[GWSG] 22% energy cut; worse US winters; Gridbid; RGGI works; 3 warnings; slr liberal code?; NCAR supercomputer

[Tilley, Al]

1.  A report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy concludes that about 22% of US energy could be saved through a systems approach to energy use which (for examples) optimizes such factors as traffic flow and adjusts power productio0n load to anticipated uses of technology.  http://aceee.org/research-report/e125?utm_source=Intelligent+Efficiency&utm_campaign=Intelligent+Efficiency&utm_medium=email

2.  Arctic warming is stacking the deck in favor of more severe winter weather in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606132420.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

3.  You may put your roof up for auction to solar energy installers with Gridbid, which launches this month.  The process should help lower the costs to installers of finding roofs, and to homeowners of finding affordable installers.  http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679974/how-valuable-is-your-roof-put-it-up-for-solar-auction

4.  The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon market including 9 NE US states, released a 3 year report showing a 23% reduction in regional carbon emissions with only trivial rate increases.  The program created significant economic growth and was responsible for 16,000 added jobs.  (Corporate propaganda mills such as ALEC and the Koch brother’s Americans for Prosperity have been predicting disaster.)  http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/06/rggi-states-cut-co2-by-23-percent-in-first-three-years?cmpid=WNL-Friday-June8-2012

5.  A Nature article warns of impending environmental collapse in terms reminiscent of the recent reconsiderations of the MIT Limits to Growth model (see my link to the Scientific American article on the World3 model in the email before last).  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/06/environmental-collapse-now-a-serious-threat-scientists/
A new UN report delivers a similar warning.  http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=108073  So far as I know, and I would welcome correction, the warning from the National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Kevin Schaefer (among others) that we have only about a decade to avoid the strong possibility of runaway warming from Arctic carbon release remains unchallenged.  The time scale for the commitment to a collapse may well not be in terms of generations or even decades if that is true.    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/12/01/379675/nature-climate-experts-thawing-permafrost-warming-of-deforestation/   Now would be an apt time for wider coverage of these warnings.

6.  Virginia lawmakers have found that “climate change” and “sea level rise” are considered liberal code words by some of their colleagues.  They have taken to trying to call for the study of “coastal resiliency” and “recurrent flooding.”  http://hamptonroads.com/2012/06/lawmakers-avoid-buzzwords-climate-change-bills

7.  A new Wyoming supercomputer named Yellowstone is expected to aid greatly the study of climate by the National Center for Atmospheric Research .  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-supercomputer-wyoming-20120610,0,2368639.story
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.unf.edu/pipermail/gwsg/attachments/20120610/22f01ba5/attachment.html