CHESTERFIELD, S.C. Authorities say a South Carolina woman has been charged with stripping for customers as young as 12 in her mobile home, which had a stripper pole in the living room.
Multiple media outlets reported Friday that 27-year-old Gwendolyn Lowery was arrested after deputies were given a flier about a party in her Chesterfield home.
Authorities say Lowery was dancing when deputies raided the home last Sunday. Investigators say they found about 20 people inside. Eight of them were juveniles, including a 12-year-old boy. Deputies say they also found a price list for strip dances and alcohol. To judge from the mugshot, she's no prize.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/29/2010 14:52 ||
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Oh, man. Nothing says "class" like a mobile home with a strpper pole in the living room. NOTHING.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/29/2010 21:17 Comments ||
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An entrepreneur. Except for the children, I'm not sure what the issue is. How on earth she shoe-horned twenty people plus the pole is beyond me, however.
A longtime rancher was killed on his Douglas-area property over the weekend, and neighbors worried that his homicide was connected to increasing border-related crime in the area. The Cochise County Sheriff's Office offered little information into the late-Saturday shooting death of 58-year-old Robert Krentz, whose family began the Krentz Ranch more than 100 years ago.
Krentz's body was found on his land, which is about 35 miles northeast of Douglas, just before midnight Saturday, said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office. The Sheriff's Office, aided by the U.S. Border Patrol, had no suspects Sunday and continued to follow leads, Capas said. She declined to comment on reports from neighbors and border activists that Krentz's death was related to smuggling in the area.
Area residents said Krentz had no enemies, and they could think of no motive for his death other than the possibility it was related to what they called the growing level of crime in the area related to illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.
Tom Tancredo, a former U.S. representative from Colorado, was visiting ranchers near Douglas to discuss border issues when he heard of Krentz's death. Tancredo said he and Krentz were friends and that he was "a mild-mannered guy" who was known for providing illegal immigrants with food and water.
Tancredo and Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said Krentz phoned a family member Saturday afternoon to say he was out near his watering hole, providing one or more illegal immigrants with aid. That's the last his family heard from him, Simcox and Tancredo said.
"He looked the other way so often," Tancredo said. "It's so ironic that he, of all people, got murdered."
If Krentz's killing was caused by an illegal immigrant or a drug smuggler, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Omar Candelaria said, it would be a first for the area, to his recollection.
"We haven't seen any instances of illegal immigrants or drug smugglers attacking U.S. citizens," Candelaria said.
Others who live nearby were unwilling to disclose their names when they spoke about the homicide Sunday because, they said, they were afraid of possible repercussions. A person at the Krentz home also declined to comment.
In a 1999 PBS interview, Robert Krentz and his wife, Susan, said illegal immigrants once stole property from their ranch, but that incident didn't stop him from aiding other trespassers.
"You know, we've personally been broke in once. And they took about $700 worth of stuff. And you know, if they come in and ask for water, I'll still give them water. I, you know, that's just my nature," Krentz was quoted as saying in written transcripts of the interview.
The longtime rancher's homicide already has caught U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' attention. Sometime this week, the Arizona Democrat will travel to Douglas for a briefing on the homicide, said Giffords' spokesman, C.J. Karamargin.
"Rob Krentz was a pillar of the Cochise County ranching community," Giffords said in a press release. "He will be greatly missed."
The Krentz family's cattle ranch was inducted into the Arizona Farming and Ranching Hall of Fame in 2008. The family started the ranch in 1907.
#1
"He looked the other way so often," Tancredo said. "It's so ironic that he, of all people, got murdered."
Looking the 'other way' in all crime generally makes room for the lawless environment to grow and sustain itself rather the it going away as amply demonstrated in countless neighborhoods across the country. It branches out to touch everyone in the end in various and numerous other forms.
#2
Area residents said Krentz had no enemies That statement is nonsensical with respect to anyone living on the southern border with Mexico. The narcotraficantes are the enemies of everyone else there. they could think of no motive for his death other than the possibility it was related to what they called the growing level of crime in the area related to illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. Well, duh. "We haven't seen any instances of illegal immigrants or drug smugglers attacking U.S. citizens," YET.
#13
Actually, I am of mixed minds about this. When Vincente Fox had his Plan Puebla Panama idea, they rousted a lot of southern Mexicans off their land, and sent them north. Many of them had never seen a desert, and tried to cross the Sonora in summer, which is madness. Lots of deaths.
So giving them water before calling the BP was charitable, so they could pick up the living, instead of the dead. However, the POS drug smugglers are a ruthless bunch of bastards who deserve to die in the desert.
The Indians down there mount regular armed patrols to stop smugglers, and nobody is going to mind much if they kill more than a few. Because the smugglers wouldn't hesitate to kill them and their families, either.
#14
Divide the Mexican border into 5 sections. Give each section to a mexican General to protect,ie. no border crossings illegally. Put a few million bucks in each Generals account in this country. More for the popular crossing areas, less for others. Subtract from each account about 50.000 bucks for each illegal caught in each area. Harsh but effective.
[Al Arabiya Latest] The diplomatic crisis between Libya and Switzerland still runs deep and can only be resolved through international arbitration, Libyan Foreign Minister Mussa Kussa told AFP on Sunday. "We demand international arbitration," to resolve the dispute with Switzerland, "and we will accept any outcome, positive or negative," said Kussa.
