[✔️] March 29, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*March 29, 2022*/

/[ Audio and text --  NPR is "shocked, shocked" to hear lies and 
disinformation about green energy  ]/
*Misinformation is derailing renewable energy projects across the United 
States*
March 28, 2022
JULIA SIMON
On a winter night in early 2016, Jeremy Kitson gathered in his buddy's 
large shed with some neighbors to plan their fight against a proposed 
wind farm in rural Van Wert County, Ohio. The project would be about a 
mile from his home.

 From the beginning, Kitson — who teaches physics and chemistry at the 
local high school — knew he didn't want the turbines anywhere near him. 
He had heard from folks who lived near another wind project about 10 
miles away that the turbines were noisy and that they couldn't sleep.

"There were so many people saying that it's horrible, you do not want to 
live under these things,'" Kitson says.

He and his neighbors went on the offensive. "I was just like, there's 
got to be a way to beat 'em," he says of the developer, Apex Clean 
Energy. "You got to outsmart them. You got to figure out the science. 
You got to figure out the economic arguments. You got to figure out what 
they're going to say and figure out how to counter it."
At the shed, according to Kitson, they agreed that part of their 
outreach would involve posting information on a Facebook community page 
called "Citizens for Clear Skies," which ultimately grew to more than 
770 followers.

In between posts selling anti-wind yard signs and posts about public 
meetings opposing local wind projects, there were posts that spread 
false, misleading and questionable information about wind energy. Links 
to stories about wind turbine noise causing birth defects in Portuguese 
horses. Posts about the health effects of low frequency infrasound, also 
called wind turbine syndrome. Posts about wind energy not actually 
reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Photos of wind turbines breaking, 
burning and falling — some in nearby counties and states, but some in 
Germany and New Zealand. According to 2014 data from the Department of 
Energy, the most recent available, out of the then-40,000 turbines in 
the U.S., there had been fewer than 40 incidents...
- -
For the Biden administration to hit its target of an electricity sector 
free of fossil fuels by 2035, the country has to double or triple the 
wind and solar power capacity it installs over the next few years and 
maintain that higher level of deployments for about a decade, says Kelly 
Speakes-Backman, who leads the Energy Department's Office of Energy 
Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Yet every single rural utility-scale wind and solar project needs local 
or state approval to get built, says Sarah Mills, who researches rural 
renewable energy at the University of Michigan. And she says it's in 
those often-fractious discussions about approval that misinformation is 
sometimes halting and stalling the installation of the renewables the 
climate needs. "At the end of the day, if local governments are not 
setting rules that allow for the infrastructure to be sited, those 
policies cannot be achieved," Mills says.

*Misinformation gets mixed up in decisions over renewable projects*
Last year, a Department of Energy study found that setback regulations 
now represent the single-greatest barrier to securing locations for wind 
projects in the U.S. Setbacks limit how close wind projects can be to 
buildings, and Mills says they often make sense to reduce things such as 
noise and "shadow flicker," the moving shadows and strobing sunlight 
that turbines can cast onto buildings. But she says misinformation can 
fuel setbacks that are more stringent than needed and sometimes act as 
outright bans on renewable energy.

In Ohio, setbacks and other rules associated with renewable projects 
have historically been set at the state level. But in October, a new 
law, SB 52, went into effect giving counties the ability to make 
exclusion zones with no utility-scale wind and solar projects.

Kitson, the science teacher, testified in support of the zones, arguing 
that turbines negatively affect property values. He pointed to his 
group's analysis comparing the lower property values in the one local 
township that has wind turbines to the higher average property values in 
the greater county.

But Ben Hoen, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 
says his more than 15 years of research has shown that wind turbines 
have little to no impact on nearby property values. Hoen says, "We have 
not found evidence of property value impacts despite studying it over 
multiple periods of time."
Hoen does say that studies in the Netherlands and United Kingdom have 
found some effects on property values, but they were far smaller than 
Kitson's reference to studies showing a 20%-40% depreciation.

In about half of states, regulations around how and whether to build 
rural utility-scale solar and wind are determined on the local level, 
Mills says. "These local officials are not necessarily experts in 
energy," she says. "And so when you have people coming and stating 
things as facts, especially if there's nobody fact-checking everything, 
right, it's difficult. They're certainly making decisions based on what 
they're hearing."

