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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Occupy Wall Street's bicycle-powered generator trashed by police in raid?; A huge victory for Keystone XL pipeline opponents --- but will it last?; Fracking chemicals found in Wyoming drinking water; PLUS: A prominent climate change skeptic calls for climate change action in Congress ... 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): Clean energy: highest rate of return of any federal program; Why solar is better than stocks; American Electric Power CEO: 'No doubt' EPA regulations create new jobs; The false gospel of green marketing ... PLUS: Reinventing Fire: How the U.S. can change energy use forever ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• Occupy Wall Street Raided by Riot Cops --- 'Green' Bicycle Generators Reportedly Trashed:
• NYPD RIOT COPS EVICT ZUCCOTTI PARK DEMONSTRATORS IN MIDDLE OF NIGHT (The BRAD BLOG)
• VIDEO: Bill McKibben, Co-founder and director of 350.org,explains why the Keystone XL pipeline will mean "game over" for the climate. (Colbert Report):





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• VIDEO: Fox "Straight News" Anchor Kelly Continues To Inflate Number Of Jobs Keystone XL Could Create (Media Matters)
• TransCanada Agrees To Re-Route Keystone XL Pipeline:
• Keystone pipeline builder proposes changing Nebraska route (LA Times):
  
  It would avoid the delicate Sandhills region above a shallow aquifer. Many cheer, but some environmentalists say the fight isn't over.
  ...
  TransCanada upped the ante Monday by splitting environmentalists, at least in the Midwest, and chipping away at Republican opposition that had surfaced in Nebraska. A letter from a State Department official to Nebraska legislators appeared to signal support for a state role in the rerouting decision, but it did not guarantee it would support any particular relocation proposal.
• Keystone Pipeline Will Be Rerouted (NY Times):
  
  At a special session of the Nebraska Legislature, a state senator announced Monday that TransCanada had agreed to adjust its intended route of the Keystone XL oil pipeline to avoid the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region of the state.
• VIDEO: NE Press Conference Announcing TransCanada's Keystone XL Pipeline to be Rerouted: At a press conference inside the Nebraska State Capitol, TransCanada announces the Keystone XL Pipeline will be moved. (Daily Nebraskan)
• But Will Keystone XL Delay Last?:
• Canada eyes Asia after U.S. delays Keystone project (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  
  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Sunday his country will make a bigger push to sell its energy products to Asia after Washington delayed a decision to approve the Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline project.
  ...
  "That will be an important priority of our government going forward and I indicated that yesterday to the president of China."
• First Nations leaders join Keystone pipeline protest (CBC)
• Native Americans and Canada's First Nations delay Toxic Pipeline (Agora Cosmopolitan) [emphasis added]:
  
  There is growing opposition to the Canadian tar sands. It is the tar sands in northern Alberta, Canada, located with the traditional territories of Cree, Dene and Métis indigenous communities from where the dirty tar-like oil is taken out of the ground, devastating the ecosystem, polluting the water and causing human health illnesses and deaths.
• Obama Must Stop Keystone XL Pipeline, Native Activists Say (Indian Country News)
• Agreement to reroute Keystone XL pipeline brightens outlook for project (Winnipeg Free Press)
• Stopping Keystone XL: IEA Says 5 Years to Avoid "Irreversible Climate Change":
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
  ...
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• The Carbon Bomb: Mini Keystone XLs All Across America (Think Progress Green)
• Federal Panel Warns of "Real Risk of Serious Environmental Consequences" with Fracking:
• Fracking Has "Real Risk Of Serious Environmental Consequences", Federal Subcommittee Reports (Treehugger):
  
  [F]rom Energy.gov's statement on it [emphasis added]:

  It is the Subcommittee's judgment that if action is not taken to reduce the environmental impact accompanying the very considerable expansion of shale gas production expected across the country - perhaps as many as 100,000 wells over the next several decades - there is a real risk of serious environmental consequences and a loss of public confidence that could delay or stop this activity.

  And this comes from an advisory panel that, when it was set up, was heavily criticized from having too many participants with cozy fossil fuel industry ties.

• READ THE DRAFT REPORT: Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Subcommittee (SEAB) on Shale Gas Production Posts Draft Report (US Dept. of Energy)
• Frackers Use 'Psy Ops' To Deal With Pennsylvania 'Insurgency' (Think Progress Green)
• Fracking Chemicals Found in Wyoming Drinking Water:
• EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer (Pro Publica):
  
  The [Wyoming] wells also contained benzene at 50 times the level that is considered safe for people, as well as phenols --- another dangerous human carcinogen --- acetone, toluene, naphthalene and traces of diesel fuel.

