Green Stories of the Day
- Green stories are changing the world. We encourage you to join in, create your own green stories, launch new initiatives, improve the environment, change the way governments run and how businesses work.
- It is y/our time to re-create the future to positively impact the quality and sustainability of life.
- As planet citizens we are interconnected global citizens. Now is time to go beyond old ways of thinking and to develop a new vision of our home, the only home we have.
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Mick Mulvaney, U.S. President Trump’s budget director (March 2016):
“Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the President was fairly straightforward —
We’re not spending money on that anymore; we consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”
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March 2019
March 5, 2019
A "Beyond Carbon" Campaign
“I will launch...Beyond Carbon: a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.”
Michael Bloomberg -- Will be 'doing' environmental campaigning the next two years, not 'talking' and running for president
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March 1, 2019
Washington Gov Joins 2020 Race, Promises To ‘Rise Up to the Most Urgent Challenge of Our Time’
- Jay Inslee Promises to Run a Climate Action Campaign
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/transcript-govs-michelle-lujan-grisham-jay-inslee-on-face-the-nation-february-24-2019/ -- https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/jay-inslee-announces-climate-focused-2020-presidential-run-does-he-stand-a-chance/ -- https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/01/politics/inslee-2020-presidential-campaign/index.html -- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/01/washington-gov-jay-inslee-announces-presidential-bid/3025885002/ -- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/jay-inslee-2020-presidential-run-climate-change -- https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/01/washington-governor-jay-inslee-launches-2020-presidential-campaign-1197170 -- https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-inslee-president-election-201900301-story.html -- https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jay-inslee-presidential-candidate-2020-801415/ -- https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/jay-inslee-wants-to-be-a-presidential-candidate-for-the-climate-change-era -- https://electrek.co/2019/03/01/jay-inslee-presidential-bid/
A Fable, a Rationalist, a Campaign for Our Times -- http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/jay-inslee-is-the-democratic-partys-sanest-2020-candidate.html
Apollo's Fire by Jay Inslee -- https://www.amazon.com/Apollos-Fire-Igniting-Americas-Economy/dp/1597266493
https://jayinslee.com/act/join-our-movement-for-climate-action
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February 18, 2019
Chicago, Chicago, a town of renown, joining towns and states across the US going to renewable energy
• https://electrek.co/2019/02/18/chicago-sets-100-percent-clean-renewable-energy-goal/
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February 13, 2019
Hearing: The State of Climate Science and Why it Matters
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
CLIMATE / Via E&E News
Democrats praise 'refreshing' change in Science Committee
The Science, Space and Technology Committee kicked off its long-awaited climate hearing this morning by agreeing on one basic fact: Climate change is happening.
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Back in business! After a decade of inaction under a Republican climate denial party line, climate science is again in front of the US House of Representatives.
Climate change is happening. Science-based decisions are needed, resilience is necessary, a Green New Deal is proposed, and healthier, more secure communities are the goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYSfjDSxKK0
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February 12, 2019
US Senate Votes to Permanently Reauthorize the 'Most Important Conservation Program'
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Bugs Be Gone
Via the Guardian / Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'
Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found.
Insects... are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.
“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades. The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic...."
The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.
The new analysis selected the 73 best studies done to date to assess the insect decline. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit. Bees have also been seriously affected...
“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification. That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” The demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.
In the tropics, where industrial agriculture is often not yet present, the rising temperatures due to climate change are thought to be a significant factor in the decline.
“The evidence all points in the same direction,” said Prof Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex in the UK. “It should be of huge concern to all of us, for insects are at the heart of every food web, they pollinate the large majority of plant species, keep the soil healthy, recycle nutrients, control pests, and much more. Love them or loathe them, we humans cannot survive without insects.”
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Envisioning a Green New Deal
Full text of the Green New Deal Resolution
Ocasio-Cortez, Markey unveil Green New Deal with backing of four presidential candidates
Follow the Green New Deal progress at GreenPolicy360
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Washington Post / Fact Checker Analysis
In 745 days, President Trump has made 8,459 false or misleading claims. - (Updated Feb. 3, 2019)
The Fact Checker’s ongoing database of the false or misleading claims made by President Trump since assuming office.
File:Fact checking - 8000 lies and counting as of Feb 2019.png
January 29, 2019
- Kamala Harris, U.S. presidential candidate -- https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1090091453341155328
January 27, 2019
Via Scientific American / The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change? Forests.
January 24, 2019
January 19, 2019
New Pentagon Report: “The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue”
The January 2019 Changing Climate National Defense report is organized into three primary sections:
I. Summary of Climate Effects and Resulting Vulnerabilities
II. DoD Efforts to Increase Installation Resiliency & Operational Viability
III. Conclusions
GreenPolicy360/Strategic Demands: The latest U.S. climate-related national security report is limited in its scope and, as a result, is severely limited in its ability to analyze and monitor the range of strategic environmental challenges in the immediate-, near-, and long-term.
A varying vision of these threats to security can be found at GreenPolicy360 and associate Strategic Demands.
The key to a "strategic realism" is contingency planning. Any full scientific assessment of security threats on the horizon is replete with environmental/global risks that are drawing daily into view. These risks are presenting clear and present danger, in U.S. Department of Defense terms, yet are being set aside due to political exigencies.
It is time for a new vision of security. Changing climate is a 360, 24/7 threat to the nation and to international relations. Climate change or better named for what it is -- climate disruption -- is the critical challenge of the 21st century. The defense establishment ignores this security reality at our joint peril.
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/New_Definitions_of_National_Security
• https://www.strategicdemands.com/new-definitions-of-security/
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January 17, 2019
Andrew Wheeler, Trump's EPA pick says climate change 'not the greatest crisis'. The former coal lobbyist took over the EPA when his predecessor Scott Pruitt resigned after months of controversy. Wheeler says, in confirmation hearings (reported by few media outlets), that "he is carrying out the president’s “regulatory reform agenda” and that the US is the “gold standard for environmental progress”.
The environment could become a top issue in the 2020 presidential race. Asked if he agreed with the president’s past statements that climate change is a Chinese “hoax”, Wheeler said he would “not use the hoax word, myself”. The latest major Trump resignations and firings. But Wheeler said he would “not call it the greatest crisis”.
“I consider it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.”
Wheeler also told the New Jersey senator Cory Booker, a likely presidential contender, that he is “still examining” a November report from US government scientists showing the country will suffer from heat-related deaths, coastal flooding and infrastructure damage.
Booker said Wheeler’s regulatory changes “fly in the face” of that science, and the Massachusetts senator Ed Markey called it “unacceptable” that Wheeler would seek confirmation without being familiar with the report.
Wheeler was a lobbyist at Faegre Baker Daniels, where he represented coal company Murray Energy until August 2017. Murray Energy wrote the administration a list of rule changes that would help the industry, and they are largely under way.
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:RCP-projections-damage_to_US_economy.jpg
• https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
• https://carbon2018.globalchange.gov/
January 14, 2019
• https://www.ewg.org/release/mining-industry-pro-trump-s-promises-bring-back-coal-he-s-lying
More coal powered US power plants were shutting the first two years of President Donald Trump's presidency than in President Obama's entire first term. According to Data from Reuters and the US Energy Information Administration nearly 15,000 megawatts of coal-fired power retired from 2009 to 2012, while from 2017 to 2018 that number jumped to about 23,000...
Via Reuters News (TV) / Trump can't stop coals decline
January 5, 2019
The new normal is abnormal.
January 4, 2019
In St. Pete/Clearwater, GreenPolicy360's terrestrial home base
January 3, 2019
Why Brazil's new president poses an unprecedented threat to the Amazon
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USA Today / Natural disasters in Texas on the scale of Hurricane Harvey's deadly destruction last year will become more frequent because of a changing climate, warns a new report Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018, ordered by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in a state where skepticism about climate change.
From the Texas Governor’s report https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/RebuildTexasHurricaneHarveyEyeOfTheStorm_12132018.pdf
"We need to stop making the old mistakes in local development that expose homes and businesses to risks that only become apparent when disaster strikes. To paraphrase the old saying, an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure."
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While climate change has largely broken down along partisan lines at the state and federal level, the nation's mayors have overwhelmingly put aside political parties to address the issue. A survey of mayors this year found that 57 percent of cities are planning to take climate-related actions in 2019. And dozens of the country's largest cities have committed to meeting the terms of the 2025 Paris Agreement on climate change, which Trump is withdrawing from on a national level.
"I think every mayor in the country would say it's their responsibility to do something," said James Brainard, the longtime mayor of Carmel, Indiana. "Our mayors are not sitting back. The mayors are the closest elected officials to the people and the mayors can make this happen regardless of what the federal government does."
Brainard, a Republican, said he doesn't consider climate change a political issue, but he acknowledged he sometimes has to tailor his message for different audiences. Liberal groups, for instance, love that the city replaced it's streetlights with LEDs, reducing electricity consumption and therefore the emission of greenhouse gasses. Conservative groups, he said, are usually more interested in the fact that the switch saves the city 20 percent on its electricity bill annually.
January 2, 2019
Steel Manufacturing: Huge Emissions, Huge Challenge
Globally, steel is responsible for 7 per cent to 9 per cent of all direct emissions from fossil fuels, with each tonne produced resulting in an average 1.83 tonnes of CO2, according to the World Steel Association.
And as the world’s population grows, demand is only predicted to increase....
“In principle there are technology routes to lower emissions from steelmaking,” said David Clarke, head of strategy and chief technology officer at ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest producer by tonnage. The catch, he added, was that “society would have to accept higher costs of steel production”....
A well-established alternative to blast furnaces are electric arc furnaces (EAFs) that melt down scrap, instead of using raw materials. EAFs are smaller, less expensive and, because they do not consume coke, pump out less CO2 than blast furnaces. They already account for about one-quarter of global steel output.
