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A very detailed and complex study (pdf) Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to the US Electricity Supply weighing the costs and benefits of increasing wind power to 20% by 2030 included some very interesting projections on bird extinction numbers expected from climate change.

While it may not be news to cleantechnica readers that climate change will kill more members of more species than wind turbines, it is interesting to see the actual figures comparing bird loss from climate change versus from wind turbines.

The study found at least 950 entire species of terrestrial birds that will be threatened with extinction as a result of climate change under several scenarios, even at the lower estimate of temperature gains, just counting species of non-sea birds in the higher latitudes; outside the tropics.

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The move comes after Disney’s Baby Einstein Co. last month announced “enhanced consumer satisfaction guarantees” after lawyers had threatened a class-action suit for false advertising. “The Walt Disney Company’s entire Baby Einstein marketing regime is based on express and implied claims that their videos are educational and beneficial for early childhood development,” a letter from the lawyers reportedly said.

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You can now explore the Amazon, Madagascar, and Sebangau National Forest in Borneo through Google Earth.

On September 25, I wrote about a Google Earth tour (narrated by AL Gore) and new Google Earth tools and layers which help people to look at the possible effects of climate change under three different scenarios. Now, three new tours have been launched that allow the exploration of critical rainforests and real-life success stories.

The tours (embedded below) have a great wealth of information and inspirational stories bound into succinct Google Earth or YouTube videos.

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This week Newsweek’s cover story promotes an exclusive ranking of “The Greenest Big Companies in America”. This is an important moment in time. In 2006, Vanity Fair was among a few high profile publications to introduce entire annual issues to the green movement and their readership was reported to have been the lowest of the yearly issues.

Fast forward three years and six months later, the introduction of Newsweek’s list marks an important moment in time. Joining the annually released lists of the Best 100 Companies to Work For (Fortune), the 100 Best Global Brands (BusinessWeek) and The Largest 500 Companies (Fortune), the (presumably) annual list represents a palpable and permanent shift in business ethics and operations. Transparency is a leading value of those engaged in the green movement but it is still interesting to read that 70% of the companies participating voluntarily provided the data necessary to compile the list (otherwise utilizing publicly available information).

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Blacklight Power has signed a contract with Akridge in Maryland, marking the sixth utility to sign up for a mysterious form of energy that defies quantum physics. The company claims that it can create energy by lowering the energy level of hydrogen atoms to below their “ground” state. Most scientists agree that this is impossible.

But that hasn’t stopped “six utilities” from signing on for the theoretical power, (though one of the utilities; Akridge Energy LLC is apparently owned by a property company.)

In an increasingly anti-science culture, scientific consensus doesn’t count for much, but the consensus is that you can’t lower hydrogen atoms below their ground state.

Most scientists agree that this violates the laws of quantum physics.

The six utilities are going out on a limb. Or perhaps they know something we don’t:

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Wind Turbines Give You Spots!

The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Belfast Telegraph are printing the same piece (unverified by any third parties) by a New York pediatrician who has set herself up as an “expert” on wind with her own vanity press. Nina Pierpont thinks “Wind Turbine Syndrome” can cause abnormal heart beats, sleep disturbance, headaches, tinnitus, nausea, visual blurring, panic attacks migraines, sleep deprivation, and general irritability.

And it is fine that a pediatrician, like anyone else, has an opinion, but that doesn’t make this science. Pierpont is claiming that her book is peer-reviewed (by other pediatricians, I assume?) which is not true. Other pediatricians (who are doctors for children) have not “peer-reviewed” her work.

More relevantly; acousticians (who actually do study the aural efffects of things like wind turbines) have not “peer-reviewed” her work.

How could they? Can a mathematician or a weatherman “peer” review a climate scientist’s work? Of course not. They are not peers. Same thing with acousticians versus childrens doctors.

A “peer”, by definition, works in the same field of study.

