This is the 520th 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. 19 Green Spotlight. More than 27,540 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.
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
foresterbob writes—The Daily Bucket: One Forester's (And One Cat's) View of the Eclipse: “I’ve always wanted to see a rocket launch, but during the heyday of the Space Race, Florida was far from when I lived. Twice I was near Cape Canaveral when a shuttle launch was planned; both times the launch was postponed. The other event that I longed to see was a total solar eclipse. I came close in 1984, witnessing the annular eclipse in Louisiana. 99.2 percent total, but not quite there! One way or another, I would witness the 2017 eclipse. Its path across the continent guaranteed me an opportunity to see it. If I stayed in Georgia, a four-hour drive would get me there. And if I found work in the Northwest, there’s no way I’d allow myself to miss it. As things turned out, I was the successful bidder on a forestry job on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, which lay directly in the path of totality. My ticket had been punched. I even found a place to stay that was within the zone. [...] Within thirty seconds of totality’s end, one viewer fired up his car and drove away. He probably leaves baseball games in the fifth inning, too. There was no reason for me to follow him. I watched the light return to normal strength, looking through the welder’s glass as the moon and sun parted company. On the ride back, two cars passed me in quick succession, one from British Columbia and one from Washington. Hey, eclipse is over, gotta get home now! As for me, I was in no hurry. The eclipse was the only thing on the day’s agenda. Nothing else was going to top the spectacular alignment that so few Americans had seen – until now.”
Besame writes—Daily Bucket: today sun and moon play a crepuscular con game on animals and plants: “Will pets and wildlife go blind looking at the sun today? How will animals react when a fake twilight and night descends? In Newport Oregon, the sun rises at 6:25am and 2.5 hours later darkness resumes as the moon blocks out the sun. Bees have been seen returning to their hives in past eclipses. Will songbirds go to sleep while bats and owls wake up? What about crickets and frogs? Will they begin their crepuscular chorus and mosquitoes begin their evening flights? As the sunlight increases, birds may consider it as an unusually swift return to sunrise and begin their morning songs. Perhaps butterflies will find a resting spot and moths will become active. There aren’t many scientific studies of how wildlife responds to a total eclipse (and even less for plants). Orb-weaving spiders were studied in Veracruz, Mexico during a 1991 eclipse. Spiders behaved in a manner typical of daily activity until totality, when many began taking down webs. After solar reappearance, most spiders that had begun taking down webs rebuilt them.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Kestrel writes—Dawn Chorus, Charlottesville Edition: Birds in Black & White: “I’d like to focus on the richness of our diversity by symbolically showcasing how ‘both sides’ get along just fine in the bird world. Although I’m only able to symbolize this through black birds and white birds, and black-and-white birds, it’s intended to speak for the larger community of our united world, all living and treating each other with grace, respect, and dignity. Feel free to add your own words and pictures (of any sort) to the mix and may we all dedicate ourselves to peace and non-violent expression of our personal truths.”
ban nock writes—The Yellowstone Migrations: “I have a new hero, no not a politician nor a big game hunter, not even the free soloist Alex Honnold. My heroes are wildlife researchers, and in this case it’s Arthur Middleton, a lowly assistant professor at Berkeley and a wildlife ecologist. Middleton exemplifies what I believed to be a species doomed to extinction. A wildlife researcher who is at home in the field and imagines unique methods of structuring studies to gather data that lead to unexpected results. I had thought the age of great wildlife researchers of the American West was about to come to an end. The world seems to have moved more towards movie star pop environmentalism and to have left hard science behind. The first time I heard of Middleton it was within the sarcastic comments of wolf advocates. The org I am a member of had helped finance a study that Middleton was soon to complete, and the results showed that the greatest predation on elk in the study was not from wolves. The wolf advocates found humor in this, as if structuring studies to give intended results were the normal way of doing things, and the Elk Foundation had blown it. The wolf advocates seemingly didn’t understand that the Foundation and the types of scientists we look to fund are not in the business of structuring science to fit preordained conclusions. What happened is Middleton began his study with questions, not answers. And no, the question wasn’t how many elk were wolves eating.”
