Weather, Water, Energy 1-16-07

Islands, islands everywhere, as global warming melts away ice and land forms we haven't seen maybe ever as a species start popping up, ready for exploration (h/t Grist). . . . While you're at Grist, check out this really terrific review of Hell and High Water, the new book on global warming and its implications. You won't come away happy, but there are prescriptions for ameliorating the damages, both from the book and from the reviewer, that seem doable, if not completely remediative. If global warming will come take away the ice where I live, I'm going to hunt down that book. . . . Some interesting work here on how 300 m. years ago or so, the fluctuations in CO2 were pretty wild, alternating us between global warming and ice ages. Not really applicable to today, but it will sensitize you to the possibility of nonlinear swings. . . . OK and TX are getting revved up over the water from OK that north TX needs to grow into yet another overdeveloped, unplanned, and wasteful TX megapolis. Can you tell whose side I'm on? . . . Uh-oh. Politics from the National Arbor Day Foundation? Just because the growing zones for plants in this country are heading north at observable speed? The wingnuts might take it that way. So very quietly get the new map the Foundation put out to let you know what's safe to plant. . . . Reuters was on fire today. Here's a couple of biofuel stories, one about the new interest in the energy source in Asia (particularly the environmentally problematical palm oil) and one about the new investment interest in the biofuel future (for those of you looking for a place for your spare capital). This one should raise confidence levels in climate researchers as they predict that the current El Nino (tilde challenged) is starting to break up, although it might not be. The idea that we may be dealing with something new is just something we crazy laymen might come up with. And finally, they hit us with this one, noting well just how little influence environmental ministers really have right now in their home nations. As I noted yesterday, the concerns we emphasize here will create authoritarian forces that will eventually make those ministers the most powerful folks in any country's government, but for now they get to just whine. . . . Finally, a couple of notes on why our greatest hope, whether we like it or not, is not the government but business. Here, Lloyd's, the big-time reinsurer, is pissed that governments are not doing enough to keep the climate disaster and the water and energy problems associated with it from hitting their pocketbook with a tsunami, hurricane, lightning bolt, . . . okay, sorry. And here, some groups have figured out that taking their environmental case directly to banks which can fund (OR NOT) various enterprises depending on their impact on weather, water, energy, like traditional coal plants. Keep in mind that Al Gore already figured this out (just like he did Iraq and everything else Bushnev has screwed to the post), hitting on the billionaires and the WalMarts (sorry, same thing) for action. Think he might be the best one to lead us to the best options we may still have left? You're not the only one. (Not sure if he'd be better in government or out, but really, seriously, what's a better choice right now?