Dr. Michael D. McDonald, Coordinator, Global Health Response and Resilience Alliance - St. Petersburg College - Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

Though the Tampa Bay area is ranked as the nation’s second-highest at-risk metropolitan area from climate change effects, it can thrive during the decades of rapid changes ahead by becoming a leader of the rapidly emerging Blue-Green economy. Tampa Bay has a set of extraordinary opportunities in the management of health, human security, and prosperity not only for its 3.5 million residents, but also as a model for how urban areas can face the challenges of sea level rise and broader climate change. The speaker will discuss how the region’s already well-established record for sound policy, adaptive markets, climate-smart infrastructure, compassion and social equity represents a foundation for transformation into a formidable force for resilience. He will explain how the diversion of trillions of dollars from petroleum-dependent industries into transformative climate resilience initiatives represents a new world of opportunities to forge a bright climate-resilient future for the region.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Union of Concerned Scientists - Underwater - Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate (28 page .PDF document)

ucsusa.org - June 2018

Sea levels are rising. Tides are inching higher. High-tide floods are becoming more frequent and reaching farther inland. And hundreds of US coastal communities will soon face chronic, disruptive flooding that directly affects people's homes, lives, and properties.

Yet property values in most coastal real estate markets do not currently reflect this risk. And most homeowners, communities, and investors are not aware of the financial losses they may soon face.

This analysis looks at what's at risk for US coastal real estate from sea level rise—and the challenges and choices we face now and in the decades to come.

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Solar panels on the roof of South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard’s energy-efficient home in South Miami on Saturday, April 13, 2019. Stoddard went off the grid for seven days to test the house’s readiness for hurricane season and used only solar panels and two Tesla wall batteries to power his home. Daniel A. Varela ***@***.***

miamiherald.com - by Linda Robertson - April 15, 2019

Hurricane season is coming and Philip Stoddard is ready . . .

. . . Stoddard, a champion of solar energy and green living, took his family on a trial run in preparation for the next Irma or Andrew . . .

. . . He turned off the main power switch located in a panel on the side of his house . . . For the next seven days, he and his family were able to operate the central air-conditioning unit during an unseasonably hot March week, all appliances, computers, lights, TV, solar water heater with an electric on-demand booster, and backyard pond pump, and charge the car without once running out of juice.

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Outside the small village of Chicua, in the western highlands, in an area affected by extreme-weather events, Ilda Gonzales looks after her daughter.

newyorker.com - by Jonathan Blitzer - Photography by Mauricio Lima - April 3, 2019

. . . In most of the western highlands, the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when. “Extreme poverty may be the primary reason people leave,” Edwin Castellanos, a climate scientist at the Universidad del Valle, told me. “But climate change is intensifying all the existing factors” . . . Farming, Castellanos has said, is “a trial-and-error exercise for the modification of the conditions of sowing and harvesting times in the face of a variable environment.” Climate change is outpacing the ability of growers to adapt.

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Diahnn "Shelly" Summers, right, embraces Lori Hogan, who is currently living in a tent in Summers' backyard months after Hurricane Michael hit in Youngstown, Fla, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2019. "This is the first time I've felt comfortable since the hurricane," said Hogan. "This is home for me and I love it." A small village has popped up in Summers' backyard outside Panama City: Where there once was an empty grassy space, tents now form a circle around a fir tree with Christmas lights. The tents are currently home for local residents who are still homeless months after Hurricane Michael screamed ashore with 155-mph winds, flattening, blowing away or rendering uninhabitable thousands of houses. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

apnews.com - by Mike Schneider - March 4, 2019

. . . Of all the Florida Panhandle areas affected by Michael, Bay County was hardest hit: Officials said almost three-quarters of its 68,000 households were affected. Former Florida House Speaker Allan Bense, who is leading a hurricane recovery initiative, estimated about 20,000 people were homeless in the weeks after the October storm.

