9.1 There's No Tomorrow
9.2 Pollution is a crises for public health
9.3 Fewer Than 10 Environment Reporters Left at Top 5 U.S. Papers
9.4 Wolf killings are based on the most cynical of premises
9.5 FMCG companies woo ragpickers to clean up sachets & lighter plastic packaging
9.6 How dangerous is bisphenol A?
9.7 The second fastest loss of groundwater storage loss after India.
9.8 The Air That Kills in India
9.9 Crop yields threatened by decline in wild bee populations
9.10 In China, public anger over secrecy on environment
9.11 Plastic only fantastic if it can be re-used
9.12 Sparrows / unleaded petrol ??
9.13 British butterflies suffer devastating year after 2012's wet summer
9.14 Neonicotinoid pesticides 'damage brain of bees'
9.15 Solving our Garbage Problem
9.16 Freezing weather brings fresh perils for British wildlife
9.17 Half of U.S. Rivers Too Sick for Fish to Live in
9.18 Children are tomorrow's custodian of nature
9.19 Swiss govt warning on cordless devices, WIFI
9.20 Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs
9.21 Time to put garbage on the table
9.22 Millions march against GM crops
9.23 Industry, fires and poachers shrink Sumatran tigers' last stronghold
9.24 Ecological Economics
9.25 Rewilding
9.26 Small Dams On Chinese River Harm Environment More Than Expected
9.27 Flying doctors
9.28 Calif. utility to retire troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant
9.29 GM crops
9.30 Genetically-modified Eggplant Found to be Unsafe for Human Consumption
9.31 Butterfly decline signals trouble in environment
9.32 'Nonsensical' claims about the benefits of GM technology
9.33 The biggest risk to the environment?
9.34 UK water companies are polluting Britain's rivers and beaches
9.35 Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking
9.36 Neonicotinoids are the new DDT killing the natural world
9.37 A texan tragedy: ample oil, not water
9.38 Something to be proud of?
9.39 The $100 billion promise
9.40 Clueless and careless about the environment
9.41 Dealing with emergencies
9.42 Incineration vs recycling
9.43 Molten fuel may be underground beneath Fukushima reactor building
9.44
9.45 In Fragmented Forests, Rapid Mammal Extinction
9.46 Emerging Contaminants
9.47 Britain's lost rivers resurrected and freed to go with the flow
9.48 When industry leads development, people and the environment suffer
9.49 Top climate scientists seek support for Nuclear Power
9.50 Greens dispute climate scientists on nuclear power
9.51 Too Hot to Touch
9.52 Entire economy depends on healthy environment
--------
9.1 There's No Tomorrow (4/1/2013)
There's No Tomorrow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
On New Year’s Day, I received an email with an attached video entitled “There’s No Tomorrow.” It’s about a half-hour long and explains how our planet is being exploited by the rich and powerful with assistance from governments around the world.
It also illustrates how this exploitation will be complete around the middle of this century when the vast majority of carbon-based resources will have been depleted. At that point, the world’s population is expected to be around 9 billion and life on Earth will be an utter nightmare.
http://www.thestar.com/
9.2 Pollution is a crisis of public health (15/1/2013)
Public transportation and bicycles are the only way for China to deal with the air pollution in cities, says an article of Beijing News Daily. Excerpts:
Treating air pollution takes time, but protecting the public's health is an urgent and real problem. The level of airborne pollutant particles with diameters smaller than 2.5 millimeters, known as PM2.5, has broken historical records in many cities in Middle and East China, causing serious air pollution that is forecasted to last for a number of days because of the lack of wind and cold weather.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
------------------------------
In Trivandrum, we have the problem of pollution from not only from transport vehicles but also from garbage being burnt all over the city (the garbage is not sorted out, so there is every possibility of lethal heavy metals like mercury and lead going up in the air- plastic is being burnt routinely). My fear is that the corporation may completely back away from garbage disposal activities, as allowing burning of garbage will be more economical for them.
Selvaraj
9.3 Fewer Than 10 Environmental Reporters Left at Top 5 U.S. Papers (17/1/2013)
Once the Times' environmental desk is dismantled, the nation's top five newspapers by readership—the Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal—will have fewer than 10 reporters and a handful of editors among them whose primary responsibility is to cover the environment.
.. Josh Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, a project of Harvard University that is exploring the future of journalism in the Internet age, said he believes there are "real benefits" to integrating environmental coverage into the entire newsroom, as the New York Times plans to do.
"Asking the entire newsroom to do more could help push environmental coverage to the forefront" and result in more stories from more reporters, Benton said.
Still, several people interviewed questioned how environmental stories will make it into the New York Times without a designated editor to champion them—and how, without a designated editor monitoring the coverage, the Times' leaders will even know if its coverage has slipped.
Last week Baquet told InsideClimate News that he'll be responsible for seeing that the Times' coverage remains as strong as it was before the desk was dismantled. When asked this week how he intends to do that, Baquet said he'll make sure section editors across the paper make the environment a top priority, but provided no details beyond that.
http://insideclimatenews.org/
9.4 Wolf killings are based on the most cynical of premises (18/1/2013)
The reason, ostensibly, is to protect the woodland caribou, a subspecies of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus caribou), whose numbers have been diminishing rapidly. This, according to the Alberta Caribou Committee, is because wolves have been killing them.
So what is this Alberta Caribou Committee? As you might expect, it represents all the usual environmental organisations, such as, er, PetroCanada, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Koch Petroleum, TransCanada Pipelines, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries and the pulp company Daishowa Marubeni.
Between them they have decided - and apparently convinced both the provincial and federal governments - that the problem afflicting the province's caribou is not the fragmentation of their habitat by seismic lines, pipelines, roads, oil platforms, timber cutting and the transformation of pristine forest into wasteland by tar sands operations, but the natural predator with which the species has lived for thousands of years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
9.5 FMCG companies woo ragpickers to clean up sachets & lighter plastic packaging (22/1/2013)
In the past, ragpickers have helped clean the city of bottles and cans as they get value for it, but largely ignored sachets and lighter plastic packaging that don't fetch any money. But these are big sources of pollution. For example, 2,100 crore worth of shampoo sachets are consumed every year. That figure stood at only 630 crore a decade ago.
http://economictimes.
MUMBAI: With the growth in consumption, plastic production in India is likely to grow by 60 per cent to touch 12.75 million tonne by 2012, according to a industry body. "Plastic is an integral part of our life and its consumption is growing every year. We are expecting the production to grow by 60 per cent in line with the consumption which will be around 12.75 million tonne by FY 12," All India Plastics Manufacturers' Association (AIPMA) President Yogesh Shah told reporters here.
http://articles.economictimes.
-------------------
@ Rs 50 / Kg of plastic, we are talking of a Rs 65000 crore industry! How much of this is flimsy plastic that floats around?
Let's hope the Confederation of Indian Industries can come up with a good business plan to recycle waste and make India clean (with active participation of households and municipalities).
Selvaraj
9.6 How dangerous is bisphenol A? (11/2/2013)
It's been banned in baby bottles since 2011, but is still allowed in food containers, despite links to deformities. Sweden's environment minister now wants a total ban on bisphenol A.
... BPA was developed in the 1930s, as scientists were looking for synthetic materials that could mimic the action of the female sex hormone estrogen. Soon it became apparent, however, that the estrogenic effects of BPA were relatively weak for therapeutic applications and other pharmaceuticals were better suited.
But BPA found an alternative use in the chemical industry as a basis for plastics and resins. Manufacturers appreciate its versatility, robustness, good electrical insulating properties and low flammability.
http://www.dw.de/how-
9.7 The second fastest loss of groundwater storage after India (13/2/2013)
Researchers found freshwater reserves in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of its total stored freshwater, the second fastest loss of groundwater storage loss after India.
9.8 The Air That Kills in India (14/2/2013)
-----------------------
Unsorted garbage being burnt - plastic, fluorescent tubes
containing mercury and whatnot.
9.9 Crop yields threatened by decline in wild bee populations (4/3/2013)
9.10 In China, public anger over secrecy on environment (10/3/2013)
And just last month, the government acknowledged for the first time that pollution had given rise to "cancer villages", admitting that cancer rates in villages near factories and polluted rivers were far higher than they should be.
9.11 Plasic only fantastic if it can be re-used (11/3/2013)
9.12 Sparrows / unleaded petrol ?? (20/3/2013)
Sparrow fans in the state now feel that it would be wiser to conserve the little birds in suburb, agricultural and hill landscapes, where it is still seen in large numbers. One of the major reasons that led to this conclusion is the widespread degradation of the environment in the urban areas. In the list of villains that made life and environment miserable for the house sparrows in the city, the least expected was unleaded petrol. “Components in the unleaded petrol, especially methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), affects the abundance and availability of insects for feeding the young chicks,’’ said Mani Chellappan, officer-in-charge of the All-India Network Project on Agricultural Ornithology, based in Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur. House sparrow chicks are raised entirely on insects and to keep a brood of 3-6 chicks requires frequent trips by parents and this demands abundance and availability of insects, close to the nest.
9.13 British butterflies suffer devastating year after 2012's wet summer (26/3/2013)
Thirteen species experienced their worst year since the scientific monitoring of butterflies began in 1976 with thousands of volunteers counting a record-low abundance of butterflies. With centuries of more anecdotal records showing there were far greater numbers of butterflies in the decades before the 1970s, scientists believe it is possible that there have never been fewer butterflies in Britain since it was first inhabited by humans.
9.14 Neonicotinoid pesticdes 'damage brain of bees' (28/3/2013)
9.15 Solving our Garbage Problem (29/3/2013)
Dear All,
9.16 Freezing weather brings fresh perils for British wildlife (31/3/2013)
9.17 Half of U.S. Rivers Too Sick for Fish to Live in (7/4/2013)
9.18 Children are tomorrow's custodian of nature (15/4/2013)
9.19 Swiss govt warning on cordless devices, WIFI (21/4/2013)
Subject: Turn Off Your WIFI & Cordless Phone When Not In Use
Swiss govt warning on cordless devices, WIFI
Listen to the Swiss govt warning its citizens concerning cordless devices (Including your hand-phone and baby monitor) PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO CLIP.
