%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fvoices.nationalgeographic.com%2F2016%2F07%2F21%2Fwater-wildlife-and-hope-rejuvenating-a-kogi-sacred-site%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Water, Wildlife and Hope: Rejuvenating a Kogi Sacred Site  

After years of planning, designing, acquiring materials, developing infrastructure, laying and burying 1,200 meters of pipe, and testing water quality and functionality, the seemingly impossible was achieved: for Colombia's Kogi people, and their related tribes who rely on Jaba Tañiwashkaka, a historically sacred site, an aqueduct that provides access to water for crop irrigation and potable water for consumption is now in place. And thanks to a determined site restoration effort, alligators, nutria, and capybara are only a few of the animals now seen in a wetland previously largely devoid of wildlife.

The Kogi people live on roughly 14.5 million acres in Colombia's northern Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region. Around the margins of the Sierra Nevada is the Línea Negra, the “Black Line,” a chain of 54 pilgrimage sites sacred to the Kogi and once part of their ancestral territories. Most of the associated sites are not currently under Kogi ownership or control—the Kogi were forced to abandon them due to decades of colonization and violent civil conflict—and many are endangered by poorly planned development schemes, megaprojects, mining activity, and/or illicit crop cultivation.

To address this, in 2012, the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) partnered with the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the Organización Gonawindúa Tayrona of the Kogi people to purchase the essential section of a coastal sacred site that the region's indigenous communities call Jaba Tañiwashkaka—an area of great environmental and cultural importance.

With the legal consolidation and traditional management of Jaba Tañiwashkaka well underway, thanks in part to additional land purchases, a pressing task has been the construction of a water supply system that allows for the continuous residence of Kogi families in their reclaimed territory and the establishment of small-scale subsistence agriculture on three hectares to sustain the families and authorities who live at or visit the site. Today, an aqueduct provides access to water for crop irrigation and potable water for consumption. Previously, any water supplied at the site of the Kogi's temples had to be carried in buckets from the Jerez River at a distance of about one kilometer, and this water was not suitable for human consumption.

Now, solar panel energy powers the pump, three 2,000-liter reservoir tanks provide storage, and a filter supplies potable water, with the remainder used for agriculture. The system was designed as a low-maintenance and ecologically responsible project, and a fourth tank has now been sited at the nearby orchard. With assistance from the national government, this land was returned to the ownership and stewardship of the Kogi.

Under the Kogi's care, and through joint efforts with ACT, their sacred territory is being restored through community monitoring, trash collection, and border enforcement. Local waters are decontaminating, as indicated by studies of the health and size of populations of crayfish, a good indicator of water quality. Littoral vegetation is rebounding, and bodies of water previously scattered with refuse are being restored to beautiful freshwater lagoons.

The local population of crabs is increasing, and previously unseen semiaquatic animals such as nutrias and young alligators have been spotted. The alligators further indicate that that a recent prohibition from capturing their eggs has helped their reproduction and repopulation. Moreover, with around-the-clock control of fires, local flora is recovering across the local wetland, including propagation of marsh vegetation and young mangrove.

In addition to the return of its original state and beauty, the temple site can now fulfill its role as a gathering site for the Kogi's traditional practices—ritual offerings, internal meetings, and exchange gatherings—that strengthen their culture and advance the conservation and restoration of the local ecology.

ACT and the Kogi are grateful to a set of funders including the White Feather Foundation, March to the Top, LUSH Cosmetics, Dora Arts Janssen, and anonymous donors whose generosity made the aqueduct a reality and helped breathe new life into this ancient wetland.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Felizabeth-mcculley-gore%2Ftechnology-that-could-tur_b_11110382.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Technology that Could Turn the Tide on Climate Change: Energy Storage  
New technology is required to make meaningful progress on climate change. This column will focus on one of those options: energy storage. A breakthrough in this area could alter the energy landscape and help the effort to combat climate change.

Improvements in utility scale energy storage could help decrease emissions and increase efficiency. The usual variability of demand for electricity causes inefficiency in energy production. This is true for any feedstock but it is especially true for renewables. Renewables are intermittent; peak production times for wind and solar don't match peak load times.

The next generation of energy storage can solve this problem. Improved energy storage would allow utilities to store the extra power generated by renewable sources and use it during peak load periods. This would also smooth out the peaks and valleys in fossil fuel-generated electricity, improving efficiency and decreasing the need for expensive energy from peaking plants.

Improved storage increases the flexibility of the utilities. It would allow them to quickly respond to increases in demand and take advantage of bursts of increased supply from renewable sources.

There are a series of demonstration projects underway that will explore ways of expanding energy storage including high tech batteries, thermal energy storage, and pumped hydro.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098232-eating-each-others-faeces-helps-earwig-young-survive-famine%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Eating each other's faeces helps earwig young survive famine  
The odd feeding behaviour may even help keep the young insects together in a primitive form of social living  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720215145.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
To protect yourself from malaria sleep with a chicken next to your bed  
For the first time, scientists have shown that malaria-transmitting mosquitoes actively avoid feeding on certain animal species such as chickens, using their sense of smell. Odors emitted by species such as chickens could provide protection for humans at risk of mosquito-transmitted diseases, according to a study.  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2016%2F07%2F21%2Frepublican-party-platform-environment_n_11105566.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Is The GOP Trying To Destroy The Earth?  
The world's scientists overwhelmingly agree: our planet is facing an environmental crisis of staggering proportions. The Earth is warming at an alar...

Read more: Climate Change, Gop, Republican Party, Environment, GOP Convention, Republican Party Platform, Politics News

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmary-ellen-harte%2Fclimate-change-this-week_b_11101470.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Climate Change This Week: Undersea Deforestation Soars, Flipping Crystals, and More!  
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.




Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, like this golden macaw, is another important reason to save the carbon storing Amazonian rainforest. Source cuyabenolodge.com

Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon




OO Deforestation In The Amazon Continues - Takeaways:

• in the last 50 years, nearly 20% has been lost
• 
  
• almost 300,000 square miles;
• 
  
• In 2015, it lost another 2,000 square miles.

OO Deforestation From Illegal Gold Mining Spreads To Northern Peru show satellite images.


When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.

OO India State Plants Close To 50 Million Trees In A Day - trying to beat a world record. Takeaways:

• govt funded +6.2 billion for tree-planting nationally;
• 
  
• India pledges to increase forest cover to 95 million hectares (235 million acres) by 2030.
• 
  
• long-term survival of trees planted in such mass campaigns remains a concern.

