‘Green News Report’ – September 13, 2012

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
FACEBOOK: Green News Report
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: US solar industry fights off Republican attacks; US wind industry does, too; PLUS: Rightwing media FAIL in attacking the Chevy Volt — again … 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): NW wildfires vex crews; $50 solar-powered water purifier is so green it’s like a joke; America’s first ocean-energy project now delivering; Arctic ice melt ‘like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions’; Ice floes continue to shut out Shell’s Arctic drilling; Gaps in US nuclear regulations; US media climate change coverage drops further; Common railroad car increases risk of hazmat spills; Canadian mining company admits 100 years of polluting WA’s Columbia River … PLUS: Calculating the true cost of electricity … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Decades Of Deception: The Coal Industry Has Advertised ‘Clean Coal’ Since At Least 1921 (Climate Progress)
• Wind Energy Could Power The World 20x Over:
• Enough wind to power global energy demand (Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Inst. for Science):
  Today, civilization uses about 18 TW of power. Near-surface winds could provide more than 20 times today’s global power demand and wind turbines on kites could potentially capture 100 times the current global power demand.
• VIDEO: Geophysical Limits to Global Wind Power (Carnegie Inst. for Science)



• US Wind Insdustry Fights Republican Attacks:
• SPI 2012: President Bill Clinton addresses the solar industry (Solar Novus)
• Wind Week: Two New Reports Highlight The Strong Economic Role Of Wind Energy (Climate Progress)
• More PTC Fallout: Katana Summit Will Close If It Doesn’t Find A Buyer (N. American Wind Power)
• Add One More Senator To The List: Vermont’s Leahy Calls For PTC Extension (N. American Wind Power)
• New poll: Nearly 75% of voters in Western states favor producing wind and solar power on federal lands. (Wilderness Society)
• U.K. Wind Output Rises to Record, National Grid Data Show (Bloomberg)
• The Romney-Ryan Ticket: Ceding The Clean Energy Future (Climate Progress)
• US Solar Industry Gaining Traction Against Fossil Fuels:
• U.S. sees a spike in solar installation over last 3 months (Grist)
• U.S. solar market spikes in 2nd quarter (San Jose Mercury News):
  The amount of photovoltaic solar panels installed across the country reached 742 megawatts in the second quarter, up from 512 megawatts in the first quarter. More solar was installed in the second quarter than in all of 2009.
• Solar power hits peak over 1,000 MW in California-ISO (Reuters)
• U.S. Solar Installs More Than Doubled in Second Quarter (BusinessWeek)
• Clinton to Solar: ‘You Represent the Future’ and ‘You Will Prevail’ (GreenTech Media)
• Solar Market Insight Report 2012 Q2 (Solar Energy Industries Assoc.)
• Spinach: The Key to Powerful Solar Cells? (Solar Feeds)
• US Solar Industry Also Fights Republican (& Utility) Attacks:
• VIDEO: SEIA President Rhone Resch Kicks Off SPI ’12 With Call To Action (9/12/12, Solar Power Intl 2012)
• U.S. Solar Industry Anticipates Utility Metering Backlash (BusinessWeek)
• Media Missing The Big Picture On Solar: A Media Matters analysis finds that one year after Solyndra declared bankruptcy, major media outlets still treat it as news despite a distinct lack of new information. (Media Matters.org)
• The ‘No More Solyndras Act’: House Republicans Want To Turn A Good Program Into A Bad One (Climate Progress):
  This week, the House will likely pass the “No More Solyndras” Act, a bill designed dismantle the loan guarantee program. While the bill won’t pass the Senate, it’s an opportunity for House Republicans to continue messaging on Solyndra in the lead-up to the November elections.
• The Romney-Ryan Ticket: Ceding The Clean Energy Future (Climate Progress)
• GOP platform highlights the party’s abrupt shift on energy, climate (Washington Post)
• Dems back global climate deal in platform (The Hill’s E2 Wire)
• Rightwing Media FAIL: Attackng the Chevy Volt AGAIN:
• GM’s Bob Lutz: The Real Story On GM’s Volt Costs: “That’s not how car business cost accounting works.” (Forbes)
• GM calls report of money-losing Volt sales ‘grossly wrong’ (LA Times):
  A Reuters report Monday said GM’s $39,995 plug-in hybrid was a big money-loser. GM, though, disputed the contention, saying Reuters’ research “is grossly wrong” and accusing the news agency of bad math.

  The automaker said the news agency incorrectly “allocated product development costs across the number of Volts sold instead of allocating across the lifetime volume of the program, which is how business operates.“

• How Much Does the Chevy Volt Cost to Make? Is It Really $89,000? (Treehugger)
• VIDEO: GM’s Bob Lutz: Conservative Attacks On The Volt Are “Patently Wrong” (Media Matters.org)
• Volt-Bashing Trumps National Security In The Conservative Media (Media Matters.org)
• VIDEO: “Electric Car” by They Might Be Giants:

