‘Green News Report’ – December 22, 2011

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Breaking: More aid to Africa for drought/famine relief; Good year-end news for anyone who breathes: new rules to clean up toxic mercury and arsenic from coal plants; 30k Chinese ‘occupy’ to protest coal plants; Meet today’s World’s Newest Oil Spill, now in Nigeria; PLUS: Um… “explosive” trends in a melting Arctic … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): House GOP earns ‘Worst Environmental Record Of Any Congress’; Record TX drought kills 500m trees; Genetic mutations in farm-raised salmon; New material breakthrough could double solar efficiency – with cheap plastic; Seattle bans plastic bags; Keystone XL would ship oil to China; USDA deregulates Monsanto GMO seed; Top clean energy stories of 2011 … PLUS: Don’t paint it black: US researchers invent paint-on solar cells … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• President Obama Announces Additional Famine Aid for Horn of Africa:
• Obama announces emergency aid for Africa famine (AP)
• USGS Expert Explains How Global Warming Likely Contributes to East Africa’s Brutal Drought (Climate Progress):
  Somalia’s “mis-government” has turned a brutal drought into a horrific famine. But “if it weren’t in drought, it wouldn’t be in famine,” as Dr. Chris Funk, one of the world’s foremost authorities on East African drought explained to me in an exclusive interview today.
• Hunger pains: famine in the Horn of Africa: East Africa is racked by terrible famine once again. So why, when aid agencies saw the drought coming, couldn’t they help the starving sooner? (Guardian UK)
• Kenyan Drought Kills Livestock Worth $690 Million, Daily Nation Reports (Bloomberg)
• Kenya’s Criminal Assault on Famine-Stricken Somalia (Truthout.org)
• Meet Today’s “World’s Newest Oil Spill”, Now Back in the Gulf of Mexico:
• Shell oil spill off Nigeria, now approaching shore, likely worst in decade for nation (AP):
  Shell estimates the Bonga spill likely was less than 40,000 barrels, or 1.68 million gallons. That’s about the same amount of oil spilled offshore in 1998 at a Mobil field. The 1998 spill saw oil slicks extended for more than 100 miles (some 160 kilometers) to Lagos, the country’s commercial capital.
• Nigeria on alert as Shell announces worst oil spill in a decade (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  The spill, one of the worst off the coast of Nigeria in 10 years, is particularly embarrassing for Shell, coming only four months after a major UN study said it could take Shell and other oil companies 30 years and $1bn to clean spills in Ogoniland, one small part of the oil-rich delta. The company also admitted responsibility in August for two major spills in the Bodo region of the delta that took place in 2008, but has yet to pay compensation.
• Shell oil spill off Nigeria likely worst in decade (AP)
• Nigeria oil spill manager: Shell offshore spill affecting 115 miles of ocean, moving to coast (Newser.com)
• Shell Gets Approval To Drill in Arctic, Spills 14,000 Gallons in Gulf of Mexico (Treehugger) [emphasis added]:
  The two aren’t causally linked of course, but the symbolism and timing is pure tragicomedy.
  