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O’Reilly borrows from Matt Taibbi’s piece at Rolling Stone, “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine”, that examines the politics of climate change and the investment houses that stand to gain with the move to carbon markets. But O’Reilly should have quit while he was ahead because Taibbi put together a decent case against Goldman Sachs. By pulling Republican whipping-boy Al Gore into his soapbox, O’Reilly softens the blow of Taibbi’s pointed critique — never mind that Al Gore’s has actually said his first choice for a policy mechanism to address climate change is a carbon tax. Watch it:

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A. global warming doesn’t exist… or if it does;
B. then human activities have nothing to do with causing it…
C. or even if we do have something to do with causing it, then mere legislation can’t lower CO2 emissions
D. …or even if legislation can make countries seek out more renewable power; then any non-fossil energy just doesn’t ‘work’ somehow.

So ever since most of the civilized world signed Kyoto, there has been a constant drumbeat from all the No We Can’t Think Tanks like the American Enterprise Institute or CATO propelling the idea that Europe is failing to meet the Kyoto goals.

Never mind that to be short of a 2010 goal in 1998 is no indication of failure. But now 2010 is within sighting distance.

And as they sing it in that great American musical South Pacific: If you don’t have a dream…? If you don’t have a dream? How… can you - make a - dream come true?”

This week we have news of yet another Kyoto nation to not just make its Kyoto dream come true - but to…

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The media has been having a heyday with the fear of a “swine flu” pandemic, and rumors and fear-mongering have taken the stage. One doctor tries to cut through the crap with his article, “Swine Flu: New Pandemic or Just Makin’ Bacon?”

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Editor’s Note: This post is a guest contribution by Frank Sesno, Emmy-award winning journalist and former CNN Bureau Chief. ”Planet Forward” is an innovative, viewer-driven program driven by the power of ideas, as citizens make their case for what they think about the nation’s energy future. The show debuts TONIGHT (8pm), in a primetime PBS special. See Frank Sesno’s last post for CleanTechnica here.

What we’re hearing at Planet Forward is rumbles of a revolution.

Some expressions are serious, some are humorous. There are essays and poems and songs. But in almost all cases, if we take this stuff at face value, we’re hearing calls for an overthrow of the old ways we drive, work, travel, get around.  

A revolution in technology and green jobs to reduce carbon emissions, deal with climate change and improve our security.  A revolution in the energy marketplace to knock the oil-igarchs around the world down a notch.  Coincidentally, this is the bottom line of Barack Obama’s hugely ambitious energy program.  And it’s what citizens and experts alike weigh in on here at Planet Forward.  

This is a place where everyone has the chance to make their case about how we use energy, where our future energy should be, and how we should think about the issue.  We’ve heard from scientists and students, CEO’s and cab drivers, defenders of coal and oil as well as advocates of wind and solar.   We’ve even got a few politicians making their case!  It’s an orchestra of voices.

What makes Planet Forward different is that we connect some of the best ideas  – rated by the online community and reviewed by our Planet Forward editorial staff –directly to decision-makers.  Some go straight to the White House.  We do all this in a prime-time television special on PBS and through follow-on webisodes here at planetforward.org.  What’s most striking is how seriously the experts take the ideas and experiences of people out in the ‘real world.’  As they should.  

This isn’t the usual television fare – which is either policy wonks talking to themselves or high-decibel hosts shouting at the rest of us.  We wanted to do it differently.  So we invited President Obama’s top adviser on energy and climate change, Carol Browner, literally to sit down with some Planet Forward contributors who submitted particularly provocative or creative ideas.  She tells them what she thinks about their proposals, takes their questions, and considers what she’d take back to the White House as a result of the conversation.

And we’re going to keep the discussion going.  We’ve got a web sequel in the works.  Submit your video or written essay by May 15th and it’ll be in the running for review and comment by another top White House adviser, Van Jones, the highly acclaimed author of The Green Collar Economy and now Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  We’ll put the exchange online – where you can see it, comment on it and share it with your social network.  

We invite you to comment on the videos already posted.  Raise questions, debate the merits.

This energy haul isn’t going to be easy.  There is a lot new under the sun (and in the wind) but it’s still very expensive, diffuse and in its infancy.   We’re going to be living with coal and oil and gas and nuclear power for a long time.  Some of them may have a rebirth as we develop new technologies for them.  Which are the winners and which are the losers – and at what cost — are among the questions we confront and must now try to answer.

Planet Forward is a chance for you to tell the world, and maybe the White House, what you’d do.  

