‘Green News Report’ – December 8, 2016

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Donald Trump picks climate science denier and fossil fuel industry tool to head EPA; Weather Channel smacks back at climate denial propaganda; It’s official: sea ice at both poles falls to stunning record lows; PLUS: Another oil pipeline spill – this time in North Dakota – not far from the Dakota Access Pipeline… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Memo Outlines Planet-Killing GOP Energy Policy; More on Trump’s Catastrophic Plan to Gut NASA’s Earth Science; While Eyes Were On Standing Rock, The Dakota Pipeline Was Being Drilled Under Another Water Source; The Perfect Tide – Sea Level and the Future of South Florida; This fall was the warmest on record, 2016 will be at least second-warmest year; Trump AG Pick Introduced First Bill Exempting Fracking from Water Regulations; Soon-To-Expire Health Benefits For Coal Miners Are At The Center Of The Government Funding Fight; Nuclear plant ‘overwhelmed’ say inspectors… PLUS: Rapid Arctic ice melt sets the stage for economic disaster under Trump… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Donald Trump picks climate science denier and fossil fuel industry tool for EPA:
• VIDEO: Trump icks fossil fuel industry ally for EPA (All in With Chris Hayes, MSNBC)
• Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to head the EPA, has sued the EPA (USA Today):
  “Trump’s nominee to lead EPA, Scott Pruitt, is a climate denier who’s worked closely with the fossil fuel industry,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the former Democratic presidential candidate. “That’s sad and dangerous.”
• Scott Pruitt, Trump’s Industry Pick for the E.P.A. (New Yorker):
  “It’s the worst thing in the history of our environment!” Isaacs exclaimed when I spoke to him on Wednesday. “We are in danger. The whole country is in danger. Our kids are in danger. People have got to do something about the Citizens United decision that is turning our country into an oligarchy, run by oil-and-gas interests,” [Garvin Isaacs, the president of the Oklahoma Bar Association,] said.
• Donald Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Ally of Fossil Fuel Industry, to Lead E.P.A. (NY Times)
• Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General (NY Times):
  But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.
• TV News Takes The Bait On Trump’s Climate Remarks, Ignoring Ample Warning Signs (Media Matters)
• Al Gore: climate change threat leaves ‘no time to despair’ over Trump victory (Guardian UK):
  “It was a sincere search for areas of common ground. I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the president-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that.”
• Sea ice at both poles officially in ‘stunning’ record low territory:
• Arctic sea ice hits record monthly low for 7th time in 2016 (AP):
  Though this is when the Arctic is supposed to be refreezing, scientists say sea ice there hit record low levels for November. In the crucial Barents Sea, the amount of floating ice decreased when it would be expected to grow.
• Polar sea ice the size of India vanishes in record heat (Reuters):
  Sea ice off Antarctica and in the Arctic is at record lows for this time of year after declining by twice the size of Alaska in a sign of rising global temperatures, climate scientists say.
• North Dakota: New pipeline spill underscores Standing Rock Sioux’s objections to pipeline:
• Western North Dakota oil pipeline shut down after spill (Reuters):
  The size of Monday’s leak and extent of the spill were not yet known. It occurred as Native Americans, climate activists and other protesters camped about 200 miles away, at the site of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline project over concerns a leak there could contaminate the water supply.
• Oil spills into Ash Coulee Creek (Bismarck Tribune)
• Analysis: North Dakota Pipelines Average Four Spills Per Year; 3 Million Gallons Spilled in Past 21 Years (Center for Biological Diversity) [emphasis added]:
  Existing pipelines in North Dakota have spilled crude oil and other hazardous liquids at least 85 times since 1996, according to an analysis released today by the Center for Biological Diversity. These 85 spills – an average of four a year – caused more than $40 million in property damage, according to the data compiled from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
• Pipeline spills in North Dakota cost $40 million in property damage. And one just spilled earlier this week. (Climate Progress)
• Thousands of snow geese killed by toxic mine waste:
• Thousands of snow geese die in Montana after landing on contaminated water (Guardian UK):
  Huge flock of migratory birds landed on acidic waters of an open pit mine where employees attempted to scare them off
• Thousands of Montana snow geese die after landing in toxic, acidic mine pit (Washington Post):
  This was no ordinary pond, however. It was the 700-acre Berkeley Pit, a former mine now submerged in water as acidic as distilled vinegar. From 1955 until operations ceased in 1982, miners extracted nearly 300 million tons of copper ore from the pit. They left behind an immense crevasse, which filled with water 900 feet deep…After it was abandoned, the pit became a federally managed Superfund site.
• Weather Channel smacks down Breitbart over climate denial propaganda:
• VIDEO: Note to Breitbart: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans (Weather Channel)
• The House Science Committee’s tweets are an embarrassment to science (Climate Progress):
  Climate scientists were quick to fire back to the committee tweeting out Breitbart misinformation.
• House “Science” Committee Reduced to Tweeting Denial Nonsense (Climate Crocks)

