Can the water footprint for solar and wind start a war?

Water Shortages Are a Major Problem for Future Energy Projects

The Thirsty Triangle: The Water Footprint of Energy Trade Between China, Canada, and the United States

Every country depends on a sustainable supply of water and energy and these two resources are inextricably linked.  The production of all energy sources uses water but coal, oil sands, biofuels, and shale gas have particularly large water footprints. Absent tight regulations these sources of energy can also create serious water pollution.  Conversely, water treatment and distribution require considerable energy—for example the state of California uses nearly 20% of its energy to clean and transfer water. China, Canada, and the United States face significant obstacles in their efforts to provide clean, affordable energy. China is heavily dependent on coal, which according to research by the Wilson Center and Circle of Blue, accounts for 20 percent of the country’s water use, exacerbating pressure on the country’s already vulnerable water resources. In the United States thermal power plants use 40% of freshwater resources for once-through cooling, making them vulnerable in times of drought. Oil sands development in Canada demands a water intensive extraction and refining process, and makes up a large and growing portion of US oil imports from Canada.

The climate suffers from unethical lawyers

If You Can’t Beat Them, Try to Silence Them with Lawyers

"Weyerhaeuser, Plum Creek and many others have spent tens of millions of dollars creating and funding the SFI program to label the paper and wood they sell from destroyed forests as sustainable".

The ruptured tar sands oil pipeline that spilled at least 12,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil in Mayflower, Arkansas, on March 29

More Spills Shine Spotlight on Keystone

Earlier that same week, a train carrying Canadian tar sands oil derailed and spilled 15,000 gallons of oil in Minnesota. - See more at: http://www.emagazine.com/daily-news/more-spills-shine-spotlight-on-keystone/#sthash.ouU6AWsr.dpuf

Don't Let the EPA Withdraw Two Proposed Chemical Safety Rules Quietly

EPA Quietly Withdraws Two Proposed Chemical Safety Rules

Let's not let them poison us quietly!!

Australia slaps Mother Earth

Conservatives sweep to Australia election victory

 Australia's conservative opposition swept to power Saturday, ending six years of Labor Party rule and winning over a disenchanted public by promising to end a hated tax on carbon emissions, boost a flagging economy and bring about political stability after years of Labor infighting.

Climate doomsday clock at 5 minutes to midnight

Climate doomsday clock at 5 minutes to midnight

Republicans propose to cut food stamp spending by 5%

Food Stamp Cuts Would Deny Benefits To At Least 4 Million: CBPP

Open your eyes to the danger of climate change.

You're Getting Warmer …

 A report from the United Nations' blue-ribbon international panel of climatologists declared global warming an "unequivocal" fact, "very likely" caused by human activity. 

We are dying quicker than you think (there goes the food chain)

Fukushima Tank Leaks 300 Tons Of 'Highly Radioactive' Water At Nuclear Plant

Military Madness: Has our Species become Insane?

There are many reasons for the belief that much of our behaviour has become insane. Here are some of them. 

Helen Caldicott is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a world renowned campaigner against nuclear weapons. She says that our species is ‘mentally sick…
The whole society is sick’1. We are in the grip of a death wish. She points out that 1 in 25 people are sociopaths with ‘no moral conscience’ and these are the people who rise to the top; who are in charge.

Evil, thy name is Koch

The Scariest Man in America

How to Save the Earth

What to Make of Change on an Overheating Planet

The cause couldn’t be more compelling.  There’s never been a clearer threat to survival, or to justice, than the rapid rise in the planet’s temperature caused by and for the profit of a microscopic percentage of its citizens. Conversely, there can be no real answer to our climate woes that doesn’t address the insane inequalities and concentrations of power that are helping to drive us toward this disaster.

What will the world look like in 50 years?

There are more pipelines in the works. Stop them all.

Coming to a neighborhood near you...Dirty oil

These are the organizations that are killing your children and here is how they are doing it. They will do anything for a dollar.

These organizations play a key role in the fossil fuel industry's "disinformation playbook," a strategy designed to confuse the public about global warming and delay action on climate change. Why? Because the fossil fuel industry wants to sell more coal, oil, and gas — even though the science clearly shows that the resulting carbon emissions threaten our planet.

Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, said, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science…. There’s no way the world can or should take these risks.” Duh!

An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

"The single biggest failure of messaging by climate scientists (until very recently) has been the failure to explain to the public, opinion makers, and the media that business-as-usual warming results in simultaneous, ever-worsening impacts that, individually, are each beyond catastrophic, but combined are unimaginablly horrific. For these impacts, terms like “global warming” and “climate change” are essentially euphemisms. That is why I have preferred the term “Hell and High Water.”."

