Climate Change

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Environmental scientist Amy Luers found the nonprofit setting more fitting than academia for her career goals. "I wanted to be at the intersection of science, policy and action," she said. That would have been hard to do as an academic scientist, she said. "It's rare that a scientist at an academic research institution gets to really see the fruits of their labor put into practice in a significant way in their lifetime," said Luers, climate change director for the Skoll Global Threats Fund, a San Francisco-based non-profit. ...

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Two West Virginia politicians -- Sen. Jay Rockefeller and the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd -- bluntly warned that Appalachia's coal industry is heading for decline. They urged intelligent long-range planning to cope with what seems to be an inevitable economic transition. "Face reality," Rockefeller declared in a West Virginia Day speech. Three years earlier, the aging Byrd said it's time to "speak the truth" and "have an open and honest dialogue about coal's future in West Virginia.

Climate change is raising sea levels and altering the jet stream in the U.S., making already powerful storms like Sandy stronger, scientists with a conservation group said. Storms will grow unless greenhouse emissions are cut, the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity said last night in a statement.

On September 30, 2012, California Governor Brown signed the “Climate and Community Revitalization” bills – AB 1532 and SB535. The first of these sets up a process to allocate revenues from auctioning allowances (that is, emissions permits) under the new market-based system that is part of the implementation of the Golden State’s 2006 landmark legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

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Lisa Micheli and Healy Hamilton, two leading mid-career scientist-entrepreneurs formerly with the California Academy of Sciences, developed a model that shows the potential impacts of climate change on biodiversity and sea-level rise in Northern California. Their project seeks to make climate change impacts tangible, educate local communities about the link between human behavior and climate change, empower individuals, and motivate action to decrease greenhouse gas emissions locally.