Change we can believe in! 'Obama EPA approves another mountaintop removal mine.' Not good. (via Yale 360)

GM says the Volt will get 230 miles per gallon in city driving. More astounding, Nissan says its electric car (the Leaf) will get 367 mpg. Of course the carbon cost of electricity generation (*cough* *cough* coal plants) needs to be accounted for, which will make the Volt roughly equivalent to a 55 mpg vehicle—still a potential gamechanger in a nation addicted to the automobile.

Tuesday afternoon!

* The conspiracy goes deeper than we ever suspected: the state of Hawaii claims to have a copy of Obama's original birth certificate.

* Behold Christoph Niemann's Periodic Table of Metaphors. More inside scuttlebutt from the illustration world at his site. Via Drawn!

* North Carolina in the news: everyone is talking about the terror arrest here last night.

* The Tennessee Valley Authority failed for more than 20 years to heed warnings that might have prevented a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, then allowed its lawyers to stifle a $3 million study into the disaster's cause to limit its legal liability, an inspector general's report said Tuesday.

* DFW on footnotes.

Wednesday night MetaFilterFilter.

* NASA climatologist James Hansen, recently arrested at an anti-mountaintop-mining demonstration in West Virginia, says we're almost too late to stop climate change. I wonder about that "almost."

* Nate Silver considers the legislative strategy at work in the upcoming Waxman-Markey vote.

* Mapping relationships in the X-Men Universe.

* An early Christmas present for my father? Corzine trails badly in New Jersey.

* Lots of talk lately about Robert Charles Wilson's anti-Singulatarian Julian Comstock: A Story of the 22nd Century. Here's an interview at io9 that takes up that angle, while Cory Doctorow highlights this blurb:

If Jules Verne had read Karl Marx, then sat down to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he still wouldn't have matched the invention and exuberance of Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Comstock.

* Dancing plagues and mass hysteria. Via MeFi.

* How complexity leads to social collapse: some intriguing historical exploration from Paul Kedrosky. Also via MeFi.

* Roger Ebert explains how Bill O'Reilly works.

O'Reilly represents a worrisome attention shift in the minds of Americans. More and more of us are not interested in substance. The nation has cut back on reading. Most eighth graders can't read a newspaper. A sizable percentage of the population doesn't watch television news at all. They want entertainment, or "news" that is entertainment. Many of us grew up in the world where most people read a daily paper and watched network and local newscasts. "All news" radio stations and TV channels were undreamed-of. News was a destination, not a generic commodity. Journalists, the good ones anyway, had ethical standards.

In those days, if you quoted The New York Times, you were bringing an authority to the table. Now O'Reilly--O'Reilly!--advises viewers to cancel their subscriptions to a paper most of them may not have ever seen. In those days, if the wire services reported something, it probably happened. Today the wire services remain indispensable, but waste resources in producing celebrity info-nuggets that belong in trash magazines. Advertisers now seek readers they once thought of as shoplifters. If nuclear war breaks out, the average citizen of a Western democracy will be better informed about Brittny Spears than the causes of their death.

Discussion (where else?) at MeFi.

Thursday!

* Following up on my article in the Indy this week on the excessive costs of nuclear power, here's a report from the head of FERC claiming "We may not need any [new nuclear or coal plants], ever."

* Also at Climate Progress: Obama vs. the Ponzi scheme and what the climate of the U.S. might look like a hundred years from now.

* Republicans aren't just talking about secession to rile up the base; they're actually invoking neo-secessionist legal strategies. It's funny, but it's not a joke.

* Jonathan Martin on why the Republican noise machine can't seem to get anywhere against Obama. It's interesting that the issue that seems to have to most traction against this White House is his failure to prosecute the previous, Republication administration for its many crimes. It's the only place where their attempts to derail Obama have worked, but it's not a viable strategy for electoral success.

* And speaking of prosecuting the Bush White House: Vermont Senator (and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee) Patrick Leahy is determined to move forward with a torture probe. Amen to that.

