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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Drought decimating Oklahoma wheat crop; Massive wildfires in Alaska; Strongest May hurricane on record in Pacific; California's oil is too hard to frack; PLUS: The politics of language: Americans care about climate change - just don't call it '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): Northern hemisphere hits CO2 milestone; World awaits Obama's new coal plant emissions regulations; Not The Onion: Woods Hole now working for oil industry; Ocean acidification decimating PacNW oysters (video); Feds add new safety requirements for KXL after southern leg failures; Farmers profit from harvesting solar along with veggies; Tesla CTO says energy storage about to explode --- in a good way ... PLUS: Hilarious video: Solar FREAKIN' Roadways! ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• Fox News FAIL: VIDEO: Fox Regular Jonathan Hoenig On Climate Change: "Put Man's Life First, Nature Will Take Care Of Itself" (Media Matters)
• Extreme Weather & Wildfires Breaking Records In the U.S.:
• Dry Conditions Fuel An Alaska Wildfire That’s Bigger Than Chicago (Climate Progress)
• Alaska: Alyeska Pipeline Believed Not Threatened by Fire 1 Mile Away (KTUU Anchorage)
• VIDEO: Statewide drought decimates wheat crops (KFOR Oklahoma City)
• Record heat and record ice: Astonishing scenes from Lake Superior (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
  
  [F]ragments of ice still speckled the water’s surface this Memorial Day weekend. These vestiges from the polar vortex winter presented an amazing contrast with the actual air temperature – which surged into the 80s in some areas just a few miles inland. Heat records were set in a region with record-setting ice extent – quite the incongruity.
• Arizona Wildfire Explodes In Size, Threatens Evacuations (Climate Progress)
• Dust Bowl Days: Will We Cut Carbon Pollution Fast Enough To Prevent Permanent Droughts? (Climate Progress)
• Extreme Weather Strikes Around the World:
• VIDEO: When it rains, it pours: Climate change brings droughts and floods alike (Grist)
• Hurricane Amanda Enters Record Books as Strongest Eastern Pacific Storm Ever Seen in Month of May
• Hurricane Amanda Peaks as Strongest May Eastern Pacific Hurricane on Record: 155 mph Winds (Weather Underground)
• Southeast Australia Endures Fall Heat Wave After Another Record-Breaking Summer (Climate Progress)
• Massive, Two Week Long China Flood Sends Half a Million Fleeing, Destroys More Than 25,000 Homes (Robert Scribbler)
• Surprise! California Is Not A 'Black Gold Mine' Of Oil:
• U.S. officials cut estimate of recoverable Monterey Shale oil by 96% (LA Times) [emphasis added]
  
  Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California's vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum.
• This Rocks: California Oil Shale No Bonanza (Clima Crocks)
• Santa Cruz becomes first California county to ban fracking (Reuters)
• Just Don't Call It 'Climate Change':
• Americans care deeply about 'global warming' – but not 'climate change' (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  George W Bush swapped the term climate change for global warming in 2002, on the advice of the Republican political consultant, Frank Luntz. In a secret memo before the mid-term elections, Luntz warned Republicans – and Bush in particular – were singularly weak on the environment. He advised a strategy of disputing climate science, and of avoiding the term "global warming' because of its highly negative connotations.
• REPORT: What’s In A Name? Global Warming vs Climate Change (Yale e360) [emphasis added]:
  
  We found that the term "global warming" is associated with greater public understanding, emotional engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term "climate change."
  ...
  For example, the term “global warming” is associated with: Greater certainty that the phenomenon is happening, especially among men, Generation X (31-48), and liberals...
• The Luntz Memo: 'A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America' [PDF] (Mother Jones):
  
  [p.12]: "Climate change is less frightening than 'global warming.'... While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge."
• Luntz Memo exposes Bush's new climate change strategy (Guardian UK, 3/3/2003):
  
  "Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."
• It’s Official: Climate Change Is Now More Divisive Than Abortion (Climate Progress)

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

• Hilarious: VIDEO: Solar Freakin' Roadways (Solar Roadways via Scott Brusaw):




• Should we cover all our roads with solar panels? (Vox.com)
• Northern hemisphere hits carbon dioxide milestone in April (Reuters):
  
  Carbon dioxide levels throughout the northern hemisphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history in April, an ominous threshold for climate change, the World Meteorological Organization said on Monday.
• Governments Await Obama’s Move on Carbon to Gauge U.S. Climate Efforts (NY Times):
  
