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Koch bros want you to think fossil fuels are great for the whole family

by ChasBurd389281 Posted on August 16, 2016

koch machine

Koch bros want you to think fossil fuels are great for the whole family

By on Aug 16, 2016Share

Charles Koch may refuse to spend money on the Trump campaign but that doesn’t mean the Koch brothers are taking their $750 million ball and going home. In addition to spending on congressional elections, they’re also backing a new effort to rebrand fossil fuels. The Fueling U.S. Forward campaign launched Saturday at the 2016 RedState Gathering in Denver.

Fueling U.S. Forward, as DeSmog’s Sharon Kelly reports, is an attempt to change the conversation from the danger of fossil fuels to the benefits of them. Its website features young, attractive stock model families and tries to convey a message that burning oil, gas, and coal is “pro-human.”

The site does not, however, mention climate change, nor the fossil fuel industry’s role in it. And while Fueling U.S. Forward wants you to believe that the industry is an engine of economic activity, it also costs us dearly: The EPA estimates that the economic losses from drought and water shortages could be $180 billion by the end of the century — not to mention the overwhelming costs of deadly storms and food shortages. How’s that for pro-human?

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Koch bros want you to think fossil fuels are great for the whole family

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Disastrous flooding in Louisiana is now normal flooding

by FranceODowd1081 Posted on August 15, 2016

Disastrous flooding in Louisiana is now normal flooding

By on Aug 15, 2016Share

Historic rainfall and flooding in Louisiana this weekend have led to at least six deaths and thousands of damaged homes. Over a foot of rain fell in Kentwood, La. in just 12 hours, and five different cities in the region have reported rainfall totals of over two feet. The amount of rain is being called “scarily high” by the National Weather Service.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said Sunday that more than 20,000 people had been rescued in the flood, including himself: The Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rogue flooded in the deluge, and the Edwards and his family were evacuated to the Louisiana State Police Joint Emergency Services Training Center in Zachary.

“It’s not over,” Gov. Edwards said at a press conference. “The water’s going to rise in many areas. It’s no time to let the guard down.”

Indeed, rainfall of this magnitude is increasingly common. Why? Warming temperatures from climate change cause additional water vapor in the atmosphere, which leads to heavy precipitation. As Eric Holthaus points out in Pacific Standard: Statistically, we should only see rainfall of this magnitude occurring once every 500 years, but this is the eighth 500-year rainfall in the U.S. in just over a year.

Clearly, something has fundamentally changed — and that something is the climate. The silver lining for Louisiana? Gov. Edwards is more promising than his predecessor, former Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), with regard to acknowledging the threat that climate change poses to his state. Granted, that bar was extremely low.

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Disastrous flooding in Louisiana is now normal flooding

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Elon Musk’s new solar roofing plan isn’t so new after all

by BryonWrench Posted on August 12, 2016

shingle and ready to mingle

Elon Musk’s new solar roofing plan isn’t so new after all

By on Aug 12, 2016Share

Now that Tesla’s buyout of Solar City is looking like a done deal, the man who turned boring electric cars into sexy hot rods wants to shake up the staid world of roofing. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has a vision of a new kind of roof made of solar panels, and he wants to sell it you.

“It’s not something on the roof — it is the roof,” Musk told a group of Wall Street analysts during a call last week to discuss quarterly earnings. “Which is a quite difficult engineering challenge and not something that is available anywhere else.”

The fact is, solar roofs have been around for more than a decade. Witness this news report, from three years ago:

But it’s true that they remain an engineering challenge because no one has been able to design photovoltaic construction materials that are a) cheaper than installing a roof and putting solar panels on it and b) more efficient at generating electricity than regular old solar panels. Part of the problem is that roofs and solar panels don’t share the same goals. A roof is designed to keep rain or snow from sneaking into your house and rotting it. A solar panel is designed to capture as much sunlight as possible.

Tesla’s new solar roof is just an announcement, not a product that you can actually buy yet. So this is kind of like Elon Musk just announced that he’s come up with a new kind of sandwich, and we’re all going to love it, and it’s called … a hamburger.

It may be that Tesla has an amazing burger (read, solar roof) in Solar City’s lab and one bite will erase the memory of all burgers before it. Until we know for sure, we are left to wonder: Why is Elon Musk so fired up to sell you a solar roof? Here are a few possible explanations.

A solar roof just looks sexier than solar panels do

Musk is the guy who almost singlehandedly turned the electric car into a lust object, overhauling the chariot of golfers and the environmentally guilt-ridden. So Musk could be just the guy to glam up the boring world of roofing. The same people who can drop $70,000 on a Tesla Model S instead of $29,860 on an electric Nissan Leaf may happily pay a premium for a solar setup that won’t disrupt the look of their fastidiously restored Eichler House.

Anyone in the market for a new roof is a potential customer

Musk describes the ideal solar roof customer as someone who wants to replace an aging roof and install solar panels at the same time. It seems illogical to build a roof made of solar panels, on the grounds that panels might stop working long before the roof does. But Solar City claims that its solar panels could last 30 years, with some drop in productivity during that time. Most solar panels have 25-year warranties. That’s around the average lifespan of a regular roof, though your mileage varies depending on your climate.