He was speaking a day after Libya and the European Union scrapped visa bans on each others' citizens that were imposed amid a bitter row between Tripoli and Berne over the arrest in Geneva in 2008 of a son of Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi.
Asked if the lifting of the bans meant that the crisis with Berne was over, Kussa said: "No, that is another thing altogether."
Switzerland and Libya have been embroiled in a diplomatic row since July 2008 after the brief arrest in Geneva of Ghaddafi's son Hannibal when two workers complained he had mistreated them.
The dispute escalated when Libya detained two Swiss businessmen and later put them on trial in two separate cases of visa violations and fraudulent business. One was acquitted and released but the second, Max Goeldi, is serving a four-month sentence in a Libyan jail.
Switzerland hit back by issuing a blacklist containing the names of 188 prominent Libyans, including Ghaddafi and members of his family from entering the Schengen zone.
Libya retaliated by banning citizens from the 25-member Schengen zone from travelling to the north African country.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/29/2010 00:00 ||
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Libya's Muammar Gaddafi says Nigeria should be divided into several states along ethnic lines - comments which are bound to anger Nigeria's government.
He said Nigeria should follow the model of Yugoslavia, after previously saying it should be divided into two - along the lines of India and Pakistan.
He recently said Nigeria should be split into a Muslim and a Christian country to end communal clashes.
That prompted a furious Nigeria to recall its ambassador to Tripoli.
Nigeria's foreign ministry said Col Gaddafi's initial comments were "irresponsible".
"His theatrics and grandstanding at every auspicious occasion have become too numerous to recount," said a foreign ministry statement.
A Nigerian senator called Col Gaddafi, until recently head of the African Union, a "mad man".
Nigeria's government has not yet commented on his latest comments.
The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says the dispute appears to have become a tit-for-tat game.
In response to Nigeria's condemnation, Col Gaddafi issued a statement to the state-run news agency, Jana.
"It became clear... that Nigeria does not consist of two parts," he accepted, before adding:
"The Yoruba people in the west and south demand independence, while the Igbo people live in the east and south.
"It became clear that the Ijaw people demand independence and the [Hausa] people in the north call for the establishment of the [Hausa] state."
In his original comments, Col Gaddafi said that Nigeria should be divided into two - comparing it to the partition of British India into Hindu-dominated India and Muslim Pakistan, which led to at least 200,000 deaths and possibly as many as one million.
But the Libyan leader now suggests Nigeria should follow in the footsteps of Yugoslavia.
He says the most bloody conflict in the former-Yugoslavia - in Bosnia - arose because that was a multi-ethnic state, while the other countries seceded "peacefully".
An attempt by Nigeria's Igbo people to gain independence in 1967 sparked a war which left more than one million people dead.
Hundreds have died this year in violence between rival Muslim and Christian groups around the city of Jos.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, with some 130 million people. It has more than 250 different ethnic groups, broadly divided into a largely Muslim north and mainly Christian south.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/29/2010 13:20 ||
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For once Ghaddafi is right, although its 60 years too late.
The West supported Muslim slaughter of Christians in the Biafran war. Perhaps 3 million dead.
The semi-feudal and Islamic Hausa-Fulani in the North were traditionally ruled by an autocratic, conservative Islamic hierarchy consisting of some thirty-odd Emirs who, in turn, owed their allegiance to a supreme Sultan. This Sultan was regarded as the source of all political power and religious authority.
The Yoruba political system in the southwest, like that of the Hausa-Fulani, also consisted of a series of monarchs being the Oba. The Yoruba monarchs, however, were less autocratic than those in the North, and the political and social system of the Yoruba accordingly allowed for greater upward mobility based on acquired rather than inherited wealth and title.
The Igbo in the southeast, in contrast to the two other groups, lived mostly in mostly autonomous, democratically-organized communities although there were monarchs in many of these ancient cities such as the Kingdom of Nri, Arochukwu and Onitsha. Unlike the other two regions, decisions among the Igbo were made by a general assembly in which every man could participate.
Not to mention abandoning genuine democracy in Africa.
#3
I find it interesting that it's been the Russians and Chinese who've turned to contracting out, in a manner of speaking, their internet activity for plausible deniability were as the Western agencies are largely closed good old boy clubs [if it wasn't invented or done in house, it's not good enough].
Less than a year ago, cap and trade was the policy of choice for tackling climate change. Today, the concept is in wide disrepute, with opponents effectively branding it "cap and tax," and Tea Party followers using it as a symbol of much of what they say is wrong with Washington.
Mr. Obama dropped all mention of cap and trade from his current budget. And the sponsors of a Senate climate bill likely to be introduced in April, now that Congress is moving past health care, dare not speak its name.
Mr. Kerry's partner in promoting global warming legislation, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, pronounced economywide cap and trade dead last month and has since been working with Mr. Kerry to try to patch together a bill that satisfies the diverse economic, regional and ideological interests of the Senate.
That plan, still being written, will include a cap on greenhouse gas emissions only for utilities, at least at first, with other industries phased in perhaps years later. It is also said to include a modest tax on gasoline, diesel fuel and aviation fuel, accompanied by new incentives for oil and gas drilling, nuclear power plant construction, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy sources like wind and solar. And a pony.