Please listen to what the Swiss govt is warning
its citizens concerning cordless devicesMaybe we should all get back to wired products...The cordless phone at home sends out the same kind of microwave frequency like wi-fi. Watch this video then you will understand. Kindly click on the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
9.20 Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs (2/5//2013)
9.21 Time to put garbage on the table (19/5//2013)
9.22 Millions march against GM crops (26/5/2013)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
9.23 Industry, fires and poachers shrink Sumatran tigers' last stronghold (26/5/2013)
From the comments section:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
9.24 Ecological Economics (29/5/2013)
The authors, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) and commissioned by the Club of Rome, developed a computer model demonstrating how economic growth was leading to natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Two of the computer scenarios, including a “business as usual” scenario and a dramatic technological progress scenario, predicted a disastrous collapse of the economy during the 21st century. The third scenario was essentially the steady state economy and assumed concerted efforts to stabilize the system. The book and its authors suffered a politically debilitating attack in the decades following its publication. At first, economists in academia chipped away at details, but soon pro-growth, free-market organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute piled on with an overarching accusation of “pessimism.” Such criticism was similar to the 19th-century criticism of Malthus’s Essay on Population and is hard to read without countering: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Perhaps Meadows and her colleagues weren’t spot-on with every detail, but the principles they laid out were undeniable and the scenarios were rigorously constructed. Decades later analysts are documenting how prescient the authors of Limits to Growth were, especially with the business as usual scenario.
... Meanwhile, expecting the market to maintain our supplies is like expecting the political arena to maintain our ethics, the library to maintain our ideas or the sewage plant to maintain our intestinal tracts. Each of these pairings represents a relationship between two variables, but in no case is the relationship straightforward or dependable, much less positively reinforcing. Thus it is with market prices and supplies. The bottom line is that markets are all about the consumption of resources. No matter how efficiently they allocate resources today, bigger markets mean more consumption and less resources tomorrow.
Now we turn to the distribution of wealth. Many neoclassical economists view the distribution of wealth as a final stage or special case of allocation and therefore “covered” by the market. Others think of distribution as a matter for politics, ethics or religion and not even within the purview of economics. Ecological economists, on the other hand, emphasize that an equitable distribution of wealth is necessary for the long-term economic security of rich and poor alike, and is therefore a central issue for economic study and policy. In fact, distribution of wealth generally takes a higher priority than allocation in ecological economics.
.. Don’t worry, this book is not about to turn into a Luddite manifesto for turning back the clock to caveman days. But it’s worth thinking about human nature, the deeply rooted, promising aspects of human nature with economic growth at the crossroads. We know that people the world over have cultural, tribal roots and urges, exposed most obviously in outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing and camping. Is there something deeper? Surely there is, especially traits, behaviors and attitudes that would have contributed to individual and tribal survival. We should at least attempt to identify some of the ways human evolution has affected our economic behavior today, rather than settling for a model that makes us look like pigs at a trough...
http://www.countercurrents.
9.25 Rewilding (30/5/2013)
Could the destruction of the natural world be reversed? Could our bare hills once more support a rich and thriving ecosystem, containing wolves, lynx, moose, bison, wolverines and boar? Does our wildlife still bear the marks of the great beasts that once roamed here? George Monbiot narrates an animation on the enchanting subject of rewilding.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
9.26 Small Dams On Chinese River Harm Environment More Than Expected (30/5/2013)
A fresh look at the environmental impacts of dams on an ecologically diverse and partially protected river in China found that small dams can pose a greater threat to ecosystems and natural landscapes than large dams. Although large dams are generally considered more harmful than their smaller counterparts, the research team's surveys of habitat loss and damage at several dam sites on the Nu River and its tributaries in Yunnan Province revealed that, watt-for-watt, the environmental harm from small dams was often greater -- sometimes by several orders of magnitude -- than from large dams.
9.27 Flying doctors (2/6/2013)
9.28 Calif. utility to retire troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant (8/6/2013)
The plant between San Diego and Los Angeles hasn't produced electricity since January 2012, after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusual damage to hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.
9.29 GM crops (12/6/2013)
9.30 Genetically-modified Eggplant Found to be Unsafe fro Human Consumption (22/6/2013)
Field trials of genetically-modified (GM) Bt eggplant, also known as Bt talong, have officially ceased in the Philippines following a major ruling by the nation’s Court of Appeals. Representing a massive victory for food sovereignty, the Court found that Bt talong is a monumental threat to both environmental and human health, and has subsequently ordered that all existing plantings of Bt talong in test fields be immediately destroyed and blocked from further propagation.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
9.31 Butterfly decline signals trouble in environment (2/7/2013)
A reader writes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
9.32 "Nonsensical" claims about the benefits of GM technology (4/7/2013)
9.33 The biggest risk to the environment (8/7/2013)
Beyond contamination and pollution, poor environmental stewardship has led to the disappearance of over 28,000 rivers! Those few rivers that do remain are so polluted that activist entrepreneurs have offered huge rewards to senior political officials willing to swim in the river for 20 minutes — an attempt to draw attention to environmental problems rarely discussed. ... http://www.policymic.com/
------------------------------
9.34 UK water companies are polluting Britain's rivers and beaches (4/8/2013)
9.35 Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking (6/8/2013)
9.36 Neonicotinoids are the new DDT killing the natural world (6/8/2013)
9.37 A Texan tragedy: ample oil, not water (12/8/2013)
9.38 Something to be proud of? (13/8/2013)
9.39 The $100 billion promise (18/8/2013)
9.40 Clueless and careless about the environment (21/8/2013)
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/
9.41 Dealing with emergencies (28/8/2013)
More than two years after the March 2011 nuclear disaster,Tokyo Electric’s recovery effort has taken a turn for the worse. Japan’s nuclear regulator last week questioned the company’s ability to deal with the crisis, echoing comments earlier in the month by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
9.42 Incineration vs recycling (30/8/2013)
"It is in many cases more expensive to collect and sort out waste for material recycling than just to collect it as residual waste and send it to energy recovery," she wrote in an email. "Some municipalities introduce only cost-effective waste solutions, while other municipalities have strong political will to introduce environmental measures and collect more waste for recycling."
9.43 Molten fuel may be underground beneath Fukushima reactor buildings (5/9/2013)
This URL paints the worst case situation:
9.44
9.45 In Fragmented Forests, Rapid Mammal Extinction (27/9/2013)
In 1987, the government of Thailand launched a huge, unplanned experiment. They built a dam across the Khlong Saeng river, creating a 60-square-mile reservoir. As the Chiew Larn reservoir rose, it drowned the river valley, transforming 150 forested hilltops into islands, each with its own isolated menagerie of wildlife.
Conservation biologists have long known that fragmenting wilderness can put species at risk of extinction. But it’s been hard to gauge how long it takes for those species to disappear. Chiew Larn has given biologists the opportunity to measure the speed of mammal extinctions. “It’s a rare thing to come by in ecological studies,” said Luke Gibson, a biologist at the National University of Singapore.
Over two decades, Dr. Gibson and his colleagues have tracked the diversity of mammals on the islands. In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, they report that the extinctions have turned out to be distressingly fast.
“Our results should be a warning,” said Dr. Gibson. “This is the trend that the world is going in.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/
9.46 Emerging Contaminants (7/10/2013)
9.47 Britain's lost rivers resurrected and freed to go with the flow (13/10/2013)
9.48 When industry leads development, people and the environment suffer (26/10/2013)
It’s like the US and oil… or the US and weapons… or the US and pharmaceuticals. Those that blame the US for all the world’s ills need only look to the power industry wields over government – a system that is being replicated throughout the world.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/
9.49 Top climate scientists seek support for Nuclear Power (4/11/2013)
We have been pursuing nuclear power almost since the creation of our country. The Department of Atomic Energy was established on 3rd August 1948 – just short of completing a year of independence. Our estimations of nuclear energy production in the 1960s was for 8000MW by the year 1987. It is now 2012 and we have just over half of that capacity (incidentally from little resisted plants compared with what lies in our future). However, our optimistic projections continue unabated, and these are at the root of a lot of propaganda related with the “necessity” of nuclear energy. The projections of 20,000MW by 2020 and 207,000MW to 275,000MV by 2052 are extremely unlikely to be achieved considering our track record so far, and the growing resistance to nuclear energy. The kicker here is that even if by some remote chance we did manage to pull this one off, it would constitute 8-10% of projected electricity capacity in 2020 and about 20% in 2052 – not even remotely the energy savior of the country it is projected as. - See more at: http://www.dianuke.org/
9.50 Greens dispute climate scientists on nuclear power (6/11/2013)
9.51 Too Hot to Touch (9/11/2013)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <alice_friedemann@yahoo.com>
Date: 9 November 2013 02:11
Subject: [RunningOnEmpty2] Book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste”
To: RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.
