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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: It’s not easy being green!: Fox ‘News’ goes to war with Kermit T. Frog!; Crunch week at UN climate talks; Million-dollar fines for Massey Energy’s WV coal mine disaster; PLUS: Protesting the World Bank’s major coal projects … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): BP accuses Halliburton of destroying evidence in Gulf Oil Spill; $50 million Gulf restoration fund urged; More radioactive water leaks from Japan’s Fukushima plant; Climate change already severely impacting agriculture; Humans responsible for 3/4 of climate change; GOP Fail: Military housing solar project a ‘go’ … PLUS: The brutal logic of climate change. It ain’t pretty … and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- Fox News Brain Trust Goes to War with Kermit The Frog:
- VIDEO: Bolling Doubles Down On Attack On The Muppets: “How Much More Demonizing Can You Be To Capitalism? It’s Terrible” (Media Matters)
- VIDEO: Fox Business’ Follow The Money Unmasks The Muppets’ Liberal Agenda: “Brainwashing” Your Kids! (Media Matters):
- Record Fines in Federal Settlement of Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster:
- Alpha to pay $200 million in landmark UBB safety deal (Charleston Gazette):
Alpha Natural Resources will spend $200 million on fines, victim restitution and mine safety improvements to resolve enforcement actions and some criminal matters arising from the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, the Gazette has learned.
…
Under the settlement, civil penalties for the Upper Big Branch Mine operators, Performance Coal Co., would be resolved. So would potential criminal liability for the company.But unlike a previous government deal with Massey, the deal does not resolve any potential criminal violations by any officers or agents of Performance Coal or Massey, sources said.
- Deaths at UBB ‘entirely preventable,’ MSHA report says (Charleston Gazette):
In a report made public this afternoon, MSHA says that actions by Massey and its Performance Coal Co. subsidiary — now owned by Alpha Natural Resources — “reflected a pervasive culture that valued production over safety.”
MSHA’s investigation team found that the disaster was caused in part by the company’s “unwarrantable failure” to follow federal rules governing mine ventilation, roof control, and the cleanup of highly explosive coal dust.
- Massey Miners Disabled Methane Monitors Before Killer Explosion (Think Progress Green)
- Record Jump In Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2010:
- Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.
…
[T]he increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.
- COP17: the 17th Annual Conference of Parties at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Durban, S. Africa
- Live Streaming & Video: WATCH the UN Climate Conference: (United Nations):
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, will bring together representatives of the world’s governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 last December.
- A Practical Guide to DURBAN CoP 17 (Climate Himalaya)
- A User’s Guide To The Climate Change Talks (NPR)
- Full Durban Coverage at The Scotsman: Durban climate blog (The Scotsman)
- Think Progress Full Coverage of the UN Climate Conference (Think Progress)
- UPDATE on COP17: the 17th Annual Conference of Parties at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Durban, S. Africa:
- Durban talks unlikely to result in climate change deal (Guardian UK):
The key issues at the talks are now clear: whether the “green climate fund” is permitted to go ahead; the future of the Kyoto treaty, which is in grave doubt; and whether there can be a new global legally binding treaty on the climate in future, or a weaker compromise. What is still unclear, with just three full negotiating days to go, is whether any of these can be resolved.
- Top UN Climate Official Blasts U.S. Climate Policy: Americans Must Realize “This Is Their Future They’re Compromising†(Think Progress Green):
[The] U.S. population needs to understand that this is not just their historical responsibility, but this is their future that they’re compromising. And when that awareness is raised, then I think the government will make more ambitious decisions. I think there’s no public pressure in the United States to take any more ambitious decision.â€
- Chinese climate negotiators raise possibility of global warming pact by 2020 (Washington Post):
Chinese climate negotiators raised the prospect of negotiating a legally binding climate pact at U.N. talks this weekend in South Africa, but the requirements they laid out for reaching that goal might make such a deal hard to reach.
