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This evening's music features blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player Jimmy Reed. Enjoy!

“When things consistently go wrong you know you're living in the real world.”

-- Marty Rubin

News and Opinion

The US is averaging one chemical accident every two days

Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, recently lamented the toll taken on the residents of East Palestine after the toxic train derailment there, saying “no other community should have to go through this”.

But such accidents are happening with striking regularity. A Guardian analysis of data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by non-profit groups that track chemical accidents in the US shows that accidental releases – be they through train derailments, truck crashes, pipeline ruptures or industrial plant leaks and spills – are happening consistently across the country.

By one estimate these incidents are occurring, on average, every two days.

“These kinds of hidden disasters happen far too frequently,” Mathy Stanislaus, who served as assistant administrator of the EPA’s office of land and emergency management during the Obama administration, told the Guardian. Stanislaus led programs focused on the cleanup of contaminated hazardous waste sites, chemical plant safety, oil spill prevention and emergency response.

In the first seven weeks of 2023 alone, there were more than 30 incidents recorded by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, roughly one every day and a half. Last year the coalition recorded 188, up from 177 in 2021. The group has tallied more than 470 incidents since it started counting in April 2020. The incidents logged by the coalition range widely in severity but each involves the accidental release of chemicals deemed to pose potential threats to human and environmental health.

Nearly 45k Animals DIED In East Palestine Ohio

To Prevent More 'Catastrophic Derailments,' Rail Workers Outline Plan for Immediate Reforms

Three weeks after the lives of East Palestine, Ohio residents were upended by a fiery wreck involving a Norfolk Southern-owned train overloaded with hazardous materials, rail union leaders on Friday implored federal regulators and lawmakers to "focus on the primary reasons for the derailment and take immediate action to prevent future disasters."

In a statement, Railroad Workers United (RWU) pointed to the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) newly published preliminary report on the February 3 crash and subsequent burnoff of vinyl chloride and other carcinogenic chemicals, which suggests that an overheated wheel bearing likely caused the train to derail. The inter-union alliance of rail workers also cited NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who said Thursday at a press conference: "This was 100% preventable. We call things accidents—there is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable."

RWU, which has previously highlighted how industry-led deregulation and Wall Street-backed policies such as "precision-scheduled railroading" have made the U.S. rail system more dangerous, said Friday that "Class 1 freight rail carriers, including Norfolk Southern, have prioritized profits over safety, cutting maintenance, equipment inspections, and personnel in all crafts while increasing the average train size to three miles or more." ...

One week ago, RWU made the case for nationalization, arguing that the U.S. "can no longer afford private ownership of the railroads; the general welfare demands that they be brought under public ownership."

In the absence of such sweeping transformation, which remains far-off given the current state of the beleaguered U.S. labor movement, the alliance on Friday demanded that federal agencies and Congress move quickly to "rein in" Norfolk Southern and other profit-maximizing rail corporations that have fought regulations, laid off workers, and purchased billions of dollars in stock rather than investing in employees and safety upgrades.

Specifically, RWU called on regulators and lawmakers to:

Ensure sufficient staffing to do the job properly, efficiently, and safely, with all trains operating with a minimum of a two-person crew;

Cap train length and weight at a reasonable level to mitigate the increased likelihood of breakdowns, train separations, and derailments;

Implement adequate and proper maintenance and inspections of locomotives and rail cars, tracks and signals, wayside detectors, and other infrastructure; and

Standardize ample training and time off without the harassment of draconian attendance policies.

Of these measures, only a proposed rule to require two-person crews—described by RWU as loophole-ridden—was included in the blueprint the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) unveiled Tuesday to hold rail companies accountable and protect the well-being of workers and fenceline communities.

The DOT also encouraged rail carriers to voluntarily provide sick leave. Norfolk Southern—facing intense scrutiny and backlash amid the ongoing East Palestine disaster—agreed Wednesday to provide up to a week of paid sick leave per year to roughly 3,000 track maintenance workers.

