's Climate Chronicles

Lifted wholesale from the Appalachian Voices blog Front Porch comes this dispatch:

The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held an important hearing yesterday on Bush’s 11th hour rule-making shenanigans. As most of our readers will know, one of those last minute rule changes is a repeal of the 25 year old Stream Buffer Zone rule - an important guard against the dumping of mountaintop removal mining waste into our streams - which just landed in the Federal Register today.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr gives perhaps the most significant and compelling testimony on mountaintop removal mining I have ever seen, and I hope you will take 10 minutes to watch him describe in his own words - and the words of his late father - exactly what is happening to the Appalachian Mountains.

Here's a transcript of part of the moving testimony. Watch the video and hear his voice.

I’ve filed very detailed testimony about some of the worst of these actions, but I just wanted to give you a real life expression of what’s going on. I flew only a few weeks ago over the Appalachian Mountains over eastern Kentucky, and West Virginia mainly, and the Cumberland Plateau. If the American people could see what I saw on that trip, there would be a revolution in this country. We are literally cutting down the Appalachian Mountains, these historic landscapes where Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett roamed.

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The following guest post was written by Jennifer Kefer, Climate and Energy Program Coordinator for The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

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New Zealand’s tuatara may be one for the climate change history books. It's a lizard-like creature that's become global warming's latest canary in the dirty coal mine.

The two species of tuatara are the only surviving members of the Sphenodontians which flourished around 200 million years ago, but because of climate change, they are reaching the end of a very long earthly run for a very peculiar reason.

Forget the Y2K countdown clock, that's ancient history, or the trillion-dollar-counter tracking the nation's deficit. Instead, bring the most important number to your website with a newly available widget. It tracks atmospheric C02.

There’s a grassroots organization launching a multi-lingual social networking site today to promote the most important number on the planet.

The number is 350 -- as in parts per million (ppm) of carbon in the atmosphere, the limit of what's acceptable.

And the grassroots group - aptly named 350.org -- is working to embed the number into global consciousness. They're organizing online to have offline results in every corner of the globe, an attempt to redeem the story of the Tower of Babel and unite humanity around a single number.

Think "green building" and what advances come to mind? FSC-certified wood or LEED credits, perhaps. Think again. Try heavy machinery.The $90 billion construction equipment industry is going hybrid, with Japan's Komatsu being first to release a product.

Rumor has it that the US Green Building Council (USGBC) is about to unclog its big backlog of LEED registration certificates. So reports the Huffington Post.

Good news for green developers because that backlog is crazy.

Take New York City. By the end of 2007 -- after four years in the program -- the USGBC had LEED-certified 15 buildings. Meanwhile, the number of projects waiting for approval had swelled to 294.

That’s a ratio of one certification for every 20 registrations -- just five percent. Pretty poor. Especially when you compare it with the UK’s equivalent green building program BREEAM, which boasts a ratio of one in five.

The reported fix?

Linux enthusiasts, rejoice! You now have more ammo in your arsenal to throw out against rival Windows – and this time it’s green.

From Network World Magazine:

Independent tests show that Linux pulls as much as 12% less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware.

For that, Linux captured the magazine's "green flag" award.

So how did Network World do it?

Oil-drenched Abu Dhabi has been sinking billions into colossal clean energy projects. And now it's promising to enact the world's toughest green building standards.

The measures, called the Estidama Program (Arabic for "sustainability"), are still in development -- part of Plan Abu Dhabi 2030, the long-term green scheme for the UAE capital.

Here are some key parts of the pending law, via Arabian Business:

Give hot rocks a chance. That's all the geothermal experts have been saying.

And now, it seems, more and more nations are paying attention.

Take Australia.

By the end of '08, it will shut down the diesel-fueled generators in the southern town of Innaminck (population 12).

And in their place will come the nation's very first geothermal power plant.