BBC News – California declares drought as early wildfires rage

17 January 2014 Last updated at 19:08 ET

Governor Jerry Brown warned against the drought’s danger to make wildfires worse
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The governor of California has declared a state-wide drought, urging residents to conserve water in what could be the state’s driest year on record.

The declaration by Governor Jerry Brown also means farmers will receive aid and more firefighters will be employed.

Mr Brown faced pressure to declare the drought as the state’s largest reservoirs are at record low levels.

The dry conditions have been blamed for a wildfire that destroyed five homes north-east of Los Angeles on Thursday.

In a press conference on Friday, Mr Brown called on residents to cut back “at least 20%” on their water usage but said the move was voluntary.

“We can’t make it rain, but we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens,” Mr Brown said in a statement.

Receding water lines can be seen on waterways and reservoirs across the state

He added the declaration was a way to focus Californians on how serious the drought conditions were.

“We are in a unprecedented, very serious situation that people should pause and reflect on how dependent we are on the rain, nature and one other,” he said on CNN.

….(read more).

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Beware of the Military Industrial Complex!

thomhartmann

Published on Jan 17, 2014

Thom Hartmann shares clips from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Military Industrial Complex” speech.

If you liked this clip of The Thom Hartmann Program, please do us a big favor and share it with your friends… and hit that “like” button!

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Senator Sherrod Brown on the Trans Pacific Partnership

thomhartmann

Published on Jan 17, 2014

If you liked this clip of The Thom Hartmann Program, please do us a big favor and share it with your friends… and hit that “like” button!

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MITx: 12.340x: Global Warming Science | edX

edX

 Published on Oct 22, 2013

Global Warming Science
An introduction to the physics of the climate system and the basic science underpinning discussions of anthropogenic climate change.

Register for Global Warming Science from MITx at http://edx.org/courses.

ABOUT THIS COURSE
12.340x introduces the basic science underpinning our knowledge of the climate system, how climate has changed in the past, and how it may change in the future. The course focuses on the fundamental energy balance in the climate system, between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation, and how this balance is affected by greenhouse gases. We will also discuss physical processes that shape the climate, such as atmospheric and oceanic convection and large-scale circulation, solar variability, orbital mechanics, and aerosols, as well as the evidence for past and present climate change. We will discuss climate models of varying degrees of complexity, and you will be able to run a model of a single column of the Earth’s atmosphere, which includes many of the important elements of simulating climate change. Together, this range of topics forms the scientific basis for our understanding of anthropogenic (human-influenced) climate change.

We will not cover issues regarding policy responses to climate change. Rather, Global Warming Science is designed to be a strictly scientific introduction to this important topic.

12.340x is geared toward students with some mathematical and scientific background, but does not require any prior knowledge of climate or atmospheric science. See the prerequisites section for more details.

Course Structure
The course will be divided into weekly sections which will be released sequentially. Each section will include a set of lecture videos and practice exercises that students will be expected to work through. Additional background readings may be assigned, all of which will be sourced from material freely available online. The course will be graded based on weekly online problem sets, as well as an online final exam.

https://www.edx.org/course/mitx/mitx-12-340x-global-warming-science-1244

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EPA Head Unable to Defend President’s Warming Claims While Imposing Job-Crushing Climate Regs

SenatorSessions

Published on Jan 16, 2014

In a hearing today on climate regulation, Senator Sessions pressed EPA administrator Gina McCarthy to support the President’s statements on warming which are used to justify massive proposed administrative actions which would hurt millions of workers. McCarthy proved unable and unwilling to support the President’s claims despite being the central figure crafting and implementing EPA regulations.

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Murrow vs. McCarthy

dabell43

Uploaded on Oct 7, 2008

From the CBC documentary series, “Dawn of the Eye.”

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Coal Industry’s Loss is Fracking Industry’s Gain

TheRealNew

Published on Jan 17, 2014

New EPA rules for power plants limiting carbon do nothing to limit other greenhouse gas emissions

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Will a Warmer World be a Sicker World? The Ecology of Global Change and infectious Disease

YaleUniversity

Published on Jan 17, 2014

Kevin Lafferty is an ecologist with the US Geological Survey. He is also adjunct faculty at UC Santa Barbara where he helps run the ecological parasitology research group.

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Global Environmental Justice: A public ecology of the carbon economy

YaleUniversity

Published on Jan 17, 2014

Tracey Osborne is Assistant Professor in the School of Geography and Development and Director of the Public Political Ecology Lab at the University of Arizona. Her research investigates the political ecology of environmental markets, particularly carbon markets, and their implications for the lives and livelihoods of forest communities in the Global South. Specifically, she explores the intersection of carbon markets, development, and agrarian change as they relate to forestry-based carbon initiatives in Mexico. She received her PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Going Local: Making Climate Assessments More Relevant for Decision Makers In New England

YaleUniversity

Published on Jan 17, 2014

Cameron Wake is a research associate professor in climatology at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire. He also has a joint appointment in the UNH Department of Earth Sciences and is the Josephine A. Lamprey Fellow in Climate and Sustainability at the UNH Sustainability Institute. Cameron leads a research program investigating regional climate and environmental change through the analysis of ice cores, instrumental data, and phenological records, with a focus on the northeast United States, the Arctic, and central Asia. His collaborative research on several regional climate assessments in the northeast United States has been shared with state and federal agencies and representatives, has been covered widely in the media, and has been cited by several as motivation for policy action. He is an author on over 70 papers published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and dozens of reports, and has provided hundreds of interviews for state, regional and national media.

– See more at: http://climate.yale.edu/event/tba-3#s…

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