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North Dakota officials might finally spill details about oil spill

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on October 16, 2013

North Dakota officials might finally spill details about oil spill

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A major oil pipeline spill in North Dakota remained undetected by Tesoro for days.

After discovering that the public, legislature, and governor were all kept in the dark for more than a week about a major oil spill on a North Dakota wheat farm, lawmakers wanted answers on Monday. But the state department that kept news of the 20,600-barrel spill to itself had more spin than answers. (The feds also withheld the information because they were being furloughed.)

David Glatt, head of the environmental section of the North Dakota Health Department, defended his department’s secrecy during the Energy Development and Transmission Committee hearing. He said the 11-day delay in notifying the public about the spill was a proper response, adding that the spill happened in the “best place it could’ve occurred.”

But by Tuesday, following a closed-door meeting between the governor’s staff and different state departments, some officials were sounding more contrite. From the Bismarck Tribune:

North Dakota’s Oil and Gas Division director Lynn Helms said the department’s stance is that the Tesoro Corp. pipeline was a rural pipeline under federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration jurisdiction. …

The state doesn’t have any laws requiring public notification of spills.

“We’re looking at some of those other triggers, such as overall volume,” Helms said.

Helms declined to put a specific threshold on how many barrels it might take to trigger a public alert on a spill. He said much smaller spills, if near a river or other water source, can do far more damage.

Don Morrison, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, called any improved availability of information to the public a positive development.

Meanwhile, news emerged on Tuesday that the 20-year-old pipeline only started carrying crude fracked from North Dakota’s Bakken shale deposit in August. Safety tests performed early in September detected a problem with the pipeline, but Inform reports that the results hadn’t been provided to Tesoro officials by the time the spill occurred. Naturally, they used the potentially leaky pipeline while awaiting the test results. I mean, what are the chances?


Source
Tioga oil leak prompts policy review by state, Bismarck Tribune

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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North Dakota officials might finally spill details about oil spill

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Republicans Prepare to Commit Party Suicide

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on September 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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Robert Costa reports that the tea partiers have won: John Boehner will allow the House to vote on a budget resolution that defunds Obamacare while fully funding everything else. There may be some wee problems, though:

But getting such a CR through the Democratic Senate and signed into law will be very difficult — and many House Republican insiders say a “Plan B” may be needed.

Here’s how my sources expect the gambit to unfold: The House passes a “defund CR,” throws it to the Senate, and waits to see what Senator Ted Cruz and his allies can do. Maybe they can get it through, maybe they can’t. Boehner and Cantor will be supportive, and conservative activists will rally.

But if Cruz and company can’t round up the votes, the House leadership will likely ask Republicans to turn their focus to the debt limit, avoid a shutdown, and pass a revised CR — one that doesn’t defund Obamacare.

It cracks me up that Costa is able to repeat this stuff with a straight face. I guess he has to in order to stay in the good graces of his sources. But here’s how it’s really going to play out: The House will pass this bill. Tea partiers everywhere will rejoice. And that will be it. Harry Reid will just laugh and toss it in the dustbin.

Boehner will then beg the lunatic wing of his party to get serious. They will threaten to hold their breaths until their faces turn blue. Boehner will sigh and toss off a pro forma speech about how President Obama needs to “get serious” about the deficit. He will then spend some time with Eric Cantor, and ask him for permission to pass a grown-up CR with some Democratic votes. If Cantor decides to let him, that’s what he’ll do. If not, there will be a government shutdown accompanied by dancing in the streets and solemn promises to hold out forever. But the public, to the apparent surprise of the tea partiers, will run out of patience very quickly. Democrats will start previewing campaign ads for next year. Phones will ring off the hook. Poll numbers will plummet. Suddenly La Revolución won’t seem quite as much fun anymore. The whole thing will then peter out amid much acrimony and scapegoating while Erick Erickson mutters on his blog about how Republicans can never be trusted to stand their ground in support of true conservatism.

Something along those lines, anyway.

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Republicans Prepare to Commit Party Suicide

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Gay Mayor of Vicco, Kentucky, Reacts to the "Best Segment of ‘The Colbert Report’ Ever"

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on August 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s being called the greatest segment The Colbert Report has ever done.