9.52 Greens dispute climate scientists on nuclear power (6/11/2013)
9.2 Pollution is a crises for public health
9.3 Fewer Than 10 Environment Reporters Left at Top 5 U.S. Papers
9.4 Wolf killings are based on the most cynical of premises
9.5 FMCG companies woo ragpickers to clean up sachets & lighter plastic packaging
9.6 How dangerous is bisphenol A?
9.7 The second fastest loss of groundwater storage loss after India.
9.8 The Air That Kills in India
9.9 Crop yields threatened by decline in wild bee populations
9.10 In China, public anger over secrecy on environment
9.11 Plastic only fantastic if it can be re-used
9.12 Sparrows / unleaded petrol ??
9.13 British butterflies suffer devastating year after 2012's wet summer
9.14 Neonicotinoid pesticides 'damage brain of bees'
9.15 Solving our Garbage Problem
9.16 Freezing weather brings fresh perils for British wildlife
9.17 Half of U.S. Rivers Too Sick for Fish to Live in
9.18 Children are tomorrow's custodian of nature
9.19 Swiss govt warning on cordless devices, WIFI
9.20 Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs
9.21 Time to put garbage on the table
9.22 Millions march against GM crops
9.23 Industry, fires and poachers shrink Sumatran tigers' last stronghold
9.24 Ecological Economics
9.25 Rewilding
9.26 Small Dams On Chinese River Harm Environment More Than Expected
9.27 Flying doctors
9.28 Calif. utility to retire troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant
9.29 GM crops
9.30 Genetically-modified Eggplant Found to be Unsafe for Human Consumption
9.31 Butterfly decline signals trouble in environment
9.32 'Nonsensical' claims about the benefits of GM technology
9.33 The biggest risk to the environment?
9.34 UK water companies are polluting Britain's rivers and beaches
9.35 Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking
9.36 Neonicotinoids are the new DDT killing the natural world
9.37 A texan tragedy: ample oil, not water
9.38 Something to be proud of?
9.39 The $100 billion promise
9.40 Clueless and careless about the environment
9.41 Dealing with emergencies
9.42 Incineration vs recycling
9.43 Molten fuel may be underground beneath Fukushima reactor building
9.44
9.45 In Fragmented Forests, Rapid Mammal Extinction
9.46 Emerging Contaminants
9.47 Britain's lost rivers resurrected and freed to go with the flow
9.48 When industry leads development, people and the environment suffer
9.49 Top climate scientists seek support for Nuclear Power
9.50 Greens dispute climate scientists on nuclear power
9.51 Too Hot to Touch
9.52 Entire economy depends on healthy environment
--------
9.1 There's No Tomorrow (4/1/2013)
There's No Tomorrow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
On New Year’s Day, I received an email with an attached video entitled “There’s No Tomorrow.” It’s about a half-hour long and explains how our planet is being exploited by the rich and powerful with assistance from governments around the world.
It also illustrates how this exploitation will be complete around the middle of this century when the vast majority of carbon-based resources will have been depleted. At that point, the world’s population is expected to be around 9 billion and life on Earth will be an utter nightmare.
http://www.thestar.com/
9.2 Pollution is a crisis of public health (15/1/2013)
Public transportation and bicycles are the only way for China to deal with the air pollution in cities, says an article of Beijing News Daily. Excerpts:
Treating air pollution takes time, but protecting the public's health is an urgent and real problem. The level of airborne pollutant particles with diameters smaller than 2.5 millimeters, known as PM2.5, has broken historical records in many cities in Middle and East China, causing serious air pollution that is forecasted to last for a number of days because of the lack of wind and cold weather.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
------------------------------
In Trivandrum, we have the problem of pollution from not only from transport vehicles but also from garbage being burnt all over the city (the garbage is not sorted out, so there is every possibility of lethal heavy metals like mercury and lead going up in the air- plastic is being burnt routinely). My fear is that the corporation may completely back away from garbage disposal activities, as allowing burning of garbage will be more economical for them.
Selvaraj
9.3 Fewer Than 10 Environmental Reporters Left at Top 5 U.S. Papers (17/1/2013)
Once the Times' environmental desk is dismantled, the nation's top five newspapers by readership—the Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal—will have fewer than 10 reporters and a handful of editors among them whose primary responsibility is to cover the environment.
.. Josh Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, a project of Harvard University that is exploring the future of journalism in the Internet age, said he believes there are "real benefits" to integrating environmental coverage into the entire newsroom, as the New York Times plans to do.
"Asking the entire newsroom to do more could help push environmental coverage to the forefront" and result in more stories from more reporters, Benton said.
Still, several people interviewed questioned how environmental stories will make it into the New York Times without a designated editor to champion them—and how, without a designated editor monitoring the coverage, the Times' leaders will even know if its coverage has slipped.
Last week Baquet told InsideClimate News that he'll be responsible for seeing that the Times' coverage remains as strong as it was before the desk was dismantled. When asked this week how he intends to do that, Baquet said he'll make sure section editors across the paper make the environment a top priority, but provided no details beyond that.
http://insideclimatenews.org/
9.4 Wolf killings are based on the most cynical of premises (18/1/2013)
The reason, ostensibly, is to protect the woodland caribou, a subspecies of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus caribou), whose numbers have been diminishing rapidly. This, according to the Alberta Caribou Committee, is because wolves have been killing them.
So what is this Alberta Caribou Committee? As you might expect, it represents all the usual environmental organisations, such as, er, PetroCanada, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Koch Petroleum, TransCanada Pipelines, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries and the pulp company Daishowa Marubeni.
Between them they have decided - and apparently convinced both the provincial and federal governments - that the problem afflicting the province's caribou is not the fragmentation of their habitat by seismic lines, pipelines, roads, oil platforms, timber cutting and the transformation of pristine forest into wasteland by tar sands operations, but the natural predator with which the species has lived for thousands of years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
9.5 FMCG companies woo ragpickers to clean up sachets & lighter plastic packaging (22/1/2013)
In the past, ragpickers have helped clean the city of bottles and cans as they get value for it, but largely ignored sachets and lighter plastic packaging that don't fetch any money. But these are big sources of pollution. For example, 2,100 crore worth of shampoo sachets are consumed every year. That figure stood at only 630 crore a decade ago.
http://economictimes.
MUMBAI: With the growth in consumption, plastic production in India is likely to grow by 60 per cent to touch 12.75 million tonne by 2012, according to a industry body. "Plastic is an integral part of our life and its consumption is growing every year. We are expecting the production to grow by 60 per cent in line with the consumption which will be around 12.75 million tonne by FY 12," All India Plastics Manufacturers' Association (AIPMA) President Yogesh Shah told reporters here.
http://articles.economictimes.
-------------------
@ Rs 50 / Kg of plastic, we are talking of a Rs 65000 crore industry! How much of this is flimsy plastic that floats around?
Let's hope the Confederation of Indian Industries can come up with a good business plan to recycle waste and make India clean (with active participation of households and municipalities).
Selvaraj
9.6 How dangerous is bisphenol A? (11/2/2013)
It's been banned in baby bottles since 2011, but is still allowed in food containers, despite links to deformities. Sweden's environment minister now wants a total ban on bisphenol A.
... BPA was developed in the 1930s, as scientists were looking for synthetic materials that could mimic the action of the female sex hormone estrogen. Soon it became apparent, however, that the estrogenic effects of BPA were relatively weak for therapeutic applications and other pharmaceuticals were better suited.
But BPA found an alternative use in the chemical industry as a basis for plastics and resins. Manufacturers appreciate its versatility, robustness, good electrical insulating properties and low flammability.
http://www.dw.de/how-
9.7 The second fastest loss of groundwater storage after India (13/2/2013)
Researchers found freshwater reserves in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of its total stored freshwater, the second fastest loss of groundwater storage loss after India.
... Turkey
controls the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, as well as the reservoirs
and infrastructure of Turkey's Greater Anatolia Project, which dictates
how much water flows downstream into Syria and Iraq, the researchers
said. With no coordinated water management between the three countries,
tensions have intensified since the 2007 drought because Turkey
continues to divert water to irrigate farmland.
"That
decline in stream flow put a lot of pressure on northern Iraq," Kate
Voss, lead author of the study and a water policy fellow with the
University of California's Center for Hydrological Modeling in Irvine,
said. "Both the UN and anecdotal reports from area residents note that
once stream flow declined, this northern region of Iraq had to switch to
groundwater. In an already fragile social, economic and political
environment, this did not help the situation."http://abcnews.go.
9.8 The Air That Kills in India (14/2/2013)
The thick haze of outdoor air pollution common in India today is the nation’s fifth-largest killer, after high blood pressure, indoor air pollution (mainly from cookfires), smoking and poor nutrition, according to a new analysis presented in New Delhi by the Boston-based Health Effects Institute. In 2010, outdoor air pollution contributed to over 620,000 premature deaths in India, up from 100,000 in 2000.
‘’It’s not just breathing bad air,’’ said Aaron Cohen, the principal epidemiologist at the institute. “A host of diseases is related to air pollution, such as cardiovascular diseases that lead to heart attacks and strokes, respiratory infections and lung cancer.”
http://green.blogs.nytimes.-----------------------
Unsorted garbage being burnt - plastic, fluorescent tubes
containing mercury and whatnot.
In
Trivandrum we have our own brand of this problem, with garbage disposal
in disarray and a frenzy of garbage burning going on without any
attempt to segregate the garbage. The government and the public are
equally unaware of the consequences. A scene from the front of my house
which adjoins
the Government Higher Secondary School for Girls, Mathrubhumi Road,
Vanchioor (where children from poorer families study). The school
authorities have sent a number of representations, as the fumes and the
stench make it difficult on the teachers and the students; the
authorities are still to respond. In India problems relating to handling and disposal of garbage is left to uneducated people belonging to the depressed classes.
Selvaraj
9.9 Crop yields threatened by decline in wild bee populations (4/3/2013)
"Before
Robertson, almost all insect collecting was done independently of the
plant," said study co-author John Marlin, a research affiliate at the
University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute, according a Washington University Newsroom article.
"Robertson was one of the first to record the insect, the plant it was
collected on, to the extent possible what the insect was doing, and
other factors, which led to an explosion of information on insect-plant
relationships."
[ Related: Wild bees boost harvest more than honeybees ]
The
two other co-authors of the study, Tiffany Knight and Laura Burkle,
recently recollected samples from part of Robertson's network, and
combining their findings with what Marlin had collected in the 1970s,
they found all of the flowering plants that Robertson had recorded, but
of the 109 species of bees, only around half were still around.
"That's
a significant decline. It's a scary decline," said Burkle, an assistant
professor of ecology at Montana State University, according to an
article on the National Public Radio website.
9.10 In China, public anger over secrecy on environment (10/3/2013)
And just last month, the government acknowledged for the first time that pollution had given rise to "cancer villages", admitting that cancer rates in villages near factories and polluted rivers were far higher than they should be.
------------------------
'In
Xanadu', a book by William Dalrymple, where the author retraces the
journey that Marco Polo made to the court of Kublai Khan, the author
talks about passing a settlement in China where practically everyone was
a mutant, affected by the fall out of atomic bomb testing done by
China.
The People's Republic of China conducted 45 tests (23 atmospheric and 22 underground, all conducted at Lop Nur Nuclear Weapons Test Base, in Malan[disambiguation needed],Xinjiang) http://en.