However, renewable energy sources alone cannot meet their enormous electricity demands — enough to power a town of 100,000 people. Another limitation is the supply of scrap, while the grades produced in EAFs are often not the right quality for certain applications, like automotive....
Swedish steel group SSAB is building a €150m pilot facility, scheduled for 2020, that would make the Nordic country the first to manufacture the metal without fossil fuels.
Hydrogen produced by electrolysis from Sweden’s abundant renewable energy resources will be used to reduce ore into a product called sponge iron, which can be converted into steel through arc furnaces.
But clean hydrogen production is expensive and would require a huge expansion of renewable energy generation capacity. South Korea’s Posco and Voestalpine of Austria are pursuing similar projects, although the latter said it could take two decades to become reality.
Until then, steelmakers are taking intermediary steps. Tata’s system removes several stages of pre-processing raw materials and, if combined with the capture and storage of waste gases, the company said it could lower CO2 emissions by 80 per cent.
December 30, 2018
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• https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060109689
Philip Shabecoff, a longtime environment reporter, has covered Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and every president in between.
Now, at age 84, he'd like to return to the news business to cover President Trump.
Shabecoff recently spoke to E&E News about his start in environmental journalism, why he thinks the Times owes him an apology and why he labels the Trump administration an "unmitigated disaster."
How did you get the environment beat?
I was assigned to the Washington bureau, and they asked me what I wanted to write about, and I said the environment. That was in 1970. ... The bureau chief told me at the time, "Well, that's not important enough for a full-time reporter in the Washington bureau, and besides, we need some help covering economics." It was not until I'd covered the White House that they let me cover the environment. And at first, not full-time. ... It wasn't until Reagan became president and Anne Gorsuch became EPA administrator and James Watt headed the Interior Department that it became a political issue as well as an environmental issue that they let me cover it full-time.
What were the most interesting storylines that you covered on that beat?
I think my first climate change story was in '78 or '79, and that was buried. The Times held it for a couple of months and put it on page 42 of the Saturday paper, which is as deeply as you can bury a story in the Times.
(SJS / GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: The climate change story of '78 referred to here was a historic event, the first US Congressional legislation passed to study Climate Change. George E. Brown of the House science committee put forward the National Climate Program Act. A memorable moment in time --- National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367 --- National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367, Sept.17, 1978 95th Congress)
Philip Shabecoff interview continues:
A decade later, I covered the hearing with [Colorado Democratic Sen.] Tim Wirth ... [and NASA climate change expert] Jim Hansen. I had interviewed [Hansen] and knew him, and it was the first major splash. It led the newspaper. ... I fully thought at that point there would be action on climate change, that the world governments would start doing something about it. How wrong I was.
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Hansen-testimony-1988.jpg
Of course, there was the whole Gorsuch-Watt era, when they were trying to dismantle environmental regulations. ... Eventually, they both had to resign, even in the Reagan administration.
What was environmental journalism like in those days?
There was hardly anybody, just a handful [of reporters]. A few of us started the Society of Environmental Journalists with just a handful, and now there's about 1,500 or so, I don't know the exact number. There's a lot of talented environmental journalists out there now.
You know, I had to resign from the Times. Officially I retired, but I resigned because I was taken off the environmental beat in 1990 because my coverage about things like climate change was considered alarmist.
What's your take on the Trump administration?
It is an unmitigated disaster, and he should be — what he's doing to the rollback of environmental regulations and particularly what he's doing to ignore climate change and build up the fossil fuel industry should be considered a crime against humanity, and he should be sent to The Hague and tried.
How do you think Trump has influenced environmental journalism?
I think he's prodded it; I think he's energized it. I think it was sort of fading for a while. I think there's a lot of good reporting coming out of what he's doing. Unfortunately, most of the journalism about the environment is horror stories.
You've seen administrations come and go. Do you think that the Trump administration's environmental policies will be long-lasting?
They can certainly restore a lot of regulations, but the damage that is being done to the climate now, it cannot be reversed. The dumping of toxins into waterways cannot be reversed. I don't think the selling off of public lands can be reversed. The damage by oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge cannot be reversed. One could go on and on. I hope that — and God willing, there will be a next administration in 2020 — they can go back to having a sane environmental policy, but the damage will have been done.
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The Trump administration isn’t about renewable energy, but thanks to the Washington, D.C., city council, it could soon be running on clean power. The council passed one of the most ambitious climate bills in the country on Tuesday requiring the District to get all of its energy from renewables by 2032.
The bill was introduced in July by City Councilmember Mary Cheh and was spurred along by a group of more than 110 environmental, justice and faith groups as well as unions. While it includes a host of new climate rules, chief among them is the renewable requirement.
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December 21, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 launch
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Apollo.jpg
• http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181220-the-nasa-mission-that-broadcast-to-a-billion-people
• https://qz.com/1501935/photos-apollo-8-brought-us-the-moon-as-never-seen-before/amp/
• https://petapixel.com/2018/12/20/how-nasas-iconic-earthrise-photo-was-shot/
Today, Bill Anders says that the most striking image to him was not the Earth as seen from the moon, so much as it was the Earth receding in the distance as they left it behind on their outbound voyage. Arguably, that view has changed us — colored our attitude toward the environment, international affairs, our place in the universe — more than Apollo’s other accomplishments.
“It took a while to affect me,” Anders says, “this beautiful blue ball against the darkest black you could imagine, getting smaller and smaller as we went. It made me realize how insignificant our little planet was.”
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Climate Negotiators Reach an Overtime Deal
Another Step toward International Cooperation: U.S. resists but chooses to sign agreement
The deal requires every country to follow uniform standards for measuring emissions. Analysts said it was now up to the countries to honor their commitments
Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists summed up the need for action as the 24th international climate meeting concluded:
- “The real test is what happens when countries go home. All the decision text in the world doesn’t cut a molecule of carbon. You need action on the ground.”
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Clean Air Cuts, Now Clean Water Act Rollbacks
- Environmental Protections Agency reports show the rollback of Obama-era regulations will leave 51 percent of the nation's wetlands unprotected
• Slashing Clean Water Act Protections
• Via The Nation / Trump Moves to Gut the Clean Water Act
• Via AccuWeather / Trump administration proposes rollbacks to Obama's Clean Water Act
• Via E&E News / Trump administration breaks with its predecessors by using a 2006 opinion by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia...
Global carbon emissions reached record high in 2018
Washington Post today as nations hold climate talks in Poland... Latest evidence of the chasm between international goals for combating climate change and what countries are actually doing.
More: https://twitter.com/greenpolicy360/status/1070404767892103168
Via The Guardian / 'Brutal news': global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018
Donald Trump Only World Leader to Reject Climate Change in G20 Statement
The US got its own section in the G20 statement on climate change
In a communiqué released at the end of the summit, the signatories of the Paris climate agreement reaffirmed that the international accord “is irreversible” and that they are committed to its “full implementation,” promising to “continue to tackle climate change, while promoting sustainable development and economic growth.”
Except for the US, which got its own clause restating President Trump’s decision over the summer to remove the US from the agreement.
“The United States reiterates its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and affirms its strong commitment to economic growth and energy access and security, utilizing all energy sources and technologies, while protecting the environment,” the U.S. clause reads.
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Air Quality / Air Pollution
AirNow / International Air Quality
World Air Quality Index / World's Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index
- Particulate air pollution is the single greatest threat to human health globally.
As the U.S. President thanks himself on a Thanksgiving holiday in November of 2018, and gives himself an "A+" grade on his environmental record, we recall his factual environmental record and his state denial of climate change and its proliferating dangers and risks. Since his administration entered office in 2017, decades of policies put in place to protect the environment have come under assault by federal agencies. The President has not 'done his homework' and has failed in his work. The reality presents a stark contrast to how the U.S. President sees himself and his 'success'.
U.N. climate report card: When it comes to cutting emissions, a dog ate the world’s homework / Via Grist
On Tuesday (Nov. 27, 2018), the U.N. released its annual report card on climate change (The Emissions Gap). The bad news is we’re failing to address the biggest problem facing humanity. The good news? There’s so much room to improve! — and cities and businesses could help pick up the slack.
First, our failing marks: After a three-year plateau, global emissions are rising again “with no signs of peaking,” according to the report. Countries aren’t hitting their Paris goals. In fact, we’re failing at those goals to such a degree that we are making the climate problem worse at an accelerating rate.
And, even if we hit our current targets, it wouldn’t be enough. Factoring in the most ambitious stated climate goals of every nation on Earth, we are still on track for emissions to keep rising beyond 2030. If you’ll recall, the recent IPCC report found that global emissions need to be half their current levels by that year for a shot at keeping warming below catastrophic levels. The U.N. report found that the countries of the world would need to increase the carbon-cutting power of climate policies five-fold in order to meet that goal of 1.5 degrees C warming.
- 27 November 2018
- Authors: UN Environment
The goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change, as agreed at the Conference of the Parties in 2015, is to keep global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It also calls for efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The annual UN Environment Emissions Gap Report presents an assessment of current national mitigation efforts and the ambitions countries have presented in their Nationally Determined Contributions, which form the foundation of the Paris Agreement.
View the Full Int'l Report on CO2 Emissions
File:UN Climate Agr Emissions Gap FullReport EN.pdf
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Trump Says He’s Too Intelligent to Believe Climate Change Report / Via NY Magazine
White House: Federal climate change report 'not based on facts'
2018 / U.S. National Climate Assessment / Federal Climate Report
U.S National Climate Assessment: A Bleak Report, a Bleak Government Response
The New Abnormal / E&E News: Not Good, Bad, Very Bad, Soon to be Worse
- Via the Washington Post / From Donald Trump's 'gut interview
- President Trump Says He’s Too Intelligent To Believe In Climate Change
- The government’s own climate report predicts the planet will warm dramatically by 2100 without urgent efforts to rein in emissions. Trump responds, “I don’t see it.”