A Beauty Among Many That Are Threatened, the decline of the monarch butterfly is the poster story of much wider insect decline, including the catastrophic decline of bees worldwide. Credit Ted Wilcox

OO Vanishing Act: Why Insects Are Declining
And Why It Matters - they are being lost to pesticides, monoculture, and habitat loss, but are essential to agriculture and \ecosystems necessary for our survival. Think food pollinators, for starters.





Paying For The Right Kind of Greenery Source www.ababaugandasafaris.com

OO Uganda: A Cheap, Simple Way To Slow Deforestation - where it is happening rapidly, is to simply pay land owners not to cut down their trees, a program showed.

The program is a positive model for protecting a biodiverse hub that includes a key habitat for endangered chimpanzees.

It also validates the effectiveness of a "Payments for Ecosystems Services" of the sort that could help slow global deforestation, leading driver of climate change.


*
*

CARBON-STORING UNDERSEA FORESTS THREATENED




Wikipedia

OO Sea Otters Are Climate Champions:
They Protect Carbon Storing Kelp Forests in the Aleutian Islands by eating sea urchins, keeping these kelp eaters from ravaging kelp forests.

"The difference in annual absorption of atmospheric carbon from kelp photosynthesis between a world with and a world without sea otters is somewhere between 13 and 43 billion kg of carbon."





Sea Urchins Flourish, Eating Declining Kelp as oceans warm and acidify. Credit David Doubilet

OO Warming, Acidifying Oceans Harm
Health, Survival Of Kelp Forests - particularly those in the warmest part of their range, shows a new study, reducing kelps while resulting in more of its predators, sea urchins.

Rock lobsters, which usually keep sea urchin numbers in check, are falling, putting yet more pressure on kelp populations. It is uncertain whether kelp communities will survive.

AUSTRALIA SEA FOREST DEVASTATION




An Undersea Jungle No More - most of Australia's kelp forests were recently destroyed by a marine heat wave. Source www.toptenplus.com

OO Australia: Marine Heatwave Devastates Vast Kelp Forests destroying about 90% of forests off the western coast between 2011 to 2013, posing a threat to biodiversity and the marine economy.


Related Headline:

OO Climate-Driven Regime Shift Of A Temperate Marine Ecosystem - rapid warming off Australia's west coast has transformed large stretches of kelp forests into tropical and subtropical marine ecosystems of seaweeds, invertebrates, corals, and fish typical of subtropical and tropical waters, a new study finds.


OO Australia's Other Great Reef Is Also Screwed - While the world panics about the Great Barrier Reef, an even larger and more valuable habitat, Australian kelp forests, are collapsing.






That's Not Snow - It's Skeletons... of mangroves that died from overheating. Credit James Cook University

OO Mangrove Die-Off in Australia Led by Climate Change - About 7,000 hectares of mangroves over 700 km in the north have died due to climate change and El Nino -- the worst in the world, says a mangrove expert.

"This is what climate change looks like. You see things push the maximums or minimums."

Climate change warmed waters in the area made rainfall more erratic and, with this strong El Nino year, pushed mangroves beyond their tolerance threshold.

Australia is also reeling from mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and mass deaths of kelp forests off the coast of Western Australia.






OO Great Barrier Reef: Govt Must Choose Which Parts To Save says an expert, and confront the prospect that some of it may be doomed, an expert on conservation modelling has warned.



*
*


OH-OH



OO Climate May Be More Sensitive And Situation More Dire says new research. The climate may be warming more and faster in response to climate changing emissions than previously thought.


*
*

CHANGING LAND USE DRIVES ASIAN CLIMATE-CHANGING EMISSIONS




Like A Giant Climate Changing Infection Asian deforestation emits climate changing carbon gases, and often the farms that replace them further add emissions in growing livestock and crops. Source ulet ifan at flipboard.com

OO Asia: Significant Carbon Emissions from Changing Land Use and Cover from 1980-2009 resulted, and were responsible for 20-40% of such source emissions globally, a new study finds.

*
*

HOT NEWS




Source NSF Central Arizona Phoenix LTER site

OO Heat Wave Lifts June To Hottest On Record For US with a record average of nearly 72 F for the lower 48 states.





OO We Just Broke The Record For Hottest Year, Nine Straight Times


*
*

CLIMATE COSTS MOUNT




US Climate Change Costs Mount with this year looking to equal or be worse than the record US disaster year, 2011. Source NOAA

OO US Billion+ Dollar Weather Disasters Surge to Eight -
And It's Only June - Takeaways:

• 2 floods and 6 severe weather events
• 
  
• Including severe hailstorms
• 
  
• many in Texas,
• 
  
• well above the US average in yearly disaster costs.

European Capitals Are Set to Heat UP under continued global warming.
Credit MikeMey67 at flickr.com

OO Climate Change To Blame For 1,000 Deaths In 2003 Heat Wave says a new study.

• The model attributes 1,000 deaths directly to climate change.
• 
  
• The model looked at Paris and London;
• 
  
• In much warmer Paris, 70% of the deaths were climate linked;
• 
  
• 20% in London.

Extended to the70,000+ deaths in Europe during that hot summer, the model could potentially link far more deaths to climate change.

The chances of experiencing such extreme heat waves in London and Paris have tripled.


OO Boiled Alive - When the human body gets to 42C, it starts to cook. The heat causes the proteins in each cell to irreversibly change, like an egg white as it boils. In the 2003 summer, record temperatures soared from 36.5 C to 41 C in Bosnia.


OO Climate Report Predicts British Heatwaves Of 48C







Source CBC, Reuters

OO Canada: Alberta Wildfires Costliest Disaster In Canadian History


*
*

MELTDOWN




Planetary Thermal Shield Disappearing as it literally melts away, allowing the planet to absorb ever more heat every day.

OO Arctic Sea Ice Crashes To Record Low For June
With Record Speed - ice cover disappeared at an average rate of 29,000 miles a day, about 70% faster than the typical rate of ice loss, experts say.


OO Alaska: As Glaciers Melt, Landslides Follow - mountainsides around Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska are giving way, causing seismic tremors and tsunamis.


*
*

FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE



@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.

The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!

*
*

SPEAKING OUT




Hillary At Least Addresses Climate Change occasionally, but Trump is absent on even acknowledging the problem.

OO Food Shortages, Sea Level Rise:
US Voters' Top Climate Change Concerns


OO Climate Change: The Missing Issue Of The 2016 Campaign - reveals a Guardian survey of US voters, who are angry that the national election campaigns fail to deal with concerns over the gathering global disaster.


