The worlds most fearsome weapon of mass destruction - global warming February 21, 2014: Sec. of State Kerry delivered a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia, in which he said climate change was perhaps the worlds most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Rep. Henry Waxman of California, two self-described climate hawks, sent a letter Thursday to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich berating them for criticism they leveled at the secretary of State for his remarks earlier this week. nationaljournal/energy/democrats-defend-kerry-s-climate-comments-20140221 March 16, 2014: New research is upending scientists long-held belief that Greenlands ice sheets are stable, showing instead that global climate change is melting the countrys ice at a much faster rate than once believed. This causes a positive feedback loop: as temperatures rise, more ice becomes water, causing the temperature to rise further and ice sheets like the one in Greenland to melt at an increasing pace. The loss of Greenland’s ice sheet has been a major contributor to global sea level rise over the past 20 years, accounting for one-sixth of the annual rise. time/26618/study-says-climate-change-accelerating-greenlands-ice-loss/ March 13, 2014: Climate scientists are getting a clearer picture for their predictions of future climate. Suraj Polade, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and lead study author , say a new way of understanding how climate change will affect us, can now go beyond just annual or seasonal mean precipitation changes, this will allows people to better adapt to and mitigate the impacts of local hydrological changes. They predict,for example, South Africa, Mexico and western Australia will go without rain for 15 to 20 more days per year, and California is likely to have five to 10 more dry days per year by the end of the century, the study found. livescience/44065-climate-change-means-less-rainfall.html The NRC hasnt heeded all the lessons of the disaster and is slow-walking regulatory changes, said Lyman, a physicist. Likewise, the agency is refusing to address a number of longstanding threats, including the risks of overcrowded spent fuel pools and inadequate emergency planning. Lyman and his co-authors warn that if NRC commissioners ignore the post-Fukushima task forces top recommendation and insist on watering down the rest of them, it will only be a matter of time before a similar event happens in the United States. They point out that: • U.S. nuclear plants are vulnerable to catastrophic natural disasters, multiple system failures, and terrorist attacks; • U.S. nuclear plants are not much better equipped than Japanese plants to cope with severe accidents; and • U.S emergency plans are not designed to protect the public in the aftermath of Fukushima-scale accidents or fully address the problem of long-term land contamination. livescience/43932-american-power-plants-fukushima-risk.html September 3 , 2012: In contrast to its total absence from the Republican Party platform (as a sign of the GOP’s anti-science global warming denial), the Democratic Party platform directly engages on climate change issues — with the term appearing 18 times in the platform. We know that global climate change is one of the biggest threats of this generation – an economic, environmental, and national security catastrophe in the making. We affirm the science of climate change, commit to significantly reducing the pollution that causes climate change, and know we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits. Climate Change. The national security threat from climate change is real, urgent, and severe. The change wrought by a warming planet will lead to new conflicts over refugees and resources; new suffering from drought and famine; catastrophic natural disasters; and the degradation of vital ecosystems across the globe. getenergysmartnow/2012/09/03/democratic-party-platform-engages-climate-change/ In the last two decades, various studies estimate that land use change, including deforestation and forest degradation, accounts for 17-29% of global greenhouse gas emission. For this reason the inclusion of reducing emissions from land use change is considered essential to achieve the objectives. ---------------------- These political constraints should prompt policy makers, academic researchers (including energy economists!), and climate advocates to rethink the role of carbon pricing in climate mitigation. And given the failure of climate policy to date to drive the rapid decarbonization needed to confront climate change, it is long past time for some fresh thinking.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:14:55 +0000
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