This is the 518th edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) usually appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Here is the Aug. 5 Green Spotlight. More than 27,(495) environmentally oriented stories have been rescued to appear in this series since 2006. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
OceanDiver writes—The Daily Bucket - Green Crab alert in the Salish Sea: “Crabs are ubiquitous and abundant in marine waters, and that’s a good thing. They are a major source of food for all kinds of creatures in the various marine ecosystems from sandy beaches to tide pools to the deep sea. And they fill many niches as predators, herbivores and scavengers. A healthy ocean needs lots of crabs. But not THIS one — the European Green Crab is spreading now into the Salish Sea where we fear it will be as destructive as it’s shown itself on other West Coast shorelines and the East Coast. What’s so bad about one more crab among the multitudes? and how do we deal with it? [...] =What’s so bad about another crab? I mean, we already have 20+ species in the Northwest. Well, it turns out Green crabs not only eat shellfish voraciously (East coast blue mussel and soft shell clam fisheries have been hit hard) but worse, they excavate half a foot down into seagrass beds searching for crabs and clams, uprooting plants, destroying that habitat. Eelgrass beds are among the most productive marine ecosystems.”
Desert Scientist writes—Return to South Fork: “My visit to South Fork was participated by a need to go back to my old Southwestern haunts one more time. I had flown to Tucson, rented a car, stayed with friends for two days and field tripped into the Santa Rita Mountains before heading to the Chiricahuas. Cave Creek is one of my favorite places on the planet and so it was the next stop, followed by the Gila National Forest in New Mexico and the Mesilla Valley Bosque near Las Cruces. However, South Fork was certainly one of my main targets. I had hiked that canyon, as well as others in the Chiricahuas, many times, visited my old mentors, Willis J. Gertsch and Vince Roth, attended the first meeting of the American Arachnological Society, hunted land snails with my graduate professor Walter Miller and other graduate students, and co-taught a field course, all in the Cave Creek area. It was a mecca for biologists and it was my place to visit after the current stressful period in my life. Unfortunately my wife was not able to join me, or it would have been a perfect trip, but still I was glad for those few hours along South Fork and for the wildlife and the peace of the canyon. South Fork still has the power to enrapture and calm as it had in the past, despite the vast changes that have occurred there. May such wild places survive the current madness.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Kestrel writes—Dawn Chorus: Drought, Rain, Flooding, and Birds! “California’s drought is over now, but the amount of water that arrived in the greater Sacramento region last year was staggering. Planners and engineers long ago built a series of bypasses and weirs to divert water that would otherwise flood downtown Sacramento. One of those bypasses is the Yolo Bypass. It also happens to be the largest wildlife area and prime birding location around for enthusiasts like me. But between last December and June of this year, the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area was an inland sea. All the water that hit the Sacramento region was diverted there. The seven miles of roads within the Bypass disappeared. So did the birds. And the birders. We missed all of the Spring migration. The amount of water covering the Wildlife Area’s 16,000 acres— 16,000 acres! — was hard to comprehend. But after 8 months, it’s finally dry again.”
owktree writes—Daily Bucket: Mirror Alphabet - "S": Photo diary.
owktree writes—Daily Bucket: Flowers in the Marsh: “More from the John Heinz NWR in Philadelphia. Flowers and insects seen on a nice sunny day while walking around the pond and tidal marsh.”
Angmar writes—The Daily Bucket: The beautiful sky-atmospheric phenomena (Open thread): Cloud photos.
CLIMATE CHAOS
Pakalolo writes—750,000,000 people in S Asia were affected by floods, droughts, extreme rainfall, heat waves and SLR: “South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s people live are suffering the consequences of climate change right now. International Water Management Institute’s (IWMI) research found that 750 million people in S Asia ‘were affected by floods, droughts, extreme rainfall, heat waves and sea-level rise (SLR) — all impacts of climate change or worsened by it — in the first decade of this millennium’. India Climate Dialogue reports: The study used data on the spatial distribution of various climate related hazards in 1,398 sub-national areas of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. An analysis of country-level population exposure showed that approximately 750 million people are affected by combined climate hazards. Of the affected population, 72% is in India, followed by 12% each in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The remaining 4% are spread across Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.”
Meteor Blades writes—The resistance should stand against any Trumpian effort to rewrite climate change draft report: “As the news appeared this week about U.S. Department of Agriculture employees being told to avoid the term ‘climate change’ in their work, the draft of a new report on climate change also appeared. That report, published Monday by The New York Times, is, according to Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University, among “the most comprehensive climate science reports’ ever to be published. It confirms what we already know: There are going to be severe effects in the United States from the warming of the planet caused by human activity, and some of those effects aren’t just in the pipeline to show up much later this century, but already beginning to happen. [...] The resistance has a crucial task in this matter. We must encourage in every way possible those who have drafted this report to refuse to retreat from their professional assessment and refuse to tell the lies spread by the malignant crew of scientifically illiterate ideologues that have taken over in Washington.”
