Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!… (Or use “Click here to listen…” link below.)
IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Poll shows Americans want clean energy, and are willing to pay for it; Mitt Romney, unclear on the concept of overfishing; Meet the nation’s newest oil spill, now in Louisiana; Study criticizes federal pipeline oversight; Big Oil rolls in taxpayer dough, as America’s wind energy industry begs for scraps; PLUS: Fox ‘News’ and hot air: No, wind farms do not cause global warming …. All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Green News Reportwith Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen5/1/2012
‘Green News Report’ – May 1, 2012 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... · · · · · ‘Green News Report’ – May 1, 2012 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
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): EPA offiical resigns over controversial remarks; ALEC plans $$$ campaign to take down state renewable energy targets; Fracking sand threatens drilling workers; Coal’s future in US is rocky at best; Nuclear industry, regulators ‘foot-dragging’ on basic safety measures; IBM’s 500-mile range electric car battery; Ocean plastic pollution: far worse than reported; Global water cycle changing faster than predicted; ‘The Killing Agency’: Wildlife agency kills indiscriminately & illegally… PLUS: AEI Scholar: “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem”… and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
Mitt Romney: Unclear on the Concept of Overfishing:
After a disastrous collapse in its cod stocks, however, it was closed indefinitely in 1992 to allow the stocks to replenish themselves. Six years have brought only faint signs of recovery.
Exxon Mobil scrambled on Monday to clean up 1,900 barrels of crude oil that leaked from a pipeline in a rural area near Torbert, Louisiana over the weekend.
A spate of recent leaks and incidents has heightened local concerns and prompted calls for tougher scrutiny from regulators. Last July, Exxon’ Silvertip pipeline spilled about 1,000 barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River in Montana, an accident that the company said cost it about $135 million.
Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are preparing for a new series of public meetings in May sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.
New Study Slams Federal Pipeline Oversight:
A report issued on Monday by the National Wildlife Federation asserts that federal laws regulating oil pipelines are inadequate in several crucial areas and that local regulations do not provide sufficient protection against safety and environmental risks.
Nearly two years after one of the worst oil spills in Midwest history, a new legal analysis by the National Wildlife Federation reveals that laws governing oil pipelines do not adequately protect the Great Lakes and its communities from oil pollution-and that states have not passed their own laws to fill in the gaps.
The little-known federal agency charged with monitoring the system and enforcing safety measures – the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – is chronically short of inspectors and lacks the resources needed to hire more, leaving too much of the regulatory control in the hands of pipeline operators themselves, according to federal reports, an examination of agency data and interviews with safety experts.
Wind Energy Tax Credit Expiration: Already Killing US Manufacturing Jobs:
Bottom line, if congress is serious about defunding all energy subsidies and making a truly level playing field, well and good, then start with the oil companies, and by the way, tell them they have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open on their own dime.
A recent study published in Nature Climate Change suggests that large wind farms could be pulling down hot air at night, raising the average temperature of the local region. The results of the study, however, have been widely misconstrued in the news media.
A recent study of satellite data found that nighttime land temperatures in the immediate vicinity of wind turbines in Texas have increased relative to nearby areas without turbines. Conservative media outlets, including Fox Nation, Rush Limbaugh and Jim Hoft, are distorting the research to claim that wind farms “cause global warming” and Fox News’ morning show concluded “wind ain’t working.” But the study’s lead author said via email that this coverage is “misleading.”
The survey’s results are counter to widely held assumptions among the media and politicians, but consistent with recent polling. The poll found:
+ 63% of Americans support “signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050″!
+ 61% of Americans say they would be more likely to vote for a political candidate who supports a “revenue neutral” tax shift, increasing taxes on fossil fuels, and reducing the federal income tax by an equal amount.
+ 61% said they support holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for “hidden costs we pay for citizens who get sick from polluted air and water, military costs to maintain access to foreign oil, and the environmental costs of spills and accidents.
Two leading political scholars “” representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution ““ have published a must-read article, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
The discovery this week of the fourth U.S. case of mad cow disease was one of two things for food safety experts: a validation of a decade-long focused surveillance regime or a lucky break that highlights the need to revisit previously scrapped efforts for more comprehensive surveillance.
…
Funding for cattle health programs in the proposed 2013 budget is set to fall by 20 percent compared to two years earlier.
…
The two major U.S. safeguards are a ban on using cattle protein in cattle feed, which can lead to animal-to-animal transmission, and keeping parts of the cow that can carry high concentrations of the disease, such as brains, spinal cords and nervous tissue, out of the food supply.
Sand dust created from the hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from rock is one of the most dangerous threats to workers at wells blossoming across the U.S., a government safety researcher said.
U.S. government support for solar energy is no different from its support for traditional energy sources, despite critics’ complaints that the renewable energy source has gotten special incentives, a new solar-industry backed report found.
Opponents include some specialty crop farmers who fear 2,4-D herbicide use could cause widespread damage to crops that are not engineered with a tolerance to it. It is so potent that its use is tightly restricted in some areas and at certain times of the year in some U.S. states.
[W]hat if the Pilgrim plant experienced a meltdown like the one that unfolded just over a year ago in Fukushima, Japan?
“I live just six miles from that plant across open water,” says Lampert, a staunch advocate for tougher oversight of the nuclear power industry. “It always comes down to public safety versus the cost to industry of implementing something.”
Based on measurements gathered around the world from 1950-2000, a team of researchers from Australia and the U.S. has concluded that the hydrologic cycle is indeed changing. Wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier. But it’s happening about twice as fast as anyone thought, and that could mean big trouble for places like Australia, which has already been experiencing crushing drought in recent years.
[R]esearchers from the Universities of Washington and Delaware and the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass., say the [Pacific Garbage Patch] is much bigger, and scarier, than that. They say scientists have only skimmed the surface on the devastating pollution caused by plastic debris in the ocean, and the research community is likely underestimating the amount of plastic in the ocean.
The recent approval of a Feed-in-Tarriff (FiT) rooftop solar program known as CLEAN LA Solar by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power opens up over 12,000 acres of potential rooftop space for solar development.
His idea has drawn withering criticism from other scientists, who cite errors in his papers and say proof is lacking. Enough evidence is already in hand, they say, to rule out the powerful cooling effect from clouds that would be needed to offset the increase of greenhouse gases.
Warm ocean currents flowing beneath ice shelves are the main cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, concludes a study by an international research team published today. The finding brings scientists closer to providing reliable projections of future sea level rise. Using measurements from NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, ICESat, in combination with computer models, the researchers were able to distinguish between warm ocean currents thawing the ice sheets from below and warm air melting them from above.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.”
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.“
We are in an historic moment, as the Trump Presidency begins its collapse; Also: Callers ring in on tomorrow's wild California Gubernatorial primary...
Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast' on the primaries, the ballroom, the slush fund, the wars, the media, Stephen Colbert, and much more...
Also: We endorse Trump's endorsement in TX GOP U.S. Senate runoff!; DOJ adds MORE corruption to Trump's already 'most corrupt' agreement in U.S. history...
Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!…
Have you heard that the Navy has been subverted by a greenie?
Here’s part two of the series on the Wildlife Service’s killing machine. Part three to follow Sunday, May 6.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/3...dly-force.html