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Are Conservatives Really Going All-In on Ben Carson?

by CarrieGottshall Posted on November 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Wow. I gather that conservatives are making a big U-turn on Ben Carson. This morning most of them were wringing their hands over Carson’s deception about being accepted at West Point. Now they’re defending him and blaming the whole thing on Politico and its typical liberal media hatred of conservatives. Their basic defense seems to be that Carson never said he “applied” to West Point, or even that he was “accepted” at West Point. All he said is that he was offered a scholarship to go there.

Well, here’s what he said in August:

I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do.

Come on, folks. “An offer from West Point” is the same as “being accepted at West Point.” It’s obvious what he was saying here, and it’s equally obvious it isn’t true. Here is Carson’s defense:

In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me — they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”

“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”

That might have happened—though no one would have used the word “scholarship” since West Point is free to begin with. But for the past two decades it’s not what Carson has said. It’s not even close. There’s a world of difference between (a) someone telling you that you could probably get into West Point and (b) actually getting into West Point.

Carson is a nutcase, a policy buffoon, and at the very least, a serial personal embellisher. With a guy like that, you just know more stuff is going to come out. Conservatives should quit while they’re behind and dump the guy. If they stick with him, eventually he’s going to make them all look like dopes.

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Are Conservatives Really Going All-In on Ben Carson?

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

by JestineChristia Posted on June 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The US law enforcement community regards homegrown violent extremists, not radicalized Islamists, as the most severe threat from political violence in the country, according to a new study from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Released late last week, the report comes amid renewed focus on the problem ever since a 21-year-old avowed white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a growing body of research highlighting the threat from right-wing extremists, but who or what exactly does that term encompass, and how big really is the problem? Mother Jones examined various reports and contacted experts to find out more.

What are “far-right” or “right-wing” extremists?
While there is no uniform definition, these terms loosely encompass individuals or groups associated with white supremacist, antigovernment, sovereign citizen, patriot, militia, or other ideologies that target specific religious, ethnic or other minority groups. (Meanwhile, how to determine which violent attacks constitute an act of terrorism has been a subject of renewed debate.)

The available data on violent attacks perpetrated by right-wing extremists ranges widely, explains Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. Researchers at the US Department of Homeland Security, New America Foundation, Southern Poverty Law Center, University of Maryland, and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point have all compiled data on right-wing extremist violence using varying criteria over different periods of time, most of them going back to the mid 1990s, when the Oklahoma City bombing riveted attention on the problem. (The exception is the University of Maryland’s data, which dates to 1970, during a surge in violent far-left extremism.)

The various studies have all led to the same general conclusion: The threat from homegrown right-wing extremists has grown in recent years. “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” Arie Perliger, the director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center, wrote in a 2012 report.

How often do right wing violent extremists attack?
The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database registered 65 attacks on American soil associated with right-wing ideologies since 9/11, versus 24 attacks by jihadist extremists. The New America Foundation, meanwhile, tallied 48 deaths from attacks by non-jihadist extremists over the same time period—including the Charleston shooting—compared with 26 deaths from attacks by jihadist extremists, including the one at Fort Hood in 2009, in which 13 were killed.

Courtesy of the New York Times

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which compiles data on “all violent attacks that were perpetrated by groups or individuals affiliated with far-right associations,” counted an average of 337 annual attacks by right-wing extremists in the decade after 9/11, including a total of 254 fatalities, or an annual average of about 18 deaths.

Arie Perliger, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Daryl Johnson, a former DHS domestic terrorism intelligence analyst who now heads the consulting firm DT Analytics, says that attacks from far-right extremists “increased dramatically” after 2008. Johnson, who began tracking domestic terrorism while at DHS, estimates that there is currently an average of one plot or attack every 40 to 45 days. “We are in a heightened period right now,” he says.

Johnson’s view is supported by a 2012 report from Perliger at the Combating Terrorism Center: “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” it notes.

