This isn't the real Mexico.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

If you're not too busy celebrating the victory of the Mexican army over the worthless frogs or working your way towards the worm at the bottle of a bottle of mescal, I'd point you towards the following diversions--

* Today is also anniversary of the sole lethal attack by the Japanese during WW II on American civilians on the mainland of the United States. It happened right here in Oregon.

* Swinebread, my kids spent Saturday watching Iron Man and partaking in Dim Sum and Free Comic Book Day. Once in a while my kids will tell me how cool I am. It's really not me. I just have cool friends like Swinebread.

* I caught Gordon Smith's new tv ad this weekend and it really gave me a chuckle. Smith doesn't have a challenger to his seat until after our primary on the 20th. Rather than wait to see which of the two democrats will be running against him he instead ran an ad attacking them both. This doesn't exactly exude quiet confidence on his part. Good.

* I'm going to pick-up Mario Kart Wii next weekend. Now if I can just figure a way to keep the missus away from it and the television. I can't afford to replace another flat screen.

* I continue to be scared by the growth of ocean dead zones. Besides the other side effects of global warming this is one that hits home for me directly. We going camping and crabbing off the coast every summer and the areas where coastal sea life can survive are shrinking at an alarming rate.

Doesn't it do anything but snow up here? We've had a blizzard every day for the past two months.

Amongst the myriad of proof signifying the increase in global warming I'd like to point you towards a couple of stories. The first was in today's Big O entitled Big, wet storms may become new 'normal.'

The steamy tropical belt around Earth's midsection, birthplace of the powerful storm that pounded the Northwest this week, is expanding much faster than scientists studying global warming expected.

It's now as wide as climate models suggested it would be at the end of this century, new research shows. The rapid growth is another sign that bigger storms carrying more rain may become the new "normal" in the Northwest, especially in fall and early winter.

Snabby's been blogging about the recent Storm of the Century(tm)
this week. Apparently those of us in the Northwest are going to see more of this. So we got that going for us.

Perhaps more troubling are the findings of NFL Meteorologists- NFL Meteorologists Warn Steaming Black-Guy Heads Occurring Later Every Year.

NEW YORK—Steaming black-guy heads, the traditional sign of approaching winter for generations of football fans, have been occurring later in the season with every passing year, a fact that may be evidence of a climatic change with long-term effects on football itself, top scientists in the meteorological department of the National Football League said in a study released Monday.

"The phenomenon of weather-related African-American supracranial vaporous emission, or 'Steaming Black-Guy Heads,' as it is colloquially known, occurs when cold dry winter air comes into contact with hot, humid, shaven heads of football players, causing their personal water vapor to condense and rise on a column of heated air," the statement read in part. "It is then observed by network cameramen, who overwhelmingly choose to film African-American players due to the dramatic contrasts that result—especially when the player in question is backlit—and beamed to millions of households during time-outs, replay reviews, and other stoppages of play. The viewers then realize that winter has come to America."

Will it be possible for even George W. Bush to ignore this latest scientific evidence? Only time will tell.

'Course, three minutes to Wapner.

Overdroid made a great observation on my last post-

Sure, and things are so great in Russia now. Also - I'm not to worried about the social pendulum as I am in the scarcity and environmental pendulums. In fact, they aren't pendulums - they are finite resources that won't swing or bounce back when gone (take you pick - greenhouse gasses, oil, water, or all of the above).

He's right. Finite natural resources may not be able to wait on the political power pendulum (PPP) swinging back towards those that are more friendly to a scientific approach to the natural world.

Jerome a Paris has a diary up at Kos today that touches this very issue. Jerome takes apart a Financial Times column on politics and global warming:

Politicians have understood that appearing to be at least greenish is good for their election prospects, but to them it's just one issue among others. The message of the column is there: that "tick the box" approach is wrong, and the issue of global warming requires their full, total and undivided attention*.

And it comes from one of the most influential voices of the London "beltway". Not a green wacko. Not a single-issue activist. A respectable, moderate member of the establishment.

Outside of a few uber-conservative politicians who stubbornly insist on reciting industry talking points to cloud environmental issues those of who support stronger governmental action towards protecting natural resources are winning the fight for the hearts and minds of the general public. We just need to translate that into legislative action. This is where we have to watch the clock.

But what about conservatives? The recent spat about Civil Rights that emerged from political ads running around the country might give us a hint as to where they'll be on this issue in a few years. As an example; two weeks ago the National Black Republican Association ran ads in Maryland claiming that Martin Luther King was a Republican.

Conservatives have a tendency to drag their feet and stubbornly fight the reality of a given situation until the last minute where they gloriously pirouette and claim the opposite position, the position they've been fighting all along, as their own.

In twenty years conservatives will claim that it was they, not progressives, that fought to limit greenhouse gas emissions and warned of a looming peak oil crisis.

Then we can pat them on the head and tell them them "that's nice."

As long as we don't have to do it while standing in three feet of water.