Windfarm War

In episode 4 of the recent BBC2 series Windfarm Wars, one John Vincent (apparently of Pershore in Worcestershire) speaks at the new appeal hearing against the West Devon Borough Council's denial of planning permission for the Den Brook wind energy facility. Alas, you must imagine the scene, because BBC allows only U.K. residents to watch their shows and then only for a week. Also, for that reason, some of the dialog and narration in the following may be confusing as to who is speaking.

Mr [John] Vincent, are you a supporter or an objector?

I'm a supporter.

Right.

Perhaps it's the word "developer" which creates the sort of animosity which will lead to the level of aggressive protest, to bring us to new debate, and these developers are actually caring scientists and engineers, wanting to help us and our world with clean energy.

To the point - now, this debate is supposedly based on what? Important new evidence? Do you know what the important new evidence was? It was an error. I asked a scientist, "How will this error in the sound figures affect the local populace?" "It is unmeasurable scientifically. It's inaudible to any creature." Yet to many people here today, it's an excuse to abuse our taxpayer in order to thrust forward a small group's own protests. It in no way reflects the will of the majority of people who would never believe that they would have to protest FOR wind. "Who would protest against it?" they might well ask.

Rather than try and persuade people who were already persuaded, the best thing is to talk to the people who I think don't understand the situation, so I made my mind up that I would have a quiet word with them, so I turned round and introduced myself to them and told them what I'd done and it just developed into something really quite bizarre.

And he knows Rachel [the developer's rep].

As soon as we got talking about it, he said, "Do you mind if I go over and bring the acousticians over from the developers?" I said, "No, great."

I'm stunned to see people objecting.

I generally agree with you, but there are specific times when these problems can arise, under certain conditions. So normally if you're standing a kilometre away, 800 metres or any distance, you can't hear them?

Absolutely. More than likely the case.

We have identified from the data that Rachel has provided us that there are specific conditions, atmospheric conditions that apply to the Den Brook area...

We would disagree with that identification. We've analysed our data as well.

If you can prove us wrong, that's fine, but you're refusing to respond to us.

We have responded in evidence.

You won't address amplitude modulation.

We have our meteorological witness...

Rachel, I got a letter from your solicitor, saying you will not be addressing amplitude modulation and you won't be addressing that in the noise conditions. It's like a denial that this stuff happens.

So the High Court case costs how much? How much has it cost you?

It's cost me a fortune. It's cost me £70,000 personally.

Couldn't you have spent that money on double glazing?

If double glazing sorted the issue...

When I stand by one of these turbines, I can't hear anything. Can I just finish?

There is a problem out there. I've been there. I've experienced it.

It can be irritating and noisy, so a great solution would be to put it somewhere quiet where it won't upset too many people. They've found that place, haven't they?

Just a minute. What are you saying?

I've just said, "Sod you, there aren't many people around it. Go ahead."

If it was going to affect thousands of people...

You are joking!

What makes you think you're so important? You've got to be joking. I don't believe you're so important.

You believe that all the people who live near windfarms aren't important, they're sacrificial?

I believe some things are good on this planet and some things are bad. A bit of noise pollution from a wind turbine... People live near motorways, they live in cities. They live in blocks of flats. You've got a lovely, ideal life set in the heart of Devon in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Enjoy it and stop whinging. The only people here today were from near Little Whinging or whatever it's called. Not all the people in the rest of the planet saying, "Build us some renewable energy."

I imagine the poor man had to be shot with a tranquilizer dart and is now held safely in a cage somewhere.

Further on in the same episode, the developer, Renewable Energy Systems, or RES, represented throughout by Rachel Ruffle, reveals their concern about "amplitude modulation', the characteristic pulsing noise from large wind turbines, presumably caused by the different air conditions at the top and bottom of the blades' sweep area:

As promised, the following Monday, RES put in their response to Mike's team's AM noise condition.

They argue that a condition is unnecessary as excessive AM is rare and it's not recommended in ETSU guidelines.

They also say stable atmospheric conditions at the appeal site are rare too, and in their view, conditioning AM would cause profound damage to the UK wind industry.

In other words, AM won't occur, but if you place conditions to prevent it, the wind industry will collapse.

Or in yet other words, AM is obviously a very serious problem, and there is no way to avoid it.

And the industry's message for those who will be adversely affected (in amenity at least and likely in health as well)?

Call in John Vincent.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights

Wind energy to offset emissions from cows

Cows belch and fart methane, a gas with 25 times the greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide. It was calculated elsewhere that in Vermont, installing 1 megawatt of wind power would have the equivalent effect on greenhouse gas emissions as removing 0.4 of a cow from the state, that the effect of the 145 MW of approved new wind projects on four ridgelines would be like removing 58 cows.

So how much wind power would have to be erected to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of all 150,000 of Vermont's cows?

375,000 MW. 125,000 turbines the size of the 21 planned for Lowell Mountain.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism, Vermont

Sweden's Lesson for Real Sustainability

Firmin DeBrabander, Chair of Humanistic Studies at Maryland Institute College of Art, writes at Counterpunch:

What if electric cars made pollution worse, not better? What if they increased greenhouse gas emissions instead of decreasing them? Preposterous you say? Well, consider what's happened in Sweden.

Through generous subsidies, Sweden aggressively pushed its citizens to trade in their cars for energy efficient replacements (hybrids, clean diesel vehicles, cars that run on ethanol). Sweden has been so successful in this initiative that it leads the world in per capita sales of 'green cars.' To everyone's surprise, however, greenhouse gas emissions from Sweden's transportation sector are up.

Or perhaps we should not be so surprised after all. What do you expect when you put people in cars they feel good about driving (or at least less guilty), which are also cheap to buy and run? Naturally, they drive them more. So much more, in fact, that they obliterate energy gains made by increased fuel efficiency.

We need to pay attention to this as GM and Nissan roll out their new green cars to great fanfare. The Chevy Volt, a hybrid with a lithium-ion battery, can go 35 miles on electric power alone (after charging over night, for example), and GM brags on its website that if you limit your daily driving to that distance, you can "commute gas-free for an average of $1.50 a day." The Volt's price is listed at a very reasonable $33K (if you qualify for the maximum $7500 in tax credits). The fully electric Nissan Leaf is advertized for an even more reasonable $26K (with qualifying tax credits, naturally). What a deal—and it's good for you, too, the carmakers want you to know. As GM helpfully points out on its website, "Electricity is a cleaner source of power."

[Ed:  Electricity, however, is primarily generated by burning coal. Electric cars only shift the emissions from car to power plant.]

Sweden is a model of sustainability innovation, while the US is the most voracious consumer on the planet. Based on Sweden's experience with green cars, it's daunting to imagine their possible impact here. Who can doubt that they'll likely inspire Americans to make longer commutes to work, live even further out in the exurbs, bringing development, blacktop and increased emissions with them?

In its current state, the green revolution is largely devoted to the effort to provide consumers with the products they have always loved, but now in affordable energy efficient versions. The thinking seems to be that through this gradual exchange, we can reduce our collective carbon footprint. Clearly, however, this approach is doomed if we don't reform our absurd consumption habits, which are so out-of-whack that they risk undoing any environmental gains we might make. Indeed, we are such ardent, addicted consumers that we take efficiency gains as license to consumer even more!

We need to address consumption fast because—news alert—the current consumer class on earth barely amounts to 1 billion people (if that), but 2 billion and counting eagerly wait in the wings.

