[GWSG] 2015 plans; solar booms; Arctic melt; oceans warmer; WAIS going N; UN wants plans; NG leaks; fossil $

[Tilley, Al]

1.  Grist asked an impressive list of climate activists what we should be doing in 2015 and got a range of responses, some surprising.  http://grist.org/climate-energy/heres-what-climate-activists-should-do-in-2015/

2.  The US installed 22 times more solar power last year than in 2008 and the solar industry produced jobs 20 times faster than the economy at large.  http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/america-installed-22-times-more-solar-in-2014-than-in-2008?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=Picture&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

3.  Scientists have suspected that lakes of meltwater are forming and draining farther and farther inland beneath Greenland’s ice sheet.  Now two have been detected, one two miles wide.  http://e360.yale.edu/digest/draining_of_greenland_lakes__signals_massive_melting_researchers_say/4345/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29

4.  90% of the heat added to the earth is carried in the oceans.  That heat has been measured for the past year and the increase will require NOAA to rescale its chart.  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jan/22/oceans-warming-so-fast-they-keep-breaking-scientists-charts

5.  As the West Antarctic Ice Sheet destabilizes, it loses mass and gravitational attraction.  The loosened water will spread more markedly to areas distant from the Antarctic—particularly to North America.  Due to this gravitational effect, the rebound of the earth’s crust under the Antarctic as mass diminishes, and changes in the earth’s rotation, North America will get a quarter to a third more sea level rise than the global average.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/22/the-u-s-has-contributed-more-to-global-warming-than-any-other-country-heres-how-the-earth-will-get-its-revenge/

6.  The UN has asked countries to submit climate plans in preparation for the Paris talks next December.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/22/us-climatechange-un-idUSKBN0KV22W20150122

7.  3% of the natural gas delivered to the Boston area escapes through leakage, three times the previous estimate.  Other cities may be delivering above projections.    http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/01/boston-belching-gigantic-gobs-greenhouse-gas

8.  Grist takes a look at the money flowing from the fossil fuel industry to the US government (in 2011-12, $329 million in campaign finance contributions) and from the government to the fossil fuel industry ($33 billion in subsidies—a more than 10,000% ROI).  The article attempts to explain how a pipeline which will supply fewer jobs than a new McDonald’s has such political support and, generally, why one political party pretty much as a whole, along with great chunks of the other, seem dedicated to preventing any meaningful action on climate disruption.  And then there is Richmond, CA, which defeated the greedheads.  As we could.  “It’s time to separate oil and state and reclaim our democracy.”  http://grist.org/climate-energy/how-citizens-united-paved-the-way-for-big-oils-bribes/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily%2520Jan%252023&utm_campaign=daily
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.unf.edu/pipermail/gwsg/attachments/20150123/11b2a3bc/attachment.html