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Category Archives: industry apologists

Climate Change Started In The 1960s – People spoke up

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Just like CANCER. That was the first thought I had when I read this article. Evidence was gathered 60 years ago. People spoke up, and the oil and gas industry killed any discussion. Now we are stuck with more powerful Hurricanes. We are stuck with the American west being consumed by droughts and fire. The Arctic is gone and the Antarctic going. The world should confiscate their wealth and apply every dime to remediating the effects. Unfortunately the whole world never does anything. I mean the UN could pass a resolution but Pfffhh.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)

The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom

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Mon 5 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
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In August 1974, the CIA produced a study on “climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems”. The diagnosis was dramatic. It warned of the emergence of a new era of weird weather, leading to political unrest and mass migration (which, in turn, would cause more unrest). The new era the agency imagined wasn’t necessarily one of hotter temperatures; the CIA had heard from scientists warning of global cooling as well as warming. But the direction in which the thermometer was traveling wasn’t their immediate concern; it was the political impact. They knew that the so-called “little ice age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not only drought and famine, but also war – and so could these new climatic changes.

“The climate change began in 1960,” the report’s first page informs us, “but no one, including the climatologists, recognized it.” Crop failures in the Soviet Union and India in the early 1960s had been attributed to standard unlucky weather. The US shipped grain to India and the Soviets killed off livestock to eat, “and premier Nikita Khrushchev was quietly deposed”.

But, the report argued, the world ignored this warning, as the global population continued to grow and states made massive investments in energy, technology and medicine.

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Go there and read. More next week (if we are still here)

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Energy Alternatives Sometimes Go Wrong – I do not try to cover them up

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I am so glad this happened in England, but if it would have happened in the US I would have reported it and demanded change. Every business makes mistakes and has to correct them, if they are honest. I would like to think we in the alternative energy world were better than most. But you know that’s just a dream. After the Guardian got involved, they made it right. But then other people started speaking up.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/sep/27/installation-of-smart-meter-leaves-elderly-woman-facing-4000-bill

The Observer
Money

Installation of smart meter leaves elderly woman facing £4,000 bill

Vulnerable 94-year-old’s boiler had to be scrapped following work by SSE

 

A 94-year-old woman, who relies on a wheelchair and a daily home help, was left with a £4,000-plus bill after SSE installed a smart meter and left her previously functioning gas boiler out of action and irreparable.

In August Anita Grant, who lives alone, agreed to have the meter installed in her Harrow home.

But rather than the easy process promised in the advertisements, her son Neil says that the decision was set to cost her £3,840 for a new boiler plus £250 redecorating costs, after SSE first said it would fix it, but then denied any liability.

Only after the Observer got involved did SSE agree to cover the cost of the replacement boiler and the additional redecorating costs.

Experts say a smart meter installation should not affect a normally functioning boiler. But in recent years there have been a small but steady stream of people claiming “it happened to me, too”.

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Go there and read. It’s disgraceful. More next week.

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Habitat Destruction Squeezes Diseases Out Of Mammals – Then they invade humans and kill us

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Seriously, how long can it be before HUMANs realize that by killing the world in general they are killing themselves. Squeezing animals out of their habitats squeezes their viruses out into us. We have no immune defenses against them and we die. I mean it is Earth’s ultimate defense system. I have a hunch we are not gonna be around for long. Wonder which one will get us first, Global Warming or Rejection by the Earth.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/22/875961137/the-worrisome-link-between-deforestation-and-disease?utm_source=digg

‘Like Poking a Beehive’: The Worrisome Link Between Deforestation And Disease

 

In 2013, an 18-month-old boy got sick after playing near a hollow tree in his backyard in a remote West African village. He developed a fever and started vomiting. His stool turned black. Two days later, he died.

Two years and more than 11,000 deaths later, the World Health Organization put out a report saying the Ebola outbreak that likely emanated from that hollow tree may have been caused in part by deforestation led by “foreign mining and timber operations.”

The tree the boy played near was infested with insectivorous bats — bats that may have been pushed into the boy’s village because upward of 80% of their natural habitat had been destroyed.

