Today's Random Tidbits

ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY

It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fueling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead. --Catherine Brahic, writing at NewScientist.com

More on biofuels, from The Guardian, 'Biofuels Switch A Mistake.'

And:

Some tipping points for climate change could be closer than previously thought. Scientists are predicting that the loss of the massive Greenland ice sheet may now be unstoppable and lead to catastrophic sea-level rises around the world. --Alok Jha, The Guardian

HEALTH CARE

In a significant policy change, Bush administration officials say that Medicare will no longer pay the extra costs of treating preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in hospitals, a move they say could save lives and millions of dollars.

Private insurers are considering similar changes, which they said could multiply the savings and benefits for patients. --Robert Pear, NY Times (also in Lancaster Sunday News , 8/19/07)

You have to love the chutzpah: the changes "could multiply the savings and benefits for patients." Um, right. For some reason I highly doubt it's the patients who will be the ones who 'benefit' from these changes.

JOE PITTS

U.S. athletes "will be there" for the Olympics in China next summer, a spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee said Thursday, despite calls for a possible boycott by some members of Congress, including Lancaster County's Rep. Joe Pitts. --Dave Pidgeon in Lancaster Intelligencer Journal (subscription)

Pitts -- as usual -- displays his great concern for human rights, as long as those humans aren't Americans.

CIVIL LIBERTIES [sic]

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver’s licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver’s licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The [newly mandated federal ID] would be mandatory for all “federal purposes,” which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don’t comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes. --Pandagon

Papers, pleez!