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 25,360 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
Pakalolo writes—A haunting silence is spreading over the natural world: “’These are soundscapes that no one will ever experience again in their natural state. They exist now only as an abstraction, a digital acoustic impression of what we once had.’ —Bernie Krause. Climate change has brought entire natural habitats to complete silence. The song of birds, the croaking of frogs and the buzzing of insects have vanished in areas where climate change eco-system impacts kill species that are unable to evolve quickly enough to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Species that can migrate are doing so in increasing numbers in a desperate effort to survive. Biophony specifically refers to the collective non-human sounds that occur in any given eco-system at any given time. It has provided scientific evidence to show that the sounds of nature have been altered by both global warming and other human endeavors. In a December 2015 interview with Outside Magazine, Bernie Krause reveals the uncomfortable truth that the natural world is increasingly silent.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Besame writes—Daily Bucket: Bombay froggy went a'courtin high and wow he does ride - un huh! “News of this frog’s unique mating technique auto-links to my name apparently, based on a message I received from someone* who sent me this story on innovative froggy sex: Bombay frog’s mating position is unlike anything seen before. I was interested and found photos to share, no small deal given these frogs mate at night (you know, only with the lights out). Also, they don’t touch each other during fertilization. And if this isn’t thrilling enough, they do it high up in trees during a monsoon! All this excitement from one species of the animal type (anurans — frogs and toads) scientists claim has the highest diversity of mating styles of any vertebrate. (Really? Really?) Helpful hint: you’re a vertebrate so get busy with the Kama Sutra or the illustration below and try to keep up.”
matching mole writes—Dawn Chorus: Isla De La Plata Revisited: “This diary documents my course on June 30 of 2011 when my Ecuador field course headed out to sea to visit Isla de la Plata, the Island of Silver, commonly known as the ‘Poor Man's Galapagos.’ [...] The island lies several miles off of the coast. It is part of Machalilla National Park, which is an attempt to protect the dry tropical forest of southwestern Ecuador. The nearest town is the village of Puerto Lopez, a hamlet supported by fishing and whale-oriented tourism (we saw plenty of whales on the boat ride over but that's a different diary).”
PHScott writes—The Daily Bucket: Prescribed Fire Photo Diary: “Lots of pictures from yesterday working on a prescribed or controlled burn to restore Longleaf Pines in North Florida. [...] It's been over 2 years since Ms. Helen had a burn on her property in western Gadsden County, Florida. Details and background are here. Please read if you want to know the whys and hows of controlled burning. This diary is all photos for the pyro in all of us. Fire is just so fascinating.”
mplo writes—Exotic Birds--Wonderful Pets to Have-Some require more Care, and have more Intense Temperaments: “As the title of my post indicates, Exotic Birds, or Parrots or Psittacine (hooked beak) birds, are wonderful pets to have around the house. They’re often strikingly beautiful, sociable, and can be great to have as pets, and as companions. On the flip side, however, some are more temperamental than others by nature, and must be dealt with more sensitively and carefully than others, they can be very messy, dirty, and some types of parrots are what are known as powder-down birds, which means that they naturally produce a very fine, white, and somewhat oily and sticky powder, as a means of insulation and protection for them. These powder-down birds generally originate in the desert, although some, like the Amazon Parrots (which originate in South and Central America), also produce this kind of a powder, also, as I’ll write more about in this diary.”
Dan Bacher writes—Water Contractors Launch New Attack on Striped Bass, Black Bass: “The Coalition for A Sustainable Delta, the Astroturf group funded by Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick’s Paramount Farms, on June 9 submitted a new petition to the California Fish and Game Commission to raise bag limits and reduce size limits on striped bass in an attempt to reduce their populations. This time they’ve added black bass also as a major ‘predator’ in their petition. The ‘Coalition’ is joined by a who’s who of the state’s agribusiness, water agency and corporate interests, including the California Chamber of Commerce, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern Claifornia, San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, Southern California Water Committee, State Water Contractors, Western Growers Association, California Farm Bureau Federation, Northern California Water Association and Kern County Water Agency.”
OceanDiver writes—The Daily Bucket - wild turkey kin selection? “First, the setting here: Wild turkeys are not native to the area where I live. This is a semi-rural island in western Washington where turkeys were brought for hunting in the middle of the last century and then went feral. My neighborhood, for at least the past 26 years, has been the summer home for various numbers of these wild turkeys who winter in the woods nearby, returning each spring for the breeding season. Recently I’ve seen the hen above with the three young poults wander through now and then accompanied by another hen. I hear turkeys most days now in the neighborhood as they forage through the back yards and lanes around my house. A couple of weeks ago I heard a major racket down the lane and went out to see what was afoot. I saw two hens and two toms, all cackling and gobbling loudly, the males in full display mode. Male turkeys spread out their feathers and strut around like this to attract hens to breed with them.”