How organized are these extremists?
As former Mother Jones staffer Adam Serwer reported in August 2012 when a neo-Nazi carried out a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the number of American extremist groups has also risen overall in recent years:

How is law enforcement responding?
About three quarters of the 382 state and local law enforcement agencies surveyed by the Triangle Center listed anti-government extremism as a top threat in their jurisdiction, compared with 39 percent that listed violence connected with Al Qaeda or related groups.

In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League documented an upswing in far-right attacks against law enforcement:

Anti-Defamation League

But those numbers should be put into perspective, the report’s authors Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer note, since terrorism of all kinds represents a small fraction of total violent crime in the United States. The number of homicides in the US since 9/11 totaled more than 215,000.

And because the data on right-wing violence varies so much, “it’s hard to get a true understanding of the threat,” German says, adding that the FBI—whose number one priority is to protect the United States from a terrorist attack—does not publish data on domestic terrorism. “Instead, we rely on these private groups that are doing a public service by compiling and publishing information,” he says. The FBI does collect and publish limited data on hate crimes, which it defines as criminal offenses “against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” But German as well as researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center point out that data relies on voluntary reporting and thus undercounts those numbers.

So what is the government doing about it?
The federal and local governments had ramped up efforts to combat domestic terrorism of all kinds in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. A few months following the 9/11 attacks, FBI official Dale Watson testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that “Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat.” But Johnson, German, and others assert that federal counterterrorism programs since 9/11 have focused overwhelmingly on the perceived threat from Islamic extremism. That includes the Obama administration’s “countering violent extremism” strategy, which “revolves around impeding the radicalization of violent jihadists,” according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

The attack in Charleston underscored “the failure of the federal government to keep closer tabs” on right-wing extremists, argues Gerald Horne, a historian and civil rights activist at the University of Houston.

But the focus may soon increase. In February, CNN reported that US Homeland Security circulated an intelligence assessment that focused on the domestic terror threat posed by right-wing extremists. Kurzman and Schanzer also point to a handout from a training program sponsored by the US Department of Justice, cautioning that the threat from antigovernment extremism “is real.”

Who and where are the perpetrators of far-right extremist attacks?
According to Perliger’s research at West Point, 54 percent of such attacks since 1990—in which the perpetrators were caught or identified—were carried out by a single individual. About 75 percent of all perpetrators identified were 29 years old or younger.

Perliger also notes that attacks have moved beyond states in the South—the birthplace of groups such as the KKK and the site of major attacks during the 1960s—to places including California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. “The existence of significant minority groups in the different states appears linked with the level of far-right violence they experience,” Perliger says. In a recent editorial, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen argued that far-right extremism is gaining ground beyond state boundaries: “Unlike those of the civil rights era, whose main goal was to maintain Jim Crow in the American South, today’s white supremacists don’t see borders; they see a white tribe under attack by people of color across the globe…The days of thinking of domestic terrorism as the work of a few Klansmen or belligerent skinheads are over.”

What factors might explain the latest rise in this kind of extremism?
Experts suggest that several factors may have played into it. Researchers commonly attribute the spike in right-wing attacks, around 2008, to the election of an African-American president. Around the time of Obama’s election, Johnson notes how the white supremacist web forum Stormfront had less than 100,000 registered users. “Today, it is over 300,000,” he says. Scholars have also debated the role that the 2008 financial crisis, a heightening debate over immigration, and other socioeconomic changes may have had. The Combating Terrorism Center’s Perliger points out that past spikes in far-right attacks also corresponded with the passing of landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and firearm restrictions during the 1990s.

Was the Charleston shooting a hate crime or an act of terrorism?
It had the marks of both, according to Horne, German, and others. FBI Director James Comey came under fire for saying the Charleston shooting did not appear to be an act of terrorism based on the available evidence. German adds that Roof’s racist comments about black people, his photos with flags invoking racist ideologies, and the fact that he killed a state senator, make clear that his attack on the church was both targeted and political.

