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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Record U.S. heat --- again; Pakistan floods and pipelines explode --- again; Arctic sea ice hits record low --- again; Cargill ground turkey recalled --- again; PLUS: Fake 'reporter' Matthew Boyle at fake 'news' site Daily Caller offers fake 'news' story on EPA, as Republicans and their fossil fuel friends open full court press against Richard Nixon's clean air and water agency --- again and again and again ... 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): Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century'; Sorry, breathers: Obama's cave on EPA ozone regs strictly political; Australia PM introduces controversial carbon laws; Prince Charles warns of human extinction due to climate change; Drought leaves over 12 mln people short of drinking water in SW China; Bush Admin advanced Solyndra loan guarantee; China’s new plan for solar power supremacy; What If solar received the same subsidies as fossil fuel?; The coming German energy turnaround; Explosion at French nuclear plant kills one; Tons of US-supplied nuclear weapons material missing; 5 interesting facts on our energy-hog economy; The Onion on Climate Change: an issue this critical demands at least 45 seconds of real, concentrated panic; Al Gore's 24-Hour global broadcast on climate change science ... PLUS: Switching from coal to natural gas could accelerate climate change, say scientists ...

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

• Is TX-based Coal Utility Suing EPA to Cover Up Bad Investments?:
• U.S. Chamber Helps Echo Propaganda from Polluter Luminant to 'Scapegoat' EPA Clean Air Rules (The BRAD BLOG):
  
  Matthew Boyle, alleged 'reporter' from Rightwing 'news' site Daily Caller claims he could find no other side of the story. The BRAD BLOG finds one in two minutes...
• Texas Power Company Sues EPA To Cover For Bad Coal Plant Investment (Brad Johnson, Think Progress Green)
• Luminant Will End Lignite Mining In Central Texas, Idle 2 Coal-Fired Plants (KWTX-Dallas)
• Extremes in 2011 Are Extremely Extreme:
• Texas Sets Records During the Second Hottest Summer in U.S. History—and the Worst Is Still to Come (TIME Eco-Centric blog)
• Climate Disasters Dominate America’s Front Pages (Think Progress Green):
  
  Extreme weather disasters, fueled by global warming pollution, dominate the nation’s news, even as the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination vie to scorn the threat of climate change. Even those who purport to accept the science of global warming, such as Jon Huntsman Jr., argue that making our climate less deadly would hurt the economy.
• U.S. Experiences Second Warmest Summer On Record (ScienceDaily) [emphasis added]:
  
  The blistering heat experienced by the United States during August, as well as the June through August months, marks the second warmest summer on record, according to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C. The persistent heat, combined with below-average precipitation across the southern U.S. during August and the three summer months, continued a record-breaking drought across the region/
• Power of Prayer: Two Months After Governor Prayed For Rain, All Of Oklahoma In Severe Drought (Think Progress Green)
• Texas sets record for hottest summer in US: Oklahoma Dust Bowl days fall to third-highest; South's drought grows more dire (MSNBC)
• Six of the 10 largest wildfires in Texas history occurred in 2011
• VIDEO: This is how fast wildfire spreads (YouTube)
• Atmospheric Forces Conspire to Make 2011 a Wild Year (Live Science)
• Politifact: Do scientists disagree about global warming? [No.] (Politifact)
• Conservative, white men most likely to be climate change sceptics, study shows (Guardian UK)
• Planet STILL Not Listening to GOP: Arctic Sea Ice Melts to Record Low:
• German Physicists: Historic Low Arctic Ice is a “Consequence of Man-Made Global Warming with Global Consequences” (Climate Progress)
• Arctic Death Spiral Continues: Sea Ice Volume Hits Record Low for Second Straight Year (Climate Progress)
• Total Arctic sea ice at record low in 2010: study (Reuters):
  
  The minimum summertime volume of Arctic sea ice fell to a record low last year, researchers said in a study to be published shortly, suggesting that thinning of the ice had outweighed a recovery in area.

  The study estimated last year broke the previous, 2007 record for the minimum volume of ice, which is calculated from a combination of sea ice area and thickness.