Xaxnar writes—BREAKING: Gov't Scientists Find Climate Change Hitting USA NOW - Fear Trump Will Suppress Report: “The draft report lists some of the effects that have been linked to climate change: fewer cool nights, more and hotter days, and other effects. The study examines every corner of the United States and finds that all of it was touched by climate change. It said the average annual rainfall across the country has increased by about 4 percent since the beginning of the 20th century. Parts of the West, Southwest and Southeast are drying up, while the Southern Plains and Midwest are getting wetter. It’s happening now, it’s real, and it’s not getting better. Scientists are concerned the report will be suppressed or heavily edited by the Trump administration, which is determinedly in denial. Read the whole thing, and check out the additional links at the bottom of the article. The New York Times has a draft copy of the report; it remains to be seen if they will release it. [...] Two related stories from NPR show why convincing people that climate change is real is running into problems. The next generation is already being indoctrinated by fossil fuel interests.”
BeninSC writes—The Most Stunning Climate Graphic I've Ever Seen: A researcher for the Finnish Meteorological Institute (Antti Lipponen) created a graphic to display temperature anomalies, arranged by country, since 1900. I have never seen anything like it. I think it’s great value is that it displays the problem and the trend in a different way.
Eric Nelson writes—Richard Engel special report: Missed climate goals a legacy of US politics: “Richard Engel has put together a series of reports from China to the United states and various developing areas of the world this week. [...] Following these next reports, is a perspective I hadn’t thought of before: One of the many boilerplate ‘conservative’ climate denier gambits → ‘needs more study’ — backfired* big time on Reagan, according to this reporting by Richard Engel. But first are these segments. The Rachel Maddow Show 8/4/17 (video) China leaving US behind to lead on green energy jobs, ambition: Richard Engel looks at how countries like India are pushing for a greener future, and China is leading the way in wind and solar manufacturing and the jobs that come with it, while Donald Trump holds the U.S. back with a focus on coal. [...] Cheap solar allows developing areas to electrify and skip coal. Janis Mackey Frayer, NBC News correspondent, looks at how the dropping price of solar energy is changing life in developing areas of the world.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—USDA Weathering Extreme Measures to Accommodate Trump’s Denial: “We’re keeping our focus on the USDA today, as the Guardian’s Oliver Milman dropped a bombshell frontpage report about the agency’s censorship of climate change. As the new administration took over, emails detailing changes in department language were sent around the agency indicating ‘climate change’ should be avoided and ‘weather extremes’ used instead. According to the staffer who sent the email, the USDA ‘won’t change the modeling, just how we talk about it.’ Another email asked senior employees to ‘visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch.’ Natasha Geiling of Think Progress was quick to tweet and write a post reminding us of how farmers are uniquely vulnerable to climate change (sorry, ‘weather extremes’) as well as some recent history on the verbal gymnastics employed by Obama’s USDA when addressing climate change with a demographic largely considered hostile to the idea.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Svensmark’s World-Famous Original Cosmic Ray Theory Gets Shut Down, Yet Again: “As climate deniers have scrounged around for arguments against the obvious, one popular avenue has been the Galactic Cosmic Ray theory. Championed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, the theory posits that tiny variations in radiation emitted by the sun, known as cosmic rays, are reducing cloud cover to the extent that they’re what’s actually causing climate change. (Spoiler alert: they aren’t.) Svensmark and the deniers got a big boost of credibility for the theory (which has been shot down for years) in May of 2016, when a paper based on data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider suggested that cosmic rays were interacting with particles given off by trees, which could be responsible for some observed warming. This new finding, that trees naturally emit the molecules that, when combined with cosmic rays, could grow into the particles that provide the basis for cloud growth. While mainstream and “skeptical” coverage tended to focus on the new finding that trees might be emitting climate-changing particles, deniers took it as support for Svensmark’s Galactic Ray theory. [...] By October, there was a follow-up paper debunking the far-out idea that these tiny cosmic changes were doing more to warm the climate than the massive amounts of greenhouse gases polluting our atmosphere.”
TheDogFather writes—Pruitt's Climate Change Con Only Works if You Can't Count: “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Scott Pruitt thinks it’s time for a spirited debate on climate change. That would be a dandy idea if that train hadn’t left the station a long time ago. And while it’s sad that we have an EPA secretary who will lie to us about the status of climate science, what’s downright frightening is that just about his entire agenda is based on tearing down every rule, regulation and policy designed to fight it and pollution in general. [...] ‘There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered (about climate change),’ Pruitt said during the interview. ‘Who better to do that than a group of scientists ... getting together and having a robust discussion for all the world to see.’ [...] The truth is this is nothing but posturing by Pruitt and the Right, which has steadfastly viewed any science that stands in opposition to their agenda as some kind of mystical unproven gobbledygook.”
