Tag Archives: nevada

Drought-plagued California tries to drink the ocean (hold the salt)

by MargeneBrune Posted on March 4, 2014

Drought-plagued California tries to drink the ocean (hold the salt)

Despite the pugnacious storms that had California on the ropes this past weekend, the state is still in the middle of a record-making drought. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is well under half its usual level for this time of year, and there’s almost certainly no way to catch up this late in the season.

Enter the ongoing construction of 17 desalination plants across the state. A $1 billion plant being built in Carlsbad, Calif., expected to be ready by 2016, will pump 50 million gallons of drinkable water out of the ocean daily — making it the largest such facility in the Western Hemisphere. Another project underway near San Francisco (a discount at only $150 million) could supply 20 million of the 750 million gallons of water guzzled daily in the Bay Area by 2020.

Desalination involves sucking up seawater and pushing it at high pressure through a series of very thin membranes, to strip away the salt and ocean gunk. Water purists (ha) know it as reverse osmosis. It’s not an ideal process, since it uses an enormous amount of energy to turn about two gallons of seawater into one gallon of potable water, plus there are the aforementioned ocean gunk leftovers, but it does keep working rain or shine. A spokesperson for the Carlsbad plant describes it as “droughtproof” — a tantalizing prospect that would probably have Californians salivating, if they could spare the spit.

Instead, we can measure excitement by the uptick in investment. Currently there are only three small desalination plants operating in the state, including one that provides all the water to aptly named Sand City since 2010. By “all the water,” we mean “enough for the 334 people who live there.” From the San Francisco Chronicle:

“It’s a miracle how we managed to get this plant,” said Sand City Mayor David Pendergrass. “If we didn’t have it, the whole area would be in trouble. We’re not under any rationing here, but then we’ve been practicing conservation for years already, so we are responsible about our water use.

“I would absolutely recommend desalination for other areas.”

Of course, the miraculous transmutation of Pacific brine to sweet freshwater comes with a price — the literal one, but also a load of energy, carbon emissions, hapless sea creatures siphoned up intake tubes, and extra salt and miscellaneous water treatment chemicals flushed back into the ocean. Some plants in progress have been stalled by these concerns. Many environmentalists and/or spendthrifts argue that it makes more sense promote water conservation and recycling before turning to expensive alchemy, but water officials still aren’t convinced that will be enough. From NPR:

Jeffrey Kightlinger, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, says the district has invested in conservation and recycling, and it has helped, but the region still needs more water to meet demand. That’s always been the case in arid California, but it’s even more so now.

“There are two things that are changing the landscape for us,” he says. “One is we’ve grown a lot. We’re doing water for nearly 40 million people statewide. The second thing that really changed is climate change. It’s real. And it’s stressing our system in new ways.”…

“We don’t have time to rehash the same debates over and over and over again. We’re going to have to start investing in things for the future,” Kightlinger says.

Even if cheap, renewable energy sources could theoretically power desalination plants without producing a lot of extra ocean pollution, desalination is not going to solve all the state’s water problems in one fell swoop. Weaning So Cal off water imported from other areas would mean building a Carlsbad-scale plant every four miles along the coast, which adds up to 25 plants just between San Diego and L.A. With so many people and so little water, no solution is going to work without significant cuts in wasted water.

Whether these facilities are a good investment, or at least a bearable compromise, will have a lot to do with what havoc climate change decides to wreak on the coastal state in the coming decades. If this drought is a sign of climates to come, California may not be the only state to run on desal.

Source
The Search For Drinking Water In California Has Led To The Ocean, NPR

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.

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

View post:

Drought-plagued California tries to drink the ocean (hold the salt)

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Monterey, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged article, climate, climate & energy, district, kightlinger, king, mayor, monterey, mountains, nevada, npr, water | Comments Off

GOP Congressional Candidate: Protecting Gays from Workplace Discrimination is "Segregation"

by LeviCfiasgh Posted on February 19, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Cresent Hardy was expected to be the milquetoast candidate in the Republican primary for Nevada’s 4th district—especially compared with his competitor for the GOP nod, Niger Innis, who said that the fight to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling was “very much like the civil rights revolution.”

