doesn’t like paper bags, either. As its website says,"So, what is the answer, paper or plastic? NEITHER! Look into purchasing reusable bags or reusing your paper or plastic bags at the store." Plastic bags do require less energy to produce; though the "ship and recycle" component of that statement is not clearly apparent in the article cited to support it.

6. Plastic's fantastic

Tierney: Don't worry about bisphenol-a, or BPA, which is used in polycarbonate plastic bottles such as Tierney's trusty Nalgene. BPA, he writes, "could be harmful if given in huge doses to rodents, but so can the natural chemicals in countless foods we eat every day."

Reality check: True, the evidence of BPA's harm comes from animal studies and there is no evidence yet that BPA exposure is harmful to humans. But most human exposure to BPA occurs through the lining of food cans, not plastic bottles. Virtually all canned products, even organic ones, are lined with BPA. For more on the growing concern about what's in plastics, see our story, "Hard to Break".

7. Meltdown averted?

Tierney: The Arctic’s ice cap has not melted, as predicted, and there's actually more ice at the North Pole this summer than last. "Most experts" are no longer expecting the ice cap to melt.

Reality check: Last year, climate scientists predicted that there was a greater than 50 percent chance that all the ice at the North Pole would melt this summer. Due to different weather patterns, the Arctic ice did not melt this summer—which is good news. Yet, as the article that Tierney cites explains, "all of the 15 teams offering projections say ice extent will remain well below the average for the last quarter century and a downward trend in summer ice around the North Pole has not abated." Translation: The ice cap still could melt in the near future, which is still very bad news.

But even if the ice melts and sea levels rise, Tierney isn't particularly worried about that, either. Following up on his "10 Things" column in his blog, he dismissed the global warming "catastrophists," for making unrealistic claims. Plus, he wrote, "They've overlooked humans' capacity to adapt —like building dikes." Why worry, indeed? —Daniel Luzer

Photo: New York Times

August 5, 2008

Here Be Arctic Dragons

One year ago Russia planted a flag of ownership on the seabed underneath the North Pole.

Now, with the ice melting before our eyes, the 21st century's first gold rush is on.

Want to know just who's after the Arctic's virgin oil, gas, and minerals? A new map shows the disputed territories that states might lay claim to in the future...

The Arctic Map was put together by researchers at Durham University and shows agreed boundaries, known claims, and potential areas states might claim.

It reflects disagreements over maritime jurisdiction in the Arctic. And the potential for a lot more. Particularly over the continental shelf more than 200 nautical miles from coastlines.

So far the Arctic states have followed the rules for establishing seabed jurisdiction set out in the 1982 Law of the Sea. No one expects such gentlemanly behavior to survive the strike of the first gold nugget.

A pdf of the map explains what all the pretty colors mean.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.