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It was a bad year for carbon emissions, even in California

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Carbon emissions are rising in the the United States, and it looks like the golden green state of California is part of the problem. Despite putting up acres of solar panels, California’s electric system produced more greenhouse gases in 2018 than in the previous year.

It’s part of a larger trend across the country. A preliminary estimate out this week says carbon dioxide emissions climbed 3.4 percent last year, the second largest increase in two decades, according to the research firm Rhodium Group.

What happened? An unusually cold spell last winter led people to turn up their furnaces. And after years of modest growth, the U.S. economy picked up in 2018. There were more planes in the air, more trucks delivering packages, more offices cranking air conditioners, and more factories burning fossil fuels.

In 2017, California had a relatively wet year, and was able to run water through hydropower turbines when the sun set over solar panels. There was less water to spare last year, so the state turned to gas plants in place of dams.

The rise in power-sector emissions is especially concerning in California because the state has made curbing pollution from power plants a priority, enacting legislation to promote renewable energy and cap fossil fuels. Yet California’s emissions have risen and fallen in line with the rest of the country.

In 2018, for instance, emissions from electricity generation rose 1.9 percent across the country, and 2 percent in California.

California emissions from electricity generationCalifornia ISO

Trevor Houser, a climate and energy analyst at the Rhodium Group, said we shouldn’t make too much of California’s backsliding because the state had significant emissions reductions in the recent past. Last year’s 2 percent increase in electricity-sector emissions comes after a 9 percent decline in 2017 and a 13 percent decline in 2016. If you look at the three-year moving average, California is still making good progress when it comes to electricity.

Decarbonizing electricity is just the beginning of the challenge: “Far more important for California climate progress will be what happens in transportation, which is more than twice the emissions of the electric power in the state,” Houser said.

Rhodium Group

U.S. emissions peaked back in 2007, then quickly plunged with the Great Recession. A switch from coal power to natural gas and renewables also pushed down the country’s carbon pollution. All told, emissions fell 12 percent between 2007 and 2015. Since then, the country has continued to shift from super-polluting coal to less-polluting natural gas, but this report shows that we’ve been burning a lot more natural gas to make electricity.

Rhodium Group

Previously it had looked like the United States had a shot at meeting pledges made as part of the Paris climate talks, despite President Donald Trump’s rejection of that agreement. Now it’s painfully obvious. in Last year’s emissions have pushed the United States far off target.

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It was a bad year for carbon emissions, even in California

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The Secret Life of Plants – Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird

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The Secret Life of Plants

A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man

Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird

Genre: Nature

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: June 12, 2018

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Explore the inner world of plants and its fascinating relation to mankind, as uncovered by the latest discoveries of science. A perennial bestseller. In this truly revolutionary and beloved work, drawn from remarkable research, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird cast light on the rich psychic universe of plants. Now available in a new edition, The Secret Life of Plants explores plants' response to human care and nurturing, their ability to communicate with man, plants' surprising reaction to music, their lie-detection abilities, their creative powers, and much more. Tompkins and Bird's classic book affirms the depth of humanity's relationship with nature and adds special urgency to the cause of protecting the environment that nourishes us.

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The Secret Life of Plants – Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird

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Genome – Matt Ridley

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Genome

The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Matt Ridley

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: March 26, 2013

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Matt Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.

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Genome – Matt Ridley

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Antarctic sea ice is ‘astonishingly’ low this melt season

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Right now, on the shores of Antarctica, there’s open water crashing against the largest ice shelf in the world. The annual ice-free season has begun at the Ross Ice Shelf — a month ahead of schedule.

The frozen region of freshwater ice the size of France partially protects the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from collapsing into the sea. In recent years, the ice-free season in the Ross Sea has become a routine event — but it happened this year on New Year’s Day, the earliest time in history.

“Antarctic sea ice extent is astonishingly low this year, not just near the Ross Ice Shelf, but around most of the continent,” says Cecilia Bitz, a polar scientist at the University of Washington.

In recent years, scientists have set up seismic monitoring stations on the ice shelf to track the wave energy as it percolates inland, potentially causing stress fractures on the Ross Ice Shelf along the way.

