‘Green News Report’ – August 6, 2013

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Breaking: Another coal mine disaster in KY; 200 arrested protesting Chevron’s toxic 100-year old San Francisco refinery; Why are drillers wasting 1/3 of natural gas?; South Korea’s growing nuclear industry scandal; Extreme heat naturally poaching Alaska’s salmon; PLUS: The world’s first test-tube burger … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): “Fatberg” ahead!; Will global warming lead to more war? It’s not that simple; NM farmers draining aquifer for fracking; Climate changing faster that in past 65m years; IG to probe State Dept conflict of interest; Fukushima: radioactive water ’emergency’; Gag order for 2 kids over fracking; Starved polar bear perished due to record sea-ice melt; Wind energy fastest-growing energy source in US … PLUS: Screw Your Salmon And Your Virgin Wilderness, Alaska, America Hungers For Molybdenum! … and much, MUCH more! …

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• Chevron Refinery Fire: Hundreds Arrested, Chevron Pays $2m Fine:
• VIDEO: California Town Takes on Chevron (The Rachel Maddow Show)



• Over 200 Arrested At Anti-Chevron Protests This Weekend (Climate Progress):
  Numbering into the thousands, the peaceful protesters, including anti-Keystone XL activist Bill McKibben and Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, decried Chevron’s dangerous practices and warned of the risk presented by increasing transport and processing of fossil fuels.
• City of Richmond sues Chevron over last year’s refinery fire (Contra Costa Times):
  Pitre said the city incurred economic losses providing emergency response to the fire and monitoring air quality; suffered environmental harm; has been hampered by the stigma from decades of releases and accidents; and that Chevron’s negligence interferes with residents’ rights to “comfort and enjoyment” of their community.
• Chevron to pay $2 million for refinery fire (SF Gate)
• Richmond leaders blast Chevron, say lawsuit is about accountability (KTVU San Francisco) [emphasis added]:
  When asked why the city didn’t sue Chevron sooner, McLaughlin said past members of the City Council have been unwilling to challenge the oil giant after receiving generous campaign contributions from the company.
• Drillers Flaring 1/3rd of Natural Gas into Atmosphere:
• Exclusive: Bakken flaring burns more than $100 million a month (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  Oil drillers in North Dakota’s Bakken shale fields are allowing nearly a third of the natural gas they drill to burn off into the air, with a value of more than $100 million per month, according to a study to be released on Monday.
  …
  North Dakota’s flaring, which NASA astronauts can see from space, releases fewer greenhouse gases than direct emission of natural gas into the air, but it is essentially burning product that could be sold at a profit if there were pipelines.
• Environmentalists call well methane leaks ‘alarmingly high’ (Fuel Fix): Almost 10% of the methane produced from oil and gas operations in a Utah site escapes into the atmosphere, according to a federally backed study published Monday.
• Duke Energy shelves major nuclear project in Florida (Reuters)
• South Korea’s Growing Nuclear Industry Scandal: ‘Deeply Compromised’:
• Scandal in South Korea Over Nuclear Revelations (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Weeks of revelations about the close ties between South Korea’s nuclear power companies, their suppliers and testing companies have led the prime minister to liken the industry to a mafia.
  …
  Prosecutors have indicted some officials at a testing company on charges of faking safety tests on parts for the plants. Some officials at the state-financed company that designs nuclear power plants were also indicted on charges of taking bribes from testing company officials in return for accepting those substandard parts. Worse yet, investigators discovered that the questionable components are installed in 14 of South Korea’s 23 nuclear power plants.
• South Korea’s Nuclear Energy Corruption Scandal Widens in Scope (Atomic Power Review)
• POACHED: Fish die as Alaska temperatures continue to break records (Reuters):
  Overheated water has been blamed for large die-offs of hatchery trout and salmon stocks in at least two parts of the state as hot, dry weather has set in, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
• Global Scientists Shocked by True Scale of Ocean Warming (Environment News Service):
  Warming oceans are causing marine species to change their breeding times and shift their habitats toward the poles much faster than land-based species, finds new research by scientists at 17 institutions across the world. The researchers warn that these big shifts in the timing of major events could produce disruption to ocean food webs, affecting all sea life, as well as humans who depend on the sea for food.
• Test-Tube Burger – Pros & Cons of Lab-Grown Food
• VIDEO: Test-tube burger: ‘We already grow enough food to feed the world’ (Telegraph UK):
  Science must play a part in solving the global population’s food consumption problem, but let’s not forget the world does grow enough to feed us all, says food campaigner Tristram Stuart.
• Test-Tube Meat’s Secret Ingredient: Unborn Cow Blood (Tom Philpott, Mother Jones) [emphasis added]:
  But just as cows don’t grow out of thin air — they need feed — in vitro meat doesn’t appear magically in those lab vats. It, too, needs to be fed something if it’s going to grow. And that brings up a serious question that’s rarely dealt with in techno-optimist takes on lab meat: What, precisely, is in the “nutrient solution” the stem cells convert into edible flesh? Then there’s the question of the energy required to maintain proper conditions for large-scale lab meat growth.
• INFOGRAPHIC: Cultured Beef: Do We Really Need a $380,000 Burger Grown in Petri Dishes? (Scientific American) [emphasis added]:
  As synthetic biologist Christina Agapakis noted in a blog critique in 2012: “Cell culture is one of the most expensive and resource-intensive techniques in modern biology.”
• First lab-grown hamburger gets full marks for ‘mouth feel’ (Guardian UK)
• VIDEO: Synthetic beef hamburger tastes ‘close to meat’ (Guardian UK)
• Google’s Sergey Brin: the man behind the test-tube burger (Guardian UK)
• Lab-grown burgers cannot provide a secure future for Africa (Guardian UK)

