Weather, Water, Energy 9-26-06

Cool. I mean, hot. James Hansen from NASA is at it again, headlining a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper detailing this period as the warmest in 12,000 years and heading full-blast at the warmest in a million years, complete with El Nino effects (sorry about the tilde, still haven't found it). Meanwhile, the century's Poster Child for Multiple Ignorance, Sen. Jim Inhofe, Repub (of course) from OK, "refutes" claims of global warming in a Senate speech replete with every half-assed, disproven claim from Global Warming for Dummies. I pray every night for the moron to have a long life so every single chicken can come home to roost on his cork-filled blockhead. . . . Speaking of obvious manipulation of fact and reality, Americans don't seem too duped by the sudden plunge of oil and gas prices just before the 2006 elections. I love the quotes about how the Big Oil Admini . . . Bushnev Administration doesn't have the power to control Big Oil supplies. The guy gets it recorded without the subsequent comment, "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . ." . . . I frequently mention the BBC as the best overall general website on these topics, but the Christian Science Monitor, you may have noticed, frequently gives it a run for its money. Witness this excellent piece relating the increasing US population to environmental problems we just can't keep pushing off on our grandkids, the Boomers' greatest historical legacy. The best part of the article deals with the belated but welcome attention of (some) businesses and (some) evangelicals to the needs (if you overlook the quote from the U-MI nut). Don't stop until you get to the bottom and the US's rank in the "environmental performance index" (not that great, surprised?). . . . Here's a story on the politics and give-and-take of wind turbine projects, this time in VT. . . . In WI, just in time for the election, the incumbent governor is making a $80 m. investment in development and use of renewable energy, leveraging it into an additional $370 m. in matching private dollars. He's a Dem (of course). . . . Chevron, with help from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is going back into WY to restart a shale oil project it dumped 30 years ago. Oil prices are higher, tech is better, violent rebels aren't as prevalent as in other nations (although in some parts of WY . . . ). May take years, may not work. It's called business. . . . And in what is likely to be all our future, Australia is creating an office of water management to deal with water "drying up much faster than predicted" (like 40 years faster than its "worst case scenario" had forecast(!)). Australia's Bushnev/Inhofe wannabe John Howard insists Al Gore is still a nut, though. The biggest shock in the article is Australia's science agency predicting a warming there of 3.6 degrees F (the one we use) by 2030 and 10.8 degrees by 2070. Never seen anything that extreme in our reports here. Is it the Foster's, or do they know something we don't? Besides corkhead Howard, I mean.