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SPECIAL NOTE: Though we didn’t have time to mention as much in today’s report, this is our 7TH ANNIVERSARY episode of the Green News Report and our 670th(!) episode overall! Wow. Please feel free to drop an Anniversary gift into THE TIP JAR so that we can afford to keep connecting the climate change dots in a way that nobody in the corporate media (or even many in the alt media, in truth) have been able to over such an extended period! And thank you all for your years of past and future support! — B&D
IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: President Obama says rest of world disturbed by our GOP Presidential candidates; New study finds air pollution kills nearly 6 million people a year globally; January 2016 was the hottest January on record; West Virginia is 40 percent flatter now, thanks to coal mining; PLUS: The renewable energy revolution is happening faster than anyone predicted…. All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Green News Report
with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen
2/18/2016
‘Green News Report’ – February 18, 2016 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... · · · · · ‘Green News Report’ – February 18, 2016 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Washington Asks If Railroads Could Afford $700M Oil Train Spill; Ohio EPA Fires Two Over Sebring Lead Contamination; Wyoming Says Its Coal Mine Cleanup Policy Is Flawed; Study Ties U.S. to Spike in Global Methane Emissions; Pipeline Corrosion Caused Santa Barbara Oil Spill; Oklahoma Cracks Down On Injection Wells After Earthquake Spike; Contaminated Flint Water Among Most Expensive In The U.S.; Study Flags Concerns CO2 Underground Stores Could Leak… PLUS: Latest moose count provides little good news… and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- January 2016 Was the Hottest January Ever Recorded:
- January 2016: Shattering the Global Warming Monthly Record (Slate) [emphasis added]:
But there’s more: 1.13C is the largest anomaly for any month since records began in 1880. There have only been monthly anomalies greater than 1C three times before in recorded history, and those three were all from last year.…El Niño only accounts for a fraction of a degree of this heating. Even accounting for El Niño years, things are getting hotter. The root cause is not El Niño. It’s us.
- Carbon Pollution Fuels Superwarm January, Hottest 12 Months On Record (Climate Progress):
True, every year is not going to be warmer than the last — but we do appear to be in the long-awaited global warming speed up.
- January Smashed Another Global Temperature Record (Climate Central)
- Global Warming Crushes Records. Again. What we’re seeing has no precedent. (Bloomberg)
- Earth is Experiencing a Global Warming Spurt (Climate Central, 1/5/2016):
The effects of the PDO on global warming can be likened to a staircase, with warming leveling off for periods, typically of more than a decade, and then bursting upward.
- Obama: International Community ‘Disturbed’ by Republican Candidates’ Positions:
- VIDEO: Obama – Americans Won’t Trust Trump With the Nuclear Codes (Mother Jones):
World leaders find the positions of GOP candidates “troubling,” the president says….”They’re all denying climate change. I think that’s troubling to the international community, since the science is unequivocal…The other countries around the world, they kind of count on the United States being on the side of science and reason and common sense, because they know that if the United States does not act on big problems in smart ways, nobody will…There’s not a single candidate in the Republican primary that thinks we should do anything about climate change, that thinks it’s serious.”
- Obama’s ASEAN summit ends with business, security pact (Desert Sun)
- Study: Air Pollution Kills Nearly 6 Million A Year Globally:
- Air Pollution Kills More People Than Malnutrition And Unsafe Sex, Scientists Say (Climate Progress):
“There are about 55 million deaths each year,” he said. “That means that air pollution in general here is about 10 percent of the total.”
- Air Pollution Blamed For 5.5 Million Deaths Annually (CS Monitor):
More than 5.5 million people die from air pollution each year, with more than 3 million of these deaths occurring in China and India.
- Polluted air causes 5.5 million deaths a year new research says (BBC)
- Coal Mining Has Flattened Appalachia:
- Flattening of Appalachia: What happens after mountaintop removal (Courier-Journal):
The team comparing digitized topographic maps from West Virginia before mountaintop mining became extensive with elevation data collected by aircraft in 2010. They found mines and valley fills from 10 to 200 meters deep. Across the region, the average slope of the land dropped by more than 10 degrees post-mining.
