‘Green News Report’ – January 3, 2012

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: We’re back! With oil & gas earthquakes in Ohio; Federal court blocks EPA’s new air pollution standards; Big Oil cage match: BP sues Halliburton; PLUS: Saddle up — what’s in store for green news in 2012, insane presidential race notwithstanding … 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.

IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): 12 simple steps for going green in ’12; Iran could disrupt but not halt oil traffic in strait; Oil giant Chesapeake behind fracking ‘land grab’; “People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food”; Whistleblower: Keystone XL a potential “disaster”; US shale gas reserves wildly overestimated; ‘Pay-As-You-Go Solar’ for India … PLUS: Yes, you can have 24-hour solar energy, even after the sun goes down … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On in OHIO: Fracking Earthquakes:
• Fracking Debunker: Cornell engineering professor to gas industry: “Tell the whole truth”: Cornell professor of engineering Anthony Ingraffea identifies four persistant myths about shale drilling which form the basis of the natural gas industry’s public relations. (Monongahela Gas blog)
• Shale Shocked: “Highly Probable” Fracking Caused U.K. Earthquakes, and It’s Linked to Oklahoma Temblors (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  If this had been happening to some renewable energy technology it would be all but fatal. Oh, wait, it was: “Fears of induced minor earthquakes have already complicated development of geothermal energy in regions like Nevada and Switzerland.”
• How fracking might have led to an Ohio earthquake (CS Monitor):
  The 4.0 Ohio earthquake this weekend was a reminder that activities related to hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking,’ can cause seismic faults to shift if not carried out carefully.
• Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes (AP)
• Ohio Halts Wells After Quake, Won’t Stop Natural-Gas Drilling (Bloomberg) [emphasis added]:
  “We are not going to stand by and let someone drive a stake through the heart of what could be an economic revival in Eastern Ohio,” [Kasich spokesman Rob] Nichols said in a telephone interview today.
• France’s Total in $2.3 billion U.S. shale gas deal (Reuters)
• Fracking Has Formerly Stable Ohio City Aquiver Over Quakes (Bloomberg)
• D&L faced violations in its past, but state reports fewer problems at its well sites in recent years (Youngstown Vindicator)
• 10 Major Flaws With New York’s Fracking Plan (Riverkeeper.org)
• Big Oil Cage Match: BP Sues Halliburton Over Gulf Oil Spill
• BP challenges Halliburton court request on spill (Reuters):
  BP has opened 2012 with a new legal move in its battle to force contractor Halliburton to help pay the costs and expenses it incurred to clean up the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which the oil major previously put at around $42 billion.

  Halliburton, the company that cemented the doomed well, had asked a court to force BP to recognize a contractual agreement that protected Halliburton against possible spill clean-up costs.

• BP settles with spill blow-out preventer maker Cameron (Reuters)
• Federal Court Blocks New EPA Air Pollution Rules:
• Court delays EPA rule on coal plants (Reuters):
  Power generators said the January 1 implementation date was too soon to allow the design and installation of pollution control equipment to meet the rule, forcing a number of units to shut or to run only part of the time.
• Court delays EPA’s cross-state air pollution rule (The Hill’s E2 Wire):
  EPA said the power plant emissions travel across state lines, threatening the health of thousands of people.
• Coal Stocks Rise on Court’s Delay of EPA Pollution Rule (Bloomberg)
• EPA tells nation’s dirty power plants to clean up: (AP) [emphasis added]:
  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.
• 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):
  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.
• 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.
• Industry wields sway over air pollution rules, enforcement (iWatch News)
• Looking ahead to 2012, looking back at 2011:
• Can the 2012 Farm Bill protect the Ogallala Aquifer? (Grist)
• After Three Decades, Tax Credit for Ethanol Expires (NYT Green) [emphasis added]:
  A federal tax credit for ethanol expired on Saturday, ending an era in which the federal government provided more than $20 billion in subsidies for use of the product.
• Congress Actually Ends Taxpayer Funding Of Ethanol Subsidies (Talking Points Memo):
  As The Detroit News reported the next day, by some estimates, total subsidies to the ethanol industry may have reached $45 billion over that period. That is several times the total loans, grants, and tax credits provided thus far to the U.S. electric-car industry.
• White House, GOP battle for supremacy on Keystone pipeline (The Hill’s E2 Wire):
  The White House and Republicans will spend the next several weeks trying to win the messaging war over the controversial project.
• A Farm Bill Primer: Getting Ready for 2012 (Simple Good & Tasty Blog)
• The Secret Farm Bill (NY Times)
• 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.

