Category Archives: Keeping Watch on Earth News

Benicia City Council, Christina Strawbridge, Kari Birdseye, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Lionel Largaespada, Local elections, Negative campaigning, Organized labor, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Services Inc.

Anti-Birdseye outside money – 3 new expenditure reports

By Roger Straw, October 24, 2018

Valero / Labor PAC alters its telephone script and shows new video ads

Three NEW Expenditure Forms 496 were posted on the City of Benicia website Tuesday, showing amended costs, new negative phone calling scripts and new tv ads bought by the anti-Birdseye PAC.

This round of phone calls focuses on local jobs, and makes unsubstantiated claims against Kari Birdseye while praising her opponents.  The ads show Birdseye’s opponents’ faces along with a positive message rather than Birdseye’s face with negative message.  They must believe the damage is done – or that the blatantly negative ads were not helping their cause.

The reports posted by the City are simply listed by number without much guidance for voters.  I’ll try to sort it out below, with new totals.  (I confess, however, that I have no idea why the PAC’s costs are less now than in previous reports – it makes no sense…)

In summary, the PAC is still absolutely LOADED for more big campaign expenditures during these final weeks before election day.

TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS: $154,200
LESS EXPENDITURES TO DATE: $25,124.81
YET TO BE SPENT:  $129,075.19
NEW EXPENDITURE REPORTS – AMENDMENTS (as of Oct. 24)

  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_12.pdf
    EXPENDITURE AMENDMENT PRO-LARGAESPADA: Winning Connection calls $8,288.75 on 10/16 (showing a new telephone script) (cumulative to date $25,124.81) as amended on 10/22
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_13.pdf
    EXPENDITURE AMENDMENT PRO-LARGAESPADA (but actually showing photocopies of new digital ads for STRAWBRIDGE): Digital Turf media buy $4,689 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $25,124.81); Digital Turf ad production $2,000 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $25,124.81)
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_14.pdf
    EXPENDITURE AMENDMENT PRO-LARGAESPADA (showing photocopies of new digital ads for LARGAESPADA): Digital Turf media buy $4,689 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $25,124.81); Digital Turf ad production $2,000 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $25,124.81)TOTAL EXPENDITURES TO DATE: $25,124.81

CONTRIBUTIONS (as of Oct. 24, no change since Oct. 18)

PREVIOUSLY REPORTED EXPENDITURES (through Oct. 18)

  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_1.pdf
    PRO-STRAWBRIDGE: Winning Connections calls $5,166.67 on 10/10; Valero Use of Poll $4,733.34 on 10/10
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_2.pdf
    PRO-LARGAESPADA: Winning Connections calls $5,166.67 on 10/10; Valero Use of Poll $4,733.34 on 10/10
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_3.pdf
    ANTI-BIRDSEYE: Winning Connections calls $5,166.67 on 10/10; Valero Use of Poll $4,733.34 on 10/10
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_4.pdf
    ANTI-BIRDSEYE: Digital Turf media buy $4,689 on 10/11 (cumulative to date $16,589); Digital Turf ad production $2,000 on 10/11 (cumulative to date $16,589)
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_5.pdf
    PRO-STRAWBRIDGE: Digital Turf media buy $4,689 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $16,589); Digital Turf ad production $2,000 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $16,589)
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_6.pdf
    PRO-LARGAESPADA: Digital Turf media buy $4,689 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $16,589); Digital Turf ad production $2,000 on 10/13 (cumulative to date $16,589)
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_7.pdf
    AMENDMENT TO 496-1 PRO-STRAWBRIDGE Winning Connection calls $5,413.73 (not $5,166.67) and (cumulative to date $16,836.07); Heat & Frost contribution of $20,000 (not $30,000) on 10/16
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_8.pdf
    AMENDMENT TO 496-2 PRO-LARGAESPADA: Winning Connections calls $5,413.73 (not $5,166.67) and (cumulative to date $16,836.07) on 10/16
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_9.pdf
    AMENDMENT TO 496-3 ANTI-BIRDSEYE: Winning Connections calls $5,413.73 (not $5,166.67) and (cumulative to date $16,836.07) on 10/16
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_10.pdf
    AMENDMENT TO 496-4 ANTI-BIRDSEYE: Digital Turf media buy and ad production (and cumulative to date $16,836) on 10/15
  • Anti-Birdseye_PAC_Form_496_11.pdf
    NEW EXPENDITURE PRO-LARGAESPADA: Winning Connection calls $9,000 (cumulative to date $25,836.06) on 10/16
    TOTAL EXPENDITURES REPORTED AS OF OCT 18: $25,836.06
California Air Resources Board (CARB), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Refinery emissions, UC Davis Air Quality Research Center