- President Donald Trump asserted that he had “very high levels of intelligence,” and as such, did not believe in the scientific consensus surrounding climate change in a sweeping interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday (Nov 27).
- “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” said Trump, speaking to the Post’s Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker. “You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean. ... As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is.”
- "You look at our air and our water, and it's right now at a record clean."
- (We do not have 'record clean' and the Trump record is one of increasing atmospheric emissions and loosening clean air rules'.)
- "And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over."
- ("Oceans are very small"? Oceans cover over 70% of the Earth's surface. And "sailing over?... What should one make of this comment?)
- "It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with."
- (The president has blamed China for creating the "myth" of climate change and global warming. Is he now saying that air pollution from China flows to the U.S. and "sails over"? Who knows what the president is saying as he says "where does this come from"...)
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UN partners with 16 global re/insurers to develop climate risk assessment tools
16th November 2018 / Reinsurance News
The UN Environment’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) has announced a partnership with a group of 16 large, global insurers and reinsurers, to develop a new generation of risk assessment tools that enable the risk transfer industry to better understand the impacts of climate change on their business.
The 16 companies represent around 10% of global insurance premiums and $5 trillion in assets under management, and the pilot group will be tasked with developing analytical tools that they will use to pioneer insurance industry risk disclosures that fall in line with the guidelines and recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
The UNEP FI states that this will require member insurers and reinsurers to leverage the latest climate science, which includes the most advanced, and forward-looking climate scenarios that are out there.
The member re/insurers includes: Allianz, AXA, IAG, Intact Financial Corporation, Länsförsäkringar Sak, MAPFRE, MS&AD, Munich Re, NN Group, QBE, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa, Storebrand, Swiss Re, TD Insurance, The Co-operators, and Tokio Marine & Nichido.
UN Environment Chief, Erik Solheim, commented: “For generations, the insurance industry has served as society’s early warning system and risk manager by understanding, reducing, pricing and carrying risk. Its message now is loud and clear: climate change risk is intensifying and is a serious threat to the insurability of communities and economies around the world.
“An uninsurable world is a price that society could not afford. This is why UN Environment is working with leading insurers to understand and reduce risk, to seize unprecedented business opportunities in climate action, and to ensure an insurable, resilient and sustainable world.”
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7 ways towns and cities are turning from grey to green
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Results of the US Mid-term Congressional Election
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Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) is poised to take control of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Johnson was the first registered nurse elected to Congress, and will be the first chair of the committee with a STEM background since the 1990s, when it was led by former engineer George Brown (D-Calif.). She has a strong positive rating from the League of Conservation Voters...
Nov 6, 2018
Press Release
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
(Dallas, TX) – Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D-TX) statement:
“I am heartened that Democrats will be in the Majority in the 116th Congress, and I cannot wait to get to work. If I am fortunate enough to be elected Chair of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, a Committee that I like to call the ‘Committee of the Future,’ I know that there is much that we can accomplish as Democrats and Republicans working together for the good of the nation. There is much to be done in the next Congress, and I believe that at a minimum we need to pursue an agenda that will:
- Ensure that the United States remains the global leader in innovation, which will require attention to a wide range of activities: promoting effective STEM education solutions, engaging the underrepresented minorities and blue collar workers in the STEM fields, supporting a robust federally funded R&D enterprise and emerging areas of science and technology, defending the scientific enterprise from political and ideological attacks, and challenging misguided or harmful Administration actions;
- Address the challenge of climate change, starting with acknowledging it is real, seeking to understand what climate science is telling us, and working to understand the ways we can mitigate it; and finally,
- Restore the credibility of the Science Committee as a place where science is respected and recognized as a crucial input to good policymaking.
“These three priorities will keep us very busy both legislatively and in carrying out the serious oversight that has been neglected by our Committee the past few Congresses. If appointed as Chair, I will work tirelessly to advance this agenda for the good of our nation.”
https://democrats-science.house.gov/
115th Congress
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The EPA's Climate Change Page Is Just Gone Now
November 1, 2018 / Via Environmental Data & Governance Initiative / Motherboard
A report released this week by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative reveals that the removal of climate change information from the EPA website is set to be a long-term policy of the Trump administration.
EPA.gov pages that previously provided information about climate change have been changed from claiming that they are "updating" to an error message that reads, "We want to help you find what you are looking for," as revealed by a report released this week by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative. The change indicates that information related climate change is not being “updated,” but removed entirely.
In April 2017, the EPA put out a press release announcing that EPA.gov would be changing to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.”
“The process, which involves updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership, is intended to ensure that the public can use the website to understand the agency's current efforts,” the April 2017 press release reads. “The changes will comply with agency ethics and legal guidance, including the use of proper archiving procedures.”
At that point, the EPA’s climate change subdomains were removed and were replaced by a page that said that the subdomains were being “updated.” The pages remained like this until the night between October 16 and 17, when the pages were updated to read “We want to help you find what you are looking for.”
There is no information related to climate change on any of the EPA’s climate change subdomains, and per the language of the EPA’s April 2017 press release, this reflects the priorities of the Trump Administration.
This is far from the first time that the Trump administration has removed information relating to climate change and environmental hazards. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, all references to climate change were removed from the White House website. In April of that year, the Department of the Interior removed references to climate change from its public-facing website. The Federal Emergency Management Agency does not even mention climate change in its five year plan released earlier this year.
The Trump administration has also taken tangible steps toward undermining environmental regulations. For instance, earlier this year, the Trump Administration revoked state waivers to the national Clean Air Act that allows states such as California, a major automobile manufacturer, to enforce stricter policies than the Clean Air Act Demands.
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Earth's oceans have absorbed up to 60 percent more heat than previously thought
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Toward Biological Annihilation
We live in an age of rapid and unprecedented planetary change. Indeed, many scientists believe our ever-increasing consumption, and the resulting increased demand for energy, land and water, is driving a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. It’s the first time in the Earth’s history that a single species – Homo sapiens – has had such a powerful impact on the planet.
This rapid planetary change, referred to as the ‘Great Acceleration’, has brought many benefits to human society. Yet we now also understand that there are multiple connections between the overall rise in our health, wealth, food and security, the unequal distribution of these benefits and the declining state of the Earth’s natural systems. Nature, underpinned by biodiversity, provides a wealth of services, which form the building blocks of modern society; but both nature and biodiversity are disappearing at an alarming rate. Despite well-meaning attempts to stop this loss through global agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, we are failing; current targets and consequent actions amount, at best, to a managed decline. To achieve climate and sustainable development commitments, reversing the loss of nature and biodiversity is critical...
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93 percent of the world’s children breathe toxic, polluted air each day
Nearly 2 billion children – about 93 percent of the world’s children under the age of 15 – breathe toxic, putrid air that’s so polluted it puts their health and well-being at serious risk, according to a new report by the World Health Organization.
Many of the children die: The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 600,000 children died in 2016 from lower respiratory infections caused by dirty air.
“Polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO. “This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfill their full potential.”
Air pollution can affect children's cognitive ability and can also trigger asthma as well as cancer. Children who have been exposed to high levels of air pollution may be at greater risk for chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease later in life...
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LA Times / Trump administration gives itself A plus grade on environment
- Few would agree with the self assessment
Never mind the facts. White House says it gets an A+ on environmental issues
A recent essay in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. by Harvard University researchers concluded that Trump’s environmental agenda “is likely to cost the lives of over 80,000 U.S. residents per decade and lead to respiratory problems for many more than 1 million people.”
Yet the heads of Trump’s Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children characterized the administration this week as being singularly focused on keeping Americans, and particularly kids, safe from dangerous industrial practices.
The task force’s activities are “a continuation of the Trump administration’s commitment to preventing future generations from being affected by lead exposure,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, citing “great progress” in safeguarding public safety.
Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist who now serves as the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said reducing exposure to toxic lead “is a top priority for EPA.”
Not really. Not if you define “reducing exposure to toxic lead” as reducing exposure to toxic lead.
“Like meat bees on baloney, the pollution lobby has swarmed the Trump administration from its inception,” said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization.
“No number of press releases and statements by Mr. Wheeler or others claiming environmental and public health protection is a ‘top priority’ for this administration can change that indisputable fact.”
The Trump administration depicting itself as a champion of the environment is as ludicrous as its recent attempts to portray itself as a defender of protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.
It’s neither. The opposite, in fact.
“This rhetoric from the Trump administration is just painting over its refusal to keep our kids safe, not just from lead poisoning, but from toxic air and water pollution,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club.
“Propaganda won't disguise the reality that Trump is responsible for the most serious attacks on clean air and water by any administration ever.”
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Turning the Toxic Tide is a series of editorials published collectively by the six editorial boards of USA TODAY Network-Florida.
- October 18, 2018 / Today's editorial, Florida is at historic crossroads is the first in the series.
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Chris Mooney / Washington Post:
Climate scientists have begun to focus on hurricane rapid intensification as an increasingly prevalent feature in the world we’re entering.
In a recent study in the Journal of Climate, researchers found more rapid intensifications in a simulation of a human-warmed world, and also that this would prove a key pathway toward more intense hurricanes... #RapidIntensification
October 12, 2018
Did global warming 'supercharge' Hurricane Michael?
Hurricane Michael exploded in intensity this week, from a rather nondescript tropical depression Sunday with winds of 35 mph to a Category 4 monster Wednesday with 155 winds.
When it hit land, it became the most powerful hurricane on record to slam Florida's Panhandle and the third-strongest U.S. landfall of all time.
Along with other weather factors, Michael's rapid intensification was fueled in part by unusually warm sea water in the Gulf of Mexico. Warm water of at least 80 degrees fuels hurricanes, and the water in the eastern Gulf this week was as much as 4 to 5 degrees warmer than normal.