For some people, The Nation’s Guide to the Nation by Richard Lingeman and the editors of The Nation could be mistaken for a guidebook for “Cultural Creatives,” we citizens living in America (and abroad) who deeply care about the environment and fellow humankind, where sustainable living is sensible living.  Edited by The Nation’s former executive editor, Richard Lingeman, one might even suspect that The Nation’s Guide to the Nation is a harbinger of the changes yet to come under the new Barack Obama administration, addressing climate change (finally), human rights and community.  It’s no coincidence that the pub date for the guide was Obama’s inauguration date.

“The Nation’s Guide to the Nation,” writes Victor Navasky and Katrina Vanden Heuvel in the book’s Introduction, “is for and about a community of committed, passionate people who have active consciences and a lively sense of social justice.”

This guide covers it all, revealing progressive film festivals to exploring the explosive growth of organic and slow food restaurants.  By what is included in the listing, the guide examines solutions to our energy crisis (not to mention financial crisis) in ways that do not involve transporting stuff around the world and burning lots of oil.  It logs in the latest collection of progressive (and some left-leaning) websites as well as locally owned bookstores that carry what many of the chain stores don’t.  All done with a touch of humor, when necessary.

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Editor’s Note: This post is a guest contribution by Frank Sesno, Emmy-award winning journalist and former CNN Washington Bureau Chief. ”Planet Forward” is an innovative, viewer-driven program driven by the power of ideas, as citizens make their case for what they think about the nation’s energy future. The show debuts on the web first and then moves to television, in a primetime PBS special on April 15th.

I’ve been in the media for a long time. I know the power we have to reach and to teach.  We can take people places they’ve never been, show them wonders – and horrors – to inform or motivate. Good, important stuff. Of course we also drive people crazy. Critics shout that too many in the media are too removed, too insular, too quick to talk and too slow to listen. Too much is dumbed down or shouted out.

So when we created Planet Forward, we wanted to do something different. We wanted to take this huge issue facing us — how we move to a sustainable, 21st century approach to the energy we use – and explore it in a way that is open, inclusive, creative and smart. We wanted to combine the power of the internet and the reach of television to bring together citizens, experts and decision-makers in a place where imagination and ideas would prevail. Sure, serious business — but also spontaneous and fun and unexpected.

Planet Forward starts online and works its way over to television. We invite people to submit a video, an essay, a photo spread, whatever works.  We say show us your ideas, your invention or what your community’s working on. Share your research. Talk technology. Tell us how attitudes are changing.

We’re getting a great response and a lot of different approaches to the challenge. Some people talk straight to the camera, others have produced highly polished videos. Some people have composed original music or produced animations. We’re getting some really creative submissions from young people. But the voices come from all over the place – and belong to governors and students, taxi drivers and scientists, advocates and engineers, artists and architects.

We like to say that Planet Forward is a virtual public square where people can come together and have their own platform to make their case, share their expertise or their opinion.

Why have we done it this way?  Because it’s decision time, and we’re about to spend billions of dollars as we rewire America — and the world — so we can have the energy we need without destroying the planet or writing more blank checks to nasty folks who, by accident of birth, sit on top of an ocean of oil and hold the world hostage to what they pump.

The unique part of Planet Forward is the way we go from web to television. The online submissions will be the basis for the television show. Citizen and expert voices unfiltered. The ratings from the online community (rate the video one to five stars) will help us select the range of views and topics to be featured on our  PBS prime-time special on April 15th. Yes, tax day. It’s also one week before earth day.

On TV, we’ll have a few experts who’ll discuss and debate the online submissions they’ll see. It is the kind of exchange you could have with your smart neighbor over the back fence where you debate the price of oil or prospects for electric cars, or the future of coal.

The experts bring a mix of experience, expertise, and opinion to the table. Shai Agassi is an entrepreneur who has become a leading voice in new energy plug-in cars. L. Hunter Lovins is an outspoken advocate of green business practices. James Connaughton shaped the country’s climate and energy policy for the last eight years in the Bush White House.

Then Carol Browner, President Obama’s top advisor on energy and climate, will look at the submissions and speak directly with some of the people who put them together. We’ll see what she has to say – and what she’ll take back to the White House.

