linkstream2 microblog

What Happens When a #Superstorm Hits DC?
http://www.RollingStone.com/politics/news/what-happens-when-a-superstorm-hits-dc-w504341Storms estimated at 1/100yr in ’50 now could be 1/3yr. Are coastal areas prepared?

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“A report compiled in part by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and published in 2013 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, included a study that found that increases in sea-level rise related to climate change have
significantly increased the probability of a Sandy-level flood as compared to 1950. … Another paper, published in 2012 in the journal Nature Climate Change, determined that by the end of the century what is presently considered a 100-year storm-surge flood in New York could actually be occurring as frequently as once every three years. … “Other nations are well aware of this changed risk regime,…In Britain, the Thames Barrier, completed in 1982, presently protects London against a one-in-1,000-year flood, … The Dutch design levees and regulations to protect their cities against a one-in-10,000-year flood, and are considering fixes that would ensure protection against a one-in-100,000-year flood.
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#Climatechange linked to…allergies, #asthma
http://www.USAToday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/30/climate-change-allergies-asthma/2163893/ Pollen up from a longer season; monitoring done w/o pay by volunteers

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“All of these things are likely affecting us,” says the CDC’s Akinbami, but it’s unclear which factors — chemicals, hygiene, pollen — have the most impact or what their relationship is to each other. She says the first two sensitize people and the third triggers their sensitivity.

On the pollen front alone, there are large gaps in the data, says the CDC’s Luber, noting pollen counts are not done on weekends and don’t cover every state. There’s not a single pollen-counting station in Alaska, Hawaii or 16 other U.S. states.

In fact, the 76 U.S. stations (plus one in Puerto Rico) are run by volunteers trained and certified by the National Allergy Bureau, part of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), a private organization that promotes research and treatment.

“There’s no federal funding,” says Linda Ford, an allergist who volunteers to do the count for the Omaha area as a way to help her patients. “There is no automated service for this,” she says, adding it can take as long as two or three hours.”
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Stop buying organic food if you…want to save the planet https://www.NewScientist.com/article/mg23231022-900-stop-buying-organic-food-if-you-really-want-to-save-the-planet/ Argues it’s not #energy efficient & bad for the #climate
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23231022-900-stop-buying-organic-food-if-you-really-want-to-save-the-planet/

Beyond #batteries
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230990-500-beyond-batteries-this-technology-could-revolutionise-energy/amp/ Using capacitors to store short-term needs reduces wear on
conventional cells & boosts performance

When a country melts
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/greenland-is-melting Calving of Greenland’s icesheets portends >3′ rise in sea level. Has this been set into motion?

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“I first visited the Greenland ice sheet in the summer of 2001. At that time, vivid illustrations of climate change were hard to come by. Now they’re everywhere—in the flooded streets of Florida and South Carolina, in the beetle-infested forests of Colorado and Montana, in the too warm waters of the Mid-Atlantic and the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, in the mounds of dead mussels that washed up this summer on the coast of Long Island and the piles of dead fish that coated the banks of the Yellowstone River.

But the problem with global warming—and the reason it continues to resist illustration, even as the streets flood and the forests die and the mussels rot on the shores—is that experience is an inadequate guide to what’s going on. The climate operates on a time delay. When carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, it takes decades—in a technical sense, millennia—for the earth to equilibrate. This summer’s fish kill was a product of warming that had become inevitable twenty or thirty years ago, and the warming that’s being locked in today won’t be fully felt until today’s toddlers reach middle age. In effect, we are living in the climate of the past, but already we’ve determined the climate’s future.

Global warming’s back-loaded temporality makes all the warnings—from scientists, government agencies, and, especially, journalists—seem hysterical, Cassandra-like—Ototototoi!—even when they are understated. Once feedbacks take over, the climate can change quickly, and it can change radically. At the end of the last ice age, during an event known as meltwater pulse 1A, sea levels rose at the rate of more than a foot a decade. It’s likely that the “floodgates” are already open, and that large sections of Greenland and Antarctica are fated to melt. It’s just the ice in front of us that’s still frozen.”
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When a country melts
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/greenland-is-melting Calving of Greenland’s icesheets portends >3′ rise in sea level. Has this been set into motion?

.@Solar_Puff http://www.Solight-Design.com/product/ Neat cubes that store the day’s sunlight for light during the night. Designed w/ a social angle.

an update on kerosene storm lamps

Breathtaking http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21702743-air-quality-indices-make-pollution-seem-less-bad-it-breathtaking Air quality in big cities may cut ~1 year from life expectancy. London significantly worse than NYC

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“It was here that the consumer could make a difference: “ ’Turn your thermostat down’ is, by my reckoning, the single best piece of advice you can give someone,” he told an interviewer. “So is ‘fly less’ and ‘drive less’. But hybrid cars and home windmills are just greenwash.”

David MacKay (with energy-efficient bicycle): ‘I love renewables, but I’m also pro-arithmetic’ Credit: Graham Turner
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In July 2015 MacKay was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, for which he underwent chemotherapy, a process he documented on a blog, “Everything is Connected”.

On April 10, just four days before his death, he posted an “open letter” to the directors of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge in which he wrote: “The hospital is a great one, the staff are wonderful, and I’m grateful for everything the NHS does for me here. But I do have just one impassioned question and plea… Why oh why oh why does [the hospital] not have any semblance of intelligent thermal environmental control?””
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/04/15/professor-sir-david-mackay-physicist–obituary/

Obit quotes him days before his death: “Why oh why…does [the hospital] not have any…intelligent thermal…control?”

http://www.ambientdevices.com/

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Ambient Devices is the leading provider of displays and systems that deliver instant, effortless access to information at a glance. Ambient’s energy products, including the Energy Orb and new Energy Joule
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