‘Green News Report’ – August 28, 2014

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Fire and explosion at Indiana refinery with a history of exploding; UN climate report warns of ‘irreversible’ global warming; Million-dollar fines for oil and chemical spills; Renewable energy now produces 22% of world’s electricity; PLUS: Get ready for the People’s Climate March on Sept. 21 in NYC … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): “An actual exit from climate hell”; 4 scenarios of our global warming future; Unpackaged: German market revolutionizes shopping; Hawaii’s largest utility will triple rooftop solar by 2020; US coal industry in free fall; Yosemite Rim Fire trees to be logged; Ocean acidification is killing Bay Area’s oyster industry … PLUS: Erick Erickson really wants you to know he doesn’t care about global warming … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Indiana Refinery Explodes — Again:
• Explosion Shakes BP’s Largest Oil Refinery In The U.S. (Climate Progress)
• Blast shakes BP’s largest US refinery at Whiting, Indiana (Reuters)
• VIDEO: Explosion at BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana (WGN Chicago)
• VIDEO: All-Clear Issued After Fire, Explosion at BP Refinery (NBC Chicago)
• Million-Dollar Fines For Oil & Chemical Spills:
• Million-Dollar Fines For Oil & Chemical Spills: (The Hill):
  ExxonMobil Corp. has agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle federal claims arising from a 2012 crude oil pipeline spill in Louisiana. A pipe in ExxonMobil’s North Line ruptured in April 2012 near Torbert, about 20 miles west of Baton Rouge, La.
• DuPont agrees to $1.3M in chemical leak fines (Charleston Gazette):
  Among other things, EPA officials alleged that DuPont officials allowed one leak to go on for five days without taking action, ignored internal safety recommendations that could have prevented a second incident, and did not timely replace a worn-out hose used to transfer toxic phosgene gas in a fatal January 2010 incident.
• UN: Window Is Closing To Stop ‘Irreversible’ Global Warming:
• Climate Scientists Spell Out Stark Danger And Immorality Of Inaction In New Leaked Report (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  One word in the latest draft report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sums up why climate inaction is so uniquely immoral: “Irreversible.” The message from climate scientists about our ongoing failure to cut carbon pollution: The catastrophic changes in climate that we are voluntarily choosing to impose on our children and grandchildren — and countless generations after them — cannot plausibly be undone for hundreds of years or more.
• Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come (NY Times)
• Irreversible Damage Seen From Climate Change in UN Leak (Bloomberg):
  Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions that cause climate change, according to a leaked draft United Nations report.
• VIDEO: IPCC Synthesis Report Demands Control Over Fossil Fuel Consumption (The Real News):



• Renewable Energy: “Join the Renewable Revolution”:
• Soon, Europe Might Not Need Any New Power Plants (Climate Progress)
• Renewable energy capacity grows at fastest ever pace: Green technologies now produce 22% of world’s electricity (Guardian UK):
  Wind, solar and other renewable power capacity grew at its strongest ever pace last year and now produces 22% of the world’s electricity, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday in a new report.
• Big power out, solar in: UBS urges investors to join renewables revolution (Guardian UK):
  World’s largest private bank predicts large-scale power stations will soon make way for electric cars and new solar technologies
• UBS: Time To Join The Green Revolution (Clean Technica):
  Leading investment bank UBS says the payback time for unsubsidised investment in electric vehicles plus rooftop solar plus battery storage will be as low as 6-8 years by 2020 – triggering a massive revolution in the energy industry.
• Study: Cutting emissions pays for itself (MIT News Office) [emphasis added]:
  Savings from healthier air can make up for some or all of the cost of carbon-reduction policies…. [J]ust how large are the health benefits of cleaner air in comparison to the costs of reducing carbon emissions? MIT researchers looked at three policies achieving the same reductions in the United States, and found that the savings on health care spending and other costs related to illness can be big – in some cases, more than 10 times the cost of policy implementation.
• Gearing Up for the People’s Climate March, Sept. 21st in NYC:
• New York climate march swells to global movement (RTCC):
  People’s Climate March spreads across six countries, as activists aim to raise the profile of UN climate summit.
• VIDEO: As Obama Settles on Nonbinding Treaty, “Only a Big Movement” Can Take on Global Warming (Democracy Now!)
• Can’t decide whether to go to the big climate march? This might convince you (Grist)
• VIDEO: Motivating Millions: People’s Climate March (Avaaz.org)

