‘Green News Report’ – November 20, 2012

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Conservative World Bank warns of catastrophic climate change; For the first time, MotorTrend’s ‘Car of the Year’ is all-electric!; CO2 emissions reach record highs; EPA slams Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine; Green up your Thanksgiving; PLUS: Urging universities to divest from fossil-fuel companies… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): EU climate head wants Obama to pull his weight in global warming talks; Obama’s Game of Chicken with Big Ag; CIA closes climate center; US Board Issues Subpoena On Offshore Platform Blast; Nigeria Exxon spill spreads for miles along coast; CA carbon-credit auction raises $290M; Court sides with NRC on post-Fukushima reactor licensing; High breast cancer risk for plastics workers; U.S., Mexico pact on CO River water sale … PLUS: Clean Break: A U.S.-Made Clean Energy Revolution? … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Green Up Your Thanksgiving!:
• The GoodGuide.com: Choose safe, healthy, green & ethical products based on scientific ratings (The Good Guide.com)
• Fight Black Friday Scourge: Buy Nothing! Learn more at Buy Nothing Day.org (BuyNothingDay.org)
• EWG’s Guide to a Healthy Thanksgiving (Environmental Working Group):
  This year, give thanks with less–fewer pesticides, greenhouse gases and maybe less money. …
• After Thanksgiving, turn Black Friday green (Washington Post):
  First, it’s more satisfying to shop within the community. Gifts from independent stores, especially when made by local artisans, support the local economy and seem more personal, too. My local bookseller … A meal at a special restaurant (good cheer around the table, again!) … any gift that is experienced or quickly consumed rather than stored has a double benefit. Most of us have little extra space for stuff. Homemade gifts are always meaningful, whether hand-knit or home-grown….
• 10 Money-Saving Green Thanksgiving Tips (US News):
  Families across America waste nearly 25% of all food prepared on Thanksgiving.
• How to discuss climate change with your uncle during the holidays: If your holiday dinner conversation turns into a debate over global warming, here are a few tips for staying cool while standing up for science (Treehugger)
• World Bank Warns of Catastrophic Climate Change:
• Climate Change Report Warns of Dramatically Warmer World This Century (The World Bank):
  “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided,” (pdf) (eBook version) warns we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.
• VIDEO: ‘Turn Down the Heat’ Warns Without Policy Action, Results Could Be Dire (The World Bank)



• IEA World Energy Outlook 2012 (Int’l Energy Agency):
  Action to improve energy efficiency could delay the complete ‘lock-in’ of the allowable emissions of carbon dioxide under a 2oC trajectory – which is currently set to happen in 2017 – until 2022, buying time to secure a much-needed global climate agreement. It would also bring substantial energy security and economic benefits, including cutting fuel bills by 20% on average,” said Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist and the WEO’s lead author.
• Yale Poll: ‘Large And Growing Majority Of Americans’ Say ‘Global Warming Is Affecting Weather In The United States’ (Climate Progress)
• Poll: Give The Voters What They Overwhelmingly Support: Policies To Promote Clean Energy (Climate Progress)
• Climate Change: Future Temperature Rise Underestimated?:
• Future temperature rises underestimated by current climate projections (Yahoo News Canada):
  “Because we have more reliable observations for humidity than for clouds, we can use the humidity patterns that change seasonally to evaluate climate models,” said Trenberth. “When examining the impact of future increases in heat-trapping gases, we find that the simulations with the best fidelity come from models that produce more warming.”
• Temperature targets unlikely to be met, UN World Meteorological Organisation says (The Australian)
• Bill McKibben: Urging Universities to Divest in Fossil Fuels:
• DO The MATH Tour with Bill McKibben (350.org)



