Category: Environment
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A Higher Price for a Cold Shower
With drought conditions firmly in place, a number of localities are instituting mandatory water restrictions. But rather than writing piddling fines for violating what are rather lax restrictions, how about using prices to address the problem? Over at the Economist blog, that’s exactly what they propose: …water utilities are not equipped to respond to similar…
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Virginia’s Native Wildlife in Jeopardy
While Virginians get increasingly worked up over the impact of Global Warming on Virginia’s climate and coastlines some 70 to 80 years from now, cricical environmental problems demand our attention right now. The Virginia Department of Inland Game and Fisheries has published the State Wildlife Action Plan, the most comprehensive investigation into the status of…
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Green Roofs Take Root in Virginia
The green roof movement in Virginia is spreading. Plant-covered roofs are popping up in Richmond, Charlottesville, Norfolk and Northern Virginia, reports Carlos Santos for the Times-Dispatch. Virginia is hardly in the forefront of the international trend, but at least it’s taking part in it. Green roofs seem to be a case where marketplace economics and…
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It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity
There’s a lot of nonsense spouted about Global Warming. The globe may, in fact, be getting warmer on average. But GW theory suggests that the warming will be most notable in areas with the lowest humidity — the polar regions and the deserts. The impact will be least noticeable in places like Virginia with lots…
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SUNDAY READING
News from WaPo: Finally a Front Page headline that gets one of the Core Confusing Words right! “In the World’s Rural Outposts, A Shortwave Channel to God.” This is a story about listening to sermons broadcast over shortwave radio filed from Homoine in southern Mozambique. There are some “rural” outposts in some parts of Africa…
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Endorsements, Endorsements, Check Yer Conservation Endorsements Right Here!
The Virginia League of Conservation Voters has endorsed 16 Senate candidates and 28 House of Delegates candidates for election in the November General Assembly elections. You can see the list here. To win an endorsement, candidates had to stand on the right side of the following issues: connecting land use and transportation, encouraging greater local…
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Patrick Michaels Update
The clearest explanation yet of why Patrick Michaels resigned as state climatologist comes in this story from the Washington Post (my emphasis below): “I resigned as Virginia state climatologist because I was told that I could not speak in public on my area of expertise, global warming, as state climatologist,” Michaels said in a statement…
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Washington Region: Hotbed of C02 Emissions
Listen up, Global Warming worriers, here’s a statistic to chill your hearts: The Washington region produces more carbon dioxide than several medium-size European countries, according to a new estimate of local carbon-dioxide emissions by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. In 2005 the region emitted 65.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — more than…
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Questions About Virginia’s Global Warming Policy
The Commonwealth of Virginia no longer has a state climatological office, but Gov. Timothy M. Kaine still has a lot to say about Global Warming. Yesterday, he testified before Congress, warning that rising sea levels due to Global Warming threatened the health of the Chesapeake Bay and put Hampton Roads, the second lowest-lying metropolitan area…
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More Details on the Michaels Ouster
Politically inconvenient state climatologist Patrick Michaels enjoyed lukewarm support, at best, from his colleagues in the University of Virginia’s Environmental Science Department. That’s what I glean, reading between the lines, from Bob Gibson’s follow-up story in the Daily Progress about his resignation as state climatologist and semi-retirement from UVa. His colleagues were hardly rushing to…
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Kaine Administration De-funds Global Warming Heretic Patrick Michaels
As Al Gore (the “Goracle”) has frequently told us, there is a scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is real. One way to achieve that consensus is to de-fund anyone who disagrees. And that is exactly what has happened to global warming contrarian Patrick Michaels. Bob Gibson with the Daily Progress reports that Michaels has…
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Virginia: A World-Class Player in Nuclear Power?
Virginia has the potential to become one of the largest energy-producing states/provinces in North America. Certainly not through the production of oil and gas, nor from mining dwindling reserves of coal in the Appalachian mountains, nor even from tapping the phenomenal potential of wind farms off the coast of Virginia Beach. No, the energy source…
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Dominion and Eminent Domain
In a recent post, “Transmission Lines and Electricity Imports,” I wrote that I wouldn’t have a big problem with regional electric transmission lines if Dominion (or any other electric power company) purchased its rights of way through voluntary negotiations with the landowners whose land the transmission line crossed. My problem was Dominion’s use of eminent…
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Go Gators!
Alligators have been spotted in the waters of Virginia Beach. Is this a sign of global warming – or are pet gators slipping the proverbial leash? I like to think that wild gators are making a comeback in the Old Dominion. Think of how much livelier the local news will be when dogs and small…
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Coastal Follies and Virginia’s Next Big Hurricane
Columns penned this week by Ed Risse and Norm Leahy offer supplementary perspectives on one of the great environmental crises of our time: the overdevelopment of precarious waterfront land. Ed and Norm highlight different aspects of this national folly. In “Castles of Sand,” Norm describes the futility of building million-dollar houses on sandy spits of…