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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Oil companies heart Osama!; Record-breaking storms lead to record-breaking floods --- and exploding levees; Too little, too late?: a new tsunami wall for Fukushima; Big Oil spends millions to protect billions; PLUS: The role of climate change in last week's deadly storms ... 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): Correlation or causation?: energy prices and US recessions; Court upholds CA's rights on federal auto emissions standards; Transparent solar panels to turn windows into generators; Shale gas and fracking unavoidable?; Response to blowout delayed despite PA plan for quick action; Study ranks food pathogens by cost to society; 21st century West to become even drier; Blowout could spill 58 mil. gallons in Arctic; Paper industry profits from pollution tax credits; Recycling resolution targets General Mills; "Mining is a loser" in practically every way; Cleaning up our air for World Asthma Day ... PLUS: The Real Reason Why Coca-Cola Isn't Ditching Bisphenol A ...

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

• WATCH: During Tornado Segment, Forbes' Ozanian Claims, "I Think Al Gore Already Admitted His Whole Case Was A Fraud" (Media Matters.org)
• Right-Wing Media Exploit Deadly Tornadoes To Attack Global Warming Science (Media Matters.org)
• Is climate change behind those killer storms? Foxheads eagerly denounce such notions (Crooks & Liars)
• Last Week's Record-Breaking Storms, and the Impact of Global Warming on Extreme Weather:
• April 2011 tornado information: April 25-28, 2011, Tornado Outbreak Statistics (NOAANews.gov)
• South's 'super tornado' outbreak may be worst ever in US history (Christian Science Monitor):
  
  Storm forensics experts have begun to put into historical perspective the massive twister outbreak that hit Alabama and six other Southern states. The Tuscaloosa twister alone may register as the most powerful long-track tornado in US history.
• Climate change could spawn more tornadoes (USA Today)
• Top Climate Scientist On The Monster Tornadoes: ‘It Is Irresponsible Not To Mention Climate Change’ (Think Progress):
  
  Climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, explains further that “climate change is present in every single meteorological event”:

  "The fact remains that there is 4 percent more water vapor–and associated additional moist energy–available both to power individual storms and to produce intense rainfall from them. Climate change is present in every single meteorological event, in that these events are occurring within a baseline atmospheric environment that has shifted in favor of more intense weather events."

• In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming (NY Times):
  
  “The climate is changing,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity” ... [describing] excessive heat, in particular, as “consistent with our understanding of how the climate responds to increasing greenhouse gases.”

  Theory suggests that a world warming up because of those gases will feature heavier rainstorms in summer, bigger snowstorms in winter, more intense droughts in at least some places and more record-breaking heat waves. Scientists and government reports say the statistical evidence shows that much of this is starting to happen.

• Are US floods, fires linked to climate change? (Monga Bay)
• Tornadoes, extreme weather, and climate change: April sets record for tornadoes in any month and in any 24-hour period. But what caused "The Katrina of tornado outbreaks"? (Climate Progress)
• Are The Latest US Storms, Floods & Fires Related to Climate Change? Yes, Yes, They Are (treehugger)
• Science Asks What's Going on With Cluster of Tornado Clusters? (NY Times)
The cruelty of this particular April, in the number of tornadoes recorded, is without equal in the United States. The record for the month has been shattered, and preliminary assessments say that of the four biggest clusters ever recorded, two have occurred in the last three weeks. What is happening here?
• Tornadoes, extreme weather, and climate change: April sets record for tornadoes in any month and in any 24-hour period. But what caused "The Katrina of tornado outbreaks"? (Climate Progress)
• GOP's Continuing Resolution Cuts Funding for National Weather Service, FEMA (Slate)
• Tornado Outbreak for the Record Books: How Did Deadly, Destructive Event Happen And What Does It Mean? (Capital Weather Gang/Wash Post)
• Op-ed: "A Cost of Denying Climate Change: Accelerating Climate Disruptions, Death, and Destruction (Huffington Post)
• Warming Behind Wild Tornado Season? (MSNBC)
• Masters: Midwest deluge enhanced by near-record Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures (Weather Underground):
  
  This week's storm system, in combination with heavy rains earlier this month, have pushed the Ohio River and Mississippi River to near-record levels near their confluence. The Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois is expected to crest at 60.5 feet on May 1. This would exceed 100-year flood stage, and be the highest flood in history, besting the 59.5? mark of 1937.
• The Warming World Of Wally Broecker, 35 Years Later (Brad Johnson, The Wonk Room, 8/4/2010)
• Record-Breaking Flooding Leads to Exploding Levees:
• Explainer: Rising Floodwaters Compel Hard Decisions (Nature Conservancy) [emphasis added]:
  
  More broadly, the 1927 flood painfully taught us an important lesson, and one that has been affirmed many times since: relying only on levees to hold is not a safe strategy. The response to that flood was to require more resiliency in the system and to allow floodplains to do some of the levees’ work.

