‘Green News Report’ – September 26, 2013

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Preview of the latest UN climate report; GOP prepares new hostage crisis on behalf of fossil fuel industry; PLUS: Facing the challenges and the opportunities of climate change … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): VIDEO: IPCC warns of climate disaster; Vive le carbon tax: France to tax fossil fuels; Physicist accuses Murdoch paper of lying; An illustrated bestiary of climate trolls; India to build world’s largest solar plant; Chinese natural gas could ‘wreak havoc’ on markets; Bill Gates goes nuclear; Cost of renewable energy’s variability is dwarfed by the savings; Idaho’s phosphate problem; Latinos growing force in the fight for environmental issues … PLUS: Good news! Around the world, mines, dams, and coal export terminals are losing … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• GOP prepares new hostage crisis on behalf of fossil fuel industry:
• Republicans Will Raise The Debt Ceiling For One Year Only If Obama Becomes A Republican (Climate Progress)
• House Republicans to tie debt ceiling hike to GOP wish list (The Hill’s e2 Wire)
• A Government Shutdown Would Grind Many Federal Environmental Functions To A Halt (Climate Progress)
• National Parks Will Close To The Public But Stay Open To Drilling If The Government Shuts Down (Climate Progess)
• Preview of the latest UN IPCC climate report:
• Faux Pause: Ocean Warming, Sea Level Rise And Polar Ice Melt Speed Up, Surface Warming To Follow (Climate Progress):
  “The heat content of the oceans is growing and growing. That means that the greenhouse effect has not taken a pause and the cold sun is not noticeably slowing global warming…”
• Scientists as certain of climate change as they are that smoking kills (AP) [emphasis added]:
  Top scientists from a variety of fields say they are about as certain that global warming is a real, man-made threat as they are that cigarettes kill. They are as sure about climate change as they are about the age of the universe. They say they are more certain about climate change than they are that vitamins make you healthy or that dioxin in Superfund sites is dangerous. They’ll even put a number on how certain they are about climate change. But that number isn’t 100 per cent. It’s 95 per cent.

  And for some non-scientists, that’s just not good enough.

• With IPCC Report, Climate Change is Settled Science (Op-Ed) (LiveScience.com)
• What You Need to Know about the Forthcoming Climate Change Report (Scientific American):
  (1) We’re responsible. Period. And CO2 is the main greenhouse gas.
• Study Sees a Higher Risk of Storms on the Horizon (NY Times)
• Is the IPCC report downplaying high end risks?:
• Michael Mann: Climate-Change Deniers Must Stop Distorting the Evidence (Op-Ed) (Live Science)
• VIDEO: Michael Mann: IPCC Downplaying Higher End Scenarios?
• Lord Stern: It would be absurd to underestimate climate change risks (Guardian UK): The IPCC report shows the risks are ‘immense’, and it would be unscientific to ignore the evidence, says the economist
• A Climate Alarm, Too Muted for Some (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  In one case, we have a lot of mainstream science that says if human society keeps burning fossil fuels with abandon, considerable land ice could melt and the ocean could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100. We have some outlier science that says the problem could be quite a bit worse than that, with a maximum rise exceeding five feet. The drafters of the report went with the lower numbers, choosing to treat the outlier science as not very credible.
  …
  Is it right to throw out bleeding-edge science in the one case while keeping it in the other?
• Climate Week NYC: Facing the opportunities of the climate challenge
• Climate Week NYC: An emphasis on fixing the free market with ‘true costing’ (Treehugger)
• How the Insurance Industry Is Dealing With Climate Change (Smithsonian Magazine)
• State Dept: U.S. Carbon Emissions Set to Fall 17%, Meeting Obama’s Goal (Bloomberg News)
• Why the World Bank is Taking on Climate Change (The World Bank):
  The World Bank Group has already made climate change a priority. We know the world cannot afford to wait, and we are stepping up our mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk management work.
• Renewable Energy Study Shows That Benefits Outweigh Costs In U.S. (Reuters):
  Wear-and-tear costs on coal and natural gas power plants from adding high levels of wind and solar energy in the U.S. West is small compared with the benefits of generating less power using fossil fuels, [the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory] said Tuesday.
• Cleaner Air from Curbing CO2 Emissions Would Save Lives, Study Finds (Yale e360)
• Debunking the deluge of propaganda from the climate science denial industry:
• Put your pooper scoopers on high alert: A deluge of climate change denial is on its way (Slate): The IPCC assessment report is due out in a few days, and the deniers are in overdrive cranking out the noise. You’d better be prepared for it.
• No, the World Isn’t Cooling (Phil Plait, Slate)
• Rising tide: Researchers struggle to project how fast, how high and how far the oceans will rise. (Nature Magazine):
  The [IPCC] panel had previously projected much higher rates of sea-level rise, but its 2007 assessment admitted that it could not tackle the entire problem: the predictions did not include the possibility of rapid changes in ice cover in Greenland or the Antarctic because the authors had concluded that it was impossible to forecast such behaviour.
• The Most Important Climate Pacts You’ve Never Heard Of (Climate Central):
  Reducing emissions of the short-lived pollutants offers the chance to slow global warming in the near-term while diplomats continue the arduous process of negotiating a longer-term climate treaty, since carbon emissions cuts will be required to limit long-term warming and its myriad effects regardless of how steep any cuts to short-lived pollutants are.