California Air Resources Board announces Symposium on Refinery & Chemical Industry Emissions

From a CARB email bulletin

Announcing the first Refinery and Chemical Industry Emissions Symposium

California Air Resources Board sent this bulletin at 10/23/2018 10:57 AM PDT

Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.

CARB_header

October 23, 2018

Announcing the First Refinery and Chemical Industry Emissions Symposium

21st Century Technologies for Quantifying Fugitive and Accidental Releases
The California Air Resources Board (and other sponsors) in partnership with the UC Davis Air Quality Research Center is organizing an educational symposium on the use of modeling for emergency preparedness and response for California refineries.  The scope of the symposium will include:

  • Modeling and monitoring for both routine and emergency operations;
  • Improvements and enhancements of air modeling, air monitoring, and coordination during significant releases from refineries; and,
  • Harmonization of modeling and emergency air monitoring with recent state initiatives that require enhanced routine air monitoring at and near these facilities.

Do you have an idea/topic to share? Work you want to discuss with others? Issues you would like a solution? Share your ideas and join our mailing list with Conference Organizer Sandra Hall.

Survey
Sessions currently will focus on:

  • Review of existing/emerging modeling strategies for fitness of purpose and proper application, best approaches for risk quantification and planning purposes, and modeling of cascading effects including offsite consequences of hydrofluoric acid releases;
  • Use of models for training, drills, and exercises by first responders, industry, and local agencies to prepare for real time considerations during emergency response;
  • Synergies with newly required air monitoring under AB 617 and AB 1647; and,
  • Feasibility of enhancing leak detection and repair surveys at refineries and other chemical facilities to a continuous program based on enhanced continuous air monitoring and backward trajectory modeling.

Participants will include CARB, California air districts, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. EPA, other Interagency Refinery Task Force Agencies, local first responders, industry, academia, consultants, and citizen groups.

Currently our conference topics include but are not limited to:

  • Monitoring & Measurement
  • Modeling: Dispersion; Meteorology
  • Emissions Characterization & Inventory Development: Quantity & Speciation; Height & Plume Rise (NOX, SOX/H2S, VOCs, HAPs)
  • Data Communication & Dissemination/Notification
  • Sensors
  • Laws & Jurisdiction for Emergency & Routine Emissions
  • Community Science/AB617
  • Policy

Tentatively set for November 2019 in Northern California. We look forward to hosting you.

Contact

Sandra Hall
UC Davis Air Quality Research Center
(530) 754-8374

Visit the UC Davis Air Quality Research Center and CARB’s Refinery Air Monitoring websites.
Benicia City Council, Benicia Climate Action Plan, Christina Strawbridge, Good Neighbor Steering Committee, Kari Birdseye, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Local elections, Northern Gateway Project, Seeno property, Valero Crude By Rail

Candidate Strawbridge defends her environmental record – the Benicia Independent responds

Christina’s comments, with my apologies and rebuttals

By Roger Straw, October 13, 2018
Kari Birdseye

In Friday’s Benicia Independent newsletter, I wrote that the one Benicia City Council candidate who stands out as a shepherd of the planet’s future is Kari Birdseye.