*Facebook groups spread misleading content*
In recent years, some of the misinformation about renewable energy has 
come from former President Donald Trump, who frequently makes misleading 
and false anti-wind claims at his rallies and media appearances, 
including the untrue idea that wind turbine noise causes cancer. Earlier 
this month, when asked about the unfolding Ukraine crisis on a podcast, 
Trump immediately responded by listing untrue ideas about wind energy.

Other misleading ideas about renewable energy come from groups with ties 
to the fossil fuel industry, like the Texas Public Policy Foundation. 
The foundation recently released a film trailer for an anti-offshore 
wind group in Massachusetts that features multiple falsehoods, including 
the untrue statement that the proposed project didn't do any 
environmental impact assessments and the incorrect idea that offshore 
wind projects "haven't worked anywhere in the world." The Texas Public 
Policy Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

But Facebook is one of the biggest drivers of misleading content about 
renewable energy, says Josh Fergen, a researcher at the University of 
Minnesota Duluth. Last fall, Fergen and his colleagues published a paper 
looking at the Facebook posts of Kitson's group and another large wind 
opposition group, about 90 kilometers east, fighting the Republic Wind Farm.

Fergen's paper concluded that posts in the two Facebook pages were 
"increasing perceptions of human health and public safety risks related 
to wind by sharing news of disasters and misinformation over health 
assessment risks." In June, the Ohio Power Siting Board, whose approval 
was needed for the site, rejected the Republic Wind Farm proposal citing 
geological concerns and the local opposition.

NPR reviewed dozens of posts from anti-wind and anti-solar groups. While 
some posts about climate change denial, lithium mining, and a quote 
misattributed to Winston Churchill were marked as inaccurate, there were 
dozens of posts with misleading information about renewable energy that 
were not tagged.

NPR sent Facebook a sampling of the posts from anti-renewable community 
pages. Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said in an emailed statement, 
"We take action against content that our fact-checking partners rate 
false as part of our comprehensive strategy to keep viral, provably 
false claims from spreading on our apps. The examples shared with us 
don't appear to meet that threshold as they have only even been shared a 
handful of times over a period of several years."

But Fergen says that these same types of misleading and false posts 
about wind and solar energy pop up in a network of Facebook groups 
around the country, feeding a conflict between rural communities and 
energy developers.

Leah Stokes, an associate professor of political science at the 
University of California, Santa Barbara, says as resistance to wind and 
solar projects spreads on social media, the dangers of misinformation 
from these anti-renewable Facebook groups is growing.

"It can really slow down the clean energy transition, and that has just 
as dire life and death consequences, not just in terms of climate 
change, but also in terms of air pollution, which overwhelmingly hits 
communities of color."...
- -
*"It's about who you trust"*
Speakes-Backman says the Department of Energy is trying to do more 
outreach to local communities about inaccurate ideas surrounding 
utility-scale solar and wind, especially around land use and 
environmental effects. "We want to make sure that we are counteracting 
the misinformation that may be out there," she says.

But Dahvi Wilson, vice president of public affairs for Apex Clean 
Energy, says her company is finding that across the country, local 
engagement is becoming increasingly difficult given community suspicions 
of renewable energy.

"I think for a long time, and maybe still in some places, developers 
thought, 'Well, we just need to give better information. We just need to 
give more information.' And it's like, 'it's so not about that at all!'" 
Wilson says. "It's about who you trust and if anybody's going to believe 
you if you're a company."

Hoen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says the perception of 
the community engagement process regarding renewables has real 
implications — even on human health. He gives the example of shadow 
flicker, the moving shadows from turbines, which opposition groups often 
cite when critiquing wind. A few states and several counties have 
regulations limiting shadow flicker on habited structures, commonly to 
about 30 hours per year, but most do not, and wind opposition groups 
argue that the strobing shadows can cause agitation, headaches, or even 
seizures in some individuals.

Hoen says to date they have not found any evidence of shadow flicker 
causing seizures, but they have found its relation to annoyance and 
stress. So Hoen's group did a study asking: "As the number of shadow 
flicker hours decrease, is there less annoyance? Are people less 
bothered by it?"

"What we found, interestingly, is that the individuals that were annoyed 
by shadow flicker did not necessarily have a higher level of shadow 
flicker at their home than those that weren't annoyed," Hoen says. "And, 
in fact, what led to that annoyance, it appears, is their perception of 
the planning process, how they felt like that development got rolled out 
in their community."

Given the importance of community engagement in the process of locating 
wind and solar, Mills says renewable proponents need to be careful that 
they aren't romanticizing the projects or providing misleading 
information themselves, for example, by saying that a wind or solar 
plant will bring lots of jobs to an area.

"There are a lot of jobs in renewable energy. Many, many of the jobs in 
renewable energy are in construction trades. And so once the project is 
built, there's not tons of jobs associated with the project," Mills 
says. "I think in all of this, it's important to not sugarcoat."

Anti-renewable groups have internal disputes over use of misinformation
In the last few months, more states — Washington, Iowa and Kansas — have 
proposed bills to restrict rural utility-scale wind and solar. In 
Kansas, these bills were proposed by state Sen. Mike Thompson, who also 
introduced a bill to shut down existing renewable projects...
In one video on the anti-solar group's YouTube channel, Thompson calls 
climate change "one of the biggest scams out there" and says "carbon 
dioxide has no correlation with the temperature on this planet 
whatsoever." That statement is false: The vast majority of scientists 
agree that the climate crisis stems from greenhouse gas emissions 
generated by human activity. Thompson did not respond to requests for 
comment.

YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez said in an emailed statement, "In 
general, we don't recommend or prominently surface content that includes 
climate change misinformation. Our systems are trained to raise videos 
from authoritative sources, like news outlets and experts, in search 
results for certain queries related to climate change and renewable energy."

Barbara Kerr is a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas 
and she's a founding member of that anti-solar group in Kansas, which 
opposes NextEra Energy's proposed utility-scale solar plant in Douglas 
and Johnson counties. Kerr says she knows the videos that have been 
featured by the group she co-founded have misinformation.

"Just horrible," Kerr says of the videos. "They are just counterfactual 
and not something we should have on the website."

But despite Kerr's objections, her group decided in January to keep the 
videos online. "It is important to not judge, and censor utility-scale 
solar content/opinions contributed by citizens. If we become judge and 
jury, we are headed down the wrong path," the group said in an emailed 
statement.

Kerr says that while she disagrees with the misinformation used by some 
in her group, she says the anti-solar coalition makes for "strange 
bedfellows." "Sometimes you have to compromise," she says. "I don't want 
to alienate these people. They go to the meetings in Douglas County and 
Johnson County."

But Dan Reuman, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the 
University of Kansas, says he worries about the role misinformation 
could play in the decision-making over the solar project, which he 
supports. He says that while he is sympathetic to those in his county 
who don't want to live near a large-scale solar plant, he also thinks 
their concerns need to be weighed against the need to mitigate climate 
change.

"I just find it upsetting," Reuman says. "I hope that the government 
doesn't make a compromise between a scientifically based position and a 
misinformation-based position. Because if you're compromising with 
misinformation, then there's sort of no limit to that, right?"...
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation



/[  Our military paying closer attention to the new ocean of the Arctic ] /
*With Eyes on Russia, the U.S. Military Prepares for an Arctic Future*
As climate change opens up the Arctic for transit and exploration, 
Russia has increasingly militarized the region. The U.S. is preparing a 
more aggressive presence of its own.
March 27, 2022
DELTA JUNCTION, Alaska — After parachuting into the frigid Alaska 
interior, Capt. Weston Iannone and his soldiers navigated miles through 
deep snow, finally setting up a temporary outpost on a ridgeline next to 
a grove of lanky spruce trees that were also struggling to survive.

Darkness was setting in, the temperature had fallen below zero, and the 
120 men and women who had gathered as part of a major combat training 
exercise in subarctic Alaska had not yet erected tents. The supply line 
for fuel, essential to keep warm through the long night ahead, was 
lagging behind.

“Everything is a challenge, from water, fuel, food, moving people, 
keeping them comfortable,” said Captain Iannone, the 27-year-old company 
commander, as his soldiers shoveled deeper into the snow in search of a 
solid foundation to put up their sleeping quarters. “This is inherent 
training — understanding how far we can push physically and mentally.”...
- -
Tensions have been growing in the region for years, as nations stake 
claims to shipping routes and energy reserves that are opening up as a 
result of climate change. Now, with the geopolitical order shifting 
after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the competition over sovereignty and 
resources in the Arctic could intensify.

On the West Coast of Alaska, the federal government is investing 
hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the port at Nome, which could 
transform into a deepwater hub servicing Coast Guard and Navy vessels 
navigating into the Arctic Circle. The Coast Guard expects to deploy 
three new icebreakers — although Russia already has more than 50 in 
operation...
- -
And while the United States has denounced Russia’s aggressive military 
expansion in the Arctic, the Pentagon has its own plans to increase its 
presence and capabilities, working to rebuild cold-weather skills 
neglected during two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air 
Force has transferred dozens of F-35 fighter jets to Alaska, announcing 
that the state will host “more advanced fighters than any other location 
in the world.” The Army last year released its first strategic plan for 
“Regaining Arctic Dominance.”

The Navy, which this month conducted exercises above and below the sea 
ice inside the Arctic Circle, also has developed a plan for protecting 
American interests in the region, warning that weakness there would mean 
that “peace and prosperity will be increasingly challenged by Russia and 
China, whose interests and values differ dramatically from ours.”...
- -
The preparations are costly in both resources and personnel. While 
Captain Iannone’s company was able to finish setting up tents before 
midnight and survived the night without incident, other companies did 
not fare so well: Eight soldiers suffered cold-weather injuries, and 
four soldiers were taken to a hospital after a fire inside a personnel 
carrier.

Meanwhile, at another recent cold-weather exercise, in Norway, four U.S. 
Marines died when their aircraft crashed.

Russia, whose eastern mainland lies just 55 miles across the Bering 
Strait from the coast of Alaska, for years has prioritized an expanded 
Arctic presence by refurbishing airfields, adding bases, training troops 
and developing a network of military defense systems on the northern 
frontier.

With a warming climate shrinking sea ice in the region, valuable fish 
stocks are moving northward, while rare minerals and the Arctic’s 
substantial reserves of fossil fuels are becoming a growing target for 
exploration. Boat traffic is poised to increase from both trade and 
tourism....
- -
Two years ago, Moscow brought its own war games barreling through the 
Bering Sea, with Russian commanders testing weapons and demanding that 
American fishing boats operating in U.S. fishing waters get out of the 
way — an order the U.S. Coast Guard advised them to comply with. Russia 
has repeatedly sent military aircraft to the edge of U.S. airspace, 
leading U.S. jets to scramble to intercept them and warn them away.

This month, in response to escalating international sanctions against 
Russia, a member of the Russian parliament demanded that Alaska, 
purchased by the United States from Russia in 1867, be returned to 
Russian control — a possibly rhetorical gesture that nonetheless 
reflected the deteriorating relationship between the two world powers.

For centuries, the vast waters of the offshore Arctic were largely a no 
man’s land locked in by ice whose exact territorial boundaries — claimed 
by the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark and Iceland — 
remained unsettled. But as melting sea ice has opened new shipping 
pathways and as nations have eyed the vast hydrocarbon and mineral 
reserves below the Arctic sea floor, the complicated treaties, claims 
and boundary zones that govern the region have been opened to fresh 
disputes.

Canada and the United States have never reached agreement on the status 
of the Northwest Passage between the North Atlantic and the Beaufort 
Sea. China, too, has been working to establish a foothold, declaring 
itself a “near-Arctic state” and partnering with Russia to promote 
“sustainable” development and expanded use of Arctic trade routes.

Russia has made it clear it intends to control the so-called Northern 
Sea Route off its northern shore, a route that significantly shortens 
the shipping distance between China and Northern Europe. U.S. officials 
have complained that Russia is illegally demanding that other nations 
seek permission to pass and threatening to use military force to sink 
vessels that do not comply.

“We are stuck with a pretty tense situation there,” said Troy Bouffard, 
director of the Center of Arctic Security and Resilience at the 
University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Either we acquiesce to Russia, to their 
extreme control of surface waters, or we elevate or escalate the issue.”...
- -
The focus in recent years had been to expand diplomatic channels, 
collaborating on a range of regional challenges through the Arctic 
Council. That work was put on pause, however, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In Nome, which hopes to position itself as a maritime gateway to the Far 
North, there has long been evidence that a new era for the Arctic was 
arriving. Mayor John Handeland said winter sea ice that once persisted 
until mid-June may now be gone by early May and does not reappear before 
Thanksgiving...
- -
The focus in recent years had been to expand diplomatic channels, 
collaborating on a range of regional challenges through the Arctic 
Council. That work was put on pause, however, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In Nome, which hopes to position itself as a maritime gateway to the Far 
North, there has long been evidence that a new era for the Arctic was 
arriving. Mayor John Handeland said winter sea ice that once persisted 
until mid-June may now be gone by early May and does not reappear before 
Thanksgiving...
- -
“I think that our people realize that our military needs to protect our 
country and our military does need to invest in a presence in the 
Arctic,” Ms. Kitka said. “But it has got to be done smart.”

Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s junior Republican U.S. senator, said that while 
there may be little threat of a Russian invasion of Alaska, there is 
concern about Russia’s military buildup in the region.

“Ukraine just demonstrates even more, what matters to these guys is 
presence and power,” Mr. Sullivan said. “And when you start to build 
ports, when you start to bring up icebreakers, when you start to bring 
up Navy shipping, when you have over 100 fifth-gen fighters in the 
Arctic in Alaska, we’re starting to now talk Putin’s language.”

Alaska is already one of the nation’s most militarized states, with more 
than 20,000 active-duty personnel assigned to places such as Eielson Air 
Force Base and Fort Wainwright in the Fairbanks area, Joint Base 
Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, and Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak. 
The Army’s large training exercise — the first Combat Training Center 
rotation to be held in Alaska — took place around Fort Greely, about 100 
miles southeast of Fairbanks. Alaska is also home to critical parts of 
the nation’s missile-defense system.

Mr. Bouffard said the fracture in relations caused by Russia’s invasion 
of Ukraine could open the door to a variety of future problems that can 
only be guessed at right now. While there is no imminent conflict in the 
Arctic, there could well be friction over how Russia manages offshore 
waters or disputes over undersea exploration. The United States also 
needs to be prepared to aid northern European allies that share an 
uncertain future with Russia in Arctic waterways, he said.

That will mean being prepared for a range of potential problems. In a 
separate Alaska military exercise in recent weeks, teams from the 
Marines and the Army practiced cold-weather strategies for containing 
chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear contamination...
- -
At the large Army war games exercise near Fort Greely, the soldiers 
rehearsed a scenario in which paratroopers seized control of an airfield 
and established operations to hold the new territory. An opposing force 
then mobilized to try to reclaim the area.

Portable heating elements were used to keep engines running, along with 
lubricants that work in subzero temperatures. Some soldiers used skis 
and snowshoes to get around, as well as snowmobiles and small-unit 
support vehicles light enough to traverse deep snow.

For many of the soldiers under Captain Iannone’s command, defending the 
airfield meant establishing positions in remote areas with more 
rudimentary means. One heavy weapons group chopped down trees by hand 
and used a sled to pull a bulky I.T.A.S. weapons system to a vantage 
point from which the soldiers could scan miles of landscape below.

They erected a tent with a small stove heater, shielded with a wall of 
snow on all sides. They rotated in hourly shifts outside the tents — 
every half-hour at night — in order to keep warm.

Even then, 21-year-old Specialist Owen Prescott said he had struggled 
with the bite of nighttime cold and was figuring out the appropriate 
layers to wear to stay warm as temperatures neared minus 20. As he 
spooned some steaming food from a freeze-dried Army ration, he said he 
and his colleagues were focusing much of their attention on making sure 
they did not become a cold-weather casualty before engaging on their 
hypothetical combat mission.

“It’s just dealing with the cold, sustaining in the cold,” said 
Specialist Prescott, who is from Southern California. “I’m used to 
wearing shorts and flip-flops my entire life.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/us/army-alaska-arctic-russia.html



/[   or it could just be one man's immoral behavior and inherent 
criminality ] /
*How Joe Manchin Aided Coal, and Earned Millions*
At every step of his political career, Joe Manchin helped a West 
Virginia power plant that is the sole customer of his private coal 
business. Along the way, he blocked ambitious climate action.
By Christopher Flavelle and Julie Tate
March 27, 2022
- -
Mr. Manchin supplied a type of low-grade coal mixed with rock and clay 
known as “gob” that is typically cast aside as junk by mining companies 
but can be burned to produce electricity. In addition, he arranged to 
receive a slice of the revenue from electricity generated by the plant — 
electric bills paid by his constituents.

The deal inked decades ago has made Mr. Manchin, now 74, a rich man.

While the fact that Mr. Manchin owns a coal business is well-known, an 
examination by The New York Times offers a more detailed portrait of the 
degree to which Mr. Manchin’s business has been interwoven with his 
official actions. He created his business while a state lawmaker in 
anticipation of the Grant Town plant, which has been the sole customer 
for his gob for the past 20 years, according to federal data. At key 
moments over the years, Mr. Manchin used his political influence to 
benefit the plant. He urged a state official to approve its air 
pollution permit, pushed fellow lawmakers to support a tax credit that 
helped the plant, and worked behind the scenes to facilitate a rate 
increase that drove up revenue for the plant — and electricity costs for 
West Virginians.