  We must continue to follow that lesson today. Despite massive investments in levees, flood damages continue to rise in the U.S., averaging more than $3 billion in damages per year in recent decades compared to less than $1 billion per year 80 years ago (in constant dollar values).

• VIDEO: Mississippi River levee blown up (Washington Post)
• Corps breaks levee as water rising elsewhere (AP):
  
  Officials in Louisiana and Mississippi are warning that the river could bring a surge of water unseen since 1927.

  The corps has said about 241 miles of levees along the Mississippi River between Cape Girardeau, Mo., and the Gulf of Mexico need to be made taller or strengthened. The volume of water moving down the river would test the levee system south of Memphis into Louisiana.

• Mississippi, Ohio rivers at all-time highs (CNN)
• After twisters, South braces for rising Mississippi River: Mississippi closes river boat casinos; Louisiana expects levees to be tested over 10 days (MSNBC)
• Divided by a river: Two states grapple with rising floodwaters (CNN)
• Soggy Fields Put US Farmers on a Tight Deadline: Incessant rains have delayed spring planting of corn from Minnesota to Indiana to Nebraska. (Reuters)
• Nice ROI: Big Oil Spends Millions to Protect Billions:
• Study: Oil and gas profits connected to lobbying, political expenditures (Washington Independent)
• As Obama calls for end to oil company tax breaks, new report links surging profits to lobbying efforts (Real Vail) [emphasis added]:
  
  With Congress and the White House increasingly railing against record oil company profits, a study late last week linked those windfalls to millions spent on lobbying and direct campaign contributions.The nonprofit Checks and Balances Project last week released an analysis of the skyrocketing profits of the nations top five oil and gas companies in the wake of near-record gas prices and compared those profits to lobbying expenditures and political contributions in 2010.
• The Oil Company Gusher (Robert Riech's blog)
• Pawlenty Defends Big Oil: Cutting Oil Subsidies Is ‘Ludicrous’ (Wonk Room)
• Right-Wing Media Falsely Claims That Cutting Tax Breaks For Oil Companies Will Boost Gas Prices (Media Matters.org)
• Exxon seeks to pre-empt profit fury (The Hill)
• ExxonMobil: Don't Hate Our Profits (Politico)
• Obama to Congress: End 'Unwarranted Tax Breaks' for Oil Companies (Washington Post)
• Obama Again Demands an End to Oil Tax Breaks (Caucus Blog, NY Times)
• Over a Barrel: As Oil Profits Soar, Obama Seeks Political Wedge (Froomkin/Huffington Post)
• Latest Developments in Japan's Ongoing Nuclear Crisis (via SEJ.org):
• Japan plans new tsunami wall at nuclear plant (AFP)
• In Nuclear Accident, Risks Extend Beyond Evacuation Zone (McClatchy)
• Despite Bipartisan Support, Nuclear Reactor Projects Falter (NY Times):
  
  In an effort to encourage nuclear power, Congress voted in 2005 to authorize $17.5 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors. Now, six years later, with the industry stalled by poor market conditions and the Fukushima disaster, nearly half of the fund remains unclaimed. And yet Congress, at the request of the Obama administration, is preparing to add $36 billion in nuclear loan guarantees to next year's budget.
• The Latest from the N.R.C. on Fukushima (NYT Green)
• Japan Postpones Nuclear Cooling (Wall St. Journal)
• Scientists To Map Radioactive Contamination in Fukushima (Asahi
  Shimbun)
• Underpowered And Unsafe, Pakistan's Nuclear Reactors Are Just Big Boys' Toys (Guardian)
• Japanese Drop Their Traditional Politeness Over Nuclear Crisis (Los Angeles Times)
• Last Plutonium Reactor Going Into Long-Term Storage at Hanford (Tri-city Herald)
• How to Tear Down a Nuclear Power Plant [Slide Show] (Scientific American)

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

• Correlation or Causation?: Energy Prices and US Recessions (Early Warning blog):
  
