submitted by Gordian Raacke

CLICK HERE - White House Council of Economic Advisors - Incorporating Renewables into the Grid: Expanding Opportunities for Smart Markets and Energy Storage (40 page .PDF report)

whitehouse.gov - June 16, 2016

. . The Administration is announcing new executive actions and 33 state and private sector commitments that will accelerate the grid integration of renewable energy and storage.  Together, these announcements are expected to result in at least 1.3 gigawatts of additional storage procurement or deployment in the next five years. .

Aerial view overlooking landscaping on April 4, 2015 in San Diego, California.  Photo: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

by Sarah Ferris and Peter Sullivan - April 25, 2016

The United States is on the verge of a national crisis that could mean the end of clean, cheap water.

Hundreds of cities and towns are at risk of sudden and severe shortages, either because available water is not safe to drink or because there simply isn’t enough of it.

The situation has grown so dire the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence now ranks water scarcity as a major threat to national security alongside terrorism.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Pew Research Center - America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan Areas

latimes.com - by Don Lee - May 11, 2016

America's shrinking middle class, a growing concern for the economy and a central issue in the presidential race, cuts across virtually all communities from coast to coast, according to a study released Wednesday.

The report by Pew Research Center found that the share of the middle class fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined from 2000 to 2014, including major cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, which saw a relatively sharp drop in its middle class.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - Quest Diagnostics - Zika Virus Infection - Important Testing Information and Helpful Resources

nbcnews.com - by Maggie Fox - April 28, 2016

The first commercial U.S. test to diagnose Zika virus won emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration Thursday.

It's a rare piece of good news as states and the federal government struggle to get out ahead of the Zika virus epidemic as it makes its way north to the U.S.

Quest Diagnostics says it should be able to handle any demand for the test, which uses the same method that government labs use to look for Zika virus in a patient's blood.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

AN EXPANDING LIST OF INFORMATION ON WINTER STORM JONAS:

CLICK HERE - The Washington Post - Mid-Atlantic coastline flooded by blizzard’s storm surge. ‘This is worse than Sandy.’

CLICK HERE - National Weather Service - Active Alerts

CLICK HERE - NOAA - Forecasts and Warnings - Storm Surge and Coastal Inundation

CLICK HERE - National Weather Service - TIDES, TIDE GUIDANCE, and TIDAL IMPACT TABLES

CLICK HERE - nj.com - When to expect high tide flooding along the Jersey Shore this weekend

CLICK HERE - nbcnewyork.com - Road Travel Banned, Mass Transit Curtailed as Snowstorm Blasts Region

CLICK HERE - CNN - Blizzard strikes East Coast; motorists stranded for hours in 3 states

Potential #snow totals for #Winter Storm #Jonas, keep in mind these numbers will likely change, latest on @AMHQ! pic.twitter.com/T6d4zRyX2X

— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) January 20, 2016

odi.org - Aditya Bahadur, Emma Lovell, Emily Wilkinson, Thomas Tanner - August 2015

CLICK HERE - Resilience in the SDGs - Developing an indicator for Target 1.5 that is fit for purpose (7 page .PDF file)

We outline a comprehensive approach for developing a cross-sectoral, multi-dimensional and dynamic understanding of resilience. This underpins the core message of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that development is multi-faceted and the achievement of many of the individual development goals is dependent on the accomplishment of other goals. It also acknowledges that shocks and stresses can reverse years of development gains and efforts to eradicate poverty by 2030. Crucially, this approach to understanding resilience draws on data that countries will collect for the SDGs anyway and entails only a small additional burden in this regard.

(CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)

Glacial Rebound: The Not So Solid Earth

nasa.gov - August 26, 2015

When you fill a sink, the water rises at the same rate to the same height in every corner. That's not the way it works with our rising seas.

According to the 23-year record of satellite data from NASA and its partners, the sea level is rising a few millimeters a year -- a fraction of an inch. If you live on the U.S. East Coast, though, your sea level is rising two or three times faster than average. If you live in Scandinavia, it's falling. Residents of China's Yellow River delta are swamped by sea level rise of more than nine inches (25 centimeters) a year.

