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ClimateWire: As water shortages and severe droughts threaten the nation, comparisons are being drawn to the Dust Bowl, a series of dust storms in the 1930s that destroyed farms across the southern Great Plains. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has warned that a period of “relocation” is possible, just as thousands migrated to California in the Dust Bowl.

“As we see the effects of climate change … we’re going to have to become even more cognizant of our relationship with land, water and wildlife,” said Salazar.

Gary McManus, a climatologist in Oklahoma, worries that global warming could be “catastrophic” for parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, the same areas that suffered during the Dust Bowl. He says that the typically dry regions could face severe dust storms with rising temperatures and the constant shifts in weather patterns make droughts more likely. What’s more, the surrounding urban areas and commercial farms are drying up water supplies.

While many residents aren’t worried about global warming, water conservation is a must in the region. For example, Jude Smith of the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge in Texas is filling ditches with hay, hoping to block the flow of dirt in water that can erode the land. Other farmers are just cutting back on water use.

Some worry that the impact of the recession will force farmers to cut back on their land maintenance efforts and ignore lessons from the Dust Bowl. But James Wedel, a 90-year-old retired farmer that lived through the Dust Bowl, says he doubts a catastrophe on that scale could happen again.

“I don’t think we’ll ever see a time like [the Dust Bowl] again,” Wedel says. “We’ve got better farming techniques and we know what we’re up against” (Brian Winter, USA Today, April 9). – JP

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Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal

We all know by now that no matter what the law dictates, those with an interest not in-line with the law will do what they can to work, shall we say, around the law. Wisconsin is said to have one of the highest rates of DUIs and binge drinking, and that probably has something to do with the state’s beer culture. Kids under the age of 21 can drink in public if they’re with a parent or legal guardian, and when you get your first DUI – at any age – it’s treated as a traffic violation, not a criminal act.

Why is that allowed to continue? The theory goes something like this: State legislators are the same kinds of hard drinkers as the general populace and they don’t want to get worked over for DUIs. Said a University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin professor, “There is a live hard, play hard, cut corners, get away with anything you can culture in the Legislature. Driving drunk is just part of a larger political culture of getting away with anything you can.”

Case in point: State rep Jef Wood has been busted three times in less than a year, and plans to defend himself in part by establishing the well populated history of assemblymen caught drunk behind the wheel. That makes it sound like things aren’t going to change any time soon. And makes us think there’s a little bit more going on in those flyover states than one would imagine…

[Source: AP]

Report: Brewery-heavy Wisconsin not exactly eager to punish drunk drivers originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Michael J. Zimmer is Of Counsel with Thompson Hine LLP in Washington DC. He serves on the American Bar Association’s Renewable Energy and Carbon Trading Committee and the Environmental Finance Committee. He is  also vice chair of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) biomass coordinating council and also serves as executive in Residence at Ohio University’s Voinovich School.

After a tough 2009 when cleantech investments all but dried up, the first quarter of this year saw a significant pickup, in part thanks to the government’s unprecedented financial commitment to the sector. Of the $865 billion in stimulus funds, some $90 billion has been allocated to cleantech companies. A little more than a year since the stimulus was signed into law, investors have come to depend on the government as an investor of first and last resort, at least up until 2012. But at best, this funding is only a band-aid solution. What’s still missing is a long-term policy that over the next decade could help uncap new investments that would make our country’s renewable energy industry even more competitive with countries like China.

While Congress endlessly debates Senators Kerry – Lieberman – Graham energy and climate change legislation, the U.S.’s window of opportunity to lead the cleantech revolution narrows. I submit that renewable energy industry players have no more than a decade to prove that they have moved beyond the cutting edge to be viable businesses that develop reliable sources of energy. Getting there will require significant government support and the implementation of a comprehensive, long-term energy policy. The Kerry – Leiberman – Grahm bill is a start when unveiled this coming week.

What should a better policy look like? Many in the renewable industry point to a European model with its combination of strong-government subsidy programs such as feed-in tariffs in addition to the market friendly cap-and-trade system.

A U.S. energy policy should definitely include a pricing system for carbon and a nationwide feed-in tariffs. Listed below are 10 additional items that I feel should be included in a comprehensive clean energy policy. Some of the measures already exist but need to be extended for at least another decade, while others are being debated in Congress. Others aren’t, but should be.