I
have more or less come to the conclusion that Engineering is a crazy
profession. The profession of engineering does not have independent
views on how the profession should engage on issues relating to the
natural environment. The reasons for this are 1) Engineers have zilch
knowledge of biology and the natural environment 2) the profession of
engineering plays second fiddle to their masters - industrialists who
are out to make a fast buck.
(...
'In Xandu' is the third book by William Dalrymple, that I have read.
The other two are 'White Mughals' and 'The Last Mughal'.)
Selvaraj
9.11 Plasic only fantastic if it can be re-used (11/3/2013)
PLASTICS
are everywhere. Whether used to store leftovers, keep hospital
equipment sterile, or insulate a home, plastics are unmatched for their
adaptability, durability, and low cost.
With
their seemingly boundless benefits, plastics have unsurprisingly
replaced traditional materials in many sectors - for example, steel in
cars, paper and glass in packaging, and wood in furniture. As a result,
annual plastic consumption worldwide has increased from 5 million tonnes
in the 1950s to around 280 million tonnes today.
Roughly
half of plastic products, such as packaging, are intended for one-time,
short-lifespan (less than six months) applications before disposal.
Given that most of these items are not biodegradable and are not
recycled, plastic waste is building up - with serious environmental
consequences. While governments have begun to implement regulations
aimed at managing the waste - for example, China banned lightweight
plastic shopping bags in 2008 - they are inadequate to address the
world's growing plastics-waste problem.
Moreover,
most plastic products are made from so-called "petroleum-based
commodity thermoplastics". Given that a non- renewable resource forms
the basis of many plastic products, current plastics usage patterns are
not sustainable.
Closed-loop
recycling, in which plastic waste is used to make another product, thus
carries huge environmental benefits, such as reduced energy and oil
consumption. But the process of separating the petroleum-based
recyclable plastics from other kinds of plastics and solid waste is
difficult, costly, and labour- intensive, so only a small proportion is
recycled.
...
An example of successful waste management is the reprocessing of PET
bottles (made of polyethylene terephthalate) into polyester fibres. In
the past decade, Japan passed several laws obliging both businesses and
individuals to separate plastics waste. This, combined with a lack of
landfill space and the country's expanding population, has enhanced
plastics recycling efforts.
As
a result, in 2010, Japan recycled 72 per cent of PET bottles, compared
with roughly 30 per cent in the US and 48 per cent in Europe. While
incineration and landfilling are still practised, such high recycling
rates underscore the positive impact of targeted policies.
...
In a world that is reliant on plastics, more sustainable production,
consumption, and disposal of plastic products is crucial. Civil society,
industry, and government must work together to increase the share of
recycled plastics, thereby ensuring that plastics' costs do not outweigh
their benefits. Marino Xanthos is professor of chemical, biological,
and pharmaceutical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
in the United States.
9.12 Sparrows / unleaded petrol ?? (20/3/2013)
Sparrow fans in the state now feel that it would be wiser to conserve the little birds in suburb, agricultural and hill landscapes, where it is still seen in large numbers. One of the major reasons that led to this conclusion is the widespread degradation of the environment in the urban areas. In the list of villains that made life and environment miserable for the house sparrows in the city, the least expected was unleaded petrol. “Components in the unleaded petrol, especially methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), affects the abundance and availability of insects for feeding the young chicks,’’ said Mani Chellappan, officer-in-charge of the All-India Network Project on Agricultural Ornithology, based in Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur. House sparrow chicks are raised entirely on insects and to keep a brood of 3-6 chicks requires frequent trips by parents and this demands abundance and availability of insects, close to the nest.
9.13 British butterflies suffer devastating year after 2012's wet summer (26/3/2013)
Thirteen species experienced their worst year since the scientific monitoring of butterflies began in 1976 with thousands of volunteers counting a record-low abundance of butterflies. With centuries of more anecdotal records showing there were far greater numbers of butterflies in the decades before the 1970s, scientists believe it is possible that there have never been fewer butterflies in Britain since it was first inhabited by humans.
9.14 Neonicotinoid pesticdes 'damage brain of bees' (28/3/2013)
Commonly used pesticides are damaging honey bee brains, studies suggest.
Scientists have found that two types of chemicals called neonicotinoids
and coumaphos are interfering with the insect's ability to learn and
remember.
Experiments revealed that exposure was also lowering brain activity,
especially when the two pesticides were used in combination.
9.15 Solving our Garbage Problem (29/3/2013)
Dear All,
I had posted earlier in this group
regarding the burning of garbage going on next to our house; from which
our family suffered for the last one year.
I am now glad to report that with help from the inmates of a lodge
nearby who were also suffering in equal measure, we have now cleaned up
the place, and with the help of posters and vigil for a few nights we no
longer have the problem. However considering the desperation of people
who roam around in the night on their scooters and on foot trying to
dispose their garbage, we will have to be alert to the possibility that
dumping of garbage could resume.
I had to do most of the cleaning myself, apart from
the help I obtained from a labourer, who I paid Rs 1000/-. The lodge
manager permitted me to dump the biodegradable waste in his compound
where there are coconut trees (I also collected two sacks of bottles and
a couple of sacks of plastic - which are presently stored in the lodge
compound). One lesson I learnt from this experience is that people are
not too willing to volunteer to get their hands dirty..... Can we move
to a more sustainable society without getting our hands dirty? Is it not
necessary to teach children in schools and colleges that sustainability
and readiness to do manual labour, when needed, go hand in hand?
... I have prepared a writeup for our Resident's
Association, with the hope that we can get a grip on our garbage
problem, so that people do have to be furtive about disposing their
garbage.
Regards,
Selvaraj
9.16 Freezing weather brings fresh perils for British wildlife (31/3/2013)
Britain's continued freezing weather is threatening ever greater numbers of wild animals, birds and
insects across the country, experts have warned. The current cold spell
– one of the longest on record – is particularly affecting creatures
that are already struggling to survive the loss of their habitats and
changes in climate.
-------------------------
This
freezing weather is thought to be caused by Global Warming. Warming of
the polar region produces a high pressure region, which causes the cold
air in the polar region to be pushed downwards.
Selvaraj
9.17 Half of U.S. Rivers Too Sick for Fish to Live in (7/4/2013)
Specific problems:
- 40 percent of our river and stream miles have high levels of nitrogen
and phosphorous, the latter a nutrient that in high amounts causes algal
blooms depleting oxygen in the water, thereby making it difficult for
aquatic life to survive.
- Excess
levels of sediment—which can smother aquatic life by damaging the gills
of fishes and invertebrates as well as burying their home and nesting
habitats—are reported in 15 percent of river and stream miles.
- Increased bacteria levels are making waterways unsafe for swimming and other recreation.
- Over 13,000 river miles were found to have mercury in fish tissue at levels that exceed thresholds protective of human health.
http://www.takepart.com/9.18 Children are tomorrow's custodian of nature (15/4/2013)
In a letter to the Sunday Times,
signed by academics, politicians and business leaders, they warn the
proposals are shortsighted, coming when the loss of wildlife and
habitats is ongoing, and evidence suggests many children are missing out
on the benefits of spending time in nature. "Under the new draft
national curriculum for England, education on the environment would
start three years later than at present and all existing references to
care and protection would be removed," the letter states.
"This is both unfathomable and unacceptable. Today's children are tomorrow's custodians of nature.
------------
In the Indian context it will be good to strengthen the Boy Scout and
Girl Guide movements, which bring children closer to nature. NCC, on
which a lot of money is being spent by the government, is suited for
older children.
Scout and Guide Law
- A Scout/Guide is trustworthy
- A Scout/Guide is loyal
- A Scout/Guide is a friend to all and a brother/sister to every other Scout/Guide.
- A Scout/Guide is courteous
- *A Scout/Guide is a friend to animals and loves nature.
- A Scout/Guide is disciplined and helps protect public property.
- A Scout/Guide is courageous.
- A Scout/Guide is thrifty.
- A Scout/Guide is pure in thought, word and deed.
9.19 Swiss govt warning on cordless devices, WIFI (21/4/2013)
Subject: Turn Off Your WIFI & Cordless Phone When Not In Use
Swiss govt warning on cordless devices, WIFI
Listen to the Swiss govt warning its citizens concerning cordless devices (Including your hand-phone and baby monitor) PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO CLIP.
Please listen to what the Swiss govt is warning
its citizens concerning cordless devicesMaybe we should all get back to wired products...The cordless phone at home sends out the same kind of microwave frequency like wi-fi. Watch this video then you will understand. Kindly click on the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
9.20 Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs (2/5//2013)
The
world's most widely used insecticide is devastating dragonflies, snails
and other water-based species, a groundbreaking Dutch study has
revealed.
On Monday, the insecticide and two others were banned for two yearsfrom
use on some crops across the European Union, due to the risk posed to
bees and other pollinators, on which many food crops rely.
However, much tougher action in the form of a total worldwide ban is needed, according to the scientist who led the new study.
"We are risking far too much to combat a few insect pests that might threaten agriculture,"
said Dr Jeroen van der Sluijs at Utrecht University. "This substance
should be phased out internationally as soon as possible." The pollution
was so bad in some places that the ditch water in fields could have
been used as an effective pesticide, he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/9.21 Time to put garbage on the table (19/5//2013)
With no long-term planning and policy reforms, the country’s burgeoning waste management problem is set to become a health and environmental crisis
.. Open
burning of waste is one of the largest sources of air pollution in
Indian cities. In Mumbai, it is the cause of about 20 per cent of air
pollution (particulate matter, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.) Trash
fires also emit 10,000 gram TEQ (toxic equivalents) of carcinogenic
dioxins/furans every year in Mumbai alone. (In comparison, France’s 127
waste-to-energy facilities together emit only four gram TEQ of dioxins
from combustion of 16 million tonnes a year.)
More than a dozen years after the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management
& Handling) Rules 2000 was issued by the Ministry of Environment and
Forests, no city complies with it. Open dumping, open burning,
landfill/dumpsite fires, and open human and animal exposure to waste are
common.
----------------
The management of waste should be taught in schools from the lower
classes. It should form an important part of the Engineering
Curriculum.
