Photo by DVIDSHUB.

The Senate is expected to vote on a bill this week that would refine federal flood insurance rules to include global-warming-related flooding projections. From a report at E&E News:

The legislation instructs the 44-year-old program with 5.6 million policyholders to incorporate science's best estimates about future flooding changes into the map-making process that identifies floodplains across the country. …

The legislation instructs the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the program, to plan for potential "future inundation" by using the latest research on climate change when updating the flood maps that weave through most counties in the country. It pinpoints possible threats from sea-level rise, increased precipitation and intensifying hurricanes.

On the one hand, given the well-documented rise of sea levels (or whatever the incorrectly political term is), adjusting insurance rates to account for likely flooding will save the government money over the long run.

On the other hand, any admission that sea level increase is occurring in any capacity is an attempt to subjugate the United States to the United Nations-USSR-Weimar Republic's plan to create one world government in which Thanksgiving is comprised solely of soy products and sale items at Whole Foods. Which sounds awesome, but some people are against it for some reason.

"Debby" is not a popular name, having never been in the top 1,000 baby names in America over the past 100 years. Its variant spelling, "Debbie," rose as high as America's 20th most-popular in 1959, before falling off the charts in 1992.

There was a movie in the 1970s that didn't help this trajectory.

It is, though, more popular as a name for storms. "Debby" has six times been used as a name for a tropical storm or hurricane; Debbie, four. In 1969, the most recent Hurricane Debbie was seeded with silver iodide in an experiment designed to test whether or not storms could be weakened. The tests were ultimately deemed failures.

Projected path of Debby.

Nor is "Debby" a particularly intimidating name, as befits 2012's Tropical Storm Debby, currently stalled in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida. It's noteworthy not for its expected impact, but for marking the first time since 1851 that four storms have formed before July. In the future, we'll look back on this and say things like, "Only four?" and then laugh as we put hurricane protection over windows in Wichita.

Image taken from Mr. Shimizu's resume. (Not really.)

Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

Here's the setup. Masataka Shimizu was the president of Tokyo Electric Power until last May. He was the head of the company when its Fukushima nuclear plant was crippled by last year's earthquake and tsunami, and he led Tepco's much-criticized response.

Last May, he resigned his position. So who hires a man whose leadership failures appear to have contributed to the irradiation of large areas of Japan? To a $26 billion drop in his company's value?

And here's the punchline. From a BBC report:

On Monday, Mr Shimizu starts his new role as an external board member at Fuji Oil Company.

Ah, yes. The oil industry.

Coal trucks in the Powder River Basin. (Photo by KimonBerlin.)

There are two senses in which coal is artificially cheap.

The more sophisticated reason is the idea that coal has negative impacts on the economy and on public health which are not incorporated into its price. There's also a practical sense in which coal is too cheap: Coal producers pay far too little for it.

A report in today's Washington Post provides a clear example of this latter sense, focused on the Powder River Basin overlapping Montana and Wyoming.

The government’s longtime practice of auctioning coal mining rights to a single bidder may have cost taxpayers as much as $28.9 billion over the past 30 years, according to an analysis to be released Monday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a Cambridge, Mass.-based think tank. ...

The phenomenon -- in which a mining company draws up a proposed area for leasing, and the Interior Department’s BLM auctions it off to that same firm -- is the rule rather than the exception in the country’s single biggest coal producing region. In the 26 coal leases the federal government has awarded in southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming since 1991, 22 have gone to a single bidder. In the other four instances, there were only two bidders involved.

Dave Roberts wrote about a similarly sweet deal in March, in which Peabody -- the sole bidder on a large seam -- paid the government $1.11 per ton for coal they could sell to China at $123 a ton. Peabody's next opportunity to win such an auction is this Thursday, as Greenpeace's Joe Smyth noted over the weekend.

If CO2 were degrees. (Photo by Joe Chung.)

From The Guardian:

Carbon dioxide emissions have risen by even more than previously thought, according to new data analysed by the Guardian, casting doubt on whether the world can avoid dangerous climate change. ...