Why did cap and trade die? The short answer is that it was done in by the weak economy, the Wall Street meltdown, determined industry opposition and its own complexity.
The idea began as a middle-of-the-road Republican plan to unleash the market to reduce power plant pollution and spur innovation. But when lawmakers tried to apply the concept to the far more pervasive problem of plant food carbon dioxide emissions, it ran into gale-force opposition from the oil industry, conservative groups that portrayed it as an economy-killing tax and lawmakers terrified that it would become a bonanza for Wall Street traders and Enron-style manipulators.
Economywide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington," said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who has been promoting the idea for more than two decades. "The term itself became too polarizing and too paralyzing in the effort to win over conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans to try to do something about climate change and our oil dependency."
Cap and trade was first tried on a significant scale 20 years ago under the first Bush administration as a way to address the problem of airborne sulfur dioxide pollution -- widely known as acid rain -- from coal-burning power plants in the Eastern United States. A limit was imposed on emissions from the plants, and utilities were allowed to buy and sell permits to comply. Today it is considered one of the most effective environmental initiatives.
Environmentalists and industries resurrected the idea in recent years as a centerpiece of measures to address global warming and growing oil imports. Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, built their climate change bill last year in large measure around it. But in trying to assemble a majority to pass it, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey dished out a cornucopia of concessions and exemptions to coal companies, utilities, refiners, heavy industry and agribusinesses. The original simplicity was lost, replaced by a bazaar in which those with the most muscle got the best deals. Opponents labeled it a tax-and-redistribution scheme.
"We turned it into 'cap and tax,' and we turned that into an epithet," said Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market research organization supported by conservative individuals and corporations. "We also did a good job of showing that a bunch of big companies -- Goldman Sachs, the oil companies, the big utilities -- would get windfall profits because they'd been given free ration coupons."
C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel in the first Bush administration and a strong advocate of the acid rain cap-and-trade program, said that opponents were largely correct in labeling the Waxman-Markey plan a tax, because so many of the pollution allowances were given away to industry rather than allocated based on past emissions. "This is potentially a $3 trillion tax," Mr. Gray said, "which is pretty steep in the best of times, and poison in the worst of times."
The House narrowly passed the bill last June, but the Senate has moved slowly to take it up. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Graham, along with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, have been trying to find support for a comprehensive measure. They, too, have been forced to seek compromise, offering incentives to oil drillers, nuclear power advocates, antitax groups, coal companies and utilities.
Two senators, Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, have proposed an alternative that they call cap and dividend, under which licenses to pollute would be auctioned to producers and wholesalers of fossil fuels, with three-quarters of the revenue returned to consumers in monthly checks to cover their higher energy costs.
Ms. Cantwell said that cap and trade had been discredited by the Wall Street crisis, the Enron scandal and the rocky start to a carbon credits trading system in Europe that has been subject to dizzying price fluctuations and widespread fraud. She said her bill would require every pollution permit to be auctioned rather than given away and was 39 pages long, compared with Waxman-Markey, which weighs in at some 1,400 pages. How can anything useful be expressed in less than a thousand pages?
The Cantwell-Collins plan is almost exactly what Mr. Obama proposed in the campaign and after first taking office -- a 100 percent auction of permits and a large tax rebate to the public. "He called our bill 'very elegant,' " Ms. Cantwell said. "Simplicity and having something people can understand is important." So this'll be C&T II. But it'll be easy to read.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/29/2010 09:40 ||
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#1
Even if one accepts ALL the arguments of the Anthropogenic Climate Change crowd, none of these legislative efforts will help 'save the world.' They will further hamper the economies of developed nations and shift economic activity to China, India, and undeveloped nations, which have far higher amounts of CO2 (and pollutants) emitted per unit of economic activity - which should INCREASE the theoretical climate change. Let's handicap our own economy at the same time as we increase global pollution and climate change - that can only make sense to a bureaucrat.
#3
Please not Cap and Trade. Jeez, I feel like health care and cap and trade are things donks get stuck on. Their obsessions border on are a form of mental illness. It is like Freddy Kruger, he just keeps coming back, and back, and back.
After a week of serious grownup news, what we all really needed was a little comic relief and thank goodness for the self-absorbed rantings of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for supplying it.
In an apparent attempt to reverse slumping ratings, Maddow's bosses even took out an ad so she could vent uncensored about how Sen. Scott Brown “smeared' her by indicating in a fund-raising letter that Democrats were trying to recruit her.
Now we're a little unclear how a run for Senate - however improbable - constitutes a “smear.' But that aside Maddow's petulance seems, well, just a little contrived.
Brown, of course, has been inundated with interview requests since his January election victory. He's just as popular on the Republican fund-raising circuit.
And Maddow might want to contemplate these numbers: Brown got 1,167,178 votes in that Senate election. Maddow's total national Nielsen Company ratings run about 881,000 (but only 240,000 in the coveted 25 to 54 age group).
Now if only Keith Olbermann would buy a summer home on the Cape . .
WASHINGTON: India and the United States have concluded a nuclear fuel reprocessing agreement to advance their bilateral civilian nuclear deal, the Obama administration announced on Monday.
The agreement, a key step in the full realization of the US-India nuclear deal reached some 18 months ago, will enable Indian reprocessing of US-supplied nuclear material under safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Nuclear reprocessing typically involves separating and managing components of spent nuclear fuel, potentially including producing weapons-grade fuel for nuclear bombs; Washington's insistence on an internationally overseen reprocessing arrangement arose from the condition in the nuclear deal that India not divert US supplied nuclear fuel to its military program.