But because the Biden administration and Congress recently imposed a contract without paid sick leave on rail workers who were threatening to strike, the vast majority still lack this basic lifesaving benefit, as do millions of private sector workers in other industries who are also awaiting legislation to address the issue.

Characterizing the DOT's plan as inadequate, RWU said Tuesday that "rank-and-file railroad workers can diagnose and fix the problems" and urged U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to enact "some of our solutions."

Russia Pincers Close Bakhmut, Zaluzhny Warns Zelensky; China Spooks West, CIA Says Russia Confident

Western Leaders Privately Say Ukraine Can’t Win the War

Western leaders privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine can not win the war against Russia and that it should begin peace talks with Moscow this year in exchange for closer ties with NATO.

The private communications are at odds with public statements from Western leaders who routinely say they will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes until it achieves victory on the battlefield.

The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the private remarks to Zelenksy, said:

“The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say.

‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner earlier this month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported. According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”

Russia AND China Demand UN Investigation Into Nord Stream Bombing

White House Believed ‘Economic Nuclear Weapon’ Would End Russian War in Ukraine

In the days after the invasion of Ukraine, the White House assessed President Vladimir Putin would end the attack if the US froze over $300 billion owned by the Russian central bank. However, the Washington-led economic war on Moscow has failed to have a major impact on the Russian economy.

According to Bloomberg, in the immediate reaction to Russian forces invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the White House began to develop the "economic equivalent of a nuclear weapon" to use against Moscow. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan led the team that designed the sanctions on Moscow’s economy and froze $300 billion in assets of the Russian central bank.

The Joe Biden administration believed the economic war inflicted "shock and awe" on the Russian economy. ... So far, the Western economic war on Russia has failed to have its designed impact on Moscow’s economy. Despite predictions of a double-digit GDP contraction in 2022, the Russian economy held firm, with the rouble one of the top-performing currencies against the dollar.

Nicholas Mulder, a Cornell professor specializing in sanctions, says Washington has changed its strategy. "They’ve given up the expectation that this will change Russian decision-making." He continued, "Instead, they see it as an economic war of attrition."

The Empire Gives People The Illusion Of Fighting The Power Without Ever Endangering Real Power

The one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen countless emotional news segments and heartstring-plucking articles, wall-to-wall social media posts, and public demonstrations decrying the evils of Vladimir Putin throughout the western world.

For what’s probably the first “anti-war” protest of most of their lives, American liberals gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC over the weekend to bravely condemn the leader of a foreign government thousands of miles away. There they were joined by empire managers like the virulent warmonger Samantha Power, who spoke at the rally opposing Russian warmongering at the capital of the most warlike nation on the planet.

For the last year, mainstream westerners have been using this war to act out their fantasies of being courageous up-punching anti-imperialists, fighting powerful bloodthirsty tyrants in defense of the needful, all while living directly under the thumb of the most tyrannical regime in the world. They mindlessly regurgitate the propaganda of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, parrot the same lines that are already being said all day long by all the most powerful institutions in the western world, all in service of the hegemonic agendas of the largest and most murderous power structure on earth, while pretending to be standing in opposition to the powerful.

The way the war in Ukraine allows mainstream liberals to play-act as rebellious anti-imperialists is a good illustration of how the empire gives people the illusion of fighting the power without their ever opposing the empire.

We saw this same trend take place in the US throughout the Trump administration, where mainstream liberals branded themselves “The Resistance” like they were socialist revolutionaries or insurgents opposing Hitler in Nazi-occupied France. In reality Trump’s presidency had little actual impact on the comforts of their lives, because beneath all the narratives Trump was a fairly normal US president whose most heinous crimes were all of the customary variety we see in all US presidents — including his predecessor and his successor. Democrats just spent four years LARPing as brave revolutionaries, and then he left office and the game ended.