“When you disturb a forest, it actually upsets, if you want, the balance of nature, the balance between pathogens and people,” says John E. Fa, a professor of biodiversity and human development at Manchester Metropolitan University, who was part of a team of researchers that linked recent forest loss to 25 Ebola outbreaks that have occurred since 1976.

A finding, he says, that showed a strong correlation between recent deforestation and disease outbreaks.

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Go there and Pray.  More next week.

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I WILL SAVE COAL – Shouted Donnie the Cheeto Burito from the roof tops

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Donald J. Trump is the worst energy President of all time. That takes a lot of doing. Jimmie Carter was real bad on Nuclear Power. George Bush was seriously bad on natural gas and oil. But this alleged policy maker pledged, during the the 2016 campaign, that he would SAVE coal. Under his Presidency the Coal Market has plummeted as has its usage. Even though foreign markets were promised, they have plunged too. Oil futures at one point were trading in negative territory for the first time ever and Nuclear Power Plants are closing. He is opposed to Wind and Solar as they spread across the land. I have a wind turbine within 15 minutes of my house in Riverton and I have a house with total roof solar panels around the corner from me. That says to me that the Cheeto Burito is about to lose office. We shall see.

https://thesouthern.com/news/local/southern-illinois-power-co-op-plans-to-shutter-its-largest-coal-fired-unit-this-fall/article_7ec9c134-48db-5448-953c-4a435aeddcd5.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

Southern Illinois Power Co-op plans to shutter its largest coal-fired unit this fall

MARION — Southern Illinois Power Cooperative plans to retire its largest coal-fired generator as early as this fall, a move that is expected to save $125 million over a decade.

President and CEO Don Gulley said the tentative decision is the result of analysis and negotiations that have been ongoing since late 2019. Gulley said SIPC utilized outside consultants to help it perform a comprehensive review of operations and determine the best path forward. The decision to close Unit 4, as it is known, was based on two primary factors, he said: sustained low energy prices in the wholesale power market, and increasingly costly environmental regulations for coal-fired generators.

Perspectives on Progress: Illinois Rep. La Shawn Ford shares thoughts on ‘crisis’ in black communities

As a result, up to 26 of the plant’s 82 employees are expected to face layoffs. Those employees are to receive a severance package under the terms of an agreement ratified by the IBEW Local 702, which represents workers, Gulley said.

SIPC is a generation and transmission cooperative located on the shores of Lake of Egypt that provides wholesale electric power to seven member distribution cooperatives, and the city of McLeansboro. It is jointly owned and governed by the distribution cooperatives, which are: Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association; Clinton County Electric Cooperative, Inc.; Monroe County Electric Co-Operative, Inc.; SouthEastern Illinois Electric Cooperative, Inc.; Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative; Tri-County Electric Cooperative, Inc.; and Clay Electric Co-operative, Inc.

 

 

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The Darkside Of The Green Revolution – Lithium extraction really messes things up

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I should very quickly say – the way things are done now. The mining industry, as it functions in the past and now, destroys things no matter what it is extracting – gold, lead or lithium. So if we are going to have a real revolution we are going to have to change the entire extraction industry. This point is larger for me than this article implies because capitalism is the problem. We as a society can achieve a carbon negative atmosphere and humans will still threaten the planet because that it what capitalism does – destroys thing. Still you have to start somewhere.

https://logicmag.io/nature/what-green-costs/?utm_source=digg

Issue 9 / Nature

December 07, 2019

What Green Costs

Thea Riofrancos

Deep in the salt flats of Chile lies the extractive frontier of the renewable energy transition.

Clean energy advocates envision an electrified home running on 100 percent renewable energy with a Tesla parked in its garage, solar shingles gleaming on its rooftop, and a smart meter dutifully collecting usage data and uploading it to the cloud. But swim upstream and eventually you arrive at the extractive frontiers of the renewable energy transition.

It was 8:45 am on the first day of the 11th Lithium Supply & Markets Conference in the basement level of the W Hotel in Santiago, Chile. There was no way for me to blend in. “Providence College” on my name tag rendered me a curiosity. Still, I was glad I remembered to wear lipstick and that my backpack had straps that converted it into a tote.