*
*

WET NEWS




OO Climate Change Makes Flood More Likely, More Damaging, experts say. Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that the warming of the planet's atmosphere is increasing the occurrence of and the seriousness of heavy rains in West Virginia.


OO Britain Faces Drowning With Global Warming As the Earth's temperature continues to rise at an alarming rate, and catastrophic flooding is just the beginning.





The Bright Eye of Destruction, Nepartak, is the latest in destructive typhoons helped by the heat of global warming. Source climatesignals.org

OO Super Typhoon Nepartak Causes Devastation Across Taiwan's Coastline


OO Climate Change Boosted Nepartak's Intensity, Destruction





OO Acid Oceans Decreasing Carbon Storage in the Oceans - as the acidity* prevents myriad marine organisms from forming calcium carbonate skeletons, an important way that oceans store carbon.

Ultimately, there will be a limit of the carbon dioxide the oceans will be able to absorb. At that point, the planet will, under continued global warming, heat up far faster.

*As humans fill the air with the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases that cause global warming, much of that carbon gets dissolved in the ocean, causing the water to acidify.




Muscled Out By Climate Change? Source allomoulesfrites.com

OO Climate Change Will Muscle
Mussels Off The Menu By 2100 says a new study, ocean acidification seriously affects mussels' ability to cling onto rocks,, which they must do 6-12 months while they grow to a marketable size.

By 2100, the mussel coastal regions will be so acidic that nearly half of mussels will be unable to cling on long enough to be farmed.


Related Headline:

OO Acid Attack: Can Mussels Hang On for Much Longer?


*
*

SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS




Hot Times - Field and construction workers are particularly vulnerable to heat wave harm. Source imgur.com

OO As Temperatures Climb, US Workers Are Suffering - In 2011, heat killed 61 U.S. workers and sickened 4,400+.

There are no federal heat standards for workers.

OO New York City Faces Drowning Within This Century - from projected sea level rises of 5-7 feet or more.

It's not clear that even the planned 10-foot walls to protect Manhattan will be enough, especially when the next big storm comes.





The Sea Is Claiming Their Homes with rising tides, faster than these Marshall Islanders can find new ones. Source Bikini Atoll Local Government via AP

OO Seas Rising Faster Than Refugee Law Can Adapt - in being able to decide what rights people have when displaced by rising sea levels.





From Wet to Dry: As Lake Poopo Died, So Did the Identity of A Community

OO Climate Change Drying Up Lakes That Sustain Communities in the Andes in South America.



*
*




OO What Happens When Society Crumbles And Progress Stops Takeaways:

Every complex society in history - think Rome, the Maya, Greece - has collapsed.

• societies grow more complex at the cost of energy;
• 
  
• social collapse occurs when not enough energy exists to sustain social complexity;
• 
  
• collapse of trade, political institutions, technology, economies, production ensues.
• 
  
• collapses are inhumane: MANY people die.

• in past regional collapses, people refashioned new societies from remnants.
• 
  
• the next collapse is likely to be global;
• 
  
• current resource devastation and pollution means
• 
  
• there will not be much left to develop our current level of society, again.

MEH: If we brought our populations to sustainable numbers and consumption levels humanely, we might spare our descendents this inhumane future.


*
*

A SWEET SPOT IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE POPULATIONS




Triple Win: Using Profits to Provide Needed US Family Planning - Medicines360.org is key to creating a sustainable US population and bright futures for women - AND saving taxpayers many billions yearly in community costs by preventing unintended pregnancies. Source medicines360.org

GOOD IDEAS




Credit E. Moinu, IITA

OO The Limits To Green Growth - Reconciling environmental and economic imperatives will be hard, but necessary.


"Some might argue that calling for radical transformation, rather than incremental change, is inappropriate...
But this view implicitly underestimates the seriousness of the environmental crisis that the world faces, and assumes linear change when the needed transformation will be non-linear."





"We Now Live In A Full World, but we still behave as if it were empty..."
Credit Randy Scott Slavin

As Herman Daly notes:

"we now live in a full world, but we still behave as if it were empty, with ample space and resources for the indefinite future...

The prevailing obsession with economic growth puts us on the path to ecological collapse, sacrificing the very sustenance of our well-being and survival.

To reverse this ominous trajectory, we must transition toward a steady-state economy focused on qualitative development, as opposed to quantitative growth, and the interdependence of the human economy and global ecosphere."




Credit Natash at free images

OO How The World's Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change - Takeaways:

• Soil mixed with biochar* and organic matter stores far more carbon;
• 
  
• Retains far more water and is far more fertile;
• 
  
• In combo with reducing fossil fuel use, it could make a huge difference
• 
  
• And address many agriculture, food security and hunger issues.
• 
  

*organic wastes heated in a low oxygen environment - a way to recycle human and agricultural wastes, both plant and animal.





Source AFP via Getty Images

OO Fix or Nix the Most Inefficient, Dirtiest Plants
To Reduce Emissions in every country, a new study indicates, since not all plants are equal in how much emissions they produce per unit power.


OO A Super Microgrid Controller Allows Microgrids to 'Talk' to Each Other - important as clean energy microgrids spread.




OO Flipping Crystals Improves Solar Cell Performance - Takeaways:

• Perovskite crystals can convert sunlight to electricity efficiently;
• 
  
• A new two dimensional formation of the crystal has tripled that efficiency
• 
  
• And is outstandingly stable.
• 
  
• Perovskites are closer to being used in solar installations.

OO California: Making Your Home Energy Smart With A Click - the state government is making it happen.





Source floridatrend.com

OO Miami's Plan To Deal With Climate Change: Make Developers Pay Up - charging fees for those who develop in environmentally sensitive areas.


OO Here's What US Can Learn From Germany's Sunny Grid - One day recently, Germany had generated just short of 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy. Part 3 of 4.


OO Surviving Kenya's Drought:
Catching Water With Rocks - Rock catchment systems use naturally occurring rock outcrops to divert rainwater to a central collection area. A concrete wall is built to direct the water that trickles down the rock surface into a sand and gravel filter, then down pipes into covered storage tanks.


*
*

GOOD CLEAN NEWS



OO Big Solar Is Leaving Rooftop Systems In The Dust - Solar power is on pace for the first time this year to contribute more new electricity to the grid than will any other form of energy - a feat driven more by economics than green mandates, favoring large scale over rooftop installations.


OO Offshore Wind Costs Hit Record Low .