Walter Einenkel writes—Right place at the right time, watch a kayaker save a desperate sea turtle: “Plastic waste in our oceans and waterways make up a large part of our planet’s environmental woes. Forty-seven percent of the debris washed up on Hawaii’s shorelines are estimated to be plastic. Progressive (and wealthy) San Francisco Bay is polluted by more plastics than any other major American body of water. There have been small steps in the right direction, including a rare bipartisan agreement in our legislature to ban microbeads (by July of next year). A couple of months ago, the below video was uploaded to YouTube showing a sea kayaker coming upon a turtle who has been tangled up in something one of us threw into a landfill. It takes a considerable amount of work, with a knife, to free the animal from its potential death sentence.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—WSJ Finally Figures Out #ExxonKnew Is About Fraud, Not Free Speech: “The WSJ has written eight editorials about the #ExxonKnew investigations, published five columns on it, and run another three op-eds. At sixteen pieces, they’ve covered this more heavily than they did the Paris Agreement (14), Keystone XL (12), or the manufactured controversy of Climategate, the biggest pseudo-win deniers have scored (13). The Journal's focus, by and large, has been the freedom-of-speech question. They’ve been hesitant, to put it kindly, to address the issue at the heart of it: Did ExxonMobil commit fraud for funding groups to tell the public that climate change poses no threat, when they knew, according to their own researchers, that to be false? [...] But that blindness has now been lifted in the most recent editorial, courtesy of letters sent from thirteen GOP attorneys general to the 20 AGs considering or pursuing ExxxonMobil investigations. These letters allege that turnabout is fair play, and if ExxonMobil’s minimizing climate risk is cause for investigation, then perhaps clean energy companies (like Al Gore’s venture-capital firm) could be investigated for exaggerating climate risk as well.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Fossil Fuel Profits Eclipsed By Pollution’s Cost: “A common refrain of those advocating against climate action has been that the economic benefits of the fossil fuel industry outweigh the costs of switching to clean energy. A new working paper out of Cambridge provides some numbers to show that this is not an even remotely legitimate claim. Researchers compared how much the top 20 fossil fuel companies profited between 2008 and 2012 with the social cost of the carbon emissions in their reserves. (At Vox, Dave Roberts goes into a little detail on the paper and explaining the social cost of carbon, for those who’d like a refresher.) The results of the analysis show that: "For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after-tax profit, with the single exception of Exxon Mobil in 2008.” So if companies had to pay to clean up their carbon emissions, instead of foisting that expense on the public, none of them would be making any money. For coal companies, every dollar of revenue translated to somewhere between $2 and $9 in climate costs borne by society.”
boatsie writes—Biochar: A "game changer" for the climate? ”A USDA research team investigating the ancient soil amendment biochar to address current and future food security is suggesting that, with its potential to store one gigaton of carbon per year by 2050, biochar could be a ‘game changer’ in addressing global warming. In field and lab tests using hundreds of varieties of biochar, scientists at South Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, are studying soil fertility, the stability of biochars in different types of soil, and the levels of carbon different biochars sequester. Biochar: A solid material obtained from thermochemical conversion of biomass in an oxygen-limited environment. Biochar can be used for a range of applications as an agent for soil improvement, improved resource use efficiency, remediation and/or protection against particular environmental pollution and as an avenue for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. In addition, to be recognized as biochar, the material has to pass a number of material property definitions that relate both to its value (e.g., H/Corg ratios relate to the degree of charring and therefore mineralization in soil) and its safety (e.g., heavy metal content). International Biochar Initiative.”