owktree writes—Daily Bucket: Raptors on the Roof!: “Right place. Right time. Was on a walk and had a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk fly over me. Which was not too surprising since a family of these have been nesting in the general vicinity for years. (Their nesting location has varied a bit, and there has been some turnover in parents. Hawk survival, especially young ones, can be problematic in a city since there are lots of threats.) When I crossed back over the river and went up towards the Art Museum I noticed movement on one corner of the roof. Ooo… hawk perching on the roof with a blue background. Then it was two hawks! So I started clicking pictures. And was amused by the number of other people walking around who did not notice or did not care.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Fossil Fuel Talking Points Running on Empty: “Last week, the Axios Generate newsletter pointed out a Wall Street Journal editorial and a National Mining Association blog post that both claim coal is making a comeback. But Amy Harder was quick to deflate those hopes with a link to a story about coal-based utility executives moving their businesses away from coal, and with a ‘thought bubble’ saying earnings reports don’t sound near as optimistic as the industry’s talking points. More importantly, Axios reported back in April that a bump in coal was on the horizon due to increased Asian imports, so it has nothing to do with the the WSJ’s favorite strawman, Obama’s ‘War on Coal.’ Speaking of debunking right-wing talking points, it turns out it also wasn’t just Obama that was responsible for quashing offshore oil drilling and new pipelines. An appeals court ruled on Friday against a natural gas pipeline company, demonstrating that despite Trump’s push to streamline approvals, states still have a say in things (particularly under the Clean Water Act). As further evidence that Trump can’t just will projects into existence, a recent auction of drilling rights only had bids on 90 of the 14,000 available offshore blocks. Clearly, there’s little appetite among companies to exploit the Gulf of Mexico. Pretty hard to blame Obama.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Celebrating a Decade of Debunking at Skeptical Science: “We don’t normally celebrate birthdays here, but this one is worth a mention. Ten years ago, an Australian named John Cook decided to catalog denier myths for easy debunking after experiencing climate change skepticism in his own family. Not long after, he went public with the myth-busting and SkepticalScience.com was born. To celebrate a decade of debunking, SKS contributor BaerbelW put together a year-by-year walkthrough of the site’s successes, and it’s an impressive showing of what a group of dedicated volunteers can accomplish. From the numbered database of Most Used Myths, to an iPhone and Android app that’s been downloaded tens of thousands of times, to a Guardian blog spin-off by two SKS contributors, to an open-source online class on countering climate denial, to a 97-hour event honoring scientists with fun cartoons, to the 97% consensus paper famously tweeted by Obama, and a consensus on the consensus follow-up, the SKS crew has been unquestionably instrumental in pushing back on denial. Two of our favorite resources, which we come back to time and again and recommend for everyone new to the space, are the Debunking Handbook and the Escalator graphic. The handbook is short but incredibly informative, while the Escalator gif is the most clear and concise rebuttal to the ‘pause’ one could ask for.”
Dartagnan writes—Trump Disbands U.S. Climate Advisory Panel Providing Critical Data For Coastal Protections Dartagnan: “On Sunday, Trump abandoned the coastal United States in their efforts to prepare and plan against the effects of climate change, specifically denying them information to assess the impact of sea level rise on new construction and the means to prevent tidal incursion into roadways, businesses, and private homes that make up coastal communities. In yet another move that indicates the White House does not take the threat of climate change seriously, the Trump administration has disbanded a federal advisory panel that worked to translate the government’s climate data into actionable insight for policymakers and the private sector...[.] The Board of the Committee for Sustained Climate Assessment was made up of 15 persons representing private and public corporations, utilities, climate researchers and local public officials. Its purpose was to interpret federal data—the same data relied upon by the Department of Defense in formulating our national security policy—for private and public construction projects and to advise local communities how to plan their projects to account for climate change.”
Hunter writes—Open thread for night owls: Trump disbands National Climate Assessment panel: “The Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment is a group of scientists and government officials tasked with assisting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in their production, every four years, of the federal document analyzing the current and predicted effect of climate change on our nation’s infrastructure, agriculture, and citizens. The Assessment is intended as a roadmap not for preventing climate change, but dealing with its unavoidable consequences; the advisory panel’s role is to help guide the government’s continued efforts so as to best include key stakeholders—that is, the public and private groups that must then plan for those changes—and identifying data and processes that would be most useful to those groups. As of tomorrow, that advisory panel will no longer exist.”
Mark Sumner writes—Exxon knew climate change was real, and knew it was a threat, but sold doubt to the public: “When word leaked in 2014 that Exxon scientists had known about climate change for decades, Exxon denied the stack of documents was actually representative of their results. They accused those who revealed the information of cherry-picking documents that looked bad for the company, even though memos going back to 1982 carried dire warnings. In a 1982 document marked ‘not to be distributed externally,’ the company’s environmental affairs office wrote that preventing global warming would require sharp cuts in fossil fuel use. Failure to do so, the document said, could result in ‘some potentially catastrophic events’ that ‘might not be reversible.’ Still, Exxon refused to admit they had done anything wrong or covered anything up. Instead, they challenged scientists to look at their complete set of documents to see that this climate change suff was just a minority opinion. And now they have. This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements ('advertorials') in The New York Times. The paper, from science historians Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, documents a company that was all too aware of the dangers of climate change internally, and all too ready to lie about that knowledge in ads for the general public.”