Although random weather patterns certainly played a role, the warm waters in the Gulf have a “human fingerprint” of climate change, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate and hurricane expert Jim Kossin.
Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress that "once again we see a storm undergoing extreme rapid intensification over unusually warm ocean waters. We saw this pattern last year with Harvey and earlier this year with Florence and now, with my namesake, Michael.”
Weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue said "there's no doubt the ocean water encountered by Michael was quite warm compared to the last three decades, especially near the coast."
A 2015 study on how ocean temperatures affect hurricane intensity in the North Atlantic found intensification increases by 16 percent for every 1.8 degree increase in average sea-surface temperatures... #HumanFingerprint
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Americans win Nobel Prize of work on climate, growth
Paul Romer: "Many people think that dealing with protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard work that they just want to ignore the problem. They want to deny it exists; they can't deal with it. I hope the prize today could help everyone see that humans are capable of amazing accomplishments when we set about trying to do something."
Romer said that his research has left him optimistic that society can solve even a threat as deeply challenging as the warming of the planet.
William Nordhaus: Nordhaus has been called "the father of climate-change economics" developing models that suggest how governments can combat global warming. One key step he has endorsed is a universal tax on carbon, which would require polluters to pay for the costs that their emissions impose on society. By using a tax rather than government edicts to slash emissions, the policy encourages companies to find innovative ways to reduce pollution -- and their tax burdens.
Nobel Prize Links Up the Environment & Climate-Change Economics
Foreign Policy Magazine
The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe
The economist William Nordhaus will receive his profession’s highest honor for research on global warming that’s been hugely influential — and entirely misguided.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. After all, this isn’t just a matter of abstract academic debate; the future of human civilization hangs in the balance.
In the 1990s, Nordhaus invented the first integrated assessment models to explore how economic growth affects carbon emissions, and how climate change in turn affects economic growth. The basic mechanisms that Nordhaus described continue to inform the models that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses today. No one disputes that this qualifies as a significant contribution to the field. The question, rather, has to do with how Nordhaus has used his models to argue for a particular policy agenda.
The models showed that if we were to rapidly reduce carbon emissions in line with what scientists say is necessary to avoid climate breakdown – by putting a high tax on carbon, for instance – it would significantly slow down the rate of economic growth. As far as scientists are concerned, that’s not a problem; we should obviously do whatever it takes to avoid climate catastrophe. But for economists like Nordhaus, this is not acceptable. After all, the whole point of neoclassical economics is to do whatever it takes to grow economic output.
So, Nordhaus’ career has been devoted to finding what he calls a “balance” between climate mitigation and GDP growth. In a famous 1991 paper titled “To slow or not to slow,” he argued firmly for the latter option: Let’s not be too eager to slow down global warming, because we don’t want to jeopardize growth.
To justify this conclusion, Nordhaus manipulates what is known as the “discount rate,” which is how economists value the costs of climate breakdown in the present as compared to the future. It might sound arcane, but it’s really quite straightforward. A discount rate of zero means that future generations are valued equally to the present; a high discount rate means that future generations are valued less, or “discounted,” compared with nearer generations.
Nordhaus prefers a high discount rate—very high. Discounting the future allows him to argue that we shouldn’t reduce emissions too quickly, because the economic cost to people today will be higher than the benefit of protecting people in the future. Instead, we should do the opposite: Focus on GDP growth now even if it means locking in future climate catastrophe. This is justifiable, he says, because future generations will then be much richer than we are and therefore better able to manage the problem.
Using this logic, Nordhaus long claimed that from the standpoint of “economic rationality” it is “optimal” to keep warming the planet to about 3.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels—vastly in excess of the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold that the IPCC insists on.
It sounds morally problematic and flies in the face of scientists’ warnings, but economists and policymakers have lined up behind Nordhaus’s argument. They like it because it gives them license to carry on with the status quo and delay difficult decisions. President Trump, for instance, has been aggressive in his preference for growth over climate action. This is in large part what explains the fact that nearly 30 years after the first IPCC report was published, global emissions are still going up. It also helps explain why even with the Paris climate agreement in place, and with all of the plans promised by the world’s governments, we’re still headed for about 3.3 degrees Celsius of warming. It’s all eerily similar to the Nordhaus trajectory.
So how do economists get away with believing that these extreme temperatures are somehow okay? Because the Nordhaus model tells us that even the worst catastrophes will not really hurt the global economy all that much. Maybe a percentage point or two at the most, by the end of the century—much less than the cost of immediate action.
Read more at FP - https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/the-nobel-prize-for-climate-catastrophe/
and at GreenPolicy360 and Strategic Demands
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Special International Report Released / October 8, 2018
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change / IPCC
The #IPCC Special Report #s on Global Warming
Thousands of scientists gather to bring together the last five years of advances in climate science to answer key questions for policymakers.
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The Environmental Protection Agency: In Retreat from Its Core Mission
"Repeal of everything the Obama administration did."
Under Pruitt, "There was utter contempt for the career staff and the commitment to do whatever industry asked them to do."
"Today, the environmental field is suffering from the temporary triumph of myth over truth."
Elizabeth Southerland (Former director of science and technology in the Office of Water): What I perceived is that the new administration came into the EPA with complete contempt for the career staff in the agency. Not once did they talk to any of us about all these rules that they’ve been requested by industry to repeal.
"It’s not just that the actions of this administration failed to follow science and evidence and facts, but they are also in many cases unlawful."
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Pathways Forward, Changing the World
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The Climate Group Gathers in New York
New climate pledges announced by global leaders at the 10th Climate Week.
California Governor Brown opens the conference with a call to action. Taking innovation and solutions to scale ... pathways, policy action, transparency.
The Climate Group, bringing together over 200 governments and businesses spanning six continents and 43 countries with the goal of reducing GHG emissions toward net-zero by 2050.
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U.S. National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Releases Climate Science Statement
More than 50,000 members received the education group's position ... In part it reads: “Given the solid scientific foundation on which climate change science rests. . . any controversies regarding climate change and human-caused contributions to climate change that are based on social, economic, or political arguments—rather than scientific arguments—should not be part of a science curriculum.”
As an official position statement, it's definitely worth reading in its entirety.
One portion of the teachers’ guidance stands out as a 'clear warning to deniers to stop trying to infect our science with cynical politics'.
The appeal by some to “teach the controversy,” the statement asserts, is a rhetorical tactic not based on science.
“Scientific explanations must be consistent with existing empirical evidence or stand up to empirical testing. Ideas based on political ideologies or pseudoscience that fail these empirical tests do not constitute science and should not be allowed to compromise the teaching of climate science.”
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Closing the Global Climate Action Summit, Governor Brown announces a partnership with Planet Labs
New Space Earth Science here we go ...
September 12-14, San Francisco, California
https://globalclimateactionsummit.org
https://globalclimateactionsummit.org/program
Green Politics in Action: California Builds Bridges to Extend International Cooperation
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Renewable Works for Orlando
Get Going Florida! Your Energy Future Is Now
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Ecology and the Cerrado of Brazil
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Envisioning 'Big Picture' Climate Solutions
Geoengineering
Who sets the global thermostat?
Imagine scenarios, the big picture, sequencing of engineering steps to slow climate change if global consensus on mitigation and prevention cannot be reached. To put it another way, if short-term thinking prevails and governments/business/human actions fail to prevent worsening climate-induced impacts, then what proactive actions can be taken before 'all hell breaks out' ...
HuffPost US to Kim Stanley Robinson
How do you define geoengineering and what are the forms it will most likely take?
I guess the definition would be something like “a deliberate planned attempt by human beings to mitigate the damages of climate change, of carbon dioxide and methane buildup in the atmosphere, and of ecological damage generally, by way of some action that is large-scale” — if not global in reach, then regional in ways that might have global repercussions.
Are you afraid for the future?
Yes.
What makes you most hopeful for a future in which humans who aren’t ultrarich can still thrive?
Progressive taxation, progressive politics, the Paris Accords, the Endangered Species Act, leftists everywhere on Earth including China, environmentalists everywhere, the growing green-red coalition or united front of environmentalists and leftists, the creative power of STEM, the humanist traditions in philosophy, people’s concern for their children, the growing sense of a “global village” we are all part of, the urge to survive. These are some of the things that make me hopeful. Hope is stubborn. It exists in us at the cellular level and works up from there, as part of the urge to live. So hope will persist. The question is, can we put it to use?
GreenPolicy360 / Geoengineering Planet Earth
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Ride along with the 2018 Nautilus Expedition
This expedition takes the Nautilus team, and us, to little-known and unexplored regions of the Eastern Pacific ocean. #NautilusLive
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U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Will Mean Challenging Times For Environmental Laws
“I call him Lord Voldemort,” conservation lawyer Bill Snape said about Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh...
This may be pushing artistic license just a touch, but... the multiple questions about the Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society choice for SCOTUS are now top of mind... the question of independent judicial review and/or money behind the nominee are out-of-the-starting-gate questions...
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Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the US EPA, Resigns
- (Pink tinting added above by Josh Marshall / via TPM)
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The Last Act
Pruitt seeks to limit EPA's authority to block water pollution permits
The proposed regulation would likely be the most significant change to how the EPA enforces the Clean Water Act’s restrictions on dredging or filling waterways in four decades.
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June 23, 2018, a Thirty Year Anniversary
- June 23, 1988, an epochal day, a history-making day
On June 23rd, 1988, James Hansen testified to the US Senate.
Siterunner: Your GreenPolicy360 siterunner remembers back over the 1970s and 80s working environmental politics with George Brown as he pushed thru the first federal climate act, the National Climate Program Act of 1978 with a climate research program, this after his earlier work to establish the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts with California and Congressional legislators at the start up of the modern environmental movement.
More of James Hansen and George Brown --
James Hansen / Washington Post
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US Environmental Protection Agency Updates
- “@EPAScottPruitt is the most corrupt administrator in the @EPA’s history.”
