Climate Change, Pollution, Clean Energy, and the Environment

[LFC]

The fact that nobody is going to jail for these oil spills is criminal. This is yet another reason we have to get away from fossil fuels. The entire industry of extraction, shipment, pipelining, refinement, and eventual product delivery is brimming with sleazy actors who aren't interested in anything that isn't profit. And once they go belly up, after the primaries cash in for years, they leave the cleanup bills to the taxpayers.

It often seems like polluters don’t get nearly enough attention and punishment from the government—but authorities cracked down on one oil and gas producer that had been shirking its cleanup duties this week in the unusual move of raiding its offices.

Agents from the U.S. Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency searched the offices of QuarterNorth Energy LLC in Lafayette, Louisiana this week, Bloomberg reported Thursday, looking for information on an oil spill at one of the company’s wells QuarterNorth Energy is a new company, but it was formed out of the ruins of an older one: Fieldwood Energy LLC, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020.

According to an investigation filed by the DOI, in January of 2021, there was a pressure incident at a gas well owned by Fieldwood off the coast of southern Louisiana, which was not reported to authorities until August 2021 and was still not fixed a year later, causing a larger spill in January of 2022. “Fieldwood’s lack of mitigation, communication, and urgency to address the issues associated with [the well] played a major role in the events leading up to the incident,” the DOI noted in its report.

Shortly after filing for bankruptcy FieldWood signed a two-year promise in February of last year with federal prosecutors to reach a compromise: in exchange for cooperating with authorities and paying a $2 million fine, the government agreed to not investigate the company for its role in two oil spills in the Gulf in 2015 and 2018. The incident at the well off the coast of southern Louisiana may be in violation of that agreement, sources told Bloomberg, and that may have prompted the raid this week.

Agreed to NOT investigate two other oil spills? This is nauseating.

And this shows us why any company performing any extraction of resources on any federal land should be forced to place a bond before ever being allowed to so much as clear some weeds. Bankrupt? We don't care. The bond will cover all the cleanup and any associated government costs.

Fieldwood’s company’s bankruptcy reorganization plan was approved last year, and last September, Grist detailed how the bankruptcy plan is causing a complex and quiet legal battle between the company over who is going to end up holding the check for their old assets. Part of the company’s plan entailed splitting its more profitable assets between its successor company while transferring older wells to two other corporations—as well as straight-up abandoning some 1,170 wells, 280 pipelines, and 270 drilling platforms, effectively attempting to shirk any sort of responsibility for their cleanup. While federal and local regulations require companies to clean up old drilling sites, even through bankruptcy, this cleanup can often fall to the bottom of the list in financial importance during a bankruptcy hearing; investors scrambling for a remaining piece of the pie will often walk away with all the money that’s left, leaving nothing for environmental damages.

The QuarterNorth/Fieldwood disaster is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the dangers posed by oil companies going bankrupt and not doing due diligence on cleaning up their messes. Since 2015, more than 260 oil companies in the U.S. have filed for bankruptcy; many of them are going through processes like the one described above, as they try and figure out ways to wiggle out of paying for their cleanup obligations.

[LFC]

It's the poorer countries who will bear most of the cost.

Pakistan’s 2022 monsoon season has been devastating, with 1,545 people dead, including 552 children, according to the latest update from the country’s National Disaster Management Authority. Tens of millions more have been displaced by the resulting floods, which at one point covered more than a third of the country.

It’s a disaster of immense scale. And though Pakistan has faced destructive, widespread rains and floods before, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called the ongoing inundation “the worst in the history of Pakistan.”

Now, an international group of 25 scientists say we can also officially call the monsoons and floods a catastrophe of climate change. The determination comes in a report from World Weather Attribution, a globally collaborative climate science project.

In their analysis of this year’s monsoon season, the researchers found its severity was likely heavily exacerbated by human-caused climate change. Specifically, warming global temperatures intensified the rains by about 50% and worsened the situation in the country’s southern provinces by an estimated 75%.

The scientists further determined that rainfall of this scale can now be expected about once in every 100 years in Pakistan, under our current level of climate change (i.e. 1.2 degrees C of warming). With just 0.8 C of additional heat, “rainfall will significantly increase further,” the authors noted.

