IN TODAY’S AUDIO REPORT: Who will build the World’s Largest Solar Farm? Right. China!; Air pollution is bad for you. Who knew? … PLUS: Oil, Oil, Toil and Trouble … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: Are blackboards more environmentally friendly than whiteboards?; Waste Not, Watt Not: Energy efficiency cuts pollution while lowering energy bills; World’s first off-shore floating wind turbine opens in Norway; ‘Once in a century’ downpour kills 20 in Turkey … PLUS: The least sustainable seafood in the world, and why you should avoid it ….
Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today’s episode follow below…
- Chinese solar plant expected to be the biggest: First Solar CEO says planned 2-gigawatt plant would be ‘impossible’ to build in US (AP)
- How Air Pollution Can Damage the Heart (Time) [emphasis added]:
Brook’s data suggest that particulates are more active players in heart problems than ozone, and that two different processes may be occurring as we inhale unclean air. First, the fine matter triggers changes in the central nervous system, causing a switch from the more controlled regulation of body processes to a more instinctive, automatic fight-or-flight response. This revs up the heartbeat and causes blood pressure to spike as the body may be responding to the presence of foreign, potentially dangerous particles in the air.
Once the immediate onslaught of pollution is gone, blood pressure drops back down. But the damaging effects persist. Particulates can lodge deep in the lungs, where they activate another process – inflammation, which kicks in over the 24 hours after exposure. The inflammatory response can stiffen blood vessels and cause longer-term damage to blood-vessel flexibility and their ability to absorb changes in blood flow from the heart. Weakened blood vessels can increase the risk of heart disease or stroke.
- BP Finds Giant Oil Field Deep in Gulf of Mexico (NY Times)
- What BP’s giant oil strike means (MSNBC): Gulf of Mexico discovery signals success of a high-risk, high-reward strategy
- Oil edges higher on weak dollar, forecast: OPEC confirms it will keep crude output unchanged (MSNBC)
- Exxon, Shell post worst earnings in years: Slumping global demand threatens to slow exploration and production (NBC, July 30)
- BP Unveils ‘Giant’ Oil Discovery in Gulf of Mexico (AFP)
- The (Not So) Hidden Costs of Crude (Dot Earth):
It’s clear the Timor Sea spill will keep spreading for weeks to come, given that the company announced last month that it plans to stanch the flow by sending a new rig to drill a temporary well, hopefully lowering the pressure driving the leak in the failed platform. But that plan has been delayed.
- Australia to Probe Timor Sea Oil Spill, Minister Says (Bloomberg)
- Oil Spill Off West Australia ‘Appalling,’ Rudd Says (Bloomberg)
- Oil spill off Kimberly Coast ‘poses fire hazard’ (Western Australian News)
- Oil spill emergency off WA coast (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
- Big Oil creates phony climate denial site, lies about it (Grist.org)
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: More green news not covered in today’s audio report… See below!
- Are blackboards more environmentally friendly than whiteboards? (Green Lantern):
Over the summer, the high school where I teach had a complete makeover—which included replacing all our old chalkboards with whiteboards. I’m happy not to be breathing in any more chalk dust, but with all those plastic pens I’ll be throwing away, is the new system really any better for the environment than the old?
- Waste Not, Watt Not: Energy efficiency cuts pollution while lowering energy bills — that’s why it’s a core strategy of the climate and clean energy bill (Climate Progress)
- World’s first floating wind turbine opens in Norway (AFP)
- ‘Once in a century’ downpour kills 20 in Turkey: Surging 6-foot floodwaters sweep through parts of Istanbul, flipping buses (MSNBC)
- The Least Sustainable Seafood in the World And Why You Should Avoid It: Avoid this seafood at all costs and make a huge difference in our oceans (Planet Green)
OT but a heads up in advance of tonight: Glenn Greenwald is saying that Obama has started the advance prep work for rolling out his “Preventive Detention” plan…
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald
… and while critics of such an obscenity abound on all sides the plan as Glenn sees it involves hammering on Progressives in particular as being anti-American terrorist sympathizers.
Thus such “unreasonable” voices should be excluded from the discussion.
The inclusion of wingnut stupidities as exact equivalents to informed Constitutional concerns will give the Admin drones
plausible“fair and balanced coverage” as an excuse for Obama taking out the left wing of his party… again…deniability
And for some reason I don’t think that such a ramping up of attacks on progs and their allies occurring at the same time as the health reform fight rages would be a coincidence.
Some Progs dared speak out… and now the
Admin is going to try to hammer them six ways from Sunday for their temerity.
Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?
“These calculations suggest that wind generation saves little greenhouse gas emissions when the emissions from the back-up are taken into account.”
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Solar power realities – supply-demand, storage and costs
“Conclusions: solar power is uneconomic. Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy but these additional costs must be carried by others.”
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Solar realities and transmission costs – addendum
“Just the cost of the trunk transmission lines alone ($180 billion) is more than the cost of the whole nuclear option ($120 billion).”
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Amory Lovins Discredited: Lovins Refuses to Answer David Bradish
This blog post by Charles Barton focuses on Amory Lovins failure to answer critics of his their paper The Nuclear Illusion which was critiqued by David Bradish
in his blog post Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Final Thoughts in which he also addresses Lovins’ erroneous “negawatts” and efficiency proposals. The erroneous ideas of Lovins’ are repeated by environmental groups and anti-nuclear groups apparently without doing adequate research and investigations. Making these erroneous proposals the centerpiece of our energy policies are to the detriment of the economy and future energy security.
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These 4 videos are an informal interview with nuclear physicist George Stanford. He talks about some facts that environmental and anti-nuclear groups ignore or lie about.
The Energy Discussion Part 1
The Energy Discussion Part 2
The Energy Discussion Part 3
The Energy Discussion Part 4
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Energy From Thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor
This video is a proposed solution to both global warming and energy for all the world’s people, including the developing nations, enough to raise the standard of living of everyone to the level of people in the Europe and the United States without the environmental impact of so called renewable energy technology. In case you didn’t know renewable energy is not green.