- What a horrifying thought while we are still reeling from the massive Gulf spill! And I never knew there were “ice control companies”- did you? Creating jobs to manage disasters really doesn’t qualify as green jobs, but green jobs can help prevent the need to manage disasters.  - Editor

Greenland’s giant island of ice could pose threat to offshore platforms, shipping
It’s slowly drifting across Arctic waters, an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan that broke off from a glacier in Greenland over the weekend.
Potentially in the path of this unstoppable giant are oil platforms and shipping lanes- and any collision could do untold damage. “It’s so big that you can’t prevent it from drifting. You can’t stop it,” said Jon-Ove Methlie Hagen, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo. Few images can capture the world’s climate fears like a 100 square mile (260 sq. kilometre) chunk of ice breaking off Greenland’s vast ice sheet. One Massachusetts Congressman has suggested, with presumed sarcasm, that it serve as a home for climate skeptics. Large enough to threaten Canada’s offshore platforms in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Wohlleben said “iceberg control companies” can redirect smaller icebergs, by towing them or spraying them with water cannons. “I don’t think they could do with an iceberg that large,” she said. “They would have to physically move the rig.”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/breakingnews/greenlands-giant-island-of-ice-could-pose-threat-to-offshore-platforms-shipping-100369689.html

-  Cutting funding for renewable energy by more than half while the Senate voted against proposed cuts to oil and gas subsidies verges on insanity. Doesn’t anyone in D.C. have children? - Editor

To help pay for the aid bill, lawmakers cut $1.5 billion from the Department of Energy’s renewable energy loan guarantee program. It’s the second time in roughly a year that Congress has raided the program to fund other priorities. Last summer, lawmakers cut $2 billion from the Dept. of Energy’s renewable energy loan account to extend the highly popular Cash for Clunkers program. Congress has not repaid the agency that $2 billion, despite frequent promises. Taken together, the cuts have whittled the program’s budget down to $2.5 billion, less than half the $6 billion Congress appropriated in early 2009.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/08/11/renewable-energy-backers-wince-as-congress-raids-doe-coffers/

- This important concept can help you explain extreme events to others. - Editor
Frozen jet stream links Pakistan floods, Russian fires
Raging wildfires in western Russia and diluvial rains over northern Pakistan- it now seems that these two apparently disconnected events have a common cause. According to meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere, unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame. As a result, weather systems sat still. Temperatures rocketed and rainfall reached extremes. In recent weeks, meteorologists have noticed a change in the jet stream’s normal pattern. Its waves normally shift east, dragging weather systems along with it. But in mid-July they ground to a halt.  Stationary patterns in the jet stream are called “blocking events”. Normally, these systems are constantly on the move – but not during a blocking event.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727730.101-frozen-jet-stream-links-pakistan-floods-russian-fires.html

- The Russian end of wheat exports because of the high temperatures is an example of extreme weather events that threaten world food production, but even slow change can reduce production. World food shortages can impact the price of food in the U.S. as well. Increasing local food production serves as a buffer to prices surely to rise. - Editor
Global warming threatens Asian rice production
Even modest rises in global temperatures will drive down rice production in Asia, the world’s biggest grower of the cereal grain that millions of poor people depend on as a staple food. As the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop. Rising temperatures in the past 25 years have already cut rice yields at several key growing locations by 10-20 percent. Rice is a key global crop, eaten by around three billion people a day.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQdV69W_J5hApCILihf6sFg0Xpng

- Since humans arrived on this planet, our weather has been relatively stable, allowing us to create systems that have defined our lives, our sustenance, our cultures, our habitats, all of which are dependent upon climate stability. If the foundational piece of all societies cracks, it will be, by far, the greatest human rights issue ever. When there is an emergency, it’s ALL HANDS ON DECK! - Editor

- Here is just one example of seemingly esoteric natural processes that are, in reality, fundamental to human life on this planet, but despite the seriousness and the total global impact, this destruction of plankton would not make even the top 50 human concerns. - Editor

Plankton, base of ocean food web, in big decline
Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world’s oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world’s oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.
And they are declining sharply. Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study in the journal Nature. The likely cause is global warming, which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say.
The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study. “It’s concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean,” said Dalhousie University biology professor Boris Worm.
For the abstract (full article requires payment)-http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/nature09268.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100728/ap_on_sc/us_sci_declining_plankton

Global subsidies for fossil fuels dwarf support given to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power and biofuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said. Governments last year gave $43 billion to $46 billion of support to renewable energy through tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices known as feed-in tariffs and alternative energy credits. That compares with the $557 billion that the International Energy Agency last month said was spent to subsidize fossil fuels in 2008. “One of the reasons the clean energy sector is starved of funding is because mainstream investors worry that renewable energy only works with direct government support,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of New Energy Finance. “This analysis shows that the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is around ten times the subsidy for renewables.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-29/fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-12-times-support-for-renewables-study-shows.html

- While some are very depressed over the Senate’s failure, a minority longing for real action hope that this will open the door to a new approach that is free of the heavily biased giveaways in this bill. Let’s all unite on a simple carbon tax, an end to petroleum subsidies, and support for renewables and efficiency.  We are dreamers but we’re “not the only ones.”- Editor
We’re Gonna Be Sorry By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Senate Democrats abandoned the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.
We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign - even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25friedman.html

- Protecting the brains of our future generation needs to be a primary goal of any sane society. When you study child development and IQ’s, it is astonishing what even a few IQ points mean. Our society values mere dollars- if it’s cheaper, it’s better. Again the equation needs to place a reasonable price on IQ points to show a truer picture. Lose of IQ points alone should end coal. And what about other health impacts, with these reproductive and developmental toxicants, mutagens, and carcinogens? - Editor

If you want smarter kids, shut coal plants
A major new study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health finds:
“Closing coal-fired power plants can have a direct, positive impact on children’s cognitive development and health….prenatal exposure to coal-burning emissions was associated with significantly lower average developmental scores and reduced motor development at age two. In the second unexposed group, these adverse effects were no longer observed; and the frequency of delayed motor developmental was significantly reduced.
For the report- http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.11480
http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/15/study-if-you-want-smarter-kids-shut-coal-plants/
(The book cover is not real but should be!)

- And what about the millions of U.S. citizens that will be leaving the coasts, too? - Editor
Climate change linked to possible mass Mexican migration to U.S
Scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change: mass migration to the United States.
Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the U.S. by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week. The number could amount to 10% of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to 65.
For the study- http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/07/16/1002632107
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/26/nation/la-na-immig-climate-20100727