The chairman of New Mexico’s $8.2 billion pension fund for teachers resigned after a disclosure that he borrowed $350,000 from a man whose son shared in as much as $22 million in finder’s fees from state investments.

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Bullets from a gun battle in Juarez, Mexico, struck a building on the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso over the weekend of Aug.

It was the first debate of the Arizona governor's race, and likely the last, as there's no way incumbent Republican Gov. Jan Brewer chances another disaster like this one.

It started out embarrassing enough:

Brewer, who has gained national notoriety for signing into law the country's toughest provisions for illegal immigrants, awkwardly paused twice during the opening statement of the Clean Elections Debate broadcast on the state's PBS affiliate.

"I have ... done so much and I just cannot believe that we have changed everything since I've become your governor in the last 600 days. Arizona has been brought back from its abyss," Brewer said, after appearing to lose her train of thought.

Then, after saying, "We have cut the budget, we have balanced the budget and we are moving forward. We have done everything that we could possibly do," the governor paused for a 10 seconds — an eternity in a live televised debate — before looking down at her notes.

Video of that giggly 10-second pause:

Ouch.

But even worse was the substance, as the local media gangs up on her for her refusal to admit that her alarmist story about beheadings in the Arizona desert is bullshit:

The transcript is below the fold, but needless to say, it's brutal. Her refusal to own up to her misstatement is inexplicable, generating hostility from the local press and stepping all over her message. But maybe that's good for Brewer, as it's one less question about her blatant conflict of interest in signing SB 1070:

Gov. Jan Brewer took center stage last Tuesday night after she officially clenched the Republican nomination. Standing just behind her was a man most Arizonans would not recognize.

He’s Chuck Coughlin, Brewer’s campaign chairman, policy adviser and a lobbyist for the largest private prison company in the country. And he’s one of two people in the Brewer administration with ties to Corrections Corporation of America.

The other administration member is communications director Paul Senseman, a former CCA lobbyist. His wife still lobbies for the company [...]

Isaacs said private prison companies have been buying influence in Arizona politics for years. The number of private prisons and jails operating across the state shows the result of that influence, he said. Currently, there are at least 12 for-profit prison, jail and detention facilities in Arizona.

Isaacs said the state has something else that attracts these companies.

“The other Holy Grail, if you will, of private prison construction is immigrant detention,” Isaac said.
Corrections Corporation of America holds the contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to lock up illegal immigrants picked up in Arizona. Tough immigration laws like Arizona's SB 1070 could send thousands of new bodies its way, and millions of dollars.

Update: Flashback to New Mexico Democratic House candidate Patty Madrid's debate meltdown in 2006. She went from front-runner to loser.

The Hindu

Second survivor confirmed in migrant massacre as Latin America mourns Los Angeles Times (blog) Authorities in Mexico have confirmed that a second person -- a Honduran citizen -- survived the massacre of 72 migrants last week in the state of Tamaulipas ... Migrants kidnapped in north MexicoAljazeera.net Drug gangs prey on migrants in risky Mexico journeyReuters Africa Border Boletín: Migrant mistreatment in Mexico nothing newArizona Daily Star The Associated Press -AlterNet -The Upshot (blog) all 618 news articles »

Authorities in Mexico have confirmed that a second person -- a Honduran citizen -- survived the massacre of 72 migrants last week in the state of Tamaulipas, but the man's identity and location are being closely guarded to protect his safety. The revelation came Wednesday, after Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa mentioned another survivor and his nationality, prompting the Honduran government to chastise Correa for releasing the information. "There's no name for what happened in Mexico last week," Correa said, according to Agence France-Presse. The investigation is delicate because of the international nature of the incident and because survivors of major crimes in Mexico are often at risk for reprisal violence. An investigator in Tamaulipas has already been reported missing. Fifty-eight men and 14 women from several Central and South American countries were killed execution-style near the town of San Fernando after refusing to work for the ruthless Zetas gang, the Ecuadoran survivor told authorities. Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, 18, was repatriated to Ecuador on Sunday and will be placed in a witness protection program. Some of the bodies were moved to a morgue in Mexico City on Wednesday as the process to identify the remains continued. Those identified so far...

The position of resident degenerate gambler here has been a varied one. Solon, the original mad monk of Mad Wagerin', is now literally becoming a monk of sorts, which left the position open to our feeble, hastily written efforts, and then the witty, beautifully crafted wagering columns of Dollar Bill Doug last season. Unfortunately for Doug, his beautiful writing and sparkling wit suffered one of the worst runs ever, and would have made you a very literate, funny, charming, and hopelessly broke wagerer. 

Answering the call this year: Peter Pattakos from Cleveland Frowns, a degenerate gambler hired both for his persistent and impressive need to wager on anything at anytime, and because of SBNation's new affirmative action policies on hiring at least one Midwesterner to write something here. He talked us into doubling our money on a Wannstache bet last fall, so he has real and formidable powers. Enjoy. 

Dollar Bill Doug's having gone corporate is probably the first best sign we've seen that Obama's really turning this thing around, but if we're going to clean this mess all the way up, we have to get more serious about trickle-down-economics. And by that, I mean getting the economy going via the magic of intelligent, well-informed sports gambling. 

My experience in the field is what qualifies me to take Doug's place as EDSBS Resident Mad Wagerer, and pretty much speaks for itself. A summary of my approach to better living through sports wagering is available here, and also contains a summary of relevant accomplishments. Not listed there is the time I convinced Orson (perhaps somewhat unsuccessfully) to quintuple what became a winning wager on Pitt when we were in Vegas at the same time last fall on the theory of "Wannstache Friday!". So you're in good hands.

Also, I'm a native of Akron/Cleveland, Ohio (for a lot of people who, like, had dads, they really are the same place) who went to NYU and Northwestern for school, which means I'm free from meaningful college football bias. (OH, HEY, BARSTOOLIO, REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE IN VEGAS AND I WAS TRYING TO TELL ORSON TO PUT MORE MONEY ON WANNSTACHE FRIDAY, AND YOU WERE LIKE, "WOW, YOU'RE LIKE THE OPPOSITE OF A SELF-HELP GROUP"? WELL WHO TURNED OUT TO REALLY BE THE OPPOSITE OF A SELF-HELP GROUP THAT DAY? BETTER DIE OF 1,000 BURNING STDS BEFORE THE BUCKEYES GO SEVENTH FLOOR ON THE CANES 45-3 NEXT WEEK. WAIT, NO, AFTER. DIE IN PAIN, OVERSUNNED RAPIST JUGGALO CAR-THIEF.)

Anyway, enough about me. The basic idea here is to play the market for narratives about the games; identifying the undervalued and overvalued storylines and playing from there. The focus is primarily on the bigger games, because those are most likely to be the stories that last through the postseason. It gets easier to do as the season goes on and the stories unfold, so the beginning is about a more circumspect approach, wading in slowly, especially careful not to get too wrapped up in any one pick. (Note: A unit is 1 percent of your bankroll for the season.)

Pittsburgh +3 over Utah (2 units) (Thursday, 8:30 ET, VERSUS): Which is just as well here, because there's winning, and there's winning the right way. We might be forced to make some tough choices later, but there's no way we're going to start this thing off by coming in and disrespecting The 'Stache. No way, even though Utah has won their last 17 at home, and all of the last 13 games for which they've had more than one week to prepare. No way, even though Pitt will start a new quarterback, redshirt sophomore Tino Sunseri, behind a center and two guards with a combined one start between them, across from the strength of Utah's defense in tackles Sealver Siliga and Dave Kruger (the 6-5, 290-lb brother of former Ute now Raven, Paul).

Pitt's All-America candidates Dion Lewis and Jonathan Baldwin aren't undervalued, but the supposedly strong-armed Sunseri's ability to get Baldwin the ball against an inexperienced secondary might be (a stronger arm than last year's first-year Pitt starter, Bill Stull, everyone seems to agree). Utah's starting quarterback Jordan Wynn is only a sophomore himself, who looked OK in six starts as a freshman, but mostly against San Diego State, New Mexico, and listless Cal in the Pointsettia Bowl. Thursday, his new left tackle John Cullen will have to contend with "one of the nation's top defensive end tandems," All-America candidate Greg Romeus and Jabaal Sheard, who will throw you through a plate glass door.

One of these men will throw you through a plate glass door. Pick one! Choose carefully! 

Defensive ends who break windows probably aren't undervalued either, but coaches who gather information to make themselves comfortable with not suspending those defensive ends might well be. Sixteen years of Dave Wannstedt as a head coach in the NFL and NCAA with only one division/conference title to his name is mainstream reason for caution coming into a road game with such implications ("Hit[ting] the conference schedule with two losses and guarantee[ing] that the Big East will bog down whatever BCS bowl they land in" sounds exactly right.). But maybe, as the most magnificent Twitter background you've ever seen strongly suggests, Pitt's recent turnaround shows that the man is finally settling in just where he's supposed to be. Maybe, finally, probably The Year of the 'Stache.

Ohio State -28.5 over Marshall (1 unit) (Thursday, 7:30 ET, Big Ten Network): Most seasons, going into a game like this with an opponent like Miami up the following week I'd be hearing Tressel like, "One eight-minute drive each period. Nothing fancy, here." I'd be glad to take Marshall and the points. But most years the Buckeyes just aren't this good. Pryor's third season as a starter is one thing, but what's flying under the radar for now is that Cameron Heyward is the best defensive lineman the Buckeyes have had since Will Smith; Devier Posey, the best receiver since David Boston/Terry Glenn. Fair enough that preseason rankings are meaningless, which might be why, with the potential exception of next week, this will be the best price we get on these guys all season. I'd take it all the way up to 35. (Note: I was 8-1 ATS picking Ohio State games last season.)

Notre Dame -11 over Purdue (1 unit) (Saturday, 3:30 ET, NBC): It's good if you can get an early handle on Notre Dame one way or another both because they're on TV every week and because they play such a diverse schedule. Here it looks too easy to take 11 with a trendy sleeper like Purdue that beat Ohio State last season with just about the same team, but a quarterback less talented than Miami transfer Robert Marve who's now taken over for the Boilermakers to much acclaim. A lot gets back to that Ohio State game for me, the only decent win Purdue really had, but sort of one the Buckeyes would have lost no matter who they played -- the rock bottom that Pryor had to hit. I know the Brian Kelly hype might seem like too much, but coaches with a resume like his really so rarely come along. Notre Dame finally got one. He's already bossing NBC. I dunno. Respect.

UNLV +20.5 over Wisconsin (1 unit) (Saturday, 11:05 ET, NO TV): NEVER FORGET. (Wait if you can here for Bad Action Bros to drive the line up, as they're sure to with this last game of opening Saturday.)

Boise St. -2.5 over Virginia Tech (1 unit) (Monday, 8:00 ET, ESPN): Kind of like with the 'Stache, Week 1 is no time to go Beamer Ball over bright-blue-and-orange happy action funtime. Anyway, Kellen Moore memorized college playbooks when he was in high school. He's Baby Peyton Hawking, and football is for thinkers.

That's all for this week. Sorry no SEC, but the UNC mess made it impossible. UConn/Michigan is the one I wish I could have figured something out for. Please don't hesitate to send angles on next week's slate to clevelandfrowns@gmail.com. Hope everyone enjoys.

[size=150:2f6bv0im] [/size:2f6bv0im] as announced today by WAC Commissioner Karl Benson. With BYU declaring that it will be an independent in the sport of football effective with the 2011 season, [u:2f6bv0im]five WAC teams � [size=150:2f6bv0im][/size:2f6bv0im], Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State and San Jose State � will provide the Cougars with five games in the season and four games in the season. [/u:2f6bv0im] For the 2011 season, WAC schools will host two games against BYU, while three teams will travel to Provo. In 2012, BYU will play two games in WAC stadiums and host two WAC teams in Provo. Specific opponents and dates will be announced in the future.[/i:2f6bv0im][/b] Benson says that U Idaho will NOT have a home game against BYU and USU apparently has its own agreement with BYU for 2011 and 2012. Thus, under the above formula of the above reported agreement, UH would play BYU in both 2011 and 2010 under the WAC agreement. Did UH sign off on that agreement? Did UH commit to staying in the WAC through until 2012?

HONOLULU—State highway conditions may be the best they’ve been in 19 years, but Hawaii’s roads ranked a dismal 47th nationwide, according to Reason Foundation’s 19th Annual Highway Report released today. The annual study measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-owned roads in 11 categories, including deficient bridges, urban traffic congestion, fatality rates, pavement condition on urban and rural Interstates and on major rural roads, and the number of unsafe narrow rural lanes. National performance in all of those key areas improved in 2008, the most recent year with complete data available. The report says that the recession is partly responsible for the overall nationwide improvement in road conditions—people are driving less, which has helped slow pavement deterioration and reduced traffic congestion and fatalities. Overall, North Dakota, Montana, and Kansas have the most cost-effective state highway systems. Rhode Island, Alaska, California, Hawaii, and New York have the least cost-effective road systems. Hawaii motorists have to look out for the most potholes on urban Interstates, with approximately 25 percent of freeway pavement in “poor condition.” In 2008, Hawaii ranked 47th in the overall performance rankings, slipping one position from 2007 when it ranked 46th. More fun facts about Hawaii’s state highways: * With 1,005 miles under the state-owned highway system, Hawaii is the smallest system among the 50 states. * Hawaii’s best rankings were for rural Interstate condition (1st tie) and fatality rate (12th). * Hawaii’s worst rankings were for urban Interstate condition (50th), deficient bridges (48th), rural other principal arterial condition (48th), capital and bridge disbursements per mile (46th), total disbursements per mile (46th) and rural narrow lanes (46th). * Hawaii reported a sharp improvement in the fatality rate from 2007 when it reported 1.33 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles to 1.04 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles in 2008. * Hawaii reported an improvement in the deficient bridges from 44.8 percent reported deficient in 2007 to 37.96 percent reported deficient in 2008. But it also reported a significant increase in the capital and bridge disbursements per mile, from $185,904 per mile of responsibility in 2007 to $259,466 per mile of responsibility in 2008, an increase of 39.6 percent. The full Annual Highway Report with detailed state-by-state analysis is online here. The full Annual Highway Report rankings from best to worst are: North Dakota Montana Kansas New Mexico Nebraska South Carolina Wyoming Missouri Georgia Oregon Delaware South Dakota Texas Kentucky Nevada Mississippi Idaho Virginia Tennessee Alabama North Carolina Utah Indiana Ohio Minnesota Arizona New Hampshire Wisconsin Arkansas West Virginia Iowa Maine Washington Colorado Michigan Louisiana Oklahoma Pennsylvania Florida Illinois Connecticut Vermont Maryland Massachusetts New Jersey New York Hawaii California Alaska Rhode Island

President Felipe Calderon delivered his latest "state of the nation" report to Congress on Wednesday, saying Mexico has made gains in security and is enjoying its strongest economic growth in a dozen years.

