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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Japan hit with monster typhoon, while Hurricane Arthur breaks a record on the US East Coast; No time for deniers: BBC smacked for false balance in climate change coverage; Voters reject climate change-denying politicians; Paltry fine for Freedom Industries poisoning drinking water in WV; Oklahoma now the nation's earthquake capitol - thanks, fracking!; PLUS: NASA's new climate eye in the sky ... 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): Pope calls exploitation of nature a sin; Solar cheaper than coal in Australia; Renewable energy provides 1/3rd of Germany's electricity; More US jobs in solar industry than coal industry; Deniers denyin' again in the Daily Mail; Extensive soil pollution in China; Court upholds cities' right to ban fracking ... PLUS: KY State Senator: Mars temperatures exactly the same as Earth ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Last week, the state of Kentucky's Interim Joint Committee on Natural Resources and Environment held a hearing to discuss the EPA's new, proposed "Clean Power Plan" rule [PDF] to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants by 30% by 2030 from 2005 levels.

While the committee is chaired by Democratic state Rep. Jim Gooch, a "proud climate change denier" (it is the coal state of Kentucky after all), according to Joe Sonka at Louisville's Leo Weekly, it was Republican state Sen. Brandon Smith who stole the show with this amazing assertion...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big Coal baron says Obama's 'evil', attacks wildly popular new EPA emissions standards; CNBC busted seeking climate change deniers; PLUS: Acting on climate and clean energy would boost global economy by $3 trillion dollars, finds World Bank ... 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): Voters more likely to back climate-friendly candidates; Plastic debris widespread on ocean surface; Hanford nuclear site workplace secrecy agreements may violate federal whistleblower laws; Arkansas spill pollution case against Exxon can proceed: court; Canadian government's own experts warn of climate change, urge action; Boom meets bust in Texas: atop a sea of oil, poverty digs in; Polar Vortex silver lining raises water levels in Great Lakes .... PLUS: Russian hackers threaten power companies, US energy infrastructure ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Dick and Dubya are back in the news! Now I wonder how that might have happened. On the upside, it allowed me to play some clips on this week's show that I first put together for a show back in 2006 (or earlier?)

Anyway, we talk about all of that and more on this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, including:

• What was Dick Cheney's epic trolling of Obama really about? (Hint: Not necessarily Obama or even Democrats).
• Who's to blame for the current mess in Iraq?
• We take a whole bunch of great calls on all of the above, including one caller with a very interesting defense of Bush and Cheney.
• Some good voting news for Ohio, for a change.
• The fossil-fueled "War on Science" now includes war on science museums.
• Plus, as ever, Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report (including some epic trolling by Obama of science deniers!)

Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

As we noted when citing the excellent recent episode of Fox' COSMOS, which explained the causes and dangers of global warming in a way that turned a long-time, self-described "climate denier" colleague of ours into a "believer," the documented facts of science don't require "belief." Scientific facts are still true, whether one chooses to believe them or not.

One of the great strengths of COSMOS host Neil deGrasse Tyson's explanation of climate change in the episode is that he did not hedge bets to satisfy the misinformed beliefs of science deniers. The show simply taught the science of global warming and what is both known and unknown about it. Period. That would seem to be the very central point of science education. But it's a point that is being forgotten, or lost, or simply ignored by some science museums when it comes to teaching the science of global warming, according to a report by Anna Kuchment of the Dallas Morning News.

Kuchment's central example is Dallas' Perot Museum of Nature and Science and their display celebrating Texas' energy boom. "Some [of the museum's] choices are scientifically questionable," James S. Russell understated for Bloomberg News shortly after the $185 million dollar facility first opened in December of 2012.

The Morning News found that some such institutions are failing to accurately portray the science of global warming and climate change, in part, "to avoid stirring up controversy with donors, visitors and political representatives."

The paper cites the energy exhibit at the Perot Museum which "failed to display a panel that spelled out the link between burning fossil fuels, higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a warming planet."

