gregladen

Last Post

gregladen — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 18:17:17 +0000

Last Post

This is my last post at Scienceblogs.com.

In the future I will be blogging at Greg Laden's blog, located at its original home at gregladen.com.

I have a feeling that Scienceblogs will not last long without me. What do you think?

But seriously, I'll be talking about the story of the current status and development of this blog and scienceblogs.com with Mike Haubrich on our podcast Ikonokast. We recorded the conversation today, and will post it in a day or two.

Please go HERE to continue this conversation.

That is all. Thank you very much.

gregladen Mon, 10/30/2017 - 14:17

Hacking Voting Machines

gregladen — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 07:04:47 +0000

Hacking Voting Machines

In every area of life, but especially in the overlapping realms of technology, science, and health, misunderstanding how things work can be widespread, and that misunderstanding can lead to problems.

In the area of voting, the main problem seems to be the expenditure of great amounts of outrage and concern over things that are not real. At the same time this happens, things that are real matter a great deal.

I'll give you one example. Remember the special election for the Congressional Representative for Georgia's 6th district, earlier this year? Several media outlets reported "voting machines stolen," which, in turn, caused great outrage and concern on The Internet because, well, voting machines had been stolen.

Now, pause for a moment and think what this means.

---Continued---

gregladen Tue, 10/10/2017 - 03:04

On that chilling law suit against the environmental groups

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 14:06:54 +0000

On that chilling law suit against the environmental groups

... which I've posted on before ... there are new developments, summarized at Inside Climate News:

Invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a federal conspiracy law devised to ensnare mobsters, the suit accuses the organizations, as well as several green campaigners individually and numerous unidentified "co-conspirators," of running what amounts to a giant racket.

"Maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace's true objective," the complaint says. "Its campaigns are consistently based on sensational misinformation untethered to facts or science, but crafted instead to induce strong emotions and, thereby, donations." Dozens of the group's campaign emails and tweets, it said, constituted wire fraud.

"As an NGO, that is a deeply chilling argument," said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), which joined eight other groups to file an amici curiae brief supporting a move to dismiss Resolute's case.

ICN goes on to describe the background and details of the suits. And now, an important appearance before the courts is about to happen.

On Oct. 10, Greenpeace will ask a federal judge in California to dismiss the case. The group submitted a similar motion last year in Georgia, where the suit was originally filed. The Georgia judge later moved the case to California, where two of the defendants are based, saying Resolute had not provided any "factual basis from which to infer that defendants committed fraud or extortion" in Georgia. "Rather, the allegations in the complaint, at best, support the inference that the defendants organized and held a protest in Augusta."

"It is very alarming that you can have plaintiffs like this, representing corporate interests attacking legitimate critics doing advocacy work by just drafting a complaint, throwing whatever in there, stretching racketeering law and going after constitutionally protected free speech by throwing labels out there basically trying to criminalize legitimate advocacy work," said Tom Wetterer, Greenpeace's general counsel.

Read all the details here.

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 10:06

One response to the Las Vegas Shooting

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 12:44:02 +0000

One response to the Las Vegas Shooting

from a major non profit, click through the the X Blog to read the press release.

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 08:44

Watch Jeff Merkley Wipe Floor With Trump's William Wehrum

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 10:26:30 +0000

Watch Jeff Merkley Wipe Floor With Trump's William Wehrum

William Wehrum is a lawyer and once, apparently, worked for the EPA. Trump is trying to appoint him to be assistant administrator for air and radiation. This is a reasonably important job that concerns many aspects of the environment.

Watch:

https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/915704243335700481

The Republicans have already said they love this guy. Of course they do.

There is a The War on Science going on, and in Washington, the Republicans are winning it. They are winning it in over 30 states. When they have finished winning it, that is the end of civilization at least in this country.

Help!

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 06:26

100 megawats of solar in Minnesota

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 09:45:07 +0000

100 megawats of solar in Minnesota

Solar gardens in the state have just reached the 100 megawatt milestone.

This is actually something of a disappointment because a few years ago, Xcel, the main energy company involved in this, projected that we'd be at 200 megawatts by some time last year. On the other hand there are close to 180 new projects in design and construction phase. A current, revised estimate suggests that the statewide solar garden production will reach that 200 megawatt goal.

Currently, Minnesota plants are produce about 15,000 megawatts of electricity. So, the solar garden electricity is only 1% of our overall current production, and current electricity production is probably close to half of what it ultimately needs to be to replace liquid and gas energy used in homes and vehicles.

One percent may not sound like a lot, but this is one percent of the overall production that comes from pretty much nowhere. Just peopled deciding to fund a few solar panels. And, we are lucky that the state legislature in the past has not stood in the way of these efforts (though Republicans in the state legislature are now actively trying to stop solar).

