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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Summer of Fire in the US; Summer of Floods in the UK; Fracking FAIL: Gasland’s Josh Fox exposes new info on the dangers of natural gas fracking — again; PLUS: Good news — and bad news — on rising sea levels in the US… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen 6/26/2012

‘Green News Report’ – June 26, 2012  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...   · · · · ·   ‘Green News Report’ – June 26, 2012  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): BREAKING: U.S. Appeals Court upholds EPA greenhouse gas emission rules; NREL: US could be 80% renewable by 2050; Midwestern drought intensifies; Louisiana school voucher students taught creationism; Canada: Harper Admin seeks to “authorize” water pollution; SCOTUS: Can EPA regulate mud from logging roads?; Will US join Law of the Sea Treaty? … PLUS: The Battle Over Climate Science — death threats, hate mail, nuisance lawsuits, political attacks. How much worse can it get? … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Summer of Fire in the US:
• Goodbye to Mountain Forests? (NYT Green) [emphasis added]:
  When the smoke finally clears and new plant life pokes up from the scorched earth after the wildfires raging in the southern Rockies, what emerges will look radically different than what was there just a few weeks ago. According to Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey in Los Alamos, N.M., forests in the region have not been regenerating after the vast wildfires that have been raging for the last decade and a half.
  …
  [F]orests are burning into oblivion and grasslands and shrub lands are taking their place. “Rising temperature is going to drive our forests off the mountains,” he said.
• Heat-Driven Wildfires Continue to Consume the West (NY Times)
• Record setting heat wave roasts Rockies (Denver), Plains, heading east (Washington Post)
• USDA, DOI, FEMA Provide Firefighters, Aircraft, and Federal Grants to Support Local Partners Combating Fires (US Dept. of Interior press release)
• Large Airtanker Modernization Strategy (USDA Forest Service) (scribd):
  With the changing climate, fire seasons will likely become longer and more severe. This has already started to occur with the Western fires season now, on average, 78 days longer than in the mid-1980s.
• Raging Colorado wildfire grows near US Air Force Academy (Reuters)
• Wildfire displaces thousands near Colorado Springs (Reuters)
• Colorado wildfire: Air Force tanker pilots call fight of Waldo Canyon Fire “surreal” (Denver Post)
• VIDEO: Romney Says America Doesn’t Need ‘More Firemen, More Policemen, More Teachers’ (Think Progress)
• Summer of Floods in the UK:
• After the deluge and the mudbath, the almighty clean-up begins: Flood waters receding after month’s worth of rain falls in 24 hours (UK Independent)
• Flooding hits northern England after torrential rain (BBC)
• UK insurers face floods hit, seen raising prices (Reuters)
• UK: June Could Be Wettest For 100 Years (Sky News)
• Good News & Bad News On Sea Level Rise:
• Rising sea levels: It’s worse than you think (David Roberts, Grist.org) [emphasis added]:
  So, if we f*ck around and allow temperature to rise 4.5 degrees C, by 2300 sea levels could be up to 5 meters (16.4 feet) higher and rising at around 13 mm a year.
• CA: Sea levels to rise 5+ feet this century, study says (LA Times):
  As climate change expands the oceans, sea levels will rise more than average along the California coast because much of the state is sinking, according to a new report.

  Sea levels along the California coast are expected to rise up to 1 foot in 20 years, 2 feet by 2050 and as much as 5 1/2 feet by the end of the century, climbing slightly more than the global average and increasing the risk of flooding and storm damage, a new study says.

• USGS: Sea level in Atlantic ‘hot spot’ rising faster than world’s (LA Times)
• Study: Sea rise faster on East Coast than rest of globe (USA Today):
  U.S. Geological Survey scientists call the 600-mile swath a “hot spot” for climbing sea levels caused by global warming. Along the region, the Atlantic Ocean is rising at an annual rate three times to four times faster than the global average since 1990, according to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

  It’s not just a faster rate, but at a faster pace, like a car on a highway “jamming on the accelerator,” said the study’s lead author, Asbury Sallenger Jr.

• Sea Level Rise Accelerating Along Atlantic Coast, Say Scientists (Insurance Journal)
• U.S. East Coast a “hot spot” for sea level rise: study: Sea levels from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod are rising at a faster pace than anywhere on Earth (Reuters)
• VIDEO: Sea level in Northeastern US rising more than three times faster than global average (CS Monitor):

• Gasland’s Josh Fox Exposes MORE Dangers of Fracking:
• VIDEO: Josh Fox’s “The Sky Is Pink” (Vimeo):
  
  

  THE SKY IS PINK from JFOX on Vimeo.

