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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Britain's new flood defenses already overwhelmed; Record extreme weather over the holidays turbocharged by El Nino and climate change; State of emergency for Flint, MI water crisis; State of emergency for massive CA natural gas leak; PLUS: TransCanada sues Obama over Keystone XL pipeline rejection... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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): Italian Mob's Toxic Waste Dumping Is Giving People Cancer; EPA Says Pesticide Harms Bees In Some Cases; Oil Prices Decline More Than 5 Percent as Stockpiles Increase; U.S. Wildfires Burned Record Area In 2015: Agriculture Department; U.S. Issues New Dietary Guidelines That Will Change The Way You Eat; FDA Just Banned These Chemicals in Food. Are They the Tip of Iceberg?; The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare... PLUS: British Coal, the End of a Mining Industry... and much, MUCH more! ...

It was a very busy live BradCast from the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in L.A. today, with a lot of breaking news, callers and more!

First: California Governor Jerry Brown declares a state of emergency as the massive natural gas leak at Porter Ranch, near Los Angeles, continues to pump millions of tons of climate changing methane (and more) into the atmosphere. And then, also breaking, Canadian tar sands oil company TransCanada files a complaint, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in federal court, charging the U.S. violated the so-called "free trade" pact when Obama blocked the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline late last year.

Next: We're joined by attorney and long-time BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernest A. Canning to discuss the new ruling by the CA Supreme Court overturning their 2014 decision that removed Proposition 49 from the state's general election ballot. The initiative, placed on the ballot by the state legislature, sought an "advisory opinion" from the electorate as to whether the state should call on Congress to overturn the infamous Citizens United decision with a Constitutional amendment.

Canning explains the new decision and how, as he reported here in early 2015, the state's high court got it wrong in the first place when they disallowed CA voters to express their opinion on Prop 49 back in 2014. He also explains why he's been absent, of late, from The BRAD BLOG! Tune in to find out why, where he's been, and if we'll ever get him back!

Then: Extreme weather, super-charged by climate change, kills scores of Americans in dozens of states across the U.S. over the holidays and the media misreports (or ignores) it completely. We correct the record (with an assist from our old friend, climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann!)

Finally: Listener calls! Including one that I am pretty sure comes from the old MovieFone guy!

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On today's BradCast, guest host Nicole Sandler of Radio or Not speaks with David Cobb from Move to Amend about their efforts to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

She also checks in with Tim O’Connor of the Environmental Defense Fund about the ongoing leak and toxic methane gas cloud hanging over Porter Ranch, just north of Los Angeles, and why this could be more dangerous than the Deepwater Horizon spill a few years back.

And the crazy militia people are at it again! (But Brad will finally be back tomorrow to discuss that and more!)

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On today's BradCast, guest host Nicole Sandler continues her year-end look back at the year almost ended.

Today, Nicole is joined by Cliff Schecter who discussed the insanity that is this nation's obsession with guns. He also painted an optimistic picture of the possibility of beginning to change our gun culture in 2016. We'll see.

Also today: Brad and Desi return to bring us the Green News Report's year in review, and Nicole has a quick correction about something she got wrong yesterday. (It doesn't happen often, but when it does, she likes to correct the record quickly.)

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Green News Report' Special Coverage 2015 Year In Review: Before 2015 and its landmark events slip into the history books, a quick review of just some of the most important environment and energy stories from a watershed year for the planet... And all in just six minutes!...In today's year-ending Green News Report!

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): Year of Clout: 10 Stories of Indigenous Environmental Influence in 2015; Greener choice, bar soap or body wash?; Storms snarl travel, threaten rare Winter tornadoes in U.S.; Nuke plant contractors faked 10 years of inspection records; Obama signs microbead pollution ban; Superbug bacteria resistant to all antibiotics found in UK... PLUS: Shale Oil running out of survival tricks as OPEC ramps up pressure ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Yes, it's time once again to toss a log on the fire, call in the kids, and curl up to the radio hearth for some good old-fashioned, old-tyme radio fun (with a very BradCast twist!)

Return with us to yesteryear in our Very Special (And Somewhat Subversive) BradCast Holiday Special!! Featuring The BradCast Radio Theatre Players in some of our earliest broadcasts from the 1930s and 40s! Featuring The Mighty Adventures of Buzz Edsel, a few giant Jupiterians, some dastardly Canadians, and even a visit from a jolly old fellow in a red suit with a whole bag of life-saving coal!

It's fun for the whole family and a swell reminder of what it was like back in the days when The BradCast was still a corporate-sponsored radio program relying on the goodwill of Henry Ford and the fine folks at the Ford Motor Company (of Dearborn, Michigan)!

