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MSNBC has an article asking if the current heat wave across much of the USA is a result of global warming. The correct scientific answer is “Who knows?” - it’s really impossible to pin down any one specific meteorological event to long-term climatic trends, whether it’s a hurricane or a heat wave. Nevertheless, it is consistent with global warming predictions, and there are some unique aspects to this particular onset of record-breaking temperatures:

So, is our current heat wave a symptom of global warming?

“This heat wave and other extreme events we’ve seen in recent years are completely consistent with what we expect to become more common as a result of global warming, even though we can’t be definitive on any single event,? says Jay Gulledge with Pew Climate Change.

But experts say our current heat wave is unique.

“So far, we’ve had about 80 daily high temperature records broken and in the month of July there were about 50 all-time records for the month of July broken — that’s phenomenal for any air mass, any heat wave that’s going on right now,” says Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Seed Magazine features an interview with Laurie David, the “media queen of the environmental movement” and trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who offers sound advice on how to deal with global warming, oil addiction, and other pressing environmental problems. Definitely worth a read.

Renowned biologist PZ Myers has once again “bravely plunged into the fascinating world of kinky sex research in humans” and described a new scientific study which concluded that viewing porn increases sperm production and potency.

So now you have a good excuse to view all the beautiful nude girls on this website - it’s good for your health and virility.

Bill Moyers recently gave a great keynote speech at the Society of Environmental Journalists Convention.

Here is an excerpt, the entire speech is available at commondreams.org:

“Rather than leading the world in finding solutions to the global environmental crises, the United States is a recalcitrant naysayer and backslider. Our government and corporate elites have turned against America’s environmental visionaries - from Teddy Roosevelt to John Muir, from Rachel Carson to David Brower, from Gaylord Nelson to Laurence Rockefeller. They have set out to eviscerate just about every significant gain of the past generation, and while they are at it they have managed to blame the environmental movement itself for the failure of the Green Revolution. If environmentalism isn’t dead, they say, it should be. And they will gladly lead the cortege to the grave.

President Bush has turned the agencies charged with environmental protection over to people who don’t believe in it. To run the Interior Department he chose a long-time defender of polluters who has opposed laws to safeguard wildlife, habitat, and public lands. To run the Forest Service he chose a timber industry lobbyist. To oversee our public lands he named a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional. To run the Superfund he chose a woman who made a living advising corporate polluters how to evade the Superfund. And in the White House office of environmental policy the President placed a lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute whose mission was to make sure the government’s scientific reports on global warming didn’t contradict the party line and the interest of oil companies. Everywhere you look, the foxes own the chicken coop.”

From the World Wildlfe Fund newsroom:

Leading Scientists Rank Endangered Dolphins, Porpoises Most In Need of Immediate Action

“Marine scientists for the first time have assessed dolphin and porpoise populations around the world which are severely threatened by entanglement in fishing gear and recommended nine urgent priorities for action in a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. These nine projects highlight species threatened by bycatch that are the most likely to benefit from immediate action but are languishing without intervention.

The list of dolphins and porpoises that could recover if changes to fishing methods and other conservation efforts are made includes harbor porpoises in the Black Sea, where thousands of porpoises are killed each year; Atlantic humpback dolphins off the coast of west Africa; and franciscana dolphins in South America. Most of the species on the list are threatened by the widespread use of one type of fishing gear — gillnets. These nets are difficult for dolphins and porpoises to spot visually or detect with their sonar, so they may become tangled in the netting or in the ropes attached to the nets.

“Almost 1,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die every day in nets and fishing gear. Some species are being pushed to the brink of extinction,” said Karen Baragona of WWF’s species conservation program. “We developed this ranking to help governments and aid agencies target their investments for the best return.”

The report will be submitted to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at its annual meeting next week in South Korea. The scientific committee of the IWC includes many of the world’s leading marine scientists, who last year endorsed the methodology of the WWF report. “

The New York Times published a good editorial today on President Bush’s disastrous environmental policies:

The Bush administration’s efforts to capitalize on the recent discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker were bizarre. Gale Norton, the interior secretary, announced a $10 million program to enlarge the bird’s habitat, proclaiming that “second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are rare.”

But what about first chances? The woodpecker, if it indeed has returned, is as much warning as gift. President Bush’s policies suggest that he not only has failed to learn from past mistakes, but is determined to repeat them on a more destructive scale.

The obvious example is his fixation on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This bespeaks an intellectually bankrupt energy policy and would certainly cause trouble for wildlife. Yet the Arctic is hardly the only illustration of the administration’s insensitivity to wilderness values. Here are three more of recent vintage:

Roadless Rollback On Thursday, the administration repealed one of President Bill Clinton’s proudest and most popular environmental initiatives, a rule that placed nearly 60 million acres, or roughly one-third, of the national forests off limits to new road building and development. The Clinton rule gave protection to some of the last truly wild places in America and the fish and wildlife that live there.

By the Forest Service’s own estimates, these roadless areas shelter at least 200 rare species, which under the administration’s less protective regime will now be more vulnerable to commercial development. The rollback also completes the administration’s demolition job on the web of forest protections it inherited from Mr. Clinton.

Drill, Drill, Drill Meanwhile, the Interior Department continues to move at warp speed to lease ever-larger chunks of the Rocky Mountains to oil and gas companies. At least one governor has had enough. Last month, Bill Richardson of New Mexico filed a suit against a Bureau of Land Management leasing plan that he says would leave 95 percent of the 1.8 million-acre Otero Mesa open to drilling.

At risk are some of the most important and fragile grasslands left in America, the wildlife they sustain and - of special concern to Mr. Richardson - an aquifer that contains the state’s largest untapped source of fresh water. The lawsuit is being closely watched by other Western governors, in particular Wyoming’s Dave Freudenthal, who is appalled by the pace and volume of the drilling activity in Wyoming’s Upper Green River Valley.

It is not as if the oil and gas companies have no place else to go. Fully 85 percent of the petroleum resources on federal lands in the five Rocky Mountain states are already leased or available for leasing. Moreover, by its own admission, the industry has neither the equipment nor the manpower to exploit the leases it already owns - yet another reason to ask why the administration finds it necessary to accelerate drilling in places where moderation is required and to invite new drilling in places where there should be none at all.

Shortchanging Nature Mr. Bush’s environmental agenda in the 2000 campaign consisted of three promises, none realized. One was to regulate global warming emissions. Another was to eliminate the maintenance backlog in the national parks. And the third was to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the government’s main program for creating and preserving parks and wildlife refuges. The program’s authorized level is $900 million, half for federal open space purchases, half for state acquisitions.

Mr. Bush hasn’t come close. This year he asked for $130 million for federal purchases, nothing for the states. Last week a House subcommittee axed the federal funds altogether. The irony that Mr. Bush may be presiding over the death of precisely the kind of program that the ivory-billed woodpeckers of this world depend on seemed lost on Mr. Bush’s senior officials, who uttered nary a peep of protest.