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Defective Meters and Whistleblower Complaints Raise Questions About Gas Utility’s Profits

DeSmogBlog

A little over a decade ago, Gary Dye, then a gas measurement engineer at NW Natural, Oregon’s largest gas utility, lost faith in his employer to responsibly deal with what he believed to be systematic inaccuracies among the company’s hundreds of thousands of gas meters. Faulty Meters Raise Questions About Profits.

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Phantom Gas and Missing Documents Reveal Gaps in Utility Oversight

DeSmogBlog

The circumstances surrounding his termination are documented among thousands of pages of public records and internal company documents that provide a penetrating look into the multi-billion dollar stakes of negotiations between governments and state-sanctioned monopolies that are shaping the future of energy systems in Oregon and beyond.

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Scientists Find Appalachian Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Put Endangered Species at Risk Thousands of Times

DeSmogBlog

Mountaintop removal coal mining — one of the most notoriously destructive forms of mining — has torn through over 500 mountains across Appalachia, even as coal’s dominance over American energy supplies has faded in recent years. The paper suggests that all of this might have happened in violation of federal law. The diamond darter.

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In Their Own Words: The Dirty Dozen Documents of Big Oil’s Secret Climate Knowledge

DeSmogBlog

For years, academics, journalists, and activists have been unearthing documents proving that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers of climate change since the late 1950s. The fossil fuel industry was first warned about climate change back in 1959 by famed physicist Edward Teller, known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.”

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Pandemics, Plans, Perceptions

Varuna

We had avian flu in 2005 and Ebola in 2014 and scientists, again including Carroll, warned that we did not develop plans to address any future outbreaks of those viruses. So what does this look like for the industry I most worry about for the next possible shock, water? We were forewarned but didn’t prepare.

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Isle de Jean Charles Community Members Moved into the First Federally Funded Resettlement Project in Louisiana Despite Visible Engineering Issues

DeSmogBlog

OCD justified the change by saying the state had determined not all residents on the island identified as part of the Tribe, and that limiting the project to a specific tribe could be seen as contrary to HUD’s rules and federal anti-discrimination laws. But the state scrapped these plans.

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Climate Tech Entrepreneurs React to the Inflation Reduction Act

Elemental Excelerator

Not to mention President Biden also signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 , putting about $67 billion toward zero-carbon industries and climate research. Analysis firm Rhodium Group estimates that it will reduce CO2 emissions by 31–44% below 2005 levels in 2030, as compared to 24–35% under current policy. Vibrant Planet ).