“We have very large uncertainties,” said Sjoukje Philip, a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and co-author of the attribution study, in an interview with Inside Climate News. “But based on observations and models together, and combining that with our theoretical knowledge, we now find that it’s likely that climate change played a role.”

[LFC]

The Earth's climate is incredibly complex. It has taken decades to understand and model the impacts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. We shouldn't implement policies that reduce greenhouse gases because we can't be sure if they're necessary. But those same asshats will grab onto this and say, "See! We can do this!" because, you know, trying to change the amount of light reaching the poles will definitely work with zero unintended side effects. Yep, the stages of denialism that were laid out decades ago are unfolding as predicted.

The poles are warming several times faster than the global average, causing record smashing heatwaves that were reported earlier this year in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Melting ice and collapsing glaciers at high latitudes would accelerate sea level rise around the planet. Fortunately, refreezing the poles by reducing incoming sunlight would be both feasible and remarkably cheap, according to new research published today in Environmental Research Communications.

Scientists laid out a possible future program whereby high-flying jets would spray microscopic aerosol particles into the atmosphere at latitudes of 60 degrees north and south—roughly Anchorage and the southern tip of Patagonia. If injected at a height of 43,000 feet (above airliner cruising altitudes), these aerosols would slowly drift poleward, slightly shading the surface beneath. "There is widespread and sensible trepidation about deploying aerosols to cool the planet," notes lead author Wake Smith, "but if the risk/benefit equation were to pay off anywhere, it would be at the poles."

Particle injections would be performed seasonally in the long days of the local spring and early summer. The same fleet of jets could service both hemispheres, ferrying to the opposite pole with the change of seasons.

This isn't a dig at the authors. They appear to have plenty of caveats but I totally expect the denialist community to run with this kind of possibility. Anything to create yet more delay.

[LFC]

Let's add clean water to the list. The Republican governor of Mississippi shows us what Republican governance is like. It's all "F*** YOU!", all the time. You're on your own.

Hurrying to drop off her rent check near her home in Jackson, Mississippi, Jasmine Roberson took a deep breath and did the math: She was seven days late, which took an extra $70 out of her already empty bank account. She has a looming $500 car payment, three boys to feed, a gas tank to fill, utilities. And she has to cover all of this and more with a week less of wages in her pocket, all because a lack of drinking water forced her to make a choice: caring for her children after schools and daycares closed, or going to work.

“I really had no choice,” Roberson, a 29-year-old single mother, said. “It was either my kids having nowhere to go or going to my job, and I chose my kids. It was a stressful moment that put me behind and now I am trying to hold on.”

To make matters worse, she can no longer get help paying for rent. Last month, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced that he was ending the state’s participation in a federal pandemic rental assistance program—which he called a “cruel” “socialist experiment”—and sending back about $130 million in aid funds. About two weeks later, Jackson’s 150,000 residents, 83 percent of whom are Black, were hit with another water crisis that made daily life a lot more difficult and expensive to get through.

For the past six weeks, most of the capital city has been without safe, reliable drinking water after floods knocked out Jackson’s already dilapidated water treatment plant. Thousands of residents in the southwest had absolutely zero liquid in their pipes for more than a week, and nearly everyone is still under a boil-water advisory. Even though the system is back up and running, and federal and state officials have been working on the decaying infrastructure, thick, smelly, brown water is still spurting out of people’s faucets and bubbling up in their lawns. Lead warnings are posted on their bills, which they still have to pay, on top of added costs from not being able to bathe, cook, or operate their businesses.

Without water, public schools and daycares had to close, so Roberson, who is the sole provider of her family, and other parents had to shell out money for food, hotels, and babysitters, or choose to miss work because they couldn’t afford child care. They had to buy bottled water, pay for the extra gas it took to drive around to stores looking for it. Those expenses make or break their ability to pay their rent.

This is just one piece of long-term Republican cruelty. (On a side note it was reported on TRS before that this state is set up to ensure white Republican hegemony.) This is what Republicans want to bring to the rest of us.

Mississippi has the highest poverty and child poverty rates in the U.S. And like many of Jackson’s residents , Roberson barely scrapes by every month, even though she is working 40 hours a week. When her city experienced its second massive water crisis in about a year, the ripple effects have sent her and many others into a financial hole that feels impossible to escape from.