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

• Good news! Around the world, mines, dams, and coal export terminals are losing. (On Earth Magazine):
  David 5, Goliath 0 (and Counting): Love the underdog? Well, get this: people around the globe are going up against Big Oil and Big Mining—and winning.
• VIDEO: IPCC Warns of Climate Disaster – Will Scientific Consensus Spark Action on Global Warming? (Democracy Now!)
• Vive le carbon tax: France to tax fossil fuels (New Scientist)
• Top physicist accuses The Australian newspaper of misrepresenting his climate change views (Graham Readfern)
• Climate Trolls – An Illustrated Bestiary (Sci Blogs):
  Some will dazzle you with words so long and unfamiliar and thoughts so obscure and eccentric that you’ll feel you must believe. Some will simply badger and harass you until you can take no more. It is a harsh and dangerous world. This is why I wish to provide you a guide to these many and varied beings you will surely come across as you venture ever deeper into their native realm. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.
• India plans to build the largest solar plant in the world (Climate Progress): Indian utilities plan to use 23,000 acres of land to build the largest solar power plant in the world, at 4GW of power.
• In 2013, Worldwide Solar Power Installations Will Overtake Wind For The First Time (Climate Progress)
• DOE official: Chinese natural gas could ‘wreak havoc’ on markets (The Hill’s e2 Wire)
• Bill Gates goes nuclear: 800 years of power from atomic waste (NY Times)
• Cost of renewable energy’s variability is dwarfed by the savings (Ars Technica): Wear and tear on equipment costs millions, but fuel savings are worth billions.
• Whale Mass Stranding Attributed to Sonar Mapping for First Time (Science Daily):
  An independent scientific review panel has concluded that the mass stranding of approximately 100 melon-headed whales in the Loza Lagoon system in northwest Madagascar in 2008 was primarily triggered by acoustic stimuli, more specifically, a multi-beam echosounder system operated by a survey vessel contracted by ExxonMobil Exploration and Production (Northern Madagascar) Limited.
• Live in a flood zone? Check your insurance: (CS Monitor):
  A new federal flood-insurance reform law requires maps to take account of projected sea level rise in designating flood zones, as federal subsidies for properties in flood zones fade to zero.
• Latinos a Growing Force in the Fight for Environmental Issues (KPCC)
• Obama nominee for US Energy Commission in jeopardy (Bloomberg):
  Senator Tim Scott will vote against President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, virtually erasing the possibility of a Senate panel approving the nomination.
• Idaho’s phosphate problem: (Indian Country Today):
  An elemental phosphorus plant owned by the FMC Corp., on the Shoshone-Bannock homelands in Idaho, has been abandoned for more than a decade. But its legacy of pollution remains — and it’s jeopardizing economic progress, public and environmental health on the reservation and in surrounding communities.
• High levels of poison found in SC sewers as probe widens: (SC State):
  Cancer-causing industrial chemicals have been found in the sewers at a Columbia-area restaurant as a state investigation of illegal dumping expands from the Upstate to the Midlands, where utility officials scrambled this week to learn more about the threat to central South Carolina.
• Flame retardants banned years ago finally declining in women (Environmental Health News
• Shell Oil’s Arctic Drilling Operations in Limbo: (LA Times):
  Shell Oil has not disclosed new safety measures since a critical federal report in March, and it has not applied to drill in the Arctic in 2014.
• Texas study reveals most residents believe in global warming: (Huffington Post):
  Don’t judge a book by its cover. Or in this case, a state by its politicians. According to a study conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 70 percent of Texans accept that global warming is taking place.
• VIDEO: ‘Green Tea Coalition’ Fights for Solar in Georgia (The BRAD BLOG):
  [P]erhaps we can forgive Fox needing to find some way to save face here, but wouldn’t “Joining environmentalists to advance Tea Party values” have been equally as accurate, if not more so?
• North Carolina Returns EPA Grant To Study Fracking’s Effects On Streams And Wetlands (Climate Progress)

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).