Could the Charleston shooting have been prevented?
Violent attacks by extremists are difficult to predict, but both the government and researchers could be doing a better job of working to understand them, German says. “You have to understand both how the movement works and what parts are dangerous and what parts aren’t, as well as understanding how the particular terrorist activity starts,” he explains, adding that most research on terrorist attacks has fixated on their ideological roots, rather than on their methodologies. “That’s where you’ll see terrorism studies completely lacking, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been thrown into terrorism research. They’re not studying the right things.”

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

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Hearings on Water Permits for Indian Point

by Myrna Posted on July 22, 2014

Department of Environmental Conservation opened hearings on renewing water quality permits for the Indian Point nuclear reactors. Visit link –  Hearings on Water Permits for Indian Point ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth: Indian Point’s Tritium Problem and the N.R.C.’s Regulatory ProblemDot Earth Blog: Indian Point’s Tritium Problem and the N.R.C.’s Regulatory ProblemU.S. Raises Threat of Quake but Lowers Risk for Towers ;

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Hearings on Water Permits for Indian Point

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Missing the Point With Statistics

by Rudolph8843 Posted on June 12, 2014

Mother Jones

I just caught a few minutes of the Brazil-Croatia World Cup opener (“patient possession football” said the announcer, which apparently means kinda slow and humdrum), and before I knew it, it was halftime. So I switched over to CNN to see if anything was going on, and caught a pretty good example of how to miss the point with statistics. The chart at issue is on the right. According to James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, mass shootings aren’t on the rise, even though it might seem that they are. But there’s something missing from this analysis, and regular readers who know my hobbyhorses should be able to guess what it is.

Is it the fact that the yellow line does, in fact, seem to be rising steadily? No. An eyeball analysis suggests that it is, but it’s not a big rise, and anyway, it’s probably accounted for by population growth.

Nope, it’s this: Since 1993, the rate of violent crime in America has plummeted by half. That’s the background to measure this against. In general, America has become a much safer, much less lethal place, and yet mass shootings have remained steady. Compared to the background rate of violent crime, mass shootings have doubled. Why?

And here’s an equally interesting question: between 1976 and 1993, violent crime increased by a significant amount, but mass shootings remained steady. Again, why?

Raw numbers are a starting point, but they don’t tell the whole story. If Americans, on average, are considerably less violent than they were 20 years ago, shouldn’t mass shootings be down? The answer presumably, is that mass shootings are actually up when you measure them correctly, or else that mass shootings have nothing to do with violent tendencies in general. My guess is the latter, and it would be genuinely interesting to hear from experts about why this is.

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Missing the Point With Statistics

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Issa’s New Scandal: An Obama Plot Against Gun Dealers

by q1jurse Posted on June 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Having been booted off the Benghazi beat, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is firing up conservatives about yet another Obama scandal: a supposed White House plot to put gun dealers and other lawful merchants out of business by denying them banking services. Issa, who chairs the House oversight and government reform committee, alleges that Operation Choke Point, a Justice Department program that cracks down on fraud by scrutinizing banks and payment processors, is being used by the Obama administration to target gun sellers and other businesses the administration doesn’t fancy. “Operation Choke Point is the Justice Department’s newest abuse of power,” Issa said, in a report released May 29.

Issa wants the program dismantled, and he is deploying some of the same tactics he’s used to slam the administration on Benghazi and the so-called IRS scandal—dumping documents, whipping the conservative media into a frenzy, and accusing the administration of overstepping the law—to get his way. The same day Issa’s report came out, the House approved an amendment to the annual Justice Department spending bill that strips the program’s funding.

Meanwhile, some Democrats are mystified that conservatives are up in arms about an anti-fraud program, and the Justice Department is emphasizing this effort has nothing to do with limiting gun-selling.

Operation Choke Point compels banks to take greater steps to prevent fraud and not engage in financial transactions with companies they suspect might be breaking the law. Under Choke Point, the Justice Department has opened civil or criminal investigations into at least 15 banks and payment processors—which serve as the middleman between banks and businesses in credit card transactions—to determine if these firms have enabled fraud.

