[GWSG] City plans; online conference; oil corp. pickle; general pickle; battery economics; AMOC weakening normal?

[Tilley, Al]

1.  Three US cities stand out in a recent article for their plans for climate change: Baltimore, MD; Denver, CO; and Chula Vista, CA.  They all involved planners and elected officials from the start, and provide for continual evaluation and adaptation to changing conditions.  http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/05/16/cities-are-best-prepared-adapt-climate-change?cmpid=tpenviro-eml-2016-05-21



2.  Bart Welling sends word of a free online conference organized by the Environmental Humanities Initiative at UC-Santa Barbara, Climate Change: Views from the Humanities.  It concludes May 25 but may continue to post its keynote speeches and fourteen panels for a while.  (Bart's paper is in panel four-an extract from what appears to be a wonderful forthcoming online book.)  Academics can participate in the discussions by registering, and the rest of us can listen to the talks.  Something like this is surely the future of conferences  http://ehc.english.ucsb.edu/?page_id=13544



3.  Large oil companies are losing money.  The usual strategy of continuing to develop stockpiles and waiting for a rise in oil prices is unlikely to work this time because many of their assets will be stranded by the energy transition as their reserve stocks remain permanently unburned.  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601471/big-oil-companies-have-already-become-dinosaurs/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-weekly-energy&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160523



4.  If all known deposits of fossil fuels were to be consumed warming would reach 10C, rendering parts of the earth uninhabitable.  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/23/world-could-warm-by-massive-10c-if-all-fossil-fuels-are-burned



5.  Battery prices have come down by a factor of three in the last few years, making it not only more feasible but profitable to couple renewable energy and storage at the utility level.  http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/18/3778623/new-economics-solar-plus-battery-storage/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cptop3&utm_term=3&utm_content=43



6.  A British study based on modeling finds that the weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation this century may be within normal variation.  The scope of the study was the past couple of decades, and "our results do not exclude a longer-term weakening."  http://www.climatecentral.org/news/atlantic-ocean-changes-may-have-been-natural-20367?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatecentral%2FdjOO+Climate+Central+-+Full+Feed  ?

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