Brian Tyler Cohen - So You Say You Want Truth...

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332 Landslide

332 Landslide

November 19, 2008

Kilowatt Ours - Yours and Mine

Energy conservation. There are 3 schools of thought, generally.




  • 1) Why should I give up the good life

  • 2) My efforts won't contribute enough to matter

  • 3) I'll do what it takes to conserve


Thanks to the 3rd group, for 30+ years of effort in designing, engineering and implementing the ideas and tools available to us today, groups 1 and 2 now have what it takes to join the effort with no reservations.



Facing energy shortages, the city of Austin purchased land at the edge of town to build a new power plant. It was necessarily close, posing health issues. It was going to be quite expensive and take longer to finish than they really had time to wait. So with research and experience from the treehuggers, nerds, geeks, enviros and offgridders the city came up with a plan. They would build a power plant that required no land clearing, no construction, no pollution. They set out to build a Conservation Power Plant. Their goal was simple in thought, logistically daunting and unprecedented. Conserve as much power through community effort as would be produced by building a new power plant. Click on the image below to see the results of their effort.





The above clip is part of a longer program, Kilowatt Ours; A Plan to Re-Energize America which aired on PBS stations over the last few months, and tonight here in the Seattle area. The documentary highlights what is hard for most Americans to grasp. There are 301 million Americans. If just one room in every home in America were lit by Energy Star lighting, it would be like removing 1 trillion pounds of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
31,500,000 kWh could be saved every year if every exit sign in America were upgraded to LED bulb. There are A LOT OF US, when each of us does a small thing it turns into huge thing, a never been done before thing. During the drought and subsequent energy shortage in California in 2001, there wasn't enough time to build new power plants to avoid the crisis. So much like other leaders before him in the face of such a crisis, the Governor asked his citizens to pitch in. Raise the thermostat to 78, unscrew 1 in 4 light bulbs... and they did. What they accomplished that summer broke world records, and set them on the path leading our country to energy independence. Below is a short clip from the program;

Some quick facts:

  • In the fall of 2000 over 300 million gallons of coal slurry were spilled into the Big Sandy River in Martin County, KY. Although this ecological disaster was 30 times greater than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, very few people outside of Kentucky hear about it.
  • Visibility in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has declined 60% over the last 60 years. (We need plants to breath, eat and drink. Plants need sunlight to grow) 83% of the visibility-reducing haze in Smoky Mountains National Park is from sulfate particulates from coal-burning power plants. The American Lung Association listed 10 southern cities in the Southeast among the top 25 most air-polluted cities in America. The EPA estimates that 33 million Americans in the Southeast alone live in bad-air areas.
  • 40 of 50 states post statewide mercury advisories warning that fish are unsafe to eat.
  • The Centers for Disease Control say that 1 in 10 women of childbearing age carry unsafe levels of mercury in their tissues.


• Compact fluorescent light bulbs use 20% as much electricity as a 100-watt incandescent bulb and last years longer too.

• New energy-efficient refrigerators are 40% more efficient than they were just two years ago.

• If just one room in every home in America were lit by Energy Star lighting, it would be like removing 1 trillion pounds of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

• A typical washing machine uses 1,000 kWh per year of electricity. An energy-efficient frontloading washer uses only 280 kWh.


• The city of Birmingham, Alabama, now saves $220,000 after upgrading all 700 street
intersections with LED traffic signals.

• When the Sumner County School System in Tennessee found that geothermal heating and cooling in a new school helped them save $5,000 per month on energy, they decided to retrofit every school in the county with this cost-cutting technology.

• Smith Middle School in North Carolina uses a technique called “daylighting” to flood classrooms with natural light.

• The Sullivan County School System in Tennessee finances their $24 million energy upgrade with the $1 million they save on energy every year.

• 31,500,000 kWh could be saved every year if every exit sign in America were upgraded to LED bulb.

So please, visit http://www.kilowattours.org/ and see what our efforts can accomplish. Sign up with their program to do your small part in a world changing effort, and save money along the way. Purchase the DVD or find the program airing on a local station and take the time to watch it. Contact your representatives http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and tell them you want to see these sorts of money saving, job providing, clean earth policies in YOUR town and be sure to tell them to watch Kilowatt Ours - A Plan to Re-Energize America. For your wallet, for your health and for our security and independence, demand a Conservation Power Plant in every town across America.

