‘Green News Report’ – June 7, 2011

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Another day, another record flood, another record wildfire; Nature’s horrific beauty; Japan’s nuclear nightmare, now worse than previously thought — again; PLUS: Did Mitt Romney just commit political suicide? GOP flip-floppery on climate change… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Surprise! Opponents Of EPA Climate Action Dominate TV News Airwaves; DOT Shuts Down Tar Sands Pipeline, then approves re-start; Recycling Wizard: what can you recycle?; Allegation Of Union Snow-Removal “Slowdown” Was Bogus; The New Politics of Climate Change; Fracking: Natural gas ‘golden age’ requires government regulation; How Koch Became An Oil Speculation Powerhouse; Making fuel from thin (CO2) air; Australian carbon tax won’t dent jobs growth: Treasurer; China agrees to halt subsidies to wind power firms; Will natural gas save us from climate change?; Brazilian Tribe on the Brink; U.S. public meetings in heartland over controversial pipeline; Carbon emissions hit new record; Carbon emissions now 10 times faster than during mass extinction 56 million years ago … PLUS: Study: permanently hotter summers beginning in 20 years …

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

• Nature’s Destructive Beauty:
  Volcano erupting this week in Puyehue, Chile (Photo credit: Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images):



• Another Day, Another Record Flood:
• Missouri River Dams to Release Historic Rush of Water (Environmental News Service)
• ‘Unprecedented’ Summerlong Flood Threatens Missouri River Dams and Levees (ClimateWire)
• Missouri River flood levee breaches expected (Reuters)
• Missouri River flood might be a help to birds, fish: Biologists say they will have room to grow (Detroit Free Press)
• Missouri River levees tested as floodwaters rise (Reuters)
• Another Day, Another Record Wildfire:
• Arizona Wildfire Forces Evacuations (KEZI Ch. 9)
• Smoke From AZ Fire Spreads to Midwest (KCRG Denver)
• Large Arizona wildfire sends haze into other states (NECN.com)
• Wildfires continue to rage in AZ (CNN)
• Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare, Worse Than Previously Reported — AGAIN:
• Radiation Understated After Quake, Japan Says (New York Times)
• Japan Says It Was Unprepared for Nuclear Disaster (AP)
• Japan Makes New Nuclear Safety Vows After Quake Disaster (Reuters)
• Japan To Restart Nuclear Reactors After Inspections (Monsters & Critics)
• UN Nuclear Agency Chief: Missions To Japan To Continue; Information at Start Not Enough (AP)
• Japan Doubles Fukushima Radiation Leak Estimate (BBC News)
• Japan Says It Was Unprepared for Nuclear Disaster (CBS News)
• Japan Concedes Severity of Blast (Wall St. Journal)
• Mitt Romney’s Political Suicide & GOP Flip-Floppery on Climate Change
• WATCH: Romney-directional Mitt says it’s “important” to reduce greenhouse gases and “We’re going to use our coal resources” (Climate Progress)
• Pawlenty: “I’m Sorry” I Once Cared About Climate (Mother Jones)
• Conservative Media Establish Climate Science Denial Litmus Test (Media Matters.org)
• Tim Pawlenty’s Big Chill: How the GOP presidential contender left a famed Arctic explorer in the cold on global warming. (Mother Jones)

