Tammie Jo Schults: Southwest pilot praised for safe landing – BBC News
Wow
Category: Infrastructure and Transportation,
The contrails conspiracy is not only garbage, it’s letting aviation off the hook too
The pollutants spread by planes are a major issue. They make a significant contribution to global warming, yet they are excluded from international negotiations, such as the conference taking place in Paris. As a result, aviation’s expansion is unchecked by concerns about climate change.
…This exclusion is ridiculous, not least because aircraft emissions have a particular role in heating the planet, due to the height at which they are released, and the multiplying impacts of the water vapour and other gases the planes produce. Gases that sometimes form contrails in the sky.
…The most vocal people protesting against aviation emissions have no interest in their contribution to global warming. Quite the opposite. Many of those now denouncing the pollution of the skies see climate science as part of the problem: a conspiracy by corporations, military planners and other nefarious interests to control the skies.
…So on one hand we have a real threat, measurable and attestable, that is caused by an identifiable industry and persists as a result of the indifference and short-termism of the world’s governments. On the other, we have a conspiracy, attributed to forces unknown and interests unspecified, so powerful and pervasive that it extends from Mark Zuckerberg to the Paris terrorists. Why does it seem to be harder to generate interest in the real issue than the improbable one?
The real issue – global warming caused by aircraft emissions – calls on us to act. Reducing our impacts means flying less; something that few people are prepared to do. It involves an exhausting battle against a powerful industry and unresponsive governments. It means reading boring papers, attending boring meetings and engaging with a level of political and technical complexity that many people find repulsive. There’s plenty of grind and precious little glory.
…onspiracy theories. They make sense of what can sometimes feel like a senseless world. They tell you that you are among the elect: aware of a grand scheme that other people (or sheeple or sleeple as the conspiracy sites often like to call them) are unable or unwilling to see. It tells you that you are a lonely crusader fighting evil of the kind that’s otherwise encountered only in films about superheroes.
And if hardly anyone reads your website, it only goes to prove how important you are: why else would the authorities go to such lengths to limit your followers?
It also absolves you of the responsibility to act. Sure, you might feel moved to create a website, take some photos, perhaps sign the odd petition or even attend one or two noisy demonstrations. But you don’t have to change anything, because somewhere, buried deep in the forebrain, is the knowledge that there’s not really anything to change. You get the glory without the grind.
Perhaps such movements are also a response to a sense of helplessness. In a world so complex, chaotic and badly governed that its most dangerous predicaments often seem intractable, it is paradoxically comforting to believe that godlike powers are in control, even if those powers are malign.
Here is a factsheet, written by the author, on contrails and why they aren’t actually chemtrail
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“The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
It has been reported that a major merchant ship goes down somewhere in the world every two or three days; most are ships sailing under flags of convenience, with underpaid crews and poor safety records.
…Captain Lawrence? Captain Davidson. Thursday morning, 0700. We have a navigational incident. I’ll keep it short. A scuttle popped open on two-deck and we were having some free communication of water go down the three-hold. Have a pretty good list. I want to just touch—contact you verbally here. Everybody’s safe, but I want to talk to you.
…“I have a marine emergency and I would like to speak to a Q.I.[Qualified Individual] We had a hull breach—a scuttle blew open during a storm. We have water down in three-hold with a heavy list. We’ve lost the main propulsion unit. The engineers cannot get it going. Can I speak to a Q.I., please?”
…[Ship’s Captain Davidson] did not know the wind speeds because the ship’s anemometer was in disrepair and had been for weeks; it is now believed that the winds were sustained at 115 m.p.h., with higher gusts. As for the waves, Davidson appears to have underreported them, perhaps as a matter of professional style. El Faro was in fact struggling to endure steep breaking waves 30 to 40 feet high, and was occasionally encountering waves still higher. These monsters were smashing over the ship, knocking containers overboard, and boiling across a lower second deck that by design was watertight below but open to the sea. That second deck was the location of the scuttle that had been opened. Three-hold was a cavernous two-deck space below it, just aft of midship.
Lawrence asked for a measure of the list. Davidson said, “Betcha it’s all of 15—15 degrees.” Fifteen degrees is steep.
…The ship was found resting upright on a sandy plain 15,400 feet beneath the surface, and the recorder—a circuit board barely 2.5 inches long—was eventually retrieved. It contained the final 26 hours of conversations among nine doomed people on the bridge. The audio quality was poor, but a technical team was able to extract most of the spoken words and produce a 496-page transcript, by far the longest in the N.T.S.B.’s history. The transcript is a remarkable document—an unadorned record of nothing more than the sounds on the bridge. The people involved are identified in the transcript only by their shipboard ranks, but the names of the officers are part of the public record, and in the time since the tragedy other names have been revealed. It is now possible to know with reasonable certainty what occurred.
