In Brief - January 12th, 2008
I've been back in Washington for just over a week now, after a relaxing holiday vacation, and I swear it hasn't stopped raining since.
They say we're in a La Nina cycle right now, which I suppose is meteorologist-speak for "really really wet." Amid all the drizzle and downpour, it must sound odd to hear that one of the things that worries me about the long term future habitability of the Northwest is water availability.
But according to the scientific research we have, climate change is going to affect rainfall patterns in much of the world, here included.
In most of the major climate model forecasts, as I understand, the Pacific Northwest is slated to become warmer and drier. Sounds good, right? Nicer weather, longer growing season. Well, maybe not. The downside is drastically reduced winter snowpack on our mountains. That snowpack is the source of our drinking water.
If that goes, our rivers, streams, and watersheds all start to dry up. We don't really have anything else to fall back on.
I spent some of my earlier years in Phoenix, which lives on fossil water pumped out of vast limestone aquifers. That kind of water takes millions of years to accumulate. We live on a tectonically active, fault-riddled chunk of Earth's crust.
So yeah, amid all the rain, I worry whether my kids will have enough water to drink when they're my age. Many people are keen to cover their roofs with solar panels (which is a terrific idea), but it may become equally important to start using our roofs to collect drinking water. Anyway, on to today's news digest.
In the Pacific Northwest
Friends, the secret to landslide victory this November would be running on the promise of dissolving the TSA and undoing every other cockamamie, useless, pseudo-security requirement that has come into existence since September 11th.
I know I'm tired of taking off my shoes for the X-ray machine, having to buy water from the newsstand vendors at anywhere from two to five times the cost of gasoline, and having to segregate my "semi-liquid" carry-on items (you know, our chocolate C4 pudding cups and squeezeable primacord diaper creme for the kids) into zip-lock baggies for proper pre-flight inspection.
I strongly suspect that roughly ninety five-gazillion percent of Americans recognize that these, ahem, "security enhancements" do not in fact make us one iota more secure against truly determined terrorist miscreants.
Furthermore, I believe that we're all thoroughly annoyed with the whole business, and recognize it for the overt fear-mongering that it is.
So whoever puts that plank in their platform, you've got my vote.
If you're in the airport bottled water business, though, you've gotta be loving the madness... and plotting how to get anything else you sell banned from passage through the holy shrines of X-ray and metal detectors.
They say we're in a La Nina cycle right now, which I suppose is meteorologist-speak for "really really wet." Amid all the drizzle and downpour, it must sound odd to hear that one of the things that worries me about the long term future habitability of the Northwest is water availability.
But according to the scientific research we have, climate change is going to affect rainfall patterns in much of the world, here included.
In most of the major climate model forecasts, as I understand, the Pacific Northwest is slated to become warmer and drier. Sounds good, right? Nicer weather, longer growing season. Well, maybe not. The downside is drastically reduced winter snowpack on our mountains. That snowpack is the source of our drinking water.
If that goes, our rivers, streams, and watersheds all start to dry up. We don't really have anything else to fall back on.
I spent some of my earlier years in Phoenix, which lives on fossil water pumped out of vast limestone aquifers. That kind of water takes millions of years to accumulate. We live on a tectonically active, fault-riddled chunk of Earth's crust.
So yeah, amid all the rain, I worry whether my kids will have enough water to drink when they're my age. Many people are keen to cover their roofs with solar panels (which is a terrific idea), but it may become equally important to start using our roofs to collect drinking water. Anyway, on to today's news digest.
In the Pacific Northwest
- It's Seahawks Gameday again...make that Playoff Gameday. The Seahawks will be battling the Green Bay Packers this afternoon for the right to advance to the NFC conference championship. And once again, Washington political leaders have staked their pride on a Seahawks victory, placing friendly wagers with their counterparts in Wisconsin.
- The City of Bellevue, for the first time in its history, has selected a woman as police chief. Linda Pillo joined the department in 1986 and has served as lieutenant, captain, major, deputy chief and, now, chief. Congratulations to Linda on her promotion.
- The Idahoan netroots community is set to welcome Markos Moulitsas as the keynote speaker of the Frank Church Banquet in Boise on March 1st, 2008. Red State Rebels has more information about the event.
- Mathematician Paul Edelman is proposing a new method for apportioning House seats. This is a proposal for what to do with the leftover fractional seats, after you divide the population of a state by the number of people that represents 1/435th of the whole nation. I'm not sure that this proposal is better or worse than anything that's been tried before, but Edelman's idea is interesting to read about nonetheless. I'd be much more interested in a clean algorithmic method for drawing congressional district boundaries. This "son of Gerrymander" system we have now leaves plenty to be desired.
- RedState, one of the better known conservative blog sites, is begging for money to help them buy better blogging software. Why? Because they hilariously can't find enough good conservative web developers to help them fix whatever duct-tape and bailing-wire solution they've got now. Setting aside RedState's quasi "liberal conspiracy" take on their plight, they really shouldn't be surprised to find themselves in this pickle. New technology is necessarily invented (and by extension, most quickly adopted) by people who are capable of looking at the state of the world and envisioning building something new to make it a little bit better. That is, by liberals. By their very nature, conservatives struggle vainly if ever valiantly to cling to what is old, so they should hardly be surprised to run smack into technology's inherent liberal bias. No conspiracy required.
- The Las Vegas Sun reports that major polling organizations, hoping to avoid a hat-trick of failures after mis-calling Iowa and New Hampshire, are skipping out on even trying to figure out who might win the slot-machine state's primaries. What a refreshing development!
- Arizona Governor Napolitano is piling on the Momentum Express, backing Barack Obama's candidacy. Will Governor Christine Gregoire follow suit? The two are good friends. Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas headlined an Election Day fundraiser for Gregoire last November.
Around the World
- Yesterday marks the 6 year anniversary of the opening of America's gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. DailyKos blogger Meteor Blades offers this exceptional retrospective.
- Perhaps we should be calling it the "$urge". What's really behind the reported reduction in Iraq violence? It's just that old adage, "if you can't beat 'em, pay 'em off."
On the Lighter Side
- The latest hilarious video meme: a spoof on Bill Gates' last full day at Microsoft, now just a short six months or so away. Amazing who you can get to be in your silly spoof videos when your pockets essentially have no bottoms.
- In the "Would be funny except that it's true" category, our ever-vigilant TSA puts a red-blooded American five year old on the no-fly list. Remind me not to name my next kid George John Thomas Washington Adams Jefferson...
Friends, the secret to landslide victory this November would be running on the promise of dissolving the TSA and undoing every other cockamamie, useless, pseudo-security requirement that has come into existence since September 11th.
I know I'm tired of taking off my shoes for the X-ray machine, having to buy water from the newsstand vendors at anywhere from two to five times the cost of gasoline, and having to segregate my "semi-liquid" carry-on items (you know, our chocolate C4 pudding cups and squeezeable primacord diaper creme for the kids) into zip-lock baggies for proper pre-flight inspection.
I strongly suspect that roughly ninety five-gazillion percent of Americans recognize that these, ahem, "security enhancements" do not in fact make us one iota more secure against truly determined terrorist miscreants.
Furthermore, I believe that we're all thoroughly annoyed with the whole business, and recognize it for the overt fear-mongering that it is.
So whoever puts that plank in their platform, you've got my vote.
If you're in the airport bottled water business, though, you've gotta be loving the madness... and plotting how to get anything else you sell banned from passage through the holy shrines of X-ray and metal detectors.
# Posted by Jason Black : 8:55 AM
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