American industry hungrily targets the rising Chinese consumer class. For the sake of the planet, we better hope it doesn't get its way. Consider: China currently has a car ownership rate approximately one-sixth that of the US. If China achieves car ownership rates comparable to the US, that would put an additional 800 million cars on the road. And that's just China. Even if we somehow succeeded in making China's fleet super efficient, it would still be more than the planet can handle.

Of course, cars are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese consumer dreams. They will also want more electronics, clothes, meat, processed foods—bigger houses. In short, we can bet that the rising Chinese middle class will want something close to what we have. And why shouldn't they? We have been showcasing our middle class comfort worldwide for years through our vast media exports. Everyone is betting, hoping—assuming?—that technology will eventually help us deliver the American dream worldwide with no environmental impact. But clearly, we may run out of planet by the time that day comes. Even the American dream in an 'energy efficient format' is likely too much for the earth to handle.

If this is chilling—and it should be—you might wonder, what are our options? Justice demands that we cannot prevent, much less discourage the growing global consumer class from having the consumer goods we currently enjoy. Real change starts with us then, and I'm afraid to say, radical change is in order. We must figure out a way to consume less, which means driving less, shopping less, eating less meat (which the UN estimates is responsible for a fifth of all greenhouse gases), and conserving food and energy. This means essentially rethinking our suburban-sprawling, fast-food-gorging, shopaholic society. We must model for the world the changes we hope everyone will make to ensure a sustainable future.

It's time to be courageous and think big about altering our lifestyle, values and future. The powers that be are reluctant to rock the boat with consumers, and have decided that leaving consumption habits intact as much as possible is the preferable option. They'd rather get us into electric cars, rather than out of our cars altogether. Well, we need more than half measures at this point. As Sweden proves, unless other more fundamental changes are made to our engrained consumption habits, half measures only dig us deeper in the hole.

Wind energy and cows in Vermont

Dear Governor Shumlin —

I just heard about your recognition of Global Wind (Power) Day: June 15. This was on the same day that I was prompted to compare Vermont wind energy's potential effect on greenhouse gas emissions with that of the roughly 150,000 cows in Vermont.

Granted that the global wind industry is lucrative for NRG Systems and Northern Power Systems among others, but considering the huge impact of erecting wind turbines on Vermont's ridgelines, is the potential environmental benefit worth it?

The Public Service Board has approved 145 MW of new wind projects in Vermont (in Sheffield, Milton, Readsboro, and Lowell). At a capacity factor of 25%, they would be expected to produce (and thereby theoretically displace) 317,550 MWh per year, or less than 5% of Vermont's total electricity production (or just over 5% of the state's total demand).

That in itself is a rather low number, considering the substantial impacts of these facilities. The potential environmental benefit, however, is even smaller when it is remembered that Vermont is ranked by the U.S. Energy Information Administration as 51st in CO₂ emissions from electricity generation.

The EIA estimates Vermont's CO₂ emissions from electricity generation to be about 10 million kg annually, or 1,430 g/MWh.

Now for the cows: An average cow is estimated to emit about 275 kg of methane gas annually, and methane has 25 times the greenhouse gas effect of CO₂. Along with its exhalations of CO₂, the CO₂-equivalent emissions from one cow is therefore about 8,000 kg annually.

Conclusion: 145 MW of wind in Vermont will theoretically save just over 450,000 kg of CO₂ emissions, which is the equivalent of removing 56 cows out of the state (even fewer if their manure is factored in).

Nobody can pretend that the severe alteration of ridgeline ecosystems, habitat destruction and fragmentation, direct harm to wildlife, and aesthetic vandalism that are a necessary part of these projects are truly balanced by such inconsequential benefits.

Formula:  1 MW installed wind capacity in Vermont = 0.4 cow

Tweet:  145MW of new wind power in Vermont will have GHG equivalent of removing 58 cows.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism,, vegetarianism, Vermont

How many cows is wind energy equal to?

Estimates of methane (CH₄) gas emissions from cows (via belching and farting, not the methane contained in their manure) vary widely, but they generally range between 500 and 1,000 grams/day.

Cows also exhale carbon dioxide (CO₂): about 2,000-4,000 g/d.

Methane is considered to be a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂, about 25 times. So a single cow emits 14,500-29,000 g CO₂-equivalent/d.

In Vermont, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, electricity generation emits an average of about 27,500,000 g CO₂/d, having the same greenhouse gas effect of 950-1,900 cows.

There are about 150,000 cows in Vermont. Therefore, they produce 80-160 times as much greenhouse gas as the state's electricity production.

---

In the spirit of the wind industry's totting up equivalences for their turbines' production of electricity (never mind that they fail to show such actual reductions), what is the cow-equivalence of wind turbines in Vermont? (Wayne Gulden in Ontario is the source of this idea.)

Vermont's 10 billion g/y CO₂ emissions from electricity generation is from about 7,000,000 MWh, i.e., 1,430 g/MWh.

At a (generous) 25% capacity factor, a 1-MW wind turbine produces 2,190 MWh/y, therefore theoretically (ignoring the inefficiencies of the grid in coping with wind's variable feed) displacing 3,131,700 g CO₂/y. One cow produces 5,292,500-10,585,000 g CO₂e/y.

In Vermont, therefore, 1 MW of installed wind capacity is theoretically equivalent to 0.25-0.5 cows, or about 0.4 — even less if the cows' manure were factored in.

The 40-MW project in Sheffield will be "equivalent" to removing 16 cows from the state.

The 30-MW Searsburg expansion in Readsboro will be "equivalent" to removing 12 cows.

The 10-MW Georgia Mountain project in Milton will be "equivalent" to removing 4 cows.

The 63-MW Lowell Mountain project will be "equivalent" to removing 25 cows.

That's 145 MW of new giant wind projects, for the greenhouse gas equivalence of removing about 58 cows from the state. In other words, giant wind turbines in Vermont — despite substantial destruction of mountain ecosystems, fragmentation of habitat, direct harm to wildlife, and vandalism of fabled mountain views — will have virtually no effect on the state's greenhouse gas emissions.

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Update. Granted, Vermont is not an isolated grid but is part of the ISO New England grid, which in 2015 produced 40,000,000 tons of CO₂, about 750 lb/MWh, of which Vermont contributed less than 0.03%. Therefore, 1 MW of installed wind capacity would theoretically offset 250× more CO₂ than calculated above for Vermont alone, or the equivalent of about 100 cows per MW. On the other hand, Vermont gets most of its electricity from Hydro Quebec (CO₂ free).

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism

Wind energy development for the challenged

In June, the New England Wind Forum, a "Wind Powering America Project" of the U.S. Department of Energy Wind and Water Power Program, interviewed a few people involved in wind energy development in the region about the challenges faced by the industry.

Patrick Quinlan, former associate director of the Wind Energy Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, describes the overarching issue as the collision of global benefits versus local impacts, a question of eschewing wind energy for its intrusive alteration of the landscape or accept it for the generalized societal benefits. Among the examples of this conflict from different state government departments to local governments to involved residents is this: "From opponents we hear concerns for birds and bats interactions, while we hear from proponents about the benefits of reduced mercury pollution and acidification of habitats."

While this sounds like a balanced approach seeking to reconcile global benefits and local impacts, one side relies on anproven premise: that there are in fact global, or even merely statewide, benefits to building giant wind turbines in as yet undisturbed landscapes. There is no argument that the impacts of such development are significant — not only to the landscape, but also to the animals, including humans, living in it. But the benefits at best remain theoretical. In reality, after decades of experience, the effects of such a diffuse, intermittent, and variable source of energy as wind on the larger pattern of energy use remain doubtful.

Treating wind as if it has a proven record of having something to offer necessarily leads to dishonest processes of reconciliation. The game is rigged from the start.

