Oil Watchdog

Goodbye, Colorado River, and Goodbye, Bangladesh Lowlands. The LA Times today predicts long-term drought in the Colorado River Basin, and the UN releases its "Policy Summary"  with more grisly details on its 2007 climate change predictions.

Here’s the UN report paragraph that brings to mind the Colorado River and Bangladesh in the same breath:

"By mid-century, annual average river runoff and water availability are projected to increase by 10-40% at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas, and decrease by 10-30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics, some of which are presently water stressed areas. In some places and in particular seasons, changes differ from these annual figures. ** D10 [3.4]"

And here’s the LATimes’ unflinching take on the UN report:

"A new global warming report issued today by the United Nations paints a near-apocalyptic vision of the Earth’s future if temperatures continue to rise unabated: more than a billion people in desperate need of water, extreme food shortages in Africa and elsewhere, a blighted landscape ravaged by fires and floods, and millions of species sentenced to extinction."

Will the major oil companies keep telling us to be cautious, do more research and beware the "economic consequences," i.e. to their bottom lines, in slowing global warming?