Selvaraj
9.22 Millions march against GM crops (26/5/2013)
Organisers say that two million people marched in protest against seed giant Monsanto in hundreds of rallies across the US and in more than 50 other countries on Saturday.
"March
Against Monsanto" protesters say they wanted to call attention to the
dangers posed by genetically modified food and the food giants that
produce it. Founder and organiser Tami Canal said protests were held in
436 cities across 52 countries.
--------------------
Time to change the management structure of science:
Big business ------> Control politicians ------> who control science : NO
SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT ----> guiding political initiatives -----> guiding businesses : YES
Selvaraj
-------------
Unapproved genetically engineered wheat has been discovered in an Oregon field, a potential threat to trade with countries that have concerns about genetically modified foods.
.. No genetically engineered wheat has been approved for US farming.
USDA officials said the wheat is the same strain as a genetically
modified wheat that was legally tested by seed giant Monsanto a decade
ago but never approved. Monsanto stopped testing that product in Oregon
and several other states in 2005.
9.23 Industry, fires and poachers shrink Sumatran tigers' last stronghold (26/5/2013)
From the comments section:
Thank
you John Vidal. The problem is that there is so little hope and hardly
anything to discuss except to bemoan corruption, greed, unfettered
capitalism, over population, excess consumption & absence of
effective governance.
9.24 Ecological Economics (29/5/2013)
The authors, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) and commissioned by the Club of Rome, developed a computer model demonstrating how economic growth was leading to natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Two of the computer scenarios, including a “business as usual” scenario and a dramatic technological progress scenario, predicted a disastrous collapse of the economy during the 21st century. The third scenario was essentially the steady state economy and assumed concerted efforts to stabilize the system. The book and its authors suffered a politically debilitating attack in the decades following its publication. At first, economists in academia chipped away at details, but soon pro-growth, free-market organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute piled on with an overarching accusation of “pessimism.” Such criticism was similar to the 19th-century criticism of Malthus’s Essay on Population and is hard to read without countering: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Perhaps Meadows and her colleagues weren’t spot-on with every detail, but the principles they laid out were undeniable and the scenarios were rigorously constructed. Decades later analysts are documenting how prescient the authors of Limits to Growth were, especially with the business as usual scenario.
... Ecological economics is founded upon different principles, micro and
macro, which lead to distinct conclusions and policy implications. These
principles stem from the natural sciences (physical and biological)
that are largely ignored in conventional or neoclassical economics.
... “Scale” refers to the size of the human economy relative to the
ecosystem. This, of course, is our focus here, and it provides the
primary distinction between neoclassical and ecological economics.
Neoclassical economics deals almost exclusively with allocation and, to a
much lesser extent, distribution. Why? Because neoclassical economics
doesn’t recognize environmental limits to economic growth. With no limit
to growth, the concept of scale is superfluous, there is no conflict
between growth and the environment, and the cure for social ills
including maldistribution of wealth is always more growth. “A rising
tide lifts all boats,” as they say.
(To understand "Scale", see figure... Empty World - Full World )
... Ecological economics deals with allocation and distribution, but its
emphasis is on scale, especially among the scholars and policy activists
we might call “Dalyists.” Scale deals with whole economies, usually
national or global, so ecological economics is geared especially to
replace conventional macroeconomics while accepting and incorporating
some of the fundamentals of conventional (neoclassical) microeconomics.
Before we delve into scale, however, let us briefly consider allocation
and distribution from the perspective of ecological economics.
.... This is an important critique, because economists often argue that
natural resources are actually becoming more plentiful just because
prices are declining. (Not that many prices are declining today.) The
late Julian Simon (1932–1998) famously peddled such pap, spawning
disciples who found Simon’s argument conducive to increasing their own
money supplies. After all, their “theory” feeds straight into the hands
of corporations that benefit from the resulting, pro-growth mindset of
consumers and policy makers. The corporate community loves these
disciples of Simon, and the new darling is the Danish statistician Bjorn
Lomborg. Praise has been heaped upon Lomborg by the likes of the
Competitive Enterprise Institute for his book, The Skeptical
Environmentalist (see Chapter 4).
... So the relationships among supply, price and quantity
supplied are really not so mysterious, at least not until a
linguistically reckless or unscrupulous growthman wades in to muddy up
the waters. The late Julian Simon has plenty of living counterparts.
Robert Bradley, president of the Institute for Energy Research, believes
that “natural resources originate from the mind, not from the ground,
and therefore are not depletable. Thus, energy can be best understood as
a bottomless pyramid of increasing substitutability and supply.” In
other words, innovators supply the world with natural resources,
including energy, from their minds. Therefore, the supply of such
resources is no problem.
Clearly such a theory inculcates a healthy supply of
manipulative political rhetoric, in which the word “supply” is quickly
corrupted. It’s a game anyone can play, so let’s take a turn. Consider
the supply of clean air at a party in an apartment. Smokers suck in the
clean air and gradually replace it with secondary smoke. Their lungs are
like pumps in an oilfield, systematically extracting the resource,
replacing it with airborne sludge. As more smokers arrive, the supply of
clean air noticeably dwindles, and non-smokers start to leave.
Eventually even the smokers start leaving, beginning with the lighter
smokers who don’t like heavy smoke. So at first, more smokers means a
lower supply of clean air, yet eventually after enough smokers have
polluted the place and many have left the supply of clean air
stabilizes. In fact the supply of clean air starts to increase a bit as
the secondary smoke is absorbed in the curtains and carpeting, and fresh
air wafts in through fissures in the walls (assuming smokers weren’t
crowding the hallways outside). Next, we conveniently overlook the fact
that it took a major reduction of clean air to make all this happen; too
complicated to consider all that. So in a squirrelly sort of way we can
now say that more smoking (that is, extraction of clean air) led to
increasing supplies of clean air, and indoor air pollution due to
smoking is a self-correcting problem. If we generalize a bit, moving out
of the confines of this particular party, we can say that the key to
less smoking in society is more smoking!... Meanwhile, expecting the market to maintain our supplies is like expecting the political arena to maintain our ethics, the library to maintain our ideas or the sewage plant to maintain our intestinal tracts. Each of these pairings represents a relationship between two variables, but in no case is the relationship straightforward or dependable, much less positively reinforcing. Thus it is with market prices and supplies. The bottom line is that markets are all about the consumption of resources. No matter how efficiently they allocate resources today, bigger markets mean more consumption and less resources tomorrow.
Now we turn to the distribution of wealth. Many neoclassical economists view the distribution of wealth as a final stage or special case of allocation and therefore “covered” by the market. Others think of distribution as a matter for politics, ethics or religion and not even within the purview of economics. Ecological economists, on the other hand, emphasize that an equitable distribution of wealth is necessary for the long-term economic security of rich and poor alike, and is therefore a central issue for economic study and policy. In fact, distribution of wealth generally takes a higher priority than allocation in ecological economics.
.. Don’t worry, this book is not about to turn into a Luddite manifesto for turning back the clock to caveman days. But it’s worth thinking about human nature, the deeply rooted, promising aspects of human nature with economic growth at the crossroads. We know that people the world over have cultural, tribal roots and urges, exposed most obviously in outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing and camping. Is there something deeper? Surely there is, especially traits, behaviors and attitudes that would have contributed to individual and tribal survival. We should at least attempt to identify some of the ways human evolution has affected our economic behavior today, rather than settling for a model that makes us look like pigs at a trough...
http://www.countercurrents.
9.25 Rewilding (30/5/2013)
Could the destruction of the natural world be reversed? Could our bare hills once more support a rich and thriving ecosystem, containing wolves, lynx, moose, bison, wolverines and boar? Does our wildlife still bear the marks of the great beasts that once roamed here? George Monbiot narrates an animation on the enchanting subject of rewilding.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
9.26 Small Dams On Chinese River Harm Environment More Than Expected (30/5/2013)
A fresh look at the environmental impacts of dams on an ecologically diverse and partially protected river in China found that small dams can pose a greater threat to ecosystems and natural landscapes than large dams. Although large dams are generally considered more harmful than their smaller counterparts, the research team's surveys of habitat loss and damage at several dam sites on the Nu River and its tributaries in Yunnan Province revealed that, watt-for-watt, the environmental harm from small dams was often greater -- sometimes by several orders of magnitude -- than from large dams.
... One
particularly detrimental impact of the small dams observed in this
study is that they often divert the flow of the river to hydropower
stations, leaving several kilometers of river bed dewatered, Kibler
explained.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/9.27 Flying doctors (2/6/2013)
Squadrons
of bumblebees are being deployed in a novel attempt to prevent grey
mould turning the summer's strawberries into fluffy mush.
The bees are
routed via a one-way system in their hive through a tray of harmless
fungus spores which, when delivered to flowers, ensure that the grey
mould cannot take hold as the fruit grows.
New flowers on a strawberry crop open every day, which means that
spraying with pesticides only protects those that are open at the time.
"But the bees visit the flowers at the perfect moment for that flower,"
said Harriet Roberts of Adas, an agricultural consultancy testing the
use of bees as delivery systems in the UK.
-----------------------
I obtained wonderful crops of beans in my small rooftop garden for about
nine months, the crops protected from pests by red ants. These red ants
had colonised a big flowering creeper that we had trailed from the
ground.
We
decided to cut the creeper, fearing that this was providing a path for
rats. Eventually the ants died out and our bean plants began to be
infected with pests. I have tried unsuccessfully to reintroduce the ants
- could not find any resource on this on the net! (I have found a
temporary solution to this problem - I have purchased a small water
sprayer, with which I blast the pests from the plants - practical in a
small garden :-)
What
human societies need to become conscious of is that there is a
tremendous conflict of interest between Modern? Agriculture which
depends of chemical poisons and an ecologically friendly agriculture.
Entomology (and other natural methods) should be made an important part
of agricultural education... Engineers also need to get involved, to
help in pest management without the use of dangerous chemicals.
Selvaraj
9.28 Calif. utility to retire troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant (8/6/2013)
The plant between San Diego and Los Angeles hasn't produced electricity since January 2012, after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusual damage to hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.
