So here is a graphic that I borrowed (eh hum) to show the folks that read here how Illinois could swith to clean energy. But do Illinois leaders have the smart to do it? I do not know, but we shall find out. By the way I tried to put the graphic directly up here but you know I am technologically challenged so just follow the link.
http://thesolutionsproject.org/infographic/#i
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Yep that’s right. Our fate as a species is left up to the Courts and the Insurance Companies. Somehow this seems fitting and yet unfair.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/koch-brothers-family-history-sons-of-wichita
By Ari Phillips
Last month, Farmers Insurance Co. filed nine class-action lawsuits arguing that local governments in the Chicago area are aware that climate change is leading to heavier rainfall but are failing to prepare accordingly. The suits allege that the localities did not do enough to prepare sewers and stormwater drains in the area during a two-day downpour last April. In what could foreshadow a legal reckoning of who is liable for the costs of climate change, the class actions against nearly 200 Chicago-area communities look to place responsibility on municipalities, perhaps spurring them to take a more forward-looking approach in designing and engineering for a future made different by climate change.
“Farmers is asking to be reimbursed for the claims it paid to homeowners who sometimes saw geysers of sewage ruin basement walls, floors and furniture,” reported E&E News. “The company says it also paid policyholders for lost income, the cost of evacuations and other damages related to declining property values.”
Andrew Logan, an insurance expert with Ceres, told E&E News that there is likely a longer-term agenda in mind with this latest effort, and that the company “could be positioning itself to avoid future losses nationwide from claims linked to floods, sea-level rise and even lawsuits against its corporate policyholders that emit greenhouse gases.”
While these suits are the first of their kind, Micahel Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York, told Reuters that there will be more cases like them attempting to address how city and local governments should manage budgets to prepare for natural disasters that have been intensified by climate change.
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Now this is off the grid and I love it. I really need to say nothing more about it. The world is starting to change.
Two hundred miles off the coast of Spain, a small island marked by a massive volcanic crater is about to become a case study for an ultramodern, zero impact society.
Over the last twelve years, engineers, researchers, and residents of El Heirro, the smallest of Spain’s Canary Islands, have been building one of the world’s most interesting living laboratories for sustainable off-grid living. They erected five towering wind turbines, built a huge reservoir that works as a battery, and installed three desalination plants that will let the tiny outpost harvest its drinking water from the sea. Now, the $75 million project is almost ready to be brought online.
Right now, El Hierro relies on diesel generators to keep the lights on for its 10,000 residents, a practice that’s both costly and dirty. The new fleet of turbines will be capable of generating 11.5 megawatts of power.
That’s more than enough, when the gusts are ample, to keep electricity flowing to all of its homes and shops, as wells as to its three desalination plants. So when the gales are good, water and power are teased out of the sky—but it’s how El Hierro handles a lack of wind that harbors the biggest innovation.
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I do not think I have to say much more than damn!
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/since-first-earth-day-u.s.-temps-marching-upward-17330
Published: April 22nd, 2014
Research Report by Climate Central
U.S. Warming Fast Since 1st Earth DaySome States Warming at Twice Global RateClick on a state to see annual temperature increase since 1970
It’s been 44 years since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, and since that time, average temperatures have been rising across the U.S. This Climate Central interactive graphic shows a state-by-state analysis of those temperature trends.
Average temperatures across most of the continental U.S. have been rising gradually for more than a century, at a rate of about 0.127°F per decade between 1910-2012. That trend parallels an overall increase in average global temperatures, which is largely the result of human greenhouse gas emissions. While global warming isn’t uniform, and some regions are warming faster than others, since the 1970s, warming across the U.S. has accelerated, previously shown in our report The Heat is On. Since then, every state’s annual average temperature has risen accordingly. On average, temperatures in the contiguous 48 states have been warming at a rate of 0.48°F per decade since 1970, nearly twice the global average.
Delaware and Wisconsin are tied as the fastest-warming states since 1970, warming at a rate of 0.67°F per decade. Average annual temperatures in the two states are about 3°F warmer than they were 44 years ago. Vermont, New Jersey, and Michigan are warming nearly as fast, and all are warming about twice as fast as the global average. The slowest-warming states are Washington, Georgia, Florida, and Oregon – warming just more than 0.3°F per decade since 1970 — and are on pace with average global temperatures.
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Green funerals are all the rage now.
http://www.greenlifestylemag.com.au/node/302/full
My mother wants to be composted when she dies. Not just in a figurative “give my body to the Earth” way, but in a way that befits someone whose passion for gardening knows no bounds.
Her final act will be to produce the lushest crop of tomatoes and zucchini her garden and this world has ever seen. I’m not entirely sure what the health department will make of this request, but my mother doesn’t care. She’ll be dead.
As the Baby Boomers enter their twilight years and begin to consider the details of their demise, it’s no surprise that this enterprising generation are pushing the boundaries when it comes to their funerals. And with the environment front and centre of society’s conscience, many are planning their funerals with future generations in mind.
“There’s a global movement towards green burial,” says Zenith Virago, death consultant and president of the Natural Death Centre Australia in Byron Bay.