Residents and social justice experts say state leaders have made it nearly impossible to find support. Mississippi’s governor and legislature have repeatedly dismissed the city’s requests for money to upgrade its water systems. Reeves has cut state programs to help needy residents, the majority of whom are people of color. That’s a big problem for a state ranked as one of the worst in the country for preparing its communities for the climate change fallout.

“We have to talk about the thousand paper cuts that got us here,” Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, which helps families in affordable housing, told the Daily Beast. “It’s all interconnected. When you are disinvesting in people you are simultaneously disinvesting in infrastructure and the systems and structures needed to stay and support cities.”

Yep, it's good ole fashioned Southern corruption. They don't just refuse to help these people, they actively steal from them. This is why block grants are so risky. There are just too many corrupt state governments.

The state is also in the thick of a massive, historic welfare scandal, in which top officials used $77 million in Temporary Assistance For Needy Families Funds (TANF) to fund projects like sports stadiums and pay big-time athletes like NFL icon Brett Favre. Meanwhile, only 1,681 families received these funds last year, even though about 20 percent of the state lives below the poverty line. Mississippi Today reported that the state denies 90 percent of those who apply, and data from Mississippi’s Department of Human Services show that the number of recipients has been steadily declining since 2018.

[LFC]

The new normal?

he summer of 2022 started with a historic flood in Montana, brought on by heavy rain and melting snow, that tore up roads and caused large areas of Yellowstone National Park to be evacuated.

It ended with a record-breaking heat wave in California and much of the West that pushed the power grid to the breaking point, causing blackouts, followed by a tropical storm that set rainfall records in southern California. A typhoon flooded coastal Alaska, and a hurricane hit Puerto Rico with more than 30 inches of rain.

In between, wildfires raged through California, Arizona and New Mexico on the background of a megadrought in Southwestern U.S. that has been more severe than anything the region has experienced in at least 1,200 years. Near Albuquerque, New Mexico, a five-mile stretch of the Rio Grande ran dry for the first time in 40 years. Persistent heat waves lingered over many parts of the country, setting temperature records.

At the same time, during a period of five weeks between July and August, five 1,000-year rainfall events occurred in St. Louis, eastern Kentucky, southern Illinois, California’s Death Valley and in Dallas, causing devastating and sometimes deadly flash floods. Extreme rainfall also led to severe flooding in Mississippi, Virginia and West Virginia.

In Pakistan, record monsoon rains inundated more than one-third of the country, killing over 1,500 people. In India and China, prolonged heat waves and droughts dried up rivers, disrupted power grids and threatened food security for billions of people.

In Europe, heat waves set record temperatures in Britain and other places, leading to severe droughts and wildfires in many parts of the continent. In South Africa, torrential rains brought flooding and mudslides that killed more than 400 people. The summer may have come to an end on the calendar, but climate disasters will surely continue.

This isn’t just a freak summer: Over the years, such extreme events are occurring in increasing frequency and intensity.

[LFC]

New York just joined California by banning the sale of petroleum powered vehicles by 2035. This all fits well within most auto manufacturers' already existing plans so it's not remotely as radical as the wingnuts are shrieking they are. We now have more than a decade long warning about what we'll need our electrical grid to handle. As quoted in the piece, no excuses!

New York is following in California’s tire treads, making drastic moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Empire State will entirely ban the purchase of new petroleum-powered cars by 2035.

“With sustained state and federal investments, our actions are incentivizing New Yorkers, local governments, and businesses to make the transition to electric vehicles. We’re driving New York’s transition to clean transportation forward, and today’s announcement will benefit our climate and the health of our communities for generations to come,” said Governor Kathy Hochul in a statement outlining the new policy directive.

The regulatory step will take New York closer to its statewide goal of 85% emissions reductions by 2050 from 1990 level.

Transportation accounted for 28% of New York’s total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the 2021 statewide report—pumping 106.92 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere in a single year. Transitioning to electric vehicles should significantly reduce those emissions, assuming the power grid transitions away from fossil fuels as well.

