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'Green News Report' - July 26, 2016
The Green News Report is also available via...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: At the RNC in Cleveland, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump (and his Veep nominee Mike Pence) promise to roll back environmental standards and bring back dirty coal; PLUS: U.S. walloped by deadly heat wave, as June 2016 breaks yet another new temperature record... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Link Between Armed Conflict And Climate Change Just Got A Bit Stronger; EPA Clears Path To Regulate Carbon Emissions From U.S. Aircraft; Obama Admin. Announces $4.5 Billion In DOE Loan Guarantees For EV Charging; Donald Trump Loses His War Against a Scottish Wind Farm; Out-of-control wildfire grows to more than 33,000 acres in Santa Clarita Valley; New Zealand Announces Plan to Wipe Out Invasive Predators; Tesla Wants To Help You Become Your Own Solar Utility. And Sell Lots Of Self-Driving Cars... PLUS: Vancouver plans to go 100% renewable. I asked the city's manager about the challenges it faces... and much, MUCH more! ...

'Green News Report' is heard on many fine radio stations around the country. For additional info on stories we covered today, plus today's 'Green News Extra', please click right here to listen!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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The Top 10 Solar States & How Utilities Are Fighting Them

"2016-07-21-1469124997-2438869-LightingtheWayReportFB7.png"

With three solar panels installed for every two Nevadans, Nevada now has more solar capacity per person than any other state. But, at the behest of NV Energy, the state also eliminated its net metering program last December, causing a whopping 93 percent decline in rooftop solar applications the following month.

The Silver State's solar schizophrenia, detailed in the latest ranking of state solar capacity by Environment America and Frontier Group, exemplifies a growing trend: the states where solar is booming the most are those where utility interests are attacking it the hardest.

That's why Bret Fanshaw of Environment America, co-author of the study, has said: "The more solar grows, the more big utilities try to stop it. Even in the face of strong public support for pollution-free energy, these special interests are working across the country to undermine the policies that have helped states become solar leaders."

"2016-07-21-1469125035-9360478-LTW4TableES11.png"

The study's top states for solar capacity per capita -- Nevada, Hawaii, California, Arizona, North Carolina, New Jersey, Vermont, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Colorado - have for years held in common pro-clean energy policies, such as strong net metering programs and interconnection standards.

But the inducements for growing numbers of homes, businesses and schools to go solar are increasingly under assault from utilities, who view distributed clean energy generation as a direct threat to their business model.

Last year utilities convinced officials in Hawaii as well as Nevada to eliminate their net metering programs, while earlier this year California's program narrowly withstood a high-profile utility assault.

"As we've seen in many states, California's big utilities proposed to cut net metering credit and add major new fees for customers who want to go solar," Susannah Churchill, West Coast Regional Director for Vote Solar, told reporters on a conference call to release the study. "After careful consideration of both the facts and input from diverse stakeholders, California regulators voted to preserve solar - standing strong for progress, for innovation, and for the public interest."

Other states fared less well. In Arizona, one major utility charged a new fee on new solar customers, depressing rooftop solar power growth in its 1 million-person service area; two other utilities in the state are now pressing to institute similar charges and eliminate their retail net metering programs.

Anti-solar salvos like these come as embattled utilities witness the growing popularity and adoption of the renewable energy resource nationwide. In February solar cleared the milestone of 1 million installations across the country, and is expected to add another million in just two years' time as prices continue to plummet.

Across the country, poll after poll shows overwhelming support for solar energy, while a Gallup poll from this year shows that as concern about global warming rises, Americans want increasing emphasis on alternative energy sources such as solar and wind rather than fossil fuels.

And so, despite utility attacks, many pro-solar policies remain in the 10 leading-edge states, who make up 88 percent of the nation's solar capacity but less than a third of its population. All have renewable energy requirements, for example, and nine have strong laws to allow solar customers to connect to the electricity grid.

But utilities aren't letting up on their quest to erode such policies, nor are they confining them to top solar states. For instance, so far they've succeeded in blocking substantial clean energy progress in Florida, where the potential is vast.

Ultimately, however, in Florida, Nevada, and across the country, we're confident public support will win out.

