CHICAGO (AP) — A whirlpool of frigid, dense air known as a "polar vortex" descended Monday into much of the U.S., pummeling parts of the country with a dangerous cold that could break decades-old records with wind chill warnings stretching from Montana to Alabama. Historic freeze could break Midwest temp records For a big chunk of the Midwest, the subzero temperatures were moving in behind another winter wallop: more than a foot of snow and high winds that made traveling treacherous. Officials closed schools in cities including Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee and warned residents to stay indoors and avoid the frigid cold altogether. The forecast is extreme: 32 below zero in Fargo, N.D.; minus 21 in Madison, Wis.; and 15 below zero in Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. Wind chills — what it feels like outside when high winds are factored into the temperature — could drop into the minus 50s and 60s. "It's just a dangerous cold," said National Weather Service meteorologist Butch Dye in Missouri. It hasn't been this cold for almost two decades in many parts of the country. Frostbite and hypothermia can set in quickly at 15 to 30 below zero.

'Polar vortex' pushes subzero temps into Midwest - Yahoo News: click link to read complete article

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Is Genetics Key to Climate Change Solutions? (Op-Ed) - Yahoo News. Plants are well known to possess extensive genetic variation in drought and temperature tolerance, water-use efficiency, and other traits that can prove critical for surviving climate changes and avoiding extinction. Changing climate conditions not only affect the plants themselves, but also other organisms that influence plant communities. For example, changing climate conditions may increase pest and pathogen outbreaks or allow an invasive species to move into an area that was previously inhospitable. Importantly, plants also exhibit genetic variation in their responses to pests and invasive species that can be used to mitigate their negative effects. The use of genetics will become increasingly important in regions suffering from climate change. For example, in the western United States, drought and higher temperatures have doubled the rate of tree mortality since 1995, with mortality rates accelerating over time. Pinyon pine, an iconic and dominant species in the West, has suffered nearly 100 percent mortality at sites in Colorado and Arizona, where climate change has made trees more susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks that in turn result in increased wildfires. Fortunately, plant genomes — all of an organism's genetic information — are a vast storehouse of genetic variability that can be used to help prevent the loss of species suffering from climate change. New technology and research platforms are making it possible for researchers to identify those individuals and populations that will survive in the climates of the future and in the face of the myriad cascading effects of climate change. Genetics-based environmental research is already helping to restore damaged and degraded landscapes. For more than 30 years, a consortium of researchers has examined how genetic variation in the cottonwood tree can affect entire communities of organisms from microbes to mammals. This research has been involved with a 50-year, $626 million effort on the lower Colorado River that shows major genetics-based differences in the success of different populations that the Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies are using to restore riparian habitat. From such combined restoration-research experiments, scientists can learn which genetic lines are most likely to survive future climates. Understanding a plant's response to climate conditions requires the integration of diverse sciences to examine how changing conditions influence the plant through its life history and that of its offspring. Plant species become adapted to local conditions over thousands of years, meaning that what is locally adapted today could do poorly tomorrow as the climate changes. Thus, genetics-based research can help identify those individuals that possess superior traits that will allow them to survive in a future climate. This type of research involves interdisciplinary teams of climate-change scientists, biologists, geneticists, modelers and engineers who are using and developing new technologies and research platforms to unlock the vast stores of information within plant genomes.

Is Genetics Key to Climate Change Solutions? (Op-Ed) - Yahoo News: click link to read full article

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UPDATE: Climate change may be far worse than scientists thought, causing global temperatures to rise by at least 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, or about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a new study. The study, published in the journal Nature, takes a fresh look at clouds' effect on the planet, according to a report by The Guardian. The research found that as the planet heats, fewer sunlight-reflecting clouds form, causing temperatures to rise further in an upward spiral. That number is double what many governments agree is the threshold for dangerous warming. Aside from dramatic environmental shifts like melting sea ice, many of the ills of the modern world -- starvation, poverty, war and disease -- are likely to get worse as the planet warms. "4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous," lead researcher Steven Sherwood told the Guardian. "For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet." Another report released earlier this month said the abrupt changes caused by rapid warming should be cause for concern, as many of climate change's biggest threats are those we aren't ready for.

Climate Change Worse Than We Thought, Likely To Be 'Catastrophic Rather Than Simply Dangerous': "In September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was "extremely likely" that human activity was the dominant cause of global warming, or about 95 percent certain -- often the gold standard in scientific accuracy."