These regional differences in sea level change will become even more apparent in the future, as ice sheets melt. For instance, when the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is totally gone, the average global sea level will rise four feet. But the East Coast of the United States will see an additional 14 to 15 inches above that average.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

FOREIGN POLICY  by Siobhán O'Grady                        April 13, 2015
When the Ebola virus spread from Guinea to Sierra Leone and Liberia last spring, the initial international response was labeled a failure. By the time President Barack Obama ordered troops to the affected countries in September, more than 2,400 people were dead.

But in the United States, where major hospitals prepared for an outbreak, there were only four in-country diagnoses, one of which resulted in a death. And some see the urgency of that response as a lesson in how the government can prepare for another public health hazard: a bioterrorist attack.

Arizona Rep. Martha McSally chairs a House subcommittee that will examine over the next few months the threat of bioterrorist attacks and U.S. preparedness to respond to them. She told Foreign Policy that even if a disease outbreak and the use of a biological agent in a coordinated attack are not completely analogous, the response strains similar systems.

“We can learn lessons from other outbreaks that are naturally occurring,” she said. “We can identify weaknesses in our response and even if it wasn’t terrorism, it presses the system at the same level....”

Image: People play by the Ana Costia river.

grist.com - February 9 2015 - Brentin Mock

Now that we have established that gentrification is a thing, at least for those impacted by it, it’s worth noting that there are good and bad sides to it, and that includes when neighborhoods get environmental makeovers.

Neighborhood improvements like upgraded sewage infrastructure, LEED-certified green buildings, and bike lanes are great, but, counterintuitively, they can freak out residents of under-resourced communities who fear that such projects might price them out. When that happens, you’ve got what Jennifer Wolch, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, calls “environmental gentrification.”

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

New EPA standards will aim to significantly cut methane emissions from oil and gas sites in the U.S.

The Obama administration makes its latest move to take on climate change.

usnews.com - by Alan Neuhauser - January 14, 2015

In the Obama administration’s latest use of executive authority to address climate change, the White House announced plans Wednesday to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry that would nearly halve methane emissions from wells, drill sites and pipelines in 10 years.

The new standards, to be developed by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act, would aim by 2025 to cut methane emissions by up to 45 percent from levels recorded in 2012. They would also slash the spread of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, key components of ground-level smog that have been linked to cancer, neurological conditions and other illnesses.

THE HILL--  by Sarah Ferris                                                                                      Dec. 10, 2014

The $1.1 trillion spending bill unveiled Tuesday night includes nearly all of President Obama’s massive $6.2 billion emergency funding request to fight the Ebola outbreak.

Senate and House lawmakers have agreed to appropriate $5.4 billion on Ebola treatment and prevention measures in the U.S. and West Africa.

The funding falls just short of the funding request issued by the president last month...

Nearly $2.5 billion would go to the Department of Health and Human Services, which plans to bolster the readiness of U.S. hospitals, speed up the development of vaccines and help monitor airline travelers from Ebola-stricken countries.

Another $2 billion would go to the U.S. Agency for International Development to “scale up” the global response. The State and Defense departments would each receive just over $100 million.

The House Rules Committee meets today  to comb through the bill, dubbed the “cromnibus,” before it goes to the House floor.

WASHINGTON POST                                                                               Oct. 26, 2014

By Spencer S. Hsu and Nia-Malika Henderson

One day after governors in New York, New Jersey and Illinois imposed a mandatory 21-day quarantine on medical workers returning from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, public health officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia did not follow suit Saturday, intensifying a national debate over how to prevent the spread of the disease.

Health officials are working to develop a consistent approach for the area around the nation’s capital. Joxel Garcia, director of the D.C. Department of Health, said that a mandatory quarantine was not scientifically justified and could have a chilling effect on the medical personnel, many of them volunteers, needed to treat Ebola patients at home and overseas.

The differing views highlight challenges confronting federal and state politicians as well as health officials as they race to keep up with fast-changing circumstances and competing political, scientific and legal demands, experts said.