Crashing Vor writes—Diamonds in the Sky: “Among the hundreds of patents being filed for nanotech applications are several which offer the promise of remarkably fast and effective carbon capture and sequestration. These molecule manipulators are going to save your world. In the US, 40 percent of CO2 emissions are generated by electrical generation plants using fossil fuels. Those emissions are prime candidates for carbon capture because the smokestacks stay in one place. A lot of those stacks are sporting a new accessory: carbon nanotube membranes developed by the California company Porifera, which hold the promise of capturing carbon at a fraction of the cost of current tech. This ain’t a someday thing. You can buy it right now. (Assuming you manage a power plant and need one.) Other nano-based technologies for carbon capture include nanowire-bacteria hybrid ‘artificial photosynthesis’ developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a process called STEP (Solar Thermal Electrochemical Process) developed by chemists at George Washington University which can not only capture CO2 but knock off the oxygen atoms and get the really strong carbon monofilaments on the spot.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Deniers Urge Readers to Crowdfund Their Hedge Fund: “Remember back in January when James Delingpole went native (advertising) and promoted an anti-renewables hedge fund set up by denier blogger JoNova, her husband, and a not-Lord-Monckton-lackey? Well, JoNova has finally gotten around to posting about it on her own blog, hoping to entice readers into donating so they have enough cash to get the Cayman Island-based hedge fund going. The Cool Futures Fund Management needs at least $375,000 to get off the ground, of which it has already raised $42,530. Most of the donations are small, though there is one $10,000 gift from Juan Vicini… The fundraisers state it plainly that all contributors get in return for their financial support is ‘the warm fuzzy glow of satisfaction’ of knowing they're helping ‘what may be an effective financial tool” to make the most of ‘the climate-bubble.’ Basically, this is just a more sophisticated version of the Health Ranger’s bucket of beans: convince your readers to give you some of their money in return for something that may or may not have much, if any, value.”
cgibosn writes—Koch Fronts Defend ExxonMobil's Denial of Climate Change Science in Full-Page New York Times Ad: “The Kochs have spent over $88 million in *traceable* funding to groups attacking climate change science, policy and regulation. Of that total, $21 million went to groups that recently bought a full page New York Times advertisement defending ExxonMobil from government investigations into its systematic misrepresentation of climate science. Crossposted from Greenpeace USA. If you're an executive at a big oil company watching as ExxonMobil is finally exposed for studying climate change, covering up the science and spreading misinformation, you're probably worried now that state attorneys general are knocking on Exxon's door. Charles and David Koch must be worried, anyway. Their foundations gave more than $21 million to the people and groups that signed a recent, full page New York Times advertisement that defends ExxonMobil's longstanding efforts to ruin the public's understanding of climate change science.”
Extreme Weather & Natural Phenomena
terrypinder writes—Weekly Wednesday Weather: HOT HOT HOT: “There’s a major heatwave in the Southwest this week.Heat gets underappreciated as a major weather hazard in many places, even places where it’s hot all the time. But you know it’s hot when even Phoenix and the Inland Empire of California have excessive heat warnings. When it gets hot people die. Not only do people die, there are other problems. Roads buckle and rails kink. You might think the roads are a solid structure—they aren’t. They are built in slabs and layers, like lots of layer cakes laid end to end, and they expand and contract with the temperature. Pavement relief joints are added to help release the stresses caused by expansion and contraction but sometimes they don’t always help. Sometimes the heat-buckling can be quite sudden and dramatic---bits of concrete explode all over the roadway. In addition, if it’s too hot, the asphalt used to pave the road can deform—ok, melt. The heat can be as stressful to maintenance budgets as the winter freeze-thaw cycle. And rail deformation can and does cause derailments. I suspect that’s what caused that oil train to derail in the Columbia Gorge a couple weeks ago.”
POPULATION, SUSTAINABILITY & EXTINCTION
Garrett writes—A Paper on Megafauna Extinction: Humans and Climate Change Both: “Causes of the Quartenary megafauna extinctions are a popular subject to talk about. The main hypotheses are that the extinctions were caused by climate change, human hunting, or both. A new paper, looking at Patagonia, and conducting genetic and radiocarbon data analysis of megafauna bones, suggests the combination of the two. Megafauna across the Americas mysteriously disappear from the fossil record toward the end of the last ice age. Scientists have long debated what may have happened and largely point to two possible culprits. The timing of that extinction seems to coincide with two major events: the peopling of the Americas and the end of the last ice age. So did humans hunt the big animals to extinction or did the changing climate do them in? Perhaps the two were partners in crime, Dr. Metcalf and her colleagues suggest in a new paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances.”
OCEANS, WATER, DROUGHT
Dan Bacher writes—Ratepayers Protest Hidden Delta Tunnels Planning Tax: “Today, ratepayers from Santa Clara Valley Water District questioned unfair, and possibly illegal, fees that have emerged in documents recovered under the Public Records Act. The documents reveal an elaborate money transfer system set up years ago that is funding planning for the controversial Delta Tunnels project. Fees that taxpayers and ratepayers never approved. In a press conference after public comments at the SCVWD Board workshop on CA WaterFix today, Bryan Carr, a SCVWD ratepayer from Monte Sereno said, ‘As a ratepayer in the District, I am upset that my water District has used ratepayer fees and parcel taxes to fund planning for the Delta Tunnels for years. he Tunnels will divert freshwater that keeps the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary alive. We deserve a vote on where our taxes and fees are being spent, especially when these projects have not met state and federal environmental standards.’’”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
Meteor Blades writes—Sketchy coal baron to help dust cobwebs from climate change-denier Trump's campaign coffers: “Trump has promised to bring back coal jobs by rolling back environmental regulations, and such talk helped him scoop up 77 percent of the vote in the West Virginia Republican primary vote. But choosing the likes of Murray to put some cash into his run for the presidency ought to cost Trump the vote of every single coal miner in the state.”
