IN TODAY’S AUDIO REPORT: Obama’s Nobel ‘green’ Prize?; Climate talks — and protests — continue in Copenhagen… PLUS: What should we call the decade of the 2000s? How about “The Hottest in Recorded History“?!… 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’: Despite a decade of record drought, Australian farmers refuse to buy into climate change; U.S. business community reacts to EPA ‘endangerment finding’; New policy on lobbyists could spur shake-up for EPA Advisory Panel; Senate panel opens door to carbon tax, sector-specific GHG limits; Right-wing billionaire funding SwiftBoat campaign against global warming science; Solar Eyesore? The fight between homeowners and homeowners associations over solar panels … PLUS: Marines take portable solar power to the front lines ….
Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today’s episode follow below…
- President Obama Accepts the Nobel Peace Prize:
- No climate action, no peace, says Obama in Nobel speech (Grist)
- War president addresses incongruity of accepting peace prize (Washington Post)
- WATCH IT: President Obama’s Nobel Acceptance Speech (SkyNews)
- READ IT: Transcript: Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize (White House.gov):
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can’t aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
And that’s why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It’s also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement — all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action — it’s military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.
- Copenhagen Talks — And Protests — Continue:
- Developing countries split over climate measures(BBC)
- Cracks show in developing bloc on third day of climate talks (AFP)
- U.S. Negotiator Dismisses Reparations for Climate (NY Times)
- UK Met Office warns carbon emissions must peak by 2020 (BBC): Keeping global temperature rise under 2C (3.7F) will be almost impossible unless carbon emissions begin to fall within a decade, analysis suggests.
- Danish police raid Copenhagen climate campaigners’ rooms: Police detain 200 activists at their Copenhagen accommodation and seize items they claim could be used for acts of civil disobedience(Guardian UK)
- Danish Police Seize Protest Equipment (NY Times)
- Danes block proposal from island nation of Tuvalu for tougher climate action (AP)
- Hottest Plan at Climate Talks Never Got Onto Table (Bloomberg)
- Climate Deal Likely to Bear Big Price Tag (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
So what is all this going to cost? The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world’s total economic output.
…
[I]ndustrialized countries have proposed a relatively modest fund of about $10 billion a year for each of the next three or four years to help poorer countries adapt. Even that effort remains the subject of conflict over which countries should contribute how much, what body should oversee the spending and how to determine which projects qualify for finance. - GOPs of rain keep falling on my head: Republicans vow to rain on Copenhagen parade (AFP)
- Tiny Tuvalu Makes Big Waves at Copenhagen (Mother Jones)
- And in This Corner, Climate Contrarians: Skeptics make their own forum in Copenhagen. (NY Times)
- Copenhagen’s Skeptic Tank (Mother Jones)
- Meanwhile, At the Other Climate Summit… (Mother Jones):
Capitalism, corporate lobbying, and consumptive culture are killing the planet—and the only acceptable solution is a radical overhaul of the global political and economic system, say delegates at a climate summit in Copenhagen this week.
…
This clarion call is what a climate agreement might sound like if matters were decided by Klimaforum, otherwise known as the “people’s climate summit.” - Hot Air: No Shortage of Opinion on Copenhagen Climate Talks:
- Going Cheney on Climate (NY Times):
[M]any of the same people who defend Mr. Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine on nukes tell us not to worry at all about catastrophic global warming, where the odds are, in fact, a lot higher than 1 percent, if we stick to business as usual. That is unfortunate, because Cheney’s instinct is precisely the right framework with which to think about the climate issue — and this whole “climategate†controversy as well.
…
But if we don’t prepare, and climate change turns out to be real, life on this planet could become a living hell. And that’s why I’m for doing the Cheney-thing on climate — preparing for 1 percent. - Takin’ Care of Business, Copenhagen Style (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
If you listened to my friends over at Fox news and the Heritage Foundation, you might be forgiven for thinking that the polyglot conference going on this week in Denmark was a conspiracy of commie sympathizers and faceless bureaucrats hell bent on taking down the global economy…
Here in no particular order are just a few of the conversations that I had the privilege of witnessing today in some of the quieter corners of the cavernous Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark where COP 15 is unfolding in real time. These economic prognostications are not my own, but they came from some of the most reliable people on the planet for navigating a path to a low carbon economy….
- Wash. Post publishes falsehood-laden Palin op-ed that is contradicted by scientists, temperature data, and … the Post itself (Media Matters)
- Debunked: Palin’s “Boycott Copenhagen” Op-Ed: Annotated (The Atlantic)
- Palin jumps from birther to flat earther: The Washington Post goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months — on climate science and the hacked emails!