The Justice Department is working with Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on the initiative. The controversy began in part because the FDIC in 2011—years before Operation Choke Point launched—issued a list of businesses associated with high-risk activity that financial institutions should watch out for. These include enterprises peddling firearms, pornography, drug paraphernalia, and racist materials. The FDIC noted that financial institutions that “properly manage these relationships and risks are neither prohibited nor discouraged from providing payment processing services to customers operating in compliance with applicable law.” In other words, there was no reason for a bank not to handle payments for these businesses just because of the goods they sell.

Nonetheless, Issa’s report alleges that the Justice Department is using the FDIC guidance as a hit list. “The FDIC’s policy statements on firearm and ammunition sales carry additional weight in light of FDIC’s active involvement in Operation Choke Point,” the report reads. But a Justice Department official tells Mother Jones that this conclusion is incorrect. “We’re not using the FDIC’s list at all,” the official says. “There’s been a lot of misunderstanding, there’s been accusations were going after gun owners…None of our cases involve gun merchants or porn.”

The Justice Department insists it’s committed to ensuring its anti-fraud campaign doesn’t inhibit lawful merchants. Issa, though, claims that Attorney General Eric Holder knew that banks would drop clients deemed “high risk” by the government, such as gun-sellers, as a result of Operation Choke Point. His report cites a recent Washington Times article reporting that a number of firearms merchants had their bank accounts shut down, supposedly because of the Obama administration. “The experience of firearms and ammunitions merchants…calls into question the sincerity of the Department’s statements,” the report states. Fox News promoted this charge, declaring, “The Obama administration, after failing to get gun control passed on Capitol Hill, has resorted to using its executive power to try to put some in the firearms industry out of business, House Republican investigators say.”

The Justice Department maintains there’s no reason banks should feel threatened by the government for doing business with certain industries, including gun-dealers. The Justice Department official notes that when the department subpoenas banks, it’s looking for payment processors that might be engaging in fraud. “We’re not saying give us all the docs you have on risky businesses,” the official says.

What about the gun-sellers who say their bank accounts were shut down? One of the gun-merchants who was cited in the Washington Times, and who says he’s a victim of Operation Choke Point, first complained publicly about his dispute with Bank of America long before the initiative was launched. The other banks in the story wouldn’t say why they closed the accounts. The Justice Department official says the agency isn’t sure why the gun merchants’ accounts were allegedly shut down, because the information its investigations have obtained does not include any links to gun dealers. “Banks are making their own assessments, that’s not something we can control,” the official says. (Last month, when several news outlets reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co shut down the accounts of people in the porn industry because of Operation Choke Point, a Chase official told Mother Jones that the government program had nothing to do with the bank’s action.)

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and a number of other Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), support Operation Choke Point. “It is a mystery to me why Chairman Issa is attacking the Department of Justice for cracking down on fraud against American consumers,” Cummings tells Mother Jones. “Contrary to the chairman’s accusations, documents produced to the committee show that the Department is using lawful investigative techniques to reduce consumer fraud.” In over 850 pages of internal Justice Department documents that Issa released, there isn’t a single mention of firearms dealers.

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Issa’s New Scandal: An Obama Plot Against Gun Dealers

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Great Barrier Reef will be smothered with silt, because coal

by GudrunHVOfytumz Posted on January 31, 2014

Great Barrier Reef will be smothered with silt, because coal

By

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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park — a supposedly protected natural area containing thousands of reefs, which together are visible from space and attract nearly $6 billion a year in tourism — is a pretty terrible place to dump loads of silt. But it’s happening: The federal agency that governs the reef approved plans to dump up to 3 million cubic meters of silt that will be dredged from the marine park to help carve a superhighway for tankers ferrying coal to Asia.

It’s the final piece in Australian Prime Minister (and known climate denier) Tony Abbott’s already-approved master plan to dredge the shipping lane, expand an existing coal terminal, and extensively mine the northeastern state of Queensland for coal.

Reuters reports that backers of the coal export project, including two Indian firms and the heiress to an Australian mining empire, hope to deliver an estimated $28 billion of coal to Asian markets once it’s complete.

