I am reaching out to you on very short notice today to see if you can still alert your membership about the important Public Hearings on the NYS Clean Energy Standard scheduled for this Tuesday, May 17th in Riverhead. It is crucial we show a solid turnout and explain why New York needs to switch to renewables without further delay.
Below are the details and relevant web links for the event. People interested in attending can RSVP via Renewable Energy Long Island’s website (or the Facebook event). People unable to attend can submit a comment online. We have posted some basic talking point on reLI’s website.
City’s Zika action plan enhances mosquito surveillance and control - Expands testing of humans and mosquitos, and launches public awareness campaign
nyc.gov - April 18, 2016
NEW YORK––Marking the start of mosquito season, Mayor de Blasio today detailed a three-year, five-borough plan to protect New Yorkers and prevent the spread of the Zika virus in New York City.
“We are doing all we can to target the mosquito that could transmit Zika here in the city, and building the capacity to respond to every possible scenario, no matter how unlikely,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We will spare no effort to protect pregnant New Yorkers from the devastating consequences of Zika, and we ask New Yorkers to help us by taking simple steps to get rid of standing water where mosquitos can breed. We also ask pregnant women who may have been exposed to Zika to talk to their doctors about getting tested.”
WASHINGTON -- The amount of man-made heat energy absorbed by the seas has doubled since 1997, a study released Monday showed.
Scientists have long known that more than 90 percent of the heat energy from man-made global warming goes into the world's oceans instead of the ground.
And they've seen ocean heat content rise in recent years. But the new study, using ocean-observing data that goes back to the British research ship Challenger in the 1870s and including high-tech modern underwater monitors and computer models, tracked how much man-made heat has been buried in the oceans in the past 150 years.
A September 2008 photo released by the Ocean Conservancy on March 10, 2009, shows a trash-covered beach in Manilla, Philippines. (Tamara Thoreson Pierce/Ocean Conservancy/AP)
washingtonpost.com - by Sarah Kaplan - January 20, 2016
There is a lot of plastic in the world’s oceans.
It coagulates into great floating “garbage patches” that cover large swaths of the Pacific. It washes up on urban beaches and remote islands, tossed about in the waves and transported across incredible distances before arriving, unwanted, back on land. It has wound up in the stomachs of more than half the world’s sea turtles and nearly all of its marine birds, studies say . . .
. . . But that quantity pales in comparison with the amount that the World Economic Forum expects will be floating into the oceans by the middle of the century.
Image: A photograph of a city skyline at dusk with lamps in the foreground that resemble stylized trees.
huffingtonpost.com - October 20th, 2015 - Jeremy Rifkin
The global economy is slowing, productivity is waning in every region of the world and unemployment remains stubbornly high in every country. At the same time, economic inequality between the rich and the poor is at the highest point in human history. In 2010 the combined wealth of the 388 richest people in the world equaled the combined wealth of the poorest half of the human race.
Increased use of low-carbon energy sources instead of fossil energy sources is making it easier for countries to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/Reuters
New report from green think tank Heinrich Boll shows OECD countries grew their economies 16% in last decade – and cut greenhouse gas emissions 6.4%
theguardian.com - by Bruce Watson - September 26, 2015
As the world works out how to avoid catastrophic climate change, one of the biggest questions remaining is whether we can continue to grow economically without also increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Image: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was opened on Feb. 26, 2008. Carved into the Arctic permafrost and filled with samples of the world's most important seeds, it's a Noah's Ark of food crops to be used in the event of a global catastrophe. AFP/Getty Images
npr.org - September 23rd, 2015
A tall rectangular building juts out of a mountainside on a Norwegian island just 800 miles from the North Pole. Narrow and sharply edged, the facility cuts an intimidating figure against the barren Arctic background. But the gray building holds the key to the earth's biodiversity. (VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)
Image: This map shows various coastal storm damage risk management strategies communities can use to adapt to increased flood risk by 2100 (at a non-specific location). Although specific communities should consider a range of all possible solutions based on site-specific conditions, not all strategies to reduce coastal storm damage risk are structural solutions. A text-only version of this information is available at the bottom of the page.
nad.usace.army.mil
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently completed a report detailing the results of a two-year study to address coastal storm and flood risk to vulnerable populations, property, ecosystems, and infrastructure affected by Hurricane Sandy in the United States' North Atlantic region.
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.
