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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The most anti-environment House of Representatives in U.S. history; PLUS: GNR Special Edition: We thank the Koch Brothers --- yes, the billionaire, dirty oil Koch Brothers --- for proving global warming! No, really!!! ... 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): NE lawmakers could challenge Keystone XL Pipeline route; Greenland ice cheet “could undergo self-amplifying cycle of melting, warming"; Fisker: debunking another GOP fake scandal; MD Court Strikes Down Landlord Protection in Lead Paint Law; Former Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist Hired by Obama; Personal Eco-Concierges Ease Transition to Green; 5-20 million tons of debris from Japan's tsunami moving toward Hawaii; CA's Coachella Workers Live in Grim Conditions; Nigerians seek $1 billion from Shell over oil spills; Appeals court upholds roadless rule protecting vast forest wilderness; California Becomes First State To Adopt Cap-And-Trade Program; Countries catch way more bluefin tuna than they are supposed to; Girls exposed in womb to BPA have risk of behavior problems; Austim diagnoses growing by 10-17% annually; Global ban on exports of toxic waste advances; 40k Dallas-Ft.Worth children under 6 have lead in blood; Meet the Tar Sands PR wizard; Alaska Borough Voters Reject Controversial Pebble Mine ...PLUS: Genetic engineering fails to increase crop yields, but succeeds at increasing 'superweeds' and human pesticide exposure ...

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

• The Most Anti-Environment House of Representatives in U.S. History:
• Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA):'The Most Anti-Environment House In History' (Huffington Post Green)
• The Most Anti-Environment House in History: How is Your Representative Voting? (Think Progress)
• Legislative Database: The Most Anti-Environment House in History (U.S. House of Representatives)
• Is this the most anti-environment House in history? (Salon):
  
  A review of votes in the 112th Congress shows a GOP at war with environmental protections/
• OP-ED: The Party of Pollution (NY Times):
  
  So what is the G.O.P. jobs plan? The answer, in large part, is to allow more pollution. So what you need to know is that weakening environmental regulations would do little to create jobs and would make us both poorer and sicker.
  ...
  [D]oes this oil-industry-backed study actually make a serious case for weaker environmental protection as a job-creation strategy? No.

  Part of the problem is that the study relies heavily on an assumed “multiplier” effect, in which every new job in energy leads indirectly to the creation of 2.5 jobs elsewhere. Republicans, you may recall, were scornful of claims that government aid that helps avoid layoffs of schoolteachers also indirectly helps save jobs in the private sector. But I guess the laws of economics change when it’s an oil company rather than a school district doing the hiring.

  Moreover, even if you take the study’s claims at face value, it offers little reason to believe that dirtier air and water can solve our current employment crisis. All the big numbers in the report are projections for late this decade. The report predicts fewer than 200,000 jobs next year, and fewer than 700,000 even by 2015.

• THANKS, Billionaire Koch Brothers! Koch-Funded Study Proves Accuracy of Global Warming Science:
• Climate Deniers Still Not Happy With Koch-Funded Climate Study (Think Porgress):
  
  The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team released a study showing that the earth’s surface has warmed 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950, with the hopes that the study would address the critiques of climate deniers who continue to insist that the earth is not warming.

  Even Richard Muller, Berkeley Earth’s scientific director who was notorious for not believing the conventional wisdom about climate change, said this study confirms global warming.

• Global warming study finds no grounds for climate sceptics' concerns: Independent investigation of the key issues sceptics claim can skew global warming figures reports that they have no real effect (Guardian UK):
  
  the Berkeley study found that the so-called urban heat island effect, which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas, is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to average land temperature rises. This is because urban regions make up less than 1% of the Earth's land area. And while stations considered "poor" might be less accurate, they recorded the same average warming trend.
• Climate Change Deniers Abandon ‘Befuddled Warmist’ Physicist Who Came Around On Global Warming (Talking Points Memo):
  
  Climate change deniers thought they had an ally in Richard Muller, a popular physics professor at UC Berkeley.

  Muller didn’t reject climate science per se, but he was a skeptic, and a convenient one for big polluters and conservative anti-environmentalists — until Muller put their money where his mouth was, and launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, in part with a grant from the Charles G. Koch foundation.

  After extensive study, he’s concluded that the existing science was right all along — that the earth’s surface is warming, at an accelerating rate. But instead of second-guessing themselves, his erstwhile allies of convenience are now abandoning him.