Dredging a new shipping lane through the reef to deliver all that coal will generate as much as 3 million cubic meters of silt. That’s an abstract number, but, if you can imagine 150,000 dump trucks all dropping loads of sand into the sea, then you have a sense for the volume.

The silt will be dumped 15 miles out to sea from the expanded port at Abbott Point. “It’s important to note the seafloor of the approved disposal area consists of sand, silt, and clay and does not contain coral reefs or seagrass beds,” the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s chair said in a statement Friday.

Scientists and conservationists say that doesn’t matter: Ocean currents are always moving sand around on the sea floor. “The best available science makes it very clear that expansion of the port at Abbot Point will have detrimental effects on the Great Barrier Reef,” 233 of them wrote in a letter to the federal government. “Sediment from dredging can smother corals and seagrasses and expose them to poisons and elevated nutrients.”

It’s worth noting that the U.S. is complicit in Australia’s fossil-fuel export blitz. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a lending body, is providing about $5 billion in financing to international energy companies to help them build a pipeline from the Queensland mainland to the hitherto pristine Curtis Island, which is inside the marine park, and to construct coal-seam gas processing facilities there. These projects will also involve dredging.

It all sounds like an environmental nightmare, but Australia’s über-conservative government wants you to know that the conditions it’s imposing on all these projects “will result in an improvement in water quality.” Awesome. And if you’re willing to believe that, the prime minister has some even better news for you: Everything you have ever heard about climate change is “absolute crap.” Fantastic!


Source
Strict conditions placed on approval for Abbot Point permit, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority approves plan to dump Abbot Point spoil, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australia permits dredge dumping near Great Barrier Reef for major coal port, Reuters

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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Great Barrier Reef will be smothered with silt, because coal

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Is the coal industry about to wreck the Great Barrier Reef?

by MatthiasA Posted on December 17, 2013

Is the coal industry about to wreck the Great Barrier Reef?

By

Shutterstock

Here’s a conundrum for you: Would it be better to protect Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which is visible from space, attracts more than a million visitors every year, and is home to thousands of species of fish, sharks, and other marine animals? Or would it be better to build one of the world’s largest coal ports near the reef, dredge the area around the port, dump millions of tons of dredged mud and sand into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and then create a coal-shipping superhighway through the reef so thousands of ships each year can ferry coal from Australia to Asia?

The answer is clearly the latter, according to Australia’s conservative government and the coal industry. The government, now under the control of climate-denying Prime Minister Tony Abbott, has just given the coal industry the go-ahead for its proposed project, despite warnings from environmentalists that the coal port and shipping plans threaten the very future of the reef. From The Guardian:

Unfortunately, soon a massively destructive coal port will be built just 50 km north of the magnificent Whitsunday Islands. The port expansion was approved by the Abbott Liberal National government on Wednesday 11 December, and it will become one of the world’s largest coal ports.

The coal export facility is ironically located on Abbot Point. The construction of this port will involve dredging 3 million cubic metres of seabed. The dredge spoil will be dumped into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

To give you an idea of the scale of this dredging, if all of the spoil was put into dump trucks, there would be 150,000 of them lined up bumper to bumper from Brisbane to Melbourne.

This expansion is further proof that the Abbott government is hell-bent on turning Australia into a reckless charco-state that solely represents the interests of fossil fuel and coal companies.

Shutterstock

This fish does not approve of coal-port plans.

Here’s more from The Christian Science Monitor:

Greenpeace estimates the number of coal ships passing through the reef will increase from a current level of about 1,700 a year to 10,150 by 2020, significantly increasing the possibility of accidents.

Environmental groups want the main authority overseeing the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to abide by its charter and block the Federal government’s approval of the Abbot Point expansion. A decision is expected next week.

With the coal industry contributing more than $20 billion a year to the government’s coffers and local businesses set to benefit from the new development, environmental groups are in for a tough fight.

This time, however, they have the support of the Queensland’s tourism operators. “There’s so much evidence that sedimentation is impacting the Great Barrier Reef … This is the tipping point,” says Bowen reef tour operator Al Grundy.