- Exclusive Video: Top U.S. Climate Negotiator Todd Stern Questions China’s Signal to Accept Binding Targets (Climate Progress)
- At Climate Talks, Back-room Deals Begin in Earnest (AP)
- India Emerges as Chief Opponent of a New Global-Warming Treaty (UK Independent)
- REDD: Durban deforestation agreement promotes transparency, scientific verification (Nature)
- China Digs Deeper Into Canadian Tar Sands During Durban Talks (Think Progress Green)
- Climate funds pledged for poor countries (Al Jazeera English)
- Cardinal: Failure At Durban Would Be A ‘Moral Apartheid’ (Think Progress Green):
During the special Mass at Emmanuel Cathedral in Durban, Cardinal Rodriguez also noted, “Just as South Africa’s Apartheid era policies sought divisions along race lines, today the world’s environment and energy policies divide man from nature.”
Rodriguez has said that “the first-hand experience of Caritas staff in emergencies shows the poor will suffer the greatest.”
- Chart: World Avoids Disruptive Carbon Emissions Cuts By Acting Now (Think Progress Green):
If the world delays until 2020 to respect the established 2-degree limit in global warming, as appears to be the growing consensus at the Durban climate change talks, emissions cuts will much more disruptive than if sufficient action is taken now, an analysis by Climate Interactive finds
- Durban climate conference sees shifting geopolitics (AFP)
- Rich nations ‘give up’ on new climate treaty until 2020 (Guardian UK): Ahead of critical talks and despite pledge for new treaty by 2012, biggest economies privately admit likelihood of long delay
- Qatar Wins Bid To Host 2012 Climate Talks (Guardian UK)
- COP 17: Protesting International Banking’s Funding of Coal:
- Banks seen as climate culprits at global talks: report (Reuters):
Major global banks are exacerbating the fight against global warming by supplying power utilities and mining firms with ample funds to build coal-fired plants, according to a report released by non-governmental groups at the climate talks in Durban.
- Are banks to blame for climate change?: A report released by non-governmental groups at the climate talks in Durban, South Africa, said that major global banks bear responsibility for global warming by funding utilities and mining companies to build coal-fired power plants (Christian Science Monitor)
- Foreclosing the future: Investment in coal-fired power plants hinders the fight against global warming (Environmental Defense Fund):
[T]he World Bank and other international public financial institutions are continuing a 15-year trend of supporting coal-fired power plant construction throughout the developing world and economies in transition.
By financing this new carbon-intensive infrastructure, multilateral development banks (MDBs) and export credit agencies (ECAs) of the industrialized world are hamstringing the fight against global warming and setting back longer term efforts to alleviate poverty in the world’s poorest countries.
- COP-17: Green Climate Fund ‘not enough’: Executive vice-president and chief administrative officer of American Electric Power says proposed $100bn-a-year fund is “woefully short” (Business Day)
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- Task Force Says BP Oil Spill Fines Should Go to Gulf Restoration (NY Times)
- More Radioactive Water Leaks at Japanese Plant (NY Times)
- Climate Trends Point to a Planet Increasingly Hostile to Agriculture: (Daily Climate):
A host of data – from sediment cores to ongoing drought in East Africa to computer models – point to one conclusion: Our increasingly hotter, drier planet is going to be a tough place to farm.
- Three-Quarters of Climate Change Is Man-Made (Nature News)
- After Solyndra loan woes, military solar project a go (Army Times):
A $1 billion solar energy project that lost a federal loan in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy and related investigations is back on track to nearly double the number of panels on residential rooftops in the U.S.
San Mateo, Calif.-based SolarCity said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit for financing the five-year project called SolarStrong. The venture would put shimmering solar panels on 120,000 military houses in dozens of states.
