America's First Offshore Wind Farm Starts Delivering Power

Off Rhode Island, Deepwater Wind's Block Island Wind Farm is now online, providing enough clean energy to power as many as 17,000 homes. Three years ago, I visited Block Island and wrote about how offshore wind would benefit Block Island.

Watch this report from Jerika Duncan of CBS News:

Hydrogen Power: Only As Clean As Its Energy Source

Photo via Alstom

Germany has unveiled a hydrogren-fueled train that it's claiming is zero emissions. It might be! It could especially be progress on the vast majority of American rail lines that aren't currently electrified. But hydrogen is only as clean as the power used to make it, and most of the coverage seems to be ignoring that.

Hydrogen fuel isn't mined or collected directly - it's basically a battery loaded with power from other direct fuel sources. If it's solar or wind, it's zero-emissions! If it's coal or oil, you might as well just use coal or oil to power the train.

Every conversation about hydrogren I've ever had:

PERSON: It's hydrogen-powered! It's zero emissions!
ME: Hydrogren is not a fuel source. It's basically a battery. It's as clean as the power that was used to make the hydrogen fuel. What was used to make the hydrogen?
PERSON: Uh, I don't know.
ME: Was it coal?
PERSON: Maybe?
ME: So it could be a train powered by coal? Like the first locomotives they had in the 1800s?
PERSON: Man, you are depressing AF.
ME: It's a curse. (goes back to blogging like this)

I Agree With This Big Polluter Lobbyist About Republican Climate Science Denial

When it comes to the Republican Party and global warming, I agree with the assessment of Thomas Pyle, head of the American Energy Alliance, a polluter front group. Here's what Pyle told Bloomberg's Zachary Mider about Jay Faison, a Republican who's spending $175 million of his own money trying to change the GOP's mind on climate science and clean energy:

“You can’t get to where he wants to be, in his lifetime, without a massive dose of good old-fashioned government intervention,” Pyle said. 

Republicans don't deny climate science because they don't know the facts or don't trust its scientific rigor. They deny it because all available solutions to global warming contradict their free-market dogma that big business alone can solve all of our problems (with a few government subsidies along the way).

The free market hasn't, and can't, solve the climate crisis any more than it solved our smog or dirty water problems - we needed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to do that. But instead of altering their ideology, American conservatives just pretend global warming doesn't exist.

After years of trying to pretend the right messaging will trick Republicans into supporting clean energy and climate science, Faison is still beating his head against the wall of denial. Inexplicably, Faison says he may vote for Gary Johnson, who doesn't think we should bother trying to stop global warming.

Faison would be better off taking Jon Stewart's advice: "Let's stop pretending that concessions to the right will, at any point, sate the beast."

And as the Center for American Progress reports, many of Faison's donations have gone to Republicans with mixed - or flat-out poor - records on climate change. Imagine how much good Faison's $175 million might've done if instead he'd spent that money trying to defeat climate science deniers?

2016's Hottest Trend in "Tainted" Halloween Candy: Tweet First, 911 Later

A big red flag that's emerged in reports of "tainted" Halloween candy in recent years: People who post to social media before calling police, or who never actually call the police at all. That way you get all the attention, but none of the getting charged with filing a false report!

Here are 2016's reports so far, and I'll keep updating this post as the investigations continue:

• A Halifax, Nova Scotia man says his son cut his thumb on a razor blade hidden in a candy bar. With his son's thumb still bleeding, the man did not clean the wound or put a Band-Aid on it - he took a picture of the bloody thumb and posted it to Twitter. 
• Right after news of the first razor incident broke in Halifax, and more than 12 hours after trick-or-treating ended, a girl in a neighboring town suddenly found a razor in a piece of her candy.
• A woman in Huntington, TX posted to Facebook that she found a needle in candy, but apparently hasn't called police. Two women in Marysville, WA also took to Facebook to report finding objects in candy. 
• Someone reported finding a razor blade in candy in Manistee, MI. But get this: "Last year, police in the City of Manistee said two children had razor blades hidden in their candy. Police determined that a family member of the victims was behind that incident. The family member had mental-health issues, police said." Very few of the news reports on this year's incident are referencing last year's hoax. 
• A woman in New Jersey reports finding a needle in candy. This incident is not far from last year's Philadelphia suburbs needle-in-candy hoax, though none of this year's local media coverage mentions last year's identical scare turned out to be hoax.
• Woman in Wisconsin Rapids, WI says her child found a nail in a Tootsie Roll. 
• Ottawa police have already declared one report of tainted candy "unfounded."
• One Wyoming town apparently got extremely hype for tainted candy & scary clowns. "Rock Springs Police Public Information Officer Alison Deters said as of 10am, the department has received one call about suspicious candy which had liquid on the inside. Officers believe the candy may have had something spilled on it, or it broke during transport."
• Update! First confirmed needle-in-candy hoax in Christiansburg, VA

Tainted Halloween candy is almost always a hoax, but that doesn't stop media and police from acting like every needle in candy is CERTAIN ATTEMPTED CHILD MURDER.