In exactly the same way, Trump’s presidency allowed right wingers to pretend they were part of a movement against the establishment, despite Trump never actually challenging the establishment in any meaningful way. They believed he was fighting the Deep State even after he imprisoned Assange. They believed he was “ending the wars” even as he ramped up aggressions against Russia which helped bring us to where we are today, killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from U.S.-backed genocide, worked to foment civil war in Iran using starvation sanctions and CIA ops with the stated goal of effecting regime change, occupied Syrian oil fields with the goal of preventing Syria’s reconstruction, greatly increased the number of troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, greatly increased the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration killing record numbers of civilians, and reduced military accountability for those airstrikes. They believed he was draining the swamp after packing his cabinet with establishment swamp monsters.

Trump supporters are just George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters. They role-play a fight against the empire that is never actually happening anywhere except in their imaginations.

For four years this went on, with Democrats acting like they were fighting the power because Trump was the power and Republicans acting like they were fighting the power because Trump’s enemies were the power. And the entire time real power went completely unchallenged, because the empire always marches forward regardless of the imperial puppet who’s sitting in the White House.

And as the war drums with China heat up we’re seeing Trump supporters turn into the mirror image of the mindless Ukraine flag-waving liberals we’re seeing today, swallowing every narrative their media feeds them right down their throats without the slightest twinge of critical thinking gag reflex. Now we’re seeing the same people who used to spew vitriol about Muslims in the Middle East suddenly metamorphose into heroic human rights champions for Muslims in Xinjiang, and the same people who’ve been shining the bright light of truth on propaganda about Russia suddenly switch it off because they believe Biden is a Xi Jinping puppet.

Imperial narrative managers actively foster these delusions of revolution and up-punching among the mainstream herd because it’s a great way to kill the possibility of any real revolutionary zeitgeist. If you can give people the illusion that they are fighting the power without their ever actually fighting the power, then you can always remain in power.

It doesn’t take much. Just a few trusted voices in their ideological echo chamber posing as passionate opponents of tyranny and abuse, and people’s natural desire to oppose those things does the rest. It naturally feels right to oppose the depravity of the powerful on behalf of the weak and defenseless; all they have to do is divert that healthy human impulse into something illusory.

Look out, if there's bipartisan consensus it usually means that there's going to be more money for the military industrial complex and regular americans are going to get a screwing.

Capitol Hill finds rare bipartisan cause in China – but it could pose problems

In the weeks since the US military shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have spoken passionately about the need to more effectively compete with Beijing. A resolution condemning China for the balloon incident passed the House in an unanimous vote of 419 to 0. Joe Biden has similarly expressed hope that efforts to strengthen America’s global competitiveness in response to a rising China can unite Democrats and Republicans in an era defined by bitter partisanship.

“Today, we’re in the strongest position in decades to compete with China or anyone else in the world,” Biden said in his State of the Union address earlier this month. “Let’s be clear: winning the competition with China should unite all of us.”

The new House select committee on China will hold its first primetime public hearing on Tuesday, and the panel’s supporters are optimistic its work will provide a rare opportunity for bipartisan cooperation in the divided Congress. But while there’s widespread agreement among policymakers and lawmakers in Washington over the need to better compete with China, there is no prevailing consensus on how to do so. Some experts also fear this kumbaya moment in Washington could escalate tensions with Beijing and increase the risk of conflict.

“There is a bipartisan consensus on the fact that China poses a broad challenge to the United States across multiple domains,” said Patricia Kim, an expert on US-China relations at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “I don’t believe we have a clear consensus on the precise mix of policies that are necessary to address this challenge.”

Free Speech on Trial: Supreme Court Hears Cases That Could Reshape Future of the Internet

"One big union."

‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizing

US corporations have mounted a fierce counterattack against the union drives at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies, and in response, federal officials are working overtime to crack down on those corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics – maneuvers that labor leaders fear could significantly drain the momentum behind today’s surge of unionization. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that polices labor-management relations, has accused Starbucks and Amazon of a slew of illegal anti-union practices, among them firing many workers in retaliation for backing a union. Nonetheless, many workplace experts question whether the NLRB’s efforts, no matter how vigorous, can assure that workers have a fair shot at unionizing.

