Category Archives: Down To Earth

A guide to talking about climate change like a Trump official

by VirgilDominique Posted on March 21, 2018

Imagine you are Brock Long, the man President Trump appointed to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. You’ve got an interesting challenge on your hands: hammering out FEMA’s long-term strategy while avoiding all mention of “climate change” — an unwritten rule among your colleagues.

The problem is that last year’s pileup of hurricanes, wildfires, and floods completely overwhelmed your agency. And scientists say that these climate change disasters will only get worse. OK — but they’re scientists. Whatever! This is the Trump era.

Under Obama, FEMA’s strategic plan plainly stated that the climate is changing. In the Trump era, that 37-page plan is peppered with the obliquest references to climate change you could dream up: “Rising natural hazard risk. The emerging challenges of 21st century disasters. The changing nature of the risks we face.”

Under the Trump administration, which actively promotes coal and oil while repealing climate policies, “climate change” has systematically disappeared from government websites, social media accounts, and science research, resulting in a culture of censorship.

If you, like a typical Trump administration employee, can’t bring yourself to mention the-change-that-must-not-be-named, try these alternative phrases instead.

‘Pre-disaster mitigation’

FEMA’s new strategy seizes on a delightfully climate-free phrase that appeared just once in the Obama plan. “Pre-disaster mitigation” is employed a full 10 times.

“As the number of people that move to coastal areas increases, and natural and manmade hazards become increasingly complex and difficult to predict, the need for forward leaning action is greater than ever before,” the report reads. “Although the Nation must do more to assess and quantify these increasing risks, we do know that pre-disaster mitigation works.”

It’s like preparing for more extreme weather and rising seas, no climate change involved!

Could FEMA carry out climate policies without acknowledging climate change? It seems unlikely. But then again, the Trump administration has done it before.

Last August, Trump revoked an Obama-era climate policy that made federal building standards stricter in flood-prone places. But after hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria struck, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development brought back a nearly identical rule for states receiving relief.

“All of this is being done without mentioning the words ‘climate change,’ but clearly these are the same types of actions,” Rob Moore, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg at the time.

So maybe there’s more hope for FEMA than you’d think. There’s money behind “pre-disaster mitigation,” after all: an entire FEMA grant program is devoted to it.

‘Weather extremes’

Last August, officials instructed staff at the U.S Department of Agriculture to avoid using “climate change” in their scientific work, suggesting “weather extremes” as a replacement.

The message projected far beyond the USDA. An NPR report found that National Science Foundation scientists, hoping to protect their research from funding cuts, had wiped climate change from summaries of their research grants. While climate change mentions were down 40 percent last year, references to “extreme weather” were on the rise.

“Scientists I know are increasingly using terms like ‘global change’, ‘environmental change’, and ‘extreme weather’, rather than explicitly saying ‘climate change,’” Jonathan Thompson, a senior ecologist at Harvard Forest, told NPR.

‘Sustainability’ and ‘resilience’

The Trump administration has made sweeping changes to federal government websites, systematically removing mentions of climate change. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), a group tracking these changes, found many instances where agencies shifted from straightforward language to wishy-washy terminology.

Across the Federal Highway Administration site, page banners that once read “Climate Change,” “Climate Adaptation,” and “Climate Mitigation” are now simply “Sustainability.” The “Sustainable Transport and Climate Change Team” became the “Sustainable Transportation and Resilience Team.”

Justin Schell, an EDGI archivist at the library of the University of Michigan, says that Trump officials may find these vague terms more palatable. “Sustainability and resilience can mean lots and lots of things,” he told Grist. “It could be that this gives them a little more flexibility to do the work that they’re trying to do” — which ostensibly has little to do climate change. Yet the words still come across as having a “green” vibe.

The fact that Trump administration officials are adopting words like “sustainability” and “resilience” could be a worrisome sign that those words aren’t as useful as environmentalists thought.

Excerpt from – 

A guide to talking about climate change like a Trump official

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Can’t bring yourself to say ‘climate change’? Try these Trump-ready phrases instead.

by BebeKlingyuejr Posted on March 21, 2018

Imagine you are Brock Long, the man President Trump appointed to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. You’ve got an interesting challenge on your hands: hammering out FEMA’s long-term strategy while avoiding all mention of “climate change” — an unwritten rule among your colleagues.

The problem is that last year’s pileup of hurricanes, wildfires, and floods completely overwhelmed your agency. And scientists say that these climate change disasters will only get worse. OK — but they’re scientists. Whatever! This is the Trump era.

Under Obama, FEMA’s strategic plan plainly stated that the climate is changing. In the Trump era, that 37-page plan is peppered with the obliquest references to climate change you could dream up: “Rising natural hazard risk. The emerging challenges of 21st century disasters. The changing nature of the risks we face.”

Under the Trump administration, which actively promotes coal and oil while repealing climate policies, “climate change” has systematically disappeared from government websites, social media accounts, and science research, resulting in a culture of censorship.

