Jet Fuel From Alcohol – What a Concept

US Air Force Completes First Test Flight Run on New Alcohol Based Jet Fuel

By EcoSeed | Thu, 12 July 2012 22:11 | 1

 

The United States Air Force announced that they have flown the first aircraft that runs on a new fuel blend based on alcohol.

The fuel, known as Alcohol-to-Jet or ATJ, is the third alternative fuel to have been evaluated by the U.S. Air Force as a potential replacement for standard petroleum-derived JP-8 aviation fuel for the organization’s fleet.

The fuel was tested on an A-10C Thunderbolt II aircraft on June 28.

The fuel is cellulose-based, or can be derived from any cell-based material like wood, paper or grass. The extracted sugars are then fermented to alcohols and then processed into aviation fuel.

ATJ was produced by biofuel manufacturer Gevo, who was put on contract last year to provide the Air Force 11,000 gallons of the fuel.

“It flew like a usual A-10 would without any issues,” said Maj. Olivia Elliott, an A-10 pilot and an evaluator for the testing.

Test engineer Capt. Joseph Rojas said the plane is an “excellent platform” for testing the new fuel due in part to its segregated fuel system.

“The system allows one engine to run off a fuel supply that is completely segregated from the other engine. This allows us to fly with one engine on the new fuel and the other on traditional fuel,” he said. “If engine operation is normal, as with the ATJ blend, then we progress to flying with both engines on the new fuel.”

Prior to ATJ, the Air Force had used synthetic paraffinic kerosene derived from coal and natural gas and a bio-mass fuel derived from plant oils and animal fats known as Hydroprocessed Renewable Jet.

The Air Force has approved fleet-wide certification efforts of the fuel blend which will be officially used once the Air Force Alternative Fuel Certification Division completes all air and ground testing.
“Eventually, it is possible that aircraft will see JP-8 consisting of all these alternatives,” said AFCD chief Jeff Braun. “You won’t be able to determine the difference and you won’t care, because all perform as JP-8.”

By. N.P. Arboleda

Source: Ecoseed

Clean Energy, Energy, Environment, Science and Technology

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July 13, 2012

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Ascending Lookout Mountain near Golden, CO

My grandson took this picture while my other grandson and I were riding our bikes up Lookout Mountain near Golden, CO.  This is an iconic ride having an altitude gain of 1400 ft over a distance of 4.5 miles.

Art, Cycling, Landscapes, Photos, Sport

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July 13, 2012

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Cooling a Warming Planet – from e360

10 JUL 2012: ANALYSIS

Cooling a Warming Planet:
A Global Air Conditioning Surge

The U.S. has long used more energy for air conditioning than all other nations combined. But as demand increases in the world’s warmer regions, global energy consumption for air conditioning is expected to continue to rise dramatically and could have a major impact on climate change.

by stan cox

The world is warming, incomes are rising, and smaller families are living in larger houses in hotter places. One result is a booming market for air conditioning — world sales in 2011 were up 13 percent over 2010, and that growth is expected to accelerate in coming decades.

By my very rough estimate, residential, commercial, and industrial air conditioning worldwide consumes at least one trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. Vehicle air conditioners in the United States alone use 7 to 10 billion gallons of gasoline annually. And thanks largely to demand in warmer regions, it is possible that world consumption of energy for cooling could explode tenfold by 2050, giving climate change an unwelcome dose of extra momentum.

The United States has long consumed more energy each year for air conditioning than the rest of the world combined. In fact, we use more electricity for cooling than the entire continent of Africa, home to a billion people, consumes for all purposes. Between 1993 and 2005, with summers growing hotter and homes larger, energy consumed by residential air

China is expected to surpass the U.S. as the world’s biggest user of electricity for air conditioning by 2020.

conditioning in the U.S. doubled, and it leaped another 20 percent by 2010. The climate impact of air conditioning our buildings and vehicles is now that of almost half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Yet with other nations following our lead, America’s century-long reign as the world cooling champion is coming to an end. And if global consumption for cooling grows as projected to 10 trillion kilowatt-hours per year — equal to half of the world’s entire electricity supply today — the climate forecast will be grim indeed.