OO Wind Power Plant In Atacama Desert Fills Chile's Clean-Energy Sails





OO Google, Amazon and Apple Are Forging
the Future of Corporate Energy Management
Large corporations are taking a more active approach to managing their energy.


OO New York Investing Bigtime in Clean Energy Future







Bringing The Sun to her community in Tanzania, selling solar lights, and clean stoves as part of the Solar Sisters cooperative. Source Solar Sisters

OO From Basket Weavers To Salt Farmers:
The Women Leading A Renewables Revolution - From Tanzania to India, social enterprises are helping women become clean energy entrepreneurs.


OO Deutsche Bank Pulls Back From Deals in Coal Mining Sector


*
*

CLINTON BESTS TRUMP AT CLIMATE AND ENERGY POLICY




Where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Stand on Climate, Energy
Source www.realclearpolitics.com

OO Where Clinton, Trump Stand on Energy, Climate Change


OO Trump's Wall Will Hurt U.S. Energy Companies - by choking off a burgeoning energy relationship between the US and the emerging oil and gas nation of Mexico.


*
*

CLUELESS LEADERSHIP




OO Despite Economic Advantages,
Some Republican States Are Discouraging Clean Energy


OO G20 Nations Fail To Agree
On Timeline For Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Subsidies


*
*

FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES




OO Coal Dust Pollution Kills 23,000 Yearly In EU penetrating lungs, and it racks up tens of billions of euros in health costs, says a new report.


OO Shell Seeks Exemption To North Sea Clear-Up Rules so it doesn't have to remove all the drilling crap it left undersea - some of the structures the size of the Empire State Building.


OO Poland's Disappearing Lakes Fuel Battle Over Coal Mining as the industry siphons groundwater for its mining, and farms and lakes dry up.

*
*

ELECTION YEAR:




If You Don't Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.

OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows -- and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.

This time, it could be worldwide. Let's keep "The Hunger Games" in the realm of fiction.

*
*



If we do not grow sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.





@@ The Cost of Unintended Pregnancy: Too Young

Teen childbearing cost US taxpayers $9+ Billion in 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.



They can go here to find locations:




And there are many more actions you can do, right here.

*
*
*

SOLAR KEEPS SMILING




OO Faster Rooftop Solar Growth
To Cut Demand From Biggest U.S. Grid


OO 'The Switch: How Solar, Storage And New Tech
Means Cheap Power For All' - the solar revolution is closer than you think, argues an expert, as storage and new technology evolve.


OO MGM Resorts Expands Solar Array, Now US Largest





*
*
*


WHY WE SHOULD ACT NOW: RISING RISKS




Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, July 20, 2016

How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.

Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: the eastern Pacific warm spot continues and so does the drought in California, despite the occasional precipitation.

Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing much warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.



There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.

To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!

Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this wild flower I photographed one spring. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you'd like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It's our way of letting Congress know there's a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmary-ellen-harte%2Fclimate-change-this-week_b_11101470.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Mary Ellen Harte: Climate Change This Week: Undersea Deforestation Soars, Flipping Crystals, and More!  
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.




Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, like this golden macaw, is another imp...

Read more: Climate Change, Environment, Drought, Extreme Weather, Global Warming, Sustainability, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Nature, Science, Technology, Technologie, Green Technology, Technology News, Climate Change Denial, Climate, Climate Science, Climate-Change, Obama, Green Energy, Clean Energy, Renewable Energy, Natural Gas, Wind Power, Solar Power, Fossil Fuels, Heat Waves, Congress, Voting, Weather, Business, Business News, Corporations, Economy, Climate Change Solutions, Greenhouse Gases, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Carbon Emissions, Food, Water, Coal, Fracking, Oil, Agriculture, Crops, Rising Sea Levels, Insurance, Pollution, Wildlife, Transportation, Transports, Transport, Cities, Deforestation, Jobs, Natural Disasters, Population, Population Growth, Overpopulation, Oceans, President Obama, Barack Obama, Epa, Nasa, Noaa, Department of Energy, Republicans, Gop, Democrats, Animals, Cute Animals, Fish, Birds, Activism, Political Activism, Humor, Alaska, California, Florida, New York, Nevada, United Nations, United Kingdom, England, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Europe, European Union, France, India, Asia, Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Norway, Denmark, Children, Babies, Children'S Health, Kids, Human Health, Health, Education, Air Pollution, Seafood, Google, Apple, Amazon, Soil, Art, Taiwan, New York City, Poland, Peru, Gold, Green News

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2F72062810%40N08%2F27827640653%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Black Robin  

Grantmasters posted a photo:

Old Blue - The saviour of the species.
The NZ Black Robin went through the most severe population bottleneck that you could imagine in the late late 70's. By 1980 she was the only breeding female left of the entire species! At one point the whole population consisted of just 5 individuals.
The fact that there are more than 200 Black Robins alive today is incredible.

If you don't already know about this species I recommend checking it out :)

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fjeremy-symons%2Fwithout-a-climate-plan-re_b_11090662.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Without a Climate Plan, Republicans Struggle as Voters Shift  
The 2016 elections are heating up. And so is the planet. According to NASA, there is a 99 percent chance that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, surpassing the current record set in 2015.

And yet for the first time in the age of modern climate science, a presidential nominee believes climate change is a hoax. Donald Trump has said that global warming was "created by and for the Chinese" (he later said he was joking), and that he will rescind the Paris climate agreement and roll back the steps President Obama has taken to address the issue (definitely not joking).


Photo Credit: Jeremy Symons

Where does that leave Republicans who think the GOP should pay attention to climate change and support clean, renewable energy sources?

On their own.

GOP Stirrings in Congress

A week before the convention, 33 House Republicans joined Democrats to successfully defeat a proposal that would have stripped funding of climate change science at the Environmental Protection Agency.

It's not a vote that will set us on the path to doing something about climate, but the growing number of Republicans who are willing to vote independently on the issue is a notable shift. Just two years ago, only one House Republican, Rep. Chris Gibson of New York, voted against an amendment that would have prevented federal agencies from assessing the costs and risks posed by climate change.

This is the latest, but not the only, sign of heightened interest among Republicans in Congress. Fourteen House Republicans have now supported a resolution calling for action on climate change. When the resolution was introduced last September, Republican Carlos Curbelo explained the reality faced by his constituents in Florida.

"South Florida is the frontline of climate change, where we have seen its negative impact in the form of rising sea-levels and the erosion of our coastal communities. Our goal...is to shift the debate from whether climate change is real to what we can do to mitigate its effects."

