‘Green News Report’ – April 15, 2014

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Green News Report Special Coverage: The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report on Mitigation: the costs, the risks, and the opportunities. Is it too late avoid climate catastrophe?… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): China’s pollution may be causing America’s extreme weather conditions; 900+ environmental activists killed around the world; March 2014 was 4th warmest on record; Kitimat, BC votes against tar sands pipeline; Solar-powered plane can ‘fly forever’; OR: investigation finds aerial pesticides sprayed on residences; EPA underestimated fracking methane leaks … PLUS: Innovation: Scientists discover how to generate solar power in the dark … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• UN IPCC Assessment Report on MITIGATION: Risk Management And Reducing Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions:
• VIDEO: Press Conference (Working Group III Report, Berlin) (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• UN IPCC: The 5th Assessment Report (UN IPCC):
  The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) provides a clear and most up to date view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. It comprises of three Working Group (WG) reports and a Synthesis Report (SYR) which integrates and synthesize material in the WG reports for policymakers.

  The Working Group III contribution assesses the options for mitigating climate change and their underlying technological, economic and institutional requirements. It transparently lays out risks, uncertainty and ethical foundations of climate change mitigation policies on the global, national and sub-national level, investigates mitigation measures for all major sectors and assesses investment and finance issues.

• UN IPCC 5th Assessment Report: Analysis:
• Climate Efforts Falling Short, U.N. Panel Says (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Delivering the latest stark news about climate change on Sunday, a United Nations panel warned that governments are not doing enough to avert profound risks in coming decades. But the experts found a silver lining: Not only is there still time to head off the worst, but the political will to do so seems to be rising around the world.
• The 3 Most Sobering Graphics From The U.N.’s New Climate Report (Climate Progress):
  The overall message of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s newest report is simple: a rapid shift to renewable energy is needed to avert catastrophic global warming. The science behind that message, however, is less simple.
• What Can Scientists Say about Ethics and Economics of Combating Climate Change? (Scientific American):Ethics and costs are contentious issues tackled by the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report
• Roadmap: Potential Pathways to Reducing Emissions:
• UN panel: Cutting emissions will cost us — but so will global warming (Vox) [emphasis added]:
  The upshot: Global greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels and other sources are rising rapidly — putting the world on pace for significant temperature increases by century’s end. To meet its climate goals, the world would have to act quickly, cutting emissions until they were 41 to 72 percent below today’s levels by mid-century. That won’t be easy. And the task gets much harder if we rule out any technologies, like nuclear power or carbon capture for coal plants.
• IPCC report proposes sucking carbon out of the air as climate fix (Guardian UK): Technique of burning biomass then pumping released carbon underground included in leaked draft from UN climate panel.
• IPCC report: 6 things you must know about reducing emissions (GreenBiz)
• UN agrees pathway towards 2015 climate change deal (RTCC)
• Costs of Mitigation Will Be ‘Modest’ – and Much Cheaper Than Further Delay:
• How to Solve Global Warming: It’s the Energy Supply (Scientific American):
  Carbon storage has to expand rapidly, or coal burning has to cease, if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change.
  …
  Restraining global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius will require changing how the world produces and uses energy to power its cities and factories, heats and cools buildings, as well as moves people and goods in airplanes, trains, cars, ships and trucks, according to the IPCC. Changes are required not just in technology, but also in people’s behavior.
• IPCC Report: And now, for some good news (Business Green):
  IPCC report confirms a better and sustainable future is possible, the onus is now on political and business leaders to make it happen
• Climate Panel Stunner: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe Is Super Cheap — But Only If We Act Now (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Now you might think it would be a no-brainer that humanity would be willing to pay a very high cost to avoid such catastrophes and achieve the low emission “2°C” (3.6°F) pathway in the left figure above (RCP2.6 — which is a total greenhouse gas level in 2100 equivalent to roughly 450 parts per million of CO2). But the third report finds that the “cost” of doing so is to reduce the median annual growth of consumption over this century by a mere 0.06%.

  You read that right, the annual growth loss to preserve a livable climate is 0.06% — and that’s “relative to annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3% per year.” So we’re talking annual growth of, say 2.24% rather than 2.30% to save billions and billions of people from needless suffering for decades if not centuries.

