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Trump blasts wind turbine emissions, says zilch about fossil fuels

It’s no secret that President Trump hates wind turbines. He’s had it out for them since at least 2012, when he tweeted that they’re an “environmental & aesthetic disaster,” and blamed them for murdering bald eagles. The enmity reportedly stems from an offshore wind farm that Trump feared would mar views from one of his golf courses in Scotland.

At a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday, Trump made his displeasure known again, saying that the wind turbines he saw recently on a trip to Palm Springs were “closed” and “rotting.” “They look like hell,” he said.

He didn’t stop there. “When they’re making them, more stuff goes up into the air and up into the ozone, the atmosphere,” Trump said. “And they don’t say this, but after a period of time, they get tired, they get old, they get rusty and a lot of guys say hey, their useful life is gone, let’s get the hell out of here.”

The president isn’t entirely wrong about that last bit. As a recent report from Bloomberg Green points out, tens of thousands of aging wind turbine blades — which can stretch longer than the wing of a Boeing 747 — are ending up in landfills. Over the next four years, 32,000 blades will go to the landfill in the United States alone. Recycling the blades, which are built to outlast hurricanes and tornadoes, is nigh impossible.

But the environmental impact of wind turbines is nothing compared to that of oil, gas, and coal — industries that Trump has tried to prop up with every executive lever available to him. If Trump actually cared about the stuff that “goes up into the air,” he’d rail against fossil fuels, not renewables. The carbon footprint of coal is nearly 90 times greater than that of wind energy, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an agency in the executive branch that Trump is the head of. The footprint of natural gas is more than 40 times greater.

Trump’s 2012 claim that wind turbines kill birds is also a half-truth: the Audubon Society estimates that wind turbines kill somewhere between 140,000 and 328,000 birds every year in North America. But the oil and gas industry kills as many as one million birds a year, says the Bureau of Land Management. And coal, the industry Trump has vowed to save, kills nearly 8 million per year.

Come to think of it, “a lot of guys say hey, their useful life is gone, let’s get the hell out of here” would be a much better motto for fossil fuels than for wind turbines.

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Trump blasts wind turbine emissions, says zilch about fossil fuels

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Grant-Lee Phillips’ "The Narrows" Skillfully Mines Americana Turf

Mother Jones

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Grant-Lee Phillips
The Narrows
Yep Roc

Yep Roc Records

Criminally underappreciated, Grant-Lee Phillips is one of the more versatile singers around. As frontman of the band Grant Lee Buffalo in the ’90s, he could conjure a T. Rex glam-rock vibe without breaking a sweat. Today, on The Narrows, Phillips skillfully mines Americana turf, mixing muscular country rockers and sparse folk that echoes Woody Guthrie. While his weary, weathered intensity can evoke Bruce Springsteen’s acoustic works, there’s none of the Boss’ self-conscious striving for mythic significance. Thoughtful, precisely detailed stories of struggle and occasional triumph such as “Yellow Weeds” and “Taking on Weight in Hot Springs” linger in the mind like a great short story. The Narrows should have a long shelf life.

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Grant-Lee Phillips’ "The Narrows" Skillfully Mines Americana Turf

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These Tweets About Attacks on Abortion Providers Should Make Your Blood Boil

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, three people were killed and at least nine were injured when Robert Lewis Dear allegedly shot them at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood facility. This assault was the latest in a recent surge of violence against women’s health clinics following the release of doctored videos this summer by anti-abortion activists who claim the videos show Planned Parenthood staffers selling fetal tissue.

But even before this summer, US abortion providers have weathered a long and deadly string of violent attacks. On Sunday, Michelle Kinsey Bruns, a feminist organizer and the woman behind Twitter account @ClinicEscort, tweeted a roundup of 100 attacks on women’s health providers, beginning with the 1976 arson attempt at an abortion clinic in Eugene, Oregon, and ending with the response from some anti-abortion activists to Friday’s shooting in Colorado.

Here’s her list:

View the story “#is100enough: how many antichoice attacks, threats & incitements until you admit clinic violence is real?” on Storify

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These Tweets About Attacks on Abortion Providers Should Make Your Blood Boil

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Friday Cat Blogging – 9 January 2015

Mother Jones

Here’s Hopper in the sewing room, surrounded by sewing paraphernalia. That look in her eye suggests either that her brother was somewhere nearby or that she was just about to gallop across all of Marian’s stuff and make a huge mess. Or maybe both. Making a mess is a favorite pastime around here these days.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 9 January 2015

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We’re Fishing the Oceans Dry. It’s Time to Reconsider Fish Farms.

