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newsclips -- Newsclips for December 26, 2012
Posted: 26 Dec 2012 11:48:06
ARB Newsclips for December 25 - 26, 2012. 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 Air district recognizes clean-burning technology. As everyone who lives here knows, the Central Valley has been plagued with a pollution problem that rears its ugly head every winter — air pollution from wood smoke — and the San Joaquin Valley Air District has been charged with the unbelievably difficult task of cleaning it up. In their valiant efforts they have implemented various measures to reach "attainment" — to meet the federal standards as set forth by the Clean Air Act. One of the most publicly recognized measure is wood-burning curtailments or, as some like to call it, a "wood- burning ban." Though never intended to be a total ban, these restrictions have been seen by some as overly restrictive. Posted. http://www.modbee.com/2012/12/24/2508291/air-district-recognizes-clean.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy People Trying to Reduce Air Pollution Might Be Inhaling Even More Pollution. Well, how's this for a kick in the Pearl Izumi thermal tights: Bicycling to work might help reduce your carbon footprint, but may also be terrible for your heath. That's the frustrating word from a team of scientists at the University of California, San Diego, who are testing out the crowdsourcing of air-pollution monitoring. The researchers gave smartphones that sense pollution to 30 study participants, and then tracked their environmental data feeds for a month. Posted. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/12/people-trying-avoid-air-pollution-might-be-getting-even-more-pollution/4249/ CLIMATE CHANGE California Law Tests Company Responses to Carbon Costs. The Morning Star Company’s three plants in California emit roughly 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year — about the same amount as the Pacific Island nation of Palau — as they turn tomatoes into ketchup, spaghetti sauce and juice used by millions of consumers around the world. Beginning Jan. 1, under the terms of a groundbreaking California environmental law known as AB 32, Morning Star and 350 other companies statewide will begin paying for those emissions, which trap heat and contribute to global warming. Posted. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/business/energy-environment/california-manufacturers-weigh-costs-of-new-greenhouse-gas-rules.html?ref=earth Other related articles: http://www.mercurynews.com/green-living/ci_22258614/california-manufacturers-weigh-costs-new-greenhouse-rules?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com California Air Resource Board to auction about 22.5 million GHG allowances. The California Air Resources Board will offer about 22.5 million greenhouse gas allowances at its next auction, which is scheduled for February 19, it said late Friday. The board will offer about 12.9 million vintage 2013 GHG allowances, as well as about 9.6 million vintage 2016 allowances. One allowance equals 1 metric ton of emissions. The vintage refers to the first year an entity can use the GHG allowance to comply with California's GHG cap-and-trade program. Posted. http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/6949182 FUELS Drillers Shift to Use of Natural Gas. Energy companies that want Americans to embrace the use of inexpensive natural gas are beginning to lead by example. The three biggest providers of oil-field services in North America—Schlumberger Ltd., Halliburton Co. and Baker Hughes Inc.—are spending millions of dollars to retrofit pumps and drilling-rig engines to run on natural gas instead of diesel fuel. Posted. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323291704578199751783044798.html?KEYWORDS=fuelsKEYWORDS%3Dfuels HIGH-SPEED RAIL Lawyers could profit from high-speed rail land battles. Real estate attorneys are seizing a monumental opportunity as California lumbers ahead with its high-speed rail plans in the central San Joaquin Valley. With 1,100 or more pieces of property in the path of the proposed route between Merced and Bakersfield, lawyers who specialize in eminent domain cases could see business spike over the coming months as the state's High-Speed Rail Authority starts trying to buy land for rights of way. "I think there's going to be a lot of attorneys who have never handled an eminent domain case who will suddenly be experts," said C. William Brewer, an eminent domain specialist with the Fresno law firm Motschiedler, Michaelides, Wishon, Brewer & Ryan. Posted. http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html GREEN ENERGY REGION: Plan to concentrate county solar revenue runs into opposition. Riverside County supervisors have adopted general guidelines for handling revenue generated by solar power plants, but have put off a decision on how to divide the money. Supervisor John Benoit proposed allocating at least half and potentially all of the cash to his desert district, where solar generators are expected to consume more than 100,000 acres. "Most of this is going to happen in the 4th Supervisorial District," Benoit said of