A demoralized workforce watching as its agency is dismantled by the very people charged to lead it: That is the grim state of affairs depicted by John J. O’Grady, a longtime employee in the Chicago field office of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s air and water, while preventing the exposure of citizens to harmful chemicals. The agency is doing none of that, in O’Grady’s telling, with career officials watching in dismay as EPA administrator Scott Pruitt seemingly lurches from one scandal to another while doing the bidding of oil barons and the chemical lobby.
“Morale is not good,” O’Grady said of the agency’s 14,000 employees. “It’s so low, you need a ladder to get out of the gutter.”
O’Grady, an EPA engineer who is also a chapter leader in the American Federation of Government Employees, a public sector union, made his remarks in an on-the-record breakfast with journalists at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C. Nearby, a television screen was tuned to CNN, where an anchor discussed Pruitt’s most recent alleged transgression: According to a Washington Post report published that morning, Pruitt had his most influential aide urging Republican donors to hire his wife Marlyn.
Judge Orders EPA to Produce Science
Via E&E News-Scientific American
June 5, 2018 / Freedom of Information Request To Be Acted Upon
EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled.
The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims.
Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested “EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.”
On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
“Particularly troubling is the apparent premise of this agency challenge to the FOIA request, namely: that the evidentiary basis for a policy or factual statement by an agency head, including about the scientific factors contributing to climate change, is inherently unknowable.”
If the case proceeds, it could mean that Pruitt would have to produce such research in the coming months or next year.
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Trump’s NASA Chief: 'I Fully Believe and Know the Climate Is Changing'
“I also know that we human beings are contributing to it in a major way”
“As far as my position on climate change and how it’s evolved, I’ll be very open...” the new administrator of NASA said at a town hall Thursday (May 17) at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“I don’t deny that consensus that the climate is changing,” he said. “In fact, I fully believe and know that the climate is changing. I also know that we humans beings are contributing to it in a major way. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We’re putting it into the atmosphere in volumes that we haven’t seen, and that greenhouse gas is warming the planet. That is absolutely happening, and we are responsible for it.”
... whether Bridenstine’s views on climate change have changed or not, the views of his bosses haven’t, and this remains a point of concern for Bridentine’s critics. The Trump White House has proposed cutting or canceling many of nasa’s earth-science missions. So far, they’ve been spared. Republicans don’t have enough seats in the Senate to pass their dream budgets, so they’ve had to negotiate bipartisan budget legislation with Democrats. This setup has preserved most of nasa’s climate funding, but not all. The latest budget deal didn’t specifically mention nasa’s Carbon Monitoring System, a $10-million program to track greenhouse-gas emissions around the world. The Trump administration took that as an opportunity to terminate the program.
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US EPA Administrator Back in the News
EPA staff Wednesday morning barred POLITICO and reporters from at least two other publications from entering a national summit on toxic chemicals, a day after a partial media blackout at the same event brought criticism from congressional Democrats and a pledge by the White House to investigate the incident... the Associated Press (reported) that one of its journalists was forcibly ejected from the building.
Pruitt scheduled the PFAS summit months ago, but it has attracted increased attention after POLITICO reported that senior EPA officials had helped block the release of an HHS study that would have increased warnings about the chemicals. EPA stepped in after the White House warned in January that releasing the study would create a "public relations nightmare."
Pruitt said he was unaware of that intervention, but it has added to the criticism he has faced from lawmakers and the public in recent months. The embattled administrator is facing more than a dozen federal investigations over his first-class travel, sweetheart condo rental from a lobbyist, heavy security spending and other matters.
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By 2030, China and Taiwan are planning to ban all plastic bags,
straws, disposable food containers, plastic cutlery and cups.
Earth Science & Environmental Security
May 22 / News Reports / California
The New GRACE satellites are launched and on their way...
Two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On -- GRACE-FO -- satellites were released from the Falcon 9's second stage about 11-and-a-half minutes after takeoff. The five Iridium NEXT satellites followed suit about an hour later, after an orbit-raising maneuver by the second stage.
As the name indicates, the GRACE-FO satellites are replacements for an earlier pair that spent 15 years monitoring how water is distributed globally, measuring changes in Earth's oceans, glaciers and ice sheets while tracking sub-surface aquifers and soil moisture.
The original GRACE mission found that Greenland, for example, is losing 281 billion tons of ice per year on average while Antarctica is losing another 125 "gigatons" annually. One gigaton is the mass of water in 400,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.
"GRACE was really a revolutionary mission for us understanding the water cycle and how the climate behaves and the trends that are taking place," said Frank Webb, GRACE-FO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"This was a view we didn't have before of water on the Earth. We were able to see how water has moved from different parts of the Earth by actually measuring its mass. ... We were able to detect things like loss of ice mass from glaciers, ice sheets, Greenland, places like that, we were able to see storage of water on land where there were floods or depletion of water on land where there are large aquifers and we've been pumping water out."
Satellite study finds major shifts in global freshwater
The NASA-led research team ... used 14 years of observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission to track global trends in freshwater in 34 regions around the world.
The study, published in the May 17, 2018 issue of the journal Nature, also incorporated satellite precipitation data from the ESSIC-led Global Precipitation Climatology Project; Landsat imagery from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey; irrigation maps; and published reports of human activities related to agriculture, mining and reservoir operations. The study period spans from 2002 to 2016.
"This is the first time we've assessed how freshwater availability is changing, everywhere on Earth, using satellite observations," said Matt Rodell, lead author of the paper and chief of the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "A key goal was to distinguish shifts in terrestrial water storage caused by natural variability—wet periods and dry periods associated with El Niño and La Niña, for example—from trends related to climate change or human impacts, like pumping groundwater out of an aquifer faster than it is replenished."
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Loss of Permafrost: Ripple Effects Head South
The Great Thaw of America's North Is Coming
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Texas Becoming Greener?
What About Pennsylvania?
May 6, 2018
From Pennsylvania / the Post-Journal
By James Colby / EARTHx
Here is my Earth Day reflection: No single person, politician, political party, or nation can solve the climate-change or sustainability crisis. The responsibility falls on every human being on planet Earth. Young and old, left and right, and rural and urban citizens must unite, collaborate, and cooperate.
Business and industry, and federal, state, and local politicians must enact public policy that reflects sustainability. The first Earth Day” (1970) was excellent, in that the left and right united to change the American landscape and the world. Clean water, air, and soil became priorities, and the EPA was established to advance these goals.
Today, many citizens feel helpless and ask this: “how can I help?”
Some individuals think environmental issues are not important or real… or not concerns of their friends, family, church members, or talk-show hosts. If you are in this group, please consider this fact: Texas is not only Red, but Green. Many Texas Republicans view green living as excellent political and business goals, and reflect fiscal responsibility.
It is a fact: clean, renewable energies, economies, and jobs are now embraced by Americans of all ideologies. Texas, known for big business, big oil, and all sizes of pickup trucks is transforming into an environmental beacon...
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- Bill McKibben: The Question I Get Asked the Most
- The questions come after talks, on twitter, in the days' incoming tide of email—sometimes even in old-fashioned letters that arrive in envelopes...
- "What can I do?" I bet I've been asked it 10,000 times by now... "What can I do to make a difference?"
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Macron Speaks to US Congress
April 25, 2018
"Let us face it, there is no Planet B..."
"I am sure one day the U.S. will come back and rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement."
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Methane, We're Watching
- Detecting methane from space
- There has been quite a buzz around this unique advancement in space, and the valuable data it will provide on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for a quarter of the warming our planet is experiencing today. Curbing anthropogenic methane emissions is one of the most efficient and economical options available to slow the rate of warming over the next few decades, while efforts continue to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide.
- "As a pollutant, methane is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-yr period and responsible for a quarter of the global warming happening today. That is a risk not just to emitters in the oil and gas sector, but to investors everywhere."
- Re: Methane Management / Harvard Investment Endowment Fund
- The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) planning to be the first environmental group to send its own satellite into space. The group's efforts are being funded through the Audacious Project, a joint effort of the non-profit group TED and philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
- “We need good solid data so that we really can support global action on climate change, and we’ve got to do it fast,” says Steven Hamburg, the EDF’s chief scientist.
- The most detailed measurements currently available of atmospheric methane concentrations currently come from a sensor aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P spacecraft, which launched in October 2017. The Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument provides global coverage at a resolution of nearly 50 square kilometres, but those measurements do not capture the dispersed sources of emissions from oil and gas fields.
- Commercial firms have developed high-resolution sensors that can be placed aboard 10-centimetre-sided CubeSats to measure emissions from individual wells or other facilities. Those data are proprietary, however, and the measurements cannot be scaled up to the level of an entire oil and gas field.
- The Environmental Defense Fund team is designing MethaneSAT to provide more-precise measurements, at a resolution of 1 square kilometre, with global coverage at least once a week.
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April and Birds On the Wing
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Daphne with an Orphan
Orphans No More
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The Oil/Gas Deal in the Arctic
"It was bigger than sending a man to the moon", re: US / Russia to drill in the Arctic
It's a big story, a 'follow the money' story, the story of oil/gas profits and global environmental costs...
Looking at Rosneft/Exxon's $500 billion Arctic deal, Rex Tillerson's appt as US Secretary of State, US/Russia oil/gas interests...
The political-economic reality in a warming North offers a rich bounty -- and pressing challenge to global security.
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https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Starlink-nasa_image.jpg
"Starlink"
- February 22, 2018, the beginning of a SpaceX planetary network...
- Micro-satellites to deliver low-cost Internet access around the globe...
- SpaceX's ultimate goal is to provide gigabit broadband services worldwide...
