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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Man-made global warming will render some regions unlivable within 50 years, new study warns; Siberian forest burning at rates unseen in 10,000 years; April 2020 ties for hottest April ever recorded globally; PLUS: Giant, invasive bee-killing 'Murder Hornets' confirmed in the U.S.... 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): Cleaner air courtesy of COVID-19 provides a window into a car-free future; Trump has reversed nearly 100 environmental rules; How climate change is contributing to skyrocketing rates of infectious diseases; At least 13 dead in India gas leak; Deforestation of Amazon rainforest accelerates amid COVID-19 pandemic; TX regulator scraps plan to curb oil production; CA utility invests big in utility-scale battery storage; 'Death spiral': Pandemic threatens future of mass transit... PLUS: Tunnel Vision: Lessons in the Impermanence of Permafrost... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• 'Murder hornets': Giant, invasive bee-killing hornets confirmed in Pacific Northwest:
• Just How Dangerous Is the 'Murder Hornet'? (Scientific American):
  
  Unlike their Asian kin, European honeybees do not respond to the scent marker or form bee balls; they are at the mercy of V. mandarinia unless humans step in...The hornet is also a reminder that an even more worrisome predator lurks in Asia: the Tropilaelaps mite, which lives in the hive and kills some of the bee larvae and weakens or deforms others that reach adulthood.
• VIDEO: "Murder hornets" have now entered the U.S. — and they could decimate the honeybee population (CBS)
• No, Americans Do Not Need to Panic About ‘Murder Hornets’ (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Asian giant hornet nest ‘eradicated’ on Vancouver Island, province says (Global News)
• How 'murder hornets' came to the U.S. (Mashable)
• Declining bee populations pose threat to global food security and nutrition (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization)
• Global temperatures rise, as atmospheric CO2 climbs relentlessly:
• Global warming pushes April temperatures into record territory, as 2020 heads for disquieting milestone (Washington Post):
  
  Global temperature departures from average are not just shades on a map, they also can have profound consequences for people and ecosystems on the ground, and under the ocean surface. The Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage Site, suffered its biggest coral bleaching event on record in 2020...
• April 2020 tied for warmest on record: EU climate service (Phys.Org):
  
  The five last years have been the hottest on record, as was the decade from 2010-2019. 2019—the second warmest year ever—was only 0.04C below 2016, when temperatures were boosted by a powerful El Nino, a periodic natural weather phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean.
• In Another Record 'We Should Not Be Breaking,' Daily Average of CO2 Levels Hits High of 418.12 ppm (Common Dreams)
• Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2 (NOAA/Mauna Loa Observatory)
• Massive wildfires underway in Siberia, Amazon rainforest logging spikes:
• Siberian Wildfires Have Burned an Area More Than Three Times the Size of Delaware (Earther)
• Wildfires ‘critical’ in Siberia and Russian Far East, up to ten times worse than last year (Siberian Times)
• Siberia is on fire like never before, leaving Russia to fend off one too many hotspots (Business Insider)
• Amazon faces ‘perfect storm’ of forest clearance, coronavirus and wildfire (Climate Change News):
  
  From January to March, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 51% compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary satellite data from the space research agency INPE...“This year’s fire could be 50% worse than what we had last year,” Paulo Moutinho, a senior scientist at Ipam, told Climate Home News by video call from Brazil.
• Forest fire season is coming. How can we stop the Amazon burning? (Guardian UK)
• Man-made global warming will render some regions unlivable within 50 years
• Future of the human climate niche Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
• 50 Years From Now, Many Densely Populated Parts of the World Could be Too Hot for Humans (Inside Climate News):
  
