Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Here is the most recent previous Green Spotlight. More than 25,590 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
Besame writes—Monarchs migrate south as scientists examine the likelihood of extinction: “Summer is over for monarch butterflies and this year’s super-generation is flying south. Morro Bay has welcomed the first arrivals from the western subpopulation who winter in California, and butterflies are still leaving Washington. The eastern subpop usually begins migrating to Mexico in August, although in some areas migration was delayed by hot temperatures. Consequences of climate change and habitat loss have reduced North American monarchs to the lowest population levels ever recorded. Compared to 1995, there are at least 90 percent fewer monarchs now. Monarchs are fussy and don’t migrate when it’s too hot. Decreasing day length, cooler temperatures, and dying back of milkweed (the larval host plant) tell the butterflies when to move south. Monday was the first day of migration through Lawrence Kansas, almost a month later than usual. A group of monarchs were seen on the University of Kansas campus midday and by late afternoon all were gone. Lack of a breeze at ground level suggested ideal conditions for gliding and soaring up higher. The butterflies probably caught a thermal and headed southwest towards Mexico says Dr. Chip Taylor, Ecology Professor at the university and Director of Monarch Watch. Overall monarchs are delaying their exit from the north this year and larvae are still hatching in the southern areas.”
Steve Horn writes—Before Presidential Debate, Obama Admin Weakened Endangered Species Act Under Oil Industry Pressure: “As eyes turned to the most viewed presidential debate in U.S. history, the Obama administration meanwhile quietly auctioned off thousands of acres of land for oil and gas drilling in national forests, opened up 119 million acres for offshore drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, and delivered a blow to the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act rule change followed a multi-year lobbying campaign by the oil and gas industry and occurred the morning before the debate unfolded. The leasing decisions came just weeks earlier, with the most recent one taking place as an online rather than in-person drilling lease auction, the product of industry and U.S. government backlash against efforts such as the Keep It In The Ground campaign which aim to block fossil fuel project development. Collectively, the announcements coincide with the release of a report by the group Oil Change International, which crunched the ‘climate math’ numbers and concluded that governments must stop both permitting new fossil fuel projects and tapping into a huge swath of existing oil and gas fields and coal mines.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
OceanDiver writes—The Daily Bucket - food's where you find it: “Hooded Mergansers yesterday afternoon. One caught a sculpin with a big splash, and the others followed close behind as it paddled away. There’s always a chance she might drop it. Maneuvering a big fish into the right position for swallowing is tricky when you have no hands, and are worried about somebody stealing it. Back on shore, a noisy chattering flock of Red-winged Blackbirds settled onto a Douglas fir a few days ago, extracting fresh ripe seeds from the cones.”
Besame writes—Court rules today against USFWS plans to capture and kill red wolves: “Red wolves in North Carolina cannot be taken from the wild unless they pose an imminent threat to people or property and not just because someone doesn’t want a wolf nearby. This ruling by federal court today was in response to a suit brought by conservation groups against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. The court told USFWS to stop capturing and killing—and authorizing private landowners to capture and kill—members of the rapidly dwindling population of wild red wolves on private land in the state. Earlier this month, the USFWS announced that red wolf restoration was possible but with caveats. I wrote about this in Red wolves can repopulation North Carolina! USFWS just announced their plan. Although this plan accurately was considered seriously flawed by conservation groups, my view was that announcing restoring wild red wolf populations as scientifically possible was an important step towards ensuring their protection in the wild and provided a basis for arguing against the USFWS’s caveats.”
Besame writes—Daily Bucket: Toughie (discovered in 2005, dead in 2016) shows we need a love song for earth: “Toughie, who spent the last eleven years in retirement from his forest canopy job in Panama, died on September 28th in the Atlanta Botanical Garden. The last of his kind, he was grabbed out of the wild in an urgent 2005 rescue mission to save as many frogs as possible when the deadly chytrid fungus swept through the cloud forest in central Panama. The fungus was especially deadly in this small range (less than 39 square miles) and field studies say it’s likely that 85 percent of all amphibians who shared his home territory were wiped out. We didn’t even know what species he was until 2008 when he was described as a Rabb’s fringe-limbed treefrog. Scientists say we will lose half of all species by the end of this century, whether we’ve seen and described them or not. In many cases, we won’t know what is lost although so far we have catalogued 1.3 million species. Each year more than 15,000 new species are found and scientists estimate there are 8.7 million species on the planet, plus or minus 1.3 million.”
enhydra lutris writes—The Daily Bucket - September Yard Report: “This is part of my ongoing project to document the changes in our yard from month to month.”
marksb writes—A Hike Through the Dry Mountains of Coastal California: “Every Sunday, my wife and I walk. We have a few routes we do, often going from near the coast up into the foothills and back, usually 6 to 8 miles. Our knees and hips still work, so we walk at a good clip and usually bring LuckyDog. On this Sunday (two weeks ago), we left Lucky at home and went up the coast to Gaviota State Park, to hike up the back of the coastal mountains to Gaviota Peak. It’s about 3 miles up, with an altitude gain of around 2,000 feet. Not too steep, but pretty much continuously up. The trail goes through a woodland area first. Oak and Sycamore dominate the trail here and it’s nice and cool along the way—much appreciated up the trail a bit when we’ll spend two and a half miles hiking up the mountain in the hot sun.”
