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Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too

by Clement62M Posted on February 19, 2015

Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too

By on 19 Feb 2015commentsShare

Shell and ExxonMobil, as well as the Dutch government, ignored for decades that drilling in Europe’s largest gas field was causing earthquakes that put human lives and property at risk. That’s the takeaway of a new report out this week from an independent group advising the Dutch government.

As the natural gas beneath the Netherlands has dwindled in recent years, residents of Groningen County have experienced an increasing number of earthquakes. Last year, the area was hit with 84. The New York Times summarized what’s going on in a feature last summer:

A half-century of extraction has reduced the field’s natural pressure in recent years, and seismic shifts from geological settling have set off increasingly frequent earthquakes — more than 120 last year, and at least 40 this year. Though most of the tremors have been small, and resulted in no reported deaths or serious injuries, they have caused widespread damage to buildings, endangered nearby dikes and frightened and angered local residents.

Though the quakes started in the 1990s, the strongest came in 2012 when a 3.6 magnitude quake caused widespread damage to buildings in a region where structures were not designed to withstand seismic activity.

It was only after that quake that the government and the drilling company started taking the welfare of residents into account, according to the recently released findings of a year-long inquiry by the Dutch Safety Board, a government-funded but non-governmental organization.

“The Dutch Safety Board concludes that the safety of citizens in Groningen with regard to induced earthquakes had no influence on decision-making on the exploitation of the Groningen gas field until 2013. Until that time, the parties viewed the impact of earthquakes as limited: a risk of damage that could be compensated,” the report concluded.

Residents have been putting pressure on the Dutch government to force production cuts at the gas field, and it has responded; most recently, the government ordered a 16 percent cut for the first half of 2015 on top of cuts already in place. The field is a major source of revenue for the Dutch government, bringing in billions of euros each year. It also accounts for one third of the natural gas produced by the European Union.

The government and the joint venture between Shell and Exxon (NAM, short for Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, of course) are also trying to win over Groningen residents by paying for damages. From the Times:

The company and various government authorities have also agreed on a five-year, €1.2 billion package to repair and reinforce homes and other buildings, including more than 20 of the medieval churches in the region that have sustained substantial damage.

This all raises questions about U.S. natural gas production and earthquakes. In recent years, wastewater disposal from fracking has caused a dramatic uptick in earthquakes in a number of states; Oklahoma has been hit particularly hard. Though the geological processes involved with the Dutch quakes are different — and Groningen was developed using traditional drilling, not fracking — some of the policy questions are the same. Namely: How bad do earthquakes have to get before the state or federal government considers limiting production?

At the moment, the more business-friendly U.S. government isn’t looking at curtailing fracking. In fact, one state hit by a recent spate of earthquakes, Ohio, is making sure that local authorities don’t interfere with state decisions about when and where drilling is allowed.

In Groningen, the relationship between the gas company and local residents got quite bad before things started to turn around. And at this point it might be too late. “NAM has spoiled trust over the last 20 to 30 years,” Jacques Wallage, a former member of the Dutch cabinet and a former mayor of Groningen, told the Times last summer. “The main question is, Can you rebuild trust?”

Oil and gas drillers across America may someday be forced to cough up an answer to the same question. But for now, fracking in the U.S. just continues — and Americans can only dream of getting more than a billion bucks to compensate for quake damage.

Source:
Earthquake Dangers in Dutch Gas Field Were Ignored for Years, Safety Board Says

, The New York Times.

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Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too

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Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

by LesleeScotto Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn’t “half as responsible as the men who forged the nation.” He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other “distortions” by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O’Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don’t withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in.

O’Reilly has repeatedly told his audience that he was a war correspondent during the Falklands war and that he experienced combat during that 1982 conflict between England and Argentina. He has often invoked this experience to emphasize that he understands war as only someone who has witnessed it could. As he once put it, “I’ve been there. That’s really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I’ve seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven’t.”