Museum officials claim the omission of the panel, which was part of the exhibition's original design, was little more than an oversight or that the panel was "incorrectly designed to fit its space" --- and that they have now "ordered a temporary panel to hang in its place until a new one can be manufactured" after the matter came to light. But those explanations seems fairly thin...particularly once the main funders of both the museum itself and this particularly exhibit are taken into consideration...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: GOP Leader Eric Cantor defeated by climate denier who doesn't want you to know that he's a denier (and for good reason); Australia sees hottest 2 years on record, but their Prime Minister is a global warming skeptic; Historic heat results in riots in India; PLUS: Tesla is giving away its secrets --- for free!... 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): "Supercritical" breakthrough for solar energy, 'like breaking the sound barrier'; Americans 2-to-1 would pay more to curb climate change; Scary hurricane record broken in Pacific; Google aims to re-invent electric utility sector; Tests prove fracking contaminated water in Texas' FDA advises pregnant women to eat fish, but avoid mercury; How El Nino 2014 will affect world weather .... PLUS: Kiriabit's president: 'it's too late for us' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Obama pushes back against climate change-denying politicians; Real-world data shows cutting emissions boosts economic growth and that the Koch Brothers are wrong; PLUS: Supreme Court says BP must continue oil spill payouts ... 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): How Solar Will Destroy Utilities in 5 Easy Steps; President of Kiribati: "It's too late for us"; Amazon tribal chief: the white man is destroying everything; War on Coal already happened - mining industry won and miners lost; FAA oks first drones on US soil - for BP; Supreme Court rules against homeowners in Camp Lejeune water contamination; Duke Energy signs deals for Dan River spill cleanup; Illinois bans plastic microbeads in personal care products due to water pollution ... PLUS: 7 reasons to be more optimistic about climate change than Ezra Klein ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Republicans attack Obama EPA's proposed CO2 emissions standards... but they were FOR emissions cuts before they were against them; Good news for endangered wolves; PLUS: Los Angeles oil spill exposes gaping hole in pipeline oversight ... 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): Pessimist Ezra Klein's 7 reasons America will fail on climate change; G7 leaders back 2015 climate deal to build on U.S. momentum; Report: faulty blowout preventer, corporate culture at fault in BP oil disaster; Court rejects BP suit to avoid paying federal fines and damages for Gulf spill; Corporate spies infiltrated Australia anti-coal group; CA fracking moratorium voted down by oil-funded legislators; China aims to cap greenhouse gas output soon; Monarch butterfly decline linked to spread of GM crops ... PLUS: Latest 'COSMOS' Episode on Global Warming Turns a 'Denier' into 'Believer' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's not really a question of whether one "believes" in man-made global warming or not. As astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the host of the fantastic revival of Carl Sagan's COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey on the Fox Network explained recently to Stephen Colbert, science is "true whether or not you believe in it. That's why it works."

Nonetheless, helping to shake those who have been long conned by the fossil fuel industry's extraordinary propaganda effort to hoax the public about the issue can only help to continue moving the needle towards the serious action we must now take to mitigate the worst of the global warming crisis.

To that end, this past Sunday's episode of COSMOS seems to have done the trick, for at least some previous "deniers", at least according to this private note sent to me from a colleague of mine:

High praise. And, now that I've seen the full episode as well, I'd concur that it is one of the clearest, smartest, most-accessible explanations of the undeniable mountains of scientific evidence for the explosion of CO2 emissions --- and the unspeakable dangers it poses to mankind --- that I've seen to date.

If you haven't watched the episode, you should. You should also let your climate denying friends know about it. It just may help to shake them out of their Big Carbon-induced stupor as well.

I'm not able to embed the episode here, unfortunately, but you can watch the entire climate change episode here for the next 38 days. (It's the one called "World Set Free".)

I hope you'll consider doing so, and I hope that Fox, or the individual producers of the series, will make this important episode available to all for much longer than just 38 days! Yes, it's that important.

A very lively BradCast this week on KPFK/Pacifica Radio.

First up, a bit of a rant on a few different things, including the good news/bad news results of California's primary election for Secretary of State and the disenfranchised voters this week in Alabama's primary (and beyond!)

Next, Desi Doyen joined us for an extended Green News Report to discuss the Obama EPA's landmark announcement of newly proposed nationwide CO2 emissions reduction and the fossil fueled freakout that followed.

Finally, listener phone calls on all of the above and more! Please enjoy it!...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx :58 mins]...

P.S. The BradCast, as well as the Green News Report, as well as The BRAD BLOG for that matter, are sponsored only by you. Please consider donating to our efforts to inform the world about stuff that actually matters...so that we can keep doing so for a bit longer. We really need your support, guys, if you can help out.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Green News Report Special Coverage: President Obama's EPA unveils historic new proposed standards to cut carbon pollution from power plants nationwide, to take action on 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): Controlled burn planned after oil spill in Delta National Wildlife Refuge; Whales Saved by Ship Speed Limits; The implications of Google's self-driving car; WSJ’s shameful climate denial; Green Energy Investment Set To 'Explode'; Here’s How Much U.S. Summers Have Warmed Since 1970; IEA Report calls for huge investment in energy development; Solar Farmers in Japan to Harvest Electricity With Crops.... PLUS: Conservatives Searching for New Reasons Not to Save Planet ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

As we noted last night, the global warming deniers were sure to start firing on all carbon-emitting pistons this week in response to the Obama EPA's landmark announcement today of proposed new rules to decrease harmful, climate-destabilizing CO2 pollution from existing dirty power plants, as per the U.S. Supreme Court-mandated enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

The deniers haven't disappointed.

