Weather, Water, Energy 9-11-06

Lots of good stuff after a weekend. A couple of books of note on our subjects. Peter Annin's The Great Lakes Water Wars outlines the future (actually the present) of those bodies as global water pressures mount, and E.O. Wilson of "sociobiology" fame has written an open letter to fundamentalists to bring them into the fold to save God's creation from human destruction. As I've noted before, how people who've let His earth be trashed think He's going to take them in the Rapture after He specifically told them to "steward" it is beyond my theological comprehension. . . . The Christian Science Monitor has started a series on the long-time career of Repub Maynard Miller, a geologist who has been studying the Juneau Icefield for sixty years and who started speaking out on the evidence for global warming 20 years ago. Nice to have something inspiring to read for a change. . . . Along the same line, the Juneau Empire has a piece on how global warming is reshaping the state's boreal forest. . . . Real Climate's article this week is on sea surface temps and their impact on climate and hurricanes. Their conclusion after review of the research?

In total, at least four studies, two based entirely on analyses of observations, and the other two based on climate model simulations, independently come to the conclusion that warming tropical Atlantic and Pacific SSTs cannot be purely attributed to any natural oscillation. These studies do not conclusively show a hurricane/global warming link, let alone determine what it's magnitude might be, but they do strengthen one pillar of that linkage.

CA drivers have done so well buying hybrids and using carpool lanes for those who do that that the lanes are now congested and policymakers are considering capping the numbers allowed in them. The first rule of trying to deal with a complex adaptive system is to plan for unexpected consequences. . . . Health Central runs an interesting article on the cost and validity of "green" products, recommending we make good friends once again with basic vinegar and baking soda. . . . Jonathan Alter at Newsweek has a good column on what the world would have been like today with a good president in office on Sept. 11, 2001. Includes some speculation on our energy policy under that kind of leader. Try not to cry. . . . Sometimes, it's not just the quantity of the water that's the problem, it's the quality, as energy impedes other resources in MT and WY. . . . And sometimes it's the quantity--Las Vegas v. rural areas in NV. . . . Finally, the International Monetary Fund thinks the US should use the recent drop in oil prices to raise gasoline taxes to cut pollution and stabilize the world economy . . . BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!..........