10 Ideas For a US clean Energy policy

1. Make Treasury direct cash grants (Section 1603) available to pension funds, foundations and non-profits and extend the grants until 2020. This would grow the cleantech  investment pool by including capital that largely remains untapped.

2. Extend the production tax credit until 2020, supporting renewables (wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, waste heat, biofuels and waste to energy) and nuclear generation power projects.

3. Establish a national Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) mandating all states to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewables.

4. Ease access to capital by establishing a federally-funded clean energy bank, as provided under the Senate model with sufficient appropriations to leverage government into private sector.

5. Make permanent the 20 percent tax credit supporting cleantech research and development, and extend the manufacturing tax credit for clean tech investments to 2020.

6. To ensure a smooth and inevitable transition to an economy where carbon is priced, starting in 2012, internalize the price of carbon at $15 ton with a market phase-in where by 2025 carbon reaches $30 a ton.

7. Extend biofuels tax incentives to 2020.

8. To open the sector to more investors, expand master-limited partnership taxation benefits to investments supporting renewable energy infrastructure projects, including transmission projects.

9. Implement a five-year tax holiday for energy storage, transmission and distribution companies and developers of electric vehicles. Lower corporate, capital gains and payroll taxes of cleantech companies with a capex of $100 million or less.

10. Extend cleantech patents’ life from 18 to 28 years in recognition of the long term capital cost horizon associated with the investments required to commercialize the technologies they represent.

Image: iStockphoto

Last week, we looked at kitchens with windows facing east for early morning sun. Today, let’s take a look at kitchens that receive high-noon sun via gorgeous skylights. Whether you’re in a top-floor apartment or a stand-alone house, a skylight just might be the answer to a little extra natural lighting in the kitchen. Even if you have some space above your kitchen, a tubular skylight can still direct light down into the space.

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Greenwire: The Christmas Mountains in Big Bend area of Texas won’t be transferred to the National Park Service, the state’s land boss said yesterday.

Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has long resisted giving the land to the Park Service, in part because they would ban guns and hunting on the property. Instead, Patterson said he will sell to a private bidder or lease the land for hunting.

In February, Congress removed the ban on guns in national parks, but the commissioner is still leaning toward a private owner. Selling the land has been a controversial proposal because of concerns the public could be shut out of the mountains or the area would be developed for commercial use.

The wilderness was donated to Texas in 1991 and debate over what to do with it has been going on ever since. Texas businessman John Poindexter bid on the land three years ago and may still be interested, although he said the land has no economic value. He estimates it would cost nearly $1 million to clear invasive plants, fence it and restore the roads to make it fully accessible and added he might repopulate the area with elk and buffalo.

Big Bend National Park superintendent, William Wellman, also has a management proposal for the mountains and said he did not know the Park Service was out of the running for the land (Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Dallas Morning News, April 9). – JP

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by Kevin Jon Heller

I rarely get to blog about the relationship between my two favorite things — professional basketball and international law — so I would be remiss if I failed to comment on the latest problem to afflict the New Jersey Nets, one of the worst teams in the NBA.  The Nets are in the process of being sold to Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire.  As part of that process, the NBA conducted a “very extensive and stringent vetting process” regarding Prokhorov’s finances and concluded that “there was nothing that was disclosed that would cause [it] not to move forward with his application for Nets ownership.”

Oops:

A New Jersey congressman says he will demand a government inquiry into Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire poised to buy the New Jersey Nets, for his extensive business dealings in Zimbabwe — a bombshell that could blow up the $200 million team deal and threaten the future of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, The Post has learned.

[snip]

“This is disgusting,” Pascrell said. “Obviously, the Board of Governors of the NBA didn’t do their job properly when they vetted this deal.”

He said the project received tax-exempt bonds.

“It’s being financed partly by the taxpayer, and the public has a right to know,” he said.

Prokhorov’s Renaissance Capital investment bank has interests in the Zimbabwean stock exchange, banks, a cellphone company, mining and a swanky, private big-game reserve. The company is intertwined with Onexim, the $25 billion Prokhorov-controlled investment fund behind the deal to bring the struggling NBA team to Brooklyn.

Pascrell said he will ask the Treasury Department, which oversees the sanctions, to investigate Onexim. In 2008, Onexim became a 50 percent owner of Renaissance Capital, which has been actively investing in Zimbabwe since 2007.

