Climate Disasters Will Enrich Insurance Business – is essentially Buffett’s message to stockholders, ignoring fears of other insurance companies that escalating climate catastrophes will bankrupt them first. No, he simply notes that as catastrophes accelerate people buy more insurance from his company.

What exactly does he insure – boats?

Credit Michael Lukovich

OO Oil And Gas Industry Has Pumped
$100+ Millions Into Republican Campaigns just for presidential candidates in 2015 alone. Let’s hope it’s a waste of money.

CLIMATE LEADERSHIP

OO Obama Administration Pays Out $500 Million To Climate Change Project as part of its $3 billion pledge to help poor countries fight climate change – defying Republican opposition to the president’s environmental plan.

Helping poor countries prevents further instability that can ultimately affect our own security. No nation is an island on Earth, as Syria, 911, and many other disasters have shown.
OO Minnesota Presses Clean Power Plan As Supreme Court Tells Feds To Wait
Gov. Mark Dayton is pushing ahead on his clean power efforts despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering federal authorities to delay plans to cut power plant carbon emissions.
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Feel the Bern?

OO Bernie Sanders Highlights Climate Change During Minnesota Rally announcing opposition to two pipeline projects that would affect the state.
OO Climate Activists Threaten To Shut Down World’s Major Coal Sites – Reclaim the Power says it will use direct action at a dozen international sites in May, including the UK’s largest opencast coal mine in south Wales.
OO Bangladesh: 1000s To March Against Coal Plant Threat To Sundarbans Forest, the world’s biggest mangrove forest, a World Heritage site.

Fracking? Not in MY Swamp, Buster! Source www.provostadventures.com

OO After Public Outcry,
Florida Drops Bill To Frack The Everglades

Gas Is Ba-a-a-a-ah-ah-d For Earth – make sheep hungry enough and they’ll spell out even the most obvious truths. Source Heinz DeChelard at www.abc.net.au

OO Australia: Farmers Use 2,000 Hungry Sheep
To Spell Out Their Message Against Gas Mining
OO Standard Oil Scion Ditches Her ExxonMobil Stock – John D. Rockefeller’s great-granddaughter doesn’t want shares in a company that’s “really hurting the world.”
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ELECTION YEAR 2016:

OO Next President Could Make Or Break
The Paris Climate Agreement – The US helped lead nearly 200 countries to a recent, international climate change agreement in Paris recently. The upcoming election could determine if the US continues to lead, or reneges on its commitments to cut climate changing emissions. VOTE.
OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years – of global warming, a new study shows — and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.

SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS

Source www.hastingstribune.com

OO Flood Damage Costs Will Rise Faster Than Sea Levels, says a new study, showing that damage will increase exponentially; the study aims to give coastal cities a way to prepare for them.
Related Headline:

OO Costs Rise Faster Than Water says a new study, emphasizing that sea levels are rising quickly, and can have dangerous and costly impacts on human infrastructure.
OO Rising Seas Pull Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s Building Boomtown,
Toward A Bust – the city is expecting its population to grow by a third, but it already can’t handle the impacts of climate change.
More costs:

Faces of Distress from a 2009 bushfire, which are increasing as temperatures rise in Australia under continuing climate change. Credit Nic MacBean at ABC News

OO Natural Disasters Costing Australia 50% More Than Estimated say 2 new reports, which find increases in family violence and mental health problems due to the stress of natural disasters outweighs the cost of rebuilding infrastructure.
OO California County Still Relying On Water Tanks, Despite Rainfall – over 800 domestic wells still are dry. Where water has returned, the supply remains unpredictable.

As ecosystemic changes increase natural disasters and threaten economic stability, water and food shortage will catalyze civil unrest and conflicts.

OO Pakistan’s Biggest Threat Isn’t Terrorism, It’s Climate Change – You know – that poor, unstable, populous, Asian nuclear power? Yeah, THAT one.
OO Which Mega-Cities Offer Best Protection From Climate Change? The wealthy ones, of course; developing world ones are falling behind, says a study.
OO Crappy Climate News: More Heat Means More Diarrhea – As temperatures rise so, too, do cases of diarrhea in many countries, says a new study. I don’t think we need a graphic here, do you?
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THE NEW COAL:

Credit Ken Doerr at flickr

OO Cheap Natural Gas Leads To More Plants And Pollution – the nation’s boom in cheap natural gas — often viewed as a clean energy source — is spawning a wave of petrochemical plants that, if built, will emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases, warns a new report.

Surprise, surprise, surprise…
OO Can Fracking Power Europe? Several countries hope to unleash vast natural-gas reserves through fracking, but drilling attempts have been disappointing… maybe this is a blessing in disguise!

Present, But Thinking? Check the CO2 Levels Credit Charles Platiau at Reuters

OO Indoor CO2 Changes Your Mental Climate – leading to poor decisions, depending on the levels, which can increase dramatically, depending on the people density, new research is finding.
OO Ex-Chief Of Chesapeake Energy Dies In Crash A Day After Indictment Aubrey McClendon was the face of the US natural gas boom, a swashbuckling innovator who pioneered a shale revolution, leading a life of luxury and loans.

Sadly, the number of hearts broken by his death are vastly outnumbered by the number of hearts broken by his work.
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SOLAR KEEPS DRIVING

OO US Solar Energy Is Poised For An Unforgettable Year in 2016 – New statistics just released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggest that the booming solar sector will add more new electricity-generating capacity than any other — including natural gas and wind.
OO Off-Grid Solar Market to Reach $3.1Billion by 2020
OO US Utility-Scale Solar Market Fueled by Growth
Beyond Renewable Portfolio Standards –
It’s Demand! – more than half of 2016 installed utility-scale solar will be outside of state-level requirements.

Storing Water, Producing Solar Power – the largest solar floating farm yet,on a reservoir near London, shows how to get more bang for the real estate buck. Patent-oriented sieve tray Source threwns.com

OO Meet The World’s Largest Floating Solar-Energy Farm As the global proliferation of solar power continues, energy experts are coming up with new ways to implement the cheap fuel alternative.
OO Singapore Feeds First Solar Power Into Retail Grid To Reduce Emissions
OO UK: Solar Thermal Panels the Latest to Get Hit by Subsidy Cuts – infuriating industry, and as a parliamentary committee warned that changes already made to the government’s energy policy had “spooked” investors and could push up consumer bills by upping costs of new energy schemes.

Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, Mar 14, 2016

Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures.

Despite the sometimes monsoonal rains pelting central California, the drought map remains little changed, while much of California’s aquifers have been permanently and significantly shrunk by farmers seeking water.

Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by these wild flax flowers I photographed one summer. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you’d like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It’s our way of letting Congress know there’s a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.