Because it is so deeply dependent on high-energy cooling, the United States is not very well positioned to call on other countries to exercise restraint for the sake of our common atmosphere. But we can warn the world of what it stands to lose if it follows our path, and that would mean making clear what we ourselves have lost during the age of air conditioning. For example, with less exposure to heat, our bodies can fail to acclimatize physiologically to summer conditions, while we develop a mental dependence on cooling. Community cohesion also has been ruptured, as neighborhoods that on warm summer evenings were once filled with people mingling are now silent — save for the whirring of air-conditioning units. A half-century of construction on the model of refrigerated cooling has left us with homes and offices in which natural ventilation often is either impossible or ineffective. The result is that the same cooling technology that can save lives during brief, intense heat waves is helping undermine our health at most other times.

The time window for debating the benefits and costs of air conditioning on a global scale is narrowing — once a country goes down the air-conditioned path, it is very hard to change course.

Air Conditioners in China Office Building

ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
Air conditioners on an office building in China’s Fujiang Province

China is already sprinting forward and is expected to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest user of electricity for air conditioning by 2020. Consider this: The number of U.S. homes equipped with air conditioning rose from 64 to 100 million between 1993 and 2009, whereas 50 million air-conditioning units were sold in China in 2010 alone. And it is projected that the number of air-conditioned vehicles in China will reach 100 million in 2015, having more than doubled in just five years.

As urban China, Japan, and South Korea approach the air-conditioning saturation point, the greatest demand growth in the post-2020 world is expected to occur elsewhere, most prominently in South and Southeast Asia. India will predominate — already, about 40 percent of all electricity consumption in the city of Mumbai goes for air conditioning. The Middle East is already heavily climate-controlled, but growth is expected to continue there as well. Within 15 years, Saudi Arabia could actually be consuming more oil than it exports, due largely to air conditioning. And with summers warming, the United States and Mexico will continue increasing their heavy consumption of cool.

Countries are already struggling to keep up with peak power demand in hot weather. This summer, India is seeing a shortfall of 17 gigawatts, with residential electricity shut off for 16 hours per day in some areas. China is falling short by 30 to 40 gigawatts, resulting in energy rationing and factory closings.

In most countries, the bulk of electricity that runs air conditioners in homes and businesses is generated from fossil fuels, most prominently coal. In contrast, a large share of space heating in cooler climates is done by directly burning fuels — usually natural gas, other gases, or oil, all of which have somewhat smaller carbon emissions than coal. That, together with the energy losses involved in generation and transmission of electric power, means that on average, an air conditioner causes more greenhouse emissions when pushing heat out of a house than does a furnace when putting the same quantity of heat into a house.

Based on projected increases in population, income, and temperatures around the world, Morna Isaac and Detlef van Vuuren of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency predict that in a warming world, the increase in emissions from air conditioning will be faster than the decline in emissions from heating; as a result, the combined greenhouse impact of heating and cooling will begin rising soon after 2020 and then shoot up fast through the end of the century.

Refrigerants — fluids that absorb and release heat efficiently at the right temperatures — are the key to air conditioning and refrigeration, but they can also be serious troublemakers when released into the atmosphere. Refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that harm the stratospheric ozone layer are being phased out under the 1989 Montreal Protocol; however, most ozone-friendlier substitutes are, like CFCs,

The U.S. experience provides little hope that renewable energy can satisfy a growing share of air conditioning demand.

powerful greenhouse gases.

Most prominent worldwide in the new generation of refrigerants are compounds known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). They have a smaller climate-warming potential than do the ozone-depleting compounds they are replacing, but they still have hundreds to thousands of times the greenhouse potency of carbon dioxide (on a pound-for-pound basis, that is; carbon dioxide is released in vastly larger quantities and has a larger total impact.) Rapid growth in air conditioning threatens to swamp out the marginal climate benefits of replacing current refrigerants with HFCs.

According to a recent forecast by Guus Velders of the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment and his colleagues, refrigerants that accumulate in the atmosphere between now and 2050 (increasingly HFCs, mostly from refrigeration and air conditioning) will add another 14 to 27 percent to the increased warming caused by all human-generated carbon dioxide emissions. Recent years, therefore, have seen a research stampede to find refrigerants with lighter greenhouse potential. Several promising candidates have been discarded on the basis of flammability, toxicity, ozone depletion, or other problems. None of the remaining prospects is ideal in all respects.