Don't miss our award-wanting holiday tradition in the making!...And Merry Christmas, world!

• COMPLETE SPECIAL...

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below!...

• Or, if you prefer to listen to just one segment at a time...

PART 1: Intro & "Buzz Edsel versus the Giant Jupiterians!"
MP3 Download or listen online below (appx. 24 mins)...

PART 2: "Buzz Edsel versus the Sun-Stealers!"
MP3 Download or listen online below (appx. 16 mins)...

PART 3: "Buzz Edsel and the Santa Surprise!"
MP3 Download or listen online below (appx. 16 mins)...

Since we are no longer sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, we must rely on you dear readers and listeners, to help us continue doing all that we do here at The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast! If you can toss in a year-end donation for our stocking, it would be greatly appreciated!...

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On today's BradCast, we've got both good news and bad at year's end.

First up, Kentucky's new 'Tea Party' Republican Governor Matt Bevin revokes the restoration of voting rights for 140,000 former felons as instituted by the former Democratic Governor. That, after the dubious and completely unverified results of the state's November gubernatorial contest. Yes, as we've noted for well over a decade now, elections matter! Bevin also did away with the previous governor's increase to the minimum wage for state workers, while he was at it.

Also today, quick news on the Trump supporter (a middle-aged white guy) arrested with a bomb after threatening to kill Muslims at a mosque in California more than two weeks ago. Also, a quick word on the record number of sign-ups this year at Healthcare.gov for new and renewed health insurance policies thanks to the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare").

Then, I'm joined by Dr. Joe Romm, editor of Climate Progress and former Asst. Sec. of Energy in the Bill Clinton Administration, after his return from Paris where the UN struck its historic agreement just over one week ago to curb greenhouse gasses that cause global warming.

As usual, Romm offers extremely informed and helpful insight, including his explanation for how the UN talks began earlier this month with the challenging goal of an agreement that would keep global temps from rising any higher than 2 degrees Centigrade, but surprisingly ended with an landmark pact that included the aspirational goal of 1.5C.

"It became clear from just looking at the science that there's nothing safe about 2 degrees Centigrade," he explains. "What we've learned in the last 18 months, with the instability in the West Antarctic ice sheet, and all the extreme weather events that we're already seeing, and the brutal droughts we're seeing in this country and elsewhere, that we're already at dangerous impacts, and we're only at 1 degree Centigrade of warming. So, I think that reality did set in." He adds: "If you want to limit to 2 degrees Centigrade total warming, the planet's net emissions have to go to zero by the end of the century. So, pretty much every country is going to have to go to zero."

Romm details exactly what that means and echoes remarks from my interview with Dr. Michael Mann last week, where Mann declared that the Paris Agreement signals the "end of the age of fossil fuels."

"We are talking about the end of the fossil-fuel driven Industrial Revolution that began 250 or so years ago," Romm tells me. "And that's why, in some senses, this is such a big deal. Because you literally had every single significant country in the world, large and small, rich and poor, all sign on to this agreement, which recognizes, yeah, the age of fossil fuels is coming to an end."

We cover a number of the steps ahead ("I was describing this as Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. We have a lot more battles before us.") during our wide-ranging conversation that also includes his complaints about Bill Gates' big new clean tech fund, and his response to the charge by NASA's former chief scientist Dr. James Hansen that the Paris Agreement is a "fraud".

"I think we're certainly at an inflection point," says Romm. "You know, change happens slowly, until it happens quickly. I tend to think we have now entered the phase of much more rapid changed than people expected."

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On today's very busy BradCast...

• A top-ranking lottery official was recently convicted of gaming the main lottery computer's random number generator for years and the investigation is now expanding to several other states. But, of course, while the Lottery Association's top security official got away with it for some six years, you needn't be worried at all about election insiders gaming computer results tabulators, right?

• Speaking of which...Half the country's voters would be embarrassed to have Donald Trump as President, though not many Republicans, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. That same poll also finds Bernie Sanders walloping Trump in a head-to-head match-up by nearly twice the margin that Hillary Clinton would beat the embarrassing GOP front-runner.

• A ruling by the WTO just succeeded in forcing the U.S. to scrap its extremely popular Country of Origin Labeling [COOL] requirements for beef and pork, even though President Obama recently told us that "no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws." We're joined by Lori Wallach, Director and Founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch for details on that and on how the incident should serve as a chilling warning about the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. That pact has yet to be approved by Congress, where it faces opposition from both Democrats and Republicans.

