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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court threatens U.S. climate policy for decades to come; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse deconstructs the unaccountable dark money takeover of the federal judiciary; PLUS: September 2020 was the hottest ever recorded on the planet... 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): Nature endorses Joe Biden for US president; Atlantic Ocean warmest it has been for 3000 years; Maui Has Begun the Process of Managed Retreat. It Wants Big Oil to Pay the Cost of Sea Level Rise; Climate Change Has Killed Half of the Great Barrier Reef’s Corals; Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA; Pope Francis calls on the faithful to act on climate change; Farmers are facing a phosphorus crisis; How Biden would use trade agreements to fight global warming... PLUS: It’s the Energy Policies, Stupid... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• September 2020 was the hottest September ever recorded on the planet:
• Earth just had its hottest September on record (NOAA):
  
  The 10-warmest Septembers have all occurred since 2005, with the seven-warmest Septembers occurring in the last seven years.
• Earth has warmest September on record, and 2020 may clinch hottest year (Washington Post):
  
  The planet just recorded its hottest September since at least 1880, according to three of the authoritative temperature-tracking agencies in the world. The data, most of which was released Wednesday, shows that 2020 is on track to be one of the hottest years on record, with the possibility of tying or breaking the milestone for the hottest year, set in 2016. In addition, 2020 is likely to be the hottest year when a La Niña event was present in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
• September 2020 was the warmest September on record, NOAA reports (Yale Climate Connections):
  
  Eight weather-related disasters that occurred last month caused $1 billion or more in damage.
• Arctic sea ice hits second-smallest summer extent on record (Ars Technica)
• The Arctic Is In A Death Spiral. How Much Longer Will It Exist? (Guardian UK)
• Amy Coney Barrett's responses in confirmation hearings suggests she is a climate science denier:
• Barrett says she has no 'firm views' on climate change (E&E News)
• VIDEO: Sen. Kennedy asks Barrett her views on climate change (Twitter)
• VIDEO: Sen. Richard Blumenthal asks Barrett if humans cause man-made climate change (Twitter)
• VIDEO: Sen. Kamala Harris asks Barrett about climate science (Reuters/Twitter)
• Why Amy Barrett's 'soft' climate science denial is a very big deal:
• Amy Coney Barrett isn't a scientist, but she might be a climate denier (Grist):
  
  Barrett's "not a scientist" line is anything but original. Republicans have trotted out the "I am not a scientist" trick for years now to deflect questions about climate change.
• Amy Coney Barrett's Climate Denial and Anti-Abortion Views Are Two Sides of the Same Coin (Earther):
  
  Barrett, as she has with topics ranging from abortion to whether there should be a peaceful transfer of power, dodged answering questions. But the dodges themselves paint a picture of what Barrett, the Federalist Society that backed her, and Senate Republicans who will almost certainly vote her onto the Supreme Court want: control, concentrated in the hands of a small group of wealthy extremists...This is soft climate denial that should be wildly disqualifying for a lifetime appointee to the Supreme Court.
• Supreme Court: 4 Climate Questions For Barrett (E&E News)
• Upcoming SCOTUS Climate Case Involves Oil Giant That Employed Barrett's Father (Daily Poster):
  
  Barrett told lawmakers she doesn't have "firm views" on climate change. For decades, her father was a lawyer at Shell Oil, which now has a major climate case in front of the high court.
• "I'm stuck on Judge Barrett's declaration that she has no "firm views" on climate change. She didn't need to evade" (Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic)
• Supreme Court: 4 Climate Questions For Barrett (E&E News)
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse deconstructs the rightwing dark money takeover of the federal judiciary:
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Amy Coney Barrett rose from corporations' crusade for power over the Supreme Court (op-ed, NBC News)
• VIDEO: Sen. Whitehouse Questions Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the 3rd Day of Confirmation Hearings (Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse/YouTube)
• Transcript: Sheldon Whitehouse at Senate nomination hearing for Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court - 13 October '20 (Thom Hartmann)
• AUDIO: 'When You Find Hypocrisy in the Daylight, Look for Power in the Shadows': 'BradCast' 10/14/2020 (The BRAD BLOG):
  
  Dark money researcher Lisa Graves on Sen. Whitehouse's Judiciary Committee revelations on the GOP's decades-long, $250 million Supreme Court-packing coup
• What the Right-Wing Dark-Money Machine Did for Amy Coney Barrett (Slate)
• At Barrett Supreme Court Hearings, Sheldon Whitehouse Broke Down How “Dark Money” Shapes the Judiciary (Teen Vogue)

'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

• Why Nature supports Joe Biden for US president (Nature)
• On Climate, Amy Coney Barrett Demurs, “I’m Not a Scientist.” Ah, that old chestnut. (Mother Jones)
• Atlantic Ocean warmest it has been for 3000 years, scientists say (9News Australia)
• Maui Has Begun the Process of Managed Retreat. It Wants Big Oil to Pay the Cost of Sea Level Rise. (Inside Climate News)
• Climate Change Has Killed Half of the Great Barrier Reef’s Corals (Smithsonian Magazine)
• It’s the Energy Policies, Stupid (UCSB Prof. Leah Stokes, Project Syndicate)
• Clean Power Plan: Having Rolled Back Obama’s Centerpiece Climate Plan, Trump Defends a Vastly More Limited Approach (Inside Climate News)
• Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA (Carbon Brief)
• Pope, in second TED talk, sides with science on climate change: ‘We have few years’ (Religion News)
• Farmers are facing a phosphorus crisis. The solution starts with soil. (National Geographic)
• The World’s Largest Tropical Wetland Has Become an Inferno (NY Times)
• Study: US seeing more frequent and pervasive coastal flooding (Climate Central)
  

• How Biden would use trade agreements to fight global warming (Politico)
• Scylla and Charybdis: Beyond climate denial and despair (The Atlantic)
• Calif. Fires: PG&E Shuts Off Power To Thousands Of Bay Area Residents (SF Chronicle)
• Number Of Global Methane Hot Spots Soared This Year Despite Slowdown (Washington Post)
• Long-Banned Toxics Are Still Accumulating In Great Lakes Birds (Environmental Health News)
• Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration (Pro Publica)
• 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).

                 

Article Categories: Environment, U.S. Senate, Democrats, U.S. Supreme Court, Sheldon Whitehouse, Green News, Donald Trump, Federalist Society, Climate change, Extreme weather, Kamala Harris, Richard Blumenthal, Election 2020, John Kennedy, Amy Coney Barrett