The US fuel-supply guarantee involved an Indian commitment to separate and firewall its civil and military reactors and set up of a dedicated reprocessing facility which will function under international (IAEA) safeguards. The just-concluded arrangement details the nuts and bolts of the inspection regime. Reactors designated as military facilities and nuclear fuel that India has produced up to now will be exempt from inspections or safeguards in this unique and exceptional arrangement.
Disclosing that the two sides have "taken an important step toward implementing civil nuclear cooperation by completing negotiations on 'arrangements and procedures' for reprocessing US-origin spent nuclear fuel, the State Department in a statement on Monday said that "completion of these arrangements will facilitate participation by US. firms in India's rapidly expanding civil nuclear energy sector."
The reprocessing arrangement was one of three residual issues the two sides were grappling with since the conclusion of the nuclear deal in October 2008. India is also required to establish by way of legislation a Civil Nuclear Liability Regime to limit compensation by American nuclear companies operating in India in case of nuclear accidents. Washington -- and US nuclear companies -- is waiting for New Delhi to pass a civil nuclear liabilities bill, which the government is expected to navigate through parliament.
A final requirement is for a written Indian "assurance" on non-proliferation under an obscure US. Energy Department rule which is considered more of a bureaucratic fine print issue.
Resolution of these residual issues and fully operationalizing the deal will lift a three-decade US moratorium on nuclear trade with India.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/29/2010 13:21 ||
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#1
When will the US resume civil reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel?
Posted by: john frum ||
03/29/2010 14:45 Comments ||
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Enviro scare campaigns have killed any propect of anyone in the developed world starting reprocessing for a long time.
India will probably be reprocessing before the USA does.
[Dawn] SHIKARPUR: Fifteen people, two women and four children among them, were killed on Saturday in tribal clashes in Madeji town and Meeral Kalhoro village.
The fighting started after the killing of a notable, Raja Khan Mangnejo, in Madeji town by armed men allegedly belonging to the Kalhoro tribe. According to police, assailants opened fire on the notable when he was sitting at a shop.
Angry people belonging to his tribe then attacked Meeral Kalhoro village in the Jabbar Shaikh police jurisdiction.
They opened fire on villagers and burned several houses.
Some of those killed in the attack were identified as Nooral, Meeral, Abdul Samad and Fateh Mohammad.
One of the attackers, Liaqat Ali Mangnejo, was also killed when the villagers retaliated.
Shikarpur DPO Younis Chandio said that seven people -- two from the Mangnejo tribe and five from the Kalhoro tribe -- were killed in clashes.
No FIR was registered till the filling of this report.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/29/2010 00:00 ||
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[Geo News] LAHORE: A civil judge on Sunday sent former MNA of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Atta Qureshi, and his son to judicial remand in connection with an alleged torture faced by a traffic warden. Atta Qureshi and his son Nasir Qureshi appeared before the Civil Judge Multan Adnan Mehdi, who shifted both father and son to jail on judicial remand. It may be reminded here that former MNA and his family members had made an attempt to stop Geo team from reporting the incident, in which a traffic warden was subjected to torture. They had also tried to snatch the camera.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/29/2010 00:00 ||
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Jerusalem District police officers detained extreme right-wing activist Noam Federman Monday afternoon, after he was caught driving his vehicle with a kid — a young, male goat - in his car.
Federman is suspected of intending to ritually slaughter the animal in the recently renovated Hurva Synagogue located near the Temple Mount in the Old City.
Police said right wing activists threatened repeatedly this week to come up to the Temple Mount and conduct ritual slaughter there during the Pessah holiday. The passover animal offering is one of the few not forbidden by virtue of the Kohanim being ritually impure (by virtue of proximity to dead bodies) and also it is the only one of those that is not funded by the ritual census Shekel collection (which is not done without a Temple) - thus it is the only animal offering that is 'ritually permitted' post Temple and without the red heifer 'cleasing' of impurity
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/29/2010 13:23 ||
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One of the few almost dangerously bitter fights among American Jews is over animal sacrifice vs. PETA nut Jews. It is so far beyond just an argument that many who would gladly argue for hours on other subjects try desperately to change the subject.
I think you mean a PETA vs Orthodox Jewish fight re kosher slaughtering since animal sacrifice isn't done by normalistic groups (yes the Samaritans still do it).
PETA has done some deceitful cut and paste film making in Kosher slaughterhouses (of course even under humane conditions, a slaughterhouse is not a pleasant place and not for the feint of heart).
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/29/2010 15:39 Comments ||
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Look, folks - it's a goat...
It's entire purpose in life is to produce milk, cheese and more goats before being killed and eaten.
Europe's largest undersea volcano could disintegrate and unleash a tsunami that would engulf southern Italy "at any time", a prominent vulcanologist warned in an interview published Monday.
The Marsili volcano, which is bursting with magma, has "fragile walls" that could collapse, Enzo Boschi told the leading daily Corriere della Sera.
"It could even happen tomorrow," said Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
"Our latest research shows that the volcano is not structurally solid, its walls are fragile, the magma chamber is of sizeable dimensions," he said. "All that tells us that the volcano is active and could begin erupting at any time."
