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California Air Resources Board News Clips for August 26, 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 RESOURCES BOARD

State's EPA chief has been fighting political fires for decades.
The new boss at California's EPA spent 30 years in government and
worked on some key environmental cases, but he's still managed to
fly under the radar. Matt Rodriquez, appointed last month by Gov.
Jerry Brown (D), isn't well-known among environmental groups.
That prompts some to ponder how he will approach his job
overseeing five other environmental agencies, each with their own
sprawling responsibilities and governor-appointed leader. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2011/08/26/5
BY PAID SUBSCRIPTION ONLY

CLIMATE CHANGE

Weather cycles cause a drop in global sea level, scientists find.
The global sea level this summer is a quarter of an inch lower
than last summer, according to NASA scientists, in sharp contrast
to the gradual rise the ocean has experienced in recent years.
The change stems from two strong weather cycles over the Pacific
Ocean — El Niño and La Niña — which shifted precipitation
patterns, according to scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Posted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/weather-cycles-cause-a-drop-in-global-sea-level-scientists-find/2011/08/25/gIQA6IeaeJ_story.html

Assessing Climate Change in a Drought-Stricken State. Texas has
endured its worst one-year drought in recorded history. And the
hottest July. August is on course to be hotter still, setting
another record. So, is this the result of climate change?
Scientists hedge, particularly when it comes to the drought,
because they are reluctant to pin any single weather event on
climate change. They point to La Niña, an intermittent Pacific
Ocean phenomenon that affects storms, as the immediate cause.
Posted. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/us/26ttdrought.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=climate%20change&st=cse

Hansen Says Obama Will Be 'Greenwashing' About Climate Change if
He Approves Keystone XL Pipeline. NASA scientist James Hansen,
who galvanized the environmental movement decades ago with his
congressional testimony about the dangers of climate change, said
yesterday that President Obama has a rare opportunity to show he
is not a "hopeless addict." Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/08/26/26climatewire-hansen-says-obama-will-be-greenwashing-about-72041.html

Hurricane Irene, Global Warming and the Rising Cost of Storm
Surge Damage.
Sea levels are higher today than when past major hurricanes have
struck the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. With climate change,
they'll rise further, making storm surges more dangerous and
costly. When the words "hurricane" and "global warming" end up in
the same sentence in a news story, typically the subject is
whether climate change is or will make Atlantic hurricanes
stronger or more frequent. Unlike many other aspects of climate
change, that's one point where legitimate scientists argue, and
the jury is still out. Posted.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/hurricane-irene-storm-surge-0811

FUELS

Cutting budget? 'Green Scissors' look like the tool. It's a rare
and strange alignment of the political stars, which might be a
sign of an idea whose time has arrived: Rep. Wally Herger is
singing in political harmony with the environmentalists at
Friends of the Earth and the Naderite consumer group Public
Citizen. The cause? Scrapping tax credits on ethanol that,
however well-intentioned originally as a move to curb the
nation's dependence on imported oil, have proven an immense
boondoggle. Posted.
http://www.redding.com/news/2011/aug/25/cutting-budget-green-scissors-look-like-the-tool/?print=1

Compressed Natural Gas Station Opens in Santa Ana. A new
compressed natural gas fueling station has been opened in Santa
Ana, California by Waste Management of Orange County. PetroCard
operates the Clean N’ Green station and will sell CNG to
commercial fleets including transit agencies, school districts,
taxis, cities, and municipalities. Supporters of CNG say that the
price of fuel is one-third below the cost of gasoline and diesel.
Posted.
http://domesticfuel.com/2011/08/25/compressed-natural-gas-station-opens-in-santa-ana/

Old Newspapers + Secret Ingredient = Cheap Biofuel. Today’s
fishwrap is tomorrow’s biofuel: a research team from Tulane
University has found a low cost, energy efficient way to recycle
ordinary newspapers into butanol biofuel, which can be used as a
drop-in replacement for gasoline. The secret ingredient is a
bacteria found in animal droppings, which naturally produces
butanol as it digests the news. Posted.
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/08/26/old-newspapers-secret-ingredient-cheap-biofuel/

VEHICLES

UPS buys 100 electric-power trucks for California routes. A
Stockton-based electric vehicle manufacturer announced Thursday
that United Parcel Service is purchasing 100 all-electric
commercial delivery vehicles for deployment throughout
California, including the Sacramento area. Electric Vehicles
International called the purchase the largest deployment of
zero-emission delivery vehicles in California and one of the
largest single deployments of commercial all-electric vehicles in
the world. Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/26/3862493/ups-buys-100-electric-power-trucks.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/25/BU7I1KRF10.DTL
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/lmtbase.aspx?storyid=1476

GREEN ENERGY

CLP Says Australian Carbon Plan May Cut Value of A$1.7 Billion
Coal Plant. CLP Holdings Ltd. (2), Hong Kong’s biggest
electricity producer, said a plan by Australia to put a price on
carbon emissions from July may impair the value of its Yallourn
brown coal power station in Victoria state. “The possible
introduction of climate change legislation may have a significant
impact on TRUenergy’s business, in particular on the Yallourn
brown coal-fired generation business,” CLP said in its 2011
interim report. Posted.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-26/clp-says-australian-carbon-plan-may-cut-value-of-a-1-7-billion-coal-plant.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/08/26/bloomberg1376-LQJ6ET6K50XV01-5RFKMA2A1TO9H59EKNGH07IIB0.DTL