In the Senate, a coalition of five Republicans and five Democrats, led by Senators Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat from Rhode Island, introduced an amendment calling for the United States to be a world leader on climate change and for Congress to act.

Many of these congressional voices on climate change took a pass on attending the GOP convention, according to Grist's Ben Adler.

Voters Heading in Different Direction

The GOP's slide into climate denial with Trump should alarm strategists who put together the Republican National Committee's post-mortem analysis of Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat. Their conclusion: the GOP lost the hearts, minds and votes of young voters, swamping the GOP's edge among older voters.

Democrats came to the same conclusion. Jim Messina, who ran President Obama's re-election campaign, revealed after the election one of the secrets to their success: climate change.

"In the 2012 election we did focus groups with young voters...and we asked them to describe a Republican, and their #1 word was 'dinosaur., We asked them why, and their biggest example was 'climate change.'"

The shift is also pushing against the trend of public opinion, and in particular a complex and evolving set of views among Republican voters.

Notably, there has been a 19 percent increase over the past two years in the share of conservative Republican voters who think global warming is happening. That's a larger jump than any other group of voters. Altogether, 73% of voters think global warming is happening.

And when it comes to addressing the problem, a May poll also found that 67 percent of Republicans support a Clean Energy Commitment and believe that "moving rapidly to clean energy is a big step toward reducing the damaging impacts of climate change."

Organizing Around a Moral Cause

Against this backdrop, a number of grassroots leaders convened in Cleveland during the Convention to discuss ways to spring the GOP from the box it has trapped itself in and re-connect with voters to offer a way forward. According to Rachel Lamb of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action:

"First and foremost, it's a moral issue." Climate change is "negatively impacting people, as well as the environment, which we're called to take care of by God."

A Road Back from the Abyss?

As Politico reports, Republican businessman and philanthropist Jay Faison laid out the challenge at a GOP convention event:

"If we have an environmental policy, I don't know what it is....we're virtually defenseless on this issue. Any purple state, we are at risk and we don't know it. Period."

The GOP's road back from the abyss of denial is anything but clear.

Perhaps mayors will lead the way. After all, mayors from both parties have to deal with the real climate damages to their communities.

Or perhaps the growing unrest among Republican rank-and-file in Congress offers a glimpse of a more hopeful path beyond the elections. If more republicans are ready to bring their ideas on climate solutions to the table, who knows what can happen?

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fjeremy-symons%2Fwithout-a-climate-plan-re_b_11090662.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Jeremy Symons: Without a Climate Plan, Republicans Struggle as Voters Shift  
The 2016 elections are heating up. And so is the planet. According to NASA, there is a 99 percent chance that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, surpassing the current record set in 2015.

Read more: Politics, Climate Change, Green, Congress, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Gop, Republicans, Clean Energy, Donald Trump, Green News

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098161-water-bottle-bees-cool-the-hive-after-their-overheated-mates-beg%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Water-bottle bees cool the hive after their overheated mates beg  
After a hot day, some honeybees become living water tanks they store water in their gut in anticipation of demand from their sisters  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160719214826.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Tiny microbe turns tropical butterfly into male killer, scientists discover  
A male-killing microbe has now been identified in a tropical butterfly called the African Queen, which leads to the death of all sons when a mother is infected.  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Flab-notes%2Fbracing-for-fire_b_11054740.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Bracing For Fire  
By Rodman Linn


A photo from space of the Las Conchas fire in the Jemez mountains near Los Alamos, N.M. just after its start at 1:30 p.m. on June 26, 2011. On the first day, driven by strong and unpredictable winds, the fire burned 43,000 acres--a rate of about an acre per second. By the time the fire was controlled, it had burned more than 150,000 acres. (Photo courtesy of NASA.)

How Computer Modeling Might Help Us Better Understand--and Better Manage--Wildfires

This summer, throughout the West, higher temperatures and decreased precipitation brought on by climate change have ramped up the frequency of wildfires -- big, catastrophic fires -- while a century of fire suppression feeds the flames with a thick tangle of fuel in our overgrown forests.

We can't stop all fires -- and we shouldn't. Healthy ecosystems depend on them. But understanding what drives big fires and predicting their behavior helps the fire community prepare for the next blaze through appropriate land management, emergency plans and firefighting strategies. Beyond those benefits, a deeper understanding of wildfires prompts important insights into tactics for using prescribed fire as well as insight into larger regional environmental issues, including how fires change river flows and the availability of water for drinking, agriculture and energy production.

For scientists studying wildfire, the challenge is predicting the seemingly unpredictable. A wide range of conditions -- temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, larger weather patterns, available fuel, fuel conditions and terrain --influence the behavior of fire. Figuring out details such as the movement of hot gasses coming off a raging forest fire or the combination of convective and radiative heat transfer that ignite unburned fuels, for example, seems impossible at first. There's so much to consider, from how the fire front interacts with the atmosphere that drives it forward to the feedbacks of the fuel's structure on the fire and winds to the impacts of the topography and regional meteorology.

Fortunately, Los Alamos National Laboratory is well suited to address this kind of multidisciplinary, ultimately physics-based problem -- and the lab has a stake in wildfire prediction and management. As the Cerro Grande and Las Conchas fires demonstrated, the laboratory and neighboring communities are equally vulnerable to runaway conflagrations on our doorstep. Furthermore, Los Alamos' mission includes addressing energy security and national security, both of which can be affected by wildfires.



Modeling wildfires exploits the lab's unique capabilities in physics, computational modeling and high-performance computing. For decades the lab has built computer models of complex systems that move and change through time. That work includes hot gasses -- fire -- and the atmosphere. The laboratory's supercomputers make it possible.

When a team of atmospheric scientists, computational physicists and mathematicians in the laboratory's Earth and Environmental Sciences division, collaborating with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and Southern Research Station, set out to simulate the interacting processes that make up a wildfire as a basis for predicting its behavior, they leveraged a wealth of expertise and experience that had been developed partially through the laboratory's weapons program.

A research effort initiated by Laboratory Fellow Francis Harlow, a pioneer in computational fluid dynamics, and Andrew White, a visionary figure in the national high-performance computing community, led to the development of FIRETEC. It was the first wildfire model to simulate the interaction among many of the physical processes that determine the continuously shifting dance between fire and its surroundings. FIRETEC, which is now developed in collaboration with U.S. Forest Service, simulates three-dimensional interactions among fire, fuel and the environment at landscape scales. By coupling FIRETEC with an atmospheric-dynamics model called HIGRAD and using real-world data, the team can represent the interaction between fire and atmosphere and the way fire adjusts to terrain, vegetation, fuel and the dynamics of fire itself.

