‘Green News Report’ – March 26, 2015

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Lots of good and/or hysterical news today! Climate change denier Ted Cruz compares himself to Galileo; BP breaks up with ALEC; Texas town goes 100 percent renewable; PLUS: Florida official struggles with Gov. Scott’s unwritten ban on the words ‘climate change’….All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): India to Rich World: Give us Cash and We’ll Cut Emissions Faster; Study shows acceleration in decline of Antarctic ice shelves; Has California’s mega-drought already begun?; Exxon Shareholder Climate Vote Blocked, Chevron’s Approved by SEC; The hidden benefits of cutting coal pollution… PLUS: Shut Up and Dance: Should we stop talking about climate change and start dancing about it?… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• VIDEO: Jon Stewart Plugs His Ears and Pretends ‘Climate Change Doesn’t Exist’ (Mediaite)
• The ‘Galileo Gambit’ – Denier Ted Cruz Compares Himself to Galileo:
  • Video: One-on-One Interview With Ted Cruz [about 14:20] (Texas Tribune)
  • Ted Cruz Compares Himself to Galileo, Calls Those Who Believe In Climate Change ‘Flat-Earthers’ (Climate Progress)
  • Ted Cruz invokes Galileo to defend climate skepticism — and historians aren’t happy (Washington Post)
  • Fact Checker: Debunking Ted Cruz’s claim that there has been ‘zero’ global warming in 17 years (Washington Post)
  • Ted Cruz says satellite data show the globe isn’t warming. This satellite scientist says otherwise (Washington Post)
  • Definition: The Galileo Gambit (Rational Wiki) [emphasis added]:
    The Galileo gambit, or Galileo fallacy, is the notion that if your ideas provoke the establishment to vilify or threaten you, you must be right. They really do forget the part where they have to prove themselves right in order to be like Galileo..

• Florida: Employee Struggles to Avoid Saying ‘Climate Change’:
• VIDEO: WATCH: Florida Official Repeatedly Dodges Term ‘Climate Change’ (Forecast the Facts):



• State Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, tries to get a state emergency management official to say “climate change.” (FL Center for Investigative Reporting)
• In Florida, Officials Ban Term ‘Climate Change’ (FL Center for Investigative Reporting)
• FEMA to States: No Climate Planning, No Money (InsideClimate News) [emphasis added]:
  The policy doesn’t affect federal money for relief after a hurricane, flood or other disaster. Specifically, beginning in March 2016, states seeking preparedness money will have to assess how climate change threatens their communities.
• How Will MSM Journalists Handle Climate Change Deniers in 2016 Election?:
• Journalists have to decide what to do about candidates who are climate change denialists (Jay Rosen’s PressThink):
  Claims that climate science is a hoax, that human action is not a factor: these are not defensible positions in a normal debate. They are ways of saying — and saying to the press — hey, the evidence doesn’t matter.
• How American journalists deal with climate deniers (Grist):
  See, for example, this Washington Post piece, in which Cruz’s denialism is simply noted without comment….It’s an “issue” that belongs to one faction of the left base, and D.C. journos are acculturated not to take such things very seriously. In a sane world, politicians would lose credibility after denying climate change.
• How should journalists treat candidates who deny climate change? (LA Times):
  Climate change, however, seems to have made cowards of the press…. [T]here’s another approach one almost never sees: Educate the readers about the reason for climate change denial, especially its absorption into the Republican mainstream. The driving force, you see, is money.
• BP Breaks Up With ALEC:
• Oil Giant BP Drops Membership With ALEC (National Journal):
  The oil-and-gas super company is just the latest big firm to leave the conservative group in recent months.
• VIDEO: Senator Whitehouse Exposes ALEC Climate Change Denial (PR Watch)
• BP Dumps ALEC; Tally at 102 (PR Watch)
• Beijing to Shut All Major Coal Power Plants to Cut Pollution (Bloomberg):
  Beijing, where pollution averaged more than twice China’s national standard last year, will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants next year….Facing pressure at home and abroad, policy makers are racing to address the environmental damage seen as a byproduct of breakneck economic growth.
• US Coal Sector in Terminal Decline:
• U.S. Coal Fall-Off Seen Foreshadowing Fossil-Fuel Pain (Bloomberg):
  The “The U.S. Coal Crash” report, released Tuesday, argues that coal demand is undergoing a structural decline — not a cyclical one — that could befall oil and natural gas producers the world over in coming years.
• REPORT: The US Coal Crash – Evidence for Structural Change (Carbon Tracker);
  Cheap shale gas has flooded the market in the US, causing the price of natural gas to fall by 80% since 2008 while renewable energy costs have also continued to fall…This has had a huge impact on the companies engaged in mining it, with over two dozen going bankrupt and many others losing over 80% of their share value over the past three years, including Peabody Energy Corp, the largest producer in the US.
• France Decrees New Rooftops Must Be Covered in Plants or Solar Panels (Alternet):
  The new law was more limited in scope than initial calls to make green roofs cover the entire surface mandatory.
• Texas town goes all in on renewable energy (Texas Tribune):
  Georgetown’s municipal utility on Wednesday unveiled plans to abandon traditional electricity sources like coal and gas power plants, instead exclusively tapping wind and solar energy to meet all of its customers’ power needs. It is the state’s first city-owned utility to make that leap.

