[GWSG] Salty rice; Mulkey's dorm; climate & conflict; Japanese FiT; EU ghg plan; Hansen on CSPAN; evitable tarsands

[Tilley, Al]

1.  Viet Nam is listed by the World Bank second to the Bahamas for vulnerability to a slight sea level rise.  Salination is already making rice growing difficult in parts of the Mekong Delta in the South.  Thanks to Brian Paradise for the story.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/21/vietnam-rice-bowl-threatened-rising-seas

2.  Stephen Mulkey is familiar to several list members for his public activity on climate change as a faculty member at the University of Florida.  Now President of Unity College in Maine, Stephen is still a voice for public action, and looks forward to having the first college dorm designed to passive house standards which will allow it to be heated in winter by “a hair dryer.”  http://www.pressherald.com/news/unity-strives-for-greenest-campus-ever_2011-08-22.html

3.  The probability of civil conflict in the tropics doubles in the (locally) hotter, drier El Niño years as opposed to cooler, wetter La Niña years.  The study is the first demonstration that civil stability relates to climate change.    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10311.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110825  An interview with the authors provides more detail.  http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/201108/s3302746.htm  The civil response to climate change may hinge on development.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14619159

4.  Japan, like China, has adopted a national feed-in tariff for renewable energy but unlike China has not yet set the purchase price to be paid by utilities in the coming 20 years.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/26/us-japan-renewables-idUSTRE77P12820110826?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29

5.  Last March the EU took a holistic approach (as opposed to a “silo” approach based on separate treatments of transport, energy, and national policies of the member nations) to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95% by 2050, on a 1990 base.  The program is meant to limit heating to 2°C.  It now looks as if China, Japan, the EU, and (perhaps) Australia are in the process of a transition to a sustainable energy base.  http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/roadmap/index_en.htm  Pike Research has released a free white paper on the EU program for its 500 million people.  Thanks to Peggy Tilley for the story.  http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/european-union-clean-energy-policy

6.  James Hansen intends to be on CSPAN at 9 a.m. Monday talking about the implications of exploiting tar sands.  In Storms of My Grandchildren, he foresees as an implication the Venus Syndrome in which our oceans boil away into space.  He calls it a “dead certainty” if we not only burn the standard fossil fuel reserves, which might set off the syndrome anyway, but go on to exploit the more exotic fuel sources such as the tar sands.

7.  An assistant US secretary of state argues that we should develop the pipeline for tar sands oil because they are going to be developed anyway.  It is a mass murderer’s argument (though no doubt made in ignorance). http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/26/obama-approves-pipeline-alberta-texas
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