Community Energy Systems

Censys.org

Community Energy Systems

Category Archives: aquifer damage

Being A Vegetarian Can Save The Planet – Jennifer McGregor thinks so anyway

Posted on by
Reply

Jennifer works at someplace called the Public Health Library, which I suppose is a great place to work.They apparently push plant based diets. I am not aq vegetarian because i do not have the discipline…plus I love pork and fish so it ain’t happening BUT it is important for as many of  as can to switch. Just think of me as your lovable hypocrite. She sent along a bunch of resources and I don’t normally post those, but she is so nice :+}

New Research Says Plant-based Diet Best for Planet and People

New Research Says Plant-based Diet Best for Planet and People

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY : , , ,
2014•11•15 Carol Smith United Nations University

As cities grow and incomes rise around the world, more and more people are leaving gardens and traditional diets behind and eating refined sugars, refined fats, oils and resource- and land-intense agricultural products like beef. This global dietary transition is harming the health of both people and the planet, says new research.

But the study also shows that shifting away from this trajectory and choosing healthier traditional Mediterranean, pescatarian or vegetarian diets could not only boost human lifespans and quality of life, but also slash emissions and save habitat for endangered species.

And we better hurry; the scientists project that if the trend continues, the situation will be worse yet with greenhouse gas emissions up by 80 percent by 2050.

Examining almost 50 years’ worth of data from the world’s 100 most populous countries, University of Minnesota Professor of Ecology G. David Tilman and graduate student Michael Clark illustrate how current diet trends are contributing to ever-rising agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and habitat degradation.

On top of that, they write: “These dietary shifts are greatly increasing the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and other chronic non-communicable diseases that lower global life expectancies.”

Culinary Resources for Vegetarianism

11 Facts About Meatless Monday That Will Inspire You To Reach For The Veggies

How To Transition To A Plant-Based Diet

Nutrition And The Vegan Diet

10 Helpful Tips for Beginning Gardeners

Grow Food At Home: 7 Tips For Growing Food In Small Spaces

Garden Better With Biodiversity & Wild Pollinators

The Buzz on Beekeeping: A Guide to Bringing Up Bees in Your Own Backyard

http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/blog/author/jennifermcgregor/

:}

Go there and read one hell of a lot. More next week.

:}

Donald Blankenship – Serial Killer released from jail

Posted on by
Reply

It is true. He killed more people than Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer and he got a year in jail. Why? Because he is a rich white and the death resulted from “mine safety violations”. So, you know, he never had a “direct hand” in their deaths. What a joke. He claims he lives in Las Vegas now, so I hope he wonders off in the desert and suffers a horrible death.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-mine-blast-ex-coal-ceo-blankenship-at-end-of-prison-term/

AP May 10, 2017, 8:05 AM

US mine blast: Ex-coal CEO Blankenship at end of prison term

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is finishing up a one-year federal prison sentence arising from the deadliest U.S. mine explosion in four decades.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website, Blankenship was set to be released Wednesday from a halfway house in Phoenix, Arizona. He must serve one year of supervised release.

“I’m glad he had time to reflect on the pain he caused,” former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin, whose office in Charleston prosecuted the case, said in a text message to The Associated Press ahead of Blankenship’s release. “I hope he used it wisely and will come out of prison ready to make amends.”

It wasn’t immediately clear where Blankenship will serve his supervised release. After his indictment, federal prosecutors indicated Blankenship owned homes in several states, and Blankenship said he lived in Las Vegas. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Charleston referred questions to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

A bureau spokesman and Blankenship’s attorney, William Taylor, didn’t return requests for comment

:}

Go there and be horrified. More next week.

:}

 

 

Dallman Power Plant Is A Pain In The Ash – That won’t change soon

Posted on by
Reply

Springfield’s coal fired power plant is not compliant with the Clean Air Act. Apparently it won’t be anytime soon.

http://www.sj-r.com/news/20160727/illinois-epa-seeks-comment-on-cwlp-clean-air-permit

Illinois EPA seeks comment on CWLP clean air permit

By Mary Hansen
Staff Writer

Posted Jul. 27, 2016 at 5:58 PM

Springfield residents can ask questions and comment on proposed updates to an air pollution permit for City Water, Light and Power’s generating station at a public hearing Aug 30.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is holding the 7 p.m. hearing at the University of Illinois Springfield’s Public Affairs Center.

The state agency is gathering comments in its process to update a Clean Air Act permit for CWLP. Under the Clean Air Act, the federal government sets limits for certain pollutants.

The changes to the permit include regulations for CWLP’s newest power plant unit, Dallman 4, which was not covered under the original permit. It also has requirements that were not law when the Illinois EPA issued the permit for Dallman 4, such as emission limits for mercury and other air toxins. The city-owned utility has been required to comply with these standards, but the permit allows the federal and state agencies, as well as the public, to monitor and enforce them.

:}

Go there and read. Google the topic too. More next week.