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

• B.C. Mining Giant Admits Polluting US Waters: (The Canadian Press):
  Canadian mining giant Teck Resources Ltd. has admitted in a U.S.
  court that effluent from its smelter in southeast British Columbia has polluted the Columbia River in Washington for more than a century.
• Northwest Wildfires Vex Crews In Washington, Wyoming And Montana (AP)
• Calculating the true cost of electricity: (Deutsche-Welle):
  Taking into account health and environmental damage, wind and solar power from new plants in Europe is actually cheaper than energy from coal and nuclear power plants, according to a new report.
• $50 solar-powered water purifier is so green it’s like a joke (Grist)
• A first for America: Ocean energy project now delivering clean electricity to U.S. electric utility grid (Portland Press Herald):
  Maine’s Ocean Renewable Power Company has started generating power for the grid from its tidal energy turbine on the bottom of Cobscook Bay near Lubec, in easternmost Maine. It is the first commercial tidal energy project to do so in North America, beating larger rivals who have tested or plan to test devices of their own in the Bay of Fundy region.
• Warmer Temperatures Make New #USDA Plant Zone Map Obsolete (CUNY):
  Gardeners and landscapers may want to rethink their fall tree plantings. Warming temperatures have already made the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new cold-weather planting guidelines obsolete, according to Dr. Nir Krakauer, assistant professor of civil engineering in The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering.
• VIDEO: Arctic ice melt ‘like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions’ (BBC):
  White ice reflects more sunlight than open water, acting like a parasol. Melting of white Arctic ice, currently at its lowest level in recent history, is causing more absorption. Prof Wadhams calculates this absorption of the sun’s rays is having an effect “the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man”.
• Ice Floes Freeze Arctic Drilling (Oceana):
  While oil spills occur nearly every day in the Gulf of Mexico, high winds, waves, fog and unpredictable ice floes promise to make drilling in the Arctic even more fraught with hazard.
  …
  “There is no price tag on the Arctic,” [Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless] said. “No matter how much money the company spends or how many vessels it mobilizes, Shell should not be allowed put the Arctic Ocean at risk.”
• Addressing a Gap in Nuclear Regulation (NYT Green):
  The question of a gap in regulations was first raised early this year by Gregory B. Jaczko, the commission’s previous chairman, who advanced the idea that the commission’s goals were so flawed that what transpired at Fukushima could have been judged to meet the agency’s safety standards.
• ABC’s Blakemore: Climate Coverage Drop Due To ‘Disinformation And Intimidation Campaign’ Plus ‘Immensity’ Of Crisis (Climate Progress):
  Complaints include what seems to the scientists a willful omission of overwhelming evidence the new droughts and floods are worsened by man made global warming, and unquestioning repetition, gullible at best, of transparent anti-science propaganda credibly reported to be funded by fossil fuel interests and anti-regulation allies.
• Common Rail Tanker Has Dangerous Flaw that Risks Hazmat Cargo Spills: (Minneapolis Star-Tribune):
  Republican Meteorologist to Mitt Romney: My Top Ten Reasons for Republicans to Accept Reality on the Climate (Huffington Post Green)
• NYC Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn (NY Times):
  [E]ven as city officials earn high marks for environmental awareness, critics say New York is moving too slowly to address the potential for flooding that could paralyze transportation, cripple the low-lying financial district and temporarily drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
• OP-ED: The Chemical Threat to America (Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, NY Times):
  We considered using existing authority in the Clean Air Act to reduce the vulnerability of chemical facilities to acts of terrorism, primarily by requiring facilities to evaluate the use of safer chemicals and processes. After considerable internal discussion, however, we decided that the best way forward was to enact legislation that would give the E.P.A. additional authority to do so. Unfortunately, and much to my frustration, after a long, multiagency effort, the White House declined to endorse a draft bill, and Congress did not act on its own.

  This has now become a 10-year battle. Today, Congress is hopelessly gridlocked on extending the inadequate homeland security appropriations statute that currently regulates the industry.

• China orders Renewable Energy Standard for wind energy (Reuters):
  China will order its dominant electricity distributors to source up to 15 percent of their power from renewable energy including wind, but slow compliance means it may be years before the country’s struggling wind power developers benefit, industry executives say.
• GM calls report of money-losing Volt sales ‘grossly wrong’ (LA Times) [emphasis added]:
  General Motors disputes a Reuters report that the automaker is losing $49,000 on each plug-in hybrid Volt sold. It accuses the news agency of using bad math.
  …
  The automaker said the news agency incorrectly “allocated product development costs across the number of Volts sold instead of allocating across the lifetime volume of the program, which is how business operates.”
• Why GM Actually Is Getting Its Money’s Worth From The Chevy Volt (International Business Times)
• 5 Ways the Stanford Study Sells Organics Short (Mother Jones):
  In short, the authors’ findings confirm what the Environmental Working Group, crunching USDA data, has been telling us for years: that organic fruits and vegetables harbor significantly fewer pesticide residues than their chemically grown peers.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• Report: Humans near tipping point that could dramatically change Earth (CS Monitor):
  Human activity is affecting Earth in many ways, but a new study suggests that continued population growth and its impact on climate and ecology could trigger a more profound chain reaction of effects within little more than a decade.
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Must-Read: Economist William Nordhaus Slams Global Warming Deniers, Explains Cost of Delay is $4 Trillion (Climate Progress):
  Nordhaus’s blunt piece – “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong” – is worth reading because he is no climate hawk.
  …
  “The skeptics’ summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results.”
• 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)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming–if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like ‘Dentists Practicing Cardiology’ (Think Progress Green)
• Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming “Humanity’s Most Pressing Concern” (Climate Progress):
  “We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties.”
• VIDEO: Behold: The World’s First 24/7 Solar Plant is Up and Running (Treehugger)
• 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)
• Earth’s Plant Growth Fell Because of Climate Change, Study Finds (NYT Green)
• 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.“