- Fracking Driller to Stop Water to Families With Contaminated Wells in PA: (AP):
Families in a northeastern Pennsylvania village with tainted water wells will have to procure their own water for the first time in nearly three years as a natural-gas driller blamed for polluting the aquifer moves ahead with its plan to stop paying for daily deliveries.
- New estimate boosts permafrost contribution to climate change (Fairbanks Daily News Miner) [emphasis added]:
An international group of researchers believes greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost will be released at a much faster rate than previously estimated, which could have significant implications for climate change projections.
- A toxic river of poison: California County’s New Idria mercury mine now a Superfund site (Santa Cruz Sentinel):
Every second of every day it flows: a river of poison gushing from the hillsides. Forty gallons a minute, 21 million gallons a year. It bubbles and gurgles across the landscape, a bright orange toxic brew, nearly as corrosive as battery acid, teeming with mercury, aluminum, iron and nickel, the legacy of a long-abandoned mine, relentlessly pouring into nearby streams.
…
“It is a toxic hell,” said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the EPA in San Francisco. “It epitomizes what Superfund is for.” - As Gas Riches Remake Plains, Rep. Boren (R-OK) Shares in Profits (NY Times):
The spreading wealth from gas fields has also benefited Representative Dan Boren, a Democrat who has deep family ties to the industry — and has acted as one of its best friends on Capitol Hill.
- White House Releases Report on Gulf Restoration: (AP):
The Obama administration has released a report on how the Gulf Coast can be restored following the nation’s worst offshore oil spill after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana in April 2010. The report from the White House’s Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Restoration Task Force comes out the same week Congress considers a bill designed to handle billions of dollars in Clean Water Act fines BP is expected to pay for the release of more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.
- BP says Halliburton ‘intentionally destroyed evidence’ after Gulf oil spill (CNN):
The accusation comes in court papers filed by BP Monday in federal court in New Orleans as part of a lawsuit aimed at having sanctions imposed on Halliburton Energy Services Inc., which was a contractor for BP on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
…
BP alleges in its filing that Halliburton destroyed evidence on cement testing and violated court orders by not bringing forth “inexplicably missing” computer modeling results. - The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist):
[L]ots of folks in the climate hawk coalition (broadly speaking) have counseled a new approach that backgrounds climate change and refocuses the discussion on innovation, energy security, and economic competitiveness.
This cannot work. At least it cannot work if we hope to avoid terrible consequences. Why not? It’s simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. “Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake” footing. That simply won’t be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It’s not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.
It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don’t want to hear it.
- Essential Climate Science Findings:
- VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
- Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of All Climate Science Denier Arguments
- World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
…
“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.” - Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
- READ the IPCC Report: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
- NBC’s Must-See TV: “Today No One Can Deny That Extreme Weather is Here to Stay” Thanks to Fossil-Fuel Driven Warming (Climate Progress)
Why I Don’t Listen To The News:
Caught N-P-Frickin’-R today talking about the climate talks in S. Africa.
Said that Canada was coming across as the bad guy because it didn’t want to sign anything unless the big polluters signed on as well. Let’s see, who were the big polluters mentioned? China, India….maybe a couple of others….
Guess who WASN’T mentioned? Thass right, the good ole USA. Not a peep about US from our good ole public radio station.
Lora @1,
That is a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome, which has replaced the soul of free America.
It is certain that ecocide has been institutionalized in America as we speak.
[ED NOTE – ‘GREEN POLICE’: We’ve tried to be tolerant of your lengthy, often incoherent comments and lists of often unexplained links here. We are allowing the following two comments to go through (though I’ve removed two long long lists you included in them, to try and make this more readable). We’ve asked before — even via email, but you give a fake address, so we can’t contact you, to stop hijacking threads. That’s why you’ve been put on the “Moderate” list. If you have a comment, which agrees or disagrees with us or anyone else, feel free to post it. But you are NOT allowed to hijack entire threads with 1500 word, incoherent rants and unexplained links. That’s just disrespectful to everyone here, and to us, as we try to keep this an open and manageable forum for discussion for everyone. Thank you for respecting that. If you can’t, then your comments will not be approved in the future. Please consider this your last warning. We are under no obligation to allow your posts here, as I’m sure you appreciate. – BF]
=====
It’s man made climate change alright, and geoengineering isn’t the cure, it’s the cause.
