Should disrupting pipeline construction draw multi-decade jail terms? (No.)
I have no great problem with punishing those who vandalize pipelines, either during construction or, especially, during operation.
States and the feds moving to punish protesters that impede or disrupt construction with multi-decade prison terms? Yeah, that seems (sadly typical) pressing of the government’s thumb down on the scales in favor of a highly lucrative (and controversial) big business.
I mean, it’s not like there aren’t other laws on the books — for vandalism, for trespass, etc. — that can address such protesters in a more balanced fashion. But twenty years? That’s beyond penalties for Assault with a Deadly Weapon (felony) using a machine gun.
Do nearby wind turbines impact property values? There are some studies that indicate that — though nothing that approaches 75%, a number he keeps increasing with each speech it seems — and there are other studies that suggest the effect is anything but systemic.
As to cancer … well, (a) again, Trump ignores the very real health effects of living near other energy sources, and (b) it’s bullshit.
But, then, Trump, beyond being a great, grand friend of the fossil fuel industry (from doing all in his power to pump up the coal industry, to trying to open every coastline and national park to oil exploration), has had a mad-on against wind power for some time, specifically regarding his prolonged and ultimate failed attempt to keep a wind farm from being built offshore of his Scottish golf course.
That Windswept Look
And if there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he never forgets an enemy, whether it’s a politician who says something mean to him, or a wind turbine.
A top US official told a group of fossil fuel industry leaders that the Trump administration will soon issue a proposal making large portions of the Atlantic available for oil and gas development, and said that it is easier to work on such priorities because Donald Trump is skilled at sowing “absolutely thrilling” distractions, according to records of a meeting obtained by the Guardian.
Joe Balash, the assistant secretary for land and minerals management, was speaking to companies in the oil exploration business at a meeting of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors, or IAGC, last month.
Why, yes, let’s absolutely “drill, baby, drill” all along the Atlantic seaboard (except Florida, through special concession to its politically sensitive barely-tilting-GOP population). What could possibly go wrong?
A reminder of what could go wrong, courtesy of the Deepwater Horizon disaster
Just as interesting was this bit, which I guess was the sort of thing one says behind not-quite-closed doors:
“One of the things that I have found absolutely thrilling in working for this administration,” said Balash,“is the president has a knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else while we do all the work that needs to be done on behalf of the American people.”
Which raises the question of whether Trump does outrageous stuff and folk who want to operate without the “attention of the public” take advantage of it to scurry out under his cover? Or is Trump intentionally playing the media and public to allow these folk to do their own thing without that “attention.”?
In either case, it’s clear the Trump Administration focus is on cranking up American oil production as much as possible, which should make some large oil firms quite happy indeed.
The US Army sometimes finds itself with bases that don’t have easy or reliable access to an electrical infrastructure. The alternative is diesel generators and the like, but those require an expensive and vulnerable logistical pathway for bringing in additional fuel.
So some Pentagon boffin has come up with the idea of building portable nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Such plants could be trucked or even flown in, and provide a steady, no-fuel-needed power supply to bases in the middle of the Iraqi desert, in Afghanistan, etc.
Sounds like a great, even futuristic idea, right? Until you start to think about what a beautiful target such plants would make — either to steal enriched uranium from, or simply to blow up and contaminate the entire area. And given that these things would be being sent into, by definition, war zones … well, it suddenly stops sounding like such a great idea.
Which concerns don’t seem to be slowing down the US Army from going out and seeking quotes …
The US distributed wind energy market crept over the 1 gigawatt (GW) mark in 2017 according to a US Department of Energy report published late last month, after nearly 100 megawatts (MW) was added last year, bringing the cumulative capacity up to 1,076…
US Distributed Wind Surpasses 1 Gigawatt Mark | CleanTechnica
The US distributed wind energy market crept over the 1 gigawatt (GW) mark in 2017 according to a US Department of Energy report published late last month, after nearly 100 megawatts (MW) was added last year, bringing the cumulative capacity up to 1,076 MW.
There’s actually a new epidemic of a very serious black lung variant appearing out there, even as the Trump administration is pushing hard for coal consumption to go up again.
But this is the year when a special tax on coal which helps pay for a black lung medical fund dramatically drops. The GAO has estimated that, in fact, to keep the fund solvent, the tax needs to be increased beyond current levels.
The coal industry is outraged … that they might be asked to pay more.
Increasing the tax or even leaving the current rate in place would burden the coal industry, says Bruce Watzman, an executive at the National Mining Association. “The competition among fuels for electric generation is intense and a couple cents a kilowatt hour makes a difference in the fuel source that’s generating the electricity,” Watzman adds.
Mr Watzman, if you can’t actually make money to cover all the costs on your product … maybe your product needs to go out of business.
Or, alternately, don’t worry — Trump is considering plans to force utilities to buy coal power regardless of the price differential. Your Association should be just fine. Unlike your workers.
I love how so called “free market” conservatives will do the complete opposite at the drop of a hat. Also, this should provide much entertainment as the entire power industry sues the DOE so that they do not have to raise rates to buy expensive power.
