Problem

money.cnn.com - Julia Horowitz and Jill Disis - August 30th 2017

The largest oil refinery in the country is shutting down as Hurricane Harvey causes more catastrophic flooding, and more have followed suit.

Early Wednesday, Motiva said it started closing its Port Arthur refinery "in response to increasing local flood conditions." The plant won't open until flood waters recede.

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cbsnews.com - by Rebecca Shabad - August 21, 2017

The Trump administration has decided to dissolve a federal advisory panel that contributes to a report that measures the current and future impacts of climate change on the U.S., The Washington Post reports.

The acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Ben Friedman, informed the chair of the advisory committee that the agency would not renew its charter, which expired Sunday, the report said. This comes two years after NOAA formed the panel, called the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment, whose 15 members were tasked with advising government and private sector stakeholders on navigating climate change.

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Federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment
http://sncaadvisorycommittee.noaa.gov

Membership - Appointments
http://sncaadvisorycommittee.noaa.gov/Membership

CLICK HERE - GPEI - THIS WEEK - Polio this week as of 9 August 2017

outbreaknewstoday.com - August 12, 2017

Additional cases of type 2 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2) have been reported recently in both Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) this week.

Syria

Three new cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) were officially confirmed at WHO headquarters in the past week, bringing the total number of cases in this outbreak to 30. Onset of paralysis of these cases is between 3 March and 16 June. Twenty-nine of the cases are from Mayadeen district, Deir Ez-Zour governorate, and one case is from Talabyad district, Raqqa governorate.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

This satellite photograph depicts the wildfire raging in Greenland, as seen from space last week. - NASA Earth Observatory

phys.org - August 14, 2017

Police in Greenland warned people to stay away from western areas of the island as wildfires scorched swathes of scrubland . . . 

 . . . Denmark's meteorological service BMI said the island registered its hottest-ever temperature of 24.8 degrees (77 Fahrenheit) on August 10.

Last year was Greenland's hottest on record.

The Danish territory has lost about 4,000 gigatons of ice since 1995, British researchers said in June, making ice melt on the huge island the biggest single contributor to rising sea levels.

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PHOTOS: A 'Massive' Wildfire Is Now Blazing In Greenland
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/08/542305822/photos-a-massive-wildfire-is-now-blazing-in-greenland