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Liang Guanglie reviews an honour guard at Mexican defense ministry in Mexico City, Mexico, Sept.

Mexico’s Committee of Tourism and Conventions for the image-tarnished Mexican State of Baja California has hired Allison & Partners for a six-figure PR effort as the roster of firms that have worked on the crisis grows larger.

Read the full story (sub req'd) | Subscribe to O'Dwyer's

Judge rules against U.S. government on oil drilling

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the U.S. government's request to dismiss an industry lawsuit challenging its deepwater oil and gas drilling moratorium, dealing another blow to the Obama administration.

Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc and other drilling companies sued the administration on June 7 after it first ordered a halt to deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following BP Plc's well rupture that killed 11 workers and caused the world's worst offshore oil spill.

As a result of Louisiana-based Hornbeck's lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans blocked implementation of the drilling ban on June 22.

Oil Trades Below $74 After Falling on Bigger-Than-Forecast Supply Increase

Oil declined as equity indexes slipped and traders waited for signs whether the European Central Bank will extend emergency lending.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet may signal at a rate meeting today that policy makers will keep offering unlimited cash to financial institutions through the end of the year. A U.S. government report yesterday showed crude stockpiles increased almost three times more than analysts forecast.

“There are still fears about a double-dip recession in the U.S,” said Roland Stenzel, a crude and carbon trader at E&T; Energie Handelsgesellschaft mbH, said from Vienna.

DOE Update: U.S. Crude Oil Production Hits 6-Year High

U.S. crude oil production increased 1.7% from last week. Year-to-date oil output is up 3.8% from the year ago period. Production is now at the highest level since April 2004.

Russia output eases back

Oil output in Russia fell by 0.8% in August from an all-time high reached in July, to hit a seven-month low, the Energy Ministry said today.

Qatari Oil Rises on Japan's Record Low Kerosene Supplies

Qatar Marine crude is trading at the highest level in four weeks versus its official selling price as Japanese refiners replenish supplies of kerosene for heating and Saudi Arabia cuts shipments of similar grades.

Qatar Marine for loading in October jumped on Aug. 23 to a premium of 5 cents a barrel relative to the benchmark producer prices, compared with a discount of 8 cents the previous week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The kerosene-rich blend has traded at an average of 9 cents below its official selling price during the past year.

Cuban offshore oil plans gain momentum

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- While the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has sparked debate in America on the merits of deepwater drilling, 90 miles away Cuba's offshore plans are quietly taking shape.

The country aims to drill seven exploration wells in its share of the Gulf of Mexico by 2014, according to American oil experts who recently met with Cuba's state oil monopoly Cupet and regulatory officials.

Norway offshore on course for record spend

Statistics Norway said today that oil and gas investments - the core driver of Norway's economic growth - were on track to set a new record high next year.

Petrobras to Buy Oil From Brazil for $42.5 Billion in Stock

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Latin America’s largest company by market value, agreed to pay the Brazilian government $42.5 billion in new stock for the right to develop 5 billion barrels of offshore oil reserves.

Petrobras, as the state-run company is known, will pay an average of $8.51 a barrel for the oil after almost two weeks of negotiations with the government, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. More than half the oil will come from the Franco field in the offshore Santos Basin, the company said.

Russia to supply 70% of oil to JV in China

Russia will supply about 70 percent of oil at market prices for a proposed joint refinery between Rosneft and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), Reuters said Thursday, citing a Russian news agency.

Gazprom rides high

Russian gas giant Gazprom saw its profit for the first quarter of the year more than triple on the back of a foreign exchange gain, adding it had cut its net debt by more than 30%.

Statoil CEO Says Canadian Oil Sands `Attractive' at Current Crude Prices

Statoil ASA, Norway’s biggest energy company, said oil sands are attractive at current crude price levels and the company is working on bringing costs down to proceed with its investments in Canada.

“We’ve had a market lately that has made that type of oil attractive,” Chief Executive Helge Lund said today in an Oslo interview. “Of course the problem two, three years ago with Canada was the costs.”

Weak Laws Bother Iraq Investors More Than Violence as U.S. Goes

Ahmed Jamal says it isn’t primarily Iraq’s violence that deters his company from investing in the country. It is its weak business laws.

“We don’t have factories or warehouses or anything like that,” said Jamal, regional sales manager for Istanbul-based beverage distributor Hayat Su, which brings bottled water to Iraq in trucks and works through a local representative. “The investment laws are not suitable.”

BP to remove equipment at Gulf well by Sunday

HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc expects to remove a failed blowout preventer atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well by Saturday or Sunday and later plug the leak for good, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Wednesday.

"We believe in the next 24 to 36 hours, we will enter a weather window that will allow us to proceed," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a briefing in Houston.

BP Tripled Ad Spending After Spill

It will come as little surprise to newspaper readers and television watchers, but BP significantly increased its spending on advertising after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. BP spent $93.4 million on newspaper, magazine, television and Internet advertising in the three months after the disaster, three times what it spent in the comparable period in 2009, the company reported to Congress.

War of the wells

But like many communities in Montana, we may soon share our backyard with a new set of neighbors, and the changes these folks bring will not be so benign. Until recently, the oil and gas industry has been the source of horror stories from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico: the names of towns like Pinedale, Rifle and Farmington have become shorthand for cautionary tales told with a "thank-God-it's-not-us" undertone.

Australian leader acquires Aboriginal land

The leader of Australia's resources-rich western province has been accused of 'another invasion' by forcibly acquiring coastal land slated for return to native tribes to build a gas plant.

Colin Barnett, premier of Western Australia state, today said he had started formal proceedings to take the land for Woodside's Browse liquefied natural gas precinct at James Price Point.

Cairn Greenland ops resume after Greenpeace protest

LONDON (AFP) – Scottish oil exploration group Cairn Energy said Thursday it had resumed operations on a rig off the coast of Greenland after Greenpeace ended a protest.

What a misanthropic bunch of stunts

Figures published by the US Geological Survey in 2008 estimated that there are 90 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic as a whole, enough to provide for the entire world’s current oil consumption for about a year. Of this, about 50 billion barrels may be found around Greenland. Given that Greenland is the biggest island in the world (assuming Australia is a continent), yet has a population of just 56,000, this could be an enormous windfall both for the local communities and for Denmark, which has formal control over the territory.

No wonder that Greenland’s prime minister, Kuupik Kleist, is less than impressed by Greenpeace’s protest: ‘Greenpeace has once again succeeded in impeding Greenland’s opportunities to secure the economic foundation for its people’s condition of life. The Greenland government regards the Greenpeace action as being a very grave and illegal attack on Greenland’s constitutional rights. It is highly disturbing that Greenpeace, in its chase on media attention, breaks the safety regulations put in place to protect people and the environment.’

Will we ever get off oil?

There's been a lot of talk about oil this summer. Most of it bad. Devastating, record-setting leaks in the Gulf of Mexico and in Michigan's Kalamazoo River underscored, once again, the danger of our dependence on crude. Seductively efficient and still relatively cheap, oil provides nearly 40 percent of America's power. But it's also a finite resource that presents a very real threat to our environment, economy, security, and health. Given the growing risks and the shrinking reserves, there must be loads of people out there -- experts from government, corporations, academia, and the like -- hatching plans for a cleaner, safer, post-oil world, right? We asked our expert panel to explain where we are in oil's troubled lifespan, and whether and how we'll ever wean the world off its current fossil fuel of choice.

Peak Oil And The German Government - Military Study Warns Of Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document - leaked on the Internet - shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The dirty topic of peak oil: get ready to reduce your reliance

Wouldn’t it be funny if we spent so long arguing about what to do about climate change that we ran out of cheap oil first? No, it wouldn’t really, it would be catastrophic.

But given the government’s delay in producing an Energy White Paper and the steady backsliding on the need to actually reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, it is not beyond the realms of possibility. Even the usually optimistic International Energy Agency (IEA) is starting to sound a little nervous.

How Malthus drove the Discovery Channel gunman crazy: The greatest pessimist in economic history has been wrong for 200 years, but he's still freaking people out

Among the demands of James Lee, the deranged gunman who rampaged through the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Washington, D.C., before being shot and killed late Wednesday afternoon, was a request that the TV network "develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race."

Insane, but perhaps not quite as kooky as it might initially seem. Because when choosing crazy-making prophets of doom and destruction as your inspiration, you could do a lot worse than the late 18th-century economist Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus.

New report shows state highways in good shape

A new report on the condition of the USA's state highways finds that they are in the best shape they have been in nearly 20 years.

The annual study by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based, libertarian, non-profit think tank, credits road improvement progress man by states and decreased wear and tear as commuters and commercial truckers drove less during the recession.

Canada's Renewable-Fuel Regulations Completed, to Take Effect on Dec. 15

Canada said it completed regulations that will require an average renewable-fuel content of 5 percent in gasoline as part of an effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The rules will take effect Dec. 15, the government said in an e-mailed announcement today.

GM moves to trademark 'Range anxiety'

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you're thinking about buying an electric car but you're worried about getting stuck someplace when the battery runs out, General Motors has a two words for that.

"Range anxiety."

The automaker has filed for a trademark on the term. Range anxiety is a major reason car shoppers say they would avoid buying an electric car.

Chevy Volt, Electric Revolution? Or Outta Gas?

The first thing I noticed driving the Chevrolet Volt is that it’s a real car. GM did not kick out the kind of street-legal version of a golf cart like we have seen with previous attempts at making an electric car. The Volt is sturdy and it has horsepower. I had it up to 80 MPH on the test track and given how quiet gasoline powered cars are today, I was hard pressed to notice a difference between the Volt and my last airport rental.

Desertec solar hopes cloud over as support starts to waver

It has been one step forward, two steps back this year for the Desertec solar project, which aims to source 15 per cent of Europe’s electricity supply from the MENA region’s deserts by 2050.

A significant piece of good news for the ambitious €400 billion (Dh1.87 trillion) scheme came in April, when one of its members, Germany’s Solar Millennium, said its 150 megawatt Kuraymat project in Egypt was nearing completion and could serve as a template for other north African solar farms.

Then came the bad news with Algeria’s decision last month not to participate in the Desertec Industrial Initiative, which was formally launched last year by a group of 12 European companies, mostly from Germany. On Monday, Paul van Son, the director of the group, said he was now also concerned about declining German government support for the project.

Fresh Air for Sale, in Hong Kong

HONG KONG — ‘‘Do your feeble breathing skills let you down? Does standing up tire you out?’’ The answer: Buy a breath or two of ‘‘Fresh Air’’ — the ‘‘revolutionary new product’’ that lets you experience breathing ‘‘like the rest of the world does.’’

...‘‘Fresh Air’’ is the new campaign tool of Hong Kong’s Clean Air Network, a nongovernmental group that promotes awareness of, you guessed it, the wretched air quality in this city of seven million.

Green roofs offer antidote to urban heat island effect, say researchers

Researchers at Columbia University have demonstrated that a layer of plants and earth can cut the rate of heat absorption through the roof of a building in summer by 84%.

Welsh biochar facility opens up carbon possibilities for farmers

WALES is set to benefit from a new £180,000 biochar facility which may transform the way the country tackles climate change.

Aberystwyth University is installing a biomass waste recycling unit designed to produce biochar – a charcoal-like substance – that can be used to improve soil fertility and raise agricultural productivity.

How bad are the next few years going to suck?

The hot question in green circles these days is, "what next?" For the last decade, strategy has been built around getting a federal climate bill that would place a cap on carbon emissions. That attempt was supposed to culminate in success this year, but it didn't, so ... what next?

There will be much to say along those lines in coming months. I hope to share words of inspiration and uplift, to stir minds with insight and hearts with passion. To tell great tales of green pastures to come and the heroes who will sail the fleet of righteousness to the golden shores of, uh, the pastures. Just real quick, though, I need to be depressed as hell for a minute.

Prince Charles urges people to wear old clothes

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, has urged people to wear more old and recycled clothes, and natural fabrics like him so as to help reduce the world's carbon footprint and halt climate change. In an article for this month's 'Vogue' magazine, he wrote about his passion for reusing and repairing things. "On the whole, the older some things are, the more comfortable and familiar they become; they can even be adapted to look new in a different context."

Climate funds shouldn't divert poverty aid, UN says

The U.N.’s climate chief says poor countries are right to expect that any funding they receive to combat global warming be kept separate from development aid or poverty relief.

Climate change 'driving a new industrial revolution'

Climate change is driving a new industrial revolution that will reward creative thinking and early investment in green technologies, British economist Nicholas Stern says.

The former World Bank president warned high-emitting countries that fell behind in this global ''green race'' to transition to a low-carbon economy could face future trade barriers.

6 global warming skeptics who changed their minds

With 2010 shaping up as the warmest year on record and unprecedented heat waves gripping the planet, global warming skeptics have suffered another blow with the defection of the "most high-profile" member of their camp, author Bjorn Lomborg. But Lomborg isn't the first doubter to accept the scientific consensus that human carbon emissions are warming the planet and need to be curtailed. Here, a review of several prominent cases:

Report: Climate change threatens historic Jamestown, Va.

Human-caused climate change threatens to flood Jamestown, the first permanent European settlement in what became the American colonies and the United States, says a report Wednesday by environmental groups.

Jamestown Island, the site of the original 1607 settlement, is low enough to be inundated by rising seas and tidal waters -- even if the waters do not rise as much by 2100 as scientists predict, according to the report by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.

Al Gore announces appointing experts to study Pakistan floods

ISLAMABAD (APP): President Asif Ali Zardari and Former US vice president Al Gore held a telephonic conversation on Thursday to discuss the situation of recent floods in Pakistan and its possible linkage with the climate change.President Zardari while discussing the causes of floods indicated that the factor of climate change and its impact should also be examined in this regard. He said the international community must take this environmental subject seriously so that solutions could be found out for the overall betterment of the world.

Climate change puts China harvests at risk

PARIS (AFP) – Climate change could reduce key harvests in China by a fifth if the gloomiest scenarios prove true, according to a study on Wednesday.

Publishing in the journal Nature, a team of Chinese scientists say China's climate "has clearly warmed" over the past half century, gaining 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1960.

Rounding out a week of contributors to "The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing," welcome Lisa Lenard-Cook, PEN-short-listed literary author whose writing book, "The Mind of Your Story," gets beyond the craft of plotting to the art of writing a compelling story. Her essay in the collection is "Why Setting Matters."

