How a hellish climate change meetup taught me to find my own way

Posted on July 27, 2010 by J. R. Minkel — 1 Comment ↓

J. R. and J. J. I met J. R. less than a year ago through The Great Michael Vine. J. R. shares my burden of saving the world. He is a lab rat and freelance journalist and writes for Scientific American and LiveScience. His book about the universe was published in 2009. Follow him on Twitter.com/JRMinkel.

Hello, Zepfanman.com readers!! Are you ready to rock?! ‘Cause I am. This is my first ever stint as a Guest Blogger, so big ups to J.J. for knowing quality when he sees it. If you like what you read here, check out my blog A Fistful of Science. Now let’s get down to it.

I’ve become increasingly interested over the past year in playing a more active role in my community. The big watershed for me was the death of Pops Minkel (my dad) in 2009. I realized how much of my grumpy attitude had come from him, and faced with the prospect of turning to “shit and dust,” as Michael Vine likes to say, I decided I wanted to spend my remaining days on Earth making as much of a difference as I could. I’ve since come to realize that being the change I want to see is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

5 money-saving ways to be an environmentalist

Posted on June 1, 2010 by J. J. — 3 Comments ↓

I’ve used the impassioned scare tactic in my climate crisis epiphany post, but most people just want to know if environmentalism will save them money. Conservation isn’t a new idea and it’s getting harder and harder to be a skeptic about the damage we’re doing to Earth these days. If you’re not convinced, there are still hundreds of ways to save money (and save the environment at the same time). Here are five (after the jump).

HRC’s Buying for Equality guide

Posted on February 23, 2010 by J. J.

Since there wasn’t an overwhelming majority response for the Tuesday topic, I decided to just go with something I feel needs to be better publicized: Buying For Equality 2010. Since 2002, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has issued an annual report card on corporate America’s treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. You’d be surprised how many major companies have failed to even respond to the survey, year after year (e.g. Lowe’s, Publix, Tupperware, Blockbuster, and IAC which has dozens of huge sub-companies).

2009 Challenge: Climate crisis epiphany

Posted on December 26, 2009 by J. J.

As I watched “the most important meeting in human history” last week, I decided that the COP15* would be a good topic for The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. More specifically, seeing this chart (below) about global warming triggered an “aha! moment” for me. Over the past couple of years, the majority of scientists have come to a consensus on realistic numbers indicating the human impact on climate change. Here is my brief attempt to make sense of what’s going on and what we can do about it.

Temp Change — Climate Scoreboard temperature change