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newsclips -- ARB Newsclips for April 10, 2013
Posted: 10 Apr 2013 12:43:48
ARB Newsclips for April 10, 2013. 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. CAP AND TRADE As Brown visits China, California-Quebec carbon-trade deal advances. As he brings his message of carbon reduction to top officials in China, Gov. Jerry Brown moved another step closer to broadening California's carbon-trading market Tuesday. Before crossing the Pacific, the governor sent a letter to the state Air Resources Board enabling it to move ahead with plans to link California's carbon-trading market with one in the Canadian province of Quebec. Carbon markets aim to reduce overall pollution by creating a system that limits the total amount of carbon emissions allowed but enables big polluters to buy the right to pollute more. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/political/la-me-pc-carbon-california-quebec-20130409,0,511580.story AIR POLLUTION Air pollution scourge underestimated, green energy can help-UN. Air pollution is an underestimated scourge that kills far more people than AIDS and malaria and a shift to cleaner energy could easily halve the toll by 2030, U.N. officials said on Tuesday. Investments in solar, wind or hydropower would benefit both human health and a drive by almost 200 nations to slow climate change, blamed mainly on a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from use of fossil fuels, they said. Posted. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/09/environment-pollution-idUSL5N0CW2U820130409 Beijing's polluted air provides Jerry Brown a political opportunity. The local media have given it a name: "Beijing Ke," or the Beijing Cough, defined by the China Daily as "a bout of persistent dry cough or throat tickle because of Beijing's poor air quality." Earlier this year, the local air-quality reading was so bad that citizens were warned to stay in doors for days on end. The international media called it the "Airpocolypse." For Beijing's 20 million residents, pollution has become a way of life. Even on the relatively good air-quality days, such as the ones that cold winds have brought here this week, locals take precautions. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/political/la-me-pc-california-jerry-brown-china-air-pollution-20130409,0,7386481.story US EPA air pollution rule suit exposes rift between gas, coal generators. Many US generators vigorously oppose the Obama administration's new regulation to curb emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants, saying the rule will shutter coal-fired power plants, drive up electricity prices and perhaps even undermine the reliability of the US electrical grid. But four companies that have invested heavily in natural gas-fired and nuclear generation are bucking that widely held industry position, saying the Environmental Protection Agency's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule is justified by "the nature of the competitive power markets" and other factors. Posted. http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/21922254 Exxon Mobil must pay $236M in NH pollution case. Exxon Mobil Corp. was found liable Tuesday in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination caused by the gasoline additive MTBE, and the jury ordered the oil giant to pay $236 million to New Hampshire to clean it up. The jurors reached their verdicts in less than 90 minutes, after sitting through nearly three months of testimony. Lawyers on both sides were stunned by the speed with which they reached the verdict on liability and even more stunned when the jurors took barely 20 minutes more to fill out the damages verdict. Posted. http://www.vcstar.com/news/2013/apr/09/exxonmobil-found-liable-in-nh-pollution-trial/#ixzz2Q4hz1fF0 Europe's toxic air: clearer but not clean. While attention is given to curbing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions blamed for global warming, substances more directly harmful to human health, notably nitrogen oxides, are pumped out of diesel engines and from European power stations burning coal that is getting cheaper as Americans exploit new gas reserves. Posted. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/us-eu-pollution-air-idUSBRE9390AW20130410 CLIMATE CHANGE Buckle up: Climate change may cause bumpier flights. Are you the kind of air traveler who turns green when your plane encounters air turbulence? Do you always have a beverage in your hand when the captain illuminates the "fasten seat belts" sign and apologizes for a bit of mid-flight "chop"? If so, you might consider booking a cruise ship instead of flying the friendly skies in the coming years. A study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change predicts that global warming will cause bumpier transatlantic flights by the middle of this century. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-global-warming-flight-turbulence-20130408,0,3403965.story Renewable Energy Won't Stop Climate Change According to Truthout Interview with Scholar and Author. Renewable energy is neither clean nor a solution to climate change according to a new Truthout interview with Ozzie Zehner, a visiting scholar at the University of California – Berkeley and author of the book Green Illusions. Instead of "hyping so-called green energy," Zehner advocates redirecting focus to the impacts of a growing human population and consumption. Posted. http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/09/5327344/renewable-energy-wont-stop-climate.html#storylink=cpy French wine could get pricey, climate change study says. That bottle of Bordeaux you put aside may become even rarer in the next few decades as climate change could reduce wine grape production in traditional parts of the world and move it elsewhere, researchers say. Danish Cabernet, anyone? Wine grape production's sensitivity to climate makes it a good test case for what could happen over the next several decades. And the land suitable for viticulture in current major wine producing regions could be reduced by 20% to 70% by 2050, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases produced, the researchers said this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-heb-wine-grapes-climate-change-20130408,0,6669681.story New science standards call for teaching climate change and more. The Next Generation Science Standards, developed over the last year by California and 25 other states in conjunction with several national scientific organizations, represent the first effort in some 15 years to transform the way science is taught in million of classrooms. The multi-state consortium is proposing that students learn fewer standards more deeply and not merely memorize information but understand how scientists actually investigated and gathered it. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-science-20130409,0,1524486.story http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/science/panel-calls-for-broad-changes-in-science-education.html?_r=1& L'Oreal Signs The Climate Declaration In Support Of Climate Change Policy. L'Oreal joined forces in Washington, DC today with 32 other leading companies and consumer brands to urge regulators and legislators to put climate change on the federal policy agenda. Recognizing the business risks associated with climate change and having been affected by Superstorm Sandy, as were many businesses in the northeast, L'Oreal has taken concrete and meaningful steps to reduce its own carbon emissions. Posted. http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/10/5331206/loreal-signs-the-climate-declaration.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy DIESEL EMISSIONS Car Emissions Tied to Rare Pediatric Cancers. Children born to mothers who lived within a mile of heavy traffic while pregnant were at higher risk of developing any of three childhood cancers, researchers said here. Higher incidences of acute lymphoblastic leukemia and two rare pediatric cancers -- retinoblastoma and germ cell tumors -- were found in children whose mothers lived within a 1,500-meter (0.93-mile) radius of gasoline and diesel emissions while pregnant, said Julia Heck, PhD, of the University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health, and colleagues. Posted. http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AACR/38360 FUELS California court ruling gives hope to foes of fracking. A court ruling that the U.S. government must consider the environmental impact of "fracking" on federal lands leased to oil companies offers opponents of the technique a useful weapon in the fierce public debate in California and other parts of the country. In a regulatory setback for hydraulic fracturing on public lands, a federal magistrate judge in San Jose, California, on Monday ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to analyze its impact on 2,500 acres in Monterey County. Posted. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/usa-fracking-california-idUSL2N0CW2L920130410 Moniz backs natural gas 'revolution' President Barack Obama's choice to lead the Energy Department pledged to increase use of natural gas Tuesday as a way to combat climate change even as the nation seeks to boost domestic energy production. Ernest Moniz, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said "a stunning increase" in production of domestic natural gas in recent years was nothing less than a "revolution" that has led to reduced emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming. Posted. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ENERGY_SECRETARY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT VEHICLES M'bishi Motors still halting Outlander plug-in hybrid shipments. Mitsubishi Motors Corp will extend its production and shipment stoppage of its Outlander plug-in hybrids until it finds the cause of an overheating lithium-ion battery in one of the vehicles, the automaker said on Wednesday. The company stopped production and shipments in late March as lithium-ion battery technology faces heightened scrutiny after problems with batteries in Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner jets. Posted. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/mitsubishi-hybrid-idUSL3N0CXITO20130410 GREEN ENERGY Did First Solar Just Upend the Solar Industry? When First Solar announced the acquisition of TetraSun yesterday it really announced a fundamental shift in the company's strategy. It isn't giving up on thin film, not yet, but it is laying the groundwork for a future without its familiar CdTe panels. TetraSun is an investment in crystalline silicon solar cells that First Solar has been fighting against for over a decade. Silicon has won the battle, and now even First Solar will join the crowd. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/business/fool/article/Did-First-Solar-Just-Upend-the-Solar-Industry-4423942.php#ixzz2Q51UHcC5 Federal budget: Obama seeks 40 percent increase in clean energy spending. President Barack Obama proposed a dramatic increase in clean-energy spending on Wednesday as he sought to expand U.S. government support for electric cars, wind power and other "green" technology despite persistent Republican criticism. The president would pay for the expansion in part by eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for oil, gas and coal industries. Previous efforts by Obama's fellow Democrats to repeal the $4 billion worth of fossil-fuel subsidies have fallen short. Posted. http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22994775/federal-budget-obama-seeks-40-percent-increase-clean BLOGS Will climate change decimate the wine industry? First we find out that carbon dioxide emissions are bad for oysters, and now a study indicates that rising global temperatures could also drastically affect wine production. That’s right: Greenhouse gases might ruin the romantic strategies of people everywhere — or, at least, result in some extra costs and environmental harm to keep these ancient aphrodisiacs readily available. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/04/08/climate_change_wine_industry_production_study/ Cap & trade: California and Quebec join forces. When it comes to cap and trade, California will no longer have to go it alone. Gov. Jerry Brown has approved linking California’s new carbon market with Quebec’s, in a transnational bid to fight global warming. Companies in each location will be able to participate in the other’s market, buying and selling “allowances” to emit greenhouse gases. Brown on Monday sent California air pollution regulators a letter certifying that Quebec’s market rules are at least as stringent as California’s. State law required Brown to make that finding before the two systems could link. Posted. http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2013/04/09/cap-trade-california-and-quebec-join-forces/ Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities. Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. That’s a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I’ve ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence. Posted. http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/