HALLIE: Lisa, it's become a bit of a cliche to say, "Setting is like another character..." and I notice that it's the one thing you don't say. I was particularly intrigued by what you said about setting as viewpoint (seeing it "through one intense point of view.") Can you tell us more about what you meant by that?

LISA: When I teach point of view, I like to begin with the room we're sitting in. Sure, we're all here, in this same place at this same moment. But while I can see all my students (if we're at a table, some in left profile, some in right), I can't see behind me, nor can I see myself. That's key: None of us can see ourselves, unless we use the old mirror or store window trick.

But let's take point of view one step further, and consider how each of us sees what we see. Everything is weighted by what we already know--I see the narrow lane that's my village's main road far differently than someone who's seeing it for the first time.

Now imagine using this for a character. Where I see, Oh crap! Not another tractor! you see, How quaint! A tractor on a state highway! And, just like that, each of those pov's has drawn a distinct picture in the reader's head.

Because that's the other thing: Your reader will never see what you do. It's her imagination. But that's good. If she's creating pictures in her mind from your details, you've succeeded.

HALLIE: How does setting function in your novel "Dissonance"?

LISA: Unlike many of my other fictions, two of the seeds for "Dissonance" were places: Los Alamos, New Mexico, & the WWII concentration camp Terezin. Terezin came first, and even though I've never been there, I kept wondering (no; make that obsessing) about what it might have been like for those interned there. I certainly never intended to write a novel about the Holocaust (& Dissonance isn't about the Holocaust; it's about love, & the healing power of forgiveness), but when the Prague narrator began to dictate her story, the setting unfolded as if I were seeing it through her eyes. Which I was, I suppose.

Los Alamos, which is about 50 miles north of where I sit at this moment, generated still more obsessing on my part. First of all, it's gorgeous up there--red & grey rock canyons, high mountain pine forest, views that stretch halfway across New Mexico when you step out of the trees. But it's also the place where the first atomic bomb was developed. How did the people who were part of that process that feel? And, still more important to Dissonance's Los Alamos narrator, how do their children feel about it? So again, the setting & point of view were tied together.

The third seed, by the way, was music theory. Go figure. Fiction works in mysterious ways.

HALLIE: What opportunities do you see most new authors miss when they write setting?

LISA: Humans are so visual, we can get carried away with what we see of a place. But setting is so much more than seeing. It's a mood, a time, a song in another room. I always encourage students to create settings that use all five--make that six--senses, & in particular the limbic senses (smell & taste), which take us back to the first time we smelled or tasted a thing as if no time has elapsed. For writers, that's pure gold.

HALLIE: For us on Jungle Red, "setting as mystery" had a particular resonance--using setting to trigger questions in the reader's mind. Any tips on how to do that?

LISA: This ties in with why I write fiction in the first place: to imagine the things I don't know. I was one of those precocious (or obnoxious, depending on your point of view) children who was forever asking why, &, in a way, I still am. What drew my ancestors to Buffalo NY (where I grew up)? Why are the curtains drawn at this house? Why does the highway end here, instead of here? Each of those questions sets up a mystery. Think about what your narrator doesn't yet know about a place, and you're off.

HALLIE: Are you working on a novel, as we speak, and is there anything you can share with us about the setting?

LISA: I am. Because my husband is a construction project manager (building big stuff, like hydroelectric projects & aqueducts) we've lived all over the western U.S. One of those places was the Antelope Valley, the northernmost part of LA County that no one ever sees. I worked, when we lived there, for a flight test outfit in Mojave, a sad desert town that exists only because two highways met there. Now there's a bypass, & the town is sadder still. But my novel takes place 20+ years ago, not long after the Mojave Airport manager realized there was money to made mothballing old passenger jets. There are hundreds of them now. They look like some trick of light, a desert mirage. But no: They're 707s, 727s, L-1011s, all lined up like the Rockettes. I just couldn't get them out of my head...

HALLIE: Rockettes -- I love that image!!

Thanks so much for visiting Jungle Red! Lisa will be checking in today so please, post comments and questions. (She can also be found at www.lisalenard.com)

And check in tomorrow when Jane Friedman, until recently the publisher for Writers Digest Books, gives us her take on how the role of agent is evolving.

Advocates for tighter immigration restrictions frequently rail against illegal immigrants for availing themselves of social services like education and publicly supported health care, arguing that they are overburdening taxpayers and utilizing scarce resources. They've succeeded in maintaining a ban on government health coverage for illegal immigrants, for instance, and have tried to implement more draconian measures on the state level.

But such measures haven't solved the political and ethical dilemmas of providing health care for illegal immigrants, which this New York Times story brings into focus. The Times piece explains how a public charity hospital in Georgia closed its outpatient dialysis clinic, only to displace some 60 uninsured illegal immigrants who need the treatment to survive. The charity hospital brokered a deal to cover about half the patients but only after a handful had died after being repatriated to Mexico. The Times explains:

Thirty-eight end-stage renal patients, most of them illegal immigrants, would receive the dialysis they need to stay alive at no cost under a rough agreement brokered Tuesday among local dialysis providers and Atlanta’s safety-net hospital, Grady Memorial... Grady, which receives direct appropriations from Fulton and DeKalb Counties, ultimately agreed on Tuesday to help pay for continuing dialysis for most of the immigrants. Others would be distributed among local dialysis providers as charity cases...

Five of the 13 patients who left for Mexico with assistance from Grady or the Mexican government have died, according to Matt Gove, a Grady senior vice president. Most died while still receiving dialysis, although not always as regularly as recommended... One patient, Fidelia Perez Garcia, 32, apparently succumbed in April to complications from renal failure after running out of Grady-sponsored treatments in Mexico.

However you slice it, there isn't an easy answer. Even if Grady hospital pulled all support for such dialysis patients, they would still end up in emergency rooms where they would be required by law to receive treatment. And if they couldn't pay, taxpayers would still end up footing part of the bill, as hospitals pass on such costs to state governments.

Oregon's probable 3-0 start begins Saturday, when lowly New Mexico plays at Autzen Stadium. The Lobos were 1-11 last season (beating Colorado State in the second game), and scored 27 points or more only twice under rookie coach Mike Locksley. They gave up 418.7 yards and 35.9 points per game, and ...

The number of illegal immigrants in Illinois has remained stable in the midst of the recession, bucking a national trend in which the number living in the U.S. declined during the last two years as jobs dwindled, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Illinois ranked No. 5 with an estimated 525,000 illegal immigrants in 2009, more than the approximately 475,000 in the state in 2008. The Pew analysts cautioned that their figures were based on a range of estimates, meaning that it is safer to say the Illinois illegal immigrant population was stable rather than to say it actually increased.

Nationwide, the total number of illegal immigrants has declined by about 1 million since 2007, to 11.1 million in 2009, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population.

While Illinois has long been attractive to illegal immigrants, the population has fluctuated over the last two decades. Unlike many states that have experienced a clear peak and decline, Illinois grew from 200,000 to 475,000 from 1990 to 2000 and then dropped to 350,000 in 2005.

"Illinois seems to have dropped in the first half of the decade when everyone else was growing and now seems to have turned around and is going back up," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer who conducted the survey based on U.S. census data.

The gap between Illinois and Florida and New York has tightened, Passel said, as those two states lost large illegal immigrant populations last year and Illinois gained over the last five years.

Nationwide, the study found that the most marked decline was among illegal immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico. From 2007 to 2009, immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America decreased 22 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico, which accounts for about 60 percent of all illegal immigrants, leveled off after reaching a peak of 7 million in 2007, the study found.

"The people are drawn here by the abundance of work," said Tim Bell, an organizer for the Chicago Workers Collaborative, which advocates workers rights for immigrants. "Over the last 15 to 20 years, the immigrant population has exploded in the suburbs, where they do most of the service work."

Other Midwestern states, including Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan, also remained stable, showing small statistical increases, the study found. States in the Southeast and Southwest, including Florida, Nevada and Virginia, saw the largest declines, while California -- which still has the highest number of illegal immigrants with 2.5 million -- saw a slight decline.

According to Passel, the numbers have been affected by the economy as well as increased immigration enforcement, which resulted in more than 389,000 deportations last year.

The statistics may be more stable in Illinois, immigration experts said, because the illegal immigrant population includes more families. Prior to the recession, states such as Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina were attractive to newer immigrants, primarily young men looking for work in thriving housing markets.

"When you look at Illinois, in comparison, we have been getting immigrants for many decades. They are not so heavily people who just recently arrived," said Rob Paral, a research fellow with the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. "So the undocumented population in Illinois is more stable, relatively more settled and relatively less mobile."

-- Dahleen Glanton

Sheriff Larry Dever, whose officers patrol Cochise County along the border between Arizona and Mexico, said he finds it “amazing” that the U.S. State Department would refer the recently passed immigration law in his state to the United Nations Human Rights Council for review.

“Well, it’s just amazing to me,” Dever told CNSNews.com. “Course, I have about as much regard for the U.N. as I do the vermin that hides in the rocks around my house here and reaches out and tries to bite me every now and then.”

Plans that were originally rejected by a New Mexico Public Regulations Commission hearing examiner for an 80MW renewable energy plan have been modified by PNM Resources to a 22MW utility-scale solar power facility and collectively approved for installation at several sites throughout the state of New Mexico. Regulators capped the facilities’ cost at US$101.7 million...

No state workers will be furloughed or laid off because of a new round of spending cuts to balance New Mexico's budget, Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday.



New Mexico - Bill Richardson - United States - Government - Business and Economy

President Felipe Calderon delivered his latest "state of the nation" report to Congress on Wednesday, saying Mexico has made gains in security and is enjoying its strongest economic growth in a dozen years.

President Felipe Calderon delivered his latest "state of the nation" report to Congress on Wednesday, saying Mexico has made gains in security and is enjoying

by Jesús Cantú, Proceso

A memorial on Monterrey Tech's campus to two students killed by soldiers who were engaged in a shoot-out with criminals. Soldiers later planted guns on the students' bodies to make it appear as though they were members of organized crime.

Mexico City, August 25- An analysis of recommendations 36 and 45, issued this year by the [Mexican government's] National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in reference to the death of the two Almanza Salazar children and of the two Monterrey Tech students, makes it clear that in both cases the soldiers who participated committed the same offenses: altering the scene of the crime, apparently to cover up their responsibility in the incidents; planting evidence to try to implicate the victims as members of criminal organizations or, at least, to modify the course of the investigations; and to hinder the national human rights ombudsman's investigations.

The existence of similar conduct in the two distinct cases, which were carried out by soldiers from two different military zones, arouses the suspicion that this is a general policy and not the anomalous personal behavior of those involved.

In particular, recommendation 45, regarding the murder of the two students, is damning [proof of] the military's evidence-planting: utilizing the Defense Ministry's very own documents, [the recommendation] demonstrates that the soldiers planted weapons they had previously seized from criminals on the students.

In this respect, the recommendation points out: "in the e-mail of images annexed in the report from the responsible authority, AR13, commander of the VII Military Zone in Nuevo Leon, said that once the confrontation against members of organized crime had ended, a grey Yukon was inspected, and inside the following was found: (...) an automatic rifle, .308 caliber, Century Arms brand, Cetme Sporter model, serial numbers erased; as well as a carbine, .223-5-56 mm, Bushmaster brand, model XM15-E2S, serial number L262834."

And further on [the recommendation] indicates: "...the public prosecutor's cadaver inspection report compiled by the Forensic Medical Service of the Nuevo Leon State Attorney General's Office states that Javier Francisco Arredondo Verdugo had in his right arm a rifle-style firearm, color black with green and a black strap, with a metallic magazine that did not have any bullets.  The serial number and brand was not observed.  Jorge Antonio Mercado Alonso, on the other hand, had in his left arm ... a black metallic firearm, 223 caliber, model XM15-E2S, Bushmaster brand, serial number L262834."

The recommendation concludes: "...from the report produce by the commander of the VII Military Zone it is deduced that the two weapons found inside the truck when it was searched by soldiers are the same weapons that appeared in the arms of both students at the moment the public prosecutor's office inspected the cadaver, even when a video demonstrated that they [the students] were not traveling in the truck.  [Rather], they were leaving campus and they were unarmed, which leads to the conclusion that these [weapons] were planted with the goal of altering the crime scene."

Martín and Bryan Almanza Salazar's funeral.

In the case of the Almanza Salazar family, the evidence comes from contradictory testimony.  The two most relevant pieces of evidence are the location of the Tahoe truck in which the two dead boys, Martín and Bryan Almanza Salazar, were traveling--it was found between two trucks occupied by members of organized crime--and the bullet holes that were shot in the front part [of the vehicle] to make it appear as though the [family's] truck was caught in the crossfire.

Regarding the truck's location, the CNDH document states: "...in the e-mail of images number 13018, sent on May 5, 2010, by AR3, which appears as an annex to the National Defense Ministry's report provided... to the National [Human Rights] Commission, the following is written:

"...5. At the end of the attack, the scene was searched and three vehicles were found in the order listed below, with the following items inside them:

"a) A dead, unidentified male assailant with military-style clothing in a blue truck; b) a male with injuries in his legs in a black Tahoe truck, who is identified as V6, indicating that he was coming from Nuevo Laredo and heading towards Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and that his family was accompanying him; also inside the vehicle, in the back, was the lifeless body of young Martin Almanza Salazar, who died at the scene, and c) a dead unidentified male assailant with military-style dress in a red vehicle."

The Almanza Salazar family's truck.  The family says soldiers shot the boys in their parents' arms as they fled the soldiers' unprovoked attack.

Regarding this detail, the recommendation states: "...the National [Human Rights] Commission observes that work was done to alter the course of the investigations, which is demonstrated by the May 9, 2010 testimony of T2 and T3 (as the witnesses are referred to in order to protect their identities), who state that when they received the call over radio from V1 (identified as Martín Almanza Rodríguez, the boys' father, who was driving the vehicle) that the truck in which they were traveling had been shot by soldiers, they went to the scene of the crime, arriving at approximately 21:30 hours on April 3, 2010, and observed in said place that there was only the black Tahoe truck with its hazard lights blinking, which they clearly identified as V1's vehicle, and, upon questioning the soldiers regarding the passengers, the soldiers told them that the injured had already been transported to Miguel Alemán for medical treatment.  [T2 and T3] went to the hospital in Miguel Alemán... As they were returning to Nuevo Laredo and crossed the bridge [near the crime scene] at about 23:30 hours on April 3, 2010, the say that V1's truck was [parked] between a blue pick up truck and a red vehicle."

(In other military documents that refer to the trucks it is observed that they took exactly the same measures as in the previous case: they used the goods that they seized from the criminals to alter the crime scene and modify the course of the investigation.)