  As the Obama administration grants permission for Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic (albeit with restrictions such as not drilling for oil when there is ice present), Shell admits to spilling roughly 14,000 gallons of oil and drilling fluids into the Gulf of Mexico.
• 30k Chinese “Occupy” a Highway to Protest Coal Plants:
• VIDEO: 30,000 Chinese ‘Occupy’ Highway to Protest Polluting Coal Plants (Climate Progress):
  Tens of thousands of residents in China’s southern Guandong Province gathered in the streets yesterday, occupying a highway to demonstrate against the development of a new coal plant near Shantou city. The residents say existing coal plants in the area are fouling local air and water, and are making people sick.
• China’s Explosive Consumption of Coal (Climate Progress)
• China village ends protests after government compromise (Reuters)
• Police in China fire tear-gas, beat protesters: witnesses (AFP)
• Chinese official denies reports of deaths at Haimen protest (Reuters)
• China Shuts Down 583 Lead-acid Battery Plants (The Economic Observer, 8/5/2011)
• “Methane Bomb”?: Ominous Trends in a Melting Arctic:
• VIDEO: Watch Arctic Lake Methane Ignited by Katey Walter Anthony (Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks)
• Best short summary: Methane Mysteries – Waves of recent coverage of permafrost melt create confusion about level of worry
• Warming Arctic Permafrost Fuels Climate Change Worries (NY Times):
  In the minds of most experts, the chief worry is not that the carbon in the permafrost will break down quickly – typical estimates say that will take more than a century, perhaps several – but that once the decomposition starts, it will be impossible to stop.
• ‘Fountains’ Of Methane 1,000M Across Erupt From Arctic Ice – a Greenhouse Gas 30 Times More Potent Than Carbon Dioxide (London Daily Mail)
• Arctic Methane: Is Catastrophe Imminent? (NYT Green)
• Methane Time Bomb in Arctic Seas — Apocalypse Not (NYT Dot Earth)
• Methane in the Arctic: The End of the World, Or What? (Grist)
• Permafrost thaw — just how scary is it? (Washington Post)
• Permafrost Science Heats Up: DOE program will examine effect of Arctic warming on frozen soils. (Scientific American)
• Good News for Breathers: NEW RULES on Coal Plant Mercury Pollution:
• EPA tells nation’s dirty power plants to clean up: (AP) [emphasis added]:
  Clean up or shut down.

  That’s the decision facing hundreds of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants under an Environmental Protection Agency rule announced Wednesday that will force plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time.

  The long overdue national standards rein in the largest remaining source of uncontrolled toxic pollution in the U.S. — the emissions from the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants, which have been allowed to run for decades without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.
  …
  About half of the 1,200 coal- and oil-fired units nationwide still lack modern pollution controls, despite the EPA in 1990 getting the authority from Congress to control toxic air pollution from power plant smokestacks.

• VIDEO: EPA Adminstrator Lisa Jackson Announces New Mercury Pollution Standards (The Rachel Maddow Show):
• After 20 Years Of Poisoned Babies, EPA Will Finally Close Coal Industry’s Toxic Mercury Loophole (Think Progress Green)
• OP-ED: Toward Healthier Air (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  This is a big victory for environmentalists and scientists who have worked for 20 years to regulate these pollutants — and an even bigger one for the public. When fully effective, the rule could save as many as 11,000 premature deaths a year and avoid countless unnecessary illnesses.
• AP IMPACT: EPA rules threaten older power plants (AP) [emphasis added]:
  They have predicted the EPA rules will kill coal as a power source and force blackouts, basing their argument on estimates from energy analysts, congressional offices, government regulators, unions and interest groups. Many of those studies inflate the number of plants retiring by counting those shutting down for reasons other than the two EPA rules.
• OP-ED: The Meaning of Mercury (Paul Krugman, NYT):
  Let me repeat part of that: it will save tens of thousands of lives every year and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases. This is actually a much bigger issue, when it comes to saving American lives, than terrorism.
  …
  It’s worth noting that these claims of economic harm from pollution regulation have always been proved wrong when the regulation finally came. Ozone regulation was supposed to cripple the economy; so was acid rain regulation; neither did.
  …
  The point that strikes me most, however, is that this shows that it matters who holds the White House. You can complain about Obama’s lack of a strong progressive agenda, which I sometimes do, or wonder what good it is to hold the White House when the other side blocks every attempt to do good through legislation. But mercury regulation would not have happened if John McCain were president.
• New mercury regulations will not reduce the reliability of our country’s electric system (Union of Concerned Scientists)
• Obama faces battle on new clean-air rules (LA Times):
  It marks the first time the Environmental Protection Agency has curbed power plant emissions of mercury, a known neurotoxin that can be profoundly harmful to children and pregnant women.
• VIDEOs: President Obama and CAP’s Carol Browner on Final Approval of Mercury and Air Toxics Rule (Climate Progress)
• Obama’s Life-Saving Clean Air Rules Will Shutter A Few Dozen 50-Year-Old Coal Plants (Think Progress Green)
• VIDEO: On Fox News, Ed Whitfield Denies ‘Any Benefit’ To Babies And Pregnant Women From Reducing Mercury Levels (Think Progress Green)
• Instead Of Tax Cut, House GOP ‘Committed’ To Putting Coal Pollution In America’s Christmas Stockings (Think Progress Green)
• US Lakes: Deposition of mercury four times greater in lakes near major urban areas (Grist)
• VIDEO: Learn more about the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and how they will improve Americans health and environment. (U.S. EPA)