• Cost of fighting warming ‘modest,’ says UN panel (AP):
  “The longer we delay the higher would be the cost,” IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told The Associated Press after the panel’s weeklong session in Berlin. “But despite that, the point I’m making is that even now, the cost is not something that’s going to bring about a major disruption of economic systems. It’s well within our reach.”
• UN IPCC 5th Assessment Report: Part 1 – The Science, Part 2 – The Impacts:
• IPCC Working Group 1: Alarming IPCC Prognosis: 9°F Warming For U.S., Faster Sea Rise, More Extreme Weather, Permafrost Collapse (Climate Progress)
• IPCC Working Group 2: Conservative Climate Panel Warns World Faces ‘Breakdown Of Food Systems’ And More Violent Conflict (Climate Progress):
  As grim as the Working Group 2 report on impacts is, it explicitly has very little to say about the catastrophic impacts and vulnerability in the business as usual case where the Earth warms 4°C to 5°C [7°F-9°F] — and it has nothing to say about even higher warming, which the latest science suggests we are headed toward.
• 402 ppm: Carbon Dioxide Levels Climb Into Uncharted Territory for Humans (Mashable):
  The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has exceeded 402 parts per million (ppm) during the past two days of observations, which is higher than at any time in at least the past 800,000 years, according to readings from monitoring equipment on a mountaintop in Hawaii.
  …
  Once emitted, a single molecule of carbon dioxide can remain aloft for hundreds of years, which means that the effects of today’s industrial activities will be felt for the next several centuries, if not thousands of years.

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

• Scientists Discover How to Generate Solar Power in the Dark (The Atlantic):
  Meet ‘photoswitches,’ a breakthrough set of materials that act as their own batteries, absorbing energy and releasing it on demand.
• Chinese Pollution May Be Causing America’s Extreme Weather Conditions (PolicyMic) [emphasis added]:
  [A]ccording to a new study, whatever happens in China doesn’t stay in China. Published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a new study examines how pollution from East Asia affects the global atmospheres…. What they found was a strong correlation between Asian pollution and irregular weather patterns across the rest of the world, namely in the Pacific.

  Though the full implications of this yet to be understood, “it’s almost certain that weather in the U.S. is changing,” said Renyi Zhang, a co-author of the study.

• More Than 900 Environmental Advocates Slain In A Decade As Concern For The Planet Grows (Huffington Post Green)
• March Was 4th Warmest on Record Globally (Climate Central)
• Geologists: Fracking Likely Cause of Ohio Earthquakes (TIME Magazine):
  Geologists have for the first time linked earthquakes deep under Ohio’s Appalachian Mountains to hydraulic fracturing, leading the state to issue strict permit conditions Friday on the gas extraction process. Researchers found that five small tremors last month near Youngstown, Ohio were likely the result of the injection of sand and water that occurs during the hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — process, the Associated Press reports.
• Canada: Kitimat residents vote no on Northern Gateway (Vancouver Sun):
  The backers of the Northern Gateway pipeline are vowing to plow ahead despite a blunt rejection by citizens of Kitimat, the community that stands to gain the most from the $7.9 billion megaproject.
• Chemical Trespass: Aerial pesticides sprayed on residential homes in rural Oregon (Eugene Weekly, Oregon):
  They didn’t think the helicopter flying overhead would be raining toxic chemicals upon their homes, their farms and their bodies. … It took a couple days for Burns, Rickard and other neighbors to realize they were all sickened by what had fallen from the helicopter, which was spraying pesticides on private forests surrounding Cedar Valley.
• Unexpected loose gas from fracking (Washington Post):
  A survey of hydraulic fracturing sites in Pennsylvania revealed drilling operations releasing plumes of methane 100 to 1,000 times the rate the EPA expects from that stage of drilling, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Meet the pilots behind the sun-powered plane that can ‘fly forever’ (CNN):
  The Swiss duo unveiled last week Solar Impulse 2, a revolutionary aircraft designed to achieve the longest ever flight in the history of aviation in terms of duration for a single pilot. It will attempt to fly non-stop for 120 hours (yes, that’s five successive days and nights) over oceans and continents without a drop of fuel.
• Coal Returns to German Utilities Replacing Lost Nuclear (Bloomberg News)
• Oil ends back under $104 on Libya supply bets (MarketWatch): Libya oil deal, global demand concerns pressure crude; supply data on tap.
• Four Years Later, BP’s Oil Spill Is Still Killing Gulf Wildlife (Climate Progress):
  “No matter what BP and others are telling you, the oil is not gone,” Doug Inkley, NWF senior scientist, said on the call. Oil continues to wash up on the Gulf’s shores — as recently as April 2, Florida Department of Environmental Protection officials found more than 350 tar balls on beaches in Escambia County, Florida.
• Department Of Defense Undertakes Largest Solar Project To Date (Climate Progress)
• Why the fossil fuel industry wants us to ignore risk (Renew Economy):
  [Renewable energy] technology is having a massive impact on incumbent industries, perhaps more than any climate policy might have done in such a short period. The fossil fuel industry understands this – which is why they are so desperate to take such technologies out of the market…

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).