Extreme Weather & Natural Phenomena
mathGuyNTulsa writes—Eclipse and Community: “We went to see the eclipse and found a community. We travelled 350 miles from our home in Tulsa to Fairmont, Nebraska to witness the solar eclipse. Despite 70% cloud cover, at the time of totality the sun was in patch of blue sky, giving a clear view of the event. It was indeed an awesome sight. This short diary isn’t about that, though. It’s about our experience in the village of Fairmont. First, the community had spent months planning for the event. They anticipated a rush of outsiders arriving and, with planning and foresight, welcomed us to their small town. There were viewing areas in two local parks, a fly-in to the local airstrip, and many community volunteers serving sandwiches, water, and other sundries to the visitors. The community had rented porta-potties for their guests. The library even had a supply of viewing glasses. along with eclipse information. Fairmont welcomed us with open arms.”
Sylvanus Prince writes—Klamath Falls birds and John Day totality photos: Photo diary.
Max Udargo writes—Total Eclipse: An Experience in Privilege: “If humans were always rational - ignorant by modern standards but rational by definition - then every rational human, naked or draped in mammoth hide, knew with certainty at that moment that the world was coming to an end and everything which had been before was no longer. The sun was gone, leaving a hole in the sky. Eternal night had descended - if even the night would hold. A rational person would know all of this instantly. So—at a time when we talk so much about privilege—here our collective privilege is that we all know better. Today, when the sun fell backwards into a hole in the sky, and the day turned into a nightmare of dishonest colors and troubled shadows, we were not afraid, because we were calmed by the protective arm and knowing smile of science. [...] Unlike my distraught ancestors, I could enjoy this boldness by virtue of a privilege bequeathed to me by science. This privilege is a kind of which we should all want to see more: the privilege of taking for granted something our ancestors never could, knowing it is a privilege everyone today can equally enjoy.”
DarkSyde writes—July 2017 sets global temperature record: “July is a hot month in the northern hemisphere. It can be beaten sometimes by August, but hopefully that won’t happen this year. Because July 2017 wasn’t a warm July, it was the hottest month ever measured in the modern global temperature record. And if that’s not depressing enough, there’s more: July 2017 has narrowly topped July 2016 as the hottest July on record, according to a shocking analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) released Tuesday. As a result, July 2017 is statistically tied with August 2016 (and July 2016) as the hottest month on record. What’s so surprising here is that records for warmest month or year almost invariably occur when the underlying human-caused global warming trend gets a temporary boost from an El Niño’s enhanced warming in the tropical Pacific. What that means for us civilians is the planet is warming up more than ever and the increase is squarely due to climate change forced by greenhouse gas emissions. That’s chiefly carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels, i.e., coal, oil, and natural gas. And we can’t even blame this one on the on-again, off-again, confluence of ocean currents and trade winds referred to as El Niño.”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
poopdogcomedy writes—NV, OH & VA-Sen: League Of Conservation Voters Helps 3 Climate Hawks Defeat 3 Climate Deniers.
ENERGY
Fossil Fuels
Mark Sumner writes—Trump officials order stop to study on health effects of mountaintop removal mining: “In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences announced that it was going to study the health effects of mountaintop removal mining. An expert team being appointed by the National Academy of Sciences will examine a ‘growing amount of academic research’ that suggests ‘possible correlations’ between increased public health risks for Appalachian residents and living near mountaintop removal coal mining, the Obama administration announced Wednesday. That study ended today, but not because the study had reached a conclusion. It ended because Donald Trump ordered it to stop. Trump administration officials have told the National Academy of Sciences to cease all work on a study of the public health risks for people living near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites in Appalachian, the academy said in a statement late this morning. Mountaintop removal mining is a uniquely destructive form of surface mining.”
Mark Sumner writes—Trump breaks out the spit and polish for clean, cleaner, cleanest coal: “As part of his exercise in stringing together sentences in a totally non-sequential, nonfactual, nonsensical way, Donald Trump spent a few moments in Phoenix bragging about clean coal. ‘We've ended the war on beautiful, clean coal, and it's just been announced that a second, brand-new coal mine, where they're going to take out clean coal — meaning, they're taking out coal, they're going to clean it — is opening in the state of Pennsylvania,’ Trump said, completely misrepresenting what clean coal is. [...] Coal coming from a mine is not clean, though it’s often ‘cleaned.’ Not by legions of workers armed with toothbrushes, as Trump’s words might imply, but by crushing the coal and running it through a ‘Preparation Plant’ to reduce the amount of ash and sulfur. Only, what comes out the other end … is not clean coal.”