One important consideration is efficiency. A refrigerant that has smaller direct greenhouse potential than those currently in use but that exchanges heat less efficiently — causing an air conditioner to consume more energy for the same amount of cooling — could have a larger total climate impact.

Isaac and Van Vuuren predict that even if demand for air conditioning is satisfied with successively more efficient generations of equipment, global electricity consumption for home cooling will still rise eightfold by 2050, which is not much better than the tenfold increase that would occur without efficiency improvements. A similar dominance of growth over efficiency has prevailed in the United States. From 1993 to 2005, energy efficiency of air-conditioning equipment improved by almost 30 percent, but household energy consumption for air conditioning doubled.

There is hope that renewable energy could satisfy a growing share of air-conditioning demand, but there is little inspiration to be drawn from the U.S. experience. Here, renewable electricity production from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal sources could expand to five times its current

Is it fair to expect people in Mumbai to go without air conditioning when so many in Miami use it freely?

production (an increase that the Environmental Protection Agency does not expect to be achieved until 2030) and still not cover the nation’s air-conditioning demand, let alone other needs. Today, worldwide renewable production is estimated at about 750 billion kilowatt hours, which, I estimate, covers about three-fourths of current global air-conditioning demand. The International Energy Agency predicts that renewable generation will expand to six times its current output by 2050. But even if that is achieved, renewable sources will still be satisfying only three-fourths of air-conditioning demand.

Each supply-side option has its own problems. Attempts to catch up with cooling demand by expanding hydroelectric power generation have caused serious ecological disruption and displacement of many millions of rural people in India, China, Brazil, and other countries. And we see hints that proliferation of air conditioning will provide an incentive to revive and expand nuclear power. Last month, in the face of strong opposition from the public, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced that his government was ending the moratorium on nuclear energy generation that had been in place since the tsunami disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. Noda acknowledged that the timing of the restart of two reactors in western Japan was no accident; the additional power will be needed to satisfy the summer surge in air conditioner use.

In thinking about global demand for cooling, two key questions emerge. Is it fair to expect people in Mumbai to go without air conditioning when so many in Miami use it freely? And if not, can the world find ways to adapt to warmer temperatures that are fair to all and do not depend on the unsupportable growth of air conditioning?

Currently, efforts to develop low-energy methods for warm climates are in progress on every continent. Passive cooling projects in China, India, Egypt, Iran, Namibia, and other countries combine traditional technologies — like wind towers and water evaporation — with newly designed, ventilation-friendly architectural features. Solar adsorption air conditioning performs a magician’s trick, using only the heat of the sun to cool the indoor air, but so far it is not very affordable or adaptable to home use. Meanwhile in India and elsewhere, cooling is being achieved solely with air pumped from underground tunnels.

 

Climate Change, Energy, Finance and Economics, Science and Technology

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July 13, 2012

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Climate Change Adding to Weather Extremes – from Scientific American

Climatewire | Energy & Sustainability

Climate Change Loads the Dice for More Extreme Weather

In the case of the 2011 heat wave in Texas, new research finds that adding climate change to La Niña makes scorching heat 20 times more likely

By Lauren Morello and ClimateWire  | July 11, 2012 | 1

climate change, extreme weather events, La NinaA summer heat wave left much of the U.S. sweltering in July 2011. On July 22, many cities from Virginia to Maine broke temperature records with highs between 38 to 42 degrees Celsius (100 to 108 Fahrenheit). The heat settled heavily over the South and Midwest as well. Both Texas and Oklahoma experienced their warmest month on record.Image: NASA/LARC

Climate change is changing the odds of some extreme weather events, according to new research by government scientists in the United States and Britain.

Back-to-back La Niña cycles helped create the scorching heat wave that drove Texas’ record-breaking drought last year, but climate change also played a role, the researchers report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

That type of severe heat wave is 20 times more likely to occur during a La Niña today than it was during a La Niña in the 1960s, say researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Meteorological Office.

“What this is saying is it’s a combination of La Niña variability, but there’s also an additional component from longer-term warming,” said study co-author Tom Peterson, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

La Niña’s influence was also evident on many of the weather extremes during a year that saw an onslaught of natural disasters, including a record-breaking 14 $1 billion-plus extreme weather events in the United States.

