‘Green News Report’ – August 29, 2013

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Keystone XL pipeline decision delayed until 2014?; MSNBC’s climate change documentary goes missing; Salmon vs. mining: Will EPA approve Alaska’s massive Pebble Mine?; Kansas farmers to run out of water within 50 years; A key finding in the plateau of rising temperatures; PLUS: A new parody ad takes aim at electric utility monopolies … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Glenn Beck threatens to fire staff who buy energy efficient lightbulbs; 8 years after Katrina, New Orleans is a monument of hope and future climate threats; Vanishing ocean smell could also mean fewer clouds; Issues surrounding GMO ‘Golden Rice’; Climate change overwhelming Detroit’s sewage system; GMO corn failing to protect crop from pests; US nukes not prepared for terrorist attacks … PLUS: MLK legacy: It’s time for civil rights and environmental activists to join hands… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Blackout?: MSNBC’s Climate Change Documentary Goes Missing:
• MSNBC’s ‘Power’ Outage: Chris Hayes’ Climate Change Documentary STILL Unavailable Online (The BRAD BLOG):
  The curious blackout of the cable net’s one-hour ‘Politics of Power’ special
  If you missed the MSNBC/Chris Hayes documentary The Politics of Power on August 16, you may never have the chance to see it again in its entirety.
  …
  [F]or some reason, the rest of the special — a rare hour-long cable news documentary on the climate crisis and its fossil fuel industry-funded deniers — has yet to be posted online. Anywhere.
• UPDATE: Keystone XL Pipeline Delayed? Plus, Internal Documents Contradict Public Stance:
• Keystone XL Decision Likely Delayed Until 2014 (Huffington Post Green(:
  A decision on the fate of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline will likely be delayed until after the release of an inspector general investigation into conflict of interest complaints….[G]iven the attention that the Keystone pipeline has attracted, it is unlikely that the State Department will make a decision on the pipeline before the IG report is finalized.
• Decision on Keystone in danger of being delayed until 2014 (The Hill’s e2 Wire)
• Canadian Documents Suggest Shift on Pipeline (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Ever since President Obama said in June that a litmus test for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada was whether it would “significantly” worsen global warming, Canadian government officials have insisted it would not. They reasoned that because the pipeline would not have any major effect on rate of development of Canada’s oil sands, as a State Department environmental review concluded in March, it would not significantly raise the amount of carbon emitted.
  …
  Briefing notes prepared for the natural resources minister, Joe Oliver…noted that “in order for crude oil production to grow, the North American pipeline network must be expanded through initiatives, such as the Keystone XL Pipeline project.”
• Salmon vs. Mining: Will EPA Approve Massive Pebble Mine in Alaska?
• On Alaska Listening Tour, EPA Administrator Gets An Earful From Both Sides Of The Pebble Mine Debate (Climate Progress):
  According to the EPA, the mine footprint itself will destroy between 24 and 90 miles of salmon streams, and normal mine operations will pollute dozens more miles of river habitat with two contaminants known to cause acute effects on salmon.
• New EPA chief steps into Alaska mine controversy (McClatchy)
• VIDEO: Alaska Gold: FRONTLINE probes the fault lines of a growing battle in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, home to the world’s last great wild sockeye salmon fishery – and enormous mineral deposits. (Frontline, PBS)
• Report: Mining in Alaska’s Bristol Bay Region Threatens a Sustainable Economy (Center for American Progress)
• EPA chief warns against climate change on visit to Alaska glacier (McClatchy)
• A New Clue in the Plateau of Rising Global Temperatures:
• Study Ties Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ to Pacific Cooldown (Climate Central) [emphasis added]:
  By running sophisticated computer models that looked at observed energy coming into the climate system, plus observed sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that the decadal-scale cooling of a portion of the tropical Pacific accounts for most of the current plateau in global average surface temperatures.
• A Cooler Pacific May Be Behind Recent Pause In Global Warming (NPR) [emphasis added]:
  It can’t last forever; the ocean will eventually return to a warm phase, “and when that happens, we will be seeing unprecedented rates of climate warming,” he says.

  Not only will we get the natural heat wave, but on top of that we’ll also get all the warming from greenhouse gases that have been building up during this cold cycle.

