I was idly reading this week's edition of The Economist magazine over breakfast this morning. As a one time table tennis player with a penhold grip myself, I'd just finished reading their obituary of Zhang Zedong when I noticed an advertisement on the facing page. It seems that on March 12th The Economist will be hosting "The Arctic Summit" at the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, Norway. According to The Economist the summit will present "A new vista for trade, energy and the environment" to:

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In a report on the UNFCCC climate change conference in Bali last December, David B. Sandalow of the Brookings Institution, the influential Washington based think tank, pointed out that:

The most important outcomes of the Bali climate change conference didn’t make the headlines… yet Bali produced three important outcomes. First, developing countries stepped up to the table… Second, a new consensus on deforestation emerged… Finally, “adaptation” moved toward center stage. Today the world faces a sobering reality: even the most aggressive plans will not prevent some amount of global warming in the decades ahead. The consequences for poor developing countries are predicted to be most severe.

Mr. Sandalow quoted Nobel peace prize-winner Al Gore as saying in Bali:

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Barack Obama gave a speech on Monday in Lansing Michigan, an area very familiar with the decline in the US automobile industry. He took the opportunity to outline his current energy policy, and he started out by laying his cards on the table:

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This week's issue of New Scientist includes a special section entitled "7 Reasons Why People Hate Reason", plus a couple of other interesting articles.

I urge you to read the special section in it's entirety. It contains articles by nine distinguished figures – linguist Noam Chomsky, neuroscientist Chris Frith, philosopher A.C. Grayling, philosopher Mary Midgeley, sociologist David Miller, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, bioethicist Tom Shakespeare, artist Keith Tyson, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, together with an editorial overview of their contributions that gives the raison d'etre for the articles:

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In a podcast by Tammy Haddad for National Journal On Air T. Boone Pickens spoke about his "Pickens Plan" and his ideas to solve the "energy issue". It seems the state of Texas has agreed to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines into the "wind corridor" where he intends to build enormous wind farms. Mr. Pickens said that:

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In a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington yesterday former Vice President Al Gore put forward his new vision of how the climate change crisis has deteriorated to the point that:

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Both presidential candidates commented today on the current high fuel prices, although for some strange reason neither of them suggested EcoDriving as part of the solution to the problem!

According to a New York Times report on a meeting in Detroit at which Al Gore formally endorsed Barack Obama for the first time Mr. Obama said:

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