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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Confirmed yet again: 2010 hottest year on record so far; Fossil fuel death toll still rising ... PLUS: The three-month mark of the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf, and all the oily mess that goes with it ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): CA's pioneering e-waste program a model gone wrong; 'Climategate' debate a polite, well-mannered affair; Geoengineering can't please everyone!; CBO: Corn based ethanol a waste of taxpayer money; What cap? Dems' climate word war; If Cap-And-Trade dies, is an energy bill still worthwhile?; Senators press for taxpayer loans to rare earth metals projects; Environmental groups on the rise in China ... PLUS: Scientists baffled by unusual upper atmosphere shrinkage ...

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

• 2010: STILL the Hottest on Record, Again:
• June was the hottest on record, says NOAA: What's more, March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record. (Christian Science Monitor)
• Last month was the hottest June recorded worldwide, figures show: NASA climate data suggests 2010 on course to be warmest year since records began (Guardian UK)
• Antarctic cold snap kills nine in Argentina: A spell of extreme cold weather has brought ice and snow to much of Argentina, killing at least nine. (BBC)
• Argentina braces for more frigid temperatures: Buenos Aires records its lowest temperatures in a decade (CNN)
• HONDA to introduce 2 Plug-In Electric Models:
• Honda to sell plug-in hybrid, electric cars in 2012: Global competitors from Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) to Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) are preparing to launch strong hybrid models that are more fuel-efficient than Honda's "mild" hybrids such as the Insight, while also readying battery-run cars. (Reuters)
• Fossil Fuel Death Toll Rises Again:
• 2 bodies found in flooded China mine that traps 11 (AP):
  
  Separately, an explosion late Sunday at a coal mine in northeastern Liaoning province killed four workers and injured 13 others, who were in stable condition, Xinhua said.

  On Saturday, 28 miners were killed when an electrical cable caught fire inside a coal shaft in northern Shaanxi province. There were no survivors. The fire happened at the privately owned Xiaonangou coal mine in Sangshuping town.
  ....
  In another accident Saturday, eight workers died when a blaze engulfed a coal mine in central Henan province, Xinhua reported.

• 30 killed, 13 trapped in separate Chinese mine incidents (LA Times)
• Eight held after clash at China mine: state media (AFP)
• Environmental groups in China: A new generation of climate-change activists (The Economist)
• The LATEST in the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf:
• BP Considers New Plan to Permanently Seal Well: As scientists on Monday allayed concerns that BP's well in the Gulf of Mexico was damaged, the company said it was considering an alternative plan that could permanently seal the gusher sooner than had been anticipated. (NYT Green)
• >Gas seeps not necessarily a problem, because pressure in oil well rising, officials say (NOLA.com)
• BP's Photoshopped Command Center Just The Latest In A Pattern Of Deception (Huffington Post Green)
• BP's Secret Ticket Request Line: Want free passes to NBA games and concerts? Just call the world's most hated oil company. (Mother Jones)
• Secret BP hotline doles out event tickets to lawmakers (SF Gate)
• BP photoshops fake photo of crisis command center, posts on main BP site (Americablog)
• BP fakes another oil spill photo, this time of 'top kill' exercise (Americablog)
• Actual Size of Gulf Disaster Still Unknown (Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones):
  
  Yet even after three months of leaking, we still don't have a solid estimate of how much oil was escaping the well for all that time. The official government flow-rate team last released an estimate on June 15, leaving the range of possible estimates quite large: from 35,000 barrels per day up to 60,000. But with the well now closed in, might we never get an accurate idea of how much oil has been dumped in the Gulf?
• The 'Super Skimmer' That Wasn't (NYT Green)
• Rig had 390 past-due repairs, BP lawyer tells Coast Guard panel (Houston Chronicle)
• Along the Gulf: Seafood prices soar due to oil spill: (USA Today)
• Bush Official Gail Norton on MMS Sex, Meth and Oil: What's the Big Deal? (Mother Jones)
• BP buys up Gulf scientists for legal defense, roiling academic community: For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation. (Mobile Press-Register)
• WATCH: Rachel Maddow Show: BP Tries to Buy Gulf Coast Scientists: (MSNBC):
• Animal Autopsies in Gulf Yield a Mystery: Sifting a range of suspects as Gulf wildlife dies (NY Times)
• BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Should the Oil Flow Restart? (The Oil Drum)
• MMS investigations of oil-rig accidents have history of inconsistency (Washington Post):
  