“We’re seeing the same situation over and over – workers going up against billionaires and billion-dollar companies with an endless amount of resources while our labor laws are far too weak,” said Michelle Eisen, a barista in Buffalo who helped lead the early unionization efforts of Starbucks in that city. “We’re all fighting for the same thing against different companies. We’re all in the same boat. No one denies that there are a lot of obstacles to overcome.”

“The labor board is doing its job with the limited resources it has,” she added. “But Starbucks continues to break the law flagrantly.” The union asserts that Starbucks has engaged in illegal retaliation by firing 150 pro-union baristas and closing a dozen recently unionized stores. ... “These workers were supposed to be able to get together without fear of retaliation,” said Lynne Fox, president of Workers United, the union that workers at more than 280 Starbucks have voted to join. “But companies, including Starbucks, have determined that the penalty for retaliation is minimal – and much more appealing than allowing workers to unionize. Violating workers’ rights has simply become part of the cost of doing business.” Labor leaders complain that the penalty imposed for illegal retaliation is often just an order to post a notice on a company’s bulletin boards saying that it broke the law.

Newly unionized workers are also frustrated and angry that efforts to reach a first contract are taking so long, with some unions asserting that companies are deliberately and illegally dragging out negotiations – an assertion the companies deny. Workers won breakthrough union victories at Starbucks in December 2021, and the next year saw several other organizing victories. REI workers had a successful union vote in March 2022, Amazon in April, Apple in June, Trader Joe’s in July and Chipotle in August, but none of those companies have reached a first contract.

The extraordinary recent wave of unionization that corporate America has faced over the past year has been met with what union supporters say is an equally extraordinary wave of union-busting that has slowed and even stopped some unionization efforts.

Inflation SPIKES As Recession Looms

The Washington Post Is Coming for Your Retirement Benefits

When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, he didn’t transform it into a paper that elevated the perspectives of the wealthy elite—it had already been that for decades. What he did do was put it on steroids: Over the next three years, the Post doubled its web traffic and surpassed the New York Times in its volume of online postings. One result: The paper’s traditional hostility to federal retirement programs has become only more amplified.

As progressive economist Dean Baker (FAIR.org, 3/19/18) has written, “The Post calling for cuts to [Social Security and Medicare] is pretty much as predictable as the sun coming up”—it’s been up to this for decades, as Bezos is probably aware. So when it once again called for retirement benefit cuts on Sunday, February 5, Baker was unsurprised (Beat the Press, 2/5/23).

The Post came out swinging in the piece (2/5/23), with the headline “Yes, Social Security and Medicare Still Need to Be Reformed—and Soon.” It began by fretting over the depletion of the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare:

The longer Congress puts off fixes, the more painful they will become for the 66 million seniors, and growing, who receive monthly Social Security payments and the approximately 59 million people enrolled in a Medicare plan.

Among other solutions, the board suggested “raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 to match the existing Social Security retirement age for those born in 1960 or later.” As Baker pointed out (Beat the Press, 2/5/23):

As people who follow policy have long known, this would have little effect on the budget, since it would raise the amount spent on providing insurance in the ACA exchanges.

But that was far from the worst of the Post’s suggestions. In the final paragraph of the editorial, the Post made its intentions even clearer. Attempting a call to action, the board wrote:

Mr. Biden was among 88 senators who voted in 1983 for a bipartisan grand bargain, negotiated by a commission led by Alan Greenspan and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, that rescued Social Security. Forty years later, if he and Republican leaders are willing to work in good faith, Mr. Biden could safeguard the greatest legacies of both the New Deal and the Great Society.

To translate: In 1983, Congress “rescued” Social Security by cutting it. The 1983 law did not change the actual age at which you can retire and draw Social Security benefits. It left that at 62. Instead, it simply said you’d get less money for retiring at any point before the new full retirement age, which reached 67 last year. For instance, those retiring at 62 today face a 50% larger cut in benefits for early retirement compared to before 2000.

The Post apparently remembers these reforms fondly. And it wants more.

This is not the only time the editorial board has called for stiffing the seniors in recent months. Last year, the board published an editorial (6/4/22) headlined “The Medicare and Social Security Disaster That Washington Is Doing Nothing to Fix.” The board sounded the alarm: “The nation has made promises to its elderly that it cannot possibly keep while continuing to do right by younger generations.”

