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 25,540 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.
Because I am on the road, only stories posted between at 3 PM Wednesday through 8 AM Saturday are included. The remainder of Saturday’s green stories will be included in the Wednesday Green Spotlight. |
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
Back Porch Philosopher writes—Oath Keepers try to co-opt the Standing Rock water protectors' efforts. Indians having none of it: “Glad the tribes are calling bullshit. Far Right Oath Keepers Seek to Exploit Water Protectors’ Stand. Worth the read. It says that Oath Keepers Media Director Jason Van Tatenhove may be presenting himself as a reporter with the Northwest Liberty News, a Kalispell, Montana-based far right website run by James White. [...] While Van Tatenhove’s writings are sympathetic with the protectors gathered in North Dakota, he is misleadingly casting the gathering to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline as similar to armed mobilizations by far right militia activists. While it is true that both have been opposed to federal actions, the commonalities end there.”
missivonne writes—An experiment on money and global climate change: “You see it over and over from Big Oil, chemical polluters and their paid lackeys in academia, think tanks, and Congress. We just don’t know enough to take a chance and regulate carbon emissions. Next time you hear that — including from Uncle Sid at Thanksgiving — bring up the history of bought research from the Merchants of Death. The lead industry was able to profit for additional decades by funding studies that cast doubt on whether lead made children retarded. The industry flaks would shake their heads and just say we didn't know enough to remove lead from paint and gasoline and, any way, that would just be a job killer. (Does the tactic sound familiar? It should.) The cigarette industry was impressed enough by the tactic to adopt it themselves. As did the sugar industry in the 1970s, when it funded studies shifting the blame for heart attacks and strokes to saturated fats. Now Big Food is following the same exact playbook.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Meteor Blades writes—Open thread for night owls: Report—Pesticide companies' own tests showed their products harm bees: “Agrochemical giants Syngenta and Bayer discovered in their own tests that their pesticides caused severe harm to bees, according to unpublished documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the environmental group Greenpeace. The companies conducted the trials on products that used the controversial pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, which have long been linked to rapid bee decline. Neonics are also the world's most commonly used pesticide.”
Besame writes—Daily Bucket: ocean-swimming grizzly bears a sign that "something's up" in British Columbia: “A pair of grizzly bears swimming near Vancouver Island in British Columbia is so unusual it may be a warning of habitat crashes on the mainland, or climate change, or both. Two bears were seen swimming from island to island about five miles off Port McNeill at the northeast end of Vancouver Island. Scientists believe they swam acrossQueen Charlotte Strait, island-hopping from the mainland over 25 miles away, a type of grizzly tourism. Chris Darimont, Hakai-Raincoast Conservation Scholar at the University of Victoria, notes that the change in behavior coincides with declining salmon populations and significant habitat loss due to logging, although a direct link hasn’t been established.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
e2247 writes—Attn: Trump ~ Climate Change and National Security ~ Respond to the Facts: “2014-05-08 National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change; May 2014; CNA Military Advisory Board. “Major findings: Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate change. MAB member General Gordon Sullivan, United States Army, Retired, has noted: “Speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen ...” We must have Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and their ilk as the most powerful Senators in the 115th Congress. The only way for that to happen is for Hillary Clinton and all down-ticket Democrats to be victorious. Otherwise Sanders, et al., will be less influential than paper tigers.”
Lenny Flank writes—New Study Looks at Psychology of Global Warming Denial: “A new research paper published in the journal Synthese has looked at several of these contradictory arguments that get thrown around the blogosphere, theAustralian Senate and the opinion pages of the (mostly) conservative media. The paper comes with the fun and enticing title: ‘The Alice in Wonderland mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism.’ Why Alice? Because, as the White Queen admitted: ‘Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Alice in Denialand: Mad as Hatters: “The idea that deniers live in their own topsy-turvey, through-the-looking-glass world is not exactly new. And that they are capable of holding mutually exclusive ideas is something Stephan Lewandowsky first outlined almost a year ago. The concept that deniers claim opposite positions at different times- for example, that CO2 doesn’t drive temperatures but that CO2 keeps the planet warm, or that temperatures can’t be measured accurately but that warming paused- has now been fleshed out into a full peer-reviewed paper, The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism. Building on the initial observations, Lewandowsky and co-authors explore how the tendency to embrace conspiracies instead of science is the hallmark of denial. They entertain the idea that it may be different individuals within the larger group who make contradictory claims, but then show multiple instances of a person who will erratically and unpredictably CHANGE PLACES(!) on these scientific issues. And unlike legitimate science, where disagreements are hashed out and undergo a self-correcting process, deniers rarely, if ever, turn their self-described ‘skepticism’ to their own kind.
