Sheryl Crow Solves Global Warming Problem!!

That's right, folks. Sheryl Crow has come up with a brilliant, two-part plan to curb global warming. The hours of sitting on the "Biodiesel Bus" touring the country to raise awareness have given her plenty of time to come up with a plan.

Not only is it simple in execution, but it's so very easy for each of us to do on our own, with only minimal government intrusion into our personal lives!

The first step of her ingenious plan:

"I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming," she wrote on her Biodiesel Bus Blog.

"Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," she suggested.

"Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required," she wrote.

That's right, folks. A simple ban on overuse of toilet paper, along with the placement of single-sheet toilet paper dispensers in every public and private restroom in the nation, complete with monitoring to determine whether someone is overwiping, is the first part of Crow's Global Warming Prevention Plan.

Never mind the volume of energy required to construct all those monitoring dispensers and place them in hundreds of millions of bathrooms. Never mind that toilet paper becomes sewage sludge, used as fertilizer. This will curb global warming, by . . . um . . . well, it just WILL!

I suggest we all carry about a plastic scraper, for use prior to the use of our single sheet of toilet paper. Yes, yes, I know. Energy invested in 300 million scrapers . . . perhaps we can share?

Lest you lose faith in Crow, she has the second part of her Plan in place already. In this, she works out her renowned fashion designer chops!

Crow also commented that paper serviettes "represent the height of wastefulness" and that she'd designed a "dining sleeve" that's detachable and can be replaced with another 'dining sleeve' once you've used it to wipe your mouth.

That's right. Banning paper napkins, which do end up in landfills, is the second half of Crow's scheme. Instead, each of us will cart about multiple extra shirtsleeves, and wipe our mouths and clean up spills with our clothing! Then, of course, after a date, we can just toss those extra sleeves into our Sleeve Carrying Bag, and put on new ones.

I believe that this "dining sleeve" falls short, however. We could go so much farther.

I propose we add a "snot sleeve" as well, and ban tissues. Yes, since folks like Crow are accustomed to places which only have paper napkins, and wiping their mouths upon their sleeves, they should be quite happy to do the same with their noses!

In fact, we can trace global warming back to Napoleon, who added buttons to the sleeves of his soldiers' uniforms to stop their nose-wiping. Ever since, waste and global temperatures have increased steadily. See the connection? Obviously, Crow missed this crucial step which will allow her plan to succeed in curbing global warming.

Wait, you say, why do we not just use cloth napkins and handkerchiefs? Well, that would seem an adequate solution, but both of those are already in use. We need something new, and it has to be designed by our new savior, Sheryl Crow.

All she wants to do is have some fun. And save the environment. Would you deny her?

IPCC to World: We're Screwed, and It's Our Fault

Last night, we had good news about cheap solar cells. Woohoo! Technology to the rescue!

Today, we have the IPCC's latest report, "Fourth Assessment of Working Group II". You can read the summary for policymakers here. (23 pages)

It was good while it lasted.

The Third Assessment, released in 2001, became baseline for the Fourth Assessment. New data, with measurements from scientists all across the globe, has resulted in improved forecast models.

A brief overview:

Within the past six years, observations include:

• Earlier spring thaws and increased discharge from snowpacks and glacial melt
• Melting of permafrost
• Increased glacial lakes, in number and size
• Altered behavior in migratory animals (birds and fish)
• Relocation of temperature-sensitive species to higher altitudes or higher latitudes (this includes malaria-carrying mosquitoes . . .)

The IPCC concludes, with 80-90% certainty, that global temperature increases are induced by human activity. They call this "anthropogenic warming".

Predictions "by mid-century" include:

• A 10-40% increase in river flows and water availability in high latitudes and wet tropical areas.
• A 10-30% decline in water availability in drier, mid-latitude regions and dry tropical areas.
• A significant (undetermined) decline in glacial and snowpack water storage, the melt from which supplies one in six currently-living people.
• Widespread ecosystem failures, as drought, combined with its companions wildfire and insect infestation, destroy forests; ocean acidification kills off marine life (shells and coral reefs will dissolve); and damage/disturbance from flooding.
• Extinction of 20-30% of the world's plant and animal species.
• Failure of ecosystems to continue carbon uptake by mid-century, accelerating warming.

Is there any good news?

• Disruption of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (the ocean currents which moves warm water to the north and colder water south, explained nicely at Wikipedia) is "very unlikely" (slowing of the MOC is "very likely" (> 90% probability). You can learn about how it's monitored here.
• "Sustainable development" (undefined in the report) can "reduce vulnerability to climate change".
• If we can stabilize emissions at 2000 levels, the global mean temperature will continue to rise another 0.6 degrees Celsius, but should then stabilize.

The message I'm taking from this? Hold onto your hats, boys. It's gonna be a bumpy century.


A good overview from an insurance perspective is here.

Interactive Mapping - How Wet Will You Get?

A clever blogger at firetree.net has put together an interactive mapping project which works with Google Maps, to show you the effect of a rise in sea level of 1 to 14 meters (roughly, 3 to 42 feet). There might be some surprises . . .

For example, Portland, Oregon is quite a few miles from the ocean -- over an hour's drive. But its average elevation? 50 feet above sea level, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. (That'd be why it was once, and will likely be again, a port city.)



Here's a map showing Portland with that 14m rise in sea level. You'll note, if you follow the link and knock it back to 7m, or other levels, that most of the same areas get flooded, though it appears to become intermittent.

At only 7 meters, some significant chunks of Seattle get pretty moist, too. A mere 3-meter rise will take out much of Sacramento. Might not be the best place for a capital city, after all?

San Francisco, you ask? That hilly city by the Bay? It will hold up fairly well . . . but most of the surrounding areas get nailed with as little as 3m. Here's 14m for comparison. Most of SF is fine, but inland areas like Stockton are completely obliterated. Modesto gains a bay of its own.

Have a look at the map, and check out your area. It helps put that pesky global warming thing into perspective!

How are you situated?

"Dust Bowl" Predicted, Southwestern US Drought

A team led by Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory predicts a "perpetual drought" in the Southwestern United States. The predicted drought should have significant observable effects before 2021:

Drought conditions are expected to resemble the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and Texas' worst-ever drought of the 1950s, Dr. Seager said. Unlike those droughts, however, the new conditions won't be temporary, the study found.

"This time, once it's in, it's in for good," Dr. Seager said.

. . .

The Columbia research team examined the output of 19 climate models that made a total of 49 projections of future rainfall, temperatures and evaporation in the Southwest. All but the three of the projections concluded that the region will face a serious increase in drought conditions as early as 2021.

This map indicates the areas predicted to experience the "permanent drought"; the darker the color, the more severe the drought predicted.

The IPCC's next report is due out tomorrow.