I found an empty seat in the sea of suits, almost all men but of different ages. They hailed variously from China, Australia, Chile, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Argentina. They were market analysts and prospectors; equipment salesmen and regulators; executives, consultants, and peddlers of information in the notoriously opaque world of lithium, a “space,” in Silicon Valley talk, not quite meriting the word “market.”

As I slid into my seat, the chairman of one of the largest lithium companies in the world, with a sordid past in a corrupt privatization process under Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, took to the stage. “Mining is the spine of Chile; mining runs through our veins.” I might have been the only person in the room who immediately thought of Eduardo Galeano’s anti-colonial page-turner, Open Veins of Latin America?—?incidentally penned the same year Pinochet came to power, brutally crushing the dream of democratic socialism in Chile. But I don’t think the chairman meant to call to mind the vampiric iconography of global capital. The dead sapping the living; the blood and sweat and tortured landscapes of extraction, especially in its colonial variant.

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Go there and read. More next week, if there is a next week.

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Climate Change Is Like A Paperclip – You can bend it however you like

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According to the Pipeline Companies and many others in or around the Fossil Fuel Industry, Climate Change is ILL DEFINED. If it hadn’t happened in Illinois I would be laughing but now I am close to puking. The world is going to be on fire, literally. They will be saying, “what fire it’s just a little warm”. They said this in front of the Illinois Commerce Commission no less. I think it has become so apparent that the Anthropocene’s purpose is the death of the planet, that they just don’t care what they say anymore. We are doomed – what does it matter. Well it matters to me. They must be held responsible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/11/13/the-energy-202-dakota-access-operators-call-climate-change-undefined-vague-and-ambiguous-in-official-filing/5dcaed9f602ff1184c316408/

The Energy 202: Dakota Access operators call climate change ‘undefined, vague, and ambiguous’ in official filing

By Dino Grandoni
November 13
THE LIGHTBULB

The operators of the Dakota Access pipeline seemed to brush aside concerns about global warming and the effects it may have on their business in an official filing, saying the phrase “climate change” is “undefined, vague, and ambiguous.”

That comment, filed in August with regulators in Illinois, comes as the pipeline’s operators try to more than double the capacity of the crude oil conduit — and as environmentalists still rail against the pipeline that has become a flash point over fossil-fuel infrastructure in the United States. The Obama administration held up the Dakota Access pipeline after months of protests from environmentalists and Native Americans only for President Trump to greenlight the project once taking office in 2017.

The pipeline’s operators are seeking permission from Illinois to add a new pump station to move extra oil in the 1,900-mile pipeline system of which the Dakota Access pipeline is a part.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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California Puts Up With Power Outages Again – When will Government and the Judicial authorities act

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I mean how long does it take for people to put an end to this travesty. The response to dry weather and high winds or either is to shut off the power. Where in any other utilities playbook does it say this? California should take over the utility and run it like a public utility. The share holders should take a bath. Maybe a dime on the dollar.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/PG-E-power-outages-to-hit-nearly-30-000-customers-14849064.php

California Wildfires

PG&E outages: 144,000 Californians without power

Roland Li , Michael Cabanatuan and Carolyn Said

About 48,000 Northern California homes and businesses — equating to about 144,000 people — were without power Wednesday in the latest round of PG&E’s precautionary outages.

The shut-offs affected far fewer people than the ones last month, which at their peak hit close to 3 million Californians. And there’s good news for those weary of blackouts: Rain could arrive in the Bay Area as soon as Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.

By 5:30 p.m., the utility had given the all-clear to restore power to about 13,000 customers in Shasta, Tehama and Glenn counties, though most of them wouldn’t get their lights back until morning, PG&E officials said.

PG&E expected an all-clear for the remaining 35,000 customers around 2 a.m. Thursday. Power restoration would begin at daybreak, officials said.