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

• India to Rich World: Give us Cash and We’ll Cut Emissions Faster (Bloomberg):
  “The world has to decide what they want,” Javadekar said in an interview at his office in New Delhi. “Every climate action has a cost. I can’t make my poor pay for somebody who has polluted the world.”
• Has California’s megadrought already begun? (Grist):
  If a megadrought has already begun — and there is increasingly strong evidence to support that it has, or will soon — there will be widespread implications, including a significant re-shifting of California agriculture outside the state.
• Exxon Shareholder Climate Vote Blocked, Chevron’s Approved by SEC (InsideClimate News) [emphasis added]:
  [Securities and Exchange Commission] officials last week blocked a groundbreaking shareholder proposal on climate change from going to a vote at ExxonMobil. The move has confounded proponents, because the decision came just five days after the same agency cleared a similar resolution for Chevron’s shareholder ballot.
• The hidden benefits of cutting coal pollution, and why they matter (Washington Post):
  [H]ow do you quantify the dollar value of those benefits so you can weigh them against costs? How do you put a dollar figure on a human life, or on the economic productivity gains and health-care savings from one less heart attack, or on the aesthetic value of cleaner air?
• Electric vehicle batteries ‘already cheaper than 2020 projections’ (Carbon Brief)[emphasis added]:
  . In 2013 the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated cost-parity could be reached in 2020, with battery costs reaching $300 per kilowatt hour of capacity. But market-leading firms were probably already producing cheaper batteries last year, says today’s new research. It says its figures are “two to four times lower than many recent peer-reviewed papers have suggested”.
• Study shows acceleration in decline of Antarctic ice shelves (Reuters):
  Satellite data from 1994 to 2012 reveals an accelerating decline in Antarctica’s massive floating ice shelves, with some shrinking 18 percent, in a development that could hasten the rise in global sea levels, scientists say.
• Shut Up and Dance: Should we stop talking about climate change and start dancing about it? (On Earth Magazine) [emphasis added]:
  Tonight, choreographer Karole Armitage, renowned since the 1980s as the “punk ballerina,” unveils On the Nature of Things at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. The dance will unfurl across three stages to fill the museum’s Millstein Hall of Ocean Life, where taxidermied polar bears and walruses can monitor the proceedings from their dioramas.
• Bracing for a big power grid attack: ‘One is too many’ (USA Today):
  About once every four days, part of the nation’s power grid — a system whose failure could leave millions in the dark — is struck by a cyber or physical attack, a USA TODAY analysis of federal energy records finds.
• Chile says drought here to stay, lays out plan to ensure water (Reuters):
  With no end in sight to a drought that has blighted Chile for the last several years, the government will invest in desalinization plants and reservoirs to ensure access to potable water, President Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday.
• VIDEO: CA Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) Calls for Mandatory Water Rationing as State Runs Dry (The BRAD BLOG):
  ‘This is Code Red. We can call for voluntary rationing because that polls better, or we can lead’, says likely 2018 gubernatorial candidate…
• California: Legal options for water agencies in times of drought (Mavens Notebook):
  “The preeminent law that governs us all when it comes to water use is Article 10, Section 2, simply stated, says that the constitution requires that the water resources of the state shall be protected, and unreasonable water use prevented…”
• Rate Of Climate Change To Soar By 2020s, With Arctic Warming 1°F Per Decade (Climate Progress):
  New research from a major national lab projects that the rate of climate change, which has risen sharply in recent decades, will soar by the 2020s. This worrisome projection – which has implications for extreme weather, sea level rise, and permafrost melt – is consistent with several recent studies.
• Now’s Your Chance to Help Save the Imperiled Monarch Butterfly-and Get Paid to Do So (Take Part) [emphasis added]:
  Another threat, according to Grant, has been well-intentioned individuals who have planted a tropical form of milkweed, which competes with native varieties and is not beneficial to monarchs or other pollinators.

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).