[GWSG] Floating solar; endangered forests; the President's climate plan; the speech

[Tilley, Al]

1.  Solaris Synergy of Israel sites solar energy collectors on water surfaces.  Thanks to Roberta Barr for the news.  http://www.solaris-synergy.com/

2.  Forests themselves are endangered in the Southwestern US and in other regions as well.  http://e360.yale.edu/feature/megadrought_in_us_southwest_a_bad_omen_for_forests_globally/2665/

3.  President Obama’s new climate plan does not promise to kick-start the transition to a post-carbon world.  It is not all that we need.  David Roberts of Grist observes that it succeeds mainly in avoiding drama, and that is not bad.  http://grist.org/politics/no-drama-obama-unveils-series-of-modest-sensible-steps-on-climate-change/?utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&sub_email=atilley@unf.edu  The plan itself:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2013/jun/25/barack-obama-climate-action-plan  The Christian Science Monitor is more appreciative of the plan, calling it “aggressive.”  http://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-obama-announces-curbs-existing-power-plants-234520881.html  Inside Climate News provides a careful critique of the President’s plan.  http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130625/president%E2%80%99s-climate-policy-speech-soars-ground-obstacles-await?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+solveclimate%2Fblog+%28InsideClimate+News%29  Finally, The Guardian received enthusiastic reactions to the speech by, among others, Al Gore, Nicholas Stern, and Christiana Figueres.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jun/25/obama-climate-speech-expert-verdict

4.  The speech itself was said to be terrific, better than the plan.  I wouldn’t know, and I imagine you don’t either.  I trusted MSNBC to carry it (they had been preparing us with the time for a day or so) but they just showed a few clips between ads and comments on the Supreme Court’s savaging of the voting rights act.  I switched among PBS and the other networks without any better luck.  I finally caught the tail end of the talk on the Tree hugger web site, which was streaming it live.  Politico notes that among the TV news networks only The Weather Channel carried it live. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/06/cable-news-skips-obamas-climate-speech-167024.html#.UcnkXY4YsJU.twitter   I wish to observe that our TV news sources gave this significant speech less coverage than they give the ordinary press conference, and to file the failure with other instances of the suppression of news on climate.  Among the TV post-speech commentary I saw only Chris Hayes gave it the attention it deserved (though the policies were widely covered in print).  Chris, too, complained of being unable to locate the speech among the networks.  He didn’t say why his was among them.  And now, courtesy of the White House via YouTube, the whole thing, which I shall proceed to watch.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=syEvjcNGFTI#at=582  I proceeded.  It is indeed a fine speech, worth the 59 minutes of your time.
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