- Sarah Palin: Boycott Copenhagen; Any deal at the Copenhagen climate summit will be more about politics than science. President Obama should stay away Guardian UK)
- Jared Diamond’s Ecocidal NYT Op-Ed (Common Dreams.org)
- It’s Official: This Decade the Hottest on Record:
- No Slowdown of Global Warming, Agency Says (NY Times)
- World Meteorological Organization and NOAA both report: 2000-2009 is the hottest decade on record: 2009 among 5 warmest years: “Only North America (United States and Canada) experienced conditions that were cooler than average.” (Climate Progress)
- Only North America Experienced Cooler than Average Temps in 2009 (Treehugger)
- “The 00s” the Hottest Decade on Record(Treehugger)
- READ THE RELEASE: 2000-2009, The Warmest Decade, World Meteorological Association
- READ THE RELEASE: NOAA: 2009 Global Temperatures Well Above Average; Slightly Above-Average for U.S. (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency)
- Iceberg, Dead Ahead!:
- Superberg B17B heading our way: Its size coincides with the just-discovered net loss of ice from the world’s largest frozen water mass, the East Antarctic ice sheet. Elsewhere in Antarctica, on its peninsula, seven ice shelves have broken up in 20 years. (The Age Australia)
- 12-mile-long monster iceberg drifting toward Australia (USA Today)
- Unexpected Ice Loss Detected in East Antarctica (NASA Earth Observatory)
- East Antarctica, Long Stable, Is Now Losing Ice (Time)
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: More green news not covered in today’s audio report…
- A lingering pool of disbelief: Despite a decade of record drought, Australian farmers refuse to buy into climate change (Washington Post)
- EPA Announces ‘Endangerment Finding’ (Wall St. Journal)
- New Policy on Lobbyists Could Spur Shake-Up for EPA Advisory Panel (Greenwire)
- Senate panel opens door to carbon tax, sector-specific GHG limits (Greenwire)
- Tax fraud costs E.U. carbon-trading system billions (AFP)
- Right-Wing Billionaire David Koch Funding SwiftBoat Campaign Against Global Warming Science (Think Progress)
- Solar Eyesores (LA Times): No one said saving the environment would be pretty, but suburban homeowners associations are blocking solar panel installations because they think they’re ugly.
- Marines take portable GREENS solar power to the front lines (Gizmag)
- Filed in Categories: Green News
17 Comments on “‘Green News Report’ – December 10, 2009”
Comments are closed.
What about that weird spiral phenomena from the rocket that took off from Russia? (supposedly)
I would never think that a rocket could make a spiral trail like that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pesqQpi6KC0&feature=related
That is fucked up
I think it was something having to do with all the weather control stuff they have been doing in Russia, Flo. I did a little poking around last night… but have been seeing headlines about it for a while… none of which I pursued because I thought it was just the Russian media’s fascination with whacky science. I’m starting to wonder if they are not experimenting with atmospheric ionization. The descriptions of that seem consistent with what was observed in Norway yesterday… and in China before that….
Googling it brings up all manner of conspiracy stuff connecting it with HAARP… which happens to be another of Governor Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory” episodes….
And “no action, no peace”? Hypocritical much?
When’s the Nobel Committee going to hand out a medal for disingenuous planet fucker of the millennium?
Thanks 99, The Russkies are playing around with something, all I can think of is Stargate…pretty cool. If a scientist ever cracks the gravity formula, it’ll probably look something like that IMO.
Re polar ice caps melting
— I don’t think many are denying that there is global warming
— but questioning if lowering CO2 emissions will make much difference
A different issue, no?
Can’t say I can say either way, just what scientists say, and interestingly Lovelock and some others who were the initial alarm bell ringers are now saying that it won’t make a difference.
Cutting down CO2 might delay the global warming effects a bit – but not stop it….
That said,
ironically by dealing with changes in Electricity and Transport sectors alone – for very different and local advantages, whatever about flooding in Madagascar –
CO2 reduction takes place anyway, since they account for 80% of CO2 emissions.
I go through that on http://www.ceolas.net/#cc1x
Unfortunately Copenhagen and US Congress instead focus on
1.Emission trading (Cap and Trade) which achieves nothing, particularly in the short term that’s supposed to be so important – because it takes many years for the allowance permit squeeze to kick in.
http://www.ceolas.net/#cce5x
2. Cut-down-and-save bans on Light Bulbs, TV sets etc that people can or can’t use, that just increases alienation and resistance to cooperation,
rather than having a policy dealing directly
with the actual supply side problems, with finance help if required by taxation (as you said before, tax unpopular too, but obviously preferable to bans on what people want to buy, and more energy using products could have current tax lowered)
Anyway, as explained on the ceolas.net website,
long term state guaranteed industry loans can keep down the cost of emission processing and/or energy substitution by utility and transport (incl auto) companies.
