Environmental hypocrite flies from Washington D.C. to California to demand that other people stop using fossil fuels
Here’s the latest example of environmental hypocrisy.
The Los Angeles Times just reported:
Police arrest young climate protesters for blocking street near Kamala Harris’ home
Demanding more action on the climate crisis, young activists blocked an intersection Monday morning near Vice President Kamala Harris’ Brentwood home, leading police to arrest six of them without incident.
Harris did not interact with the demonstrators, as her motorcade took an alternate route from her home to Los Angeles International Airport that morning.
High school student Wei Zhou, 17, came from their home in Washington, D.C., to join the demonstration, having participated in a similar protest outside President Biden’s home in Delaware in February. Declaring a climate emergency would allow Biden “to unlock a bunch of powers,” said Zhou, who joined the movement at 14.
That could include protecting people affected by climate disasters from eviction and providing them free healthcare, they said.
Zhou stood with a dozen additional protesters across the street from the blockade. “Harris, Harris, can’t you see, this is an emergency,” they chanted, alternating the latter phrase with “fossil fuels are killing me” and “this will be your legacy.”
Environmentalists are against mining the lithium that is used in batteries for electric cars
https://apnews.com/article/nevada-thacker-pass-lithium-mine-4ad772a6940eb8edd507b50a179202f2
9th Circuit denies bid by environmentalists and tribes to block Nevada lithium mine
By SCOTT SONNER
July 17, 2023
RENO, Nev. (AP) — The latest bid by conservationists and tribal leaders to block construction of a huge lithium mine already in the works along the Nevada-Oregon line was denied by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.
A three-panel judge of the San Francisco-based appellate court rejected a half-dozen legal arguments the opponents had put forth in their appeal seeking to overturn federal land managers’ approval of one of the projects at the forefront of President Joe Biden’s plans to combat climate change.
The critics have been fighting it in federal court for two years. They claim the open-pit mine, as deep as the length of a football field, will violate multiple environmental laws and destroy lands tribal members consider sacred because they say dozens of their ancestors were massacred there in 1865.
Lithium Nevada Corp.’s mine at Thacker Pass, 200 miles (320 kilometers) northeast of Reno, has pitted environmentalists and Native Americans against Biden’s efforts to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner, renewable energy sources. The mine would involve extraction of the silvery-white metal used in electric vehicle batteries.
On Monday, the judges didn’t specifically address the claims that the project fails to comply with a new opinion the 9th Circuit issued last year that blocked a copper mine in Arizona based on a more stringent interpretation of the 1872 Mining Law regarding the use of neighboring lands to dispose of waste.
Rather, they more generally deferred to the expertise of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which approved the mine in 2021, and the decision by U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno earlier this year to allow construction to go forward even though she concluded the mine was not in complete compliance with the new interpretation of the Civil War-era mining law.
The bureau approved the mine in 2021 on an accelerated basis under Donald Trump’s administration. The Biden administration has continued to embrace it in an effort to ramp up U.S. lithium production.
Officials for Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of the Canadian-based Lithium Americas, say the Thacker Pass mine’s reserves would support lithium for more than 1.5 million electric vehicles per year for 40 years.
Conservationists say the operation will pollute the groundwater and destroy precious habitat for sage-grouse, pronghorn antelope and other species in violation of environmental laws.
Their lawyers had argued that Du illegally exceeded her authority when she refused to revoke the mine’s operation plan in March despite her conclusion that federal land managers had violated the law in approving parts of it.
The 9th Circuit ruling concluded Du applied the proper legal standard and found the bureau’s sole error in approving the project “weighed against” vacating the entire approval of the mine.
The bureau’s approval of the mine “was not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with” the National Environmental Policy Act, the 11-page ruling said.
Spokespeople for the plaintiffs said after Monday’s ruling they were considering their legal options.
“We all recognize the need for renewable energy, but it can’t come at the cost of making the biodiversity crisis worse,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project.
Government lawyers had said much of the evidence the Western Shoshone and Paiute tribes presented about the sacred nature of the land came after a formal decision had been issued and that none of it clearly established the actual location of the massacre.
The 9th Circuit ruled the bureau acted “reasonably and in good faith” in its consultation with tribes potentially affected by the mine.
Company officials said Monday they were “pleased to see such a decisive ruling” and that construction was continuing.
“We have always been confident that the permitting process for Thacker Pass was conducted thoroughly and appropriately,” Lithium Americas CEO Jonathan Evans said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.
One independent analyst group said the “brisk” issuance of the ruling so soon after the June 27 oral arguments underscored the significance of what it considered an “important legal victory” for the mine that could become one of the largest lithium-producing operations in the world.
”Opponents could seek further review at the Ninth Circuit or may appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, though we are skeptical their arguments would fare any better,” Washington-based ClearView Energy Partners said in a note to clients.
Plaintiffs in the case said in emails to the AP that they hadn’t decided whether to appeal.
Great Basin Resource Watch Executive Director John Hadder warned the ruling could set a dangerous precedent.
“Lithium Nevada’s destruction of sage-grouse, pronghorn and other wildlife habitats at Thacker Pass foretells the damage to public lands and the biodiversity loss that the lithium boom in the West will cause,” said Katie Fite, public lands director for WildLands Defense.
A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-plant-closure-hailed-green-100038112.html
A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up.
By Oliver Milman
March 20, 2024
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
“From a climate change point of view it’s been a real step backwards and made it harder for New York City to decarbonize its electricity supply than it could’ve been,” said Ben Furnas, a climate and energy policy expert at Cornell University. “This has been a cautionary tale that has left New York in a really challenging spot.”
The closure of Indian Point raises sticky questions for the green movement and states such as New York that are looking to slash carbon pollution. Should long-held concerns about nuclear be shelved due to the overriding challenge of the climate crisis? If so, what should be done about the US’s fleet of ageing nuclear plants?
For those who spent decades fighting Indian Point, the power plant had few redeeming qualities even in an era of escalating global heating. Perched on the banks of the Hudson River about 25 miles north of Manhattan, the hulking facility started operation in the 1960s and its three reactors at one point contributed about a quarter of New York City’s power.
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling. Pressure from Andrew Cuomo, New York’s then governor, and Bernie Sanders – the senator called Indian Point a “catastrophe waiting to happen” – led to a phased closure announced in 2017, with the two remaining reactors shutting in 2020 and 2021.
The closure was cause for jubilation in green circles, with Mark Ruffalo, the actor and environmentalist, calling the plant’s end “a BIG deal”. He added in a video: “Let’s get beyond Indian Point.” New York has two other nuclear stations, which have also faced opposition, that have licenses set to expire this decade.
But rather than immediately usher in a new dawn of clean energy, Indian Point’s departure spurred a jump in planet-heating emissions. New York upped its consumption of readily available gas to make up its shortfall in 2020 and again in 2021, as nuclear dropped to just a fifth of the state’s electricity generation, down from about a third before Indian Point’s closure.
This reversal will not itself wreck New York’s goal of making its grid emissions-free by 2040. Two major projects bringing Canadian hydropower and upstate solar and wind electricity will come online by 2027, while the state is pushing ahead with new offshore wind projects – New York’s first offshore turbines started whirring last week. Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, has vowed the state will “build a cleaner, greener future for all New Yorkers”.
Even as renewable energy blossoms at a gathering pace in the US, though, it is gas that remains the most common fallback for utilities once they take nuclear offline, according to Furnas. This mirrors a situation faced by Germany after it looked to move away from nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, only to fall back on coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, as a temporary replacement.
