Category Archives: dying planet

Run Like Hell The Pollution In The Atmosphere Will Kill Us – But there is no place to run

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and the people who are doing the pollution are lying to keep on doing it. As you know this week I have (it’s) been examining phrases with (jam) hell in them to avoid thinking about how (band) bad things are about to get here on Planet Earth. Now it appears that even if we stop today the oceans will continue to acidify for years (friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySO-gryuO-c) and that means a huge loss of food.

http://www.what-the-hell-is-hell.com/Hellphrases.htm

Run like Hell seems to imply really really fast. Like you can run from hell? Or as the song says “get out of hell before they know you are there”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBcY9HGqehE&feature=related

But there is also something in the phrase that implies that you not look back,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntm1YfehK7U&feature=related

And you you do not stop running until you can run no more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcQZ2tnWeg&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Like_Hell

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Yet the Energy Industry continues to lie through its teeth about our real choices:

 http://www.alternet.org/water/141202/energy_industry_threatens_water_quality,_sways_congress_with_misleading_data/

Energy Industry Threatens Water Quality, Sways Congress With Misleading Data

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica. Posted July 9, 2009.

The industry is misleading the public into a false choice between the economy and the environment.

The two key arguments that the oil and gas industry is using to fight federal regulation of the natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing — that the costs would cripple their business and that state regulations are already strong — are challenged by the same data and reports the industry is using to bolster its position.

One widely-referenced study (PDF) estimated that complying with regulations would cost the oil and gas industry more than $100,000 per gas well. But the figures are based on 10-year-old estimates and list expensive procedures that aren’t mentioned in the proposed regulations.

Another report (PDF) concluded that state regulations for drilling, including fracturing, “are adequately designed to directly protect water.” But the report reveals that only four states require regulatory approval before hydraulic fracturing begins. It also outlines how requirements for encasing wells in cement — a practice the author has said is critical to containing hydraulic fracturing fluids and protecting water — varies from state to state.

One recommendation in that report flies in face of industry’s assertion that its processes are safe: hydraulic fracturing needs more study and should be banned in certain cases near sensitive water supplies.

Hydraulic fracturing — where water and sand laced with chemicals is injected underground to break up rock — is considered essential to harvesting deeply buried gas reserves that some predict could meet U.S. demand for 116 years.

In 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, based on assurances that the process was safe. But a series of ProPublica reports has identified a number of cases in which water has been contaminated in drilling areas across the country, and EPA scientists say they can’t fully investigate them because of the exemption.

Now, Congress is considering legislation to restore the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight of the process. And industry — leveraging its money and political connections — is using the recent reports to fight back.

Since January at least five studies have been published making the case that state laws (PDF) are adequate and that new regulations could hamper exploration (PDF), raise fuel prices and eliminate jobs. Three of the studies were paid for by the Department of Energy and produced by consulting firms that also work with the industry. One of the DOE reports (PDF) was written by the same person who authored a study for the Independent Petroleum Association of America (PDF)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx3DtXyEqrE

If you are in England you might want to give these folks a try:

http://www.souththamesgas.co.uk

http://www.allaspectsltd.co.uk/services/plumbing-services/

Dave Stern likes them.

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Our Atmosphere Is A Highway To Hell – And the heat is melting the Polar Caps

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This week we have been exploring all the ways to get to purgatory, the netherworld, the valley of the gods, or the bad place where bad people go. I think the highway metaphor implies in no small way that you are driving yourself there. It implies free will if nothing else because of course you could turn around if you like.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1178

All this can carry a tune I suppose:

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/6058/

But it all just makes you forget that we have used the atmosphere as an open sewer for so long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqwFfGgLPzM

While we melt the Polar Caps away:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17436-warming-arctic-could-teem-with-life-by-2030.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change

Warming Arctic could teem with life by 2030

“Teeming with life” may not be the description that springs to mind when thinking of the Arctic Ocean, but that could soon change as global warming removes the region’s icy lid.

A study of what the Arctic looked like just before dinosaurs were wiped off the planet has provided a glimpse of what could be to come within decades.

Alan Kemp of the UK National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and colleagues used powerful microscopes to inspect cores of mud extracted from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. They found successive layers of tiny algae called diatoms. The pattern of the layers and the distribution of the diatoms provides strong evidence that the Arctic was free of ice during the summer and, contrary to recent studies, frequently covered in ice during the winter.

Hot summer

Ice-free summers and icy winters are precisely what glaciologists fear could happen in the Arctic within decades. Over the past few years, wind pattern and warm temperatures have been gradually thinning Arctic sea ice, making it less and less likely to survive the summer. Some believe the Arctic could be ice-free during the summer as soon as 2030.

The researchers say that the sheer number of diatoms locked in the mud suggests that when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth the Arctic Ocean was biologically very rich during the summer, on a par with the most productive regions of the Southern Ocean today. Since diatoms are at the very bottom of the food chain, waters rich in diatoms can support a lot of larger life forms as well.

“On the basis of our findings, we can say that it is likely that a future Arctic Ocean free of summer sea ice will also be highly productive,” says Kemp. Arctic fauna today is limited by the region’s harsh conditions. The ocean is home to very few species of fish – such as the Arctic cod – which in turn support seals, whales and polar bears.

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Shouldn’t you be buying beach front property in Alaska?

