This is the 544th 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 February 3 Green Spotlight. More than 28,380 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
matching mole writes—Dawn Chorus: Immigration: “Immigration has been in the news a lot recently and I thought I’d talk, briefly, today about bird immigration. This is a different topic than migration, here we’re going to talk about permanent changes in where birds live as a result of their movements. [...] Birds are quite mobile organisms and thus are somewhat less constrained by geography than say salamanders or freshwater fishes. However birds still show geographic patterns of distribution. You don’t see birds of paradise in the Amazon or quetzals in Australia. Here in the Nearctic we share a lot of bird families with the Palearctic such as nuthatches, chickadees, and finches. Other groups such as the corvids (jays, crows, etc) occur basically worldwide. However we have a lot of immigrants from the Neotropics that provide a lot of color to our more temperate habitats. Our warblers, hummingbirds, and tanagers are all basically tropical birds that are slumming it up north. Less colorful (mostly) but an important component of the our summer are the flycatchers. These are also neotropical birds.”
annieli writes—Nebraska GOP State Senator tries to erase the designation of wind power as “renewable.”: “With the prospect of Facebook putting a massive wind energy development in Nebraska to support its data center, Tom Brewer R-District 43 deploys a bureaucratically lazy solution when the policy issues are far more nuanced. Rather than actually address the regulatory and environmental issues and the externalities of energy development, especially in a rural state, Brewer has chosen a pencil-pusher’s solution in arguing against developments not affecting his district. Nebraska State Senator Tom Brewer (R) has proposed a new bill that would restrict wind power development in the state and end the designation of wind power as ‘renewable.’ One provision in Brewer’s bill would redefine the term ‘renewable energy generation facility’ by striking out the word ‘wind’ from the list of designated facilities. [...] ‘Wind energy is not Nebraska Nice,’ Brewer wrote in an opinion piece last October. ‘Wind energy is a scam that hurts people and animals, wastes billions in tax dollars, and isn’t ‘green’ energy by any definition of the term’.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
owktree writes—Daily Bucket: Looking forward to Spring: Photo diary. “A gray day in February, so time to brighten things up a bit.”
6412093 writes—The Daily Bucket--Marching Frogs: “I spotted the coded message immediately. She’d published it in the ‘Ask an Expert’ garden section, like we planned. ‘Are frogs out earlier than usual in Oregon? I’ve noticed the frogs are out of hibernation early in Albany and Corvallis. I’ve lived in my homes for 13 years and never witnessed this.’ The expert responded this is their normal breeding time, and in McMinnville they’d started calling around Jan. 11. That was the warning I waited for. Now I know the Pacific chorus frog was on the move, heading out from under leaves and plants and hopping towards their ancestral birth ponds, to breed and continue their life cycle for another year. Albany and the other cities are an hour or two south of where I live. If the frogs are mobilizing there, they’ll be active in my own backyard very soon.”
Pakalolo writes—A destructive beetle has jumped the Rockies: “Yale Climate Connections reported this news when they recently shared this post on social media. Canada’s vast conifer forests are being destroyed by tiny beetles that are on the move. Mountain pine beetles are native to western North America, but as the climate warms, the beetle’s range is expanding. Diana Six is an entomologist at the University of Montana. She says that, as the beetles spread to these new locations, they are starting to kill a new type of tree: jack pine, which is a dominant species across much of Canada. Six: ‘Jack pine is what we call a naive host. It means it’s one that the beetle hasn’t co-evolved with and so that tree has never had to evolve defenses against the beetle.’ Six worries that the pine beetle, which she describes as being the size of a mouse turd, ‘could destroy vast areas of jack pine forests across Canada, and eventually even move into eastern pine forests’.”
PHScott writes—The Daily Bucket: Florida's Champion Bald Cypress Trees: “Last Saturday I went on a hike sponsored by the FL Native Plant Society to an area I don't often visit way east of Tallahassee. We were near the Suwannee River, a river many of you may recognize from an old song (read the link please — it mentions my old buddy who wrote a new FL state song). For those driving to Florida, it's southwest of I-75 and I-10 near Live Oak, FL or the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park. [...] The habitat is very simliar to my neck of the woods west of Tallahassee. We started at the Suwannee Ridge WEA (also a mitigation area) which has many sinkholes and some have cave openings. This is a fresh hole judging by the lack of moss farther inside. Peter stepped to see if there was airflow indicating a larger chamber. He will likely enlarge the opening and explore further at some point. Bears, raccoons, possums, snakes and more also use these small caves.”
Jen Hayden writes—Wildlife officials stunned and outraged after the Trump administration guts the Migratory Bird Act: “Donald Trump and his Republican allies are turning over every element of our government and governance to lobbyists and big industry. A Big Pharma executive put in charge of Health and Human Services, an anti-public school billionaire crusader in charge of the nation’s public schools and on and on. In another big gift to big polluters, the Trump administration has rolled back elements of the 1918 Migratory Bird Act that have been in place for nearly 50 years and is credited with helping hundreds of species survive and thrive since then. They’ve “re-interpreted” parts of the Act to help their pollution-pumping friends. From Audubon: In December, the Department of the Interior released an interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that eliminates its ability to hold industries accountable for bird deaths. Reversing decades of practice by administrations under both political parties, this legal opinion drastically limits the law and puts hundreds of species of birds at greater risk.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
ClimateDenierRound-up writes—Trump Administration Apparently Weighing Kigali and HFC Options: “Last November, the Trump administration made a subtle but surprising announcement in that it supported the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, a global agreement to reduce certain types of greenhouse gases. At the Montreal Protocol’s 30th Anniversary meeting, nations of the world came together to discuss how to continue reducing chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC emissions, which have largely been removed from use as hair spray and as coolants. Though the ozone hole is the primary concern, the gases that replace CFCs (HFCs and other variants) are also greenhouse gasses, many times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The US participation last year in the Montreal protocol discussions on the Kigali Amendment to phase out HFCs was a stark contrast with the administration’s Paris agreement approach. This support for phasing out HFCs was likely driven in large part by the industry’s support for the Montreal Agreement. This was, it seemed, the one international trade agreement that Trump wasn’t going to scuttle for no good reason. Well, now we’re not so sure.”
ClimateDenierRound-up writes—Critical Thinking Is Critical, But So Are Facts: “Idaho lawmakers are currently debating whether or not to include climate change in science education standards. The local lawmaker opposed to including the fact that human activity is changing the climate, Republican Rep. Scott Syme, said he doesn’t like that the climate-related sections of the proposed standards ‘have conclusions drawn in.’ Now, aside from the grammar no-no of ending a sentence with a preposition, this focus on the process of learning instead of the facts is not all that misplaced. Students should absolutely be taught critical thinking skills, instead of just wrote memorization of facts. But then again, Rep. Syme said he doesn’t ‘care if the students come up with a conclusion that the earth is flat – as long as it’s their conclusion, not something that’s told to them’.”
ClimateDenierRound-up writes—As Conservatives Continue Sharing Fake News, Critical Thinking Skills Offer Inoculation: “Two studies published this week provide the latest update to our ongoing search for a cure for fake news. One of the studies demonstrates that the fake news issue continues to be ideologically--and politically--one-sided. An Oxford working paper seeks to answer the question posed as the first line of the abstract, ‘what kinds of social media users read junk news?’ (You already know the answer…) The authors found that while Democrats prefer mainstream media and Republicans like conservative media, it is hard-right (not necessarily Republican) Trump supporters who account for more than half of the junk news traffic studied on both Twitter and Facebook.”
Pakalolo writes—Keeping the world below 2°C of warming requires technology that we don’t possess: “Scott K. Johnson, of ars Technica reports on a new European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) report which looks at the outlook for CO2 removal. It is not remotely optimistic. Instead, the authors state that negative emission technologies (NETs) offer only ‘limited realistic potential’ to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and not at the gigaton scale envisioned in climate scenarios. The analysis is well known to everyone who has paid even a little attention: the world hasn’t yet done enough to lessen the impacts of climate change. The last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report included greenhouse gas emissions scenarios that could limit global warming to two degrees Celsius or less, but we’re not even close to a trajectory that would achieve any of them.”
Hunter writes—Open thread for night owls: Trump to withdraw nomination of climate skeptic to top environment post: “The White House intends to withdraw another nomination as staffing problems continue past the one-year mark of the Trump administration: This time it is Harnett White, nominated to head the Council on Environmental Quality. As has been the case with several of Trump’s other nominees, her fitness for the job was called into question after, among other things, reporters uncovered White’s extremist statements on a far-right radio program.”
OCEANS, WATER, DROUGHT
Dan Bacher writes—State Water Board denies motions by Delta Tunnels opponents to delay WaterFix hearing: “The California WaterFix hearing officers for the State Water Resources Control Board just denied the motions by Delta Tunnels opponents to delay the hearing on the permits to build the project, based on alleged exparte communications between Water Board and Department of Water Resources staff. The officers, Board Chair Felicia Marcus and Member Tam M. Doduc, found that no changes to the WaterFix project have been proposed that would warrant re-opening Part 1 or staying Part 2 of the hearing process at this time. ‘Further, we find that the communications between State Water Board staff and DWR staff that are the subject of the motions either concerned non-controversial, procedural issues or were properly limited in scope to California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) consultation between lead agency and responsible agency to ensure analysis of an adequate range of alternatives,’ they wrote.”
ENERGY
A Siegel writes—EIAgov forecast subtitled: We are EFF'd ...”The latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook has been released and one's hope, on first glance, is that this forecast is just as off as so much of energy forecasting has been because, if this is accurate, the simplest summary of this might be: The United States and humanity is EFFed when it comes to an opportunity to mitigate climate change through reduced energy emissions. If EIA is right, we will just fossil foolishly burn our way through fossil fuels even as the climate crisis worsens and as clean energy options become ever better economically. The critiques of EIA forecasting abound (see short bibliography here). Adam Scott well captured the situation last September in discussing the just-released International Energy Outlook (IEO).”
Dan Bacher writes—Unlike California, Florida Senate Committee Unanimously Votes to Ban Fracking: “While Governor Jerry Brown continues to support an expansion of fracking and offshore drilling in California, the Florida Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation committee today voted 10-0 to pass SB 462 to prohibit “advanced well stimulation,” commonly known as fracking, throughout the state. This strong showing of support for a state-level fracking ban by the committee, chaired by Senator Bradley, is “both unprecedented and significant” in the long standing fight to ban the dangerous oil and gas extraction practice in the Sunshine State, said Michelle Allen, Florida organizer for Food & Water Watch, in a statement. Shepherded in by Senator Dana Young and Representative Kathleen Peters, ban bills were introduced in the state Senate and House with bipartisan support.”
Rmuse writes—Trump Is Expanding the Koch's War On Renewable Energy: “Two weeks ago when Trump announced steep tariffs on solar panels he lied and swore the purpose was to save and create a wealth of American jobs. Of course that was pure mendacity because the number of jobs in manufacturing solar panels is far less than 2,000 in America for two specific reasons. First, the solar cell manufacturing process is highly mechanized and requires hardly any human labor. Second, advanced nations such as China began investing in solar manufacturing at about the same time the Koch brothers tasked Republicans with killing the renewable energy industry. America as a solar cell manufacturing power never took off because there was no urgency in investing in or developing a new technology that did not enrich the fossil fuel industry. That idiotic lack of action allowed China to take an American invention and develop it into a highly profitable industry that left America behind and elevated China as the world leader in solar panel manufacturing.”
rebel ga writes—Good News! Northern Pass Project-NH Permit Denied, By Unanimous Decision. Feb 1, 2018: Hydro-Quebec along with American partner, Eversource Energy, were all set to go. To start construction, April 2018. They already had; a Presidential permit, for the project. US NYSE Eversource Energy Very Good News! Northern Pass Denied CCNH-LFDA Feb 02, 2018. New Hampshire-Northern Pass Project, Denied Permit By Unanimous Decision. February 1, 2018 (CONCORD, NH) – Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) released the following statement, in response to the, Unanimous 7-0 Vote Of The New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee (SEC). Denying, the Northern Pass Project, the necessary approvals to site and construct, its proposed transmission line in New Hampshire.
Novie writes—King Coal is Dead: “One big reason why people are so resistant to abandoning coal and moving to other industries is that they have been told again and again by Republican politicians (Donald Trump most of all) that the only reason for the coal collapse is environmental regulations pushed by Democrats and that these jobs are going to start flooding back as soon as Republicans take over the government. The reality is that nothing short of massive government subsidies will allow coal to return to the levels it was at less than a decade ago, and there is almost no chance of it returning to massive levels it was once at in the 20th century.“
Jon Sokolow via lowkell writes—3-Time Sellout: Terry McAuliffe’s Secret Mountain Valley Pipeline Deals+ The Smoking Gun They Reveal: “On Friday, February 2, we published “Secret Sellout or Pay to Play?,” a Blue Virginia exclusive. Our article exposed what until then in Virginia had been a secret Memorandum of Understanding signed in December by the administration of then Governor Terry McAuliffe with political power broker Dominion Energy regarding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. As we explained, in return for a payoff of $58 million (paid to various entities), ‘Terry McAuliffe gave Dominion a full and complete release from any and all damage to Virginia’s forests and water from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’ and he did so ‘before the pipeline has even been approved – it still has not been approved – much less built’. We also showed that Dominion’s $58 million payoff “is exactly what it looks like – a good old fashion pay-to-play scheme – exactly like the one now being roundly criticized, even by pipeline supporters, in neighboring North Carolina’ [...] It turns out the full story is much worse. Because we now know that McAuliffe made not one, not two, but three secret pipeline agreements in late December.
Martin Smyth writes—Green Wave Bigger Than Our Blue Wave: “Because the cost of renewable energy like wind, solar and storage has dropped below the costs of fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. There is a growing body of evidence that a clean energy boom is coming, similar to the tech boom of the 1990's. For example: ‘Ford’s plan to double its electrified vehicle spending is part of an investment tsunami in batteries and electric cars by global automakers that now totals $90 billion and is still growing.’ [...]Energy Storage is killing the growth of natural gas. Used for peak demand, utility scale battery storage is replacing gas peaker plants, which were the future of natural gas. Used to optimize large scale natural gas power plants, it's reducing the amount of gas needed. Storage is also the missing link needed to extend the use of wind and solar.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
David Benac writes—The Corporate Takeover of American Agriculture: [David Benac is running for U.S. Congress in Michigan's 6th congressional district.] “For decades, the guiding principle of agricultural policy in the United States has been ‘Go big or go home.’ We need new leadership for a diverse, sustainable agriculture in the United States. I want to provide that leadership in Congress, based on the principle that farming can and should function as part of a community.Family farms have been under attack by corporations and their political allies since 1950. Over 3.5 million families have lost their farms since that time, while the average acreage of a farm in the US increased by over 200 percent. The rapid growth of corporate power in the US during the 1980s played out on America’s farms, where the rate of consolidation coincided with an incredibly difficult decade for family farms. The 1990s showed some promise, with organic and specialty farming providing entry points for smaller farms, but by the 2010s, the number of farmers has once again decreased while farm acreage monopolized by big agriculture business continues to rise. In Michigan alone, sixty-seven thousand families have lost their farms since 1960 while the average farm acreage has increased by almost 150 percent.”