Wallach explains how the U.S. was slammed with a $1 billion/year sanction from the WTO, based on complaints about COOL from Canada and Mexico. "Within a week of the sanctions being authorized, Congress slipped into that huge omnibus bill the revocation of the Country of Origin meat labels --- including ground beef, which is particularly horrifying. So the WTO has gotten rid of one of our most popular consumer labeling policies," Wallach tells me. But, she goes on to explain, the mechanisms for forcing the U.S. to change our own consumer trade and safety laws are even more disturbing in the TPP, which she describes as "considerably worse."

"The TPP is privately enforceable by individual foreign companies and investors, through the very controversial Investor to State Dispute Settlement system," she describes. "And that lets any individual company drag a sovereign nation that signed that agreement --- away from its own courts, outside of its own laws --- in front of a foreign tribunal of three private sector lawyers, who the TPP would empower to order the signatory government to pay unlimited sumsof taxpayer money for any policy, government action, or inaction that the investor believes violated its new privileges as a foreign investor and would undermine its expected future profits."

• Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us as temperatures rise to record levels in parts of the country --- in the 70s in some places in Pennsylvania, for example --- on Christmas Eve! But why worry? That and much much more in our latest, chocked-full-o'-news Green News Report today.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: ABC News hosts a presidential debate, but climate change and energy aren't invited; President Obama warns Republicans the world is moving forward on climate; Officials knew Flint, MI's water contaminated with lead; Massive natural gas leak continues in Southern CA; PLUS: British court rejects Donald Trump's wind farm objection... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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): Internet has revelation that climate change action won't kill the economy after all; Obama says climate deal with outlast GOP denial; U.S. power grid hacked multiple times; Oil industry lobbyists succeed in opening Alaskan refuge to drilling; U.S. issues biggest energy efficiency rules ever; Oil prices slump to 11-year lows; Opposition builds to offshore drilling...PLUS: 'Intersex' male bass fish found throughout protected U.S. waters... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, Congress and the President leave D.C. for the holidays, but not before coming together to pass a huge, bi-partisan(!) spending and tax bill.

Peace on Earth? Not quite, but its a start, as Obama noted in his year end press conference today.

In the meantime, another massive reporting failure from the New York Times (once again) creates confusion for the nation following the recent terror attack in San Bernardino, prompting its Public Editor to call for "systematic change" in the way stories are reported at the nation's so-called "paper of record".

The Bernie Sanders campaign files suit against the DNC after being shut out from their own voter database following charges that his campaign inappropriately accessed Hillary Clinton's voter data after a firewall went down on the DNC's server. Sanders' supporters are crying foul against the Democratic Party, just one day before the next 2016 Democratic Presidential Debate (which is, again, being hidden on a Saturday --- this one, just before Christmas --- and on the same weekend the new Star Wars movie opens.)

And finally, the nation continues to cower in fear --- making GOP Presidential candidates very happy, no doubt --- as another entire school district gets shuts down on Friday over something even more absurd than what led to the shutdown of the L.A. school system earlier this week. Are we becoming South Park Nation? That news (and much more) at week's end may suggest as much.

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On today's BradCast, ownership of our nation's media gets more and more rightwing in advance of the 2016 Presidential elections.

First up, in Ohio, a newspaper owner/publisher fires the paper's editor, a 31-year employee, for daring to talk with staffers about an editorial critical of the NRA that the owner/publisher had spiked.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, the state's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is secretly purchased by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's largest single funder during the 2012 Presidential election cycle. After a week of mystery and lies from Adelson --- and investigative reporting by the journalists who actually work at the paper, who had no idea who they now work for --- the billionaire admits that, yes, it was his family that bought the paper...and a hugely inflated price.

Media Matters' Salvatore Colleluori joins us to explain why Adelson's mysterious purchase of the R-J is so disturbing on a whole bunch of levels. Among them: While the paper was already a right-leaning news outlet, the purchase could result in still more of Adelson's far rightwing political views making it into print in the key swing-state of Nevada in a Presidential election year. Moreover, as we discuss on today's program, the takeover could also serve to help keep coverage of Adelson's own highly suspect business dealings --- from China to The Vegas Strip --- out of the pages of the biggest paper in the state's biggest city all together.

"The other newspapers that he owns have very, very distinct stances that are very much in line with him," Colleluori tells me on today's program. "Owning the biggest newspaper in the state gives him a major mouthpiece going into, not only the 2016 election, but with a big Senate election coming in Nevada, there are going to be a lot of opportunities for him to throw his weight around in the state."

"As the old adage goes," he notes, "If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em."