“As renewables are being built we still need energy for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining and most often it’s gas that is doing that,” said Furnas. “It’s a harrowing dynamic. Taking away a big slice of clean energy coming from nuclear can be a self-inflicted wound from a climate change point of view.”
With the world barreling towards disastrous climate change impacts due to the dawdling pace of emissions cuts, some environmentalists have set aside reservations and accepted nuclear as an expedient power source. The US currently derives about a fifth of its electricity from nuclear power.
Bill McKibben, author, activist and founder of 350.org, said that the position “of the people I know and trust” is that “if you have an existing nuke, keep it open if you can. I think most people are agnostic on new nuclear, hoping that the next generation of reactors might pan out but fearing that they’ll be too expensive.
“The hard part for nuclear, aside from all the traditional and still applicable safety caveats, is that sun and wind and batteries just keep getting cheaper and cheaper, which means the nuclear industry increasingly depends on political gamesmanship to get public funding,” McKibben added.
Wariness over nuclear has long been a central tenet of the environmental movement, though, and opponents point to concerns over nuclear waste, localized pollution and the chance, albeit unlikely, of a major disaster. In California, a coalition of green groups recently filed a lawsuit to try to force the closure of the Diablo Canyon facility, which provides about 8% of the state’s electricity.
“Diablo Canyon has not received the safety upgrades and maintenance it needs and we are dubious that nuclear is safe in any regard, let alone without these upgrades – it’s a huge problem,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth, which was founded in 1969 to, among other things, oppose Diablo Canyon.
Templeton said the groups were alarmed over Diablo Canyon’s discharge of waste water into the environment and the possibility an earthquake could trigger a disastrous leak of nuclear waste. A previous Friends of the Earth deal with the plant’s operator, PG&E, to shutter Diablo Canyon was clouded by state legislation allowing the facility to remain open for another five years, and potentially longer, which Templeton said was a “twist of the knife” to opponents.
“We are not stuck in the past – we are embracing renewable energy technology like solar and wind,” she said. “There was ample notice for everyone to get their houses in order and switch over to solar and wind and they didn’t do anything. The main beneficiary of all this is the corporation making money out of this plant remaining active for longer.”
Meanwhile, supporters of nuclear – some online fans have been called “nuclear bros” – claim the energy source has moved past the specter of Chernobyl and into a new era of small modular nuclear reactors. Amazon recently purchased a nuclear-powered data center, while Bill Gates has also plowed investment into the technology. Rising electricity bills, as well as the climate crisis, are causing people to reassess nuclear, advocates say.
“Things have changed drastically – five years ago I would get a very hostile response when talking about nuclear, now people are just so much more open about it,” said Grace Stanke, a nuclear fuels engineer and former Miss America who regularly gives talks on the benefits of nuclear.
“I find that young people really want to have a discussion about nuclear because of climate change, but people of all ages want reliable, accessible energy,” she said. “Nuclear can provide that.”
We need to build more nuclear power plants so we can stay warm in the winter without destroying the environment. Apparently, Seattle’s green energy doesn’t work so well when it’s this cold.
Puget Sound Energy asks customers to reduce usage as cold snap settles over Washington
January 13, 2024
Puget Sound Energy is asking its customers to voluntarily reduce their natural gas and electricity usage during the evenings.
“Due to the extreme cold temperatures facing our area, regional utilities are experiencing higher energy use than forecasted, and we need to reduce strain on the grid,” said a spokesperson.
Officials are also asking customers to limit their use of hot water.
“We appreciate your assistance in supporting our communities throughout the region,” continued the spokesperson.
Nuclear power would create more electricity, would use less than 1% as much land, and would work even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. To call this 280 square mile monstrosity “green” is being incredibly dishonest.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/india-energy-project-solve-energy-150000402.html
India’s new energy project will solve energy needs for 18 million homes — and it will be so big, it will be visible from space
By Leo Collis
December 26, 2023
A huge new energy project in India is expected to deliver 30 gigawatts of renewable energy annually.
According to the Associated Press, it will be enough to supply the energy needs of 18 million homes in the country and will cover an area of 280 square miles in the salt desert of western India’s Gujarat state.
The solar and wind energy project will be as large as Singapore, and developers say it will be the world’s biggest renewable energy project and will even be visible from space.
With India announcing in 2022 a target for net zero emissions by 2070, the country needs to be ambitious. The AP said that the aim is to produce 500 gigawatts of clean energy by 2030 on the way to the wider target nearly half a century away.
Only 10% of India’s electricity is powered by renewable sources, the AP noted, with coal generating 70% of the country’s electricity. It is behind only China and the United States when it comes to energy-related pollution from dirty-fuel sources.
There are factors to consider with such a massive undertaking. Biodiversity in the area needs to be taken into account, with the vast expanse of land home to desert foxes and flamingoes as well as migratory birds that visit during the winter months.
Meanwhile, existing residents will be affected, with construction, increased activity, and a potential rise in tourism a worry for locals in surrounding villages.
So, the project will need to be undertaken responsibly, but the benefits are sure to be enormous.
With data from Statista putting India as the most populated country on the planet with nearly 1.5 billion residents, providing clean energy for its citizens is crucial to reducing the production of polluting gases that contribute to global heating.
As Reuters reported, European Union scientists have said 2023 was the warmest year on record, as much as 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average temperature recorded between 1850 and 1900.
It’s clear, then, that to prevent further temperature rises that increase the likelihood of extreme weather conditions such as drought, flooding, and deadly storms, projects like this will be vital for the health of the planet and its inhabitants.
I’m looking forward to watching California environmentalists argue with each other over whether or not they should mine this lithium for electric cars
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/worlds-largest-ree-lithium-discovered-160012987.html
World’s Largest Reserve Of REE Lithium Discovered Beneath California’s Salton Sea: $540 Billion Motherlode Could Meet America’s Supply Demands For Decades
By Eric McConnell
December 26, 2023
When it comes to rare-earth elements (REEs), lithium stands out because of its usefulness and potential value. That’s why the Department of Energy (DOE) was jumping for joy when it discovered what is believed to be the world’s largest supply of lithium beneath California’s Salton Sea. The estimated 18 million-ton motherlode could be worth up to $540 billion and meet America’s demand for decades to come.
In the 1990s, lithium was perhaps most famous for being the title of a hit song by the band Nirvana. Fast forward 30 years, and Lithium has become famous as an indispensable element in the multibillion-dollar renewable energy industry. Lithium is a key component of the rechargeable batteries that power things like electric cars. Production of other important consumer products like cellular phones and solar energy panels also requires large amounts of lithium.
Without enough Lithium to power those batteries and other innovations, the world’s effort to fight climate change through renewable energy will be hampered. In a recent report, high-ranking DOE official Jeff Marootian said, “Lithium is vital to decarbonizing the economy and meeting President Biden’s goals of 50% electric vehicle adoption by 2030.” The problem with that is China currently dominates the global production of lithium.
A global rival such as China controlling the world’s supply of lithium runs counter to America’s strategic and economic interests. That’s why the DOE has been funding the exploration of lithium sources inside the United States. As part of that effort, it gave a $14.9 million grant to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy to study the area surrounding the Salton Sea, which straddles Riverside and Imperial counties in the California desert.
