Geoscience Policy Monthly Review
october 2013
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federal agencies & administration
EPA to hold meetings around the nation to discuss reducing GHG emissions
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hosting eleven public listening sessions across the country to solicit ideas and input from the public regarding the best Clean Air Act approaches to reducing carbon pollution from existing power plants. Power plants are the nation’s largest stationary source of carbon pollution, responsible for about one-third of all greenhouse gas pollution in the United States. The EPA hopes to enforce stricter regulations on existing power plants that would cut emissions by 26% by 2020.
Sources: Environmental Protection Agency
NSF grants fund new ocean observation center
The National Science Foundation awarded $16 million in grants to fund a new observation system in the sub-polar region of the North Atlantic Ocean to better understand the ‘global conveyor belt’ – the system of surface ocean currents that carry warmer waters northward, and the deep ocean currents that carry cooler waters southward toward the equator. This initiative is part of the U.S.-led Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP). The $16 million will be distributed over the next five years to oceanographers at Duke University, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the University of Miami. The project is in collaboration with international researchers in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
This is the OSNAP observation location in the North Atlantic Ocean;
red arrows show warm water, blue cold. Photo credit: WHOISources: National Science Foundation
Sources: National Science Foundation