FIRETEC presents a new way of studying fire and learning how to better manage and cope with it. The model provides additional scientific input for decisions by policymakers working in land management, water resources and energy. The team hopes it will eventually assist fire and fuel management operations. Currently the team is partnering with the Rocky Mountain Research Station to study the combined influence of wind and slope on heat exposure in firefighter safety zones, with the Air Force Wildland Fire Center to study the efficiency of various prescribed fire tactics and with INRA of France and the Canadian Forest Service to study the effects of fuel breaks for fire management.

But there's more research to be done to further improve wildfire modeling for practical use in the field during a fire. FIRETEC's complexity and the massive amounts of data involved require enormous high-performance computers such as those available at Los Alamos to perform simulations. The laboratory-led team is now working with the Forest Service to apply what it learns from FIRETEC to assist in developing and refining less detailed but faster-running tools that incident fire commanders could run on their laptops to predict fire behavior over the next few hours. This is a short enough time frame to deploy firefighters in anticipation of the fire's next move or help keep firefighters out of harm's way. This faster-running tool could also benefit decision-support tools such as Simtable, which is currently used in the laboratory's Emergency Operations Center.

On another front, as part of a larger Los Alamos study on the impact of climate-driven changes on watersheds, laboratory researchers are working toward using FIRETEC to potentially spin off simplified models. One model can explore, for example, how the aftermath of a catastrophic fire in the Colorado River system might alter flows in the San Juan River. That's important locally because the San Juan supplies drinking water to Santa Fe and cools the Four Corners Generating Station, a major regional energy source. How will climate-driven changes to vegetation alter the pattern of fires and the severity of the effects in that watershed? What can be done to minimize those impacts? Research underway now should answer these questions.

Providing those answers is an appropriate endeavor for Los Alamos for several reasons. While the Los Alamos community has had more than its fair share of encounters with wildfire, the research is more than personal: it fits the laboratory's mission to enhance energy security and national security. Additionally, the required expertise in the combination of multi-phase fluid dynamics, heat transfer, combustion, computational modeling and computer science are optimally aligned with many of the laboratory's other mission areas. "Science serving society" is a catchy phrase, but in the case of wildfire modeling at Los Alamos, it couldn't be more apt.

Rod Linn is a senior scientist in the Computational Earth Science group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he studies and models a wide range of atmospheric phenomenon using computational physics. Linn has led much of the development and application of the FIRETEC computer program for predicting wildfire behavior, but the breadth of work using this tool is accomplished through a broad set of Los Alamos investigators as well as domestic and international collaborators.


More about how Los Alamos National Laboratory prepares for wildfires:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fthomas-p-kimbis%2Fpresident-obamas-new-energy_b_11076082.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
President Obama's New Energy Initiative Another Win for Solar  
Today, the White House announced a truly groundbreaking initiative called Clean Energy Savings for All Americans. This program aims to increase access to solar energy across communities of all income levels and geographies, so that no matter where you live, if you have a sunny roof, you have the chance to go solar. And the Administration did so by providing a bevy of options that move renewables and solar forward significantly.

The array of initiative components culminates in a goal of providing one gigawatt of solar for low to middle-income households by 2020. And chief among the announcements is the issuance of new guidance for property-assessed clean energy (PACE) financing that will allow mortgage insurance to now be issued by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA), rather than through the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Association (Freddie Mac), which ran into roadblocks with PACE loans six years ago.

Cutting through the alphabet soup of federal agencies, the bottom line is that more Americans will now be able to choose solar, and private industry can seize the opportunity to build more solar systems.

"Solar panels are no longer for wealthy folks who live where the sun shines every day, they're already a reality for Americans in communities all across the country. Today we're offering even more families and communities the chance to choose cleaner sources of energy," said Obama about the initiative.




One of the greatest parts about the PACE plan is that it leverages the flexibilities of the executive branch in ways that are seldom seen in Washington stovepipes. The initiative cuts red tape with the result that roughly 200,000 homes could choose to lower their electricity bills through solar over the next four years.

SEIA applauds the President for taking these measures, which mirror the solar industry's commitment to expand solar access to everyone, regardless of their income or where they live. These policies empower veterans and lower income households to cut power bills, while putting more Americans back to work with good-paying jobs installing solar panels from Los Angeles to Boston.

This is how it should be. This year, solar reached one million installations in the U.S., crossed over the threshold of providing 1 percent of American electricity, and provided more new power capacity than all other energy sources combined in the first quarter, and we're just getting warmed up. It's time for all Americans to have a ticket to the solar revolution, celebrating American innovation and smart federal policy.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fanna-jane-grossman%2Fdonald-trump-poop-bags-my_b_11076128.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Donald Trump Poop Bags, My Cartoonist Dad And Me: Rethinking How We Pick Up After Dogs  
In the 1970s in New York City, dog poo was a whole to-do. A campaign to clean up the streets of excrement began when Fran Lee, an Upper West Side activist, started drawing attention to a purported link between feces on sidewalks and child blindness. What followed was something of a waste-management creativity renaissance: enthusiasts wrote up plans for everything from sidewalk dog toilets to poop-freezing sprays to city-funded "enviromaids" employed to pick up after dogs.

Ultimately, the solution was a simple mandate: Pick up after your dog. Many scoffed at the thought. My dad was among the dissenters. But, one day in the early 1980s when we were out together in SoHo with our dog Mabel, she went, we walked away, and then a stranger shouted at us for not picking it up. That moment changed everything.

Back then, our excrement removal routine depended on something once commonly found in most households: newspaper. Indeed, Fran Lee, the anti-poop crusader, specifically suggested people use The New York Times for this purpose. It was an exciting time for print media.

In our home, newspaper served several purposes, not a few of which had to do with animal care and control; it lined the ground for Mabel when she was a puppy; it was bedding for the guinea pig. Once, when he was coming home with the Sunday Times, my dad spotted a rat on the stairs and slammed the paper down, killing it. He wrote to the Times to tell them of this alternate use of their publication. They published it as a letter to the editor.

This was not the first time my dad's work was seen in a major paper. He is a prolific political caricaturist, and his send-ups were frequently in the publications I'd bring on walks. Often, while walking the dog, I would find myself interested enough in something that I'd stand over Mabel's deposit for a minute, finishing a paragraph. It was a habit I probably picked up from my dad. "I remember reading a Times article on a piece of paper I was using to scoop," he once told me. "It was about some new discovery regarding the stars and planets. My deep thought was about living out, at that moment, the perfect conjunction of the glorious and the disgusting. Needless to say, I never finished the article."

