‘Green News Report’ – April 29, 2014

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Deadly tornado outbreak rips across the South, but safer building codes still stalled by lawmakers; Good news for those who breathe: Supreme Court upholds EPA’s cross-state pollution standard; PLUS: Happy 60th Birthday, solar energy! Look what we dug up to celebrate!… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Six grassroots environmental activists win prestigious Goldman Prize; Miscarriage Risk Rises With BPA Exposure: Study; Exxon’s $900 Billion Arctic Prize at Risk After Ukraine; BP doesn’t want to pay for oil spill research; Capping Chernobyl – literally; New sweeping reforms to reduce coal mine dust, black lung disease … PLUS: Pork prices spike as pig virus wipes out over 10% of nation’s hogs … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Deadly Tornadoes Rip Across The South:
• Deaths reported from US storms reaches 31 (AP):
  At least 31 deaths have been reported from a large, stubborn storm system making its way through the South after pummeling the central U.S.
• VIDEO: 75 million Americans under threat of severe weather (CNN)
• VIDEO: Anchor Evacuates Studio As Tornado Hits: (ABC)
• Oklahoma Plan For School Storm Shelters Thwarted By Tax Cut (Huffington Post Green)
• Tornado Safety For Oklahoma Schools May Fall Victim To Anti-Tax Zeal (Climate Progress)
• What Is the Climate Change Influence On Tornadoes?:
• Tornadoes, Extreme Weather And Climate Change (Joe Romm, Climate Progress):
  Tom Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center, explained in a 2011 email: “What we can say with confidence is that heavy and extreme precipitation events often associated with thunderstorms and convection are increasing and have been linked to human-induced changes in atmospheric composition.”
• VIDEO: Extreme Weather 101: Tornadoes (Climate Central)
• Good News for Breathers: SCOTUS Upholds EPA Cross-State Pollution Rule:
• Rare win for the environment at the Supreme Court (Adam Serwer, MSNBC)
• Supreme Court: 28 states must slash wind-blown pollution (USA Today) [emphasis added]:
  The question was who should pay for air pollution that crosses state lines. The answer, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, is blowing in the wind. States in the Midwest and South whose polluted air flows north and east must comply with a federally imposed solution, a 6-2 majority of justices ruled.
  …
  The Environmental Protection Agency blames exposure to ozone and fine particles in the air for one in 20 deaths in the United States, 90,000 hospital admissions, 200,000 non-fatal heart attacks and 2.5 million cases of aggravated asthma.
• Press Release: Supreme Court Win for Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (Environmental Defense Fund)
• California 100% In Drought – So Gov. Brown Attacks Homeowners Associations:
• Gov. Jerry Brown ramps up drought action with emergency declaration (Sacramento Bee)
• Reaction Split on Gov. Brown’s Newest Drought Proclamation (KCET)
• Californians, stop watering your lawns — for real this time (Grist)
• Happy 60th Birthday, Solar Energy:
• THE SOLAR CELL TURNS 60, Part 1 (New Energy News)
• The Bell Laboratory Science Series (Wikipedia)
• 60 Years of Solar Cells (Peter Sinclair’s Climate Crocks.com):

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

• Six Honored With Goldman Prize For Grass-Roots Green Activism (AP)
• Miscarriage Risk Rises With BPA Exposure, Study Finds (Environmental Health News)M
• Exxon’s $900 Billion Arctic Prize at Risk After Ukraine (Bloomberg News)
• How a Gulf Settlement That BP Once Hailed Became Its Target (NY Times)
• Pig Virus Wipes Out Over 10 Percent Of Nation’s Hogs; Pork Prices Spike (Reuters)
• U.S. announces sweeping reforms to protect coal miners from black lung disease (Center for Public Integrity):
  After almost two decades of reports, hearings, failed proposals and political wrangling, federal regulators on Wednesday announced sweeping changes to protect coal miners from black lung disease.
  …
  “I’ve heard people say we should wait and study this more,” Perez said. “We have, quite literally, studied the issue to death. … We have the tools to prevent this devastating disease. Now it’s time to muster the will to do it.”
• March Was 4th Warmest on Record Globally (Climate Central)
• 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.
• Climate Panel Stunner: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe Is Super Cheap – But Only If We Act Now (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  [T]he 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.
• 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.

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).