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The little island that could is going 100 percent renewable

by UTKJaimiesgne Posted on September 30, 2014

Isla Bonita

The little island that could is going 100 percent renewable

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30 Sep 2014 7:30 AM

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Europeans thought the tiny island of El Hierro was the end of the world before Cristobal Colon sailed to that other hemisphere. Now it’s the beginning of a post-fossil energy world.

One of Spain’s Canary Islands off Africa’s coast, El Hierro is an active volcanic landmass too remote to hook up to the motherland’s electricity grid. Until recently, 6,600 tons of barged-in diesel were burned each year to generate power for the island’s 10,000 residents.

But today, El Hierro stands mere months away from its goal of 100-percent renewable electricity — thanks to a wind farm that stores excess energy in a connected water turbine system. NPR’s Lauren Frayer tells the story:

This past summer, El Hierro inaugurated the Gorona del Viento power plant, a $110 million wind and water turbine farm. By the end of this year, the plant will generate all of the island’s energy needs of up to 48 gigawatt hours per year.

The plant consists of five big industrial windmills and two lakes. On windy days — and there are plenty — the windmills harness the Canary Islands’ Atlantic gusts. When production exceeds demand, such as at night, excess energy is used to pump water from a sea-level lake up into a natural volcanic crater half a mile uphill.

When the wind dies down, the water is released down through a pipe connecting the two lakes. On its way, it passes through turbines, which generate hydro-power.

Everything is connected with sensors so that within five seconds of the wind dying down, the hydro portion of the plant kicks in. For island residents, the lights don’t even flicker.

The technology used in both the wind and water portions of the plant is simple, but El Hierro is the first to combine the two components, says Juan Manuel Quintero, an engineer who serves on the board of the Gorona del Viento plant.

Next up for the little island that could: completing the transition to energy independence by making every car on El Hierro electric by 2020.

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The little island that could is going 100 percent renewable

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Don’t Worry, the Crazy Is Coming Soon in the House Benghazi Hearing

by CarltonDecosta Posted on September 18, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R–SC), was shockingly calm. Aside from a bit of gotcha over a 15-year-old report, there were no conspiracy theories, no hot buttons pressed, no shrieking clown shows. The extremely sober topic was whether the State Department has been successfully implementing the recommendations made by the Accountability Review Board shortly after the attacks. Everyone was on their best behavior, and even Ed Kilgore was impressed:

Now it’s possible Gowdy will be taken to the woodshed by other Republicans (not to mention the conservative media that has made Benghazi! a sort of national security counterpart to Agenda 21), and come back snarling and ranting. But for the first time since September 11, 2012, the subject is being discussed by Republicans in an atmosphere that isn’t reminiscent of a Tea Party street rally.

Go ahead and call me a stone partisan blinded by my own ill will toward Republicans, but come on. Gowdy doesn’t need to be taken to the woodshed by anyone. This is just well-played theater from a guy who’s a mite smarter than the usual tea party crackpot. He’s gulling everyone into treating this like a serious investigation so that he’ll have some credibility stored up when it comes time for the hundredth repetition of the stand-down myth or the latest insane parsing of the White House talking points. That’s what this is all about.

I’ll apologize if Gowdy manages to keep the tone of this hearing civil and judicious all the way to the end. But I’m not too worried about having to eat any crow here.

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Don’t Worry, the Crazy Is Coming Soon in the House Benghazi Hearing

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Wasting water in California will now cost you $500

by LeilaniGMN Posted on July 16, 2014

Wasting water in California will now cost you $500

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Here’s a list of things that could now get you fined up to $500 a day in California, where a multi-year drought is sucking reservoirs and snowpacks dry:

Spraying so much water on your lawn or garden that excess water flows onto non-planted areas, walkways, parking lots, or neighboring property.
Washing your car with a hose that doesn’t have an automatic shut-off device.
Spraying water on a driveway, a sidewalk, asphalt, or any other hard surface.
Using fresh water in a water fountain — unless the water recirculates.