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Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

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Casino Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Is Shocked—Shocked!—by Online Gambling

by MauriciEir Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Casino magnate and conservative megadonor Sheldon Adelson has been on a full-scale crusade against internet gambling. An advocacy group he launched and helps to bankroll is currently at the vanguard of a lobbying effort to pass a federal ban on online wagering. The billionaire, who says he’ll spend “whatever it takes” to support the ban, claims he opposes internet gambling on “moral” grounds, because it preys on the most vulnerable members of society. What he doesn’t say is that for years his company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., tested the waters on getting into this business for itself.

Adelson’s pet cause got a boost in Congress earlier this month when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced (for the second time) the Restoration of America’s Wire Act. The bill aims to strengthen the Federal Wire Act of 1961, which prohibited phone and wire-based wagering, by applying it to internet gambling—effectively banning the practice. The Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, an Adelson-launched group whose chairs include former New York Gov. George Pataki (R) and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown (D), is lobbying heavily for the bill and running ads online and in print in support of the cause. On its website, the group casts online gambling as an out-of-control phenomenon that “crosses the line of responsible gaming by bringing gambling into our living rooms and onto our smartphones” by “targeting the young, the poor, and the elderly where they live.”

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Casino Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Is Shocked—Shocked!—by Online Gambling

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Now we can watch the oceans acidify in real time

by CalvinRemer Posted on February 18, 2015

Now we can watch the oceans acidify in real time

By on 18 Feb 2015commentsShare

We have a new way to measure ocean acidification … from space! Just as it did for the rotary phone and the which-way-is-my-weathervane-pointing meteorology, satellite technology will give a big boost to the tech available to monitor ocean chemistry, according to new research. Scientists previously relied on a patchy network of buoys, ships, and lab tests to monitor acidification. By combining satellite measurements of salinity and other ocean variables, scientists can now paint a near-instantaneous picture of the ocean’s acid baseline at any one time.

And, bonus points: It turns out that five years of changing ocean chemistry is pretty mesmerizing:

Here’s more from Climate Central:

The new monitoring techniques can help monitor hot spots such as the Bay of Bengal, the Arctic Ocean, and the Caribbean, three places where ocean acidification could have major economic impacts but where little research has been done.

New monitoring efforts may come in particularly useful in the coming months, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there is a risk of major coral bleaching in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans through May, an event that may rival severe bleaching that occurred in 1998 and 2010. Some island nations in the tropical Pacific including Kiribati, Nauru and the Solomon Islands are already seeing ocean conditions that can cause bleaching.

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Ocean Acidification, Now Watchable in Real Time

, Climate Central.

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What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

by BDRWilliam Posted on February 18, 2015

What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

By on 17 Feb 2015commentsShare

Earlier this month, Miss Piggy took an epic seven-hour trip on the Pineapple Express, reminding everyone that the she still knows how to party. A video documenting the experience shows Miss Piggy and her crew clearly flying high and soaking up the Northern California weather. There’s also this one dude who’s just devouring some snacks.

Of course, by “Miss Piggy,” I mean the decked-out government airplane built to fly through hurricanes, and by “Pineapple Express,” I mean the river of water vapor that flows over the Pacific Ocean and brings California about 40 percent of its annual precipitation. But you guys knew that, right?

Anyway, atmospheric rivers like the Pineapple Express are major players in the Earth’s water cycle. The big ones can transport up to 15 times the amount of water flowing through the mouth of the Mississippi River, and when they hit land, mountain ranges like those on the California coast push the vapor up higher into the atmosphere, where it condenses into rain and snow.

During the first week of February, for example, the Pineapple Express hit the West Coast and doused parts of Northern California for days. It wasn’t enough rain to end California’s drought, but it was enough to make going places suck for lots of people.

Understanding how these atmospheric rivers work is important for both short-term weather forecasting and climate modeling, which is why during this last Pineapple Express, scientists flew directly into the thick of it.

Miss Piggy is part of a fleet of planes known as “hurricane hunters” that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to take data from inside hurricanes. Kermit and Gonzo are also part of the fleet (read about the collaboration between the NOAA and Jim Henson Productions here).

As a hurricane hunter, Miss Piggy is equipped to collect all kinds of weather data. Here’s a sample of the measurements she took during the Pineapple Express, from the LA Times:

Radar equipment mounted on the aircraft’s exterior measured precipitation and cloud thickness. Probes attached to the wings measured the number and size of liquid cloud droplets. Another of the plane’s radar devices measured the height of ocean waves.