The following quotes come from a press release sent out this morning from the fossil fuel industry-funded "Heartland Institute," which pretends to offer science-based arguments in support of their "mission...to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems."

In fact, the group serves as little more than a mouthpiece for Big Carbon and the modern Republican Party which, largely thanks to Citizens United in 2010, now eschews the use of actual science in the public sphere.

Despite their ironic "non-profit" status --- enjoying government subsidies for promoting "free-market solutions" --- the Heartland Institute is also little more than an arm of the Republican Party. In one of the responses to today's announcement, the Heartland Institute President argues that "Republicans in the House and Senate are right to oppose EPA's new global warming rules," and "Voters will do well to remember who was on their side during the coming political battles."

In another response, the "non-partisan" group says that challenging the Obama EPA's proposed policy could be great for the GOP. "If done intelligently," Heartland's Science Director(!) Jay Lehr writes, the challenge "could cost [Obama's] party the Senate in the November elections and dramatically increase the Republican majority in the House of Representatives - which will enable the Republicans to stymie any further legislative action by the president for the remainder of his term."

Now that's some good Science Directing! And some good non-partisanship! Of course, this is also the same group that purchased billboards comparing those who believe in science to "The Unabomber" and Charles Manson, so it's not as though anybody would take these folks seriously, right? Wrong. They are consistently featured and quoted by theoretically legitimate mainstream media outlets in coverage of the pretend "global warming debate".

Here then, in no particular order, are the top 7 most amusing responses from the Heartland Institute's "experts", as released this morning in response to today's EPA announcement...

Our too-infrequent guest blogger D.R. Tucker is now working the weekend shift at Washington Monthly's excellent "Political Animal" blog and, as expected, he's out of the gate like a lion on the climate crisis and the pre-wrangling over the Obama EPA's proposed landmark guidelines for restrictions on CO2 emissions by dirty coal-fired power plants (ya know, the rules they're required by law, under the 1970 Clean Air Act, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, to put in place.)

Over just this weekend, D.R. has published a number of sharp articles there on the topic, including "It's On: You can already hear the denialists screaming. And scheming."; "The Short-Timers"; "(Dirty) Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand"; and the ingeniously-named "If You Like Your Planet, You Can Keep Your Planet" (in which he quotes The BRAD BLOG at some length, from this recent piece).

You should read them all if you'd like to be smarter about actual facts in regard to climate change, the GOP denial industry (which will certainly be kicking into the highest of dudgeon once again this week), and the clear and present danger we now face thanks to run-away, human-caused CO2 emissions and the global warming it is causing.

But it was the following exchange in the comments section of the "If You Like Your Planet..." piece --- specifically the last line by commenter "Virginia" --- which made me smile...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama ups the rhetoric on action against global warming; Speaker Boehner says he's 'not qualified to debate climate science', but knows pollution regulations are bad; Majority of Americans support reducing emissions; Victory for fossil fuels over clean energy in Boehner's Ohio; PLUS: Solar. Freakin'. Roadways!!!... 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): Wall St. Journal's 'shameful' climate denial; U.S. power plants already succeeding in reducing emissions; Something is killing baby puffins in the North Atlantic; Debunking the Chamber of Commerce's bogus claims; Coal industry export dreams withering away; Climate CoLab wants you to solve climate change; Exxon CEO: “No viable pathway” to reduce carbon emissions; Germans digging 'home-made' electricity.... PLUS: Corporate consolidation of farmland a risk to world food security: study ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Update on Turkish coal mine tragedy; California wilting and burning; Oil pipeline bursts in L.A.; PLUS: Military leaders warn climate change threatens national security --- so Fox "News" attacks the military... 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): Germany sets new solar energy record: 74% of electricity; CA drought may cause earthquakes, too; End fossil fuel burning, save $71 trillion - and preserve civilization; Funny: conservatives praise Antarctic Ice Sheet melt as beautiful expression of free market; Analysis: Should we cover our roads with solar panels?; Giant poster material literally absorbs pollution; Tropical cyclones shifting toward poles; Risks questioned at closed nuclear power plants ... PLUS: VIDEO: Colbert Embraces Conservative Solution to Climate Change: 'F*ck It' ... and much, MUCH more! ...