• Fossil Free: Divest from Fossil Fuels! (Go Fossil Free.org)
• 2028: The End of the World As We Know It? Bill McKibben’s ‘Do the Math’ tour is a call to arms on climate change. (Take Part.com):
  “There is nothing radical in what we’re discussing,” journalist and climate change activist Bill McKibben said before a crowd of nearly 1,000 at the University of California Los Angeles last night. “The radicals work for the oil companies.”
• How you can help clean energy eat Big Oil’s lunch (Grist)
• CO2 Emissions Reach Record High in 2011:
• CO2 Hits New High; World Could Warm 7°F by 2060 (Climate Central):
  That’s a 40 percent increase over levels in 1750, before humans began burning fossil fuels in earnest.
  …
  Frustrated with this global inaction, the World Bank released a report on Sunday saying that without significant emissions reductions, the world’s average temperature could climb by 4°C (7.2°F) by as early as 2060. The report highlighted the dire consequences for human health and safety — including dangerous sea level rise, heat waves, and other extreme weather events.
• EPA Slams Proposed Pebble Mine:
• Alaska’s Clash Over Salmon and Gold Goes National (National Geographic):
  On November 9 the panel released its report, largely confirming the reliability of EPA’s original assessment. “Given the extremely long-term nature of the project,” one reviewer wrote, “the risks seem, if anything, understated.”
  …
  “Alaska,” Halford said, “still has what most of America has lost.”
• EPA review of Pebble Mine gets more scrutiny (Alaska Daily News)
• VIDEO: Frontline Investigation: Alaska Gold – the Pebble Mine (PBS)
• Tailings Dams: Where Mining Waste is Stored Forever (PBS)
• FIRST EVER: All-Electric Car Wins MotorTrend’s ‘Car of the Year’ for 2013:
• 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S: Shocking Winner: Proof Positive that America Can Still Make (Great) Things (Motor Trend Magazine)
• Assessing Sandy: Are electric cars a better bet in emergencies?: In some parts of New York and New Jersey right now, electric cars are suddenly making a whole lot of sense (CS Monitor)
• Superstorm Sandy: Grid-Tied Solar Panels No Savior in a Blackout (BusinessWeek)
• Solar trucks provide electricity in Sandy’s wake (NBC News)

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

• Clean Break: Can the U.S. Create Its Own Clean Energy Revolution? (Inside Climate News):
  “That is the future of energy,” he said, pointing to the dark blue panels on his roof.
• EU climate head wants Obama to pull his weight in global warming talks (Washington Post)
• Obama’s Game of Chicken: The untold story of how the administration tried to stand up to big agricultural companies on behalf of independent farmers, and lost.
• Amid Budget Scrutiny, CIA Closes Climate Center (Greenwire):
  With the U.S. intelligence budget shrinking, the CIA has quietly shut down its Center on Climate Change and National Security — a project that was launched with the support of Leon Panetta when he led the agency, but that drew sharp criticism from some Republicans in Congress.
• Iowa Scientists Warn of Need for Climate Change Action (Reuters)
• US Board Issues Subpoena On Offshore Platform Blast:: A U.S. industrial accident investigative board served Black Elk Energy with a subpoena on Monday, seeking information about last week’s offshore Gulf of Mexico oil platform explosion that left one worker dead and another missing.
• California’s First Carbon-Credit Auction Raises $290 Million (Los Angeles Times)
• Court Sympathetic to NRC Over Post-Fukushima Reactor Licensing:: Federal appeals court judges today indicated that environmental groups may face an uphill battle in challenging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of a reactor design and the country’s first new nuclear construction in more than three decades.
• Study: High Breast Cancer Risk for Plastics Workers: (Center for Public Integrity):
  For more than three decades, workers, most of them women, have complained of dreadful conditions in many of this city’s plastic automotive parts factories: Pungent fumes and dust that caused nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and dizziness. Blobs of smelly, smoldering plastic dumped directly onto the floor. ‘It was like hell,’
  says one woman who still works in the industry.
• U.S., Mexico Reach Pact on CO River Water Sale: Water agencies in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada will buy nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water from Mexico’s share of the Colorado River for nearly $10 million. (LA Times)
• COVER STORY: It’s Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us-and they’re right-that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.
  …
  If all that doesn’t impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.

• 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.“