Posts by Tom Elko

Coal fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power generation, is getting a reputation as a green building material when used to make concrete, but due to toxins it contains, its use in agricultural applications may be cause for concern.

For the dedicated few who have grown tired of the federal courts repeatedly swatting away challenges to President Barack Obama’s citizenship, a familiar foe is rising to fill the conspiratorial void.
Breathless tweets and angry blog posts, sparked by an article on FoxNews.com, call the nation’s attention to the emerging belief that the United Nations will [...]

Van Jones is the enigmatic founder of Green For All and an advocate for a green economy as a solution to poverty, and now he’s President Obama’s choice to become Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Jones appeared at Minnesota’s state capitol on March, 5th for Youth Lobby Day, where he spoke to over 200 “young scholars” advocating for the Minnesota Clean Cars Bill.

Minnesota landowners feared prospectors would come before any wind energy boom and artificially drive up land prices as historically happens with oil and gas development. Over the course of two years laws were passed to protect landowners, repealed to protect wind developers, and work groups were created for the two groups to establish best practices. Now the state Office of Energy Security has issued a report finding absolutely no evidence of prospecting, despite similarities between wind lease rights and oil and gas rights.

Since he’s lost his bid to become the 44th president of the United State of America, Sen. John McCain has taken to twittering top-ten lists about his favorite subject, disgusting Washington, D.C., brand pork, and he’s not letting the facts get in the way. After seven top-ten lists of the “porkiest” earmarks, McCain call out ” $142,500 for the Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota – brought to you by former Cong. James Ramstad.” Unfortunately, nothing in that tweet is true.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) unanimously approved the Certificate of Need for a transmission line project necessary for the construction of the Big Stone II coal-fired power plant in Milbank, South Dakota.

Despite a room full of citizens opposed to the plants construction for environmental concerns, many holding signs and some dressed in animal costumes, the PUC did not deliberate on the coal-fired facility itself or the environmental impacts that it may have, focusing instead on the cost of the project and its implications for utility rate payers.

A years-long battle over a proposed coal plant in South Dakota could come to a close during a Minnesota Public Utility Commission hearing in St. Paul this Thursday. The commission will decide on whether to issue a Certificate of Need for transmission line upgrades in Minnesota required to construct the Big Stone II coal-fired power plant.

If the certificate is denied the project will likely be scrapped entirely. If approved, environmental groups will be left with little recourse against the plant’s construction.

This morning an online advertisement appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s web site heralding, over an image of the Republican presidential candidate before a flag, “McCain wins debate!” This declaration of victory came despite the fact that the debate in question has not yet occurred and at the time of its appearance McCain’s participation was [...]

The Sunlight Foundation has put together a fascinating animated graph that tracks the political donations from the finance, insurance and real estate sectors and to which party the money has gone. Utilizing Google Motion Chart and 20 years worth of data gathered by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the chart seeks to demonstrate how [...]

The Internet threw its collective weight around and led a public rejection of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s proposed $700 billion blank-check Wall Street bailout.  The online petitions, open sources and incendiary snark came fast and furious from all political corners.