The event would result in "a strong tsunami that could strike the coasts of Campania, Calabria and Sicily," Boschi said.
The undersea Marsili, 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) tall and located some 150 kilometres (90 miles) southwest of Naples, has not erupted since the start of recorded history. It is 70 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide, and its crater is some 450 metres below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
"A rupture of the walls would let loose millions of cubic metres of material capable of generating a very powerful wave," Boschi said. "While the indications that have been collected are precise, it is impossible to make predictions. The risk is real but hard to evaluate."
#1
Sounds to me like someone needs research grant funding. Did you know that you "could" be hit right on the head by a meteorite just as you are sitting here reading this? But it is impossible to make predictions. The risk of that is real but hard to evaluate.
#2
Marsili is almost 10,000 ft. tall, 43 miles long and 19 miles wide. This means that if about anything happens to it, it would be very bad.
Not just an eruption, but if one of its walls collapses, or a large piece just breaks off, which has apparently happened before, as they are sitting right next to it, a super tidal wave could result.
And such events are not mutually exclusive. The west coast of Italy and the north coast of Sicily could just be flattened.
#3
Clearly we need BRUCE WILLIS + his Team of brave, Rough-N-Ready dirty smelly DRILLERS-RIGGERS to drill a side hole[s) and relieve the pressure on this NOT-SO-TEXAS-SIZED-VOLCANO???
If people had any clue of what has happened in the Naples area over the recent geological history, they wouldn't live there to begin with. Probably the most interesting is the VEI-7 eruption at Campi Flegrei about 30,000 years ago (during the last ice age just before the start of this interglacial) that spread ash all the way to Moscow and ended hominid habitation of much of Central and Eastern Europe for over 2000 years. Archeology shows Neanderthal habitation before the event, nothing for 2000 years after the event, and then modern human habitation thereafter. It buried much of Eastern Europe under 6 feet or more of volcanic ash.
This story is some researcher angling for grant money by creating fear. Now the politicians will need to "study" it and he will be the recipient of the research grant. I see this crap all the time in the scientific literature. "Global Warming" is much the same scam.
There are dozens of such unstable cones around the planet and there is absolutely nothing we can do about them. Mt. Rainier in Washington is one of them. The entire Western slope is "rotten" and could slide at any moment with no warning whatsoever. All the studying in the world isn't going to change that or give you any warning of an impending failure of that slope.
Same goes for volcanoes in the Azores / Canary Islands area.
But you couldn't pay me enough to live anywhere near Naples. That place erupts at nearly Yellowstone magnitude and much more frequent intervals. More like Long Valley Caldera magnitudes but still, very powerful eruptions and at fairly frequent intervals in geological timeframs.
California will need 55,657 gigawatt-hours of new renewable generation to meet the state's 20 percent standard by 2013 and more than 100,000 GWh to meet the 33 percent standard by 2020, according to the ISO report. Independent System Operator
Since large-scale renewable resources, like wind and solar generation, are located far from cities, California will need many new power lines to deliver power long distances to reach its renewable energy targets. But these would have disasterous consequences, so they can't be built in California. So how do they get to 33% green goal?
According to the ISO's preliminary studies, meeting the 33 percent renewable goal will require more than 800 miles of 500-kilovolt transmission lines in operation by 2020. The ISO said the weather-dependent, intermittent nature of wind and solar resources place new demands on the electric system to prevent power disruption. Another cost of green energy.
Another major regulatory change under consideration in the state is a once-through-cooling water use regulation that will affect more than a dozen coastal power plants that currently use ocean water for cooling. The ISO said the change, if implemented, may force the retirement or repowering of nearly 19,000 megawatts of existing generation - more than one-third of the grid's installed capacity - located near coastal communities by 2024. So close the power plants close to the people and build wind farms hundred of miles away?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/29/2010 08:33 ||
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More whale oil - it's renewable...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/29/2010 9:03 Comments ||
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"California will need to import 55,657 gigawatt-hours of new renewable generation to meet the state's 20 percent standard by 2013 and more than 100,000 GWh to meet the 33 percent standard by 2020, according to the ISO report."
As we type at the Rant, fixed it for you. Do you really expect the Granola bunch to allow the exploitation of resources and construction of power plants in their own neighborhoods? /rhet question. And they do need 'THEM' to blame when they have to pay for imported power as prices rise. You know, THEM, the people from out of state.
#3
Move the people to Tehachapi Pass and the Geysers geothermal field. Green power sources and no long transmission lines. Yeah, I know there are no jobs, but that won't matter if we just move the unemployed.
#4
We are seeing an increase in transmission lines here in Kansas, especially in the west where the Eastern power grid meets the Western.
P2K, you are correct when you say Import the power. Shortly before the fall of Enron there was a day that all the power being generated in the United States was being used or spoken for. Power that normally sold for $40/MWH was going for in upwards of $1500 dollars. But CA being the "green state" it is and needing the power due to all it's people; would only buy "clean" hydro power from Canada. Nevermind that our coal plant in Kansas was sending power North to help keep their grid balanced from the giant sucking sound coming from those around Los Angeles.
More transmission lines will help get wind power, when it's available, to the markets that need it. However, that's a risky and expensive venture, based soley on the wind driven generation.
