Clean Start: July 11, 2011

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

A 42,000 gallon oil spill in Montana’s Yellowstone River caused by a rupture in an Exxon Mobil pipeline earlier this week has hundreds of Montana farmers fretting about the impact of puddles of crude oil, and thick patches of the oil discoloring the fields. [Washington Post]

Federal regulators said on Sunday they want Exxon Mobil to retool its preliminary plan to clean up oil spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana from a ruptured pipe at the start of July. [Reuters]

A dozen U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic technicians launch boats daily on the flooding Missouri to monitor its tremendous flow. [Omaha World-Herald]

Senators from the seven states along the Missouri River are meeting this week to discuss flood policy. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

The flooding Missouri River is slowly beginning to recede in Pierre, SD after a month and a half of high flood. [Reuters]

Michigan’s largest wind farm is starting to take shape. [Detroit Free-Press]

The French government announced Monday the launch of a $14.26 billion offer to build five offshore wind farms, in a bid to reduce its longstanding reliance on atomic power. [Wall Street Journal]

New Jersey state climatologist David Robinson: “a conclusion of human-induced climate change is inescapable.” [Asbury Park Press]

Texan climatologist Andrew Dessler: “the vulnerability of Texas” to climate change is “akin to that of the low-lying island states of the Pacific that are going to be inundated by sea-level rise over the coming century.” [Houston Chronicle]

“The ocean is taking up less carbon because of the warming caused by the carbon in the atmosphere,” new research confirms. [Science Daily]

The heat wave in Wichita, home to climate-denying carbon polluter Koch Industries, broke records at 111 degrees. [Wichita Eagle]