the planned development. "And that's where most of the impacts are going to be felt." Posted. http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/swcounty/region-plan-to-concentrate-county-solar-revenue-runs-into-opposition/article_1c2c50dc-ca5d-5e05-b8a8-f5f40e8f3b56.html OPINION The Shale Revolution's Shifting Geopolitics. The shale energy revolution is likely to shift the tectonic plates of global power in ways that are largely beneficial to the West and reinforce U.S. power and influence during the first half of this century. Yet most public discussion of shale’s potential either focuses on the alleged environmental dangers of fracking or on how shale will affect the market price of natural gas. Both discussions blind policy makers to the true scale of the shale revolution. Posted. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/global/the-shale-revolutions-shifting-geopolitics.html Quicker fix for climate change. The Doha climate change conference this year was the most significant in nearly 20 years of gatherings under the U.N. Framework Convention process aimed at staving off future global warming disaster. Since carbon dioxide emission limits agreed to under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol were to expire at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2012, it was critical that the international community agreed to extend those obligations and to continue talks about future emission cuts. Posted. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/26/opinion/yang-climate-change/index.html A breath of stale air from GOP. Mitt Romney, who opposed government subsidies for clean power and thought all energy production technologies should compete equally in the free market, did not win the election. That's the good news. The bad news is that his backward policies are still popular among many congressional Republicans, posing a threat to a wind-energy tax credit that is creating jobs and helping to wean the country off fossil fuels. Unless it is extended, the tax credit will expire at the end of the year. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-wind-energy-tax-credit-20121226,0,364449.story Natural cycle climate warming prevails. A commenter to my letter of Dec. 6 (“Another C02 warming diversion”) by the name of “ProfBada” states, “Predictions of carbon dioxide increases and global warming ... are based on hard science, the basis of which has been around for over a century.” However the question remains, how much does CO2 contribute to the warming shown in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or NASA charts? Apparently, his “hard science” doesn’t include the requirement to validate/prove a theory, since he conveniently dodges the question of validation that CO2 is the major warming cause. Posted. http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/natural-cycle-climate-warming-prevails/article_0fdd4836-4bec-11e2-a25d-001a4bcf887a.html BLOGS 2012 Climate Change News That Made Headlines This Year. Global warming was hot news this year, literally. Perhaps the most unavoidable climate story of 2012 was the warmth that gripped much of the United States, and to a lesser degree, the planet, throughout the entire year. Heat waves brought "spring in March" to parts of the country, and broke all-time high-temperature records in a number of places. This, inevitably, led to a discussion of global warming and the degree to which it contributes to some types of extreme weather, in this case heat waves. Posted. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/25/2012-climate-change-news-_n_2363220.html Earth Log: Red-faced moment for Valley air board. For 15 embarrassing minutes, the local air board last week seemed as confused as anyone about the federal government's new particle pollution standard. But the confusion did make a point. There are so many different air-quality plans, updates and bureaucratic hoops that even people who should know the score sometimes don't. Last week, several board members of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District were poised to purposely miss a federal deadline for a plan to meet the 2006 standard for the 24-hour average. Posted. http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113226/mark-grossi-red-faced-moment-for.html#storylink=misearch Grim First: Air Pollution Makes Top 10 List Of Disease Risk Factors. According to the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) Study published this month in The Lancet, high blood pressure, tobacco smoke, and alcohol abuse are the world's most dangerous risk factors for disease. Among the other top-ten items on that grim list, we also find air pollution -- largely ambient particulate matter from auto emissions. That's the first time that air pollution has made the global top-ten list of disease risk factors. Its rise in prominence seems linked to increased vehicle usage (as well as construction and commerce) in emerging economies, since the study notes that air pollution is especially bad in countries like China and India. Posted. http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1081334_grim-first-air-pollution-makes-top-10-list-of-disease-risk-factors