Christina Strawbridge

I pointed out that candidate Christina Strawbridge made a huge difference in 2016, voting to stop Valero’s dangerous and dirty Crude by Rail proposal, but I went on to give a critical review of a few of Strawbridge’s votes on environmental issues.

Christina wrote a friendly and detailed response to my criticism, and she deserves to be heard on the issues.  Here are her comments, along with my responses:

SEENO

BENINDY NEWSLETTER: “…she voted in favor of Seeno development…”

CHRISTINA: I did not vote for development of the Seeno Property. It never came before me while I served on the Council. This fabrication was used extensively against me in the last election. The closest I came was to ask Council in a 2 step process to put the use of the property on the Agenda to discuss. Even though a majority agreed to that request it never happened.

ROGER: I apologize for misstating the facts in my newsletter, however there is more to the story.  Seeno was back with a proposal, the Northern Gateway Project in 2015-2016, when Christina was on Council. She is right to point out that the project never came before Council – for approval. The project proponent, suspected Seeno surrogate Schwartz Land Development, approached the Council to be placed on the agenda for “guidance.”  Christina voted approval with a majority and so Council convened a workshop.  Ultimately the developer withdrew their plans when public opposition arose. Opponents of the project were strongly objecting to the housing element in the proposal, and skeptical of the developer’s claim of no relation to the Seeno family.  When a proposal comes before Council in a 2-step process, it is often fair to vote for an airing of pros and cons and discussion regardless of one’s opinion on the merits of the proposal.  But when Council convened the “guidance” workshop on Feb 23, 2016 Christina offered the following accommodating remarks as shown in the minutes: “Council Member Strawbridge discussed the need to figure out economic development within the City. The issue is what would be a viable project in the area. She would like to move forward with the project so we can see what can be done creatively out there (affordable housing, etc.).”  [Emphasis added.]

VALERO GETS GOOD NEIGHBOR SETTLEMENT MONEY

BENINDY NEWSLETTER: “[she voted] in favor of a nearly million-dollar give back to Valero…”

CHRISTINA: The million $$$ give back to Valero. I believe you are referring to the grant recommendations through the Sustainability Commission for remaining money in the Good Neighbor Settlement. This was at the height of the historic drought and the project that Valero wanted to use the money for was a large water conservation project.

ROGER: Valero’s boiler construction project was a good idea at the height of our historic drought.  But the Sustainability Commission’s settlement funds were no substitute for the deep pockets of Valero Energy Corporation to fund the project.  Christina voted with Hughes and Schwartzman on June 17, 2014 to flip $829,000 of the Valero / Good Neighbor settlement money back to Valero to fund the project.  The Community Sustainability Commission recommended against distribution of grant funds to corporate giant Valero, pointing out that Valero could easily afford the outlay itself and recoup costs in about a year.  The CSC preferred to spread the money over a longer period of time to fund local climate solutions that would otherwise be unlikely to move forward.  By flipping the recommendation, most of the remaining funds were spent, decimating the ability of the Sustainability Commission to make further significant investments in smaller projects that would benefit Benicia.

DEFUNDING OF BENICIA’S CLIMATE ACTION COORDINATOR

BENINDY NEWSLETTER: [she voted] “in favor of a budget that discontinued employment of Benicia’s Climate Action Coordinator”

CHRISTINA: Funding the Climate Action Coordinator. As you might recall the contract ended for the CAP coordinator Alex Porteshawver when she left Sonoma State University’s Center for Sustainable Communities to work for a for a company that wanted to provide less service for more money. There was thought that the solar project savings would pay for the coordinator. That was not the case. During deliberation, I asked the Community Development Director if there had been an attempt to negotiate with the company to allow some continued presence of Alex. Staff’s response was the company was not interested. I believe the CAP coordinator was an important asset to our community and Alex was really well thought of in the industry. Perhaps with a different staff and more creative thinking she would still be here.