- Mountaintop removal mining is flattening Appalachia (Grist)
- How the Coal Industry Flattened the Mountains of Appalachia (Climate Progress)
- Renewable Energy Revolution Happening Faster Than Predicted:
- Why the Renewables Revolution Is Now Unstoppable (Climate Progress):
Once upon a time, people imagined that replacing fossil fuels with renewables like solar and wind would jeopardize the electric grid’s reliability. Then along came some major countries who showed that it didn’t, and that there really are no limits to renewable integration.
- The renewable energy revolution is already upon us, report shows (Mashable):
On the campaign trail, many candidates tend to portray the clean energy revolution as a pie-in-the-sky idea, with new investments needed in oil and gas drilling while we wait for a technological fix to solve our energy and global warming challenges….In fact, we are now in the midst of a far more rapid shift away from fossil fuels, such as coal, to renewables, including solar and wind power, than anyone has realized, including the candidates for president.
- VIDEO: Sustainable Energy in America — ‘A Factbook short interview’ (Bloomberg New Energy Finance)
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- Latest Moose Count Provides Little Good News (Minneapolis Star-Tribune):
Minnesota’s moose continued their long decline in 2015.
- Washington Asks If Railroads Could Afford $700M Oil Train Spill (Bellingham Herald):
Railroads that haul oil trains through Washington state will need to report whether they could afford around $700 million to pay for a derailment and spill, under a recently finalized state rule.
- Ohio EPA Fires Two Over Sebring Contamination (Columbus Dispatch):
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency fired two employees in its Columbus office on Wednesday, and demoted a third employee in the EPA’s northeastern district over lead contamination in the Mahoning County village of Sebring.
- Wyoming Says Its Coal Mine Cleanup Policy Is Flawed (Reuters):
A program that has allowed U.S. coal companies to forego cleanup insurance on massive western mines is flawed and needs to be fixed, Wyoming officials have told federal regulators.
- Study Ties U.S. to Spike in Global Methane Emissions (Climate Central):
There was a huge global spike in one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change over the last decade, and the U.S. may be the biggest culprit, according a new Harvard University study.
- Pipeline Corrosion Caused Santa Barbara Oil Spill: Federal Officials (LA Times):
Federal regulators say corrosion on the outside of an oil pipeline was the cause of a major crude spill on the Santa Barbara coast last year.
- Oklahoma Cracks Down On Injection Wells After Earthquake Spike (CS Monitor):
The Sooner State has switched strategies, limiting not just the depth, but amount of wastewater than oil and gas producers can pump back underground.
- FDA to Start Testing for Glyphosate in Food (Civil Eats):
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation’s chief food safety regulator, plans to start testing certain foods for residues of the world’s most widely used weed killer after the World Health Organization’s cancer experts last year declared the chemical a probable human carcinogen.
- Contaminated Flint Water Among Most Expensive In The U.S.: Report (Reuters):
Residents of Flint, Michigan, one of the poorest cities in the United States, paid some of the nation’s highest water bills even as the city failed to treat drinking water properly, leading to lead contamination, according to a report released on Tuesday.
- Study Flags Concerns CO2 Underground Stores Could Leak (Climate Change News):
Carbon dioxide pumped into old oil wells could react with salt water and erode ‘host rocks’ and cement, researchers find/
- Two-Thirds of the World Faces Severe Water Shortages (NY Tiems):
About four billion people, or two-thirds of the world’s population, face severe water shortages during at least one month every year, far more than was previously thought, according to Arjen Y. Hoekstra, a professor of water management at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
- Oxford’s Halley Professor on How the Climate Challenge Could Derail a Brilliant Human Destiny (Dot Earth):
This long-term view shows that the next few decades offer a brief window of opportunity to minimize large-scale and potentially catastrophic climate change that will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.
- Sea-Level Rise ‘Could Last Twice As Long As Human History’ (Guardian UK):
Huge sea-level rises caused by climate change will last far longer than the entire history of human civilisation to date, according to new research, unless the brief window of opportunity of the next few decades is used to cut carbon emissions drastically.
- Record Warmth `Almost Certainly’ Due to Humans, Scientists Say (Bloomberg):
The odds are “vanishingly small” that recent years of record warmth aren’t due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, researchers in the U.S. and Germany said, adding to pressure on world governments to cut back on fossil fuel use.
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.
Happy Anniversary B&D !