  Until now, 60 inspectors were tasked with investigating all types of incidents. Between 2006 and 2009, those included 30 worker deaths, 1,298 injuries, 514 fires and 23 blowouts that left wells out of control. They conducted 378 investigations in the gulf in roughly the same time period, with 21 considered worthy of more rigorous and extended scrutiny by a panel.
  ...
  MMS levied financial penalties 154 times in the past five years, agency officials testified last month. Although the agency now may assess fines of up to $35,000 per day, in five years it collected only $8.5 million. Its largest fine between 2000 and 2009 was $697,500, according to an MMS Web site.
• Will BP spill taint Cameron's U.S. visit? (Reuters)
• BP Lobbied Brits Ahead of Lockerbie Bomber Release: BP confirmed today that it had lobbied the British government in late 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya prior to the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. (AOL News)
• David Cameron to meet with US senators over Lockerbie bombing: David Cameron is slated to meet today with four US senators regarding reports that oil giant BP had a hand in the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people. (Christian Science Monitor)
• BP to sell assets to pay for spill (Reuters)
• “Two Stories” of Gulf Seafood: News reports tread the line between confidence and caution (Columbia Journalism Review)
• After Oil Spills, Hidden Damage Can Last for Years (NY Times)
• As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies (NY Times)

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

• California's pioneering e-waste program a model gone wrong: By paying more than $320 million to collect and recycle computer monitors and televisions, the state has built a magnet for fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars, including illegal material smuggled in from out of state. (Sacramento Bee)
• Climategate' debate: less meltdown, more well-mannered argument: Polemical and partisan characterises the climate debate online - but at last night's Guardian debate there was courteousness and a distinct warmth in the air (Guardian UK)
• Geoengineering can't please everyone: Adding aerosols to the atmosphere will not counter global warming in all regions. Attempting to offset global warming by injecting sunlight-reflecting gases into the upper atmosphere isn't the quick fix for global climate change that advocates believe it might be, a new study finds. (Nature)
• CBO: Corn based ethanol: a waste of taxpayer money (Daily Kos)
• What cap? Dems' climate word war: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid played dumb last week when a reporter asked him if the energy and climate bill headed to the floor would come with a "cap" on greenhouse gas emissions.
• If Cap-And-Trade Dies, Is An Energy Bill Still Worthwhile? (The Vine)
• Senators press Energy Dept. to back rare earth metals projects: A bipartisan group of senators is pressuring the Department of Energy (DOE) to issue loan guarantees for projects that expand domestic supplies of rare earth metals, which are critical to alternative energy projects and now come largely from China. (The Hill)
• Environmental groups in China: A new generation of climate-change activists (The Economist)
• Scientists baffled by unusual upper atmosphere shrinkage (CNN):
  
  An upper layer of Earth's atmosphere recently shrank so much that researchers are at a loss to adequately explain it, NASA said on Thursday.

  The thermosphere, which blocks harmful ultraviolet rays, expands and contracts regularly due to the sun's activities. As carbon dioxide increases, it has a cooling effect at such high altitudes, which also contributes to the contraction.

  But even these two factors aren't fully explaining the extraordinary contraction which, though unlikely to affect the weather, can affect the movement of satellites, researchers said.

  "This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years," John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab was quoted as saying in NASA news report.

                 

Article Categories: Environment, Green News, BP Oil Disaster