A major producer of solar roofing just got out of the business.

Back in June, Dow Chemical announced that it would stop manufacturing its line of solar shingles as part of an upcoming merger with the chemical giant Dupont. Dow shipped its last order of shingles on Aug. 10. Even if Dow got out of the solar-roofing business because there wasn’t enough money in it, the company’s abrupt exit leaves behind former customers that could be courted.

Whenever Elon Musk gets stressed out, he promises new stuff.

There is turmoil in Tesla-land — the company has had trouble meeting production deadlines, and it lost more money than expected so far this year. SolarCity’s stock has lost more than half its value since the beginning of this year, while Tesla’s has bounced around erratically. Buying Solar City almost doubles Tesla’s debt.

Faced with numbers this depressing, who wouldn’t cast about for exciting things to promise. In the last month, Musk has been doing this at a fairly steady clip — promising cars so autonomous that they will earn money for you when you aren’t around, tiny buses that can be summoned at the push of a button, and electric semi-trucks, all to be rolled out sometime in the future. Let us not forget the Hyperloop and the vegetarians-only Mars colony. Compared to all of that, a solar roof sounds almost … sensible.

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Elon Musk’s new solar roofing plan isn’t so new after all

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Protests over Texas high-speed rail take a turn for the ridiculous

by JanessaWilloughb Posted on August 12, 2016

Derailed

Protests over Texas high-speed rail take a turn for the ridiculous

By on Aug 12, 2016 5:49 pmShare

A Texas company plans to build a high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston, turning a four-hour drive between two of the nation’s fastest growing cities into a 90-minute train ride. “Not so fast,” say the rural residents who live between Dallas and Houston.

City officials favor the Japanese-backed, $10-billion project, but those living between Dallas and Houston are opposed — and rural counties are moving fast to block it. Landowners generally dislike when infrastructure slices their land in half, especially when they aren’t likely to benefit from it.

Opposition to the railroad comes down to a question of eminent domain, the government’s right to take private property for public use. Critics argue that because Texas Central Partners isn’t technically an operating railroad, it can’t seize land.

Compared to other industrialized countries, the U.S. is plain pathetic on high-speed rail, and the Texas “bullet train” is currently one of America’s most promising prospects for starting to change that.

Other anti-train arguments aren’t as sane. This protestor told the Japanese government to “peddle your obsolete technology elsewhere,” to which someone in the crowd replied: “Remember Pearl Harbor!”

Always a valid argument.

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Protests over Texas high-speed rail take a turn for the ridiculous

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Here’s the latest community to crack down on fossil fuel shipments

by HaiOdumndtizix Posted on August 11, 2016

Thanks, but no tanks

Here’s the latest community to crack down on fossil fuel shipments

By on Aug 11, 2016Share

Whatcom County, Washington, a mostly rural area in the upper northwest corner of the country, has become the latest community to crack down on fossil fuel shipments.

On Tuesday, the county council unanimously voted to impose a 60-day moratorium on permit approvals for new projects that would export crude oil or other unrefined fossil fuels. The council noted the public safety risks posed by increased fossil fuel shipments.

Whatcom County was the site of a battle earlier this year between a developer that wanted to build a coal export terminal and the Lummi Nation, which argued that the terminal would infringe on its tribal fishing rights. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sided with the Lummi in May and denied a permit for the project, which would have processed up to 54 million metric tons of exports to Asia each year, most of it coal.

The county isn’t alone in fighting against fossil fuel shipments. The cities of Spokane and Vancouver in Washington and Oakland in California have also taken or are considering steps to limit the movement of dirty fuels within their borders, citing risks to both residents and the environment.

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Here’s the latest community to crack down on fossil fuel shipments

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The Olympics keeps getting greener — well, the pools do, anyway

by LourdesManor Posted on August 10, 2016

algae whiz

The Olympics keeps getting greener — well, the pools do, anyway

By on Aug 10, 2016Share

This wasn’t part of Rio’s plan to host the greenest Olympics ever.

When the diving pool turned a frightening shade of St. Patty’s Day sometime Monday night, it caught us all off guard — including Tom Daley, a British diver.

Less than 24 hours later, it happened again.

The leading theory is that the green color was caused by algae. The “heat and a lack of wind” sapped the chlorine in the pool, a Rio spokesperson said. Apparently, it’s safe to swim in — at least, compared to the actual bodies of water that surround Rio, which are teeming with sewage and superbacteria.

Algae are a familiar menace in many waterways (not just of the swimming-pool variety). The harmful blue-green variety is made worse by phosphorous- and nitrogen-rich fertilizers, but climate change hasn’t helped matters either. Toxic algae blooms thrive best in warm, tepid waters, and the consequences are much bigger in freshwater than a change in color.

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The Olympics keeps getting greener — well, the pools do, anyway

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Here’s a new Olympic sport to consider: Safe sex

by JulianeStalling Posted on August 9, 2016

Smashing Records

Here’s a new Olympic sport to consider: Safe sex

By on Aug 9, 2016Share

Olympic organizers are supplying attendees with 450,000 condoms — fully three times the number available in London in 2012. “Would you be more inclined to rampantly bang in the country that gave us that guy from Love Actually, or the one that gave us that other guy from Love Actually?” pondered the Official Sexy Times Division of the International Olympic Committee, immediately before buying out several Costcos’ worth of prophylactics.