A neighbor takes photographs of a boat smashed against a car garage, deposited there by the high winds and storm surge from Hurricane Florence, along the Neuse River, Sept. 15, 2018 in New Bern, North Carolina. - (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates

weather.com - by Sean Breslin - February 8, 2019

Hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin are exploding into monster storms at a rapid pace more and more often, and climate change is one reason why, a new study has found.

Published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, the findings compiled by a team of hurricane experts – several of whom work for NOAA – concluded that rapid intensification is happening more often than it should.

The result can be a hurricane that grows from a relatively tame Category 1 to a massive Category 4 or 5 storm, the most recent example being Hurricane Michael, which ravaged the Florida Panhandle last October (the Gulf of Mexico is included as part of the Atlantic Basin).

But the definition of circular economy remains unhelpfully broad.

fastcompany.com - by Adele Peters - February 5, 2019

When Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport remodeled a terminal, it didn’t buy light bulbs; instead, the company signed a contract for “light as a service” from Signify, the company formerly known as Philips Lighting. Signify owns the physical lights, giving it the incentive to make products that last as long as possible and that can be easily repaired and recycled if anything breaks.

The service is one example of a shift to a circular economy model. Rather than just mining materials and manufacturing products that ultimately end up in landfills, companies are increasingly trying to figure out how to use resources in closed loops.

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CLICK HERE - Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack - Volume 1: Executive Report - 2004 (62 page .PDF report)

solarpowerrocks.com - by Ben Zientara - October 2017

. . . The thing to be worried about here is what’s known as a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, or EMP for short. If a nuclear weapon of sufficient size is detonated, an EMP can disrupt everything that uses electronic circuitry, potentially causing irreversible damage to electronics in cars, airplanes, the U.S. electric grid, and yes, your home solar system . . .

. . . the U.S. Government has commissioned a few studies of the effects and likely aftereffects of an EMP-as-weapon deployed against the country . . .

. . . Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) . . . it’s a lot like the E3 component of a nuclear EMP, and can shut down the grid in much the same way.

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A highway stands immersed in floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey in West Columbia, Texas, on Aug. 30.  Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

CLICK HERE - CDP - Company Scores

bloomberg.com - by Christopher Flavelle - January 22, 2019

Bank of America Corp. worries flooded homeowners will default on their mortgages. The Walt Disney Co. is concerned its theme parks will get too hot for vacationers, while AT&T Inc. fears hurricanes and wildfires may knock out its cell towers.

The Coca-Cola Co. wonders if there will still be enough water to make Coke.

As the Trump administration rolls back rules meant to curb global warming, new disclosures show that the country’s largest companies are already bracing for its effects. The documents reveal how widely climate change is expected to cascade through the economy -- disrupting supply chains, disabling operations and driving away customers, but also offering new ways to make money.

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PACK ICE MELTING IN SPRING IN ANTARCTICA'S WEDDEL SEA. CREDIT: PLANET OBSERVER/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The faster the ocean warms, the faster key Antarctic glaciers will disintegrate.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–2017

thinkprogress.org - by Joe Romm - January 15, 2019

A stunning new study on Antarctic sea ice collapse greatly raises the risk of a 10-foot sea level rise this century if President Donald Trump’s climate policies aren’t quickly reversed.

Warming ocean waters drove a 6-fold increase in annual ice mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet between 1979 and 2017, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s been known for a while that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) was unstable and collapsing at an accelerating rate due to global warming. But the new study finds that parts of the vastly larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) are also disintegrating.

A firefighter battling the Camp fire, which became California’s deadliest in history. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

Pacific Gas and Electric, which supplies 16 million residents, is under investigation for its role in the Camp fire and others

theguardian.com - by Vivian Ho - January 14, 2019

The utility company that services more than a third of California announced on Monday it plans to file for bankruptcy by the end of the month. Several deadly wildfires believed to have been caused by the company left it with potential liabilities of at least $30bn.

The board of directors of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has determined that the move “is ultimately the only viable option to restore PG&E’s financial stability to fund ongoing operations and provide safe service to customers”, the San Francisco-based company stated in a filing at the Security and Exchange Commission.

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