tapu dali writes—Reposted from RealClimate b/c I think it's important. Sec Clinton, time to focus on Climate Change! “One of the silliest arguments of climate deniers goes like this: the atmosphere with its greenhouse gases cannot warm the Earth’s surface, because it is colder than the surface. But heat always flows from warm to cold and never vice versa, as stated in the second law of thermodynamics. The freshly baked Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts has recently phrased it thus in his maiden speech: It is basic. The sun warms the earth’s surface. The surface, by contact, warms the moving, circulating atmosphere. That means the atmosphere cools the surface. How then can the atmosphere warm it? It cannot. That is why their computer models are wrong. This is of course not only questions the increasing human-caused greenhouse effect, but in general our understanding of temperatures on all planets, which goes back to Joseph Fourier, who in 1824 was the first to understand the importance of the greenhouse effect.”
Ronin51 writes—2016 Election: Climate Change, The 900 Pound Guerrilla: “The Bad News is that climate change is a man-made disaster created by our undisciplined use of energy and resources, natural and human. Once a slow motion train wreck it is now picking up speed and the wreckage is piling up all around us. No other problem facing us is as important. That bears repeating. No Other Problem Facing Us Is As Important As Climate Change. That is because climate change makes all of our other problems much worse and likely unsolvable. If we don’t make climate change our number one concern and take immediate, significant action then the catastrophe will careen out of control with little chance of saving the world we love. In that case the show is over, we’re kaput, good night Irene. On the other hand, the Good News is that we know that climate change is happening and how to fight it. The solution is complex but not impossible; it involves the use of technology with our talent for organization. In addition, we can anticipate where needed changes will cause hardships and do things that ease the transition for those affected. There is no need for anyone to be thrown overboard.”
Ronin51 writes—Clinton Is Going to Lose Because of Climate Change: “Hillary Clinton will lose the 2016 election because she has not stressed climate change and enlisted the energy of younger voters. This is a terrible blunder that the planet can’t afford.”
discocrisco writes—Another reason why Trump should Never be Elected. Denial of Climate Change Despite Grave Situation: “At some point or another (and hopefully sooner rather than later) we, as a civilization, are going to have to institute a carbon tax on all fossil fuel emissions. It's the most practical way to stop climate change, and it's only way to recoup the costs of all the damage Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Gas have done and continue to do to our planet.’ How, we can afford to elect Trump given the monstrosity of this problem? One of Trump’s biggest supporters, Alex Jones, denies the reality that man-made climate is to blame for the loss 40 trillion of Greenland Sheet Ice. Such dangerous ignorance has tremendous consequences.”
OCEANS, WATER, DROUGHT
Dan Bacher writes—Groups ask agencies to dump Delta Tunnels plan or start over: “One day after Governor Jerry Brown once again posed as a ‘green governor’ and ‘climate leader’ while delivering the opening remarks at the 26th Annual Conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, a coalition of fishing, conservation and public interest groups sent a letter to the state and federal agencies overseeing the proposed Delta Tunnels urging them to either drop the plan, or develop a new Draft EIR/EIS for the project that includes newly released information. The letter concludes that approving the project as proposed threatens to tarnish President Obama’s environmental legacy. Groups signing the letter include AquAlliance, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, California Water Impact Network, Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, Planning and Conservation League, Restore the Delta, and Sierra Club California.”
ENERGY
Mark Sumner writes—Donald Trump is selling an energy pipe dream: “Donald Trump promised to lift environmental regulations, open federal lands to oil and gas production and ease permitting for oil pipelines during a speech at a fracking conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday in which he accused Hillary Clinton of wanting to kill the energy industry. ‘I am going to lift the restrictions on American energy and allow this wealth to pour into our communities — including right here in Pennsylvania,’ Trump told shale industry leaders. ‘The shale energy revolution will unleash massive wealth for American workers and families.’ But what Trump is selling the voters of Pennsylvania is a pipe dream. Literally. The oil shale boom is over, and there’s no clearer sign than this: In just the last two years, more than 100 oil companies have gone bankrupt.”
