Clean Start: August 8, 2011

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Washington and Lee University is embarking on a solar energy project it calls the largest in Virginia. [Times Dispatch]

An oil spill in India was reported from the cargo vessel MV Rak Carrier, which sank off the Mumbai coast. [Hindustan Times]

More than a year after a private company operating in public waters retched 170 million gallons of crude and 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico, creating one of the world’s largest environmental catastrophes, we still lack thorough and reliable statistics on the BP oil disaster’s impact on the health of residents. [NOLA]

Climate models have moved quickly from “Climate 1.0″ — proving that human-caused climate change is happening — to “Climate 2.0” — what is the impact of climate change. [Star Tribune]

Addressing wetlands loss will be a major component of an upcoming report on Gulf Coast oil spill recovery, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday. [Miami Herald]

Researchers from the Joint Global Change Research Institute introduced the RCP 4.5 scenario, a global economic model of how civilization can limit greenhouse concentrations to 525 parts per million carbon dioxide, or 4.5 Watts per square meters radiative forcing. [Science Daily]

The flood threat along the Missouri River is not over yet. [CBS St. Louis]

The heat wave has claimed two more lives in Houston, an 80-year-old woman and her 50-year-old daughter. [KCEN]

Unless something is done about climate pollution, the current suffering in the Horn of Africa offers a grim foretaste of the future – temperatures in east Africa are going to rise and rainfall patterns will change, making a bad situation worse. [Guardian]

The demise of the world’s forests some 250 million years ago likely was accelerated by aggressive tree-killing fungi triggered by global climate change. [Science Daily]