Brown unveils tax package to boost clean-tech industry.
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) introduced a tax package
yesterday aimed at wooing clean technology companies and others
to consider building manufacturing plants in the Golden State.
Surrounded by executives from Tesla Motors Inc., Solyndra Inc.
and other clean-tech companies, Brown proposed reversing an
income tax provision from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)
and extending a sales-tax exemption for startups and established
companies that buy a large amount of equipment. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2011/08/26/25 BY PAID
SUBSCRIPTION ONLY

Waste-to-energy technology makes progress in U.S., but critics
remain. From the sidewalk there's almost no evidence that behind
the walls of the energy-from-waste plant in Alexandria, Va., an
incinerator is burning garbage at more than 1,700 degrees
Fahrenheit and providing electricity to thousands of homes.
"Everything that the resident puts out on the street in a trash
can comes here," said Bryan Donnelly, the facility manager. At
his location, that amounts to about 350,000 tons of municipal
waste per year. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2011/08/26/3 BY PAID
SUBSCRIPTION ONLY

MISCELLANEOUS

Environmental groups sue S.F. over landfill plans. Environmental
groups have sued San Francisco over that city's plans to send
train loads of its trash to rural Yuba County. In separate filing
in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, Yuba Group Against
Garbage and Sustainability, Parks, Recycling and Wildlife Legal
Defense Fund alleged that San Francisco officials violated state
law by failing to conduct an environmental impact report on
efforts to transport up to 5 million tons of trash to a landfill
in the city of Wheatland. Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/26/3862586/environmental-groups-sue-sf-over.html

OPINIONS

Climate change and extreme weather; California's prisoner
shuffle; science vs. theology. Wet, wild, worse? Re "Weather
extremes may be the new norm," Aug. 24 It is missing the point to
suggest that the weather we have had this past year (with its
temperature extremes, violent storms, droughts and floods) may be
the "new normal." These new weather patterns are but the tip of
the iceberg, a faint indication of the truly horrendous weather
that science has shown we have in store for us if we don't act
now to head off the worst effects of climate change. Posted.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-0826-friday-20110826,0,4554247,print.story

Viewpoints: Energy program generates ratepayer benefits. Although
it is one of the best- kept secrets in Sacramento, the Public
Interest Energy Research Program has been the driving force
behind California's blitz to accelerate the generation of clean
energy and to continue our ranking as the nation's most
energy-efficient state. Since its inception in 1996, more than
$700 million from the program has been directed into energy
research, development and demonstration projects in the state.
Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/26/3862556/energy-program-generates-ratepayer.html

BLOGS

G.M. Link-Up With LG Chem Will Range Beyond Batteries. General
Motors and South Korea’s LG Group are teaming up to develop
electric vehicles, though to what extent the two companies will
collaborate is not yet known. The automaker announced an
agreement to jointly design and engineer plug-in cars with LG
Chem, a subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate, on Thursday.
Posted. 
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/g-m-link-up-with-lg-chem-will-range-beyond-batteries/?scp=10&sq=vehicles&st=cse

Time to Start Work on a Panic Button? For two decades, the
world’s governments have failed to meet their own commitment to
reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas.
As frustration builds among scientists, some of them have begun
to argue for research on a potential last-ditch option in case
global warming starts to get out of control. It is called
geoengineering — or directly manipulating the Earth’s climate.
The idea sounds like science fiction, but it is not. Posted. 
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/time-to-start-work-on-a-panic-button/?ref=earth

Fire officials warn of carbon monoxide detector scam. Officials
are warning residents of a scam to sell overpriced carbon
monoxide detectors. The scammers send out mail solicitations
directing residents to buy a detector from them or face fines
under SB 183. That legislation does require the detectors in all
single-family residences, but no public agency is pressuring
consumers to buy a particular product, said officials from the
Los Angeles County Fire Department. Posted.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/monoxide-detector-scam.html

Los Angeles neighborhood bears the brunt of air pollution. As
summer temperatures rise, so do fears of asthma and other
illnesses caused by all the air pollution converging on the east
Los Angeles community of Boyle Heights. With its proximity to
freeways, industrial sites and shipping corridors, activists say
the geography of Boyle Heights brings a disproportionate health
burden to residents. Determined to reduce the adverse health
effects caused by air pollution, residents and activists of this
historically immigrant community are taking proactive and
innovative measures to improve their environment. Posted.
http://newsdesk.org/2011/08/historic-los-angeles-neighborhood-continues-to-bear-the-brunt-of-air-pollution/

Climate Change May Not Cause Hurricanes, But It Can Make Them
Much Stronger. The perhaps inevitable question: So what's the
connection between climate change and Hurricane Irene? The stock
answer is that it's hard if not impossible to blame any extreme
weather event and climate change, but it does contribute to
making hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, even blizzards (for a
while at least) more likely. As for hurricanes, one of the
factors contributing to their strength is warm ocean
water--hurricanes need ocean surface temperatures to exceed 79°F.
Posted.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/08/climate-change-can-make-hurricanes-more-intense.php

US breaks ground on first industrial-scale carbon capture
project. Construction begins at Illinois plant as Department of
Energy pledges $41m for research projects. The US government's
carbon capture and storage (CCS) efforts stepped up a gear this
week, with the start of construction on the government's first
industrial-scale scheme and funds worth $41m set aside for
another 16 research projects. Posted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/26/us-carbon-capture-and-storage-biofuels