The Green Miles Conquers Old Rag Mountain

The Green Miles climbed his first mountain this weekend. Yeah, I know, how could an avowed treehugger like me have avoided it for 30 years? I didn't really get into trail hiking until relatively recently. And Northern Virginia has so many great parks and trails to explore, I've always had an excuse to stay local and avoid the two hour drive to the closest mountains.

But my roommate loves hiking Shenandoah National Park, so this weekend we headed down Route 211 to Old Rag Mountain. We took the less-challenging back route up, skipping the rock scrambles of the main trail, but it was still five miles to the 3,291-foot peak and back. As you can see below, the view was well worth it.

Get much more information about hiking Old Rag at Hiking Upward!

How Many Cops Does It Take To Monitor a Clean Energy Rally?

Here's a great video of a clean energy rally in Richmond that The Green Miles attended recently:



Digg users can vote this up here!

Strange But True: UPS Saves $12 Million the Right Way

Small steps towards energy efficiency may not seem like they add up to much around your home. Changing an incandescent bulb to a compact fluorescent saves you $3 per bulb each year -- nice, but not enough for a beer at the ballpark.

But if you're Wal-Mart and use hundreds of thousands of bulbs, changing to CFLs can add up to millions in savings.

UPS recently made a similar discovery, finding that smarter route planning added up to enormous rewards:

Company leaders figured out that sitting in traffic, waiting to make a left, burns way too much fuel. So they zapped as many left turns as they could from 100,000 truck routes a day.

Instead, drivers are handed computer-generated delivery routes that have them going in efficiently calculated loops, calling for left turns only when necessary.

"You start on the right-hand side of the street and you stay on the right-hand side of the street almost all of the day," said Dan McMackin, a former UPS driver who is now a company spokesman. "The only left turn you make is to come home."

According to the company, this simple technique saves an eye-popping amount of gasoline. "In the last year alone," a UPS release stated, "this system has shaved nearly 30 million miles off UPS's delivery routes, saved 3 million gallons of gas, and reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year."

At $4 a gallon, conserving 3 million gallons of gas translates to a savings of $12 million.

Hey, Remember the 90s? Patrick Michaels is Bringing Climate Denial Back!

A lot of conservatives have moved on from trying to say global warming isn't happening, or even that it's not due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Instead people like President Bush say that while global warming is happening, we mustn't require anyone to do anything about it because they think American business is unable to innovate and will never be able to adapt. OK, they don't say that last part, but it's certainly what they imply.

But not Patrick J. Michaels. The disgraced wannabe Virginia state climatologist is a retro kind of guy. So now, in the tradition of Goat Boy, he's bringing us Hey! Remember the '90s, when global warming deniers ran wild.

Let's break it down FireJoeMorgan.com-style:

Global-warming myth
Washington Times
May 16, 2008

I love it. Don't be like that wishy-washy President Bush, trying to cover up your true beliefs and trying to at least sound rational and moderate.

Say what you mean. Go for the throat right in the headline. Global warming is made up!

By Patrick J. Michaels - On May Day, Noah Keenlyside of Germany's Leipzig Institute of Marine Science, published a paper in Nature forecasting no additional global warming "over the next decade."

Germany's Leipzing Institute of Marine Science - certainly much more of a known and trusted name than, say, NASA. Or the UN's IPCC.

And hey, why aren't you putting global warming in quotes like Drudge always does? Everyone knows if you put something in quotes it means it's made up.

Al Gore and his minions continue to chant that "the science is settled" on global warming, but the only thing settled is that there has not been any since 1998.

Not true. 2005 was the hottest year on record. 2007 tied with 1998 for the second-hottest year on record. But continue, Patrick J. Michaels. Let's not let a complete fabrication in your second sentence slow you down. And I like where you're going with the selective use of quotation marks.

Critics of this view (rightfully) argue that 1998 was the warmest year in modern record, due to a huge El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean, and that it is unfair to start any analysis at a high (or a low) point in a longer history.

I wouldn't argue that because 1998 wasn't the hottest year on record. You'd think a climatologist would be able to get that right. But generally speaking, I'd agree -- can't start a review of any data by cherry-picking an abberational year and starting from there. Like, saying the Red Sox are the best team ever because they have the most titles since 2004 (when they had none in the 86 years before that). That would be dishonest.

But starting in 2001 or 1998 yields the same result: no warming.

Wait, didn't you just say that would be dishonest? I mean, we knew he'd manipulate the data and facts to fit his argument, but isn't it a little weird to actually say, "You know what would be dishonest? What I'm about to do."

The Keenlyside team found that natural variability in the Earth's oceans will "temporarily offset" global warming from carbon dioxide. Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is oceanic; hence, what happens there greatly influences global temperature. It is now known that both Atlantic and Pacific temperatures can get "stuck," for a decade or longer, in relatively warm or cool patterns. The North Atlantic is now forecast to be in a cold stage for a decade, which will help put the damper on global warming. Another Pacific temperature pattern is forecast not to push warming, either.

