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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: NY Gov. Cuomo blames meteorologists for his failure to prep for deadly Buffalo snowstorm; Arrests in Canada protesting another tar sands pipeline; You’ll never guess who is now the world leader in deforestation; PLUS: Those lefty treehugger hippies at the World Bank warn extreme weather will be the ‘new normal’ by 2050 … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Green News Report
with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen
11/25/2014
‘Green News Report’ – November 25, 2014 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... · · · · · ‘Green News Report’ – November 25, 2014 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Solar and wind energy start to win on price vs. fossil fuels; Giving thanks for climate heroes big and small this thanksgiving; White House threatens to put brakes on alternative biofuels; EPA orders pollution upgrades on big TX coal plants; White evangelicals believe extreme weather disasters caused by End Times, not climate change; Neither rain nor snow nor heat sways views on climate science… PLUS: Leaked: The Oil Lobby’s Conspiracy to Kill Off California’s Climate Law… and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- DEADLINE Dec. 1st: Support President Obama’s Pollution Standards for Power Plants:
- How to Comment on the Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule (EPA.gov):
Comments on the Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule must be received by December 1, 2014. Be sure to reference Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602. Federal eRulemaking portal here.
- The Clean Power Plan: A Climate Game Changer (Union of Concerned Scientists):
A historic opportunity to reduce carbon pollution from the single largest source of U.S. global warming emissions – These historic standards are a centerpiece of the president’s Climate Action Plan and represent the most significant opportunity in years to help curb the growing consequences of climate change. … TAKE ACTION HERE.
- EPA Power Plant Mercury Rule Gets U.S. Supreme Court Review (Bloomberg News) [emphasis added]:
The agency estimates the rule will cost $9.6 billion a year once fully implemented in 2016. The EPA says the new standards will prevent 11,000 premature deaths a year and produce as much as $90 billion in annual benefits.
- Buffalo Snow: Meteorologists Criticize Gov. Cuomo’s Blame Game:
- VIDEO: Governor Cuomo Questions NWS Forecast (The Weather Channel)
- Cuomo: Criticism of National Weather Service wasn’t intended (WGRZ)
- Politicians, Please Stop Blaming Meteorologists for Inept Storm Response (Slate):
The 125 weather stations the governor plans to build across New York state will do a great job telling him what storms are actually doing (if they happen to pass over one of them—it’s a big state, after all), but won’t do much to predict the weather. For that, you need supercomputers, weather balloons, and meteorologists—exactly the meteorologists he pissed off this week.
- PHOTOS: Extreme Weather? What Extreme Weather? (The BRAD BLOG):
One other problem: temps are expected to rise in Buffalo over the weekend after the next monster volley of snow. They will be pushing 60 degrees by Monday. Got flood insurance?
- Buffalo Belted With Five Feet of Snow; Is Jet Stream Weirdness to Blame? (Weather Underground)
- Canada: Arrests at Burnaby Mountain Over Kinder Morgan Tar Sands Pipeline:
- RCMP Arrest Protesters at Kinder Morgan Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion (Environment News Service):
An 11-year-old girl was among those arrested Sunday as a crowd protested survey work by the Texas-based Kinder Morgan company for a tar sands pipeline expansion through the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby.
- More arrests as Burnaby Mountain protests continue Sunday (Global News)
- VIDEO: Must-see speeches from a weekend protesting Kinder Morgan’s atrocious pipeline project (350.org)
- A Tyee Kinder Morgan Reader: With strife on Burnaby Mountain rising, a sampler of a decade’s reporting on the US pipeline giant (The Tyee)
- David Suzuki blasts RCMP for arresting grandson, Tamo Campos, at B.C. Kinder Morgan pipeline protest (National Post)
- Edelman’s TransCanada Astroturf Docs Expose Oil Industry PR Attack (DeSmogBlog):
TransCanada has failed for years to win approval of the controversial border-crossing Keystone XL pipeline, so apparently the company has decided to ‘win ugly or lose pretty’ with an aggressive public relations attack on its opponents.
- The Arrests Began on Burnaby Mountain (PlanetSave)
- On Burnaby Mountain, Confronting the Gorilla (The Tyee)
- ‘Kinder Morgan Is Breaking the Law,’ Economist Alleges (The Tyee)
- Canada Now World Leader in Deforestation:
- Canada is now the world’s leading ‘deforestation nation’ (Rabble.com):
The world’s last remaining forest wilderness is rapidly being lost — and much of this is taking place in Canada, not in Brazil or Indonesia where deforestation has so far made the headlines.
- Global Forest Watch: A dynamic online forest monitoring and alert system that empowers people everywhere to better manage forests. (World Resources Institute)
- A Forest Threatened by Keystone XL (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
Since the mining frenzy for this garbage crude took off in 2000, nearly two million acres of this ancient forest have been cleared or degraded.
- World Bank Warns: Today’s Extremes Are Tomorrow’s New Normal:
- This Is The Dystopian World We Are Leaving For Today’s Teenagers (Climate Progress)
- World Is Locked into ~1.5°C Warming & Risks Are Rising, New Climate Report Finds (World Bank)
- Global Warming Is Already Locked In, World Bank Says (NBC News):
The world is locked into 1.5°C global warming, posing severe risks to lives and livelihoods around the world, according to a new climate report commissioned by the World Bank. The report, which called on a large body of scientific evidence, found that global warming of close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times — up from 0.8°C today — is already locked into Earth’s atmospheric system by past and predicted greenhouse gas emissions.