He fears the port expansion will threaten a nesting ground for green turtles and a humpback whale gathering area in the waters between Abbot Point and the Whitsunday Islands.

Of course, threatening the reef is nothing new for the coal industry. As The Christian Science Monitor points out, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning are warming the ocean waters and turning them more acidic, long posing a threat to the colorful reef ecosystem.


Source
Has a natural world wonder just been approved for destruction by the Australian government?, The Guardian
Australia approves coal port near Great Barrier Reef, Christian Science Monitor

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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Is the coal industry about to wreck the Great Barrier Reef?

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Are Brits going to get screwed by pricey nuclear power?

by Conradk77 Posted on December 13, 2013

Are Brits going to get screwed by pricey nuclear power?

By

EDF Energy

This nuclear plant would be really, really expensive.

New nuclear power has become so expensive that Britain intends to allow a nuke plant operator to charge double the market rate for electricity. The European Union is investigating whether that amounts to illegal government aid to a company.

French nuclear energy giant EDF wants to build a $26 billion facility in southwest England, the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. The U.K. government’s philosophy is that nuclear power is desirable; the new plant could meet 7 percent of Britain’s electricity needs without hurting the climate. So, the power plant would be heavily subsidized by utility customers paying roughly double the rate set by the free market for electricity.

Some say that plan violates E.U. rules that restrict government aid for individual companies. From Reuters:

The European Commission will open an investigation next week into planned British support for a new nuclear power plant, three people familiar with the matter said, in a precedent-setting case for future nuclear funding in Europe. …

If the Commission refuses state aid approval, the Hinkley Point project could fail, threatening the British government’s long-term energy and environmental plans which call for nuclear power.

“The project could not proceed,” an EU diplomatic source said when asked what would happen if the Commission rules against the plan.

Another possibility is the directorate could call for modification of the government’s planned support, involving the guaranteed price or the contract’s length.

If you think opening a nuclear power plant is a dicey and pricey proposition these days, wait until you hear how much it costs to shut one down.

The Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida went offline in 2009, following a series of maintenance-related accidents, because it could no longer compete with fossil fuels or renewables on price. This week, Duke Energy told regulators that the shutdown and cleanup will cost $1.2 billion and take 60 years. That’s nearly twice as long as the plant was in operation.


Source
EU to launch probe into British nuclear state aid next week — sources, Reuters
Shutting down Crystal River nuclear plant will cost $1.2 billion, take 60 years, Tampa Bay Times

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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Are Brits going to get screwed by pricey nuclear power?

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Bid adieu to South Carolina’s drowning shorelines

by Obediah Ousley Posted on November 26, 2013

Bid adieu to South Carolina’s drowning shorelines

By

Frank Kehren

About 1,200 acres of land have disappeared from Bulls Island and three nearby islands along the South Carolina coast since the 1990s — lost to rising seas and the eroding effects of powerful storms.

The erosion problems at the barrier islands, which are part of Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, are so severe that U.S. Interior Department secretary Sally Jewell visited them last week.

The State reports that the land’s vanishing act is harming wildlife populations:

Islands in the 66,000-acre Cape Romain refuge provide important nesting habitat for loggerhead sea turtles, federally protected reptiles that deposit their eggs in sand dunes for protection. But many of the dunes are washing away. …

Raye Nilius, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and Cape Romain project leader, said some birds that nest on Cape Romain’s islands also face threats from the encroaching ocean. As islands dwindle in size, birds that lay nests on top of the beach have fewer places for their young to hatch.

Least terns, black skimmers, and eastern brown pelicans are some of the birds of particular concern because of nesting habitat loss, Nilius said.

“We used to have huge numbers of eastern pelicans on some of those islands,” Nilius said, noting that at one spot, “They’re all gone now. Their habitat has been diminished in size.”

It’s not just chunks of land that are disappearing: Entire features of the landscape — like the spit known as Sandy Point — are entirely vanishing. A sign used to warn visitors not to bring their pets onto Sandy Point; now it juts ominously out of the water.