Records show that several energy companies have held ownership stakes in 
the power plant, major corporations with interests far beyond West 
Virginia. At various points, those corporations have sought to influence 
the Senate, including legislation before committees on which Mr. Manchin 
sat, creating what ethics experts describe as a conflict of interest.

As the pivotal vote in an evenly split Senate, Mr. Manchin has blocked 
legislation that would speed the country’s transition to wind, solar and 
other clean energy and away from coal, oil and gas, the burning of which 
is dangerously heating the planet. With the war in Ukraine and resulting 
calls to boycott Russian gas, Mr. Manchin has joined Republicans to 
press for more American gas and oil production to fill the gap on the 
world market...
- -
But as the Grant Town plant continues to burn coal and pay dividends to 
Mr. Manchin, it has harmed West Virginians economically, costing them 
hundreds of millions of dollars in excess electricity fees. That’s 
because gob is a less efficient power source than regular coal.

Mr. Manchin declined an interview request. His spokeswoman, Sam Runyon, 
did not respond to detailed questions about his business interests, and 
whether those interests affected his actions as a public official. 
Senate ethics rules forbid members from acting on legislation to further 
their financial interests or those of immediate family members. There is 
no indication that Mr. Manchin broke any laws.

In the past, Mr. Manchin has repeatedly said that he has acted to 
protect valued industries in West Virginia, which ranked second in coal 
production and fifth in natural gas in 2020, according to federal data. 
He has defended his personal business ties to the Grant Town plant, 
telling the Charleston Gazette in 1996, “I did it to keep West Virginia 
people working.”

This account is based on thousands of pages of documents from lawsuits, 
land records, state regulatory hearings, lobbying and financial 
disclosures, federal energy data and other records spanning more than 
three decades. The Times also spoke with three dozen former business 
associates, current and former government officials, and industry experts.

The documents and interviews show that at every level of Mr. Manchin’s 
political career, from state lawmaker to U.S. senator, his official 
actions have benefited his financial interest in the Grant Town plant, 
blurring the line between public business and private gain...
- -
*The private company behind Mr. Manchin’s millions*
Mr. Manchin and his wife owned assets worth between $4.5 million to 
$12.8 million in 2020, according to Senate financial disclosure forms, 
which provide only a range with few specifics. Mr. Manchin, who drives a 
silver Maserati Levante, reported dozens of assets, including bank 
accounts, mutual funds, real estate and ownership stakes in more than a 
dozen companies...
- -
But the bulk of Mr. Manchin’s reported income since entering the Senate 
has come from one company: Enersystems, Inc., which he founded with his 
brother Roch Manchin in 1988, the year before the Grant Town plant got a 
permit from the state of West Virginia.

Enersystems Inc. is now run by Mr. Manchin’s son, Joseph Manchin IV. In 
2020, it paid Mr. Manchin $491,949, according to his filings, almost 
three times his salary as a United States senator. From 2010 through 
2020, Mr. Manchin reported a total of $5.6 million from the company.
---
In the middle of his second term as governor, Mr. Manchin handily won a 
special election in 2010 to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the 
death of Robert Byrd. From a seat on the Senate Committee on Energy and 
Natural Resources, Mr. Manchin had an ability to shape federal policy 
governing oil, gas and coal.

He became one of the most vocal opponents to the E.P.A.’s proposed 
limits on emissions of mercury and other hazardous substances from power 
plants. The mercury regulations, which eventually took effect, were 
particularly threatening to plants like Grant Town, because gob 
generates more mercury per kilowatt of electricity when burned than 
traditional coal, according to Lisa Evans, senior counsel at the 
environmental advocacy group Earthjustice.

Mr. Manchin also sought to protect coal plants from more stringent 
regulation of coal ash, which gob-fired plants generate in higher 
volumes than conventional coal-burning facilities. He sponsored 
legislation in 2016 that gave regulatory authority over coal ash to 
states, rather than allowing federal regulators to dictate terms.

Mr. Manchin easily won a full Senate term in 2012 and re-election in 
2018, and became a top recipient of campaign contributions from the 
mining, oil and gas industries.

Meanwhile, AmBit increasingly bought its fuel from Mr. Manchin’s 
company, to the point that it got 80 percent of its coal waste from the 
Manchin family business in 2020, compared to one-quarter when he first 
entered the Senate.

Reached by phone, AmBit’s executive director, Kenneth Niemann, agreed to 
answer written questions for this article but then did not respond to them.