.. The
problems center on steam generators that were installed during a $670
million overhaul in 2009 and 2010. After the plant was shut down, tests
found some generator tubes were so badly eroded that they could fail and
possibly release radiation, a stunning finding inside the nearly new
equipment.
9.29 GM crops (12/6/2013)
The UK environment secretary is to lobby the EU to relax strict restrictions on growing GM crops for human consumption for fears of being "left behind", it emerged on Wednesday.
In a speech due to be given next week, Owen Paterson is expected to announce the government's intentions to start a new debate withinEurope, with a view to opening up the possibility of GM crops being grown in the UK.
Lead
author of the study Dr. Judy Carman stated, "We found these adverse
effects when we fed the animals a mixture of crops containing three GM
genes and the GM proteins that these genes produce. Yet no food
regulator anywhere in the world requires a safety assessment for the
possible toxic effects of mixtures. Our results provide clear evidence
that regulators need to safety assess GM crops containing mixtures of GM
genes, regardless of whether those genes occur in the one GM plant or
in a mixture of GM plants eaten in the same meal, even if regulators
have already assessed GM plants containing single GM genes in the
mixture."
The following photo shows one of the pig intestines fed a non-GMO diet vs. a pig intestine fed a GMO diet. As you can see from the photo, the pig fed the GMO diet suffered severe inflammation of the stomach:
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.
The following photo shows one of the pig intestines fed a non-GMO diet vs. a pig intestine fed a GMO diet. As you can see from the photo, the pig fed the GMO diet suffered severe inflammation of the stomach:
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.
Stephen Colbert on Monsanto GMO Wheat growing wild in Oregon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?9.30 Genetically-modified Eggplant Found to be Unsafe fro Human Consumption (22/6/2013)
Field trials of genetically-modified (GM) Bt eggplant, also known as Bt talong, have officially ceased in the Philippines following a major ruling by the nation’s Court of Appeals. Representing a massive victory for food sovereignty, the Court found that Bt talong is a monumental threat to both environmental and human health, and has subsequently ordered that all existing plantings of Bt talong in test fields be immediately destroyed and blocked from further propagation.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
9.31 Butterfly decline signals trouble in environment (2/7/2013)
A reader writes:
I
am an organic gardener and this article is very important. I hope
others read it and understand that without butterflies, bees and other
beneficial insects, we will someday run out of food. That's right, we
will become endangered. Dragon flies are what get rid of mosquitoes, not
pesticides. Pesticides mutate mosquitoes and make the problem worse.
When we live a natural, sustainable life, our environment is balanced.
Unfortunately, the greed of Dow and Monsanto is destroying this natural
balance.
9.32 "Nonsensical" claims about the benefits of GM technology (4/7/2013)
Tory
MP Zac Goldsmith has made a vociferous attack on Owen Paterson, the
Environment Secretary, over his campaign to bring genetically modified
(GM) crops to Britain.
The Richmond Park MP accused his
fellow party member of making "nonsensical" claims about the benefits of
GM technology, claiming that Mr Paterson is a puppet of the industry
and does not understand the dangers genetically modified crops pose to
the ecosystem.
Speaking to The Independent, Mr Goldsmith said
the environment secretary's recent speech to formally launch his
campaign to grow GM crops in Britain was "nonsense"..
http://www.independent.co.uk/9.33 The biggest risk to the environment (8/7/2013)
Beyond contamination and pollution, poor environmental stewardship has led to the disappearance of over 28,000 rivers! Those few rivers that do remain are so polluted that activist entrepreneurs have offered huge rewards to senior political officials willing to swim in the river for 20 minutes — an attempt to draw attention to environmental problems rarely discussed. ... http://www.policymic.com/
------------------------------
The
only way to tackle this problem is to change the nature of engineering
education. Engineers need to be thought leaders, not tame followers of
Big Business, Economists and Politicians (who while excelling in
people management skills, will lack a scientific background).
Selvaraj9.34 UK water companies are polluting Britain's rivers and beaches (4/8/2013)
The most persistent and frequent polluters of England's rivers and beaches are the nation's 10 biggest water companies, an Observer investigation has revealed.
The
companies, which are responsible for treating waste water and
delivering clean supplies, have been punished for more than 1,000
incidents in the past nine years, but fined a total of only £3.5m.
The
revelations have raised concern that the financial penalties are far
too low to change the behaviour of an industry that generates billions
of pounds in profits and shareholder dividends. The charge is backed by
the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, which is proposing major hikes in penalties.
Pollution incidents,
which have included sewage illegally pouring into a harbour for more
than a year, and managers destroying records, show no sign of declining,
according to data obtained from the Environment Agency (EA) under
freedom of information rules. Only a third of the 1,000 incidents led to
a fine (of an average of just £10,800); the rest resulted in cautions.
http://www.theguardian.com/9.35 Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking (6/8/2013)
The
Hallowich family had earlier accused oil and gas companies of
destroying their 10-acre farm in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania and
putting their children's health in danger. Their property was adjacent
to major industrial operations: four gas wells, gas compressor stations,
and a waste water pound, which the Hallowich family said contaminated
their water supply and caused burning eyes, sore throats and headaches.
Gag
orders – on adults – are typical in settlements reached between oil and
gas operators and residents in the heart of shale gas boom in
Pennsylvania. But the company lawyer's insistence on extending the
lifetime gag order to the Hallowichs' children gave even the judge
pause, according to the court documents.
-------------------
Controlling the press is at the heart of the modern industrial system.
Unfortunately the internet arrived on the scene a little late, if it had
arrived fifty years back, we could have applied the brakes a little
sooner and perhaps checked the possibility of going over the cliff (in
terms of environmental and resource issues).
Selvaraj
9.36 Neonicotinoids are the new DDT killing the natural world (6/8/2013)
Neonicotinoids are already known as a major cause of the decline of bees and other pollinators. These pesticides can be applied to the seeds of crops, and they remain in the plant as it grows, killing the insects which
eat it. The quantities required to destroy insect life are
astonishingly small: by volume these poisons are 10,000 times as
powerful as DDT. When honeybees are exposed to just 5 nanogrammes of
neonicotinoids, half of them will die. As bees, hoverflies, butterflies,
moths, beetles and other pollinators feed from the flowers of treated
crops, they are, it seems, able to absorb enough of the pesticide to
compromise their survival.
But only a tiny proportion of the neonicotinoids that farmers use enter
the pollen or nectar of the flower. Studies conducted so far suggest
that only between 1.6% and 20% of the pesticide used for dressing seeds
is actually absorbed by the crop: a far lower rate even than when toxins
are sprayed onto leaves. Some of the residue blows off as dust, which
is likely to wreak havoc among the populations of many species of
insects in hedgerows and surrounding habitats. But the great majority –
Goulson says "typically more than 90%" – of the pesticide applied to the
seeds enters the soil.
...
Of course, not all the neonicotinoids entering the soil stay there
indefinitely. You'll be relieved to hear that some of them are washed
out, whereupon … ah yes, they end up in groundwater or in the rivers.
What happens there? Who knows? Neonicotinoids are not even listed among
the substances that must be monitored under the EU's water framework
directive, so we have no clear picture of what their concentrations are
in the water that we and many other species use.
http://www.theguardian.com/9.37 A Texan tragedy: ample oil, not water (12/8/2013)
Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry's outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.
In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Nearly
15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred
from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools.
In Barnhart's case, the well appears to have run dry because the water
was being extracted for shale gas fracking.
http://www.theguardian.com/9.38 Something to be proud of? (13/8/2013)
The
survey concluded that India has the worst air pollution in the entire
world, beating China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Also, according to
another recent WHO survey, across the G-20 economies, 13 of the 20 most polluted cities are in India.
9.39 The $100 billion promise (18/8/2013)
Ecuador’s
innovative idea to seek money in return for not drilling did not
materialize out of thin air. The idea had been repeatedly proposed by
numerous academics and environmentalists and had the backing of the UN.
Last year, in a paper in the Journal of Political Economy,
Northwestern’s Bård Harstad argued that paying poorer countries to keep
their fossil fuel resources unexploited could be one of the most
cost-effective ways of tackling climate change. At the U.N. Green Climate Fund talks in 2009,
wealthy nations had pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020
from public and private sources to help poorer nations curb their
greenhouse-gas emissions. Ecuador seems like a reasonable target for
those climate efforts. As the the country's president said, "It was not
charity that we sought from the international community, but
co-responsibility in the face of climate change.”
http://www.policymic.com/
--------------------
Unless we have an economic system based on facts (not fiction), there is no way we are going to solve this problem.
Selvaraj
9.40 Clueless and careless about the environment (21/8/2013)
There
is a yawning gap between scientific understanding of our environment
and public policy, and it is not just confined to climate change, where
long-term benefits of effective policy are a casualty to debate about
short-term costs.
Part of the problem may be the relatively poor representation of science in the halls of power.
I examined the background of all 820 or so politicians in our federal,
state and territory governments, and of those with a degree - just over
half of them - nearly 80 per cent have an arts, economics or law degree.
Only about 5 per cent of all politicians have a science degree.
Advertisement
This pattern was reflected in cabinet and shadow cabinets - only one environment minister possesses a science degree.
Environmental issues are increasingly complex, requiring understanding
of the long-term trade-offs between development and environmental
sustainability. Even experienced conservation scientists find these
problems challenging. How well do the backgrounds of our politicians
equip them to decide the future of our environment?
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/
---------------------
Basically all seven billion of us are complicit, since only by bleeding nature we ensure our short term prosperity.
Selvaraj
9.41 Dealing with emergencies (28/8/2013)
More than two years after the March 2011 nuclear disaster,Tokyo Electric’s recovery effort has taken a turn for the worse. Japan’s nuclear regulator last week questioned the company’s ability to deal with the crisis, echoing comments earlier in the month by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/
-------------
One
thing is quite clear, individual governments and the international
community do not have clear cut plans for dealing with emergencies.
We
saw this in the Bhopal crisis, the BP oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico
and the nuclear crisis in Japan. There is the IAEA (Internation Atomic
Energy Agency) which failed to warn the Japanese regarding basic faults
in the layout of their nuclear plants.