Almost everyone says they are for green energy; the debate comes in how we get there.

Planet Forward can make a difference. The public is the driver of the conversation. People who don’t normally sit in front of the camera shape the debate. Decision-makers and experts listen to what they have to say and then respond, not the other way around. We think this is what makes Planet Forward such a ground-breaking form of new media.

>> For more information on this project, see PlanetFoward.org

Read the full post:

Genetically Engineered Animals and Your Family’s Diet

We’re getting a great response and a lot of different approaches to the challenge. Some people talk straight to the camera, others have produced highly polished videos. Some people have composed original music or produced animations. We’re getting some really creative submissions from young people. But the voices come from all over the place – and belong to governors and students, taxi drivers and scientists, advocates and engineers, artists and architects.

We like to say that Planet Forward is a virtual public square where people can come together and have their own platform to make their case, share their expertise or their opinion.

Why have we done it this way?  Because it’s decision time, and we’re about to spend billions of dollars as we rewire America — and the world — so we can have the energy we need without destroying the planet or writing more blank checks to nasty folks who, by accident of birth, sit on top of an ocean of oil and hold the world hostage to what they pump.

The unique part of Planet Forward is the way we go from web to television. The online submissions will be the basis for the television show. Citizen and expert voices unfiltered. The ratings from the online community (rate the video one to five stars) will help us select the range of views and topics to be featured on our  PBS prime-time special on April 15th. Yes, tax day. It’s also one week before earth day.

On TV, we’ll have a few experts who’ll discuss and debate the online submissions they’ll see. It is the kind of exchange you could have with your smart neighbor over the back fence where you debate the price of oil or prospects for electric cars, or the future of coal.

The experts bring a mix of experience, expertise, and opinion to the table. Shai Agassi is an entrepreneur who has become a leading voice in new energy plug-in cars. L. Hunter Lovins is an outspoken advocate of green business practices. James Connaughton shaped the country’s climate and energy policy for the last eight years in the Bush White House.

Then Carol Browner, President Obama’s top advisor on energy and climate, will look at the submissions and speak directly with some of the people who put them together. We’ll see what she has to say – and what she’ll take back to the White House.

Almost everyone says they are for green energy; the debate comes in how we get there.

Planet Forward can make a difference. The public is the driver of the conversation. People who don’t normally sit in front of the camera shape the debate. Decision-makers and experts listen to what they have to say and then respond, not the other way around. We think this is what makes Planet Forward such a ground-breaking form of new media.

>> For more information on this project, see PlanetFoward.org

Although politicians themselves may be relative newcomers in the world of communicating in 140-character or less, those who write about and study politics aren’t. And that goes for those who favor environmental politics, too.

What is to follow is by no means an exhaustive list. I’ve also left out those accounts that only RSS feeds (while recognizing their value). I’ve certainly left off a few that belong here, but I encourage you to add them below. Remember, this is not necessarily a “Best of”, but rather a few of the eco-political twitterers I find value in. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

10 twitter users you should follow:

@emilygertz The lead blogger at change.org’s Stop Global Warming blog, Emily Gertz’s work is all over the interwebs, including powerhouses like WorldChanging, Scientific American, and Grist.

@forestpolicy Deane Rimerman keeps the Forest Policy Research website updated with news and commentary about, you guessed it, forest policy. Good stuff.

@ghoberg I first came across Prof. Hoberg while doing some research on Canadian forest policy in grad school. Though relatively new to the twitterverse, his tweets are insightful and have even given me a few story ideas.

@greenskeptic Blogging the new green economy as The Green Skeptic since 2004, Scott Anderson lends his expertise on cleantech and social-entrepreneurial ventures, along with updates on his hoops game.

@grist More than just a twitterfeed, the folks at Grist.org have developed a nice mix of links and conversational tweets on their twitterstream. While the content at Grist is not entirely politics, the content at Gristmill pretty much is — and it rocks.

@kgrandia Kevin Grandia is the Managing Editor of DeSmogBlog and also Director of New Media for Hoggan and Associates in Vancouver, Canada. When he’s not clearing the PR pollution that hovers around climate debate, he’s tweeting about politics, society and life. Never mundane.