  President Obama is expected to announce on Monday an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from the nation’s 600 coal-fired power plants, in a speech that government analysts in Beijing, Brussels and beyond will scrutinize to determine how serious the president is about fighting global warming.
• Not The Onion: Budget cuts for Woods Hole to ally with Saudi Arabia for ocean oil research (Boston Globe) [emphasis added]:
  
  [N]ow the nonprofit institution, facing a severe budget crunch as federal research funding is slashed, has a very different sort of venture in the offing: helping oil and gas companies identify new sources of the very fossil fuels believed to be damaging the environment... The potential that Woods Hole’s world-renowned expertise in deep water exploration could become a new tool for oil firms...is troubling to some environmental groups and others who worry the institution’s scientists could be co-opted by private interests if they are forced to rely too heavily on their support for research.
• VIDEO: Ocean acidification slurps up oysters (Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  “The ocean is so acidic that it is dissolving the shells of our baby oysters,” says Diani Taylor of Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton, Wash. She and her cousin Brittany are fifth-generation oyster farmers, and are grappling with ocean waters that are more acidic and corrosive than their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers knew. Ocean acidification is one planetary response to humans’ burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide that is absorbed by the oceans.
• Feds quietly add new safety requirements for Keystone pipeline (AP) [emphasis added]:
  
  Inspections by the safety agency found TransCanada wasn't using approved welding procedures to connect pipes, the letter said. The company had hired welders who weren't qualified to work on the project because TransCanada used improper procedures to test them, the letter said. In order to qualify to work on a pipeline, welders must have recent experience using approved welding procedures and pass a test of their work.
• Solar Farmers in Japan to Harvest Electricity With Crops (Bloomberg News):
  
  Makoto Takazawa and his father Yukio earned 1.7 million yen ($16,700) last fiscal year selling electricity from solar panels that hang in a giant canopy above their farm east of Tokyo. The cash was almost nine times more than they made from the crops growing in the soil below.
• Why Coal-Dependent Utilities Shouldn't Be So Scared of Carbon Regulations (GreenTech Media):
  
  There are dozens of technologies that can fill in the gap left by coal plant closures. The biggest hurdle isn't cost-it's failure of imagination.
• I Don't Want to Be Right: Why people persist in believing things that just aren't true: (The New Yorker)
  
  Facts and evidence, for one, may not be the answer everyone thinks they are: they simply aren't that effective, given how selectively they are processed and interpreted. Instead, why not focus on presenting issues in a way keeps broader notions out of it-messages that are not political, not ideological, not in any way a reflection of who you are?
• North Carolina Wants To Nominate Climate Change Deniers To Study Sea Level Rise (Climate Change):
  
  Climate deniers could soon overtake a North Carolina commission created to study the effects of sea level rise. The nominations are only the latest blow from conservatives that have done their best to make climate change seem inconsequential to the coastal state. In the process, the Republican-controlled legislature managed to bury a key projection of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission panel: The state’s shores will face more than three feet of sea level rise within the next century.
• It’s Official: Climate Change Is Now More Divisive Than Abortion (Climate Progress)
• Tesla CTO on Energy Storage: 'We Should All Be Thinking Bigger' (GreenTech Media) [emphasis added]:
  
  "The Roadster was the biggest battery pack in a vehicle and people were terrified by a 50-kilowatt-hour battery pack. Now, that seems like old technology; it has improved a lot since then." He noted that in the five years between the launch of the Roadster and the Model S, battery performance had improved by 40 percent. He said that battery energy density has doubled over the last ten years and that the curve is not starting to plateau.
• Pope Francis Makes Biblical Case For Addressing Climate Change: 'If We Destroy Creation, Creation Will Destroy Us' (Climate Progress)
• Oil spills up 17 percent in U.S. in 2013 (E & E News)
• VIDEO: Colbert Embraces Conservative Solution to Climate Change: 'F*ck It' (The Colbert Report)
• How to Solve Global Warming: It's the Energy Supply (Scientific American):
  
  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.

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• Video Proof That Global Warming is a 'Hoax'!: NASA Temperature Data 1888-2011 (The BRAD BLOG):



• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).

                 

Article Categories: Fox 'News', California, Mainstream Corporate Media, Alaska, Environment, Minnesota, Green News, Fracking, Natural gas, Nuclear power/weapons, Oil, Climate change, Extreme weather