*Hidden ties to large corporations*
On the surface, Mr. Manchin has a business relationship with a single 
power plant in West Virginia.

But determining the players behind AmBit, the owner of the Grant Town 
power plant, is a bit like handling a set of Russian nesting dolls.

At various points, three major companies — Edison International, NRG 
Energy and Tokyo-based Sumitomo — owned a significant share of AmBit, 
through a series of holding companies that had the effect of obscuring 
their involvement, records show.
  -
And while all three companies partly owned the Grant Town plant, which 
was paying Mr. Manchin, their representatives lobbied the Senate on 
dozens of bills handled by the committees on which Mr. Manchin sat, 
according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. Lobbyists are not 
required to identify specific pieces of legislation or name lawmakers 
with whom they meet.
.
When asked if Sumitomo or its subsidiaries had lobbied Mr. Manchin or 
his staff from 2010 through 2020, Sumitomo spokeswoman Amy Babcock said, 
“No, not to our knowledge.” A spokeswoman for NRG, Laura Avant, said the 
company’s lobbying “was not targeted” at Mr. Manchin during 2014 when 
NRG owned a stake in the Grant Town plant.

Edison would not say whether it had lobbied Mr. Manchin while the 
company owned part of the Grant Town plant. “Edison International has a 
responsibility to work with legislators on policies that best serve our 
customers,” said Jeffrey T. Monford, a spokesman for Edison. “We abide 
by all rules around those communications.”

Ms. Runyon, the spokeswoman for Mr. Manchin, would not say whether Mr. 
Manchin had ever been lobbied by Sumitomo, NRG or Edison while those 
companies owned a stake in Grant Town. “Throughout the entirety of 
Senator Manchin’s public service career, he has always been in full 
compliance with ethics and financial disclosure rules,” Ms. Runyon said 
in a statement.

Mr. Manchin’s ties to AmBit left him in a complicated position, 
according to Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in 
St. Louis who specializes in government ethics. He was in a position to 
help craft, support or block legislation that affected Edison, NRG or 
Sumitomo. At the same time, through their ownership of the Grant Town 
plant, those companies had influence over decisions that could affect 
Mr. Manchin’s income.

Mr. Manchin’s case demonstrates the need to tighten ethics rules, Ms. 
Clark said. “We care where the income stream comes from,” she said. 
“What you don’t want is essentially members of Congress to own companies 
that then become methods or mechanisms for the Sumitomos of the world to 
get in good with members of Congress.”
- -
In 2020, Mr. Manchin’s power reached new heights.

Mr. Biden was elected president in part on a promise to address climate 
change. Making good on that pledge hinges on moving legislation through 
a Senate that is split 50 Republicans to 48 Democrats and their two 
Independent allies. With Republicans unanimously opposed to most 
legislation introduced by Senate Democrats, any single Democrat can stop 
a bill by withholding support.

Last summer and fall, Mr. Manchin blocked the spending bill that 
contained Mr. Biden’s climate proposals, which had included penalties 
for power companies that did not reduce their coal use. But as those 
negotiations were underway in Washington, a different dispute was 
unfolding in West Virginia — one that may have affected Mr. Manchin’s 
incentives for ultimately opposing the federal climate bill.

For years, AmBit had warned that tighter greenhouse gas regulations 
could shutter the Grant Town plant. The company said it needed cash 
partly as a cushion against any new government limits on pollution. Last 
May, AmBit asked Mon Power to cancel the remainder of its contract, 
which expires in 2036, in exchange for a payment from Mon Power of as 
much as $200 million or more. That would allow Mon Power to find another 
source of electricity, maybe at a lower cost, and AmBit could try to 
find another customer for electricity from its Grant Town plant.

The stakes for Mr. Manchin were high. Grant Town was the only remaining 
power plant in his state that burned gob. If new federal climate rules 
put Grant Town out of business, his company would have no other 
potential customers for its waste coal.

Mon Power refused the request for a buyout. So AmBit turned to the 
Public Service Commission, asking it to force Mon Power to reconsider. 
In November, just as discussions between Mr. Manchin and the White House 
over the climate bill were reaching their peak, the commission held a 
hearing in Charleston to consider AmBit’s request.

In a filing to the commission, Richard J. Halloran, a founder and owner 
of AmBit, said that failing to get a buyout “will give us less 
protection against the anti fossil fuel (coal) sentiment and legislation 
and taxation.” (Mr. Halloran declined to comment.)
. .
The commission’s chairwoman, Charlotte R. Lane, expressed skepticism, 
noting that just a few years had passed since the commission had granted 
the company its latest rate increase. “Now you’re back,” Ms. Lane said, 
according to the transcript. “I am somewhat perplexed at what you are 
doing.”