As Chandler Sherman, Deputy Campaign Manager of Bring Back Solar, the group organized to undo the damage inflicted by big utilities late last year, said, "the people of Nevada overwhelmingly support restoring net metering, so Nevadans once again have the freedom to power our communities with affordable, clean energy."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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World Bank's Updated Safeguards a Missed Opportunity to Raise the Bar for Development Policy
Despite an unprecedented consultative process involving thousands of stakeholders from government, civil society, and the private sector, the review and update of the World Bank safeguard policies has proven to be a missed opportunity for the Bank to reclaim its place as a global leader in development. While the new Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) includes promising new areas of policy coverage, it lacks the strength and clarity that people negatively impacted by development so profoundly depend upon. It is therefore critical that the Bank utilize the upcoming implementation period to address the weaknesses of the new Framework and build on its strengths to ensure that it ultimately leads to a more equitable and sustainable approach to development.

For decades World Bank safeguards have been viewed as the gold standard in development finance. The Bank was the first development finance institution to adopt mandatory safeguard policies to prevent and mitigate environmental and social harms. These policies have served as a model for other institutions and set the bar for development policy generally. With the development landscape undergoing rapid change over the last several years, the safeguards review represented a historic opportunity for the World Bank to once again take the lead among its peer institutions. The outcome of the review, however, is clearly a result of political compromise rather than an effort to set a new paradigm for development policy.

As a whole, the ESF represents a fundamental shift in the way the Bank has approached safeguards for over thirty years. Most concerning, it moves the Bank away from a system of rules-based compliance and toward a system of unprecedented flexibility that favors using a borrower's own laws and policies in lieu of Bank safeguards--despite the widely varying capacity of borrowers to deal with social and environmental impacts of risky development projects. Similarly, the ESF allows for third party financial intermediaries (FIs) to take responsibility for managing social and environmental risk, leading to concerns around the processes through which communities will be able to seek redress for harm. Existing mechanisms for transparency and oversight are also undermined by the pervasive vague language and loopholes in the ESF, which will not even be applied to over one third of the Bank's total portfolio. In some of the most problematic areas of change, the ESF represents a profound weakening of existing protections, putting it at odds with U.S. Congressional mandates as well as President Kim's commitment not to dilute the safeguards.

On certain issues, however, the final ESF represents an improvement over earlier drafts and current policies. A key disclosure requirement that provides communities with crucial information before a project is approved has been added in this draft, bringing the ESF closer to current safeguard standards. The ESF also expands the reach of safeguards into new areas that were previously ignored or underrepresented--including labor, discrimination, stakeholder engagement, and disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. These new requirements will help prevent negative impacts of projects on the most marginalized, including children, persons with disabilities, women, ethnic and religious minorities, and those that identify as LGBT, and to enable those groups traditionally excluded from development to share in its benefits.

These improvements in the ESF are not without their caveats. With regard to labor, for example, the ESF includes provisions related to child labor and forced labor, but lacks reference to core ILO conventions. Language defining disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in earlier drafts has also been removed from the main policy in the latest draft. Bank's clear commitment to prevent negative impacts on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, including children, early in the project cycle is a step in the right direction. However, it is disappointing that the Bank chose at this late stage to move key language defining those groups from the policy to a management-level directive without providing stakeholders a chance to review and comment on such a significant change.

The updated ESF also represents progress toward inclusion of disability in World Bank policy, yet improvements are still necessary to ensure persons with disabilities will share in project benefits. The new ESF shows that the Bank is making progress in considering persons with disabilities in its operations. However, this latest draft does not go far enough to ensure persons with disabilities are fully able to benefit from Bank projects. The term 'inclusion' in the updated ESF should be clearly defined and include persons with disabilities as this is essential to ensuring that barriers to participation in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Bank projects are removed.

Another positive development in the updated ESF is a new policy on Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure, which would require borrowers for the first time to engage with project stakeholders in a much more systematic way than current policies demand. However, many borrowing countries do not have the national systems in place to conduct meaningful, accessible, and safe consultations with impacted communities and project stakeholders. In order for the new policy to allow for effective engagement, the Bank will have to increase its supervisory role, particularly for high and substantial risk projects and for those taking place in countries where communities and civil society may have limited capacity and space to operate.

"2016-07-21-1469111714-1155668-BrusselsSafeguardsProtest.JPG"

Photo caption: Protesters in front of the World Bank office in Brussels (Belgium), September 2014 (Photo credits: Arnaud Ghys)

Other areas in which the ESF clearly does not go far enough include climate change. The updated ESF pales in comparison to the Bank's powerful rhetoric on the immediate need to address this global crisis, and there is a concerning lack of emphasis on potential impacts to the climate resilience of communities and ecosystems. The ESF only requires estimates of greenhouse gas emissions for some projects to the extent 'technically and financially feasible. Combined with the Bank's commitment to increase its climate-focused spending from 21% to 28%, it remains unclear how it plans to mitigate the negative climate impacts caused by the vast remaining portion of its lending.