California Gov. Gavin Newsome was touring the Salton Sea with President Joe Biden to tout America’s renewable energy industry when he referred to the area as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.” If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider that the DOE estimates there is enough lithium beneath the Salton Sea to provide batteries for more than 375 million electric vehicles (EVs).
The estimated 18 million tons of lithium would put America firmly in the lead in terms of supplying the global market. It could turbocharge EV and solar production and has the potential to give the United States an unprecedented level of energy independence.
If the lithium beneath the Salton Sea can be harvested and brought to market, America would no longer have to rely on nations like Saudi Arabia and China for its energy or automaking needs. America would also be much richer because lithium is worth an estimated $29,000 per ton. That would make the Salton Sea’s estimated 18 million gallons worth $540 billion.
A partnership between the U.S. government and Buffett has the potential to increase America’s production of lithium and profitability for the industry. That’s why Berkshire Hathaway Energy is hard at work. The company operates 10 of the Salton Sea’s geothermal power plants.
It is not alone. EnergySource and Controlled Thermal Resources are also operating in the area. If America becomes the global leader in lithium production, it could lead to a boom of lithium-based businesses that could add billions or trillions of dollars per year to the U.S. economy.
Watch: Paramedic rushing to ‘life and death’ emergency begs police to clear Just Stop Oil protesters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkyAGOPiino
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/08/paramedic-life-or-death-emergency-just-stop-oil-protest/
Watch: Paramedic rushing to ‘life and death’ emergency begs police to clear Just Stop Oil protesters
Activists from eco group slow marched on Waterloo Bridge in London on Wednesday, causing carriageway to be shut in both directionsBy Ewan Somerville
8 November 2023
A paramedic responding to a “life and death” emergency begged police to let him through a Just Stop Oil protest.
Sixty activists from the eco group spent 30 minutes slow marching on Waterloo Bridge on Wednesday morning, causing the carriageway to be shut in both directions for an hour.
An ambulance arrived with blue lights and sirens, but was held up in the gridlocked traffic for about 10 minutes. The driver told The Telegraph: “I am responding to a life and death emergency – I am going to pick up a team from Guy’s and St Thomas’ to save someone’s life at another hospital but can’t get through.”
The paramedic pleaded with police officers to let him through on multiple occasions as he became increasingly angry. Officers said they were working to let him through as quickly as they could as activists lay down and hung off the central reservation, causing the road to be closed.
He was from the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Retrieval Team, a unit responsible for a temporary life support system for people whose lungs have stopped working properly.
St Thomas’ hospital, in Westminster, is one of just five centres that treat acute severe cardiorespiratory failure in adults in England.
As the ambulance came to a standstill, a member of the public shouted at the group from the pavement: “You’re stopping people from getting to operations, you idiots. Very good job, stopping a bit of oil. Protest in the right place.”
When a supportive member of the public ttried to calm down the man, he responded, referencing the world’s largest oil exporter: “Well I don’t think it’s OK – go to Saudi Arabia and complain. You’re very clever, Saudis Arabia would welcome you lot.”
The protest was the latest in Just Stop Oil’s new campaign of slow marches, in which activists walk along a road and halt all traffic. Unlike in previous months, the group is now refusing to leave roads until dragged off and arrested.
Waterloo Bridge was shut when the activists “went floppy” upon arrest and lay down in the central reservation, meaning police deemed it too unsafe for cars to pass.
It remained closed to traffic almost two hours after the protest began, as activists said they “refused to comply” with officers and had to be dragged into police vans one by one from the central reservation.
Dozens of officers made arrests under the Public Order Act, with the 60 activists initially congregating at Waterloo Station in plain clothes before putting on their orange vests.
It comes after the Met warned on Tuesday that Londoners were “bearing the brunt” of Just Stop Oil’s actions because of the number of frontline officers required to police the demonstrations.
Some 44 activists from the group were charged following another slow march on Monday, including two accused of causing criminal damage by smashing a painting at the National Gallery.
There have been 98 charges and 219 arrests of Just Stop Oil protesters since Oct 30, but the group has vowed to carry on “until we win”, with “thousands of arrests” expected.
In August 2022, a NASA report on the January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai stated, “The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface…. The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano… could remain in the stratosphere for several years.”
Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere
By Jane J. Lee and Andrew Wang
August 2, 2022
The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface.
When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.
In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.
Millán analyzed data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite, which measures atmospheric gases, including water vapor and ozone. After the Tonga volcano erupted, the MLS team started seeing water vapor readings that were off the charts. “We had to carefully inspect all the measurements in the plume to make sure they were trustworthy,” said Millán.
A Lasting Impression
Volcanic eruptions rarely inject much water into the stratosphere. In the 18 years that NASA has been taking measurements, only two other eruptions – the 2008 Kasatochi event in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile – sent appreciable amounts of water vapor to such high altitudes. But those were mere blips compared to the Tonga event, and the water vapor from both previous eruptions dissipated quickly. The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano, on the other hand, could remain in the stratosphere for several years.
This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures. Massive volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo typically cool Earth’s surface by ejecting gases, dust, and ash that reflect sunlight back into space. In contrast, the Tonga volcano didn’t inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and the huge amounts of water vapor from the eruption may have a small, temporary warming effect, since water vapor traps heat. The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere and would not be enough to noticeably exacerbate climate change effects.
The sheer amount of water injected into the stratosphere was likely only possible because the underwater volcano’s caldera – a basin-shaped depression usually formed after magma erupts or drains from a shallow chamber beneath the volcano – was at just the right depth in the ocean: about 490 feet (150 meters) down. Any shallower, and there wouldn’t have been enough seawater superheated by the erupting magma to account for the stratospheric water vapor values Millán and his colleagues saw. Any deeper, and the immense pressures in the ocean’s depths could have muted the eruption.
The MLS instrument was well situated to detect this water vapor plume because it observes natural microwave signals emitted from Earth’s atmosphere. Measuring these signals enables MLS to “see” through obstacles like ash clouds that can blind other instruments measuring water vapor in the stratosphere. “MLS was the only instrument with dense enough coverage to capture the water vapor plume as it happened, and the only one that wasn’t affected by the ash that the volcano released,” said Millán.
The MLS instrument was designed and built by JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the Aura mission.
Environmental protestors block traffic during LGBTQ parade. This is just too funny!
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-66074939
London Pride: Seven arrests as Just Stop Oil protest delays parade
July 1, 2023
Seven Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested while trying to halt the annual Pride parade in central London.
Images on social media showed police removing demonstrators who managed to briefly stop the march.
The Metropolitan Police said seven people were arrested for public nuisance offences.
Before the parade started, LGBTQ+ Just Stop Oil members called on Pride to stop accepting sponsorship money from “high-polluting industries”.
Organisers estimate more than 30,000 participants from across 600 organisations took part in the parade.
Speaking after the arrests, Will De’Athe-Morris, from Pride in London said he did not want the protest to overshadow the parade’s core message.
“Pride is a protest and pride is a celebration,” he told the BBC. “We are protesting for LGBTQ+ rights and for our trans siblings in a separate march alone.
“So for us anyone who tries to disrupt that protest and parade is really letting down those people who use this space once a year to come together to celebrate and protest for those rights.”
Police said the parade was briefly delayed for around 17 minutes while officers dealt with the protesters at Piccadilly’s junction with Down Street.
BBC Radio London’s Rob Oxley said the protesters “sat down in front of the Coke float for around 20 minutes”.