But on Tuesday, Hardy, a Nevada state assemblyman, gave Ennis a run for his money. In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Hardy called the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a federal bill passed by the Senate that prohibits employers from discriminating against workers on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, “segregation.”

“When we create classes, we create that same separation that we’re trying to unfold somehow,” Hardy told the Sun. “By continuing to create these laws that are what I call segregation laws, it puts one class of a person over another. We are creating classes of people through these laws.”

In the same interview, Hardy vowed that he “will always vote against same sex marriage because of my religious beliefs, the way I was raised…For me to vote for it would be to deny the same God that I believe in.”

As a state assemblyman, Hardy was one of just 13 assembly members to vote against a Nevada bill banning housing and job discrimination against transgender people. Republican Governor Brian Sandoval signed that bill into law in May 2011.

Hardy and Innis are competing to challenge first-term Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford. The sprawling 4th district, which covers northern Las Vegas suburbs, leans Democrat, although Horsford was elected in 2012 with a scant 50.1 percent of the vote. While Innis is running as an outsider, Hardy is squarely backed by the Republican establishment, having racked up endorsements from Sandoval, Sen. Dean Heller, and Rep. Mark Amodei.

More here:

GOP Congressional Candidate: Protecting Gays from Workplace Discrimination is "Segregation"

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged democrat, Hardy, horsford, nevada, people, public, republican, senate, venta | Comments Off

Elizabeth Warren: We Need to Stop Packing the Courts With Corporate Judges

by GeorgettaPulido Posted on February 6, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Thursday morning, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on President Barack Obama to nominate more judges to the federal bench who have backgrounds serving the public interest instead of corporate America.

Of Obama’s judicial nominations so far, just ten—fewer than four percent—have worked as lawyers at public interest organizations, according to a report released Thursday by the Alliance for Justice, a network of civil rights organizations. Only 10 nominees have had experience representing workers in labor disputes. Eighty-five percent have been either corporate attorneys or prosecutors. At an event Thursday sponsored by several civil rights organizations, including the Brennan Center for Justice and the Alliance for Justice, Warren called for more balance in the system.

“Power is becoming more and more concentrated on one side,” she said. “Well-financed corporate interests line up to fight for their own privileges and resist any change that would limit corporate excess… We have an opportunity to…fight for something that balances the playing field in the other direction.”

Warren noted that now is the perfect time to take up that fight. Obstruction by Senate Republicans has stalled the confirmation of many of the president’s judicial nominees over the years. More federal judgeships remained vacant during Obama’s first term than during President George W. Bush’s, and there are still more than 50 vacancies on the federal bench that need to be filled. “So it’s unsurprising that the president and a majority of the Senate gravitated to nominating corporate lawyers…that most conservative senators could not object to,” Warren said. In November, however, the Senate voted to put an end to GOP obstruction by ending the filibuster for judicial nominations. Now it only takes a simple majority of the Senate to confirm nominees to the federal bench. Theoretically, that means that Obama can nominate progressive candidates with experience representing the average American, and Democrats will be able to confirm those nominees without any Republican votes.

On Jan 16, the president nominated four lawyers with public interest backgrounds to fill district court vacancies in Illinois, Washington, Nevada, and Missouri. Two of those nominees have significant trial experience representing plaintiffs in corporate wrongdoing cases, one is a former public defender, and one comes from criminal defense.

But there are still roadblocks that may prevent the president from nominating progressive candidates. The GOP can still use something called the “blue-slip process” as a de facto filibuster on nominations. Here’s how: When the president is considering a potential judicial nomination, the senators from the state where the judge would serve are given a blue slip of paper. If both senators do not return their blue slips, the nominee is not allowed to move on to a vote in the Senate judiciary committee.

It is because of the blue-slip process, for example, that Obama recently nominated two candidates to serve on the federal bench in Georgia who raised the hackles of liberals: Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs and Atlanta attorney Mark Howard Cohen. Boggs voted to keep the Confederate battle emblem as a prominent part of Georgia’s state flag when he was a Georgia legislator in the early 2000s. Cohen helped defend Georgia’s voter ID law, which voting rights advocates say makes it harder for poor people and minorities to vote.