As it relates to forests and natural habitats, the updated ESF can be characterized as a serious dilution of current policy. The World Bank's existing safeguards on forests and natural habitats have been collapsed into one standard that fails to consider or protect environmental values other than biodiversity, and introduces the possibility of offsets in critical habitats. For the first time in the history of its safeguards, the Bank has given a green light to industrial logging and other projects in protected forests. At the same time, it has stripped away protections and rights from forest communities, leaving them and the forests they depend upon highly vulnerable.

The characterization of the ESF as a missed opportunity is perhaps most emblematic in its treatment of human rights. By referencing human rights only in the "Vision Statement" of the ESF, which includes no operational requirements on either the Bank or borrowers, the Bank is setting itself apart from other development institutions that have already committed to respect human rights in their activities. The Bank's failure to recognize the right of indigenous communities to give their consent to development projects also threatens to increase their vulnerability at a time when their resources and their very lives are increasingly at risk. The ESF does little to strengthen the land rights of people affected by its investments, and despite disastrous failures in its record of displacing people, does not extend adequate protections to those evicted as a result of Bank projects.

While serious concerns remain about the text of this document, the World Bank has the ability to improve the ESF through the development of detailed guidance notes, proper tools, and well-resourced support during the critical implementation process. The disappointingly low bar for the safeguards--"no dilution"--should not be the Bank's benchmark moving forward. Instead, the original ambitious objectives of the review process should guide the implementation period, including enhancing protections for people and the environment, providing inclusive access to development benefits and seeking the participation of communities that stand to be impacted.

Co-authored with Jolie Schwarz, Legislative Affairs Fellow at Bank Information Center

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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A Plastic Smog Is Smothering Our Oceans

Photo credit: Zak Noyle

Every single time I go for a surf or a swim in the ocean in Southern California, I find plastic floating in the sea. I usually grab the plastic bag, wrapper or fragment and stuff it in my wetsuit or swim trunks to remove it from the water. My experience is indicative of the global plastic pollution epidemic. We are simply using too much wasteful plastic and a significant amount is getting into the ocean, where it is harming marine life.

Every year, an estimated 5-13 million tons of plastic enter our oceans. Here in the U.S., about 100 billion plastic bags are used annually. That's around 360 bags a year for each person in this country. Every day, more than 500 million plastic straws are discarded.

For every 167 disposable water bottles the average American uses, only 38 are recycled. Less than 5% of plastic bags are recycled. Recent studies predict that unless action is taken, by 2050, there will be more plastic by weight than fish in our oceans.

Plastic poses a major threat to our marine environment, ecosystems and marine life. It's now being found in seafood that can eventually land on our plates. A major problem with plastic is that it doesn't biodegrade. It photodegrades and breaks into smaller pieces, meaning that virtually every piece of plastic ever produced still exists today in some form. It's estimated that there are over 5.25 trillion particles of plastic spread throughout the oceans, resulting in a plastic smog.

Beach cleanup volunteers frequently cite plastic as one of the main forms of pollution picked up on beaches across coastlines. Unless removed, the plastic debris often ends up in the ocean. Cleaning beaches reduces ocean-bound plastic, raises awareness and provides important data about some of the most commonly littered items. However, beach cleanups alone will not solve the problem.

What can we do to turn the tide of plastic pollution? Over the last decade, many major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York, San Diego and local communities across the country have implemented plastic bag bans or fees to help reduce our plastic footprint. Plastic bag bans are an effective way to decrease plastic bag use by addressing the problem where it starts, with the creation and consumption of plastic. As consumers, if we decline to use plastic bags and instead opt for reusable options, then decreased market demand can change the quantity of plastic generated and ultimately reduce a major source of pollution affecting our oceans and marine ecosystems.

Big plastic companies are aware of this and have poured millions of dollars into fighting against bag bans. For example, in California, while the first state-wide bag ban was signed into law by Governor Brown in 2014, the plastic industry is pushing hard to reverse this sensible law. It's now up to California citizens to vote 'Yes on Prop 67' to support the bag ban in November and reduce plastic pollution, clean up our oceans and beaches and protect marine wildlife.

