Strategic lawsuit against public participation - Wikipedia

A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.

Strategic lawsuit against public participation - Wikipedia

Michigan and other red states have no anti-SLAPP laws! Shame!

For centuries the rivers sustained Aboriginal culture. Now they are dry, elders despair | Australia news | The Guardian

Driving across a bone-dry riverbed at Walgett, it’s easy to believe the worst predictions of climate disaster are happening as the temperature gauge on the car dashboard hits 49C.

Two rivers meet outside Walgett in north-west New South Wales: the Barwon and the Namoi. They are major tributaries in the Murray Darling system.

But they’re both empty, and this has never happened before.


The empty Barwon River

For centuries the rivers sustained Aboriginal culture. Now they are dry, elders despair | Australia news | The Guardian

Four scientists make creativity a key to communicating their research » Yale Climate Connections

Cartoons and imaginative use of video, art, and graphics help get their message across.

This month’s “This is Not Cool” original video, produced by independent videographer and YCC regular contributor Peter Sinclair, explores the creative science communication initiatives of four different scientists.



Four scientists make creativity a key to communicating their research » Yale Climate Connections

Wind energy: turbines are getting taller, bigger, and more powerful - Vox

The declining price of solar power gets more press, but there are big things happening in wind technology too. And I mean big.

The math on wind turbines is pretty simple: Bigger is better. Specifically, there are two ways to produce more power from the wind in a given area.

The first is with bigger rotors and blades to cover a wider area. That increases the capacity of the turbine, i.e., its total potential production.

The second is to get the blades up higher into the atmosphere, where the wind blows more steadily. That increases the turbine’s “capacity factor,” i.e., the amount of power it actually produces relative to its total potential (or more colloquially: how often it runs).


The GE Haliade-X, a big-ass wind turbine. GE

Wind energy: turbines are getting taller, bigger, and more powerful - Vox

E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.


The Hunter power plant in Castle Dale, Utah, which burns an estimated 4.5 million tons of coal a year.CreditCreditBrandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

The E.P.A. had originally forecast that eliminating the Obama-era rule, the Clean Power Plan, and replacing it with a new measure would have resulted in an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year. The new analytical model would significantly reduce that number and would most likely be used by the Trump administration to defend further rollbacks of air pollution rules if it is formally adopted.

E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math - The New York Times

Climate change: Global sea level rise could be bigger than expected - BBC News

Scientists believe that global sea levels could rise far more than predicted, due to accelerating melting in Greenland and Antarctica. The long-held view has been that the world's seas would rise by a maximum of just under a metre by 2100. This new study, based on expert opinions, projects that the real level may be around double that figure. This could lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, the authors say.



JONATHAN BAMBER: A small boat in the Illulissat Icefjord in western Greenland, dwarfed by icebergs that have calved from Greenland's largest glacier, Jacobshavn Isbrae



Antarctic instability 'is spreading'

Thousands of penguin chicks wiped out

Warning from 'Antarctica's last forests'

Climate change: Global sea level rise could be bigger than expected - BBC News

BP backs Trump’s Arctic oil drilling plans despite climate risk - Unearthed

Oil major BP played a key role in lobbying the Trump administration to allow oil and gas drilling in two previously protected areas of the Alaskan Arctic, Unearthed can reveal.

Opening up the areas to exploration poses significant risks to the environment and will undermine efforts to meet the Paris climate targets to prevent catastrophic climate change.


Map showing the Beaufort Sea and the Trump administration's proposed leasing areas within the Arctic Refuge. Credit: Bureau of Land Management



Writing to Trump administration officials, the company first lobbied for more areas to be opened up to drilling off the US coast and then welcomed plans to lease swathes of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea for oil and gas exploration, according to documents seen by Unearthed.

BP backs Trump’s Arctic oil drilling plans despite climate risk - Unearthed