Climate Change Costs

The Stockholm Institute has released a study that proposes the U.S., China and wealthy nations should bear the costs for curbing carbon-dioxide emissions worldwide in proportion to the income and air pollution they generate
Under the Stockholm Institute’s proposal, the U.S. would be responsible for carrying out 26.7 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas reductions by 2020, [...]

American Presidential Politics

Last night I listened to parts of the Democratic National Convention – including the speeches of Al Gore and Barack Obama. I find Mr. Obama a good orator, and he and his wife appear understandable and sincere.
There is something about the whole Convention that troubles me (and I would guess that I will have the [...]

Bioplanning

Ms. Beresford-Kroeger, 63, is a native of Ireland who has bachelor’s degrees in medical biochemistry and botany, and has worked as a Ph.D.-level researcher at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, where she published several papers on the chemistry of artificial blood. She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring [...]

An Interesting Discussion

Over the past couple of days I’ve had several discussions with Rhode Island USDA NRCS about their development of a Rapid Watershed Assessment (RWA). The RWA gives NRCS, farmers, and conservation organizations the ability to prioritize conservation actions, determine the best economies for those conservation actions, and adaptively manage conservation and farm systems.
Part of the [...]

Square Watermelons

Those creative Japanese! They’ve determined a method for growing square watermelons….I wonder what the European fruit and vegetable regulators would think of this puppy.
By the way, it costs $83.

BEE Japan

BEE Japan (Bicycle for Everyone’s Earth) is a bicycle group cycling for two months to raise awareness of ‘earth-friendly’ practices.
Here are the practices:
* Travelling the length of Japan exclusively by bicycle
* Eating low on the food chain (vegetarian)
* Choosing organic products whenever possible
* Choosing fair trade products whenever possible
* Supporting local economies by buying local [...]

Joe Biden and Amtrak

Joe Biden has been an Amtrak customer for thirty five years. He’s a big advocate of mass transportation.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/joe-biden-fan-amtrak.php

Democratic National Convention

My wife and I watched a couple hours of the Democratic National Convention last night- including the speeches of Edward Kennedy and Michelle Obama….along with a number of others.
The most meaningful speech was from a former Representative, Jim Leach. He made sense…not dynamic but reasonable and intelligent. Ted Kennedy’s appearance was, I’m certain, energizing to [...]

CEO Compensation

I belong to a small investment group. One of our members has a major beef with the current level of CEO compensation. I recently was sent this April 08 Forbes rundown. The average compensation for the 500 largest corporations in 2007 was a mere $12.8 million…down 15 per cent from the previous year’s hayday.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/ceo-pay-compensation-lead-bestbosses08-cx-sd_0430ceo_land.html
They have [...]

Soil

The September, 2008 issue of National Geographic has an interesting set of articles on soils and soil erosion:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text