There are a few large scale solar projects currently producing about 162 megawatts. Hardly anybody has solar on their roof, and all those flat topped public buildings, strip malls, etc. are sitting there unused. Most of them, anyway. If we fully deploy solar, this state, which by the way is fairly sunny, should be able to produce double a lot more electricity with solar.

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 05:45

The Energy East Pipeline Is Toast

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 09:20:25 +0000

The Energy East Pipeline Is Toast

Witness the overall demise of fossil fuel pipelines, thanks in part to the hard work of amazing activists, and in part to the fact that the value of these pipelines is dropping fast, which in turn, can be attributed in no small part to the hard work of amazing activists. And now, the latest:

From The Globe and Mail:

TransCanada scraps controversial Energy East Pipeline project

TransCanada Corp. has pulled the plug on its controversial $15.7-billion Energy East Pipeline proposal, after slowing oil sands growth and heightened environmental scrutiny raised doubts about the viability of the project.

In a terse statement Thursday morning, TransCanada said it has reviewed the "changed circumstances" and would be informing the National Energy Board that it would no longer proceed with the project, including the related Eastern Mainline, a natural gas pipeline that complemented the crude-carrying Energy East.

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 05:20

Puerto Rico, now's your chance!

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 07:06:25 +0000

Puerto Rico, now's your chance!

Puerto Rico can become the first significant size polity to rebuild itself from the ground up to be totally Carbon free. Or at least, that seems like a good idea. If only the US Government wasn't so anti-Puerto Rico, owing to the president being, well, Trump.

Anyway, there is now a pile of money and effort pouring int Puerto Rico and this can be used in part to give Puerto Rico sigificantly more economic and energy security in its future, if only energy-smart decisions are made now. So let's see what Get Energy Smart Now blog has to say about this!

Puerto Rico’s electricity system, prior to Maria, heavily relied on centralized diesel power generation with above-ground power transmission: very high cost electricity, dependent on continued fossil-fuel imports, with great vulnerability to disruption.

Post disaster, thoughtful policy and efforts would seek to maximize value in the Disaster 4R chain: relief, recovery, reconstruction, and resiliency against future impacts.

Rapid deployment/installation of solar-power centered micro-grids to Puerto Rico is a clear example of a Disaster 4R.

Here are some rapid thoughts as to such a Solar Disaster 4R package.

Go HERE to see the bullet pointed suggestions which could ultimately lead Puerto Rico into the next era of energy planning and development. As noted in the bullet points of the post, the success and validity of any such overhaul is based on it coming from the Puerto Rican society, economy, and local population.

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 03:06

Trump Loses Another Fight, or two

gregladen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 06:41:49 +0000

Trump Loses Another Fight, or two

The Trump Administration, in the person of Interior Secretary Zinke, tried to eliminate Obama-era limitations on greenhouse gas emissions from the petroleum industry. The Administration tried to use the "Administrative Procedure Act to turn off provisions intended to reduce how much natural gas petroleum drillers could vent or burn on public or tribal lands. This would have been administered via the BLM. The federal government was sued by California, New Mexico, and various environmental groups, and yesterday, the court ruled in favor of the environment.

This is the second loss for Trump and Zinke in the same courtroom.

A third loss came in a Washington court where Trump tried to side step related methane emission restrictions using the EPA. A federal judge also nixed taht.

gregladen Thu, 10/05/2017 - 02:41

Joel Clement Resigned today

gregladen — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 13:41:50 +0000

Joel Clement Resigned today

You will remember Clement as the whistle blower at the Department of the Interior who was harassed for showing how climate change affects communities in Alaska. He was removed from his job by Fake Interior Secretory Zinke and given a new job removing staples from paperwork or something similar. Zinke similarly reassigned several others at around the same time. The inspector general has been investigating this but nothing has come of that yet.

Clement hung on for a long time but today he left his position. According to the Washington Post:

“Keeping my voice is more important than keeping my job,” he said. “I have not found another job yet. I have vast contacts inside the agency and outside. I do believe I can be a strong voice to resisting what the Zinke team is doing.”

Clement said workers at Interior are outraged by Zinke’s comment in a speech slightly more than a week ago that they are disloyal. “I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag,” Zinke said, adding that policy-decision positions should be shipped from Washington to Western cities, such as Denver.

“Everyone is pissed here about his comments about loyalty. It’s the buzz in the building. You hear snide remarks all day long at how ludicrous that was. They clearly have lost respect for the leadership of that organization,” Clement said.

gregladen Wed, 10/04/2017 - 09:41