You hit a nail on the head I've been thinking since all this started a few years ago. And that's why the idea of drilling off the coast infuriates me. We actually want to drill MORE oil? Ugh

One of my folks this past weekend said they've changed their mind on drilling, they don't want to give up their new SUV. Why not put the same money we'd invest in drilling into green energy? I mean, helloooo.

I get really upset at that mentality... and a lot American's have it. I sorta wanna yell at my family for it sometimes. The idea of sacrifice or living green is a foreign concept here. I guess we all do our part; my household does. We drive fuel efficient vehicles, recycle everything we can, use power saving bulbs, and I hope to get solar panels eventually. I think if we all did our part, it'd add up.

I often wonder how I went "green" and the rest of my family didn't. Kinda weird.

It's amazing how short-sighted some people can be. People hear about the idea of plants closing and jobs being lost. It never occurs to them that what REPLACES them might create even MORE opportunities. It's very possible that MORE jobs might be created in building and setting up wind farms, solar farms, and other alternative energy engineering projects than those which might be lost from downsizing our current oil, gas, and coal-based technologies, yet people don't see that. Funny thing is, it's already happening. Do you know what the #1 new occupation is in Detroit among laid-off auto workers? Nursing. That's right. Assembly line workers are becoming male nurses and helping ease the nursing shortage which will only continue to grow as the baby boomers age. There are countless other examples.

Old technologies go away but not into a vacuum. Something takes their place, but too many people are too wrapped up in their small worlds to see that.

The Western Cape (where Cape Town is) is a winter rainfall area but the recent rains they've had there are way more than they should be getting. This is ridiculous...homes and farm buildings that have been standing for half a century and longer are flooded almost to roof height and many folk have had to be rescued by boat. A major bridge which is one towns only link to the outside world has been severely structurally damaged and at the moment traffic authorities are letting no more than 5 cars cross a time - at own risk

Yikes Graham. Seems like flooding is become an all too often occurrence these days.

What has me (and I'm sure others) concerned is our upcoming Hurricane season. It's unusual for our Atlantic basin storms to start off the coast of Africa so early, but Bertha did it this and last week. Normally that doesn't happen until September. This time of year they typically are just in the gulf. But SST's seem to be a lot warmer this year - so that's not looking good for our east coast.

I watched the news reports when Bertha was forming and there was some uncertainty about what it would develop to. Then it weakened and didn't head your way. It's significance is as you have said though...starting so relatively close off the African coast and so early in the season for that to be happening. What I understood is that usually means a heavy season for you guys

Lightning Strikes: Get Used to Catastrophic Wildfires and Worse

By Scott Thill,
Posted July 18, 2008.

In California there were 8,000 lightning strikes in one event, and that was months before fire season. There is more of that in store across the West.


"This is a specter against which grand inquisitors and wars against terrorism are powerless to protect us," Mike Davis wrote in a 2003 essay titled "The Perfect Fire," which was composed against the backdrop of a massive firestorm that callously rampaged across Southern California, burning thousands of homes and billions of dollars in its wake. "It is, of course," he added, "the right time of the year for the end of the world."

It still is. In late June, an ahead-of-schedule dry lightning event sparked more than 8,000 strikes across California, setting off over 800 fires, many of which are still burning as I write. And if you're the praying type, you might want to start praying they can be put out before the conventional time window for such events arrives in late July and August.

"This doesn't bode well for the fire season," AccuWeather.com meteorologist Ken Clark told the Associated Press in June, shortly after the lightning hit. "We're not even into the meat of the fire season at this point, and the brush is extremely dry. It's not going to get any better," he added. "It's going to get worse."

How much worse? How much time have you got? You might want to spend it packing.

According to a study published in Science last year, the Southwest region of the United States will enter permanent drought by 2050, and that's being optimistic. The seven states dependent upon the Colorado River Basin -- Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and California -- will most likely war over what remains of its diminishing water resources. The region's thirsty population will also be beset by rampant firestorms, as portions of the snowpack that remains bypass the liquid stage and evaporate into thin, dry air.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists argued in the paper "Early Warning Signs of Global Warming: Droughts and Fires," published before global warming consciousness took hold this century, "Warmer global temperatures are expected to cause an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, with increased evaporation over both land and water." As the same organization explained in an analysis of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, "Nearly 90 percent of the 29,000 observational data series examined revealed changes consistent with the expected response to global warming."

In other words, dry lightning strikes in June might be "climatologically rare" now, as National Weather Service science officer John Juskie explained in the same Associated Press report. But thanks to human-induced global warming, they will soon be utterly logical.

"In the Rocky Mountains, fire season has grown by almost two months over the past decade as a result of climbing temperatures," explains Sierra Club spokesperson Kristina Johnson. "And as we see more droughts in California, we can expect more catastrophic wildfires."


More at: AlterNet