On Wednesday night, the Comedy Central news-satire program aired the latest installment in its “People Who Are Destroying America” series. The segment is on Johnny Cummings, the openly gay mayor—and a part-time hairdresser—of Vicco, Kentucky, a hamlet of about 330 people. Vicco made news earlier this year when it became the smallest town in the United States to pass a ban on discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. (The ordinance passed by a 3-1 city-commission vote. According to Cummings, who introduced the ordinance to the city council, representatives from five other towns told him that they want to be the next ones to pass such a “fairness ordinance.”)

“Everything considered, I was remarkably pleased with the way the Colbert segment turned out,” Cummings tells Mother Jones.

“Russia‘s not the only place trying to defend its family values,” host Stephen Colbert says, referring to the culture war over America’s traditional “small-town morals,” as he introduces the clip. What follows is a touching, funny, and stereotype-pulverizing look at a tiny Appalachian town and how its residents feel about the anti-discrimination policy and their mayor. Watch it here:

“If God makes ’em born gay, then why is he against it?” a Vicco resident says, in the clip’s moving final moments. “I can’t understand that. I’ve tried and tried and tried to understand that, and I can’t.”

The night after the segment aired, Cummings told Mother Jones about why he agreed to do it. “We got a lot of attention after that New York Times article ran in January, and we got these offers from production companies wanting to do all this crap,” Cummings recalls. The “crap” here refers to how five production companies, including that of ABC, have recently shown interest in filming a reality TV show in Vicco. “So when some of them called, I was often quite rude to them…But then I got a call from The Colbert Report. I always watch The Colbert Report…To get your point across, sometimes you just gotta laugh. That’s how I look at it. So I thought, okay, The Colbert Report would be perfect.”

The Comedy Central film crew came to town to shoot footage last February. The show also featured a pastor named Truman Hurt, the lone voice in the segment raising objections to the so-called gay lifestyle. The pastor’s objections, as well as local confusion over the legal specifics of the ordinance, were framed by some media outlets (such as MSNBC’s Maddow Blog) as a backlash and controversy. In Cummings’ view, no backlash actually occurred, and the town has been overwhelmingly supportive. “The only negative response we really got was the local TV station that played it up…and tried to cover it as ‘backlash,'” Cummings says. “If you check out my Facebook page, there’s not a negative thing on there about this. But some people tried to create a ‘backlash,’ I guess.”

The 50-year-old Cummings has been praised by residents and others for leading efforts to revitalize the Kentucky town’s infrastructure. Cummings is a Democrat (as is the majority of Vicco’s population) but has switched between Republican and Democratic party affiliation. Aside from his mayorship and his gig as a local hairdresser, he plays the blues on his saxophone in his spare time. He is also a big fan of Josephine Baker, the jazz singer and political activist who helped the French Resistance fight the Nazis.

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Gay Mayor of Vicco, Kentucky, Reacts to the "Best Segment of ‘The Colbert Report’ Ever"

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Crafty Obama Plans to Give Undocumented Immigrants the Right to Vote in 2014

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on July 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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Courtesy of Steve Benen, here is Michele Bachmann explaining why immigration reform is a bad idea for Republicans:

I think the president, even by executive order, can again wave his magic wand before 2014 and he’d say now all of the new, legal Americans are going to have voting rights.

Why do I say that? He did it in 2012. Do you remember? Anyone who was here as a Latina under age 30, he said, “You get to vote.”

What? He decides you get to vote? If he did it 2012, know — take it to the bank — he’ll do in 2014.

Does anyone have any idea what Bachmann is talking about? This is obviously a reference to the mini-DREAM executive order that Obama signed in 2012, but all that did was grant work permits and end deportations of undocumented immigrants who had come to the country before the age of 15. It wasn’t just for Latinas and it had nothing to do with voting.

I know, I know: it’s just Bachmann being Bachmann. But I’ll bet that this becomes yet another an underground tea party “fact” within days. You’ll be hearing it from your crazy uncle this Thanksgiving.

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Crafty Obama Plans to Give Undocumented Immigrants the Right to Vote in 2014

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Make Solar Cells in a… Microwave?

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on June 21, 2013

earth911

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Make Solar Cells in a… Microwave?

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Keystone backers hire lobbyists with ties to John Kerry

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on May 31, 2013

Keystone backers hire lobbyists with ties to John Kerry

By Lisa Hymas

State Department

Will John Kerry be swayed by former colleagues who are now pushing the Keystone pipeline?

The fight over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is getting personal — or should that be personnel?