Lefty Coaster writes—Now Greenland IS ON FIRE: “In a region better known for its ice and snow, it's a fire that now has scientists struggling to learn more. Since at least the end of last month, a stretch of land in western Greenland has been alight with a with a "sizable wildfire," NASA says.”
Pakalolo writes—There's a wildfire burning in Greenland. Meanwhile, Trump censors the term climate change: “Brian Kahn of Climate Central has reported a wildfire in Greenland. Given there are no trees there the fire is being fed by tundra grasses and scrub. The Greenland ice sheet is the 2nd largest in the world and holds 20 feet of sea level rise. There’s no denying that it’s weird to be talking about wildfires in Greenland because ice covers the majority of the island. Forests are basically nonexistent and this fire appears to be burning through grasses, willows and other low-slung vegetation on the tundra that makes up the majority of the land not covered by ice. Data for Greenland fires is hard to come by, but there is some context for fires in other parts of the northern tier of the world. The boreal forest sprawls across Canada, Russia, Alaska and northern Europe, and provides a longer-term record for researchers to dig into. That record shows that the boreal forest is burning at a rate unprecedented in the past 10,000 years.”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
poopdogcomedy writes—ME-Gov: Adam Cote (D) Rolls Out His Green Energy Jobs Plan With Emphasis On Solar Power: “Received this email yesterday from Attorney and Veteran Adam Cote’s (D, ME) gubernatorial campaign: Friends, Once again, Governor LePage has failed to seize an opportunity to strengthen Maine’s economy and create good jobs we need in Maine. After the Governor bullied the Maine legislature, they narrowly voted to uphold his veto of a bill that would have helped grow our solar energy industry. This is a huge loss for Maine and one of the clearest examples of the need for new leadership and change in Augusta. Neighboring states like Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire have thousands of strong, good paying solar jobs -- from plumbers and electricians to engineers and other professionals. But Maine, because of the lack of support from Governor LePage and the power of special interests, has only a few hundred solar jobs.”
poopdogcomedy writes—MT-Sen: Jon Tester (D) Goes After Congress' Inaction On Battling Climate Change: “Received this e-mail today from U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s (D. MT) re-election campaign: Is climate change real? Ask a Montana farmer. Sharla and I are bringing in the harvest weeks early this year. Ask any farmer or rancher across the western United States. Their crops and herds are suffering from drought. Ask anyone from an area hit by severe storms. Folks from communities all across Montana and all around the country can tell you the climate is changing, and it’s affecting our economy. Yes, climate change is a real thing -- and we have to do something about it. You can't fix a problem by pretending it doesn't exist. You have to dig in, find solutions wherever they exist, and take action.”
ENERGY
Fossil Fuels
NickEngelfried writes—What Happens When Trump's War on the "War on Coal" Fails? “For years under the Obama administration, Republicans worked to convince voters they would fix a series of intractable problems, if only they could reclaim control of all main seats of government. GOP lawmakers promised to make health care cheaper, straighten out chaos in the Middle East, and restore economic prosperity to communities hit by the declining coal industry. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House (and large majorities of state legislatures and governorships across the country), they’ve found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to actually make good on their promises. And so far, they’ve failed miserably. [...] Despite lots of cheap talk, Republicans have not been able to do much for coal country. Making matters worse, they’ve also failed to put forward any coherent strategy for helping coal communities adapt to a post-carbon world.”
Renewables, Efficiency & Conservation
Canatheist writes—The Electric Revolution is here. But are we prepared for the fallout? “So we have a car that can potentially go a million miles or more, needs very little maintenance, and is dirt cheap to drive, but owning a car for decades isn’t something that many people are interested in. Especially these days, cars go obsolete fast. Compare the dashboard of even a 5 year old car to a brand new one of the same make and you will see some radical changes. 10 years ago, an aux port for playing tunes from your Zune or iPod was a pretty forward thinking idea. Now, if you don’t see an aux port, bluetooth capability, plus application linking from Google, Android, AND Apple, you’re behinds the times. Who can take advantage of electric car longevity, and still use up the car before it’s horribly obsolete? Taxi cabs. Averaging around 70,000 miles per year (NYC Taxi numbers) cabs put considerably more wear and tear on a car than any individual can. What’s the most expensive part of the cab? The driver, which accounts for about 1/3 the total cost of running a cab. This is where autodrive coupled with electric vehicles is really going to change things.”