Where there is a problem – deal with the problem!
99 @ #4: When’s the Nobel Committee going to hand out a medal for disingenuous planet fucker of the millennium?
Maybe ‘cuz someone else is still using it? Karl Rove says “Bush was a Green Leader”
>And “no action, no peace”? Hypocritical much?
Yeah, the leak of the “Danish text” was interesting. Most of the reporting I’ve seen from COP15 suggests that the the leak was a lot less disruptive than portrayed in the Guardian piece, that they saw no signs of “disarray”.
But the LA Times is reporting that some of the developing countries that were so incensed by the draft text took part in drafting it, which Mother Jones suggests may be “evidence of some early agreement bridging the developed-developing chasm”.
Good overview from David Corn at MoJo on the emerging split among the developing nations bloc — between the poor developing nations and the fast-growing developing nations. Quite a lot of maneuvering going on…
Peter, no one is saying that we can “stop” the affects of CO2 (and other GHG) forcing. It’s too late for that — a certain amount of warming is already baked in. The work now is to mitigate how bad it’s gonna get, by cutting down how much more will go into the atmosphere in the coming years. The difference between 2C and 4C of warming is substantial, so…. yeah, cutting down on emissions, of which energy efficiency is a major component, is kinda important. That’s the reasoning underlying the ‘all of the above’ approach these days for reductions at both the industry level (big) and the consumer level (small).
The arguments for and against a ‘carbon tax’ vs. a ‘cap & trade’ system are now focused on what’s politically feasible in the Senate. Regardless of the merits of a ‘carbon tax’, at best it appears to be politically unattainable — not just “unpopular” as you say, but actually more along the lines of “impossible”. As in, not going to happen. So the thinking behind the push for cap & trade seem to be that we really don’t have time to wait for a ‘tax’ scheme to become politically possible, due to the uncertainties over just how sensitive the climate system would be to additional CO2/GHG forcing and the political reality of passing anything in the Senate. The thinking seems to be that it’s better to get something in place and underway. At this point they seem to be saying that cap & trade is the closest achievable thing to changing our current perverse incentive structure that has more than a snowball’s chance in hell of actually happening.
I’ve also seen some commentators express suspicion that, at worst, the sudden support for a ‘carbon tax’ over ‘cap & trade’ from some industry bigwigs is really a set-up — handing them the word and an actual ‘tax’ to use in perpetuity as a political bludgeon, claiming they “might” support it (like Congressional Republicans’ input on health care reform) — then pull a Lucy with the football…
Well, Desi, it has become apparent to me since originally freaking over the Danish Text that most seem to be taking it in stride… mostly because it isn’t a finalized done-deal and everyone is trained on the goal of getting as much as they can in this process. But the part that nailed me was that we would propose yanking any of it from the U.N. at all… no matter what comes of it… but what comes of that sort of action by “our country” is almost always precisely what “our country” proposes. Someone on Democracy Now! put forth that Obama wouldn’t agree to show up in Copenhagen without that…. It’s actually upsetting me more that the original uproar died down so quickly and maybe one of your links will help me with that, but trying to move this off the international stage and into a tighter-knit association of the perps to hammer this out doesn’t seem any nicer than the perps getting their lawyers to give them legal opinions that torture isn’t torture.
I’m sick of being the bad guy on the world stage.
I don’t think we should bother comparing to Bush anymore because Obama is outdoing him in so many nefarious things already… including lying his fucking head off about what “we’re” doing, and what he’s accomplishing. “Our” side is used to Rove’s and O’Reilly’s partisan bullshitting, but is also about as avid to excuse or rename or explain away somehow “our” side’s dirty deeds as “their” side ever is.
I’m getting to the place where I can appreciate Bush’s openness about his dishonesty, the transparency of his lies. It’s waaaay harder to bust Obama on his whoppers because he’s so much smoother and sneakier and disingenuous about it. But one tiny example, Bush came right out in public and called the have-mores his base, while Obama went on with his crap about Main Street not being eaten by Wall Street… when Goldman Sachs was his base.
The nicest thing you can say about him is that he’s a limp sister, a weakling who caves in to any powerful people who don’t like his airy-fairy populist inclinations if they’re anything at all more than merely rhetorical. He’s doing a shit job for The People, but a fabulous one for our owners.