…[Captain Davidson] was a by-the-book mariner with a reputation for being unusually competent and organized. By training and temperament he was a safety-first man.
…At the time, TOTE was busy blaming Davidson by insisting that all routing and weather decisions were his alone to make, but here Davidson appeared to be asking permission for the Old Bahama Channel run. To make matters worse, it was answered by one of the cc’d managers, the director of ship management, Jim Fisker-Andersen, who was in San Francisco at the time. Fisker-Andersen wrote, “Captain Mike, diversion request heads up through Old Bahama Channel understood and authorized. Thank you for the heads up. Kind regards.”
…As is usually the case, the catastrophe was unfolding because of a combination of factors that had aligned, which included: Davidson’s caution with the home office; his decision to take a straight-line course; the subtle pressures to stick to the schedule; the systematic failure of the forecasts; the persuasiveness of the B.V.S. graphics; the lack of a functioning anemometer; the failure by some to challenge Davidson’s thinking more vigorously; the initial attribution of the ship’s list entirely to the winds; and finally a certain mental inertia that had overcome all of them. This is the stuff of tragedy that can never be completely explained.
“The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades | Vanity Fair
Jeezus…
A Whistle-Blower Alleges Corruption in Rick Perry’s Department of Energy
At one point, the coal magnate handed Perry a document containing his “Action Plan for reliable and low cost electricity in America and to assist in the survival of our Country’s coal industry.” Edelman snapped a closeup. Afterward, he said, he heard Perry tell Murray, “I think we can help you with this.”
…Perry proposed that all coal plants in certain areas, including many that do business with Murray Energy, be required to keep a ninety-day supply of coal onsite to provide “fuel-secure” power. Edelman was alarmed: the language in Perry’s letter clearly echoed Murray’s “action plan.” Moreover, only a month earlier, a report by Perry’s own staff had concluded that “reliability is adequate today,” raising the question of why the rule was necessary.
A Whistle-Blower Alleges Corruption in Rick Perry’s Department of Energy | The New Yorker
oy!
Scott Pruitt Getting Pressure To Resign From EPA
Pruitt has come under scrutiny over his accommodations in Washington after ABC News reported last week that he rented a room in a luxury townhouse co-owned by the wife of a top gas industry lobbyist. That same day, Bloomberg News reported that Pruitt paid $50-a-night for the room, well below market value for a place in that neighborhood. The EPA’s Office of General Counsel issued a hasty memo on Thursday arguing that the administrator paid a fair rate.
… Pruitt’s use of taxpayer-funded security details on trips home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a family vacation to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and an outing to the Rose Bowl college football game in Pasadena, California.
…Federal regulations require government employees to be “prudent” when “making official travel arrangements” and book “the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.”
Yet Pruitt spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class flights to Oklahoma, and regularly books $1,400 to $4,000 flights to Boston, New York and Corpus Christi, Texas, according to The Washington Post. He often stays at luxury hotels.
Pruitt’s international travel costs are especially high. His trip to Italy for an environmental summit last June cost more than $120,000. Pruitt’s trip to Morocco in December to promote liquefied natural gas ― a bizarre decision for an EPA administrator ― cost nearly $40,000, according to E&E News.
… Pruitt made his name on the national stage suing the EPA more than a dozen times to block rules such as the Clean Power Plan, President Barack Obama’s landmark greenhouse gas regulation, which Pruitt is in the process of repealing. He championed Exxon Mobil Corp. in investigations into whether the oil giant committed fraud by covering up evidence that emissions from burning fossil fuels warm the planet.
Scott Pruitt Buffeted By Growing Pressure To Resign From EPA | HuffPost
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EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’
For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist [J. Steven Hart,] property records from 2017 show.
…Hart confirmed to ABC News in a brief interview that Pruitt had lived in the flat, which is owned by a limited liability company that links to an address listed to Hart and his wife Vicki Hart, a lobbyist with expertise in the healthcare arena. Steven Hart said Vicki Hart co-owns the condo. He said his wife was not the majority owner, but would not identify her partners.
…[Vicki Hart’s] website says she previously worked as a senior health policy advisor for two Senate Majority Leaders before establishing her firm in 2002.
Steven Hart served in the Reagan Justice Department and became, according to his website, is one of the nation’s top fundraisers, donating more than $110,000 to Republican political candidates and committees last election cycle, records show.
…Mr. Hart is the chairman and CEO of Williams and Jensen, a firm that reported more than $16 million in federal lobbying income in 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Among his many clients are the NRA, for whom he serves as outside legal counsel.
…Another lobbying client of Hart’s, the railroad Norfolk Southern, spent $160,000 last year on lobbying Congress on “issues affecting coal usage, oil production, and transportation, including EPA regulation.”
…The revelations about Pruitt’s living situation come as more questions are being raised by members of Congress about his travel habits.
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A new exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) delves into the Negro Motorist Green Book
Nat King Cole was the first to record the song and the great irony is that while the jazz legend helped romanticize the highway, it was incredibly dangerous for him: Route 66 snaked through cities and towns that were hostile and often violent toward black travelers.
However, touring musicians, like Cole, and other travelers had a secret weapon to bypass racist towns, restaurants, motels, gas stations, and other businesses across the country: The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide to establishments that were safe for and welcoming to African Americans.
…“The Green Book was like a treasure map that led [black travelers] to places that they could stop, from gas stations to food to hotels,” Adams tells Curbed.
…“America was promoting this idea of travel and using automobiles and trailers to explore the country, but it wasn’t something that black Americans had the privilege of doing,” Dexter Wimberly, the exhibition’s curator, tells Curbed. “What Green did was try to construct a space where black travelers can feel like all the other [white] Americans who can travel.”
…“In society, there so many opposition forces to deal with; focusing on the effects of the Green Book would be more enlightening to future generations,” Adams says. “Something so simple as putting a book together can be a way to deal with political unrest; something so simple that you can do on your own can affect people in a constructive way.”
How the “Green Book” changed travel for African Americans – Curbed
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Amtrak funding, including for long-distance trains, to be preserved
“There is an urgent need to improve the safety of our railways and this federal funding will help implement positive train control, grade crossing improvements, and other critical railway safety updates,” said U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “I was proud to have fought for these funds to be included in the omnibus language.”
Positive train control is an automated system to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments due to excessive speed and other accidents. Lack of positive train control has been blamed for numerous deadly mishaps.
The budget will provide $592 million for the federal Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program, which makes competitive grants to railroads and government agencies for safety and capacity improvements.
Schumer’s office said it was the first time the program received substantial funding.
Amtrak funding, including for long-distance trains, to be preserved
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A look at transportation safety rules sidelined under Trump
A rule adopted in 2016 in response to a congressional directive requires that new hybrid and electric vehicles emit sounds when traveling at low speeds to alert pedestrians and cyclists to their approach.
…DOT has withdrawn a rule it was in the early stages of writing to require that states annually inspect commercial buses and other passenger-carrying vehicles. Since 1990, there have been more than 220 commercial bus crashes and fires resulting in at least 484 deaths and 4,618 injuries, according to Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, which tracks crashes through media reports.
…A rule proposed in 2015 would expand safety requirements for oil and natural gas pipelines, including greater reporting, inspections of pipelines within 72 hours of an extreme weather event or natural disaster, more frequent inspections using tools that can look inside pipes, and greater use of leak detection systems.
…The rule requires industry to follow the American Petroleum Institute’s recommended practices for the design and operation of underground natural gas storage facilities. The gas industry wants portions of the rule to be voluntary guidance, rather than mandatory regulations, and they want up to eight years instead of one year to fully implement the rule. PHMSA has said it won’t enforce the portions that have drawn industry opposition while it is reconsidering the rule.
A look at transportation safety rules sidelined under Trump
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Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, says top U.S. official
The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.
…In January 2017, just weeks before leaving his post, [Former DHS Secretary Jeh] Johnson declared the nation’s electoral systems part of the nation’s federally protected “critical infrastructure,” a designation that applies to entities like the power grid that could be attacked. It made protecting the electoral systems an official duty of DHS.
But Johnson told NBC News he is now worried that since the 2016 election a lot of states have done little to nothing “to actually harden their cybersecurity.”
…Many of the states complained the federal government did not provide specific threat details, saying that information was classified and state officials did not have proper clearances.
…Other states that NBC contacted said they were still waiting for cybersecurity help from the federal government.
…Some state officials had opposed Johnson’s designation of electoral systems as critical infrastructure, viewing it a federal intrusion.
Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, says top U.S. official – NBC News
oy….
California says it will ban crude from Trump offshore drilling plan
California will block the transport of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs through its state, officials told Reuters, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.
California’s threat to deny pipeline permits for transporting oil from new leases off the Pacific Coast is the latest step by states trying to halt the biggest proposed expansion in decades of federal oil and gas leasing. Officials in Florida, North and South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, have also warned drilling could despoil beaches, harm wildlife and hurt lucrative tourism industries.
California says it will ban crude from Trump offshore drilling plan
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Harvard can save West Station, bu tthe question is are they willing to back up claims of being a good neighbor by putting their money where their mouth is?