Hochul pulled up to a press conference in White Plains in a Chevy Bolt on Thursday morning, where she laid out the plans for a future gas-free New York. The regulation will go into effect in phases.

First, by 2026, 35% of all new light-duty vehicles sold in the state will be required to be electric. Then, by 2030, that percentage will rise to 68%, ramping up to 100% by 2035. New pollution standards for gas-powered vehicles manufactured from 2026 to 2034 are also set accompany the EV mandates.

Additional related policies include moving to an all-electric school bus fleet across New York by 2035 and increased financial support for both individuals and municipalities looking to purchase EVs. The state is adding $10 million to the Drive Clean Rebate program, which offers an incentive of up to $2,000 (on top of the federal tax rebate of up to $7,500) to incentivize and assist people in purchasing electric cars. New York has already issued more than 78,000 rebates statewide, according to Hochul.

“You have no more excuses” to not buy an EV, Hochul said. “We are not heading down that dead-end street [of gas vehicles] any longer.” Although the upfront costs of purchasing an EV are still relatively high, that cost is dropping, and some assessments have found that, in the long-term, electric cars are cheaper to maintain and own than their gas counterparts.

[pnwguy]

www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/us/alaska-cancels-crab-season.html

[goldenvalley]

Oct 15, 2022 16:37:24 GMT pnwguy said:

www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/us/alaska-cancels-crab-season.html

I feel sorry for the crabbers but I don't understand their opposition.  If they got their way they might be able to make it through this year but decimate what's left of the crabs so that next year there won't be anything to catch. 

[pnwguy]

Oct 15, 2022 17:11:21 GMT goldenvalley said:

Oct 15, 2022 16:37:24 GMT pnwguy said:

www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/us/alaska-cancels-crab-season.html

I feel sorry for the crabbers but I don't understand their opposition.  If they got their way they might be able to make it through this year but decimate what's left of the crabs so that next year there won't be anything to catch. 

Alaska has a very well managed fishery, and most people who depend on it understand the need to protect the system.  It sounded more like they hoped for some sort of financial support to cover them until conditions allow it to reopen.  

[AnBr]

Oh, socialism.

[pnwguy]

Oct 15, 2022 18:35:29 GMT AnBr said:

Oh, socialism.

The good kind 

I've generally found seafood producers to be generally more cooperative with government management and restrictions than other resource-dependent people.  While quite independent, rugged types in general, perhaps it's the knowledge than any one could be caught in a situation where they need rescue on the ocean, either by competitors or the USCG, that gives them more cohesion toward dealing with population management requirements.  They seem to be more "we're all in this together", as opposed to loggers, mill workers, miners, or petroleum workers, which balk at government regulation much more and see everything as a conspiracy to rob their jobs.

[goldenvalley]

This is so depressing.  Context: The emissions cutting was done mostly by trying to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned by humans and the targets for cutting were set with that in mind.  

A nearly two-decade effort by Californians to cut their emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide may have been erased by a single, devastating year of wildfires, according to UCLA and University of Chicago researchers.

The state’s record-breaking 2020 fire season, which saw more than 4 million acres burn, spewed almost twice the tonnage of greenhouse gases as the total amount of carbon dioxide reductions made since 2003, according to a study published recently in the journal Environmental Pollution.

Researchers estimated that about 127 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent were released by the fires, compared with about 65 million metric tons of reductions achieved in the previous 18 years.

“When we look at the contribution of the 2020 wildfires, it becomes almost like a new sector of emissions in the economy,” said Michael Jerrett, a professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and a lead author of the research. “Really, we’re about double the reductions.”

[LFC]

If our MSM was worth anything, this story would be blasted all over the place. One asshat is training an army of people to literally protect the destruction of our planet.

Recently I learned about a man who has trained 1,000+ people to block wind and solar projects.

I read through all his training materials, presentations, and seminars.

Here's what I learned about him and how his students plan to "win the war on clean energy."

🧵
The odds are pretty good you haven't heard of this man, John Droz, Jr.

He's only been interviewed by a few journalists. And when asked about his influence he always responds the same way:

"This story isn't about me."

But the story of climate action and delay in America is very much about Droz.

For most of his life, Droz was a semi-retired real estate developer. In 2011, he reinvented himself and became a "physicist."

