CLICK HERE - HURRICANES: A BIT STRONGER, A BIT SLOWER, AND A LOT WETTER IN A WARMER CLIMATE

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Changes in Hurricanes from a 13-Yr Convection-Permitting Pseudo–Global Warming Simulation

caribbean360.com - May 23, 2018

American scientists studying past and future weather patterns have warned hurricane conditions could get bigger, stronger and wetter.

Researchers at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have published a detailed analysis of how 22 recent hurricanes would change if they instead formed near the end of this century. And while each storm’s transformation would be unique, on balance, the hurricanes would become a little stronger, a little slower moving, and a lot wetter.

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Dunlaw Wind Farm at Soutra Hill North in the Scottish Borders. The US president has claimed that climate action is too costly. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Almost all nations would benefit economically from keeping global warming to 1.5C, a new study indicates

CLICK HERE - ABSTRACT - Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH LETTER - Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets

theguardian.com - by Damian Carrington - May 23, 2018

Florida Power & Light

miaminewtimes.com - by Jerry Iannelli - May 2, 2018

In the long, hot, powerless days after Hurricane Irma, Miamians grew all sorts of irate at Florida Power & Light, South Florida's largest electricity company. After sweltering for more than a week without power, a group of sweaty Miami-area residents sued FPL last year over the widespread outages after the storm.

Despite the fact that FPL says it spent more than $3 billion hardening its power grid after Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005, 4.4 million of the company's 4.9 million customers (about 90 percent) lost power during last year's hurricane despite the fact that Miami ended up avoiding sustained hurricane-force winds. In their class-action lawsuit against FPL, filed in county court September 26, the residents alleged the company misspent those storm-hardening funds.

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A new study found that hurricanes intensify more quickly now than they did 30 years ago. Hurricanes from 2017 like Irma (center), and Jose (right) are examples of these types of hurricanes. Hurricane Katia is seen on the left.  (Photo: NOAA)

usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - May 10, 2018

With the start of hurricane season just three weeks away — and memory of last year's disastrous storms still fresh — scientists reported that powerful hurricanes are strengthening faster than they did 30 years ago.

Four of the monster hurricanes last year (Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria) all intensified rapidly — when the maximum wind speed increases at least 29 mph within 24 hours . . .

 . . . According to a study out this week, the main cause appears to be a natural climate phenomenon that warms the seawater where hurricanes typically intensify in the Atlantic.

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submitted by David McDougal

After a heavy rain in August, pedestrians wade across flooded streets in Miami’s Brickell area of Miami. Carl Juste

miamiherald.com - by JOEY FLECHAS AND ALEX HARRIS - May 10, 2018

Facing strong opposition from climate-change groups, Miami on Thursday backed down from a change critics said would undermine the city's quest to position itself as the shining example of how a city should prepare for climate change.

Multiple commissioners and a host of activists were worried a change to the city's leadership structure could send the public and other governments the wrong message about how seriously the city is taking climate change. They feared that high-level planning decisions and big-ticket projects across the city wouldn't get the necessary input from the staffers with expertise.

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submitted by Krae Van Sickle

Figure 1: Distribution-scale solar costs more than wholesale power, but it costs less if you fairly value all benefits

rmi.org - by Titiaan Palazzi Thomas Koch Blank - May 1, 2018

“New Record Set for World’s Cheapest Solar.” A headline like this makes for great social media fodder. The downward trend in renewables prices is fantastic—it’s the most important driver for the growth of solar and wind energy.

However, when your business or utility is comparing different energy projects, looking at cost alone is not enough. Even energy projects at very low costs can be “out of the money” if the value created by a project is less than its cost.

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A transmission tower and downed lines in the mountainous terrain of eastern Puerto Rico. Workers from the island and throughout the United States have worked to restore power after Hurricanes Irma and Maria last September.

It took months to restore electricity in Puerto Rico after hurricanes dealt a one-two punch. Many homes are still without power, and the system’s future is far from certain.

nytimes.com - by JAMES GLANZ and FRANCES ROBLES - Photographs by TODD HEISLER - May 6, 2018

 . . . After Maria and the hurricane that preceded it, called Irma, Puerto Rico all but slipped from the modern era . . .

 . . . an examination of the power grid’s reconstruction — based on a review of hundreds of documents and interviews with dozens of public officials, utility experts and citizens across the island — shows how a series of decisions by federal and Puerto Rican authorities together sent the effort reeling on a course that would take months to correct. The human and economic damage wrought by all that time without power may be irreparable.

(Photo: Getty Images)

CLICK HERE - Scripps Institute of Oceanography - CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE HITS RECORD HIGH MONTHLY AVERAGE

usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - May 4, 2018

Carbon dioxide — the gas scientists say is most responsible for global warming — reached its highest level in recorded history last month, at 410 parts per million.