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

• Memo Outlines Planet-Killing GOP Energy Policy (Climate Crocks):
  President-elect Donald Trump is set to gut US environmental regulations, open up federal lands for fossil fuel extraction, and quit the Paris climate agreement, according to documents seen by Energydesk. A memo penned by Thomas Pyle, head of the Department of Energy transition team, and obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy…
• Rapid Arctic ice melt sets the stage for economic disaster under Trump (Climate Progress):
  The great ice sheets are unstable, ice melt is speeding up, and deniers will soon be in charge. What could go wrong?
• While Eyes Were On Standing Rock, The Dakota Pipeline Was Being Drilled Under Another Water Source (Fast Co-Exist):
  While the pipeline may have been halted in North Dakota, construction workers just finished drilling under the Des Moines River, which supplies the water for half a million people in Iowa.
• Follow-Up: More on Trump’s Catastrophic Plan to Gut NASA’s Earth Science (Slate):
  As expected, the days leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration are like the timer on an atomic bomb ticking down to Armageddon. Every day there’s some new horrific thing he and his cronies do, and the only predictable thing they do is find the worst possible choice to make in any given circumstance.
• New Video: The Perfect Tide – Sea Level and the Future of South Florida (Climate Crocks)
• This fall was the warmest on record, 2016 will be at least second-warmest year (Washington Post):
  Here’s something that does not surprise us one bit: Fall 2016 was the warmest on record in the United States, and it looks as if this year is going to end up the second-warmest on record – even if December is really cold. If you’ve been following along this year, it shouldn’t surprise you either.
• VIDEO: What does Standing Rock mean for anti-pipeline protesters in Canada? (CBC):
  Clayton Thomas- Muller of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation of Manitoba on how the North Dakota protests might affect pipeline opposition north of the border.
• Energy Transfer keeps up legal pressure after pipeline defeat (Reuters)
• Halliburton Loophole: Jeff Sessions, Trump AG Pick, Introduced First Bill Exempting Fracking from Water Regulations (DeSmog Blog)
• Soon-To-Expire Health Benefits For Coal Miners Are At The Center Of The Government Funding Fight (Huffington Post):
  A provision would protect miners’ health care benefits but not their dwindling pensions.
• Nuclear plant ‘overwhelmed’ say inspectors (Cape Cod Times):
  While employees show a lot of positive energy, “it appears many staff across the site may not have the standards to know what ‘good’ actually is,” wrote Donald Jackson, chief of operations at the NRC’s Northeast region and team leader. “The plant seems overwhelmed just trying to run the station.”
• Giraffes, Rarer Than Elephants, Put On Extinction Watch List (AP)
• Missouri Peach Farmer Sues Monsanto Over Illegal Herbicide Use (St. Louis Today):
  Missouri’s largest peach producer has filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co., alleging that the biotech company bears responsibility for illegal herbicide use suspected of causing widespread crop damage in southeast Missouri and neighboring states.
• 5 lessons activists can learn from Florida’s successful ballot fight to defend solar (Grist):
  Here’s what clean power advocates across the U.S. can learn from Florida’s solar fight: Lesson 1: Conservatives can be big clean energy boosters – if you sell it right…
• No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously (Vox):
  If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere.

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).