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

• Unpackaged: German market revolutionizes shopping (Epoch Times):
  “We need a shopping revolution. We need to move away from wasteful single-use packaging, and instead make zero-waste and unpackaged food available for everyone.”
• Erick Erickson Really Wants You To Know He Doesn’t Care About Climate Change (Talking Points Memo) [emphasis added]:
  Since the notion of potentially-catastrophic man-made climate change is not congenial to him, he is forced to argue his way backward from his conclusion to a fantasy cause.
  …
  In the end, Erickson’s blustery aggression against his dreamed-of malign conspiracy blustery aggression is just a paper-thin layer of toughness over a sad, scared core….At some point, though, we need to choose between disruption now and massively worse outcomes for people in the future. Erickson, forced to choose, admits he opts for the latter.
• Hawaii’s Largest Utility Announces Plan To Triple Rooftop Solar By 2030 (Climate Progress):
  Wile the plan’s intentions may seem noble on their face, the package was actually released in response to an order from Hawaii’s energy regulator in April.
• America’s coal heartland is in economic freefall — but only the most desperate are fleeing (Washington Post):
  What’s happening now in America’s coal heartland is not just the typical bust. Those in the industry say it’s more dire, potentially permanent, caused at once by declining reserves, a cheaper influx of competing gas and looming environmental regulations.
• Rim fire’s ‘ghost’ trees to be logged, U.S. Forest Service decides (LA Times):
  A decision announced Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service calls for salvage-logging on more than 15,000 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest and the removal of an additional 17,706 acres of trees along non-public roads.Because the logging value of burned trees deteriorates quickly, the plan was formed under emergency rules and cannot be appealed. Salvaging can begin as soon as forest supervisor Susan Skalski gives her approval, which is expected Thursday.
• What’s Killing the Bay Area’s Oysters? (San Francisco Magazine):
  The culprit? Ocean acidification—climate change’s caustic cousin—caused by rising carbon dioxide emissions. Over the last 10 years, it has wreaked havoc on the West Coast oyster business. And though farmers have found ways to work around it temporarily, the problem—both for oyster farming and for our coastal ecosystems—is only going to get worse. “I was once thinking I’d leave the farm to the kids, but now I don’t think there’s going to be a farm to leave,” says Friend. “Our days are numbered.” – See more at: http://modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/whats-killing-the-bay-areas-oysters#sthash.e4gNORl9.dpuf
• 4 Scenarios Show What Climate Change Will Do To The Earth, From Pretty Bad To Disaster (Fast CoExist):
  But exactly how bad is still an open question, and a lot depends not only on how we react, but how quickly. The rate at which humans cut down on greenhouse gas emissions–if we do choose to cut them–will have a large bearing on how the world turns out by 2100, the forecasts reveal.
• An Actual Exit from Climate Hell (Andrew Sullivan, The Dish):
  [O]ne of the big changes we require is remarkably conservative in nature. It’s called Cap and Dividend…
  A prominent member of Congress has proposed a comprehensive national climate-change plan. It’s only 28 pages long, it’s market-based, and it would put money into the pockets of most Americans….The government would rebate all of the revenue from selling permits back to anyone with a Social Security number,more than offsetting any rise in consumer prices for 80 percent of Americans.
• Can Birds Be Protected From Huge Solar Plants? (Climate Central):
  The effects of wind turbines on birds, which research suggests kill far fewer birds per megawatt hour than do fossil fuel plants, have long been a source of consternation for many environmentalists. Their bird-killing effects have been serious enough to kill and hamper some planned projects. Now, as concentrated solar farms start to sweep the globe, solar energy developers are facing similar outcries and opposition for the harm that their clean energy facilities can cause to wildlife.
• Divest from Fossil Fuels: This Approach to Climate Change Doesn’t Involve Obama, the Senate or the UN (Bloomberg Sustainability):
  What happens when you kick out the companies that make civilization go? Not much. What Fossil Free Indexes shows is a tight correlation between the full S&P 500 and the same index stripped of the fossil fuel businesses.
• Obama pursing climate accord in lieu of treaty (NY Times)
• Widespread methane leakage’ from ocean floor off US coast (BBC):
  Researchers say they have found more than 500 bubbling methane vents on the seafloor off the US east coast. The unexpected discovery indicates there are large volumes of the gas contained in a type of sludgy ice called methane hydrate. There are concerns that these new seeps could be making a hitherto unnoticed contribution to global warming.
• The Climate Scientist Who Pioneered Geoengineering Fears It’s About to Blow Up (Motherboard):
  “So the idea that huge swaths of the tropics might not be suitable for growing crops,” he went on, “is plausible. And if you’re unable to grow crops in huge swaths of the tropics, is that going to create political turmoil and migration? It could be a major disruption.”
• If you have allergies, talk to your doctor about cap and trade (CityLab)
• PA Oil Contractor Admits To Lying About Plugging Abandoned Wells (Bloomberg):
  A Pennsylvania contractor has pleaded guilty in a federal court to falsely certifying that he had properly plugged abandoned oil wells in the vicinity of a proposed injection well as required under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Justice Department said.
• Politics & Global Warming, Spring 2014 (Yale Project for Climate Communication) [emphasis added]:
  [R]egistered voters are 2.5 times more likely to vote for a congressional or presidential candidate who supports action to reduce global warming. Further, registered voters are 3 times more likely to vote against a candidate who opposes action to reduce global warming.
• Zero carbon and economic growth can go together, UN study says (Guardian UK):
  The top 15 emitter countries could make deep cuts to emissions while also tripling economic output, according to the study

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).