Three other planes joined Miss Piggy on the sky river that day back in early February. Two collected data at higher altitudes, and one collected water droplet samples. There was also a ship taking measurements 230 miles off shore, and a satellite measuring surface winds. The International Space Station also got in on the action, measuring how dust particles (aka the nuclei at the center of vapor droplets) mix above the ocean. Scientists hope all the data will help them better understand how these rivers behave as they flow over land so places like Northern California can adequately prepare for them.

In a statement to the LA Times, Ryan Spackman, the lead researcher on board Miss Piggy, said the day’s mission was “an unprecedented interrogation of an atmospheric river event in landfall.”

Way to go, Miss Piggy. You still got it!

Source:
Scientists go high and low for data on drought-fighting ‘sky rivers’

, LA Times.

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What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

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Visiting My Friend in Putin’s Prison Camp

by MarquisLKA Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

My first stop at Sadovaya Prison Colony No. 2 in central Russia is the visitors’ intake center. I’ve traveled for 14 hours on an overnight train that reeked of fetid socks to see my imprisoned friend, environmental activist Yevgeny Vitishko. By my noon arrival at the colony, I’m already running late, and reams of red tape await before I’ll be able to see him.

I’ve come to these cold mud flats 440 miles south of Moscow for the first interview Vitishko has given in the seven months since February 12, 2014, the day he was sent away in the midst of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

In the years leading up to the event, Vitishko had emerged as one of the competition’s fiercest critics. Along with his little-known organization, the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC), Vitishko protested the ecological destruction and crony Kremlin corruption that fed the $51 billion games, the most expensive in history. Now, a year after the closing ceremonies, his dire predictions of environmental havoc have come true—and Vitishko sits in prison. He has been described as the only prisoner of conscience associated with the Sochi Olympics.

Vitishko and I immediately hit it off when we first met in January 2014, in his hometown of Tuapse, 75 miles northwest of Sochi on the Black Sea. A Krasnodar court had recently sentenced him to three years in the Sadovaya penal colony on charges that he’d painted an environmental message on a fence. He remained free on the condition he not leave Tuapse until a long-shot February 12 appeal was set to be heard at a regional court.

We met up at my hotel, one of the town’s neglected Soviet-era spas. The 41-year-old geologist’s white turtleneck and tan made him look like he’s just stepped off a yacht. I hopped in his car and he sped down the narrow hill roads to his favorite coffee joint.

His looming prison sentence gave him, Vitishko said, a “nothing to lose” freedom with his words. With the opening ceremony just 13 days away, Vitishko sipped his cup of Turkish blend and rattled off the Games’ disastrous effects. The Myzmta River, once Sochi’s main water source, was poisoned by toxic construction waste. Wells had dried up, thanks to illegal quarries and dump sites; the weight of newly paved roads, trafficked nearly 24/7 for years by heavy dump trucks and digging machinery, ruined the region’s aquifers. The traffic inundated villagers with dust, affecting residents’ health, livestock, and farms. Sochi’s seaside stadiums decimated the Imereti lowlands, turning a major migratory stopover for endangered birds into a strip of Olympic venues and construction debris. But the longest lasting damage, Vitishko warned, would come from the way the government rewrote environmental law to accommodate Olympic construction.

Bridges over what’s left of the Mzymta river in Sochi Nils Bøhmer/Bellona

After seven years of gumshoeing, Vitishko was preparing to publish a report detailing such findings, cowritten with his friend Suren Gazaryan, once the Olympics kicked into full swing. (Full disclosure: I helped translate EWNC’s report into English.)

“I’m not afraid to go to jail for what I’ve said, and I probably will,” Vitishko told me that day. “If it draws the world’s attention to how the Olympics have destroyed the Black Sea area, I’ll sit in a cell. It’ll just be part of my journey.”