If you, like a typical Trump administration employee, can’t bring yourself to mention the-change-that-must-not-be-named, try these alternative phrases instead.

‘Pre-disaster mitigation’

FEMA’s new strategy seizes on a delightfully climate-free phrase that appeared just once in the Obama plan. “Pre-disaster mitigation” is employed a full 10 times.

“As the number of people that move to coastal areas increases, and natural and manmade hazards become increasingly complex and difficult to predict, the need for forward leaning action is greater than ever before,” the report reads. “Although the Nation must do more to assess and quantify these increasing risks, we do know that pre-disaster mitigation works.”

It’s like preparing for more extreme weather and rising seas, no climate change involved!

Could FEMA carry out climate policies without acknowledging climate change? It seems unlikely. But then again, the Trump administration has done it before.

Last August, Trump revoked an Obama-era climate policy that made federal building standards stricter in flood-prone places. But after hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria struck, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development brought back a nearly identical rule for states receiving relief.

“All of this is being done without mentioning the words ‘climate change,’ but clearly these are the same types of actions,” Rob Moore, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg at the time.

So maybe there’s more hope for FEMA than you’d think. There’s money behind “pre-disaster mitigation,” after all: an entire FEMA grant program is devoted to it.

‘Weather extremes’

Last August, officials instructed staff at the U.S Department of Agriculture to avoid using “climate change” in their scientific work, suggesting “weather extremes” as a replacement.

The message projected far beyond the USDA. An NPR report found that National Science Foundation scientists, hoping to protect their research from funding cuts, had wiped climate change from summaries of their research grants. While climate change mentions were down 40 percent last year, references to “extreme weather” were on the rise.

“Scientists I know are increasingly using terms like ‘global change’, ‘environmental change’, and ‘extreme weather’, rather than explicitly saying ‘climate change,’” Jonathan Thompson, a senior ecologist at Harvard Forest, told NPR.

‘Sustainability’ and ‘resilience’

The Trump administration has made sweeping changes to federal government websites, systematically removing mentions of climate change. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), a group tracking these changes, found many instances where agencies shifted from straightforward language to wishy-washy terminology.

Across the Federal Highway Administration site, page banners that once read “Climate Change,” “Climate Adaptation,” and “Climate Mitigation” are now simply “Sustainability.” The “Sustainable Transport and Climate Change Team” became the “Sustainable Transportation and Resilience Team.”

Justin Schell, an EDGI archivist at the library of the University of Michigan, says that Trump officials may find these vague terms more palatable. “Sustainability and resilience can mean lots and lots of things,” he told Grist. “It could be that this gives them a little more flexibility to do the work that they’re trying to do” — which ostensibly has little to do climate change. Yet the words still come across as having a “green” vibe.

The fact that Trump administration officials are adopting words like “sustainability” and “resilience” could be a worrisome sign that those words aren’t as useful as environmentalists thought.

Taken from:  

Can’t bring yourself to say ‘climate change’? Try these Trump-ready phrases instead.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Down To Earth, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Can’t bring yourself to say ‘climate change’? Try these Trump-ready phrases instead.

Six months after Maria, the hardest hit city in Puerto Rico is still being ignored

by JamesYarcvqloe Posted on March 20, 2018

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Jose Morales Menendez had some great times fishing along the beautiful southeast coast of Puerto Rico. He recalls fishing from 1 a.m. to 10 a.m., watching the lights of giant freight ships pass by his little boat. Now, mostly blind since 2005, the 75-year-old depends on others for many day-to-day things. But still, life was okay before Hurricane Maria made landfall six months ago. Now?

“Life after Maria has been really sad,” he says, sitting in the front room of his small house yards from the beach in the Playa el Negro section of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. The house, which he shares with his wife Irma, was flooded during the storm after it made landfall very near their neighborhood with sustained winds of 155 mph. “The little bit that we had was taken back.”

Yabucoa, a town of about 35,000 on the southeastern corner of Puerto Rico, was devastated by Hurricane Maria. The winds destroyed concrete homes that had withstood prior hurricanes, according to USA Today, leaving it the hardest hit city on an island wracked with devastation. Officials estimate that roughly 1,500 homes were destroyed, along with 95 percent of all municipal infrastructure. With the six-month anniversary of the storm on Tuesday, just 35 percent of the town is energized. The town is providing water to its citizens by using 25 generators to power pumps, and significant damage can be seen throughout town, including piles of debris near city hall.

The mayor is working out of a small temporary office in the center of town. Mariel Rivera, his spokesperson, explained that the sheer volume of devastation has made recovery painfully slow. She shared a spreadsheet tracking what the dozens of electrical crews from places like New Jersey, Vermont, and Florida are doing in the city, including the neighborhoods where they’re working. She credited the mayor for pushing to get as much work done in the town as has been done, slow as it is, and says the state government has largely ignored the city. Comparing it to New Orleans after Katrina, or places in Texas and Florida after Harvey and Irma, respectively, Rivera slammed Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló for neglecting her community.