As Yahoo! Sports reports, the push for protection is partially attributed to anxieties around the Zika virus, which is sexually transmittable. But also, just as a general rule: If you’re going to have casual, celebratory, romping sex, do it with protection. Or as they say — adorably — in Brazil, with “a little shirt:”

I know what you’re thinking: “But wouldn’t it be a fantastic thing if all of these incredible physical specimens combined their perfect genes for a better world? Why are the Olympics cockblocking the beautification of our planet?”

Counterpoint:

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Here’s a new Olympic sport to consider: Safe sex

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Colorado could vote to limit fracking on November ballot

by BobMoowattin Posted on August 9, 2016

Fracktions

Colorado could vote to limit fracking on November ballot

By on Aug 9, 2016Share

Colorado is one step closer to ditching fracking.

Anti-fracking activists have collected 100,000 signatures, more than the 98,500 needed, to secure two measures on the November ballot. One measure would bring oil and gas drilling operations under local oversight while the other would add a no-fracking buffer zone 2,500 feet around any occupied buildings. Together these would, in essence, prevent drilling on 95 percent of the state’s most oil-rich land, according to the New York Times.

The state has 30 days to review the signatures and submit any challenges.

The industry, however, is already fighting back. Pro-fracking groups have raised $13 million to oppose the initiatives, and Yes for Health and Safety Over Fracking, the group that collected the signatures, reported that volunteer and contractor canvassers were “yelled at, and physically threatened” by people suspiciously spouting oil and gas industry’s favorite lines.

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Colorado could vote to limit fracking on November ballot

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‘Alarming’ coral reef bleaching wave descends on the Maldives

by ArdenCulbert Posted on August 8, 2016

Tide 2 Go

‘Alarming’ coral reef bleaching wave descends on the Maldives

By on Aug 8, 2016Share

We have a new competitor for the “worst place on Earth to be a coral!”

More than half of the coral reefs in the Maldives have been hit by a wave of bleaching this year, according to a new survey conducted by a team of researchers. Signs of bleaching were found in around 60 percent of the study area’s total number of corals — in some segments of the reef, the percentage of corals affected was as high as 90 percent. The biodiversity-rich area is home to some 3 percent of the planet’s corals.

The Maldives bleaching disaster is the latest battle in a three-year war on the world’s coral reefs. The attacking force? A deadly combo of record-smashing high ocean temperatures and the effects of a strong El Niño year. Bleaching is a phenomenon that happens when stressed, hungry corals expel the algae that give them their characteristically vibrant colors — just like you when you’re too late for the happy hour app special at Chili’s. It’s most recently made headlines by turning the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest collection of corals, ghost-white.

Ameer Abdulla, the research team leader and a senior adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told the Guardian that the study’s results were “alarming,” adding that the bleaching is likely to only get worse.

Think the Maldivian corals have it bad? Consider the tiny nation’s 400,000 human citizens. The low-lying chain of islands has been hit so hard by climate change and rising sea levels already that it’s been making plans to relocate its own citizens — making Maldivians some of the world’s first climate refugees.

So … can our coral reefs survive climate change? Watch our video to learn more.

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‘Alarming’ coral reef bleaching wave descends on the Maldives

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McDonald’s kept its promise to use fewer antibiotics

by EdisonNeild7936 Posted on August 2, 2016

Nugget of Truth

McDonald’s kept its promise to use fewer antibiotics

By on Aug 2, 2016Share

McDonald’s may give us false hope when it comes to the Gaelic sorcery that lurks in its Shamrock Shakes, but the fast food chain just made good on a more important promise. Last year, the home of the Hamburglar announced a plan to stop buying chicken served in its U.S. restaurants from farmers that use antibiotics prescribed to humans. Groups that campaign against the overuse of antibiotics, like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Pew Charitable Trusts are applauding McDonald’s for reaching the milestone ahead of its own deadline.

A move like this — especially made by an oft-maligned fast food giant — really matters. The more we use antibiotics, the more germs evolve to resist them. Human use of antibiotics is the biggest cause of antimicrobial-resistant diseases, but there’s good evidence that agricultural use of antibiotics can contribute to the problem as well.

The spring of 2015 was a tipping point for corporate pledges: Around that time, just about every U.S. food company that uses poultry (with one defiant exception) made a commitment to stop using antibiotics that are important for human medicine. If you wondered if a corporation like McDonald’s can stick to a pledge, now you know: Reform is possible.

Of course, this doesn’t fix the problem entirely — these pledges apply to the United States, but antibiotic resistance knows no borders. And because we continue to spur the evolution of resistance every time we prescribe antibiotics to humans, we must invent alternatives. To paraphrase words of the great philosopher and space pirate, Mark Watney: In the face of overwhelming odds, we are left with only one option. We’re going to have to science the shit out of this.

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McDonald’s kept its promise to use fewer antibiotics

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