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Visiting My Friend in Putin’s Prison Camp

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Can Tiny Houses Help Fix Homelessness?

by RonnieThomson Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

More Coverage of Homelessness


The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness


Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless


How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along to Find Out


This Massive Project Is Great News for Homeless Vets in Los Angeles


Here’s What It’s Like to Be a Homeless Techie in Silicon Valley


Hanging Out With the Tech Have-Nots at a Silicon Valley Shantytown

In November 2013, June lived in a makeshift encampment of tarps and cardboard, squeezed between a road and a chain link fence in West Oakland, California. “It can happen to anybody, man,” he says of life on the street. “Up today, down tomorrow. That’s the way it goes.”

Come last winter, June upgraded from his ramshackle encampment to a pink wooden house with a tan door and shiny roof. The new house, which is just long enough for him to lie down inside, cost only $30 to build.

It’s one of about 25 colorful homes artist Greg Kloehn has fashioned from the massive amounts of garbage dumped illegally in Oakland—a city where a minimum wage worker would have to put in 150-hour weeks to afford a fair market, two-bedroom apartment. He uses whatever materials he happens upon—pallets, bed boards, sheets of plastic, dryer doors. One home has an umbrella and grill propped on its miniature front porch. Wheels accommodate the “nomadic life” of people living on the street, who relocate frequently to avoid cops and city cleanup crews. As Kloehn jokes, he builds “illegal homes out of illegal garbage.”

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Can Tiny Houses Help Fix Homelessness?

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Witness the Death of the ’60s in Ken Light’s Era-Defining Photos

by ZenaidaMaccallu Posted on February 14, 2015

Mother Jones

Ken Light’s photos from 1969 to 1974 document the social landscape of America as it frayed at the seams, rife with turmoil. As a young photographer, Light captured the country at this pivotal moment, and his frontline protest photos in Ohio and political images from the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami show the opposite ends of the spectrum.

But the photos that make his new book, American Stories in the Age of Protest, so great are less-familiar ones: the everyday person out waving flags in support of Nixon, the garage band taking to a makeshift stage in support of McGovern, the kids hanging out in West Oakland. It’s photos like these, so common at the time, that gain importance with age. They give contour and meaning to historical projects such as this.

Having already published seven books with the likes of Aperture, Smithsonian, and the University of California Press, Light took matters into his own hands for this project, launching a Kickstarter to fund the book. With other noted, well-published photographers (like Eugene Richards) successfully crowdfunding book projects, it appears to be a win-win for folks like Light: get more people interested and involved in the projects and maintain more control over the finished product.

All photos from American Stories in the Age of Protest: 1969-1974, by Ken Light.

Nixon Rally, Inauguration, 1973

Detention, High School, 1971

Teenager, Columbus, Ohio, 1971

DeWitt Clinton High School, Bronx, 1972

Free Concert, Athens, Ohio, 1969

Vietnam Moratorium, Washington, DC, 1969

McGovern Rally, Southeast Ohio, 1972

Boy Scout, Nixon Inauguration, 1973

Ohio State Penitentiary, Columbus, Ohio

Return of the POWs, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, 1973

West Oakland, California, 1974

Nixon Resigns, Oakland, California, 1974

Photographer Ken Light, 1972, Republican National Convention, Miami

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Witness the Death of the ’60s in Ken Light’s Era-Defining Photos

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5 States Where Republicans Are Getting Serious About Criminal Justice Reform

by RusselLoeffler Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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A growing group of conservatives are stepping back from their traditional “tough on crime” stance and taking a lead on reforming the criminal justice system. There’s even talk that congressional Republicans and Democrats could come together on the issue: Earlier this week, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced a bipartisan prison reform bill. (Though it seems to have considerable flaws.)

At the state level, Republicans have already been taking on the issue. Here are five states where Republican governors and their fellow GOP lawmakers are taking on broken prison systems and the harsh laws that have fueled the incarceration boom:

Nebraska: Members of Nebraska’s legislature have introduced several bills that address the state’s overcrowded prisons. These include two bills introduced Wednesday, which would do away with mandatory minimum sentences for a slew of crimes (including distributing cocaine and heroin) and limit Nebraska’s “three-strikes” law to violent crimes. While the Cornhusker State’s legislature is nonpartisan, a majority of bills’ cosponsors are affiliated with the Republican Party, including Sen. Jim Smith, the head of the state branch of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Republican Governor Pete Ricketts reportedly supports the push for prison reform, as does the Omaha-based Platte Institute, a conservative think tank that recently released recommendations for decreasing incarceration that have drawn support from the Nebraska ACLU.