Of course, the easiest solution, the one that conservatives will not do, would be to buy and operate the aging expensive facilities themselves if they were so concerned about it. The USBR already operates almost every major hydro facility in the US, so it would be easy for them to drop a billion dollars to buy these plants and maintain and run them in case of an emergency.
Trump Prepares Lifeline for Money-Losing Coal Power Plants
Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that could represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.
After Trump’s Interior Secretary Zinke announced that pretty much everywhere would now be open to offshore oil drilling (and it was also announced that a bunch of regulations put in place around offshore drilling in the aftermath of the BP oil disaster a few years back), there was a lot of outrage from (among others) lots of different states that happen to have coastlines that they would rather not seen covered with spilled out (or coastal views they would just as soon have filled with offshore derricks [1]).
Well, worry not, because it’s easy to get out of offshore oil development: just ask!
Zinke announced today that, no, there won’t be any exploration off the coast of Florida. All Gov. Rick Scott had to do was ask.
Oh, and be a loyal Trump supporter.
Oh, and be running for the US Senate and wanting to avoid having Floridans, including even maybe some Republicans, being pissed off about offshore drilling.
Of course, the excuse looks to be “Florida is unique and its coasts are heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver.” Because I’m sure no other coastal states are “unique,” or that their coasts are reliant on tourism, or fisheries, or other things that big oil spills might damage.
It’s good to be a political ally of the the majority party, whether it’s getting access to all that precious oil and gas for your bottom line, or sealing it off so that you get votes for a Senate run.
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[1] Insert ironic comment here about how Donald Trump pitched a hissy-fit over wind farms offshore from his Scottish golf course.
Indeed, in the Administration’s new National Security Strategy, it’s “an anti-growth energy agenda” that’s a threat to the world, and that only American can lead the way out of.
Which sounds like a weaselly way of saying that climate change is too expensive to deal with, particularly in terms of energy company profits, and the oil/coal/gas must flow, so suck it up, future, because Donald won’t be around in a few decades, so what the hell does he care what happens then?
And he’s moving to express it with all available speed. After all, there’s Obama Era actions to undo, oil and gas interests to pay back, and environmentalists and minorities to torque off. The man’s on a schedule people!
…[T]the president will visit Salt Lake City, Utah, next Monday to announce that he’s shrinking national monuments of huge importance to Native Americans. Without visiting the monuments he’s targeted, Trump is expected to announce his decision on a review conducted by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. He reportedly told Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that he will shrink the 1.35 million acres Bears Ears and 1.9 million acres Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments to a fraction of their original sizes.
More specifically, Bears Ears will be cut to 100,000 to 300,000 acres; Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be shrunk in half, to between 700,000 and 1.2 million acres.
But take the long view, folks. I’m sure that when coal, oil, and gas interests are done, and other business interests have had their go at the territory, everyone will agree that the areas outside the redrawn monuments won’t be worth preserving.
Not surprisingly, Scott Pruitt doesn’t consider the EPA climate report that says, yup, humans are definitely causing significant climate change, to actually say that humans are definitely causing significant climate change.
In an interview with USA Today, Pruitt said the climate report will not stop his agency from moving forward with dismantling the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was designed to cut global warming pollutants from coal-burning power plants. […] “We’re taking the very necessary step to evaluate our authority under the Clean Air Act and we’ll take steps that are required to issue a subsequent rule. That’s our focus,” Pruitt said. “Does this report have any bearing on that? No it doesn’t. It doesn’t impact the withdrawal and it doesn’t impact the replacement,” he said. […] “Obviously the climate is changing and has always changed, (and) humans contribute to that. Measuring with exact precision is very challenging,” Pruitt said. “So I think the report (is) good to encourage an open dialogue on this.”
This has nothing to do with open dialog. Not when dialog is about evading, denying, and discrediting. Or pretending to science when making decisions about what is scientific fact is just about what’s convenient, profitable, or ideologically proper.
Why would Donald Trump impose tariffs on imported solar panels, when even conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation think is awful policy?
Because he can.
Because then he’s imposing tariffs and can tell his base that he’s sticking it to those unfair foreigners and all their dumping and job stealing, even if it does nothing to bring jobs to the US.
And because then he can say to his coal-mining buddies, “See? People said coal was dying because the economics weren’t there. Well, now you owe me.”
And because for him it’s flipping a big middle finger at all the tree-hugging, climate-change-believing, pussy liberals he so despises and whose outrage he’ll relish as a sign that he’s the biggest alpha dog in the pack and can piss on anything he wants.
It’s not about policy. It’s never about policy. It’s about ego.
That’s the best case scenario — the worst is that he’s actively hostile to the environment and would be completely thrilled to see the nation paved over under a blackened sky. Except for his golf courses, of course, which will remain beautiful, green, and private.
But, honestly, I think he doesn’t much care. As long as he can profit from his businesses for the next twenty years, and get plenty of outside funding for a re-election in three years.
