The 9.7 Trillion Dollar Question | Cyclones and Climate Change |

Humanity and cyclones are no strangers to each other. Roughly 35 percent of the world’s 7 billion people are in the path of cyclones and coastal populations are expected to swell in the coming century. To understand the future damage that cyclones could inflict on ever-growing coastal cities, two researchers looked at 60 years of cyclone and economic data in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study.  You can do a lot with $9.7 trillion: buy all the real estate in Manhattan 12 times over, purchase 22 carbon copies of Apple, or an absurd quantity of apples.
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Image shows Hurricane Sandy debris & parts of destroyed houses on 11/12/2012 in Queens, N.Y.

How existing cropland could feed billions more

Date:

July 17, 2014

Source:

University of Minnesota

Summary:

Feeding a growing human population without increasing stresses on Earth's strained land and water resources may seem like an impossible challenge. But according to a new report focusing efforts to improve food systems on a few specific regions, crops and actions could make it possible to both meet the basic needs of 3 billion more people and decrease agriculture's environmental footprint. Read More:

 

 

The Planets Climate is not in the process of altering course... It has altered course.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The head of the World Bank is warning that climate change will lead to armed conflicts over shortages of food and water. On “Ann Curry Reports: Our Year of Extremes,” airing Sunday night on NBC, Curry shows us how people are witnessing the impact of rising global temperatures. Read More:

Not just the Koch brothers: New study reveals funders behind the climate change denial effort |

New study exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement and marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.
"The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming," said Brulle. "Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight -- often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians -- but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what's going on behind the scenes."
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Original Image [1938 x 1574]

Survival Guide For Climate Change Debates:

200,000 Moms | Clean Air Strong

Fighting For Our Kids' Health

Bike Share with a fresh design and energy |

~New York City

The bike helmet on her head said "Nutcase," and though this was merely the name of the Oregon company that made it, there was something wry and self-aware about Janette Sadik-Khan choosing to wear one on the streets of New York. You had to be a little unhinged and adventurous to have the big vision that Sadik-Khan, New York City's transportation commissioner, brought to this unruly madhouse of a city. Sadik-Khan expected resistance, but the tenor of anger surprised her, especially at its peak a couple of winters ago. She was grateful to the mayor for having her back. She was now philosophical about it. "I think most of the animosity was about fighting change," she said. "Challenge the status quo, and it will push right back."
 Since then Polls now showed strong public support for bike lanes and bike share—in Citi Bike's case, a 73% approval rating after four months of operation. Politicians who had once howled about bike lanes were now using the blue bikes as campaign vehicles. A city was evolving.
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6 Unforgettable Train Trips in the U.S

Train travel offers families so much more than merely an alternative to driving. The most memorable train trips deliver both fabulous scenery and a dose of Americana you just can’t appreciate through the windows of a car | Read More: Best Train Trips for Families|

First-ever real estate website designed to help high volume-inclined music-lovers |

If your college parties never received any noise complaints then there is a chance that you weren't doing college right. In any case, for some people, the inclination to blare music at deafening decibels doesn’t go away after earning a diploma. Read More:

Red Cedar Tree Study Shows That Clean Air Act Is Reducing Pollution, Improving Forests |

The research team -- which included Jesse Nippert, associate professor of biology -- spent four years studying centuries-old eastern red cedar trees, or Juniperus virginiana, in the Central Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia | Story Continues:

Mapping The Climate Change Deniers Making Our Laws |

                                                                                       This map shows where climate-denying legislators come from--and how many weather-related disasters their states have faced in the past few years.
In a post-fact era, you can be an elected official and have a remarkably flexible relationship with the truth. Take climate science: more than 97% of scientists agree that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, but conservative politicians--and more than 65% of Republicans in Congress--outdo one another to demonstrate just how little they believe in science.
While that’s not exactly news, a new project by the site Think Progress aims to put the spotlight on just who climate change deniers are and where they come from, with a map of the U.S. showing the number of climate-denying legislators per state. Read More:

Healthier Airways

The term toxic mold is sometimes used to refer to mold-related indoor air quality and health problems, such as bronchitis, asthma, coughing, wheezing and other respiratory symptoms. Exposure to significant quantities of mold spores can cause serious health issues. Read More

Sudden Allergies | When a Summer Cold Is Much More

The most common allergy triggers during the summer months are grass pollens and mold spores. In fact, mold can be more bothersome than pollen. Mold spores are everywhere and commonly outnumber pollen grains in the air even when the pollen season is at its worst. At home, the mold can be easily seen on the walls, ceilings, clothing, furniture, carpets, food and other places, if it is present. It can also flourish on equipment that we use everyday, like air conditioners. Read More |

In a War of Words, Makers of Plastic Bags Go to Court:

“Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the omnipotence of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.”
~John Burroughs, American Naturalist

The plastic bag industry filed a lawsuit against ChicoBag, a company that produces reusable bags, for exaggerating claims about the pollution caused by single-use plastic.

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Germany to phase out nuclear power..

In their White House press conference Tuesday, President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood together on topics ranging from the global economy to Libya.

Yet last week, Chancellor Merkel parted ways with the US on what had been a shared vision of how to maintain thriving economies while reducing greenhouse gases. For both nations, part of that plan had been nuclear power. For Germany, it is no longer.
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Break The Bottled Water Habit

The $14.4 billion bottled-water market has come under fire for being environmentally incorrect as those discarded plastic containers keep piling up in landfills.

Bottled water? That's so '80s! Break The Habit.

On Sale Now!

'Greener' climate prediction shows plants slow warming:

A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.
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MIT’s 3M Professor of Environmental Economics On Government Spending

Government deficit spending has been a contentious issue during this year’s U.S. mid-term election campaigns. Yet some economists believe that additional government spending in certain areas is needed to help spur growth. MIT News asked Michael Greenstone, MIT’s 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, and director of The Hamilton Group, a Washington-based public-policy organization, about America’s spending priorities. Read more:

Oceans in Peril:

"If current trends continue, the extinctions of the coming decades will be clearly visible to future geologists comparable in scale to the great extinction events in Earth's history," he wrote. "I think it will be an enigmatic extinction...Story continues:

The long-term and the short-term of Earth's Thermometer:

Putting a limit on heat-trapping emissions and encouraging the use of healthier, cleaner energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, would help us to avoid the worst potential consequences of global warming: Story continues

Green Power An Easy Win For Australia:

Australia's new leader should ramp up renewable energy use and enshrine tougher energy efficiency standards to fight global warming, leading climate scientists said on Tuesday, describing them as easy policy wins. Shelving the scheme in April led in part to a plunge in the popularity of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ahead of an election later this year. His deputy Julia Gillard took over as prime minister last week, pledging greater consensus on setting a price on carbon. Read more:

UN: Nature's diversity fast disappearing:

New York - The natural systems that support life on earth, from the Amazon forests to coral reefs, are close to the tipping point of collapse because of human activities, a new study on the global biodiversity said Monday.
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