abcnews.go.com - October 24th, 2013 - Kevin Begos

Some of the largest pension funds in the U.S. and the world are worried that major fossil fuel companies may not be as profitable in the future because of efforts to limit climate change, and they want details on how the firms will manage a long-term shift to cleaner energy sources.

In a statement released Thursday, leaders of 70 funds said they're asking 45 of the world's top oil, gas, coal and electric power companies to do detailed assessments of how efforts to control climate change could impact their businesses.

"Institutional investors must think over the long term, which means that we must take environmental risks into consideration when we make investments," New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told The Associated Press in a statement.

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Image: 7th Annual TIDES TechnologyField Demonstration

flickr.com - October 1-4th, 2013

In the link below are images from the 7th Annual TIDES Technology Field Demonstration.

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A man walks through flooded streets in Hoboken, New Jersey, after Superstorm Sandy | Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As subsidized rates of federal flood insurance rise, property owners along the coasts get angry. But we need insurance that reflects the risks of a changing planet

time.com - by Bryan Walsh - October 1, 2013

Thousands of homeowners in flood-prone parts of the country are going to be in for a rude awakening.  On Oct. 1, new changes to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which offers government-subsidized policies for households and businesses threatened by floods, mean that businesses in flood zones and homes that have been severely or repeatedly flooded will start going up 25% a year until rates reach levels that would reflect the actual risk from flooding. (Higher rates for second or vacation homes went into effect at the start of 2013.) That means that property owners in flood-prone areas who might have once been paying around $500 a year—rates that were well below what the market would charge, given the threat from flooding—will go up by thousands of dollars over the next decade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0-J8NGM_v4

http://climaterealityproject.org

Climate Reality Project Chairman Al Gore explores successful social movements though history.

The Climate Reality Project, founded and chaired by former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore, is dedicated to unleashing a global cultural movement demanding action on the climate crisis. Despite overwhelming international scientific consensus on climate change, the global community still lacks the resolve to implement meaningful solutions. The Climate Reality Project exists to forge an unwavering bedrock of impassioned support necessary for urgent action. With that foundation, together we will ignite the moral courage in our leaders to solve the climate crisis.

submitted by Albert Gomez

realclimate.org

RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science. All posts are signed by the author(s), except ‘group’ posts which are collective efforts from the whole team. This is a moderated forum.

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smithsonianmag.com - nationalgeographic.com - October 9, 2013

Climate change is a global problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to hit us all the same time.

If you live in Moscow, scientists estimate that your local climate will depart from the historical norm in the year 2063. In New York, that date is the year 2047. And if you happen to reside in Mexico City or Jakarta, those numbers are 2031 and 2029, respectively.

See a pattern here? These estimates, which all come from a new study published today in Nature by scientists from the University of Hawaii, reflect a concerning trend that some scientists believe will define the arrival of climate change’s effects on the planet: It’ll arrive in tropical, biodiverse areas first.

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Julio and Belinda Ramos, who were hit with a power outage, hold their eight-year-old son Charles as they stand in line to pick up food supplies at a grocery store after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

theatlanticcities.com - by Siddhartha Mahanta - October 21, 2013

In New York City, locating a bite to eat is rarely a difficult task. The city is a food paradise or, depending on your mood, a place of overwhelming glut.

But when Superstorm Sandy pummeled New York last fall, it revealed the terrifying potential for sudden food shortages.

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state.gov

Remarks - Todd D. Stern
Special Envoy for Climate Change 
Chatham House
London, United Kingdom
October 22, 2013

Thanks so much. I’m very glad to be here at this distinguished venue. I appreciate the invitation.

Today, I want to talk about the promise and challenge of developing an ambitious, durable, new international climate agreement.

We are, of course, well past the time of doubting that our climate is changing, that it is changing rapidly, and that the pace of change is accelerating. We can see that climate impacts are already large, are very likely to increase significantly, and have the potential to be fundamentally disruptive to our world and the world of our children and grandchildren.

earthjustice.org - October 18, 2013 - Doug Pflugh

It is rewarding to successfully wrap-up a case. This can be especially true when our work protects special places, preserving them for future generations. It is a pleasure to be able to point at a map and say, “Those are the places that were saved.”

The U.S. Supreme Court took action last week that did just that—endorsing an earlier conservation victory and ending the long fight over proposed oil and gas development on the doorstep of beloved public lands in the west ...

A Chevron gas station sign is pictured at one of their retain gas stations in Cardiff, California October 9, 2013. 
Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

reuters.com - by Bernard Vaughan - October 14, 2013

(Reuters) - Chevron Corp will try to convince a U.S. judge this week that a group of Ecuadorean villagers and their U.S. lawyer used bribery to win an $18 billion judgment against Chevron from a court in Ecuador, in the latest chapter in a long-running fight over pollution in the Amazon jungle.

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CLICK HERE - Wikipedia - History - Lago Agrio Oil Field

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submitted by Albert Gomez

greentechmedia.com - by Chet Lyons - October 10, 2013

Grid-Scale Energy Storage in North America 2013: Applications, Technologies and Suppliers

We are now entering the early growth stages of what will surely become a giant global industry - energy storage - which will both support and compete with conventional generation, transmission and distribution resources. The evolution of the industry will lead to new business models and the creation of new companies that make, apply and operate storage assets to help the grid work more reliably and cost-effectively, while decreasing unwanted environmental impacts.

cbsnews.com - by Rebecca Kaplan, Stephanie Condon - October 16, 2013

After 15 days of a government shutdown and on the eve of when the country was set to lose its borrowing authority, Congress passed legislation to fund the government and avert a default Wednesday night. President Obama later signed the bill, officially reopening the government and allowing federal employees to head back to work.

By a vote of 81 to 18 in the Senate and 285 to 144 in the House, the agreement, negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, was approved. It will fund the government through Jan. 15 and lift the debt ceiling through Feb. 7.

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cnn.com - by Tom Cohen - October 16, 2013

Washington (CNN) -- Senate leaders on Wednesday announced a deal to end the partial government shutdown and avoid a possible U.S. default as soon as the end of this week, and a key GOP conservative said he wouldn't try to block the measure.

bloomberg.com - by John Glover - October 14, 2013

Reneging on its debt obligations would make the U.S. the first major Western government to default since Nazi Germany 80 years ago. . .

. . . “These are generally catastrophic economic events,” said Professor Eugene N. White, an economics historian at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “There is no happy ending.”

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Video: A video report on the predicted climate shifts.

huffingtonpost.com - October 9th, 2013 - Andrew Freedman

The mean annual climate of the average location on Earth will slip past the most extreme conditions experienced during the past 150 years and into new territory by between 2047 and 2069, depending on the amount of climate-warming greenhouse gases that are emitted during the next few decades, a new study found. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, used a new index to show for the first time when the climate — which has been warming during the past century in response to manmade pollution and natural variability — will be radically different from average conditions during the 1860-2005 period.

The study shows that tropical areas, which contain the richest diversity of species on the planet as well as some of the poorest countries, will be among the first to see the climate exceed historical limits — in as little as a decade from now — which spells trouble for rainforest ecosystems and nations that have a limited capacity to adapt to rapid climate change.