Reducing our plastic footprint is not just for coastal communities. Since all of our waterways are connected, everyone has a stake in reducing the plastic smog that is choking our ocean. Here are three simple ways to reduce your footprint:

• Bring reusable bags and refuse plastic.
• Carry reusable water bottles. This not only benefits the environment, but also saves money.
• Skip the straw!

The good news is that we can change the current trajectory of marine plastic pollution by supporting sensible policies like Proposition 67 and simply choosing reusable items to reduce our plastic consumption. It's up to us to change the tide and make a positive difference in the health of our ocean, waves and beaches for future generations.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Major Media Get Climate Change Wrong (Again)
In an editorial in Saturday's paper, the Chicago Tribune editorial board said that we still need coal, oil and gas because solving climate change is too complex. Such handwaving doesn't pass the smell test: they haven't done their homework. To be fair, for a paper that once regularly featured a climate denier (Dennis Byrne), the Trib has come around somewhat, especially in their praise for the Paris climate agreement. But they're still miles away from reality.

So too, it appears, are the Atlantic and the Washington Post, which feted climate change deniers in events sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute last week in Cleveland. You know what these types of events are like, lots of mixed drinks and bromides. The Intercept gives the full scoop on such shameless and unethical actions by publications that should be pressing the powerful on climate change, not coddling them.

Last year was the hottest on record and this year looks to top it. Luckily, the Democratic Party platform calls for galvanizing a World War II-like effort to stop climate change. But there are obstacles, beyond even the presidential contest, that could prevent more thoroughgoing action to prevent climate change. One such obstacle, for instance, is the growth of gas infrastructure which would put us on a path toward certain temperature rise and obviate everything else we are trying to do. And this is where journalists should be challenging conventional wisdom about climate change and urging massive deployment of the functional renewable energy we already have, not offering milquetoast paeans to the wonders of technology or the lie that climate science isn't settled.

Joe Romm of Climate Progress has been one of the most insistent scientists arguing this point. He says that we'd be able to nip climate change in the bud if we deployed all the resources we already have. Unlike Bill Gates, he doesn't think that we need an energy miracle that won't even be functional for decades. We need to act now.

So I urge you, for the good of the planet, not to buy the corrupt and lazy work of outlets like the Tribune, Atlantic and Washington Post when it comes to climate change. It is one of the most urgent issues we face today and needs to be addressed as fossil fuels need to be quickly phased out. The time to do so is now.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Scaling Positive Impact - 'ApHRICA' to Revolutionize Understanding of Ocean Acidification

By Matthew Mulrennan

The Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOAON) with approximate locations for 'ApHRICA', a pilot project to deploy ocean pH sensors in South Africa, Mozambique, the Seychelles, and Mauritius for the first time. This project is a public-private partnership to fill in gaps for ocean acidification research in East Africa involving the U.S. Department of State, the Ocean Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, and the XPRIZE Foundation and various research institutions.

This week kicks off a groundbreaking workshop and pilot project to install cutting-edge ocean sensors in Mauritius, Mozambique, the Seychelles and South Africa to study ocean acidification in East Africa for the first time. The project is actually called "OceAn pH Research Integration and Collaboration in Africa - ApHRICA". Workshop speakers include the White House Science Envoy for Ocean, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Dr. Roshan Ramessur at the University of Mauritius, and ocean sensor trainers and scientists Dr. Andrew Dickson of UCSD, Dr. Sam Dupont of University of Gothenburg, and James Beck, CEO of Sunburst Sensors.

ApHRICA has been years in the making, starting with developing ocean pH sensor tools, engaging leading experts, and raising the funds to bring passionate people and new technologies together to take action, and fill much-needed ocean data gaps. Last July, XPRIZE awarded the $2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, a prize competition for developing breakthrough ocean pH sensors to improve understanding of ocean acidification. One year later, the winning team Sunburst Sensors, a small company in Missoula, Montana, is providing their 'iSAMI' ocean pH sensor for this project. The iSAMI was chosen due to its unprecedented affordability, accuracy and ease of use.

James Beck, CEO of Sunburst Sensors states, "Sunburst Sensors is both proud and excited to be working in this effort to expand the monitoring of ocean acidification to nations of Africa and eventually, we hope, around the globe."

James Beck, CEO of Sunburst Sensors with the iSAMI (right) and tSAMI (left), the two winning ocean pH sensors of the $2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE. The iSAMI is an easy-to-use, accurate and affordable ocean pH sensor, which will be deployed in ApHRICA.

