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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: ‘Sit down and shut up!’: Superstorm Sandy recovery stalled, 2 years later; The Weather Channel repudiates its climate change-denying co-founder; PLUS: ‘It’s not too late’: the stark yet hopeful message in the UN’s final climate science report… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Toxic chemicals skyrocket near fracking sites; Solar energy to hit grid parity in U.S. by 2016; Libertarian ‘think tank’ sues White House over climate change video; Did Nuclear Regulatory Commission secretly alter earthquake standards?; Nuclear industry failing to address climate change; Monsanto targeting Millennials; Hope fades for trapped coal miners; CA: electric car chargers mandated for new construction … PLUS: The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster: Superstorm Sandy response was definitely not a success … and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- Brilliant: The Daily Show’s New Koch Industries Ad: (The Daily Show, Comedy Central)
- Superstorm Sandy Anniversary: ‘It’s (Still) Global Warming, Stupid’ (Climate Progress):
Over the last two years, our ever-strengthening understanding of human-caused global warming has confirmed these links. Also, the science is now clear that, absent aggressive action to slash carbon pollution, warming-driven sea level rise will make Sandy-level storm surges the norm on the East Coast in the coming decades.
- Superstorm Sandy: Chris Christie Shouts Down Protester:
- VIDEO: Christie to Sandy heckler: ‘Sit down and shut up!’ (NJ.com)
- VIDEO: Hurricane Sandy survivor: Chris Christie is sitting on $800 million meant for disaster relief (Raw Story):
According to Keady’s advocacy group, Finish The Job, Christie’s administration has mismanaged the Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) while boasting about its success in the public eye….“Unless $800 million went out the door in the last four days, it’s still sitting there,†he said of the RREM funds.
- Nearly 60 percent of Sandy victims still need money to rebuild or elevate homes, poll finds (NJ.com)
- Superstorm Sandy: 2 Years Later, Recovery Is Mixed:
- 2 Years After Sandy, U.S. Disaster Policy Is Still A Disaster (Huffington Post Green)
- 31 Senate Republicans Opposed Sandy Relief After Supporting Disaster Aid For Home States (Climate Progress 1/29/13)
- Sandy Scorecard: 2 years later, aid disbursements a mixed bag (NJ.com)
- 5 Things That Are Still Broken 2 Years After Superstorm Sandy (Mother Jones):
The disastrous hurricane hit two years ago this week. But red tape has made rebuilding painfully slow.
- Building for the Next Big Storm: After Hurricane Sandy, New York Rebuilds for the Future (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
While only a few of the smallest projects have been finished, the vast constellation of proposals — backed by what one official called a “strange polyamorous relationship†of the city, state and federal governments — will most likely take years and billions of dollars to complete, if indeed that is ever achieved. If there is one guiding principle at work, it is the notion that the city, which has thumbed its nose at the water for 300 years, can no longer keep the sea at bay, but must by necessity invite it in.
- New York Today: Learning From Hurricane Sandy (NY Times)
- Meet the undocumented workers who rebuilt New York and New Jersey after Sandy (PRI)
- 4 Ways Hurricane Sandy Is Still Transforming NYC’s Infrastructure (Gizmodo)
- The Weather Channel Repudiates Its Climate-Denying Founder:
- Global Warming: The Weather Channel Position Statement (The Weather Channel) [emphasis added]:
The scientific issue of global warming can be broken down into three main questions: Is global warming a reality? Are human activities causing it? What are the prospects for the future?…The potential exists for the climate to reach a “tipping point,” if it hasn’t already done so, beyond which radical and irreversible changes occur.
- The Weather Channel Rebukes Its Co-Founder On Climate Change (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
Though a spokesperson for the Weather Channel did not return ThinkProgress’ request for comment as to why it decided to release a position statement, it is very possible that it had something to do with John Coleman, a Weather Channel co-founder who was reportedly “forced out†after a year on the job. … Never mind that Coleman doesn’t even have a degree in meteorology, as he himself has admitted.
- VIDEO: Co-Founder of The Weather Channel: Global Warming Is a Complete Hoax (Mediaite):
“There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.” He told Kelly it’s tough to get a media platform these days when you’re a climate skeptic “ever since Al Gore made it a plank of the Democratic Party.”
- “It’s Not Hopeless”: UN IPCC Final Climate Science Synthesis Report:
- U.N. Climate Change Draft Sees Risks of Irreversible Damage (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
Climate change may have “serious, pervasive and irreversible” impacts on human society and nature, according to a draft U.N. report due for approval this week that says governments still have time to avert the worst.
- 9 Significant Scientific Findings too Recent to Be Included in the New IPCC Report (World Resources Institute)
- ‘It Is Not Hopeless,’ says World’s Chief Climate Scientist (Common Dreams)
- IPCC Opening Ceremony AR5 SYR – 27 October 2014, Copenhagen at 40:50 (UN IPCC Youtube Channel) [emphasis added]:
It is not hopeless…The Synthesis Report will provide the roadmap by which policymakers will hopefully find their way to a global agreement to finally reverse course on climate change. It gives us the knowledge to make informed choices, the knowledge to build a brighter, more sustainable future. It enhances our vital understanding of the rationale for action—and the serious implications for inaction.