PG&E canceled planned shut-offs for an additional 83,000 homes and businesses — affecting about 249,000 people — as conditions improved, making wildfires less likely. Late Wednesday, the utility decided to preserve power for another 9,400 customers in Butte, Yuba, Plumas and Tehama counties; 14,000 customers in those areas had been told to prepare for outages.

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Go there and get outraged over their outages. More next week.

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Murray Coal Goes Bankrupt – Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

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Mr. Coal goes down and the media want us to cry over his breathing difficulties. What do you want to bet it ain’t black lung. This is the guy who pioneered Mountain Top Removal. This is the guy that was responsible for the biggest mine disaster in recent history that killed men and women. This is the guy who got Trump to be “Pro Coal” and roll back environmental regulations that have poison our air. Now people’s pensions are threatened. It doesn’t get nastier than this.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/business/murray-energy-coal-bankruptcy-pension/index.html

‘Nervous and scared.’ Coal workers fear for pensions after Murray Energy bankruptcy

Matt Egan

By Matt Egan, CNN Business

Updated 10:43 AM ET, Fri November 1, 2019

New York (CNN Business)Tom Kacsmar worked underground at a coal mine for nearly four decades. The promise of a decent pension and healthcare for life kept him at this dangerous job.

Now, Kacsmar fears those benefits will get washed away by the bankruptcy of Murray Energy, America’s largest private coal mining company.
“I was a proud, hard-working coal miner my entire life. With the stroke of a pen, they’re going to cut my healthcare,” the 76-year-old retiree told CNN Business.
Kacsmar never worked a day for Murray Energy, the mining giant founded by coal king Robert Murray. But like countless other retirees, the fate of his benefits is inextricably linked to the company, which is seeking to “dramatically” slash its liabilities, including $8 billion of pension and retiree healthcare obligations.

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Go there and read. More next week. Coal is dying. YAA

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CWLP Is Doomed – Coal will strangle it to death

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A “multi-post” that I rarely ever do any more. But this issue is important so first my recommendations, first published on Facebook, and then the facts on the ground.

CWLP IS Doomed

If the members of the City Council of Springfield had any sense at all (and guts/leadership) they would:

1/ Tell IBEW 193 to retrain the workers at Dallman 1 2 and 3 in Solar and Wind
2/ They would close Dallman 1 2 and 3
3/ They would put out a notice for proposals to gasify Dallman
4/ They would take the savings and invest it in renewables
5/ They would ask the County to drop their ridiculous zoning rules for wind farms so we could have a wind farm in Sangamon county

But instead they will live in the 1900s and like Trump demand coal for a fuel source no matter what.

First the SJ-R

https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190507/report-recommends-cwlp-retire-its-three-oldest-power-units-move-away-from-coal

Report recommends CWLP retire its three oldest power units, move away from coal

In a much-anticipated report, an energy consulting firm is recommending that City Water, Light and Power retire three of its four coal-fired power generators “as soon as feasible” while offering the utility a roadmap to a less coal-dependent future.

The Energy Authority (TEA), which was retained by the city last year to map out a plan for the utility’s power generation for the next 20 years, released the 84-page “integrated resource plan” on Monday and gave a presentation to members of the Springfield City Council.

The firm recommended that CWLP retire Dallman units 1, 2 and 3 by as early as 2020 after finding that “no scenario economically retained these units.”

The results are not much of a surprise given the age of the units and the current state of the energy market, which has been upended by the rise of natural gas and the increasing affordability of renewable energy. For coal-dependent utilities like CWLP, it has not been easy to keep up.

“One of the things that we’ve been saying for quite some time is that coal-fired units basically can’t compete very well in the market, they’re not competitive in the current market,” said CWLP chief utility engineer Doug Brown. “So this report basically confirms all of that.”

Then the Illinois Times.

https://illinoistimes.com/article-21209-consultant-retire-three-of-cwlp%E2%80%99s-coal-fired-plants.html

Thursday, May 9, 2019 12:05 am

Consultant: Retire three of CWLP’s coal-fired plants

By Karen Ackerman Witter

How can Springfield’s City Water, Light and Power (CWLP) best provide electrical power to meet the community’s future energy needs? Retiring Dallman Units 1, 2 and 3 coal-fired plants, increasing the use of renewable energy and expanding energy efficiency are some of the recommendations included in a recently released report.

