That is the claim here for the new Harry Potter book. Here are the stats they claim:

That’s green enough to warm the large heart of Rubeus Hagrid — bet all you Muggles didn’t know his first name (though truth be told, I didn’t either until I went to Wikipedia). And a wave of the wand to Kate Sheppard at Gristmill for pointing this out.

BTW, saw the latest movie – The Order of the Phoenix – and the film of book five may be the best of the bunch. Of course, it would’ve made much more sense if they hadn’t dawdled so much in filming the books so that we could see the movie of book six before book seven comes out this month.

Extreme heat leads to wildifires, algae blooms and record highs – Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Montana is hot. Factoid: “At Gallatin Field airport Sunday, the mercury topped out at 105 degrees, shattering the record of 99 degrees for that date, set in 2006.” Nothng to worry about, Denyers, it is all merely a grand coincidence the last two years have been record-breaking just as atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are reaching record levels.

Howard announces emissions trading scheme for Australia – Radio New Zealand. Prime Minister Howard said “the new emissions scheme will help Australia substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest cost.” Oops — that leaves the United States as the only rich countries taking no serious action.

Swiss glacier retreats at a rapid clip – Christian Science Monitor. “At this rate, by 2100 about 80 percent of the surface of the glacier will be gone,” says Ralph Logon, a Swiss geomorphologist and expert on glaciers. No worries, Denyers, this is only more evidence of the grand coincidence.

Solar Power Wins Enthusiasts but Not Money – New York Times. An interesting, if controversial article. But the bottom line is certainly true — without much more effort by the federal government, solar photovoltaics is likely to remain a relatively small part of the climate solutions picture.

If you want a Chinese perspective on global warming, a good place to start is this China Daily opinion piece, “Climate change is reshaping global politics.” Pang Zhongying, a research fellow with the Joint Program on Globalization under the CRF-Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, makes some points worth remembering, especially:

Western countries and industrialized Asian nations like Japan and the Republic of Korea have moved many of their factories to developing countries such as China and India, where cheap labor allows them to manufacture at lower costs than at home. This globalization of production has resulted in the discharge of much more waste in poor nations that otherwise would have been released in developed countries. As a matter of fact, not all of the greenhouse gases released “in China” or “from China” are really “China’s”.

Think of our large and growing trade deficit with China as the U.S. exporting industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Worse still, China has a more coal-intensive industrial base, so producing things there generates far more pollution than had we produce the same goods here.

As if we didn’t know Cheney’s energy bias, six years after the fact, the White House has released the names of the experts from whom a prominent energy task force sought advice in 2001.

The Washington Post‘s article Papers Detail Industry’s Role in Cheney’s Energy Report reviews the list somewhat chronologically, and to no one’s surprise – the oil and energy-production industry was heavily favored.

Environmental interests were tossed aside, merely an endnote in the process. What happened to global warming concerns?

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