• 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)
• Top 10 states ravaged by extreme weather in 2011 (Grist)

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

• 12 Simple Steps for Going Green in 2012 (EcoWatch)
• Special Report: Energy giant Chesapeake hid behind shells in “land grab” (Reuters):
  Northern has voided hundreds of land deals, and was indeed a facade – a shell company created so that one of America’s largest energy companies could conceal its role in the leasing spree, a Reuters investigation has found. Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest gas driller, was behind the entire operation.
• Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food’ (Guardian UK):
  It’s not just bad harvests and climate change – it’s also speculators that are behind record prices. And it’s the planet’s poorest who pay
• Big shift for gas-guzzling nation: fuels are top US export; oil imports still world’s highest (Washington Post)
• Pipeline Inspector-Turned Whistleblower Calls Keystone XL a Potential “Disaster” (Climate Progress)
• Don’t count on that shale gas revolution (Grist) [emphasis added]:
  [W] could run out of natural gas in a decade, especially if we make a mass transition to it as a source of electricity and transportation fuel. (Our proven reserves, as opposed to our potential or likely ones, are only good for a decade’s worth of energy.)
• Pay-As-You-Go Solar Power Brings Clean Electricity To Off-The-Grid India (Treehugger):
  [C]ustomers make a small initial down payment for a high-quality solar PV system and then pre-pay for the energy service, topping up their systems in small user-defined increments using a mobile phone. Each payment for energy also adds towards the final purchase price. Once fully paid, the system unlocks permanently and produces energy, free and clear.
• Dead fish in Norway, dead birds in Arkansas (AP)
• Butterball Turkey Facility Raided in Response to Horrifying Undercover Video Expose (Treehugger)
• Iran could disrupt but not halt oil traffic in strait and would pay heavy price, analysts say (Chicago Tribune):
  With missile batteries, fleets of attack boats and stocks of naval mines, Iran can disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz but probably cannot completely shut down the world’s most important oil route, military analysts say. The question for Iran’s leadership is whether it is worth the heavy price.
• Judge Blocks a California Fuel Regulation (NY Times):
  The ruling by the judge, Lawrence J. O’Neill of United States District Court in Fresno, said the rule unconstitutionally discriminates against out-of-state producers and tries to regulate activities that take place entirely outside state boundaries, from producers’ choice of farming methods to refiners’ use of coal-fired electricity.
• Monsanto’s GMO Bt: The lesson not learned (Science News):
  [B]ack in early August, Iowa State scientists published a report in PLoS ONE about rootworms able to feast on supposedly protected crops. “This is the first report of field-evolved resistance to a Bt toxin by the western corn rootworm and by any species of Coleoptera [i.e. beetles and weevils],” Aaron Gassmann and his colleagues noted. “Insufficient planting of refuges and [genetic] inheritance of resistance may have contributed,” they said.
• Electric car company that received a $529M federal loan recalls vehicles (The Hill’s E2 Wire)
• Brazil cites Chevron third time for oil spill (Reuters)
• 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.

• Climate Cognitive Dissonance: The “Profound Contradiction” Between Science and Markets on the Road to 10°F Warming (David Roberts, Grist)
• Climate change got even less media coverage than last year (Grist)

• 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.“