Last year the city hired The Energy Authority (TEA) to develop an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). Kevin Glake from TEA presented the results of the comprehensive study to the city council on May 6 at a meeting of the Public Utilities Committee. Anyone who uses electricity generated by CWLP or cares about the future of the city’s public utility should be interested in this plan.

Public comments are being accepted now through June 3, and a public open house is scheduled for 5-7 p.m. May 20 at the Lincoln Public Library. More information and the complete plan are available online at https://cwlp.com/IRP.aspx. Comments can be emailed to IRP@cwlp.com or mailed to CWLP General Office, ATTN: CWLP IRP, 800 E. Monroe St., Springfield, 62701.

https://illinoistimes.com/article-21312-letting-go.html

Thursday, June 13, 2019 12:19 am

Letting go

Springfield ponders cutting back on coal

By Bruce Rushton

t’s not a welcome message in council chambers.

“They came back with exactly what everyone on the city council knows,” Ward 1 Ald. Chuck Redpath declared at a May 28 committee-of-the-whole meeting, joining colleagues in criticizing the report issued by The Energy Authority. “The point is, we can’t just…go down without a fight. We’re talking about getting rid of two, maybe three, of our plants, and it’s going to be detrimental to our ratepayers. It’s going to be detrimental because, eventually, you are going to have to go out on the net, and buy off the net – the grid – and then we’re going to be subjected to whatever prices we get stuck with if we’re down to one plant. We’ve got to start thinking outside the box and find a better way.”

And so Redpath and other aldermen cling to coal, even as they talk about new courses. Those opposed to coal have a simple response to complaints about a report that contains no surprises.

“They’re not learning anything new because nothing has changed in six years in terms of the economics of those old units,” says Andy Knott, senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club. “They don’t want to look at the facts and the reality and make the best decisions for the ratepayers.”

“They’re too old”

“Integrated resource plan,” a tag invented in the 1980s, is the official title of the study that’s drawing ire from aldermen. The planning process is supposed to help utilities figure out long-term economics. Thirty-three states, but not Illinois, require utilities to prepare IRPs that are subject to review by state regulators.

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Go there and read sadly/ More next week…

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Nuclear Power In China – The new frontier

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OK. It never fails to be true. The Nuclear Power Industry always has “A new safer problem free” Nuclear Reactor, and it never is true. But they sold China, and I am sure they are trying with India. Look out! South America and South Africa.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-france-nuclear/china-launches-worlds-first-epr-nuclear-project-in-taishan-idUSKBN1OD0Y4

China launches world’s first EPR nuclear project in Taishan

BEIJING (Reuters) – The world’s first third-generation “Evolutionary Power Reactor” (EPR) has gone into operation at Taishan in China’s Guangdong province, the French and Chinese developers behind the project announced on Friday.

The 1,750-megawatt EPR, formerly known as the “European Pressurised Reactor” and designed by France’s Areva, completed a 168-hour trial run on Thursday evening, said state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN).

Its commercial launch can be “a source of inspiration” for other next-generation reactors, Guo Limin, general manager of the Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture Company, said at a press briefing in Beijing.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-world-epr-nuclear-reactor-china.html

World’s second EPR nuclear reactor starts work in China

A next-generation EPR nuclear reactor in China has carried out its first chain reaction, French energy giant EDF announced Wednesday, becoming the second using the much-delayed European technology to reach the milestone.

The fission reaction at the Taishan 2 reactor on Tuesday follows the Taishan 1 becoming last year the first of its kind to advance to the operational stage.

“The was authorised and yesterday the Chinese reactor carried out a for the first time,” EDF chairman and CEO Jean-Bernard Levy told Europe 1 radio on Wednesday.

As a side note, if you are interested in a Guide To Solar Power, the replacement for nukes. Please look here.

https://www.flexible-solar-panel.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-solar-energy/

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Go to all of those places and read. More next week.

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