Watch Leonardo DiCaprio's "Before the Flood" in Full, For Free, Right Now

Exxon Finally Admits Global Warming Is Stranding Its Assets

Exxon Mobil is finally admitting to investors that billions of barrels of oil may be stranded assets - too expensive & too destructive to our climate to ever drill out & sell. That's after decades of deceiving the public on global warming. For the 3rd quarter of 2016, profits fell 38%.

"Oil companies are admitting the future isn't oil," tweets the Wall Street Journal's Christopher Mims. "Think of all the nations, not just stocks, this puts into terminal decline." 

And states - what about the budgets of Alaska, North Dakota, Louisiana, Texas and other places that are so heavily dependent on oil revenue?

Get Ready For 2016's Fake Tainted Halloween Candy Scares

Every year, headlines are filled with reports of tainted Halloween candy. Razor blades in apples! How would you hide one without making it completely obvious? They never say. Poisoned candy! But every kid knows exactly who gave what candy - if you wanted to hurt kids, giving out poisoned candy would be no more secretive than chasing kids around your neighborhood waving a rake.

Let's review 2015's Halloween candy danger scares that made national headlines. Not one of them was even confirmed as an actual attempt to hurt children, never mind an incident that actually hurt a child:

• Gloucester, NJ: Man arrested for making own tainted candy & falsely reporting it
• Kennett Square, PA: Kids admit making up report of finding needles in Twix bars
• Hudson, NH: Cause never publicly identified for razor blade allegedly found in trick-or-treating bag; two years before in a neighboring town, a "razor blade in trick-or-treating bag" turned out to have fallen out of a pencil case
• Manistee, MI: Razor blade in candy turned out to have been a hoax by a family member with mental health issues. 
• Hopkinton, MA: New, wrapped discs of toilet bowl cleaner found in trick-or-treating bags, despite kids not being able to say who gave them out. This was apparently supposed to be dangerous because kids are so stupid they'll eat toilet bowl cleaner.

Poisoned Halloween candy is an urban legend, but that doesn't stop local and even national news from reporting every flimsy story as a WARNING FOR PARENTS TONIGHT. The follow-up news confirming the hoax inevitably gets much less coverage.

Don't inspect your kids' Halloween candy - it scares them for no reason.

And to follow the latest scares - which again, are almost always fake - follow Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog.

David Letterman, America's Funniest Climate Activist

Most global warming and clean energy humor is chuckle-chuckle amusing but not ha-ha funny. David Letterman is joining this season of Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously and he doesn't do mildly amusing - he does wicked funny:

 
Go like Years of Living Dangerously on Facebook for more videos & info.

Deregulate Parking, Says Obama Administration

Great to see the Obama administration come out in favor of housing for people over storage for cars:

“Parking requirements generally impose an undue burden on housing development, particularly for transit-oriented or affordable housing,” the paper states. “When transit-oriented developments are intended to help reduce automobile dependence, parking requirements can undermine that goal by inducing new residents to drive, thereby counteracting city goals for increased use of public transit, walking and biking.”

The anti-parking stance came from a “Housing Development Toolkit,” a broadside against zoning. The report says zoning “reduced the ability of many housing markets to respond to growing demand,” making affordable housing hard to find in high-price areas.

Nixing off-street parking is not the paper’s only recommendation. It also advocates taxing vacant land, making it easier to get permits and making cities more dense.

This is the opposite of a big government mandate - it's the Obama White House urging communities to get rid of local regulations that restrict new housing and smart growth.

Gary Johnson Wants to Watch the World Burn

Libertarian Party candidate for president Gary Johnson says we should do nothing about global warming.

That means Gary Johnson isn't a libertarian on global warming. Libertarians aren't in favor of letting one party (the coal, oil and gas industries) harm everyone else with no consequence. They're in favor of minimal government intervention, sure - say, a carbon tax - but actual libertarians aren't any more in favor of letting polluters run rampant than they are in letting murders walk free.

Johnson is a climate nihilist, saying the world's going end someday anyway, so why bother trying to protect our children? As with his Syria ignorance, Johnson seems like a dim bulb with no interest in serious policy.

I'm voting for Hillary Clinton, the strongest pro-science candidate with a strong climate policy.