Pipeline company TransCanada and the Canadian province of Alberta have been hiring lobbyists and consultants who previously worked with Secretary of State John Kerry, hoping they’ll help convince him that Keystone XL deserves a thumbs-up.

After the State Department finishes environmental and other reviews of the pipeline plan, Kerry will make a recommendation to President Obama about whether it should be approved. Obama will then make the final call.

From The Boston Globe:

In mid-March, about six weeks after Kerry was confirmed as secretary of state, the province of Alberta hired new consultants — some with ties to Kerry — to help them ensure the project wins approval.

They enlisted Boston-based communications and strategy firm Rasky Baerlein to “reach out and engage the US administration and key Senate and congressional committees,” according to federal records. Among those registered to lobby for the firm are Graham Shalgian, who worked on Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign; and Joe Baerlein, who has known Kerry for decades. …

The Alberta government also hired the well-connected Washington firm Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti to lobby US officials. David Castagnetti, a principal at the firm, is a longtime Kerry supporter who was the chief liaison to Congress during Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

The Financial Times reports that TransCanada and Alberta have also hired “companies staffed by former aides to President Barack Obama or to Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state.”

TransCanada has already been under fire for hiring Paul Elliott, a key member of Mrs Clinton’s campaign team during her presidential run in 2008, as its chief lobbyist.

TransCanada is also poised to rehire SKD Knickerbocker, the communications company run by Anita Dunn, a former Obama adviser who worked for Mr Kerry in the late 1980s.

From Politico:

[E]nvironmental groups say they are particularly appalled by the lobbyists’ connections to Kerry.

“The most effective, tried-and-true method to sway policy decision makers is to put their former staff, advisors and/or colleagues on your payroll,” Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, told POLITICO in an email. He added, “It is money and influence-peddling that, more often than not, sets energy policy, rather than merits, science or national interest.”

But green groups are playing the game too. From The Washington Post:

Four [former Obama aides] — Bill Burton, Stephanie Cutter, Jim Papa and Paul Tewes — work as consultants for opponents of the [Keystone] project ….

Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said her group hired Burton, the former White House deputy press secretary, to highlight problems posed by Keystone XL.

Still, the playing field is far from level. Keystone opponents have nowhere near as big a lobbying and PR budget as Keystone pushers.

And it’s still too early to tell whether environmentalists’ insider trump card — Joe Biden — is an ace or a joker.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on

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Frackers leaking less methane than previously believed, EPA says

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on May 1, 2013

Frackers leaking less methane than previously believed, EPA says

By John Upton

Ed Yourdon

Just how wack is it? The jury’s out.

Some seemingly happy news about fracking emerged this week: The EPA has lowered its estimate of how much methane escapes during the production of natural gas, down about 20 percent from previous estimates.

If the EPA is right, that’s good, because methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. If we’re going to frack for natural gas (which is mostly methane), we want to be burning that gas for energy rather than having a bunch of it escape into the atmosphere.

But not everyone buys the EPA’s new numbers.

From the AP:

The scope of the EPA’s revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. …

The EPA said it made the changes based on expert reviews and new data from several sources, including a report funded by the oil and gas industry. But the estimates aren’t based on independent field tests of actual emissions, and some scientists said that’s a problem.

Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor of ecology who led a 2011 methane leak study that is widely cited by critics of fracking, wrote in an email that “time will tell where the truth lies in all this, but I think EPA is wrong.”

Howarth said other federal climate scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published recent studies documenting massive methane leaks from natural gas operations in Colorado and other Western states.

Howarth wrote that the EPA seems “to be ignoring the published NOAA data in their latest efforts, and the bias on industry only pushing estimates downward — never up — is quite real. EPA badly needs a counter-acting force, such as outside independent review of their process.”

The natural gas industry points out that switching to its product is better for the climate than burning coal, and it has a point — natural gas power plants emit about half as much greenhouse gases as coal plants. But methane leakage during the fracking process could undermine those GHG savings. Also, while cheap gas is cutting into coal’s market share, it’s also making it harder for renewables to compete.

The natural gas industry is, of course, feeling vindicated by EPA’s revised numbers. Steve Everley with Energy In Depth, an industry-funded group, told the AP that “the methane ‘leak’ claim just got a lot more difficult for opponents” of natural gas to make.

But this dispute is far from settled, so neither side should get too happy yet.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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