Sue Jones, president of Community Energy Partners and lead facilitator for the Maine Wind Working Group, is similarly trapped in a fantasy, as revealed by her statement, "Experience from Europe and elsewhere tells us that it will take 10-14 years of education and experience living with wind turbines before it becomes generally acceptable." In fact, the opposite is true. Regions with more experience of industrial wind know the problems, especially as the towers and facilities continue to metastasize. Denmark, for example, now has very strict rules that, along with fierce local opposition, have effectively ended onshore development.

It would seem that she is actually hoping to get as much wind erected as possible before, as in Denmark, it becomes truly impossible. Although she speaks about educating people, her plans rely on their general inexperience and keeping them ignorant.

Only Kenneth Payne, administrator of the State of Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, approaches reality in dealing with wind energy development: "Right now the image of 'wind energy' is loaded with symbolic value. Call to mind the image of a wind turbine in an advertisement in a periodical — does that image speak to how people actually live in our region? The transition from symbolic value to practical value is critical." And it is the practical value that is still a matter of debate.

On the matter of impacts, Dave Lamont, director for regulated utility planning at the Vermont Department of Public Service, is candid:

Regarding "how" to deploy wind energy, impacts of siting are the most critical issues. These siting issues most often boil down to visual impacts, noise impacts, and habitat impacts. Because of their size and the fact that in New England wind resources are found mostly on ridgelines, turbines are generally located in visually prominent places. This creates aesthetic issues for those in the surrounding area. While there are some areas with exposures that allow the turbines to be only partially visible from most locations, many sites have strong visibility from many locations. There are limited mitigation measures available — painting the turbines a color that blends in or selecting a lighting system that is radar activated. These measures help but don't hide the turbines.

The second critical issue is noise impacts. This seems to be an evolving issue for which there is a shortage of good information. While the higher-pitched sounds are muffled by distance and the rustling of the wind, it seems that low pitch and frequency noises from the larger rotating parts are also present. There can be some mitigation with insulation, but is that sufficient?

Finally, habitat seems to be a critical issue for ridge-top wind projects. Higher elevations contain a more fragile ecosystem, where it is possible that access roads may traverse through bear habitat, and turbines may extend into migration routes. Due to the limited history of development in these high-elevation areas, much less is known about the impacts of construction here. This makes those in charge of managing this habitat more cautious about approving projects with such potential impacts.

But missing still is any questioning that these impacts can be balanced in analysis by meaningful benefits.

Dave Ljunquist, associate director of project development at the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, gets back to bashing objectors as solely emotional without experience or facts. He asserts that resistance is based on what people "have heard or what they are afraid might be the case", i.e., experience and facts. Promoters like himself, on the other hand, defy experience and facts to assert only meaningless numbers and personally denigrate those who raise well founded questions. Like Sue Jones, he also supports "public education programs to familiarize the general population with the realities of wind turbine projects", by which he means more aggressive public relations programs, since the realities of wind turbine projects are precisely what drive opposition.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Ignoring the obvious: wind sucks

In a short article in the June 2011 North American Windpower about the Goodhue County wind project in Minnesota, Angela Beniwal quotes Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings judge Kathleen Sheehy, who ruled that the county's rules for wind facilities should not be applied, that

there is no scientific support in peer-reviewed literature for the proposition that wind turbines cause any adverse health effects in humans.

That is a meaningless statement, since there is also no scientific support in peer-reviewed literature (i.e., original epidemiological research) for the proposition that wind turbines do not cause any adverse health effects.

Therefore, the consistent direct testimony from around the world must stand as strong evidence that there are indeed adverse health effects for many people who live near giant wind turbines.

What Judge Sheehy really said was:

I know that some people get sick from wind turbines, and the county rules would do a lot to protect them. But my job is to add an official state government "fuck you" to that of the developers.

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Also in the same issue, another item notes "Rising Temps Won't Affect Production", describing an analysis of how rising temperatures might affect wind energy over the nest 30-50 years.

Unspoken is the necessary converse: Rising wind energy production won't affect global warming.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights

Quick replies re recent pro-wind articles

Wind Farms Mean Money for Sherman County, Ore., New York Times

The article says that Oregon spent $11 million in tax credits per project. Federal tax credits amount to even more. What the people of Sherman County are getting is crumbs. Taxpayer funds could have been much more efficiently spent if the goal is to help rural communities.

Support windfarms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackouts (George Monbiot), Guardian

The ridiculous thing about wind - and the needless cost - is that you still have to have a complete grid besides to generate power when the wind isn't blowing just right. Wind is an additional cost. Wind is an additional impact.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Coal versus wind or nuclear

"Global warming is a huge threat," Walter said, ... "but it's still not as bad as radioactive waste. It turns out that species can adapt a lot faster than we used to think. If you've got climate change spread over a hundred years, a fragile ecosystem has a fighting chance. But when the reactor blows up, everything's fucked immediately and stays fucked for the next five thousand years."

"So yay coal. Let's burn more coal. Rah, rah."

"It's complicated, Patty. The picture gets complicated when you consider the alternatives. Nuclear's a disaster waiting to happen overnight. There's zero chance of ecosystems recovering from an overnight disaster. Everybody's talking about wind energy, but wind's not so great, either. This idiot Jocelyn Zorn's got a brochure that shows the two choices — the only two choices, presumably. Picture A shows this devastated post-MTR[*] desertscape, Picture B shows ten windmills in a pristine mountain landscape. And what's wrong with this picture? What's wrong is there are only ten windmills in it. Where what you actually need is ten thousand windmills You need every mountaintop in West Virginia to be covered with turbines. Imagine being a migratory bird trying to fly through that. And if you blanket the state with windmills, you think it's still going to be a tourist attraction? And plus, to compete with coal, those windmills have to operate forever. A hundred years from now, you're still going to have the same old piss-ugly eyesore, mowing down whatever wildlife is left. Whereas the mountaintop-removal site, in a hundred years, if you reclaim it properly, it may not be perfect, but it's going to be a a valuable mature forest."

—Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, p. 323-324)

*MTR, mountaintop removal.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Wind Energy

(Season 21, Episode 19)

Leonora Carrington, 1917-2011

(click title)

Khmer rock 'n roll CD

Click the title to download a CD's worth of Cambodian Rock 'n Roll hits from the 1960s and '70s.

Ros Sereysothea CD

Click the title to download a CD's worth of Cambodian Rock 'n Roll hits by singer Ros Sereysothea.

The Lily of Killarney

Romantic opera in three acts: Text by [John] Oxenford and [Dion] Boucicault, founded on the latter's romantic drama, "The Colleen Bawn." Music by Sir Julius Benedict. First production at Covent Garden, London, February 8, 1862.

Sir Julius Benedict, one of the most accomplished musicians of his time, and an intimate friend of the great Webster [Carl Maria von Weber?], is now chiefly remembered by his Lily of Killarney, popular thirty years ago, but now almost forgotten.

The best known number is the famous duet, "The Moon Has Raised Her Lamp Above," sung by Danny and Hardress in Act I as they are about to cross the lake to the Colleen Bawn.