  In every case, energy prices were rising either before or immediately at the onset of the recession, and in every case they "broke" in some sense before the recession was over - either declining, or at least sharply slowing in growth.
  ...
  [T]his data is at least consistent with the narrative that, in the post 1973 era, energy is consistently in somewhat problematic supply, and you can think of many of the recessions as showing a pattern in which energy prices are rising as the world overshoots what can currently be supplied, or what can currently be supplied drops as a result of geopolitical events, and energy prices rise until some pre-existing weakness in the global economic fabric tears in the course of a recession, and prices fall back again.
• California's Right To Exceed Federal Auto Emissions Standards Is Upheld (Los Angeles Times)
• Transparent material opens a new window on solar energy (Physics World) [emphasis added]:
  
  Researchers in the US have developed a new kind of organic solar cell that converts a small but significant fraction of the sunlight that falls onto it into electricity, while still allowing most of the visible part of that light to pass through. Thanks to this transparency, the team says that the cell could be mounted onto windows in buildings or cars in order to tap a currently under-exploited source of energy.
• Why Shale Gas and Fracking May Be Part of Our Clean Energy Future (Triple Pundit)
• Response to Nat. Gas Blowout Took 13 Hours, Despite PA Plan for Quick Action (Pro Publica):
  
  When Chesapeake Energy lost control of a Marcellus Shale gas well in Pennsylvania on April 19, an emergency response team from Texas was called in to stop the leak. By the time the team arrived more than 13 hours later, brine water and hydraulic fracturing fluids from the well had spewed across nearby fields and into a creek.
• Study Ranks Food Pathogens by Cost to Society: (Washington Post):
  
  Of the food pathogens that cost society the most money - in terms of medical care, lost days of work, long-term chronic health problems or deaths - half are found in poultry, pork, beef and other meat products, according to a study due for release Thursday.
• A 21st-century water forecast (NYT Green):
  
  The broad-brush conclusion of a new federal report on the future impact of climate change on water in the West is a bit familiar. Throughout the West, there will be less snow, and what snow there is will melt faster. The dry Southwest is going to get drier, and the wet Northwest wetter.
• Blowout Could Spill 58 Million Gallons in Arctic (AP):
  
  The federal agency overseeing offshore drilling in Alaska says the worst-case scenario for a blowout in the Chukchi Sea lease could result in a spill of more than 58 million gallons of oil into Arctic waters.
• Paper Industry Profits from 'Black Liquor' Tax Credits (Washington Post):
  
  At a time when tea-party budget-cut fervor is taking food out of the mouths of children, the paper industry is reaping billions in unintended taxpayer-funded federal subsidies from a loophole meant to encourage alternative fuels.
• Recycling Resolution Targets General Mills and Procter & Gamble (As You Sow.org):
  
  "We're burning and landfilling 40 million tons of recyclable packaging materials estimated to be worth $15 to $23 billion every year." said Conrad MacKerron, As You Sow's Senior Director for Corporate Responsibility.
  ...
  "We believe it's time for companies to manage the full life cycle of packaging as efficiently as they manage design and marketing of products," said MacKerron.
• National coal expert: "Mining is a loser" in practically every way (Grist):
  
  Anytime coal's cost to America is discussed, the coal industry reflexively talks about what an economic lifeline it is for the states in which it operates. Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman-based think tank focusing on natural resource issues, has a solid new study that's getting national attention for undercutting those claims. For instance, the Headwaters study finds that "fossil fuel production has not insulated energy-producing states from fiscal crisis," that "fossil fuel extraction has a limited influence at the state level on economic indicators such as GDP by state, personal income, and employment," and that "the volatility of fossil fuel markets poses obstacles to the stability and long-term security of economic growth in energy-producing regions."

  This is a problem for the coal industry, which spends heavily to construct a fantasy world in which it's a "clean" industry to which we should feel grateful, a vital supplier of our power, and an economic lifeline to host communities.

  But in the real world, coal's case is even weaker than the Headwaters study shows.

• The Real Reason Why Coca-Cola Isn't Ditching Bisphenol A (Treehugger) [emphasis added]:
  
  The REAL reason that Coke isn't talking is that they know perfectly well what the real answer is to the issue of how to get rid of BPA in cans: bring back the returnable bottle system that they have spent fifty years trying to destroy. As I noted in my post Recycling is Bullshit, the switch to disposables has enabled Coke to centralize production, eliminate the independent bottlers that served each community or region, and ship the stuff around the country on the interstates paid for by the taxpayers.
• Cleaning up our air for World Asthma Day: Comment on EPA’s plans to cut air toxics from power plants (Climate Progress)

                 

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