Those stern emergency regulations were adopted Tuesday by a unanimous vote of the State Water Resources Control Board – part of an effort to crack down on the profligate use of water during critically lean times.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) asked the state’s residents to voluntarily conserve water in January, but they didn’t. Rather, as the San Jose Mercury News reports, “a new state survey released Tuesday showed that water use in May rose by 1 percent this year, compared with a 2011-2013 May average.”

Californians use more water on their gardens and lawns than they use inside their homes, as shown in the following chart from a document prepared for the board members ahead of Tuesday’s vote. So the new rules focus on outdoor use.

Extreme drought is now affecting 80 percent of the Golden State. Some 400,000 acres of farmland could be fallowed due to water shortages, and water customers in the hardest-hit communities are having their daily water supplies capped at less than 50 gallons per person.

The California Landscape Contractors Association sees an upside, though. It expects that the threats of fines could convince Californians to hire its members to replace thirsty nonnative plants in their gardens with drought-hardy alternatives. “If the runoff prohibition is enforced at the local level, we expect it to result in a multitude of landscape retrofits in the coming months,” association executive Larry Rohlfes told the water board in a letter dated Monday, one of a large stack of letters sent by various groups and residents in support of the new rules. “The water efficient landscapes that result will help the state’s long-term conservation efforts — in addition to helping the state deal with a hopefully short-term drought emergency.”


Source
Proposed text of emergency regulations, State Water Resources Control Board
California Drought: Conservation efforts failing despite pleas to save water, San Jose Mercury News

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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Unions Should Brace Themselves for a Major Supreme Court Loss

by KianHeinrich Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s official: The Supreme Court will wait until Monday, the final day of the current term, to issue its decision in Harris v. Quinn. As I explained in May, Harris is a blockbuster case that could, in a worst-case scenario, wipe public-employee unions such as SEIU and AFSCME off the map. And the chances of a damaging decision in Harris just increased—here’s why.

Heading into Thursday, the Supreme Court had Harris and three other cases left to decide. The justices chose to issue their opinions concerning presidential recess appointments (Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board) and so-called buffer zones keeping protesters at a distance from abortion clinics (McCullen v. Coakley). Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal member of the court, wrote the Canning opinion; Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, took the lead in McCullen.

This makes it more likely that Justice Samuel Alito, who we’ve yet to hear much from, will write the opinion in Harris, which points to bad news for public-employee unions. “There’s almost no question Justice Alito has this opinion unless he lost his majority along way,” tweets Rick Hasen, a University of California-Irvine law professor. “Anti-union is his signature issue.”

Labor officials can only hope Hasen is wrong. Alito is strongly anti-union. In the 2012 case Knox v. SEIU, Alito essentially invited labor’s foes to challenge the basic model of public-employee unionism, in which non-union employees can be made to pay dues to a union for bargaining on their behalf, representing them in grievance issues, etc. Harris makes such a challenge; it’s what Alito asked for.

Unions like to call those non-member payments “fair share” dues. If it’s the union’s job, they reason, to represent all members and nonmembers in a unionized workplace, then all those workers should pay their fair share for that representation. Conservatives—and Alito—say fair-share fees violate the First Amendment rights of non-union workers.

The outcome in Harris could cut a number of ways. The Supreme Court could uphold the lower court’s decision dismissing the suit—a big union victory. It could strike down fair share fees—the equivalent of Congress passing a national right-to-work bill. (Right-to-work laws ban unions from collecting those fair-share fees from non-members.) Public-employee unions would survive that decision, but it would be a blow. The court could also effectively enact right-to-work nationwide and kneecap a union’s ability to exclusively represent employees in a unionized workplace. That would be catastrophic for public-employee unions.

If there’s any judge who might go that far, it would be Samuel Alito.

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Unions Should Brace Themselves for a Major Supreme Court Loss

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Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads to Costco, Skips Walmart on Latest Book Tour

by Juli34Bfuc Posted on June 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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How times change. This Saturday Hillary Clinton is scheduled to swing by a Costco in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, for a book signing—part of her tour touting her new release, Hard Choices. The choice of venue isn’t all that surprising: the discount retail outlet has become a favorite among liberals thanks to its reasonable wages and generous health benefits. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden love to get photographed yucking it up at Costco stores, while the company’s co-founder and former CEO spoke at the Democrats’ 2012 convention.