Read this article –

Elizabeth Warren: We Need to Stop Packing the Courts With Corporate Judges

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged alliance, america, american, federal, george, georgia, justice, nevada, president, senate, thursday, washington | Comments Off

Climate change means more wildfires, and that means lots more air pollution

by Bradly62Ea Posted on February 4, 2014

Climate change means more wildfires, and that means lots more air pollution

By John Upton

CAL FIRE

Wildfires not only jeopardize lives and property. They also cause air pollution — from planet-warming carbon dioxide to health-endangering soot and nitrogen oxides. This pollution can trigger hospital visits. It can also hamper agricultural output, and damage forests and other ecosystems.

This will be a particular problem in California, according to new research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Scientists analyzed future climate and population scenarios for the state and forecast that air pollution from wildfires in California could increase by between 19 and 101 percent by the end of the century. They found that the worst effects will likely be experienced in Northern California, particularly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and in the Klamath-Siskiyou region at Oregon’s border.

“[I]ncreases in wildfire emissions due to climate change may have detrimental impacts on air quality and — combined with a growing population — may result in increased population exposure to unhealthy air pollutants,” the scientists write.

California’s current epic drought will likely lead to another year of epic blazes. The region is so tinder-dry that there have already been 400 wildfires in the state this year. “The conditions we are experiencing right now are similar to what we would be seeing in August — that’s how dry it is,” a Cal Fire spokesperson told The Fresno Bee. “Even though the calendar says it’s February and it’s winter, conditions are primed for wildfires.”

And wildfires are forecast to become a more severe problem as the climate continues to change.

Hold your breath, California.

Source
Projected Effects of Climate and Development on California Wildfire Emissions through 2100, Environmental Science & Technology
Calif. firefighters brace for hot year, more than 400 January wildfires, The Fresno Bee / Merced Sun-Star

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: Climate & Energy

Continued:

Climate change means more wildfires, and that means lots more air pollution

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged california, climate, climate & energy, facebook, fresno, g & f, nevada, Ona, oregon, technology | Comments Off

Republicans Are Trying to Build a Better Primary

by KennethCovingto Posted on January 24, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Jonathan Bernstein reports on Republican efforts to shorten the primary season:

If all goes according to plan, the result will be votes in the first four (“carve-out”) states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina — in February, followed by votes in rapid succession in March and April, with the primary season finishing up in May. That’s a lot more compressed than the January-to-June schedule of the past few cycles.

….The 2012 cycle, the theory goes, just went on too long, with eventual nominee Mitt Romney taking too many shots from other candidates. My feeling, however, is that the hits Romney took almost certainly didn’t matter for the fall campaign. The real lesson of 2012 that Republicans should worry about is that virtually any crank, no matter how little qualified for president, can have a very good two weeks….It’s essentially the stories of Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum in 2012.

By compressing the calendar, you increase the danger that a mediocre or worse candidate could get hot at just the right time and wrap up the nomination before the party has time to stop it….The March crunch could get so momentous that it overwhelms the rest of the schedule. In other words, if crunch time in March takes on the air of a de facto national primary — even one spread out over two or three weeks — it could mean trouble.

I agree that compressing the actual voting might not matter much. These days, primary campaigns start early: we’ll almost certainly have several declared candidates by early 2015 and a full field by the middle of the year. Those guys are going to be out on the trail taking shots for a very long time no matter what. Besides, primary season is almost always effectively over by March or April anyway, even if there are a few Ron Paul-esque stragglers who refuse to concede for PR reasons. It rarely lasts more than 14 or 15 weeks.

So what about Bernstein’s theory that the real problem is beefing up the invisible primary so that fringe candidates are booted out early? I’m not so sure about that either. The clown show of 2012 was truly sui generis, something that’s never really happened before. And I’m not so convinced that any of the fringe folks would have had better odds in a compressed primary season, as he suggests. Sure, they each got hot for a week or two, but they typically got hot in one or two states. I don’t think they could have replicated that performance if they’d been competing in lots of different states at once.

But I could be wrong! Generally speaking, my advice to both parties is simple: Make your primaries as similar to a general election as possible. That would mean, for example, ditching the Iowa caucuses, since the kind of retail politics that win in Iowa are irrelevant to success in November. What you want is a candidate that can raise lots of money; appeal to lots of people; and has a good media presence. That’s what wins general elections these days, and a successful primary season is one that gives the advantage to those qualities. The quaint notion that New Hampshire is a great place to start because it’s a small state and gives everyone a chance is ridiculous. No modern political party should want a process that gives everyone a chance. They should want a process that brutally winnows out the vanity candidates and narrows the field to folks who know how to win on the big stage.

