Taking the high road

David cameron seeks to harness the profit motive, Stephen Chu calls the move to sustainable energy a "Sputnik moment" and UN food experts call for a Green Marshall Plan
Some things change and some things stay the same

Oh - and Scientists suggest that the adults ignore the squeals of the children and just get on with it

Keeping it real

As thre Cancun COP kicks off, we are reminded of what's at stake

Lost in Translation

Speed

Half a League Onward

The Metropolitan police confidently predict an increase in public order problems

Coal hole and Normal Service

Developed World Coal production is on the up to fuel the fires of China and India. It doesn't count in our emissions total. Neat, huh?

and another thing...

Now that the recession is, allegedly, starting to recede somewhat, we're back up to full speed as he hurtle towards the rapids.
Rich nations are still reneging on half-arsed "commitments" made to those on the front line




Thanks to Dwight Towers

Reality Checks

Illogical Progression

Strange how folk don't carry their distrust of scientific consensus over into other specialist areas, isn't it?

Mr Brightside's Modest Proposals

This is a few days old now - a musing on the Berkeley research that explored people's fear of fear and their peculiar evidence-averse just-world view. This left me in something of a quandary. Does one tell the tale with all its' sorry implications, and run the risk that the audience jams down the shutters? Or does one ease up on the implications and give folk the opportunity to feel that there is nothing that needs to be done? What peculiarly unhelpful psychology we are blessed with.

In the end I plumped for doing what I do. It seems strange and willfully perverse to insist that a movement as broad and internally argumentative (not to mention overwhelmingly voluntary) as environmentalism should have one voice and one message and that it is somehow the sole responsibility of environmentalism to find the tiny chink in the public's psychological defenses that will miraculously overcome the foibles that evolution has left us with. You know - the one thing that'll turn it all around? Do you know it? I dont.
We could do with some help here. Hello? We. Could. Do. With. Some. Help. Here. It's a job of work that needs doing and will not be accomplished without the participation of every slice and nuance of the population.
Hmm. I feel a rant coming on so I'll stop. Although...

I get the impression that when the shit does hit the fan it will be the environmental movement that will be blamed - in glorious isolation - for failing to rally the planet, for failing to successfully herd cats and teach elephants to tap-dance. Fence-sitters are probably already drafting the charges now.

Alms and the Man

Thanks to Craig Mackintosh for this link

Inundation Nation

From an idea by Marc Hudson, for the final MCFly, I guess it plays on the long list of unheeded documents over too many years. I may be getting a wee bit cynical. Here are a few more that may go the same way, what with us being such arses and so bad at sums

Revelations

In the US -A candidate for the House Energy and Commerce Committee gets his science from the ranting tracts of a bygone age

More on narrative, this time from RealClimate

Adam Corner on Geoengineering

Facts of Life

This one stems from a DotEarth story about epidemic rises in incidences deformed beaks amongst the birds of Alaska and elsewhere

Burning Bridges

This could be the new paradigm for gated industrial communities - imagine the hungry clamouring at the fences. Lots of uncertainty here, considering the problems of food supply for a growing population.
Meanwhile...the military pitch in, as do scientists, to tell a more convincing tale

Thanks, as ever, to Glenn Barry at Climate Ark for sterling work generating the links

Crop Circle

This sprang from a nice overview of the issue from AP, and from the poorly examined coverage in the latest Channel 4 hack-fest

Yes, I know there's no punch-line

Tea=Party on, dudes

This, too, shall pass