That year, his home state of N.C. debated a bill about climate change.
Droz put together a series of presentations, some as long as 168 slides, and headed to the capital.

He had crunched the numbers and looked at the science.

According to Droz, climate change was a sham pushed by clean energy lobbyists.

Remarkably, many legislators listened to him.

Even the Washington Post listened to him. In an article about sea-level rise, they quoted the real estate developer as a "local physicist."

[LFC]

More warmth, more drought.

Recent hot and dry conditions have only fueled the seemingly endless drought that’s pummeling the U.S. for months. October saw higher-than-average temperatures and lower-than-average precipitation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this week.

According to NOAA, the average temperature throughout the U.S. last month was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius). This is about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average, according to the report. A map of the year from January through October shows above-average temperatures in shades of red and below-average temperatures in shades of blue—and the red clearly dominates.



The heat last month was record-breaking in some states. Washington saw its warmest October on record, while Oregon experienced its second-warmest October, according to NOAA.

Around the country last month, average precipitation was 1.66 inches (4 centimeters), which was half an inch (1.2 cm) lower than usual. As of the beginning of November, about 62% of the country was experiencing a range of drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor report. Last month was also the third-driest October on record, per NOAA.

[LFC]

Interesting greenhouse gas tracker. See who the worst emitters are near you using their map. The worst near me are a couple of local airports and landfills.

If you’ve ever wondered how much methane the landfill in your neighborhood emits, there’s now a way to potentially find out. A promising new tool can zoom in on spots around the world in various industries to measure just how much greenhouse gases those locations and facilities are emitting.

The mapping tool, released last week at COP27 by the organization Climate TRACE, uses hundreds of satellites, thousands of mounted sensors, and various artificial intelligence models to measure the global emissions of different greenhouse gases from major sectors, including oil and gas production, waste disposal and management, agriculture, forestry and land use, transportation and power.

[LFC]

We're f***ed. I simply don't see Western nations becoming responsible for their emissions and developing nations are going to be even worse. Future generations, especially those living in nations that didn't cause the problem, will be stuck with the aftermath. Externalization of profits is capitalism at its worst.

[LFC]

We STILL haven't cleaned up our old uranium mines and people are getting sick and dying from them. Fairly long, very horrific.

In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed.

Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in Colorado. Thousands of sheep turned blue and died after foraging on land tainted by processing sites in North Dakota. And cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers.

The U.S. government bankrolled the industry, and mining companies rushed to profit, building more than 50 mills and processing sites to refine uranium ore.

But the government didn’t have a plan for the toxic byproducts of this nuclear assembly line. Some of the more than 250 million tons of toxic and radioactive detritus, known as tailings, scattered into nearby communities, some spilled into streams and some leaked into aquifers.

Congress finally created the agency that now oversees uranium mill waste cleanup in 1974 and enacted the law governing that process in 1978, but the industry would soon collapse due to falling uranium prices and rising safety concerns. Most mills closed by the mid-1980s.

When cleanup began, federal regulators first focused on the most immediate public health threat, radiation exposure. Agencies or companies completely covered waste at most mills to halt leaks of the carcinogenic gas radon and moved some waste by truck and train to impoundments specially designed to encapsulate it.

But the government has fallen down in addressing another lingering threat from the industry’s byproducts: widespread water pollution.

Regulators haven’t made a full accounting of whether they properly addressed groundwater contamination. So, for the first time, ProPublica cataloged cleanup efforts at the country’s 48 uranium mills, seven related processing sites and numerous tailings piles.

At least 84% of the sites have polluted groundwater. And nearly 75% still have either no liner or only a partial liner between mill waste and the ground, leaving them susceptible to leaking pollution into groundwater. In the arid West, where most of the sites are located, climate change is drying up surface water, making underground reserves increasingly important.

ProPublica’s review of thousands of pages of government and corporate documents, accompanied by interviews with 100 people, also found that cleanup has been hampered by infighting among regulatory agencies and the frequency with which regulators grant exemptions to their own water quality standards.

The result: a long history of water pollution and sickness.