It’s just the rest of us that will suffer. For decades.
While it news-releasey, if the info here is correct, it really is a major step forward.
Electric Vehicles, like petroleum-driven ones, need refueling. That problem for EVs is increased by both low range and the time it takes to recharge. Nobody wants to get stuck somewhere at a charging station that’s going to take an hour to do its job, whether running errands or going on a long trip.
Worse, long charge times tie up recharging infrastructure. That infrastructure is already a problem for EVs — it’s not like there’s a charging station at every major city intersection or overpass on the interstate. If a car is tied up twenty, thirty, sixty minutes or longer, then any other EVs that need a charge at that rare spot will have to wait — or extra charging stations will need installation, at higher cost, and with more dubious return on investment for someone betting on how many EVs need charging.
But a battery that lasts two hundred miles and just takes six minutes to charge? Heck, I’ve had stops at the gas station that were significantly longer than that. That, suddenly, makes EVs that much more practical.
Though Trump thunderously Executive Ordered the Clean Power Plan to be rescinded, it turns out that, no, you can’t just do that. The EPA has now formally announced it’s going to start undoing the Clean Power Plan — which never went into effect, due to law suits from folk like … well, like Scott Pruitt, now the head of the EPA. But to undoing it, they have to go through a whole new set of rulesmaking, which will take years (not counting court activities), and still have to take into account the EPA’s own ruling that, well, yeah, releasing greenhouse gasses is dangerous.
So … not much will actively change for quite some time, but on the bright side not much will actively change for quite some time. Except, of course, the climate.
Florida Power and Light lobbied hard for big rate increases in order to “prepare” for major storms.
But in many places Florida’s power grid went down faster under Irma than during the more powerful Hurricane Wilma in 2005. FPL refuses to install buried power lines which would be protected from the winds. And part of that money has gone instead to major lobbying efforts that meant that people with solar panels could not use them during the blackouts following the storm.
FPL’s lobbying wing has fought hard against letting Floridians power their own homes with solar panels. Thanks to power-company rules, it’s impossible across Florida to simply buy a solar panel and power your individual home with it. You are instead legally mandated to connect your panels to your local electric grid.
More egregious, FPL mandates that if the power goes out, your solar-power system must power down along with the rest of the grid, robbing potentially needy people of power during major outages.
[…] Thanks to power-company influence, one of America’s sunniest states lags far behind the rest of the nation when it comes to solar adoption.
Of course. The power company — and the politicians they “support” — can’t make any money that way, disaster-stricken customers be damned.
It’s the radioactive elephant in the room about nuclear energy — nuclear plants generate waste, and that waste is dangerous for tens of thousands of years, and what the hell do you do with it?
The answer to date from countries using nuclear plants is to stick it in metal drums in ponds (to cool it) and hope someone figures out a long-term solution before the drums rust through.
Finland is tired of waiting. It thinks it has a decent solution now that will serve for the extremely long period that the waste needs to be stored, and are proceeding with same. It’s not clear that the combination of geography, geology,, Finnish government, and community approval is transferable to other nations (these remain, in the US at least, an intractable problem), but I have to applaud them for taking action that sounds reasonable and makes as much sense as anything else proposed.
One might expect the turbines of a wind farm to be heavily hit by the very winds they are designed to stand up in, but the initial reports in Texas have at least one farm surviving and back online faster than the power transmission system can handle.
Or, on the contrary, the idea of a passenger rail service running from Ft Collins to Pueblo seems to be a no-brainer. But, apparently, someone needs to figure out who is going to pay for it and who will make it profitable.
Were I the municipalities outside of Denver that would be stops along the way, I would be begging to throw money at this idea. Hell, Denver itself would benefit from having commuter connections from Ft Collins and Colorado Springs outside of bus service.
Colorado commission works on plan for Front Range passenger rail
A state commission has begun exploring ways to realize Colorado transportation officials’ vision of passenger rail service that stretches up and down the Front Range.
The commission, which includes government representatives from Denver to Trinidad, has until Dec. 1 to submit to the legislature a plan detailing steps forward and funding options. The ultimate hope is a commuter rail that runs from Fort Collins to Pueblo, which probably would cos…
The Trump transition team has disavowed a questionnaire that went to Department of Energy leadership, ostensibly from that transition team:
'The survey of 74 questions, which the Energy Department received last Tuesday, asked for the names of workers and contractors who had attended U.N. climate meetings. It also asked for the names of those who had attended meetings on the social cost of carbon, a metric that federal agencies use in formulating regulations on the energy business.'
The Trump team sent out a brief news blurb: "The questionnaire was not authorized or part of our standard protocol. The person who sent it has been properly counseled."
Yeah, that disavowal would be a lot more convincing if this questionnaire hadn't been gone out and been made last week and faced DoE, public, Congressional, and White House criticism for it since then.
Trump team disavows survey seeking names of climate workers
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team on Wednesday disavowed a survey sent to the U.S. Department of Energy that requested the names of people working on climate change in the agency.