“In addition to East African drought, La Niña also played a role in droughts that occurred thousands of miles away in Mexico and southwestern United States, among the worst on record in both countries,” said Jessica Blunden, another NCDC climate scientist.

And the weather pattern also helped cool the planet briefly, though 2011 still ranks among the 15 warmest years on record, NOAA said yesterday in its annual “State of the Climate” report, compiled by 378 scientists in 48 countries.

‘Cooler’ becomes a relative term
Conditions were unusually warm compared with other years when La Niña was present. While 2011 stands as the coolest year since 2008, “the word ‘cooler’ is actually relative,” Blunden said.

The global average temperature last year still exceeded the average temperature recorded between 1981 and 2010 — the three warmest decades since record-keeping began 130 years ago.

“Long-term trends are continuing to show what we’d expect in a warmer world,” said NCDC Director Tom Karl.

Those trends are especially pronounced in the Arctic, which continues to warm roughly twice as fast as the planet’s lower latitudes. Last year, the northwestern Alaska town of Barrow experienced a record 86 consecutive days in which the daily low temperature did not dip below freezing.

“The Arctic is clearly experiencing the impacts of a prolonged and intensified warming trend,” said Martin Jeffries, Arctic science adviser to the Office of Naval Research.

This year, the lower 48 states are also sizzling. Yesterday, NOAA said the first six months of the year were the warmest January to June in the contiguous United States since record-keeping began in 1895.

Meanwhile, the level of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere continues to climb. The global average level of carbon dioxide broke the 390 parts per million barrier for the first time last year, an increase of 2.10 ppm from 2010. Levels of methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere also rose.

But determining the role climate change has played in individual extreme weather events is tricky, researchers said.

“A lot of people want to know shortly after an extreme event, what were the causes of it? How are these things changing over time?” said Peterson. “But this is an evolving science.”

While it’s true that scientists can’t say with certainty whether climate change caused a given weather event, that is the wrong question to ask, experts said.

When climate gives events an extra push
Instead, they are examining whether climate change is changing the odds of natural disasters like floods, droughts, heat waves and hurricanes.

 

Climate Change, Environment, Science and Technology

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July 12, 2012

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Baby Buffs on Grass

From the local Buffalo Ranch near Evergreen, CO

Art, Buffalo, Photos, Wildlife

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July 12, 2012

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Cyber Warfare – from Oil Price Daily.com

The Devastating Effects of a Cyber-Attack Against a Country’s Energy Grid

By Llewellyn King | Tue, 10 July 2012 21:47 | 1

Benefit From the Latest Energy Trends and Investment Opportunities before the mainstream media and investing public are aware they even exist. The Free Oilprice.com Energy Intelligence Report gives you this and much more. Click here to find out more.

Computer war has grown up. It has moved from the age of the equivalent of black powder to the equivalent of high-explosive shells — not yet nuclear devices but close.

Enemies with sophisticated computer technology, money and determination can now contemplate the possibility of taking down the electrical systems of large swaths of the nation. Just a small interruption in power supply is devastating; as has been demonstrated by the recent power outages in 10 states, caused by severe weather.

The world as we know it stops when power fails; gasoline cannot be pumped, air conditioning and all other household appliances cannot be used, plunging us into a dark age without the tools of a dark age – candles, firewood, horses and carts.

At the center of this vulnerability is a device most of us have never heard of but is an essential part of modern infrastructure. It is the programmable logic controller (PLC).

In appearance the PLC is usually a small, black box about the size of a woman’s purse. It came on the scene in the 1960s, when microprocessors became available and has grown exponentially in application and deployment ever since. The full computerization of the PLC put it silently but vitally in charge of nearly every commercial/industrial operation, from assembly lines to power dispatch.

These devices are the brain box of everything from air traffic systems to railroads. They replaced old-fashioned relays and human commands, and made automation truly automatic.

The revolution brought on by the PLC is an “ultra-important part” of the continuing story of technological progress, according to Ken Ball, an engineering physicist who has written a history of these devices.

Now the PLC — this quiet workhorse, this silent servant — is a cause of worry; not so much from computer hackers, out for a bit of fun through manipulating a single controller, but from the wreckage that can be achieved  in a government-sponsored cyber attack with planning and malice of forethought.

Such an attack could be launched for diverse purposes against many aspects of our society. But the most paralyzing would be an attack on the electrical system; on the controllers that run power plant operations and the grid, from coal to nuclear to natural gas to wind turbines and other renewables.

