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enviromedia.com Texas is currently suffering its worst drought in recorded history with much of it in what the U.S. Drought Monitor classifies as D3, Extreme Drought, or D4, Exceptional Drought. Several municipalities are in danger of completely running out of water in less than six months. Some may have no water in fewer than [...] California’s stringent new rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions were scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1 2012. But on Thursday Dec. 29, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence O’Neill ruled that California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves regulation of commerce to the federal government and [...] Three Figures around a globe, Salvator Rosa, Italian, 17th Century (Metropolitan Museum) As National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spokesman Christopher Vaccaro put it: In many ways, 2011 rewrote the record books. For the Guardian’s series “2011 In Review”, John Vidal sums up the past year. The year 2011 was another ecologically tumultuous year with greenhouse [...] California’s stringent cap and trade rules were scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1 2012 but a federal judge blocked it on Thursday. In my view, California’s cap and trade plans are unworkable, easily gamed, would raise energy prices substantially while accomplishing little to reduce emissions, and would probably drive even more business out [...] Canada says since Kyoto doesn’t cover the US and China that the whole thing is basically meaningless. They have a point. Plus, they can’t meet the new standards anyway. So they’re pulling out. I wonder who will be next to leave and if this is the beginning of the end of Kyoto. The deal, for the first time, mandates that developing countries like China must also meet the standards that the US and Europe do. But standards have been weakened, none of it has to be implemented until 2020, and funding is mostly nonexistent. Feh. Climate change is happening, rube, so put down the Ambien, Prozac, Viagra and crotch-shots on CNN/Faux News Kool-Aid and turn off the television, because Polar bears are now being observed by scientists resorting to cannibalism, and expect to see more as Arctic sea ice declines. In “Observations of cannibalism by polar bears(Ursus maritimus) on summer and autumn sea ice at Svalbard, [...] That’s a huge amount of power. Hydro makes better sense in cold climates because methane emissions from rotting vegetation are less. Meanwhile, the US is going into the opposite direction, and wanted to exploit Canadian tar sands, an obscene project that now happily looks like it is dead. localwork.com Phoenix is the least sustainable city in the world, says Andrew Ross. Much of this is due to the city being in the “bull’s eye” of climate change. It is heating up and becoming arid faster than any other area in the Northern Hemisphere. Exacerbating this dire situation is its sprawling area of [...] When at the Morgan Hill, CA Library, I normally scan the new books section looking for something interesting. The last time I did this, I discovered The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future a look at the future by Laurence C. Smith, Professor of Geography at UCLA. It is an easy [...] |  | ||||
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