Climate in America

Casual Observations from Virginia to Kansas: I am moving my headquarters for the summer from Ann Arbor to Boulder by way of Maryland and Virginia. Trying to work some along the way, most notably on a proposal about water resources for energy production, and how climate change might impact water resources.

Consciousness of climate change is spreading throughout the U.S. In West Virginia there are billboards, "Clean, Carbon Neutral Coal." They are sponsored by Walker Machinery, and have set off some controversy, especially by a group trying to stop mountain top removal as a form coal mining. (West Virginia Coal Association) On the rivers in West Virginia and on trains in Kansas there are mountains of coal. In Kansas there is debate about a coal power plant.

In Illinois Corn has corn ethanol front and center for energy security, air quality, and climate change. The same is true for virtually every state in the Corn Belt. There is news of experiments in Oklahoma on switchgrass.

Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection's We Can Solve It campaign is all over NPR sponsorship.

So there it is right in our faces, climate and climate change. It's a marketing tool, and as a marketing tool there are misrepresentations of the facts, the impacts of products.

Comments?

Iconinc BBQ at Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City. Worthy new BB at PeeWees in Scottsville, Va.

Attribution of climate change series starts next week.