Problem, Reaction, Solution.
Instead of geoengineering being labeled this way and the public recognizing this, first it was kept secret from the public, and now instead of being kept secret, in a reversal, it’s now openly one of the UN’s “solution to the problem” , A problem they created with geoengineering in the first place. A problem that also dumps a number of nasty things into the atmosphere, far worse than exhaust from a car.
First chemtrails were denied in 2010, now it’s embraced as a UN solution in 2011.
So go ahead Greens, Bradbloggers, keep pushing this crap, you’ll get just what you want less C02, but at the expense of having plenty of worse crap in the air.
Take the health effects of exposure to sulphur. One SINGLE ingredient out of many used.
[ED NOTE: LENGTHY LIST OF ALLEGED HEALTH EFFECTS REMOVED TO MAKE THIS SLIGHTLY MORE READABLE. – BF]
The Navy is now conducting open air testing in California, Oregon and Washington coast line. They are now using a whole host of TOXIC CHEMICALS including some banned by the Geneva Convention, like Red Phosphorous. The Navy and Air Force toxic chemical list includes, but not limited to:
[ED NOTE: LENGTHY LIST OF CHEMICALS REMOVED TO MAKE THIS SLIGHTLY MORE READABLE. – BF]
The people of California need to:
* Demand public investigation of chemtrails spraying in California
* Demand an immediate cease to all chemtrail spraying until we know the short and long term effects of chemtrails on the general population.
* Introduce legislation to create “No-Chemtrail Spraying Zones†in California.
* Give immunity and protection to anyone willing to blow the whistle on chemtrail operations.
* Boycott products made by any companies who make or produce chemtrail related products.
* Identify who is responsible for allowing us to be sprayed on the city/county/state/global level.
* Demand that each city/county/state be given a 72 hour warning before spraying so people can choose to protect themselves.
* Demand an explanation for chemtrail spraying on the city/county/state/congress/senate levels and do not accept the denial that spraying is going on.
* Prosecute anyone who continues to aid these illegal chemtrail operations and hold those companies responsible that produce toxic chemicals, toxic metals, biological toxins, and any other submicron particles that cause chemtrail related diseases that effect the general population.
Investigations and inquiries on the state level and above are being ignored and chemtrail spraying is being denied at the highest levels of our government. The only way to halt chemtrail toxic spraying on us is for the general population to wake up and demand that it stop.
When a free people no longer have a say in the air that they breathe, they are no longer free. Think about it, someone or some group of persons, non-elected, now have the power over the air we that we breathe in on a daily basis. They are now deciding what to put in the air and therefore are affecting our overall health and wellness. This means that we are potentially “one spray†away from a potential disaster that could kill/contaminate everyone in the U. S. and all NATO countries. What will happen if an enemy country gains control over these toxic sprays? If you see a chemtrail above your head you are now at risk.
Well see if you post this or not.
Lora #1, beside the BradBlog, if you want comprehensive coverage of world events…go to DemocracyNow!.org…today, and yesterday, extremely potent and necessary comments from those peoples affected by climate change…as we witness the effects of climate change, happening, right now! Watch the participants that are effected.
BTW, NPR, PBS…all dominated by corporations. Notably the Kock (I spelled it wrong on purpose) brothers, the mining industry, the oil industry, And all the other polluters. Yet, PBS asks for our donations…yes, by all means fund your own demise, citizens of America!!!!