It
seems to me that a private company (even a large one) will not have the
capability and the financial muscles to deal with a very serious
problem and Governments (and the international community) must step in
early - not late.
I
can only wonder about the mindset of the international community. Let
us say Bangladesh, with its limited scientific capability decides to set
up a nuclear power plant and their is a crisis, will the most advanced
countries step in unreservedly, to tackle the issue, as they would to
tackle a similar issue in their own backyard?
Selvaraj
9.42 Incineration vs recycling (30/8/2013)
"It is in many cases more expensive to collect and sort out waste for material recycling than just to collect it as residual waste and send it to energy recovery," she wrote in an email. "Some municipalities introduce only cost-effective waste solutions, while other municipalities have strong political will to introduce environmental measures and collect more waste for recycling."
... Except
for pockets like Flanders, Simon believes that the major mistake
Europe's leading incinerator countries have made is committing too much
trash to incineration too soon by instituting landfill bans. "Back then
nobody knew or expected it would be possible to achieve the current
recycling rates," he said. "As they rolled out recycling they also
planned incineration capacity. This trend hit the wall when recycling
started competing with incineration for the available waste. In this
situation some countries decided to give way to incineration and either
import waste to burn or burn recyclables."
http://www.theguardian.com/9.43 Molten fuel may be underground beneath Fukushima reactor buildings (5/9/2013)
This URL paints the worst case situation:
I was wondering what would happen if nothing
was done and contaminated water was allowed to enter the Pacific. How
many sq Km of the Pacific would have to be written off.
Regards,
Selvaraj from Trivandrum, India
----------
As I understand it, there is an underground freshwater aquifer which
runs under Fukushima and heads towards Tokyo and other more highly
populated Japanese cities. Tokyo and many of those cities rely on that
aquifer for their drinking water. And there have been reports surfacing
that contamination from the molten cores has entered that aquifer and
detectable radiation is already being measured in the Tokyo water
supply.
So the answer to your question is two fold.
First, that radiation appears to not just be all flushing out to the Pacific, but may also contaminate fresh water supplies elsewhere in Japan. If this happens to a large extent, Tokyo and other cities may become uninhabitable.
Second, even with the radiation which escapes to the Pacific, the bigger concern are the biologically active elements, which will be picked up and concentrated in ocean life, and make their way into the food chain. Elements like calcium, strontium and cesium plus others. It is not just a simple dilution problem. These biological elements will likely make all seafood from the Pacific dangerous to eat, until they and their radioactive children have finished decaying. There was recently a youtube video of a German simulation of radiation spread in the Pacific (it has since disappeared). Basically all of the northern Pacific is contaminated within 5 years. Some areas much earlier.
Steve in Colorado
So the answer to your question is two fold.
First, that radiation appears to not just be all flushing out to the Pacific, but may also contaminate fresh water supplies elsewhere in Japan. If this happens to a large extent, Tokyo and other cities may become uninhabitable.
Second, even with the radiation which escapes to the Pacific, the bigger concern are the biologically active elements, which will be picked up and concentrated in ocean life, and make their way into the food chain. Elements like calcium, strontium and cesium plus others. It is not just a simple dilution problem. These biological elements will likely make all seafood from the Pacific dangerous to eat, until they and their radioactive children have finished decaying. There was recently a youtube video of a German simulation of radiation spread in the Pacific (it has since disappeared). Basically all of the northern Pacific is contaminated within 5 years. Some areas much earlier.
Steve in Colorado
9.45 In Fragmented Forests, Rapid Mammal Extinction (27/9/2013)
In 1987, the government of Thailand launched a huge, unplanned experiment. They built a dam across the Khlong Saeng river, creating a 60-square-mile reservoir. As the Chiew Larn reservoir rose, it drowned the river valley, transforming 150 forested hilltops into islands, each with its own isolated menagerie of wildlife.
Conservation biologists have long known that fragmenting wilderness can put species at risk of extinction. But it’s been hard to gauge how long it takes for those species to disappear. Chiew Larn has given biologists the opportunity to measure the speed of mammal extinctions. “It’s a rare thing to come by in ecological studies,” said Luke Gibson, a biologist at the National University of Singapore.
Over two decades, Dr. Gibson and his colleagues have tracked the diversity of mammals on the islands. In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, they report that the extinctions have turned out to be distressingly fast.
“Our results should be a warning,” said Dr. Gibson. “This is the trend that the world is going in.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/
9.46 Emerging Contaminants (7/10/2013)
Every
time you brush your teeth with Colgate Total, coat your underarms with
Arm & Hammer Essentials deodorant, or wash your hands with Dial
Complete liquid soap or your dishes with Dawn Ultra, you may be
polluting the Thames River.
These
and dozens of other cleaners and cosmetics, along with toothbrushes,
socks, underwear, yoga mats, hockey helmets, cutting boards and other
items carrying labels like "Biofresh," "Microban," and "antimicrobial,"
contain triclosan. This powerful chemical kills bacteria but also is the
target of growing concern about its harmful effects on human health and
the environment.
... "This
is a stupid use of a toxic chemical," said Mae Wu, attorney for health
programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit group
with a pending lawsuit to force the Food & Drug Administration to
regulate and curtail use of triclosan and its close cousin,
triclocarban.
... Triclosan,
he said, is an unnecessary product additive. It washes out of socks and
underwear treated with it, and liquid soap with triclosan doesn't work
any better than hot water and soap at getting hands clean and
bacteria-free, he said.
"We've gone crazy with these products," he said. "We just don't need them."
9.47 Britain's lost rivers resurrected and freed to go with the flow (13/10/2013)
The brick-lined culvert that runs through the centre of Manchester's
Philips Park has all the charm of an open sewer. There are no grassy
banks, no fish, no reeds or other aquatic plants, no signs of life.
Apart from a few broken bottles and an occasional rusting supermarket
trolley, the waterway – built at the turn of the 20th century – is
featureless and sterile for its entire mile-long course through the
park.
The 2m-wide channel could pass for a section of the city's sewage works. In fact, this turns out to be one of the major rivers of
north-west England, the Medlock. Like dozens of other natural waterways
in Britain it was channelled into culverts – others were buried in
tunnels – in the wake of the country's industrial expansion during
Victorian and Edwardian times.
To
the industrialists back then, rivers – apart from supplying water for
dye works or taking away waste – were considered to be inconveniences
and so were diverted, often underground. The end result was the creation
of a network of lost rivers across the nation.
But
now the Medlock is being reclaimed as part of a campaign that
ecologists hope will return many of these lost waterways to their
natural glory.
The programme has been set up as part of Britain's response to the EU Water Framework Directive which
aims to breathe life back into natural waterways across the continent
by 2027. Hundreds will be tackled, many of them in Britain.
http://www.theguardian.com/9.48 When industry leads development, people and the environment suffer (26/10/2013)
It’s like the US and oil… or the US and weapons… or the US and pharmaceuticals. Those that blame the US for all the world’s ills need only look to the power industry wields over government – a system that is being replicated throughout the world.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/
9.49 Top climate scientists seek support for Nuclear Power (4/11/2013)
“There’s enough wind to power the entire world, for all purposes, around
seven times over,” the professor of civil and environmental engineering
told David Letterman. “Solar, about 30 times over, in high-solar locations worldwide.
... Early on, Letterman posed one of the most pressing questions regarding a shift to renewables: “How do we motivate the fossil fuel people—the gas, and oil people—of this country to stop what they are doing? … They’re not going to give up this multi-billion dollar industry.”
http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/
Necessity of Nuclear Energy for India: Debunking the myth... Early on, Letterman posed one of the most pressing questions regarding a shift to renewables: “How do we motivate the fossil fuel people—the gas, and oil people—of this country to stop what they are doing? … They’re not going to give up this multi-billion dollar industry.”
http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/
We have been pursuing nuclear power almost since the creation of our country. The Department of Atomic Energy was established on 3rd August 1948 – just short of completing a year of independence. Our estimations of nuclear energy production in the 1960s was for 8000MW by the year 1987. It is now 2012 and we have just over half of that capacity (incidentally from little resisted plants compared with what lies in our future). However, our optimistic projections continue unabated, and these are at the root of a lot of propaganda related with the “necessity” of nuclear energy. The projections of 20,000MW by 2020 and 207,000MW to 275,000MV by 2052 are extremely unlikely to be achieved considering our track record so far, and the growing resistance to nuclear energy. The kicker here is that even if by some remote chance we did manage to pull this one off, it would constitute 8-10% of projected electricity capacity in 2020 and about 20% in 2052 – not even remotely the energy savior of the country it is projected as. - See more at: http://www.dianuke.org/
The Nuclear Illusion:
Fast breeder reactors have proven to be fragile and unreliable. Conducting routine maintenance becomes a difficult task because sodium cannot interact with air (von Hippel, 2010). Removing fuel, draining sodium and completely flushing excess sodium from the reactor’s hardware can take months and drag into a years long process (von Hippel, 2010). France’s Superphenix’s fast breeder reactor was shut down more than half of its 10-year existence. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France have shuttered their fast breeder reactors after experiencing significant problems with hardware in their reactors immersed in sodium (von Hippel, 2010).
http://www.
--------------------
Fast breeder reactors have proven to be fragile and unreliable. Conducting routine maintenance becomes a difficult task because sodium cannot interact with air (von Hippel, 2010). Removing fuel, draining sodium and completely flushing excess sodium from the reactor’s hardware can take months and drag into a years long process (von Hippel, 2010). France’s Superphenix’s fast breeder reactor was shut down more than half of its 10-year existence. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France have shuttered their fast breeder reactors after experiencing significant problems with hardware in their reactors immersed in sodium (von Hippel, 2010).
http://www.
Top climate scientists ask environmentalists to support nuclear power in climate battle
http://www.washingtonpost.com/--------------------
The important thing to note
about renewable energy is that the fuel has not cost. The cost of all
fossil fuels is going to increase with time.
If
Nuclear Power is no longer popular, the Nuclear Engineering Community
have themselves to blame. They should have realised well in advance the
consequences of a failure of a Nuclear Power plant. We now have two
major failures Chernobyl and Fukushima. If there is world war (a lot of
humans seem keen to go to heaven) we are going to have a major
catastrophe.