According to its Web site, Renaissance Capital has offices in Manhattan and was the financial sponsor of an economic forum in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare that provided foreign investors special access to government ministers in June 2009 — which experts say is a violation of the sanctions.

I feel sorry for the Nets, but I won’t be sorry if the deal falls through because of Prokhorov’s ties to Mugabe’s regime.  Zimbabwe has never produced an NBA player, but many current players come from Africa — Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria (11!), Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, and Tanzania — and the NBA actively engages in outreach to the continent.  So it would be an insult to everything the NBA stands for to have one of its teams owned by a man who is propping up one of the world’s worst dictators.

" Nós estamos no meio de uma corrida entre habilidade humana quanto aos meios e tolice humana quanto aos fins. "

Bertrand Russell

Greenwire: Connecticut may become the first state to lower the amount of electricity it mandates must come from renewable sources.

A bill that has passed through committee in the current legislative session, which is slated to end May 5, would cut the state’s renewable portfolio standard by nearly half.

Currently the state has an ambitious goal of obtaining a fifth of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. When Connecticut first crafted the goal a few years ago, it became the leader in the renewable energy push, though Colorado and California have since instituted their own 30 percent goals.

But supporters of the rollback initiative say meeting the goal has meant state utilities mostly purchase renewable energy from outside the state, since the region’s climate and lack of land make it a poor site for solar and wind installations. And a 2003 plan to construct a 150-megawatt project that would have included 13 plants that are mostly fuel cells and biomass has been stalled by a lack of financing.

Environmental groups are pushing back against the proposed legislation. “This would mark Connecticut as the only state in the nation moving backward,” said Christopher Phelps, program director for Environment Connecticut, an environmental advocacy group.

If a national renewable energy standard is approved by Congress — an idea that has been backed by Obama — it would put the state at a disadvantage, Phelps said. There is also a concern that a lowered renewable energy goal will lead to a drop in investments in renewable projects altogether.

The bill would funnel the money that utilities would have spent to achieve the standard and use it to fund no-interest loans for consumers to purchase renewable and energy-efficient products.

Thirty-one states have renewable portfolio standards (Jan Ellen Spiegel, New York Times, April 8). – DFM

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Ariz. House OKs No-Permit Concealed Guns
The Arizona House voted Thursday to make the state the third in the nation to allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Last week Gov Brewer signed a bill which declares that guns manufactured entirely in Arizona are exempt from federal oversight/taxes and are not subject to federal laws restricting the sale of firearms or requiring them to be registered.

He Has Excellent Posture

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“…He has no legs and no eyesight, but Marine Cpl. Matthew Bradford has four more years of military service ahead of him after becoming the first blind double-amputee to re-enlist.

…Bradford, 23, has learned to walk with prosthetic limbs and navigate without his vision, and he only regrets that he can’t return to combat duty in Iraq, the paper reported.

Instead the Kentucky native will head to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he will work with other wounded Marines in hopes of helping them cope with anger, depression and other issues.

“I’m paving the road for the rest of them who want to stay in but think they can’t,” he told the Express-News. “I’m ready to get back to work.” (source)

Very humbling.

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Romney took 439 votes (24%) to Paul’s 438 votes (also 24%), a result that disappointed a Paul-heavy crowd that had stuck around to watch the results. Sarah Palin came in third with 330 votes (18%), and Newt Gingrich came in fourth with 321 votes (18%); Mike Huckabee, who did not attend the event, scored 4%. Total ballots cast: 1,806.

Proving that he’s the Republican party frontrunner in 2012, Romney won the straw poll without even attending the event.

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El jefe de equipo Colin Kolles de la escudería española Hispania Racing Team F1 ha afirmado que estan buscando a un piloto veterano para que corra con su monoplaza en los entrenamientos de los Viernes de cada Gran Premio.

Por el momento, el nombre que más suena es el del italiano Giancarlo Fisichella quién podría aportar una gran experiencia para desarrollar el monoplaza de esta nueva escudería. Lo que esta muy claro es que Bruno Senna y Karun Chandhok no tienen el nivel necesario para desarrollar el coche de su escudería a la velocidad necesaria para no quedarse descolgada del resto de equipos de la parrilla.

Desde HRT han afirmado que el tercer piloto será anunciado próximamente y es posible que lo veamos en acción en el próximo GP de España.

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