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

• Record TX Drought Kills As Many As Half a Billion Trees: (Reuters):
  The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service./div>
• House GOP Voted 191 Times Against The Planet, Earning ‘Worst Environmental Record Of Any Congress’ (Think Progress Green)
• Unfit Salmon and ‘Plain Old Darwinian Selection’ (NY Times):
  “The news is that we’ve identified the mechanism as adaptation to the hatchery, and that it happened in only a single generation,” Michael Blouin, an evolutionary geneticist at Oregon State University and one of the paper’s authors, said in an interview. “It’s just plain old Darwinian selection to captivity.”
• Breakthrough Could Double Solar Energy Output: (LA Times):
  A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.

  A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.

  Not only that, but it’s way cheap. Chemistry professor Xiaoyang Zhu and his team discovered that an organic plastic semiconductor could double the number of electrons harvested out of one photon of sunlight. Yep, plastic.

• Seattle Bans Single-Use Plastic Bags: (AP):
  The Seattle City Council voted Monday to ban single-use plastic bags from groceries and other retail stores, joining a growing trend among cities that embrace green values.
• Unusual Marine Mammal Deaths on Four US Coasts: (Mother Jones):
  As of this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared three ‘unusual mortality events’ (UME) — unexplained death clusters-for multiple species of marine mammals on four US coastlines: the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Bering Sea, and the Chukchi Sea.
• New Solar Cell Gives Its “110 Percent” in Efficiency (Daily Tech)
• Climate Cognitive Dissonance: The “Profound Contradiction” Between Science and Markets on the Road to 10°F Warming (David Roberts, Grist)
• Fact Check: Keystone XL Would Ship Foreign Oil To Foreign Lands (Think Progress Green) [emphasis added]:
  [E[xisting Canadian oil pipelines all go to the Midwest, where the only buyer for their crude is the United States. Keystone XL would divert Canadian oil from refineries in the Midwest to the Gulf Coast where it can be refined and exported.

  Many of these refineries are in free trade zones where oil may be exported to international buyers without paying U.S. taxes. And that is exactly what Valero, one of the largest potential buyers of Keystone XL’s oil, has told its investors it will do. The idea that Keystone XL will improve U.S. oil supply is a documented scam being played on the American people by Big Oil and its friends in Washington DC.

• USDA Deregulates Two Monsanto Genetically Engineered Seeds (Truthout.org):
  Critics say such efforts could replace traditional and sustainable farming methods with American-style industrial agriculture and prevent African governments from effectively regulating GE crops.

  Last week, Truthout revealed that the USDA is taking steps to speed up the approval process for GE crops after industry groups put mounting pressure on top officials in recent years.

• Texas drought kills up to half a billion trees (Reuters):
  The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to estimates from the Texas Forest Service.
• Interior Dept. approves solar, wind farms in West; pushes offshore wind in Atlantic Ocean (Washington Post)
• Top 10 Clean Energy Stories of 2011 (with Charts) (Climate Progress)
• VIDEO: Season’s Greetings From the Fox News Climate Deniers (Media Matters.org)
• Paint-On Solar Cells Developed (Science Daily):
  Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light — electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.

  A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive “solar paint” that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy….

• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of All Climate Science Denier Arguments
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  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.

• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• 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)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)
• No, global warming hasn’t stopped (New Scientist)
• Top UN Climate Official Blasts U.S. Climate Policy: Americans Must Realize “This Is Their Future They’re Compromising” (Think Progress Green)
• VIDEO: Climate Scientists Michael Mann on “A Look Into Our Climate: Past To Present To Future” (TEDx, YouTube)
• Heads in the Sand: Warning: “Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment,” reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?
  (National Journal) [emphasis added]:
  Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there’s no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. “If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political,” he said.
  …
  Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.“