“The governors of those states went first to the worst areas,” she says. “Yabucoa was a town that received a direct hit from Maria and to this day the governor has not stepped foot in Yabucoa.”

(A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to a request for comment.)

Darlene Rivera, the administrator for the municipal cemetery, says Yabucoa is “still in crisis,” and not getting the help it needs. Rivera says her mother, a cardiac patient and diabetic, died of a heart attack after Maria because she didn’t have regular access to medical care and couldn’t properly store her diabetes medication without refrigeration.

Rivera says that there have been 150 deaths registered with the cemetery in the six months since Maria passed through. In the first 10 weeks of 2018, Rivera says she recorded 40 more deaths than she did over the same period of time in 2017. Rivera can’t definitively say if the increased rate of death is linked to Maria, but “there seems to be a correlation.”

Official accountings of Maria-related deaths have been widely questioned. The island’s government recently partnered with George Washington University to conduct a new count.

The two city workers tell me about one of their coworkers who went missing after the storm. Mayra Cortéz Merced, 59, worked in the city’s property records office. After Maria, they say, Cortéz couldn’t get consistent treatment from a doctor or access to her psychiatric medications. Her neighbors say they saw her leave her house on January 31st. “She just disappeared,” Rivera, the mayor’s spokesperson, says. “When you are a mental health patient these things can get the best of you.”

A few miles from the center of town, out toward Lucia Beach along Highway 901, Luis Saul Sustache mans the bar at a roadside chinchorro called La Rumba. With a round face that makes him look much younger than his 34 years, Saul points to the new-ish looking wood that makes up roughly half the patio and explains that the bar was nearly destroyed during Maria, but was repaired quickly and reopened 10 days after the winds died down. Most of the business the bar sees is from the scores of contractors from the mainland working in the area, but even so times are tough.

“Sometimes it feels like it’s easier to just close down the business,” he says, before walking away to pack five bottles of cold water into a plastic bag for another customer.

Further down the road, at a long-term stay hotel called Lucia Beach Villas, Ana Celia Lazú reports that the property suffered some damage in the storm but that the owners have been able to finance repairs with revenue from stateside contractors who are staying as guests. Some smaller out buildings around the property, though, have been been abandoned. One, a two story house just south of the hotel, suffered heavy damage and was vacated by its owner days after the storm. Right in front of the hotel stood a beachfront chinchorro that was completely destroyed.

Jose Morales Menendez’s house sits about a mile or two down from Lucia Beach. After the storm, FEMA gave him and his wife Irma $8,000 to help with repairs, but they say it’s not nearly enough. Irma says she has a hard time sleeping, worried that the waves will again rise up and pull her out to sea, or that an earthquake will shake the home and end it all.

Still, though, she’s thankful.

“We have many blessings,” she says. Her husband shared a similar sentiment, saying that despite everything, his family and neighbors have provided help, support, and love.

“I thank my lord for the beings who have come to help,” he says.

Source:

Six months after Maria, the hardest hit city in Puerto Rico is still being ignored

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Climate change will have its Scopes Monkey Trial this week

by WoodrowPantano Posted on March 19, 2018

In 1925, a Tennessee substitute teacher was indicted by a grand jury for teaching evolution to his high school class. That case, the Scopes trial, became famous for pitting science against the Bible, and it helped pave the way for educational reform.

On Tuesday, a case in California could do for climate change what the Scopes trial did for evolution. Last September, San Francisco and Oakland filed major lawsuits against five of the world’s largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.

All of those companies are constantly being sued for making large and sometimes permanent environmental messes. But the people of California aren’t suing BP and co. for spills, explosions, or other easily traceable disasters. Rather, they’re suing because those companies:

  1. knew about climate change decades ago,
  2. continued doing business as usual, and
  3. engaged in a world-wide public relations campaign to sow confusion over climate science.

California says the companies have been using deception to profit as the planet warms, and they should pay for the infrastructure the state needs to protect itself against rising sea-levels.

The lawsuits join others in a new wave of court cases: the climate suits. Two weeks ago, a climate change lawsuit filed by 21 kid activists against the Trump administration was cleared for trial. A week later, Arnold Schwarzeneggar announced plans to sue Big Oil for committing “first degree murder.” And New York City hit polluters with a double whammy in January: the city decided to divest billions of dollars in pension money from fossil fuels and filed a lawsuit against some of the biggest polluters in the industry.

The cases pit people against industry and government, and, whether or not the people win, the legal battles could mark the beginning of a shift in the way fossil fuel companies are held accountable in court. This particular case is especially novel, thanks to an unorthodox judge named William Alsup.

The judge presiding over the Bay Area cities-vs.-oil companies case isn’t your average federal justice. Alsup’s the guy who blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end DACA, taught himself how to use a programming script for a Silicon Valley lawsuit, and, as part of another tech battle, asked two ride-sharing services to give him a tutorial on self-driving cars to make a better-informed ruling.