Meteor Blades writes—Sen. Markey and seven other Democrats introduce bill to set up Climate Change Education Program: “Together with seven other Democrats, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, one of the Senate’s leading environmental champions, introduced a bill Friday to create a national program to educate the public on climate change. The introduction date was chosen to coincide with the first anniversary of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ encyclical urging the world to fight climate change. It’s too bad this bill could not have been introduced 25 years ago, just as the climate change deniers were gearing up their campaign of propaganda and climatologist-smearing. But even last summer, with the proof of climate forecasters’ dire predictions popping up everywhere from the Arctic to the Amazon, Markey couldn’t get his proposal—in amendment form—passed through Congress. Democratic Rep. Mike Honda introduced a similar bill in the House last year, with similar lack of results.”
WILDERNESS, NATIONAL FORESTS AND PARKS & OTHER PUBLIC LANDS
Lefty Coaster writes—President Obama talks about climate change in Yosemite National Park:
BYPRODUCTS, TRASH, TOXIC & RADIOACTIVE WASTE
ENERGY
Nuclear & Fossil Fuels
Dan Bacher writes—Western States Petroleum Association Wins The Prestigious "Scummy" Award: ”The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the lobbying organization for Big Oil in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, received the prestigious ‘Scummy Award’ from the environmental group ‘Stop Fooling California’ (stopfoolingca.org) on June 17 for ‘fighting for the oil industry’s right to pollute.’ In every edition of Stop Fooling California’s ‘The Crude Truth’ newsletter, the group gives the ‘Scummy Award’ for ‘who’s the best at being the worst.’ I love these awards because they offer a creative and humorous way to point out the latest transgressions of the oil industry. ‘Remember that time the Richmond Chevron refinery sent thousands to the hospital when it caught fire and covered the community with heavy, toxic smoke?,’ the group recalled. ‘Well, understandably, the local air quality management district didn’t like that one bit. So, officials set up five rules designed to reduce refinery emissions and ensure Big Oil doesn’t poison its neighbors. Seems reasonable, right?’”
Steve Masover writes—Coal hazard "protection" fallacies exposed by Oakland public health experts: “The City of Oakland will rally on the afternoon of Saturday 25 June outside City Hall, in opposition to the prospect of coal storage and handling in the city. Coal transport proposed by developer Phil Tagami would funnel up to nine million metric tons of coal through the city's proposed Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal (OBOT) each year, sending mile-long trains of Utah coal through West Oakland every day for the duration of Tagami's 66-year lease of the OBOT site. Immediately upon learning of this threat to the community's health and waterfront, city residents have organized to push elected leaders to take a stand against this misuse of publicly owned space. The City Council will vote on a proposal to ban coal storage and handling at the Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal (OBOT) at a special meeting on Monday, June 27 at 5 pm (rally at 4). As debate over the terminal unfolded over this past year, coal proponents have advertised they will use new technology to shield port workers and their West Oakland neighbors from the toxic, corrosive, and explosive dangers of transporting coal through the former Oakland Army Base. But fantasies can't protect Oakland's workers and families from coal's frighteningly real threats.”
ECO-ACTION & ECO JUSTICE
JayFarquharson writes—Our hand in killing Environmentalists: “Berta Cáceres, the murdered environmental campaigner, appeared on a hitlist distributed to US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military months before her death, a former soldier has claimed. Lists featuring the names and photographs of dozens of social and environmental activists were given to two elite units, with orders to eliminate each target, according to First Sergeant Rodrigo Cruz, 20.”
ybruti writes—Citizens Climate Lobby asks you to call Congress tomorrow: “Please call your members of Congress tomorrow, June 20th, to tell them to take action on climate change. Climate change affects national security and global stability, and you can tell both your senators and your representative that it’s their job to address this urgent issue. The call-in coincides with a meeting of more than 900 Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) members in Washington, D.C. to urge Congress to take bipartisan action on climate change. They will be lobbying their members of Congress, and your phone calls will make a difference.”