[State Representative Michael] Moran’s district includes much of Brighton and Allston, including the site of a massive project that would take down a decrepit Mass. Pike viaduct, straighten the highway, and free up dozens of acres, now owned by Harvard, for new development.
…In a public comment letter also signed by other elected officials representing Allston and Brighton in the House, Senate, and Boston City Council, Moran urges the state to “monetize the total benefits” to Harvard — the “single biggest beneficiary” of the Pike realignment — to guarantee the construction of West Station sooner rather than later. In other words: While Harvard has already committed to covering a third of the station’s cost, the state should hit the school up for the majority of it.
…In general, the Greater Boston region, which might otherwise have become the eastern end of the Rust Belt, shouldn’t take its universities for granted. Yet there are some problems that only an institution like Harvard can solve. It would be a shame if the university stood aside as a major transit hub — the key to an urban vision for Allston — fell victim to bureaucratic inertia.
Michael Dukakis’s Last Stand for the State of Massachusetts
[Dukakis is] in the midst of one more big push, his current obsession, and something he’s been working on for a long time: getting the city’s North and South stations connected by an underground rail line. “It would be transformative,” he will gush—in how much congestion would be relieved, in how many polluting cars would be taken off the road, in how much time would be saved for commuters, and in the economic boom that would result.
We walk the 2 miles to Northeastern, where Dukakis has taught public policy and management for 27 years. It’s a walk he makes most weekdays, winding along the Emerald Necklace. [As] always, Dukakis carries a plastic bag, because as he walks he must pick up trash.
…Dukakis’s obsession with connecting the North and South stations stretches back as far as he can remember. He has been riding public transit—streetcars at first—by himself since he was five years old, in 1938. It gave him freedom to go downtown as a boy in the city he loved, to wander. To stare up at the home of Paul Revere on North Square, to imagine that he was Johnny Tremain, the fictional acolyte of the great silversmith. Dukakis loved history. Or to go to baseball games. All his life the T has been his preferred mode of travel, especially for the dozen years when he was governor: taking the Green Line to Beacon Hill, talking to people also heading to work or school about how their lives were going, about what he should be doing better.
…[Weld and Dukakis] have joined together on this, in an effort to persuade the guy in the governor’s office that this is the project he ought to be focusing on, and not wasting time spending—are you ready for this?—$2 billion to add seven tracks to South Station. Absolutely crazy, folks! Seven tracks. Two billion dollars. When they fill up, then what? And what about the folks on the north side, who come down from the North Shore, Merrimack Valley. Bam, hit North Station, then two trains, three changes, walking, running, trying to get to work. It’s crazy! I have colleagues who come from the North Shore, you ought to be able to get on a commuter train and come to Ruggles, the Northeastern station. Can’t do it. So what do they do? They drive!” Which is causing terrible gridlock.
…“What I want to know is why we’re spending money on this interchange. We’ve got about 200 bridges in the state in desperate need of paint.”
In the dark car, Michael Dukakis shakes his head, because it simply doesn’t make any sense.
Michael Dukakis’s Last Stand for the State of Massachusetts
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Director of Puerto Rico power company resigns amid blackouts, controversial contract
Earlier this week, Ramos testified before a U.S. Senate committee about a $300 million contract awarded to Whitefish Energy Holdings that has since been canceled. The contract is undergoing a local and federal audit.
Prior to the announcement of Ramos’ resignation, local newspaper El Vocero had reported on Friday that Ramos had awarded a nearly $100,000 contract to an attorney for consulting work just days after Hurricane Irma brushed past Puerto Rico. It was the same attorney Ramos previously had tried to appoint as sub-director of the power company. Rossello said that contract also will be reviewed.
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Saad Hariri plans France trip after resigning as Lebanon’s prime minister in Saudi Arabia
His resignation — which he blamed on pressure from Iran and its Lebanese Shiite proxy, Hezbollah — stunned Lebanon and the wider region and raised fears the country would plunge again into factional turmoil.
But Lebanese officials had said Hariri, who is a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, had been forced to resign by Saudi authorities and was unable to move or speak freely from Riyadh. Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun, said Wednesday that Hariri was a “hostage,” and that his government would not accept such an “attack on Lebanese sovereignty.”
…But as Shiite Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, have competed for influence in the region, the threat of upheaval in Lebanon intensified. Iran has long backed Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful political and military movement, and which is key to Iranian regional reach.
…For its part, Riyadh has sought to bolster Hariri and his Sunni bloc in Lebanon, and have fought what Saudi officials claim are Iranian proxy forces in Yemen. Iran denies having direct links to the Houthi forces in Yemen that drove out the Saudi-backed president in 2015.
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