Former Vice President Al Gore has started a new project recently. It’s called the We Campaign and is self-described as “a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection — a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore. Our ultimate aim is to halt global warming. Specifically we are educating people in the US and around the world that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.”

It’s odd that they would describe themselves as nonpartisan. Other partisan groups that describe themselves as nonpartisan or bipartisan include the Fraser Institute, Heartland Institute, Discovery Institute, and The National Center for Policy Analysis.
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Since it’s the weekend and I have nothing better to do (read:I have a lot of things I need to do, but don’t want to do them), I’ve been thinking more about the proposed expansion at Heathrow airport. Inel has once again posted an intriguing article called End bias in favour of aviation and other stories, mostly consisting of annotated links to articles in the Guardian. The one that caught my eye was The arguments for and against Heathrow’s runway 3.

First a rant. In aviation runways are numbered by the direction in which they point. For instance, the current runways at Heathrow are 9R, 9L, 27R, and 27L. Calling the proposed expansion “runway 3″ would mean that there would be a runway pointing approximately 30 degrees east of magnetic north. That’s just wrong; nobody is proposing that. The third runway will be parallel to the existing runways.
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Inel has has a series of posts lately about the proposed Heathrow Expansion. The lastest being Calling all students! Help Stop Heathrow Expansion. Please. I don’t live anywhere close to Heathrow, but for what it’s worth here’s my opinion. Expansion of any airport close to a large city is likely to be unpopular. The principal complaint is that the increased air traffic will contribute to the overall noise-pollution of the city.

Looking at a Stop Heathrow Expansion site, they offer four reasons to oppose construction of a new runway. (If you’re short for time, scroll down to the bottom and read the last one.)
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This post is slightly off-topic for this blog, but I think that it’s important. The issue is whether the Presidential candidates have a good enough grasp of the scientific issues, or have good enough science advisors, to make effective policy. Today I’ll be focusing on Barack Obama and his plans for energy efficiency. All position statements are taken directly off of his website.

While Obama has many sub-issues related to energy and the environment on that page, the one I’ll be focusing on is this idea:

Improve Energy Efficiency 50 Percent by 2030

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