  The EPA said the water samples were saturated with methane gas that matched the deep layers of natural gas being drilled for energy. The gas did not match the shallower methane that the gas industry says is naturally occurring in water, a signal that the contamination was related to drilling and was less likely to have come from drilling waste spilled above ground.

• New Waterless Fracking Method Avoids Pollution Problems, But Drillers Slow to Embrace It (Reuters):
  
  Little-noticed drilling technique uses propane gel, not water, to release natural gas. Higher cost, lack of data and industry habit stand in the way.
• Prominent Climate Change Skeptic Scientist Calls For Climate ACTION in Congressional Hearing:
• VIDEO: Congressional Climate Briefing to Push "End of Climate Change Skepticism" (House Natural Resources Committee, Democrats):
  
  Three prominent scientists will present the best case yet for the end of climate skepticism in Washington and the world over the fact that the world is warming at a congressional briefing held by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

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

• Clean Energy Has Highest Documented Rate of Return of Any Federal Program, But the WashPost Cluelessly Smears It Anyway (Climate Progress)
• Why Solar is Better than Stocks (Solar Feeds):
  
  [F]or me, [rooftop solar] has been a more stable and predictable investment than stocks (these days!) in that I get a monthly financial benefit (which equates to about a 5% annual return on my investment which is better than any CD) and all indications are when I sell this investment I will recover more than I put in. This is very similar to a dividend paying stock but with the very important environmental benefits which was the prime driver for my decision. Personally I couldn't be happier and consider it a solid win-win investment which is rare to find.
• EPA Regulations Will Create New Jobs, Says American Electric Power CEO: "No Question About That" (Think Progress Green)
• The false gospel of green marketing: The companies that are the heaviest resource depleters are often the first to declare how 'sustainable' their practices are (Guardian UK)
• Reefs Recovered Faster After Mass Extinction Than First Thought (Science Daily):
  
  Metazoan-dominated reefs only took 1.5 million years to recover after the largest species extinction 252 million years ago, an international research team including paleontologists from the University of Zurich has established based on fossils from the southwestern United States.

  Harsh living conditions caused by major fluctuations in the carbon content and sea levels, overacidification and oxygen deficiency in the seas triggered the largest mass extinction of all time at the end of the Permian era 252 million years ago.

• VIDEO: Koch-Funded Scientist On Morning Joe: 'We're Getting Very Steep Warming' (Think Progress Green)
• Video: How Fox Slants The Energy Debate (Media Matters)
• Horizon announces versatile Sunbox solar power charging system (Gizmag)
• Device that harvests water from thin air wins the James Dyson Award (Gizmag):
  
  The Swinburne University of Technology design graduate was driven to transform an ancient cooling technique into a new sub-surface irrigation system, following the enduring Australian drought that saw high levels of farmer suicide along Australia's Murray- Darling Basin.
• Nature is fooled into flowering in a 'second spring' (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  Fruit, frogs, birds, insects, plants: they are all enjoying a warm autumn as the seasons go topsy-turvy. Ecologists are observing a rash of freak occurrences and oddities throughout England.
  ...
  [T]hese are the sights and sounds of an English summer. Except that they have all been recorded in the last week or so, even as shops are decking out in shiny baubles and cranking out Christmas carols.
  ...
  "Autumn has been a bit weird," admits a spokesman for the Woodland Trust.
• 'Climate vulnerable' countries meet in Bangladesh (AFP):
  
  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will open a forum in Bangladesh on Monday at which countries most vulnerable to climate change will try to unite ahead of global talks in South Africa in December.
• 8 months after nuclear disaster, Fukushima remains in shambles (Huffington Post Green):
  
  Two reactor buildings once painted in a cheery sky blue loom over the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Their roofs are blasted away, their crumbled concrete walls reduced to steel frames. In their shadow, plumbers, electricians and truck drivers, sometimes numbering in the thousands, go dutifully about their work, all clad from head to toe in white hazmat suits. Their job - cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl - will take decades to complete.
  ....
  A preliminary government report released this month predicted it will take 30 years or more to safely decommission Fukushima Dai-ichi. Like Chernobyl, it will probably be encased in a concrete and steel "sarcophagus."
• Reinvent Fire: Change Energy Use Forever (Rocky Mountain Institute) [emphasis added]:
  
  Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era offers market-based, actionable solutions integrating transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity. Built on Rocky Mountain Institute's 30 years of research and collaboration in all four sectors, Reinventing Fire maps pathways for running a 158%-bigger U.S. economy in 2050 but needing no oil, no coal, no nuclear energy, one-third less natural gas, and no new inventions. This would cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual-in addition to the value of avoiding fossil fuels' huge but uncounted external costs.

                 

Article Categories: Environment, Barack Obama, Republicans, State Department, Green News, EPA, Japan, Fracking, Koch Industries, Natural gas, Coal, Nuclear power/weapons