Alsup’s quest for a well-rounded education means that before this trial moves forward, both parties must give him a two-part, first-of-its-kind tutorial in climate science in no more than two hours each. It’s a highly unusual request from a judge, experts say, and it will give Americans the opportunity to follow along as big polluters finally go on record about climate science and climate denialism.

Judge Alsup has submitted 14 questions for each party in the case to answer, including:

What caused the various ice ages?
What are the main sources of CO2 that account for the incremental buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Why hasn’t plant life turned the higher levels of CO2 back into oxygen?

Most of the 14 questions could be answered by a precocious fifth grader. But the hearing, according to Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, will be the first time oil companies defend themselves in court against decades of climate science.

“Up until now, fossil fuel companies have been able to talk about climate science in political and media arenas where there is far less accountability to the truth,” Burger says.

The complaint

In addition to providing answers to Alsup’s questions, the plaintiffs will likely present evidence that oil companies knew about the harmful effects of CO2 on the atmosphere at least since the 1970s. They may also highlight the prize-winning 2015 investigation by InsideClimate News, which revealed that Exxon purposefully misled the public about the risks of fossil fuels in order to protect its business. Despite having long known about the dangers of fossil-fuel consumption, California will charge that the “defendants continue to engage in massive fossil fuel production.”

As CO2 levels spike and global temperatures increase, melting glaciers have caused flooding in California’s coastal cities. The state’s argument rests on the charge that fossil fuel producers have caused a public nuisance. While the accusation sounds like something you’d call a drunk guy making a ruckus in the street, in legalese, it’s dead serious, constituting a crime that jeopardizes the welfare of a community.

The defense

While the oil companies are unlikely to deny climate science, they are expected to highlight areas of uncertainty on its specifics. Even though climate science has made leaps and bounds in the past decade, scientists still readily admit how hard it is to pin down exactly how much sea-level rise we can expect in the next 50 to 100 years. You can be sure Big Oil’s lawyers will question the validity of some climate science’s conclusions in court.

But they won’t stop there. The defendants will probably try to get the case dismissed on the grounds that the complaint “calls into question longstanding decisions by the Federal Government regarding, among other things, national security, national energy policy, environmental protection, development of outer continental shelf lands, the maintenance of a national petroleum reserve, mineral extraction on federal lands.” And the lawyers will rightly point out that their clients have “produced billions of dollars for the federal government.” In other words, they’ll try to argue that, by putting this case on trial, the government is biting some of the hands that feed it.

The defendants have already achieved one victory — they requested that the case be heard in federal instead of state court, where local laws are tough on big polluters. Just Friday, fossil fuel companies suffered a blow when a different set of lawsuits from three Californian counties were successfully moved to state court. But, for this case, Judge Alsup agreed with industry, saying a “patchwork of 50 different answers to the same fundamental global issue would be unworkable.”

What happens if California wins

If San Francisco and Oakland win their respective suits, the five oil giants might have to pay billions of dollars into an “abatement fund,” a reserve that the cities can use to pay for seawalls and other infrastructure to protect their citizens against rising oceans.

But the case might not even make it to trial. California could quite possibly ace the upcoming climate change tutorial and lose the case nevertheless. The tutorial puts climate science in the spotlight, but the oil companies could persuasively argue that California’s sea-level concerns (and the damaging storm surges that accompany sea rise) can’t be pinned on individual companies.

“There are legal obstacles that could prevent this case from ever going to trial,” Burger says. “The science could play a role in some of these preliminary arguments, but the ultimate questions about whether the science equates with legal liability for these plaintiffs, the factual connection between these particular parties’ actions and the particular harm suffered by these cities, may never get heard.”

In other words, California could win the battle but lose the war. The oil companies hope the case will ultimately get dismissed or shunted up to the Supreme Court where legal precedent favors polluters. That doesn’t necessarily spell doom for the future of the climate suit.

If the court ultimately rules in favor of the defendants, there’s a long line of similar lawsuits waiting for their day in court. Buckle up, polluters! You’re in for it now.

Read More: 

Climate change will have its Scopes Monkey Trial this week

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Meteorologists have a new strategy for bringing climate change down to earth

by Niki95Guqssevo Posted on March 15, 2018

This story was originally published by Ensia. 

KOLR10 News TV meteorologist Elisa Raffa wanted to tell her viewers about climate change, so she started with beer.

“Beer is mostly water, right?” the Springfield Missouri, reporter says. “One of our local breweries gets the water they use from a nearby lake. Well, because temperatures are going up there has been an algae bloom in the lake. It’s not a dangerous bloom — but it impacts the taste of the water and, of course, the beer.”

Mother’s Brewing Company also buys produce like peaches and cucumbers from local farmers, Raffa says. Those fresh fruits and veggies give brews like the Sunshine Chugsuckle and the Uncanny their signature flavor. But between increasingly violent hail storms and early blooms on the peach trees that then get hit with late freezes, that produce is in trouble. Mother’s and other Missouri brewers may have to turn to imported, frozen products. “And that not only impacts taste, it harms the local economy,” Raffa says.