Such a coordinated attack could bring the United States to its knees for days or weeks with traffic jams, abandoned cars, closed airports and hospitals reliant on emergency generators while fuel supplies last.

For this to happen, the hostile force would need to able to get around many firewalls and what are called “sandboxes,” where malware is trapped when detected.

The evidence of how effective attacks on controllers can be lies in Iran and two U.S./Israeli programs (worms, which have been used against the nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz. The first worm was launched specifically at a single type of controller, made by the German company Siemens and deployed in the Natanz plant.

A slip let some of the worm be detected on the Internet by American security companies like Symantec. They named it Stuxnet.

So far Stuxnet has been able to cause the destruction of about 1,000 of the 5,000 Iranian centrifuge enrichment devices. This was done by running them at unsafe speeds, while telling the operators that all was well.

A second worm, called Flame, has been trolling though Iranian computers, sending back critical information on military and scientific secrets. This fiendishly clever operation was launched under President George W. Bush with the code name Olympic Games. But it has been ramped up by President Barack Obama, according to David Sanger of The New York Times.

How safe are our computers and those little black boxes that control everything from traffic lights to chocolate manufacture? I am told by a former technology expert at the CIA that cybersecurity is the top worry of defense planners: It is “ultra” critical, he told me.

Also on the commercial side, many companies are working with clients to protect their systems. Benjamin Jun, vice president of technology at Cryptography Research, Inc., is one of the civilian sentries guarding networks, and by extension controllers for private clients. Jun says invaders are looking for flaws and complexity does not necessarily make a system less vulnerable.

We now live in a world in which devastation can be inflicted by the evil on the unprepared without a shot being fired.

By. Llewellyn King

border wars, Cyber Warfare, internet

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July 11, 2012

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Mother and Baby Buffalo

Lunch time at the local buffalo herd near Evergreen, Co. Note that Mama Buff is shedding her old winter coat for summer.  She will get her new winter coat in autumn.

Art, Buffalo, Landscapes, Wildlife

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July 11, 2012

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Denmark to Lead in Going Green – from Oil Price Daily.com

Denmark to Lead EU in Going Green

By John Daly | Mon, 09 July 2012 22:02 | 0

Amidst the on-going roiling European Union debate over the organization’s crisis, politicians in Brussels have been scrambling to construct a fiscal policy that will shore up the organization’s common currency, the Euro.

But the on-going hardball fiscal discussions have laid bare the fact that, quite aside from a common financial policy, the EU suffers from a number of sovereign disconnects as well, and one of the most notable of these is energy policy.

In Spain, the government is preparing to raise taxes on renewable energy generation projects along with nuclear power as an element in the government’s broad energy reform program to curtail the nation’s deficits, according to government sources.

Renewable energy sources will reportedly be hit hard, by up to $1.1 billion annually, with the country’s nascent solar technologies likely to bear the brunt.

At the figurative and literal end of the EU pole, Denmark is going full bore to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, seeking to reduce the nation’s dependency on them by 33 percent by 2020 and to achieve complete independence from hydrocarbon fossil fuels three decades later, by 2050.

Say who? Scandinavian environmental tree-huggers?

No – the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Building, in its “Energy Strategy 2050” report.

Denmark, as one of Scandinavia’s most prosperous countries, currently has deeper pockets than fiscally strapped Spain, but the issue here stripped of political flummery is one of commitment.

Just as Germany in the wake of the 11 March 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe decided to shutter its 19 online nuclear power plants (NPPs), so Copenhagen has made a political commitment to wean itself off a hydrocarbon-based energy economy.

The “Energy Strategy 2050” contains initial policies and initiatives intended to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuel consumption 33 percent by 2020 before achieving complete independence from fossil fuels three decades later. One of the core elements in accomplishing this is an increased reliance on wind power, as within the next eight years numerous new wind projects, including offshore wind are scheduled to come online, bringing the total wind power contribution to Denmark’s electric supply up to 40 percent.

The transition to renewable power from fossil fuels will not be cheap. Denmark’s Minister for Climate and Energy Lykke Friis nevertheless called the government’s commitment to renewable energy “economically responsible,”telling journalists, “No one is saying that carrying out major investments in energy efficiency and expanding our use of renewable energy is going to be free. But the alternative: Continued dependence on fossil fuels will, as all signs indicate, only become more expensive in the years to come. Converting to renewable energy will shield Denmark from the effects of increasing energy prices.”