Mother Jones

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When I meet Kenny Belov mid-morning at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, the boats that would normally be out at sea chasing salmon sit tethered to their docks. The steady breeze coursing through the bay belies choppier conditions farther out—so rough that the local fishermen threw in the towel for the fifth morning in a row. Belov scans the horizon as he explains this, feet away from the warehouse of his sustainable seafood company, TwoXSea. Because his business hinges on what local fishermen can bring in, he’s used to coping with wild fish shortages.

But unlike these fishermen, Belov has a stash of treasure in his warehouse, as he soon shows me: a golf-cart-size container of plump trout, their glossy bodies still taut from rigor mortis. The night before, Belov drove north to Humboldt to help “chill kill” the fish by submerging them live into barrels of slushy ice water. Belov can count on shipments of these McFarland Springs trout every week—because he helped grow them himself on a farm.

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We’re Fishing the Oceans Dry. It’s Time to Reconsider Fish Farms.

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Strawberry fields, not forever: Workers ditch farm after it punishes them for fleeing wildfire

Strawberry fields, not forever: Workers ditch farm after it punishes them for fleeing wildfire

Shutterstock

Strawberries: not worth choking over.

Workers on a strawberry farm in Southern California were fired last week when they became worried about smoke from a nearby wildfire and left mid-shift. After a media backlash, the farm offered the workers their jobs back, but the workers said, essentially, “Screw you.”

The strawberry pickers had taken shelter inside from choking smoke and falling ashes from the Springs Fire, defying an order from a foreman who told them to suck it up and keep on picking. From NBC4:

The ashes were falling on top of us, one of them explained, adding “it was hard to breathe.”

Air quality in the region was at dangerously poor levels and 15 workers at Crisalida Farms decided they could not handle it any longer. They left, even though their foreman warned them they would not have a job when they returned.

The workers were non-union, but United Farm Workers went in to help anyway, meeting with Crisalida Farms officials and demanding that they hire the workers back. Meanwhile, Telemundo and other news outlets began reporting on the injustice, placing the company in an awkward spotlight.

Crisalida Farms eventually relented, but only one of the 15 workers decided to return to their former job. All the others found more fruitful work elsewhere.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie 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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Strawberry fields, not forever: Workers ditch farm after it punishes them for fleeing wildfire

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Beware: Rough wildfire season ahead

Beware: Rough wildfire season ahead

wanderingnome

Smoke from the Springs Fire blows over a dry Californian landscape.

An inferno that led to the evacuation of thousands of Southern Californians last week was a harbinger of a nasty fire season ahead for America’s West and Southwest.

A change in the weather on Sunday helped firefighters start to bring the Springs Fire in the Santa Monica Mountains under control, three days after it sparked to life amid hot and dry conditions.

Much of California is particularly dry and unseasonably brown this year. Storms stayed away from the state over the winter and mountains are covered with just a thin layer of snow.

From USA Today:

[Ventura County Fire Capt. Dan Horton said] that a blaze like this one typically doesn’t strike until deep into summer or fall, after the summer’s dry heat has withered hillside vegetation.

“The hot, dry conditions we have seen are usually what we see in July,” Horton said. “It does raise our level of concern. If this is any indication, we are definitely looking at a difficult fire season ahead.”

The blaze is one of more than 680 wildfires in the state this year — about 200 more than average. The state has seen a severe drought during the past year, and the water content of California’s snowpack is only 17% of normal.

This ongoing firefighting effort coincided with publication of a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that warns climate change may increase drought conditions in some places even as it brings heavier rainfall to others. The L.A. Times makes the link:

The study arrives as a large wildfire has burned thousands of acres in Ventura County. Although many factors have shaped the spread and severity of the fire, the land may have been primed by low rainfall in California.

Climate change does not cause forest fires but does contribute to their likelihood, [Pacific Institute President Peter] Gleick said, adding: “It’s not about causality but influence.”

The Springs Fire began raging a day after the National Interagency Fire Center warned of high fire risks this spring and summer in West Coast states, the Southwest, and parts of Montana and Idaho.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie 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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Beware: Rough wildfire season ahead

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