Everybody and their mother has already blogged on the anti-science declaration by GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz, who dismissed global warming as a “total crock of shit.”

I didn’t think I had much to add to the well-deserved trashing he received — until I looked up the word “crock.” Wikipedia explains:

Especially in engineering, a crock is a botched attempt or design to achieve something. An automobile with intentionally designed square wheels would be a crock.

Hmm. What car company makes crocks? Could it be a car company that has been losing market share for decades?

This meaning of crock may well derive from “Norwegian krake, sickly animal, and Middle Dutch kraecke, broken-down horse” — yet another perfect metaphor for General Motors.

How can a global manufacturing and technology company run by someone who doesn’t believe in science — and if you think global warming is a “crock of shit” then you definitely do not believe in science — succeed in the advanced car market of the 21st century? The question answer itself.

Memos Show Pressure on EPA Chief – Associated Press; Internal memos apparently show inner-agency pressure on EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to either grant the California tailpipe waiver or resign. Still, EPA spokespeople stand in defense of Johnson, so the past memos may not have much weight. The memos are resurfacing as part of an investigation by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) into the EPA’s decision. See also the LA Times and Reuters.

Gas Prices Soar, Posing a Threat to Family Budget – New York Times. “The effect of high oil prices today could be the difference between having a recession and not having a recession,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a Harvard economist. [JR: Thank you very much, President George "no energy strategy and no Iraq reconstronstruction strategy" Bush.]

Noah’s Ark For Crop Seeds Opens In Arctic Norway – Reuters. Norwegians have started a vault of seeds for food crops – “100 million seeds from more than 100 countries have been sent for safekeeping at the $10 million facility which holds 268,000 seed samples, each from a different farm or field.” The vaults can survive even the worst-case global warming scenario. [JR: If only the same were true for most species on this planet....]

China’s Olympic Water Province Faces Severe Drought – PlanetArk. Will the athletes go thirsty?! Probably not, but the flux of people to Beijing this summer will put loads of stress on the already short water resources…

Few places on earth are more vulnerable to climate change than the oceans. Every passing year provides more and more evidence that serious impacts from human-caused global warming are here now. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Peering into the murky depths, Jane Lubchenco searched for sea life, but all she saw were signs of death.

Video images scanned from the seafloor revealed a boneyard of crab skeletons, dead fish and other marine life smothered under a white mat of bacteria. At times, the camera’s unblinking eye revealed nothing – a barren undersea desert in waters renowned for their bounty of Dungeness crabs and fat rockfish.

“We couldn’t believe our eyes,” Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. “It was so overwhelming and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn’t swim or scuttle away had died.”

Upon further study, Lubchenco and other marine ecologists at Oregon State University concluded that that the undersea plague appears to be a symptom of global warming. In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers note how these low-oxygen waters have expanded north into Washington and crept south as far as the California state line. And, they appear to be as regular as the tides, a cycle that has repeated itself every summer and fall since 2002.

I will post the link to the Science article below with the abstract. The SF Chronicle explains:

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