[This post has been written by Dana, winner of the Climate Progress political pundit award.]
To begin with, I’d like to attribute my success in the 2008 election predictions to FiveThirtyEight, a terrific political analysis website to which I was addicted throughout the campaign. The website’s excellent poll analysis was the basis of my own projections. And of course the overall intelligence of the American people to finally elect an intelligent leader with an understanding of the importance of environmental issues ultimately allowed my realistic/optimistic predictions to come to fruition. Like most Climate Progress readers, I’m very excited about the prospects of the Obama presidency, and in fact I’m writing this post on the eve of his inauguration.
Shifting subjects a bit, another of my favorite websites (along with Climate Progress, of course) is the Green Home Huddle.
It is a green products website with a number of very useful features, from user reviews of green products to wiki articles on a variety of environmental subjects to a green discussion board (including a climate change section). I consider the Green Home Huddle to be a big database where environmentally-conscious people can learn and share our own knowledge and experience about everything from electric cars to climate change to environmentally friendly food and cleaning products.
The Green Home Huddle also has an Ask an Industry Leader segment in which someone with expertise in an environmental industry (such as ZAP co-founder Gary Starr) agrees to an interview, and Huddler users supply the questions. Joe has generously agreed to be the site’s next expert, and questions are now being accepted from Huddler users.
So for all you Climate Progress readers who have been dying for Joe to answer your questions, this is your chance. You can ask Joe about any subject within his expertise (for example, energy efficiency, alternative energy, climate change, etc.). Huddler users will also vote on the questions (each post has the option to “Rate Post” with a thumbs-up), and the best questions will be submitted to Joe. You do have to register with Huddler first, but that’s free of course. And while you’re there, I recommend checking out the rest of the site, and maybe hopping over to participate in some of the climate change discussions. The more the merrier.
[JR: This turned out to be one of those serendipitous coincidences that make the internet so internetty.]
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Thanks for allowing me to post on Climate Progress, Joe!
Psst… Dana, take out the part about FiveThirtyEight…
Much better to let everyone think you’re a political genius!
Gotta give credit where credit is due. FiveThirtyEight is great.
I’ve got a policy question that I’ve been dying to ask. I’ll try to post over there (sounds like an interesting site anyway), but I’m going to cross post here since I doubt it will get (m)any votes.
Why don’t people advocate that a portion of the home energy efficiency stimulus be based on the need of the home instead of the owners? Specifically, I’m thinking of old housing that is expensive to weatherize but which would have a huge reduction due to how bad it is. This unfortunately is too expensive for most middle class owners to modernize, so it doesn’t happen. Specifically, here in St. Louis, there’s a lot of 70-120+ year old brick housing with zero wall insulation and flat roofs. Insulating walls without wall cavities basically requires something along the lines of building walls within the exterior walls or a gut rehab. Insulating the roof is also a much bigger deal than normal as there isn’t enough space to crawl around and insulate it. If the house still has knob and tube wiring, you can’t even spray insulation up there without rewiring. I’ve done what I can (switched to a white roof when last replaced, added a solar powered attic fan and air sealed the basement), but most people can’t afford major weatherproofing. What’s an ecologically minded historic homeowner to do?
Most and oftentimes all of the questions get submitted to the expert, so go ahead and ask it on Huddler Jason!
It would be nice if it was true that most people voted for Obama because he was the most intelligent and because his policies were the best. Probably many picked him because he was tall, had deep voice and steady speaking style and good looking for a politician.
If Obama was short, fat, ugly and high pitched voice, would people vote for him because his ideas were better than everybody elses? I doubt it. You gotta look good. It overcomes so much about everything in life. (and this doesn’t come from any discontent I might have !)