blogs.bmj.com - by Trish Groves / The BMJ - September 8, 2015
The whole debate on sharing clinical study data has focused on transparency, reproducibility, and completing the evidence base for treatments. Yet public health emergencies such as the Ebola and MERS outbreaks provide a vitally important reason for sharing study data, usually before publication or even before submission to a journal, and ideally in a public repository.
Renewable technologies no longer cost outliers, report says
No single technology is cheapest under all circumstances
The cost of producing electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind has dropped significantly over the past five years, narrowing the gap with power generated from fossil fuels and nuclear reactors, according to the International Energy Agency.
“The costs of renewable technologies -- in particular solar photovoltaic -- have declined significantly over the past five years,” the Paris-based IEA said in a report called Projected Costs of Generating Electricity. “These technologies are no longer cost outliers.”
huffingtonpost.com - by Dr. James Hansen - July 27, 2015
. . . 2°C global warming, rather than being a safe "guardrail," is highly dangerous. . . .
. . . My conclusion, based on the total information available, is that continued high emissions would result in multi-meter sea level rise this century and lock in continued ice sheet disintegration such that building cities or rebuilding cities on coast lines would become foolish. . . .
. . . A startling conclusion of our paper is that effects of freshwater release onto the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic are already underway and 1-2 decades sooner in the real world than in the model (Fig. 2).
By William Yardley, LA Times, June 23, 2015 | Photo: Jim Cole, Associated Press
EPA report cites benefits of reducing emissions, including at power plants, and of limiting climate change. This coal-fired plant is Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H. (Jim Cole / Associated Press)
Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change could prevent tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions in economic losses in the United States, according to a new study by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Escalators to the South Ferry Whitehall St. subway station in the financial district of Manhattan are shown flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. A new study finds that without human-caused global warming, the New York subways might not have been flooded. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters
The paper finds that global warming is putting extreme weather on steroids
One of the hottest areas of climate research these days is on the potential connections between human emissions, global warming, and extreme weather. Will global warming make extreme weather more common or less common? More severe or less severe?
New research, just published today in Nature Climate Change helps to answer that question by approaching the problem in a novel way.
The problem: The growing emission of carbon dioxide from a wide range of human activities is causing unprecedented changes to the land and sea. Identifying effective, efficient and politically acceptable approaches to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is one of society’s most pressing goals.
nap.edu - Institute of Medicine. Understanding the Connections Between Coastal Waters and Ocean Ecosystem Services and Human Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2014.
Authors
Rose Marie Martinez and Erin Rusch, Rapporteurs; Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice (BPH); Institute of Medicine (IOM)