- VIDEO: Get Ready For Floods and Droughts as Climate Changes (World Bank)
- New Study Adds Up the Benefits of Climate Action in Lives, Jobs and GDP (World Bank)
- Extreme weather from global warming is unstoppable and irreversible, warns World Bank (Daily Mail)
- U.S.-China Climate Agreement Won’t Slow Warming Enough, World Bank Says (Bloomberg)
- World Needs to Mind the Carbon Emissions Gap (Climate Central):
“This is not a policy conclusion, this is just doing the math,” Joseph Alcamo, chief scientist of the report, said. “By 2030 we will have to turn the corner on global emissions so that we should have global emissions roughly 20-30 percent lower than they are (projected) now. That’s a telling message from the science community that business-as-usual is not an option.”
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- Solar and Wind Energy Start to Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels (NY Times):
For the solar and wind industries in the United States, it has been a long-held dream: to produce energy at a cost equal to conventional sources like coal and natural gas. That day appears to be dawning.
- Here’s How To Show Gratitude To Climate Heroes Big And Small This Thanksgiving (Climate Progress):
This Thanksgiving season, the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication once again wants you to tweet out some gratitude via the hashtag #ClimateThanks.
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I remain very thankful for climate scientists, who toil away for long hours away from their family, sometimes in the most inhospitable parts of the world, for not much money (sorry disinformers) — and do so thanklessly. - White House Threatens To Put Brakes on Alternative Fuels (LA Times):
As biotech masterminds and venture capitalists scramble to hatch a new generation of environmentally friendly fuels that can help power the average gasoline-burning car, they are confronting an unexpected obstacle: the White House.
- Americans Once Almost Ate Wild Turkeys Into Extinction (The DoDo) [emphasis added]:
Few people are alive today who would remember when wild turkeys teetered on the edge of extinction after almost being eaten into oblivion. But how that fate was avoided represents what is considered by some to be the greatest conservation success story in American history.
- EPA Orders Pollution Upgrades on Some Big Texas Coal Plants (Dallas Morning News)
- Most White Evangelicals Attribute Intense National Disasters To The Apocalypse, Not Climate Change (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
While 62 percent of total respondents ascribed the cause of recent natural disasters to climate change, 49 percent also thought biblical “end times” were the cause.
- Leaked: The Oil Lobby’s Conspiracy to Kill Off California’s Climate Law (BusinessWeek) [emphasis added]:
The Powerpoint deck details a plan to throttle AB 32 (also known as the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) and steps to thwart low carbon fuel standards (known as LCFS) in California, Oregon, and Washington State…lays out the construction of what environmentalists contend is an elaborate “astroturf campaign.”
- Neither rain nor snow nor heat sways views on climate science (LA Times) [emphasis added]:
Freaky seasons and drastic weather anomalies do little to convince most people that climate change is real – political ideology does much more, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
- EPA Rejects a Texas Clean-Air Plan, Orders Pollution Upgrades on Some Big Coal Plants (InsideClimate News):
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday rejected parts of a key Texas clean-air plan, setting up a conflict with deep implications both for the state’s electricity mix and air quality across much of the country.
- Federal Judge Blocks Review Of Alaska Mine’s Impact On Salmon (Climate Progress):
A federal judge has dealt a procedural blow to the EPA’s efforts to protect a remote part of Alaska from the impacts of what could be the largest copper and cold mine in North America.
- 2014 Set for Record Hot; Record Cold Thing of the Past (Climate Central)
- A New Carbon Tax Bill In The Senate Comes With Both Promise And Problems (Climate Progress):
In a sense, the problem of climate change is incredibly simple: certain people are dumping carbon into the atmosphere, and in the coming decades we will all suffer from the effects of that pollution. That, in turn, suggests a simple fix: make the emitters pay for that damage in the here and now. If they don’t want to pay, they won’t emit.
- Pope Francis: “Unbridled consumerism” will have destructive consequences for the planet (Salon) [emphasis added]:
Free market fundamentalism poses a grave threat to both economic security and the health of the planet, Pope Francis warns in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the host of this weekend’s Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane.
- How to stop global warming, in 7 steps (Vox.com) [emphasis added]:
5) Cutting emissions will cost us – but so will global warming… Economic modeling suggests that this would shave 0.06 percentage points off global economic growth each year….The world would still get richer over time, but at a somewhat slower rate.
FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page
But exactly how bad is still an open question, and a lot depends not only on how we react, but how quickly. The rate at which humans cut down on greenhouse gas emissions–if we do choose to cut them–will have a large bearing on how the world turns out by 2100, the forecasts reveal.
Restraining global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius will require changing how the world produces and uses energy to power its cities and factories, heats and cools buildings, as well as moves people and goods in airplanes, trains, cars, ships and trucks, according to the IPCC. Changes are required not just in technology, but also in people’s behavior.
Interesting TV clip about ultimate climate change catastrophe: The Newsroom (Jeff Daniels)
Dredd — I know! It was a real surprise to see someone – anyone – attempting to dramatize the info. No EPA official would talk that way in reality, but it was certainly an interesting approach.