Three of the best recent analyses of what we are headed towards can be found here:

• M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F
• Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path
• Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!

Please pass this climate change article to your "Uncle Bob".

"So I just don’t get it. Do you really think it’s wise to bet the future of our planet on the hope that 97 percent of climate scientists are wrong? Why not seek solutions while we can?"   

Soapbox: An open letter to Uncle Bob regarding climate change 

Todd Mitchell is a Fort Collins resident.

We all know an "Uncle Bob/Aunt Bobbie" and he or she needs to understand what is happening now. As a species we have managed to survive calamity beyond my imagination. Some of those disasters were natural, most were caused by humankind's constant want of more. Now nature itself is changing because of our unquenchable thirst.

However you look at it, God or no, we have only this one Earth. By chance or divine intervention, here we are on this perfect planet, and it came with all these resources. They looked unlimited when all we could do was stand on a hill. Now we understand how small and isolated Earth is.

We all must start making conscious decisions about our future, our children's future, humanity's future. You had better start now. It will only be getting worse. We can no longer prevent the "Hot Generation". We twiddled our thumbs to the facts and chose to believe the lies. "Someone else will take care of it." we thought. Now all we can do is try to prevent the "last generation".

So, as my father used to say (His name was Bob, a different kind of Bob) "Get up off your dead asses and do something!" You have seen the children suffering famine with their eyes hopelessly pleading? They are looking at you. The mother holding her dead child mouthing the word "Why?". She is asking you. And if you don't DEMAND CHANGE, imagine those images from the news when you look in the mirror.

What is disaster on Earth looks beautiful to the Universe. We are small and we have no place to go.

Gorgeous Glimpses of Calamity

Do you have family born after June 23, 1988? Generation Hot includes hardship, disaster, disease and death.

In fact, every child on earth born after June 23, 1988 belongs to what I call Generation Hot. This generation includes some two billion young people, all of whom have grown up under global warming and are fated to spend the rest of their lives confronting its mounting impacts.

CT flood home insurance rates increase and you are paying for them.

Is your flood insurance raising in CT?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's new "flood" maps are slowly being rolled out to communities across the state. The changes, which take effect Oct. 1, could mean significant premiums to some property owners.

And you Pay!

Something for the scientists

ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF INCREASING ELECTRIC GRID RESILIENCE TO WEATHER OUTAGES

They are burning your food in their cars!

Ethanol quotas pump money from your pocket

Oppose fracking wherever it is.

Are We Trading Our Health For Oil in New, Fracking-Induced California Gold Rush?

 

40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World.

40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World

What you should do: 1. Do a little reading on climate change. 2. Get in touch with those who represent you.

Climate change: Evidence, Impact and Choices

The cost of solar power is coming down.

Chart of the day: sliding U.S. solar prices

Now is the time we need science if we want a future.

Sequestration Ushers In A Dark Age For Science In America

If climate change is so dangerous and eminent, why aren't people worried?

Why do we worry too much about some environmental risks and not enough about others?

Mental Shortcuts

Big decisions based on little information

Answer the following questions with yes or no:

1. Are pesticides a serious threat to public health?

2. Is genetically modified food a serious threat to public health?

3. Is bisphenol A (a chemical ingredient of plastics, also used to line food cans) a serious threat to public health?

Now, the most important question:

4. Did you have all the facts you needed to make a fully informed, analytical, reasoned decision about any of the first three questions?

Please don't be willfully blind to the dangers of climate change!!

Margaret Heffernan: The dangers of "willful blindness"

But if sea level is capable of rising several feet per century, as Dr. O’Leary’s paper would seem to imply and as many other scientists believe, then babies being born now could live to see the early stages of a global calamity.

The fast-retreating Sheldon Glacier in Antarctica. A collapse of a polar ice sheet could result in a jump in sea level.

It's breathing, he thought. "All of a sudden I see a thing with a heartbeat."

This Pulsing Earth

Climate change affects your family. Your mother needs your help.

Climate Change Indicators in the United States

The Earth's climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events—like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures—are already affecting society and ecosystems. 

Time = Money. Looking at small changes mathematically.