Source
Wildlife could be biggest losers as SC islands wash away, The State

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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Bid adieu to South Carolina’s drowning shorelines

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The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

by julyye49 Posted on November 13, 2013

The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

By

Sandia National Laboratories

Three Mile Island: still not popular.

The nuclear power industry is melting down in America, and in the rest of the Western Hemisphere too.

Nuclear plants still generate nearly 20 percent of electricity in the U.S. But a report by investment research firm Morningstar in its latest Utilities Observer publication warns about the sector’s risks. The report says “the ‘nuclear renaissance’ is on hold indefinitely” in the West thanks to low electricity prices, largely driven by the natural-gas fracking boom but also by new renewable energy projects, and controversy in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown:

Aside from the two new nuclear projects in the U.S., one in France (Flamanville), and a possible one in the U.K. (Hinkley Point C), we think new-build nuclear in the West is dead. …

We don’t expect an end to the new nuclear construction in China and South Korea or the development interest in India and elsewhere in Asia. … Nuclear power is not going to disappear as a long-term option and it will continue to evolve. However, an investment in a new Western nuke plant even with the best available technology today will remain a rare experiment.

Another problem for the sector: Nuclear power plants are ill-suited to modern energy-pricing schemes, as The New York Times recently reported. Nuclear plants can’t be quickly powered up or down to meet demand as prices rise and fall throughout the day and night, so sometimes reactor operators are forced to sell electricity at a loss when demand is lowest. 

Five U.S. nuclear power plants have recently shuttered or announced upcoming closures: Vermont Yankee in Vermont, San Onofre in California, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, Crystal River in Florida, and Oyster Creek in New Jersey. Those closures have been largely the result of falling power prices and rising maintenance costs.

Here are six more nuclear plants that Morningstar identifies as the most likely to close next:

1. & 2. R.E. Ginna, opened in 1984 in Onatario, N.Y., and James A. FitzPatrick, opened in 1974 in Scriba, N.Y.

Blame it on the wind. “Renewable energy has flooded the wind-rich region, driven by New York’s renewable portfolio standard,” the Morningstar report notes. “Upstate New York off-peak power prices have fallen to $32 per megawatt hour as of mid-2013 from $55/MWh in 2008. Transmission bottlenecks prevent the plants from tapping the state’s eastern markets, where power prices are 30% higher.”

3. Pilgrim, opened in 1972 in Plymouth, Mass.

The power plant’s operating license was extended until 2032 despite fierce opposition last year. Still, says Morningstar, “Entergy is not obligated to operate it for that long and could exit if power prices sink much further.”

4. Three Mile Island, opened in 1974 in Middletown, Penn.

One of Three Mile Island’s two reactors closed down in 1979 because, well, because it partially melted down. Now Morningstar says the other reactor is at risk of closure because it “faces challenging economics,” and those challenges will be exacerbated if several large natural-gas plants are built nearby as proposed.

5. Davis Besse, opened in 1977 in Oak Harbor, Ohio

Morningstar notes “strong opposition” to efforts to extend the power plant’s operating license after it expires in 2017 and the plant’s “tarnished reputation.” The facility closed in 2002 after corrosion was discovered in the main vessel and it didn’t resume operations until 2004. Still, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff declared in September that there were no safety issues at the plant that would affect its relicensing effort.

6. Indian Point, opened in 1973 in Buchanan, N.Y.

Neighbors and many lawmakers really want to shut down this plant, located less than 50 miles north of Manhattan. “When you have this much local opposition and opposition from state government, what I’ve seen over time is that it’s very difficult to operate plants,” former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Michael Jaczko told Bloomberg in October. “The best solution is to sit down with all the interested stakeholders and think about a way to shut down the plant on a reasonable time frame.” Still, Morningstar’s analysts say that “owing to transmission constraints and Indian Point’s relatively low cost, we think there is a strong probability that the plant will eventually be relicensed.”

Maybe somebody should tell James Hansen about the nuclear industry’s mounting woes.

MorningstarClick to embiggen.

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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The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

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