Vermont
updated
2:21 p.m.
2 days now until our upcoming strategy/brainstorming session (in Montpelier this Saturday, from 1-3 - I'll post and email a map later today) among new media activists and other "Democratic stakeholders." Again, if you plan on coming, please RSVP to (jodum at poetworld.net) as this is not a public forum per se - its a working meeting with the goal of brainstorming some specific strategies and movin...
Green Mountain Daily - 6:43 a.m.
This couldn't have happened any better if they'd planned it. Yesterday Shay Totten's column at Seven Days reported on the profitability of the Burlintgon Free Press for its corporate masters at Gannett: In fact, excluding Gannett papers in Guam and tiny Tulare, California, the Free Press ranks in the top five within the company’s Community Newspaper Division in terms ...
Green Mountain Daily - 5:21 a.m.
The Bloomberg Wind Energy Index is a multiple weighted index of the leading windpower stocks in the world, with a higher emphasis placed on the companies with the highest exposure to the wind industry and the key suppliers to the wind industry. The index is rebalanced quarterly. Here is a chart of its value since its inception: tags: wind power , wind energy ...
Kirby Mountain - Wed 3:26 p.m.
According to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data (click the title of this post), the consumption of oil in September 2008 was 533,880,000 barrels, which was 12.8% lower than the oil used in September 2007, 612,438,000 barrels. It is the lowest September consumption since 1994. Now how hard was that? That drop represents, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 33,779,9...
Kirby Mountain - Wed 11:03 a.m.
So who's more dangerous to society? A man armed with an uncooked cream pie, or a drunk with a loaded gun pointed at someone's head? That's not a rhetorical question: according to Judge Brian Grearson it's the pie man. (my emphasis) If Thomas Coffey hadn't served his country with distinction during a military career that has spanned nearly two decades, the Waterbury man would almost certainly ...
Green Mountain Daily - Wed 7:29 a.m.
3 days now until our upcoming strategy/brainstorming session among new media activists and other "Democratic stakeholders." Again, if you plan on coming, please RSVP to (jodum at poetworld.net) as this is not a public forum per se - its a working meeting with the goal of brainstorming some specific strategies and moving towards implementing them to whatever extent we feel is manageable. Yesterday...
Green Mountain Daily - Wed 6:21 a.m.
From Twitterings by Townsend , the daily blog of the executive editor of the Burlington Free Press, recounting a visit to the editorial board by Peter Shumlin: Since all meetings of the Free Press editorial board are on the record, we were told but only one area "where the state made promises it cannot keep: Catamout Health is a wonder program we cannot afford...I am not saying I am going ou...
Green Mountain Daily - Tue 8:52 p.m. - 3 clicks 
Pete Miss : (Get it? Like "Peat Moss" Get it? Oh... never mind.) Got my Peter's scrambled the other day. It wasn't Peter Shumlin who let Matt Dunne's gas guzzler tax wallow in Senatorial oblivion, it was Peter Welch . Shumlin II: The Return hadn't come to the Montpelier theater yet. Woops. Sorry Pete. Don't mean to make you feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of Vermont politics. I promise ...
Green Mountain Daily - Tue 3:10 p.m. - 5 clicks
Let Jon Stewart explain. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c MSNBC Replaces Fox News Barack Obama Interview John McCain Interview Sarah Palin Video Funny Election Video ...
Green Mountain Daily - Tue 2:40 p.m.
It's 4 days until our upcoming strategy/brainstorming session among new media activists and other "Democratic stakeholders," focusing on avoiding the mistakes of this recently passed election cycle and bringing power, energy and ideas to bear from outside the usual institutional channels that seem to limit us year after year to many of the same dead ends. We have a solid, workable and varied gro...
Green Mountain Daily - Tue 11:10 a.m.
In 1973, when the CIA got wind of the revelations that would expose its decades-long program into mind control experiments, then-CIA Director Richard Helms, and Sidney Gottlieb, head of the Agency's Technical Services Division, got together to destroy all the files they could find on MKULTRA and related programs. These programs consisted of experiments on human subjects on isolation, sensory depr...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Mon 1:04 p.m. - 4 clicks
From VPR: The chairman of the Vermont Senate's Judiciary Committee says lawmakers may want to consider expanding the power of legislative committees to subpoena witnesses and take testimony under oath. Senator Richard Sears says his panel was frustrated at times in recent months during hearings looking into how Vermont responds to sex crimes against children... ...Legislative committees curr...
Green Mountain Daily - Mon 5:44 a.m. - 6 clicks
VPR had a good story this morning contrasting the approaches that Richard Snelling took to the huge budget deficits we were facing in 1991 and the approach Douglas is taking today. It's worth a listen. The story points out that although Douglas considers Snelling his mentor, heis taking the exact opposite course, refusing to even consider tax increases on any segment of the population to a...
Green Mountain Daily - Mon 5:44 a.m.
If you want to boil an egg, you can heat the water on a stove and put the egg in the hot water. Or you can take the egg to a hot spring and put the egg in the hot spring. Not everybody has a hot spring like we once did but there are lots of them around. Or you can drill for hot water like we and all our neighbors do for cold water. Some people think drilling is bad. &nbs...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Fri 7:51 a.m. - 20 clicks
'They [the large environmental groups] are shackled by their source of money, shackled by their relationship to the Democratic Party, shackled by the fact that their boards are controlled by corporate executives. ... The environment isn’t even talked about in political campaigns much anymore … aside from these airy homilies about global warming, or green jobs to try and reinvigorate the economy. ....
