Weather, Water, Energy 9-14-06

A very interesting story from ND today. A survey there found 69% of residents willing to pay an added dollar a month on electricity bills to finance renewable energy projects. 81% favored requiring utilities to get at least 10% of their electricity from wind and other renewable sources while 79% backed having all ND gasoline include a 10% ethanol blend. This is North Dakota, people. Maybe room for optimism elsewhere? . . . I mentioned in an earlier post that the BBC is the best general news site for stories on our topics here, and they prove me right today. Three stories of interest. One looks at the growing number of "climate refugees" in Bangladesh, running from increased floods brought by global warming. Another details British plans for an energy research institute funded by the government and energy companies (?!). The last discusses a "position paper" from the British Royal Botanic Gardens urging more planning for plant changes from global warming and urban growth, including gardening tips (!). . . . USA Today runs a story on the summer of 2006 as the hottest in 70 years, due greatly to increased nighttime temps. And for those who think, well, we got through 1936 so there's no global warming, this is summer temps, not the full year, and those numbers are still highest for the last 10-15 years. . . . The Christian Science Monitor alerts us to the impact of global warming in Spain, where jellyfish and confused Arctic seals are turning up on coastlines when they really probably shouldn't. This on top of years of drought, fires, and shrinking coastline from rising waterline. Spain's spring, brought by warmer currents than hit central Europe, comes two weeks earlier and last days longer than 30 years ago, affecting fauna as well. (While the Spanish can make the link between climate and warming with ease, Climate Progress points out how hard it is for US media to add 2 and 2.) . . . Along the same cheery line, Agence France-Presse, via Terra Daily, reports a Nature article predicting extreme summers for Europe becoming so common, they're not extreme anymore, moving the hot, dry Mediterranean climate northward. . . . And NASA's James Hansen continues to speak out on the likely catastrophe of global warming, telling a CA conference that our window deal effectively with the impact is down to 10 years. Assuming there's a civilization 100 years from now, Hansen should be one of the prominent heroes in whatever history remains to be written. . . .