For Clinton, this is a near repeat of her last book tour, almost exactly 11 years ago today. That tour also took her through the DC suburbs. But back then, she appeared at Costco’s rival, a company that has become, for Democratic activists, the emblem of income inequality: Walmart. In 2003, more than 1,000 Hill-fans showed up at the Fairfax, Virginia, store to have their copy of Clinton’s memoir Living History signed. “After many hours of waiting, they finally reached the senator, sitting at a black-curtain display facing a rack of $9.88 women’s shoes and $7.84 denim baby outfits,” according to an Associated Press article from the time. Clinton spent three hours interacting with her adoring crowd, at one point needing a hand massage from an aide after she got post-autograph finger cramps.

Clinton’s Walmart allegiance would soon sour. In 2005 she returned a $5,000 donation from the company’s PAC, severing most of her political ties to the company and putting an end to a long, cozy relationship that dated back to her days in Arkansas. Walmart is the country’s largest private employer with 1.3 million US employees, a wildly profitable company that has led the way in destabilizing unions as a force in the American economy. It is now common course for Democrats with national ambitions to rail against the company’s low wages and efforts to quash workers’ attempts to organize. Clinton’s past association with Walmart shows the dangers of a political career that spans more than three decades. When political tides shift over the years, they can leave stains on one’s resume.

Hillary was the primary breadwinner for the Clinton clan when Bill was governor of Arkansas in the 1980s. With Bill earning $35,000 a year as governor, the family relied on Hillary’s salary from her job as a partner at Rose Law Firm, which she supplemented by serving as a board member for several companies. One of those companies was Walmart, and it was an association that proved particularly lucrative for the Clintons. She sat on the board from 1986-1992 and earned $18,000 a year, with a $1,500 bonus for each quarterly board meeting she attended. Clinton held nearly $100,000 in Walmart stock before she and her husband moved to DC.

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Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads to Costco, Skips Walmart on Latest Book Tour

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Yes, frackers can forcibly drill your land, even if you don’t want them to

by BarbraSingletar Posted on June 13, 2014

don’t frack me, bro

Yes, frackers can forcibly drill your land, even if you don’t want them to

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13254

Jump in. You have no choice.

Forced pooling isn’t some kind of college pool party that jocks compel nerds to attend, resulting in wacky hijinks. It’s a grim legal tool, dating back nearly a century in some states, that allows drillers to tap the fossil fuels beneath a reluctant landowner’s property — if enough of their neighbors sell their drilling rights. The philosophy of such laws is that subterranean pools of oil and natural gas pay no heed to property lines.

As hydraulic fracturing takes grip across the nation, frackers are taking advantage of state laws that were drafted to allow forced pooling for conventional gas and oil drilling.

Newsweek took a trip to Marcellus Shale country and interviewed Suzanne Matteo and Bob Svetlak, two of the residents who’ve been stymieing drilling plans by refusing to sign agreements that would allow Hilcorp to frack their land in Pulaski Township, Penn., in exchange for per-acre payments and royalties:

[L]ate last August, the company filed an application with the state to drill on a large swath of land that includes property owned by Bob Svetlak, 73, … and now the company was trying to use a 1961 “forced pooling” law to access the natural gas beneath his 14.6 acres without his consent.

Matteo says that when she heard about Hilcorp’s move on Svetlak’s property, she knew hers would be next. She, along with Svetlak and two other property owners, represent 35 holdout acres within the 3,267-acre area that Hilcorp has proposed as a drilling unit. Sure enough, a neighbor who had leased to Hilcorp soon showed Matteo a letter from the company encouraging leaseholders to attend a meeting before the state Environmental Hearing Board to cheer on its forced pooling application (referred to as a Well Spacing Application).

