3MIN News December 26, 2013: Weather, Space-Weather

Suspicious0bservers

Published on Dec 26, 2013

Website: http://www.suspicious0bservers.org

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Urban Poor hit hardest by Climate Change

greentvgreentv

Published on Nov 23, 2013

Poor urban dwellers are already suffering from the impacts of climate change, and their plight is likely to get worse. As the UN climate change talks in Warsaw enter their final stages, delegates heard how people living in slums all over the world are fed up waiting for political decisions, and taking action themselves through the “Momentum for Change” initiative.

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Reliable Power for New York City

greentvgreentv

Published on Dec 26, 2013

HVDC technology offers an excellent opportunity to support and improve the power supply for today’s growing and increasingly energy-hungry metropolitan areas. One example is New York: Solutions from Siemens are contributing to keeping the city’s power-supply infrastructure stronger and more reliable in the face of growing demand.

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Taking Root The Vision of Wangari Maathai

Juan Varni

Published on Nov 10, 2012

Wangari Maathai Sees the Forest for the Trees

http://video.pbs.org/video/1818141671/

• Aired: 03/22/2011
• 03:04
• Rating: TV-PG

How does the simple act of planting trees lead to winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Ask Wangari Maathai of Kenya. In 1977, she suggested rural women plant trees to address problems stemming from a degraded environment. Under her leadership, their tree-planting grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment and to promote democracy, earning Maathai the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

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Nobel Peace Prize, Right Livelihood Winner Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) | Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/29/nobel_peace_prize_right_livelihood_winner
The Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died on Sunday at the age of 71 after a battle with cancer. In 1977, she spearheaded the struggle against state-backed deforestation in Kenya and founded the Green Belt Movement, which has planted tens of millions of trees in the country. She has also been an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and democratic development. In 1984 ,she won the Right Livelihood Award. Twenty years later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first African woman to do so. We air excerpts of her 2009 interview on Democracy Now! and of her 2004 speech when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. [includes rush transcript]

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai: If US Moves Forward on Climate Change, Rest of World Will Follow | Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/25/nobel_peace_laureate_wangari_maathai_if
A new overview of research on global warming has found climate change is happening faster and on a broader scale than scientists projected in 2007. The new findings come in a week where the issue of global warming is at the fore with a one-day UN summit on climate change and the G-20 in Pittsburgh. We speak with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, who was chosen to speak on behalf of international civil society at the UN summit.

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Edward Snowden warns about loss of privacy in Christmas message

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/dec/25/edward-snowden-christmas-message-video

Edward Snowden, the man who revealed extensive details of electronic surveillance by American, Australian and British spy agencies, warns of the dangers posed by mass surveillance in an alternative Christmas message broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK. The two-minute video is believed to have been recorded in Moscow, where Snowden has been granted temporary asylum.

• Source: Reuters/Channel 4
• Length: 1min 41sec
• theguardian.com
• Wednesday 25 December 2013

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Media

Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

• Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York

• The Observer, Saturday 21 February 2004 20.33 EST

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

‘Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,’ concludes the Pentagon analysis. ‘Once again, warfare would define human life.’

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will ‘break economies’ | Nafeez Ahmed

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/23/british-petroleum-geologist-peak-oil-break-economy-recession
Industry expert warns of grim future of ‘recession’ driven ‘resource wars’ at University College London lecture

A former BP geologist speaks out on the danger of peak oil. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of “continuous recession” and increased risk of conflict and hunger.

At a lecture on ‘Geohazards’ earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.

Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that “peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves.” Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year:

“We need new production equal to a new Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply… New discoveries have not matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the amount we can recover – but production is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum].”

Dr. Miller, who prepared annual in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007, refers to this as the “ATM problem” – “more money, but still limited daily withdrawals.” As a consequence: “Production of conventional liquid oil has been flat since 2008. Growth in liquid supply since then has been largely of natural gas liquids [NGL]- ethane, propane, butane, pentane – and oil-sand bitumen.”

Dr. Miller is co-editor of a special edition of the prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, published this month on the future of oil supply. In an introductory paper co-authored with Dr. Steve R. Sorrel, co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, they argue that among oil industry experts “there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil has passed and that we are entering a new and very different phase.” They endorse the conservative conclusions of an extensive earlier study by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC):

….(read more).

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change

• Author: ‘I call it the climate-change counter movement’
• Study focuses on groups opposing US political action
theguardian.com, Friday 20 December 2013 14.58 EST

A coal fired plant. Photograph: John Giles/PA

Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.

The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.

“I call it the climate-change counter movement,” said the author of the study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle. “It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort.”

Brulle’s study, published on Friday in the journal Climatic Change, offers the most definitive exposure to date of the political and financial forces blocking American action on climate change. Still, there are big gaps.

….(read more).

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120