Before calling for “some mix of modest benefit adjustments and tax hikes” to shore up these earned benefit programs, the Post spent most of the piece attempting to instill fear in its readership about the latest projections for the finances of Social Security and Medicare. After laying out the numbers, the board wrote:

These numbers may seem small. They are not; total federal spending has historically hovered around 20% of GDP. The trustees are projecting a vast expansion of outlays for the elderly that would hollow out the government’s ability to spend on education, infrastructure, anti-poverty programs and other investments in children and working-age adults.

The Post quite explicitly places Social Security and Medicare in direct conflict with other government programs in this passage. But under even minor scrutiny, this idea of a zero-sum conflict between protecting elderly entitlement programs and investing in children falls apart.

Why can’t we spend more on social programs? The answer is—we can. According to a 2019 report from the University of New Hampshire, total government spending in the US, which sits at 38% of GDP, puts the US at 12th out of the 13 highest-income countries in the report.

The US does rank first in healthcare spending, but this is not because of largesse directed towards the elderly. Rather, it is a result of the brutally inefficient design of the US healthcare system, marked by administrative bloat and inflated prices.

As Baker observes (Beat the Press, 2/5/23), Medicare, which is much more efficient than private health plans, points to the solution, not the problem. In fact, studies have estimated that Medicare for All, a target of the Post’s vitriol in the past (1/27/16, 8/12/18, 5/4/19), would actually lower overall healthcare spending while improving health outcomes (Jacobin, 12/3/18).

When it comes to spending on social protection, which includes retirement programs for the elderly, the story is more straightforward. The US comes in last place among the highest-income countries. It spends 57% less per capita than the average in these countries. As the UNH report explains:

Social protection is the only spending category for which US spending is greatly lower than other countries. The difference explains how the United States can spend so much more than other countries on its military and health services while still spending so much less than other countries overall.

To portray Social Security cuts as necessary in light of this evidence is absurd.

What we’re really talking about when we’re discussing Social Security and Medicare is what we want to do with our resources as a country. We have more than enough wealth to provide solid retirement benefits and good medical care to the elderly. The question is: Do we want to do that? Or do we want to cut the programs that do those things? It’s really that simple.

It just so happens the Post favors cuts over human welfare. Exactly the kind of perspective Bezos deemed well worth putting his money behind.

Pfffftttt!!! As if.

Sanders Pushes Biden to Embrace Social Security Expansion

In a previously unreported discussion, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders urged President Joe Biden to ensure Social Security is fully funded through the end of the century by increasing taxes on wealthier Americans, according to a report published Thursday.

During the hourlong meeting on January 25—which took place before Biden and Sanders (I-Vt.) shot a video together about student debt—the democratic socialist senator pushed the president to expand payroll taxes on high-income Americans, The Washington Post reports. Currently, only the first $160,000 in earnings is subject to payroll tax.

Sanders reportedly asked Biden to support his plan—which is highly unlikely to gain congressional approval—to expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 annually for each recipient. Biden was noncommittal, according to the senator.

Democrats place policing and “public safety” at center of Chicago municipal elections

On February 28, voting will close in the 2023 municipal elections for mayor and city council (50 seats, one per ward) in Chicago, the country’s third largest city. Early voting began January 26, with mail-in ballots reportedly increasing turnout over previous elections. Eight candidates are challenging the widely unpopular Mayor Lori Lightfoot, formerly a police accountability board official under mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel. The main contenders are Democratic Representative Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Cook County Commissioner and the Chicago Teachers Union’s political and legislative official Brandon Johnson, and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, who has oriented himself to the police and the far-right in the Chicago region.

Since it is unlikely any mayoral candidate will take a majority of the vote outright, given the number of candidates, the vote which ends February 28 will be a primary, with a runoff election between the two top candidates to take place in April. A significant portion of the city council is expected to turn over, with 16 of 50 aldermen retiring and 39 total seats contested. Several city council seats are expected to go to runoff as well. The full results of the primary may not be known for several days.