“The DJ on the float continued to play music and the crowd cheered as they were removed.”
In my opinion, California should build its wind farms in California, not Wyoming. This is totally unfair to the people of Wyoming. The people of California are hypocrites.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/build-begins-wyoming-california-power-125225690.html
Build begins on Wyoming-to-California power line amid growing wind power concern
By Mead Gruver
June 20, 2023
RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) — Portrait photographer Anne Brande shoots graduation and wedding engagement photos at scenic spots throughout southeastern Wyoming’s granite mountains and sprawling sagebrush valleys, but worries what those views will look like in a few years. Wind energy is booming here.
In a state where being able to hunt, fish and camp in gorgeous and untrammeled nature is a way of life, worries about spoiled views, killed eagles and disturbed big-game animals such as elk and mule deer have grown with the spread of wind turbines.
On Tuesday, state and federal officials will break ground on TransWest Express, a transmission line that will move electricity from the $5 billion, 3,000-megawatt, 600-turbine Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm to southern California, a place legally mandated to switch to clean energy. The wind farm will be the country’s biggest yet.
As elsewhere, opposition to wind farms in Wyoming correlates with proximity to homes and cabins: Chokecherry and Sierra Madre is massive but isolated, and has generated less opposition than some others. But Brande and rural property owners opposed a 500-megawatt, 120-turbine wind farm soon to be built near the Colorado state line. They lost, but the matter reached the Wyoming Supreme Court.
The contentious county approval process included a five-hour public hearing in a packed courtroom in Laramie in 2021. Residents expressed a range of concerns, from turbine blades killing birds to construction blasting damaging home foundations.
Scientists have proven that pollution by humans has caused an increase in the LGBTQ population of flies
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-discovered-alarming-side-effect-100000446.html
Scientists have discovered an alarming new side effect of air pollution: ‘We had not thought about this before’
By Eliot Engelmaier
June 20, 2023
Air pollution is having an unbelievable effect on flies, altering how they attract one another and mate.
What’s happening?
Insects typically find their mates by heavily relying on pheromones –– chemicals that allow males and females to locate each other and mate.
These pheromones are distinctive to males and females of a species, and in the case of flies, they are being disrupted and degraded by the pervasive increase of ozone in the air, which is a result of air pollution.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany discovered these effects by developing an experiment that mimicked ozone levels similar to what is measured during the summertime in cities.
Typically, male flies’ pheromones attract females while simultaneously repelling other males. But increased ozone levels caused a decrease in pheromones, which caused females to be less attracted to males and led to courtship between male flies.
“We could explain that males started courting each other after a short ozone exposure because they obviously could not distinguish ozonated males from females,” said researchers Nanji Jiang and Markus Knaden. “However, we had not thought about this before. Therefore, we were quite puzzled by the behavior of the ozone-exposed males, which lined up in long courtship chains.”
Why is this important?
The effects of this news are substantial. It is not just flies that are affected –– ozone is thought to affect the patterns of many insects.
Pheromone communication is not only used for mating. It also helps insects identify members of the same species and their communities, such as bee hives, wasp nests, and ant colonies. Nothing sounds more chaotic than a bunch of ants, bees, and wasps confused and out of place.
The chaos doesn’t stop there –– insects such as bees and butterflies are vital pollinators. A decrease in pheromones equals a decline in reproduction and population. The effects could be detrimental, as 80% of our crops require insect pollinators.
What can I do to help prevent this?
According to Bill Hansson, head of the Evolutionary Neuroethology Department and co-founder of the Max Planck Center Next Generation Insect Chemical Ecology, “the only solution to this dilemma is to immediately reduce pollutants in the atmosphere.”
Immediately reducing pollutants in the atmosphere will require efforts from large brands and corporations that release a significant amount of pollutants. Still, some steps can be taken on an individual level as well. Individuals can drive their cars less, use less energy, and opt for more sustainable shopping options, to name a few.
A federal jury has awarded a Georgia couple $135.5 million for damages to their property by a Tennessee-based solar power company and its contractor
https://apnews.com/article/solar-company-land-pollution-verdict-7f04778f08e43fe11a30a517958de9a4
Georgia couple awarded $135.5M for polluted land and water
May 3, 2023
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — A federal jury has awarded a Georgia couple $135.5 million for damages to their property by a Tennessee-based solar company and its contractor.
The award against Silicon Ranch Corp. and its contractor, IEA Inc., was announced Friday by James E. Butler, attorney for plaintiffs Shaun and Amie Harris who live near Lumpkin, Georgia, south of Columbus, WRBL-TV reported.
According to the lawsuit, Silicon Ranch Corp. has developed more than 160 solar panel facilities across the country, many of which were built by IEA. At “Lumpkin Solar,” IEA cleared and mass-graded about 1,000 acres of timberland, farmland and land near the Harris couple that was previously used for recreational hunting and fishing — without installing adequate measures for erosion and sediment control, Butler said in a news release.
“The result was what one would expect — when it rained, pollution poured downhill and downstream onto the neighbors’ property, inundating wetlands with silt and sediment, and turning a 21-acre trophy fishing lake into a mud hole,” Butler said.
The companies “created, operated and maintained a nuisance … that caused sedimentation to pollute plaintiffs’ wetlands, streams and lake. The court further finds that this nuisance has continued for approximately two years unabated,” U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land said in the order.
The jury returned a compensatory damage verdict of $10.5 million.
In the punitive phase, where jurors consider an amount that would punish the companies for their actions, the panel found that SRC, IEA and and an IEA subsidiary — IEA Constructors, LLC — acted with specific intent to cause harm. The jury imposed $25 million in punitive damages against SRC, $50 million against IEA Inc., and $50 million against IEA Constructors, LLC, the news release said.
Westwood Professional Services Inc., the engineering firm that designed the erosion and sediment control plan for SRC and IEA, was released from any liability, the law firm said.
“The SRC/IEA litigation and trial strategy was to blame everyone else and deny responsibility,” said plaintiffs’ counsel, Dan Philyaw. “They blamed Westwood, they blamed Shaun and Amie, they blamed too much rain, and they blamed ‘erodible soils.’”
“Meanness is not neighborly,” Butler said in summarizing the case, “and it is a terrible litigation and trial strategy.”
Silicon Ranch, located in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that it would appeal the verdicts.
“We relied on our contractor to carry out this scope of work in compliance with applicable law and in keeping with industry best management practices, as specified by the appropriate regulatory bodies in the state of Georgia,” the company said.
“As the long-term owner of this facility, Silicon Ranch remains committed to the continued success of Stewart County and the surrounding region,” the company continued. “While we sincerely regret the unintentional damage to our neighbor’s property, Silicon Ranch does not believe the verdict in this trial is supported by the facts in this case.”
I can think of two possible reasons why New York Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman said, “We need to stop drilling for fossil fuels completely”
New York Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman recently said, “We need to stop drilling for fossil fuels completely.”
I can think of two possible reasons why he said this.
One is that he doesn’t know that the fertilizer that we use to grow our food is made from fossil fuels.
The other is that he does know it, but he believes that his voters don’t know it.
Either one is a pretty scary prospect.
Here’s video of him saying those words on CNN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG3kBhkSTXM
How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/solar-farms-took-over-california-100025850.html
How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’
By Oliver Wainwright
May 21, 2023
Deep in the Mojave desert, about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, a sparkling blue sea shimmers on the horizon. Visible from the I-10 highway, amid the parched plains and sun-baked mountains, it is an improbable sight: a deep blue slick stretching for miles across the Chuckwalla Valley, forming an endless glistening mirror.
