Weather, Water, Energy 7-11-07

Remember how the deniers and obstructionists keep saying how global warming is due to increased sun radiation? How they keep showing these fancy graphs up to 1980 to show the increase? Were the data not available since 1980? Well, no, but those data show the solar rays have decreased since then, exactly the time when we’ve been having the hottest years in recorded history. So actually the data on the sun supports human responsibility for our warming. They must have just missed that somehow. How inconveeeeeenient. (Time for the deniers and obstructionists to turn full attention to cow belching, I guess.) . . . Brazil’s latest egomaniac leader pledges to develop the nation into a major nuclear power by building nuke plants which could only, only, only, only be used for peaceful purposes. Good luck with the waste and water after you’ve put your mirror down. . . . First tortilla, then beer, now pasta. Because Italian pasta makers have to meet high demand, they have to import their special wheat from places like Canada, whose PM is a mini-me to Australia's idiot PM and which is now pumping more into biofuels, meaning less to export to Italy, meaning pasta prices are going to rise in the name of a fuel that will add to greenhouse gases. Got that? . . . If Jane Jacobs was right about “import substitution” being a key to building wealth and cities, who’ll step up to the plate and get the windmill blade construction trade going here? And what if that causes pollution? . . . At Only In It For The Gold, Michael Tobis has talked to academic scientists who assure him that carbon sequestration can work so he’s jumping on the coal bandwagon. Haven’t there been academic scientists who said that coal mining could be done without long-lasting harm to environments before? Only problem seems to be that politics thing and the companies actually obeying the laws. But let’s not pay attention to history here. Tobis is busy being his “reasonable,” moderate self unlike those of us who study politics, know what will happen, and prefer not to put our trust, like spouses in continually abusive relationships, in promises that this time will be different. (Joseph Romm at Climate Progress, however, knows just what it’s all about and doesn’t back down to any of the feckless little twits.) . . . I was excited when Climate Policy, the American Meteorological Society blog, came up, but have been disappointed in their infrequent posts and Weekly Reader kind of content. This latest post on security and energy needs isn’t much better but it does state the case firmly for action NOW if we are going to get our gas emissions down enough to make a difference, doing a good job of explaining why. . . . Midges as climate indicators? (I know what you’re asking. Midges are little bitty insects.) Turns out that fossilized midges are giving scientists a good look at the rapid climate changes that have happened in the past in Britain as a result of Gulf Stream shifts due to climate change. Those changes have occurred quickly and lasted a while as the Stream adjusted. Not good news to those who keep insisting we have plenty of time and the tech will definitely be there to stop things like this from happening. Or us who get screwed by them having too much input into the solution processes.