Greta Thurnberg's message is getting through.  Most people have children and her message is making it to the homes of loved children.

January 27, 2020

The CMB-designed HydroTug hydrogen-powered tugboat for the Port of Antwerp 

Port of Antwerp (click here) has ordered construction of a tug powered by hydrogen, the first in the world.

Compagnie Maritime Belge (click here) (CMB) announced Monday that it has fully offset the CO2 emissions from all of its shipping operations beginning this year. To achieve net-zero operation, the company has supported certified climate projects in developing countries and acquired voluntary carbon units in Zambia (carbon-reducing agricultural and forest management practices), Guatemala (forest management) and India (wind and solar parks).

Carbon offsets - in particular forest conservation - have attracted scrutiny in recent years over questions of permanence and effectiveness. The difficulties for forest projects include changing political winds (e.g., the rise of pro-deforestation factions in Brazil), enforcement difficulties (illegal logging and land-clearing), accounting challenges (for example, whether a successful forestry outcome would have happened anyways), and "leakage," or the relocation of the unwanted deforestation activity to a different site. 

However, CMB does not intend to rely on offsets for the long term. Rather than aiming for the IMO target of a 50 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, CMB aims to go fully zero-carbon (not just fully-offset) over the same period...

These are global commitments. There is no excuse anymore.

January 24, 2020
By Vanessa Bates Rameriz

The alarming headlines (click here) about Australia’s bush fires over the last couple weeks have heightened the global outcry over climate change, and companies, NGOs, and governments are taking action.

One of the most ambitious targets was set last week by Microsoft. In a press conference on January 16, CEO Satya Nadella announced that not only does the company plan to be carbon negative by 2030, but if it succeeds, the move will effectively cancel out its lifetime CO2 emissions by 2050....

Committing to carbon neutrality has become something of a (laudable, necessary) fad in recent years, with companies like Amazon, Bosch, Nestle, L’Oreal, SAP, Google, and many others reaching carbon neutrality or pledging to reach it in the near future. This means they’re either eliminating their own emissions by, say, switching to 100 percent renewable energy, or they’re buying carbon offsets, which are credits that fund emissions-reduction projects around the world.

It’s not just companies jumping on the carbon-neutral bandwagon; countries and states are too. The UK pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, Hawaii by 2045, and Finland by 2035....

2019-nCOV

China's borders are closed. (click here)

January 27, 2020

Melbourne - Australia confirmed on Monday (click here) its fifth case of a new coronavirus, with health officials saying the case involved a 21-year-old woman who was on the last flight out of the Chinese city of Wuhan to Sydney before China imposed a travel ban.

The coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a wildlife market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, has killed 80 people, all of them in China, and infected more than 2,700, the vast majority in China.

The woman traveled on a direct flight to Sydney from Wuhan and developed symptoms within 24 hours and went to an emergency department, New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant told reporters.

“The patient was immediately put into isolation,” Chant said....

It was a bright sunny, cloudless day in Afghanistan with temperatures in the 20s.

As long as the jet was operating correctly, there was no reason why it crashed, so much as shot down.

January 27, 2020
By Colin Dwyer

A plane crashed Monday (click here) in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province, and within hours, a swarm of conflicting reports had coalesced around the wreckage.

According to a U.S. official, the plane — a U.S. Bombardier E-11A — had two people on board, both of whom died in the crash. The official told NPR that the plane went down because of mechanical problems.

But that's not the only account of the incident.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, told NPR that insurgents with the group shot down the plane and that it had CIA officials on board. Earlier Monday, Mujahid referred to the plane on Twitter as an "enemy intelligence aircraft" and said the bodies of the intelligence officials were still lying near the crash site in the Sado Khelo region of Ghazni....

I honestly don't know why the USA continually invests in advanced weapons, no one else that is an enemy of the USA has them, but, once they are lost to crashes, the then does have enough information to match the battlefield of the USA.

At this point, I think Trump owns the record of losing the USA's most sophisticated and expensive technology. The drone in the Straits of Hormuz and now the jet containing to USA military personnel over Afghanistan. 

To the left is the unmanned variety.

...BACN is essentially a set of airborne (click here) radios and data link terminals that fly on two different aircraft types, but those terminals include SADL—Situational Awareness Data Link—and Link 16. Then for the radios, there’s a UHF as well as SATCOM. Then we also have common data link downlink capability, which is a high bandwidth way to pass information.

The whole BACN system is flown airborne on the E-11 aircraft, and then also on the EQ-4B aircraft. A little more about those aircraft is that the E-11 is a commercial derivative aircraft [BD-700 Global Express] that has been modified. Then the EQ-4B is a version of the Global Hawk.

