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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Way too much water now falling on the Arizona desert; Another day, another toxic spill, this time in the Ohio River; New breakthrough recycles old car batteries into solar panels; Wind energy prices hit an all-time low in U.S.; PLUS: An innovative water wheel auto-magically cleaning up Baltimore Harbor … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen 8/21/2014

‘Green News Report’ – August 21, 2014  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...   · · · · ·   ‘Green News Report’ – August 21, 2014  |  With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Pregnant women should avoid tuna entirely; Transparent solar turns your windows into mini-solar cells; Solar boom causing global solar panel shortage; Solar thermal plant torches birds in mid-air; World’s ice sheets melting at fastest rate ever recorded; Leonardo DiCaprio voices climate change film; Homeowners associations blocking residential solar installations; California has allocated 5x more water than it actually has … PLUS: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change … and much, MUCH more! …

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

• Extreme Deluges Wreak Havoc in Phoenix, Around the World:
• VIDEO: Phoenix, Arizona, Flash Floods Strand Residents, Knock Out Power (NBC News)
• Flooding In Arizona Prompts Dramatic Rescues (Climate Progress)
• Scores Killed in Flooding in Nepal and India (NY Times)
• Hiroshima, Japan, Landslides and Flooding Kill at Least 39, Including 3 Children; Dozens Missing (The Weather Channel)
• Swiss train plunges into ravine after landslide (Independent UK)
• Flash floods, landslide warning in 20 provinces of north and northeast (Thai News)
• New Toxic Spills Threaten Drinking Water in Ohio, Mexico:
• Duke Energy Spilled At Least 5,000 Gallons Of Diesel Into The Ohio River On Monday (Climate Progress)
• Mexico: Mining Company Lied on Spill, Official Says (NY Times)
• Mining Spill Near U.S. Border Closes 88 Schools, Leaves Thousands Of Mexicans Without Water (Climate Progress):
  Arturo Rodriguez, the head of industrial inspection for the Attorney General for Environmental Protection, told the New York Times that “lax supervision at the mine, along with rains and construction defects, appeared to have caused the spill,” and that “mine operators should have been able to detect the leak before such a large quantity leaked into the river.”
• Innovative Water Wheel Cleans Up Baltimore Harbor:
• Solar-Powered Water Wheel Can Clean 50,000 Pounds of Baltimore’s Trash Per Day (Moyers & Co.)
• Baltimore’s Water Wheel Keeps On Turning, Pulling In Tons Of Trash (NPR)
• VIDEO: Water Wheel operating in a rain storm in Baltimore, MD (Healthy Harbor)




• Solar Breakthrough: Cheap Panels Made From Recycled Car Batteries:
• Recycling old car batteries into solar cells: Proposal could divert a dangerous waste stream while producing low-cost photovoltaics (MIT News) [emphasis added]:
  This could be a classic win-win solution: A system proposed by researchers at MIT recycles materials from discarded car batteries — a potential source of lead pollution — into new, long-lasting solar panels that provide emissions-free power.
• VIDEO: MIT Researchers Turn Used Car Batteries into Solar Cells (Spectrum IEEE)
• Spray-on solar PV cells could slash the cost of solar electricity (Gizmag):
  Although the cell’s efficiency is only a modest 11 percent, it can be manufactured very cheaply, paving the way for significant reductions in the cost of large-scale solar panel production.
• VIDEO: Perovskites: The Emergence of a New Era for Low-Cost, High-Efficiency Solar Cells (American Chemical Society)
• Wind Energy Booming in U.S., U.K.:
• UK Wind Generation Records Falling In Blustery August (Clean Technica)
• Wind Energy Prices at All-Time Low, According to U.S. Report (Yale e360):
  The cost of wind power in the U.S. is at an all-time low of 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy, and utility companies are in some cases electing to use wind as an energy source over fossil fuels because of its low cost.