• "I Stick to Science": Richard Muller's Statement to Congress about Climate Change (Scientific American) [emphasis added]:
  
  The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was created to make the best possible estimate of global temperature change using as complete a record of measurements as possible and by applying novel methods for the estimation and elimination of systematic biases.
  ...
  In an initial test, Berkeley Earth chose stations randomly from the complete set of 39,028 stations. Such a selection is free of station selection bias.
  In our preliminary analysis of these stations, we found a warming trend that is shown in the figure. It is very similar to that reported by the prior groups: a rise of about 0.7 degrees C since 1957....The Berkeley Earth agreement with the prior analysis surprised us, since our preliminary results don't yet address many of the known biases.
• Funding for the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study: (Scientific American) [emphasis added]:
  
  The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study has received a total of $623,087 in financial support from:
  The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund ($20,000)
  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ($188,587)
  William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation ($100,000)
  Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates) ($100,000)
  Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000)
  The Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation ($50,000)
  We have also received funding from a number of private individuals, totaling $14,500.
• Scientists Often Pigeonholed By Political Debates (NPR, 4/11/2011) [emphasis added]:
  
  During a Congressional hearing on climate science, physicist Richard Muller was expected to testify on the side of climate change skeptics. Instead, Muller announced his team found a warming trend. Muller says scientists are often challenged to insulate findings from political pressures.
• Experts Heat Up Over Berkeley Lab Scientist's Quest to 'Calm' Climate Change Debate (NY Times, 4/1/2011)
• Global Warming Indeed Under Way, Contrarian Panel Says (NYT Green):
  
  A team at the University of California Berkeley that set out to test the temperature data underlying the consensus on global warming has concluded that the mainstream estimate of the rise in the earth's surface temperature since 1950 is indeed accurate. It has warmed about
  1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers say.
• Skeptic Talking Point Melts Away as an Inconvenient Physicist Confirms Warming (NYT Dot Earth)
• Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (Univ. of CA at Berkeley)

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

• Nebraska Lawmakers Could Challenge Pipeline Route (AP):
  
  Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman said Monday he will call a special legislative session that could allow lawmakers to challenge the route of a massive transnational oil pipeline, despite uncertainty about whether such an effort will succeed or stand up in court.
• Greenland Ice Sheet “Could Undergo a Self-Amplifying Cycle of Melting and Warming … Difficult to Halt,” Scientists Find (Climate Progress):
  
  The Greenland ice sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures don’t hit record highs, according to a new analysis by Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. His findings suggest that glaciers could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be difficult to halt.

  “We are finding that even if you don’t have record-breaking highs, as long as warm temperatures persist you can get record-breaking melting because of positive feedback mechanisms,” said Professor Tedesco, who directs CCNY’s Cryospheric Processes Laboratory….

• If Republicans Try To Manufacture A Clean Energy Scandal With Fisker, These Letters May Haunt Them (Think Progress):
  
  Republicans exaggerated and misconstrued the controversy over Solyndra, a failed solar company that received a subsidized loan (originating from the Bush administration), to call to cutting all clean energy loan programs.

  But before Republicans turn on the right-wing echo chamber to twist the Fisker story into some sort of case of wrongdoing, they should consider this ThinkProgress report about GOP lawmakers who have requested the same type of clean energy loans. According to the report, at least 62 requested green energy subsidies from the Obama administration. Both the Indiana and Louisina Republican delegations requested taxpayer money for energy efficient start-up car companies — using the same type of program obtained by Fisker Automotive.

• House Passes Bill Deying EU Aircraft Emissions Rules (The Hill):
  
  The House defied the European Union Monday evening, quickly approving legislation that would ban European countries from imposing emission trading requirements on U.S. airlines.
• MD Court Strikes Down Landlord Protection in Lead Paint Law (Baltimore Subn):
  
  Maryland's highest court struck down Monday a key provision of state law that shielded owners of older rental housing from civil lawsuits --- and potentially costly payments to victims --- if they took precautions to protect children in their units from lead-paint poisoning. In a 7-0 ruling, the Court of Appeals declared that the 1994 lead-poisoning law violated the state's Constitution by denying a day in court to victims of the once-widespread environmental health scourge. In doing so, the court struck down what was considered a historic legislative compromise.
• Former Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist Hired by Obama (LA Times):
  
  President Obama's reelection campaign has hired a former lobbyist for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline as a top adviser.
• Personal Eco-Concierges Ease Transition to Green (NY Times):
  
  They will run your errands by bicycle, recommend a spa that gives vegan manicures or buy organic clothes for you and your dog. They will even book you a dream vacation and buy the appropriate carbon offsets. Green living is just so much easier when you have your own personal environmental concierge.
• 5-20 million tons of debris from Japan's tsunami moving toward Hawaii (Yahoo News):
  
  Some 5 to 20 million tons of debris--furniture, fishing boats, refrigerators--sucked into the Pacific Ocean in the wake of Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami are moving rapidly across the Pacific. Researchers from the University of Hawaii tracking the wreckage estimate it could approach the U.S. West Coast in the next three years, the UK Daily Mail reports.
• On Edge of Paradise, Coachella Workers Live in Grim Conditions (California Watch):
  
  At one end of Avenue 54, a road slicing through some of the most fertile land in the United States, resides the California of the popular imagination: a place of Bermuda shorts, putting greens and picture-window champagne dinners overlooking the infinity pool.