Raffa’s 2017 beer story was a short segment on the evening newscast. But it marks a shift. From heatwaves and extreme rainfall to drought and flooding, climate change is becoming hard to ignore. To help their viewers understand what is happening around them, TV meteorologists are increasingly taking the lead in educating the public as to how climate change affects their lives.

For years, TV meteorologists were hesitant to talk about climate change. Climatological views — the long-term trends and patterns that influence weather — were not part of their education. Their time on air is limited. Some stations may discourage climate change talk. Many meteorologists simply feel it isn’t their responsibility. And some are concerned about how it might affect their ratings and job security.

“Audiences trust their local meteorologists,” says Mike Nelson, chief meteorologist at Denver7, an ABC affiliate in Colorado. “Our jobs depend on that trust. Meteorologists understand this, and some tend to stay away from controversial subjects.”

But that won’t do anymore, says Nelson. “We are as close to a scientist as most Americans will ever get. People invite us into their living rooms. We have a responsibility to educate them on the facts.”

In 2010, several meteorologists joined Climate Central, George Mason and Yale universities, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the American Meteorological Society in a pilot project to explore how broadcast meteorologists could better communicate climate change. Two years later, Climate Central launched Climate Matters as a full-time, national program to help meteorologists talk about climate change in and with their communities.

“We need more people connecting the dots about how climate change is already affecting people and will continue to do so in the future,” says Bernadette Woods Placky, Climate Central chief meteorologist and director of Climate Matters. By linking local impacts to larger changes, Climate Matters aims to empower people to prepare for impacts like heatwaves, flooding, elevated food prices, and health situations. “We are a resource to help meteorologists tell their local story,” says Woods Placky.

Today, Climate Matters supplies webinars to help meteorologists understand topics such as climate models, health impacts, and extreme precipitation events. It provides data for individual markets, such as how viewers think about climate change. It also offers weekly communication packages containing location-specific climate analyses and visuals as well as workshops offering a deeper dive into the science, impacts, and solutions to climate change.

“We meteorologists need to show people global climate change and what it means to them,” says 42-year broadcast veteran Jim Gandy, chief meteorologist at News19 in Columbia, South Carolina, and a founding member of Climate Matters.

To bring that message home, Gandy produced a segment for the nightly newscast based on a 2006 study showing that increased carbon dioxide helps poison ivy spread and, crucially, makes it more toxic. “Poison ivy toxicity has doubled since the 1950s,” Gandy says. And it will double again by the end of the century according to the study, according to Gandy. This means that more people will be allergic to poison ivy and more people are expected to end up in the emergency room.

“If we don’t start talking about climate change now, how are we going to explain to people what they are seeing?” says Gandy. He has also enlightened his viewers about the impacts on local vegetable prices due to the California drought and talked about how the increased heat South Carolina is seeing affects gardening.

Each broadcast meteorologist has to find a way to bring the story of climate change down to the local level and figure out what matters to their viewers, say Woods Placky and Gandy.

In Arizona, Amber Sullins, five-time Emmy Award WinningABC15chief meteorologist, builds her climate change stories and information with her key demographic in mind: women aged 25 to 54. “I leave out things people can’t connect with like sea ice,” she says. “Instead, I focus on what my viewers care about: their children, their finances.”

Sullins also incorporates past data on frequency of fires or heatwaves into her daily forecast. “It helps to provide perspective,” she says. “ I also talk about projections so people know where we are going.”

Raffa avoids using the words “climate change.” Experience has taught her that the term alienates people.

Chief meteorologist Jorge Torres at KOB 4 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, agrees with this approach. “I’m just showing what’s going on. Just science and data,” he says. “I show my viewers that climate change is happening without ramming it down people’s throats or laying blame.”

Torres uses graphs and charts supplied by Climate Matters to communicate trends such as the steady decrease in snowpack in New Mexico mountains since 1980 and the increase in record-breaking high temperatures. Torres also uses social media to share the facts on climate change, tweeting his charts and graphs and engaging with his followers. He speaks regularly to schools, college groups, ski clubs, retirement groups, and others to get the message across.

“I just give them the hard data,” says. “It speaks for itself.”

Examples of how to tell the local story vary widely. Meteorologist Chelsea Ingram atKYW CBS 3 in Philadelphia talked about the fate of the Philadelphia airport as sea levels rise. In Detroit, Paul Gross, meteorologist at WDIV-TV, regularly explains to his viewers how increased evaporation from a warmer atmosphere in turn results in some of the massive snows experienced in his region the past few years.

Of course, not everyone is on board with communicating climate change from the evening news broadcast. Arecent survey showedthat 38 percent of broadcast meteorologists either don’t believe in climate change or don’t believe that it is human-caused. But of the estimated 2,200 meteorologists around the country, about 500 are working with Climate Matters to tell the local stories of climate change. “It has been revolutionary,” says Woods Placky. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we are reaching a tipping point.”