ROGER: Christina gives a fair defense here.  Budget decisions are complex and difficult, and often must include compromises.  Public support for the Climate Action Coordinator was huge, and the numbers showed that she more than paid for her salary through city savings.  Disappointment lingers.  If Christina is elected, I hope she will work with our new City Staff and Council to revisit funding for a Climate Action Coordinator.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

CHRISTINA’S OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL VOTES & ENDORSEMENTS

CHRISTINA: Some things you left out about being environmentally insensitive with my voting record:

  • voted for MCE Marin Clean Energy
  • supported the completion of the solar project pump 3
  • voted to move forward for obtaining grants for the water reuse project
  • served/serve on the Solano County State Parks Committee to coordinate efforts to keep the 2 State Parks open and get the State to do work on deferred maintenance, (Currently on the board of the Benicia State Parks Association)
  • voted to fund the BRIP Business Resource Incentive Program whose goal was to assist businesses in improving productivity and viability through energy and resource savings. BRIP won multiple awards in combining economic development and sustainability for Benicia businesses
  • voted for a comprehensive water conservation program to save water and find funding for lawn replacement, gray water use, etc.
  • I have also been endorsed by the Sierra Club and the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee.

ROGER: Christina’s record on environmental issues definitely has some pluses, but it also has some poor marks.  Suffice to say, every vote on Council is nuanced, and there are often times when a compromise is called for.  In the end, however, the alliances we strike are in fact important, and outcomes matter.  In her 2016 campaign for Council, Christina aligned herself with Mark Hughes for Mayor.  Hughes’ comments and votes on Council have been uniformly insensitive to needs of the environment – he even waffles on the significance of human causes of climate change. Hughes strongly supported Valero Crude by Rail and has fallen short on many other important issues.  Christina is currently supported in her run for Council by Hughes.

Keeping Watch on Earth News

NY Times: U.N. Dire Climate Warning

Repost from The New York Times

Dire Climate Warning Lands With a Thud on Trump’s Desk

By Mark Landler and Coral Davenport, Oct. 8, 2018
President Trump on Monday in Orlando, Fla., where he spoke to a convention of police chiefs. He did not mention a United Nations report on the threat of climate change. Credit Tom Brenner for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A day after the United Nations issued its most urgent call to arms yet for the world to confront the threat of climate change, President Trump boarded Air Force One for Florida — a state that lies directly in the path of this coming calamity — and said nothing about it.

It was the latest, most vivid example of Mr. Trump’s dissent from an effort that has galvanized much of the world. While the United Nations warned of mass wildfires, food shortages and dying coral reefs as soon as 2040, Mr. Trump discussed his successful Supreme Court battle rather than how rising seawaters are already flooding Miami on sunny days.

The president’s isolation is not just from the world: In California, New York, Massachusetts and other states, governments and companies are pushing ahead with regulations and technological innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

That bottom-up activism is a source of hope for those who have watched in despair since last year when Mr. Trump declared he would pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. But experts say it is no substitute for the world’s largest economy, and second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, turning its back on the fight.

“You have this enormous discrepancy between the White House and, essentially, everyone else,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “The leadership in Washington is really moving against the whole agenda.”

The United Nations report paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

It describes a world of worsening food shortages and poverty; more wildfires; and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

Among climate-change scientists, there were increasing fears that Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord, which at first seemed a lonely act of defiance, may embolden other countries to leave it as well.

In Brazil, voters are on track to elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has vowed to withdraw his country, the world’s seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, from the pact.

Mr. Trump’s announcement last year prompted a show of solidarity from the other 194 countries that signed the accord, not to mention American political and business leaders who rallied under the slogan, “We are still in!” But to populists like Mr. Bolsonaro, Mr. Trump’s demands that the United States be given a better deal could prove appealing.

“To the extent that we get these narrow-minded, so-called nationalist, populist leaders, we could have a big problem,” said John P. Holdren, who served as President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser. “Brazil, with its huge area of forests, is going to suffer terribly from climate change.”