A great deal of work and tall hurdles lie ahead. But it can be done. We still have time to build a better, more sustainable world. We still have time to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change. But we have precious little of that time.
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster (Pro Publica):
The Red Cross botched key elements of its mission after Sandy and Isaac, leaving behind a trail of unmet needs and acrimony, according to an investigation by ProPublica and NPR. The charity’s shortcomings were detailed in confidential reports and internal emails, as well as accounts from current and former disaster relief specialists.
What’s more, Red Cross officials at national headquarters in Washington, D.C. compounded the charity’s inability to provide relief by “diverting assets for public relations purposes,†as one internal report puts it. Distribution of relief supplies, the report said, was “politically driven.â€
- Toxic Chemicals, Carcinogens Skyrocket Near Fracking Sites (US News & World Report):
The spikes almost certainly will lead to a cancer increase in surrounding areas, a study author says.
- Libertarians Sue White House Over ‘Polar Vortex’ Climate Change Video (Climate Progress):
A libertarian think tank has sued the White House over a video that claimed global warming might be tied to last year’s extreme cold spell, commonly referred to as the “polar vortex.”
- Lawsuit alleges NRC secretly altered earthquake standards at California nuclear plant (SF Gate):
Federal regulators secretly and illegally revised the license for California’s last nuclear power facility — PG&E’s Diablo Canyon — to mask the aging plant’s vulnerability to earthquakes, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by environmentalists.
- While You Were Getting Worked Up Over Oil Prices, This Just Happened to Solar (Bloomberg News):
After years of struggling against cheap natural gas prices and variable subsidies, solar electricity is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices in 47 U.S. states — in 2016, according to a Deutsche Bank report published this week. That’s assuming the U.S. maintains its 30 percent tax credit on system costs, which is set to expire that same year.
- Analysis: Nuclear – the thin end of a failing wedge (Bloomberg New Energy Finance):
If the world is not prepared to make its fossil-based – particularly its coal-based – power stations carbon-neutral, then it is going to have to replace them with something else. The stalling of the nuclear renaissance in the wake of Fukushima is therefore of particular concern.
- Monsanto Hired This Guy To Help It Win Over Millennials (NPR):
s I scrolled through tweets about a panel on agricultural entrepreneurs at the SXSW Eco conference earlier this month, one caught my eye. The sender was Vance Crowe, Monsanto’s director of millennial engagement.
- CA To Require New Buildings To Be Prepped For Electric-Car Charging Stations (Green Car Reports)
- Hopes Fading for Workers Trapped in Flooded Turkish Coal Mine (Wall St. Journal): Miners Trapped When Water Pipe Exploded Inside Private Mine in Karaman Province
- Why The Result Of Brazil’s Elections Could Be Bad News For The Climate (Climate Progress):
Despite the victory, the current administration has been criticized by a large contingency of environmentalists and economists for adopting a short-sighted approach to economic development, often overlooking major environmental concerns for the sake of large scale infrastructure projects.
- How can we get power to the poor without frying the planet? (Grist):
As we pilot our ship through the 21st century, humanity faces its own narrow strait, its own Scylla and Charybdis. On one side is the many-headed monster of energy poverty, with its attendant ill health, backbreaking labor, and wasted potential. …On the other side there is climate change, “waves and whirlwinds of fire,†which on our current trajectory threatens to flood, parch, starve, and uproot millions of people this century and possibly render the planet hostile to human life for centuries to come.
- 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.
FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page
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.
“U.N. Climate Change Draft Sees Risks of Irreversible Damage (Reuters) …”
One environmentalist replied to the report thusly:
(Guardian).
Hey Dredd! All I have to say is enjoy your winter cause it’s going to be the last one you ever experience. The warmth is a comin’ and it’s going to make you deader than a doornail as it covers you in it’s stealthy coziness. Better move to Alaska before it’s too late, and everybody’s already there, and they shut the door to you and your fellow climate deniers! You will bake yo butt off and not even know what hit ya.
Cooper @ #2 — Dredd is a frequent commenter here and is not a climate science denier.
Also: your claims are incorrect. No climate scientist has predicted this will be the “last” winter in North America. They have predicted that global warming will lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather events – including extreme cold events and extreme snow events.
You said it Desi! It’s gettin’ extreme out there. I heared of friends being taken up “Dorathy style” in tornadas and then popped out of the clouds incased in a big icecube in the middle of summer all the time. But there is hope. The MP3 from the sun will do the trick one day and take down the power grid, and then our worries about the crazy time weather will finally be over. I guess that’s why the goberment won’t harden it, so we all can be safe from bad weather. I knew they’d do something about AGW. They’re track record is damn good. They is of a mind so sublimey and filanthropical and can you say “geneusness,” cause we get what we pay for, so they must be smart. I know they will take all those billions in carbon taxes and shower enough of it upon the earth to block the sun as they fly their private jets to and fro accross the planet. Bless you!
Is that the best you can do, Coop? Sad. You climate science denier trolls seem to be running out of material.
Ya blew it, “Cooper” – you violated one of the very few rules we have around here by fraudulently posting under multiple screen names. So gotta put you on comment moderation.