Weather, Water, Energy 3-13-07

• The NY Times has done its usual job of mucking up an important issue, Al Gore's account of global warming, and is taken apart yet one more time, this time by RealClimate. Tell me again why this rag is "the paper of record"??? And let's be sure to remember them when we don't take necessary action because the American people are so ignorant about what's happening, as shown by this disappointing and scary Gallup poll.
• Meanwhile, in a country in which reporting on reality is more the norm, Britain has set "legally binding" carbon emission targets of 60% reduction by 2050 within an overall climate plan, including heavy investment in renewables. Here's the logic: "The debate on climate change has shifted from whether we need to act to how much we need to do by when, and the economic implications of doing so. "The time is therefore right for the introduction of a strong legal framework in the UK for tackling climate change." But don't tell the NY Times. They apparently have surplus of moron reporters to assign to the story.
• More takes on ethanol and it and our future. Grist links you to three stories popping big holes in that biofuel bubble. OTOH, a Purdue U study seems to point to ways that biofuels could be more efficiently developed. OTOH, even if the mechanics can be managed, there's always the plain old corruption that we can expect where there are both money and cronies in government to max out.
• More on the emerging problems with buying emission offsets. The key concept is something called "additionality," which basically means that your dollars to "offset" may just be going for pre-existing efforts, not additional efforts. This is going to have to be structured much better before I'm investing, which is, of course, the problem.
• And here's another reason keeping in front of the emissions will be hard. Turns out that more CO2 tends to stimulate soils to release CO2, not store it, as previously believed, through encouraging microbes that increase decomposition.
• The world is changing in front of the Bushnevs and we just have to hope we can survive to the other side. Jeb leaves FL in a more sensible Repub's hands and, voila!!, one of the worst states may be jumping into national leadership. Of course, the Bushnevs will all be living in Dubai by the time the hooey is really hitting.