Dan Bacher writes—Feather River Hatchery Ladder Opens As Salmon Spawning Season Begins: “The fish ladder at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Feather River Hatchery in Oroville opened on September 19, heralding the start of the spawning season on the Feather River. As the hatchery spawns spring-run Chinooks, anglers are experiencing increasing salmon success on the section of river open to fishing. The hatchery spawns both spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon. The staff will take more than 3 million spring-run eggs and 12 million fall-run eggs over the next two months in order to produce Chinook salmon for release next spring, according to Penny Crenshaw at the hatchery. The hatchery has trapped around 1,000 spring-run Chinooks and has taken 2.8 million eggs to date, according to a preliminary estimate. They will begin spawning the fall-run Chinooks around October 10.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Climate Science History in Primary Documents: “If you spend any amount of time talking climate change online, before long you’ll run into someone who thinks they’re clever in pointing out that They used to call it global warming, but then when it stopped warming, they switched to climate change! There are a number of ways in which this can easily be proven wrong. One is to point out that the IPCC was never the IPGW. Another is to point out that it was actually GOP messaging guru Frank Luntz who recommended they use ‘climate change’ because it didn’t sound as ominous as ‘global warming.’ Now there’s a resource that shows that the concept of climatic change (as opposed to global warming) is over a century old. Brad Johnson has put together a timeline of climate change science, dating back to John Tyndall’s work in 1861 and ending with the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990. So in response to those who claim that climate science is still in its infancy and in no way certain, we can point out that the hypothesis emerged before cars did. In 1882 H.A. Phillips wrote a letter to Nature warning us that ‘increasing pollution of the atmosphere will have a marked influence on the climate.’”
e2247 writes—Mon. Oct 3 Leonardo DiCaprio, President Obama, Katharine Hayhoe on Climate Change ~attn: Millennials: “Mon. Oct. 3rd Leonardo DiCaprio (actor-producer-activist), President Obama and Katherine Hayhoe (acclaimed evangelical-atmospheric scientist) will discuss Climate Change at ‘South by South Lawn (SXSL): A White House Festival of Ideas, Art and Action.’ Will this be an exercise in what Mychal Denzel Smith characterizes as a ‘sweet spot between affable and standoffish’? Will there be even one policy proposal about Climate Change articulated? Will it foreshadow some Tuesday, Oct. 4th, lone 2016 Vice Presidential Debate moderator asking anything substantive of Tim Kaine & Mike Pence about their positions on Climate Change impacts on National Security? Will Millennial Voters including but not limited to those who are part of The Longwood Story give any attention to the SXSL Climate Change discussion before the Kaine-Pence political extravaganza Tuesday at Longwood University or will it all be just so much French to them?”
Extreme Weather & Natural Phenomena
Pakalolo writes—Catastrophe in Siberia as wildfires threaten oil pipes-Fire in the Amazon is reaching record levels: “The Siberian Times reports on a horrific and large outbreak of fires throughout the Siberian region. These fires are threatening the Eastern Siberia - Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline and has caused the Irkutsk Oil Company to suspend supplies of oil. 'The situation with the fires in Irkutsk region and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) remains difficult,' he said. 'There are six wildfires less than in five kilometres from the ESPO facilities. Fires were as close as 300 metres from key pipeline facilities, he said. Click here to see the wildfires that ‘officially’ do not exist. The pictures show the fires in Irkutsk region, with one claim that locals have been subjected to smoke fumes for as long as six months from blazes that, per the Siberian Times, officially were not burning.”
terrypinder writes—Daily Kos Weather Center: Hurricane Matthew could be worst storm for Jamaica since 1988: “Most modeling suggests Matthew will move over eastern Jamaica (or past just barely to the east) and then over eastern Cuba. When it gets into the Bahamas is where things get extremely uncertain.”