Yes. Projections. Models. Forecasts. All valuable. Keep these words in mind, kids. There will be a quiz in couple of paragraphs.

Science no longer provides justification for any rush to pass drastic global warming legislation. The Climate Security Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and John Warner, would cut emissions of carbon dioxide — the main "global warming" gas — by 66 percent over the next 42 years. With expected population growth, this means about a 90 percent drop in emissions per capita, to 19th-century levels.

BAM! "Global warming" in quotes. Means it's not true. Global warming now exists only in Imaginationland.

But yes, the Climate Security Act would dramatically slash our greenhouse gas emissions. It's not the first time America has asked science and industry to lead a revolution. Apollo project. Building a military machine to stop the Nazis. Big problems, big solutions. We can do it.

Other regulatory dictates are similarly unjustified. The Justice Department has ruled that the Interior Department has until May 15 to decide whether or not to list the polar bear as an endangered species.

Pressure to pass impossible-to-achieve legislation, like Lieberman-Warner, or grandstanding political stunts, like calling polar bears an "endangered species" even when they are at near record-high population levels, are based upon projections of rapid and persistent global warming.

WHAMMY! Endangered species don't exist anymore, either. Relax, giant pandas! You're doing fine.

And again with the impossible-to-achieve-ness. Great things are hard to do. If they were easy, they wouldn't be great. I just picture Patrick J. Michaels watching the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan with his arms folded and shaking his head saying, "This is going to be a short movie. They'll never make it."

Proponents of wild legislation like to point to the 2007 science compendium from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, deemed so authoritative it was awarded half of last year's Nobel Peace Prize. (The other half went to Al Gore.) In it there are dozens of computer-driven projections for 21st-century warming. Not one of them projects that the earth's natural climate variability will shut down global warming from carbon dioxide for two decades. Yet, that is just what has happened.

Yes, we wouldn't want to rely on computer projections and models, would we? Wait, what's that? Patrick J. Michaels was talking about a computer models and forecasts just five paragraphs ago? Well, you see, that's a model he agrees with. That's fine. The thousands of models he disagrees with are all bullshit.

The next half-dozen paragraphs are more "this one guy is right and the entire rest of the scientific community is wrong." Let's skip to the end.

One final prediction: The teeming polar bear population will be listed as "endangered," and in the next year or two, Congress will pass a bill mandating large and impossible cuts in carbon dioxide.

Um, that's not one prediction. That's two. No wonder this guy can't figure out which year was the hottest on record.

What is "settled" is the politics, not the science.

The science isn't settled! Teach to the controversy! Evolution is a theory! Wait, what were we talking about?

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.

We even get a revealing tidbit in the tagline. Patrick J. Michaels works for the Cato Institute, which is funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil and General Motors. Gee, do you think that might color his perspective? Just a little bit?

Morning Exercise for Arlingtonians

The Green Miles came to the embarrassing realization the other day that he'd forgotten to enter enviroCAB in his cell for easy reference. So he has a morning exercise for you.

What's that now? Don't think this is actually exercise? Well, if Nintendo can call this exercise, anything's fair game.

1. Get out your cell phone.
2. Create a new contact called "enviroCAB."
3. Enter this number: (703) 920-3333.

See, I bet you burned, like, 5 calories. And had fun at the same time! Maybe now you're ready to lose 2,000 pounds in one day.

Doonesbury on Bottled Water

Earth-Shaking Clean Energy Deal: Investor Bets $2 Billion on Wind

Huge news in the renewable energy sector today:

Oil investor T. Boone Pickens' Mesa Power LLP said on Thursday it ordered 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co as part of the $2 billion first phase of a planned Texas wind farm.

It said the turbine order was the world's largest for a single-site wind power development.

The 667 turbines are capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 300,000 average U.S. homes, Mesa said in a release.

The four-phase Pampa Wind Project would be the world's largest wind energy generator, with more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for 1.3 million homes, when completed in 2014, Mesa said.

OK, so let's compare the planned energy investments for Virginia and Texas:

Virginia: $1.8 billion for a 585 megawatt coal-fired facility in Wise County. Short-term jobs during construction: 800. Long-term jobs during operation: 75. Estimated increase in operation costs if carbon capture and storage becomes viable: 30-60%. Without CCS, estimated annual cost of carbon permits in 2030 for 5.4 million tons of C02: $108 million.

Texas: $2 billion for a 1,000 megawatt wind power facility. For full 4,000 megawatt facility, short-term jobs during construction: 1,500 jobs. Long-term jobs during operation: 720. Added cost of operation under climate legislation limiting carbon emissions: $0.

It's not too late to make the smart investment. Tell Gov. Kaine to make thoughtful appointments to the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board as it reviews permits for polluting facilities such as the proposed Wise County plant and the Mirant plant in Alexandria.

Cross-posted from Raising Kaine