The Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate and Vice President. But how green is really Joe Biden? Well, it seems he is green enough for the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) to applaud Barack Obama’s choice and to hail Joe Biden in regards to his environmental records.

“With a lifetime LCV environmental score of 83%, Joe Biden recognizes that ending our addiction to oil is vital to our national security,” LCV President Gene Karpinski said. “Senator Biden is a long-time leader on key energy and environmental issues, and the members of LCV enthusiastically support Senator Obama’s choice.”

ScienceSays.net lists “Biden’s awesome environmental record” saying he is just as strong on the environment as Obama and that Biden “isn’t afraid to say it”:

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Research by the University of Gothenburg shows that more than 400 marine zones around the world has such “a great lack of oxygen in soft seabeds that fauna and fish have been harmed.” The research made by the Swedish University also shows that the dead soft seabeds have doubled every decade since the 60’s.

Back in 1995 Rutger Rosenberg, from the Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg, and Robert Diaz, from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in the USA, carried out research and studies on the world’s soft seabeds. Their research then showed 44 zones “that were so afflicted by oxygen deficiency that soft-seabed fauna and fish had been harmed.”

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The US Climate Change Science Program was created by the climate change denying Bush administration back in late 2002 “to review the validity of climate-change science before making policy decisions.” The science program was criticized by environmentalists for being used so that Bush could continue doing absolutely nothing to curb climate change.

But now the Climate Change Science Program has released their results and they clearly show that “human activity was responsible for the rapid warming of the 20th century.”

“The evidence is pretty convincing that the models give a good simulation of climate,” lead author David Bader of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California told reporters last week. He concedes that the report did not examine predictions of future climate change. Nor did it address policy issues, which will be left to the next administration.

Via New Scientist

The Republican presidential contender John McCain yesterday tried to make fun of Barack Obama at a biker rally with his hard-core voters saying Obama’s new energy plan was all about inflating your tires. At the biker rally John McCain said that “my opponent doesn’t want to drill. He doesn’t want nuclear power. He wants you to inflate your tires.” Later in an interview he said that “we are not going to achieve energy independence by inflating our tires.”

Besides the fact that John McCain is not telling the truth about what Obama said he is also completely wrong about the effectiveness of proper tire inflation.

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On this day, 63 years ago, USA dropped the nuclear bomb “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, USA dropped a second nuclear bomb over Nagasaki in Japan. The bombs killed as many as 240 000 people. Thousands more died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians.

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The Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has released his “New Energy for America” plan. If elected some of the things in his plan are 10% renewables by 2012, one million plug-ins by 2015 and energy efficiency now.

John McCain’s energy plan in comparison is, let’s say, a bit weaker. He is all about nuclear energy, a $300 million battery prize, nothing on energy efficiency and an opposition to clean renewable energy.

Here are some of the energy plans Barack Obama has for America:

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There have been a lot of discussions about the high gas prices in USA the past months and what exactly should be done to curb this trend. Some politicians, like McCain, Bush, and Gingrich, are taking advantage of the situation and tries to push for the ending of a 27-year moratorium on offshore drilling along the coastlines of USA.

But offshore drilling is not a “quick fix” and it won’t help to lower the gas prices. The only ones that will profit from this are Bush and McCain’s friends in the oil industry. While people are suffering from the high gas prices the oil companies are reporting record profits after record profits.

Greenpeace has listed a bunch of reasons why offshore drilling is not the answer to high gas prices at the pump:

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According to development economist Jeffrey Sachs the fight against climate change won’t cost us more than 1% of global income per year, a sum that the world can afford.

“If we look seriously at mitigation, it is not too expensive,” he told a conference in Geneva on the humanitarian impact of climate change.”

“If we invested around $700 billion per year, we would be able to create a sustainable energy system.”

“The United States spent just $3 billion on sustainable energy last year - equal to 36 hours of spending by the Pentagon on defence, according to Sachs, who is director of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University.”

Jeffrey Sachs also criticised governments around the world for failing to live up to their promises to provide development aid and relief to poor people already affected by the effects of climate change, saying “how the rich world leaves the poor world to die is the biggest mistake on the planet.”

31% of men believe climate change “is a myth invented by the hippies.” At least that is the case if you take a look at the results from the 2008 great male survey from AskMen.com, one of the most comprehensive opinion polls of men ever conducted on the web.

31% might seem like a high number in the light of overwhelming scientific evidence and consensus in favour of man-made climate change. Luckily the majority are no climate change deniers as 69% the men asked are worried about the effects of global warming.

Besides all the ordinary sport, movie, celebrity and TV questions the men who participated in the survey were actually asked a couple of serious questions.

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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest labor unions in USA, has announced that they no longer support President Bush’s platform for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

During a summit in California on “good jobs and clean air” Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa announced that their labor union is leaving the ANWR coalition.

“We are not going to drill our way out of the energy problems we are facing—not here and not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We must find a long-term approach that breaks our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the development of alternate energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power.”

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