“I’ve had very little blowback,” says New Mexico’s Torres. “In fact I’ve heard more viewers tell me I need to talk about climate change more often.” Other meteorologists have had similar results. The feedback has been so positive, in fact, that Climate Matters is looking to expand to the newsroom.

“I got into meteorology because I loved learning how weather impacts me beyond needing an umbrella,” says Raffa. “My advice is to find your niche. Find your own story and your own way to do it. Understand how your viewers feel and talk to them.”

Original post – 

Meteorologists have a new strategy for bringing climate change down to earth

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Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Earth and Space – Isaac Asimov

by Myrna Posted on December 10, 2017

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Earth and Space
Isaac Asimov

Genre: Physics

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: September 24, 1991

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


A thrilling nonfiction tour of the cosmos that brings the universe down to Earth, from one of the all-time masters of science fiction.   No one makes sense out of science like Isaac Asimov. Are you puzzled by pulsars? Baffled by black holes? Bewildered by the big bang? If so, here are succinct, crystal-clear answers to more than one hundred of the most significant questions about the essential nature of the universe—questions that have fired the imagination since the beginning of history.   Over the course of this fantastic voyage, the origins, the discoveries, and the stunning achievements of astronomy will unfold before your eyes. You will experience close encounters with giant planets, exploding stars, distant galaxies, and more. For anyone who has ever asked the ultimate questions, who has ever looked up at the sky and asked What in heaven is going on? , Isaac Asimov’s unique vision, skill, and authority will bring the big picture into focus.   “A fine introduction to modern astronomical theory.”— Library Journal

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Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Earth and Space – Isaac Asimov

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The Hunt for Vulcan – Thomas Levenson

by Myrna Posted on August 7, 2017

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Hunt for Vulcan

. . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe

Thomas Levenson

Genre: History

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: November 3, 2015

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


The captivating, all-but-forgotten story of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and the search for a planet that never existed For more than fifty years, the world’s top scientists searched for the “missing” planet Vulcan, whose existence was mandated by Isaac Newton’s theories of gravity. Countless hours were spent on the hunt for the elusive orb, and some of the era’s most skilled astronomers even claimed to have found it. There was just one problem: It was never there. In The Hunt for Vulcan, Thomas Levenson follows the visionary scientists who inhabit the story of the phantom planet, starting with Isaac Newton, who in 1687 provided an explanation for all matter in motion throughout the universe, leading to Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, who almost two centuries later built on Newton’s theories and discovered Neptune, becoming the most famous scientist in the world. Le Verrier attempted to surpass that triumph by predicting the existence of yet another planet in our solar system, Vulcan. It took Albert Einstein to discern that the mystery of the missing planet was a problem not of measurements or math but of Newton’s theory of gravity itself. Einstein’s general theory of relativity proved that Vulcan did not and could not exist, and that the search for it had merely been a quirk of operating under the wrong set of assumptions about the universe. Levenson tells the previously untold tale of how the “discovery” of Vulcan in the nineteenth century set the stage for Einstein’s monumental breakthrough, the greatest individual intellectual achievement of the twentieth century. A dramatic human story of an epic quest, The Hunt for Vulcan offers insight into how science really advances (as opposed to the way we’re taught about it in school) and how the best work of the greatest scientists reveals an artist’s sensibility. Opening a new window onto our world, Levenson illuminates some of our most iconic ideas as he recounts one of the strangest episodes in the history of science. Praise for The Hunt for Vulcan “Delightful . . . a charming tale about an all-but-forgotten episode in science history.” — The Wall Street Journal “Engaging . . . At heart, this is a story about how science advances, one insight at a time. But the immediacy, almost romance, of Levenson’s writing makes it almost novelistic.” — The Washington Post “Captures the drama of the tireless search for this celestial object.” — Science   “A well-structured, fast-paced example of exemplary science writing.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A short, beautifully produced book that tells a cautionary tale . . . Levenson is a breezy writer who renders complex ideas in down-to-earth language.” — The Boston Globe “An inspiring tale about the quest for discovery.” —Walter Isaacson “Equal to the best science writing I’ve read anywhere, by any author. Beautifully composed, rich in historical context, deeply researched, it is, above all, great storytelling.” —Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe “Levenson tells us where Vulcan came from, how it vanished, and why its spirit lurks today. Along the way, we learn more than a bit of just how science works—when it succeeds as well as when it fails.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson “Science writing at its best. This book is not just learned, passionate, and witty—it is profoundly wise.” —Junot Díaz From the Hardcover edition.

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The Hunt for Vulcan – Thomas Levenson

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil de Grasse Tyson

by Myrna Posted on May 14, 2017

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Neil de Grasse Tyson

Genre: Physics

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: May 2, 2017

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W. W. Norton


The #1 New York Times Bestseller: The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist. What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day. While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil de Grasse Tyson

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U.S. likely to become a major energy exporter in a decade

by GilbertPfy Posted on January 6, 2017

The amount of energy Americans use and the pollution they emit from using coal, oil, and natural gas are not likely to change radically over the next 30 years, even as the U.S. becomes a major energy exporter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook, published Thursday.

