[GWSG] Climate games; food at risk; weather disasters; Catskill floods; Greenland breakup; SunShot awards; 7 billion; drinking tea

[Tilley, Al]

1.  A forthcoming German study uses game theory to devise a strategy for climate talks.  The free riders—the US, Canada, and Russia—hope to be able to continue emissions on the backs of more responsible nations and thus get climate change mitigation for free.  The strategy assigns emissions targets and then raises them if all do not comply.  If the free riders want to preserve a livable climate they will have to comply.  But the free riders do not give much sign of rational decision making.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/06/game-theory-un-climate-talks

2.  The increasing variability of weather means increasing variability in food production by the American Midwest, which supplies a significant proportion of the world’s food.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/05/us-usa-agriculture-climate-idUSTRE7843GS20110905?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29

3.  This year the US has suffered three times the usual number of weather-related disasters costing over $1 billion each.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/05/us-unprecedented-weather-extremes

4.  Flooding in the Catskills has initiated discussion of whether people should be allowed to build in a flood plain.  It is a topic destined to become common in Florida and elsewhere as we become aware of sea level rise projections.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/nyregion/for-a-town-on-a-flood-plain-doubts-about-rebuilding.html?_r=1

5.  A scientist reported being “gob-smacked” by the scale and speed of the breakup of the outlet tongue of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-14771523

6.  The Department of Energy has made its first round of more than $145 million in SunShot awards to solar energy producers and developers.    http://energy.gov/articles/department-energy-awards-more-145-million-advanced-solar-technologies  The project goal is to reduce the cost of solar power production by 75% this decade.  Utility scale construction costs would then be about $1 a watt and would produce energy for $.06 a kilowatt hour.  http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/news_detail.html?news_id=16701

7.  With the seventh billion human due to be born next month, the UN chief Ban Ki—moon  called sustainable development the topo issue of the century.  http://my.news.yahoo.com/un-chief-says-revolution-hope-underway-044813664.html

8.  34% of Tea Party adherents consider global warming a reality, according to a new Yale survey.  They consider themselves more well informed than do other groups, and less in need of additional information.     http://e360.yale.edu/digest/new_global_warming_survey_finds_skepticism_among_tea_party_members/3111/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29
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