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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Climate Change and Election 2014: High stakes on energy, the environment, and global warming … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Green News Report
with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen
10/28/2014
‘Green News Report’ – October 28, 2014 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... | Climate change on the ballot. · · · · · ‘Green News Report’ – October 28, 2014 | With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... | Climate change on the ballot.
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Australia breaks heat records – again; BP oil spill left big oily ‘bathtub ring’ on seafloor; Shell wants 5 more years to drill in the Arctic; How can we get power to the poor without frying the planet?; More storms mean more sewage overflows in Wisconsin; Japan town votes to re-start nuclear plants; Amid CA drought, bruising battle over water … PLUS: U.N. climate change draft report warns risks of ‘irreversible’ damage… and much, MUCH more! …
STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- VIDEO: Co-Founder of The Weather Channel: Global Warming Is a Complete Hoax (Mediaite):
“There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.” He told Kelly it’s tough to get a media platform these days when you’re a climate skeptic “ever since Al Gore made it a plank of the Democratic Party.”
- Republican Candidates ‘Greenwash’ On Fossil Fuels & Climate Science Denial
- VIDEO: Leading Politicians Dodge and Deny Climate Change Threat During Midterm Elections (Republic Report)
- Poll: 70% of Americans Support Regulating Carbon Emissions (Washington Post):
Democrats and Republicans are in rare agreement on the issue. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans, 76 percent among independents and 79 percent of Democrats support state-level limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
- Climate Change vs. Ebola: GOP Says We’re Not Scientists Except When We Are (Rude Pundit)
- CT: Gubernatorial Candidates Spar On Campaign Financing, Climate Change (Hartford Courant)
- Paul Ryan Still Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About On Climate Change (Climate Progress)
- High Stakes Election Will Determine Control of U.S. Senate, Climate Policy:
- If GOP Takes Senate, Climate Change Deniers Will Control Key Committees (Republic Report)
- New Alaska polls scramble Senate calculus (Salon)
- CNN poll: Voters are angry (CNN)
- Gary Peters vs. Terri Lynn Land Nonpartisan Candidate Guide For Michigan Senate Race 2014 (Huffington Post)
- VIDEO: Could green energy be a ‘game changer’ for midterms? (The Ed Schultz Show, MSNBC):
Clean energy policies could play a major role in the outcome of many Midterm elections, as Republicans run on increasing oil production and climate change.
- Environment & Energy Now Playing in the Campaign Ad Wars:
- Environmental Issues Become a Force in Political Advertising (NY Times):
Ads mentioning energy, climate change and the environment – over 125,000 spots and climbing on the Senate side – have surged to record levels during the 2014 midterm election cycle.
- Environmental groups are spending an unprecedented $85 million in the 2014 elections (Washinton Post) [emphasis added]:
The motivation is clear. The groups are driven by the growing urgency of the climate change problem in general, and also the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, which some fear might be hindered in a Republican-controlled Congress.
- VIDEO: League of Conservation Voters Ads in Key Races: (LCV.org)
- Koch Brothers Plan $300 Million Spending Spree In 2014 (Huffington Post Green)
- The Koch Brothers have funded 44,000 ads in the 2014 election (Washington Post)
- Democratic Climate Activist Tom Steyer Is Election’s Biggest Donor – That We Know Of (NPR) [emphasis added]:
Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer has spent an astonishing $58 million this election cycle, more than any other donor in the traditional, fully disclosed part of the political system…. “Together, we’re sending an unmistakable message to Washington. Climate change is not just an important issue, it’s the issue. And we need leaders who will take it seriously.”
- Meet the midterms’ 42 megadonors (USA Today)
- How Cheap Wind Energy Threatens To Upend The Kansas Governor’s Race And Upset The Koch Brothers (Climate Progress),/li>
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- U.N. Climate Change Draft Sees Risks of Irreversible Damage (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
Climate change may have “serious, pervasive and irreversible” impacts on human society and nature, according to a draft U.N. report due for approval this week that says governments still have time to avert the worst.
- Australia Blasted by Record Heat — Again (Climate Central):
Strange early-season temperatures again dogged sweaty Australians over the weekend, with Saturday’s continent-wide average maximum topping 97°F — a record for October.
- BP Spill Left Big Oily ‘Bathtub Ring’ on Seafloor (AP):
The BP oil spill left an oily “bathub ring” on the sea floor that’s about the size of Rhode Island, new research shows.
- How can we get power to the poor without frying the planet? (Grist):
As we pilot our ship through the 21st century, humanity faces its own narrow strait, its own Scylla and Charybdis. On one side is the many-headed monster of energy poverty, with its attendant ill health, backbreaking labor, and wasted potential. …On the other side there is climate change, “waves and whirlwinds of fire,” which on our current trajectory threatens to flood, parch, starve, and uproot millions of people this century and possibly render the planet hostile to human life for centuries to come.
- With Storms Intensifying, Milwaukee Braces for Bigger Flows (Daily Climate):
Climate change has thrown historic rain patterns out of whack. Sanitation departments throughout the Midwest are bracing to keep up with more frequent and intense runoff.
- Shell Seeks 5 More Years for Arctic Oil Drilling Drive (Bloomberg):
Royal Dutch Shell Plc is asking the Obama administration for five more years to explore for oil off Alaska’s coast, saying set backs and legal delays may push the start of drilling past the 2017 expiration of some leases.
- Pragmatism on Climate Change Trumps Politics at Local Level Across US (NY Times):
Ms. Jacobs, a commissioner for Broward County, pressed her case, arguing that few issues were more critical to residents of southeast Florida than street flooding at high tide — sometimes even on sunny days — and ocean water seeping into their drinking water. “It’s how you ask the question,” she said. “Is clean water important to you?” Voters have answered yes so far.
- Japan Edges Back Towards Nuclear Power With Vote To Restart Reactors (Guardian UK):
Japan has moved closer to a return to nuclear power, more than three years after the Fukushima disaster, after a town in the country’s south-west voted to approve two reactors coming back online.
- Most Canadians Say Environment Trumps Energy Prices (Bloomberg News):
A majority of Canadians view environmental protection as being more important than energy prices and expect businesses to carry the burden of a carbon tax, according to a recent poll.
- After Election 2014: STEM EDUCATION (Science Magazine)
- Rooftop solar is just the beginning; utilities must innovate or go extinct (Grist):
Sooner or later, there must be a wholesale rethinking of the utility business model. And if utilities are smart, they’ll do it sooner.
- Amid California’s drought, a bruising battle for cheap water (LA Times):
In truth, neither is to blame for Westlands’ woes so much as the simple fact that the nation’s largest irrigation district is in the wrong place.
- Lifecycle Study Shows Renewable Electricity Is Greener Than All Other Sources: (Climate Central):
[R]esearchers conducted the first-ever lifecycle analysis of a wide-scale global rollout of new wind, hydro and solar power plants, asking whether shifting from coal and natural gas power generation to renewables would increase or decrease certain types of pollution.
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[O]ver time, the environmental impact of extracting those raw materials declines, pollution decreases and the total quantity of those materials likely needed for renewables is a fraction of the volume of those materials being mined today, the study says. - 4 Scenarios Show What Climate Change Will Do To The Earth, From Pretty Bad To Disaster (Fast CoExist):
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.
FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page
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.
I see you caught the Weather Channel co-founder denialist story.
Romney & Co. bought the Weather Channel and Weather Underground, so we may see an Agnotology surge in the context of mocking America.