“By integrating the tracts in red, Hilcorp can potentially drill twice as many wells into your unit, allowing Hilcorp to fully develop the minerals beneath your land,” the letter said, adding that without forced pooling, more wells would need to be drilled and less gas would be produced. In short, the letter implied to the leaseholders, unless their holdout neighbors were forcibly pooled, their own future royalties would be in jeopardy.

The letter included a map, with Matteo’s land as well as three other unleased tracts clearly identified in red. …

After seeing the letter sent to her neighbors, Matteo and two other holdout property owners filed a lawsuit against Hilcorp, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the state attorney general, alleging that the forced pooling law is a violation of their constitutional right to private property, as well as a violation of state eminent domain law, which stipulates that any taking of private land must be for a public, not private, purpose. …

Despite the health concerns, some of Matteo’s neighbors are frustrated with her and others for holding up the royalties they will receive once the gas starts flowing. Bruce and Jody Clingan, who own a 200-acre golf course nearby, received a bonus of over $500,000 when they signed with Hilcorp, plus 18 percent royalties on future production. Bruce Clingan told CBS that he couldn’t understand why “1 percent” of landowners in the proposed unit could prevent drilling to which the other “99 percent” have consented.

Which is why Matteo believes her lawsuit is just the beginning. “I know I’m screwed, no matter what,” she says. “There’s going to be wells near me no matter what. There’s a large landowner behind me and across the street that would probably love the money for a well pad. But I know we’re getting used as a precedent. If they get away with this with us, it’s going to happen everywhere.”

Forced pooling laws are currently on the books in 39 states, with different states requiring different thresholds of consent among landholders before drilling can be forced upon all of them. Some lawmakers are trying to rein in such laws, while others are trying to introduce new ones.


Source
Your Lawn Need Fracking?, Newsweek

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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Yes, frackers can forcibly drill your land, even if you don’t want them to

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As Earth Warms, West Nile Spreads

by Myrna Posted on May 9, 2014

The virus took the U.S. by surprise. Thanks to climate change, it’s here to stay. Wikimedia Commons The day that everything changed was a broiling Thursday in July—95 degrees, the kind of dry heat that Sacramento Valley residents are used to. If you have to work outside, you do it before noon, swathed in long sleeves and pants to keep the sun at bay and the mosquitoes from eating you alive. On this day, however, my grandmother, an active and spritely woman even at 80, never made it outside to the garden. She mentioned at breakfast that she wasn’t feeling well, and my grandfather suggested that she take a nap in the sunroom. When he finally woke her up at 4 p.m., she still felt ill and feverish. The nearest emergency room is more than an hour’s drive from their 20-acre farm in rural northern California, but they decided to make the trip. The doctors performed a CAT scan, gave my grandmother some Tylenol, and sent her home. When my grandparents finally got back at around 11 p.m., my grandfather tried to convince my grandmother to eat something; she said that she could manage a piece of toast. A few days later he found the toast, one bite taken out of it, abandoned in the microwave. To keep reading, click here. View original: As Earth Warms, West Nile Spreads Related Articles7 Scary Facts About How Global Warming Is Scorching the United StatesThe Animals of ChernobylWATCH: These Reefs Are Beautiful—But Most of the Coral Is Dead

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As Earth Warms, West Nile Spreads

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Northwestern’s Football Team Just Voted on Unionization. Here’s What Happens Next.

by SusannahGiles Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Northwestern University football players voted on unionization today following a push from current and former athletes, a regional labor board hearing in their favor, and a concerted effort by university officials to convince players to vote no. Now that ballots have been cast, the landscape of college sports has been…well, it’s pretty much the same. For now, at least.

While the votes have been cast, they will not be counted until the National Labor Relations Board headquarters in Washington, DC, rules on whether the athletes are employees, which could take months. The board’s Chicago region found that they were, but Northwestern appealed that decision. The university has been active in pushing players not to unionize: Football players received iPads and were thrown a party at a bowling alley the first day of practice, though Northwestern officials said it was unrelated to the upcoming union vote. Head coach Pat Fitzgerald emailed the team that they might not be able to trust a union, and that the downside of organizing is much bigger than the upside. “You have nothing to gain by forming a union,” he wrote, keeping with the school’s theme that players have plenty to lose but their chains.