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All the criticisms of alternative power sources were just a bunch of bullshit put out by the fossil fuels industry to try to prevent the widespread use of the. And the proof by god is in the numbers.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/california-electric-grid-sets-solar-231527788.html
March 10 (Reuters) – California set back-to-back solar power records last week, the state grid operator said on Monday.
The amount of electricity produced from carbon-free solar facilities connected to the grid reached 4,093 megawatts on Saturday, surpassing the day-earlier record of 3,926 MW, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) said in a statement.
With 5,231 MW, California leads the nation in installed solar generation, including thermal and photovoltaic facilities, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Power generated from solar has more than doubled from June 2012 when the ISO recorded 2,071 MW of peak production, the ISO said
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Well that makes sense because humans are driving themselves to extinction.
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059995434
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a voluntary agreement designed to protect the lesser prairie chicken and its dwindling habitat from oil and gas drilling activity as the deadline approaches for the service to decide whether to list the colorful bird as threatened.
FWS and the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) announced late Friday that they had signed the formal agreement, called the Range-wide Oil and Gas Candidate Conservation Agreement With Assurances.
Landowners and companies that enroll in the Candidate Conservation Agreement With Assurances (CCAA) through WAFWA agree to take steps to protect lesser prairie chicken habitat and to pay a mitigation fee if their actions harm the bird’s habitat. In exchange, the service agrees not to impose any further restrictions or mandates on the participants if the bird is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
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So a closer analysis leads to some doubts. First and foremost it takes “tens of thousands” of turbines to do it. That is A LOT of turbines. Second, the placement and the impact of that many turbines is not really considered nor what to do with the electricity generated. As the engineer said in the article building that many turbines is not feasible now. But it is a pretty exciting thought experiment.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/26/offshore-wind-farms-tame-hurricanes/5813425/
Billions of dollars in U.S. damage from mega-storms Katrina and Sandy might have been avoided with a perhaps surprising device — wind turbines.
That’s the finding of a ground-breaking study today that says mammoth offshore wind farms can tame hurricanes rather than be destroyed by them. It says a phalanx of tens of thousands of turbines can lower a hurricane’s wind speed up to 92 mph and reduce its storm surge up to 79%.
Unlike sea walls, which protect cities from storm surges, wind farms pay for themselves by generating pollution-free electricity, says lead author Mark Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford University. “The additional hurricane (protection) benefit is free.”
No offshore wind farms currently operate in the United States, although 11 are under development — mostly off the East and Texas coasts. Most of the world’s offshore turbines are in northwestern Europe, but China is ramping up its capacity.
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I have a saying. If you can’t make it work under capitalism and socialism is already leaving you voluntarily then you are pretty much done for this world. It looks like coals time has come and gone and it is the same with nuclear power too. Thank the gods that be. Now the question is, is it too late? We are walking a tight rope on that one. If we can come up with some remediations we just might pull out of this very steep climate dive. It is going to be close.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/flurry-of-coal-power-plant-shutdowns-expected-by-2016-17086
By Bobby Magill
A flurry of coal-fired power plants — major sources of climate change-fueling carbon dioxide emissions — could be closed by 2016, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts.
New emissions regulations and low natural gas prices, partly because of the fracking boom throughout the U.S., are leading utilities to shut down coal-fired power plants and open new ones that burn natural gas. With new Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards limiting mercury, acid gases and toxic metals from coal-fired power plants taking effect in 2015, there is even more impetus for utilities to retire older coal plants, according to the EIA.
Because of those new standards, the EIA forecasts that 90 percent of the power plants expected to shut down by 2020 will actually be shut down by 2016. Those new standards include coal-fired power plants likely having to install flue gas desulfurization equipment, or “scrubbers,” which cost hundreds of millions of dollars each, depending on the size of the plant.
Utilities may decide to shutter a coal-fired power plant if coal prices, wholesale electricity prices and the costs of installing scrubbers do not make economic sense, according to the EIA.
Coal-fired power plants are feeling the heat about carbon emissions, too. Concern about coal plants’ carbon emission contributing to climate change are driving the EPA to write new carbon emissions rules unrelated to the new mercury standards. The EPA has proposed new regulations aiming to curb carbon emissions from future coal-fired power plants and is in the process of proposing similar regulations governing existing coal power plants.
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No Frackers will go to jail if they violate WHAT LAWS? IDNR might as well give away the state of Illinois to being totally trashed. Where will the Fracking start? In our State Parks?
Day 49 1/2/13
Topic: Fines penalties, suspensions and revocations
For regulations to work, levied fines must exceed the financial benefit a company gains by violating the rules. None of the rulemaking sanctions meet this criterion. This results in the other 150 pages of rules being essentially meaningless because they will be ignored. The draft rule sanctions place the Hydraulic Fracturing Regulatory Act (HFRA) on the road to failure before the first permit is issued.
Examples:
Revisions Needed: Return to the standards of the law with regard to fines, penalties and revocations.
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Go there and comment. We are done with this.
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