Climate Change and the Florida Fall: “As the fall of 2016 begins with the autumnal equinox (September 22), here in this part of Florida most folks are probably aware that we've had an usually hot summer – which is saying something for the Tampa Bay Region. This should not be too much of a surprise however, since August and July tied for the hottest months on record and, as reported by NASA, ‘each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month in the modern temperature record.’ Memories of seasons past suggest that there should have been a cool spell or two by now – a hint of fall, at least. Not this year, unless you count the few sub-90-degree days in early September when Hurricane Hermine passed by. We've not only been in the 90s, we've often been in the mid-90s, with more than a few 95-degree days in July and August, and now September. In this part of Florida, the average high for the summer months is 90 degrees – exactly. A cursory check of Tampa's high temperatures shows we've been at or above that most days (about 80% of the time), with plenty of days in the 93-96 range. This is incredibly hot for Florida, and more than a few folks have remarked to me that they do not remember it ever being this hot. I don't either, and I've lived here for more than 60 years.”
OCEANS, WATER, DROUGHT
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Drought Index Update Leaves Deniers High and Dry: “We don’t usually waste your time with denier’s dabblings in climate science. There are too many examples, they rarely get any traction in the real world, and these posts would all be the same. ‘Are climate scientists adjusting data to make climate change look worse than it is? No. No they’re not.’ But in what may be a new record for how quickly a conspiracy can crumble, a Watts Up With That (WUWT) post was published in the early morning hours on Thursday and was already corrected by the start of the work day. The headline asks ‘Is NOAA adjusting data to make droughts look worse than they are?’ No. No they’re not.”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
gmoke writes—Environmentalists Are Awful Voters: “Nathaniel Stinnett launched the Environmental Voter Project (http://environmentalvoter.org) in 2015 with the mission of ‘identifying inactive environmentalists and then turning them into consistent activists and voters.’ He spoke on Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at MIT and at Tufts on Thursday, September 22 on the topic of ‘Modern Environmental Politics: big data, behavioral science, and getting environmentalists to vote.’ You can see his Tufts presentation at youtu.be/...”
Steve Horn writes—Trump Economic Adviser "Pushing" for Climate Denier, Fracking Promoter to Head EPA: “Stephen Moore — economic adviser for Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign — recently told Politico's Morning Energy that he is ‘pushing’ to have a climate change denier and fossil fuel promoter, Kathleen Hartnett White, named as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if Trump is elected president in November. Buried in Politico's daily newsletter on September 28, the news comes as the Trump campaign has also announced that another climate change denier — Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) — is leading Trump's EPA transition team. White currently serves as a fellow-in-residence at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which, like CEI, is funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, and she also serves on the Trump campaign's economic advisory team. White co-heads the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Fueling Freedom Project, which has among its stated goals to ‘explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels’ and ‘end the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant.’”
BYPRODUCTS, TRASH, TOXIC & RADIOACTIVE WASTE
Eclectablog writes—One year since Gov. Snyder admitted the #FlintWaterCrisis, only 0.7% of lead service lines replaced: “At the Michigan Nurses Association conference taking place in Lansing this week, residents of Flint got up to talk about the ongoing catastrophe happening in their city – the so-called “Flint Water Crisis”. Calling this situation a “crisis” is, in fact, understating the problem. The women who spoke and later talked in-depth to my wife Anne described how very little has changed since their drinking water became poisoned with the powerful neurotoxin lead, the direct result of decisions made by appointed Emergency Managers over two years ago. • Children already showing signs of behavioral disturbances resulting from lead poisoning. • Lack of ‘easy’ access to bottled water now that the federal ‘emergency’ has been declared over and the National Guard no longer assisting with water deliveries. • Pregnant women having an inordinate number of miscarriages. • Undocumented immigrants unable to obtain bottled water for fear of being deported because they must show and ID at water distribution sites. • Corroded water lines inside the house now leaking and slowly destroying the home itself. • Hot water heaters and other water-using appliances ruined and rendered unusable by the corrosive Flint River water pumped through them for months. • Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in residents young and old who no longer trust any person or any group, particularly the state government. In short, nothing about this ‘crisis’ has been improved for them. In fact, because the eyes of the country have turned away, they feel things are in some ways worse. They feel abandoned.”
ENERGY
Nuclear & Fossil Fuels
amazonwatch writes—#EndAmazonCrude! “Yesterday Amazon Watch issued a new call to the consumers and companies in the U.S. and around the world: End Amazon Crude! With the release of a new investigative report, an animated video by long-time ally and Pulitzer Prize winning animator Mark Fiore, an infographic, and a petition to demand that refineries in the U.S. stop sourcing crude from the rainforest, our new campaign to End Amazon Crude kicks off with a bang, and we want you to join us in this important call to action. As you may know, multinational corporations and governments have long sought to exploit the Amazon for its resources. The devastating effects of oil drilling in the Amazon are painfully obvious due to the drill and dump practices of Chevron (then Texaco) and Occidental Petroleum we've so often reported. Nonetheless, even today many governments and companies are still drilling in the Amazon despite its devastating impacts on the indigenous communities who live there and its many negative effects on our climate.”