Investment Advice From The Green Miles: Exxon Mobil Edition

If they're frauding you on climate science, they're probably more than willing to fraud you on all sorts of other important things:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how Exxon Mobil Corp. has valued its assets in the face of the current plunge in oil prices—and how it estimates theirfuture worth in a world of increasing climate change regulations, according to people familiar with the matter.

The SEC sought information and documents in August from Exxon as well as the company’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The federal agency has also been receiving documents that the company submitted as part of a continuing probe into similar issues begun last year by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the people said.

The formal investigation is examining Exxon’s longstanding practice of not writing down the value of its oil and gas reserves when prices fall. Exxon is the only major U.S. energy producer that hasn’t taken a write-down or impairment charge since oil prices plunged two years ago. Peers including Chevron Corp. have lowered valuations by a collective $50 billion.

Learn more about Exxon's climate science fraud at ExxonKnew.org.

Watch Wind Turbine Blades Being Tested

I recently had a chance to visit the Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown, a project of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. I got to watch huge wind turbine blades being twisted and bent, over and over, always springing right back into shape.

Wind opponents like to make it seem as though a stiff breeze could knock them over - seems plausible, right? They're so tall and thin! But they're incredibly well made with cutting edge technology and built to last. That thinness allows the blades to be feathered to let the wind go right past. Turbines most often survive the strongest of storms and are right back to generating electricity the next day.

In fact, one study showed wind turbines have a better chance of beating a hurricane than the other way around. Build an absurdly high number of offshore wind turbines and they could slow both the wind and the coastal flooding from of a monster storm, according to Stanford University researchers.

Amazing to watch these massive #wind turbines being tested. Wind opponents like to make it seem like a stiff breeze might splinter them. In reality, wind turbines are designed to survive hurricanes & be back to producing power the next day. #massachusetts #energy

A video posted by Miles Grant (@thegreenmilesgrant) on Sep 15, 2016 at 3:42pm PDT

Fight Garbage Cable Boxes: Ask the FCC to Unlock the Box

Cable boxes are garbage - slow, expensive, and huge power vampires.

Led by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and supported by Congressional leaders like Sen. Ed Markey, there's an effort to "unlock the box" - to let your cable channels run through third-party boxes like Roku and AppleTV. Those third-party boxes are much cheaper, faster, and better than cable company boxes.

The FCC is set to vote Sept. 29. Please take a moment right now to urge the FCC to unlock the box.

Hermine, With Global Warming's Fingerprints, Smacks East Coast

Hurricane Hermine hitting Florida ended a historic 11-year drought of hurricanes making landfall in Florida. Climate science deniers had grabbed onto that lull to claim global warming wasn't worsening storms. But storm trackers say the drought was a total coincidence - there were plenty of storms around, hitting the Caribbean, Mexico and elsewhere, they just happened to miss us.

Meanwhile, Hermine has provided new evidence that global warming is fueling tropical storms.

Conservative Media's New Lie About Obama and Coal Jobs

Conservative media keeps saying there have been 83,000 coal mining jobs lost under President Obama. The problem is that there were barely that many coal mining jobs total when President Obama took office.

Total U.S. coal mining jobs, according to the Energy Information Administration:

• 2009: 86,859
• 2014: 74,931 (most recent year available)

If you believe the historic trends, the war on coal began under President Reagan and has had only modest success under President Obama:

The truth is that mechanization has been killing coal jobs for decades. As the Center for American Progress reports, in recent years, cheap fracked gas and competition with foreign coal have done as much to hurt coal as clean air regulations.

Why is Providence So Bad at Non-Car Transportation?

I've talked about how Providence's local inter-city transportation is terrible.

Today, Transport Providence points out it's no better at helping Providence residents get around by bike:

Mayor Jorge Elorza bikes to work everyday, and takes part in frequent night rides with community members. By all accounts the mayor is supportive of bicycling. However, Providence has made next to no progress on bike infrastructure during the two years the mayor has been in office. This needs to change. [...]

Where is the bike infrastructure, Mayor Elorza? We cannot expect mass cycling to take root in Rhode Island without our core cities establishing bike routes that are suitable for eight year olds, eighty year olds, and everyone in between. If we’re going to provide routes that are safe for people in wheelchairs and rascals, we need bike routes, like what the Dutch and Danish have. Doing this can help us make more efficient use of our school bus funding, our sidewalk funding, our parking, and improve business outcomes for small business.

Bike infrastructure - like protected bike lanes and bike racks - and makes for a more vibrant community. People can get around while exercising, smelling the fresh air, and seeing each other, rather than stuck inside expensive, noisy, polluting cars that take up tons of space through roads and parking.

It's also smart economic policy. One study showed every dollar invested in separated bike lanes returns $24 in avoided pollution, health care costs, and traffic, according to Adele Peters at Fast Company's Co.Exist. Another study showed investment in bike infrastructure returns a huge payoff compared to car infrastructure in longer lives, lower health care costs, less spending on gas, and just plain cheaper infrastructure.

