Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production – New York Times. “Greater cultivation of crops to produce ethanol could harm water quality and leave some regions of the country with water shortages, a panel of experts is reporting.” The full National Research Council report, “Water Implications of Biofuels Production in the United States,” is available online.

We’re Carboholics. Make Us Stop. — Washington Post. Op-Ed calling for carbon regulations by David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy Inc., a wholesale power generator serving 19 million households with total greenhouse gas emissions exceeding Norway’s:

Global warming should be at the top of Congress’s agenda — because action by this Congress will turn the tide of climate change around the world. Never before have we faced the prospect of fundamentally damaging our global ecosystem by the day-to-day activities of each and every one of us. A cap-and-trade system is the place to start. America must act now to protect our future.

Row erupts over risk to polar bears — The Guardian. “The global warming sceptic Bjorn Lomborg, has sparked fresh debate about the dangers of increasing temperatures with new claims that polar bears are not on the brink of collapse and are more threatened by hunting than by climate change.” We’ve already debunked “Bear” Lomborg on this claim, but it’s good to see the British media take this nonsense on:

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The politically savvy blogger Steven Clemons makes this fascinating point:

Gore’s win seals the deal that he owns the global climate change franchise. Everyone big in this game — from firms, to NGOs, to governments — will need the Al Gore seal of approval on whether some initiatives are good or bad. That’s going to be interesting. Al Gore is going to be an NGO of his very own, and he’s probably going to have to get a sticker machine so that stuff he likes can bear his seal of approval.

But there is a bigger, more complicated and admittedly cynical dimension to the Gore win.

It keeps climate change policy from being something that anyone else can take a lot of credit for, particularly the Clintons — unless they can work out a deal.

The rest of the article has some fascinating behind-the-scenes from the Clinton Global Initiative that I had wondered about when I was there — why did Gore get onto a plenary panel when he wasn’t on the agenda?