The outlook, which does not factor in any policies from the incoming fossil fuel–friendly Trump administration, shows that the U.S. is unlikely to make significant gains in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to meet its obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement, even though zero-carbon renewables are expected to grow faster than any other energy source over the next three decades.

Electricity generation is expected to remain the largest single use of energy in the U.S., but crude oil use for transportation is expected to be the largest source of energy-related carbon emissions. Carbon emissions from transportation surpassed those from electric power generation for the first time in U.S history in 2016.

The U.S. is likely to become a major exporter of energy because it is expected to produce about 20 percent more energy than it does today through 2040 while using only about 5 percent more energy, said EIA administrator Adam Sieminsky.

“We’re going to have fairly strong domestic production of energy and relatively flat demand,” he said. “You put those two together, it implies that the U.S. could become a net energy exporter.” And that could happen as soon as 2026.

That scenario, in addition to gains in energy efficiency across the country and declining coal consumption, will keep annual carbon emissions from energy use roughly level with today’s — about 5.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to EIA data.  Energy-related carbon emissions in the U.S. have been falling since they peaked at about 6 billion metric tons in 2007.

The EIA offers a variety of different projections for how Americans will produce and use energy in the coming decades. The scenario in which the U.S. emits the most carbon dioxide through 2040 is the one in which the Obama administration’s signature climate change policy, the Clean Power Plan, is tossed out by the courts or the incoming Trump administration.

The Clean Power Plan, a major key to the success of the Paris Climate Agreement, was designed to limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants, encouraging utilities to generate more and more electricity using natural gas and renewables. But the plan’s fate is in doubt because 24 states have sued to kill it, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked it, and the incoming Trump administration has vowed to rescind it because it wants to revive the flagging coal industry.

The federal government is projecting that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from energy use will remain relatively steady in the coming decades.EIA

Regardless of the fate of the Clean Power Plan, energy-related carbon emissions are not expected to change much. If the plan is rescinded or overturned, the U.S. will emit about 5.4 billion metric tons annually through 2040 — slightly higher than today. If the plan remains in place, emissions are expected to drop to about 5 billion metric tons annually.

The biggest change the EIA expects to see over the next 30 years is one that’s already in progress today —  Americans are expected to use more and more natural gas and renewables than they do now. Natural gas production is expected to grow 1.2 percent through 2050, with wind and solar power production growing 3.5 percent.

“If the Clean Power Plan is not implemented, if natural gas prices remain relatively low, and the tax credits in the renewables area play out a little, we will see more natural gas in the future,” Sieminsky said.

The fracking boom in the U.S. over the past decade has flooded the country with natural gas, bringing prices down. Cheap natural gas, more so than climate regulations under the Clean Power Plan, has encouraged electric power companies to switch away from coal-fired power plants, which have always formed the backbone of the energy grid. The trend is expected to continue over the next 30 years.

For example, just this week, the operator of one of the West’s largest coal-fired power plants, the Arizona’s Navajo Generating Station northeast of the Grand Canyon, announced the plant and the coal mine that supplies it may close this year because of low natural gas prices, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper.

Despite growth in natural gas and renewables, the EIA expects coal production will continue a slow but gradual decline, falling only 0.7 percent through 2050.

Sieminsky said the decline in coal use in the U.S. will translate worldwide as well, and the fate of the Clean Power Plan isn’t much of a factor in the long-term outlook for coal because utilities have already begun committing to using natural gas to generate electricity.

“Capital costs of building coal plants are high,” he said. “A lot of countries are moving away from coal for air pollution reasons. It’s not a climate issue — it’s more of a health issue.”

China, for example, has begun shuttering coal-fired power plants to reduce its urban smog — the worst in the world.

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U.S. likely to become a major energy exporter in a decade

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How To Give Your Bathroom A ‘Go Green’ Makeover

by WillDriggers Posted on June 22, 2016

If you’re an eco friendly individual looking to go green, there are a few obvious places to start — perhaps you create a recycling command center in the garage, outfit your backyard with a compost bin, and stock your fridge and pantry with minimally processed, minimally packaged healthy food and drink.

These are all fantastic ideas and indeed, essential components of an eco friendly home, but in planning for the garage and the backyard, the kitchen and pantry, we’ve left out one very important area: the bathroom. Chronically overlooked and left to last on the list, the lowly bathroom presents a fantastic opportunity to go green by making just a few simple changes.

Go green in the bathroom in 3, 2, 1

Chronically overlooked and left to last on the list, the lowly bathroom presents a fantastic opportunity to go green by making just a few simple changes. Image Credit: Iriana Shiyan / Shutterstock

First, the basics. It’s easy to make a massive reduction in paper waste just by switching to 100% post-consumer recycled toilet paper. Over 27,000 trees are cut down every day worldwide just to make toilet paper — so choosing a recycled roll can put a significant dent in the number of trees lost with virtually zero effort on your part.