Also, to make it appear as though the family had been caught in the crossfire, once the injured and the bodies had been taken away, the soldiers fired at the truck's windshield and hood.  The CNDH recommendation states: "...in relation to the bullet holes that appear in the front of the truck, they do not coincide with the victim's testimony.  Moreover, the National [Human Rights] Commission's forensic report indicates that, in relation to the bullet holes described in the right front passenger seat, it can be established that the shooter was located outside and in front of the vehicle in question; likewise, that the seat was not occupied by any person due to the absence of biological fluids (blood stains or tissue), meaning that it is very probable that they [the bullet holes] were made once the truck was unoccupied."

In both cases, at the beginning of the recommendations, the CNDH makes a nearly identical observation.  In the students' case, it notes: "[The CNDH] considers it necessary to make evident that during the investigation for this recommendation, there were obstacles and a lack of collaboration on the part of the National Defense Ministry, which denied [access to] some of the information that was requested in order to discover the truth of what happened."

According to the CNDH's recommendations, the behaviors and cover-ups are very similar, despite the fact that the cases, soldiers, and military zones are different, which makes it more difficult to attribute the human rights violations to human error or individual abuses.

Translated by Kristin Bricker.

The chart above is the same solar incentive report card we produced in part 4 of our 2010 report, albeit with one difference: blue and red states. My main impulse was not to rustle a regional divide between people in our country, yet instead to highlight differences in legislative policy and priorities.

I was curious to understand why so many red states lag so far behind in our report and started doing some more research this morning. I figured it can’t be just because of strong oil, gas, and coal lobbies. Could it? Well, who am I kidding, of course it could.

However, I found a ranking of federal dollars spent per dollar of taxes received in each state, and that raised my eyebrows. Here’s a great graphic made by a Harvard blogger which illustrates where our federal dollars flow. I didn’t realize Harvard had blogger guys but I was thankful for this one. I marked his chart up to more clearly show the red and blue states:

All those little red dots in the upper right are red states, the little blue ones to the lower left are blue states. The higher you go up the y-axis, the more conservative the state in the 2008 election. The further across the x-axis you go, the more money you get from the government than you pay in taxes.

If you affiliate yourself with Republican conservatives, you might be surprised to see a strong statistical relationship, but that the direction is the opposite from what you would expect: The red states (those that vote Republican) generally receive more subsidies from the federal government than they pay in taxes; in other words they are further to the right in the graph. It’s the other way around with the blue states (those that vote Democratic).

The big blue outlier way to the right in the graph is New Mexico, though there are several expensive air force bases and some top secret stuff located in the state. I was interested to see the cash cows for the rest of the country are taxpayers in New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, Illinois, Delaware, California, New York, and Colorado. Intriguingly, those same states score very well in our solar incentive report above.

This trend in wealth redistribution in the form of subsidies is not a new one. Here’s the trend from 1981-2005 which I just compiled from the Tax Foundation’s data:

The closer you get to being ranked #50, the less the amount of federal taxes coming from your state actually gets spent in your state. Note how Red and Blue states diverge after Reagan took office in 1981 and still haven’t rebalanced? Now there’s a true conservative who got things done!

Who is ranked #50? Well, here’s New Jersey, the state with arguably the best solar incentives in the country:

Not only do the tax dollars in New Jersey flow mainly to Republican states which fare very poorly in our report solar report card, but New Jersey also manages to have the best solar incentives in the country. While those incentives start with a strong renewable portfolio standard instead of tax dollars, it is intriguing to note how money flows through the country, who is tooting what horn, and where progressive solar legislation gets enacted and where it is glossed over.

I think it’s funny that more and more blowhards are tooting the “cut government spending” horn and pointing fingers at states that have relatively strong solar policies as prime targets of ill-advised socialist expenditures and “earmarks”. After all, the more these people toot, the more they are amplified by the mainstream media. That’s mainly because a few billionaires are motivated to force feed political opinion into your eyes and ears, but we’ll save that story for another day.

Maybe the red state political establishment has become accustomed to battling for their disproportional share of handouts from the Fed. While they could be drafting new clean energy policy to spur growth in a new industry and create more jobs, there appears to be more interest in fighting for solid positioning in the dirty oil, coal and gas pork trough.

What to conclude from all of this? Well, for one I should not have been surprised to learn Glenn Beck was urging his followers to boycott the census a few months back. Maybe he didn’t want them to find out their state coffers continue to be lined with Democrat dollars. On the other hand, even without free subsidies from other states, our country’s big blue cash cows are spearheading the nascent solar industry movement. Good on them!

No matter where you live or who your representatives are, we urge you to at least get a quote for solar energy on your home. You may be very surprised how quickly you can be in the green.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon handed his assessment of the state of his nation to Congress on Wednesday. NPR's Jason Beaubien also assesses the state of Mexico, nearly four years into a drug war that seems to swell, grow and get more brutal by the day.

by Randy Rieland.

Once upon a time in the wonderful world of oil, the crude guys took care of the government guys. They gave them expensive presents. They partied with them. They were a team, a family. Not ... any ... more.

Culture shock: Michael Bromwich, head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy—the agency formerly known as the infamous Minerals Management Services—sent an email to his employees laying out new rules for doing business. No more winks and back-scratching, no more revolving door between the regulators and the regulated, and no more inspections on companies where family members or close personal friends work. Oh, and definitely no more sex and drug parties. That sounds righteous and all, but Bromwich’s policies have a long legacy to overcome. As Stephen Power, writing in the Wall Street Journal, notes:

Rig workers and agency employees in the Gulf Coast “have often known one another since childhood,” according to a report published earlier this year by the Interior Department’s inspector general. The same report found that at one agency office in Louisiana, employees accepted sporting-event tickets, lunches, and other gifts earlier this decade from oil and natural-gas companies.

Oh, so it was a teaching moment: BP says that it’s learned many lessons from its disastrous summer in the Gulf—now, there’s an understatement. A report BP is delivering to Department of Interior officials today says the company is now much better equipped to deal with deep water accidents. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t it make more sense to be equipped to deal with a deep water accident before the deep water accident. Another BP report expected soon makes the oil giant look even worse. According to a version leaked to Bloomberg’s Joe Carroll, BP’s internal investigation found that company engineers aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig misinterpreted test drilling results in the hours before the well exploded.

It’s nature way: Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s days as one of Big Oil’s best buddies in Alaska are over. The senator from Alaska conceded to her Republican primary opponent Joe Miller last night when it became clear that she wouldn’t get nearly enough absentee ballot votes to prevent an embarrassing upset. But the fossil fuel folks are shedding no tears. Miller, who’s well ahead of his Democratic opponent in the polls, insists that the science supporting climate change is in “serious question.” And if global warming is actually occurring, he sure isn’t about to blame humans. Proclaims Miller:

We know the temperature change is part of the process of our existence, but we haven’t heard there’s a man-made global warming.

Bake it to the limit:  Not that Joe Miller’s worried, but it seems worth noting that it was 96 degrees F in New York City yesterday, making this officially the hottest summer in the city’s recorded history. From June to August, the temperature averaged 77.8 degrees F, breaking the previous high mark set in 1966.

Plastic not-so-fantastic: California’s reputation as an environmental trendsetter took a hit yesterday when state legislators rejected a proposed ban on plastic shopping bags. Enviros argued that state residents go through 19 billion plastic bags a year and a big load of them end up as litter. But the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastic bag manufacturers, spent millions to hammer home this year’s surefire anti-green message: This will cost jobs! The tactic worked again.

Go with the floes: They haven’t even discovered oil off the coast of Greenland yet—only natural gas deposits—but already Greenland has become an enviro battlefield. Yesterday, four members of Greenpeace stopped exploratory drilling by the Scottish company Cairn Energy by climbing on its rig and attaching a platform to it. Writing in The Guardian, John Sauven explains why drilling in the Arctic is different than anywhere else.  

Anyone who has seen the remarkable images coming from the Arctic over the last few days will know how unusual, dangerous and extreme this business has become. While icebergs the size of football stadiums are towed out of a rig’s path, ships equipped with high-pressure water cannons blast smaller chunks into submission. And all the while the clock is ticking. As the winter freeze edges nearer, this frantic exploration company rushes to finish the job before sheet-ice cuts off the region completely.

Take the money and shun: Can banks have a conscience? According to a report by Tom Zeller, Jr. in the New York Times, at least some have become more wary about investing in nasty practices such as mountaintop removal mining. Their concern likely has more to do with avoiding unnecessary risks and legal entanglements. Or maybe they’re just trying to greenwash their reputations. Whatever. It’s a start. Writes Zeller:

... banking analysts and others suggest that heated debate over climate change, water quality, and other environmental considerations is forcing lenders to take a much harder—and often uncomfortable—look at where they extend credit, and to whom.

Some like it bot: In the oil spills of the future—and there will be some, let’s not kid ourselves—companies may not need to rely on a fleet of civilians using equipment that hasn’t been updated in decades. Instead, they can call out the robots. Researchers at MIT have developed a solar-powered robot prototype equipped with nanotechnology. They claim that a small army of the devices, dubbed “Seaswarm,” could clean up an area the size of the Gulf of Mexico in a month.

And no one has to worry about getting their life back.

Related Links:

Discovery hostage taker is a population-obsessed eco-wacko

Climate change poses big risks to China’s crops and economy, study finds

Moving beyond oil [TRANSCRIPT]

After much speculation, Brigham Young University officially left the Mountain West Conference.

BYU's decision came on the heels of an earlier attempt to leave the conference for the Western Athletic Conference. With their newly announced new deal with ESPN, BYU has officially entered the realm of "independent."

This leaves the Mountain West Conference in a tough spot. Before their abrupt exit, the conference was on the verge of becoming a borderline major conference.

BYU is a big loss, in both football and basketball. The Mormon University has won four football conference titles, and has made the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament for the past four seasons.

The departure of BYU ends any realistic talk that the MWC could turn into a major conference. But BYU's exit does not mean that the Mountain West is no longer the best of the mid-major conferences.

New Additions

The Mountain West loses BYU. But they will pick up three very solid additions in the next few seasons.

1. Boise State has won seven out of the last eight Western Athletic Conference football championships. They also have won two BCS bowl games.  As strong as BYU has been in football, Boise St. is even better, and is truly one of the rising programs in FBS football.
2. Fresno State has long been an elite mid-major football program. Since 1999, Fresno State has only missed out on a postseason bowl game once. The Bulldogs also won a College World Series in 2008, and are known for their strong baseball and softball programs.
3. The University of Nevada is probably the weakest of the new additions, but they are also a solid program. They have been to five straight football bowl games, and won five WAC men's basketball titles in the 00s.

Remaining Teams

BYU exits the MWC, but numerous strong teams remain.

Utah and TCU lead the way. Utah, just like newcomer Boise State, has won two BCS bowl games in their history. In addition, Utah has the ninth most wins among men's basketball programs.

TCU is one of the best mid-major football programs in the country. They played in their first BCS bowl game last season, losing to future MWC member Boise State.

UNLV, Colorado State, San Diego State, New Mexico and the Air Force Academy all have achieved varying degrees of success in the major collegiate sports as well.

BYU is not leaving a bare cupboard.

Conclusion

Brigham Young University is a strong program. And their loss will be felt by the Mountain West Conference.

However, when viewed in combination with the new additions of Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada, the Mountain West has actually improved overall.

BYU's exit will temporarily halt the Mountain West's quest toward major conference status. But they remain the best overall mid-major in the country, particularly in football.

No state workers will be furloughed or laid off because of a new round of spending cuts to balance New Mexico's budget, Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich wants to outsource and privatize state government jobs (click here for more from Labor 2010 in Ohio). While he was in Congress, Kasich voted to send tens of thousands American jobs overseas.

Kasich voted for NAFTA and trade deals with China that, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), cost more than 140,000 Ohio jobs. But when Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was in Congress, he voted to no on those bills because as he said: “I felt they take jobs out of Ohio and America.”

Just as devastating to the workers who saw their jobs outsourced, Kasich, while a member of the board of directors at Invacare, signed off in 2006 on sending 225 Elyria jobs to China and Mexico.

Check out more on the Invacare job loss here .

Kansas City Star

Mexico launches federal probe of migrant massacre Las Vegas Sun The cartel controls much of Tamaulipas, a cattle-ranching state that is the last leg for migrants running the gauntlet up the Gulf coast to Texas. ... Every Action Causes a ReactionTucson Citizen all 492 news articles »

Sheriff Larry Dever, whose officers patrol Cochise County along the border between Arizona and Mexico, said he finds it “amazing” that the U.S. State Department would refer the recently passed immigration law in his state to the United Nations Human Rights Council for review.
“Well, it’s just amazing to me,” Dever told CNSNews.com. “Course, I have about as much regard for the U.N. as I do the vermin that hides in the rocks around my house here and reaches out and tries to bite me every now and then.”
The Bush administration refused to join the U.N. Human Rights Council, citing lax membership criteria that allowed countries with poor human rights records to sit on the council, including countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt.

The Obama administration joined the council, citing its imperfections but made claims that U.S. efforts could change the organization for the better.
Now, the U.S. State Department is asking the council to review possible human rights violations that supposedly could occur under the Arizona’s new law against illegal immigration. The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) has also filed a lawsuit challenging the Arizona law.
“Where does this end?” Dever told CNSNews.com.
“Why the Department of Justice intervened in this case to begin with was beyond comprehension,” Dever said, referring to the DOJ lawsuit, which claims that the Arizona law violated the federal government’s exclusive right to enforce federal immigration laws.

Dever said the State Department move, however, is in keeping with the Obama administration’s reluctance to enforce federal immigration law and that it is probably seeking support from the United Nations to further its agenda.
“It’s indicative of the personality of the entire administration and what they are trying to get done,” Dever said. “This is just further evidence.”
Dever added that the results of the U.N. review would not have any impact for those with boots on the ground in Arizona who, on a daily basis, fight the flow of illegal immigrants across the porous U.S. border.
“They can take their declarations and their findings and pack them all up and keep them in the United Nations because we really don’t care what they think,” Dever said.
In its report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the State Department, headed by Secretary Hillary Clinton, said the following: “A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. This action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.”

• added by: im1mjrpain  
• 21 comments

by Grist.

The Colorado River hasn’t reached the sea in ages. Is there hope left for this storied but manhandled river? Jonathan Waterman, author of Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea Down the Colorado River, brought together two experts from either end of the river to talk about what’s happened to the river over the years, and how to get more water flowing in the future.

Brad Udall is the director of Western Water Assessment, based out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) offices in Boulder, Colo. Osvel Hinojosa works as director of the water and wetlands program from the Mexican environmental group Pronatura.

Jonathan Waterman: So while you’re both involved a lot with agencies that have to do with safeguarding water and the Colorado River throughout the basin, we’ve also chosen to talk with you because you live, essentially, at opposite ends of the spectrum—in the state of Colorado near the headwaters, and then in the Mexican delta, where the river runs dry. And these are ideal positions to show the range of river issues. So if you guys could introduce yourself and your work, especially your work related to the Colorado River.

Brad Udall: I work for the University of Colorado where I’m on the research faculty. I run a program here called the Western Water Assessment which is supported with NOAA funding. We utilize a team of 30 researchers to look at climate issues in the American West with the idea to help folks—decision-makers make better decisions with respect to climate. And when I say climate I mean what we can learn about past climate—for example, tree-ring studies—what we know might happen in the next six to 12 months, and what we might know into the future, say 100 years out, because of climate change. The 30 people that are associated with this program range from climate scientists to economists to policy folks, environmental scientists, you name it—we’ve got access to them, and we’re trying to produce the best science we can. In particular, my area of expertise is the Colorado River basin, and I’ve been party to a number of studies that look into the future of this river.

Osvel Hinojosa: I work for Pronatura in Mexicali, based mostly in the delta region and upper Gulf of California. And we have been working on the restoration of the Colorado delta for almost 10 years now, working with organizations from both sides of the border. We have been doing  basic research to understand the issues and how can we restore the delta that is feasible, and then we have also been involved in active restoration and community work, monitoring, and more recently a lot on the water issues. We’ve created a water trust with some other organizations to purchase water and restore the flow in the Colorado River delta.

JW: Great, thank you. Brad, I’ll start with you again in the headwaters. What are the biggest challenges for water sustainability, for both humankind and natural habitat today in the Colorado River basin?

BU: When I think of sustainability issues with regard to the Colorado River, it really revolves around how much water is going to be in the river in the future, and are we using what we have now wisely. Like most Western states, roughly 75 percent of all the water here goes to agriculture. The remainder goes to municipal and other uses. The model projections for the future of the river show us anywhere from 10 to 20 percent reductions in flows mid-century, and obviously more possible by the year 2100. And if these come true, and there are many scientific reasons to believe that they will, it means we’re going to have to take a hard look at how we’re using water, and is there in fact any left to develop? Or maybe we’ve already overdeveloped what’s here. So it’s a challenge on almost any aspect of water management, from the critters needing water to live in, to humans, to agriculture, to even our new energy economy here in Colorado, which potentially, depending on how it evolves, might utilize significant amounts of water that might in fact not be here.

JW: And I’ll hand it to you, Osvel, in terms of water sustainability in the Colorado River basin, what do you think the biggest challenge is?

OH: Well, I agree with Brad in that sense, and a lot of the [problem] came from the past and extended to the future. I mean, clearly the river was overallocated, and in different locations was given away to different cities and municipalities in the U.S. and in Mexico, too. The environment was not considered. And so into the future, we’re facing this challenge: How can we figure out a way to meet those allocations that have already been given away, and then at the same time how can we recover that water to retain environmental functions? So it’s quite hard. At the same time, I guess that this challenge and the stress into the system has opened a lot of dialogue that used to be closed between water managers, between agencies between countries, and also we have environmental organizations’ water managers. And so the discussion is more open, to try to collaborate and find solutions.

JW:When was the last time the river flowed into the sea, through the delta?

OH: The last event when there was water flowing from the Colorado River into the Gulf was around 1998-1999. There were big flow releases from the dams that reached into the Gulf of California. After that, there were some small releases that almost reached the upper Gulf, but not quite. Then there was a big earthquake on April 4 this year, causing quite a bit of damage in the irrigation system in Mexicali. So most of the Mexican allocation of water was directed into the river. So for a few days, there was water flowing into the river into the Gulf of California.

JW: I didn’t realize that, I thought most of those systems were patched.

OH: Well, there was significant damage in the canal system, over 80,000 acres of land. So Mexico was not able to deal with the water delivery, so they would just open Morales dam. And for four days, there was continuous water from the Morales dam into the Gulf.

JW: The Morales dam—the diversion dam—is the only one owned by Mexico that brings water west toward Mexicali rather than toward the delta. So either of you—are we still in a drought today? The drought that started nearly a decade ago. I’ll toss that to you, Brad.

BU: Absolutely, yes. It’s the biggest drought in the historic record since 1906 or so, when we started keeping records in the Colorado River basin, and it’s really significantly a more pronounced drought than the next-nearest drought. You can look at droughts in a lot of different ways, but one way to look at it is in 10-year period flows, and this period of 10-year flows is 3 percent more than the next nearest period, if you will. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re talking about flows over 10 years, it’s a huge amount of water. I think Lake Mead, for example, would be almost 50 feet higher if we were in the next-nearest drought, just to give you an idea. And Mead has dropped approximately 100 feet during this 10-year period.

JW: Can you clarify for people who might be in the Rockies that have seen snowfalls that are approaching average over the last few years, why the drought continues?

BU: Sure, and you’re right, I’m looking at a graph right now of precipitation over the last 10 years. And there were three years that were really bad at the beginning of the 2000s, 2001-2003. Almost all the years since then have been about average in terms of precipitation. But runoff has been significantly less. And we believe that these significantly high temperatures that we’ve been experiencing, especially over the last 10 years because of man’s emissions of greenhouse gases, have reduced the runoff in the river. What our research shows is a couple different things: We can develop relationships between temperature and runoff, and precipitation and runoff, and it appears that this system is very sensitive to increased temperatures. And as temperatures go up, and this is the reason for these predictions for 2050, even if you have the same amount of precipitation as we currently have for snow and rain, you get significantly less runoff as the American west heats up due to climate change.

JW: That’s fascinating. So to recap that, even though skiers have been having a heyday the last three winters, at least in the Colorado Rockies, it doesn’t translate to water runoff because the temperatures are much warmer throughout the year.

BU: That’s correct. And there’s another little piece to the puzzle here, brand new science—red snow that shows up in Colorado in the springtime these days. And it appears that all this dust, which is originating out of Arizona and Utah, is impacting runoff in very interesting ways. We think it might be leading to an average decrease of 5 percent runoff every year.

JW: And that’s because of the evaporation?

BU: Yes, the dust sits on top of the snow, and as the snow begins to melt in the springtime, the dust doesn’t sink down through the snow pack; it sits on top and absorbs more solar energy. Some of it evaporates, and because the snow melts sooner, the plants begin to use water sooner. So it’s a combination of two different forms of what scientists call evapo-transpiration, both evaporation and transpiration of water used by plants.

JW: Well, you both know a lot about the river, not only as scientists and researchers and through your careers, but Brad I know you were a boatman, and you both were kicking around in the basin for many years. I floated through Cataract Canyon and the Canyonlands National Park, Utah, for a few days again, and saw as many other people see, what seems to be an intact river mid-summer. From your experiences, is there any place where people can go to still see sections of the river, or even its tributaries that are relatively intact? Or is it really all a masquerade, are we looking at a river that’s a glimmer of its former self?

BU: I think when you ask that question, in some sense you lead us to the other tributaries that aren’t dammed and otherwise, because the dams obviously change the natural sequence of flow. And in the case of being in Cataract, there aren’t too many dams about you but there’s enough to change the flow. You’re still at the end of July, you probably are seeing some runoff from the snowpack, maybe not a lot. But rivers like the Dolores that only have one dam, might be a good place to see the river in its natural state, though I think some people would disagree with me, because that dam on the Dolores does change the hydrogravity pretty seriously.

JW: Or the Yampa, in early spring?

BU: Yes, the Yampa has no dams on it. That’s a classic case, much better than the Dolores.

JW: So we have a few of those places left. Osvel, what is your favorite section of water in the Colorado River basin?

OH: I have to say, when you go in the upper basin, you feel it’s much more of a river than going into the lower basin or into the delta, and it’s fascinating to go there in the Dolores and Yampa and see the river behaving as a river. And as you walk down into the lower basin, I would say that the tributaries, it’s quite a good stretch. The Williams [is] quite a good patch. It’s below the Parker dam, and it’s used mostly for flood control, not for storage. So it still has pretty much a natural flow most of the year. So I would say in the lower basin the Williams River is the most natural stretch. But I have the say I enjoy parts in the Colorado Delta, like the Santa Clara. It’s very artificial in many ways; it’s basically maintained by agricultural return flows. But in the wetlands there, you feel the wilderness.

JW: Tell me more—a lot of people who have seen that the river doesn’t flow through the delta have concluded that the delta is gone. So tell us more about the delta, and what’s alive there and why the Cienega is a great hope.

OH: Yes, it’s a very interesting—there is no water flow in the river, but there are still very significant wetlands, and they are very important for wildlife. Every year in the winter, there are about 30,000 migratory water birds moving through the Colorado River in places like the Cienega, the Santa Clara, and the Rio Grande. And the funny thing is that these wetlands were basically maintained by agricultural return flows and seepage from canals. Just a small part of them are maintained by dedicated water, so that is one of the things that we’re trying to change. There are still about 60,000 to 80,000 acres of wetlands in the delta, mostly marshes and some shallow pools, and very important mudflats. But also there are still significant patches of cottonwood and willows, so again they don’t have this allocated water, but they still have very important environmental values.

JW: So to put that in context—I hear a large note of hope and logically a good reason for hope—how much of the delta is missing, compared to what we would have seen if we traveled there a century ago?

OH: Oh, probably about 80 percent is missing, and the remaining 20 percent is not the same quality as what it used to be. So yes, certainly it has been a very large loss. This area including the whole Mexicali valley, and you can extend that farther into Mexico, used to be the Colorado River delta. We’re talking about 500,000 acres of mixed wetlands, riparian forests, marshes, and into the estuary and upper Gulf of California, though now that has been mostly converted to agriculture. But there are still some patches in good shape.

JW: So are there sufficient resources being brought to bear on issues on the river, whether it’s habitat that you’re talking about Osvel, or even climate change issues, Brad?

BU: Good question, I think not in the realm of science. I think people would like to bring more resources to bear, there’s a $2 million dollar study underway that’s trying to look at future supply and demand on the system, and it’s a big enough system that $2 million isn’t nearly enough. By comparison, the Australians did a study on their effective analogue, the Murray-Darling basin, and they spent $10 million on that study to get the kind of information that we’re trying to get out of $2 million. I think there are a lot of people that are interested in this and a lot of concern about the future from many different perspectives, including water providers and users, but we haven’t figured out how to get the necessary resources directed at the river.

JW: On the eastern seaboard on this country, there’s a great deal of rain. There’s more than 40 inches of rainfall a year there, and in the west we have half that, and down where Osvel is, maybe 2 inches of rain a year. So I wonder if it’s not a complete misunderstanding of climate and the lack of water to begin with that people can’t bring for their resources to bear.

BU: It’s clearly partly that, Jon.

OH: I agree, there is not enough understanding, and I agree that there has not been enough resources to address the issue, from the science perspective, getting all the information that we need to make the best decisions, I don’t think we are there yet, and also for the policy work that is needed in order to bring together different perspectives in the basin, that needs a lot of resources and time and commitment from the different parties, and I don’t think we are there yet.

JW: Yeah, rather than the $2 million or $10 million that is being used in Australia, perhaps we need three times that much to begin a study so we can figure out where to begin. So that brings me to the question of how do we make people aware? Whether they’re users of the river here in the west, or whether they’re policy-makers in D.C. What can we do to call people’s attention to what I often think of as a potential train wreck?

BU: What it really takes is an extreme event. And I really hate to say this, but it’s true. It takes a [Hurricane] Katrina, or it takes an enormous drought. We may be getting close to that in terms of where Lake Mead is and where it’s headed. It’s 90 percent of the water supply for Las Vegas, and if Lake Mead drops another 25 feet the entity that runs the river, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, is going to have to implement shortages to some of the users in the lower basin, the first time ever that will occur. So I’m a firm believer in crisis as being a good driver in change and awareness.

JW: If it’s not too late, I guess.

BU: Yeah, if it’s not too late. There are a lot of people who are trying to do the educational component on this river, and there’s a subset of people who absolutely pay attention and know the risk, and then there are a whole bunch more of American people in the West who are totally oblivious to where their water comes from.

JW: Alright Osvel, your take on that crisis model?

OH: Well yes, crisis absolutely is a driver—and it’s already working. For the first time, Mexico perceived that there could be a shortage.  Since 1944, with the International Water Treaty, the U.S. has always delivered the amount of water they have to deliver to Mexico. But now, in the future, there is this very real risk that the U.S. could deliver less water. So it has certainly called attention to officials in Mexico City, who now are more attentive to the situation and more willing to have a dialogue with U.S. counterparts and taking into consideration the point of view the managers, the water users from the Colorado Delta-Mexicali region.

JW: So our audience can understand restoring whole flows to the delta, could you talk about that briefly, how much money it would take and what it would take to see the type of restoration that could bring us back—not to a completely restored delta—but a delta that at least has some natural function left to it.

OH: Right, well that’s one of the bases of the restoration work we’re doing for the delta, not just the planting of native trees, but restoring flows. And that has two components: one is that the base flow, which we think does not need to be a large amount—we’re talking something between 16,000 to 18,00 acre feet a year, we’re still refining that number. And we’re considering that we can get that water from purchasing water rights from the Mexicali valley. So that’s one of the ideas. The other component is a post-flow. So if we only have a base flow, the riparian system does not work as it should. It needs this flowing every certain amount of year, even if they are only for two or three months, but in a larger flow, maybe 700 cfs [cubic feet per second]. For that, that aspect needs to have international collaboration, because it needs release from the dams that go all the way to the delta. And that’s part of what’s happening now with international negotiations between the United States and Mexico, trying to figure out if we can make that happen.

In terms of how much it will require, in terms of the base flow, it’s a very good question because water prices are changing and we’re still not sure about the total amount of water. We’re talking about several million dollars, at least.

JW: And is that just Mexico’s share?

OH: Yes, and that’s for the base flow, and we’re thinking of getting the water from the Mexicali valley.

BU: If I can, let me just get that in context. 100,000 acre-feet is less than 1 percent of the annual flow of the river. It’s something that we should be able to figure out how to do. Many people north of the border think this is solely a Mexican problem—that they have their water down there and we have our water up here. I tend to look at it more inclusively and think that this is a joint problem between the two nations, and we should jointly figure out how to solve it. And some people will think this is blasphemous of me, but I think the U.S. should supply some of this water.

JW: We talk about water grabs even from the headwaters that the U.S. has to deal with and the upper and lower basin have to deal with; we have performed a water grab essentially, on one of the most important features of the river. And I think as Brad says, it behooves us to look for a solution to bring water back to the delta.

BU: It’s really a tiny amount of water that is needed, and it seems to me through savvy water management, we could come up with this water.

JW: Well, if you guys could choose between limiting greenhouse gasses, curbing population growth in the basin, readdressing issues of allocation, or farm water—remanaging the use of agricultural water—which would you take as the most important cure for the water’s predicted demise?

BU: All of the above!

OH: Yes, all of the above absolutely. I don’t think we can solve the river issues picking just one issue. It’s really a function of different things. Certainly managing  and looking differently at the management of agricultural water would probably yield results sooner, so I guess it’s like a first step you can go to and have more water available to work in a direction. But if you don’t tackle the issue of population in the basin and the over-allocation problem and the system-wide management and the issue of climate change, then we will be in the same spot in a few years. So I guess all of the above.

BU: It’s easy to tag climate change as the big boogeyman of the 21st century. If you do that, I think you overlook an enormous amount of stresses that the world and the American Southwest are facing. And I think you put your hand on all of them when you posed that question, and they’re all really important. This century is going to be unlike any other, and it’s not just climate change. Climate change is an additional stressor to all these other ones. And yes, there is a lot going on right now that we need to pay attention to.

JW: To wrap this up, can either of you make suggestion as to what readers at Grist.org can do in terms of their own daily lives for issues of water sustainability, whether it be in Oklahoma or Seattle or here in the drying southwest?

OH: Well, the first thing is to just get informed. Get informed about your water sources and your basin, and the environmental component of the water we use, and how it affects the environment in your basin and the issues. And probably there are organizations already working on those issues. So getting informed is certainly the first thing you need to do to participate better.

BU: I think that’s absolutely true. Too many people think that their water comes “out of the tap”, and the truth is that it comes out of a river somewhere, or a groundwater basin somewhere. Understanding the impacts of the local use on the source of water is pretty important. That falls under getting informed. On a very local sort of home-issue, over the last five years I’ve begun to keep track of the water usage in my house, just looking at the bill, and also my electricity use. And it’s really interesting to see what you can do in terms of conservation with just a little bit of effort, it doesn’t take much. My electrical use is down about 30 percent, just by doing savvy things around my house, and your water use can be pretty similar if you’re savvy about it. People frequently over-water outside, and they take long showers that they don’t need to, and there are tons of ways to save water.

JW: I do the same thing at my home, and I like to look toward water products. The food that I eat and where it comes from is overlooked by a huge portion of consumers, and the things we do as consumers of water; things like beef or cotton or all the dairy productions, all which come from the Colorado River Basin consume an enormous amount of water, whether it’s through giving this water to agriculture, or the water we’re using for alfalfa throughout the basin.

 

Related Links:

Arid El Paso makes every drop count

Wading into a water war between two countries and two states

Mighty Colorado River dribbles through Mexico [EXCERPT]

The tenure of President Felipe Calderón, who is preparing to give his fourth state of the union address, has been marked by the brutal Mexico drug war and political infighting that's stymied reform.

Our guest blogger is Joshua Dorner, Communications Director for Progressive Media.

As ThinkProgress and others have reported, Koch Industries and its billionaire owners, Charles and David Koch, have played a leading role in the apparently successful effort by polluters to stymie Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

Not content to simply stop progress, however, the Koch brothers and various Koch-funded organizations have also been actively trying to roll back existing clean air and clean energy laws — both at the state and national levels. David Koch, who lives in New York City and whose company is based in Kansas, is secretly bankrolling the Proposition 23 effort to roll back California’s landmark clean energy law. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity helped make opposition to “cap-and-trade” a Tea Party talking point and then launched its so-called “Regulation Reality” tour to attack Supreme Court-mandated Clean Air Act regulations being finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Today, a new Koch-backed national effort to protect the energy industry, dubbed “Rally for Jobs,” begins with rallies in Texas and will continue next week with events in New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. While the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s Washington lobbying arm, is the “presenting sponsor” of the Rally for Jobs tour, several Koch-backed groups are also involved:

• FreedomWorks, whose Koch-founded precursor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, received some $5.7 million from Koch foundations.
• Americans for Prosperity, which received at least $5.1 million from Koch Foundations from 2005-2008 and is an offshoot of the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, which itself received more than $6 million from Koch foundations.
• The American Highway Users Alliance, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• Americans for Tax Reform, which received $60,000 from Koch Foundations from 1997-2008.
• The Institute for Policy Innovation, which received $35,000 from Koch foundations.
• The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• The National Taxpayers Union, which has received $20,000 from Koch foundations.
• The Natural Gas Supply Association, of which Koch Industries appears to be a member.
• The Texas Prosperity Project, on whose board of directors sits Bill Oswald, Government & Regulatory Affairs Director at Koch Industries.
• The Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, which recently held an event sponsored by Flint Hills Resources, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.

The Rally for Jobs tour is the latest astroturf attempt by Koch and the rest of Big Oil to use the economic anxiety gripping the nation to stave off any new attempts to crack down on the industry’s emissions and to block new accountability measures in the wake of the BP oil disaster. The front group’s website uses standard energy industry boilerplate repeating the false claim that increased energy use and economic prosperity are inexorably linked:

More energy equals more jobs, higher incomes and greater economic growth. We must come together to tell Washington that our livelihoods depend on the oil and natural gas industry and consumers who rely on access to affordable energy will not be overlooked.

Just yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report showing that a concerted national energy efficiency program (i.e using less energy, not more) could create 625,000 sustained jobs over ten years, spark $500 billion in investment, and save ratepayers $64 billion that they could then use more productively.

The Rally for Jobs website also implies that the federal government is blocking energy production and somehow threatening jobs, presumably referring to the Obama administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil industry and some elected officials have been fearmongering over the moratorium for months, but a front page New York Times article from last week noted that job losses as a result of the drilling ban have simply “failed to materialize.” Further underscoring how unreliable the claims of the oil industry often turn out to be, just two of the 33 deepwater rigs idled by the moratorium have actually left the Gulf.

It seems that politics and the fall election may also have played a role in selecting the tour’s stops. Canton, Ohio and Mokena, Illinois, the sites of two stops next week, are not generally known for their role in oil production, but they do happen to be home to vulnerable freshman House Democrats–both of whom voted for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation last year. Indeed, Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, noted that “we have always encouraged our employees to engage in political activities.”

If this all sounds strangely familiar, it’s because many of the same Koch-backed groups participated in a nearly identical effort last summer. The so-called “Energy Citizens” campaign was widely mocked as the height of energy industry astroturfing, especially after documents were uncovered showing that 15 of the 21 Energy Citizens events were actually planned by oil industry lobbyists.

It seems that when it comes to astroturf groups protecting polluters, almost all roads eventually lead back to the “Kochtopus.”

Globe and Mail

Felipe Calderón marks four years of reform efforts stymied by Mexico drug war Christian Science Monitor The tenure of President Felipe Calderón, who is preparing to give his fourth state of the union address, has been marked by the brutal Mexico drug war and ... FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in MexicoReuters Africa From Mexico to Baltimore Dying on Our DoorstepCounterPunch BEHIND MEXICO'S BLOODSHEDReal News Network Dallas Morning News -Sacramento Bee -New York Daily News all 713 news articles »

If you read my work at all, you know that come the middle of August, I'm a college football introvert.

Nothing else matters. I don't want to go on dates, go to the movies, or go to the beach. Baseball becomes a non-existent part of my life until October. I'd much rather spend August locked in my room, figuring out who the backup long snapper at New Mexico State is, and how a change at defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee will impact the Sun Belt race. Don't judge me, that's just how I am.

Well this year has been no different. I feel like I've been writing about college football for six months now, yet somehow, the games haven't even started yet. I've broken down all these teams every way I know how to; the good and the bad, their strengths, weaknesses, whatever.

Simply put, I can rattle off Auburn's road schedule easier than I can my own family's birthdays, which is great for you the reader, but bad for my dad who has a birthday sometime this month.

So with that, here are my college football conference previews. They aren't my usual, long, rambling diatribes, if only because I feel like I've already talked about all these teams from every angle I can. But I do need to get my picks on paper, if only so you have something to make fun of me for at the end of the season.

Also, be sure to check back for the first of my award winning (Ok, maybe not), college football picks column, this coming Friday. Until then, I'll hold you over with a few of my selections for Thursday night, found at the end of this article.

Now onto, the conference preview picks.

(To read all of Aaron's college football writing, please click here, or visit him at www.aarontorres-sports.com)

ACC Atlantic: Florida State

I received a lot of heat for the comments I made on Bobby Bowden in my "Way Too Early, Top 25 Preview." But you know what? I stand by them. The guy's time has passed, I'm sorry but it's true. Bobby Bowden needs to worry about finding a fourth for his lunch time conasta game, not beating Urban Meyer and Randy Shannon.

Besides, Florida State is in good shape with Jimbo Fisher. This offense is going to score a lot of points, mainly because they did so last year, and bring basically everyone back. With an infusion of youth, this defense will be better too. And when I say youth, I'm not talking about all those hot-shot recruits, but Mark Stoops as the new coordinator. Like Bowden, Mickey Andrews's time had to come to move on. The guy thought his players were wearing leather helmets.

Give me Jimbo Fisher. And give me a Florida State Atlantic title.

ACC Coastal: Georgia Tech

I'm not a fan of calling teams, coaches, or players, "sexy picks," if only because I find the phrase really creepy.

Regardless, coming into this year, Miami seems to be everyone's "sexy" pick, with Virginia Tech being the safe one, and North Carolina the "Well, it might look crazy now, but if everything breaks right I'm going to look like a genius in December" pick. Good luck with that. Especially when the Tar Heels don't score a point against LSU this weekend.

Either way, give me Georgia Tech to win the Coastal and here's why: Everyone talks about the losses of four underclassmen to the NFL (including their leading rusher, leading receiver and one of the best sack guys in the country), but I don't care. They've still got Josh Nesbitt, and as long as he's there, it doesn't matter who plays running back or wide receiver, they're going to move the ball. Fill in the next guy, it doesn't matter. In this system, running backs and receivers are expendable parts. Games are won and lost by quarterback play.

As for the defense, I wasn't really sold, at least until I did an ACC Preview podcast with Michael Felder of InTheBleachers.net. As a former player, he told me what it was like to prepare for an Al Groh defense, and I promise you, it ain't pretty. Even if Groh set back the head coaching profession back by 15 years.

Finally, let's look at the schedule. Because as the kids say, I love it!

They avoid Florida State and Boston College out of the Atlantic, which is a big, big deal. They play North Carolina in Week 3, and honestly, it's anyone's guess as to who—if anyone—will be eligible to play for the Tar Heels at that point. Finally, they get a bye week before a big Thursday night trip to Virginia Tech (although Virginia Tech has a bye too), with that mid-week game giving them an extra few days to prepare for Miami the following Saturday.

ACC Champion: Georgia Tech

FSU's young defense is going to have seven days to prepare for Georgia Tech after playing Florida the week before? Umm, good luck with that.

Give me Tech in their second straight Orange Bowl.

Big 10: Iowa

Last week I explained why I didn't think Ohio State would win the Big 10, so now let me give you a few quick thoughts on why I think Iowa will.

Really it isn't one thing they're great at, as much that they're just good at everything. They've got experience at quarterback (although as I've said many, many times, Ricky Stanzi can be a bit erratic). They've got AMAZING depth at running back. Three guys could lead Iowa in rushing this year. And Adrian Clayborn is back to lead this defense. If you don't remember the name, just ask our buddy Josh Nesbitt about last year's Orange Bowl. He's still got Clayborn's cleat marks on his back.

Finally, there's the schedule. Historically, the Hawkeyes have owned Penn State and Wisconsin (then again, if history was our only barometer, I'd have Army playing Notre Dame in the BCS National Championship Game). And I really think after what happened against Ohio State last year, Iowa wants the Buckeyes. They get them at Kinnick Stadium in 2010. An early season trip to Arizona scares me a bit, but that has no impact on the race for the Big 10 title.

Iowa may have just missed the Rose Bowl last year. I think they get there in 2010.

 

SEC East: Florida

Believe me, I'm not one of those guys that looks at last year's stats and records, and makes my picks for this season based on that (although I could see why you might think that way).

Still, I'm taking Florida, but it's not so much about the Gators as it is everyone else. Vandy's done, and the season hasn't started yet. I like Kentucky, but not enough to take this division. Tennessee barely has enough bodies to make up a flag football team let alone a real one. South Carolina, well, when it comes to them, fool me once shame on you, fool me five years in a row...

Which leaves us with Florida and Georgia. Truthfully, I've been talked into the Bulldogs to a degree this year. A lot of people have correctly pointed out that because of injuries the last couple years, they may have the deepest offensive line in college football this season. And we all know that if you've got a really good offensive line, it lets you get away with a lot of deficiencies in other places.

I do believe the defense at Georgia is going to be better, too. To me, it wasn't so much that they were under-skilled and overwhelmed last year, just that at some point they stopped listening to Willie Martinez. That won't happen this year with Todd Grantham.

With that, there are a few reasons I'm still taking Florida. One, Urban Meyer owns Mark Richt. NASA actually scientifically proved it this summer. At this point, Urban might as well just pay the mortgage on Richt's house.

More importantly though, it comes down to quarterback play. Both teams are inexperienced, yet only Georgia is young. John Brantley might not be the seasoned vet that Tim Tebow was, but with three years in this system, I trust him more than I do Aaron Murray.

I still think the Gators are a 2-3 loss team this year. But I'll take them to make their third straight trip to Atlanta.

SEC West: Alabama

Like I said with Florida, I'm not dumb enough to think Alabama is going to be as good as they were last year, go undefeated, anything like that. They will lose at least one game during the regular season. Maybe to Florida. Or Arkansas. Or truthfully, I think it could be LSU. People forget how well the fightin' Les Miles' played the Tide last season.

But I don't think they're going to lose more than one game during the season, and I still think their closest competitors (Auburn/Arkansas/LSU) are going to lose at least two. By default, that puts them back in the SEC title game as West Champions.

SEC Champion: Alabama

I started out this column by talking about sexy picks, and we'll end it there, too. I know it's not fun to pick Alabama to win the SEC, but let's look at this realistically.

If they played Florida (my projection), they'd be heading to Atlanta with the more experienced QB, the two best running backs on the field, and the best wide receiver, too. The lines would be neutral since each is way more experienced on offense than defense. Alabama seems like they'd have the better linebacker core, with Florida the advantage in the secondary.

Simply put, there's just more good players with more experience for the Crimson Tide.

Really, the only thing that could actually work against Alabama is if they win when Florida comes to Tuscaloosa on October 2nd. I find it hard to see Urban Meyer letting anyone beat him three times in a row.

Still, give me the Tide. It isn't sexy, but it's smart.

(Because of length, this is just PART of Aaron's BCS Conference previews. To get his take on the Big XII, Pac-10 and Big East, click here or visit him at www.aarontorres-sports.com

Also, to stay in touch with Aaron, make sure to follow him on Twitter @Aaron_Torres, Facebook.com/AaronTorresSports or by downloading his APP for FREE for your iPhone or Android!)

A plan by PNM Resources to add solar power facilities costing up to $101.7 million has been approved by state regulators, the New Mexico utility said Wednesday.

The Western Athletic Conference and Brigham Young University have entered into a scheduling agreement as announced today by WAC Commissioner Karl Benson. With BYU declaring that it will be an independent in the sport of football effective with the 2011 season, five WAC teams – Hawai‘i, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State and San Jose State – will provide the Cougars with five games in the 2011 season and four games in the 2012 season.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Prospects for China

The key question in all this is how much longer China's economic miracle can continue before the realities of finite mineral resources force a slowdown? Another five years of 10 percent annual economic growth will result in Beijing increasing its oil consumption by another 2.5-3 million barrels per day. This alone would likely mop up much of the world's spare capacity to produce oil and result in very large price increases. When China's ever growing demand is added to that of India, Brazil and the oil exporting states, the likelihood that we will see a substantial increase in oil prices within the next five years becomes very high.

Secret German military study warns of dramatic oil crisis

Berlin : A confidential German army study warned of a looming oil crisis which could have dramatic political and economic consequences for the world, the Hamburg-based weekly news magazine Der Spiegel said Tuesday.

According to the report, a think-tank of the German army has for the first time ever analyzed the security policy dimensions of the peak oil problem.

Peak Oil from a Security Studies Perspective

The Strategic Institute of the German Bundeswehr has now published a document on the implications of peak oil for security (more precisely: the study was leaked). The study is very well written and recommended as an essential read not only for geostrategist but especially for those involved in global sustainability questions. In fact, at least in wording the authors care about such diverse issues as environmental impact of unconventional oils and the impact of global-marked-induced land-use change on indigenous populations. It is worthwhile to have a closer look on some of their results:

Remembering Matt Simmons

Matt Simmons, a long time friend of the Maine coast and its islands and a student of the winds and waters of Gulf of Maine, loved to tell the story of his first trip to Maine, courtesy of a labor strike while he worked construction one summer as a college student in his home state of Utah. When a labor dispute suddenly shut down the construction site, he and a buddy were only too happy to collect their strike checks and head out on a jaunt. They went north into the Canadian Rockies then turned right and headed toward the Inscrutable East, dipping back down into the United States via the border at Jackman, where they drove along the shores of Moosehead Lake before ending up in Boston. On a lark, Matt ducked into the Harvard Business School, which had not had a long history at that point of actively recruiting students from Mormon country in Utah, but the visit was enough to entice him to apply and enroll. Matt loved telling that story because it held the kinds of mutually opposed contradictions he loved to explore-a businessman who owed his right future to a labor strike. If genius is the ability to hold mutually opposing ideas in the mind at the same time without being paralyzed, Matt Simmons would certainly qualify.

Oil Drops, Caps Worst Month Since May, as Hurricane Earl Threatens Demand

Oil tumbled, capping its worst month since May, on forecasts Hurricane Earl will pelt the U.S. East Coast, curbing fuel demand during the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Crude dropped the most in 12 weeks amid speculation that stormy weather will keep beachgoers and travelers at home. Labor Day is the traditional end of the U.S. summer driving season, the peak gasoline demand period. U.S. gasoline demand slid to a 12-week low last week, MasterCard Inc. reported today.

“It’s the last thing we need,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy. “It’s a big gasoline consumption weekend. Given how poor the gasoline demand has been, it will be a final parting blow for the summer driving season if people won’t hit the beach in droves.”

Ethanol Surpasses Gasoline for First Time Since December

For the first time since December, ethanol prices are higher than gasoline as corn surges and refiners profit from tax breaks.

Gas Prices Explained

So what determines the price of gasoline? Speculators? Evil conspiring oil companies? Well, actually no. It's demand and supply, of course. On the demand side the American automobile fleet gets better gas mileage than it did a few years ago and Americans, whacked by the recession and high unemployment rates, are driving a bit less than they used to. In addition, thanks to government subsidies, about 9 percent of what goes into our gas tanks is ethanol produced from corn, which also reduces the demand for refined crude. On the supply side, global oil supplies are ample and refiners in the U.S. evidently believed the Obama administration’s rosy “recovery summer” scenarios and stockpiled a lot of gasoline.

Sinopec Plans to Cut September Oil Processing by 4% at Refinery in Hainan

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia’s biggest refiner, will process 4 percent less crude oil at its Hainan plant in September compared with last month, an official at the refinery said.

FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Saudi Arabia

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, under the rule of an ageing King Abdullah, has the dilemma of making reforms that keep the austere clerical establishment that opposes change on side and violent Islamist militants at bay.

Any instability at the helm of Saudi Arabia, which controls more than a fifth of the world's crude oil reserves and is a regional linchpin of U.S. policy in the Middle East, would be a concern for the rest of the Arab Gulf region.

FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Yemen

(Reuters) - Rising al Qaeda militancy, a surge in violence in a secessionist south and crushing poverty will be this year's critical tests for Yemen, neighbour to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

Reid hopeful for GOP energy votes after elections

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped to pick up Republican votes for a pared-down energy bill after the midterm congressional elections.

"Maybe after the elections we can get some more Republicans to help us on these issues," Reid, a Democrat, told reporters in a teleconference on Tuesday.

Sinopec Sees Solid Gas Growth Ahead

While oil production experienced sluggishness in the first half, natural gas production showed solid growth. China is ramping up gas production as it seeks to find alternatives to coal, which emits high carbon levels. It is set to raise the country's energy needs from the current 3% to 10% by 2020.

Insurance likely to reduce BP's liability for Gulf of Mexico oil spill

BP PLC has taken on some of the blame for the Deepwater Horizon rig that spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year, but the company is still expected to have limited liability for mistakes made misreading pressure data that indicated a blowout was imminent.

BP Raises $363 Million in Malaysian Asset Sale to Help Pay for Gulf Spill

BP Plc, seeking cash to help pay for the worst U.S. oil spill, agreed to sell its Malaysian chemical assets to Petroliam Nasional Bhd. to focus on projects in China and India.

BP will sell its 15 percent stake in Ethylene Malaysia Sdn and 60 percent interest in Polyethylene Malaysia Sdn for $363 million, the London-based company said today in a statement. It will also be eligible for a possible $48 million dividend from the ethylene unit.

A Nuclear Giant Moves Into Wind

Exelon, a nuclear giant that recently backed away from building new nuclear plants, is moving into wind.

Canada company builds major waste-to-biofuel plant

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A Canadian company started construction on Tuesday on what it says is the world's first industrial-scale plant to turn municipal waste into biofuel.

Privately-owned Enerkem Inc said the C$80 million ($75 million) facility in Edmonton, Alberta, will produce enough biofuel to keep more than 400,000 cars a year running on a 5 percent ethanol fuel blend.

Thorium Cures the Free Market

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium ... If Barack Obama were to marshal America's vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

New Warnings About Costs of Nuclear Power

As anticipation grows about a possible renaissance for the nuclear power industry — and about its potential for curbing greenhouse gas emissions — some politicians are stepping up warnings about the high cost of such projects.

Last week, Traicho Traikov, the Bulgarian economy and energy minister, said the cost of building a second plant near the Danube River had reached 9 billion euros, or $11.4 billion, according to the Sofia News Agency.

The original cost of the project for two reactors was expected to be just under $4 billion.

Homeowners Must Pay Off Energy Improvement Loans

Many homeowners who participated in a program that let them repay the cost of solar panels and other energy improvements through an annual surcharge on their property taxes must pay off the loans before they can refinance their mortgages, two government-chartered mortgage companies said Tuesday.

The guidance came from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as efforts to resolve a dispute over the program — called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE — have failed.

Calif. rejects ban on plastic shopping bags

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California lawmakers have rejected a bill seeking to ban plastic shopping bags after a contentious debate over whether the state was going too far in trying to regulate personal choice.

The Democratic bill, which failed late Tuesday, would have been the first statewide ban, although a few California cities already prohibit their use.

A Greener Champagne Bottle

“This is how we’re remaking the future of Champagne,” he said, pointing to the area just below the neck. “We’re slimming the shoulders to make the bottle lighter, so our carbon footprint will be reduced to help keep Champagne here for future generations.”

The Champagne industry has embarked on a drive to cut the 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide it emits every year transporting billions of tiny bubbles around the world. Producing and shipping accounts for nearly a third of Champagne’s carbon emissions, with the hefty bottle the biggest offender.

Cleaner Cars, A to D

The Obama administration has proposed new stickers for cars and light trucks that will make it easier to see whether you are buying a fuel-efficient one or a guzzler, and how much it contributes to global warming. The stickers are a symbol of how far this country has come in providing a wider range of environmentally responsible choices to help ensure cleaner air and a healthier planet.

L.A. mayor, Latino activists take on oil companies over Proposition 23

They say the ballot initiative to suspend the state's climate change law would hurt low-income communities already suffering the most from pollution.

Jeff Rubin: High energy prices make Copenhagen green

There is certainly much to be said for Denmark’s leadership in green energy. While North American carbon emissions have risen by around 30 per cent since 1990 (the reference point for the Kyoto Accord), Denmark’s emissions are actually lower than they were two decades ago. That’s generally ascribed to the fact that a world-leading 20 per cent of the power generated in Denmark comes from wind.

Less commonly known is the source of the other 80 per cent. I was surprised to discover that it comes from good old King Coal. In fact, coal’s share of power generation in Denmark’s power grid is basically the same as it is in China.

Tiny creatures reveal ancient sea levels

"It was a very big surprise," says David Barnes, lead author of the study at the British Antarctic Survey, of the find of similar bryozoans 2400 kilometres apart in seas on either side of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is 2 kilometres thick.

"The most likely explanation of such similarity is that this ice sheet is much less stable than previously thought and has collapsed at some point in the recent past," he says.

"And if the West Antarctic ice shelf has been lost in recent times we have to re-think the possibility of loss in future with climate change."

Here's the latest video from Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll of New Left Media interviewing attendees at Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally held this past Saturday in Washington. 

The sentiments being expressed are really no different than say the ones that were expressed at this McCain/Palin rally (video at The Guardian) in Colorado Springs back in late October 2008. The Guardian, at the time, wrote of Palin's adoring crowd that day that "beneath the cheers and applause, there was a lingering mood of defeat - a sense that it was all over, and that as much as anything, this was a goodbye rally for the woman who just months ago had so energised social conservatives." There's no question that "lingering mood of defeat" on the right has over the past two years been further transformed into a Lernaean Hydra of ignorance, anger, bigotry, righteous indignation, fear, sheer stupidity and irrationality.

That these people sincerely hold the belief that Obama is a racist Muslim Socialist born in Kenya underscores the influence of the right-wing propagandist machine that is Fox News and the right-wing blogs. Today a "hydra-like problem" or "hydra" refers to a multifaceted problem that seems incapable of step-by-step solution, or to one that worsens upon conventional attempts to solve it, for example, attempts to suppress a particular piece of information resulting in it being disseminated even more widely.

And we clearly face a hydra-like problem when it comes to the right-wing echo chamber. Let's face it, they have more money and their own media empire, a purveyor of misinformation like no other on the planet. But as Hercules did slay the Lernaean Hydra, so too we will slay the multi-headed serpent that is the nativist right with the sword that is demographics.

Back in 1998 at a speech at Portland State University, President Clinton noted:

Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within five years, there will be no majority race in our largest state, California. In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time ... [These immigrants] are energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be American.

Indeed in 2001, California, the nation's most populous state, joined New Mexico, Hawaii and the District of Columbia where non-Hispanic whites are also in the minority. And in 2005, Texas became the fourth state to have a non-white majority population. As of 2008, the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents has fallen below 60 percent in Maryland, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, New York and Mississippi. 

In thinking about Arizona's anti-immigration SB 2281, my thoughts are that the law is really not much more than an pathetic attempt at ethnic cleansing, a last ditch effort to drive Hispanics from the state. According to a Brookings Institution report, Arizona's Hispanic population has shot up 180 percent in the last 20 years, with the white population dropping from 72 percent to 58 percent. Hispanics account for about one-third of the state's 6.6 million people, and 90 percent of Hispanics under age 18 were born in the US. Even if all immigration from Mexico were halted tomorrow, the high birthrate of this young population would continue Arizona's population boom and its demographic shift. Arizona will become majority-minority state by 2020.

According to the US Census Bureau, the dominance of non-Hispanic white people, who today account for two-thirds of Americans, will be whittled away, falling steadily to less than half in 2042 and just 46 percent by 2050. In the opposite trajectory, those who describe themselves as Hispanic, African-American, Asian and Native American will increase in proportion from about a third now to 54 percent by 2050.

Such a rapid demographical shift is in tune with trends that we have been seeing for quite some time, but it is happening much faster than experts had predicted 12 years ago when President Clinton gave his speech. When I hear Tea Baggers talk about "taking back their country," I can't help but think that what they really mean is reversing that demographical shift. I suspect as that demographical shift takes increasing hold we will continue to be subjected to the dying gasps of nativism but they are grasping at straws if they think that the demographic shift can be reversed.

It's game, set, match for the nativist right but whether the non-nativist right can make inroads into the growing Hispanic electorate will depend on whether they amend their vitriol on immigration issues. For Democrats, it is certainly a political imperative that we enact a comprehensive immigration reform and remain attuned to the social justice concerns of most Hispanics but more importantly, I think, we need to demonstrate that our basic values include tolerance and cultural pluralism. These are the values to which President Clinton was referring to back in 1998 and these are the values that will ultimately assign the nativist right to irrelevancy.

Irish Times

Cancun bar attack is more bad news for Mexico tourism USA Today And on Friday, the US State Department extended its Mexico travel warning to note that children of US government personnel are being ordered to leave the ... Eight killed in bar firebombing in Cancun, Mexico: owner reportedly refused to ...New York Daily News Eight People Killed in Mexico Resort City of CancunBloomberg Eight killed in fire-bombing in MexicoHindustan Times Sri Lankan News -The Associated Press -Daily Mail all 286 news articles »

The Ecuadorean government couldn't get its citizen out of Mexico fast enough. The young man had been making his way to the U.S. last week when he and 72 fellow Latin American migrants, he told authorities, were abducted by one of Mexico's most vicious drug cartels, the Zetas, in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas.

The bullet-riddled bodies of 72 Central and South Americans reportedly slain by drug traffickers in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas shine a light on the dark truth known to undocumented migrants: The trek north through Mexico is treacherous, and those who undertake it put themselves at the mercy of vicious predators.