Just by securing the right for players to vote on representation, though, union advocates say they’ve already won. “Today is special because college athletes exercised their rights under labor laws, rights the NCAA has fought hard to deny them,” said Ramogi Huma, president of the College Athletes Players Association, which will represent the players if they vote to unionize. “Today’s vote clearly demonstrates that amateurism is a myth and that college athletes are employees.”

The results of the vote will only matter if the NLRB upholds the decision that the football players are Northwestern employees. If players voted no, the status quo will remain and players will be free to vote again next year (and every year after that). If they voted yes, Northwestern will likely refuse to bargain, which would take the case to federal court, dragging the process out even longer.

It may be a slow march, but the fight for unionization—led by Huma and former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter—is already paying dividends. Last week the NCAA removed restrictions on food for athletes, and president Mark Emmert told ESPN that the NCAA will likely vote on covering the difference between a scholarship and a full cost of college attendance, as well as adding an extra year of eligibility for players who are forced to sit out a year after transferring to another school. While those solutions aren’t exactly what the union has called for, they are the first of what will likely be many compromises as players and advocates keep the pressure on.

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Northwestern’s Football Team Just Voted on Unionization. Here’s What Happens Next.

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California’s cap-and-trade program pays loggers to clearcut old-growth forests

by BrandonVonDouss Posted on April 3, 2014

California’s cap-and-trade program pays loggers to clearcut old-growth forests

By

Ebbets Pass Forest Watch

Does this look climate-friendly to you?

Timber industry lobbyists clinched a nice little victory in Sacramento four years ago, and now forests and the climate are paying the price.

Under California’s cap-and-trade program, which began in late 2012, timber companies can earn carbon credits by felling forests and chopping down old-growth trees — and then replanting the razed earth with younger trees. Which they will eventually chop down, again, after they have grown. The idea was that the younger trees would suck up a lot of carbon dioxide as they grew. But that flies in the face of scientific findings, published earlier this year in the journal Nature, that older trees are far better than their younger cousins at sucking carbon out of the sky.

A coalition of environmental groups sent a letter on Tuesday to the California Air Resources Board and Climate Action Reserve, the state’s carbon-offset registry, urging them to reconsider the wrongheaded rules:

Ignoring objections and calls from nongovernmental organizations like Sierra Club California, Center for Biological Diversity, and others to remove or modify these provisions, the Air Resources Board rubber-stamped the Forest Protocol and incorporated it intact as an integral part of the ARB’s cap and trade rules. We believe these actions by CAR and ARB were misguided policy decisions, and should be reconsidered in light of the new scientific findings.

In our view, the flawed Forest Protocol undermines the credibility of California’s cap and trade system by incentivizing the destruction of old-growth forests in the state and in North America.

“It’s time to cut the incentives for clearcutting from the cap and trade program,” said John Trinkl of Ebbets Pass Forest Watch, which works to protect forests from clearcutters, including Sierra Pacific Industries, which lobbied for the logging-friendly provisions. “SPI stands to gain $100 million for selling offset credits from growing tree plantations after clearcutting old growth forests. They should be punished, not rewarded.”

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.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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"Purge" May Not Mean What You Think It Means

by AlisonBeak Posted on March 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Marcy Wheeler reports on today’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board hearing:

The most striking aspect of the hearing was the tooth-pulling effort to get the panel to define the terms they use….The most interesting redefinitions were for “purge” and “search.”

….Purge does not mean — as you might expect — “destroy.” Rather, it means only “remove from NSA systems in such a way that it cannot be used.” Which, best as I understand it, means they’re not actually destroying this data.

….“Purge.” To keep. Somewhere else.

Maybe not even somewhere else! Perhaps to the NSA, purging a record merely means flipping a database flag so that it won’t show up in ordinary queries. There’s no telling.

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"Purge" May Not Mean What You Think It Means

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