Renewables, Efficiency & Conservation
databob writes—Koch brothers and fossil fuel utilities poised to destroy roof-top solar in Florida: “So what’s the bottom line? Buried in the fine print of the definitions, this amendment would allow utilities to charge more than the market rate for electricity sold to ‘roof-top’ solar customers when they need it, and to pay less than market rate for the excess electricity purchased from the same customer. The legalese is a bit dense, but once you get past the notion that the fossil-fuel utilities are spending almost $20 million to do something nice for consumers, it gets easier to understand and believe. Why does this matter? Well, I’m a Florida resident contemplating installing roof-top solar (i actually am, believe it or not). My cost-benefit analysis looks good as long as I can count on buying and selling electricity at the market rate. If I have to pay more for what I buy and get less for what I sell, it starts to make less financial sense to do this. Since the amendment as proposed doesn’t include any limits on how badly the utility is able to screw me — in both directions, no less — it’s not very likely I’m going to invest a large sum (probably over $20,000) in a roof-top solar system I really, really want, at least until the fallout from this amendment is known.”
Pipelines and Other Fossil Fuel Transportation
navajo writes—N.D. militarized police push back Water Protectors with armored vehicles, tear gas and rifles: “Ever since North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to protect the pipeline, our Water Protectors don’t know what they’ll face. They have been pushed back by private security guards armed with attack dogs and pepper spray. Some were bitten and sprayed as a newly reported ancestral burial site was deliberately bulldozed to destroy evidence. Wednesday, September 28, the Water Protectors’ caravan was met with armored vehicles, helicopters dropping tear gas and police armed with military-style rifles. Video shows that as the resisters are confronted, the militarized force starts locking and loading their weapons. Our people immediately raise their hands in unison and yell that they are not armed, that they are praying! The arrests begin, tear gas goes off and one videographer flees to get his footage out. Twenty-one are arrested.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
skohayes writes—Saturday Morning Garden Blogging: Fall is upon us already! “Fall seems to have jumped the gun a bit this year out here, and we’re already seeing temperatures in the 40’s at night, and it isn’t even October! I welcome the cool nights as I can open the windows and cool the house down at night. We were still getting some daytime highs in the 90’s last week, so my plants were having a hard time adjusting! I don’t have many pictures of the garden this year, we had another bad year of grasshoppers and things got pretty chewed to pieces. What the grasshoppers didn’t get, like my sunflowers, the borers killed before they bloomed. Even my front planters struggled, as the grasshoppers chewed the petunias and the coleus to shreds. I had a few weeks where it looked “decent.”
TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE
Court Olson writes—What is going on? Why the Big Rift Over I-732 Among Environmental Groups? ”“I don’t get it. What’s going on?” a woman asked me after a mixed race meeting of mostly strangers gathered to discuss the intersection of race and climate justice. She wanted to know why the host environmental group, 350 Seattle, had recently changed their position from endorsing to neutral on I-732 –-that’s the revenue neutral carbon tax initiative on the ballot this fall in Washington State. This woman wasn’t the first to ask me such a question. [...] Some of the I-732 opposition reasoning seems obvious enough. Here is an excerpt taken from postings by an association of people of color groups named ‘Front and Centere’: ‘I-732 does not adequately address who’s most impacted by fossil fuel pollution and climate change nor does it work to alleviate either of those burdens for communities and workers on the frontlines. Instead of confronting the inequities of pollution and the opportunity for a Just Transition, I-732 poses as tax reform. This is a step backwards for climate justice.’”
MISCELLANY
Walter Einenkel writes—Republican 'science' chairman Rep. Lamar Smith is now going after the SEC to protect ExxonMobil: “Texas Republican, climate change denier, and inexplicably the Chairman of the House Science committee Rep. Lamar Smith continues his abuse of power in his tireless quest to defend ExxonMobil from the meanies around the United States. Smith, chairman of the House Science committee, asked the federal financial regulatory agency to provide documents related to its investigation of Exxon. Saying the committee was "troubled" by the commission's investigation, Smith requested SEC chair Mary Jo White provide information about the purpose, scope, and origin of the agency's inquiries into Exxon's climate disclosures. Like any good Republican trying to gum up the works, Rep. Smith is asking the SEC to provide enough information that will allow him to waste everyone’s time while doing nothing positive for the world of science. Here’s the letter somebody in the oil and gas industry he wrote to Mary Jo White of the SEC.”