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

• VIDEO: Leonardo DiCaprio voices climate change film (Politico)

• VIDEO: Pregnant women should avoid tuna entirely, says Consumer Reports (Treehugger):
  Probably not so great even if you’re not pregnant. …Consumer Reports tested a bunch of tuna samples and decided to go farther than the FDA: As a precaution, pregnant women should avoid all tuna, period.
• Solar Boom Driving First Global Panel Shortage Since 2006 (Bloomberg):
  The solar industry is facing a looming shortage of photovoltaic panels, reversing a two-year slump triggered by a global glut….With installations expected to swell as much as 29 percent this year, executives are bracing for the first shortfall since 2006.
• Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change (Op-ed, Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
  The role of culture makes the framing of problems and solutions crucial, Marshall argues. In fact, he regrets the framing of climate change as an environmental issue, rather than one of economics, health, human rights or defense.
• Transparent Solar: Solar energy that doesn’t block the view: (Science Daily):
  Researchers have developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window. It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a flat, clear surface.
• Emerging solar thermal plants scorch birds in mid-air (AP):
  The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
• World’s Largest Ice Sheets Melting At Fastest Rate Ever Recorded (Huffington Post Green):
  “Combined, the two ice sheets are thinning at a rate of 500 cubic kilometres per year,” said glaciologist Dr. Angelika Humbert, one of the authors of the AWI study, in a press release. “That is the highest speed observed since altimetry satellite records began about 20 years ago.”
  …
  Somewhat encouragingly, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is gaining mass. However, those gains are very modest and don’t make up for the loss of ice in West Antarctica and Greenland.
• Oklahoma Gets Hit With 20 Earthquakes In One Day (Climate Progress)
• Major Court Ruling Clears The Way To Let Renewables Into The Grid (Climate Progress)
• The Fight Against Outlandish Neighborhood Rules Calling Solar Panels Too Ugly To Install (Climate Progress):
  “What if I want a solar panel shaped like the Starship Enterprise?” a Texas state senator asked during a 2011 legislative hearing about solar panel installation in property owning communities, where decisions are guided by strict rules and regulations that tend to put the homogeneity of the group ahead of homeowners’ desires.
• Experts: Pro-Smog Pollution Report Is “Unmoored From Reality” (Media Matters):
  A recent study from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) claims that smog regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will cost the economy $270 billion. But the regulations, necessary to alleviate the unsafe smog pollution currently experienced by 140 million Americans, will likely achieve net benefits by reducing costs associated with medical expenses and premature deaths, while experts have said the NAM study uses “fraudulent” claims and is “not based in economic reality.”
• Booming Rooftop Solar Power Suffers Growing Pains (Scientific American):
  Reaping benefits from solar panels on a home may be harder than some sales pitches suggest
• California has grossly over-allocated water (UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences):
  California has given away five times more surface water than the state actually has, making it hard for regulators to tell whose supplies should be cut during a drought.
• GPS is Tracking West’s Vanishing Water, Scientists Surprised to Learn (National Geographic):
  Scientists discover that GPS can measure how much water has disappeared from the West. It’s a bucketload.
• Science FTW: ‘Cosmos’ Garners Four Emmys, ‘Years Of Living Dangerously’ Wins As Top Nonfiction Series (Climate Progress):
  It was a great night at the Emmys for non-fiction series with a science and/or climate theme.
• Toxic tale of Annie, Fannie, Mike: Blue-green villains behind Lake Erie’s history of algae woes (Toledo Blade):
  We begin today’s attempt to sort out the highly arcane, often-confusing science of Lake Erie algae with three simple names: Annie, Fannie, and Mike. They’re not your friends.
• Put a price on nature? We must stop this neoliberal road to ruin (Guardian UK):
  As Lakoff has pointed out, these people are trying to do the right thing but they are completely failing to apply a frames analysis. A frame is a mental structure through which you understand an issue. Instead of framing the issue with our own values and describing and projecting our values – which is the only thing in the medium- to long-term that ever works – we are abandoning them and adopting instead the values of the people who are wrecking the environment. How could there be any long-term outcome other than more destruction?
• Huge gap in pollution exposure by race surprises U of M researchers (MinnPost)

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).