Kirby Mountain - Nov 25
Click here (change.gov/page/s/energyenviro) for a form to submit your thoughts to the Obama-Biden Energy and Environment Policy Team. The Obama team needs to know that it is no longer excusable to pretend that large-scale wind is a meaningful part of our energy and environmental goals. Wind energy is intermittent, variable, and nondispatchable, so it can not replace other more reliable sources ...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 25
Meg Mitchell, Forest Supervisor, Green Mountain National Forest, writes: The Green Mountain National Forest released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement [DEIS] for the proposed Deerfield Wind Project in September and we will accept public comment until November 28. The DEIS helps us make a final decision on approval or disapproval of the project by analyzing the effects of an expansion o...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 19
Here's an interesting bit of information from the press release announcing the unanimous approval of a large wind ordinance specifying strict noise limits and 1/2-mile setbacks : An open records request from the town of Union study committee revealed that no medical or scientific data was used to set the 50 decibel noise limits or the 1000 foot setback the Public Service Commission recommends....
Kirby Mountain - Nov 18
Whose interests are being served? As many people have long pointed out, the industrial wind industry is not an alternative to but a symptom of big energy. . . . On Nov. 14, the the industry trade group American Wind Energy Association announced a new chief executive officer (CEO) to replace Randall Swisher after nearly 20 years: Denise Bode, who will take over in January. Denise B...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 15
Comeek artist Lynda Barry talks to City Beat in Los Angeles (via National Wind Watch): The work I’m doing the most of to save the environment is getting the word out about the serious downsides of industrial scale wind turbines. If the goal of using renewable energy resources is to reduce CO2 emissions, industrial-scale wind turbines don’t do this. Because they need fossil-fuel burning power pl...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 15
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has honored the owner of Silk Soymilk, Horizon Organic, International Delight, and Land O'Lakes, Whitewave Foods, for its green power purchases: "To date, the company's total wind energy purchases are the equivalent of eliminating more than 450 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions annually." The problem is that they have not been purchasing gr...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 14
Since I’m publicly on the record as predicting that Obama would win by “the widest margin since Reagan” I’ve really only cared about one thing related to this election — that my prediction wouldn’t make me look like a total moron. Well, as of earlier this morning, CNN is reporting the current popular vote total as… Obama: [...]...
What's the Point? - Nov 11
An ad for Frontier Pro Services in the October 2008 issue of North American Windpower: Running a wind farm is a massive task. Scores of turbines, thousands of tons of metal and fiberglass, oceans of fluids. How does anyone keep up with it! ... Protecting your assets is the most important job you have, and Frontier Pro Services is here to help. Gearbox servicing Fluids sampling Oil an...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 11
Receipts of Coal Delivered for the Electric Power Industry -- Electric Power Annual, Energy Information Association, October 22, 2007 2002: 869,929,000 tons 2003: 949,191,000 2004: 965,057,000 2005: 986,213,000 2006: 1,043,681,000 Direct Use and Retail Sales of Electricity, Total Electric Industry -- Electric Power Annual, Energy Information Association, October 22, 2007 2002: 3,6...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 6
For posterity’s sake, I just wanted to link to this article which appeared on the front page of the Burlington Free Press on Saturday, November 1st, 2008… photo by Ryan Mercer, Burlington Free Press With three days to go before the election, there are plenty of pundits now willing to predict Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will [...]...
What's the Point? - Nov 6 - 12 clicks
Vt. Governor: Anthony Pollina Vt. Lieutenant Governor: Ben Mitchell Vt. State Representative (Hartland–West Windsor): John Bartholomew U.S. Representative (Vt.): Peter Welch ...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 3 - 8 clicks
To the Editor, Geelong Advertiser: As a science editor, I share Heinz Dahl's frustration with the inaccurate use of terms in characterizing wind energy on the grid ( "Winds of change", Opinion, October 30th ). But while pretending to clarify terms, Mr. Dahl only further confuses them as he evades their unique application to wind energy. Efficiency is not the issue. It is well understood that ...
Kirby Mountain - Oct 30
I predict he’ll run, win the nomination, and win the Presidency with the widest margin since Reagan. Really. ...
What's the Point? - Oct 23
By Bruce Friedrich The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) held a climate-change conference, January 16 to 18 2008 in Washington DC, which focused on solutions to the problem of human-induced climate change. And the same week, in Paris, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, held a press conferen...
Kirby Mountain - Oct 23
The debate last night between Senators Obama and McCain illustrated a common laziness in lumping all energy together, failing to differentiate their different uses. Here are the relevant excerpts: McCain: ... We have to have nuclear power. We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much. It's wind, tide, solar, natural gas, nuclear, off-shore drilling, ... S...
Kirby Mountain - Oct 23
An Oct. 15 press release from Babcock & Brown states: The 51-megawatt (MW) Wessington Springs Wind Farm will provide clean and renewable energy to the University of South Dakota (USD) and South Dakota State University (SDSU), which become the first universities in the Midwest to be powered with 100% renewable energy. It also says: The power produced will connect to the Western Area Power Adm...
Kirby Mountain - Oct 23