[GWSG] Solar beats wind; cheap CA power; atmos. heat lull; insurance report; tornadoes; refugees

[Tilley, Al]

1.  The cost of solar power is now lower than wind in some markets, and should generally overtake (undertake?) wind soon.    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/16/column-wynn-wind-solar-idUSL6N0DV3M120130516  Goldman Sachs is putting $500 million into third party financing for rooftop solar and has plans to invest $40 billion in renewable energy in the next decade.  http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059981337
They are (also?) investing $2.9 billion in Japanese renewables.  http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gc4YRdHoaAYcFcphbOFjmpt_i4wA

2.  California’s renewable energy program has added only 1% to power bills since 2006, lower than expected.  http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/05/despite-fears-new-renewables-are-not-bankrupting-california?cmpid=WNL-Friday-May24-2013

3.  An article in Nature Geoscience confirms that the oceans are absorbing an unexpected portion of recent global heating, and that atmospheric heating seems likely to be slower than anticipated in the immediate future.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/19/us-climate-temperatures-idUSBRE94I0DJ20130519?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews  More detail, particularly expert commentary:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/19/climate-change-meltdown-unlikely-research  And a bit more:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023#<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023>  The topic has been misunderstood as calling basic climate science into question.  I am trying to include enough commentary to put that idea to rest.

4.  At a December hearing on climate disruption insurance industry speakers urged insurers not to pull out of high risk markets.  They remarked on the resistance to paying the costs of current risks—specifically in Florida.  One observed that not all of the costs of climate change are insurable.  The occasion was the release of a CERES report on the issue.  http://eesi.org/121412_insurance  The NRDC reports that in 2012 the taxpayers directly funded 3 times more of the costs of climate disruption than did the insurance industry.  Climate-related events took more federal support in 2012 than education or transportation.  http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/taxpayer-climate-costs.asp

5.  Warming has no clear statistical influence on tornado incidence so far, and because wind shear may decrease in a warming world, may have no influence in the future.  http://www.climatecentral.org/news/making-sense-of-the-moore-tornado-in-a-climate-context-16021?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatecentral%2FdjOO+Climate+Central+-+Full+Feed  More from Joe Romm, including an observation from Kevin Trenberth that the additional warmth and moisture from climate disruption are certainly influencing storm intensity and have increased general damages by up to 32%.  http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/21/2040221/tornadoes-extreme-weather-and-climate-change-revisited/

6.  More than 32 million people were displaced from their homes last year, 98% from climate-related disasters.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/picture/2013/may/20/climate-disasters-displace-millions-worldwide
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.unf.edu/pipermail/gwsg/attachments/20130524/df343feb/attachment.html