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newsclips -- Newsclips for November 4, 2011.
Posted: 04 Nov 2011 14:58:22
California Air Resources Board News Clips for November 4, 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 America's 20 Dirtiest Cities. California has gone to extremes to improve the state’s air quality, pushing out coal-fired power plants and implementing the strictest auto emissions standards in the nation. L.A.’s persistent smog layer may be a shadow of its former self, but it hasn’t been enough. Lots of people and too many cars means California still has seven big cities that rank among the 20 most polluted in the nation. Posted. http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/11/04/americas-20-dirtiest-cities/ Winter air pollution program begins in Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District. The Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District announced that the winter Don't Light Tonight season is under way. Vacaville residents should be aware that the use of fireplaces, pellet stoves, wood stoves and other wood-burning devices such as outdoor fire pits, can create particulate pollution. Don't Light Tonight (DLT) is a voluntary wintertime air pollution reduction program which runs through February. Posted. http://www.thereporter.com/news/ci_19263070 CLIMATE CHANGE Global carbon dioxide output soars in 2010. Washington -- The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/04/MNVK1LQAB4.DTL MISCELLANEOUS Brown plans forum on state’s climate change risks. Gov. Jerry Brown today announced he’ll get together with environmental, business and public health and safety leaders for “The Governor’s Conference on Extreme Climate Risks and California’s Future” on Dec. 15 in San Francisco. Brown’s office said the conference will focus on the risks of unpredictable and extreme weather events caused by climate change and how our communities can prepare and adapt. Posted. http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/2011/11/03/brown-plans-forum-on-states-climate-change-risks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalBlotter+%28Political+Blotter%29 VEHICLES California rail agency requests billions to start construction. At a meeting of the high-speed rail authority in Sacramento, dozens of people attack the $98-billion project's cost and say it will harm their homes and livelihoods. California's bullet train agency on Thursday formally requested a multibillion-dollar appropriation to start construction next year, after dozens of people from across the state attacked the $98-billion project's cost, rationale and effects on communities. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-high-speed-rail-20111104,0,1321051.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Flocal+%28L.A.+Times+-+California+%7C+Local+News%29 GREEN ENERGY U.S. Bid for Green Policy at APEC Faces Hurdles. Singapore—China and other developing countries are resisting a U.S. proposal to cut tariffs on environmental goods, casting doubt on one of President Barack Obama's goals for a Pacific Rim summit he hosts next week. The U.S. has been pressing for years, with little success, to liberalize trade on "green" goods, such as wind turbines and solar panels, and services in World Trade Organization talks. Mr. Obama's efforts on the issue at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit Nov. 11-13 in Honolulu face the same divisions that have stymied the WTO campaign. Posted. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203716204577017222664942802.html?mod=WSJ_Energy_leftHeadlines&_nocache=1320426936339&user=welcome BY SUBSCRIPTION China will phase out energy-draining light bulbs. China will phase out power-draining light bulbs within five years in a move to make the world's biggest polluting nation more efficient but also certain to impact the global market. China will ban imports and sales of 100-watt-and-higher incandescent bulbs from Oct. 1, 2012, in an attempt to save energy and curb climate change, China's main planning agency said Friday. Bans will also be imposed on 60-watt-and-higher bulbs from Oct. 1, 2014 and 15-watt-and-higher old-style bulbs from Oct. 1, 2016. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/china-will-phase-out-energy-draining-incandescent-bulbs-certain-to-impact-global-market/2011/11/04/gIQAb4o3kM_story.html http://www.nctimes.com/business/china-will-phase-out-energy-draining-light-bulbs/article_68430c63-6027-55b7-89f4-5e711a9ce240.html#ixzz1ckg1H0Zj http://www.modbee.com/2011/11/04/1933015/china-will-phase-out-energy-draining.html http://www.grist.org/list/2011-11-04-china-bulb-ban-will-eliminate-1-billion-incandescents-annually More funding for improvements at intermodal facility. The City Council approved $400,000 in funding from new sources Tuesday for upgrades to the Sacramento Intermodal Transportation Facility project, including energy-efficient lighting and new power cabinets that will help reduce air emissions at the new facility. The project is being built at the downtown railyards and is currently in the first phase of development. City officials say Phase 1 should be completed by mid-summer 2012. Posted. http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/59556/More_funding_for_improvements_at_intermodal_facility OPINIONS Why I Remain a Global-Warming Skeptic. Searching for scientific truth in the realm of climate. Last month the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project released the findings of its extensive study on global land temperatures over the past century. Physics professor Richard Muller, who led the study, heralded the findings with a number of controversial statements in the press, including an op-ed in this newspaper titled "The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism." And yet Mr. Muller remains a true skeptic—a searcher for scientific truth. Posted. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577012014136900828.html?mod=googlenews_wsj http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/opinion/dr-mullers-findings-on-global-warming.html Shale Gas Revolution. The United States is a country that has received many blessings, and once upon a time you could assume that Americans would come together to take advantage of them. But you can no longer make that assumption. The country is more divided and more clogged by special interests. Now we groan to absorb even the most wondrous gifts. A few years ago, a business genius named George P. Mitchell helped offer such a gift. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/opinion/brooks-the-shale-gas-revolution.html?scp=10&sq=fuels&st=cse Still on board the bullet train. Yes, the price tag has tripled and its completion date is 13 years later. But it's still a gamble worth taking. It's easy to see why many Californians are losing patience with the bullet train. Voters who were asked in 2008 to approve $9.95 billion in bonds to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco were told the project would cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020, yet a more realistic business plan released Tuesday by the rail authority placed the price tag at — whoops — $98 billion and the completion date at 2033. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-train-20111104,0,7045793.story EDITORIAL: Bureaucratic overkill. For those who think that government tends to be the right answer for most problems facing humankind, we suggest a look at the South Coast Air Quality Management District. In order to meet state and federal clean-air standards in the Inland Empire (as well as Orange and Los Angeles counties), the district has decided to issue temporary bans on the use of fireplaces. Not factory emissions. Not diesel emissions. Not automotive emissions. Not power-plant emissions. Posted. http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-bureaucratic-overkill/article_445c5615-2bc0-54db-91b0-aba3b2d3c44e.html#ixzz1ckejItkC Wind energy’s future? All puffed up, it seems. The green lobby, which apparently includes anyone willing to think green thoughts, has been clamoring for everyone to switch from the stuff that we know can power civilization to something else, like renewable energy, like wind. We guess it’s renewable when it chooses to blow, but that’s just part of the problem. A report relying on published information by the Energy Information Administration and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory discovers that wind isn’t all it’s puffed up to be, at least as a reasonable alternative to fossil fuel. Posted. http://orangepunch.ocregister.com/2011/11/03/wind-energys-future-all-puffed-up-it-seems/59543/ BLOGS In Changing Ecosystems, Winners and Losers. Two new peer-reviewed studies, one about forests and the other about oceans, predict that existing ecosystems will rearrange themselves over the next 70-plus years in response to global warming. In one of the studies, to be published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment, scientists from Oregon, Montana and British Columbia write that northwestern forests removed from the climatic buffering effect of the Pacific Ocean will transform themselves to adapt to less rainfall as well as warmer temperatures at high altitudes. Posted. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/in-changing-ecosystems-winners-and-losers/ California Rebates for Hybrids and E.V.’s Live On, in Reduced Form. California is the largest early-adopter market for electric vehicles in part because of incentives like single-driver access to H.O.V. lanes and financial subsidies. The state offered cash rebates of as much as $5,000 for zero-emission vehicles, or ZEVs, through the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project, subsidies that mostly went to new owners of the Nissan Leaf. Posted. http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/california-rebates-for-hybrids-and-e-v-s-live-on-in-reduced-form/ Scott Samuelsen, UCI Engineering Professor, Honored At White House Today. Scott Samuelsen, who teaches mechanical, aerospace and environmental engineering, was honored as a "Champion of Change" in D.C for his innovations in hydrogen power and smog reduction. The honor comes after Samuelsen and others at the National Fuel Cell Research Center, where he's the director, created a system that turns excrement into hydrogen fuel. Posted. http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/11/scott_samuelsen_uci_engineerin.php Where does the Volt go from here? I wrote last time that I had done two recent stories for popularmechanics.com having to do with the Chevrolet Volt. The first was on Volt (and Nissan Leaf) sales – both still limited by supply, not demand, as production and distribution ramps up. For the second, I was asked to clean my crystal ball and predict the future for Volt, and extended range EVs in general. Posted. http://green.autoblog.com/2011/11/03/where-does-erev-technology-go-from-here/ DOE calculates the cost of owning a car. The Department of Energy has created a tool that can be used to compare the fiscal and environmental costs of thousands of new and used car models. When figuring up vehicle costs, it's easy enough to tally the price of gas and toss in an occasional oil change, but working through the real cost of ownership including the initial investment, expected depreciation and cost of maintenance can make determining the best value difficult. Posted. http://green.autoblog.com/2011/11/03/doe-calculates-the-cost-of-owning-a-car/ NASA finds first-ever ozone hole over Arctic. The first ozone “hole” ever seen over northern polar regions was picked up earlier this year by satellites and weather balloons, according to a new study led by NASA. The severe depletion of the ozone layer, which shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays, was comparable to the ozone hole seen each year over the Antarctic since the mid-1980s, though smaller. Posted. http://sciencedude.ocregister.com/2011/10/03/nasa-finds-first-ever-ozone-hole-over-arctic/142543/