WonkLine: March 5, 2010

Posted by Wonk Room Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:49:00 GMT

From the Wonk Room.

California’s dirty air caused more than $193 million in hospital-based medical care from 2005 to 2007 as people sought help for problems such as asthma and pneumonia that are triggered by elevated pollution levels,” according to a new RAND Corporation study.

In a full-page ad in Variety, a coalition of green groups said “the predatory grab for resources the Oscar-nominated film Avatar portrays on the fictional planet Pandora is similar to methods used in northern Alberta” for tar sands extraction.

A submission by the UK Institute of Physics “to a parliamentary inquiry examining the behavior of climate-change scientists” was drawn from Peter Gill, a consultant for “oil and gas production companies, who “argues that global warming is a religion.”