Reports by government agencies found high concentrations of cancer near a mill in Utah and elevated cancer risks from mill waste in New Mexico that can persist until cleanup is complete. Residents near those sites and others have seen so many cases of cancer and thyroid disease that they believe the mills and waste piles are to blame, although epidemiological studies to prove such a link have rarely been done.

“The government didn’t pay attention up front and make sure it was done right. They just said, ‘Go get uranium,’” said Bill Dixon, who spent decades cleaning up uranium and nuclear sites with the state of Oregon and in the private sector.

Tom Hanrahan grew up near uranium mills in Colorado and New Mexico and watched three of his three brothers contract cancer. He believes his siblings were “casualties” of the war effort.

“Somebody knew that this was a ticking atomic bomb,” Hanrahan said. “But, in military terms, this was the cost of fighting a war.”

[LFC]

We're toast, quite literally.

China and India are on the rise. China, in particular, is going to change the world.

[LFC]

Another oil spill, this one in Kansas from the existing Keystone pipeline. The company that operates it claims the spill is about 14,000 barrels which is a little short of 600,000 gallons. Of course these initial "estimates" from industry have a history of being lowballed until the spill is out of the news cycle. Imagine if this happened in the Ogallala Aquifer. As you can see from below Keystone does not have the best track record.

An oil spill in northern Kansas has shut down a major pipeline that transports crude oil from Canada to Texas.

Thousand of barrels of oil spilled from the Keystone Pipeline into Mill Creek on Wednesday night. Canada-based TC Energy, which operates the pipeline, isolated that section of the Keystone system after the company saw that the pipeline’s pressure had dropped, the Associated Press reported. The company estimated that the spill has released 14,000 barrels of oil into the surrounding environment.

“We have contained downstream migration of the release. The system remains shutdown as our crews actively respond and work to contain and recover the oil,” a TC Energy statement said. “Our primary focus right now is the health and safety of onsite staff and personnel, the surrounding community, and mitigating risk to the environment.”

The statement did not say what exactly caused the recent leak but claimed the company is conducting “around-the-clock air monitoring” in the surrounding area of the spill, the AP reports.

The surface water at Mill Creek has been affected by the spill, but “there are no known impacts to drinking water wells or the public,” a statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said. The EPA is overseeing TC Energy’s cleanup response. Randy Hubbard, the Washington County Emergency Management coordinator, told the Associated Press that there are no evacuation orders because the spill occurred in a rural area.

This is not the first time the Keystone Pipeline system has spewed toxic oil into the environment. In October 2019, it leaked more than 380,000 gallons of crude oil in Edinburg, North Dakota. And in November 2017, the very same pipeline spilled about 210,000 gallons of crude oil in Amherst, South Dakota. This particular spill was caused by a crack in the pipe that originated from the pipeline’s construction.

Remember that one of the arguments for pipelines is that a tanker truck is more likely to cause a spill. What they don't mention is that a tanker truck only carries about 8,000 gallons. Of course if you just have 75 or so crash in the exact same place all at once then it's the same thing as just happened in Kansas.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 9, 2022 21:11:42 GMT LFC said:

Another oil spill, this one in Kansas from the existing Keystone pipeline. The company that operates it claims the spill is about 14,000 barrels which is a little short of 600,000 gallons. Of course these initial "estimates" from industry have a history of being lowballed until the spill is out of the news cycle. Imagine if this happened in the Ogallala Aquifer. As you can see from below Keystone does not have the best track record.

An oil spill in northern Kansas has shut down a major pipeline that transports crude oil from Canada to Texas.

Thousand of barrels of oil spilled from the Keystone Pipeline into Mill Creek on Wednesday night. Canada-based TC Energy, which operates the pipeline, isolated that section of the Keystone system after the company saw that the pipeline’s pressure had dropped, the Associated Press reported. The company estimated that the spill has released 14,000 barrels of oil into the surrounding environment.

“We have contained downstream migration of the release. The system remains shutdown as our crews actively respond and work to contain and recover the oil,” a TC Energy statement said. “Our primary focus right now is the health and safety of onsite staff and personnel, the surrounding community, and mitigating risk to the environment.”

The statement did not say what exactly caused the recent leak but claimed the company is conducting “around-the-clock air monitoring” in the surrounding area of the spill, the AP reports.