  But there is another Avenue 54 concealed behind tumbleweeds and dust.
  It is the 54 of arsenic-tainted water, frequent blackouts and raw sewage that backs up into the shower. It is a place of grim housekeeping, where the residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley's roughly 125 illegal mobile home parks struggle to make 720 square feet of deteriorating metal and plywood a safe and habitable home.

• Nigerians seek $1 billion from Shell over oil spills (Reuters):
  
  A Nigerian community from the oil-rich Niger Delta has filed a lawsuit in the United States seeking $1 billion in compensation from Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell for decades of pollution caused by oil spills.
• Appeals court upholds roadless rule protecting vast forest wilderness (AP):
  
  A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law prohibiting roads on nearly 50 million acres of land in national forests across the United States, a ruling hailed by environmentalists as one of the most significant in decades.
• California Becomes First State To Adopt Cap-And-Trade Program (Los Angeles Times)
• Report: Countries catch way more bluefin tuna than they are supposed to (Mother Jones:
  
  Countries around the world are selling more than twice as much Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna than international standards allow, according to a new report from the Pew Environment Group. The report, released earlier this week, compares the recorded volume of Atlantic bluefin tuna caught and traded in the Mediterranean Sea and northeastern Atlantic Ocean with catch quotas set by the intergovernmental body responsible for regulating the fish's trade.
• Girls exposed in womb to BPA have risk of behavior problems (Bloomberg):
  
  "The research showed that hyperactive, anxious, aggressive and depressed behavior was more common in 3-year-old girls who were exposed in the womb to bisphenol-A than in boys of the same age. No association was seen between bisphenol-A levels during later childhood and behavior for either gender, according to the study released today by the journal Pediatrics.
• CDC: Austim diagnoses growing by 10-17% annually (Scranton Times-Tribune):
  
  The figure is so astounding it appears to be a misprint at first glance. One in 110. That's the number of American children living with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), based on the most recently published estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• Global ban on exports of toxic waste advances (AP):
  
  More than 170 countries agreed Friday to accelerate adoption of a global ban on the export of hazardous wastes, including old electronics, to developing countries.
• 40k Dallas-Ft.Worth children under 6 have lead in blood (Dallas Morning News):
  
  The headlines have focused on Frisco, where a battery-recycling plant emits too much lead. But the dangers go far beyond Frisco's backyard. In cities such as Dallas and Fort Worth, particles from leaded gasoline banned decades ago still contaminate the soil.
• Global Warming Indeed Under Way, Contrarian Panel Says (NYT Green):
  
  A team at the University of California Berkeley that set out to test the temperature data underlying the consensus on global warming has concluded that the mainstream estimate of the rise in the earth's surface temperature since 1950 is indeed accurate. It has warmed about
  1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers say.
• Skeptic Talking Point Melts Away as an Inconvenient Physicist Confirms Warming (NYT Dot Earth)
• Berkely Earth Surface Temperature (Univ. of CA at Berkeley)
• Meet the Tar Sands PR wizard (Mother Jones):
  
  Ezra Levant spins tar sands crude as 'ethical oil' --- with the same tricks he used in his tobacco lobbyist days." "This summer, as environmental groups converged on Washington, DC, to protest the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a Canadian 'grassroots' nonprofit by the name of Ethical Oil went on the counteroffensive. The group's YouTube videos and TV ads all carried the same blunt message: You can buy oil from Saudi Arabia and bankroll terrorism, the oppression of women, and fanatical Islam, or you can buy oil from Canada, your friendly, democratic neighbors to the north.
• Alaska Borough Voters Reject Controversial Pebble Mine (Anchorage Daily News)
• GM Crops promote superweeds, food insecurity, and pesticides, say NGOs (Guardian UK):
  
  Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of 'superweeds', according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.

                 

Article Categories: Mainstream Media Failure, Accountability, U.S. House, Environment, Bill Maher, Republicans, Green News, EPA, Fracking, Koch Industries, Natural gas, Coal