REGULATIONS & PROTECTIONS
Walter Einenkel writes—New study shows that the cost of rolling back climate regulations will push $300 billion: “Inside Climate News is reporting on a new study that throws deregulated polluted drinking water all over this Republican administration’s claims that it is too costly to implement many of the environmental rules put in place under the Obama administration. Jessica Wentz from Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law—an author in the study—told Inside Climate News that the projected costs of these rules down the road per year are dwarfed by the costs of not implementing them. They found that the total costs associated with those rules—the costs for companies to comply, higher prices for consumers and other indirect costs—were projected to be about $84 billion per year in 2030. But in that same year, the benefits—including the direct savings from lower carbon emissions, improved public health from lower emissions of pollutants, and new jobs created by the rules—were expected to be worth nearly $370 billion. They also found that the rules would prevent the emission of the equivalent of nearly 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2030.”
TOXINS, HAZARDOUS & RADIOACTIVE WASTE
Jeraldinee writes—Trump Cuts Funds For Toxic Waste Cleanup: “There was a Waste Management and Regulatory Oversight Subcommittee hearing held on 1st August, to discuss the future of Superfund, which is a program of Environmental Protection Agency. This meeting was held because of Superfund task force first report released insight of recommendations for the cleanup of sites. The Superfund task force was created by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in May 2017. As we can see until now, the fate of the program is facing many threats because of the budget cuts suggested by the EPA and Superfund program. The Superfund program will lose 30% budget if the budget proposed by Donald Trump gets approved. Many were expecting Trump’s proposed cut for EPA, but such deep cut from Superfund was unforeseen. There was a statement earlier, given by Pruitt which supported the Superfund program as he said, ‘he does not support cutting the Superfund program and instead promised to prioritize it’.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Beyond Bad Puns: Why Sam Clovis’s Racism Matters for Science: “Now, Sam Clovis, Trump’s nominee for the USDA’s top science spot, is up to bat. Clovis’s resume, with its lack of basic scientific credentials, has already been thoroughly dissected in multiple outlets (ProPublica’s Jessica Huseman has done particularly excellent work here). But the disastrous job interview isn’t over. Last week, CNN dug up some old blog posts Clovis wrote as a right-wing radio host back in 2011 and 2012. Most of the posts are unhinged diatribes on Hannity-type conspiracy theories: Barack Obama’s Muslim heritage, how the US government targets pro-life activists, and other Fox News-encouraged fairytales that have now become a mainstay of our news cycle. Clovis also used his blog to rant on the history of racial politics in the United States in a bizarre handful of posts. One screed calls on the 2012 Republican presidential candidates to publicly label progressives as “liars, race traders and race 'traitors.’”
Pakalolo writes—'Flash drought’ in High Plains may devastate half the wheat harvest-Warming saps protein from crops: “Environmental hero Bill McKibben writing in an opinion piece for The Guardian, blisters the Trump administration’s recently revealed emails that ban the use of the term ‘climate change.’ The emails reveal that The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), I know, instructed staff to hide the fact that global warming is threatening the food supply from crops to livestock. At the federal level, the new policy has yet to show clear-cut success either. As the say-no-evil policy has rolled out in the early months of the Trump presidency, it coincided with the onset of a truly dramatic “flash drought” across much of the nation’s wheat belt. As the Farm Journal website pointed out earlier last week: ‘Crops in the Dakotas and Montana are baking on an anvil of severe drought and extreme heat, as bone-dry conditions force growers and ranchers to make difficult decisions regarding cattle, corn and wheat.’ Eric Holthaus of Grist reports on the flash drought striking the high plains of the United States where he notes that ‘It’s peak hurricane season, but the nation’s worst weather disaster right now is raging on the High Plains.’
MISCELLANY
Desert Scientist writes—The Danger Of Being Green: “As the Muppet Kermit the Frog observed (admittedly in a different context), being green is quite difficult. There are two basic dangers, I think. One is the obvious problem of avoiding being a preachy pain in the ass and thus turning possible allies off (I knew a couple of those and after listening to them rant on I was ready to shoot and eat a spotted owl) and the other is avoiding being a target for certain types of “progress” oriented left-wingers (don’t worry about the environment- just feed the people) or (most often lately) greedy corporatist conservatives (the bottom line is the only important issue.) In some cases a person’s life may be threatened and sometimes taken (See: www.theguardian.com/...) I would postulate that one does not have to be an ideologue of any stripe to be an environmentalist and that being an environmentalist is in fact being humanist in the broader sense and has little to do with being a Democrat or a Republican, or at least shouldn’t. In fact, being an environmentalist is a survival tactic that takes into account that we humans are (gasp) animals who’s mental and physical survival (barring catastrophic volcanism, earthquakes or meteor strikes) depends on doing all in our power to mitigate the effects of our burgeoning population and technologically induced pollution, including the current problems with Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”