A high demand, low density asset:

Lt Col Helfrich: We have seven aircraft [four E-11s and three EQ-4Bs] and we’re flying essentially two 24/7 orbits, every day around the clock. Last year alone, we flew 21,000 combat flight hours over 1,500 combat missions and supported about 7,000 combat strikes in theater. That was just last year.

On the E-11 side, first off we have very good maintainers that keep the aircraft up and flying. The BD-700—the E-11s—have been a good platform for us, but we average about eight times as much [flight time] as other non-military BD-700s. It’s been a very good platform, but we’ve definitely pushed it, or we’ve been the fleet leader with the E-11s.

Why is it that the Russians are reporting from the center of the action?

US Senator Romney has been stating he wants to hear from witnesses since the beginning.

He is a moral man. He answers to a higher power than Kelly Loeffler. He did not cross to the left when the first request for witnesses came forward. He did not abandon his party or the facts. The facts as they were presented leaves him thinking the Senate needs to hear from others that love the country as well. He did not follow the US House hearings or votes. He has stated he had work that demands his attention, so he went into the US Senate hearing without ideas or prejudice.

He has stated openly before there was a Senate hearing that he wants to know what John Bolton the former ambassador has to say. He is correct. Former Ambassador Bolton needs to speak to the US Senate. He isn't necessarily my choice as he is a staunch Republican and has always believed in the US military as an answer to many problems that beset the world. But, he was insulted enough by Donald John Trump to resign from his position. He chased people from his office when the conversation leaned into untenable and outside the reach of USA policy. He also sees Rudy Giuliani as a worry.

Putting everything into context, US Senator Romney is correct. The American people need to understand the actions of a man as president that simply doesn't make sense. There are more facts that have surfaced about the Executive Branch with Trump in the Oval Office and it is very troubling. I sincerely hope the US Senate takes this issue seriously and lives up to their oath of office as well as the oath of impeachment.

January 27, 2020
By Clare Foran

Republican Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler (click here) targeted her colleague GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah on Monday over the issue of witnesses at the Senate impeachment trial.

In a tweet, Loeffler leveled an accusation at Romney, saying, "After 2 weeks, it's clear that Democrats have no case for impeachment. Sadly, my colleague @SenatorRomney wants to appease the left by calling witnesses who will slander the @realDonaldTrump during their 15 minutes of fame. The circus is over. It's time to move on!"

Loeffler, a political novice and businesswoman, was sworn in as Georgia's newest senator earlier this month, taking over the seat previously held by then-Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who retired at the end of last year over health concerns.

Her comments about Romney come as a debate over whether there should be witnesses called during the trial has intensified in the wake of a New York Times report that former national security adviser John Bolton's draft manuscript says President Donald Trump told him US security assistance to Ukraine was conditioned on investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden....

The US Constitution needs a champion right about now. Protecting the US Constitution is reliant upon the judgement and decisions of the Democrats. Put it on the line and ask for subpoenas for witnesses. It is about the country, not politics.

January 27, 2020
By Neal K. Katyal, Joshua A. Geltzer and Mickey Edwards

...Yet Republican members of the Senate (click here) have signaled that they intend to uphold Mr. Trump’s unprecedented decision to block all of this material.

But it turns out they don’t get to make that choice — Chief Justice John Roberts does. This isn’t a matter of Democrats needing four “moderate” Republicans to vote for subpoenas and witnesses, as the Trump lawyers have been claiming. Rather, the impeachment rules, like all trial systems, put a large thumb on the scale of issuing subpoenas and place that power within the authority of the judge, in this case the chief justice.

Most critically, it would take a two-thirds vote — not a majority — of the Senate to overrule that. This week, Democrats can and should ask the chief justice to issue subpoenas on his authority so that key witnesses of relevance like John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney appear in the Senate, and the Senate should subpoena all relevant documents as well....

"Morning Papers"

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

January 25, 2020

Donald Trump (click here for video) stands accused of attacking Democrats and the impeachment trial following the initial evidence presented by Rep. Adam Schiff, whom the president called in a tweet, ‘conman Adam Schiff.’ Joy Reid and her panel discuss.

Trump threatens everyone. Before it was "Shifty Schiff," now it's Conman Schiff. Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Jerry Nadler put together a first rate report to the US Senate. They have every reason to be proud in standing up to the USA Constitution. 

If the US Senate is not willing to protect the US Constitution in the same way, they will pay the price at the ballot box. Everyone is disgusted with Trump, except, those on the dole like Guiliani.