Weather, Water, Energy 7-30-07

Human activity, a warmer sea, changing wind patterns, twice the number of hurricanes over the last century. Sounds about right. . . . Let’s give credit when it’s due. The Chinese authorities are apparently going to make getting loans harder for heavy polluters. That’s what they’re saying, anyway. When the polluters claim they can’t meet the conditions to reduce pollution and the nation’s econ output slackens and social upheaval results, well, we’ll see how serious they really are. . . . A biofuel that might actually be worth it? Sounds like it may be possible. A company gearing up to produce. . . . Bunch of good stuff over at Climate Progress, including GM’s latest immoral “greenwashing” effort, (not coincidentally) “who killed the electric car?”, Science declaring global warming “game over,” and why “geo-engineering” should be on no menu. . . . I used to work in a state budget office and take public admin seminars at the same time. Heard a lot about the theory and practice of “efficiency” as the byword for budgeting, cutting “waste” which was the same as redundancy. As this post makes clear, that’s the byword for everything these days, and, as I thought at the time when I was being forced to look for and eliminate redundancy, it’s short-sighted and dangerous. The world is teeming with redundancy in order to max out on “resiliency” and the ability to adapt. IOW, avoid the “one best way” that might prove extremely vulnerable some day and leave you without viable alternatives to help you cope. And it looks like we’re adopting the same “efficient” orientation for our actions to deal with global warming. What’s that “those who don’t learn from history” thing? . . .