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

• REPORT: Opponents Of EPA Climate Action Dominate TV News Airwaves (Media Matters.org)
• DOT Shuts Down Tar Sands Pipeline (Mother Jones):
  TransCanada has grand dreams of building a gigantic pipeline that would traverse the United States and ship oil from Canada’s tar sands to Texas refineries. But the branch of the Keystone pipeline that the company is already operating in the US has created a considerable problem—causing a dozen spills in just its first year of operation.
  …
  In an order issued to the company on Friday, associate administrator for pipeline safety at the Department of Transportation Jeffrey Wiese wrote:
  …
  “I find that a failure to issue this Order expeditiously to require immediate corrective action would result in likely serious harm to life, property, and the environment.”
• Feds OK Keystone Pipeline Restart (The Hill)
• Recycling Wizard: Find out where to bring your electronics for reuse, recycling and proper disposal (StopWaste.org)
• NYC Investigation Provides More Evidence That Allegation Of Union Snow-Removal “Slowdown” Was Bogus (MediaMatters.org)
• The New Politics of Climate Change (New Yorker):
  When Obama took office, he appointed some of the country’s most knowledgeable climate scientists to his Administration, and it seemed for a time as if he might take his responsibility to lead on this issue seriously. That hope has faded.
• Natural gas ‘golden age’ requires government regulation (Grist)
• How Koch Became An Oil Speculation Powerhouse: From Inventing Oil Derivatives To Deregulating The Market (Think Progress)
• Missouri River floods, Arizona burns — As Floods And Fires Mount, House Forbids FEMA, Coast Guard From Preparing For Climate Disasters (Think Progress)
• Making fuel from thin air (ABC Australia):
  “The dominant thinking 10 years ago was that we should bury the CO2,” Bocarsly says. “If you could efficiently convert CO2 into something that was useful you wouldn’t have to spend all that money and energy to put it into the ground. You could sort of recycle it.”
• Australian carbon tax won’t dent jobs growth: Treasurer (Reuters)
• China agrees to halt subsidies to wind power firms (Reuters)
• Will using more natural gas save us from #climate change? Insights from a new IEA report. (ClimateCentral)
• The Last Stand for the Xingu: Brazilian Tribe on the Brink. (EcoPreservation Society)
• U.S. to hold public meetings in heartland over controversial TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline (Reuters):
  As a proposed $7 billion pipeline to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to refiners in Texas faces local opposition, the State Department will hold public meetings in five states the line would travel through before it decides whether the project can go forward. (MT, SD, NE, OK, TX)
  …
  “These meetings will give the public an opportunity to voice their views on economic, energy security, environmental and safety issues, in addition to any other issues the public thinks should be taken into account in determining whether granting or denying the Presidential Permit would be in the national interest,” the State Department said in a release.

  The Department was forced to issue a supplemental review of the 700,000 barrels per day pipeline in April after the Environmental Protection Agency complained an initial report did not adequately assess risks to water tables, output of greenhouse gases from production of oil sands petroleum, and alternative routes.

• Melting of the Arctic ‘will accelerate climate change within 20 years’ (The Independent U):
  A study into the speed at which the permafrost is melting suggests that the tipping point will occur between 2020 and 2030 and will mark the point at which the Arctic turns from being a net “sink” for carbon dioxide into an overall source that will accelerate global warming, they said.

  The study is the first global investigation of what will happen in a warmer world to the huge amounts of frozen plant matter that has remained undegraded in the soil since it was incorporated into the permafrost about 30,000 years ago.
  …
  “Our research shows that the release of carbon from permafrost will result in an irreversible climate tipping point in only 20 years… Once the frozen carbon thaws out and decays, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost,” [Dr. Kevin Schaefer of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado] said.

• Carbon levels hit new peak, research shows: Preliminary data from the US government shows that carbon dioxide levels peaked last week at the highest levels on record (Guardian UK)
• Global warming: Bleaker and bleaker (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  New figures show we are still hurtling towards dangerous climate change – at a time when policymakers are running out of ideas

  As chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol is not given to overstatement – so his comment in our paper today that the latest figures on greenhouse gas emissions are “the worst news” should be taken seriously.

• Study: Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster now than 56 million years ago, the PETM, a time of 10°F warming and mass extinction (Climate Progress)
• Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers beginning in 20 years (Stanford Univ.):
  Large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that by the middle of this century even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years.
  …
  In the study, the Stanford team concluded that many tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see “the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat” in the next two decades. Middle latitudes of Europe, China and North America – including the United States – are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years, the researchers found.