• U.S. Interior Needs To Strengthen Fracking Rules: Lawmakers (Reuters):
  U.S. Democrats in the House of Representatives urged the Obama administration on Wednesday to expand proposed regulations for fracking for natural gas, saying companies should be required to reveal the chemicals to be used in the process prior to drilling.
• Myths And Facts About Natural Gas (Media Matters.org)

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

• BREAKING: U.S. Appeals Court Upholds EPA Greenhouse Gas Emission Rules (Climate Progress):
  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today unanimously ruled in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) legal authority to limit industrial carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act to protect Americans’ health.
• NREL: Renewable Electricity Futures Study Shows US Could Achieve 80% Renewable by 2050 (National Renewable Energy Labs):
  Midwestern Drought Intensifies: ‘I Don’t Remember Anytime It Was This Dry, This Early’ (Climate Progress):

  A mild snow-less winter, an unusually dry spring, and debilitating heat in May and June have created serious drought conditions in parts of Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, among other states.
• Louisiana Voucher Students Taught Creationism, Climate Change Denial, and Bigotry: Building a separate subculture of ignorant religious fanatics (Little Green Footballs):
  Louisiana is embarking on a great fundamentalist adventure with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s wide-ranging school voucher program, which diverts state education funds to primarily religious private schools — many of whom will be teaching a curriculum designed by the most extreme and fanatical Protestant religious groups in America…
  “Students will be taught that humans and dinosaurs walked on earth together, and this instruction will be paid for with public funds.“
• CANADA: Harper Administration seeks new tools to “authorize” water pollution (Canada.com):
  Changes to Canada’s environmental protection laws in the federal budget implementation bill will offer new tools to “authorize” water pollution, while allowing the government to outsource services to protect the country’s waterways, says Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield.
• SCOTUS: Can EPA regulate mud from logging roads? (AP):
  Efforts to investigate US Wildlife Services’ control methods continue (Sacramento Bee):

  After two days of searching, she discovered her dog’s body near an M-44 about 900 feet from their home. “It was a horrible thing,” she said. “She had thrown up. You could tell it had been a horrible death. It was really, really heart-wrenching … . I was just lucky it was my dog and it wasn’t my son.”
• United States debates joining Law of the Sea (Public Radio International) [emphasis added]:
  It’s been 30 years since the U.N. Law of the Sea was first established, and the United States still hasn’t ratified the treaty. The Law of the Sea defines a nation’s rights and responsibilities in, on and under the world’s oceans and has global implications for national security, commerce and the environment.
  …
  According to Living on Earth’s Jeff Young, the main point made in those hearings, was that without being a party to the treaty, the U.S. lacks authority in disputes over who gets access to the ocean’s resources.
• The Battle Over Climate Science: Climate scientists routinely face death threats, hate mail, nuisance lawsuits and political attacks. How much worse can it get? (Popular Science) [emphasis added]:
  How had a small band of non-scientists managed to so quickly and thoroughly pursuade the nation’s leaders to reject an ever more coherent and definitive body of scientific evidence?
  …
  Bast says Heartland does not reject all of mainstream climate science. “Virtually everybody agrees,” he tells me, that “there has been warming in the second half of the 20th century [and] that there is probably a human role in that warming, that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that the increase in atmospheric concentrations can be attributed to human activity.” The organization, he says, argues primarily for “cost-effective solutions” to climate change. As our meeting is wrapping up, Bast says genuinely, “Don’t call us deniers. Skeptics is fine. Moderates, realists. But not deniers.”

  But a few weeks later, Heartland would launch a new advertising campaign. As drivers crawled along Chicago’s busy Eisenhower Expressway, they were confronted with a large billboard that compared believers in global warming with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The text on the billboard read, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”
• Senate Move to Reverse Mercury Rule Fails (NYT Green)
• The Great German Energy Experiment (MIT Technology Review):
  Germany has decided to pursue ambitious greenhouse-gas reductions—while closing down its nuclear plants. Can a heavily industrialized country power its economy with wind turbines and solar panels? [Yes.]
• Global warming’s evil twin threatens West Coast fishing grounds (CS Monitor):
  Within the next few decades, ocean acidification — an effect of global warming — could leave sea creatures along the West Coast unable to maintain their protective shells, according to a new study.

• 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)
• 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.“