REGULATIONS & PROTECTIONS
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Reformed “Skeptic” Embraces Red Team as Industry Worries About Regulatory Rollback: “As the Trump administration continues blinding itself to reality (most recently by suspending federal assistance for a report on the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining) and mashing ctrl+z on everything Obama did, even the oil and gas industry is getting worried that things may be getting undone too quickly. That’s the gist of Ben Lefebvre's PoliticoPRO story, which quotes various industry voices expressing some concern at the perhaps overzealous regulatory repeals. But before you get too excited about industry caring about the environment, know that their concern isn’t pollution, but public backlash after inevitable spills happens. One anonymous staffer told Lefebvre that ‘It’s not helpful if regulations are streamlined so as to allow something to happen — say, a methane explosion or a spill — and we’d be painted with it as an entire industry.’ So it doesn’t matter if a spill destroys an ecosystem or poisons people, but public perception matters. This mindfulness of public perception is also likely motivating the much-maligned Red Team effort. While most everyone is opposed to the idea because it is nothing more than a PR project meant to give the impression of a 50/50 split on the issue (as opposed to the actual 97/3 consensus), one person is giving Pruitt the benefit of the doubt. Unsurprisingly, it’s Richard Muller, the ‘converted skeptic’ behind the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.”
WILDERNESS, NATIONAL FORESTS AND PARKS, OTHER PUBLIC LANDS
Meteor Blades writes—Report on mucking up a bunch of our nat'l monuments is due Thursday from Interior Dept's Ryan Zinke: “Thursday is the deadline for Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke’s review of 27 of America’s 129 national monuments with an eye to rescinding or shrinking them. He’s already announced, without details, that he will recommend one of those, Bears Ears in Utah, be cut back. All the monuments being scrutinized have been presidentially designated since 1996, and most are more than 100,000 acres. Altogether they cover 11.2 million acres on land and 217 million acres in the sea. They were designated by presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Except for one, all are in the 10 most western contiguous states. National Geographic has a wonderful map-and-photo-filled explainer here. In a few hours we’ll see how much attention Zinke paid to the views of the 2.4 million people who commented publicly on the review. The League of Conservation Voters estimates that 80 percent of these comments favored keeping the monuments intact. Others have put the percentage even higher.”
susans writes—National Parks lifetime pass price to increase: “The Los Angeles Times reports today that beginning next Monday, 8/28/2017, the price of the lifetime National Parks pass for people 62 and older will increase from $10 to $80. There is a backlog as people hurry to take advantage before it gets more expensive. www.latimes.com/... With the pass, seniors get free visits to more than 2,000 sites managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
Rmuse writes—Farmers' Crops Are Rotting in the Fields Thanks To Trump: “Kind of like ‘getting tired of winning,’ the only thing that Trump is stopping is agriculture and rural prosperity that is indeed turning around; but it is going in the wrong direction for the American agriculture industry and in the ‘winning’ direction for the rest of the world. And, what that wrong direction amounts to for farmers is watching their crops rot in the fields because they are facing an impossible task of finding field laborers with expertise to harvest and process the crops to get them to market in a timely fashion. In the third or fourth report in a couple of months about how Trump’s immigration and trade policy is singlehandedly hurting an already struggling agriculture sector, farmers are crying, literally crying, that they cannot find the people qualified to harvest their crops. Unlike most other industries, agriculture is an extremely time sensitive industry where harvesting crops at precisely the right time is the key to success. But harvesting in a timely manner is an issue many farmers aren’t even having to face because they cannot find field workers to harvest at any time due to Trump’s immigration policy.”
webranding writes—Backyard Gardens. Could Use Some Advice: Long story short I had a fire in my house. I decided to take out a loan and do things with my house, built in 1972, to extend its life many more decades. One was putting in a new sewer line from my house to the City. The City drew the sewer line [off] by 4 feet. My contractor hit said line and flooded almost a city block. I had heard it was bad, but just saw it a few days ago. My backyard, I think a ¼ acre is just done. A mud pit. I got a few ideas. But know folks here are smarter than me. My contractor just wants me to lay sod down. I am like I have each year expanded my garden. I got no issue with grass, but really in 2017 that can’t be my only option can it?”
TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE
Walter Einenkel writes—As Trump drops infrastructure council to defend white supremacy, China speeds up their rail system: “Remember how Trump was going to try to deflect the global disaster his Republican Party is a couple of weeks ago, by unveiling some terrible idea for an infrastructure plan? Yeah, we all forgot under a barrage of reminders that this administration rose to power in no small part due to the promise that they would start a race war against anyone not white. And so while we have been awaiting the official announcement of how Trump and his transportation secretary Elaine Chao are going to try to privatize our transportation system and make corporations more money at the expense of tax payers, China decided to go ahead and [do what’s in that photo on the right]. Trump’s response over the past few days has been to disband plans for an ‘infrastructure council’.”