Second, if you’re a woman, consider rethinking the way you have your periods. Rather than using committing to a lifetime of disposable pads or tampons, it may be worthwhile to do some research into cloth pads or menstrual cups like the Moon Cup or Diva Cup. Cloth pads are an easy go green switch and they simply get tossed in the washing machine (just like cloth diapers would) to be washed and reused. Likewise soft silicone menstrual cups are a great, virtually waste-free alternative for tampon users. Full disclosure — There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s also a great way to reduce the amount of waste associated with your monthly cycle.

Also for the ladies (sorry, we do most of the heavy lifting in the bathroom it seems), evaluate your makeup and see if you can cut down on the packaging, the number of cosmetics products used, or even switch to a more eco friendly brand. If you’ve established a loyalty to one specific brand, don’t worry! You can go green while still looking good.
Recycling powerhouse Terracycle offers a recycling brigade for cosmetics and beauty products, where you can collect and send back an incredible array of product packages which would ordinarily be destined for the trash. Products included in this recycling program include,

Hair gel tubes and caps,
lip balm tubes,
lipstick cases,
lip gloss tubes,
mascara tubes,
eye shadow cases,
bronzer cases,
foundation packaging,
powder cases,
eyeliner cases,
eyeliner pencils,
eye-shadow tubes,
concealer tubes,
concealer sticks,
and lip liner pencils.

That’s a whole lot of waste that can completely bypass your bathroom wastebasket!

A sharp idea

A gender-neutral way to go green? Switch out your razor! Image Credit: Nejron Photo / Shutterstock

Next, a gender-neutral way to go green — switch out your razor. When your shave gets less than smooth, instead of buying some eight-bladed monstrosity where a package of replacement heads cost as much as a nice meal, invest in a stainless steel safety razor, instead. There’s a reason the world shaved this way for decades — it works! It’s clean, efficient, and waste-free, and replacement blades are a few bucks for a pack of five razor blades. It’s also an excuse to avoid gendered marketing. I don’t have to pay more for a pretty pink razor to fit my delicate lady hands, I’ve been using a “man’s” safety razor for almost three years now and I absolutely love it. Find one secondhand and disinfect it by boiling, or visit your local shave shop for options.

Prescription to go green

It’s now time to tackle the medicine cabinet. Disposing of medications properly is rarely mentioned, but it’s a vital part of prescription medicine safety. Emptying expired or unused pills into a garbage can be quite dangerous because of the possibility of small children or pets ingesting them, and if you think you’re being safe by flushing them down the toilet – think again. A story in the Harvard Health Letter states,

“A study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1999 and 2000 found measurable amounts of one or more medications in 80% of the water samples drawn from a network of 139 streams in 30 states. The drugs identified included a witches’ brew of antibiotics, antidepressants, blood thinners, heart medications (ACE inhibitors, calcium-channel blockers, digoxin), hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone), and painkillers.”

Yikes. Moral of the story? Don’t flush your pills! Take any old, unused or expired medications back to your pharmacy to ensure that they’re disposed of in a safe manner.

A clean slate

And last but not least, the task that we often leave until the bitter end: cleaning the bathroom. It’s easy to whip up a few simple recipes to give your bathroom a sparkling green makeover. Tub scrub, shower door spray, and an easy toilet cleaner — the recipes are all here and unbelievably easy to whip up with just a few natural ingredients. These DIY cleaners are a great way to go green in the bathroom without spending a ton on cleaning products with questionable ingredients, packaged in wasteful plastic bottles. They work like a dream and they make the often-onerous chore of bathroom cleaning seem a little less like drudgery.

Being able to go green means taking on all aspects of your house — from the fun and glitzy eco-tech to the more, ahem, down-to-earth aspects of green living, like embarking upon an eco friendly bathroom makeover. By addressing everything from your toilet paper to your cosmetics and beauty care products, tackling menstrual care and shaving gear, and even being a responsible adult by disposing of medications and finally getting rolling up your sleeves to get rid of that toilet ring, going green in the bathroom is a great idea.

Feature image credit: Steve Cukrov / Shutterstock 

About
Latest Posts

Madeleine Somerville

Madeleine Somerville is the author of

All You Need Is Less: An Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity

. She is a writer, wanna-be hippie, and lover of soft cheeses. She lives in Edmonton, Canada with her daughter. You can also find Madeleine at her blog,

Sweet Madeleine

.

Latest posts by Madeleine Somerville (see all)

How To Give Your Bathroom A ‘Go Green’ Makeover – June 22, 2016
When Is Composting Better Than Recycling? – June 9, 2016
TrailRider Proves Access To Nature Is Attainable – June 4, 2016

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How To Give Your Bathroom A ‘Go Green’ Makeover

Posted in Down To Earth, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Uncategorized, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How To Give Your Bathroom A ‘Go Green’ Makeover