The most interesting part of the Danish government’s commitment to renewable energy?

Denmark’s on-going investment in wind turbines and other forms of renewable energy is in stark contrast with neighbouring Sweden, which is expanding its energy commitment to nuclear power with Stockholm’s decision in principle to grant permission to build 10 new NPPs. The Danish Energy Association has expressed concerns thatthe Swedish decision to upgrade its nuclear commitment could “smash the economics of renewable energy.”

Given that Sweden and Denmark have an interconnected power grid, cheap Swedish NPP electricity could depress electricity prices.

Friis could not say whether the Swedish nuclear power may create a need for more state aid for Denmark’s renewable energy plan, saying only, “We have a vision for Denmark to be free of fossil fuels, and then we see if we have an energy system that is adapted to make it profitable.”

It will be fascinating to see which national system commitment prevails, especially as five decades ago nuclear energy was also promoted as a panacea to reliance on fossils fuels. Given that both Sweden and Denmark are prosperous nations, the final outcome, suffused with cash, is unlikely to be clear for some years – in which case, potential new developments at Fukushima may well render the debate moot, as so far, wind power’s environmental impact currently seems to be limited to bird strikes, while crippled NPPs trail longer-term environmental consequences in their wake.

By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com

Clean Energy, Economic Systems, Energy, Finance and Economics, Science and Technology

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July 10, 2012

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Dark Money Subverting the Democratic Process from Mother Jones

Dems: Dark Money Groups Use “Secret Money to Subvert the Democratic Process”

—By 

| Mon Jul. 9, 2012 1:30 PM PDT

Democrats are continuing their offensive against conservative dark-money groups, arguing that they are not “social welfare” nonprofits as they claim but rather political committees flaunting donor disclosure rules. In a new complaint to the Federal Election Commission first reported by the New York Times, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee executive director Guy Cecil calls out Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, the senior citizen-focused 60 Plus Association, and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity. The three groups, Cecil writes, “are in the vanguard of using secret money to subvert the democratic process.”

The complaint singles out a factually challenged ad from 60 Plus targeting Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a similarly fuzzy Crossroads ad targeting Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and an Americans for Prosperity ad attacking Senate candidate Tim Kaine (D-Va.). Cecil writes (PDF):

Each group shields its donors from disclosure by disavowing political committee status under FECA, and claiming exemption from tax under 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. None has a legitimate claim…Outrageously, 60 Plus and AFP each told the Internal Revenue Service on its 2010 Form 990 that it engaged in no direct or indirect activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates at all during the bulk of the 2010 cycle. These claims are risible on their face, given what is known publicly about these groups’ activities.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told the Times that complaints that fail to mention similar groups supporting Democrats doing “exactly as their center-right counterparts are publicity stunts to promote partisan causes and are not taken seriously by serious people.” Likewise, 60 Plus chairman James Martin said the complaint is “naked politics, pure and simple. They need to stop their whining and stop trying to achieve with lawyers what they can’t in the arena of public opinion.” Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell penned an op-ed for USA Today arguing that requiring 501(c)(4)s to reveal their donors could inspire a Nixonian enemies list used to harass big political donors.

While a federal appeals court ruled last month that the government must start determining the “major purpose” of 501(c)(4) groups like Crossroads GPS, the decision will likely be subject to more legal wrangling. And as the Times reminds us, the FEC “is usually slow to respond to such complaints, and any action is unlikely to affect the 2012 election.”

2012 Elections, Elections, Finance and Economics, Media, politics

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July 9, 2012

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Good News for Afghanistan!

Afghanistan’s Landscape is Perfect for Renewable Energy

By Green Futures | Mon, 09 July 2012 00:00 |

Say the word ‘Afghanistan’ and you’ll conjure up a number of associations in your listener’s mind. It’s a safe bet that none of them will include ‘promising haven of renewable energy’. But that’s a pretty fair description of what’s underway in the mountainous north-eastern province of Badakhshan, “the least developed part of the least developed country in the world”.

