Straining at gnats while ignoring the black monster devouring Oregon's future

This is troubling -- it's apparently much easier to rally people against proposed LNG pipelines in Western Oregon than it is to get them to even realize that death-dealing, radioisotope and mercury-emitting, climate destabilizing coal burned in Eastern Oregon is the PRIMARY source of their electricity (coal is the single largest fuel source for PGE's electricity).

In other words, people will get all outraged at the possibility of "foreign LNG" while relying extensively on "foreign coal" (100% of Boardman's coal is from the Powder River Basin).

The good people at the Salem Progressive Film Series should be sure to make their panelists explain why they're more exercised about LNG than they are about coal, the enemy of the human race.

One of these panelists, Bill Bradbury, is running for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Oregon. He should definitely be made to explain how he squares his work on climate with his tacit support for continuing to burn coal.

Pulp Fiction: Costly makework project for consultants

The projects that transportation planners should be working on are how to use the rail and the river to make autos unnecessary, not how to promote more driving. Image via Wikipedia

As the forecasts for Oregon under a destabilized climate become ever more dire -- and still manage to underestimate the rate of change being observed -- the Boondoggle on the Willamette known as the "Salem River Crossing" project plods on, busily drafting a monumental fictional opus about a project unlikely to ever be funded (thank God).

This particular opus, known as the "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" is intentionally omitting any analysis of peak oil and, even worse, climate change. In other words, the "environmental" analysis is going to ignore the most crucial environmental question of the millennium, as it relies on travel demand models that assume a future like the past and boundless cheap gasoline available for all. Your tax dollars, hardly at work.

Friends of Salem Public Library Fall Books (& etc.) Sale

Friends of Salem Public Library Fall Book Sale

Everyone wins when it’s Friends of the Library Book Sale time. Book lovers can load arms and bags with
low-cost reading and all the proceeds go to support special programs and projects at Salem Public Library. Books are sorted by category so readers of all ages and preferences can find what they like best.

The Fall Sale offers two special opportuniti es to enthusiastic book lovers. This is the sale that features “Friends Night,” a members-only preview sale from 5-8 p.m. Thursday, October 15. Shoppers do need to be members to get in, but the Friends make that easy too by selling memberships at the door.

Also, for the 10th year, the Friends will offer Specialty & Collectible books during the Fall Book Sale, available for purchase at marked prices. A Silent Auction and pamphlets will also be available. A few of the treasures offered include:

• Accordian Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music by Blair Kilpatrick, 2009 (first ed.)

• Long Time Gone by J.A. Jance; a specially published limited and signed first edition from 2005

• D-Day with the Screaming Eagles by George Koskimaki, 2002

• Imperial Life in the Qing Dynasty: Treasures from the Shenyang Palace Museum, China

• Oregon The Way It Was by Edwin D Culp; from Caxton Press, 1989

SALE HOURS

• Thursday, October 15 ― 5-8 p.m. Friends Night (Members only. You can join at the door)
• Friday, October 16 ― 10 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
• Saturday, October 17 ― 10 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, October 18 ― 1 - 4:30 p.m. ($3 Bag Day!)
  

LOCATION: In the Anderson Rooms (Lower Level of Salem Public Library, 585 Liberty St. SE) Paperbacks & Children’s Books — 50 cents; Hardbacks — $1; Romance Paperbacks & Audio-Visual Items — 25 cents; Specialty & Collectibles; rare/collectible books and ephemera at marked prices in the Plaza.

New book from a real Oregonian hero: "What's the Worst That Could Happen"

Oregon science teacher and creator of one of the most-watched YouTube videos ever has put together a must-read book for every voter, politician, and government employee . . . a book that doesn't just push a point of view but instead teaches how to approach the problem from Hell. Low-cost and important. Buy it, buy it for your kids' teachers, all your elected officials, etc. and ask them to read it.
From an interview with James Hansen of NASA:

Earth Island Institute: You've been called the father of global warming. What does that means to you and is it actually true?

Of course it's not true, in the sense that global warming goes way back into the 1800s. The first really good discussion was in the 1860s by John Kendall, who was a British physicist. He speculated that the climate changes from glacial to interglacial were related to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that turned out to be right. We've only in the last several years realized and proven that about half of the temperature change in the glacial to interglacial changes is in fact due to changes of greenhouse gases - mainly carbon dioxide.

EII: One of the places most recently where you've been rather blunt is on the proposed Waxman-Markey climate bill. How would you summarize the problems that you see?

You can summarize the problem and prove that the bill is inadequate in a very simple way. You just look at the geophysical constraints on the problem and you look at how much carbon there is in oil, gas, and coal. And you see that the oil and gas is enough to get us into a dangerous zone for atmospheric carbon dioxide but not so far that we couldn't solve the problem. But if you add coal and put that carbon in the atmosphere, then there is no practical way to solve the problem. So you just have to look at the proposed policy and see if it allows coal to continue to be used and emit the CO2 in the atmosphere.