The Moon Has Raised Her Lamp Above, sung by John McCormack and Reinald Werrenrath:

Victor 3024, recorded April 9, 1914, Camden, New Jersey

Characters
Eily O'Connor, the Colleen Bawn (soprano)
Anne Chute, an heiress (soprano)
Mrs. Cregan, a widow (contralto)
Hardress Cregan, her son (tenor)
Myles na Coppaleen (tenor)
Corrigan (bass)
Father Tom (bass)
Danny Mann, Cregan's boatman (baritone)

Time and Place: Killarney, Ireland; nineteenth century

The rise of the curtain reveals a party of Hardress Cregan's friends enjoying the hospitality of the hall at Torc Cregan. The Cregan estates are heavily encumbered, Corrigan, a "middle-man," holding the mortgage. Corrigan calls upon Mrs. Cregan while her son and his friends are absent, and suggests, with an eye to the settlement of his own account, that the family fortunes might be improved by marrying young Cregan to the heiress, Anne Chute. As an alternative, he hints that he would be willing to accept Mrs. Cregan's hand, but his proposal is scornfully refused by the still attractive widow. Corrigan then informs Mrs. Cregan that her son has an affair with Eily, the Colleen Bawn. The widow is much distressed to hear that her son is associating with a peasant girl, and promises to turn his affections toward the heiress.

The next scene shows the cottage of Eily O'Connor, who lives there under the protection of the good old priest, Father Tom. Hardress, who has been convinced by his mother that it would be to his advantage to marry Anne, enters and tries to persuade Eily to surrender her marriage certificate — for the couple are already married — but the girl refuses, having promised Father Tom never to part with her "marriage lines." Hardress leaves in a fury, swearing never to see her again.

In Act II Cregan, though filled with remorse because of his cruel desertion of the Colleen Bawn, is nevertheless paying suit to Anne. Corrigan is meanwhile pressing his unwelcome attentions upon Mrs. Cregan. Danny Mann, devoted to Hardress, and hoping to help him in his troubles, persuades Mrs. Cregan to give him one of her son's gloves. Danny gives the glove to Eily and tells her that Hardress has sent it as a sign that he needs her. Danny then takes her to a water cave and demands the certificate of her marriage. When she refuses to give it up, he throws her into the water. Myles, however, happens to be in the cave, and mistaking Danny for an otter in the twilight, shoots him, then perceiving the Colleen Bawn in the water, dives in and rescues her.

In the last act Hardress is about to marry the heiress, when Corrigan, angry because of the slights he has received from Cregan and his mothr, causes the young man's arrest on a charge of murdering Eily. Myles, however, appears with the living Eily, and a deathbed confession from Danny that he had attempted the murder. When Hardress sees Eily he realizes that he loves his wife, and the young couple are reconciled, while the heiress good-naturedly steps aside and even bestows a fortune on the happy pair! At least so the libretto says, and who should doubt it?

—The Victrola Book of the Opera, by Samuel Holland Rous, 1919 (5th revised edition; first published 1912), Victor Talking Machine Company, Camden, New Jersey.

Green Death

The banality of evil ...

Ontario Environmental Registry Number: 011-3181

Description: Gilead Power Corporation has applied for a permit under clause 17(2)(c) of the Endangered Species Act, 2007 (ESA) to kill, harm and harass Blanding’s Turtle and Whip-poor-will as well as damage and destroy the habitat of Whip-poor-will for the purpose of the development and operation of Ostrander Point Wind Energy Park in the Township of South Marysburgh. The proposed Ostrander Point Wind Energy Park would consist of 9 wind turbines, up to 22.5 MW installed capacity, and is expected to produce enough electricity for approximately 6,000 homes. The project is proposed on 324 hectares of Crown land, along the shores of Lake Ontario, in Prince Edward County.

Other Information: Both Whip-poor-will (Caprimlugus vociferous) and Blanding’s Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii), are listed as threatened on the Species at Risk in Ontario List in Ontario Regulation 230/08 (O. Reg. 230/08) of the ESA. Clause 9 (1)(a) of the ESA provides that no person shall kill, harm, harass, capture or take a living member of a species that is listed on the Species at Risk in Ontario List as extirpated, endangered or threatened.

Whip-poor-will currently has general habitat protection under the ESA. Clause 10(1)(a) of the ESA provides that no person shall damage or destroy the habitat of a species that is listed on the Species at Risk in Ontario list as an endangered or threatened species. ...

Reasonable alternatives have been considered, including alternatives that would not adversely affect both species and the best alternative was chosen in considering six different site layouts to eliminate or reduce adverse impacts to Whip-poor-will and its habitat and Blanding’s Turtle. The best alternative to balance the development plans and achieve overall benefit for Whip-poor-will and Blanding’s Turtle was selected. Construction windows were adjusted to avoid adverse impacts to species during the active season. ...

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

Single-Payer Medicare-for-All Legislation Introduced

WASHINGTON, May 10 -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced today that he introduced legislation to provide health care for every American through a Medicare-for-all type single-payer system.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) filed a companion bill in the House to provide better care for more patients at less cost by eliminating the middle-man role played by private insurance companies that rake off billions of dollars in profits.

The twin measures, both called the American Health Security Act of 2011, would provide federal guidelines and strong minimum standards for states to administer single-payer health care programs.

"The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to its people," Sanders said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on health care with worse results than others that spend far less. It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American health care system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all single-payer health coverage program."

McDermott said, "The new health care law made big progress towards covering many more people and finding ways to lower cost. However, I think the best way to reduce costs and guarantee coverage for all is through a Single-payer system like Medicare. This bill does just that - it builds on the new health care law by giving states the flexibility they need to go to a single-payer system of their own. It will also reduce costs, and Americans will be healthier."

Sanders and McDermott were joined at the press conference by leaders of organizations supporting the measure, including Arlene Baker-Holt, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO; Jean Ross, co-president of the National Nurses United; and Greg Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

While making the case for a single-payer system nationwide, Sanders applauded the Vermont Legislature which earlier this month voted to put the state on the path toward a single-payer system. Vermont, Sanders said, could become a model for the nation. ...

human rights, Vermont

The 1% (or rather less) solution

It is commonly stated by the wind industry and their enablers that wind energy represented 35% of all new generating capacity in the U.S. in the past 4 years, or since 2007. This claim comes from the American Wind Energy Association's annual market report for 2010, which was released last month. It costs $550, so the only information publicly available is from the April 7 press statement.

The only relevant figure provided is that 5,116 MW of wind added in 2010 represented 26% of all new electric capacity that year. A small graph in the press release shows that coal also represented almost exactly the same percentage, whereas about 40% of new capacity was for natural gas.

Is this meaningful? According to the Energy Information Administration, total summer generating capacity increased from 2007 to 2009 (the last summary figures available) by 3.3%. So wind capacity added barely 1% to the country's electric capacity.

But wind capacity is very unlike conventional capacity. The latter can be called on at almost any time for its full capacity. Wind turbines, in contrast, produce only at the whims of the wind. Their average generation over a year is between 20% and 35% of their capacity. And for the grid, their capacity is effectively nil, because they can not be called on to provide power in response to demand.

Meanwhile, electricity consumption actually decreased slightly (about 0.5%) from 2007 to 2010.

So why the push (let alone the boasting) to industrialize ever more rural and wild places?

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Instant Runoff Voting Explained

The U.K. will be voting on the "Alternative Vote" next week. It is equivalent to what Americans call "Instant Run-off Voting": a fairer alternative to the "Winner Takes All" (U.S.) or "First Pass the Post" (U.K.) systems now in place.

The illustration below, adapted from the British campaign, illustrates why IRV is fairer.

How IRV works:

• On the ballot, each voter marks first choice as "1", second choice (if any) as "2", and so on.
• After vote, first choices are counted as usual.
• If no candidate gets more than 50% of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and the second choice on each of those ballots is counted (i.e., instant run-off).
• This continues until one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.