Hydraulic Fracturing & Drilling Wastewater
Walter Einenkel writes—New method shows that recent Texas earthquakes were man-made: “The 4.8 magnitude earthquake that hit East Texas back in 2012 was the result of wastewater injections from oil and gas companies. These are the findings, say scientists using a new method of research in the earthquake/geophysics field—Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). InSAR is a ‘technique for mapping ground deformation using radar images of the Earth's surface that are collected from orbiting satellites,’ according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It's regularly used to monitor volcanoes. In East Texas, it could detect changes in the of Earth's surface at the scale of centimeters. Other scientists have already hypothesized, using more traditional analysis, the same solutions to the East Texas earthquake events. As many people here have pointed out, in virtually every diary I’ve written on this subject, wastewater injection by itself is not the problem. Neither is hydraulic fracturing, necessarily. The issue is where the wastewater gets injected.”
ECO-ACTION & ECO JUSTICE
navajo writes—1200 Archeologists denounce desecration of Standing Rock burial grounds by DAPL, UN agrees: “Today, in a letter to President Obama, the United States Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers, a coalition of more than 1,200 archeologists, museum directors and historians from institutions including the Smithsonian and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries denounced the deliberate destruction of Standing Rock Sioux ancestral burial sites in North Dakota. As archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum workers committed to responsible stewardship, we are invested in the preservation and interpretation of archaeological and cultural heritage for the common good. We join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in denouncing the recent destruction of ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people. On Saturday, September 3, 2016, the company behind the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline project bulldozed land containing Native American burial grounds, grave markers, and artifacts–including ancient cairns and stone prayer rings. The construction crews, flanked by private security and canine squads, arrived just hours after the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lawyers disclosed the location of the recently discovered site in federal court filings.”
thebarrel7 writes—The Shame of what the Pipeline Company and the US is doing to the Sioux Nation in the Dakotas: “I've been reading the transcript version of the Sioux Nation's 1868 Treaty with the United States and I can't find one part that says the government or money-hungry private industry should expect access to Sioux land to carve a huge path through the land for a stupid pipeline. See this link for interesting reading … the original hand-written versions are a little faded and difficult to read, so I opted to download the transcript version - other than a couple typos it shows the acceptance of all rules by both sides, even though the Sioux were being driven into a reservation situation, the treaty was to stop a war … and they were expected to become farmers and learn to live like us, even though they were hunters …www.ourdocuments.gov/... This Treaty shows the border of their land, which interestingly includes their sacred lands of the Black Hills … here is where I start to see things about the Pipeline that look just like what happened many years ago … There was gold found in the Black Hills, miners began sneaking in and cutting into that sacred place without permission, getting clobbered by the Indians as they should have.”
medicineturtle writes—"Mother Earth is not a machine": “Henry Red Cloud: ‘Mother Earth is not a machine.’ ‘Sustainability is one of the main points of the Indians. ‘Mother Earth is not a machine, it has a soul,’ the Lakota Indians. There are three important things in life: raise children who grow food and drinking water. In any kind of food, one must ask today, what's in it and whether they are edible. Water is often dirty. In some countries, particularly in Asia, it is inconceivable, easy to drink water from a river, said Red Cloud. Worse even: Many people wear masks because the air is highly toxic. Finally, said Red Cloud, that we do not want to be the generation that has done nothing. As humans, we would have to reconnect, we greet on the street, stick together and work together. \”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
MerryLight writes—Saturday Morning Garden Blogging - Flowers Love Fall! “It’s official — autumn is here. With our hot, dry climate in Colorado, a lot of flowers don’t really start to look spectacular until the weather cools and moisture arrives. They know the end is near but they are determined to go out in a blaze of glory! (At least, that’s what they do at my house). [...] I tried to find the time to work on the garden beds this summer but my job and commute time combined made it just impossible until I was able to find a job closer to home. I decided to concentrate on potted plants instead. Among the many pots I planted this year, I had Black-eyed Susans come up in the craziest places without any warning. These beauties are volunteers in a pot I had on the side porch. I’ll be curious to see where they decide to move to next spring.”