[GWSG] Boston to retreat; C management; trees dying in Sierra Nevada; W VA politics & floods; 1.6 feet in 24 hours

[Tilley, Al]

1.  A study by Massachusetts universities finds that the expected rates of sea level rise would mean a managed retreat from low areas of Boston rather than futile attempts to maintain habitation by hardening the coastline.  Thanks to Brian Paradise for the story.  http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/22/climate-change-could-have-even-worse-impact-boston-than-previously-expected/S6hZ4nDPeUWNyTsx6ZckuL/story.html?s_campaign=8315



2.  Carbon capture with basalt petrification has received attention lately, but Stephen Mulkey argues that we would be much better advised to avoid tinkering which could preserve use of fossil fuels (though the original Iceland process was for a geothermal generation plant), and to investigate ways to maximize natural sequestration of carbon.  https://environmentalcentury.net/2016/06/23/carbon-capture-and-sequestration-the-old-fashioned-way/



3.  Sixteen million trees died in California last year from drought, bark beetles, and high temperatures.  About 66 million trees have died in the Sierra Nevada since 2010.  Forest fire danger will increase, and ecosystems across the state will be threatened.  Drought is expected to bring analogous conditions to other states.  At some point many areas will lose their tree cover.   http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/06/22/california-worse-millions-more-trees-gone?cmpid=tpenviro-eml-2016-06-25



4.  The recent killing floods in West Virginia are fed by the increased water carried by an atmosphere heated by greenhouse gasses from burning the coal which is the basis of right wing interest in the state and the motivation for its political control of the people now losing their houses, their lands, and their lives.  The irony is familiar but little remarked in the press.  The politics of fracking, oil spills, and coal mining are pretty much the result of those who profit controlling, more or less successfully, the attitudes and actions of those who most directly suffer the effects.  It is the politics of the extraction, use, and aftereffects of fossil fuels.  https://climatecrocks.com/2016/06/25/coal-country-clobbered-by-climate-fueled-cataclysm/



5.  West Virginia is not the only area suffering floods.  Some areas in Kyushu, Japan, got 1.6 feet of rain in one day.  For each degree Celsius of heating the atmosphere carries 7% more moisture.   https://climatecrocks.com/2016/06/26/not-just-w-virginia-its-a-hard-rain-fallin/  ?

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