  If the inhabitants do not migrate to more livable areas, the researchers projected, one-third of the global population will experience a mean annual temperature warmer than 84 degrees Fahrenheit—an average currently found only on 0.8 percent of the Earth's land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara...."Humanity has responded quite markedly to climate changes in the past. However, none of those in the past 5,000 years have been as strong as the one we are likely facing over the coming 50 years," [Marten Scheffer, with Wageningen University and Research] said.
• Unsuitable for 'human life to flourish': Up to 3B will live in extreme heat by 2070, study warns (USA Today)
• Billions projected to suffer nearly unlivable heat in 2070 (AP)
• Another European oil giant commits to net zero emissions by 2050:
• Big Oil's "net zero" club grows (Axios):
  
  Plenty of details remain to be filled in when it comes to how exactly these behemoths will meet these long-term goals and even interim targets.
• Total outlines plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 despite tough first quarter (NS Energy Business)
• 'Totally insincere': Splits emerge over investor response to Total's net zero pledge (GreenBiz)
• Europe's energy giants turn greener, but paths and targets diverge (Reuters):
  
  Many climate ambitions among oil majors relate to results three decades into the future and depend on carbon offsets, whose availability is finite, and carbon capture and storage, a technology not currently deployed at commercial scale. What does this mean, say, for the carbon footprint of a car driver at a petrol station?...Still, European oil and gas producers’ climate ambitions are way ahead of their U.S. peers ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
• Shell unveils plans to become net-zero carbon company by 2050 (Guardian UK)
• Lessons from a Big Oil investor call (Heated.World)

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

For a comprehensive roundup of daily environmental news you can trust, see the Society of Environmental Journalists' Daily Headlines page

• Cleaner Air Courtesy of Coronavirus Provides Window into a Car-Free Future (E&E News)
• The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List. (NY Times)
• How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease (Pro Publica)
• India Gas Leak: At Least 13 Dead After Visakhapatnam Accident (BBC)
• Your Perfect Green Lawn Is a Buzz Kill: Here’s how to turn it into a pollinator party. (Mother Jones)
• Analysis: What impact will the coronavirus pandemic have on atmospheric CO2? (Carbon Brief)
• Deforestation of Amazon rainforest accelerates amid COVID-19 pandemic (ABC News)
• Texas regulator drops plan to mandate oil output cuts (Reuters)
• Inside Clean Energy: A California Utility Announces 770 Megawatts of Battery Storage. That’s a Lot. (Inside Climate News)
• Covid-19 Crisis Will Wipe Out Demand For Fossil Fuels, Says IEA (Guardian UK)
• 'Death spiral.' Pandemic threatens future of mass transit (E&E News)
• Trump's security order could have 'chilling effect,' slow smart grid deployment, experts say (Utility Dive)
• Waste Connections Q1: Coronavirus cut revenue by $12M, worst effects in Northeast and Canada (Waste Dive)
• Tunnel Vision: Lessons in the Impermanence of Permafrost (Undark)
• Minnesota: New Lawsuit Over Twin Metals Mineral Leases in Superior National Forest (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
• Ecotourism Collapse Threatens Communities And Wildlife (Guardian UK)
• Exxon's Snake Oil: 100 years of deception (Columbia Journalism Review)
• What Does '12 Years to Act on Climate Change' (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? (Inside Climate News)
• VIDEO: A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (The Intercept)
• SEJ Backgrounder: Green New Deal Proposes Sweeping Economic Transformation (Society of Environmental Journalists)
• Explainer: The 'Green New Deal': Mobilizing for a just, prosperous, and sustainable economy (New Consensus)
• What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like: How to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes. (David Roberts, Vox)
• A Global Shift To Sustainability Would Save Us $26 Trillion (Vox)
• Project Drawdown: 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (Drawdown.org)
• An Optimist's Guide to Solving Climate Change and Saving the World (Vice)
• The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. (Politico)
• The world's bleak climate situation, in 3 charts: We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there. (Vox)
• The Climate Risks We Face (NY Times):
  
  To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate - so every reduction in emissions helps.
• The Uninhabitable Earth: When will climate change make earth too hot for humans? (New York Magazine):
  
  Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak - sooner than you think.
• A beginner's guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy (Vox):
  
  Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it's possible for the whole world to run on renewables - we merely lack the "political will." So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.

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

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

                 

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