Vermont

Iraq can avoid U.S./U.K. Orwellian state

Dallas Darling writes at World News (click the title of this post for the entire piece):

By the time former President George W. Bush ordered massive and deadly bombing campaigns over Iraq, followed by a preemptive military invasion that killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, there was no need to burn books. Neither was there concern over public demonstrations, anti-war rhetoric, acts of sedition, or Americans disrupting Congressional hearings and televised news accounts of the war. In a nation that no longer reads books, there is no need for book burnings. In a society that no longer knows how to think, there is no need for the thought police. In a country that speaks only in euphemisms — words and phrases devoid of any meaning and reality and facts — there is no need to suppress speech. In a state that fences and cordons off areas for protesters, the Gestapo and secret police are not needed. Furthermore, in a society socially engineered to consume manufactured, yet illegal, wars and high-tech atrocities, brutal occupations and collectivized murder becomes entertainment. Reality in an empire, or what appears to be reality dictated through illusions, is much more comfortable and easier to digest and to live with than moral convictions, moral courage, and moral outrage.

This is exactly the kind of totalitarian society and state George Orwell warned and wrote about in his book: "1984." ... Even though Orwell warned of such thought control and mass persuasion, referring to it as "brainwashing" and "protective stupidity," he believed that the State's sophisticated and subliminal control over the masses could never ultimately penetrate the heart. In other words, Orwell believed the inner workings of the soul would somehow remain mysterious and impregnable. The heart of humanity could never be completely mastered. There would always be some form of political dissidence and resistance to totalitarian regimes.

But Orwell never foresaw a corporative and market-oriented society, especially one that has been deeply internalized, and a society and culture in which addictive consumerism and mindless entertainment replaces thinking and ethics and universal principles of goodness and the importance of human life. He could not have realized that through global capitalism and neo-liberal policies, a new mentality and humanity could be fashioned and formed, that selfish unconscious desires could perpetually override more global conscientious morals and behavior, and that ideals like freedom, mercy, love, justice, and equality, and events and actions like preemptive invasions, wars, torture, murder, and rape, could be packaged and then advertised and sold. For Orwell, this preemptive invasion of the mind and the continued occupation of the heart and the very essence of "being" was foreign, nearly impossible. But in America, the pacification of civic engagement and thinking and the moral concepts of right and wrong has become sloppy and impoverished and in many cases, nonexistent.

In "Politics and the English Language," Orwell prophetically wrote: "This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases ... can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits." But in a consumerist and market-oriented for-profit culture and society, like that of America, selfish and materialistic and dystopian habits are difficult to overcome. ... Within this Americanized and inhuman environment, it is no wonder demonstrations are considered disturbances and dissenting voices and ideas are treason. Blatant lies are merely unfortunate mistakes, torture is useful and needful, revenge and militarism are glorified, and political indifference and aloofness are virtuous.

... In a disturbing twist of fate, Orwell's nightmare is Britain and America. Not only have Americans and Brits become their own thought police, but they have become their own demonstration and speech and petition police. By allowing their thoughts and ethics to be purged by the state and corporate powers, they have built their own "cages," their own Guantanamo Prisons, their own secret black sites.

Some Iraqis are aware of an American and British-like Orwellian state being established in their nation and around the world. Recent attacks against U.S. military bases and personnel were in response to America's continued support for a totalitarian regime in Bahrain and its crimes against humanity. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has courageously denounced the ban on public rallies, calling it "undemocratic" and based on fear. Sadr further added that the Iraqi government claims democracy but is undemocratic by allowing massive anti-U.S. protests to only be held at three stadiums. Nor have other Iraqis submitted to the extreme spectacles of preemptive wars and high-tech atrocities. They have not drunk the bitter waters of global capitalism, nor consumed and internalized its images and false realities. Dissent is not only imaginable but still a possibility. They have rejected "herd intoxication" and well honed psychological appeals to the basic instincts of humanity. And Orwell would have probably agreed with El-Baradei's words and ideas when he said, "Do we, as a community of nations, have the wisdom and courage to take the corrective measures needed, to ensure that such a tragedy will never happened again?"

If Not Wind Then What?

There was once a time when "No" was a respected and essential side of an argument. Classical debates are still based on one side supporting a proposition and the other side not. Support of the proposition requires mustering proofs to show its validity. Opposition requires showing it to be invalid, unsupported by solid proof. "Questioning", after all, is one definition of "proving", i.e., testing. It is the essence of intellectual inquiry.

Now, in the age of marketing, such proof of a proposition is no longer expected, much less required. The proposition is that you have a solution to some problem, but only the existence of the problem can be questioned (though such questioning is then scoffed at: "head in the sand!"). Rather than burdening yourself with having to prove that your product is indeed a solution, you turn the burden on to the antagonist: not to question your proposition, but to provide an alternative proposition.

This is no longer logic, much less science. It parallels religious faith. An atheist can not argue with a believer, because the believer needs an alternative: not "no god" but rather a different god.

And so we come to large-scale wind energy on the grid.

We have a fossil fuel crisis, due to either dwindling supplies or the ill effects of burning it. We also have large-scale wind turbines, which generate electricity without burning fossil fuels. Ergo, by illogical leap, the latter must be a solution to the former.

And anyone who notices that the evidence supporting the proposition is not only weak but even absent, is denounced as a naysayer, a stooge for coal, a climate change denier. Rather than prove the proposition, the marketer demands the questioner to come up with something better: If not wind, then what?

But the question is: If wind, what? It is not enough to simply assert that wind-generated electricity entering the grid reduces the use of and emissions from fossil fuels. The proposition requires numbers, data, real-world experience to show how much fossil fuel is burned per unit of electricity consumed before versus after the addition of wind power on the grid.

Since I first sought to learn more about large-scale wind energy 8 years ago and noticed the striking absence of such numbers, thus calling into question the entire enterprise, the situation has not changed. Arguments are churned out to prove the soundness of the theory, but actual data regarding fossil fuel use remain missing. The theory is not to be tested, i.e., proven.

(The theory leaps from the essentially true statement that "one kilowatt-hour of wind-generated electricity displaces one kilowatt-hour of electricity from other sources" to impute that that "one kilowatt-hour of wind-generated electricity displaces the fossil fuel otherwise required to generate one kilowatt-hour of electricity". This ignores fossil fuel burning while not generating electricity — e.g., in spinning reserve — and by less efficient operation. That is why actual numbers are needed to test the imputation.)

The heretical fact appears to be that not erecting giant wind turbines does as much good as erecting fields and fields of them. In other words, the endless erections on every hill and dale do not do much, if any, good at all.

So the question is indeed, If not wind then what? But it is for wind's proponents to answer, not those who have tested their claims and found them to be invalid.

See also:  'Saying "yes" to wind — or the new hat'

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Green power LOVES chemicals

An ad for BASF notes the chemical dependency of wind turbines, in addition to each turbine's hundreds of gallons of lubricating oil and coolants and rare earth metal–based magnets (click the image to see the full-page ad):

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

Saying "yes" to wind — or a new hat

Richard Sullivan, Massachusetts' Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, wrote in the Cape Cod Times, April 19, 2011:

Saying "yes" to wind energy is a vote against polluted air, energy insecurity, and climate change — and an affirmation of our commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainable economic growth.

In the same vein, I could say:

Saying "yes" to a new hat is a vote against cancer, bullying, and social injustice — and an affirmation of our commitment to gardening and thrift.

And I would be expected to justify this remarkable claim. I might be able to argue that psychologically a new hat symbolizes those votes and affirmations, but if the hat cost a couple million dollars and caused birds and bats to fall out of the air and my neighbors to fall sick and required everyone else to buy other hats to counter the effects of my hat, then I would be expected to show real evidence supporting my claim.