Also today: Some thoughts on the rightwing talk radio outlet which CNN partnered with for this week's GOP debate, where, as we note in our latest Green News Report, CNN also completely avoided discussion of climate change and the largest world agreement ever struck just days earlier, and how a record warm December in the Midwest and North-East is ending what is now almost certainly going to be the warmest year ever recorded on Planet Earth...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Republicans hold another Presidential primary debate on national security, but host CNN skips right over energy and climate change; House Republicans lift crude oil export ban; 90 percent of disasters caused by extreme weather; PLUS:: November 2015 was the hottest November on record... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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): Toxic firefighting foam has contaminated U.S. drinking water; San Diego vows to go 100 per cent renewable in 20 years; Lakes are warming at an alarming rate; UK PM Cameron urged to rethink solar subsidy cuts; Denied: UK court rejects Trump's wind farm block; Cheap gas spurs SUV sales... PLUS: 2016 set to be hottest year on record ... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we cover the 'credible threat' of terror said to have been received by Los Angeles school officials out here, leading to today's unprecedented, complete shutdown of the second largest school district in the nation.

I'm joined by Ernesto Arce, News Director at our flagship radio station here in Los Angeles, Pacifica Radio's KPFK, for the latest, including the growing belief that the entire matter was little more than a hoax; that there have been more than 150 reports of hate crimes against Muslims here in Southern California since the San Bernardino shootings two weeks ago; and that today's panic suggests, once again, that you don't have to fire a shot or set off a bomb to terrorize Americans.

Also today, the sentencing of the latest Republican Sec. of State --- New Mexico's Dianna Duran --- to be found guilty of election fraud crimes, even as the GOP still pretends that Democrats are committing massive "voter fraud"; I finally figure out a way that Donald Trump could be knocked off his throne and maybe not win the GOP 2016 nomination after all (maybe); And Desi Doyen joins us for special Green News Report coverage of the historic UN climate agreement that was finalized unanimously by almost 200 nations over the weekend in Paris...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Green News Report Special Coverage: United Nations climate talks in Paris (COP21) result in an historic agreement for the planet and human civilization, in hopes of meeting the challenge of climate change... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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): Paris Climate Pact Sinks Coal Stocks, Lifts Renewable Energy; She’s Braved Rough Seas, Space Walks --- and Now Climate Change Deniers; Food Industry Pushing Halt To GMO Labeling By End of Year; The Siege of Miami: rising sea levels; E.P.A. Broke Law With Social Media Push for Water Rule; Global supermarkets selling shrimp peeled by slaves... PLUS: 33,480 Americans Dead After 70 Years of Atomic Weaponry... and much, MUCH more! ...

"It's difficult to understate the significance of this agreement," Dr. Michael E. Mann tells me on today's BradCast. "I think we are witnessing the end of the age of fossil fuels and the beginning of a new age of a clean global energy economy."

Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, creator of the infamous "hockey stick graph", and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, was speaking, of course, of the historic U.N. Paris Agreement, where negotiators from some 200 nations unanimously agreed over the weekend to curb the release of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, in hopes of staving off the worst effects of climate change.

The landmark COP21 accord has been some 21 years in the making, if not many more, as explained during today's show. While cautioning that "the devil is in the details" and "reductions that we'll get out of this agreement alone won't be enough to keep us below dangerous levels of warming," Mann says the agreement finally "starts to put us on the path to avoiding dangerous climate change."

But is it too little too late? Is it even possible to keep global temperatures from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, as called for by the agreement (which also asks nations to keep that rise no higher than 1.5C, if possible)? Mann tells me he believes there is still time to avoid the worst consequences of man's behavior and decades of inaction.

"I can give that answer confidently, as a scientist who studies the numbers. Yes, it is absolutely still physically possible," he says. "What is more in question, of course: is it doable? Is it achievable? And that's a matter of political will. That's really the only limitation."

We discuss those political limitations and much more today, including Mann's op-ed in last week's New York Times slamming Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chair of the U.S. House Science Committee, for his "assault on climate science," as well as Smith's published response to that op-ed. "There's not a truthful word in his statement," Mann retorts.

I also ask the professor about former NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen's assertion that the Paris Agreement is a "fraud" because it fails to include a specific global price on the release of carbon into the atmosphere; about the increasing calls for investigation and prosecution of ExxonMobil for obscuring their own scientists' findings about the "potentially catastrophic" effects of global warming as early as 1977; about that satellite data set cited by Republican climate deniers to suggest that global warming has either paused or doesn't exist at all; and a few more of what I characterize as my own "dumb science questions" about the effects of climate change on weather predictions and El Niño.

As usual, Mann pulls no punches in today's exclusive BradCast interview.

Also today: President Obama's update on the continuing military fight against ISIS and new polling news for both Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates (and the Sanders campaigns' decrying of a network news "Bernie Blackout") in advance of the next GOP Presidential debate on Tuesday...

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