The Weekend Backlog

Take a couple days off from posting and stories pile up.

How do you deal with local ordinance "deniers"? A S.F. Chronicle writer rants about lawn-waterers during a growing water shortage: So Where's the Drought-rage?

It's like watching someone clean out their car and just toss all the garbage onto the street. Do you say anything? Is it worth it? Just watching this river forming in the gutter is its own form of water torture. Is it time to engage in complete and total DROUGHT-RAGE!?

We ain't seen nothin' yet. British meteorologists forecast that global warming will become more intense after 2009.

Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record...

A major insurer describes the changing landscape of risk management. Lloyd's Chairman speaks:

Above all, what insurers want to see is a focus on contingency planning. Preparedness is key – yet you may be surprised to know that many businesses aren’t ready to face disaster when it strikes. In our recent research, almost 40 per cent of business leaders admitted that they do not have adequate disaster plans in place to respond to terrorist attacks². Some think that contingency planning is too expensive, but in fact the most important steps for surviving a crisis often cost little. Being unprepared can be the most expensive strategy of all.

California Dreamin' - at least we've reached the point where the analysts can say "more analysis needed." This is part of the California Climate Change Portal.

In response to Executive Order S-3-05, the California Energy Commission and the California Environmental Protection Agency commissioned an assessment of potential climate change impacts to California entitled “the Scenarios Project”. This report summarizes the findings from individual research efforts and compares them with earlier studies. Findings include increases in temperature, changes to the hydrologic cycle, and more frequent and severe extreme weather events. More information and analysis is needed to understand the vulnerability of economic sectors, ecosystems, and human health.

Global Warming remedies will be expensive. As if we hadn't guessed. But this NY Times story provides examples, dollar signs and lots of zeros. Of course, if you compare it to the cost of our military adventure in Iraq, it ain't so much.

Global warming is by nature a big-enough problem to create the kind of necessity that could be mother, father and midwife to invention. And plenty of big ideas are out there to address it, some that may even lead to substantial enterprises much as our military needs have