The same is true with industrial wind power, which does indeed exist in the real world of nature, the power grid, and people. If you claim that wind energy reduces polluted air, energy insecurity, and climate change, then you must provide the evidence not only of such benefits, but also that the degree of its achievement of such benefits is not outweighed by its adverse impacts.

Remarkably, with decades of data, the people saying "yes" to wind energy have yet to provide such evidence.

Their vote is non sequitur. Therefore, its defense is necessarily ad populum, its reply to critics necessarily ad hominem.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

The Nature Conservancy calls for killing 1 million birds, innumerable bats

A paper in PloS One by Nature Conservancy researchers describes how almost half of the more than 12,000,000 acres (19,305 square miles; 50,000 square kilometers) estimated by the Department of Energy to be required for 241 gigawatts of wind power as part of its plan of 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030 can be erected on "disturbed" land. Disturbed land includes croplands, hay and pasture lands, surface mines, and urban development.

Unfortunately, although the paper provides estimates of the total acreage of each of these, it does not provide how much wind development on each that they recommend, only the total. Since strip mining and mountaintop removal do not to a large extent exist in the high-wind states that the paper recommends focusing on, and urban/suburban areas are off-limits to giant wind turbines owing to health and safety concerns, The Nature Conservancy is apparently recommending that sprawling wind turbine facilities be primarily erected in the plains states on crop and pasture land. Which is already where development is focused.

That still leaves more than half, almost 7,000,000 acres (10,425 square miles; 27,000 square kilometers) to be developed on undisturbed land, i.e., in wild areas. How The Nature Conservancy can dare to call this scenario a "win-win for wind and wildlife" beggars belief.

These estimates are based on capacity factor assumptions ranging from 38% to 53%, the latter figure being exactly twice the actual average figure for wind turbines in the U.S. So the actual land area (before the adjustments described below) would be a total of 20,400,000 acres (31,875 square miles; 82,556 square kilometers): more than 8,500,000 acres (13,281 square miles; 34,398 square kilometers) on farms and ranches and almost 11,900,000 acres (18,594 square miles; 48,158 square kilometers) in wilderness.

Their discussion of the study's limitations acknowledges the need for new (high-voltage) transmission lines (but they ignore the impact of heavy-duty roads, as well as the need for new thermal generation to balance and back up the wind energy) and their ignoring of the aerial impact on birds, bats, and insects: "In particular, birds require migratory stopover sites, and these may occur along rivers, wetlands, or playa lakes that are embedded within heavily disturbed agricultural landscapes. Second, even terrestrial species may require migratory corridors through disturbed areas to access undisturbed habitat."

The authors note that "mitigation measures, such as feathering blades (which stops their rotation) or reducing operations during lower winds speeds when bat mortality is known to be high ... could reduce bat mortality independent of where wind energy is sited; micrositing of turbines can reduce bird mortality". These measures, of course, would require even more wind turbines to be erected to make up for the loss.

So ultimately they must resort to the craven comparison to other causes of bird deaths by human activity, as if adding 1,000,000 more (ignoring wind power's unique and devastating toll on bats and the larger proportion of raptor deaths) is thus absolved. In addition, they appeal to the imperative of combating climate change, that we have to kill more birds and bats to save them, without examining the premise that wind energy contributes to that battle to any meaningful degree.

This is only a "win-win" for developers and The Nature Conservancy's donations from them.

See also:
"Environmentalism Against the Gods"
"How Green Became the Color of Money"

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Environmentalism against the gods

Friends of the Earth Australia states (reasonably) that

There are four basic questions we need to ask to evaluate any 'solution' proposed to address climate change:

• Does it result in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the timeframe required?
• Is it equitable on a global level? (We should all be concerned about schemes that say it's okay for people in the industrialised world to keep consuming as usual.)
• Does it avoid social or environmental risks for this or future generations?

A solution is viable only if we can answer 'yes' to all these questions.

Yet, about 6 minutes into a news report on the Australian Senate inquiry into health effects of wind farms, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth joins his voice with that of the industrialists to dismiss health concerns in the name of jobs, investment, and industry.

Similarly many "environmentalists" in the U.S. join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in decrying regulations that slow the march of wind development for such concerns as wildlife, the environment, and human health, again primarily citing investment and jobs.

It has been a while since major environmental groups actually put the interests of the environment ahead of those of industry, so this should not be a surprise. It stands instead as yet more proof of their hypocrisy.

[[[[ ]]]]
Apparently, this place that has never had much use to the larger world beyond that of hosting a new prison or a solid-waste dump turns out to be an ideal location for an industrial "wind farm," ideal mostly because the people are too few and too poor to offer much in the way of resistance. So far only one of the towns affected has "volunteered" — in much the same way and for most of the same reasons as our children volunteer for service in Iraq — to be the site of what might be described as a vast environmentalist grotto of 400-foot-high spinning "crosses" before which the state's green progressives will be able to genuflect and receive absolution before zooming back to their prodigiously wired lives.

—Garret Keizer, Harper's Magazine, June 2007

What I Has Learned

The purpose of a government is to collect taxes from a group of people called a "nation" to fund wars for the benefit of corporations that do not themselves pay taxes because they instead support the careers of legislators. Such wars are not only against foreign "nations", but just as often against the very people (one's own "nation") funding them. As with the fasces, the populus is bound as one by its government to be wielded as a club by the corporations.

human rights, animal rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Reflections of conspiracy theory

Sam Smith writes at Undernews:

Why are we allowed to have theories on every topic from the creation of the universe to who is going to win the World Series with the sole exception of wondering who in power is screwing us and how?

The very use of the term 'conspiracy theorist' is an anti-intellectual attempt to silence argument for which the labeler has no factual answer. Ironically, it is often the very accuser who is more inclined to believe in conspiracies, albeit benign ones, because it implies a small number of people deciding the course of history, which is how these critics were taught in college that society properly functions.

Thus anyone who attacks someone else as a conspiracy theorist should be ignored on grounds of simple incompetence with the possible additional liability of disingenuousness. To do the job right, one must follow the evidence and be clear when it stops. The rest is theory or hypothesis, acceptable and worthy of debate, but in a lesser category than fact.

The massive effort to stop people from wondering about such matters is itself reasonable cause for suspicion since the effort relies so heavily on ridicule and so little on fact. Not probably the result of a conspiracy, mind you. More likely, one might theorize, absent further evidence, just plain stupidity.

Monbiot: Radiation no danger

George Monbiot of The Guardian has been convinced by the Fukushima disaster that nuclear power is safe. His opinion is reinforced by the Chernobyl disaster — because few people have actually died from them, and those that did were (or will be) just the workers or other people who shouldn't have been around or shouldn't have drunk contaminated milk.

You see, radiation is safe — as long as you don't go anywhere near it or let it into your body!

A hundred thousand people around the Fukushima plant have probably lost their homes forever, more proof of how safe nuclear radiation is, as long as you drop everything and flee and never come back.

Monbiot's first announcement of this revelation was titled "Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power", paraphrasing the subtitle of Stanley Kubrick's sendup of the arms race, "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb". Kubrick was being satirical, embracing Armageddon for comedic effect. The ironic edge of the title was apparently lost on Monbiot, who embraces nuclear disaster not as a warning, but as proof of its benefit to humanity and the earth.

Monbiot does argue that there are no safe alternatives, but that does not require pretending that nuclear is safe. Embrace its destructive power, George! Love the danger. Waa-Hooo!

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

White River Valley Players' Vermont Teen Theater

presents

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Sat. 4/2 at 7 pm
Sun. 4/3 at 2 pm
Fri. 4/8 at 7 pm
Sat. 4/9 at 7 pm
Sun. 4/10 at 2 pm

Rochester (Vt.) High School Auditorium

Tickets $7 (not appropriate for young children due to some language)

Scary stuff

From artist Judy Taylor:

A Cobbler trains his young Apprentice. In the background are scenes from that era.