On Dec. 29, the commission rejected AmBit’s request, and with it the 
chances of a financial buffer against tighter climate rules for Mr. 
Manchin’s most important customer.

Ten days before the Public Service Commission announced its decision, 
Mr. Manchin said in a statement that he could not support the 
president’s bill, effectively dooming it.

Ms. Runyon, the spokeswoman for Mr. Manchin, did not directly respond to 
a question about whether Mr. Manchin’s ties to Grant Town influenced his 
decision to oppose the bill. “From the beginning, Senator Manchin has 
clearly articulated the reasons he could not support [the legislation] — 
rising inflation, the global pandemic and geopolitical unrest around the 
world,” Ms. Runyon said in a statement.

But among the reasons Mr. Manchin gave at the time was the bill’s effect 
on the power sector.

“We have invested billions of dollars into clean energy technologies so 
we can continue to lead the world in reducing emissions through 
innovation,” Mr. Manchin said in December. “But to do so at a rate that 
is faster than technology or the markets allow will have catastrophic 
consequences.”

The statement made no mention of Mr. Manchin’s ties to Grant Town.
- Kitty Bennett, Dionne Searcey and Steve Eder contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/climate/manchin-coal-climate-conflicts.html



/[   Food stress expected to rise  ] /
*Complex Models Now Gauge the Impact of Climate Change on Global Food 
Production. The Results Are ‘Alarming’*
Climate change is a "threat multiplier," making hunger emergencies 
worse. Advanced modeling shows that crop yields could plummet, faster 
than expected.
By Georgina Gustin - March 27, 2022
- -
And while famine and malnutrition are complicated problems, in the 
decades since these models began to examine the projected impact of 
global warming on food production, it’s become increasingly clear that 
climate change is a “threat multiplier,” making hunger emergencies 
worse. In some cases it could be the primary cause.

Nearly 1 billion people went hungry or were malnourished last year and 
that number is projected to rise this year...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27032022/climate-change-food-production-famine/



/[ Plan ahead folks ]/
*Large fires becoming even larger, more widespread*
Their frequency has tripled in some parts of the U.S., a team of 
environmental scientists found
By Erin Blakemore 3-27-2022
Each year, thousands of wildfires burn millions of acres in the United 
States.

Fire season may be a reality in many places around the country. But the 
threat is spreading to areas once relatively unscathed by wildfires, a 
new study suggests.

In the journal Science Advances, a team of environmental scientists 
found that fire frequency has tripled in some parts of the United States 
— and that in the 2000s, wildfires grew up to four times the size of 
fires in previous decades.

The scientists studied data from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity, a 
federal interagency program that tracks burn severity over time in the 
United States. The data spans from 1984 to 2018 and covers more than 
28,000 fires over 1,000 acres in size in the West and 500 acres in size 
in the East.

Since 2005, the analysis shows, fire frequency grew nationwide. In the 
East and West, fires became twice as frequent, and they became four 
times as frequent in the Great Plains. As frequency grew, so did 
acreage, with the average size ballooning. In 2018, 2½ times more 
acreage was destroyed in the West each year compared with the previous 
two decades. The number rose 178 percent in the East.

These fires were different from earlier ones: They were bigger and were 
more likely to occur together. And the regions susceptible to fire grew 
along with fire frequency.

The team attributes the change to drought, but humans are also to blame: 
Human-caused climate change has dried out many areas, and 84 percent of 
the fires were started by humans and not other factors such as lightning 
strikes.

Americans need to “rethink our priorities,” the researchers write, 
participating in a challenging and ongoing conversation about how to 
address the changing fire outlook.

But for now, the outlook is grim, says William Travis, deputy director 
of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Earth Lab and a co-author of the 
paper. “More large fires plus intensifying development mean that the 
worst fire disasters are still to come,” he says in a news release.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/03/27/wildfires-increasing-frequency-climate-change/



/[ The news archive - to a time when we learned to look two months ahead ]/
*March 29, 2016*
The New York Times reports:

    "Deadly summer heat waves in the eastern United States may be
    predictable nearly two months before they occur, giving emergency
    planners and farmers more time to prepare, scientists reported on
    Monday."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/heat-wave-predictions-weather.html


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