This amount is highest in at least the past 800,000 years, according to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels had fluctuated over the millennia but had never exceeded 300 parts per million.

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The Everglades wilderness has already been reduced by half by the construction of dams and canals and to accommodate a booming population. Photograph: Getty Images

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - SE Saline Everglades Transgressive Sedimentation in Response to Historic Acceleration in Sea-Level Rise: A Viable Marker for the Base of the Anthropocene?

The ‘river of grass’ wilderness and coastal communities are in peril, with the buffer coastal ecosystems on a ‘death march’ inland

theguardian.com - by Oliver Milman - May 2, 2018

Florida’s mangroves have been forced into a hasty retreat by sea level rise and now face being drowned, imperiling coastal communities and the prized Everglades wetlands, researchers have found.

Mangroves in south-east Florida in an area studied by the researchers have been on a “death march” inland as they edge away from the swelling ocean but have now hit a manmade levee and are likely to be submerged by water within 30 years, according to the Florida International University analysis.

sciencedaily.com - April 30, 2018

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population - https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032047 - Circulation. 2018;CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032047

Summary:  Maintaining five healthy habits -- eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy body weight, not drinking too much alcohol, and not smoking -- during adulthood may add more than a decade to life expectancy, according to a new study.

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CLICK HERE - These 5 healthy habits could help you live a decade longer, study suggests

CLICK HERE - Healthy lifestyle may prolong life expectancy in US adults

DC just proposed a first-of-its-kind regulatory body—and utilities should pay close attention.

CLICK HERE - Joint Release: Councilmembers Allen and Cheh to introduce bill modernizing DC’s energy grid

icf.com - by Steve Fine and Matt Robison - April 17, 2018

Two Washington, D.C. City Council members proposed a remarkable change in utility regulation last week. Mary Cheh and Charles Allen introduced a bill to create a Distributed Energy Resource Authority (DER Authority): a first-of-its-kind regulatory body that would be empowered to undertake traditional utility planning functions, and with a specific mandate to assess any proposed utility grid investment greater than $25 million and open it up to competitive bids.

Volunteers with Koncious Contractors remove tree branches from a Little Havana home. After Hurricane Irma, many South Florida community groups deployed volunteers to low-income and disabled people with recovery.  NADEGE GREEN / WLRN

wlrn.org - by KATE STEIN & ALEXANDER GONZALEZ - April 23, 2018

Several South Florida nonprofits are launching five meetings to ensure equality in hurricane recovery efforts, continuing work that began after Hurricane Irma.

After the storm, some elderly people went days without ice or water. Some students who rely on free school lunches didn't have a way to eat. Volunteers and community groups stepped up to host barbecues, deliver supplies and help with tree removal.

Now the groups want to create preparedness plans that specifically meet the needs of low-income neighborhoods. They also want to push for more accountability from elected officials.

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CLICK HERE - GreenPrint: Our Design for a Sustainable Future (200 page .PDF report)

CLICK HERE - Miami-Dade Climate Change Action Plan (20 page .PDF report)

miamidade.gov

Miami-Dade County is pleased to share with you GreenPrint: Our Design for a Sustainable Future. The plans development was a fully collaborative process among the many diverse stakeholders of our community: County staff, community groups, experts from the business community and academia, and a wide range of individual Miami-Dade residents. During the course of the year, nearly 100 public meetings were held, and approximately 360 new and existing initiatives were evaluated.

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cnn.com - by John D. Sutter - additional reporting by Cristian Arroyo - photograph by Jayme Gershen for CNN - April 20, 2018

With no running water, no power and no school for her kids, Carmen "Millie" Santiago fled Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean last fall. Like thousands of evacuees, she landed here in central Florida. And, like hundreds, she's still stuck in a motel.

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At a walkout and rally in Washington Square Park on Friday, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, students called for an end to gun violence. Credit Holly Pickett for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Sarah Maslin Nir - April 20, 2018

Most of them were not yet born when students shot a dozen people to death inside Columbine High School in Colorado, an atrocity that sparked a national debate over guns exactly 19 years ago.

But on Friday, on the anniversary of the April 20, 1999, shooting, the several thousand high school students who walked out of schools across the city and beyond to rally against guns in Manhattan said they felt they lived in a world of near-constant Columbines.

The teenagers spoke angrily of active shooter drills since kindergarten, of backpack and locker searches, of mock lockdowns sitting in silence in classrooms with the lights turned out, as they gathered in protest in Washington Square Park. And they spoke of the numbing barrage of school shootings in America — by some counts more than 200 in the past two decades.