In 2010, the latest year for which figures have been compiled, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the world emitted 31.8bn tonnes of carbon from energy consumption. That represents a climb of 6.7% on the year before and is significantly higher than the previous best estimate, made by the International Energy Agency last year, that in 2010 a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide were released from burning fossil fuel.

Bees swarm a light pole in Central Park.

On a rooftop a few dozen blocks south of my apartment, there's a beehive. The hive's owner, a woman named Susan, keeps what she described as an Italian species of bee, Carniolans. (In reality, the species is from Slovenia.) Pedigree aside (we are talking about the tony Upper West Side, after all), Carniolans have other traits to recommend them. They're more docile, for example, and more resistant to certain diseases. They are also more prone to swarming.

This week, The New York Times reported that bee swarms are increasingly appearing around the city.

This spring in New York City, clumps of homeless bees have turned up, often in inconvenient public places, at nearly double the rate of past years. A warm winter followed by an early spring, experts say, has created optimal breeding conditions. That may have caught some beekeepers off guard, especially those who have taken up the practice in recent years.

There's a link between hive overcrowding and swarming. When a hive becomes too crowded, bees can be displaced. New beekeepers, the Times suggests, can be unprepared to deal with a number of bees suddenly looking for a place to stay. The New York City real estate market is tough for everyone.

Bee swarms are frightening. Several weeks ago, my wife and I encountered one on a light pole in Central Park. An audible hum; a teeming mass orbited by a few stragglers. We did what anyone would do: took pictures, Instagrammed them, quickly moved on. (See above!)

Click to embiggen.

A National Guard member who was called in to tackle the wildfires currently raging in Colorado shot this amazing aerial view, and a member of the unit posted it on Reddit, where he and some other firefighting experts answered a few questions as well.

And at a low, low price! (Image courtesy of Engadget.)

An iPad costs you at least $400. That's for an older model; the latest version runs up to $830. And that doesn't include the data plan. Depending on your carrier and options, you could be paying another $50 a month. So for a year, the high-end iPad with the most expensive data plan will run you over $1,400.

On top of that, you have to charge the thing. According to a study from the Electric Power Research Institute, adding the cost of powering your $1,400 investment brings your annual total up to ... $1,401.36.

Consumers who fully charge their iPad tablet every other day can expect to pay $1.36 for the electricity needed annually to power the device, according to an  assessment by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

The analysis shows that each model of the iPad consumes less than 12 kWh of electricity over the course of a year, based on a full charge every other day. By comparison, a plasma 42” television consumes 358 kWh of electricity a year.

My favorite biker-in-New-York image.

What happens when you throw 10,000 publicly available bikes into one of the most crowded, dense cities in America?

Check New York City in a few months.

The announcement earlier this year that the city (with a "y") was partnering with Citi (with an "i") to create a network of bike-sharing stations met with broad approval. (Except from the New York Post, which will hate anything as long as doing so generates a funny headline.) Stations will be predominantly located in Manhattan, with a few outposts just across the river in Queens and Brooklyn -- though not in heavily Orthodox South Williamsburg.

This week, Bloomberg interviewed people around the city to gauge anticipated reactions to the influx of two-wheeled transport. Their prediction: "Bikelash."

Chris Johannesen, who rides recreationally near his home in Queens, said the bike-share will succeed only if riders feel safe on the streets.

“I love to bike in the city, personally, though I feel like it’s more dangerous for some people than others,” Johannesen, 34, said on his lunch break in Times Square this week. “If people don’t feel safe riding the bikes in the city, then it may never take off.” ...

This is my actual air conditioner. Adorable, no?

There was a report in the Times this morning that outlines the various ways in which the coolant gases in air conditioners are bad for the environment. Here's the key section:

The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners, up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050.

So the therapy to cure one global environmental disaster is now seeding another. “There is precious little time to do something, to act,” said Stephen O. Andersen, the co-chairman of the treaty’s technical and economic advisory panel.

For me, sitting in New York City where the temperature is still hot (as I won't shut up about), this article is basically like The New York Times decided to tell me that my best friend is the world's biggest jerk. I know that, New York Times. I know my best friend is a jerk. But he is my best friend.

What's next, New York Times? An expose about how sitting can kill you? Oh, you already covered that. Great.