The election will also seat 66 individuals, three in each of the 22 police districts, on a newly-created police districts council, aimed at refurbishing the image of the police after a seemingly endless series of exposures of police frame-ups, torture, violence and murder. The council members are to offer recommendations and advice, and receive $500 a month. Their recommendations carry no real weight and the body itself is yet another attempt to make it appear the city is taking steps to improve the long-standing problem of police violence, while the Democratic Party as a whole clamors for more cops and more funding.

The most significant feature of the election is its extraordinarily right-wing character, with a near-total emphasis placed on crime, and “public safety.” The campaigns and news media claim this singular focus is supported by public polling, but the polls published also indicate deep fear of and hostility to the police going back many years, sentiments which are fully justified. In 2022, police murders in the United States reached a new record of 1,176, as the administration of President Joe Biden budgeted a staggering $30 billion to shore up local and state police forces. Repudiating the demands of the 2020 mass protests against police violence after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Biden declared in his 2022 state of the union address, “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police.”

There is unanimity among the nine candidates in this law-and-order propaganda. Every candidate, from the openly right-wing Paul Vallas and Willie Wilson, who claimed at a debate that a “police officer should be able to hunt [people] like a rabbit,” to the so-called “progressives” Chuy Garcia and Brandon Johnson. Whoever is elected in the spring will be responsible for leading an aggressive effort in Chicago to repress social opposition and beat back social demands in the interests of capital, supported by the Democratic Party at all levels.

Red states leading the US in solar and wind production, new report shows

A new report by Climate Central shows how US capacity to generate renewable energy shot up last year – and surprisingly, red states lead the nation in solar and wind power production.

National wind and solar capacity grew 16% compared to 2021. All told, renewables generated enough electricity to power 64m American households. The report comes as the Biden administration starts to make billions of dollars available for renewable energy projects. The administration has committed to decarbonizing the grid completely by 2030 and getting the US to net zero emissions by mid-century.

“We are moving closer to the goals we need to reach in order to hit net zero,” said Jennifer Brady, a senior data analyst at Climate Central. “We have a free natural resource in the form of weather that can be captured to generate power.”

Climate action has often been stymied at the local and federal levels by Republican leaders. But the new report shows Iowa and Oklahoma – all of which have Republican governors and majority Republican state legislatures – led the nation in wind power production, while California and Florida were the largest producers of solar power. Texas is a leader in both solar and wind power.

There are several reasons why wind energy has grown by leaps in Texas. The state has been proactive in building out transmission lines to bring wind power to businesses and homes, which means future wind farms can easily connect to this grid. These investments allow the state to take advantage of its natural renewable resources. Laws deregulating the energy market in Texas have also been conducive to leasing land for wind turbines; only 2% of the land in Texas is regulated by the federal government.

Recapturing excess heat could power most of Europe, say experts

Excess heat produced across Europe could almost power the entire region but preventing this waste is largely being ignored as a solution to the energy crisis, say environmental experts. “The global energy crisis is a wakeup call to stop wasting energy,” said Toby Morgan, senior manager for the built environment at Climate Group, an environmental not-for-profit. “Now, more than ever, we need to make better use of the energy we already produce, we simply can’t afford to let it literally escape out the window. Energy efficiency improvements, like capturing and recycling excess heat, are absolutely critical to lower fossil fuel demand and lower bills.”

A report published this week by the global engineering company Danfoss estimated that in the EU alone, excess heat was equal to 2,860 TWh a year, almost the same as the EU’s total energy demand for heat and hot water.

Surplus heat is released into the air from a wide range of sources, including supermarkets, transport networks, data centres and commercial buildings. Much of this can be captured and used via existing heat recovery technologies, such as heat pumps, plus more efficient air conditioners and manufacturing machinery according to the authors of the report. Other solutions include improved urban planning and district energy systems based on networks of renewable energy supplies for both heating and cooling.