Utah: Republican state Representative Eric Hutchings is sponsoring legislation that aims to reduce Utah’s prison population and decrease recidivism. The bill, which has yet to be publicly released, would decrease the charge for drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor. Governor Gary Herbert, also a Republican, has put aside $10.5 million for recidivism reform.

Illinois: Governor Bruce Rauner’s agenda includes a plan to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison by instead sending them to community programs. Earlier this week, he created a commission of lawmakers, cops, and activists to recommend reforms to the state’s criminal justice system. More details about his plan will come out when he releases his 2016 budget recommendations next week.

Alabama: The legislature-appointed Alabama Prison Reform Task Force is gearing up to propose a new bill for the next legislative session, which begins in March. Led by Republican state Senator Cam Ward, an outspoken Second Amendment defender, the task force is seeking ways to cut down the state’s prison population, which is more twice its intended size. One of Ward’s ideas? Making re-entry easier by throwing out draconian laws for ex-felons, like those preventing them from getting driver’s licenses.

Georgia: A similar task force, the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform, has been recommending reforms to lawmakers. Formed in 2011 by Republican Governor Nathan Deal, the group has pushed the state to stop imprisoning juveniles and reform sentencing for nonviolent offenders, which slashed $20 million off the cost to house inmates in Georgia. The council’s current agenda includes initiatives to improve reentry for ex-felons.

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5 States Where Republicans Are Getting Serious About Criminal Justice Reform

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There’s a Horrifying Amount of Plastic in the Ocean. This Chart Shows Who’s to Blame.

by AleciaUynx Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Marine scientists have long known that plastic pollution in the ocean is a huge problem. The most visible sign of it is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of waste (actually spanning several distinct patches) floating in the ocean. It’s at least twice the size of Texas and can be seen from space. This pollution has an incalculably lethal effect on everything from plankton to whales.

So just how much plastic is there? A new study in Science yesterday put out some pretty horrifying numbers: In 2010, the study finds, between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons (that’s about 10.5 billion to 28 billion pounds) of plastic entered the oceans—the median of those estimates is 1.3 times the weight of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

If we want to crack down on all that plastic, knowing where it all comes from could be as important as knowing how much there is. That’s the main idea behind this study. A team of scientists led by University of Georgia environmental engineer Jenna Jambeck set out to calculate how much plastic every one of the world’s 192 coastal countries dumps into the ocean. To do it, they combined data on each country’s per-capita waste generation, the size of the population living within 50 kilometers of the ocean, the percentage of waste that is plastic, and the percentage of plastic waste that is “mismanaged” (defined as “either littered or inadequately disposed”).

The last step is to estimate how much of the mismanaged coastal plastic waste actually washes into the sea. (This is the step that explains the wide uncertainty range in the grand totals above.) Jambeck drew on existing literature on waste streams from places like South Africa and the Bay Area to reach an estimate of 15-40 percent; she then applied that range across the board.

The chart below shows the worst offenders, in terms of total plastic pollution in the ocean in 2010, using data from the study. The top-ranks belong to middle-income countries with rapidly growing coastal populations that lack the resources to keep pace with waste management infrastructure. By contrast, even though the United States has relatively good waste management, its per-capita waste production is so high that it makes the top 20.

Tim McDonnell

That’s right: China alone dumped nearly 5 billion pounds of plastic waste into the ocean in 2010. But what’s even worse is just how much the study projects these numbers will grow in the future, based on predictions of population growth in each country by 2025. The chart below shows the top-ranked countries in terms of total mismanaged plastic waste (in other words, not all of this plastic is necessarily winding up in the ocean). China is still very much in the lead, and India shows a disturbing explosion of plastic pollution:

Tim McDonnell

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There’s a Horrifying Amount of Plastic in the Ocean. This Chart Shows Who’s to Blame.

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