I don’t have the time to do a full review, but let me instead simply recommend Joe Romm’s book, Hell and High Water. It’s a survey of the global warming situation, with a emphasis on public policy and what I’ve called the global warming infowar (the reality based community vs. the delayers and deniers fighting to convert the mainstreamers).

I have a few quibbles with the book, such as the way he short-changed the section on hydrogen as a vehicle fuel–particularly striking, given that Romm wrote what I consider to be the book on the topic, The Hype About Hydrogen. But it’s well worth your time and money.

Romm is also the grand poobah over at Climate Progress.

India’s water shortage:

Indeed, the ground here in India’s fertile breadbasket is beginning to look like Swiss cheese. On either side of Kumar’s drill the calm beauty of emerald rice paddies belies a catastrophe brewing hundreds of feet beneath the surface. As the water table drops dangerously low, farmers are investing heavily - and often going into debt - to bore deeper wells and install more powerful pumps. A prayer might just be the best chance for survival.

…

The problem is not only that farmers are mining aquifers faster than they can be replenished. As water levels drop, pumps are also sapping an already fragile and overtaxed electricity grid. And because farmers in Punjab pay nothing for electricity, they run their pumps with abandon, which further depletes the water table. “All these issues are interconnected,” says Saurabh Kumar, who heads the government’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency in New Delhi. “But agreeing on a simple thing is asking for the moon.”

That’s exactly what Kumar hopes to do: get politicians, farmers, and bureaucrats to sign on to reforms that will save billions of dollars and reduce the amount of water pumped out of the ground. A pilot program for his nationwide scheme is expected to launch early this year. Farmers will receive new, efficient pumps with meters and prepaid electricity credits allowing them to draw roughly the same amount of water they use now and either pocket the savings if they pump less or pay to pump more. Utilities will be required to upgrade transmission lines to cut losses and improve service.

The program comes at considerable cost (about $7.5 billion) but promises great savings ($2.2 billion a year). Unlike many experts who say the answer to India’s water and energy problems is to charge farmers the real cost of electricity, Kumar argues that “for political reasons, for the next fifty years you cannot charge for energy in the agriculture sector. There would be riots.”

Free electricity being used to deplete dwindling water resources to grow food in India? And you thought getting Americans out of their unneeded SUV’s was a policy challenge.

While this article doesn’t mention global warming-induced climate change, that is a factor, albeit in a much broader context. Around the world humanity has built up many population centers based on original transportation convenience (look at all the cities founded on coastlines or rivers) plus implicit assumptions–there will always be fresh water here, the winter storms and/or summer heat won’t be too bad, we can grow enough food, etc–that are proving to be bad bets. The combination of population pressure and global warming means these places need more resource to sustain human life, and in many cases less resource, particularly fresh water, will be available. That lack of water in underground aquifers or running from mountains in the summer as the prior winter’s snow melt impacts agriculture, hydroelectric and thermoelectric electricity generation, and even transportation, thanks to the difficulty of piloting ships through shallower channels.

In many parts of the world, the primary vector for the impact of global warming on human beings will be the supply of fresh water, not rising sea levels or tropical storms or heat waves.

Warmer Atlantic worsens hurricanes:

When the water in the hurricane breeding grounds of the Atlantic warms one degree in the dead of summer, overall hurricane activity jumps by half, according to a new study.

Scientists have long known that hurricanes get their enormous energy from warm waters, so the warmer the water, the more fuel a storm has to either start up or get stronger. The study calculates how much storm frequency and strength is due to warmer sea water, said author Mark Saunders, professor of climate prediction at the University College London.

Saunders found a distinct numerical connection between the ups and downs of water temperatures and how nasty hurricane season gets. That helps explain why hurricanes have been so much worse in the past dozen years, and even why 2007 — with waters slightly cooler than normal — was an exception and not that bad a hurricane year, Saunders said.

“It’s very surprisingly sensitive to small changes in sea surface temperature,” he said.

His study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, found that changes in wind patterns caused a bigger shift in hurricane activity, but he concentrated his analysis on what sea temperature did to storms. Saunders didn’t look at what caused the temperature fluctuations, although he believes that climate change is a contributing factor.

…

Saunders calculated that for every one degree Fahrenheit increase:

• Overall hurricane activity — a combination of frequency and hurricane strength — increases 49 percent.

• The number of intense hurricanes, with winds over 110 mph, increases 45 percent.

• The number of hurricanes of any size increases 36 percent.

• The number of tropical storms increase 31 percent.

For example, 2005 was the most active hurricane season on record, and Atlantic water temperatures were the warmest, about 1.4 degrees above normal. That hurricane season set a new high with 28 storms and 13 hurricanes. Seven of the hurricanes were major storms.

The thing that makes this link-worthy, of course, is not that there’s a connection between warmer sea surface temps and storm activity, but that the relationship is so strong, and what the implies in a warming world.

Mass. Lawmakers Eye Ban On LNG Terminal:

Lawmakers from the south coast of Massachusetts are testifying in favor of a bill that would prevent construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal in Fall River.

The measure would mandate that a new LNG terminal be built nearly one mile away from residential areas.

If passed into law, it would kill an LNG terminal proposed by Weaver’s Cove Energy.

Various government studies have found that fire from a terrorism attack against a tanker carrying LNG could ignite so fiercely it would burn people one mile away.

And this is very far from being the only such item that shows up in my daily Google alerts. No one wants one of these terminals nearby, and the US is on a path to desperately needing them in the coming years. The amount of natural gas we can import from Canada and Mexico will decline markedly, meaning we’ll have to import more of it from overseas (mostly Russia and Persian Gulf nations), and the only way you can import natural gas (except for pipelines) is through an LNG terminal.

For a Canadian example, see: New drive under way to head off LNG project