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

• Screw Your Salmon And Your Virgin Wilderness, Alaska, America Hungers For Molybdenum (Wonkette)
• Study: Watching Fox News Makes You Distrust Climate Scientists (Mother Jones):
  [A] number of studies show that watching Fox News increases your risk of holding incorrect beliefs about the science of climate change… [A] new paper just out in the journal Public Understanding of Science takes this line of inquiry further, beginning to unpack precisely how conservative media work to undermine the public’s acceptance of science.
• Will global warming lead to more war? It’s not that simple. (Washington Post):
  So does that mean that climate change will make war more common in the decades ahead? Actually, despite all the alarming headlines, that’s not so clear. Researchers who work in this field say that this is a complicated subject, and there’s not really a straightforward answer here.
• Drought-Stricken New Mexico Farmers Drain Aquifer To Sell Water For Fracking (Climate Progress):
  The bad news is that the terrible drought in New Mexico has led some farmers to sell their water to the oil and gas industry. The worse news is that many of them are actually pumping the water out of the aquifer to do so. The worst news of all is that once the frackers get through tainting it with their witches’ brew of chemicals, that water often becomes unrecoverable.
• Today’s Climate Change Proves Much Faster Than Changes in Past 65 Million Years (Scientific American): Climate change is occurring 10 to 100 times faster than in the past and ecosystems will find it hard to adjust
• State Department watchdog probes Keystone XL review (CS Monitor): Keystone XL pipeline is under scrutiny as the State Department’s inspector general probes conflict of interest charges surrounding a review of Keystone XL.
• Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an ’emergency’ (Reuters):
  This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.
• Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking (Guardian UK): Two Pennsylvanian children will live their lives under a gag order imposed under a $750,000 settlement.
• Solar Could Provide One-Third Of The Western U.S.’s Power Needs By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Sad: Starved polar bear perished due to record sea-ice melt, says expert (Guardian UK): Climate change has reduced ice in the Arctic to record lows in the past year, forcing animals to range further in search of food.
• VIDEO: Fatberg ahead! How London was saved from a 15-tonne ball of grease (Guardian UK): Team of sewerage workers took three weeks to clear bus-sized toxic ball of fat that threatened to flood streets with sewage.
• U.S. wind power fastest-growing energy source in 2012, report says (LA Times):
  In a first, wind energy became the No. 1 source of new U.S. electricity generation capacity in 2012, according to a report released by the Energy Department on Tuesday.
• Battle looms over expanding shipments of coal in Houston (Fuel Fix)
• One dead, two injured following mining accident in Harlan County (WYMT Kentucky)
• Wash. Examiner Duped By “Global Cooling” “Scam Artist” — Even After We Warned Them (Media Matters)
• Study Finds 5 Ways Conservative Media Erode Trust In Scientists (Media Matters)

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• Video Proof That Global Warming is a ‘Hoax’!: NASA Temperature Data 1888-2011 (The BRAD BLOG):



• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).