Q&A: Gary Lauder, venture capitalist, on designing the future as if time mattered

Turn up the heat on climate denial - Environmental Action

"A schoolchild can tell that the planet is getting warmer, and that human carbon pollution is the cause. Apparently, that simple truth is too difficult a concept for some members of Congress, like Iowa's Steve King. He recently told a Koch Brothers' group "if sea levels go up 4 or 6 inches, I don’t know if we’d know that.”*

In fact, unless we act now, climate change could cause sea level rise up to 69 FEET,more than enough to be apparent even from Iowa.** Unlike King, actual scientists know that if we do nothing, a 6-foot rise in sea level could put cities from Galveston, Texas, to  Miami, Fla. to Atlantic City, N.J., under water by 2030. ***"

First Sci-fi and now Cli-fi (or "Sci-fi gets hot.)

So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created A New Literary Genre?

Odds is the latest in what seems to be an emerging literary genre. Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter. The genre has come to be called climate fiction — "cli-fi," for short.

Protesters Condemn ALEC's Push to Privatize Public Education

Demonstrators crash the ALEC convention in Chicago, a city heavily impacted by the privatization of public schools.

Chemistry class sponsored by Monsanto.

Climate Change. Around the Earth, scenes like this are happening in someone's neighborhood.

 In Nashville Climate change: This was yesterday, who's neighborhood today?

In California Climate change: This was yesterday, who's neighborhood today?

In Madison Climate change: This was yesterday, who's neighborhood today?

Remember our Founders. Remember who we are. Remember what we do.

The Founders and Climate Change

Looking for work? You should know about climate change.

Government Inaction Is Turning Off Investors Who Want To Back Green Energy

Companies want workers who think realistically about the future.

Would the opposition please look at the other side? Just look. There is no bad intent.

The White House Blog

Climate change is occurring 10 to 100 times faster than in the past and ecosystems will find it hard to adjust

Today's Climate Change Proves Much Faster Than Changes in Past 65 Million Years

Local = Global, Global = Local

Solar Electric Light Fund

Another perspective of climate change and the Chicago training

Mommy Blog SNO

Climate change remains a material risk for a majority of investors

Investors See Climate Change as Risk That Influences Decisions: Report

About 81 percent of asset owners and 68 percent of asset managers said they view climate change as a material risk across their entire investment portfolio in the third annual Global Investor Survey on Climate Change. Most of the remaining respondents identified climate risks only for certain asset classes, such as real estate and infrastructure.

Seafood is a staple of many diets. Estuaries are important to seafood.

Climate Change Threatens U.S. Estuaries

Estuaries are places where rivers meet the sea, providing nursery habitat for fish and shellfish while buffering many coastal communities from the impacts of coastal storms and sea level rise.

Warmer climate strongly affects human conflict and violence worldwide, says study

Climate Change And Violence Linked, Breakthrough Study Finds

"The biggest culprit: higher temperatures. Out of 27 modern societies studied, all 27 showed a positive relationship between higher temperatures and violence."

"“Our results shed new light on how the future climate will shape human societies,” said Burke.  The findings of the study suggest that a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius could increase the rate of intergroup conflicts, such as civil wars, by over 50 percent in many parts of the world."

NOAA State of the Climate in 2012

State of the Climate in 2012 - NOAA

Supporting the Rights of People Living with Disabilities

At least 57.8 million Americans live with one or more disabilities. Despite that, the U.S. Senate has so far refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This international treaty would strengthen and protect the rights — including the human right to water, which UUSC promotes worldwide — of people too often ignored. Last year, U.S. ratification of the treaty failed by just five votes.

Republicans Threaten Networks Over Projects on Hillary Clinton

"The chairman of the Republican National Committee threatened on Monday to refuse to partner with CNN or NBC on any presidential primary debates if the two networks move ahead with plans for television projects on Hillary Rodham Clinton."

APS Wants to Tax the Sun?

Solar Flame War in Arizona, Coming Your Way Soon..

Why do we play down the horror of climate change?

Jonathon Porritt wonders why we moderate the 'scary' impacts of global warming to avoid alienating people

"Don't let the prospect of impending disaster crush your spirits. Don't let the prospect of a suboptimal long-term future kill your hope. Hope for the unlikely! Work for the unlikely!" 

A website for crowd-funding climate projects.

I have been talking to people who could not raise the money for their trip to Chicago and a person from Nepal trying to start a paper book library on climate change. This is the best site I have found to do this. indiegogo. Does anyone have any input?

The Virtues of Government Secrecy

The false choice between “secrecy” and “transparency” in the Manning and Snowden debate.

"It’s Sunday evening, and my head is still spinning after spending three amazing days at Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Chicago last week."

Hashtag Reality | Main Street Climate

NASA data and graphs here:

NASA climate data