Each of these wind turbines takes steel, concrete, and manpower just as a coal plant does. The wind turbines (3 MW) just installed aound Concordia, KS each have a base that contains 500 cubic yards of concrete.
The new plant we are attempting to get built will be physically located in the Eastern graid but supply power to the Western grid. We'll have a recitifier station that will syphon off about 100-150 MW's for use on the Eastern grid.
To be able to do this, two 750kV transmission lines will be built from Holcomb to Colorado. One will go NW towards Limon and the other basically straight west to Pueblo. These lines will open up avenues for many of the new winds farms to reach their markets.
Now if we could only work out the scheduling of when the wind blows..........
#5
Assuming $1B per gig of construction costs for wind power, which is crazy low, you're looking at the potential for $2 trillion to build this thing by 2020. Not to mention any hiccups you run into when you try to scale up to 100,000 gigs.
I suggest a cheaper and equally effective alternative would be to supply every Californian with a full-color photo of some wind turbines turning silently in a green field with fluffy clouds floating by. That's really what they want.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/29/2010 12:23 Comments ||
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#6
I assume the 55 and 100 K-GWh numbers are demand side. Which means that they will need EVEN MORE at supply side because of the resistance in the long power lines, no?
#7
No, this electricity will be forbidden by executive order of the POTUS from experiencing any line loss. And will also have to buy health insurance.
And, d'uh, that's $1 trillion in my scenario. But who's counting.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/29/2010 18:31 Comments ||
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#8
At least California has managed to come up with a novel piece of Green idiocy. Shutting down coastal power stations because of 'heat pollution' of the oceans.
While humans have unintentionally been altering Earth's climate for centuries, some scientists have begun to study how to intentionally hack the globe to cool the overheated planet.
Eli Kintisch's new book, Hack the Planet provides a thorough and nuanced portrait of the development of geoengineering. Through long acquaintance with the field's biggest names, Kintisch, a staff writer for Science, paints a deep sociological portrait of a radical new scientific discipline bursting messily into the world. Apparently, this writer is paid by the adjective.
He reminds us that even though the techniques may be wild and global, many of the people dreaming them up are regular scientists trying to deal rationally with a carbon problem that they don't see society solving. Faced with a warming world, they are torn between watching nature die or trying to surgically kill it themselves.
Wired.com: What are some of the basic geoengineering options being discussed?
Eli Kintisch: The main geoengineering techniques fall into two basic categories: One, the ways to block sunlight at different points in the atmosphere and earth system to lower the temperature rapidly in that way, and the other is enhancing the planet's ability to take up carbon dioxide through a variety of techniques. So, sun-blocking and carbon-sucking are the two main ways.
With sun-blocking, what you are essentially doing is brightening the planet, increasing the earth's albedo. That can change the amount of total radiation that the planet experiences. Scientists have proposed ways of intercepting solar radiation at every single point from the surface of the earth by whitening roofs or brightening the ocean's surface itself with tiny bubbles, to brightening low-lying and high clouds, to one of the most radical and discussed geoengineering techniques: adding particles called aerosols to the stratosphere. That technique has many names, but I like to call it the Pinatubo option, because it was influenced by the rapid cooling that follows volcanic eruptions.
The Pinatubo option involves spraying some kind of particles (usually people talk about sulfur) into the upper atmosphere to form a kind of haze that blocks a small percentage of the sun's rays before they can enter the lower atmosphere.
The carbon methods involve generally enhancing natural systems to take in more carbon, perhaps genetically modifying plants so they have more carbonaceous cells or growing large blooms of algae in the ocean by using some sort of key nutrient that can catalyze and fertilize their growth. The main way has been to use iron. You could also build machines to suck in the carbon dioxide.
Wired.com: One fascinating connection you draw is between scientists developing the atomic bomb and scientists working on geoengineering. "You hope to God this is never used but if you have to use it, you better know how it behaves," David Battisti tells you. That argument runs throughout post-war science. Does anyone have a better answer than the atomic scientists did?
Kintisch: At this point, a lot of scientists feel the cat is out of the bag. If anything, a desperate politician 30 years form now may suddenly decide, "I need to cool the planet." And if we don't study it, scientists won't have any way to warn this leader of what the consequences will be. From that perspective there is a Pandora's box that has been opened.
Geoengineering is a bad idea whose time has come. It is something that you have to study and hope to never use. [For the atomic scientists], the other side has nuclear weapons and they are pointed at you, so you have no choice but to develop a deterrent. In this case, the nuclear weapons are the unknown chance that the planet's sensitivity to CO2 is very high and will respond to some of these worst-case tipping points.
Scientist feel they have no choice but to develop this response that viscerally is almost sickening to many scientists, especially someone like David Battisti, who thinks a lot about the internal dynamics of the climate system and understands how hard it is to understand how the parts fit together and then predict its behavior. But, they're going to go ahead anyway. For the children.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/29/2010 08:15 ||
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#1
Let's put a giant beach umbrella up in the sky between us and the sun. And if it gets too chilly we can close it for a while.
#2
watching nature die
WTF? "Nature" is dying? Give me a f*cking break. Climate change - been there, done that. Ditto ecosystem change, mass extinctions, and on and on. The only thing constant on Earth is change. Always has been, always will be.
#5
IMO read, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE/LATITUDES given various MSM-Net Artics on how the same will bear the brunt of any Natural [Sun + Volcanism + SPace] + Human-induced/caused temperature change now thru Year 2100, espec the former + vee also the lesser-devloped SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE???
