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newsclips -- Newsclips for October 10, 2011
Posted: 10 Oct 2011 12:00:24
California Air Resources Board News Clips for October 10, 2011. This is a service of the California Air Resources Board’s Office of Communications. You may need to sign in or register with individual websites to view some of the following news articles. AIR POLLUTION A GOP assault on environmental regulations. Republicans in the House are best known for their inflexible opposition to tax hikes and government spending, but that's nothing new for the GOP; what marks this group as different is that it is perhaps the most anti-environment Congress in history. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-epa-20111010,0,6247792.story San Pedro residents revive debate about gas storage tanks' safety. Studies by a consultant and USC graduate student come to more worrying conclusions than a company-funded report about the potential for devastation in an emergency at a San Pedro butane facility. Melissa Palma never thought much about the huge gas storage tanks perched on a hillside near the San Pedro home she and her husband settled into 18 years ago. Only recently she learned that the domed, 40-year-old, circular, steel structures contain up to 25 million gallons of highly flammable butane — what some neighbors and public officials say are the makings of a potential catastrophe. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-lpg-storage-20111010,0,5641848.story Separating ozone fact from fiction. Air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley has suddenly become a $29 million a year problem. Of course, the real cost is much greater as businesses struggle to comply with clean-air regulations, and those who suffer from foul air seek medical treatment. But just about all of us are paying for the Valley's notorious pollution, through a new $12 DMV fee to cover a $29 million federal penalty for failing to meet even an outdated ozone standard. Posted. http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111008/A_NEWS14/110080331/-1/NEWSMAP New Federal Fuel Efficiency Standards Cut Smog, Save Billions. It’s not news that California has some of the worst air quality ratings in the country. Despite decades of work to clean up the state’s air, health-threatening smog is nearly omnipresent. One of the key causes for this pollution is the cars and trucks Californians drive. Mobile sources, which include our everyday vehicles, are responsible for about two-thirds of the state’s air pollution—even more in certain areas. The same sources also contribute to more than a third of the state’s greenhouse gas pollution. Posted. http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/node/9449 CLIMATE CHANGE California AB 32's Cap-And-Trade Program Developments. This article is the latest in a series chronicling the first litigation challenge to AB 32 (the Global Warming Solutions Act) and the cap-and-trade program in Association of Irritated Residents, et al. v. California Air Resources Board, Case No. CPF-09-509562, ("Ass'n of Irritated Residents v. CARB "). Though environmental justice groups continue to object to cap-and-trade as the primary vehicle to reduce greenhouse ("GHG") emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, the California Supreme Court recently allowed California Air Resources Board's ("ARB") cap-and-trade implementation to move forward, and agency rule development continues. Posted. http://www.natlawreview.com/article/california-ab-32-s-cap-and-trade-program-developments DIESEL EMISSIONS Newton: L.A. needs this job generator. If you've wondered why people complain about the difficulty of doing business in Los Angeles, consider the Southern California International Gateway project. BNSF is prepared to invest $500 million to build the gateway, a rail loading yard that would stimulate trade and produce jobs. And yet, for more than seven years, the project has bumped along without being either approved or rejected. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-newton-column-port-international-gateway-20111010,0,4381138.column FUELS Pilots Fly the Last Frontier for Leaded Gas. Anchorage, Alaska -- The small, piston-engine airplanes at Merrill Field roar to full throttle as they reach the main runway, many of them bound for remote Arctic towns with people and precious supplies. Pilots rev up their engines at the beginning of the airstrip to make sure they'll have enough power to climb above the snow-frosted mountains that ring Alaska's largest city. And that makes this spot ground zero for an environmental challenge that most people thought was resolved decades ago. Posted. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/10/07/07greenwire-pilots-fly-the-last-frontier-for-leaded-gas-83036.html?pagewanted=print Denham faults ethanol subsidies behind closing of Fulton Valley Farms. Washington, D.C. – Rep. Jeff Denham today issued the following statement in response to a Central Valley business, Fulton Valley Farms, announcing that it will close its doors due to the high price of feed. The high cost of feed is a direct result of the ethanol mandates and subsidies, and has forced many job creators in California to shut down. “Fulton Valley Farms will be forced to close its doors as a result of the high price of feed for its chickens and 185 Californians will lose their jobs as a result. Posted. http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2011/10/07/2073204/denham-faults-ethanol-subsidies.html#ixzz1a8w0HTux VEHICLES Bullet train's environmental benefits remain murky. High-speed rail could help cut air pollution in California – if the system succeeds in getting enough people out of their cars. Planners with the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority expect that the electric trains could reduce traffic on the state’s roadways by 2.5 percent by 2035. Each vehicle-mile traveled creates emissions that foul the air with greenhouse gases, smog-forming chemicals and fine particles like soot and dust. Posted. http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/bullet-trains-environmental-benefits-remain-murky-13004 GREEN ENERGY UN chief calls for universal access to electricity by 2030, clean energy revolution. The U.N. secretary-general called Monday for universal access to electricity by 2030, saying a lack of energy in parts of the world threatens economic growth and job creation. Ban Ki-moon also urged governments and the private sector to pursue “a clean energy revolution,” so that the use of renewable energy sources could be doubled in 20 years. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/un-chief-ban-ki-moon-urges-energy-revolution-for-poor-doubling-renewables-in-20-years/2011/10/10/gIQAV86jZL_story.html New machine recycles fridges the green way. Recycling refrigerators - especially those made more than 15 years ago - is a tricky job. The coolant in old appliances (now banned from newer versions) can cause serious trouble, warming the atmosphere and depleting the ozone layer. Regulations forbid the release of liquid refrigerants during disposal. But what if the refrigerant was not in the cooling system, but stored in the old foam used for insulation? The insulation in older machines is full of a gassy refrigerant that can waft away during dismantling and continue to diffuse later when the foam is shredded and sitting in a landfill. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/08/BU3C1L8U0S.DTL#ixzz1aOuutszd East Bay vets find employment in green energy industry. Michael Ferreira and Ron Rodd were born 40 years apart, and served in different branches of the military. Ferreira was a U.S. Marine and Rodd served in the U.S. Navy. Rodd went to Vietnam in 1967 and Ferreira completed two deployments to Iraq, returning home for the last time in 2008. It's not likely that the two men would have ever met, but they did, and in fact spent the last 14 weeks together in classrooms, learning about the growing solar industry, where both plan to pursue careers. Posted. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_19073822?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com Experts discuss battery performance at EV Battery Tech USA 2011. The EV Battery Tech USA gathered experts from leading vehicle OEMs across the world between 27-28 September 2011 in Troy, Michigan. cars21.com who was a media partner of the conference brings you a second overview of presentations, this time focusing on battery life and enhancement of battery performance. The parameters influencing battery life are well understood, according to Jeff Kessen from A123 Systems, however, they are not all under the control of battery manufacturers. These factors include ambient temperature, power requirements, total energy throughput or state of charge, which all have to be taken into account when considering battery life performance. Posted. http://www.cars21.com/content/articles/67220111010.php BLOGS Scant CO2 Benefit from China’s Coal-Powered Electric Cars. Much has been made of China’s big push to build and deploy 1 million electric vehicles a year by 2015. The move will help cut smog and oil imports. Less has been made of the scant impact this is likely to have on the country’s emissions of carbon dioxide, given its enduring reliance on coal for most of its electricity. Here’s a “Your Dot” contribution describing the situation from Lucia Green-Weiskel, who has worked in China for the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation and co-authored a report on electric vehicles there for the United Nations. Posted. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/scant-co2-benefit-from-chinas-coal-powered-electric-cars/ The Amazon Dieback Scenario. In an article last weekend about rising stress in the world’s forests, I briefly mentioned that computer projections regarding the future of forests are still in a primitive state. Scientists cannot really say whether trees will continue to take up a big proportion of our carbon emissions through the rest of this century, or whether they will instead succumb to climate change on a large scale. You can find reports in the scientific literature to support both outcomes, and every prospect in between. Posted. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/the-amazon-dieback-scenario/ California's global-warming law under fire from one of its own. California’s aggressive effort to attack global warming is coming under scrutiny in Congress from a powerful regulatory-wary Republican -- who also happens to be from the Golden State. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has launched an investigation into the Obama administration’s actions to increase vehicle fuel-economy standards, including its 2009 decision to grant California’s request to impose tough restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Posted. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/california-global-warming-law-darrell-issa.html