But something’s not quite right. Closer up, the water’s edge appears blocky and pixelated, with the look of a low-res computer rendering, while its surface is sculpted in orderly geometric ridges, like frozen waves.
“We had a guy pull in the other day towing a big boat,” says Don Sneddon, a local resident. “He asked us how to get to the launch ramp to the lake. I don’t think he realised he was looking at a lake of solar panels.”
Over the last few years, this swathe of desert has been steadily carpeted with one of the world’s largest concentrations of solar power plants, forming a sprawling photovoltaic sea. On the ground, the scale is almost incomprehensible. The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone – the ground zero of California’s solar energy boom – stretches for 150,000 acres, making it 10 times the size of Manhattan.
It is a crucial component of the United States’ green energy revolution. Solar makes up about 3% of the US electricity supply, but the Biden administration hopes it will reach 45% by 2050, primarily by building more huge plants like this across the country’s flat, empty plains.
But there’s one thing that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – the agency tasked with facilitating these projects on public land – doesn’t seem to have fully taken into account: the desert isn’t quite as empty as it thought. It might look like a barren wilderness, but this stretch of the Mojave is a rich and fragile habitat for endangered species and home to thousand-year-old carbon-capturing woodlands, ancient Indigenous cultural sites – and hundreds of people’s homes.
Residents have watched ruefully for years as solar plants crept over the horizon, bringing noise and pollution that’s eroding a way of life in their desert refuge.
“We feel like we’ve been sacrificed,” says Mark Carrington, who, like Sneddon, lives in the Lake Tamarisk resort, a community for over-55s near Desert Center, which is increasingly surrounded by solar farms. “We’re a senior community, and half of us now have breathing difficulties because of all the dust churned up by the construction. I moved here for the clean air, but some days I have to go outside wearing goggles. What was an oasis has become a little island in a dead solar sea.”
Concerns have intensified following the recent news of a project, called Easley, that would see the panels come just 200 metres from their backyards. Residents claim that excessive water use by solar plants has contributed to the drying up of two local wells, while their property values have been hit hard, with several now struggling to sell their homes.
“It has been psychologically gruelling,” says Teresa Pierce, who moved here six years ago. “From the constant pounding of the metal posts to the endless dust storms. I now have allergies that I’d never had before – my arms burn all day long and my nose is always running. I feel like a prisoner in my own home.”
Elizabeth Knowles, director of community engagement for Intersect Power, the company behind the Easley project, said it knew of residents’ concerns and was exploring how to move the project further from the community. “Since being made aware of their concerns, we have been in regular contact with residents to listen to their concerns and incorporate their feedback into our planning efforts.”
‘90% of the story is underground’
The mostly flat expanse south-east of Joshua Tree national park was originally identified as a prime site for industrial-scale solar power under the Obama administration, which fast-tracked the first project, Desert Sunlight, in 2011. It was the largest solar plant in the world at the time of completion, in 2015, covering an area of almost 4,000 acres, and it opened the floodgates for more. Since then, 15 projects have been completed or are under construction, with momentous mythological names like Athos and Oberon. Ultimately, if built to full capacity, this shimmering patchwork quilt could generate 24 gigawatts, enough energy to power 7m homes.
But as the pace of construction has ramped up, so have voices questioning the cumulative impact of these projects on the desert’s populations – both human and non-human.
Kevin Emmerich worked for the National Park Service for over 20 years before setting up Basin & Range Watch in 2008, a non-profit that campaigns to conserve desert life. He says solar plants create myriad environmental problems, including habitat destruction and “lethal death traps” for birds, which dive at the panels, mistaking them for water.
He says one project bulldozed 600 acres of designated critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise, while populations of Mojave fringe-toed lizards and bighorn sheep have also been afflicted. “We’re trying to solve one environmental problem by creating so many others.”
Such adverse impacts are supposed to be prevented by the desert renewable energy conservation plan (DRECP), which was approved in 2016 after years of consultation and covers almost 11m acres of California. But Emmerich and others think the process is flawed, allowing streamlined environmental reviews and continual amendments that they say trample conservationists’ concerns.
“The plan talks about the importance of making sure there’s enough room between the solar projects to preserve wildlife routes,” says Chris Clarke of the National Parks Conservation Association. “But the individual assessments for each project do not take into account the cumulative impact. The solar plants are blocking endangered species’ natural transport corridors across the desert.”
Much of the critical habitat in question is dry wash woodland, made up of “microphyll” shrubs and trees like palo verde, ironwood, catclaw and honey mesquite, which grow in a network of green veins across the desert. But, compared with old-growth forests of giant redwoods, or expanses of venerable Joshua trees, the significance of these small desert shrubs can be hard for the untrained eye to appreciate.
“When people look across the desert, they just see scrubby little plants that look dead half the time,” says Robin Kobaly, a botanist who worked at the BLM for over 20 years as a wildlife biologist before founding the Summertree Institute, an environmental education non-profit. “But they are missing 90% of the story – which is underground.”
Her book, The Desert Underground, features illustrated cross-sections that reveal the hidden universe of roots extended up to 150ft below the surface, supported by branching networks of fungal mycelium. “This is how we need to look at the desert,” she says, turning a diagram from her book upside-down. “It’s an underground forest – just as majestic and important as a giant redwood forest, but we can’t see it.”
The reason this root network is so valuable, she argues, because it operates as an enormous “carbon sink” where plants breathe in carbon dioxide at the surface and out underground, forming layers of sedimentary rock known as caliche. “If left undisturbed, the carbon can remain stored for thousands of years,’” she says.
Desert plants are some of the oldest carbon-capturers around: Mojave yuccas can be up to 2,500 years old, while the humble creosote bush can live for over 10,000 years. These plants also sequester carbon in the form of glomalin, a protein secreted around the fungal threads connected to the plants’ roots, thought to store a third of the world’s soil carbon. “By digging these plants up,” says Kobaly, “we are removing the most efficient carbon sequestration units on the planet – and releasing millennia of stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the solar panels we are replacing them with have a lifespan of around 25 years.”
For Alfredo Acosta Figueroa, the unstoppable march of desert solar represents an existential threat of a different kind. As a descendant of the Chemehuevi and Yaqui nations, he has watched as what he says are numerous sacred Indigenous sites have been bulldozed.
“The history of the world is told by these sites,” he says, “by geoglyphs, petroglyphs, and pictographs. Yet the government has chosen to ignore and push aside the creation story in the name of progress.”
His organisation, La Cuna de Aztlan, acts as custodian of over 300 such sites in the Lower Colorado River Basin, many of which, he says, have already been damaged beyond repair. He claims that a 200ft-long geoglyph of Kokopelli, a flute-playing god, was destroyed by a new road to one of the solar plants, while an image of Cicimitl, an Aztec spirit said to guide souls to the afterlife, is also threatened. “The solar projects cannot destroy just one sacred site without destroying the sacredness of the entire area,” he adds. “They are all connected.”
He cites a 2010 report by the California Energy Commission, which includes testimony from the heritage experts Dr Elizabeth Bagwell and Beverly E Bastian stating that “more than 800 sites within the I-10 Corridor and 17,000 sites within the Southern California Desert Region will potentially be destroyed”, and that “mitigation can reduce the impact of the destruction, but not to a less-than-significant level”.