The surface water at Mill Creek has been affected by the spill, but “there are no known impacts to drinking water wells or the public,” a statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said. The EPA is overseeing TC Energy’s cleanup response. Randy Hubbard, the Washington County Emergency Management coordinator, told the Associated Press that there are no evacuation orders because the spill occurred in a rural area.

This is not the first time the Keystone Pipeline system has spewed toxic oil into the environment. In October 2019, it leaked more than 380,000 gallons of crude oil in Edinburg, North Dakota. And in November 2017, the very same pipeline spilled about 210,000 gallons of crude oil in Amherst, South Dakota. This particular spill was caused by a crack in the pipe that originated from the pipeline’s construction.

Remember that one of the arguments for pipelines is that a tanker truck is more likely to cause a spill. What they don't mention is that a tanker truck only carries about 8,000 gallons. Of course if you just have 75 or so crash in the exact same place all at once then it's the same thing as just happened in Kansas.

People fear what they see...tanker ships, trains, and trucks, more than what they don't see. And they don't understand what's under the ground...like ground water aquifers.  It all seems so clean and neat to have underground pipes transferring crude, but all pipes leak eventually or natural events like small earthquakes can disrupt them.  

[LFC]

The NOAA Arctic Report Card for 2022 came out. As you'd expect, things are pretty horrible. Some topline findings are:

• The average surface air temperature over the Arctic for this past year (October 2021-September 2022) was the 6th warmest since 1900. The last seven years are collectively the warmest seven years on record.

• June 2022 terrestrial snow cover was unusually low over both the North American (2nd lowest in the 56-year record) and Eurasian Arctic (3rd lowest in the record). Winter accumulation was above average, but early snow melt in a warming Arctic contributed to the overall low snow cover.

• A significant increase in Arctic precipitation since the 1950s is now detectable across all seasons. Wetter-than-normal conditions were observed from October 2021 through September 2022, in what was the 3rd wettest year of the past 72 years.

• The Greenland Ice Sheet experienced its 25th consecutive year of ice loss. In September 2022, unprecedented late-season warming created surface melt conditions over 36% of the ice sheet, including at the 10,500 ft ice sheet summit.

[LFC]

Texass continues to lead America's part in destruction of the planet.

Texas Republicans are messing with the state’s grid to fulfill their political ambitions. Again.

Ahead of the 2023 legislative session, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has made it clear that one of his priorities for the upcoming year is increasing natural gas production to, supposedly, stabilize the grid. Patrick has told multiple media outlets in recent weeks that he will push this spring for the legislature to form a plan to build more natural gas plants—potentially forcing renewables providers to help foot the bill.

“We still need more power. We just have to do that. We have plenty of cheap, natural gas under the ground,” he said in an interview with KXXV this week as he discussed the reforms to the Texas grid . “Renewables are fine. They help the environment, help lower the cost of energy, but we don’t have enough dispatchable power. That means when we turn on the light switch, the lights come on. When you turn on your AC or furnace, it comes on because it’s reliable.”

There are some real conversations to be had around making sure the grid is reliable and has enough baseload power for when wind and solar aren’t available. Unfortunately, legislation that simply mandates more production—especially any legislation proposed by those with a vested interest in promoting oil and gas interests—far oversimplifies the issues that are facing the state’s grid.

[LFC]

Yes, mockery is sometimes the best response. Imagine being a professional asshole on TikTok and getting publicly owned by an autistic teenager. Ba-ZING-gah!

[LFC]

OMG! After being owned by a teenager Tate Donovan, who is apparently a kickboxer, made a reply that was all but literally saying "I know you are but what am I?" Publicly owned and then a sad, pathetic self-own? That's gotta' hurt a narcissist like that. Somebody decided to have some fun with his fight record on his Wikipedia page.

[andydp]

Dec 29, 2022 15:13:59 GMT LFC said:

OMG! After being owned by a teenager Tate Donovan, who is apparently a kickboxer, made a reply that was all but literally saying "I know you are but what am I?" Publicly owned and then a sad, pathetic self-own? That's gotta' hurt a narcissist like that. Somebody decided to have some fun with his fight record on his Wikipedia page.