It pisses me off the more because of all the heartless and greedy and taxophobic Republicans who have bitched about our sneaky elitism all this time. That’s what we’ve got now. We’ve got just what they said we’d get, despite all the lying and psychotic stuff that ever comes out of them, they weren’t wrong about that part.
This is a global catastrophe and so all the talk about what is “politically feasible” fills me with rage. It makes me crazier because those who insist on inserting this “politically feasible” stuff into it usually call themselves “realists”… when that’s about as far from realism as it gets. What’s real is what’s happening to our planet. What’s unreal is the competing “interests” butting in to the process of fixing it… meaning: If political interests are what’s being served, the planet itself is ignored, but everybody can be happy to have seemed to be working their butts off to save our planet.
Not gonna cut it.
Thanks Des,
While I think Carbon tax (as Emission tax rather than Fuel tax) is better than emission trading,
really for utilities the current EPA idea of simply setting phased in CO2 limits – as they’ve done with coal power mercury emissions – is
in my view more logical
(the tax I mentioned was product tax eg efficiency based tax on light bulbs rather than
efficiency based bans, but I did’nt say that so clearly 🙂 )
RE emission trading the irony is as said that it pushes everything years into the future, when any actual squeeze on allowance permits kicks in.
I see your political take on it,
and I think senators like house reps secretly love the allowance system with all the wrangling involved.
Whenever I question any Congressmen about it they point out what they “achieved for” Montana or Virginia etc in the bloated bills
Emission Reduction Alternatives
http://ceolas.net/#cce1x
Introduction: The need – or not – to deal with emissions
The Overall Picture
Emission sources, land and ocean cycles, agriculture and deforestation
1. Direct Industrial Emission Regulation
Mandated reduction of CO2, monitored like other emission substances
2. Carbon Taxation
Fuel Tax — Emission Tax
3. Emission Trading (Cap and Trade)
Basic Idea
Offsets — Tree Planting — Manufacture Shift — Fair Trading
Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs — Allowance Trading
Companies: Business Stability + Cost
In Conclusion
4. Contracted CO2 Reduction
Private companies compete for contracts to lower CO2 emissions.
I mean, here’s a little taste of how frantic the rest of the world is getting… and, even if China and India had a hand in the Danish Text, which would mollify some that it least the worst offenders are on board to do something, which is actually more likely to turn out to be an extremely ornate not nearly enough, it’s taking all the wrath of the victims of our greed and stupidity out of the what process we have for addressing the catastrophe, taking the global out of globalization, putting the privileged in charge of deciding who lives and who dies in this wise too. The bottomless sense of entitlement at work on the world never ceases to amaze in the realization of the ever-greater depth that bottomlessness really entails.
From The Nation today:
Floridiot and 99, here’s one follow-up on the Russian missile test/weird phenomenon in the Norwegian sky story:
Norway spiral: A rocket scientist explains the mystery: After watching the Norway spiral video, a US rocket scientist is convinced it was a missile. That blue plume? “Tiny sapphires,” he says.
Specific details at the link…
Thanks, Desi. I hadn’t checked the Russian papers over the last day or so to see if they’d weighed in on it, and still haven’t, but, though I’d read this guy’s explanation for it already, there wasn’t the part about the Russians saying they were testing missiles.
If true, that probably nails it.
What we saw still seems to comport with the atmospheric ionization stuff they’re talking more than this intricate missile explanation, and there isn’t any mention of the Chinese sighting of something almost identical… only switching directions on its axis in mid-spiraling… but it at least seems there’s enough other explanation floating around to keep it earthly in our feverish imaginations….
I’m only remaining skeptical because this weather control/weapon, whatever, is all so secretive, more so on our side, HAARP, but it’s really hard to wade through all the stuff googling yields up because there are so many outright paranoid people trying to speculate on it and give intricate explanations to back up their speculation. I just know I’ve seen some headlines about Russian efforts to control weather recently and thought it was probably something like Russian efforts at faith healing… until this thing made me start looking into it a little more.
Just confirmed they were testing Bulava missiles that day….
Now I gotta see if the Chinese sighting comports with their graphic here… if I can manage to wade through the Chinese….
Its all about chasing shadows.
By that I mean latching on to this or that latest, most innovative idea that some self styled money making guru has put out in the hope it’ll go viral and make them a lot of money off the backs of all the headless chickens who will follow them blindly down a blind alley. Its a shame but a truism nonetheless that people will follow where someone they see as an expert leads. Even if they lead them to certain disaster, which is what most of the gurus tend to do to their flocks.
The trick is to recognize a shadow when you see it!