Selvaraj9.50 Greens dispute climate scientists on nuclear power (6/11/2013)
Environmentalists are pushing back against four prominent climate
scientists who say the green movement should embrace nuclear power plant
construction to help fight climate change.
... “While we respect Dr. Hansen and his advocacy to raise the alarm about catastrophic climate change, we thoroughly disagree that nuclear power has any role to play in addressing the threat posed by global warming. If we are to abate the worst impacts of climate change we need solutions that are fast, affordable, and safe. Nuclear is none of these,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear power analyst with Greenpeace USA.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-
COST OF NUCLEAR PLANTS... “While we respect Dr. Hansen and his advocacy to raise the alarm about catastrophic climate change, we thoroughly disagree that nuclear power has any role to play in addressing the threat posed by global warming. If we are to abate the worst impacts of climate change we need solutions that are fast, affordable, and safe. Nuclear is none of these,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear power analyst with Greenpeace USA.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-
9.51 Too Hot to Touch (9/11/2013)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <alice_friedemann@yahoo.com>
Date: 9 November 2013 02:11
Subject: [RunningOnEmpty2] Book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste”
To: RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.
The entire book review is at
http://energyskeptic.com/2013/
Meanwhile, 70,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and 20,000 giant canisters of defense-related high-level radioactive waste is sitting at 121 sites across 39 states, with another 70,000 tons on the way before nuclear power plants reach their end of life. All of this waste is now, and for millions of years, exposing future generations and is vulnerable to terrorists, tsunamis, floods, rising sea levels, hurricanes, electric grid outages, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters.
Spent fuel pools in America at 104 nuclear power plants, have an average of 10 times more radioactive fuel stored than what was at Fukushima, and almost no safety features such as a backup water-circulation systems and generators.
About 75% of spent fuel in America is being stored in pools, many of them so full they have four times the amount they were designed to hold.
The National Academy of Sciences published a report that stated
terrorists could drain the water from spent fuel storage, causing the
fuel rods to self-ignite and release large quantities of radioactivity,
or they could steal nuclear waste to make a (dirty) bomb.
Not making a choice about where to store nuclear waste is a choice. We will expose future generations to millions of years of toxic radioactive wastes if we don’t clean them up now.
This book has a complete history of nuclear waste and what to do with
it, the many issues, how we arrived at doing nothing, and has
outstanding explanations of difficult topics across many fields (i.e.
nuclear science, geology, hydrology, etc), as well as explaining the
even more difficult political and human issues preventing us from
disposing of nuclear wastes in a permanent geological repository.
The goal of anti-nuclear opponents has been to prevent a nuclear waste site from happening so that no new nuclear power plants would be built. Many states, such as California, have laws against building new nuclear plants until a waste depository exists.
The thing is, activists never needed to fear new reactors because the upfront costs are so high and the payback so delayed along with such high, uninsurable liabilities, that investors and utilities haven’t wanted to build nuclear power plants for decades. Also, Uranium reserves are so low there’s only enough left to power existing nuclear plants for a few more decades (Tverberg), and perhaps less than that once the energy crisis hits and the energy to mine and crush millions of tons of ore is used for other purposes.
The only way new plants would ever get built is for the government to build them. Not going to happen. America has trillions in debt, hundreds of trillions of unfunded liabilities in the future (i.e. Medicare and other programs), the overall economic system is $600 trillion in debt, and the entire economic system is rotten and corrupt to the core with no reform in sight (see my amazon Fraud & Greed: Wall Street, Banks, & Insurance book list for details). The final nail in the coffin is Fukushima — even if the government decided to nuclear power plants, public opposition would be too high. Not to mention the most dysfunctional Congress in history.
Within the next few years (Hirsch), we will be on the exponentially declining oil curve of Hubbert’s Peak, and it will be too late to move the waste because our priorities will be rationing oil to agriculture to grow, harvest and distribute food, repair essential infrastructure, home heating and cooling, and emergency services.
Once the energy crisis hits, even if new nuclear plants are begun, which is not a given, since the crisis is oil — electricity doesn’t solve anything — building would probably stop because within the next ten years there are very good odds of another nuclear disaster: our plants are old and falling apart.
It’s really bad, much worse than most people realize. I highly recommend the 128 page report by Hirsch called “Nuclear Reactor Hazards Ongoing Dangers of Operating Nuclear Technology in the 21st Century”, or my summary of this paper at energyskeptic “Summary of Greenpeace Nuclear Reactor Hazards”.
I have nothing against nuclear power. I don’t even see nuclear waste as the most serious kind of waste that needs to be dealt with.
But it is outrageous that we are doing nothing to protect future generations, who will be back to living in the age of wood and helpless to do anything themselves about the nuclear waste we’ve generated. They’re going to have enough problems to cope with.
Another reason why it is unlikely many nuclear power plants will be built in the future is that they would barely make a dent in the energy crisis. Alley points out that to both address climate change AND meet the world’s projected energy needs over the next 50 years, we would need to build ALL OF THESE (Pacala):
Book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste”
http://energyskeptic.com/2013/
Introduction to Nuclear Waste Disposal
After Yucca Mountain was thrown out as a nuclear waste site in 2009 after 25 years and $10 billion in studies — to help Senator Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) get re-elected in 2010 — there is nowhere to put nuclear waste. Not much, if anything, is being done to find a new place, and there’s no chance an ideologically divided Congress would agree on a new site anyhow.Meanwhile, 70,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and 20,000 giant canisters of defense-related high-level radioactive waste is sitting at 121 sites across 39 states, with another 70,000 tons on the way before nuclear power plants reach their end of life. All of this waste is now, and for millions of years, exposing future generations and is vulnerable to terrorists, tsunamis, floods, rising sea levels, hurricanes, electric grid outages, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters.
Spent fuel pools in America at 104 nuclear power plants, have an average of 10 times more radioactive fuel stored than what was at Fukushima, and almost no safety features such as a backup water-circulation systems and generators.
About 75% of spent fuel in America is being stored in pools, many of them so full they have four times the amount they were designed to hold.
Not making a choice about where to store nuclear waste is a choice. We will expose future generations to millions of years of toxic radioactive wastes if we don’t clean them up now.
The goal of anti-nuclear opponents has been to prevent a nuclear waste site from happening so that no new nuclear power plants would be built. Many states, such as California, have laws against building new nuclear plants until a waste depository exists.
The thing is, activists never needed to fear new reactors because the upfront costs are so high and the payback so delayed along with such high, uninsurable liabilities, that investors and utilities haven’t wanted to build nuclear power plants for decades. Also, Uranium reserves are so low there’s only enough left to power existing nuclear plants for a few more decades (Tverberg), and perhaps less than that once the energy crisis hits and the energy to mine and crush millions of tons of ore is used for other purposes.
The only way new plants would ever get built is for the government to build them. Not going to happen. America has trillions in debt, hundreds of trillions of unfunded liabilities in the future (i.e. Medicare and other programs), the overall economic system is $600 trillion in debt, and the entire economic system is rotten and corrupt to the core with no reform in sight (see my amazon Fraud & Greed: Wall Street, Banks, & Insurance book list for details). The final nail in the coffin is Fukushima — even if the government decided to nuclear power plants, public opposition would be too high. Not to mention the most dysfunctional Congress in history.
Within the next few years (Hirsch), we will be on the exponentially declining oil curve of Hubbert’s Peak, and it will be too late to move the waste because our priorities will be rationing oil to agriculture to grow, harvest and distribute food, repair essential infrastructure, home heating and cooling, and emergency services.
Once the energy crisis hits, even if new nuclear plants are begun, which is not a given, since the crisis is oil — electricity doesn’t solve anything — building would probably stop because within the next ten years there are very good odds of another nuclear disaster: our plants are old and falling apart.
It’s really bad, much worse than most people realize. I highly recommend the 128 page report by Hirsch called “Nuclear Reactor Hazards Ongoing Dangers of Operating Nuclear Technology in the 21st Century”, or my summary of this paper at energyskeptic “Summary of Greenpeace Nuclear Reactor Hazards”.
I have nothing against nuclear power. I don’t even see nuclear waste as the most serious kind of waste that needs to be dealt with.
But it is outrageous that we are doing nothing to protect future generations, who will be back to living in the age of wood and helpless to do anything themselves about the nuclear waste we’ve generated. They’re going to have enough problems to cope with.
Another reason why it is unlikely many nuclear power plants will be built in the future is that they would barely make a dent in the energy crisis. Alley points out that to both address climate change AND meet the world’s projected energy needs over the next 50 years, we would need to build ALL OF THESE (Pacala):
- Fuel economy increased for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 miles per gallon
- Carbon emissions cut by 25% in buildings and appliances
- Replace 1,400 Gigawatt coal plants with natural gas plants. These NG plants would require 4 times as much natural gas as is being produced now.
- Capture and store 80% of CO2 from today’s coal production
- Use 17% of all of the world’s croplands to produce biofuels (instead of food)
- Build 2,000,000 windmills on 3% of land in America
- Build 900 nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants (there are about 450 nuclear power plants globally now)
9.52 Greens dispute climate scientists on nuclear power (6/11/2013)
Environmentalists are pushing back against four prominent climate
scientists who say the green movement should embrace nuclear power plant
construction to help fight climate change.
... “While we respect Dr. Hansen and his advocacy to raise the alarm about catastrophic climate change, we thoroughly disagree that nuclear power has any role to play in addressing the threat posed by global warming. If we are to abate the worst impacts of climate change we need solutions that are fast, affordable, and safe. Nuclear is none of these,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear power analyst with Greenpeace USA.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-
COST OF NUCLEAR PLANTS... “While we respect Dr. Hansen and his advocacy to raise the alarm about catastrophic climate change, we thoroughly disagree that nuclear power has any role to play in addressing the threat posed by global warming. If we are to abate the worst impacts of climate change we need solutions that are fast, affordable, and safe. Nuclear is none of these,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear power analyst with Greenpeace USA.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-
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