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UPDATE: Arctic Ice Melt Tied To Heat Waves And Downpours In U.S., Europe And Elsewhere, Study Suggests. (Reuters) - A thaw of Arctic ice and snow is linked to worsening summer heatwaves and downpours thousands of miles south in Europe, the United States and other areas, underlying the scale of the threat posed by global warming, scientists said on Sunday. Their report, which was dismissed as inconclusive by some other experts, warned of increasingly extreme weather across "much of North America and Eurasia where billions of people will be affected". The study is part of a drive to work out how climate change affects the frequency of extreme weather, from droughts to floods. Governments want to know the trends to plan everything from water supplies to what crops to plant. But the science of a warming Arctic is far from settled. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, experts in China and the United States said they could not conclusively say the Arctic thaw caused more extreme weather, or vice versa. But they said they had found evidence of a relationship between the two. Rising temperatures over thawing snow on land and sea ice in the Arctic were changing atmospheric pressure and winds, the report said. The changes slowed the eastward movement of vast meandering weather systems and meant more time for extreme weather to develop - such as a heatwave in Russia in 2010, droughts in the United States and China in 2011 and 2012, or heavy summer rains that caused floods in Britain in 2012, the paper added. "The study contributes to a growing body of evidence that ... the melting Arctic has wide-ranging implications for people living in the middle latitudes," lead author Qiuhong Tang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told Reuters.

Arctic Ice Melt Tied To Heat Waves And Downpours In U.S., Europe And Elsewhere, Study Suggests: "VANISHING ICE

Sea ice in the Arctic shrank to a record low in 2012 and the U.N.'s panel of climate scientists says it could almost vanish in summers by 2050 with rising greenhouse gas emissions. But some scientists said other factors, including the usual vagaries of weather or changing sea temperatures, may explain some recent extremes rather than changes in the Arctic."

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UPDATE: Ancient farming seen curbing extinctions of animals, plants | (Reuters) - Ancient farming practices, such as raising fish in rice paddies in China or Aboriginal Australian fire controls, will get a new lease of life under plans to slow extinctions of animals and plants, experts said on Monday. Turning to traditional farming is seen as a way of limiting what U.N. studies say is the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, driven by a rising human population that is wrecking natural habitats. A 115-nation group seeking to protect the diversity of wildlife, which underpins everything from food supplies to medicines, will look at ways to revive and promote indigenous peoples' practices at talks in Turkey from December 9-14. "Indigenous and local knowledge ... has played a key role in arresting biodiversity loss and conserving biodiversity," Zakri Abdul Hamid, founding chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), told Reuters.

Ancient farming seen curbing extinctions of animals, plants | Reuters: "The idea is partly to compare traditional farming around the world and see if the practices can be used in other nations. Among ideas, raising fish in the waters of rice paddies, a practice used in south China for 1,200 years and in some other Asian nations, can reduce pests. Most modern rice paddies are not used to raise fish. Farming the two together "reduces by 68 percent the need for pesticides and by 24 percent the need for chemical fertilizer compared with monocultures", an IPBES report said. Pesticides often kill many more species than those targeted."

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RENEWABLE ENERGY UPDATE: Greenbriar Capital begins formal construction at 80 MW Blue Mountain Utah. A fully contracted 80 MW wind energy project holding a 20-year energy sales agreement with PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Mid-American Energy Holdings Company, itself 89% owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Construction has been awarded to RMT, Inc. of Madison, Wisconsin, a subsidiary of IEA Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives, LLC of Chicago. RMT is a world leader in renewable power engineering, procurement and construction services having built over 5,000 MW of renewable energy facilities including 2 world-class projects owned by Greenbriar Capital management's previous company, Western Wind Energy Corp. This included the industry leading 120-MW Windstar Wind Project in Tehachapi, CA and the 10.5-MW Kingman combined wind-solar project, the first purpose built fully integrated wind-solar generating facility in the World. Construction at Blue Mountain began December 9th and will qualify the 80-MW Blue Mountain Wind P

Greenbriar Capital b"Greenbriar Capital Corp. is a leading developer of renewable energy and sustainable real estate projects. With long-term, high impact, contracted sales agreements in key project locations and led by a successful industry recognized operating and development team, Greenbriar targets deep value assets directed at adding significant accretive shareholder value.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
"SIGNED"
Jeffrey J. Ciachurski
President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release."

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Japan uses offsets to meet Kyoto emission goal - media | Reuters.Japan met its Kyoto Protocol obligations to lower greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees and buying carbon credits as actual emissions rose, media reported on Sunday, days after the country watered down targets for cutting them further by 2020.

Japan uses offsets to meet Kyoto emission goal - media | Reuters: "Japan, the world's fifth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, was obliged under Kyoto to cut emissions by 6 percent from 1990/91 levels to 1.186 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent a year on average over the five years to March 2013.

The Nikkei business daily said actual emissions rose by 1.4 percent to 1.279 billion tonnes, but Japan met its target with offsets for planting trees and through the government and companies purchasing carbon credits from abroad."

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