Bitz pointed to low ice concentration also happening right now in the Amundsen Sea, more than 1,000 miles away from Ross, and that’s potentially even more worrying. In a worst-case scenario, with continued business as usual greenhouse gas emissions, ice shelves all across West Antarctica could collapse within decades, melted from above and below and shattered by wave action.

After that, it would probably be just a matter of time before West Antarctica’s massive land-based glaciers, like the “Doomsday glaciers” at Thwaites and Pine Island, collapse as well, sending sea levels upward by as much as 10 feet and flooding every coastal city on Earth.

Sea ice concentration on January 1, 2019. The Ross Sea is on the lower edge of West Antarctica and Amundsen is north and near this map’s West Antarctica labeling.National Snow & Ice Data Center

Across the entire continent, there are more than 750,000 square miles of sea ice missing, a record deficiet for this time of year. Because it’s approaching mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica will keep shedding sea ice for about another six weeks or so, and is currently on pace to drop far below the all-time record low set in 2016.

The North Pole and South Pole are both very cold, of course, but they couldn’t be more different in how climate change is affecting them.

The Arctic is an ocean fringed by cold continents, and has already passed a tipping point. Sea ice there has been declining sharply for decades — so much so that about a year ago, scientist declared the start of a “New Arctic,” with conditions likely unseen in at least 1,500 years, and probably much, much longer.

Owing to its unique geography (a cold continent fringed by a relatively warmer ocean), sea ice in the Antarctic region has long been considered something of a climate wildcard. A sharp decline in the Antarctic began only two years ago, and scientists aren’t sure yet if it will continue. If 2019 and the rapidly warming Southern Ocean is any indication, it will.

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Antarctic sea ice is ‘astonishingly’ low this melt season

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PG&E could face murder charges for California’s wildfires

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It’s been nearly two months since the massive Camp Fire laid waste to the town of Paradise in northern California. It destroyed nearly 14,000 homes and claimed at least 86 lives, making it the deadliest fire in the state’s history. And now the state’s largest public utility provider, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. could face murder or manslaughter charges related to the blazes.

PG&E is already under investigation for criminal wrongdoing related to California’s deadly wildfires. Though investigators have not determined what officially sparked the fire, PG&E reported “an outage” on a transmission line in the area where the blaze began around the time the blazes started.

If district prosecutors find that “reckless operation” of its power equipment caused any of the state’s deadly wildfires in the past two years, the company could be held responsible for not just the resulting property damages but the loss of life as well.

“PG&E’s most important responsibility is public and workforce safety,” the utility, which provides electricity to about 16 million Californians, said in a statement. “Our focus continues to be on assessing our infrastructure to further enhance safety and helping our customers continue to recover and rebuild.”

On Friday, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra submitted a legal brief to a federal judge who is considering how the wildfires could affect PG&E’s probation from a criminal case born out a 2010 explosion at a natural gas pipeline operated by PG&E. The judge will have to gauge PG&E’s “mental state” — meaning, its employees’ degree of negligence and recklessness — before determining which charges to bring, if any.

Potential charges range from minor misdemeanors related to poor maintenance of trees along power lines to involuntary manslaughter or murder if the company is found to be the cause of the wildfires.

In addition to possible criminal charges, PG&E could be found liable for billions of dollars in civil damages. But it’s not just the company that will bear the burden of any resulting settlements. In September 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill which permitted PG&E to pass on some of the costs related to utility’s role in the 2017 wildfires on to their customers.

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PG&E could face murder charges for California’s wildfires

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Meet the Press just modeled what it looks like to take climate change seriously

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On Sunday morning, NBC’s Meet the Press did what no other weekend news program had ever done before: They discussed climate change for a full hour.

Host Chuck Todd led off the hour with what amounted to a bold line in the sand: Climate denial is no longer welcome on our airwaves. It’s a statement that hopefully sets the tone for media coverage as a new year begins and 2020 Presidential campaigns gets underway. It was a glimpse of what it would look like if we took climate change seriously.

Although an episode like this was a long-time coming and the debate itself was a little underwhelming (and maybe the show’s forward-looking ban should have come with an apology for past sins), it was still a watershed moment for the media when most shows have long-ignored the most important issue facing humanity in our collective history. And it was refreshing to see a real-life climate scientist speaking freely about the urgency of our present moment and unimpeded by stale talking points.

