For years, the idea of adapting to climate change has been anathema to environmentalists. Adaptation is admitting defeat or at the least taking the eye off the ball, which is prevention.

Those attitudes may be changing for two reasons. First, climate change is happening a lot faster than most thought it would. According to Manish Bapna of the World Resources institute for example, it is too late to avoid “dangerous consequences, so we must… adapt.”

Second, it’s becoming clear that global warming disproportionately impacts the most destitute people on the planet. The poorest of the poor depend on arid climate agriculture, subsistence fishing and rain forests-things that are directly and immediately affected by climate change.  If any group needed to adapt it is this group, but the very poor cannot afford the irrigation systems, flood control systems and complex public health initiatives necessary to adapt.

Destitute people happen to have minute carbon footprints. The irony of this is not lost on UC Berkeley’s Kirk Smith who reminds us that climate change is “the world’s biggest regressive tax: the poorest pay for the behavior of the rich.”

A closely watched anti-terrorism case came to a close in London last week. In it, British prosecutors charged that 8 British Muslims had planned to disguise liquid explosives as soft drinks, smuggle them onto 7 airliners, and detonate them while the planes flew from London to North America.

The evidence included bomb making equipment, flight schedules on memory sticks, martyrdom videos and a tape of the conspirators at a safe house. But ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali claimed his group planned to carry out a lesser stunt, perhaps detonating small devices at harmless locations, perhaps at Heathrow airport.

The jury didn’t believe Ali, but they couldn’t be sure what he was up to. They convicted 3 men of conspiracy to “murder persons unknown,” a lesser charge. They could not reach a verdict on 4 others and acquitted the last one, who was alleged to have been an advisor from al-Qaeda.

In picking up the pieces, some noted that the case was processed per routine through the British criminal justice system. To them, the disappointing result proves that prosecuting the war on terror requires extra-legal processes such as military tribunals and changed rules regarding pre-trial detention periods and rights to privacy and council.

To others, the British police had moved in too quickly. Had they waited a bit longer, they would have had purchased airline tickets and completed bombs-in short, better evidence.

Google insists it’s not a monopoly. Sometimes it just can’t help acting like one.

Just ask Dan Savage who started sourcetool.com, a B2B web site in 2005. Sourcetool is a directory of industrial products distributors. It adds value to conventional search by ranking distributors in dimensions Mr. Savage believes are important.

Mr. Savage’s business relies fundamentally on Google. He pays Google to place ads for Sourcetool at the top of search pages generated by terms like “crankshaft.” For people that follow Google’s path to Sourcetool in search of crankshafts, Mr. Savage pays Google AdSense to place targeted ads on his site.

Initially, things went well. Mr. Savage generated revenues of $650K/month. He paid Google $500K/month for the ads and after other expenses, he cleared $115K/month.

Then one day Sourcetool’s traffic went pffffft.

Savage’s ads had stopped appearing on Google. When he asked why, Google replied that it had updated its search algorithms and the new ones determined that Sourcetool’s landing page quality was low. As a result, Google increased the minimum required bid for Sourcetool ads from 6 cents to at least $1. The new minimum bid exceeded Mr. Savage’s limit, so Sourcetool’s ads vanished.

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