GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up and comments on the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
- Natural disasters destabilize weak governments and exacerbate existing conflicts. With the projected (and observed) increase the number and severity in natural disaster from climate change then we are in for a rocky 21st century.
- Global warming deniers use many transparent arguments to spread misinformation. The popular one right now is that the global temperature has been flat for 15 years. Now a Republican politician is pushing the idea that the goal of the climate change conspiracy is to create a global government. This is Cold War era type paranoia.
- What are the real effects of climate change? How will your life change? Grist.org offers this sobering look at how climate change will affect our lives from beer to hiking.
- Who’s to blame for climate change? For all the climate change denial propaganda, Mother Jones and the Climate Desk offer this video explaining where greenhouse gas emissions come from.
- The price of oil is affected by war and national strife, right now the turmoil of the week is Egypt. Oil is an unstable commodity that helps create a constant up and down in our economy and stock market. Traders on Wall Street love this turmoil, just look at micro lending that takes advantage of very small changes happening every second. We need a stable economy based on creating and selling sustainable products, instead of our current finance and cheap import dependent economy that we have now.
- Tesla is poised to become biggest player in the EV market. Tesla is working on making a safe, reliable, cheap, small battery that has a range of 200 miles powering a car with a sticker price of $30,000. Paving the way for the EV economy car that any middle class person can afford. I hope they succeed!
- The growth of wind and solar energy requires improved weather analysis – better weather projection leads to better understanding of renewable power generation potential on any given day.
- “The Cloud” is not environmentally friendly. The cloud is based on enormous server farms that use a lot of energy, all hours of the day. Greater awareness about the the energy consumption from technology is a first step in conserving energy from our mobile, cloud-connected lives, just like getting in the habit of turning off lights in rooms that are not being used.
- The Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone” is growing. It’s not the only one.
- Central America has a harsh history of oil exploration; now Ecuador is caving to the pressure and pull of allowing more oil drilling.
