What Miami-Dade County is doing about Zika

E120, e130, public health,

News Wrap: Obama renews case for TPP; more DNC resignations

E120, e130,

The facts behind Trump’s comments on Russia and Ukraine

E120, e130,

Obama: Donald Trump ‘is unfit to serve as president’

E120, e130,

Obama’s final push for TPP

E120, e130,

Clive Hamilton on climate engineering: The Return of Dr Strangelove, ANU Aug 2010

ANU TV

Uploaded on Aug 4, 2010

Professor Clive Hamilton discusses the various ideas floated in the area of climate engineering in a video recorded at The Australian National University on 4 August 2010.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr Strangelove was a mad scientist whose character was modelled on Dr Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb”. In the 1990s, Teller and his colleague at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lowell Wood (a weapons researcher nicknamed “Dr Evil”), were among the first to advocate climate engineering. This scheme aimed to transform the chemical composition of the Earth’s atmosphere in order to offset global warming. Taking control of the weather sounds like science fiction, but there is now a powerful alliance of scientists and venture capitalists backing it. The public is being kept in the dark, but with severe climate disruption now inevitable, the climate engineers may well succeed in their mission.

Professor Clive Hamilton is professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, attached to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at The Australian National University. For many years he was the executive director of the Australia Institute, a think tank he founded. He has written a number of bestselling books including Growth Fetish, Affluenza (with Richard Denniss) and The Freedom Paradox. His latest book, Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change, was published in March by Allen & Unwin (www.clivehamilton.net.au)

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

MegaStructures – Ultimate Oil Sands Mine (National Geographic Documentary)

MSFTV3

Published on Jul 10, 2015

MegaStructures – Ultimate Oil Sands Mine (National Geographic Documentary)
MegaStructures – Ultimate Oil Sands Mine
MegaStructures (National Geographic Documentary)
MegaStructures

Our YouTube channel features full documentary films as well as educational television series.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

A nuclear fix for warming: Worth it? – Yale Climate Connections

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 By Bruce Lieberman

Nuclear energy’s obituary has been in the works for decades.

Some back readiness to expand nuclear power, if only as last resort in warming planet. Pros and cons of nuclear energy in context of climate change.

And predictions of a nuclear decline were bolstered in June, when Pacific Gas & Electric in California announced its plans to close the state’s last operating nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

The decision comes at a time of expanding renewable energy in California, slowing electricity demand and, as The New York Times reported June 21, “after years of public pressure to close the plant … because of safety concerns over its location, near several faulty lines, and its use of ocean water for cooling.”

But elsewhere, the industry is showing signs of life – and support from a small group of climate scientists who believe nuclear must be considered as a possible tool to cut carbon emissions, given what they see as the gravity of excessive warming.

On June 3, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s new $4.7 billion nuclear power plant, Watts Bar Unit 2, came online. The 1,150-megawatt reactor was the first nuclear power plant in the nation to switch on since 1996.

Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has marshaled the Energy Department to find ways to preserve nuclear power’s role in electricity generation as the nation strives toward a less carbon-intensive economy. “We’re supposed to be adding zero-carbon sources, not subtracting,” he said at a May symposium the department convened to explore ways to help strengthen the nuclear industry.

Policy experts, climate scientists, and others remain divided over whether nuclear should have a future in a global energy mix aimed at mitigating climate changes.

In late 2015, a small dust-up played out at The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. when Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes, who has written extensively about the politics and vested interests related to climate change, criticized climate scientists who had earlier argued in the paper that nuclear power is essential if the globe is to take decarbonization seriously. Those scientists, James Hansen, Kerry Emmanuel, Ken Caldeira, and Tom Wigley, argued that in the wake of the December 2015 Paris climate accords, nuclear energy – particularly next-generation “closed fuel cycle” systems that reprocess spent fuel – shows real promise for addressing the intermittency challenge of renewable sources of energy. The group called for “an accelerated deployment of nuclear reactors” – as many as 115 reactors globally between now and 2050. “Nuclear will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them,” the scientists wrote.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Nuclear

Helmut Koester Memorial Service

Harvard Divinity School

Published on Aug 1, 2016

Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Emeritus, passed away on New Year’s Day, 2016, at age 89.

Koester was a leading scholar in the history of Christianity, New Testament exegesis and theology, the religions of the ancient Roman world, and archeology.

HDS faculty and friends remembered Professor Koester during a memorial service on May 6, 2016.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice