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Any time, day or night!
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Public Comment Period on Marcellus Waste Treatment Ends TODAY

From Joy:

Reminder: Public Comment Period on Marcellus Waste Treatment Ends February 12th (deadline extended from 2/5). Email your comments to: RegComments@state.pa.us Subject line should read "Chapter 95 Wastewater Treatment Requirements" Include your name and address. There's still time! It's YOUR water!

I'm adding a repost with some background on the issue and some potential talking points. For the Sierra Club's take, http://alleghenysc.org/?p=1513

The EPA is considering changing the code to more explicitly control "dissolved solids" (read: toxic salts from untreated Marcellus Shale gas extraction water) in our rivers and groundwater. We predict there will also be pressure on them to actually weaken the rules instead, so this is not something that should happen on autopilot. For the official text, go here.

You can make public comment by e-mail, but you must follow the right format in the subject line. "Electronic Comments—Comments may be submitted electronically to the Board at RegComments@state.pa.us and must also be received by the Board by February 5, 2010. A subject heading of the proposal and a return name and address must be included in each transmission. If an acknowledgement of electronic comments is not received by the sender within 2 working days, the comments should be retransmitted to ensure receipt."

Talking Points:

Safe drinking water. (I feel mine's already starting to taste funny, and there is already untreated frac water entering the water supply upstream from us. If I can taste the sufates, that suggests the heavy metals are there too).

Do It Now. (No more drilling permits until the protections are in place).

Include the major components that frac water adds or leaches from the soil (heavy metals & arsenic, salts such as chlorides and sulfates and bromides and magnesium, organics such as benzene, and radium in any form).

And above all, No weakening of Total Dissolved Solids discharge standards! (The allowed levels are already high in the Mon, Yough, Conemaugh, and the West Branch of the Susuquehanna, impacting the water quality.)

Complain about shifting the costs to consumers and taxpayers by having to purify a much larger quantity of drinking water, instead of cleaning the frac water at its source.

Finally, ask that the fracwater be recorded and tracked as it comes out of the ground and is sent off for treatment, to prevent illegal dumping or "watering" of the surroundings. I personally would also like to also see a comparison of what goes in vs. what goes out, to know how much is seeping into our groundwater.

Before you hit "send," make sure you include your name and address, and check your subject line to make sure it says something like "Comment on proposal to amend 25 Pa. Code Chapter 95 (relating to Wastewater Treatment Requirements)."

ABC News Notes Ravenstahl's Snow FAIL

From ABC News in an article about mayors and snow removal:

Another East Coast city mayor who is being bombarded with criticism is Pittsburgh's Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who was out of town celebrating his 30th birthday at a mountain resort when a record snow storm hit the city over the weekend. He took even more heat when the street in front of his and his brother's house was salted and cleared while the rest of the city remained buried underneath snow.

On being out of town, Ravenstahl said, "No one could have anticipated this."

He said his street needed to be cleaned because he has to be out and about.

OK, so Pittsburgh is not exactly "East Coast" but someone at ABC News was nice enough to send me an email noting that they had read this post on Lil Mayor Luke's history with snow removal and that they enjoyed following our perspective on politics.

So, I guess that makes the whole blizzard thingy worth it. ;-)
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Abraham Lincoln's Birthday (2010 Edition)

For your listening pleasure.

A Lincoln Portrait by Aaron Copland

Part 1:

Part II:

This is what Abraham Lincoln said:

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Happy Lincoln's Birthday everyone.

Note: I know I posted this only a few months ago but it's such a great piece that I had to repost. And for you trumpet geeks in the audience, I am pretty sure that's Gerard Schwartz on lead trumpet.

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

Happy Lincoln's Birthday everybody!

Go read last year's post on this.

Later Today

Also via Twitter:


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Today

Via Twitter:


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A Few Notes For My Climate-Skeptical Friends

From Time:

Brace yourselves now — this may be a case of politicians twisting the facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm. As the meteorologist Jeff Masters points out in his excellent blog at Weather Underground, the two major storms that hit Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this winter — in December and during the first weekend of February — are already among the 10 heaviest snowfalls those cities have ever recorded. The chance of that happening in the same winter is incredibly unlikely.

And here's what Masters' blog has to say:

Heavy snow events--a contradiction to global warming theory?

Global warming skeptics regularly have a field day whenever a record snow storm pounds the U.S., claiming that such events are inconsistent with a globe that is warming. If the globe is warming, there should, on average, be fewer days when it snows, and thus fewer snow storms. However, it is possible that if climate change is simultaneously causing an increase in ratio of snowstorms with very heavy snow to storms with ordinary amounts of snow, we could actually see an increase in very heavy snowstorms in some portions of the world. There is evidence that this is happening for winter storms in the Northeast U.S.--the mighty Nor'easters like the "Snowmageddon" storm of February 5-6 and "Snowpocalypse" of December 19, 2009. Let's take a look at the evidence. There are two requirements for a record snow storm:

1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.

It's not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.3°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events--the ones most likely to cause flash flooding--will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. Groisman et al. (2004) found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events in the U.S. over the past 100 years, though mainly in spring and summer. However, the authors did find a significant increase in winter heavy precipitation events have occurred in the Northeast U.S. This was echoed by Changnon et al. (2006), who found, "The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity."

Hmm. Warmer temps lead to more moisture in the air which intensifies the severity of storms leading to more rain and greater snow. Interesting.

Not that, you know, science will sway the skeptics. Witness the "science" taking place over there at the Washington Times:

Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global warming fraud is without equal in modern science.

Simple. To the point. And completely wrong.

So why is this such a big issue? Here's why:

We judge global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years. Although the United States will be less affected and is better equipped than most nations to deal with climate change, and may even see a benefit owing to increases in agriculture productivity, infrastructure repair and replacement will be costly. We judge that the most significant impact for the United States will be indirect and result from climate-driven effects on many other countries and their potential to seriously affect US national security interests. We assess that climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure in any state out to 2030, but the impacts will worsen existing problems—such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions. Climate change could threaten domestic stability in some states, potentially contributing to intra- or, less likely, interstate conflict, particularly over access to increasingly scarce water resources. We judge that economic migrants will perceive additional reasons to migrate because of harsh climates, both within nations and from disadvantaged to
richer countries.

So who said that? Which left-leaning tree-hugging "let's ruin Amurika's economy" group had the audacity to say that?

It's from Dr Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in testimony before Congress June of 2008.

Tell me who was President then?

Mayor Ravenstahl: A History of Snow Removal Problems

(Video here)
While I made light of Ravenstahl's snow removal problems here, that post did show that this was not the Mayor's first failure to provide basic city services so I decided to delve a little deeper.

February 2007:
Ravenstahl "asks people to stay home today, tonight." "Crews have been out all day, but Mr. Ravenstahl acknowledged that many city streets are slippery and snow-covered."

February 2008:
- "2/13/08:

Complaints surface of political plowing."

- 2/15/08, Mayor promises changes in snow removal priorities

"Reliance on RouteSmart, a computerized system that can route snow plows to neglected areas, a move Public Works Director Guy Costa foreshadowed in January. An executive order to end the practice among some plow truck drivers of delaying work on primary roads in favor of clearing the streets of elected city officials and Democratic committee members."

- 2/16/08, Mayor declares war on snow, Ravenstahl makes changes, vows 'we will do better'

"With the city fielding more than 1,000 calls about unplowed streets this week, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl intends to pull out all the stops -- and a few more snow plows as well -- to make sure it doesn't happen again."

November 2009:
Mayor/Administration brags to New York Times: "By most measures he has been fairly successful as mayor. He cut the city’s work force by 2 percent, streamlined snow removal..." [Emphasis added]

December 2009:
"Into Sunday morning, even major thoroughfares were snow-covered and residents said other roads remained impassible. [snip] Some neighborhoods registered few complaints with the lion's share of the criticism coming from Squirrel Hill, Shadyside and Greenfield in the East End and Brookline and Beechview in the South Hills. Those complaints come after Mayor Ravenstahl declared war on snow and called for the implementation of a route system to make snow removal more efficient."

February 2010
- 2/5/2010

Mayor leaves town despite a Winter Storm Warning issued, headline stating "Pittsburgh region preparing for the arrival of its largest snowfall in seven years," and KDKA predicting up to 12 inches all by early that morning.

- 2/5/2010 - 2/6/2010

City receives 15 to 23 inches of snow.

- 2/8/2010

'Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said this afternoon that city crews are scrambling to clear snow from all secondary streets today, knowing that a forecast of 6 to 10 inches of new snow expected tomorrow will force them to return to primary roads. The goal for secondary streets is "to at least get them treated in some way before the additional snow starts to fall tomorrow," Mr. Ravenstahl said by phone. "I want to make sure that those roads that haven't been touched are dealt with. "The thought process and rationale is to attempt to get at least the top layer of snow off of all streets" before snow starts again.'

- 2/9/2010

"Mayor Luke Ravenstahl defended the city's snow removal while admitting the city hasn't had enough resources to do a total job. Ravenstahl said during the early stages of the storm Friday night, public works employees, in many cases, had to respond to some public safety issues. The mayor issued a call for outside contractors and private individuals to contact the city by...if they can help in snow plowing and removal. The city already is getting assistance in the form of manpower and vehicles from both the Pa. National Guard and PennDOT."

- 2/10/2010

'Mr. Ravenstahl said that while the city would evaluate its performance and the effectiveness of its routing system, the week's problems were to some degree rooted in numbers: 30 inches, five days, and only so many dollars. "Our fleet is not adequate for the storm that we had this time, with 20 inches of snow," and a follow-up storm of perhaps another 10 inches. "We could very easily purchase more equipment, but of course we have to balance that with our budgetary constraints." Mr. Ravenstahl said a big problem over the weekend was the diversion of salt trucks from routes to assist stuck police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.'

Numerous Pittsburgh streets remain untouched by plow or salt...
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Colbert Speaks

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Notice Something?

Ok. Found this by way of crooksandliars. It links to this page at Houston Press. The text reads:

The much awaited Perry-Palin rally (with extra special guest Ted Nugent) visited the Rick Berry Center in Cypress on Sunday afternoon, but made sure to wrap things up before the Big Game. Football trumps politics in Texas, of course, even if Sarah Palin comes to town.

And here's what's what:

Texas, Palin, Perry, Homeschooling and The Nuge.

Some days, it's just too easy.

Councilwoman Rudiak to lead task force on City's performance during snow emergency

Via Councilor Rudiak's office:

(Pittsburgh) – Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak today was named to lead a task force convened by Council President Darlene Harris to look into the City's performance during the current snow emergency. The task force will be tasked with investigating, reporting key findings, and making recommendations on how the City can better administer its emergency operation systems in the future, with a specific eye toward snow emergencies.

“Four days after the storm there are still thousands of people across our City who are snowed in,” said Rudiak. “People are angry that it is taking so long to get power restored and streets cleared, and there needs to be accountability.”

The task force will initially convene later this week to begin its review. Until then, City Council will focus on helping the Mayor’s Emergency Operation Center with constituent calls. Once the snow emergency is over, the task force will begin a full review.

“We want to make sure we can dig out of this storm before we start getting too academic. We are in an emergency and we need to be focused on that right now,” Rudiak said.

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The answer is NO

Real Billboard
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General Luke Ravenstahl Announces "I have returned" to the War On Snow

Luke Ravenstahl promises to not just fade away.
Two years ago (almost to the day) General Luke Ravenstahl, after suffering heavy losses to the elements, vowed "to pull out all the stops -- and a few more snow plows as well -- to make sure it doesn't happen again." On that day in 2008, he famously declared a "War On Snow."

Last night, General Ravenstahl announced "I have returned" to a snow weary City of Pittsburgh.

Ravenstahl was bogged down in Laurel Highlands when the City was blitzed by the surprise attack (the neighborhoods of Beltzhoover, South Side, and Beechview being the hardest hit).

General Ravenstahl has now brought in reinforcements from the National Guard and has called upon the citizenry to join in the battle to ensure our right to once again move freely throughout our fair City.

Ravenstahl also swore a solemn oath to take on undesirable elements in City Council once order has been restored saying, "I am concerned for the security of our great City; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."

God Bless and Godspeed, General Ravenstahl!

A grateful City salutes you.
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Krugman

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

And by that he means the right side of the Senate.

RIP John Murtha

John "Jack" Murtha, 1932 - 2010
Rep. John "Jack" Murtha, PA's longest serving Member of Congress passed away today. There are numerous online obituaries for Murtha, but I like this from Think Progress best:

During the Bush administration, Murtha became a forceful, outspoken voice for Iraq redeployment. In November 2005, the former Marine and Iraq war hawk came out and called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal in Iraq. His stance was a turning point in the war debate, clearing the way for more Democrats to speak up. “The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home,” he declared.

Of course, there's already speculation as to who will be elected to serve out his term.
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Cyclops Snowman Stalks South Side

Or in this case, Kyklops snowman:


South Side streets still snowed-in...
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The Trib And The IPCC

Selective Sourcing by Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust.

Something we've come to expect.

Take a look. This is from today's editorial page at the Tribune-Review:

When an engine blows blue smoke, it's best to look under the hood. After the IPCC's melting-glaciers claim backfired, deeper investigation by inquiring minds raised more questions.

Among them, the 2007 IPCC assertion that climate change threatens up to 40 percent of the Amazon rain forest. The Sunday Telegraph of London reports the reference isn't tied to peer-reviewed science but to a report by an environmental advocacy group, the World Wildlife Fund, which focused on the detriments from logging. Proponents insist the climate claim is sound.

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri, under pressure to resign, calls growing skepticism "totally unfounded." If so, then open all the IPCC's findings to an independent peer review -- and stop blowing smoke.

So...

Let's go take a look at that Telegraph article. And here's where we find the selective sourcing from the braintrust. Here's what they left out:

Scientists fear the controversies will be used by climate change sceptics to sway public opinion to ignore global warming — even though the fundamental science, that greenhouse gases can heat the world, remains strong.

Not surprising that our friends on Mellon's payroll would conveniently omit that part.

Again, the science is strong enough for the Pentagon (but not, or so it seems, strong enough for the Trib braintrust).

I do love, however, the irony of the Trib criticizing anyone for the use of advocacy research. How often does the Trib rely on the "research" from the Scaife-supported The Heritage Foundation? The Allegheny Institute?

Yea, I thought so.

A Revisit of Sorts

An astute reader mailed this in yesterday:

Between you and me, you’re way off base with your post “A Tale Of Two Papers.”

You must not have read the rest of Mike’s story. It includes an interview that offsets what the Climate Depot guy said. It chalks his words up to nothing more than “character assignation" that seeks to attack the person, not the issue. A very strong point, indeed. That wasn't part of your post. The story is very thorough and quotes Mann quite a bit, along with a Penn State spokeswoman. That's more than I can say for other media sources.

In case you missed it, this is the blogpost my astute reader critiqued.

Perhaps my astute reader is correct about my blog post. However after rereading my post and Cronin's story, I am standing by my piece.

My main point was that Cronin was spinning the story by skimming over the three allegations (including the one that was actually about whether Mann falsified data - he didn't) and quickly jumping onto the one allegation left unresolved. It's the context of the story that makes its spin obvious - it's found on the pages of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a paper let's remember that's no fan of climate science. Were Cronin to point out too stridently that the report found no evidence that Mann falsified data, then the Trib's narrative that "Climategate" undermines climate science would itself be undermined.

After reading Cronin's piece it still seems obvious to me that he spun the story in favor of his paper's bias against climate science.

My astute reader's argument about the skeptic and the interview that "offsets" the skeptic's charge is little more than a he said/he said situation. Is it true that Mann is a "statistical charlatan" as the skeptic asserts? It's not enough to just quote someone to disagree with him. In fact since the report from Penn State declares that there's no credible evidence that Mann falsified data, we can safely assume that he's not a charlatan.

So why include the skeptic's ad hominem attack at all unless Cronin was looking to toss some red meat to the other climate skeptics to be found among the Trib's readership?

As evidence, let's take a look at one of today's editorials:

The inconvenient truth about Penn State University's decision to further investigate only one of four "formal allegations" against Church of Climatology high priest Michael Mann -- one pertaining to the style, not the substance, of his "research" -- is that it's a self-protective blue-and-whitewash.

Professor Mann, a key figure in the Climategate e-mails scandal, created the discredited "hockey stick" temperature graph. The pass Penn State is giving him on allegations of suppressing or falsifying data, deleting or concealing e-mails and misusing privileged or confidential information is the result of "expert" academic parsing that reduced those e-mails' damning evidence to meaningless mush.

Here's how the report gives Mann a pass on the first allegation:

After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so, and certainly not while at Penn State. In fact to the contrary, in instances that have been focused upon by some as indicating falsification of data, for example in the use of a “trick” to manipulate the data, this is explained as a discussion among Dr. Jones and others including Dr. Mann about how best to put together a graph for a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report. They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.

But since the Trib's braintrust already knows the truth, no amount of evidence will convince them that the report is anything but a whitewash. Simple, really. No need to think.

And do we really need to go back to the "hockey stick" thing? Do I really need to point out that the National Research Council concluded that:

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward.

There's less confidence the farther back you go, but to assert the hockey stick's "discredited" is just false.

But again this is the Trib. No amount of factual data will convince them. They know the truth. Anything that diverges from the truth is part of the conspiracy.

Funny thing - since The Pentagon seems to accept the reality of climate change here, how long must we wait before Richard Mellon Scaife's brain trust denounces the US Military for spreading socialism?

Snowpocalypse: Photos From Scott Township, PA

Uh-oh! Looks like action is needed:


Shoveling a path:


Someone decides to make a tunnel...


She's actually trying to *eat* her way through:


A well deserved break:


BONUS MD PHOTO:
From Silver Spring, Maryland early this morning.

My sister's car is -- fortunately -- on the right: