Month: February 2023

Nationwide Fossil Fuel Funded Network Spreads Misinformation About Clean Energy

As the report, above, from an Iowa TV staton shows, clean energy is under coordinated attack by a nationwide network of fossil fuel funded “think tanks”, using social media algorithms to spread misinformation, lies and fear.

NPR:

Roger Houser’s ranching business was getting squeezed. The calves he raises in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley were selling for about the same price they had a few years earlier, while costs for essentials like fuel and fertilizer kept going up. But Houser found another use for his 500 acres.

An energy company offered to lease Houser’s property in rural Page County to build a solar plant that could power about 25,000 homes. It was a good offer, Houser says. More money than he could make growing hay and selling cattle.

“The idea of being able to keep the land as one parcel and not have it split up was very attractive,” Houser says. “To have some passive income for retirement was good. And then the main thing was the electricity it would generate and the good it would do made it feel good all the way around.”

But soon after he got the offer, organized opposition began a four-year battle against solar development in the county. A group of locals eventually joined forces with a nonprofit called Citizens for Responsible Solar to stop the project on Houser’s land and pass restrictions effectively banning big solar plants from being built in the area.

Citizens for Responsible Solar is part of a growing backlash against renewable energy in rural communities across the United States. The group, which was started in 2019 and appears to use strategies honed by other activists in campaigns against the wind industry, has helped local groups fighting solar projects in at least 10 states including Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, according to its website.

“I think for years, there has been this sense that this is not all coincidence. That local groups are popping up in different places, saying the same things, using the same online campaign materials,” says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. 

Citizens for Responsible Solar seems to be a well-mobilized “national effort to foment local opposition to renewable energy,” Burger adds. “What that reflects is the unfortunate politicization of climate change, the politicization of energy, and, unfortunately, the political nature of the energy transition, which is really just a necessary response to an environmental reality.” 

Citizens for Responsible Solar was founded in an exurb of Washington, D.C., by a longtime political operative named Susan Ralston who worked in the White House under President George W. Bush and still has deep ties to power players in conservative politics.

Ralston tapped conservative insiders to help set up and run Citizens for Responsible Solar. She also consulted with a longtime activist against renewable energy who once defended former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that noise from wind turbines can cause cancer. And when Ralston was launching the group, a consulting firm she owns got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the foundation of a leading GOP donor who is also a major investor in fossil fuel companies. It’s unclear what the money to Ralston’s firm was used for. Ralston has previously denied that Citizens for Responsible Solar received money from fossil fuel interests. 

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How the Internet Feeds on Your Anger

You always knew they were doing it to you. You know, – THEM.
Those people you hate.

I know I just posted something with Sarah Silverman, – but this story is too
important to skip.
It’s about how social media manipulates your anger, and divides us.

Anger, we now know, is like a drug, and it affects the brain exactly like crack or fentanyl.
I’ve been in some rooms lately where a whole lot of people were very, very, fearful and angry – at society, at big corporations, weirdly, clean energy, and, at me.
They’ve been targeted by soulless social media algorithms that know them better than they know themselves – better than their spouses or family, and know how to press their buttons. And, of course, there is also a nationwide network of fossil funded interest groups who know this fact and take advantage of it for their own purposes.

Also, the piece above shows how the “cat litterboxes in school bathrooms” story got started – at my local school board meeting.

Even Fox, Bannon, Admit GOP Missteps on Ohio Derailment

Media Matters:

STEVE DOOCY (FOX HOST): Speaking of the White House, apparently regulations regarding train safety were changed during the Trump Administration. This particular railroad and others lobbied President Trump to dismantle an Obama-era rule that would have required railroads to update their braking systems. And apparently the Obama administration had pushed for it to govern transportation of hazardous materials after about half a million barrels of crude were dumped, but ultimately, the Trump Administration undid that and said the costs exceeded the benefits. Nobody understands and, you know, when they talk about whether or not it’s safe to drink the water, the question is groundwater.

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The Weekend Wonk: Fox News Naked

Washington Post:

A stunning cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony obtained by the software company and made public on Thursday in a Delaware court filing showed high-level Fox executives and on-air stars privately agonizing over the wild and false claims of a stolen election that Trump allies promoted on Fox airwaves in the weeks after the 2020 election. “Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.
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But the Dominion filing also lends ammunition to their long-held argument: that Fox allowed the false claims to air because it was fearful of losing viewers to Newsmax, an ever more pro-Trump news channel.

“The texts and emails support [Dominion’s] claim that Fox was more concerned about its audience and market share than the truth concerning the 2020 presidential election,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William & Mary Law School who specializes in the First Amendment and called the breadth of the internal communications “extraordinary.”

In a statement, a Fox spokesperson said: “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”

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I was asking myself during the day yesterday whether the stunning hypocrisy revealed in court disclosures would cause even a ripple in the larger discussion, simply because the “mainstream” media is vested in the idea that Fox News is a “real” news organization, with “real” journalists, who should be taken seriously, instead of the fraudulent propaganda outfit that it is.

And if that long overdue reassessment takes place, would it even scratch the surface of the alternative universe of non-fact that a significant segment of the population, the Fox News audience, have been sequestered in for 3 decades?

Still TBD, but the best discussion I’ve seen of the revelations is in the “Pod Save America” segment above.

Below, some recent examples of Fox’s takes on climate news. I hadn’t reviewed in a while, and it’s actually worse, and crazier, than I thought.
Below, “climate scientist” Tom Harris gives a full blown, not even nuanced climate denial screed that sounds straight out of a 2010 era climate denial conference. Even uses a lump of coal as a prop.


In the next one, Tucker Carlson reaches for a two-fer, with both climate denial and anti-vax messaging.

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Fox News Naked”

Racing with “Green” Hydrogen in Greenland. Ok.

Stumbled on this news report describing something I had heard about in the last trip to Greenland.
Just east of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland’s main air hub – there is an extensive area of bare sand, dust really – the fine dust left over when glaciers grind up bedrock to the finest powder.
The whole area is somewhat of a desert environment, with minimal rainfall, due to the natural drying effect as sinking air flows off the ice sheet, warming and losing moisture as it goes. That’s what made this place a good site for a cold war SAC airbase, giving it one of the longest runways in the world, built for B-52s.
More recently, as the permafrost sags beneath the airstrip, the time is rapidly approaching when major air traffic will be routed thru Illulisat, some few hundred kilometers to the north. That construction was well underway when I visited in July.


Above, in 2021, some promoters took advantage of the desert like terrain to stage a series of races using hydrogen powered vehicles. OK, not really the greenest of projects, to haul vehicles to a remote area and race them, but whatever. I think I set the video up to start at the 3:25 mark, so if that doesn’t happen you know where to skip to.
The promoters tell ABC News that they are producing the hydrogen with solar panels, and show a suspiciously small array. The well informed researchers I was with told me the charging was done with diesel generators, so take it all with a grain of glacial powder.

Below, I was recording as we drove by this “desert” stretch on the way out to take a look at some sensors at the edge of Russell Glacier, July 7, 2022.

Fox News (!): Siting Clean Energy a Win-Win

Below, glowingly positive support for siting clean energy as a hedge against climate change. Holy Shit.

Above, slightly less, but mostly positive account of experience with solar farms in Virginia.

The focus below is extremely on point – clean energy siting is emerging as an important topic at the state and national level. See this recent post on Illinois’ new law streamlining that process, something that surrounding states are looking at.

Fox News:

In politics, there often seems to be little we can agree on. Increasingly, however, Americans are inching toward consensus on what was once a hot-button issue: climate change. Recent polling from my organization, the American Conservation Coalition, in partnership with pollster Frank Luntz, shows that voters ranked climate change second as the “most urgent crisis” to address on the heels of midterm elections – just behind affordability.  

Polling also shows that Americans were vocal in supporting investments in renewable energy and the expansion of nuclear power. While these measures are certainly worth pursuing, there’s a roadblock: permitting reform.  

In layman’s terms, permitting reform refers to the process by which construction and development projects receive government approval and necessary permits. The current permitting process for new energy projects is slow, cumbersome, and often ineffective. It hinders the growth and development of clean energy technologies, with an average review time of 4.5 years and added costs to the tune of millions. Reform efforts aim to streamline the process so that projects can be completed more quickly and at a lower cost.  

The unfortunate reality is that the term means very little to the everyday American.  

While not the most popular or exciting, this wonky policy topic is an essential solution to a challenge that is top of mind for most Americans. You won’t see a protest sign demanding “permitting reform now” alongside “end fossil fuels” at a march or rally anytime soon. Still, the approach aligns with what Americans want: a balance between economic priorities and environmental concerns.  

Republicans, specifically, should support permitting reform efforts as part of their commitment to free market principles and American competitiveness. After all, in the greatest country in the world, we must build cleaner, faster. The United States is a hub for innovation and cutting-edge technology, and we also have some of the highest environmental standards in the world. By streamlining our permitting process, we can create a more-efficient system that will help pave the way for a more sustainable and prosperous future. 

On one hand, streamlining regulations can help to stimulate economic growth. Through regulatory certainty, permitting reform makes it easier for businesses to develop clean energy projects. This drives investment and innovation into the sector, in turn creating jobs for American workers. But job creation isn’t the only economic benefit to permitting reform – by reducing red tape and bureaucracy, it’s easier for energy companies to operate and compete, ultimately driving down costs for consumers.  

On the other hand, these economic advantages come coupled with environmental benefits. Most obviously, increased domestic production means reducing emissions. While promoting energy independence, we can reduce our reliance on foreign nations. By fostering the growth of domestic clean technologies, we can improve our energy security and reduce our vulnerability to global market fluctuations.  

Continue reading “Fox News (!): Siting Clean Energy a Win-Win”

Ohio Finding Out What Developing World has Known for Decades

Right wing media up in arms as white people experience toxic corporate neglect.

Continue reading “Ohio Finding Out What Developing World has Known for Decades”