Daily Briefing: Wed.

A SLAM CLUNK? The "cash for clunkers" rebate program may get a critical $2 billion fill-up this week, as congressional leaders scramble to sustain its runaway success. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that he has enough votes to replenish the impoverished program for another month, vowing to vote on the matter before the upcoming August recess. The AP reports that GOP opposition is eroding, with critics such as Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint unwilling to push too fiercely against the popular rebates, which are giving consumers up to $4,500 when they trade in older, gas-guzzling cars for newer, fuel-efficient ones. While climate experts say the program is barely a drop in the overall greenhouse-gas bucket, more than 240,000 Americans have already traded in their clunkers, yielding an average efficiency increase of 61 percent. "It's really small numbers," a scientist with the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute tells the AP. "But if you don't start somewhere, where are you going to start? It heads the country in the right direction." (Sources: Associated Press, AP, TIME)

 

TOPS OFF: There ain't no mountain high enough to keep mining companies away from Appalachian coal seams, mainly because they're flattening them all. Mountaintop removal is blamed not only for decapitating some of Earth's oldest peaks, but also destroying streams, rivers and valleys below them by dumping all the resulting rock and debris. Environmentalists have been dismayed by the blind eye President Obama has turned to the issue — "We cannot continue to give President Obama a pass on this much longer," NASA scientist James Hansen recently said. Obama's interest may not be necessary, though, since a bipartisan bill now in the Senate would undercut the economics of mountaintop removal by prohibiting companies from dumping debris into streams. Meanwhile, the Guardian profiles Larry Gibson, the one-man frontline who's been defending against mountaintop removal for the past 25 years. "The mountains in West Virginia are the oldest in the world and now they are gone in the blink of an eye," he says. "I am the man who is holding the fort down here. I am the man holding them back." (Sources: Washington Post, Guardian)

 

PAYING CLIMATE BILLS: The average U.S. household would pay less than $150 more per year over the next 10 years under the House version of the climate bill, according to a new draft report from the Energy Information Administration. The EIA report is in line with others conducted by the EPA and the Congressional Budget Office, seeing an average energy premium of $142 in 2020 and $583 in 2030, and gasoline premiums of 23 cents a gallon in a decade and 36 cents a gallon in 20 years. The EIA says it will release the final version of the report soon. (Source: Reuters)

 

GARBAGE PATCH KIDS: Scientists from the University of California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have embarked on a three-week research cruise into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to study the giant, nebulous and little-understood underwater trash galaxy. The crew's main goal is to determine how the huge accumulation of plastic is affecting marine life, but they'll also be studying other aspects, such as how big it is and how it circulates. (Source: CNN)

 

TREES FALLING IN THE FOREST: The Amazon rain forest isn't having a good summer. Deforestation in the world's biggest jungle quadrupled in June from May's already-severe losses, according to satellite imagery from Brazil's space agency, with 223 square miles of forest either burned or cut down. More than 1,800 square miles of Amazon woodland have been lost since last July, but the Brazilian government vowed in December to slow deforestation by 70 percent over a decade. (Source: Agence France-Presse)

 

TROPICAL SUPPRESSION: El Niño has come on stronger this summer than scientists had anticipated, warming up the Pacific Ocean and cooling down the Atlantic hurricane season by creating more wind shear. The effect has been so dramatic, in fact, that the premier U.S. hurricane forecasting center on Tuesday shaved a hurricane off its previous prediction for 2009. Colorado State University's hurricane forest team now expects 10 named tropical storms, four hurricanes and two major hurricanes, which have sustained winds of at least 111 mph. (Source: USA Today)

 

KING RAT: Directed by the late Heath Ledger, Modest Mouse's highly anticipated video for "King Rat" was released Tuesday. The animated look at a world where whales hunt humans is at once entertaining, haunting and mesmerizing, although Ledger tragically died before he could see the final version. All the proceeds from the first month's iTunes downloads will benefit the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a marine-life protection group made famous by its skirmishes with Japanese whaling ships. (Source: Huffington Post)

 

 

— Russell McLendon