Yesterday, for the first time in 137 years of operation, while world leaders meet in Paris for COP21, The Hindu did not go to print because of heavy flooding.

Consequent to the heavy rain, print editions of The Hindu dated December 2, 2015, in Chennai, Vellore, Puducherry and Tirupati have been cancelled after taking into consideration the safety of those in the distribution network.

The Indian daily newspaper, with a circulation just above that of the New York Times, did not print yesterday’s Chennai edition, but uploaded PDFs from the issue to their website.

Link via Democracy Now

Bloomberg on some promising trends in U.S. energy production.

For the first time, widespread adoption of renewables is effectively lowering the capacity factor for fossil fuels. That’s because once a solar or wind project is built, the marginal cost of the electricity it produces is pretty much zero—free electricity—while coal and gas plants require more fuel for every new watt produced. If you’re a power company with a choice, you choose the free stuff every time.

It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. As more renewables are installed, coal and natural gas plants are used less. As coal and gas are used less, the cost of using them to generate electricity goes up. As the cost of coal and gas power rises, more renewables will be installed.

See also: a wonky financial analysis of the residential solar market.

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Here’s a map created by Stamen comparing two different scenarios of climate change, depending on how much carbon we manage to cut.

See also: a WIRED magazine article about the map.

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Tonight I am starting a two day art-making binge at something called Art Hack Day:

Art Hack Day is an internet-based nonprofit dedicated to hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is tech … Sixty artists-hackers and hacker-artists inhabit an art space to create an exhibit from scratch during 48h. We start on a Thursday evening with a meet & greet and provide good food, fast Internet, and equipment for collaborating on and creating new work. On Saturday evening we transition from hackspace to exhibition hall and the projects are shown to the public during a flash exhibit (open to the public just one evening).

Each Art Hack Day event has a theme, and this one is called Deluge.

The increased severity and frequency of extreme weather events, including recent years’ tropical storm systems, droughts and heat waves, are largely the result of human-induced climate change. In addition to widespread damage across the Atlantic seaside, Sandy’s flooding in New York’s Zone A confronted many artists and galleries directly with the reality of their environment, bringing undeniable gravity to a crisis that often seems distant. Decades of postponement and self-deceit will have to come to a close. But what comes next?

Come on out to Pioneer Works for the exhibition this Saturday, January 31st, starting at 7pm.

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Ellie wrote about the climate debate within the climate movement:

After the failures (Copenhagen) and painfully slow progress (Cancun, Lima) seen at recent U.N. Climate Summits, we know we can’t trust our political leaders to get us there. The mass movement Naomi Klein speaks of shows its face here and there, but in my milieu, I see much more of the infighting, cynicism and turning away. Of course the movement Klein describes has to come from the grass roots level, not from academia, but we can’t just fight the status quo without a solution in mind. As she acknowledges, we need a destination to aim for, and a set of solutions to put in place once we get there.

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