Back in July T. Boone Pickens announced a quartering of his mega-wind farm project. The project has essentially been scrapped due to continuing issues with access to transmission lines, as Mr. Pickens downplays wind in his wind+natural gas “plan.” The remaining order with GE has been halved to three hundred odd turbines, whose future home is expected to be relocated from the Texas panhandle to Canada or Montana.

The comic has nothing to do with the story per se, but was interesting and allows for a segue to an NYT/Greenwire piece from last month pointing out that Wind Projects Don’t Hurt Neighbors’ Property Values — Study. Makes sense to me. After all, if the likes of Monet and van Gogh found beauty in windmills, who am I to disagree?

While the text of the comic is not quite accurate—we’ll chalk it up to artistic license—it gets the point across. In the past week or so, a number of independent groups have examined the “evidence” including FactCheck.org and the Associated Press. Even so, the East Anglian emails stirred one paper in England to publish an article purportedly giving 100 reasons why global warming was perfectly natural to which New Scientist replied with 50 reasons against. See also this side-by-side graphic refuting skeptics’ major points.

In other news, the New York Times recently interviewed a climatologist who strives to engage skeptics and openly debate the evidence.

Meanwhile, Støre-Gore reports snow and ice across the world vanishing quickly as a new article in Nature suggests that… [view entry]

reminded me of a wonderful, but unfortunately defunct strip, Rustle the Leaf; though I don’t know why it wasn’t “Russell the Leaf.” I really used to look forward to this every week, and was quite disappointed when it stopped updating. Included below are some of my favorite strips as a brief introduction to this little known gem, and I hope you enjoy Russell and Rooty as much as I do:

If you work with kids, or just want to enjoy some extra strips, check out their lesson plans too; especially February 2006 – Toxic Transmissions. There’s also a simple but cute animated explanation of global warming.

Keep this in mind, and consider pointing it out to the management of any businesses you frequent that might be trying to violate the laws of thermodynamics and cool the outdoors. After all, it’s crazy to leave your doors and windows open during the winter, right?