Years later I would go on to write for some of the newspapers we used to for this purpose. Was my choice of career determined by these stolen moments of paper-reading? Hard to say, but I know the secondary use for newspaper never left my mind. In the pre-blog era, if I found myself obsessing about an article I was writing, I'd remember the ephemeral nature of the medium. It'd soon be covered in shit.

When I got my own dog in the mid 2000s, I realized that my family had been living in the dog-waste dark ages. Even the most functional use of print media was on the wane. Every pet store carried small plastic bag rolls especially made for the purpose of poop. The bags were cheap, but it seemed weird to me to spend any money on a plastic bag that would be used to place poop into another plastic bag.

I wasn't a Times subscriber at that point, but, thanks to an abundance of takeout menus and old New Yorkers, I managed to resist the poop-bag craze for years. But seamless.com changed the volume of menus shoved under the door, and I eventually started to read magazines on my iPad. More recently I used supermarket plastic bags, but those are also in their golden years, thanks to online grocery delivery and increasing legislation across the country that imposes fees on their use.

So, I started to buy those darn rolls. Using them is part of a semi-daily ritual that is now about nothing but poop. To be sure, there are a few lines of decorative poop bags -- pink argyle, green stripes, etc. But... yawn. I dreamt of something that would tickle my intellect, not match my handbag.

This line of thinking led me to try to imagine a way in which we could embrace the ephemeral nature of printed content, while also injecting a bit of culture into a routine chore. Is there a way that turd-tidying could be, again, a time to take in a tidbit of art, or even literature? Could we use our dogs' waste to perhaps make a political statement? Is it possible that these small moments of civic duty (doodie!) could get us to look up from our phones and actually, in some way, alter the way we look at the world?

I brought the idea to my father. He has caricatured presidential hopefuls for many decades and has dabbled in unusual media before -- in the 1980s, he sculpted Ronald Reagan out of chopped liver.



Could I mine his talent to put something meaningful on a bag meant for excrement? Who would be the appropriate person for him to caricature for this purpose? It'd have to be someone in the news -- maybe someone generally disliked by the kind of people who would appreciate a bit of wit in an unusual place. The answer seemed obvious: Donald Trump. His name even contains the word "dump!" It was meant to be.

Dad initially refused -- he did not want to be associated with poop. I argued the point: Is poop not one of the great equalizing factors of mankind? He complied.

I didn't have such luck in the other direction: Poop bag makers wanted nothing to do with Trump. There are only a handful of US-based factories that have the machinery to make the kind of small rolls I wanted, and all said they did not want to be involved in politics. After much searching, I finally found a factory in a place that was thrilled to print Donald Trump's face on a minimum of 5,000 poop bags. That place was China.

Call it a physical manifestation of editorial commentary: Experience the joy of smashing the presumptive GOP candidates face into excrement. But the fun doesn't end there! Tie it up and put it on display on the curb -- his head filled with your dog's shit.



My years as a print journalist may be in the rear view, but as a curator of plastic bag art, I've only just found my preferred medium. The Donald Trump bags have inspired me to go big: Why not a subscription service! PoopBag OfTheMonth.com was born. What do YOU want to see on your poop bag?! The only limits are your imagination! And the size of the crap.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fkarl-grossman%2Findian-point-documentary-_b_11035654.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
'Indian Point' -- Documentary On Problem-Plagued Nuclear Plants Is Out  
"Indian Point" is a film about the long problem-plagued Indian Point nuclear power plants that are "so, so risky -- so close to New York City," notes its director and producer Ivy Meeropol. "Times Square is 35 miles away."

The plants constitute a disaster waiting to happen, threatening especially the lives of the 22 million people who live within 50 miles from them. "There is no way to evacuate--what I've learned about an evacuation plan is that there is none," says Meeropol. The plants are "on two earthquake fault lines," she notes. "And there is a natural gas pipeline right there that an earthquake could rupture."

Meanwhile, both plants, located in Buchanan, New York along the Hudson River, are now essentially running without licenses. The federal government's 40-year operating license for Indian Point 2 expired in 2013 and Indian Point 3's license expired last year. Their owner, Entergy, is seeking to have them run for another 20 years--although nuclear plants were never seen as running for more than 40 years because of radioactivity embrittling metal parts and otherwise causing safety problems. (Indian Point 1 was opened in 1962 and closed in 1974, its emergency core cooling system deemed impossible to fix.)

At Indian Point 2 and 3 there have been frequent accidents and issues involving releases of radioactivity through the years. The discharges of tritium or irradiated water, H30, which cannot be filtered out of good water, into the aquifer below the Westinghouse nuclear plants and also the Hudson River have been a major concern.

But it's not just Indian Point that "Indian Point" is about. The film emphasizes: "With so much attention focused on Indian Point, the future of nuclear plants in the United States might depend on what happens here."

"I would give the film an 'A.' I wholeheartedly recommend it for wide release throughout the United States," says Priscilla Star, founder of the Coalition Against Nukes: "It is a stellar learning tool. It depicts the David-versus-Goliath struggle involving those trying to close these decrepit nuclear plants and the profit-hungry nuclear industry. It shows grassroots activists fighting the time bombs in their community."

The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. For the past two weeks it has been showing five-times-a-day at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, also in Manhattan. That run will go until Thursday, July 21. On Friday, July 22, it is to open in Los Angeles. After its theatrical release, it will air on the Epix cable TV channel.

Among those in the film are anti-Indian Point activist Marilyn Elie and long-time environmental journalist Roger Witherspoon who has written extensively about Indian Point. And also Entergy employees appear. Meeropol and her crew were given full access to the nuclear plants.

The documentary provides a special focus on Dr. Gregory Jaczko. He was chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) when the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan began in March 2011. As notes Meeropol, Jaczko sought to have "lessons learned" from the Fukushima catastrophe--which involved General Electric nuclear plants--applied to nuclear power plants in the U.S. And he was given "a really tough time." Pressure by the nuclear industry caused Jaczko, with a doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to be "pushed out" as NRC chairman and member. Meeropol tells of how "this guy, a decent person trying to do his job, was completely abused."

Meeropol, in an interview, said the NRC "is too closely linked to the nuclear industry. It's not going to do anything that the nuclear industry regards as too costly or onerous. I want that to be one of the biggest takeaways from the film--how a regulatory body cares more about the industry it is supposed to regulate than the public. And of all industries that should be regulated, it's the nuclear power industry." She said she found the nuclear industry and nuclear energy officials in the U.S. government "one and the same."

