Everglades (and South Florida, Including Miami) With 5ft Of Sea Level Rise

"Hotspot watersheds" with 10 or more at-risk fish and mussel species are concentrated in the Southeastern United States.  This reflects both the freshwater diversity of rivers and streams in this region, and the significant conservation threats.

From the Washington Post:

Map from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing how much electricity each state gets from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. Maine was the clear winner in 2011, getting 27 percent of its electricity coming from renewable sources — a lot of it wind power and biomass. But Maine had a lot of renewable energy back in 2001, too. South Dakota and Iowa, at 21 percent and 17 percent, have seen far more impressive growth. Both of those states got almost none of their electricity from renewable sources a decade ago.

A somewhat pessimistic view of climate diplomacy by Eduardo Porter in the New York Times: In the 30 years since the first international meeting on climate change in 1988 in Toronto, temperatures continue to rise and greenhouse gas emissions are greater than ever. 

Original article

(continued from previous post)

The big story in Houser and Mohan's study is where these cleaner forms of energy are coming from that are responsible for half of the drop in emissions. It's generally assumed that the drop is a result of cleaner and cheap natural gas pushing out dirty coal. However, Houser and Mohan show that we shouldn't be counting out reneables.

Plumer:

Natural gas is indeed pushing out dirtier coal, and that makes a sizable difference (burning natural gas for electricity emits about half the carbon-dioxide that burning coal does). But wind farms are also sprouting up across the country, thanks to government subsidies. What’s more, industrial sites are burning more biomass for heat and electricity, while biofuels like ethanol are nudging out oil. All of that has done a lot to cut emissions.

A study in the journal Science Advances looked at population trends of sea turtles across 299 populations for which there was publicly available data. The image shows regions where populations of sea turtles are increasing (green) and decreasing (red). Of the regional populations, there is an upward trend in 12 and a downward trend in 5, suggesting a possible rebound of sea turtle populations, albeit challenges remain.

CC = C. caretta (loggerhead turtle) CM = C. mydas (green turtle) DC = D. coriacea (leatherback sea turtle) EI = E. imbricata (hawksbill turtle) LK = L. kempii (Kemp’s ridley) LO = L. olivacea (olive ridley) ND = N. depressus (flatback turtle)

The environmental blog Mongabay.com created a series of graphs from the IUCN Red List, which evaluates the conservation status of plant and animal species and lists those that are under threat. I'll be posting a series of them from different groups.

The first is the conservation status of herps, or reptiles and amphibians.

A study of "fossil beaches", those areas where geology and fossils show they were once pre-historic coasts, is aiming to give us a better picture of the threat of sea level rise. Researchers acknowledge that, even during natural climatic shifts, carbon dioxide is the primary driver of global warming and cooling. During the Pliocene, carbon dioxide was at 400ppm and sea level was much higher. We are currently at 393ppm and rising. We are likely to cross over 400ppm in the next several years. Thus, looking at sea level rise during the Pliocene can give us a picture of what sea levels may look like as a result of current global warming. This map shows where the coastline was in the U.S. during the Pliocene.

Stanford scholar Mark Z. Jacobson lays out how the US could get to 100% renewable energy by 2050. David Roberts describes his ambitious blueprint and the challenges it would face here.

Ongoing drought conditions have the prompted the U.S. Agriculture Department to declare a federal disaster area in more than 1,000 counties covering 26 states. That's almost one-third of all the counties in the United States, making it the largest disaster declaration ever made by the USDA. The result is skyrocketing corn, wheat and soybean prices.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap and trade program involving nine northeastern states:  Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. New Jersey was a part of the program but Gov. Christie pulled the state out of the agreement in 2011. The purpose of the program is to lower emissions from power plants in the northeast. On its face, carbon emissions have declined from 188 million tons of carbon-dioxide in 2005 to 91 million tons in 2012. However, much of that is due to the recession and cheap natural gas replacing dirty coal. At present, power plants emit less carbon than the current cap. This gives little incentive for them to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

In an effort to further drive investment in efficiency and renewables, the RGGI released a proposal to progressively lower the emissions cap through 2020. The 2020 cap will be 14% below the current level of emissions.

Brad Plumer of the Washington Posts notes that "Between now and 2020, the new RGGI scheme is hoping to cut annual emissions by about 13 million tons. That’s about 0.06 of all power plant emissions in the United States last year. A rounding error. Ultimately, RGGI might best be thought of less as a solution to climate change and more of a revenue-raiser for the Northeast. It’s also an experiment of sorts — a way for policymakers to figure out what works and what doesn’t in climate policy."