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Submission + - Guardian petition for fossil fuel divestment receives 60,000 signatures (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: In less than 24 hours, more than 60,000 readers have joined a campaign on the Guardian’s website asking the world’s largest charitable foundations – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust – to divest their endowments from fossil fuels.

It was, in the words of one reader, “a big day in civic journalism”. The Guardian’s website and front page have never looked quite like it, as oil dripped down where the news would normally be.

Submission + - Japan utilities set to scrap five aging nuclear reactors (reuters.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Three aging nuclear reactors in Japan will be decommissioned due to the high cost of upgrading them in line with tougher safety standards set after the Fukushima disaster, their operators said on Tuesday.

Another two reactors were also likely to be scrapped, local media reports said, with announcements expected later in the week.

The moves are the first concrete sign that Japan's nuclear industry is heeding a government request to shut down older reactors that are considered more vulnerable to natural disasters in the hope that it will ease public concerns about a restart of other reactors.

All 48 of Japan's nuclear reactors were taken offline after an earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011.

As many as two-thirds of the country's reactors may never return to operation because of high costs, local opposition or seismic risks, a Reuters analysis showed last year.

Comment Natural gas should be a strategic resoruce (Score 1) 190

by mdsolar (#49266501) Attached to: UN Backs Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign
We use natural gas in home heating and in ethanol production and in generating electricity, And, with CAFE standards increasing and oil production rising, we are within spitting distance of energy independence. It is hard to see how we could use anything close to half our natural gas production to produce gasoline when it supplies so much in other areas and there is such a small way to go to eliminate oil imports. But, the ability to do gas-to-liquid easily makes an even stronger case for restricting exports of natural gas just as we do with oil and recognizing natural gas as a strategic resource.

As a strategic resource, we should build enough LNG export capacity in the US and enough import capacity in NATO to displace Russian gas supplies, and then let that sit idle. This would be similar to Israel having dibs on our strategic petroleum reserve. Russia would treat our allies much better as natural gas customers if we could take away their market at any time they put the squeeze on.

Submission + - NASA wants your help hunting for asteroids

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since the early 20th century, astronomers have relied on the same technique to detect asteroids — they take images of a section in the sky and look for star-like objects that move between frames. However, with an increase in sensitivity of ground-based telescopes, it has become increasingly difficult for astronomers to sift through the massive pile of data and verify every single detection. In order to increase the frequency of asteroid detection, including of those bodies that could be potential threats to our planet, NASA has released new software, developed in collaboration with Planetary Resources, Inc., capable of running on any standard PC. The software, which can be downloaded for free, will accept images from a telescope and run an algorithm on them to determine celestial bodies that are moving in a manner consistent with an asteroid.

Submission + - Helping poor countries tackle climate change is affordable (businessgreen.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Rich countries would not need to spend more than two per cent of their GDP by 2050 to help developing nations cut their carbon emissions, new analysis from London's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change has suggested.

Developed countries have already agreed to provide an additional $100bn a year by 2020 to help poorer countries reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the worst effects of climate change.

However, the new study warns significantly more funding will be needed over the coming decades to help poorer nations cope with climate impacts. The report, which has been submitted for peer review to the Climate Policy journal, uses a number of sophisticated economic models to conclude that rich countries would need to give at least $400bn, and as much as $2tr, to the 'global south' each year to help them cope with the demands of tackling climate change.

But it argues that even this massive commitment would not equate to more than one to two per cent of rich countries' GDP.

"The cost to high-income countries, while substantial, is not likely to be prohibitive," the document states.

Comment Moral bankruptcy (Score 3, Interesting) 190

by mdsolar (#49264407) Attached to: UN Backs Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign
All of the fossil fuels run on science. There is geology and chemistry and pollution control and how to make oil flow in a pipeline. If you school won't invest in fossil fuels, there is a chance you won't consider working for them either. The engineering and science may not get done as quickly and the industry may slow as a result of moral objections.

Comment Re:10 myths about fossil fuel divestment (Score 1) 190

by mdsolar (#49263953) Attached to: UN Backs Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign
Well #6 says "This argument would have merit if there was much evidence to support it. When, for example, the Guardian asked the Wellcome Trust to give instances where engagement had produced change, it could not. And as campaigner Bill McKibben has pointed out, engagement is unlikely to persuade a company to commit to eventually putting itself out of business. In fact some market regulators, such as in the US, do not allow this kind of engagement. "

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