November 12, 2008

Nuclear Power’s Image Makeover - The Market Speaks

By Tom Zeller Jr.



As part of James Kanter’s post last week on the efforts of one nuclear power company to solicit proposals from architectural firms on ways to improve the visual impact of nuclear power plants, we asked readers for their ideas.



Needless to say, there were lots of opinions — many of them taking issue with the very premise of the exercise. We also received a number of drawings, photographs and other artistic efforts reflecting a variety of viewpoints. Herewith, we offer a selection of those.

(Note: We’ll continue to feature your artwork and thoughts on the idea of a nuclear power renaissance as we receive them — though we reserve the right to excerpt and edit for clarity and brevity. Keep your thoughts short and your artwork of manageable size, folks. Send them here: greeninc nytimes com.)

Dylan Wolfe, an assistant professor of visual communication at Clemson University, offered the following entry — and a bit of social engineering — toward a safer nuclear energy program:



1. Construct power plants in the richest neighborhoods in the country.

2. Keep nuclear waste inside the homes of those same neighborhoods.
Bill Gates, for example, would have the influence and capacity to assure that the plants were safe and well-maintained. Keeping the waste local solves the transport and disposal problem — plus, Mr. Gates will certainly monitor his share of the waste diligently. The only additional measure required would be to create mandatory residence restrictions, so that the residents don’t try to move out.


But hey, those neighborhoods already have conveniently located gates



Click Here to see the other submissions.

November 7, 2008

Obama Costs Nader the Election

By Bob Maschi

Election results are in and they clearly indicate that Democrat Barack Obama has cost Peace and Freedom’s candidate, Ralph Nader, the presidency. Simple math proves that had Obama not run, and had all of his support gone to Nader, that Nader would have easily won the majority of Electoral College votes and, therefore, the presidency.

A similar electoral flaw occurred in the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore cost Ralph Nader the presidency." Courtesy of Peace and Freedom



November 3, 2008

Is the Election About to Be Stolen in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Elsewhere?

Monday 03 November 2008
by: Cynthia Boaz, Ange-Marie Hancock, David McCuan, Mark Crispin Miller and Michael Nagler, t r u t h o u t Perspective


Calvin Thomas in West Virginia claims to have witnessed a touch-screen machine malfunction that assigned his vote to John McCain as opposed to Barack Obama - his intended choice.

Last Friday, a federal court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered Michael Connell, an information-technology consultant to the McCain '08 campaign, to give a deposition in a court proceeding. Mr. Connell, whose firm, GovTech Solutions, built Ohio's 2004 election results computer network, was in a position to have knowledge about the alleged manipulation of electronic voting results in that presidential contest (a technique known as "flipping") in order to switch the winner in Ohio from Sen. John Kerry to President Bush. The deposition is scheduled to take place today, November 3, one day before the 2008 general election.

Connell is a former associate of Karl Rove, who is believed by those familiar with the events in question to have engaged in witness intimidation to prevent testimony about what happened in Ohio in 2004. They also believe that IT companies associated with the Republican Party have redeveloped the capacity to manipulate electronic voting results in Tuesday's election, both within Ohio and outside, including Pennsylvania and other key battleground states such as Colorado and New Mexico. One such firm, Triad GSI, is managing voter registration databases in 55 of Ohio's 88 counties and is hosting 25 of those databases.

All this has led to speculation that the McCain campaign's insistence that they can win Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other states, despite being (in some places, significantly) behind in most of the polls, could be prompted by having been informed about planned cyber interference with electronic voting results.

Click here to continue reading the disgusting details: http://www.truthout.org/110308R



Video the Vote 2008

Video the Vote is a national network of citizen journalists, independent filmmakers, and media professionals working together to document voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
LEARN MORE CHECK OUT OUR 2008 PROMO

The Center for Public Integrity

The 380,000-plus-word database presented here allows, for the first time, the Iraq-related public pronouncements of top Bush administration officials to be tracked on a day-by-day basis against their private assessments and the actual “ground truth” as it is now known. Throughout the database, passages containing false statements by the top Bush administration officials are highlighted in yellow. The 935 false statements in the database may also be accessed by selecting the “False Statements” option from the “Subject” pull-down menu and may be displayed within selected date ranges using the selection tool below. Searches may also be limited by person or subject, or both, by using the appropriate selections from the pull-down menus.