Quarterback Jeff Fleming, who started nine of 13 games he played in last season for New Mexico State, has transferred to Sacramento State.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bongo Congo is very proud to present a one of a kind woman.

All the way from Paso Robles, Miss Peachy Canyon!

This fiery vixen’s packing a Peachy Canyon 2007 Snow Vineyard Zinfandel 3-Pack and boys, her production’s growing every year. Her Zinfandel grapes have plenty of curves and yes, she’s got 5% Petite Sirah AND she’s happy to see you.

She’s got everything you want in the Zin next door: aromas of strawberries, flavors of raspberries, and those beautiful bright cherry red colors. A true gentleman will also notice her subtle hints of vanilla and spice. I know what you’re thinking and yes, those barrels were racked twice during 18 months of aging in good ol’ American Oak.

And there she goes, ladies and gentlemen! The kind of Zinfandel you’d bring home to your mother after a night on the town! Peachy Canyon!

2007 Snow Zinfandel: 

• Appellation: Paso Robles
• Composition: 95% Zinfandel , 5% Petite Sirah
• Vineyard:  Snow Vineyard Zinfandel, Mustard Creek Petite Sirah
• Alcohol: 14.9%
• Harvest Brix Ave.: 25.5 - 26.5
• Res. Sugar: .06
• Harvest Dates: 9/6/07 - 9/30/07
• Bottling Date: 3/3/09
• Case Production: 685 

Rules and restrictions:

• Wine sold by winery (or a retailer in your state where necessary)
• You must be 21 or older to order
• Whoever receives the package must be 21 or older
• If you're drunk when the package shows up, you will not be allowed to receive it
• Wine cannot be delivered to a P.O. Box
• We highly recommend you use a business address as your shipping address

Thanks to stick-in-the-mud buzzkilling state legislators, wine may only be delivered to the following states:

• Arizona
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• District Of Columbia
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Oregon
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Washington
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

If your state's not on the list, you're out of luck... for now. Keep up with the ever-changing laws over at ShipCompliantBlog.com, and/or sound the alarms with your state assembly person through FreeTheGrapes.org. Meanwhile, all Federal, state and local laws are complied with in providing this wine.

It'll be cats and dogs living together.

The Cougars are ditching the Mountain West and joining in the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the West Coast Conference.

A few reporters have been tipped to Brigham Young University's decision to leave the Mountain West. The school will go independent in football and join the West Coast Conference in all other sports.

At this point we're waiting for official announcements from BYU and the WCC, which Andy Katz writes will be happening before the night is over.

(Update: Here's the WCC's press release. There will be a press conference at BYU Wednesday at noon local time, 2 ET.)

The MWC's deadline for BYU's decision was set for tomorrow. That deadline only dealt with what the university was going to do for the 2011-12 academic year. Sneaking in 24 hours before, we now know the Cougars have less than 12 months remaining as a Mountain West school.

They'll be leaving the conference they helped concoct in 1999.

From a basketball perspective and what it does to the Cougs' strength of schedule, it's a demotion, no question. The Mountain West has produced multiple legitimate tournament-caliber teams over the past half-decade, while the West Coast Conference has occasionally given us an inconsistent second fiddle to Gonzaga but not much more. Top to bottom, the MWC is/was a better basketball league.

Now, if Portland and St. Mary's can continue to ascend, the gap is not so grand. That remains to be seen. As of now, the Cougars will not be facing teams that can equate to UNLV, San Diego State, New Mexico and Utah on a year-in, year-out basis. They'll go from playing 15,000-seat arenas in the MWC, in storied venues like The Pit (New Mexico) to balling in 2,500-seat, glorified high school gymnasiums. But the move is based on football and football alone, of course.

BYU instantly becomes the bread-winner in the conference, which prides itself on its privatized religious institutions. BYU is certainly that. 

Eight employees of a Cancun strip club were killed early Tuesday when a group of men threw Molotov cocktails into the building in a working-class area not frequented by tourists, state authorities said. Although several murders over the past few years point to the infiltration of drug gangs in parts of the city, Cancun had largely been spared the street-level drug violence that has besieged northern Mexico and the Pacific Coast.

BYU, Notre Dame, Army, Navy.

Those are the four football independents. Does the WCC care?

Only because it now has another perennial NCAA tournament team in the conference as a result.

Saint Mary's, Gonzaga, BYU.

Before the conference shifts this summer, the Atlantic 10 or Mountain West were considered the best mid-major basketball conferences.

The Atlantic 10 is still solid, to be sure. But the MWC has taken a turn for the worst.

The losses of Utah and BYU has taken away two formidable basketball powers. While they did add Nevada, Fresno State, and Boise State, only Nevada helps them in basketball.

They lost access to the state of Utah.

The WCC now has three teams who reached the second round of the NCAA tournament this past season. The Pac-10 didn't even have that many.

There are still some very good basketball schools in the MWC. San Diego State, UNLV, and New Mexico all seem to be headed in the right direction.

Problem?

None of them are Gonzaga.

Gonzaga has been seen as a major team in a mid-major conference for a long time.

The national presence Gonzaga holds means no BCS school is afraid to play them. They are a perennial participant of the NCAA tournament.

Gonzaga is the cream of the mid-major crop sans Butler.

The emergence of Saint Mary's as a NCAA tournament contender each of the past three seasons, along with Loyola Marymount, is bringing the WCC into the national light.

Having two conference schools with RPIs in the 30s or 40s gives BYU a big push and gives them access to larger markets (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland).

This also works out well for the WCC.

The other eight schools would have access to the Salt Lake City market.

For a school like Saint Mary's, who has had a difficult time scheduling high RPI teams, adding BYU means there are two fewer games they have to find against a quality opponent.

Along with the A-10, the WCC has become an elite mid-major conference.

Does the bottom of the conference leave much to be desired? Of course.

But the same goes for the bottom of any mid-major conference. Same could be said about the bottom of the Big East.

The first expansion of the WCC in 30 years has lifted the WCC to new heights.

BYU will begin WCC play in 2011-2012.

Cleveland National Air Show - Labor Day Weekend Family Fun - Plain Dealer 
This Labor Day weekend the Cleveland National Air Show will be taking place at Burke Lakefront Airport. From 9 am - 5 pm on Saturday, September 4th through ...

The Society of Air Racing Historians display - Cleveland National Air Show
The Society is a group of dedicated air racing enthusiasts whose purpose is to preserve the complete and accurate records of air races, race pilots and race planes.
The National Air Races held in Cleveland from 1929 to 1949, represent one of the most significant aviation events of the 20th century. Cleveland's newly constructed Municipal Airport, the world's largest airport at the time, along with its permanent 50,000-seat bleachers, won the city hosting rights to the event.  ...

Air show attendance numbers soar - Santa Maria Times
About 8500 people attended this year's Thunder Over the Valley air show at the Santa Maria Public Airport, according to the event organizer. ...

Businesses got a big boost from air show - Seacoastonline.com
PORTSMOUTH — Beautiful weather, the unofficial last weekend of the summer and a high-caliber Boston-Portsmouth Air Show created a "perfect ...

Airshow of the Cascades Huge Success - KBND
It started out as a small air show in a farmer's field, and this last weekend the Airshow of the Cascade's conducted it's tenth air show for the public. ...

Photos: Mexico, MO Salute to Veterans Air Show Fair Ground Scenes
from The Aero Experience by Carmelo Turdo

Photos from third annual Trabuco Flyers air show - OCRegister
TRABUCO CANYON – About 100 area residents gathered Saturday at Trabuco Flyers Field for the annual Bob Pierce Memorial Training Event and Air Show. ...

Virginia Aviation News: State gears up for Fall fly-ins and airshows by DOAV
Two days of family fun including pancake breakfast each day, fly-in aircraft, classic and antique cars, youth activities including moon bounce and Young Eagles rides (Saturday only). Berlin Airlift C-54 "Spirit of Freedom" on display ...

Winds trim Offutt air show - Omaha World-Herald
Gusty winds forced a couple of changes at Sunday's air show at Offutt Air Force Base, but crowds still saw an impressive performance. ...

Red Arrows delight thousands at the Eye Show - Norwich Evening News
The RAF aerobatic display team thrilled crowds for yesterday's final day of the charitable show, which attracts around 30000 people to the farmland at ...

Shoreham Airshow bosses "disappointed" by refund requests - The Argus.co.uk
Stunned Shoreham Airshow bosses have revealed scores of people have demanded their money back – because it rained. ...

Popular air show returns to Much Marcle - Ledbury Reporter
HUNDREDS of flight enthusiasts will be heading to Much Marcle this weekend as a popular air show returns after a two-year absence. The Much Marcle Air Show ...

Lessons to be learned from air show, 'Race to the Top' - Shore News Today
Congratulations to everyone involved with the eighth annual Atlantic City Air Show, Thunder Over the Boardwalk, held last Tuesday and Wednesday. ...

A thrilling jet race to claim the air-speed crown - Financial Times
The noisy, aviation-gasoline-soaked power that produces high speeds at events such as the Reno Air Races in Nevada, which this month celebrates 47 years, ...

shoot out in super sport from www.aafo.com
John Sharp is sitting this year out, but the other racers are working frantically to take the title of Fastest Super Sport. Kevin Eldridge in his NXT 'Relentless' is perhaps the favorite, flying behind a modified Lycoming and a new MT prop; but the ...

Air Race - the critical line
In 1931, The Schneider Trophy air race was held over the waters in the snapshot. Advance this video to 2.42  for a clip of the 1929 race, also held here:
The winning plane in 1931, ...

Bob Hoover tells his absurd, incredible story.
I used to see this guy every year at the Reno Air races, met him quite a few times and stood around quietly while my dad the old dudes on the team my dad was pitting for talked incomprehensible shop, but I never really knew his whole ...

WWII aircraft bring back memories - DesMoinesRegister.com
I read an ad in The Des Moines Register announcing the scheduled arrival of a B-17 World War II aircraft named "The Sentimental Journey. ...

Image of the Week: P-51D Mustang G-HAEC from Flight Image of the Day 
This week's Image of the Week (featured on page 3 of Flight International), is taken by AirSpace user flyer1 (Martin Dighton). His photo depicts "Big Beautiful Doll" P-51D Mustang G-HAEC [cn.1517] at the Shoreham 2010 air show.

WORLD CUP in parachute jumping target THALGAU - Salzkammergut hat
This surpasses Airshow sure everything that the Red Bull Air Races worldwide will bid on. Hannes Arch has ground quite natural and normal - as you ... 

Breaking records? - Team Bonhomme News
So what’s happening this week… I presume that if you're visiting this website, you might have a passing interest in racing aeroplanes and therefore will be interested to know about an attempt on a record that is happening at this very moment. Our friend Steve Noujaim is currently trying to fly from the UK to South Africa and back in a light aircraft in less than 3 days 15 hours and 17 minutes, a record set in May 2009 but ...

St. Louis 99s Newsletters and Minutes: Minutes - August 2010
Jean Murry reported that we had received a thank you note from the Wings of Hope for our $150 donation in support of Teresa Camp and Beverly Cleair in the Air Race Classic. Jan Pocock was thanked for bringing the cake. ...

WASP Gather As Cochran Estate is Presented with Congressional Gold Medal from WAI Connect Blog 
September 29th is the day. Palm Desert, California, is the place. The occasion? The presentation of Jacqueline Cochran's Congressional Gold Medal to the executor of her estate, Ms. Aldine Tarter, by Crissi Tonsi, who has carried the medal since it was presented to all of the WASP in a ceremony at the Capitol last March. The presentation will take place at Atria Senior Living Community in Palm ...

EAA AirVenture Museum from Winging It 
This past week end, Georgia and I made a trip to Oshkosh to visit the EAA AirVenture Museum. We left home about 9AM on Saturday and pulled into the museum parking lot right at noon.The weather was good, the museum was uncrowded and we had the whole afternoon to explore the exhibits. ...

Pacific Aviation Museum to sign lease for historic control tower By Associated Press
The Pacific Aviation Museum officials plan to sign a lease for the historic control tower and observation deck on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor.
Museum officials said the lease will clear the way for the long-awaited restoration of the site.
The tower is where a radioman issued the first radio broadcast of the Japanese attack at 8:05 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941. Exploding bombs shattered lower-level windows during the assault. ...

A blast from aviation's past - TheDay.com
The restored World War II B-17G bomber "Aluminum Overcast', owned and operated by the Experimental Aircraft Association, is in New London on its 2010 ...

On This Day in Aviation History: August 31st from NYCAviation.com
The Super Guppy makes her maiden flight, Rolls-Royce fires up the RB211 for the first time, Rocky Marciano dies in a plane crash, Aeromexico Flight 498 suffers a midair collision near LAX, and more...

August 31 from Cut and Paste Aviation 

Cluster Balloonist Jonathan Trappe from Aviation Blogs 
Jonathan Trappe is a sort of super-hero to some children and a crazy man to some adults. We found him inspirational. Trappe is licensed to fly beneath a group of homemade helium-filled balloons. That means his aircraft is one of the most structurally redundant vehicles in the sky. But it’s also challenging to fly. Trappe controls his direction by varying his altitude. He can drop water ballast or ...

Preteen’s aviation dream takes flight - CTNews
Nick Nunno, 12, can’t drive a car, but about once a month he buckles into the pilot’s seat of a Grumman Tiger airplane and takes flight.
Though he is too young to earn a pilot’s license or fly solo, the Milford resident takes flying lessons for enjoyment about once a month, on weekends or after school, at Blue Sky Flight, a flight school at Sikorsky Memorial Airport.
The FAA mandates a person be at least 17 to test for a pilot license, but does not designate a minimum age requirement for flight school enrollment. ...

Grand Blanc teen pilot: 'Everything about it is fun' - The Flint Journal
GRAND BLANC, Michigan — Dillon Duquette sat in the cockpit of a Cessna 180 airplane Aug. 6, ready to take off.
Under the eyes of his flight instructor, the 16-year-old had looked over every inch of the plane to make sure it was safe to fly — tugging on wing flaps, checking the fuel tanks, flipping the lights — before the two of them taxied out to the runway.
Then the instructor exited the plane, and Duquette took off alone.  ...

The Flying Yacht! from Aviation News 
London, England (CNN) — Need to get your superyacht from the crystal-blue waters of the Caribbean to the glamorous Mediterranean in a hurry? Not a problem when your luxury vessel transforms into a sleek jetplane at the click of a button.
That’s exactly what Yelken Octuri’s “Flying Yacht” design would do if built. Octuri, a French cabin designer for Airbus, has combined his knowledge of aircraft design with his love of the seas to create the outlandish concept yacht. ...

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