Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!…



(Or use “Click here to listen…” link below.)

IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Weather Whiplash: record May snowstorm in Minnesota, early May wildfires in California; Who paid for last year’s billion-dollar record crop disaster? YOU did; Myth-busting: 40th anniversary of Newsweek’s “coming ice age” blunder; PLUS: Surprise! Fox ‘News’ lies about the term ‘climate change’ … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen 5/2/2013

‘Green News Report’ – May 2, 2013  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...   · · · · ·   ‘Green News Report’ – May 2, 2013  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...

30s 30s

0:00 0:00

Download Episode Link to this page Embed on your site! Subscribe RSS/Podcast

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): What would ‘wartime mobilization’ to fight climate change look like?; You Won’t Believe What’s in Your Turkey Burger; Most Americans clueless about global scientific consensus on climate change;
Billionaire Koch Bros attack renewable energy standards in the states & launch new front group; Oslo runs out of garbage, imports it from rest of the world; Climate Change: Top Investors Will Feel Heat of New Epoch … PLUS: Unburnable Fuel: Either governments are not serious about climate change or fossil-fuel firms are overvalued … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Wacky Weather Whiplash: Record May Snowstorm:
• Historic May snows hit Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa (Dr. Jeff Masters, Weather Underground)
• VIDEO: Snowstorm dumps 15 inches in southeastern MN (KARE-Minneapolis):
  The National Weather Service says the 15.5 inch total registered in Owatonna could be the heaviest May snowfall in Minnesota’s recorded history. The previous high snow total was a foot near Leonard, in Clearwater County, Minn. on May 3, 1954. Tower, Minn. saw 10 inches on May 3, 1950.
• VIDEO: All In With Chris Hayes: U.S. spends billions on disaster relief (MSNBC)
• Historic May Snowstorm Buries Rochester, MN (Accuweather)
• Breaking Weather: Heavy Rain Pours Over Florida (Accuweather)
• Unusually cold spring in Europe and the Southeast U.S. due to the Arctic Oscillation (Weather Underground)
• Wild Weather Swings May Be a Sign of Climate Change (Climate Central)
• CA Wildfire Season Off to Ominous, Early, Roaring Start:
• Bad news: Calif. snowpack 17 percent of normal (San Jose Mercury News)
• California fires: Ventura County blaze could reach Pacific Ocean (LA Times)
• VIDEO: Hundreds Flee Southern California Wildfire (CNBC): Winds spurred new wildfires and evacuations near Southern California, with CNBC’s Sue Herera.
• California’s fire season is more than a month early because of unusually dry conditions and hot temperatures (USA Today)
• California Spring Fire: Unusually Strong Santa Anas, Dryness (Accuweather)
• Extreme Weather Disasters Are Expensive:
• Who Paid For Last Year’s Record Crop Disaster? YOU Did: (NPR)
  Here’s why it’s Cadillac insurance and why it ends up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Last year, farmers got a poor harvest. At the same time, because corn and soybeans were in short supply, prices soared, which benefited farmers greatly. The insurance, however, paid farmers for the lost yield “” but paid them at the higher, post-drought market price. Essentially, farmers reaped the drought’s benefits, yet were protected from its harm.
• Update: Exxon’s Pegasus Pipeline Spill:
• Exxon Spills Tar Sands Oil Again In Missouri, Can’t Find 126,000 Gallons Spilled In Arkansas (Climate Progress)
• Exxon’s Pegasus oil pipe spills crude into Missouri yard (Reuters): Exxon Mobil Corp’s near 70-year-old Pegasus oil pipeline spilled a small amount of crude on Tuesday into a residential yard in Ripley County, Missouri, a month after the same pipe spewed thousands of barrels of crude in Arkansas.
• Study finds ‘soup of toxic chemicals’ in the air near Arkansas ExxonMobil spill site (Russia Today)
• Mythbusting: 40th Anniversary of Newsweek’s Ice Age Blunder:
• What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s? (Skeptical Science)
• FLASHBACK: Newsweek, April 28, 1975: The Cooling World (Denis Dutton.com)
• Closing the Consensus Gap on Climate Change (John Cook, Weather Underground):
  On average, the general public think less than half of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. The reality is 97%. There is a huge gap between public perception of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming and reality.
• Mythbusting: Fox News Lies About ‘Climate Change’ vs. ‘Global Warming’:
• VIDEO: The Global Warming Name Game: Fox Concocts A Conspiracy For The Phrase “Climate Change” (Media Matters.org):



• Debunking The Dumbest Denier Myth (Again): ‘Climate Change’ Vs. ‘Global Warming’ (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Indeed, it is conservatives who typically change the names of things, as in refusing to say “Democratic” but only “Democrat” and insisting on “death tax” rather than “estate tax,” even though only big estates are taxed, not death.
• In a confidential 2003 memo, Luntz asserted that the Administration and conservatives should stop using the term “global warming” because it was too frightening (Political Strategy Archives, via Climate Progress):
  It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation. 1) “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”.

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

• Unburnable fuel: Either governments are not serious about climate change or fossil-fuel firms are overvalued (The Economist) [emphasis added]:
  Markets can misprice risk, as investors in subprime mortgages discovered in 2008. Several recent reports suggest that markets are now overlooking the risk of “unburnable carbon”. The share prices of oil, gas and coal companies depend in part on their reserves. The more fossil fuels a firm has underground, the more valuable its shares. But what if some of those reserves can never be dug up and burned? … If governments were determined to implement their climate policies, a lot of that carbon would have to be left in the ground…
• What would ‘wartime mobilization’ to fight climate change look like? (David Roberts, Grist):
  [The] scale and speed seem to demand something like wartime mobilization. That metaphor gets used a lot. I’ve used it many times myself. But is it apt? And what would it mean to take it seriously? There’s been lots of academic attention to the technology side of rapid, large-scale mitigation, but little attention to the governance side. How could a country engineer such a transition? What powers and institutions would be necessary?
• You Won’t Believe What’s in Your Turkey Burger: Yes, there’s fecal bacteria in your ground turkey (Mother Jones)
• Closing the Consensus Gap on Climate Change (John Cook, Weather Underground):
  On average, the general public think less than half of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. The reality is 97%. There is a huge gap between public perception of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming and reality.
• Why Two Rich Men from Kansas Want to Dismantle Maine’s Renewable Energy Policy…And Why
  YOU Should Care [PDF[ (Maine Conservation Alliance): Are We Debating Renewable Energy or the Koch Brothers’ Profits?
• Kochs Form New Dark Money Group To Hide Political Activities From Public: Koch’s new “Business League” will keep political spending in the shadows. (Alternet)
• Oslo runs out of garbage, imports it from rest of the world (Treehugger)
• Oil drilling technology leaps, clean energy lags (AP) [emphasis added]:
  Technology created an energy revolution over the past decade – just not the one we expected…. Fossil fuels? They were going to be expensive and scarce, relics of an earlier, dirtier age. But in the race to conquer energy technology, Old Energy is winning.
• Climate Change: Top Investors Will Feel Heat of New Epoch (Bloomberg) [emphasis added]:
  Just how great are today’s great investors? We might not know, not yet, because they’ve become great in a great time for investing.
  …
  “What if there is a future that demands that an investor — a seemingly great investor — change course or at least learn new tricks? Ah, now, that would be a test of greatness: the ability to adapt to a new epoch,” [Pimco co-founder Bill] Gross wrote. The interesting thing about Gross’s choice of words is that in the time he has been an investor, there has been a change of epoch — a geological epoch — that might itself prove to be the ultimate test for elite investors.
• Government Study Cites Mix of Factors in Death of Honeybees (NY Times):
  officials in the United States Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and others involved in the bee study said that there was not enough evidence to support a ban on one group of pesticides, and that the costs of such action might exceed the benefits.
• A Key Experiment to Probe the Future of Our Acidifying Oceans (Yale 360): In a Swedish fjord, European researchers are conducting an ambitious experiment aimed at better understanding how ocean acidification will affect marine life. Ultimately, these scientists hope to determine which species might win and which might lose in a more acidic ocean.
• General Motors urges Obama and Congress to unite on climate change (Guardian UK): Auto giant adds signature to Climate Declaration, which calls on government to pass climate laws that would help economy.
• San Onofre nuclear power plant held together with masking tape, broomsticks (UPI) [emphasis added]:
  An inside source snapped a photo inside the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego showing plastic bags, masking tape and broom sticks used to stem a massive leaky pipe.
  …
  Records show SONGS staff reported “hundreds of corrosion notifications” and “degraded equipment.” Staff sent a letter to management saying SONGS “clearly has a serious corrosion problem” throughout the plant.
• French Town Has Too Much Money To Spend Thanks To Wind Turbines, Mayor Says (Huffington Post Green) [emphasis added]:
  According to Couzinié, the town’s budget has increased more than fivefold in the past three years — from 400,000 euros (about $523,000) to 2.3 million euros (more than $3 million) — as a result of the 11 wind turbines that were installed in 2009. For a town with a population of less than 200 people, the available funds are much more than Arfons needs to thrive.“It’s as if a rain of gold fell on the village,” Couzinié told TV station France 3.
• U.S.-born kids have more allergies, asthma (Reuters):
  Kids and teens who are born abroad and immigrate to the United States are about half as likely to have asthma and allergies as those who are born in the U.S., according to a new study.
• How Far Can Climate Change Go?: (Scientific American) [emphasis added]:
  How far can we push the planet?

• COVER STORY: It’s Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  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.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century — way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• 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)
• 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. …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)
• 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 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)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)