What crazy weather in the midwest today! If you look at a radar map, it looked like a giant hurricane over the upper U.S.,  and the winds were (still are) incredible.  Low barametric pressure levels have all been completely broken today.  The storm is called a “bomb” among scientists for it’s steep drop in low pressure and high winds,  and it’s also been described as an inland hurricane.  It’s the second storm in severity in history in the Great Lakes since the Edmund Fitzgerald sank.   So far, 300,000 are without power over several states.

Below is some weather and climate information from the rest of the country.  First, another Climate Files podcast for October talks about the connection between militarism and the environment, and some of the latest science from the ACC.  You can see more here. Some news highlights from SolveClimate and Sierra Club are below.

Who could live like this? Floods in Bangkok continue. This shows floodwaters in Nakhon Ratchasima province, northeast of Bangkok October 20, 2010. Reuters photo.

New Internet Site to Publish Fracking Fluid Information

The Okla.-based Ground Water Protection Council says its system will allow drillers to publish chemical recipes used in the new wells they have “fracked.” Disclosure will be on a voluntary basis only, it said, but the group is optimistic firms will participate.

India First to Quantify Economic Value of Natural World

The announcement is due to be made at a meeting of world governments in Japan to try to halt global destruction of biodiversity, and it is hoped that such a move by a major developing economy will prompt other countries to join the initiative.

Some landowners won’t allow land to be used for new dirty oil pipeline. In late September, SolveClimate News reporter Elizabeth McGowan traveled to Nebraska to find out more about the Keystone XL pipeline that TransCanada plans to build to carry crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas. This is the sixth in a series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 here.

BIG OIL and foreign companies influence our elections: A new report shows that BP and other big CO2-emitting European companies have contributed substantial funding to climate-change-denying Tea Party candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. The Guardian

Reappearing Act: Scientists conducting research in the Gulf of Mexico have found much oil residue on the ocean floor in a 140-mile radius around the Macondo Well, refuting claims that the spilled oil has largely disappeared from the Gulf. USA Today

Climate Victims: Holland Island is the latest Chesapeake Island to disappear under the Bay, where rising ocean levels, prompted by glacial melting and climate change, have all but erased life on the islands, and the islands themselves. Washington Post

Feds Approve Largest-Ever Solar Project in Calif. (AP)

The Obama administration has approved a thousand-megawatt solar project on federal land in southern California, the largest solar project ever planned on U.S. public lands.

Bloomberg Report Puts U.S. Solar Sector on Brink of Immense Growth (PV Tech)

A new report by Bloomberg New [...]