See a supernova from your back yard this weekend

Something fun for a Labor Day weekend. From the Washington Post:

Get out your binoculars and telescopes. This weekend, a supernova that is closer to Earth than any found in at least the last 25 years will be visible from your back yard.

The violently exploding white dwarf star is brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, approximately 21 million light-years away, Wired reports. (Most supernovas spotted by astronomers are around 1 billion light-years away and cannot be seen by amateurs.)

A supernova often causes a burst of radiation that can outshine an entire galaxy before it fades from view.

The article includes this helpful video, with instructions on how to find the supernova and the Pinwheel Galaxy that contains it:



Read more about the supernova here. Enjoy.

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Koch Bros will be big winners if Keystone sludge-oil pipeline is approved

Well, there's a surprise. Obama's worst enemy, and the climate's as well, the ever-famous Koch Brothers and Koch Industries, are positioned to be big winners if (when) the Keystone Tar Sands pipeline is approved.

Think about it this way — that pipeline isn't carrying toxic sludge through two provinces and 12 states to Texas. It's carrying money into the dirty pockets of two of the most power-mad, driven billionaires on the planet. (Did I mention that their daddy was a John Birch Society founder?)

Thanks to an alert reader, we find this via email. It's from February, and so far, way off the radar. Time to make this connection a feature of the Keystone story — call it the Keystone–Koch Bros Pipeline.

David Sassoon writing at Solve Climate News (my emphasis):

The Keystone XL pipeline, awaiting a thumbs up or down on a presidential permit, would increase the import of heavy oil from Canada's oil sands to the U.S. by as much as 510,000 barrels a day, if it gets built. ... Opponents say it would magnify an environmental nightmare at great cost and provide only the illusion of national benefit.

What's been left out of the ferocious debate over the pipeline, however, is the prospect that if president Obama allows a permit for the Keystone XL to be granted, he would be handing a big victory and great financial opportunity to Charles and David Koch, his bitterest political enemies and among the most powerful opponents of his clean economy agenda.

There is so much in the article that it's hard to summarize. It's also very well researched, especially considering that Koch Industries is privately owned (by the brothers, natch).

For example, there's this detail, one of many:

An unknown amount of company profits — figures are unavailable as the company is privately held — come from the Pine Bend Refinery near St. Paul, Minnesota, which supplies 30 to 40 percent of Wisconsin's transportation fuel[.] ... About 80 percent of what the Koch refinery processes is heavy crude from Alberta's oil sands, a company spokesperson told the media last year. The oil that reaches the refinery is supplied through the Koch brothers' Flint Hills operation in Calgary, the company's website says. ... [T]he oil sands crude which reaches the Pine Bend refinery on American soil accounts for about a quarter of the total supply reaching the U.S. from Alberta's tar sands mining operations.

The Koch Brothers are deep into the Tar Sands project, and will be huge beneficiaries of the Keystone XL Pipeline. They own sludge-oil (called "heavy oil" by insiders), refineries, even regional pipelines for distribution.

For a nice interactive map of the Keystone pipeline, helpfully provided by TransCanada Corporation, click here.

The Keystone–Koch Brothers Pipeline. Remember that name. If Obama wants to do them a dis-service, he will un-approve that pipeline. Or he can serve up more "mush from the wimp" and give them everything they want.

It's his call, and his alone. Sir.

GP
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More details emerge on CIA links to Gaddafi

Al Jazeera reported US links the other day and now even more is emerging.

The CIA and other Western intelligence agencies worked closely with the ousted regime of Moammar Gadhafi, sharing tips and cooperating in handing over terror suspects for interrogation to a regime known to use torture, according to a trove of security documents discovered after the fall of Tripoli.

The revelations provide new details on the West's efforts to turn Libya's mercurial leader from foe to ally and provide an embarrassing example of the U.S. administration's collaboration with authoritarian regimes in the war on terror.

The documents, among tens of thousands found in an External Security building in Tripoli, show an increasingly warm relationship, with CIA agents proposing to set up a permanent Tripoli office, addressing their Libyan counterparts by their first names and giving them advice. In one memo, a British agent even sends Christmas greetings.

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Environmentalists weigh options

Any liberal should have started to weight their options the second Obama brought on Summers and Geithner right after the election. Concerning the environment though, there have been a few OK moments but overall, the administration's positions look too much like what we might expect from someone like Mitt Romney. Maybe Obama thinks that he's winning over the always popular independents but nothing suggests that he is.

What next? Who really wants to donate money to anyone who supports this and who wants to lift a finger to help?

In late August, the State Department gave a crucial go-ahead on a controversial pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Then on Friday, leading into the holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced without warning that it was walking away from stricter ozone pollution standards that it had been promising for three years and instead sticking with Bush-era standards.

John D. Walke, clean air director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group based in New York, likened the ozone decision to a “bomb being dropped.”

Mr. Walke and representatives of other environmental groups saw the president’s actions as brazen political sellouts to business interests and the Republican Party, which regards environmental regulations as job killers and a brick wall to economic recovery.

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Libyan rebels set to take Gaddafi strongholds

These could be the final moments for Gaddafi.

Libyan rebels are poised to attack one of Moammar Gadhafi's remaining strongholds, but their military spokesman said Sunday he expected the town's tribal leaders to surrender rather than see their divided followers fight one another.

Rebels control most of Libya and are moving forward with setting up a new government, but they might hold off on declaring victory until Gadhafi is caught and his remaining strongholds are defeated. Gadhafi and his staunchest allies have been on the run since the fall of the capital late last month. Loyalists have entrenched themselves in several towns, including besieged Bani Walid, some 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli.

Col. Ahmed Bani, the rebel's military spokesman based in Benghazi, said members of the tribe that dominates Bani Walid, the Warfala, are divided over whether to join the rebels. He said the Warfala to surrender to avoid fighting among one another.

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Van Morrison - Moondance

Despite flying Delta on an Air France code share I successfully made it to the US. As is usually the case, the Delta crew was as nice as could be but boy are the planes lousy. If it was 1990 it may have been fine but that was a long way ago. How can they charge as much when the planes are such old? Read the rest of this post...