The Indian Ocean is an ideal location for this pilot project not only because it has long been a notorious mystery for oceanographers, but long-term monitoring of ocean conditions is also lacking in many regions of East Africa. ApHRICA will strengthen the resiliency of coastal communities, improve oceanographic collaboration in the region, and the data will contribute significantly to the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOAON) to improve understanding and response to ocean acidification.

Mark J. Spalding, President of The Ocean Foundation, is a crucial partner on the project. Spalding says, "community food resources are being threatened by ocean acidification. This workshop is a critical step in increasing coverage for our network to forecast ocean acidification, especially in a place like East Africa that has a strong reliance on marine resources, but currently lacks the capacity to measure the status and progress of ocean acidification in the open ocean, coastal ocean and estuarine areas."

Each day, emissions from cars, planes and power plants add millions of tons of carbon into the ocean. As a result, the ocean's acidity has increased 30% since the Industrial Revolution. The rate of this ocean acidification event is likely unparalleled in Earth's history. The rapid changes in ocean acidity are causing an 'osteoporosis of the sea', increasingly harming marine life like plankton, oysters, and corals that make shells or skeletons from calcium carbonate.

Dr. Roshan Ramessur, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Mauritius, who is coordinating the training workshop believes, "this is an exciting project for us because it will allow us to build capacity in our countries for monitoring and understanding ocean acidification. The new sensors will allow us to contribute to a global network; something we haven't been able to do before. This is groundbreaking because regional capacity to study this problem is foundational for ensuring our food security futures."

We know ocean acidification is a threat to marine biodiversity, coastal communities and the global economy, but we still need vital information about these changes in ocean chemistry including where it's happening, to what extent and its impacts. We need to urgently scale ocean acidification research to more countries and regions around the world from the Coral Triangle to Latin America to the Arctic. The time to act on ocean acidification is now, and ApHRICA will light a spark that makes this invaluable research grow exponentially.

Matthew Mulrennan is the lead of the Ocean Initiative at XPRIZE - a commitment to conduct five ocean XPRIZE competitions, and put us on a path to making the ocean healthy, valued and understood.

Visit XPRIZE at xprize.org; follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+; and get our newsletter to stay informed.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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NASA Cuts Feed!

"2016-07-24-1469380129-4987126-052516Anomaly1.jpg"

I have spent much time in postings discussing the anomalous objects seen on the International Space Station feeds and I think its time to put it into an article so I can stop repeating myself. I have been asked to analyze many such images and video so I want to clarify some information about these feeds before addressing the objects seen on the feeds.

It seems that any article on the feeds from the ISS inevitably start with "NASA Cuts Feed! ..." or something similar. This points out how little people who write such garbage actually know. The feeds are not "CUT" as if they are hiding something. If you are reading this article because the title grabbed you then congratulations. You were the victim of needless sensationalism. Sensationalism with a point for once.

The feeds are transmitted to the ground from the ISS of course. The ISS is moving at over 17000 mph in orbit and the orbit changes slightly with each pass such that the station doesnt go over the same spot with each successive orbit. The ground stations and satellites that relay the signal are occasionally out of range. The coverage network has all kinds of Swiss cheese holes in it where the coverage momentarily drops out or is lost.

Having watched these feeds for two years now almost daily I have come to be able to predict when they will go down based on the known holes in the feeds' groundstation network. I can usually tell where the ISS is roughly located by simply seeing if the feed is UP. Then consulting a sat mapper I can confirm that no it wasnt over Iran but over the Southern Indian Ocean for example. Both locations among others are known 'holes' in the feed.

Here is the point: If NASA were cutting feeds at "critical times" as many articles dramatically claim, then WHY would we EVER see feeds from space that are live? Why would "NASA" ever take that chance? This is a simple "Oh yea...." moment you should be feeling right now. If UFOs were always seen in orbit as a matter of course, then "NASA", if intent on keeping it from us, would NEVER have allowed a live feed that could catch such an activity in the act of happening.

Speaking of NASA, the other very important point that the conspiracy folks like to ignore is that the ISS crew is an INTERNATIONAL crew consisting of Japanese, Russian, and American astronauts. the ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Space Agency) and Roscosmos (Russian Federal space agency) would all have to fully agree to such a coverup. And lets not leave out all the folks in DLR (German Space Agency) and the University of Bonn who are using the High Definition Earth Viewing Experiment (HDEV) data for their purposes. What is perplexing to those of us who remain logical about this is that the Russians are the ones from whom we have always traditionally wished to hide our technology from and a visit from a wayward alien in an UFO would certainly be one of those hidden items.