A wildfire burning last year near Casitas Springs, Calif. The United Nations report warns of mass wildfires, food shortages and dying coral reefs as soon as 2040. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Beyond the domino effect, Mr. Holdren, who is now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said there were other immediate costs to what he called “the squandering of U.S. leadership on an acute global issue.”

Mr. Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, cut the American contribution to a global fund that supports climate mitigation and assistance efforts in developing countries by two-thirds, to $1 billion. He has tried to cut government funding of climate-related research — an effort that Congress has so far resisted.

The White House issued no public response to the United Nations report, which was issued Monday in South Korea at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders.

“Not today,” said Bill Shine, the White House communications director. “It’s a Kavanaugh night.”

After Mr. Trump returned Monday from Orlando, Fla., where he spoke to a convention of police chiefs and referred to the hurricane now approaching that state, he attended a White House ceremony to swear in Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Following the ceremony, Lindsay E. Walters, a deputy press secretary, said, “The United States is leading the world in providing affordable, abundant and secure energy to our citizens, while protecting the environment and reducing emissions through job-creating innovation.”

She noted that carbon dioxide-related emissions declined 14 percent in the United States from 2005 to 2017, while they rose 21 percent globally during the same period.

On Saturday, an American delegation in South Korea joined more than 180 countries in accepting the report’s summary for policymakers, but a statement from the State Department added that it “does not imply endorsement by the United States of the specific findings or underlying contents of the report.”

The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.”

The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels by 2040.

The Paris accord set a goal of preventing warming of more than 3.6 degrees above preindustrial levels — long considered a threshold for the most severe social and economic damage from climate change. But the heads of small island nations, fearful of rising sea levels, had also asked scientists to examine the effects of 2.7 degrees of warming.

Without aggressive action, many effects that scientists once expected to happen further in the future will arrive by 2040, and at the lower temperature, the report shows.

“It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the report.

Flooded homes last month in Lumberton, N.C., after Hurricane Florence hit. Credit Johnny Milano for The New York Times

To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, the report said, greenhouse emissions must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and by 100 percent by 2050. It also found that use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40 percent today to 1 to 7 percent by 2050.

“This report makes it clear: There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University and an author of the report. Mr. Trump has vowed to increase the burning of coal.

“It makes me feel angry when I think about the U.S. government,” Mr. Shindell said. “My kids feel like it’s their future being destroyed.” He watched as the grounds of his son’s high school in Durham, N.C., and the roads around it flooded last month after Hurricane Florence.

Dr. Allen said there was little question the report will be ignored in Washington. “The current administration doesn’t seem interested in it all,” he said, although he added that as a scientist, he takes the long view.

“One way or another,” he said, “the facts do win out.”

Mr. Trump encouraged scientists recently when he nominated Kelvin Droegemeier, a well-respected meteorologist who is an expert on extreme weather, to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The post had been vacant since Mr. Trump took office.

But it is unlikely that Mr. Droegemeier will change the president’s views on climate change, and other influential aides are hardly going to challenge him.

For example, the Trump administration’s counterterrorism strategy, released last week, made no mention of climate change as a cause for extremism. The Obama administration regularly cited it in threat assessments because of its effect on migration and the competition for food and water.

“I don’t think climate change is a cause of international terrorism,” said the national security adviser, John R. Bolton.

For all that, scientists said that they saw a few rays of sunshine amid the clouds. A Democratic takeover of the House would raise the odds that Congress would continue blocking cuts to research. And despite his criticism of the Paris accord as “very unfair” to the United States, Mr. Trump has left the door open to staying in the deal, if the terms were improved.

“I have been of the opinion all along that we can definitely see the U.S. back in the Paris agreement, even under Trump,” Mr. Rockström said.

Legally, he noted, the United States cannot formally withdraw from the pact until 2020, and the agreement’s terms are voluntary.

“He can sit there in the White House and draw up his own plan,” Mr. Rockström said.

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Coral Davenport from Incheon, South Korea. Reporting was contributed by Somini Sengupta.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 8, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Climate Warning Hits Silent Wall On Trump’s Desk.