[Straits Times] THAI Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva sat down yesterday in face-to-face talks with three red shirt leaders, in an abrupt reversal of his earlier position. But the hastily arranged talks, which were televised 'live', ended inconclusively with both sides still cordial but refusing to yield any ground.
The talks are scheduled to continue later today.
Mr Abhisit agreed to the talks after the red shirts, who had staged more than two weeks of peaceful rallies in the capital, stepped up their actions on Saturday, forcing the army to withdraw troops confronted by unarmed crowds.
'House dissolution can only happen if we see it is not only the way out for"the reds but also for the whole country,' he told the three leaders of the anti-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), which is demanding fresh elections.
But as the three hours of talks ended, red shirt leader Jatuporn Promphan told Mr Abhisit: 'We ask you to dissolve the House within two weeks. Whatever your decision should be, if we talk tomorrow, I want you to consider this condition.'
He added: 'If you are confident of winning an election, you should return power to the people.'
Posted by: Fred ||
03/29/2010 00:00 ||
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Who died and left this clown God?
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected not by normal people
environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory. In other words, a LOON.
It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.
"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful." Well, he's evolved to that point, but the rest of us neanderthals haven't ...
One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. He really means forever.
I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." You want war? We'll give you war. And a good swift kick in the ass.
There's more, if you can stomach it.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/29/2010 12:48 ||
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Great. Looking forward to a couple of centuries of elevator music...
Couldn't we send Democracy to Hawaii for a vacation instead?
I have some sympathy for Lovelock's views about our society. Infact I find particularly disturbing the fact that even the best scientists (and all greens) appear completely unwilling (or too stupid) to deal with 'deliberate climate change' by covert military (USA) activities. Activities which have been in operation for at least 2 decades and are deliberately designed to disrupt climate/weather for hegemonic ends.
By refusing to factor-in the climatic distortions produced by this 'weather warfare', poor science about global climate change is guaranteed.
#3
This is all of a piece with Thomas Friedman's newfound love for the Chinese Communist dictatorship. If you think you're one of the smart people, and most of the people around you are stupid compared to you, and you are therefore their natural ruler, you end up pining for a system of government where you and your friends who are also smart people can rule by decree, without the messy necessity of having to persuade the not-so-smart people of how smart you are. "Climate change" is just the latest excuse; if it's not that, it's "overpopulation" or "peak oil" or "the coming ice age" or "a #5 seed in the Final Four" or anything else you can think of.
See also, e.g., Obama, Barack H.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/29/2010 15:05 Comments ||
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#4
Sorry, CF - no insult to birds intended. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/29/2010 15:09 Comments ||
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#5
Yeah, democracy sucks for the environment. That's why the old Iron Curtain countries and China have some of the nastiest polluted sites anywhere....too much democracy. Stupid git.
#7
Mike: For further information, see "Cannibals All!: Or Slaves Without Masters" (1857), in which proto-socialist George Fitzhugh postulated that slavery was such a good thing, that 9 out of 10 people should be slaves.
Only 1 in 10, the elites, are able to endure the hardship of being masters. They spend their time keeping the slaves from ever getting troublesome freedom and liberty. For this they are rewarded by the grateful slaves, and feast on what the slaves produce.
In other words, Fitzhugh was a bastard who deserved a horsewhipping. However, to this day, his philosophical descendants still exist, and still want to be masters, while reducing most everyone else to slavery.
The FBI said Sunday that agents conducted weekend raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio and arrested at least three people, and a militia leader in Michigan said the target of at least one of the raids was a Christian militia group.
Federal warrants were sealed, but a federal law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said some of those arrested face gun charges and officials are pursuing other suspects.
FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said there had been activity in two southeast Michigan counties near the Ohio state line. She wouldn't say whether they were tied to the raids in the other states.
FBI spokesman Scott Wilson in Cleveland said agents arrested two people Saturday after raids in two Ohio towns. A third arrest made in northeast Illinois on Sunday stemmed from a raid Saturday just over the border in northwest Indiana, both part of an ongoing investigation led by the FBI in Michigan, according to a statement from agents in Illinois.
George Ponce, 18, who works at a pizzeria next door to a home raided in Hammond, Ind., said he and a few co-workers stepped outside for a break Saturday night and saw a swarm of law enforcement.
"I heard a yell, 'Get back inside!' and saw a squad member pointing a rifle at us," Ponce said. "They told us the bomb squad was going in, sweeping the house looking for bombs."
He said another agent was in the bushes near the house, and law enforcement vehicles were "all over." He estimated that agents took more than two dozen guns from the house.
Michael Lackomar, a spokesman for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said one of his team leaders got a frantic phone call Saturday evening from members of Hutaree, a Christian militia group, who said their property in southwest Michigan was being raided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"They said they were under attack by the ATF and wanted a place to hide," Lackomar said. "My team leader said, 'no thanks.' "
The team leader was cooperating with the FBI on Sunday, Lackomar said. He said SMVM wasn't affiliated with Hutaree, which states on its Web site to be "prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't."
"We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ," the group's Web site said. "Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment.
An e-mail sent to the group by The Associated Press wasn't returned Sunday, and phone numbers for the group's leadership were not immediately available. Berchtold, the FBI spokeswoman in Michigan, said she couldn't confirm if the raids were connected to Hutaree.