The Bureau of Land Management declined a request for an interview. In an emailed statement, its public affairs officer, Michelle Van Der Linden, did not directly address questions about solar plants’ water use, health issues, or ecological and archeological impacts, but said the agency operated within the applicable laws and acts. “The DRECP effort was a multiple-year collaborative discussion resulting in an agreement reached between the BLM, numerous environmental groups, partners and stakeholders, in regards to the application and decision process related to renewable energy projects. Project issues were and continue to be identified and addressed through the National Environmental Policy Act process, which includes the opportunity for public engagement and input and also addresses many of the cumulative impacts and additional environmental, social and economic concerns mentioned.”
‘So many other places we should put solar’
But a more fundamental question remains: why build in the desert, when thousands of acres of rooftops in urban areas lie empty across California?
“There are so many other places we should be putting solar,” says Clarke, of the National Parks Conservation Association, from homes to warehouses to parking lots and industrial zones. He describes the current model of large-scale, centralised power generation, hundreds of miles from where the power is actually needed, as “a 20th-century business plan for a 21st-century problem”.
“The conversion of intact wildlife habitat should be the absolute last resort, but it’s become our first resort – just because it’s the easy fix.”
Vincent Battaglia, founder of Renova Energy, a rooftop solar company based in Palm Desert, agrees. “We’ve been led to believe that all solar is good solar,” he says. “But it’s not when it molests pristine land, requires hundreds of millions of dollars to transmit to city centres, and loses so much power along the way. It is simply preserving the monopoly of the big energy companies.”
California recently reduced the incentive for homeowners to install rooftop solar panels after it slashed the amount that they can earn from feeding power back into the grid by about 75%. Forecasters suggest that, after doubling in size from 2020 to 2022, the market for residential solar installations is expected to decrease by nearly 40% by 2024 as a result.
Battaglia is optimistic that home energy storage is the answer. “Batteries are the future,” he says. “With solar panels on rooftops and batteries in homes, we’ll finally be able to cut the cord from the big utility companies. Soon, those fields of desert solar farms will be defunct – left as rusting relics of another age.”
Back in Lake Tamarisk, the residents are preparing for the long battle ahead. “They picked on a little town and thought they could wipe us out,” says Sneddon. “But they can’t just mow us over like they did the desert tortoises.
“They thought we were a bunch of uneducated redneck hicks living out here in the desert,” says Pierce. “We’re going to show them they were wrong.”
Finland just began operating a brand new nuclear reactor
Electricity prices in Finland flipped negative – a huge oversupply of clean, hydroelectric power meant suppliers were almost giving it away
By Marianne Guenot
May 25, 2023
The Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power plant in Eurajoki, Finland.
Finland’s renewable power strategy is paying off as its energy has fallen into negative prices.
A new nuclear reactor, as well as unexpected floods, are leading to a glut of clean energy.
It is a striking reversal from last year, when Finns slashed their usage after cutting ties with Russia.
Finland was dealing with an unusual problem on Wednesday: clean electricity that was so abundant it sent energy prices into the negative.
While much of Europe was facing an energy crisis, the Nordic country reported that its spot energy prices dropped below zero before noon.
This meant that the average energy price for the day was “slightly” below zero, Jukka Ruusunen, the CEO of Finland’s grid operator, Fingrid, told the Finnish public broadcaster Yle.
In practice, it doesn’t appear any ordinary Finns are being paid to consume electricity. People pay a markup on the electricity, and often pay agreed rates for power instead of the raw market price.
The price drop was driven by an unexpected glut of renewable energy and Finns cutting back on energy use because of the crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Now there is enough electricity, and it is almost emission-free,” Ruusunen told Yle, adding that Finns could “feel good about using electricity.”
Finland went from energy poverty to glut in just a few months
The news is a remarkable turnaround for a country that only a few months ago told its people to watch their energy consumption.
“Last winter, the only thing people could talk about was where to get more electricity. Now we are thinking hard about how to limit production. We have gone from one extreme to another,” Ruusunen told Yle.
The country faced an energy crisis after it banned energy imports from its neighbor Russia as part of the global backlash after it invaded Ukraine.
But a new nuclear reactor was brought online in April this year and provided a significant new stream of power for Finland’s population, around 5.5 million people.
Olkiluoto 3, the first new nuclear reactor to be opened in Europe in more than 15 years, brought the price of electricity in Finland down by 75%, from 245.98 euros per megawatt-hour in December to 60.55 euros per megawatt-hour in April, according to The National.
The country aims to become carbon neutral by 2035 and has been pushing to introduce renewable energy solutions. Ruusunen told the National that Finland wanted wind to become its primary power source by 2027.
This is also contributing to the drop in energy prices. Excessive meltwater — which has caused flood warnings in several northern European countries — is pushing Finland’s hydroelectric plants into overdrive and giving plentiful electricity.
“During spring floods, there is often this kind of forced production because production cannot be slowed down. Due to the huge amount of water, hydropower often has a poor capacity to regulate in spring,” Ruusunen said.
Finland is now dealing with energy prices being too low
Finland is now dealing with the opposite problem of poor energy supply: energy operators may no longer be able to operate normally if the electricity is worth less than the cost of producing it.
“Production that is not profitable at these prices is usually removed from the market,” Ruusunen said.
Because hydropower cannot be slowed down or turned off, other producers like nuclear are looking to dial back their production to avoid losing money on energy production.
Ruusunen said this meant Finns could happily use all the energy they wanted.
Man confronts climate activists blocking traffic in London, shoving them and ripping banners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nsltRTtKQI
Street housekeeping keeps SF Mayor Breed – and everyone else – hopping
Street housekeeping keeps SF Mayor Breed – and everyone else – hopping
By Matier & Ross
Aug 22, 2018
Mayor London Breed, who won her election largely on a promise to clean up the city, is stepping up efforts to scrub San Francisco’s streets, including playing a bit of cat and mouse with her own city department heads.
Breed has taken to making unannounced walks through hard-hit neighborhoods — at times with reporters in tow — but without giving the police or Public Works officials the usual heads-up that in the past allowed for the cleanups that usually precede a mayoral visit.
“I don’t want the areas to be clean if it’s not clean on a regular basis. I want to see what everybody else is seeing,” Breed tells us.
And when Breed spots a problem, she texts the department head.
The sight of human waste, discarded hypodermic needles, trash and general grime is nothing new to anyone walking in downtown, in the Mission District or in any of a number of other San Francisco neighborhoods these days.
And, as Breed notes, “We’re spending a lot of money to address this problem.”
No kidding.
San Francisco Public Works has a $72.5 million-a-year street cleaning budget — including spending $12 million a year on what essentially have become housekeeping services for homeless encampments.
The costs include $2.8 million for a Hot Spots crew to wash down the camps and remove any biohazards, $2.3 million for street steam cleaners, $3.1 million for the Pit Stop portable toilets, plus the new $830,977-a-year Poop Patrol to actively hunt down and clean up human waste.
(By the way, the poop patrolers earn $71,760 a year, which swells to $184,678 with mandated benefits.)
At the same time, the Department of Public Health has an additional $700,000 set aside for a 10-member, needle cleanup squad, complete with it’s own minivan. The $19-an-hour needle cleanup jobs were approved as part of the latest budget crafted largely by former Mayor Mark Farrell.
