‘Green News Report’ – April 5, 2018

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Buried NOAA study predicts dramatic increase in high-tide flooding; Trump’s trade war to hit U.S. automakers, farmers, and yes, drillers; Mississippi River floods worse now than at any time in past 500 years; Americans tell Interior Department to ‘take a hike’ over national park fee increases; PLUS: Major oil CEO admits fossil fuels cause climate change — 20 years ago… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Shell Oil knew fossil fuels created climate change risks back in 1980s, internal documents show; 6 tricks Scott Pruitt uses to manipulate the media; The War on Science is over. The Republicans won; Limiting global warming to 1.5C would have ‘significant economic benefits; America’s freshwater mussels are going extinct; Limiting global warming to 1.5C would have ‘significant economic benefits; Judge: fracking gas from neighbor’s property is trespassing; Rising seas: the slow-motion catastrophe threatening 350-year-old farms in MA… PLUS: Dr. King said segregation harms us all: Both minorities and whites who live in racially divided communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than those who live in more integrated areas… and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Buried NOAA study predicts dramatic increase in high-tide flooding within 30 years:
• NOAA Technical Report: Patterns and Projections of High Tide Flooding Along the U.S. Coastline Using a Common Impact Threshold (NOAA.gov)
• VIDEO Kait Parker, Meteorologist: NOAA Sea Level Rise Study Makes No Mention of Climate Change (Weather Channel)
• Federal report: High-tide flooding could happen ‘every other day’ by late this century (Washington Post):
  For a more aggressive “intermediate” scenario, in which greenhouse gas emissions carry on at today’s pace, high-tide flooding is forecast to occur 365 days per year.
• Mississippi River flooding worst in 500 years – and humans are to blame:
• Mississippi River flooding worse now than any time in past 500 years (Nature):
  Efforts to control the river’s flow with levees and other structures have increased the risk of dangerous floods…Some hydrologists say that the river needs more-naturalistic management, to mimic the wandering, dynamic waterway of a century ago. But millions of people live and farm in the historic floodplain and an entire shipping economy is built around the Mississippi, making that strategy a tall order.
• Scientists say the Mississippi is flooding more than it has in 500 years — and we caused it (Washington Post):
  It uses river sediment records and tree rings from once-drowned oaks to infer past flow patterns and floods, and finds that the past 150 years stand out from the past 500 in terms of the volume and frequency of recent flooding events.
• Human-engineered changes on Mississippi River increased extreme floods (Science Daily)
• Trump’s retaliatory tariffs will harm U.S. farmers, automakers, drillers:
• Trump Targets Chinese Wind, Battery and EV Imports, With Limited US Impact (Green Tech Media):
  The specific energy storage imports that could be subject to new tariffs are: nickel cadmium batteries; lead acid batteries; and battery parts, including separators…Tariffs on lead acid batteries would have a fairly significant impact on companies like Johnson Controls and Exide, but are less of a concern for the cleantech sector.
• ‘Shooting oneself in the foot’: How Trump’s China tariffs will slam U.S. companies (LA Times)
• White House Unveils Tariffs on 1,300 Chinese Products (NY Times):
  The list of goods excludes many Chinese-made consumer products available for sale at Target or Walmart, including clothing, shoes and toys. But it will most likely increase costs for American manufacturers that depend on imported parts because it concentrates heavily on machinery and high-tech components.
• Morning Energy: Tariff Talk (Politico):
  The list includes a host of battery technologies, which would be hit with a 25 percent tariff, including “lithium primary cells and primary batteries,” as well as certain alloy steel and iron used in oil and gas drilling.
• They voted for Donald Trump. Now soybean farmers could get slammed by the trade war he started. (Washington Post)
• Mobil CEO admits fossil fuels cause climate change…20 years ago:
• VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Newly uncovered video shows Mobil CEO admitting climate change connection (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  “Our customers using our products probably account for 95 percent of those emissions. But with the 5 percent that we’re responsible for, we’re doing an inventory.”… The statement is an “implicit, and potentially explicit acknowledgement, that the biggest impact of an oil company on the climate comes from the use of its product,” Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, told ThinkProgress.
• FULL VIDEO: Former Mobil Oil executive talks about climate change (Think Progress)
• Judge dismisses Exxon’s ‘nonsensical lawsuit’ against climate investigations (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  The investigations began in 2015, after a series of investigative reports published by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that the company’s internal scientists were aware of the risks of burning fossil fuels as early as the 1970s. Despite that information, however, Exxon continued to fund a public campaign aimed at undermining the scientific consensus around climate change, and maintained an official position of climate denial for years.
• Americans reject Interior Dept’s scheme to increase National Parks entrance fees:
• Americans tell Interior to take a hike over proposed national park fee increase (Washington Post):
  An Interior official familiar with the changes now being discussed said some type of increase remains almost certain but that the dramatic hike is being reconsidered for fear that it would cause visitation to plunge, reducing sorely needed revenue at top destinations such as Yosemite in California, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah, and Yellowstone in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
• Interior backing away from steep fee hikes at national parks (AP):
  The fee hike, along with a bipartisan bill pending in Congress to create a parks maintenance fund, “will provide a historic investment” in the park system, Swift said. A bill co-sponsored by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Steve Daines, R-Mont., and other lawmakers would use revenue from energy production on federal lands to help reduce the long-standing maintenance backlog at national parks.

‘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

• Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show (Inside Climate News)
• Dr. King Said Segregation Harms Us All: Both minorities and whites who live in racially divided communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than those who live in more integrated areas. (NY Times)
• The War on Science Is Over. The Republicans Won. (The New Republic)
• Wow. Look at These Astounding Photos of Abandoned Dockless Vehicles in America. (Slate)
• Arecibo, the Puerto Rican town left to stew in toxic waste (Earther)
• Sea Level Rise: the slow-motion catastrophe threatening 350-year-old farms (The Atlantic)
• 6 tricks Scott Pruitt uses to manipulate the media (Grist)
• Donors to Pruitt’s Oklahoma Groups Now Lobby EPA, and Reap Benefits (Maplight)
• Pruitt Takes Clean Water Act Decisions Away from Regional EPA Offices (Inside Climate News)
• Pennsylvania Judge: Fracking Gas From Neighbor’s Property Is Trespassing (Daily Climate)
• America’s freshwater mussels are going extinct — and that’s bad news for every living creature that relies on them (The Revelator)
• Limiting global warming to 1.5C would have ‘significant economic benefits’ (Carbon Brief)
• Unilever unwraps plan for closed loop plastic food-grade packaging (GreenBiz)
• Univ. of New South Wales launches ‘world-first’ e-waste microfactory (ZDNet)
• Tougher Climate Policies Could Save 150 Million Lives, Researchers Find (Washington Post)
• AUDIO: An Inconvenient ‘BradCast’ with Al Gore (The BRAD BLOG):
  Guest Host Angie Coiro’s exclusive interview with the former Vice President on elections, pollution, persuasion, activism, and hope…
• The Climate Risks We Face (NY Times):
  To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate – so every reduction in emissions helps.
• 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).