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Blue-Green Connection to Life on Earth
"The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One"
- "A single kind of blue-green algae in the ocean ('Prochlorococcus') produces the oxygen in one of every five breaths we take"
Planet Citizen, Bioneer and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio joins w/ Planet to launch an amazing ocean imaging, earth science project
- Reefscape
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US Nuclear Posture Review Released
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US Slaps Tariff on Solar Energy Panels
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World Bank to end financial support for oil and gas extraction
- Bank announces in Paris it ‘will no longer finance upstream oil and gas’ after 2019 in response to threat posed by climate change
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European Union unveils plan to make all plastic packaging recyclable by 2030
- The EU wants to make all plastic packaging recyclable, reduce single-use plastic and restrict microplastics. The plan would "lay the foundations for a new plastic economy."
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Green Networking, Going Global
GreenPolicy360: Greening Our Blue Planet
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Rein In Trump's Ability to Launch Nuclear First Strike
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Pope Francis on the Environment
VATICAN CITY, January 8, 2018 (Reuters) - Pope Francis called on Monday for all nations to support dialog to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and to work for a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear weapons must be banned,” Francis said, quoting a document issued by Pope John XXIII at the height of the Cold War and adding that there is “no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance.”
He noted that the Holy See was among 122 states that last year agreed to a United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The United States, Britain, France and others boycotted the talks that led to the treaty, instead pledging commitment to a decades-old Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“It is of paramount importance to support every effort at dialog on the Korean peninsula, in order to find new ways of overcoming the current disputes, increasing mutual trust and ensuring a peaceful future for the Korean people and the entire world,” Francis said, addressing the nuclear crisis beween North Korea and the United States.
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Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters
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- Regenerative Green Best Practices
- "The World's First Professor of Planetary Health" / #PlanetaryHealth
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2017 Green Stories of the Day / Edited/Re-published February 2018
New Definitions of National & Global Security
Rethinking Nuclear Risks
@GreenPolicy's associate, Strategic Demands
When Carl Sagan Warned the World About Nuclear Winter
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News from the Int'l One Planet Summit
- December 2017, Paris, France
Climate commitments at the 'One Planet Summit' in Paris
World Bank Group pledges to stop investing in oil and gas exploration
China/Xinhua -- France hosts climate change summit
World is losing the battle against climate change
Euronews "One Planet" Global Summit Meet Up Video
Macron Holds a Climate Summit, and Trump Casts a Shadow
More than 50 US mayors just signed a charter to meet the Paris agreement goals
With fossil fuel subsidies, humanity investing in 'own doom': UN chief
France wants America’s best climate scientists because our government won’t want them
- France launches Make Our Planet Great Again grants
EU announces €9bn in funding for climate action
- EU funds will be focused on clean energy, and sustainable cities and agriculture
John Kerry: US 'will come back' to Paris climate accord
UK: World’s space agencies to set up climate observatory
- The heads of several of the world’s space agencies have agreed to set up a climate observatory to pool data and share it with scientists across the world. The UK Space Agency has joined other organisations to commit to working together on activities such as increasing observations of key climate variables and validating the data.
- They aim to improve long term sustainability and accessibility of climate data captured by satellites.
- Graham Turnock, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, who signed the agreement in Paris said: “The UK is working with international organisations to encourage the use of space data and technology to tackling climate change. It’s important we come together and agree to work towards improving the quality and sustainability of climate data from space and ensuring it is made freely available to researchers around the world.”
In September 2018, a follow on Global Climate Action Summit will be held in San Francisco.
- Co-chaired by Jerry Brown, the governor of California said of the next Summit:
- If we all work together, humanity can rise to the existential threat of climate change.
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News from the Int'l Climate Conference in Germany
- UN Climate Change@UNFCCC
- @JerryBrownGov joins Facebook UN event at #COP23 in Bonn:
"The #ParisAgreement was a miracle - we must build on this miracle. We are on the road to hell without full Paris Agreement implementation"
- Andy Revkin@Revkin
- Read @ElizKolbert
- FutureEarth
- International research for global sustainability - https://mobile.twitter.com/FutureEarth
- GreenPolicy360
- Climate News - https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_News
- Resilience - https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:GreenPolicy360_-_Resilience.png
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Carbon Dioxide and the "Thin Blue" Atmosphere
- NASA OCO-2, critical measurements, critical mission - https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12478
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere through human activities...
- The OCO-2 mission represents an important advance in the ability to observe atmospheric carbon dioxide. OCO-2 collects high-precision, total column measurements of carbon dioxide (from the sensor to Earth’s surface) during daylight conditions.
- Scientists can also use model results to understand and predict where carbon dioxide is being emitted and removed from the atmosphere and how much is from natural processes and human activities.
- Carbon dioxide variations are largely controlled by fossil fuel emissions and seasonal fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere and land biosphere.
- OCO-2's unprecedented science is "a step toward answering critical questions about carbon dioxide and Earth's climate future."
- http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/358655-federal-report-blames-humans-for-global-warming-and-its-effects
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html
- http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-pol-climate-change-report-20171103-story.html
- https://thinkprogress.org/trump-national-climate-assessment-9ae0781f7a9a/
- https://www.salon.com/2017/11/03/climate-change-is-happening-because-of-human-activity-trump-administration-admits/
- https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/us-government-climate-report-climate-change-is-real-and-our-fault/
- https://www.rt.com/usa/408764-climate-report-contradicts-trump/
- https://thedailybanter.com/2017/11/white-house-approves-climate-change-report/
- http://grist.org/briefly/the-u-s-government-just-released-a-report-confirming-everything-we-know-about-climate-change/
- http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-11/04/c_136727069.htm
- International Cooperation, Framework Convention on Climate Change
Only One Country Refuses to Support the Int'l Climate Agreement
November 7, 2017
California Gov. Jerry Brown delivers a blunt climate change message in Germany
Brown has been hailed in German media as the “anti-Trump” for his efforts to keep the United States engaged in the 2015 Paris agreement’s commitments to cut greenhouse emissions...
“It’s hard to get your mind around something so extensive,” said Brown, who was appointed by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, the U.N. conference president, to serve as a special advisor for states and regions...
“Let’s lead the whole world to realize this is not your normal political challenge,” he added. “This is much bigger. This is life itself. It requires courage and imagination.”
- Dawning Thin Blue Perspective
- New Definitions of National And Global Security
- Fragile edge of our planet
- Thin blue line
- Mysterious rhythm
- Our next breath
- Heart struck with wonder
- Mind dizzy with awe
- -- Astronaut Douglas Wheelock @Astro_Wheels
- "Climathon"
- To highlight the global collaboration happening across the world -- http://www.climate-kic.org/
- War on the Rocks
- Look deeply at the threat -- https://warontherocks.com/2017/10/trumps-threat-to-nuclear-order/
- Today's 'Sunday Services' visits Patagonia, with a special thanks to Danny Moses, long-time, now retired, Editor-in-Chief of Sierra Club Books
- I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones. ― Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia
- There were no voices here. There was this, what I saw; and though beyond it were mountains and glaciers and albatrosses and Indians; there was nothing to speak of, nothing to delay me further. Only the Patagonian paradox: tiny blossoms in vast space; to be here, it helped to be a miniaturist, or else interested in enormous empty spaces. There was no intermediate zone to study. Either the enormity of the desert or the sight of a tiny flower. In Patagonia you had to choose between the tiny and the vast. ― Paul Theroux
- There is a saying in Patagonia -- que asegura a la persona que come el fruto del calafate, su regreso a estas tierras -- those who taste the fruit of the calafate will return to this land. I have tasted the calafate berry. ― Jeff Gnass
Environmental Security reasons why environmental protection regulations exist around the world --
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_protection
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Environmental_Protection
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Environmental_Laws
- Deconstructing the Environmental Protection Agency / October 18
- A Frontline Public Broadcasting Investigation
- Prevent Nuclear First Use / October 16
- From our associate #StratDem -- http://strategicdemands.com/
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- Planet Earth's "thin blue layer", strategic necessity
- Living Earth / October 13
- Planet Earth Flag Proposal / October 11
- Google Earth Goes Social / October 10
- Green Business Investing / October 9
- Investing with Green Values -- Green Money Journal
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- Nobel Peace Prize goes to the "International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons" -- ICAN -- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-41528743
- Landmark Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons Bans Research, Possession, Use, Nuclear Deterrence
- How Much Carbon Are We Emitting into Our Atmosphere? / October 5
Planet Earth, Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists / October 4
Union of Concerned Scientists Speaks Out
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_and_Space,_Politics
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- 'Sunday Services' - Looking Out / October 1
- Time to Prepare for the Worst in Korea
- Updates on Nuclear Threat on the Korean Peninsula @ www.strategicdemands.com
- Threat Horizon
- From yesterday's stormy seas to today's performance by Jackson Browne and his band
- Some of them were angry
- At the way the earth was abused
- By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
- And they struggled to protect her from them
- Only to be confused
- By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
- And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
- In the naked dawn only a few survived
- And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
- Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
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- After the US president threatens at the UN to "totally destroy" North Korea, the UN continues with its vote to totally ban nuclear weapons...
- The US president's speech at the UN -- Transcript
- GreenPolicy360 / Strategic Demands:
- A New Security Vision for the 21st Century
- Stanislav Petrov: Russia remembers - https://www.rt.com/news/403625-nuclear-soviet-officer-died/
- and then there's Vasily Arkhipov http://strategicdemands.com/remembering-a-day-in-1962/
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- GreenPolicy360 launches Net Zero Energy Policy (take that Irma) www.netzeropolicy.com
- With synchronicity @work, a "1000 Cities Initiative" is announced -- https://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/patti-smith-rising-above-and-fighting-climate-change-art.html
- "Patti Smith's daughter explains, "that if 1000 cities come together and commit to becoming 100% renewable and transition off fossil fuels by 2040, we can turn the Paris Agreement into action."
