Legalectric

Check the Washington Post’s link, complete with a peanut gallery for comments:

Kagan Hearing live

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is on now… then Kaufmann, who was surprisingly bashing “pro-corporate” and “pro-business” judicial opinions, which is so strange from a Senator from Delaware… and now Franken…

Time to trot out the “Carbon Capture & Storage” red herring again(and check those teeth, how bizarre!).  Yet another study out that shows that Carbon Capture ain’t happenin’ and we’d best be dealing with the problem and not pretending like CCS will save us.

Long-term Effectiveness and Consequences of Carbon Dioxide Sequestration – Shaffer

Bottom line:

The carbon sequestration pathway presented here posits great human effort in the next two hundred years but subsequent human inaction in the spirit of `out of sight, out of mind’. Alternatively, long-term leakage from the ocean or geological reservoirs could be actively countered by resequestration to stabilize climate at some desired level. However, there are serious concerns connected withthis. First, it would be difficult to gauge the global leakage rate that would have to be matched by the resequestration rate. Long-term monitoring of atmospheric CO2 concentrations would probably be the best way to address this but natural carbon-cycle fluctuations would complicate this approach. Second, resequestration would have to be carried out over many thousands of years, a burden for future society not unlike that of long-term management of nuclear waste. By greatly limiting carbon emissions in our time, we could reduce the need for massive CO2 sequestration and thus reduce unwanted consequences and burdens over many future generations from the leakage of sequestered CO2.

This came from a Yahoo News article:

Yahoo News June 27, 2010

Carbon storage faces leak dilemma — study

By Agence France Presse

PARIS (AFP) — Dreams of braking global warming by storing carbon emissions from power plants could be undermined by the risk of leakage, according to a study published on Sunday. [The study itself is available here: http://goo.gl/wygb

Rich countries have earmarked tens of billions of dollars of investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is still only at an experimental stage.
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The STrib had posted a thoughtful, balanced piece about the problems with “biomass,” actually discussing some of the problems with biomass — and biomass is a burning issue here in Minnesota.  And then, with the blink of an eye, it’s GONE… GONE… GONE!

Benefits or Boondoggle?

Here it is, with a related NYT blog post:

Net Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny

Q & A: Woody Biomass Pros and Cons

And in full so it can’t be disappeared, from the New York Times:

Net Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny

By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: June 18, 2010

GREENFIELD, Mass. — Matthew Wolfe, an energy developer with plans to turn tree branches and other woody debris into electric power, sees himself as a positive force in the effort to wean his state off of planet-warming fossil fuels.

“It’s way better than coal,” Mr. Wolfe said, “if you look at it over its life cycle.”

Not everyone agrees, as evidenced by lawn signs in this northwestern Massachusetts town reading “Biomass? No Thanks.”

In fact, power generated by burning wood, plants and other organic material, which makes up 50 percent of all renewable energy produced in the United States, according to federal statistics, is facing increased scrutiny and opposition.

That, critics say, is because it is not as climate-friendly as once thought, and the pollution it causes in the short run may outweigh its long-term benefits.
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As seen on Hwy. 52 between the Zumbrota exits

Goodhue County is considering modifications of their wind ordinance, and have formed a committee to look at it with county planning staff.

CLICK HERE for the County’s wind page.

And here is the draft ordinance, in pdf’d Track Changes:

Article 18 draft revision 06-14-2010

Here is the report from the Rochester Post Bulletin:

First draft of Goodhue County’s new wind regulations proves unpopular

And from June 15th Beagle:

County seeks more time on wind proposal

We were there to address specifics about proposed changes, and the discussion was wide ranging.

Ben Kerl, National Wind/AWA Goodhue (or whatever their name may be today!) made some astounding statements yesterday.  He actually said, regarding Goodhue County’s ordinance proposal for wind projects, where they proposed to require a copy of the Power Purchase Agreement, to demonstrate it’s not a vaporware project, to help assure “they wouldn’t build an empty building,” and he had the audacity to say that he objected to this requirement, and that he’d have to check with Xcel to see if it could be disclosed.  IF IT COULD BE DISCLOSED!!!

EXCUUUUUUUUSE MEEE?!?!  It’s already public information (redacted a tad-bit), it’s already a public document:

PPA – North Goodhue Wind

PPA – South Goodhue

The PPA provided in the PPA dockets would be sufficient to satisfy the county’s concerns.

That statement of Kerl’s was SO egregious I just couldn’t sit there and let it slide.

These PPAs above are from the Goodhue PPA dockets at the PUC.  To review the full PPA dockets:

1. Go to www.puc.state.mn.us; and
2. Click on “search documents;” and
3. Search for dockets 09-1348 and 09-1350 (they’re pretty much identical).

Oh, and we were discussing a Property Protection Plan as has been established in other jurisdictions, where the developer essentially guarantees that the property values will not be lower.   Steve Groth raised that issue, and of course Ben Kerl objected, and thought it essentially a black hole of liability that would quash funding.  I raised the “Buy the Farm” provision for transmission as something that is used in transmission to assure that if a landowner wants out, that they could do so.

CLICK HERE for  Minn. Stat. 216E.12 — “Buy the Farm” and go down to Subd. 4.

There’s more, but that requires a little background work, so stay tuned.  In the meantime…

Shame on you, Ben Kerl…

So here I sit in Rochester, and we’ve got a CLE in the Ethics part about blogging and “social media,” which is pretty interesting.  Some examples are a Florida lawyer making a negative blog post (that the judge was an “evil witch”) and lo and behold, the judge found out because she was his “friend” on Facebook.  Another one was a lawyer who was on a jury and was blogging about the case he was on.  DUH, how stupid can you get?!?!

The examples are extreme, i.e., a judge discussing cases on Facebook, again, DUH!

And on another note… A real depressing part of this gathering was the “State of the 3rd District” which was about the struggles to maintain some semblance of a court system (don’t worry, I’m not going to claim any semblance of justice in this gutting) amidst layoffs, and moving court workers to other counties, even telling some that they now had to work 60 miles away, that judges are grossly overloaded and they have 75% of the judges they need for the caseloads, and that they don’t even have individual law clerks now, and are closing the front desk and shutting off the phones one afternoon a week in an attempt to catch up, how absurd can it be?  Do you know that to help mitigate the slashes to the Public Defender budget we attorneys now pay an extra $100 annually?  Is this any way to run a court?  It just made me sick, the 3rd Chief Judge spent about 20 minutes laying all that horrific news out, and then, the moderator introduces the new Pawlenty appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Lorie Skjerven Gildea.  She offered empty platitudes, “we have to work together in this difficult time” or some such… GIVE ME A BREAK, WASN’T SHE LISTENING TO THE “STATE OF THE3RD DISTRICT?”  Her boss is responsible for this sorry state.

Here’s one take on Gildea’s appointment, from an Eric Black column on MinnPost:

It’s awkward.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty yesterday elevated Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Lorie Gildea to be chief justice just eight days after Gildea had published a strong dissent taking Pawlenty’s side in the unallotment case. Awkward.
…

State Rep. Ryan Winkler, who is also an attorney, used stronger language. In a press release (that means he had time to think about his word choices), he called the appointments “nauseating.” He said Gildea’s promotion was “just a big thank you for the loyal dissent she wrote last week defending Governor Pawlenty’s illegal unallotments.” See if you can guess Rep. Winkler’s political party.

Take a few minutes and read the whole column:

Pawlenty’s Supreme Court picks raise sticky and embarrassing issues