If you break down the 60-minute episode, solutions-focused politicians took up most of the time. The show focused on long interviews with outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown and ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — past and (maybe) future presidential candidates who have devoted large portions of their careers to addressing climate change head-on. The only member of Congress to appear on the program was Republican Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who will give up his Congressional seat in three days.

Notably absent from the conversation were direct voices from the current generation of climate leaders — Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped change the national conversation on climate change by advocating for a Green New Deal during the last half of 2018, and young Sunrise Movement activists who, in a tweet, claimed partial credit for the show’s topical focus. As a result, the episode barely mentioned bold science-based policies to rapidly decarbonize the global economy.

Still, since talking about climate change is the most important thing any of us can do about it, the show was significant. It amounted to a call-to-action for the media: Debates over the science of climate change are no longer welcome. It’s high time to focus on solutions. We also need to be thinking about the kinds of climate conversations we should be hearing in the next election cycle.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt made the claim on Sunday that climate change was the biggest story of 2018. If that’s true, then this Meet the Press episode was a signal to candidates like Elizabeth Warren, who have yet to endorse officially the Green New Deal, to pay even closer attention to the issue.

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Meet the Press just modeled what it looks like to take climate change seriously

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Cod – Mark Kurlansky

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Cod

A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Mark Kurlansky

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: July 1, 1998

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Seller: PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.


An unexpected, energetic look at world history on sea and land from the bestselling author of Salt and The Basque History of the World Cod , Mark Kurlansky’s third work of nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James Beard Award , is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod, frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. As we make our way through the centuries of cod history, we also find a delicious legacy of recipes, and the tragic story of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once their numbers were legendary. In this lovely, thoughtful history, Mark Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that changed the world forever changed by the world's folly? “Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish.” –David McCullough, author of The Wright Brothers and 1776 From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Cod – Mark Kurlansky

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Breves respuestas a las grandes preguntas – Stephen Hawking

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Breves respuestas a las grandes preguntas

Stephen Hawking

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: October 30, 2018

Publisher: Grupo Planeta

Seller: Editorial Planeta, S.A.U.


Stephen Hawking fue reconocido como una de las mentes más brillantes de nuestro tiempo y una figura de inspiración después de desafiar su diagnóstico de ELA a la edad de veintiún años. Es conocido tanto por sus avances en física teórica como por su capacidad para hacer accesibles para todos conceptos complejos y destacó por su travieso sentido del humor. En el momento de su muerte, Hawking estaba trabajando en un proyecto final: un libro que compilaba sus respuestas a las «grandes» preguntas que a menudo se le planteaban: preguntas que iban más allá del campo académico. Dentro de estas páginas, ofrece su punto de vista personal sobre nuestros mayores desafíos como raza humana, y hacia dónde, como planeta, nos dirigimos después. Cada sección será presentada por un pensador líder que ofrecerá su propia visión de la contribución del profesor Hawking a nuestro entendimiento.

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Breves respuestas a las grandes preguntas – Stephen Hawking

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Life after EPA: What is Scott Pruitt doing now?

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Ever wonder what happens to people when they get booted from President Trump’s graces? (They don’t all wind up with a Saturday Night Live trip down memory lane.)

It’s been almost six months since Scott Pruitt was cut loose as head of the EPA, and for the most part he’s been keeping out of the spotlight. According to sources, Pruitt is using his industry connections to launch a private consulting business — you know, promoting coal exports and consorting with coal barons, the way a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency would.

However, Pruitt’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, says these new career pursuits will stop short of violating an official five-year ban on lobbying the EPA. After a mess of ethics violations and legal scandals, Pruitt is proceeding with caution. Mitchell says: “He has discussed multiple opportunities with me and has been quite careful not to do anything that is even close to the line.”

Although Pruitt’s fall from grace hasn’t been memorialized on SNL, he did become the butt of a few jokes by someone else — his former bestie, Donald Trump.

Evidently, Trump has congratulated Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt’s replacement, several times for not trying to buy used mattress from Trump Hotel. Yep. Pruitt did that. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little reuse, reduce, recycle — it may turn out to be one of Pruitt’s better moves for the environment.

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Life after EPA: What is Scott Pruitt doing now?

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Here’s how the government shutdown hurts disaster recovery

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We don’t yet know if 2019 will be a letdown, but it will likely start with a shutdown.

Seven days in, the budget gridlock between Congress and the President over federal funding for his proposed border wall remains at a standstill. The House and Senate adjourned Thursday without a budget deal, meaning the partial government shutdown, which affects about a quarter of the federal government, will continue until at least Monday.

For President Trump, that means no Mar-A-Lago trip for New Year’s. For around 800,000 federal workers, that’s no paycheck for the foreseeable future.

The shutdown caps off a year that’s been marked by several climate-related disasters, from Hurricanes Michael and Florence, which pummelled states like Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, to California’s deadly wildfires. Among the Americans affected by the partial shutdown are disaster survivors — and the federal workers and lawmakers working to help them recover.

The failure to pass a federal spending bill also has repercussions for those who have survived disasters and intimate partner violence, as the Violence Against Women Act lapsed during the shutdown. (Studies show that there are upticks in domestic and gender-based violence after super storms.)

Because of the current shutdown, The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood insurance Program has stopped issuing new flood insurance policies and will not renew existing policies that lapse. “FEMA’s decision will cause upheaval for home buyers and sellers across the country,” Louisiana Senator John Kennedy said in a statement.

As long as the shutdown drags on, federal employees will be furloughed or required to work without pay. FEMA officials have said that staff will stay on the job, much to the relief of residents in hurricane and wildfire-affected areas.

Folks over at the National Weather Service are also still on the job after an exhausting year. “We’ll be here every night, in bad weather or not,” said Jonathan Blaes, acting meteorologist-in-charge at the Weather Service in Raleigh, in an interview with CBS News. “We’ve been tremendously busy weather wise here, to be honest with you, with multiple hurricanes, floods and now a winter storm. So, I know our staff is tired. And, the holidays are a little harder because they’re away from their families.”

Both sides of the aisle have been using the interruption in disaster relief to shutdown-shame and pressure the opposition. Take Representative Austin Scott of Georgia, a Republican, who tweeted out this burn just before the shutdown (after the House voted to include $5 billion for Trump’s border wall to the budget, forcing another, ultimately unsuccessful, Senate vote).

“What the mainstream media fails to report is that in addition to fulfilling Trump’s request on border security $, the House was also able to secure in the [short-term continuing resolution] $8B in disaster assistance for GA, FL, AL, CA & the Carolinas,” he tweeted.

Representative Scott — who has a record of denying climate change — added in a statement that his constituency needs help: “Georgia families, as well as families in Florida, Alabama, the Carolinas and California, desperately need federal assistance to recover from catastrophic weather events this year.”

If the House-proposed version of the budget had passed, $1.1 billion of the $8 billion allocated for disaster assistance would have gone toward paying for crops lost during hurricanes. Austin says that money is urgently needed before farmers are scheduled to plant crops in 2019.

But just like the larger budget, the allocation of disaster relief is a contentious.. Democratic Representative Sanford Bishop — also from Georgia — said in a statement that the $8 million set aside for impacted rural communities would merely be “token disaster relief.” Instead he asked for $150 million in funding for rural areas hit by disasters. He also called for $600 million for nutrition assistance for Puerto Rico (currently not included in the budget at all) and $480 million instead of the allocated $200 million for the Emergency Forest Restoration Program.

This isn’t the first time this year that a government shutdown has hampered negotiations over disaster relief. It’s the third government shutdown of 2018. (That hasn’t happened since 1977 when President Jimmy Carter was in office.) 2018 began with an immigration-fueled three-day shutdown in January, followed by a brief funding gap in February. Hurricanes Florence and Michael hadn’t yet hit states in the south and southeast, but other communities were still reeling from Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

“The delay in passing a budget with a significant disaster package has been devastating for people in Houston,” wrote Michelle Tremillo, executive director of the Texas Organizing Project, in an op-ed for The Hill early this year.

President Trump eventually signed a spending bill in mid-February allocating nearly $90 billion in disaster relief and ending that government shutdown. Some politicians said it still wasn’t enough — Governor Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico said the island alone required $94 billion for recovery from Hurricane Maria.

As to when we may have an end to this shutdown, the House and Senate will return next week to continue negotiations. But it’s possible a solution will get punted to the next session of Congress, slated to begin January 3, 2019, when Democrats will assume the House majority.

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Here’s how the government shutdown hurts disaster recovery

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