Child labor was common in Maine. They frequently performed dangerous tasks for long hours.

Young women were often sent to the mills by their families, who could not, or would not, support them.

For the first time, workers were allowed to vote anonymously in 1891.

In 1884, Maine celebrated its first "Labor's Day", a day for the workers to celebrate.

A member of the IWW or "Wobblies" tries to organize the Maine woodsmen.

Scenes from an unsuccessful strike attempt to create better conditions for women workers.

Frances Perkins, FDR's Labor Secretary and untiring labor activist, a Maine Labor icon.

Maine's version of WWII women workers participated as ship-builders.

The International Paper strike of 1986 in Jay, Maine, one that still divides the town.

A figure from the past offers a hammer to workers of the present, who are unsure of its value in a changing world.

human rights

Gasland and wind energy

With panning shots of the sprawling arrays of giant wind turbines in Texas, Josh Fox thought he was silently offering an alternative vision at the end of his eye-opening documentary Gasland.

He obviously hadn't seen Laura Israel's documentary Windfall yet. Anyone who knows how wind developers operate and have suffered the consequences saw the same story played out by gas developers in Fox's film.

To anyone aware of the facts about wind energy development, those eerie shots of the Texas turbines were clearly foreboding rather than promising. They seemed to promise part 2 of the exploration of energy's unpublicized dark side, not the end of the story.

Especially considering that more wind means more natural gas, which is required to balance the erratic production of wind turbines.

Part 1: Gasland.  Part 2: Windfall.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Greens for Nuclear: Useful Idiots

Alexander Cockburn writes at Counterpunch:

On the recruitment of Greens to the cause of the nuclear industry, Martin Kokus sent us the following very interesting letter:

“Instead of saying that global warming rescued the nuclear lobby, I would say the nuclear complex invented global warming. I was working on man-made climate change during the 70's and I think that even the biggest conspiracy theorist is underestimating the role that the nuclear complex played in shaping the debate on AGW. When I say nuclear complex, I am not just referring to the power lobby, but also the weapons manufacturers, the military, the nuclear labs, the academics who are funded by nuclear labs, and those who think that there is some huge geopolitical advantage for the west to go nuclear.

“The nukes were pushing AGW from my earliest political memory. In 1973-74, the Hoover Institute funded a tour by Edward Teller where he described co2 as the real environmental problem and nuclear power was its only solution. (I am sure that you are aware that the Hoover Institute is now espousing AGW as a liberal conspiracy.) During the same time period Bernard Cohen, head of U of Pitt's Nuke Labs, self-appointed expert on safety, and proponent of nuclear power was funded by Americans for Energy Independence (AEI) to do the same thing. One of the organizers of AEI was longtime Cohen associate Zalman Shapiro who was the subject of a series of Counterpunch essays by Grant Smith in regards to the Israeli nuke program. These speakers were not sponsored by climatology departments but by nuclear engineering departments.

“I was in the first US seminar on man-made climate change at UVA. We were worried about particulates, land use, deforestation, and most of all the introduction of agribusiness into the third world. My profs dismissed AGW in about 15 minutes. But even then, one of our contract monitors from Oak Ridge AEC was pushing me to get interested in the greenhouse effect. I also remember Outside magazine (which I always considered right wing and phony environmentalist [indeed, its interest is clearly in conquering nature —Ed.]) doing a series that considered AGW to be the most serious environmental threat. I always found this interesting because there were absolutely no data behind it.

“The real money came into AGW after Thatcher got elected. I am sure that you are familiar with the Centre for Policy Studies', a conservative British think tank, decision to hype AGW. Well, the Reagan administration more than matched that money. We funded half the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia’s climate group. The UEA was the scene of the recent Climategate scandal. The Hadley Centre and the UEA were the incubators for the IPCC. The money was monitored by what used to be the AEC lab at Oakridge which is now under DOE. The older climatologists were ignored in this funding buildup. In fact, existing funding for non co2 climate change research disappeared.”

Green Development?

To the Editor, New York Times:

By painting as "Nimby" all who question development plans, Elisabeth Rosenthal does a disservice to community participation in decision-making ["Green Development? Not in My (Liberal) Backyard", Week in Review, Mar. 13]. Such pejorative name-calling serves only to quash serious and open discussion.

Every development project requires a cost-benefit analysis, but the "greater good" is often evoked as a means of shutting out local concerns. The people who will be directly affected are best placed to ensure that the costs -- and the claimed benefits -- are properly assessed. It should not be a surprise that their conclusions are frequently different from those of developers and politicians.

This is certainly the case with wind power, which, when examined with the cold eye of someone facing major industrial development of a rural or even wild area, seems to be primarily a tax avoidance scheme for energy companies and investors. After decades of deployment, its other benefits (e.g., less carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning) have proven to be elusive at best. And its impacts -- on the environment, wildlife, and human neighbors -- far exceed the developers' reassurances.

Rosenthal also describes overseas acquiescence, but the European Platform Against Windfarms includes at last count 473 organizations from 21 countries, including 6 from Denmark and 68 from Germany. In the U.K. (with 78 groups signed on to the EPAW), industrialists regularly complain that a third of proposed wind energy facilities are blocked because of locals having a say on the future of their landscapes and their lives.

Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Joke of the day

A CEO, a union worker, and a Tea Partier are at a table with 12 cookies. The CEO takes 11 and says to the Tea Partier: "Keep an eye on that union guy, he wants your cookie."

Wind power kept going in Japan by other sources surviving earthquake

The blogosphere is aquiver with a press release from the Japanese Wind Power Association noting that all of the country's wind energy facilities survived the recent earthquake. Since only one facility is in or even anywhere near the hardest hit region, and they are designed to withstand earthquakes (as were the Fukushima nuclear plants -- it was the tsunami that took them out), that is hardly surprising.

In all the parroting of this self-serving and shamelessly opportunistic industry press release, not one blogger attempts to establish context. How did Japan's 100,000 MW or so of coal, oil, gas, hydro, and most nuclear plants fare? Compared with the <300 MW (<100 MW actual average output) of wind, those other sources obviously are what is keeping Japan going. But what should be most informative is the fact that 36% of the wind plant was inoperable because the rest of the grid was down. In fact, wind turbines require power from the grid to operate, though in this case it was probably transmissi­on that was down. So the remaining 64% were still operating only because the other sources on the grid were still operating.

wind power, wind energy

The "Green" Nuclear Cabal

Jeffrey St. Clair writes about how global warming and the nuclear lobby (click the title of this post for the entire piece, an excerpt from his book "Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature":

Even when compared to coal, nuclear power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."

environment, environmentalism

Brotherhood of Man

Motorhead reminds you to get back in line:


And from the song "Brotherhood of Man":

We are worse than animals, we hunger for the kill.
We put our faith in maniacs, the triumph of the will,
We kill for money, wealth and lust, for this we should be damned.
We are disease upon the world, brotherhood of man.

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Green Scare: The New War on Environmentalism

An important new book needs your support:

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, ecoanarchism

No Face, but Plants Like Life Too

Carol Kaesuk Yoon has written a most amoral attempt to morally justify eating animals. It's at the New York Times. Basically, she argues that that killing plants is just as bad as killing animals.

But she applies her absurdist logic only as far as rationalizing her own diet. If she can't draw a line between plants and animals, how can she draw a line between humans and other animals? In other words, she can not argue against cannibalism.