- With synchronicity @work, a "1000 Cities Initiative" is announced -- https://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/patti-smith-rising-above-and-fighting-climate-change-art.html
- Patti Smith remembers an inspiration: “When I worked with Ralph Nader, one of the things that he taught us was that nothing productive comes from negativity or pessimism. So it’s important not to be drawn into a state of pessimism or paralysis, one has to take a breath and rise above it. I’m not saying that as rhetoric, I’m saying it as an action, as what I have to do myself. I feel the same way that you feel, that everyone else feels, but I refuse to be trampled by it, I refuse to be demoralized; I just keep on doing my work, our work.”
- From Clearwater, Evacuating / September 8
- Time to evacuate. Will be back online next week. Stay safe all!
Strategic Demands / #StratDem
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Strategic_Demands
http://strategicdemands.com/environmental-security/
Quote: "Extreme Weather Events" / September 6
- A Losing Choice for NASA / September 5
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) - https://www.nrel.gov/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renewable_Energy_Laboratory
- Renewable Energy World - http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/index.html / http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/energy-storage/top-news.html
- The Green Goal: A Clean Energy Economy - https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Renewable_Energy
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- World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
- “The annual World Day of prayer for the Care of Creation offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation, raising to God our thanks for the marvelous works that He has entrusted to our care...”
- Not Just Another Climate Speech / September 2
- By Dr. Joseph Romm, creator of climateprogress.org -- http://www.climateprogress.org
- Extreme Weather / August 31
- Boomtown Houston, Flooding Times / August 30
- H/t to ProPublica's investigative series on Houston in danger. Note the series beginning publication date, December 2016...
- Now Comes 'Hell and High Water' Harvey...
https://assets.rbl.ms/10607706/980x.jpg
- Global Fact-Checking Projects in Countries -- PolitiFact is a networking model...
- "There are 96 fact-checking projects in 37 countries", beginning with the original PolitiFact project from Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida
- 'Sunday Services' / Eco-Schism in the Christian Faith
- Now there are some who believe in a 'global warming hoax', evangelism, prophecy, end times -- and there are those more 'on earth', who believe in 'our common home' and in a moral imperative to 'care for our common home'. Take a look at a profound schism growing within the Christian church, a 'split' in beliefs that will act to shape our future life, our future common life on earth, however we look at faith and religion. The actual number of Christians in the world is estimated in the range of 2 - 3 billion, with over 1.2 billion Catholics ...
- Here is US Senator Jim Inhofe, perhaps the most powerful man on environmental policy in the US Senate, his philosophy of a scientific 'hoax' and why he believes as he does, and why he wields his power to fit his religious beliefs...
- In stark contrast to the US evangelical religious views like Senator Inhofe of the oil/gas state of Oklahoma, here's Pope Francis, the first pontiff to name himself after the Catholic Church's patron saint of the environment, St. Francis. The Jesuit pope is promulgator of a first Catholic eco-encyclical and doctrine ... Laudato Si'
- Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma): "I disagree with the pope's philosophy on global warming. I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists..."
- "My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."
- New Views from Above / August 26
The US President, Nuclear Codes & 'First Use' / August 25
- Continuing On Topic / World-US News in Depth:
The US President & 'First Use' / August 24
- Update: GreenPolicy360 and the Strategic Demands team are reviewing a proposed bill that goes further than the Lieu/Markey 'first-use' proposal. Stay tuned. We'll be back...
The US President & Nuclear Codes / August 23
- James R. Clapper Jr., former director of US national intelligence, questioned president Trump’s fitness for office following the president's speech in Phoenix on Tuesday, August 22.
- “I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office... I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it — maybe he is looking for a way out.”
- Clapper continued in an interview after he watched Trump’s speech, saying that he is very worried about the president’s access to nuclear codes...
- “In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said, referencing the president and the North Korean leader.
- “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”
- #HairTrigger
- “U.S. national security policy rests on the assertion that 'forward presence' contributes directly to global peace and security. In Base Nation, David Vine examines, dismantles, and disproves that claim. He demonstrates that America's sprawling network of overseas bases imposes costs — not only financial but also political, environmental, and moral — that far exceed what the Pentagon is prepared to acknowledge. Base Nation offers a devastating critique, and no doubt Washington will try to ignore it. Citizens should refuse to let that happen.” --- Andrew J. Bacevich
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- Green On an August Eve / August 21
- Visiting Strategic Demands / August 19 & 20
- GreenPolicy360's associate ... www.strategicdemands.com
- Trump's Climate Rejection / August 17
- The "Donald Trump Forest" project has been started by campaigners upset at what they call the US president's "ignorance" on climate science.
- Trump Forest allows people either to plant trees locally or pay for trees to be planted.
- Currently the campaign to compensate for the impact of President Trump's climate policies has 120,000 pledges...
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- GrnPolicy Siterunner: Thinking of nuclear this morning when I woke and after checking Google News to see if nuclear war had broken out w/ N Korea ... and w/ China (China 'official' news yesterday: “If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so”) and knowing the US and Chinese pres spoke by phone late yesterday, I began thinking of recent expert opinions I've read (w/ a h/t to Tom Nichols).
- Thinking about a Falk and Krieger piece who talked of a nuclear 'flamenco' a couple months ago, I began thinking about the current US Pacific Fleet admiral, Scott Swift, who last wk said he'd shoot off atomic weapons toward China if ordered by the president. The admiral's statement in Australia was then explained by a US Navy spokesman named Charlie Brown (not kidding). Here's the May 30th Hill op-ed, still timely:
- It's All Connected -- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Relational_Reality.jpg
- What Climate Change Report? / August 8
- On 'First Use' and Banning Nukes / August 7
- Preemptive, Preventive, and/or First-Use Strikes: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-should-have-sole-authority-to-launch-a-nuclear-attack/
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- 'Sunday Services' - Jacques Cousteau's Grandson Speaking at the Bioneers Conference
- This past week GreenPolicy looked more closely at the Earth's seas and oceans
- Now, reflecting, we listen to a presentation by an environmental ocean exploring family
- This past week GreenPolicy looked more closely at the Earth's seas and oceans
- Ocean Circulation / What? "Nothing to See Here", Keep Paddling
- https://news.yale.edu/2017/07/31/loss-arctic-sea-ice-impacting-atlantic-ocean-water-circulation-system
"To see Wild Florida you've got to get down into the mud & back into the trees & up into the rivers & into the backwaters & dig around"
Clearwater, Florida, GreenPolicy360's terrestrial home base, geo-located on a limestone/karst peninsula that is still wild here & there...
Save a Butterfly, Save a Species / July 31
- http://www.boredpanda.com/rare-blue-swallowtail-pipevine-butterfly-repopulation-tim-wong/
- https://www.treehugger.com/conservation/pipevine-swallowtail-butterfly-conservation-san-francisco-tim-wong.html
- http://www.boredpanda.com/rare-blue-swallowtail-pipevine-butterfly-repopulation-tim-wong/
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- Food Is Med, Eat Healthy, Be Healthy / July 29
- Save Food. Don't Waste It / July 28
- Another Day of Lamar / July 26
- WASHINGTON — Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — who has spent his career cozying up to fossil fuel interests, dismissing the threat of climate change and harassing federal climate scientists — is now arguing that pumping the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide is “beneficial” to global trade, crop production and the lushness of the planet.
- Rather than buying into “hysteria,” Americans should be celebrating the plus sides of a changing climate, Smith argues in an op-ed published July 24th in The Daily Signal, a news website published by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
- Smith — who has used his power as chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to push his anti-science views — kicks off his op-ed by claiming Americans’ perception of the phenomenon is “too often determined by their hearing just one side of the story.”
- “The benefits of a changing climate are often ignored and under-researched,” Smith said. “Our climate is too complex and the consequences of misguided policies too harsh to discount the positive effects of carbon enrichment.”
- Increased carbon dioxide, Smith writes, promotes photosynthesis, resulting in a “greater volume of food production and better quality food” and “lush vegetation” that “assists in controlling water runoff, provides more habitats for many animal species, and even aids in climate stabilization, as more vegetation absorbs more carbon dioxide.” Warmer temperatures, he notes, results in longer growing seasons.
- Smith goes as far as to make a case for why a rapidly melting Arctic, which scientists warn could cost tens of trillions of dollars by the end of this century, is a positive thing.
- “Also, as the Earth warms, we are seeing beneficial changes to the earth’s geography,” he writes. “For instance, Arctic sea ice is decreasing. This development will create new commercial shipping lanes that provide faster, more convenient, and less costly routes between ports in Asia, Europe, and eastern North America. This will increase international trade and strengthen the world economy.”
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- Decommissioning the Fukushima reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($72 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
- Removing nuclear fuel waste from destroyed reactors may take as long as 40 years.
- Thomas Pesquet, ESA astronaut: “Looking at Earth from above made me think about my own world a little differently, and I hope that the ISS on Street View changes your view of the world too.”
- Law & Environmental Protection / July 19
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- "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
- Green Crowdpowered Air-Q Mapping / July 13
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Banned: Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Adopted
July/August / Special Issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
2017 Doomsday Clock Statement
Draft Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons
- Nuclear Treaty / @ United Nations / July 5
- http://www.undocs.org/en/a/conf.229/2017/L.3/Rev.1
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Moving To Renewable Energy and Away from Oil/Gas Strategic Conflicts
- Volvo Goes Full EV / July 6
- http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2017/07/6.htm -- http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/volvo-going-all-electric-first-automaker-ditch-combustion-engine-n779791
Moving Toward Electoral Choice and Away from Global Conflict
- Your Vote, Your Voice
- http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article159113369.html
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/11/presidential-executive-order-establishment-presidential-advisory
- https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-takes-legal-action-over-trump-election-commission-executive-order -- http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/01/trump-election-panel-fraud-tweets-240165
- https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-is-planning-an-unprecedented-attack-on-voting-rights/ -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/30/how-trumps-nationwide-voter-data-request-could-lead-to-voter-suppression -- http://www.wsls.com/top-stories/demand-for-voter-rolls-shows-ugly-truth-about-trumps-voter-fraud-commission -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
- https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-takes-legal-action-over-trump-election-commission-executive-order -- http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/01/trump-election-panel-fraud-tweets-240165
Strategic Demands: New Definitions of Security, National & Global
New Arms Race Qua Old Arms Race / June 29
Winless War, Endless War / June 28
Putin, Trump, Nuclear Risks / June 27
At the UN: Abolish Nuclear Weapons
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Sunday 'Earth Services' / ThinBlueLayer.com
- Ecologists “are going to have this epiphany.” A University of California scientist describes the rapidly improving satellite view from outer space as a “macroscope.”