@revkin Andrew Revkin is a long time science writer for the New York Times and leads their Dot Earth blog in addition to his print duties. His tweets often offer little snippets of what he is currently writing/researching (thus giving his followers a taste of what they can expect in tomorrow’s Times).

@sheagunther Green Options co-founder and mainstay on the green blogosphere, Shea Gunther is now blogging at Mother Nature News; a project that is already garnering considerable attention.

@sustainablog Jeff Mcintre-Strasburg has been blogging at sustainablog since 2003, which I think is right around the time Guttenberg invented the blog. Co-founder and former Senior Editor at Green Options, Jeff has a PhD in English and more than once been my go-to guy when I get caught in a grammatic pickle.

@YaleE360 With some of the most respected thinkers and doers in science and the environment, the  YaleE360 website hit the ground running with some of the most thought-provoking environmental journalism on the net when it launched in the Summer of 2008.

Of course you can follow us on twitter at @redgreenandblue; or me, Tim Hurst, at @ecopolitologist, where I tweet about environmental politics and cleantech from my Green Options and ecopolitology work, along with other links I find worthy of sharing and the occasional personal tweets and twitpics.

Now it’s your turn. Who do you follow on twitter for environmental politics (broadly defined). Maybe people should be following you, that’s cool too, just tell us. Now’s your chance.

Image: carrotcreative via flickr

We’re getting a great response and a lot of different approaches to the challenge. Some people talk straight to the camera, others have produced highly polished videos. Some people have composed original music or produced animations. We’re getting some really creative submissions from young people. But the voices come from all over the place – and belong to governors and students, taxi drivers and scientists, advocates and engineers, artists and architects.

We like to say that Planet Forward is a virtual public square where people can come together and have their own platform to make their case, share their expertise or their opinion.

Why have we done it this way?  Because it’s decision time, and we’re about to spend billions of dollars as we rewire America — and the world — so we can have the energy we need without destroying the planet or writing more blank checks to nasty folks who, by accident of birth, sit on top of an ocean of oil and hold the world hostage to what they pump.

The unique part of Planet Forward is the way we go from web to television. The online submissions will be the basis for the television show. Citizen and expert voices unfiltered. The ratings from the online community (rate the video one to five stars) will help us select the range of views and topics to be featured on our  PBS prime-time special on April 15th. Yes, tax day. It’s also one week before earth day.

On TV, we’ll have a few experts who’ll discuss and debate the online submissions they’ll see. It is the kind of exchange you could have with your smart neighbor over the back fence where you debate the price of oil or prospects for electric cars, or the future of coal.

The experts bring a mix of experience, expertise, and opinion to the table. Shai Agassi is an entrepreneur who has become a leading voice in new energy plug-in cars. L. Hunter Lovins is an outspoken advocate of green business practices. James Connaughton shaped the country’s climate and energy policy for the last eight years in the Bush White House.

Then Carol Browner, President Obama’s top advisor on energy and climate, will look at the submissions and speak directly with some of the people who put them together. We’ll see what she has to say – and what she’ll take back to the White House.

Almost everyone says they are for green energy; the debate comes in how we get there.

Planet Forward can make a difference. The public is the driver of the conversation. People who don’t normally sit in front of the camera shape the debate. Decision-makers and experts listen to what they have to say and then respond, not the other way around. We think this is what makes Planet Forward such a ground-breaking form of new media.

>> For more information on this project, see PlanetFoward.org

For all President Obama’s rhetoric of science being back in the White House spotlight, it sounds like much of America hasn’t quite gotten that message.  A new poll from Gallup suggests that 41% of Americans think that the threat of Global Warming is exaggerated, the highest such number in a decade.  Well, at least people now mostly accept that it’s happening, even if it’s not a big deal…

Take that, Science!

Not surprisingly, the numbers on urgency seem to be based on political party: 66% of Republicans now think the Global Warming concerns are overblown, whereas people who identify as Democrats are holding at around 20%.  The political party that supports old energy doesn’t believe we need new energy… hmmmm…

It’s very easy for me, and for everyone else who clearly sees the logic behind the climate change science, to be frustrated by the war being waged on these facts by a coordinated series of commercial campaigns, and by the political factions who are allied with oil and coal interests.  But my background is coming from the news, so it’s not surprising that it’s the mainstream media that makes this poll really stick in my craw.