Meeropol began the "Indian Point" film project in January 2011. She had moved from Brooklyn up to the Hudson Valley "a decade ago when our son was born. Commuting in and out of the city on the Metro-North train, I went right past the plants. They looked so foreboding and odd there in that beautiful landscape."

Also, until she, her husband and son moved upstate, "having lived in New York City, I had no idea how close they were to the city."

Further, in the community where they went to live, Cold Spring, 15 miles from the plants. "we could hear the [emergency] sirens" from the plants and she was unsettled receiving in the mail an "emergency preparedness booklet titled: 'Are You Ready?'"

So the experienced filmmaker started doing research on the "dangerous endeavor of making nuclear energy." With the Fukushima disaster beginning just a few months after she started on the film, that "broadened" its perspective.

She said the films she has made have always been "character-driven" and she was attracted to feature in "Indian Point" Marilyn Elie--"she knows her stuff"--and Roger Witherspoon. "I liked his dynamic. He is a journalist. She is an activist." She stressed to Entergy officials that she would be even-handed "and quite amazingly was given access" to the plants. Her connecting with Jaczko was crucial. It "became my crusade to redeem Greg Jaczko before the world."

She started making the film on a shoe string. "I ran out of money numerous times." But she was able to get financial support from the Sundance Institute, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Catapult Fund, and individual contributions. And "partnering" with Julie Goldman, founder of Motto Films, was extremely important. Goldman is also producer of "Indian Point." A "very generous grant" was received from the MacArthur Foundation which also "opened up other doors."
Indian Point sits there on the Hudson, continuing with accidents and in emitting what the NRC says are "permissible" levels of radioactivity. They are highly likely candidates for a Chernobyl or Fukushima-level catastrophe in the most highly populated area of the United States. And the NRC, steadfastly ignoring Jaczko's warnings, in league with Entergy, seeks to let the decrepit time bombs run for another 20 years--just asking for disaster.

The good news is that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been endeavoring to have the Indian Point nuclear plants closed and safe-energy activists and an array of environmental and safe-energy organizations are working hard to shut them down--and the film "Indian Point" is out.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720143534.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
New dinosaur species may give clues to evolutionary origin of megaraptorid clade  
A new species of megaraptorid dinosaur discovered in Patagonia may help discern the evolutionary origins of the megaraptorid clade.  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720135856.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
More for less in pastures  
Research comparing pastures with multiple types of plants to those with less variety shows surprising results in land productivity and soil health.  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160719123902.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Scientists watch water fleas take over new territory  
Look into any nutrient-rich pond almost anywhere in the world and you will find Daphnia pulex, a tiny crustacean (also called a water flea) that is a source of food for fish and fascination for scientists. A new study offers insights into this creature's ability to disperse and its remarkable success in the wild.  
gaia  

%feed  
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/354095589435506355/  
Ichneumon wasp (Tryc  

Ichneumon wasp (Trychosis sp.) collected at rare Charitable Research Reserve, Ontario, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG22570-F02; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=RRMFE3045-15; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:ACW1110)

 
pin-gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Ftrevor-neilson%2Fhillary-clintons-acceptan_b_11087970.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Hillary Clinton's Acceptance Speech At The DNC: What Would Roosevelt Do About The Climate Crisis?  
For the past two decades, America's leading environmental analysts, including Lester Brown, Joseph Romm and Thomas Friedman, have written of the need for a World War II-scale mobilization in response to the global climate and sustainability crisis. This election season, the advocacy has finally gone mainstream. Bernie Sanders called for a WWII-scale climate mobilization at the April 14 CNN Brooklyn debate, and on July 9, the Democratic Party platform committee overwhelmingly voted in favor of an amendment calling for a "WWII-type national mobilization to save civilization" from "the global climate emergency."

Many of us have known for years that such a mobilization will be required to save America, and indeed, all of human civilization from catastrophe. In 2007, Secretary Clinton referenced the need for a WWII-scale mobilization to address the climate crisis in a major speech on energy and climate. After the 2012 election, Susie Tompkins Buell urged President Obama to address the challenge of climate change by appointing officials to "galvanize the equivalent of the Roosevelt-led mobilization for World War II."

Now the Democratic Party at large has taken up the mantle of a Rooseveltian climate mobilization. In 2016, the idea of a World War II-equivalent mobilization to restore a stable climate -- not simply a commitment to clean energy -- is what demonstrates to Americans a serious commitment to overcoming the climate crisis.

Secretary Clinton's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention provides a momentous opportunity for her to double down on her advocacy of a WWII-scale mobilization to restore a safe and stable climate. If the Secretary champions a WWII-style climate mobilization, it will provide an inspiring contrast to Donald Trump's neo-isolationist "America First" approach to energy policy and global affairs. Furthermore, if she commits to holding a climate summit in the first 100 days of her administration, it will demonstrate a concrete commitment toward overcoming the climate crisis.

A principled call for a heroic mobilization to save civilization can unite Americans of all political persuasions -- including those who genuinely want to make America great again.

While Donald Trump calls the climate crisis a "Chinese Hoax" the Secretary can demonstrate her commitment to lead like FDR--to commence an "all hands on deck" mobilization that will protect our national security, create millions of new jobs, stabilize the global environment, and show American greatness.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098187-one-part-of-antarctica-has-been-cooling-since-1998-heres-why%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
One part of Antarctica has been cooling since 1998 here's why  
The once fast-warming Antarctic Peninsula has cooled over the past 18 years thanks to shifting winds but global warming will soon override their effect  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720125519.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
New data on bird population trends and the climate conditions they occupy  
A new study of population trends among 46 ecologically diverse bird species in North America overturns a long-held assumption that the climate conditions occupied by a species do not change over time. Instead, birds that have increased in abundance over the last 30 years now occupy a wider range of climate conditions than they did 30 years ago, and declining species occupying a smaller range.  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720105306.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Using bed bug shed skins to combat the pest  
The shed skins of bed bugs retain the 'obnoxious sweetness' smell often associated with the pests, a finding that could potentially be used to combat infestations of the insects, new research suggests.  
gaia  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720094442.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Are forests of the future at risk?  
Human disturbance negatively affects the pollination and seed dispersal of forest trees an effect that can be observed in both tropical and temperate forests. This is the key result of a synthesis of 408 studies from 34 countries around the globe. In the long term, less pollination and seed dispersal is likely to reduce the ability of forests to natural regenerate.  
gaia