:}

Berta Caceres – She was murdered for the environment

Posted on by
Reply

Sure everybody in power down there says it was a robbery gone bad but she was assassinated. I mean the cops that were suppose to be guarding her were guarding the wrong house blocks away in another neighborhood. Damn those damn dams.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/gunmen-murder-honduran-environmentalist-leader-160303181349473.html

Politics

Honduras: Environmentalist Berta Caceres shot dead

Berta Caceres, who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, has been shot dead at her home in the town of La Esperanza.

| Politics, Human Rights, Environment, Latin America

Honduran environmentalist leader and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize Berta Caceres has been shot dead at her home in the town of La Esperanza.

Caceres was killed early on Thursday by two assailants who broke into her home, a member of her group, the Indian Council of People’s Organizations of Honduras, said.

“Honduras has lost a brave and committed social activist,” fellow activist Tomas Membreno said in a statement.

Caceres, a mother of four, led opposition to a proposed dam on the Gualcarque river, considered sacred by the Lencas.

She had previously complained of receiving death threats from police, soldiers and local landowners because of her work.

Activist Carlos Reyes described the assassination “a political crime by the government”.

:}

Go there read. More next week.

:}

Hydroelectric Power Is Under Assault – Soon it could be dead

Posted on by
Reply

As this article makes clear, we need dams. In my mind they are a trade off we can live with, and the excuse that it is just unprofitable to repair them is disgusting. Still, there are environmentalists who disagree.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas-biggest-dams-is-falling-apart

One of Africa’s Biggest Dams Is Falling Apart

By

The new year has not been kind to the hydroelectric-dam industry. On January 11th, the New York Times reported that Mosul Dam, the largest such structure in Iraq, urgently requires maintenance to prevent its collapse, a disaster that could drown as many as five hundred thousand people downstream and leave a million homeless. Four days earlier, the energy minister of Zambia declared that Kariba Dam, which straddles the border between his country and Zimbabwe, holding back the world’s largest reservoir, was in “dire” condition. An unprecedented drought threatens to shut down the dam’s power production, which supplies nearly half the nation’s electricity.

The news comes as more and more of the biggest hydroelectric-dam projects around the world are being cancelled or postponed. In 2014, researchers at Oxford University reviewed the financial performance of two hundred and forty-five dams and concluded that the “construction costs of large dams are too high to yield a positive return.” Other forms of energy generation—wind, solar, and miniature hydropower units that can be installed inside irrigation canals—are becoming competitive, and they cause far less social and environmental damage. And dams are particularly ill-suited to climate change, which simultaneously requires that they be larger (to accommodate the anticipated floods) and smaller (to be cost-effective during the anticipated droughts).

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

Canada Proposes Lake Huron Nuclear Waste Dump – A very bad idea

Posted on by
Reply

This is an old piece but there is a petition being circulated on line:

http://www.stopthegreatlakesnucleardump.com/

Please go there and sign it. I could not find a newer piece but this should shock your socks off. If it were to ever leak we would have another Fukushima on our hands.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/20/stopping-the-great-lakes-radioactive-dump/

May 20, 2015

Stopping the Great Lakes Radioactive Dump

by John Laforge

Hundreds of environmental and public interest groups, dozens of governmental bodies and thousands of concerned residents across the Great Lakes Basin have joined in rejecting a proposal by the giant utility company Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to bury 200,000 cubic meters of its radioactive waste on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, near its Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, in Kincardine, Ontario. The proposed dump is for so-called low- and intermediate-level radioactive wastes from the company’s 20 nuclear reactors. The site is 1.2 kilometers from Lake Huron on Bruce Peninsula.

On May 6, Canada’s Joint Review Panel submitted to Canada’s Ministry of Environment — the Honorable Leona Aglukkaq — its formal recommendation to approve the plan. Intervening parties have 120 days to submit comments on the JRP’s “environmental assessment” once its “conditions” have been made public. Aglukkaq will then make a recommendation to Ontario’s Premier, Kathleen Wynne, who will make the final decision about whether the dump should be constructed.

Most of the groups, legislators and cities opposing the so-called Deep Geologic Repository (regular folks call it a hole in the ground) have decided to ignore or to just parody the forthcoming “conditions” regulating the plan. A nit-picking analysis of them, they say, only gives the impression that permanent contamination of the Great Lakes somehow an acceptable risk under certain theoretical, computer-model-derived conditions. As Dr. Gordon Edwards, founder of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, said May 19 over the phone, “We reject any permanent abandonment of radioactive waste deep underground near the Great Lakes. And this project, at this time, under any conditions is absurd.”

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

Coal Is Dead – Solar is the future

Posted on by
Reply

This the first of a tow part report. The first focuses more on the “Coal is dead part”.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/11/coal-is-dead-its-time-to-accept-it.aspx

Coal Is Dead: It’s Time to Accept It

The coal industry is on life support, and that’s not changing anytime soon.

Travis Hoium
(TMFFlushDraw)
Apr 11, 2015 at 9:09AM
For years, coal supporters have been saying that a turnaround is just around the corner. China’s demand is about to pick up, domestic environmental regulations will be struck down and we’ll fire up coal plants again, or clean coal is here!

