January 30, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a coal industry “astroturf” organization, is sponsoring the Republican presidential debate tonight and Democratic debate tomorrow night, both in California and hosted by CNN. Think Progress has noticed that ABEC has sponsored three previous debates on CNN, and, in each one, there have been no questions about global warming. […]

January 30, 2008 The Pump Handle

On January 20th, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper published the results of six months’ worth of interviews with employees from the building site of Beijing’s Olympic stadium: CHINA has systematically covered up the accidental deaths of at least 10 workers, and perhaps many more, in a rush to construct the futuristic “bird’s nest” stadium in Beijing […]

January 29, 2008 The Pump Handle 2Comment

In San Francisco, large grocery stores are no longer allowed to give out the disposable, non-biodegradable plastic bags that have formed a giant patch of plastic (twice the size of Texas) in the Pacific Ocean and caused a host of other problems. The Whole Foods supermarket chain will halt plastic-bag distribution on Earth Day this […]

January 29, 2008 The Pump Handle 4Comment

In his last state of the union address, President Bush glossed over the seriousness of some of the most pressing problems facing our country, and suggested they could be solved with something that’s been in short supply during his tenure. “Global climate change” got one brief mention, as something that the nation is committed to confronting with cleaner […]

January 28, 2008 The Pump Handle 3Comment

Earlier this month, I wrote in Restoring FOIA about recently passed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which were signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 31, 2007.  Supporters of the OPEN Government Act, including the Society for Environmental Journalists (SEJ), are hoping that these new FOIA requirements will bring easier and speedier access […]

January 28, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

UPDATED BELOW Annys Shin of the Washington Post has reported that Dr. Gail Charnley, a well-known corporate product defense expert, is the White House’s leading candidate for the chairmanship of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We’ve written extensively here about this beleaguered agency. Finally, after the nation watched helplessly at the recall of millions of […]

January 26, 2008 The Pump Handle 2Comment

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released new information concerning the massive explosion on December 19 at the T2 Laboratories plant in Jacksonville, Florida.  The disaster killed four men out of the nine total who were working at the time.  In their announcement, the CSB investigators indicated that 33 people—more than double the number originally reported—suffered lacerations, […]

January 25, 2008 The Pump Handle

The science blogosphere has been particularly active this past week. The Second Annual Science Blogging Conference brought bloggers together in North Carolina, where they discussed open science, blogger ethics, gender and race in science, science communication, and more. Conference organizer Coturnix has links and videos aplenty. One thought-provoking post comes from Abel Pharmboy, who reports […]

January 24, 2008 The Pump Handle 3Comment

Yesterday, the American Association for the Advancement of Science – the world’s largest general scientific society – announced its co-sponsorship of the Science Debate 2008 campaign (which we at The Pump Handle support, and blogged about here). In light of recent economic events, the press release announcing AAAS’s co-sponsorship focused on the link between science […]