You've got to cut off the coal source. Not only does [Waxman-Markey] assure that we will continue to run these coal plants that we have but it actually gives approval for additional coal plants. That simple test tells us that this bill is not adequate.

The basic point - the fundamental problem - is that because of government policies, fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy. They are not made to pay for the damages they do to human health and the environment. As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy, they are going to be used. That's why I say you have to address the fundamental problem and that is put a rising price on carbon emissions.

Food for thought: The dealers we use for our addiction

click to enlarge

Oregonian: Pressure mounting to close Boardman

The new gates prepared for when CO2 hits 425 --- which will be soon if we don't stop mining and burning coal. Image via Wikipedia

Finally. What say you, M. Lee Pelton, PGE Board Member?


A reader sent me a copy of this note that was sent to President Pelton:










Dear Dr. Pelton,

A recent posting to citizenforum, a Salem listserve, revealed your membership on the PGE Board of Directors. The person posted the comments below and I decided to share them with you and ask for your comment.

Assuming you are on the PGE Board, does that mean you endorse the operation of the Boardman coal plant outlined in the comments? If you disagree with how Boardman is managed, how do you communicate your concerns to the PGE Board?

Sincerely,

The letter writer was referring to this:

"While it would be unfair to impute questions about minor corporate operational details to board members, I don't think it's at all unfair to assume that a board member of a major utility --- someone appointed to look out for shareholders' interests --- is on board with fundamental policy questions, absent some evidence to the contrary.

PGE operates the worst polluting plant in Oregon, one pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, mercury, and radioactive materials into the atmosphere annually. PGE collects and spends millions of ratepayer dollars patting itself on the back for its greenwashing efforts while quietly but insistently arguing to the PUC that it must not be made to shut down the plant (the Boardman coal plant). The public is entitled to assume that all PGE board members supports the utility's policies on questions of major public policy direction unless a board member disassociates himself from those policies and campaigns to change them."

What allowing cars to dominate your city gets you

Image by LHOON via Flickr

This. Don't miss the photo spread.

King Midas discovered that you can't eat gold. We need to remember that it's true for pavement too.

I shutter to think about what happened to spelling

Image by sushiesque via Flickr

If you want to feel confident about the educational attainments of your fellow men and women, avoid Craigslist at all costs. Every time I visit, I find one or two new spellings that give me concern for our future. Today's happy coinage: "Shudders" for the objects that some people like to slap on their T-111 to make it look like there are cheap objects slapped on the T-111.

And I've long since lost count of the number of times that Craigslisters have "loose" and "loosing"where lose and losing would be correct. It makes me worry about what a looser I am for caring about such things.

(Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not saying that people who misspell things a lot are all stupid. But I do observe that all stupid people misspell things quite a lot . . . or alot, as it usually appears these days. And why does it matter? Because words are tools. It's not required that you use big, complicated, unusual words . . . but if you can't spell the words you already use, it's like a carpenter who leaves the saw out in the rain to get dull and rusted. Respect for your tools means paying attention to the small differences that distinguish them and using the right tool for the right job. With words, those differences are especially important because they usually say something about the origin of the words, which is a real help to choosing the right one at the right time.)

Now that the rich have captured the initiative & referendum process, what's left?

Oregonians were early adopters of the initiative and referendum processes, the highlight of the Progressive Era reforms, which were needed to break the stranglehold wealth had on state legislatures in the Gilded Age of the 19th and early 20th Century.

Now that we're suffering the aftershocks from the cataclysmic collapse of the Second Gilded Age, one with excesses that make the famous Robber Barons look like small-time grifters, we find that the same forces have captured the I&R game and turned it into their private preserve. If the bought-and-sold politicians show even the slightest signs of incipient vertebrate status, passing even the mildest of reforms and reducing the gains of the wealthy by something on the order of a rounding error in the third decimal place, they unleash their reserve army of desperately poor people with orders for them to go collect signatures against the interests of themselves and every other Oregonian (including the rich themselves, whose greed blinds them to penalty they pay for living in a two-class country with a hollowed-out place where the middle class used to be).

I'm not ready to do away with the I&R system. Yet. But if this repeal of the recent tiny tax hikes passes then we need to figure out whether there's anything "progressive" left of the progressive's signature reform or whether it's just another way for the corporations to shaft the people of Oregon.

More like this please -- and fast.

Isn't straw bale scary? Mattawa, Wash. public library. Image via Wikipedia

Straw-bale homes. The building code should be revised to make the performance of straw bale homes the standard (not the method, but the attainable performance). Then, if builders don't want to use straw, fine, but they have to build a house as well-insulated and tight as they could have with straw.

Nice straw-bale primer here.