- "New Space", Democratizing Earth Observations / June 20
- At the UN: Abolish Nuclear Weapons / June 16
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June 12 / Reuters -- The U.S. said it would not sign up to a pledge by Italy, Canada, Japan, France, Britain and Germany which called the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change "irreversible" and key for the "security and prosperity of our planet."
As a consequence, Washington formally refused to back multilateral development banks — bodies designed to finance poorer nations and help them reduce their pollution emissions.
"The U.S. is now left as a footnote to climate action and that's very sad," said Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna. "Everyone expressed their deep disappointment with the U.S. decision," she said.
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Sunday 'Earth Services' - Protecting 'The Commons'
- Opening Up the Arctic to Oil/Gas? / June 9
- "It's not a time for inertia, it's a time for radical change" -- https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=19834
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- Yesterday Was a Bad Day
- The Consequences Start Now / June 1
- The US will be judged, this day will be long remembered.
- National Security & Global Security are interrelated. He doesn't know this. There's so much he doesn't know & so much he doesn't know that he doesn't know.
- “This current departure from reality in Washington will be very short-lived, that I promise you,” Brown told POLITICO in an interview. “I’ve spoken with Republicans here in the Legislature, and they’re beginning to get very serious about climate action, so the momentum is all the other way. And I think Trump, paradoxically, is giving climate denial such a bad name that he’s actually building the very movement that he is [purporting] to undermine...”
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- Premier Li Keqiang of China said on Thursday that his country remained committed to the fight against climate change and to participating in international efforts for a greener world.
- “China will continue to uphold its commitments to the Paris climate agreement,” Mr. Li said, confirming a position his country agreed to alongside the United States in 2014, in what proved to be a watershed moment for the ultimate passage of the landmark accord the following year.
- “Step by step, and very arduously, together with other countries, we will work toward the goals set” by global leaders in 2015, Mr. Li said, standing beside Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Berlin.
- Ms. Merkel, who welcomed the Chinese commitment as “encouraging,” has been a leader in the global push for climate action since 1992, when she played a crucial international role in passage of the world’s first climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.
- US business leaders point at downside -- http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/big-business-urges-trump-stick-paris-climate-accord-n766641 -- http://lowcarbonusa.org/business
- “If you have to go to a board of directors and say, ‘I have to make a multibillion-dollar investment that is multi-year,’ are you going to base it on two or four years in the political cycle or … on long-term economic, technological, and consumer trends?” -- Melissa Lavinson / The Atlantic
Future of Humanity at Risk / May 31
- Forward or back? -- https://www.axios.com/scoop-trump-is-pulling-u-s-out-of-paris-climate-deal-2427773025.html
- Backwards looking -- "The 22" -- https://www.axios.com/scoop-top-republican-senators-urge-trump-to-exit-paris-climate-deal-2421530161.html
- A policy direction from the US president that will live up to the challenges or deliver economic, environmental disasters.
- “I’ve always made more money in bad markets than in good markets.” -- DJ Trump, Quoted 05/23/16 - MSNBC
- Reflecting on Next Steps:
- The Trump administration: A bump on the road?
- Remember that a future president can rejoin the Paris global climate agreement with a 'flick of a pen'.
- "The noose tightens," Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change, told The Independent. The US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would only aggravate the climate change problem and make it much more difficult to prevent the crossing of a global temperature to a dangerous threshold. Three billion tonnes of additional carbon dioxide could be released into the air every year...
- "America’s Little Big Man -- http://billmoyers.com/story/little-big-man/
- Trump is teaching us how deeply disturbed our American world actually is"
- "America’s Little Big Man -- http://billmoyers.com/story/little-big-man/
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- Pope & a President Meet / May 24
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- Better Climate Observation Needed / May 13
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- Northern Route thru the Arctic / May 5
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- April 29
- EPA removes climate science website from public view after two decades in operation -- Here's the Pruitt #EPA "kicks" explanation -- https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-kicks-website-updates
An Archived Website of http://epa.gov/climatechange/ can be found at the Wayback Machine
https://www.epa.gov/climatechange
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- GreenPolicy360.net -- Greening our Blue Planet
- GTN Climate / April 20
- Virtual Earth Maps / April 17
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- April 1st
- "Physics... a framework for thinking" https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Tesla,_electric_cars
House Science Committee attacks the science
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- "Results of the Privacy Protection Vote" / http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll202.xml
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- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/15/car-pollution-carbon-emissions-obama-trump-epa
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- March 11th | #Fukushima
- March 9th | #ClimateChange #ClimatePolicy #US #California
- https://www.wired.com/2017/03/want-gut-emission-rules-prepare-war-california/
- California Out in Front
- California Governor Jerry Brown
- (Re: New actions threaten the US 'Clean Power Plan')
- http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060051196
- March 8 | #DeepState #SecurityState
- March 6 | #Expertise #Science
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- March 1
- Facts & Science, the basis of knowledge
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- Sunday 'Earth Services' / Week 7
Watch the Forests of the Seas & Listen to Philip Glass
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- Sunday 'Earth Services' / Week 6
- Planet, Alphabet-Google, Terra Bella -- Democratization of Space
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- Sunday 'Earth Services' / Week 5
- 'Bridges to Babylon', recorded in Los Angeles @ Ocean Wave Studio w/ Billy Preston on Hammond. 'Saint of Me' - Live in Rio
- Japan has more car charging stations than gas stations
- February 1
- GPS satellites, distributed over 6 orbital planes, provide important context for ongoing and historical science missions, and enable new types of #EarthScience research not previously possible
- The data are publicly available, hosted by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and can be found by searching the data.gov portal or at https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/satellite-data/satellite-systems/gps/
- GPS satellites, distributed over 6 orbital planes, provide important context for ongoing and historical science missions, and enable new types of #EarthScience research not previously possible
- January 31
- "Earth in Human Hands"
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- January 28
- National Resources Defense Council launches "onEarth-Trump V. Earth" to track environmental policy moves of the US president
- January 27
- Nuclear Issues / Cold War 2.0 -- Strategic Demands, GreenPolicy's associated site, investigates escalating #nuclear #proliferation
- January 26
- Climate Mirror: https://climate.daknob.net/
- The Climate Mirror Project is working to mirror and safely archive U.S. Govt. websites/datasets related to climate, climate change, and global warming
- Climate Mirror: https://climate.daknob.net/
- January 25
- Powerpak: 80 MWh Powerpack station from TESLA & Southern California Edison, biggest energy storage project in the world using lithium-ion batteries
- January 24
- The REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act of 2017
- The 'Most Dangerous Bill You've Never Heard Of Just Passed the House of Representatives'
- The REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act of 2017
- January 23
- Bill McKibben, former GreenPolicy360 advisor, speaks to challenges with Trump as the US president
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- "THAW" in the Arctic: "It’s almost as if global warming is looking right back at you"
- January 21
- "Divisive Times" and the "Overview Effect"
- "Earth Right Now": Far Beyond an Inauguration Day
- January 19
- Environmental Protection Agency confirmation hearings: Does Scott Pruitt believe in the mission of the EPA?
- January 18, 2017
- US House Science Committee continues down the path of science denial
- January 16, 2017
- "Science on trial". Scott Pruitt comes to the Senate for confirmation hearings to head up the Environmental Protection Agency
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About Us in Clearwater, Florida
- January 14, 2017
- "Being clever". Cities/states/countries confronting the risks of climate change by being out in front with clean energy action
- Tags: #EarthScience #PlanetCitizen #Green360 #ClimatePolicy #EnvironmentalProtection #NewDefinitionsofSecurity
- "Being clever". Cities/states/countries confronting the risks of climate change by being out in front with clean energy action
- January 13, 2017
- Skyscrapers in China in 2016 going up, up and up. Count 'em beginning with Shenzhen
- January 12, 2017
- Alliances at risk, national/global security at risk: President-elect promises to dismiss the international climate agreement
- January 11, 2017
- Pulling into the local supermarket parking lot, what do I see? An EV i3
- January 10, 2017
- Smoking killing millions a year, trillions in costs
- January 9, 2017
- First ongoing study of the Earth's upper atmosphere #EnvironmentalSecurity #Earth360
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- January 7, 2017
- William Perry, 'prophet of doom', warns of nextgen nuclear weapons, proliferation and a new Cold War turning hot
- Visit GreenPolicy's associated site, Strategic Demands
- January 6, 2017
- NASA Climate Resource Center (and vital national/global security programs the Trump administration is threatening)
- January 5, 2017
- Offshore Wind Energy starts up on the East Coast of the US (illustrated with vivid images)
- January 4, 2017
- From the Obama administration's top science advisor, John Holdren, words of caution
- January 3, 2017
- Cornelia Dean, writer of "Against the Tide" #RisingSeas #ClimateChange
- January 2, 2017
- Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech #PlanetCitizen
- ○
- GreenPolicy360
- "Greening Our Blue Planet"
![[1]](https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth-NASA.jpg){kind=link}
Planet Citizens
GreenPolicy360
Frontlines of Green Best Practices
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- Pages with broken file links
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