Further, the feeds are not all managed by NASA. The downlinked feeds are picked up by hundreds of locations around the world and processed or passed on by many people who would ALSO have to be in on the big secret. Jet Propulsion laboratory, JAXA, Roscosmos, and a large international team of monitoring staff watch the feeds all day and all night when they are up. Saying "NASA Cuts the Feed!" is embarrassingly ignorant and short sighted of those who report such. It shows all at once the incredible LACK of knowledge on the part of the reporting organization. I guess we can call it sheer ignorance right?

You can routinely hear Russian controllers talking to Russian crew members on the station The more you look at it the more sinister of a coverup it has to become for the conspiracy for to work. It approaches absolute nonsense at some point. Why hide a secret UFO visiting the ISS? Well if it was a strictly NASA station it would make more sense unlikely as it would be. In such a case the USA would remain in control and in communication with an alien species that no other nation has access to.

But that is NOT the case on the ISS considering its INTERNATIONAL nature... (The "I" in ISS remember) So NOW what is the reason that several countries would hide the technology? If you try to argue that they want it for themselves, it falls completely flat. By default the Russians, Japanese, and Americans would have it... There IS NO OTHER space faring people of substance right now. The Chinese Tiangong station is the equivalent of our 1970s vintage Skylab, and here is no other contender at the moment. We are the only ones with the Russians and Japanese. So what benefit would hiding a UFO visit to the ISS generate? NONE.

I would caution against the urge to play the "world panic" card too because an alien presence on Earth would probably generate peace between warring nations not war or panic. It would be a comfort to most people on Earth to know there was a race that has been visiting us for a long time and now making contact.

It would be CELEBRATED not FEARED.

On the tech side we can easily figure out what we are seeing on the feeds. This includes a number of astronomical objects that are visible in the live video from the ISS. One such object is of course the Moon. The Moon as on Earth shows up day or night. Now night on the ISS is simply being on the backside of the Earth from the Sun. Astronauts are treated to 15 sunrises and sunsets per 24 hour period. An easy test to determine if an object is astronomical in nature or otherwise is to calculate how long it takes to move from place to place and determine which direction it is heading.

One recent sensationalist article that went around the world claimed that an object appeared to be entering the Earth's atmosphere as seen from an ISS feed... And oh yes, "NASA Cuts Feed!" of course. The object was none other than the Moon setting as seen from the ISS and a simple calculation showed the object just happened to be setting at the same rate that the station was moving around the Earth. A remarkable coincidence wouldnt you say?

But it is not just the Moon that can be seen on the feeds. Bright stars and Venus show up plenty of times. On Earth during daylight the Moon is a familiar visible object to most people besides the Sun of course. Keen eyes can spot Venus if you know where to look. On the ISS however, Sun or no Sun, astronomical objects can be seen. There are no Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules in a sky to scatter the blue light from the Sun in a phenomenon called Rayleigh Scattering. This molecular content is the reason we have a blue sky on Earth and the corresponding lack of molecular content on orbit is the reason that the "sky" that the astronauts see is always black.

Lets look at an example that is related to one that I analyzed for this upcoming season of NASA's Unexplained Files. It was called out as an anomaly near the station in the sky seen around the ISS and of course the notion that the "feed was cut" was trotted out because that adds drama. But here is that image:

"2016-07-24-1469383102-1165710-SecondAnomaly.jpg"

Looks interesting doesnt it? But, to borrow their own conspiratorial language, what you DIDNT get to see and what the authors of the many articles didnt want you to know was that moments later the image looked like THIS:

"2016-07-24-1469383344-6186181-20160526Anomaly22explalined.png"

Here we can clearly see that it is just an artifact from the bright rising Sun hitting the clear camera cover on the UStream Live ISS feed. You can see many other artifacts as well and this is due to particles that are floating around in space that adhere to the window or due to micrometeorite strikes that pit the glass covering the cameras. So read the articles if you must, provide click income to the purveyors if you want, but see these artifacts for yourself and watch them come and go like clockwork with every rise and set of the Sun as seen from the ISS.

You can follow the ISS via http://www.isstracker.com/ or UStream's live ISS view or looking up the live feeds for the High Definition Experiment (HDEV) ... Be informed!

See you next time!

"2016-07-24-1469385643-1702294-HuffPostEndPageIMG02.jpg"

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