I'm seeing a marked uptick in lefty griping in my feeds, often with some variation on the phrase "washing my hands of the Democratic Party." I'd say this sort of proclamation was unfair, but I guess its time has come; Obama has been president, after all, for two whole months and yet puppies still die.

Confidential to my fellow travelers: What I wrote about pragmatism during the primaries (1, 2) still holds. I don't like the way the financial crisis is being handled either, but unless you foresee wholesale Constitutional reforms before 2012 you're going to have either a Democratic or Republican president. You have to pick one, and there's only one who will ever even listen to people like us. The happy feeling you get from not voting for a Democrat is worth exactly nothing.

Elections have consequences. To take just one example that passed across my newsreader yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency has now blocked mountaintop-removal coal-mining. That happened because the far-too-centrist, corporatist, hopelessly compromised Democratic Party is now in power. And not just in power, but more unabashedly progressive than it's been for forty years. Drag the country to the left with one hand, hold your nose with the other, but we're stuck with the Democrats if we ever want to get anything accomplished. You don't have to like it—but if you want to be a politically relevant actor in America you have to come to terms with it.

I would have thought the example of the last eight years would have proved this point well enough. Have our memories gotten so short?

Again, four more.

* My working assumption has been that the GOP's biggest names—Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney, god-help-us Sarah Palin—would sit out 2012 to take on the winner of the open Democratic field in 2016. (I've actually thought for a while that 2012's Bob Dole would be Newt Gingrich; someone who'll lose handily but won't get creamed.) But that assumption may have been wrong; Bobby Jindal's bizarre grandstanding over federally funded unemployment benefits in a time of deep economic crisis suggests he may try for 2012 after all. Like Steve, though, I don't quite grok the strategy; prolonging misery and screwing up the economic recovery of his home state helps him how, exactly?

* Climate questions for Barack Obama.

Q. You favor a strong push to develop the technology needed to capture and sequester carbon from coal-fired power plants. Many argue that the surest way to bring this technology to market is to impose a nationwide moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired plants that don’t capture and store their carbon emissions. Would you support such a moratorium?

* Wil Wheaton has seen Watchmen.

* Unless DVR usage is significant, I would not get too used to Dollhouse.

Saturday links: links for a Saturday.

* MetaFilter's apparently been hacked. If you're using a PC and especially if you're using Internet Explorer, don't go there. Maybe don't get there no matter what.

* The New York Times proclaims "the collapse of the clean coal myth." About time, considering there was never any such thing.

* Ranking Beatles songs, #1 to #185. Via Kottke. The White Album takes some early hits.

* Is Wikipedia eating the world? Via Kevin Drum.

* Go play some Scriball.

* And a new blog is devoted entirely to Matt Yglesias's spelling mistakes.

HuffPoGreen has extensive coverage of the Tennessee coal ash disaster, including first-hand reports and before-and-after photos, while Crooks and Liars links to long-term health effects of the sludge.

Last week's Tennessee coal disaster is already said to be three times worse than originally thought.

Millions of yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at TVA's Kingston coal-fired plant Monday, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that may be seeping into the ground and flowing downriver. Comment at Gristmill and Open Left, which calls this "an environmental 9/11." (via Vu)

Nuclear power isn't even all that carbon-friendly.

Potpourri.

* Incoming Energy Secretary Steven Chu hates coal. I sort of love this guy.

* The Battlestar Galactica webisodes have started up again.

* "Would you rather be a novel or a poem?" Answer wisely and you could go to Oxford. Via Bookninja.

* Every so often the veil of ideology drops.

* Classic albums get LEGOized.

* 'Whedon: Dollhouse Problems Are My Fault.'

* Ron Moore's promising-sounding Virtuality may never see the light of day.

* The natural history of mythical creatures.