Lackomar said none of the raids focused on his group. Lackomar said about eight to 10 members of Hutaree trained with SMVM twice in the past three years. SMVM holds monthly training sessions focusing on survival training and shooting practice, Lackomar said.
In Michigan, police swarmed a rural, wooded property around 7 p.m. Saturday outside Adrian, about 70 miles southwest of Detroit, said Evelyn Reitz, who lives about a half-mile away. She said several police cars, with lights flashing, were still there Sunday evening and 15 to 20 officers were stationed in the area.
Neighbor Jane Cattell said she came home from the movies Saturday night and a helicopter was circling above, its spotlight illuminating her house. She and her sister, Sarah Holtz, wouldn't say who lived in the home but said they knew them from riding their horses past their house.
"They're your average, nice neighbors," Holtz said.
There were rumors about ties to a militia, but Holtz she knew nothing of that from her interaction with them.
One of the raids in Ohio occurred at Bayshore Estates, a trailer park in Sandusky, a small city on Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland, park manager Terry Mills said. Authorities blocked off the street for about an hour Saturday night, he said.
"Needless to say, this has everyone talking," said Mills, 62. "We have a lot of retirees here who don't want all this commotion."
Mills said he didn't know the identity of the person arrested.
FBI agents in Ohio also made an arrest in Huron on Saturday night, Wilson said. No further information would be released until after they appeared in court Monday, he said.
Nine arrestees were up in front of a judge at 10 a.m.:
In a federal indictment, the government says the group is an anti-government, extremist organization that planned war with the United States. It is also alleged that the group wanted to kill members of law enforcement.
Federal charges include Seditious Conspiracy, Attempt to Use Weapons of Mass Destruction, Teaching/Demonstrating Use of Explosive Materials and two counts of Carrying, Using and Posessing a Firearm During and in Relation to a Crime of Violence.
The Detroit News has a lot of detail: Nine members of a Lenawee County-based militia group were planning to "levy war" against the United States and "oppose by force" the nation's government, according to an indictment unsealed this morning in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
The five-count indictment alleges that between August 2008 and the present, the defendants were trying to use bombs and other weapons to oppose the U.S. government.
They had plans to kill a local law enforcement official and, once officers from across the country came to the funeral, to attack the funeral procession, the indictment alleges.
The eight men and one woman are members of the Hutaree, identified as an "anti-government extremist organization" in the indictment, and each faces three to five charges, including sedition, attempts to use weapons of mass destruction, teaching/demonstrating use of explosive materials and two counts of carrying weapons in relation to a crime of violence.
A scouting mission was planned for April and, if someone had stumbled upon the mission, the Hutaree decided they could be killed, according to the indictment.
It was this mission that prompted the raids, said Barbara McQuade, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Although there had been reports the Hutaree may have targeted Muslims, there is no mention in the indictment of any threats against them.
Articles written late yesterday on the subject included the following, which seems to have gotten lost today:
Mike Lackomar, of Michiganmilitia.com, said both The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia and the Michiganmilitia.com were not a part of the raid.
Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations. One of the Hutaree members called a Michigan militia leader for assistance Saturday after federal agents had already began their raid, Lackomar said, but the militia member -- who is of Islamic decent [other articles said simply that the man is Muslim] and had heard about the threats -- declined to offer help.
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on Islamic-American Relations of Michigan, made an announcement Sunday during the group's 10th anniversary banquet about receiving a call from a network journalist about the alleged threat against Muslims.
"Don't allow this news to scare you away from practicing your faith," said Walid.
Audible gaps were heard throughout the banquet hall when the news was announced. Walid said he will call local authorities about more information on the allegations. He urged local Muslims to recommitt themselves to their faith in light of the accusations.
Elsewhere I read that the Right Reverend Jesse Jackson was speaking to the group when the call came in. But that may just be a rumour.
#5
The group placed under arrest do look like a rather dim collection of bulbs. I suspect we'll be learning more in the days and weeks to come. Thank God there were no shots fired and no mothers holding infants blown into eternity. I'd not be at all surprised to learn that the Bureau and ATF have executed another brilliantly conceived cock-up. Their record of achievement in matters such as this is somewhat less than noteworthy.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
CHESTERFIELD, S.C. Authorities say a South Carolina woman has been charged with stripping for customers as young as 12 in her mobile home, which had a stripper pole in the living room.
Less than a year ago, cap and trade was the policy of choice for tackling climate change. Today, the concept is in wide disrepute, with opponents effectively branding it "cap and tax," and Tea Party followers using it as a symbol of much of what they say is wrong with Washington. 
Economywide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington," said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who has been promoting the idea for more than two decades. "The term itself became too polarizing and too paralyzing in the effort to win over conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans to try to do something about climate change and our oil dependency." 
After a week of serious grownup news, what we all really needed was a little comic relief and thank goodness for the self-absorbed rantings of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for supplying it.
Europe's largest undersea volcano could disintegrate and unleash a tsunami that would engulf southern Italy "at any time", a prominent vulcanologist warned in an interview published Monday.
California will need 55,657 gigawatt-hours of new renewable generation to meet the state's 20 percent standard by 2013 and more than 100,000 GWh to meet the 33 percent standard by 2020, according to the ISO report.
