Fire and rain

Tim Hanes, writing an end-of-summer piece about NASA plans for a British newspaper, speculates daringly as follows: "That round yellow thing in the sky may have more influence on climate change than man’s activities."

And in an even more stunning reversal of conventional wisdom, Tom Maguire says Hurricane Katrina saved more lives than it took, because the poorly-constructed levees protecting New Orleans could instead have failed without warning, which would have been more catastrophic than failure-with-time-to-evacuate-if-you-were-paying-attention.

Residents of Sacramento, CA, take heed. The levy system there isn't in markedly better shape than Lousiana's was or is, and while the American and Sacramento Rivers don't enjoy even half the reputation of the Mississippi, they flood sometimes, too. As Governor Schwarzenegger noted in a late-February letter to Congress, Sacramento has "the lowest flood protection of any major river city in the United States." State officials back that assertion:

"The most pervasive problem we have in California is low levels of flood protection for highly urban areas," said Rod Mayer, acting chief of the Division of Flood Management for the California Department of Water Resources. "When we have urbanized areas of hundreds of thousands of homes and we only have 100-year protection - that's really inadequate. That means if you have a 30-year mortgage on your house, there's a one in four chance of this occurring during your 30 years. And that's just too high."