In pretending a transcendence of speciesism to the extent even of plants, she actually entrenches her bigotry: Only her appetite matters. Rather than being equally alive and demanding of respect, everything is equally only food to her, equally subject to disrespect.

animal rights, vegetarianism

Make Wall Street Pay

This year Bank of America is receiving the "income tax refund from hell" — $666 million for 2010, according to its annual report filed in late February 2011. This is following a $3.5 billion refund reported in 2009. Bank of America's federal income tax benefit this year is roughly two times the Obama administration's proposed cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program ($299 million).

Six banks — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley together paid income tax at an approximate rate of 11% of their pre-tax US earnings in 2009 and 2010. Had they paid at 35%, what they are legally mandated to pay, the federal government would have received an additional $13 billion in tax revenue. This would cover more than two years of salaries for the 132,000 teacher jobs lost since the economic crisis began in 2008.

Wells Fargo reportedly received a $4 billion federal income tax refund on $18 billion in pre-tax income in 2009, and paid 7.5% of its pre-tax income of $19 billion in 2010 in federal taxes. Its net federal income tax benefit for 2009 and 2010 combined, $2.5 billion, is equal to the Obama administration's proposed cuts of 50% to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Banks use a variety of mechanisms to avoid corporate income taxes, including offshore tax shelters. 50% of the six banks' 1871 foreign subsidiaries are incorporated in jurisdictions that have been identified as offshore tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands.

Bank of America operates 371 tax-sheltered subsidiaries, more than any other big bank studied, and 204 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands alone, according to its latest regulatory filings. 75% of Goldman Sachs's foreign subsidiaries are incorporated in offshore tax havens.

The banks' private banking arms also protect the wealth of rich clients from taxation through offshore investment strategies. Bank of America's wealth management arm encourages clients to register their yachts in foreign jurisdictions for tax reasons.

Closing special tax loopholes on the financial sector and implementing sensible revenue-raising initiatives such as the Financial Speculation Tax could generate over $150 billion in federal tax revenue each year.

Download the report: "Big Bank Tax Drain".

Right Sights Rites Sigh

To the Editor:

Dick Tracy has provided an amusing political lesson with his March 10 "Right Sights" (Vermont Standard). The entire piece can stand just as well (or rather, as weakly) if all instances of "conservative" and "progressive" are simply switched. Every criticism he makes of progressives applies equally, and often more aptly, to conservatives. This may be because he limits his definitions to big government versus big business, which are effectively one and the same.

Another problem is that no thinking person actually lives according to Tracy's broad abstractions and crude absolutes. Each of us is an ever-evolving stew of democrat and reactionary, liberal and puritan, anarchist and authoritarian - even, I venture to suggest, Dick Tracy, if he dare admit it.

Until then, the ritual recital of caricatures and fantasy scenarios, not only of others but even more revealing of himself, that characterize Tracy's column remains meaningless, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[Related to this, see "Dooleysprudence" by James Joyce (1916).]

[Also: "Is it time for Obama to nationalize and peopleize America's industrial production and its profits?" ('In the early twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt agreed with progressives and reformers that the greatest threat to the nation's economy and its security was excessive corporate centralization of power and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the very rich and powerful. ... Roosevelt recognized the growing possibilities of a Workers Revolution and proclaimed: "We should enter upon a course of supervision, control, and regulation of those great corporations — a regulation which we should not fear, if necessary, to bring to the point of control of monopoly practices and prices." One of the lines he drew in the sand against massive corporate power and its abuses was to be the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike and the right for workers to strike and collectively bargain.')]

Vermont

Loving Liberty

Tom Hodgkinson writes in his book The Idle Parent (Click here to visit The Idler web site):

As John Locke wisely observed, children are lovers of liberty. They resist confinement. They appear to have naturally imperious, even insolent natures. Clearly the purpose of 'civilizing' through parental nagging and school-based education systems is to squash the imperiousness and introduce docility. To make slaves out of gods. That the kids resist the process tooth and nail should be celebrated. Might their resistance not demonstrate that there is something at fault with the enclosing system rather than the things enclosed? We should learn from these liberty-lovers to resist enclosure ourselves, rather than attempting to drag the kids down to our slavish level. Forget ideas of 'good' and 'bad' behaviour. Keep instead the poles of 'free' and 'enslaved' in your mind. Reduce authority and enlarge freedom. Revere and respect the little creatures in your house. As Bertrand Russell wrote in 'Freedom Versus Authority in Education': 'Reverence for human personality is the beginning of wisdom, in every social question, but above all in education.'

And George Meredith writes in his novel The Ordeal of Richard Feverel:

It is difficult for those who think very earnestly for their children to know when their children are thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command ...

Republican or Democrat?

The difference between today's Democratic and Republican parties is that whereas the latter simply take us backward step by step, the former, for every step forward, take us 2 steps backward. The result is the same.

Embarrassments of Empire

David Bromwich writes at Tomgram (click the title of this post):

The need to give assurance seems to be an inseparable trait of Obama’s character. He deals with big decisions by first moving to cement a secure alliance with the powers-that-be, no matter how discredited they are, no matter how resounding his previous contempt for them may have been. Yet this is a reflex that often prematurely cedes control to the powerful over whom he might otherwise be in a position to exert leverage. That fight, however, is not for him.

To say it another way, Obama visibly hates crisis. He is so averse to the very idea of instability that he seems unable to use a crisis to his advantage. Seldom, to judge by the evidence thus far, is he the first, second, or third person in the room to recognize that a state of crisis exists. The hesitation that looked like apathy and the hyper-managerial tone of his response to the BP oil spill offered a vivid illustration of this trait. Egypt brought out the same pattern.

Thomas Friedman is off today

From the New York Times:

Thomas L. Friedman is off today.
It's a start, but at some point they will have to admit that Thomas Friedman is always off.

Energy Cycling

Ben Falk writes in Vermont Commons (click the title of this post for the entire piece):

Why are trees – especially nut trees – at the basis of these regenerative land use systems and highly adapted human cultures? In the simplest terms, it has to do with inputs and outputs. A nut tree is simply more effective and efficient at converting sunlight and precipitation into value, over the long term, than any other technology humans have yet designed.

This becomes clear when comparing biological systems in general with non-living technologies. Consider a photovoltaic panel or wind turbine. Each requires large and damaging inputs to generate single outputs. What are the inputs for a photovoltaic panel? Bauxite from which to smelt the aluminum frame, silicon and numerous other minerals (many only found in difficult-to-access and a dwindling number of places on the planet), and myriad other mined and smelted metals and minerals. These all must be mined, transported, refined, transported again, then fabricated, then shipped again. All for one output: electricity.

What are the inputs required for a nut tree? An exchange between breeder and planter, transporting of the seed or seedling, some woodchip mulch, rain, and sunshine. And time. What are its yields? Oxygen, soil, wildlife food and housing, moisture retention, carbon sequestration, air filtration, human food, stock feed, building materials, shade, windbreak, and beauty, to name a few.

The former resource path – the abiotic – provides us with a practical service at great cost. The latter, biological (or “soft”) path creates an enduring and generative legacy of positive value. And whereas a solar panel or wind turbine or green building offers diminishing yields over time, a nut tree’s output actually increases, for at least the first century or two of its lifetime.

Such is the power – and imperative – of biological systems: they are the only means we have of sidestepping entropy, at least for significant periods of time, on this planet. That’s what tips the balance; it all comes down to capture, storage, and transfer. The best system is the one that can harvest the most sunlight and moisture, then store that value for the longest period of time while converting some of it into products and services that other living things, like humans, can use. And biological systems do this very well, while non-living mechanical systems cannot.

tags:  environment, environmentalism, Vermont