Renewable Energy Isn’t Just Cutting Costs, It’s Saving Lives

Renewable Energy Isn't Just Cutting Costs, It's Saving Lives

Renewable energy is very much in the limelight these days, as country after country experience how these sources can keep at par with fossil fuels. Various places have shown how renewables are capable of supplying a huge chunk of their electricity demand. Renewables do so much more, though, as a recent study published in the journal Nature Energy now shows. Analyzing the impact of solar and wind energy in the U.S, the paper’s authors focused on how these renewables have saved both lives and money during a nine-year period (from 2007 to 2015). By reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increased dependence in solar and wind energy sources have improved air quality in the U.S., at a rate that varies between region to region.

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By 2100, 2 Out of 3 Europeans Will be Impacted by Weather Disasters

Weather Disaster to Impact 2 Out of 3 Europeans_women of green

By the end of the century, two out of three people living in Europe will be affected by heat waves, coastal floods and other weather-related disasters, largely due to global warming and climate change, according to a study published earlier this month in the journal Lancet Planetary Health. That’s 350 million people in 31 countries subjected to an increased risk of death and health hazards. Overall, weather-related disasters are expected to cause 152,000 deaths a year in Europe between 2071 and 2100, jumping from 3,000 weather disaster-related deaths per year between 1981 and 2010.

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Iceberg About the Size of Delaware Breaks off Antarctica

One of the largest icebergs ever recorded has broken off from an ice shelf in western Antarctica, researchers said last Wednesday. The iceberg — about the size of Delaware and weighing an estimated 1.12 trillion tons — finally ripped free sometime between Monday and Wednesday, scientists at the University of Swansea in Britain. Researchers said they were not immediately aware the calving is linked to human-induced climate change. Since the ice shelf was already in the ocean and held a relatively small amount of land ice, the potential melting of the freed iceberg is not expected to have an immediate effect on the sea level.

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Arctic Stronghold of World’s Seeds Flooded After Permafrost Melts

Svalbard Global Seed Vault is Flooded_Women of Gree

No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change. It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel. The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”. But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world’s hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. “It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that,” said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault. […]

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Why Women Need to Be Leading on Climate Change Around the World

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Women who aim for high political office often face plenty of challenges along the way. As a result, “they have an ability to resist and lead which is undoubtedly stronger than that of most men with a typical career path,” says Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. That hardiness is coming in handy as many of the world’s cities – a growing number of them led by women – move to take the lead in adopting clean energy, adapting to climate threats and otherwise battling climate change. Women, “have the courage to bring about those changes,” said Hidalgo, Paris’ first woman mayor and the first female leader of a global network of more than 80 cities leading on climate action. In two years, the number of women in charge of large cities that are taking the lead on climate change has risen from four to 16, according to C40 Cities, which is organizing a conference for women leaders in New York.

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Senators Introduce 100% Clean Energy by 2050 Bill

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Four senators, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on April 27 introduced a bill that would transition the U.S. to 100% clean energy by 2050. Sanders, alongside Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Senator Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., created the legislation amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to unwind former President Barack Obama’s climate protections. The “100 by ’50 Act,” lays out a roadmap for the transition, and is the first bill introduced in Congress that envisions a 100% fossil fuel free U.S., according to a news release from Merkley’s office.

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Renewable Energy is Expanding So Fast, Power Grid Infrastructure Can’t Keep Up

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Renewable energy is gaining ground. In some places, though, it may be gaining too much too fast. The infrastructure isn’t able to handle the large amounts of added energy from renewables, in countries like China and Germany. Providing adequate energy has always presented challenges. With the new technologies that are available today, new opportunities, as well as new difficulties, arise. Although the transition may seem problematic, the benefits are well worth it. Consumers can help move the transition forward by learning more about renewables and purchasing renewable energy when possible. As a country and a planet, we need to invest in new technologies, work to increase grid flexibility and be open to new ideas if we are to navigate the move to a more renewable energy generation mix smoothly.

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Music professor receives patent to help fight bark beetles ravaging Western forests

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UC Santa Cruz music professor David Dunn has joined forces with two forest scientists from Northern Arizona University to combat an insect infestation that is killing millions of trees throughout the West. They are applying the results of nearly a decade of acoustic research in an unconventional collaborative effort to stop bark beetles from tunneling through the living tissue of weakened, drought-stressed pine trees. The trio has now received a patent for a device that uses sound as a targeted sonic weapon to disrupt the feeding, communication, reproduction, and various other essential behaviors of the insects.

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Spring Has Arrived 20 Days Early in Parts of the U.S. — According to Plants and Trees

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According to the National Phenology Network (NPN), a biological research organization that works with the US Geological Survey to track the cyclical behavior of plant life across the country, this year has been marked by an unusually warm winter, which has led plants to begin spring rhythms very early. With each new leaf index map the NPN releases, the region of the country that’s experiencing a premature spring has grown including Maryland and Virginia — spring is already here. On the most recent one, released, Monday, that region includes New York.

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How to Keep Environmentalism Alive in 2017

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Environmentalism has taken many different forms over the years. Recently, say the past decade or so, it’s been largely relaxed and passive. Now however, that’s changed in the U.S. as there’s a new administration in town that doesn’t have the same views on environmentalism and climate change as did the previous administration. No matter where you stand on politics, the last eight years were progress for our planet but they weren’t good enough. If you’re not sure where to begin to keep environmentalism alive in 2017, here are plenty of options.

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