It won’t happen because it would require the parties to play massive hardball with the Iowas and New Hampshires of the world, something they won’t do. But they probably should.

Link to original:

Republicans Are Trying to Build a Better Primary

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged advice, elections, events, general, kevin drum, mother, nevada, people, south, world | Comments Off

No, Climate Change Is Not Waking Bears From Hibernation

by Hedrick Lepsch Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last week, a rogue black bear made a cameo appearance for skiers at the Heavenly Mountain Resort near Lake Tahoe. The month before, a 260-pound male bear had to be put down by wildlife officials after breaking into several cars and a home in the same area. The spate of run-ins comes as California’s brutal drought lingers on, with snowpack in the Sierra Nevada at a fifth of its normal level, leading several news outlets to suggest that balmy conditions have led bears here to awaken prematurely from their annual winter slumber.

That’s a nice hypothesis, but according to the California Department Fish and Wildlife, there’s nothing to it. Five to 15 percent of the Tahoe area’s 300 black bears stay awake every winter, said CDFW biologist Jason Holley, and “we don’t have any evidence to support that there’s any more this winter.” In fact, Holley said, the last few months of 2013 saw fewer bear complaints than average.

The front page of a recent San Francisco Chronicle. There’s no evidence that more bears are awake this year than in an average year, officials said. Clara Jeffery/Mother Jones

So why all the hullabaloo? Holley’s guess is that the drought cut down supplies of the bears’ natural food sources—mainly grass, berries, and insects, although they’ll eat just about anything—forcing those that are normally awake anyway to wander further afield, i.e., onto your ski slope or into your backyard. Not that the bears mind much.

“They are very adaptive and very mobile, so they will usually be able to take care of their daily needs in a drought situation,” Holley said. “But then they’re coming down to the lake to drink a lot, coming down for food. If the drought persists, it greatly increases the odds of a negative interaction with people.”

What motivates some bears to stay awake while others hibernate is still somewhat of a mystery to scientists, according to Roger Baldwin, a wildlife specialist at the University of California-Davis who has conducted extensive research on bear behavior. When small mammals (a squirrel, say) hibernate, their heart rate and body temperature drop radically, toeing death’s doorstep without actually stepping over, and stay that way for several months. Black bears, on the other hand, are much less extreme: They crank down their metabolism, heart rate, and body temperature just enough to get seriously lazy, but are still with it enough to be “perfectly capable of taking a swipe at you if you crawl into the den with them,” Baldwin said, so rousting them is neither uncommon nor difficult.

Continue Reading »

Link to article:

No, Climate Change Is Not Waking Bears From Hibernation

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged Bears!, blue marble, california, environment, king, lai, nevada, Ona, service, several, sierra, university | Comments Off

Conflicts of Interest Abound in State Supreme Courts

by Ha Zega Posted on December 5, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity reveals troubling conflicts of interest in state supreme courts nationwide. CPI combed through the financial disclosure forms of state supreme court justices in all 50 states and reviewed the states’ disclosure laws for judges. Their findings on both fronts are discouraging.

CPI discovered several instances of justices writing opinions that favored companies they had financial ties to. An Arkansas justice ruled in favor of a company that had been paying his wife a salary of as much as $12,499 for two years. A high court judge in California ruled in favor of Wells Fargo despite owning up to $1 million of the bank’s stock—even as a colleague who owned less stock recused himself. Other justices accepted perks from lawyers —from country club memberships to a $50,000 Italian vacation.

Uncovering such information is exceedingly difficult because most states’ disclosure laws for judges are pretty weak. While federal judges are required to recuse themselves from cases if they or a family member own even a single share of stock in a company involved, state laws are murky and inconsistent. CPI devised a system for grading the state standards for preventing these kinds of conflicts of interest: 43 got a D or lower.

Check out some of CPI’s finds below: Some recent examples of state supreme court justices weighing in on cases involving companies in which they or their spouses owned stock, and a list of the freebies thrown at top judges.