‘Green News Report’ – August 29, 2017

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: ‘Green News Report’ Special Coverage: Hurricane Harvey causes long term, widespread devastation across Houston and Southeast Texas… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): More than 20 Texas representatives and senators voted against Sandy aid. How will they vote on Harvey?; Want to be mad about government insurance? Be mad about the program that will be critical after Harvey; Why Hurricane Harvey became so extreme; Scientists asked to remove ‘climate change’ from grant proposal; Tree-killing beetles spread into northern US forests linked to global warming; 29 states just banned laws about seeds… PLUS: Lummi Nation declares state of emergency after salmon spill… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• How you can help victims of Hurricane Harvey (PBS NewsHour)
• Hurricane Harvey continues to wreak havoc across Houston, SE Texas:
• Houston Chronicle Special Coverage: Hurricane Harvey (Houston Chronicle)
• VIDEO: FEMA administrator: We’re ‘going to be there for years’ (CNN)
• Deluged Texas Braces for More Rain, and Years of Recovery (NY Times)
• Harvey shatters rainfall record for a tropical system in the lower 48 states, according to the National Weather Service (ABC)
• Why not evacuate before Harvey? Houston leaders defend their calls to stay put (Texas Tribune):
  Of the 139 deaths that the state linked to Hurricane Rita, 73 occurred before the storm hit Texas…Houston mayor Sylvester Turner this weekend indicated Rita’s legacy factored into his decision. “You cannot put, in the city of Houston, 2.3 million people on the road … That is dangerous,” he said in a news conference Sunday. “If you think the situation right now is bad — you give an order to evacuate, you create a nightmare.”
• Governor activates full Texas National Guard as rescue efforts continue (Texas Tribune)
• Aman Betheja: The debate of whether Houston should have issued a mandatory evacuation is more complicated than many probably realize. (Aman Betheja, Texas Tribune)
• What we know about climate change influence on Hurricane Harvey’s risks, impacts:
• Climate change did not “cause” Harvey, but it’s a huge part of the story (David Roberts, Vox):
  9 things we can say about Harvey and climate.
• Dr. Michael Mann: What can we say about the role of climate change in the unprecedented disaster that is unfolding in Houston with Hurricane #Harvey? (Dr. Michael Mann, Facebook)
• Did Climate Change Intensify Hurricane Harvey? (The Atlantic):
  “The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm.”
• Hurricane Harvey Could Also Be a Major Pollution Disaster (The New Republic):
  The powerful storm is headed straight toward the heart of the American petrochemical industry, while a key EPA response position remains unfilled.
• The Relationship Between Hurricanes and Climate Change (NYTimes)
• What we can and can’t say about climate change and Hurricane Harvey (Washington Post)
• Houston was warned it wasn’t ready to deal with major flooding:
• Harvey is an unprecedented disaster made worse by poor planning (Climate Progress):
  Unless we get serious about both adaptation and mitigation, we won’t be prepared when the next big storm hits.
• Hell and High Water (Texas Tribune/Pro Publica):
  Houston is the fourth-largest city in the country. It’s home to the nation’s largest refining and petrochemical complex, where billions of gallons of oil and dangerous chemicals are stored. And it’s a sitting duck for the next big hurricane. Learn why Texas isn’t ready.
• For years, engineers have warned that Houston was a flood disaster in the making. Why didn’t somebody do something? (LA Times):
  The future defense of Houston is likely to be expensive, experts said. The Corps spent $14.2 billion to improve flood control in New Orleans after Katrina, which was aimed at building up levees and flood walls. But just this month, the city was again flooded when its decrepit pumping system was overwhelmed by rainfall.
• Tropical Depression Irma brewing off of South Carolina
• Potential Tropical Cyclone Ten Moving through North Carolina Outer Banks; Unlikely to Become Tropical Storm Irma (The Weather Channel)
• After Harvey, two more tropical storms, Irma and Jose, aren’t far behind (ABC News)
• Death toll rises in Nepal, Bangladesh, India monsoon floods:
• With Ten Times the Usual Rain, Mumbai Heads Towards Imminent Flood (News 18)
• Monsoon floods cut off villages, swamp farms in South Asia (PBS NewsHour)
• Flooding in Bangladesh: Calling Out Climate Change From the High Ground (New Security Beat)

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

For a comprehensive roundup of daily environmental news you can trust, see the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Daily Headlines page

• VIDEO: Houston faces tough choices to handle Harvey and future flooding (The Rachel Maddow Show):
  Jim Blackburn, co-director at the SSPEED Center at Rice University, talks with Rachel Maddow about the challenges and options for Houston in dealing with the flooding and storm surge effects of severe storms.
• More than 20 Texas representatives and senators voted against Sandy aid. How will they vote on Harvey? (Michael Hiltzik, LA Times):
  The representatives, and Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, all voted against a $50.5-billion relief package for victims of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy when it came before them in January 2013. (The measure passed anyway.)…Most of the lawmakers who commented on the 2013 Sandy appropriation couched their opposition in terms of fiscal responsibility…Others demanded that every dollar spent on Sandy relief be balanced by a dollar cut somewhere else in the federal budget. As I wrote last year, when Louisiana congressmen who voted against Sandy were tasked with securing relief for victims of Hurricane Matthew, this position elevated the ideology of the balanced budget to an article of faith.
• Why Hurricane Harvey became so extreme (Scientific American):
  Why did Hurricane Harvey so quickly explode from a Category 1 hurricane to Category 4?…Masters also wrote a fascinating article on why the jet stream is getting weird.
• Want to be mad about government insurance? Be mad about the program that will be critical after Harvey. (Washington Post):
  There are three ways in which climate change will continue to make storms like Hurricane Harvey more disastrous, in the way that a basement full of gasoline cans will make a house fire worse.
• Scientist Asked To Remove ‘Climate Change’ From Grant Proposal (Washington Post):
  A Northeastern University researcher who was asked to remove any reference to climate change from her Energy Department grant proposal said Monday that she had posted the letter publicly “because I found it to be a stark reminder of the ongoing politicization of science.”
• Tree-Killing Beetles Spread into Northern U.S. Forests as Temps Rise (Inside Climate News):
  A study finds strong links between climate change and the spread of southern pine beetles, whose damage increases the risk of ecosystem harm and forest fires.
• 29 States Just Banned Laws About Seeds (Mother Jones):
  With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from adopting their own rules on the use of seeds, including bans on GMOs. Opponents say that there’s nothing more fundamental than a seed, and that now, in many parts of the country, decisions about what can be grown have been taken out of local control and put solely in the hands of the state.
• Lummi Nation Declares State Of Emergency After Salmon Spill (King 5 Seattle):
  The Lummi Nation declared a state of emergency Thursday after a weekend spill of Atlantic salmon from a fish farm in San Juan waters.
• EPA Ends Sponsorship Of Climate Leadership Program (Reuters):
  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will no longer sponsor an awards program honoring voluntary corporate actions to combat global warming, it announced on Friday, the agency’s latest move to undo Obama-era climate change programs.
• NASA shocker: Last month was hottest July, and hottest month, on record (Climate Porgress):
  It’s the first time we’ve seen such a record month in the absence of an El Niño boost.
• The Uninhabitable Earth: When will climate change make earth too hot for humans? (New York Magazine):
  Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak – sooner than you think.
• A beginner’s guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy (Vox):
  Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it’s possible for the whole world to run on renewables – we merely lack the “political will.” So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.
• 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).