While we are waiting…
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
These are not the press releases you were looking for.
http://enenews.com/ Nuclear News By Region
Other tidbits
Section 1705 solar project failures
“Yesterday we learned that another DOE subsidy recipient, Beacon Power, has joined the much-maligned Solyndra in bankruptcy court”
“New York-based Ener1 received a $118.5 million grant to expand its manufacturing operations in Indianapolis, Ind., run by a subsidiary EnerDel, which received a visit from Vice President Joe Biden earlier this year.”
Wanna talk cars?
Forget Tessla for a moment.
So, Where Are the Green Cars?
A Salinas car manufacturing company that was funded with more than $500k in taxpayers’ money — it was expected to build environmentally friendly electric cars and create new jobs — has folded before almost any cars could run off the assembly line
Shall we look at Government Motors? GM? Is your new Chevy Volt so hot that it’s literally catching on fire? Good thing they only sold 6000 of them.
Too bad our corrupt establishment din’t pay attention to this guy.
youtube.com/watch?v=VY-OUCBlFT0
youtube.com/watch?v=VaqVyFbOgyo
Or these guys
youtube.com/results?search_query=hho+truck
continuing.
Mercury regulated into law by congress in all light-bulbs by January 2012
SunPower is currently on track to become the second embarrassing failure in the DOE’s loan portfolio. It is deeply in debt, and company executives recently announced plans to lower its earnings projections for 2011 even further.
Evergreen Solar Inc is a “Massachusetts company that the White House once said ‘is hoping to hire 90 to 100 people’ thanks to stimulus money has $485.6 million in debt. Evergreen closed a factory in March, reports the Boston Herald, and cut 800 jobs. A Michigan plant is to be shut down, as well, causing the loss of even more jobs.”
“Green Vehicles of Salinas, Calif., which has burned through more than $500,000 in money ‘invested’ by the city, folded last month without having produced anything of significance. The company promised it would employ about 70 and pay back Salinas taxpayers with $700,000 a year in city taxes.”
In Seattle, “a $20 million federal grant for home weatherization has, according to KOMO news, retrofitted only three houses and created 14 jobs in more than a year.”
Hopewell Junction, New York’s SpectraWatt, Inc. scored $500,000 from the Energy Department in June 2009 and $150,000 from the National Science Foundation in June 2010. On Aug. 19, the solar-power company went bust.
Mountain Plaza Inc. went bankrupt in 2003. Nonetheless, its “truck-stop electrification” technology won $424,000 in EPA stimulus funds administered by Tennessee’s Transportation Department. Yet again, Mountain Plaza filed for bankruptcy in June 2010.
Notwithstanding its February 2009 bankruptcy and default on a $58 million loan from BNP
Paribas, Wisconsin- based, ethanol-oriented Olsen’s Mill Acquisition was stimulated with $10million in January 2010, along with Olsen’s Crop Services. ADM purchased the defunct operation’s assets last month.
Energy last June 18 gave Solar Trust, an American subsidiary of Germany’s Solar Millennium, a $2.1 billion loan guarantee for a Blythe solar-power facility. Last June, Energy handed Spain’s Abengoa Solar a $1.2 billion guarantee for its Mojave Solar Project and backstopped $1.45 billion last December for Abengoa’s Gila Bend, Ariz. outpost.
On Sept. 28, Energy approved a $737 million loan guarantee for Nevada’s SolarReserve Project. It promises 600 construction jobs at $1.23 million each and 45 permanent jobs at $16.4 million per position. Energy also guaranteed $337 million for Sempra Energy’s Mesquite Solar Project in Arizona. Its 300 construction jobs cost $1.12 million each, while its seven permanent positions equal $48.1 million per job created.
Unless something environmentally drastic happens that hit the purse of corporate America, we can’t expect green policies that are actually effective.
Thanks all for the comments.
For those who genuinely desire to further their understanding of the current state of climate science, please go to Skeptical Science.com, a comprehensive database of primary scientific evidence that rebuts ALL of the climate change denier arguments, with easy-to-digest explanations for non-scientists.