Let’s face it: Coal is dead, and it’s been a long time coming. Peabody Energy (NYSE:BTU), Arch Coal (NYSE:ACI), Alpha Natural Resources (NYSE:ANR), and others are just barely holding onto survival while reporting hundreds of millions in losses annually. But they’ll eventually be scrapped for parts as the energy industry moves to cheaper forms of energy. Whether you accept it or not, that’s the reality of coal in 2015.

No one wants to build coal power plants
Whether it’s regulations, smog, or cost, there’s no country that wants to build more coal power plants than it absolutely has to. That puts coal producers in a tough position, dealing with falling demand and competitors that are fighting over scraps of the coal market.

:}

Go there and dance on coal’s grave. More next week.

:}

Remember Tepco – You know that little nuclear disaster thing

Posted on by
Reply

Well, the disaster is still around but Tepco is jumping back into the bond market. Oh, and thanks to the Japanese Government for selling off assets.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/tepco-considers-return-to-japan-bond-market-as-profit-increases

Tepco Mulls First Public Bond Sale in Japan Since Fukushima

sstapczynski

October 18, 2015 — 10:08 PM CDT
Updated on October 18, 2015 — 11:14 PM CDT

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is considering returning to Japan’s bond market next September in the first public offering since the disaster at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power facility in 2011.

Tepco, as the utility is known, plans to raise a total of 330 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in the fiscal year starting April 2016, the Nikkei newspaper reported Monday. The company has hired five sales managers including SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., according to the report. Tepco spokesman Tatsuhiro Yamagishi said the utility is considering bond sales from September but couldn’t confirm other details when reached by phone.

A public debt offering would be Tepco’s first in six years after it halted bond sales following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima site. The disaster put Tepco on the verge of default, with the head of Japan’s biggest stock market saying in 2011 that the company should file for bankruptcy protection. Tepco was saved by a 1 trillion yen infusion from the government the following year, the nation’s largest bailout since the 1990s.

:}

Go there and read a little teeny bit. More next week.

:}

 

Chernobyl Is A Wildlife Refuge Now – Wouldn’t legislation have been easier

Posted on by
Reply

To answer my own question, because radiation works better then man made fences, at keeping people out. Thus keeping the animals safe. Though I have seen articles about people who do go into the exclusion zone, none of them seem to be hunters.

http://daily.jstor.org/chernobyl-can-wildlife-return-blast/

By October 26, 2015

Chernobyl: Can Wildlife Return After the Blast?

Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, the area is surprisingly full of life. Wild boar, moose, wolves, and other wildlife are thriving in the 30km Exclusion Zone surrounding the destroyed reactor. A thick forest has swallowed the site and, with the exception of monitored visits, it is entirely off-limits to humans. It seems incredible that any life can persist in such a heavily-damaged area, but ecological recovery of this kind has occurred before.

From the 1970s until the mid 1990s, the French military conducted a series of underground nuclear explosions at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific. The blasts created massive pressure waves that instantly wiped out every fish in the surrounding area. Incredibly, fish populations rebounded to previous levels within five years. Even though the explosions destroyed the fish population, their habitats remained largely intact and ready for recolonization. The Mururoa experience suggests that under such circumstances, populations can rebound rapidly.

The situation in Chernobyl was similar in that the habitat remained roughly intact and the area had previously supported wildlife. But a big difference between the two is radiation: unlike at Muruoa, the radioactive fallout at Chernobyl was extreme. The latter’s forests are saturated with radiation and if they ever burn, this poison will spread throughout Central Europe. The water and soil are hopelessly contaminated and will remain so for thousands of years.

For years, it was believed that radiation would deter wildlife recolonization, or kill any wildlife that did return to the area. But by the early 1990s, researchers were astounded by the abundance and diversity of wildlife in the exclusion zone, including endangered species like the black stork. It was determined that though explosions and heavy fallout immediately following the accident wiped out resident wildlife, these species soon returned

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

The Supreme Court Could Have Followed The Pope – But instead they went the opposite way

Posted on by
Reply

The Age of Coal is over. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court doesn’t get that. In fact most of the power plants have already installed the required equipment so what does this ruling even mean?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-obamas-epa-limits-air-pollution?sc=fb

Environment

U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Obama’s EPA Limits on Air Pollution

Landmark 5-4 decision is major setback for Obama’s efforts to set limits on amount of mercury, arsenic and other toxins coal-fired power plants can spew into air, lakes and rivers.
By Suzanne Goldenberg, Raya Jalabi / The Guardian

June 29, 2015

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down new rules for America’s biggest air polluters on Monday, dealing a blow to the Obama administration’s efforts to set limits on the amount of mercury, arsenic and other toxins coal-fired power plants can spew into the air, lakes and rivers.

The 5-4 decision was a major setback to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and could leave the agency more vulnerable to legal challenges from industry and Republican-led states to its new carbon pollution rules.

It was also a blow to years of local efforts to clean up dangerous air pollution.

:}

Go there and read. Be prepared to be sad. More next week.

:}

 

For an additional punch today…