• Experts drill Arctic ice to fathom speed of melt (Reuters)
• Scientists to track acidification in Arctic Ocean (Reuters)
• Pakistan Flooded Again:
• Dozens Killed in Kenya Pipeline Explosion:
• Kenya Gasoline Pipeline Blast Kills At Least 61 (LA Times):
  
  More than 60 people died Monday in a densely populated Nairobi slum after an explosion and fire caused by gasoline from a leaking pipe. At least 116 badly burned people, many of them children, were taken to hospitals. Many were not expected to survive, as medical staff struggled with shortages of blood for transfusions.
• Nairobi Pipeline Fire Claims More Than 100 Lives (Environment News Service)
• Factory Food Giant Cargill Again Recalling Contaminated Ground Turkey:
• Cargill recalls more turkey products over salmonella fears (AP)
• Just a Coincidence!: Fox News, Fossil Fuel Industry & U.S. Chamber Simultaneously Launch EPA Attack Week:
• Memo to Right-Wing Anti-EPA Job-Killers: Sick and Dead People Aren’t Very Productive (Climate Progress):
  
  A recent EPA study estimated that just one law — the Clean Air Act — prevented 230,000 deaths, 3.2 million lost school days, and 13 million lost work days a year in 2010. The benefits of this act, including savings in medical expenses and increased worker productivity, are 30 times greater than its cost of implementation, and the benefits of regulation, more generally, also have been shown to exceed costs [pdf].

• VIDEO: American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) Launches Anti-EPA Ad At Tea Party Debate (Think Progress Green)
• EPA Bashing, Drill Baby Drill at CNN Tea Party Debate
• VIDEO: CNN Tea Party Debate Question: "Energy Independence" (MoxNews)
• CHART: Breaking down the GOP presidential debate in Tampa (St. Petersburg Times)
• Romney’s Energy Policy Advisor Jim Talent Works For A Lobbying Firm For Peabody Coal (Think Progress Green)
• Rick Perry: The EPA ‘Won’t Know What Hit ‘Em’ (Think Progress Green)
• CNN Debate Exposes the Myth of the Tea 'Party' (The Atlantic):
  
  "The Tea Party's supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today," he recently wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

  Nor does evidence support the myth that the tea party is a libertarian-leaning faction of the conservative movement. "Americans who support the conservative Christian movement, sometimes known as the religious right, also overwhelmingly support the Tea Party," noted a February Pew poll, finding that tea partiers were more likely to support traditional conservative positions on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

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

• Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century' (Independent UK):
  
  Coral reefs will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist

  Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.

• Obama's Cave on EPA Ozone Regs Strictly Political (Matt Yglesias, Think Progress):
  
  What seems to have happened is that White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley met with industry groups who showed him a map of which counties would be forced by the new rules into non-compliance. There were a bunch of counties on the map, many of which were in states such as Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio that are crucial to Obama’s re-election effort.
• Australia PM introduces controversial carbon laws (Reuters):
  
  Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced her government's controversial carbon tax plans into parliament on Tuesday, a third attempt to legislate a price on pollution.

  Gillard has staked her minority government's future on passing the laws, which would force around 500 big polluting companies to pay for carbon emissions through a A$23 ($23.75) per tonne carbon tax from July 2012, ahead of emissions trading from mid 2015. Earlier plans to levy a tax were rejected in 2009.

• Prince Charles Warns of Human Extinction Due to Climate Change (Treehugger) [emphasis added]:
  
  "History will not judge us by how much economic growth we achieve in the immediate years ahead, nor by how much we expand material consumption, but by the legacy for our grandchildren and their grandchildren," he said. "We are consuming what is rightfully theirs by sacrificing long-term progress on the altar of immediate satisfaction. That is hardly responsible behaviour. There is an urgent need for all of us to concentrate our efforts on sustaining, nurturing and protecting the Earth's natural capital and, moreover, reshaping our economic system so that Nature sits at the very heart of our thinking."
• Drought leaves over 12 mln people short of drinking water in SW China (Xinhua News Agency):
  
  China allocates 1.3 bln yuan for southwest drought relief

  A lingering drought has left more than 12.6 million people short of drinking water and huge tracts of farmland parched in China's southwestern regions, the nation's top drought-relief authority said Thursday.