The Environmental Appeals Board effectively killed the expansion of the coal industry yesterday in a landmark ruling requiring the "best-available control technology" for CO2 emissions. I'm on my way out the door, but this is big and very welcome news. More commentary at Climate Progress, Think Progress, Daily Kos, and HuffPo.

Bush's seven deadly environmental sins. And things are about to get worse as our worst president limps out of office to retirement in utter disgrace:

In the next few weeks, the Bush administration is expected to relax environmental-protection rules on power plants near national parks, uranium mining near the Grand Canyon and more mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia.

More here and here. 72 days left.

EcoTuesday!

* Kim Stanley Robinson, hero of the environment.

* People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.

* We're double-saved! 'New Facility Uses Algae to Turn Coal Pollution Into Fuel.'

* Except we've already destroyed the oceans and the rainforests.

Evening links.

* McCain is still hinting that he won't show up at the debate tomorrow. (This campaign has become so insane, I can hardly stand it. What the hell is this? Are they really serious?) What we're seeing now is exactly the consequence of Obama's warning not to inject presidential politics into delicate legislative negotiations—McCain's fake campaign suspension has done nothing but derail the process.

* He's not too busy to be on the teevee, of course.

* And of course this is all Obama's fault for not agreeing to the town halls. John, I'm begging you, just shut up.

* Barbara Boxer doesn't hold back in her anger over what's happening.

* Sarah Silverman makes her bid to save America with the Great Schelp.

* Al Gore blows my mind with a call for civil disobedience against the building of additional coal plants.

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” he said at the third annual meeting of former President Bill Clinton’s initiative, which arranges partnerships between the very rich and the very needy.

* And here's why: Global carbon emissions jumped 3% in 2007.

* On a more optimistic note, Obama supports NASA.

* Obama and Biden will be coming to Greensboro on the *only day for the next month I'll be out of North Carolina*. Damn you, Obama! There's a reason for this visit: North Carolina looks to be right on the brink of flipping. More at Facing South in two parts.

Tuesday, Tuesday.

* Global warming may increase kidney stones. Now will you act, America?

* Shutting down coal plants makes kids smarter.

* Can the human species be sophisticated (mature) enough to keep in mind a looming challenge (decarbonizing the energy system, which will happen eventually anyway) even as it deals with a real-time problem (avoiding energy-related economic turmoil)? An interesting two-part discussion at the New York Times Dot Earth blog.

* LEGO Futurama.

* And pictures from the wedding I attended in Jersey this weekend are up at my Flickr account.

EnviroTuesday!

* A Georgia judge has blocked construction of a coal plant over CO2 concerns.

* The L.A. Times envisions a world of $200 oil.

* The New Yorker looks into claims that speculation is driving up oil prices (maybe, but probably not to a significant extent) as well as the uplifting story of an island community in Denmark that has worked to reduce its net carbon emissions to zero.

Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.

Burning fossil fuels like coal is the chief cause of man-made greenhouse gases. Hansen said the Earth's atmosphere has got to get back to a level of 350 parts of carbon dioxide per million. Last month, it was 10% higher: 386.7 parts per million.

Hansen said he'll testify on behalf of British protesters against new coal-fired power plants. Protesters have chained themselves to gates and equipment at sites of several proposed coal plants in England.

"The thing that I think is most important is to block coal-fired power plants," Hansen told the luncheon. "I'm not yet at the point of chaining myself but we somehow have to draw attention to this."

Frank Maisano, a spokesman for many U.S. utilities, including those trying to build new coal plants, said while Hansen has shown foresight as a scientist, his "stop them all approach is very simplistic" and shows that he is beyond his level of expertise.

The year of Hansen's original testimony was the world's hottest year on record. Since then, 14 years have been hotter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Two decades later, Hansen spent his time on the question of whether it's too late to do anything about it. His answer: There's still time to stop the worst, but not much time.

"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would."

Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.

In more positive news, Honda is releasing a hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle, while wind power is outpacing nuclear power 10-to-1, with China leading the pack.