The new needle crew is on top of the $364,000 that the health department already was spending on a four-member needle team.
Breed is also leaning on Chief William Scott for more foot patrols.
“I’ve definitely had discussions with the chief and asked that beat officers be out there,” Breed said.
City officials say foot beats have nearly doubled in the past year, from 76 to 140 officers.
The problem, however, is that every time the cops arrest someone for a low-level, quality-of-life or petty street crime, the beat cops have to write up an incident report and transport the suspect to jail for booking, all of which takes them off the street.
Breed said she and the police are now looking into the possibility of using sheriff’s deputies to help transport prisoners, in turn allowing beat cops to stay on patrol.
The mayor, however, makes clear that the burden of solving all the city’s street problems doesn’t rest solely on City Hall.
“The responsibility is with everyone,” Breed said. “People shouldn’t be comfortable throwing their trash on the ground, and if people have recommendations on where they want trash cans, they can call 311.”
San Francisco published this study on feces on public sidewalks. This is from page 11.
https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/CY22_Street_Sidewalk_Standards_Report_05222023.pdf
About 30% of evaluated streets and sidewalks report feces.
Observations of human and animal feces were less common in the Core Citywide sample, with about 30% of evaluations observing feces on the street or sidewalk.
In contrast, almost half (47%) of evaluations in all Key Commercial Areas observed feces. At the neighborhood-level:
▪ Feces on streets and sidewalks were least likely to be found in Noe Valley and Glen Park.
▪ Feces were most common in the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, the Mission, and South of Market.
Images Show Mars Has Extreme Global Warming
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98168&page=1
Images Show Mars Has Extreme Global Warming
By Amanda Onion
Dec. 7, 2001 — It might seem like the weather’s getting warmer here on Earth, but Mars appears to have an even bigger global warming problem.
High-resolution images snapped by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor show that levels of frozen water and carbon dioxide at the Red Planet’s poles have dwindled dramatically — by more than 10 feet — over a single Martian year (equivalent to 687 days or about two Earth years).
The increased coal pollution from Germany shutting down its nuclear power plants may have already killed more people than the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters combined
In May 2023, the Washington Post wrote:
“Had Germany kept its nuclear plants running from 2010, it could have slashed its use of coal for electricity to 13 percent by now. Today’s figure is 31 percent… Already more lives might have been lost just in Germany because of air pollution from coal power than from all of the world’s nuclear accidents to date, Fukushima and Chernobyl included.”
Wow.
The idiocy of these so-called “environmentalists” never ceases to amaze me.
New York has been closing some of its nuclear reactors, and replacing them with fossil fuel
NY’s fossil fuel use soared after Indian Point plant closure. Officials sound the alarm.
By Thomas C. Zambito
July 22, 2022
The 2021 shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant led to near-total dependence on fossil fuels to produce electricity in New York’s energy-hungry downstate region, and surging amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air.
A report issued last month by the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electric grid, shows that in 2021, 89% of downstate energy came from natural gas and oil, up from 77% the previous year when both of Indian Point’s two reactors were still running.
The newly released figures demonstrate in stark detail just how much work the state will need to do in the coming years if it’s to achieve its ambitious climate-related goals − reducing carbon-producing emissions to zero while clearing the way for renewables like wind and solar power to make a larger contribution to the electric grid.
And they have pro-nuclear advocates urging the state to clear a path to allow nuclear power play a larger role in the state’s energy future.
“If we’re serious about dealing with climate change, then we’re going to need all the tools in the toolbox, which includes nuclear, not just now but in the future,” said Keith Schue, an electrical engineer and a leader of Nuclear New York, a pro-nuclear group allied with James Hansen, a leading climate scientist. “We do believe that closing Indian Point was a mistake. But are we going to continue making mistakes or can we learn from them?”
The shift to greater fossil fuel reliance comes as little surprise.
A 2017 NYISO study predicted the 2,000 megawatts of power lost when Indian Point closed would be picked up by three new natural gas plants – in Dover Plains, Wawayanda and Bayonne, N.J. One megawatt powers between 800 and 1,000 homes.
And Indian Point’s former owner, Louisiana-based Entergy, noted that the year after its Vermont Yankee plant shut down in 2014, natural gas-fired generation jumped 12 percent, just as it has since the Buchanan plant closed. The first of Indian Point’s two working reactors shut down in April 2020, followed by the second in April 2021.
With Indian Point eliminated from the energy mix, it has become even harder to wean a downstate region that includes New York City off fossil fuels.
Why did the plant close?
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration brokered the 2017 deal with Entergy that led to Indian Point’s shutdown, with Cuomo citing fears of a nuclear mishap at a power plant located some 35 miles from New York City. He chose to keep open three upstate nuclear plants – two on Lake Ontario and another near Rochester − by arranging for some $7.6 billion in subsidies over 12 years.
But the agreement that shuttered Indian Point came when natural gas was cheap. Entergy cited competition from natural gas in the energy market as the prime mover behind its decision to close a plant that had generated electricity for Westchester County and New York City for six decades.
Today, with natural gas prices surging, electricity is not so cheap.
“We got used to having historically cheap natural gas in the United States,” said Madison Hilly, the founder and executive director of the Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal in Chicago. “So places that shut down their nuclear plants, even if they were replaced with gas, consumers really didn’t feel that in their pocketbooks. Now the era of nonprofit natural gas − as I call it − seems to be over. It’s really expensive.”
In 2021, the average wholesale price of electricity in New York was $47.59 per megawatt hour last year, nearly double what it was the previous year. NYISO’s independent monitor credited the increase in wholesale electric prices to the Indian Point shutdown, the NYISO report said.
California, which is pursuing a slate of clean energy goals like New York’s, appears to be rethinking its decision to do away with nuclear power.
In May, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would support keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open beyond its planned 2025 closure to ensure the reliability of the state’s electric grid. Researchers from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have concluded keeping the plant open for another ten years could limit carbon emissions and save the state $2.6 billion in power costs.
Hilly has teamed with Nuclear New York, a coalition of scientists, engineers and labor and management from the nuclear industry, to urge the state to give nuclear power a larger role in the state’s energy mix. In April, Hansen, a former NASA scientist who was among the first to identify the consequences from climate change, appeared at an Albany press conference to urge the state to include nuclear in a plan being drafted for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
“We’re trying to prevent the situation from getting that bad – that reality that forces politicians to eat crow,” Hilly said. “Eventually, if we keep going down this path, ratepayers and voters are not going to tolerate it and politicians will quickly have to get on board or get out.”
A spokesman for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state is forging ahead with its twin goals of having 70% of the state’s electric demand met by renewables by 2030 and 100% zero emissions by 2040.
“These goals, which are being met through solar, wind, and hydroelectricity along with the continued use of the state’s three existing upstate nuclear plants, were developed to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, combat the dangerous impacts of climate change and benefit New Yorkers by reducing volatility in electricity pricing,” spokesman Leo Rosales said. “Planning for these goals took into account the necessary closure of Indian Point following dozens of safety and operational hazards and in no way jeopardizes New York’s clean energy goals or the reliability of the state’s electric grid.”
Transmission:Power lines will bring wind and solar energy from upstate but will it be enough to help NY achieve green energy goals?
NY’s electric grid under siege
Increased energy costs are only part of the problem.
NYISO’s June “Power Trends” report offers a sobering assessment of grid reliability in the years ahead.