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Activists have taken to Facebook and web 2.0, but relatively few have embraced the power of the torrent community.

While torrents are mostly known for spreading copyrighted content like movies, music, and software, many social and environmental activists have found the protocol to be a perfect match for their goal to spread information relating to their cause.

Here are five interesting and/or successful uses of BitTorrent to spread a message:

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The claim that reporters who cover environmental news are being laid off in huge amounts does not ring true to me personally, even though I have no evidence. Currently the mainstream media, along with a multitude of sites across the internet, seem to be giving more attention to environmental and scientific issues than I can ever recall in the past.

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Last week Europe and Africa met in Florence for the “Interdependence Days“, an event promoted by a bunch of associations (among the others Legambiente) and supported by Regione Toscana.

A two-days workshop about poverty, media, environment and cooperation with the African states. An opportunity to dig into the political, economical and social reality of Africa so unknown and misunderstanded by the old country.

Italian and African speakers have focused on the necessity to establish a new way to read the relationship between the two continents in order to fight poverty and set the basis for development. The world of information turned out to be the first responsible in this process. Too often European media present Africa only as the land of civil wars and poor-feeding, the heart of tragedies and natural disasters.

Where is the other face of Africa?

European citizens, Italians in particular, have a very poor knowledge about what Africa represents in term of human relations and ancient traditions: a crossroads of populations, cultures and dialects that enriches the heritage of the world giving us the opportunity to look at the future. Some African journalists, present at the event, tried to underline the importance of new international policies in Africa in order to protect its environment, so rich in natural resources, and restore a society exhausted by corruption and civil struggles.The Italian President of FNSI (National Federation of Journalists) attended the meeting to request more professionalism in our journalism.

All the representatives have agreed that only an Afro-European sinergy for a global governance could face the challenges of the future acting for equality and cooperation. Starting with a correct information of the African issues into the European media.

Image credit: by Jaci Barkopec in Flickr under Creative Commons

We’re getting a great response and a lot of different approaches to the challenge. Some people talk straight to the camera, others have produced highly polished videos. Some people have composed original music or produced animations. We’re getting some really creative submissions from young people. But the voices come from all over the place – and belong to governors and students, taxi drivers and scientists, advocates and engineers, artists and architects.

We like to say that Planet Forward is a virtual public square where people can come together and have their own platform to make their case, share their expertise or their opinion.

Why have we done it this way?  Because it’s decision time, and we’re about to spend billions of dollars as we rewire America — and the world — so we can have the energy we need without destroying the planet or writing more blank checks to nasty folks who, by accident of birth, sit on top of an ocean of oil and hold the world hostage to what they pump.

The unique part of Planet Forward is the way we go from web to television. The online submissions will be the basis for the television show. Citizen and expert voices unfiltered. The ratings from the online community (rate the video one to five stars) will help us select the range of views and topics to be featured on our  PBS prime-time special on April 15th. Yes, tax day. It’s also one week before earth day.

On TV, we’ll have a few experts who’ll discuss and debate the online submissions they’ll see. It is the kind of exchange you could have with your smart neighbor over the back fence where you debate the price of oil or prospects for electric cars, or the future of coal.

The experts bring a mix of experience, expertise, and opinion to the table. Shai Agassi is an entrepreneur who has become a leading voice in new energy plug-in cars. L. Hunter Lovins is an outspoken advocate of green business practices. James Connaughton shaped the country’s climate and energy policy for the last eight years in the Bush White House.

Then Carol Browner, President Obama’s top advisor on energy and climate, will look at the submissions and speak directly with some of the people who put them together. We’ll see what she has to say – and what she’ll take back to the White House.

Almost everyone says they are for green energy; the debate comes in how we get there.

Planet Forward can make a difference. The public is the driver of the conversation. People who don’t normally sit in front of the camera shape the debate. Decision-makers and experts listen to what they have to say and then respond, not the other way around. We think this is what makes Planet Forward such a ground-breaking form of new media.

>> For more information on this project, see PlanetFoward.org