A contrarian take on the IRS scandal, comparing fictional interstellar travel speeds, and more.
Anna
A shocking inside look at China’s air pollution problem.
Check out this terrifying, fascinating timelapse of thirty years of human impact on the earth.
A contrarian take on the IRS scandal from David Horsey:
As inept as the IRS may have been in the way they processed applications for 501(c)(4) status, the bigger scandal is that the IRS grants the tax-exempt designation to so many overtly political organizations, treating them as if they are no more engaged in partisan politics than the Girl Scouts.
Clark
Geekery for the week: Did you ever wonder who’s faster, the Starship Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon? Well, here ya go: a graphic comparison of fictional interstellar travel speeds. read more »
When rain gardens release too much pollution, engineers go back to the drawing board.
In the stormwater world, if a rain garden is releasing more pollution into the environment than it’s capturing, word gets around.
So when the city of Redmond crunched its first flush of data from a new roadside rain garden and discovered the water coming out of it was tainted with alarming levels of phosphorus, nitrates, and copper, the stormwater community took notice. Washington State regulators went on the record to say that they would be studying the data and possibly … read more »
Energy use in cars and trucks is declining at a surprising clip.
There’s been quite a bit in the news of late about the decline in driving and gasoline consumption: take, for example, last week’s report on what the long-term decline in driving means for the nation’s transportation finances, a report that generated some interesting press coverage.
And there’s also been quite a lot of attention to ethanol—particularly the fact that US ethanol consumption has grown so quickly that refiners are starting to bump against the so-called “blend wall,” the point at which no more ethanol can be added to highway fuel without running into legal troubles or mechanical difficulties.
But the two issues—declining gas consumption, increasing ethanol consumption—actually interact in interesting ways. read more »
New polling, including not-terrible support for a carbon pollution tax.
Today Yale and George Mason are releasing the third report from their latest national survey, Public Support for Climate and Energy Policies in April 2013.
The takeaways? Well, for starters, big, fat majorities of voters want Congress and the President to get to work on American clean energy and climate solutions. Americans increasingly looking to corporations and industry to take responsibility and do something about global warming (to lesser degrees they look to Congress, themselves, and the president to get to work).
A robust majority—61 percent—supports a carbon tax that would help pay down the national debt. But, as is typical, opposition to a carbon tax gains a majority (58 percent) when the specific cost to households is presented (in this case $180). Still, a large majority of Americans say they support a US effort to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs.
Happily, those who continue to favor doing nothing are seeing their numbers dwindle.
The numbers are strong. But recent fluctuations—or trends—aren’t necessarily continuing in the right direction. American priorities for clean energy and global warming action by the president and Congress have decreased slightly as has support for several climate and energy policies. read more »