The amount of energy resources the state can access each day is decreasing, and that trend is expected to worsen in the years to come as the demand for electricity surges. Electricity needed to charge cars and heat buildings will shift peak usage to the winter instead of summer, which typically sees the highest energy usage as air conditioners run around the clock.
Adding to the problem are environmental regulations that will impact the output of the state’s peaker plants, fossil-fuel generated plants that take their name from delivering energy at times of peak demand. Roughly half of the 3,300 megawatts these plants generate in the lower Hudson Valley, Long Island and New York City will be unavailable during the summer of 2025, NYISO notes.
“The margins that we see on our system are shrinking,” NYISO president and chief executive officer Rich Dewey told reporters at a media briefing last month.
The grid is in perhaps the most transformative moment in its history.
Older generating plants are being shut down while the state introduces a slate of renewable energy projects – offshore wind on Long Island, wind power upstate, batteries to store solar energy.
A network of transmission lines stretching from western New York to New York City is currently under construction, part of an effort to remove a bottleneck that kept clean energy stuck north of Albany. Upstate’s energy mix is decidedly cleaner than downstate’s. Upstate, three nuclear power plants and hydropower from the Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station contribute to a 91% carbon-free energy grid.
There are also plans to deliver hydropower to New York City from Canada by way of 340 miles of underground cable that will run in the Hudson River. Another 174-mile transmission line will bring upstate wind down to Queens along upstate rights-of-way.
But it will be years before these projects are up and running.
The NYISO report anticipates a 10% gap in the amount of renewable power that will be available on an as-needed basis in the winter of 2040.
“We’ve identified there is a need for dispatchable, emissions-free resources,” Dewey said. “That technology does not yet exist and there’s a gap that needs to be closed. We’re only going to get so far with wind, solar and storage, due to the intermittent nature of those resources.”
And by next year, a heatwave with an average temperate of 95 degrees may result in thin margins and “significant deficiencies,” NYISO says.
A 98-degree heatwave would test the system’s limits today and exceed grid capabilities next year, the report adds.
“We’re taking on a little bit more risk in our ability to manage unplanned, unforeseen events on the power system, or potentially severe weather events,” Dewey added.
NYISO isn’t alone in its concerns about grid reliability. The state’s utilities have been raising their concerns.
A group representing most of the state’s major utilities recently studied energy production for the month of January, an especially cold month and the first winter when Indian Point wasn’t producing power. The plant’s Unit 2 shut down in 2020 and Unit 3 the following year.
Wind and other renewables contributed 5% of total generation. There was less wind and less solar generation due to shorter daylight hours and heavy cloud cover.
“Today’s renewable resources are emissions-free, but their output is weather-dependent,” the Utility Consultation Group analysis says. “This intermittency and the need for electric supply to meet customer energy demand every hour of the day may result in reliability issues if not proactively addressed.”
The group represents Central Hudson, ConEdison, Rochester, Niagara Mohawk, NYSEG and Orange and Rockland utilities.
‘Closing Indian Point was a mistake’
Critics of the deal that led to Indian Point’s closure question why the plant couldn’t remain open while the state pursued a renewable buildout.
“Maybe someday renewables could be a big factor in the energy market,” said Theresa Knickerbocker, the mayor of the lower Hudson Valley village of Buchanan, home to Indian Point. “But, right now, two gas plants were opened up to compensate for the loss of Indian Point, which has zero carbon emissions. It’s kind of hypocritical, right?”
Buchanan faces the loss of some $3.5 million in property taxes that Entergy paid the village while the reactors were still operating.
Business groups fear the thinner energy surplus could impact a factory’s ability to deliver goods on time, while driving away companies that are considering relocating.
“The renewable buildout is a multi-decade process,” said Ken Pokalsky, the vice president of the Business Council of New York. “It’s probably going slower than we would like. Every one of these project is complicated…It would be safe to say it’s moving forward. But fast enough is a subjective evaluation.”
Nuclear New York wants the state to work with the federal government to encourage and develop new nuclear reactors, which don’t produce the nuclear waste that older generation reactors do.
This week, Entergy announced it was partnering with Holtec, the New Jersey company that is tearing down Indian Point, in a deal to build small nuclear reactors. Their plan envisions building one of the first reactors at Oyster Creek, a shutdown nuclear power plant in New Jersey.
And the nuclear group wants New York to continue the subsidies that have allowed the three upstate nuclear power plants to continue beyond 2029.
Schue said other nations have been adopting the next generation of nuclear energy generation into the mix. “We’d like to change that,” Schue said. “We’d like to see New York step up to the plate. We’ve got the skills. We’ve got the spirit of innovation, we have the manpower.”
A wind energy company has pleaded guilty after killing at least 150 eagles
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091250692/esi-energy-bald-eagles
A wind energy company has pleaded guilty after killing at least 150 eagles
April 6, 2022
BILLINGS, Mont. — A wind energy company was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a Tuesday court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was charged in the deaths of eagles at three of its wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico.
In addition to those deaths, golden and bald eagles were killed at wind farms affiliated with ESI and NextEra since 2012 in eight states, prosecutors said: Wyoming, California, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona and Illinois. The birds are killed when they fly into the blades of wind turbines. Some ESI turbines killed multiple eagles, prosecutors said.
It’s illegal to kill or harm eagles under federal law.
The bald eagle — the U.S. national symbol — was removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2007, following a dramatic recovery from its widespread decimation due to harmful pesticides and other problems. Golden eagles have not fared as well, with populations considered stable but under pressure including from wind farms, collisions with vehicles, illegal shootings and poisoning from lead ammunition.
The case comes amid a push by President Joe Biden for more renewable energy from wind, solar and other sources to help reduce climate changing emissions. It also follows a renewed commitment by federal wildlife officials under Biden to enforce protections for eagles and other birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, after criminal prosecutions were halted under former President Donald Trump.
Companies historically have been able to avoid prosecution if they take steps to avoid bird deaths and seek permits for those that occur. ESI did not seek such a permit, authorities said.
The company was warned prior to building the wind farms in New Mexico and Wyoming that they would kill birds, but it proceeded anyway and at times ignored advice from federal wildlife officials about how to minimize the deaths, according to court documents.
“For more than a decade, ESI has violated (wildlife) laws, taking eagles without obtaining or even seeking the necessary permit,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in a statement.
ESI agreed under a plea agreement to spend up to $27 million during its five-year probationary period on measures to prevent future eagle deaths. That includes shutting down turbines at times when eagles are more likely to be present.
Despite those measures, wildlife officials anticipate that some eagles still could die. When that happens, the company will pay $29,623 per dead eagle, under the agreement.
NextEra President Rebecca Kujawa said collisions of birds with wind turbines are unavoidable accidents that should not be criminalized. She said the company is committed to reducing damage to wildlife from its projects.
“We disagree with the government’s underlying enforcement activity,” Kujawa said in a statement. “Building any structure, driving any vehicle, or flying any airplane carries with it a possibility that accidental eagle and other bird collisions may occur.”
Anyone who works in the U.S. Capitol Building, but is afraid of radiation from nuclear power, is very ignorant of science and math
PBS wrote the following:
The US Capitol Building in Washington DC:
This building is so radioactive, due to the high uranium content in its granite walls, it could never be licensed as a nuclear power reactor site.
Original: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html
Therefore, anyone who works in the U.S. Capitol Building, but is afraid of radiation from nuclear power, is very ignorant of science and math.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 