• Exclusive: Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the Story (Climate Progress):
  
  It’s often claimed that the Solyndra loan guarantee was “rushed through” by the Obama Administration for political reasons. In fact, the Solyndra loan guarantee was a multi-year process that the Bush Administration launched in 2007.
• China’s New Plan for Solar Power Supremacy (Climate Progress):
  
  The U.S. media is abuzz over last week’s bankruptcy of thin-film solar manufacturer Solyndra LLC, with some conservative politicians trying to use the demise of the start-up to argue against federal financing for green energy. But the Chinese media is focusing on a far more important solar power development: two major energy plans that will lay the policy roadmap for China’s clean energy development over the next decade.
• CHART: What If Solar Energy Received the Same Subsidies As Fossil Fuel? (Chicago Sun-Times):
  
  Hint: U.S. receives 3,900% more sun than Germany, yet Germany has 6000% more solar than U.S.
• The coming German energy turnaround (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists):
  
  But does such a turnaround make economic sense, or is Germany isolating itself economically? Is there danger of a deindustrialisation --- that is, will businesses relocate because of exploding electricity prices --- and will Germans have to live with blackouts? Some with political or financial interests in the status quo like to predict horrific economic effects from an energy turnaround, but a close look at German energy prospects suggests the opposite is true...
• Explosion at French Nuclear Plant Leaves One Person Dead (NY Times):
  
  One person was killed and four were injured Monday afternoon in an explosion at a nuclear waste treatment site in southern France, according to the French Nuclear Safety Authority.
• Missing: Tons of US-Supplied Nuclear Weapons Material (Mother Jones)
• Reinventing Fire: Five Interesting Facts About Our Energy-Hogging Economy (Think Progress Green)
• The Onion on Climate Change: An Issue This Critical Demands at Least 45 Seconds of Real, Concentrated Panic Each Week (The Onion):
  
  Indeed, if there was ever a time when a desperate call to take action against global warming should race through our heads as we lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, that time is now.

  Many well-intentioned people will take 20 seconds out of their week to consider the consequences of the lifestyle they’ve chosen, perhaps contemplating how their reliance on fossil fuels has contributed to the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap. But if progress is what we truly want, 20 seconds is simply not enough. Not by a long shot. An issue this critical demands at least 45 seconds to a solid minute of real, concentrated panic.

• Al Gore is Back With 24-Hour Broadcast on Climate Change Science (Daily Climate):
  
  Exxon Makes Billion-Dollar Bet Climate Change is Real, Here Now and Going to Get Worse But Keeps Funding Deniers (Climate Progress):
  

  Exxon would like you to believe that climate change is neither real nor urgent. That is why they have spent millions of dollars over the last several years funding climate skeptics and fighting legislation that would regulate the emissions of greenhouse gases.
  ...
  Actions, however, speak louder than words. And Exxon’s most recent action was a thunderclap. According to reports, Exxon has just signed an extensive deal with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, to develop promising offshore oil and gas deposits in the Arctic Ocean.
  ...
  One key thing has changed: the arctic ice is melting rapidly.
• Switching from coal to natural gas would accelerate climate change, say scientists (Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  Here is a terrifying, crazy-making truth: Getting off coal will accelerate climate change, at least in the short term.

  This isn't an argument for maintaining our coal addiction --- because if we stick with coal, we are, frankly, dead as a species, plus more immediately dead or at least very wheezy as individuals.
  ...
  But according to a new analysis from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, through 2050 a switch from coal to natural gas would actually accelerate climate change. Even though natural gas leads to fewer greenhouse gas emissions than coal, the "problem" is that natural gas is cleaner in another sense, too: Burning it leads to fewer aerosols in the air.

                 

Article Categories: Fox 'News', CNN, Wolf Blitzer, Mainstream Corporate Media, Texas, Environment, Barack Obama, Republicans, Election 2012, Green News, EPA, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fracking, Rick Perry