If Providence, or any other aging city, is going to thrive in the 21st century, it needs to be more than just a commuter destination, or a highway pass-through for people traveling from Boston to New York. It needs to be a great place for people - not just for cars.

5 Years After DC Earthquake, We're Still Cutting Quake Monitoring Budgets

Hey, it's 5th anniversary of the Virginia earthquake that shook DC! Back then, we pointed out the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey had been slashed by austerity measures.

What about in the five years since? Surely as our economy has rebounded, we've restored investments in protecting every single American from major earthquakes, especially quake-prone economic engines like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, right?

• FY 1997: $1.19 billion, which is $1.76 billion in 2015 dollars 
• FY 2015 enacted budget: $1.04 billion 
• That's an effective cut of: 41%

Clearly a nation with a $16.77 trillion annual GDP can't afford frivolities like trying to give its citizens advance warning of major earthquakes and volcano eruptions.

Trump's Taxes & GOP Science Denial: Morals Are For Losers

Today's Republican Party is less about any particular principle or set of values than it is about being willing to completely abandon any morals whenever the party machinery demands it:

Donald Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Sunday morning that she does not want the Republican presidential nominee to release his tax returns until an audit by the Internal Revenue Service is completed, abandoning a position that she took five months ago, when she didn't work for the campaign and urged Trump to "be transparent" and release the filings.

We've seen similar courage of convictions from Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsay Graham. They spoke out on global warming when it served their maverick images, but that was the high water mark of their climate courage. They abandoned the cause when the party feared a climate & clean energy bill might actually pass in 2010 and have stayed quiet on carbon pollution limits ever since.

As Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times today, "climate denial has become a sort of badge of right-wing identity, above and beyond the still-operative motive of rewarding donors." And now so is denying that Americans have a right to know what a presidential candidate is hiding in his tax returns.

Meanwhile, as Trump demands Hillary Clinton release every email she ever wrote, his new campaign CEO calls it a "smear" when Greenpeace uses the Freedom of Information Act to access some of a polluter scientist's emails. Morals are for losers!

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant's New Enemy: Global Warming

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Massachusetts can't take the heat.

The Farmers' Almanac Winter Forecast is Malarkey

The Farmers' Almanac just released its winter forecast for 2017, so I thought it would be a good time to see how their winter 2016 forecast did last year. From August 2015:

It’s not what Bostonians want to hear: The Farmer’s Almanac says another rough winter is in your stars.

A year after Boston was pummeled with the snowiest winter on record, editors of the Maine-based publication have dubbed their latest forecast a “winter deja vu,” hearkening to last winter’s misery across the Northeast.

Using a formula built on sunspots, moon phases and tidal action, the 199-year-old almanac that hits newsstands this week predicts cold and snowy weather from Maine to Montana.

Though meteorologists immediately blasted the Almanac forecast as about as accurate as a Magic 8 Ball, even PBS covered it as news. Meanwhile, scientists at NOAA predicted a winter that was warmer and wetter than average. So did AccuWeather.

So what actually happened?

December through February, a three-month period known as "meteorological winter," has shattered warm and wet records in 2015-2016 from New England to the Southeast, Midwest, Plains and West.

Basing your long-range weather forecast on sunspots is like basing your climate change outlook on the moon. When journalists repeat those guesses as news, they're doing a disservice to actual science.

News outlets also uncritically repeat the Almanac's claim to 80% accuracy. But that assertion is no more reality-based than its actual forecasts:

The Old Farmer's Almanac claims "many longtime Almanac followers claim that our forecasts are 80% to 85% accurate." This is simply a claim and not the actual accuracy. John Walsh, University of Illinois Atmospheric Sciences professor emeritus, reviewed the accuracy of five years of monthly forecasts from 32 weather stations around the county and found 50.7% of the monthly temperature forecasts and 51.9% of precipitation forecasts to correctly predict a deviation from averages.

50 percent - you could get just as accurate a guess by flipping a coin.

What do the fortune tellers at the Almanac have to say about winter 2017?

[Y]ou better start preparing because according to the Long Range Weather Forecast released by The Old Farmer's Almanac, this one is going to be a real doozy.

Every region of the U.S. will be hit with a different type of terrible. The Northeast and Midwest can expect "colder than normal" temperatures and precipitation is supposed to be "above normal."

Here in New England, the Farmers' Almanac is geared toward a certain type of yankee who, every single year, thinks god will surely punish us for our sin of enjoying summer by smiting us with a horrible winter. To get those folks to buy your almanac, you need to make sure every winter forecast fulfills that fervor.