The province may lack development in the conventional sense of the word. Even major roads are rough, rutted mud tracks, impassable for much of the winter. It can take hours to make a journey of 30 miles, and you emerge from the jeep feeling as though you’ve been flung around inside a tumble drier. But Badakhshan doesn’t lack resources. If peace ever returns, its spectacular landscape will be a magnet for tourism: snowy peaks looming over richly fertile valleys bright with apricot blossom and spring wheat, watered by fast flowing rivers.

And it’s these which provide a ready resource of a different kind. Here, among the last outliers of the Hindu Kush, local Afghan communities are working with German engineers and development experts to install run-of-the-river hydro plants. Six are in place to date, with a total capacity of 1.3MW. They bring light and power to 63,000 people in homes and businesses who previously had to rely on smoky kerosene lanterns or pricey, unreliable diesel generators. The plants are a small triumph of engineering: in an area with few roads even a jeep can manage, many parts have to be carried on mule back – no small task when canals have to be carved out of the mountainsides and electricity poles erected on remote hilltops.

The six plants are part of a wider programme, Energy Supply for Rural Areas [ESRA], run by Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water and the German overseas development body GIZ, with the support of the consultancyIntegration. Together with Afghan colleagues, their staff spent three years crisscrossing Badakhshan, staying in villages, surviving an ‘IED’ bomb attack and, slowly, cup of tea after cup of tea, winning over local leaders to the scheme. It was painstaking but essential work. Everyone needs to be on board for the schemes to succeed: the district governors, imams and the local ‘commanders’ (former mujahidin leaders who still wield considerable clout). Even though the province is not a hotbed of Taliban activity, it’s seen its share of attacks, and there is little doubt that the plants would be tempting targets had they not won such overwhelming local support. As it is, none has ever been hit.

While the capital costs were met with donor funding, running and repair expenses are covered by the electricity bills. At around five afghanis (£0.06) per unit, hydro power is more than competitive with kerosene or diesel – assuming the latter is even available. Local people are trained to operate and manage the plants as independent businesses, under the umbrella of the Ministry.

The effects on everyday life have been dramatic. Householders love the clean, bright electric light, compared to the smoky and highly flammable kerosene lanterns. Electric water heaters mean there’s no need to light a fire – using scarce brushwood gathered from the bare hillsides – every time you want a cup of tea. Schoolteachers told me how children can study in the evening, and “don’t hide away at home because they’re scared that the teacher will tell them off for not doing their homework”. Television makes everyone feel more connected to the outside world, particularly women, who in this very conservative society can feel isolated. “Now they gather at each other’s houses to watch their favourite shows with their ‘TV friends’”. (‘Afghan Star’, the national equivalent of ‘X-Factor’, is particularly popular.) And local health clinics have the power, literally, to save lives which could otherwise have been lost.

The hydro has been a boon to local artisans, too. Mohammed Amir, a carpenter in the village of Farghambowl, told me that where it once took him five days to make a door, it now takes just one, thanks to a new set of power tools. Variations on his story are repeated up and down the street of this and other village bazaars: small businesses which were once struggling – millers, tailors, blacksmiths – are now prospering. Young people who left their homes to look for work as far away as Kabul are returning to set up shop, bringing urban skills such as computer training to their villages.

The power carries with it another plus, too: in return for the wires coming over the hill, farmers have to agree to stop growing opium poppies. Such is the appeal of electricity that this condition seems to be widely observed. Daoula Mohammed, the governor of Jurm district, summed it up: “Ask people here what is the single most important project for them – they will always say electricity. One night there was a flood; some sediment had blocked the channel [taking water to the hydro plant]. And the next day, 100 people came from the bazaar with shovels to clear it [to make sure the power came back]… If there’s a security problem, people can live with it. If there’s a problem with water, they can live with it. But if people find they don’t have power for just one night, they all come hammering on my door!”

When other planned plants come on-stream, including one solar PV farm, over 90,000 people in the area will enjoy the fruits of clean, round-the-clock power and light. And this could be just the start. Whole swathes of the country have huge potential for plants on this kind of scale, whether driven by water, wind or sun. No one knows just what will happen in Afghanistan when the international forces pull out in 2014. But by rooting such schemes in local communities, ESRA is hoping that they have the resilience to withstand whatever turbulent times lie ahead.

By. Martin Wright

Clean Energy, Energy

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July 9, 2012

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