Brian Vad Mathiesen, a professor in energy planning and renewable energy systems at Aalborg University, led the research cited in the report that builds on his team’s previous Heat Roadmap Europe projects. “The amount of cities, regions and countries in Europe which waste heat while spending billions on natural gas or electric heating is mind-blowing,” said Vad Mathiesen, warning that Europe’s energy security was at stake. ...

There was “huge, unharnessed potential” to the excess heat produced by heavy industry, such as chemical manufacturing, steel and cement production. In the EU, that amounts to more than 267 TWh a year, more than the combined heat generation of Germany, Poland and Sweden in 2021.

Parts of US see earliest spring conditions on record: ‘Climate change playing out in real time’

Blooming daffodils in New York City. Leaves sprouting from red maples in North Carolina. Cherry blossoms about to bud in Washington. Record winter warmth across much of the eastern US has caused spring-like conditions to arrive earlier than ever previously recorded in several places, provoking delight over the mild weather and despair over the unfolding climate crisis.

In New York, one of several US cities to experience its warmest January on record, spring conditions have arrived 32 days before the long-term normal, which is its earliest onset of biological spring in 40 years of charting seasonal trends by the National Phenology Network.

Spring activity has, meanwhile, arrived at least 20 days earlier than usual for huge swathes of the US south-east and east, with parts of central Texas, south-east Arkansas, southern Ohio and Maryland, along with New York, all recording their earliest spring conditions on record so far this year. “It’s a little unsettling, it’s certainly something that is out of the bounds of when we’d normally expect spring,” said Teresa Crimmins, director of the National Phenology Network and an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona. “It perhaps isn’t surprising, given the trajectory our planet is on, but it is surprising when you live through it.”

Winter has barely registered for millions of people in the US north-east, with states across the New England region all experiencing their warmest January in the 155-year national record. New York City, which experienced more lightning strikes than snowfall in a balmy month, notched an average temperature 10F higher than the long-term average. The Great Lakes, meanwhile, have had a record-low amount of ice coverage during their usual February peak. ...

The warm winter, and the galloping arrival of spring-like weather, is part of a longer-term trend of milder winters and scrambled seasons due to the heating of the planet caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Crimmins said her network of observers have voiced “surprise, concern and anxiety” over another early spring, which follows a string of similar early onsets over the past decade or so.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Activist Erin Brockovich Leads East Palestine Residents in Town Hall Meeting

More Evidence Emerges That US Wanted Russia to Invade

Norway emerges as key staging ground for US military provocations against Russia

Zelensky Threatened w/ DEATH If He Negotiated With Russia!

U.S. Gives ANOTHER $10 Billion To Ukraine!?!?

Moldova’s President Sandu tightens grip on power, as the country is being drawn into the maelstrom of the NATO-Russia war

Ukraine - Those Guns Unknown To Me

Common Dreams writer figures it out: Ukraine and The Tunnel at the End of the Light

Democrats Praise Bush, Want More Small-Business War Profiteers

U.S. Hegemony - At War With China's Global Security Initiative

‘Strongest snowstorm in years’ leaves Californians delighted and frozen

‘Blind chance’ or plot? Exhumation may help solve puzzle of 1933 Reichstag blaze

Will the Equal Rights Amendment Finally Be Added to the U.S. Constitution 50 Years After It Passed?

A History of California, Capitalism, and the World: Malcolm Harris on New Book “Palo Alto”

Buttigieg HUMILIATED By Ohio Reporters

You Voted Trump! Joy Behar BLAMES Ohioans for Derailment

'They burned everything': Israeli settlers torch Palestinian homes, cars after West Bank attack

MSNBC Buried This HONEST Anti-War Rally Report Exposing Rachel Maddow’s Lies

Book Burning PRAISED When It’s Anti-Russian

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Reed - You've Got Me Dizzy

Jimmy Reed - Bright Lights, Big City

Jimmy Reed - I'm the Man Down There

Jimmy Reed - Tell Me You Love Me

Jimmy Reed - Ain't That Lovin' You

Jimmy Reed - I'll Change My Style

Jimmy Reed - The Sun Is Shining

Jimmy Reed - Too Much

Jimmy Reed – Little Rain

Jimmy Reed - Rockin' With Reed