With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 10/16/2012, 2:53pm PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Debating the future - contrasting the candidates on energy; Obama fast-tracks solar on public lands; Car battery maker goes bankrupt; PLUS: It's official: September 2012 was the hottest month ever. Ever, people! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Corn Belt Shifts North With Climate as Kansas Crop Dies; TEPCO admits Fukushima was avoidable; New Study Ties Hurricane Strength To Global Warming; Keystone XL pipeline opponents turn to civil disobedience; Iraq to invest up to $1.6 bln in solar and wind ... PLUS: World's biggest geoengineering experiment 'violates' UN rules ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

  • World's biggest geoengineering experiment 'violates' UN rules: (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
    Satellite images appear to confirm the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilisation that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits.

    “It is difficult if not impossible to detect and describe important effects that we know might occur months or years later,” said John Cullen , an oceanographer at Dalhousie University. “Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired.”

  • Corn Belt Shifts North With Climate as Kansas Crop Dies (Bloomberg) [emphasis added]:
    Shifts such as these reflect a view among food producers that this summer’s drought in the U.S. --- the worst in half a century -- isn’t a random disaster. It’s a glimpse of a future altered by climate change that will affect worldwide production.
  • TEPCO admits Fukushima was avoidable (Sydney Morning Herald):
    The company at the centre of Japan's worst nuclear crisis has acknowledged for the first time it could have avoided the disaster that crippled the Fukushima No.1 power plant. In a dramatic reversal of its insistence nothing could have protected the plant against the earthquake and tsunami that killed almost 20,000 people on March 11, 2011, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said it had known safety improvements were needed before the disaster, but had failed to implement them.
  • Koch Industries Warns 45,000 Employees Of ‘Consequences’ If They Don’t Vote For Republicans (Climate Progress)
  • New Study Ties Hurricane Strength To Global Warming (Climate Central):
    But Alex Grinsted of the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues came at the problem in an entirely different way. They looked not at hurricanes themselves, but at the storm surges tropical storms drive before them as they come ashore, and surges have been reliably measured by devices known as tide gauges all the way back to the 1920's.

    “Using surges as an indicator,” Grinsted said in an interview, “we see an increase in all magnitudes of storms when ocean temperatures are warmer.”

  • Keystone XL pipeline opponents turn to civil disobedience (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
    The blockade group said 10 people were arrested Monday after locking themselves to pieces of heavy equipment. Earlier in the month, Hannah joined east Texas landowner Eleanor Fairchild to protest TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. On Oct. 4, they were arrested on charges of criminal trespassing for standing in front of excavation equipment on Fairchild’s [own] property.
  • Iraq plans to invest up to $1.6 bln in solar and wind energy (Reuters):
    Iraq invites firms to build wind and solar energy stations, Aims to add 400 MW in three years:
    ...
    Invitations have been sent to about 25 leading companies to manufacture and install solar and wind power plants, said Laith al-Mamury, the head of the planning and studies department at the ministry of electricity.
  • Republican Meteorologist to Mitt Romney: My Top Ten Reasons for Republicans to Accept Reality on the Climate (Huffington Post Green)
  • Essential Climate Science Findings:
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