Politics in the Zeros

The Trump Administration now appears determined to prosecute Julian Assange. I would not be surprised if Edward Snowden somehow gets returned to the U.S. Assange and Snowden have served their purpose. Neither Trump nor Russia has little further use for them, and loose cannons can do damage if allowed to freely roll around.

John Schindler finds it significant that Assange helped Snowden get to Moscow in 2013, and further believes the whole deal was stage-managed by Moscow. This does not necessarily mean Snowden knew he was being manipulated. Assange, on the other hand is and always has been a snake.

If you are looking for clear and obvious good guys in this, well, it’s not a cowboy film where heroes can be identified by their white hats. It’s a John Le Carre novel, a murky wilderness of mirrors where little can be taken at face value. However, all roads here do lead to Trump / Russia collusion both on the election and financial deals that don’t want made public.

Trump Co. was deeply connected to Wikileaks, even as they try to distance themselves from it now.

Several members of Team Trump may now be facing FBI questions about their dealings with WikiLeaks, especially Roger Stone, the longtime Trump associate and self-described dirty trickster who repeatedly boasted of his relationship with Assange, including admissions that he had foreknowledge of WikiLeaks email dumps that were damaging to the Clinton campaign and Democrats. Collusion with shady political operatives is one thing, while collusion with hostile foreign intelligence services is quite another, legally speaking. Anybody who’s been playing footsie with Assange and his “privacy organization” to influence American politics with help from the Kremlin, should expect a visit by Federal investigators sometime soon.

This is crucial. Much of the intel being used to investigate Trump / Russia ties came from Brit / European IC.

Thanks to Snowden and his battalions of cultish supporters in their echo chambers in all corners of the globe, any findings from the NSA-led Western intelligence alliance are automatically suspect. This has proved very useful to Vladimir Putin, since the lion’s share of evidence establishing collusion between his government and Team Trump comes from Western SIGINT. We now know that several Western spy services, including NSA, possess damning evidence of clandestine links in 2016 and before between Team Trump and Russian spies.

Vestas V164 offshore wind turbines

The biggest offshore wind turbines now produce 8 MW, enough for roughly 48,000 US homes, and are over 700 feet tall. They will soon be dwarfed by much bigger turbines capable of producing 15 MW, maybe much more. The economies of scale in such behemoths means big wind will be completely competitive with any power source. They will no longer need subsidies or tax credits.

Just one giant 15-megawatt turbine would produce power more cheaply than five 3-megawatt machines, or even two with an 8-megawatt capacity. That’s because bigger turbines can produce the same power from a fewer number of foundations and less complex grid connections. The wind farm’s layout can be made more efficient, and fewer machines means less maintenance.

The scale of the turbines may not even stop at 15 megawatts. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp. is working on components for a possible 50-megawatt turbine that would have blades 100 meters long — each stretching further than two soccer fields.

Photo by ActiveSteve

Enough water will be released from Lake Powell into Lake Mead this year to prevent a shortage that would have triggered mandatory cutbacks in water amounts for Nevada and Arizona. 9 million acre-feet will flow from Powell to Mead. This is above the annual average on 8.7 million acre-feet but less than originally hoped for due a dry March.

Still, this is hugely good news, even if the rationing could still happen a few years in the future. A bullet has been dodged.

A shortage would trigger cuts in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada, the first states to be hit under the multi-state agreements and rules governing the Colorado River. That had been expected as soon as next year.

“It’s pushed that shortage likelihood out into the future,” Duke said, but it’s too early to say how far

Lake Mead will now end this water year 5, maybe 7 feet higher than last year.