• How the Pacific has paused global warming on hold (but not for long) (Telegraph UK): Although temperatures on Earth are higher than ever, the ocean is playing a major role in absorbing excess heat, a new study suggests
• Solving the Mysteries of ‘Hiatus’ in Global Warming (Keeling Curve blog, UCSD)
• Kansas Farmers Will Run Out of Water in 50 Years:
  • Study: High Plains Aquifer mostly gone in 50 years (SF Gate):
    If Kansas farmers keep irrigating crops at present levels, an estimated 69 percent of the water in the High Plains Aquifer will depleted within 50 years, according to a study released Monday.
  • Wells Are Running Dry In Parts Of Kansas (NPR)
  • REPORT: Tapping unsustainable groundwater stores for agricultural production in the High Plains Aquifer of Kansas, projections to 2110 (Abstract, Proceedings of the Natl Academy of Sciences)
  • Where the world’s running out of water, in one map (Washington Post)

• Parody Ad Takes Aim At Big Electric Utilities Over Rooftop Solar:
• California Solar Energy Plan Inspires Ads Mocking Utility (Huffington Post Green)
• VIDEO: Edison Hates Rooftop Solar (Presente.org)

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

• It’s time for civil rights and environmental activists to join hands (Grist):
  [T]he 1963 March on Washington led the way to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and later the Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Act, and helped elevate the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development into a Cabinet-level agency. The 1970 Earth Day helped win to passage of the Clean Water Act, a new Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

  Given what each of these movements produced independently, it’s scary to think about what they might produce in unison.

• Vanishing ocean smell could also mean fewer clouds (Grist) [emphasis added]:
  The unique oceanside smell that flows over your olfactory organs is loaded with sulfur — dimethylsulfide, to be exact, or DMS. It’s produced when phytoplankton decompose. And it’s a fragrant compound that’s as special as it smells: In the atmosphere it reacts to produce sulfuric acid, which aids in the formation of clouds. But it’s a smell that’s endangered by climate change.
• 8 Years After Katrina, New Orleans Is A Monument Of Both Hope And Future Climate Threats (Climate Progress)
• GMO: Proponents of food biotechnology are still talking about Golden Rice? Sigh. (Marion Nestle, Food Politics): A common theme of biotechnology proponents is that “Golden Rice holds so much promise that no questioning of its value is justified.”
• It holds enough water to raise sea levels 50 metres, but East Antarctica ice sheet is even more unstable than we thought (Telegraph UK)
• GOP Marjority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor Skipped The March On Washington To Meet With Oil Lobbyists (Climate Progress)
• Detroit has a major sewage problem (Salon): Climate change has increased heavy rains, overflowing the sewer system, forcing the city to release raw sewage into the Detroit River.
• Glenn Beck threatens to fire staff who buy eco-friendly lightbulbs (CNET):
  He will not have some leftie-leaning, lily-livered administrator buying eco-friendly lightbulbs. Speaking on his pulsating show, Beck instructed his assistant: “I fire the person who starts to purchase fluorescent lightbulbs.”
• GMO corn failing to protect fields from pest damage: report (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  Evidence gathered from fields in two Illinois counties suggests that pest problems are mounting as the rootworms grow ever more resistant to efforts to fight them, including crop rotation combined with use of the biotech corn, according to the report issued by Michael Gray, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois. Farmers across “a wide swath of Illinois” could face formidable challenges in protecting their corn crops from the hungry insects, Gray said in the August 27 report.
• Tom Coburn: ‘I’m A Global Warming Denier. I Don’t Deny That.’ (Huffington Post Green)
• Report: Nuclear Received 4 Times More Subsidies Than Solar in CA (GreenTech Media)
• NRC spots problem during nuclear power plant safety drill (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
• Salmonella in Spices Prompts Changes in Farming (NY Times)
• Climate Change An Emerging Civil Rights Issue: (Green For All):
  Remember Hurricane Katrina? The hurricane that leveled New Orleans showed that severe weather in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color is a matter of life and death….It’s not difficult to see how injustice and inequality played out during Hurricane Katrina….African-Americans living in L.A. are more than twice as likely to die in a heat wave as other residents in the city, thanks to an abundance of pavement and lack of shade, cars and air conditioning in neighborhoods with the fewest resources.
• VIDEO: Climate Name Change: Name Hurricanes After Climate Science Deniers! (350Action.org via Climate Progress):



• Science Denier: GOP Congressman Rokita Says It’s ‘Arrogant’ To Believe In Man-Made Climate Change (Climate Progress)
• Might as well face it, you’re addicted to oil (Smart Planet):
  America, we need to talk.
  Have a seat.
  Remember when President George W. Bush told you seven years ago that you’re addicted to oil?
  It’s time to get serious about your problem. So here’s a little tough love.
• Why So Many Conservatives Deny The Climate Problem: They Hate The Solution (Climate Progress):
  That’s it. That is the logic behind the pervasive view on climate change on the right: We don’t like the solutions to this problem, so we officially declare this not to be a problem.

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).