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Our Atmospere Is A Hell Bound Train – Illinois moves south and eventually ends up with Louisiana’s weather

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I have suddenly become interested in the descent into hell as a metaphor for the descent of humankind from peak activity to tribalism. I am not a big fan of the descent theory either. It seems like commercial activity and traveling are universal and have gone on since the beginning of time. It is true that certain forms of economic organization have come and gone. But it seems to me that it universally accepted education that comes and goes. Mainly that is because the things we know are true are  constantly evolving. Like he said in Men in Black:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJvl5fnB-bU&feature=PlayList&p=41D6FF8997B79F88&index=3

Anyway, the difference between “hell in a hand basket” and “hell bound train” is that the basket metaphor seems almost leisurely and the train seems to move a lot faster. As far as origins:

http://everything2.com/title/The%2520Hell-Bound%2520Train

One long poem or:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlqqeobOJvg

One long song:

http://tomtrumpinski.com/Tom_Trumpinski/Books_&_Stories.html

One long book.

Nonetheless you have to admit that it can’t predate the invention of the actual train itself. Why worry about such things? Because the idea that Illinois shall soon have sub Trobical weather is just simply revolting. But according to this it is happening faster than even the “extremists” thought:

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2166

30 Jun 2009: Analysis

Report Gives Sobering View
Of Warming’s Impact on U.S.

A new U.S. government report paints a disturbing picture of the current and future effects of climate change and offers a glimpse of what the nation’s climate will be like by century’s end

by michael d. lemonick

For anyone wondering whether climate change has already hit the United States, a recent U.S. government report says it has — and in a big way.

Witness these trends: In the northeastern U.S., winter temperatures have increased by 4 degrees F since 1970; in the Pacific Northwest, the depth of the Cascade Mountain snowpack on April 1 has declined by 25 percent over the last half century, while spring runoff from the Cascades now occurs nearly a month earlier than 50 years ago; and in Alaska, winter temperatures have increased a stunning 6.3 degrees F in the last 50 years.

Those are just some of the sobering signs of rapid warming spelled out this month in a new report by a U.S. government body that almost no one has heard of: the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCR), which by law is required to report to Congress every ten years on the causes, effects, and possible responses to climate change in the U.S.

If the changes that the U.S. already has experienced make you uneasy, then perhaps you shouldn’t read the the downloadable document itself: It makes quite clear that if the U.S. and the world do little or nothing to slow greenhouse gas emissions, then the climate in the U.S. will be far hotter — and decidedly unpleasant — by the end of this century.

For those inclined to dismiss the USGCR’s report, it should be noted that the group’s scientific pedigree is impeccable. The study is a joint effort of the departments of Energy, Commerce, Defense, State, Interior, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture — plus the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science Foundation, and the Agency for International Development.

The report, which includes new material not contained in the 2007 report

Click to Enlarge
climate

U.S. Global Change Research Program

The Warming of Illinois

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, brings climate change down to the level where people live. For each region of the U.S., the report describes some of the changes that have already been observed, then looks at what’s likely to happen under both a low-emissions scenario (in which emissions of greenhouse gases are cut substantially) and a high-emissions scenario (where the world pretty much stays on the course it’s now following).

Either way, the authors say, significant changes are coming. Substantial emissions cuts are under active debate, but they remain hypothetical so far; the highlights cited here will therefore focus on the business-as-usual scenario — not in order to be alarmist, but to stay in the realm of the concrete.

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I included all that I did just so I could include the cool map of Illinois. Read the rest it is really frightening.

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The Atmosphere’s Going To Hell In A Handbasket – OK so we know it won’t fit

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in a handbasket. I don’t even know what that means or its origins:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-goi1.htm

I have a hunch it was an allusion to being beheaded where the head would have landed in a basket myself but:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hell-in-a-handbasket.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_hell_in_a_handbasket

But I digress…Of course I digress because the prospects of us humans having screwed up our atmosphere so much that it may cease to support most mammalian life is just to gross and disgusting to contemplate.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jun/30-state-of-the-climate-and-science

Environment / Global Warming

The State of the Climate—and of Climate Science

Four scientists discuss where the climate is and where it’s going.

by photography by Timothy Archibald

From the June 2009 issue, published online June 30, 2009

Robin Bell, Ken Caldera, Bill Easterling, Stephen Schneider

In the list of world challenges, global warming might be at once the most alarming and the most controversial. According to some predictions, climate change caused by human activity could cause mass extinction in the oceans, redraw the planet’s coastlines, and ravage world food supplies. At the same time, a significant portion of the American public questions whether global warming will really cause any major harm; many still doubt that human-driven warming is happening at all. How can we settle the debate? And can we intervene in the process or find ways to adapt to the new conditions? In conjunction with the National Science Foundation and the San Francisco Exploratorium, DISCOVER brought together four experts to discuss the reality and meaning of climate change. In a highly nuanced exchange of ideas, these researchers weighed the various scenarios and laid out a road map for navigating the warmer world to come. The conversation was moderated by DISCOVER’s editor in chief, Corey S. Powell.

POWELL: One question I hear all the time is whether the current change in climate is truly extraordinary. Even if humans are contributing to global warming, isn’t this just like the natural variations that have happened many times in the past?

Robin Bell: A little background first. I spend a lot of time studying the ice sheets at the bottom of the planet—how they form and how they collapse. The poles are like the planet’s air conditioner. When things are working well, the poles keep the planet nice and cool and we don’t think about it. When things stop working, the poles can start to melt and there’s a puddle on the floor. Today both poles are getting warmer; in Greenland and Antarctica you can see the surface of the ice dropping, and you can see there’s less mass when you measure the ice from space. The process has been ongoing, but it looks like it’s happening faster than it was. We know the ice sheets have come and gone in the past. Why is this any different? One of the most compelling reasons is that in the past the ice sheets from the two poles didn’t move together—one would lead and the other would follow. This time, both the north and south are spewing ice into the global ocean, accelerating at the same time.

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Please read more if you dare.

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The Slow Local Food People Are Pretty Cool – I have been hanging out with the Lawn to Food Types lately

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It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPSh47gHz8&feature=related

While I have understood for like 40 years that “scarcity” was the real environmental issue and that “over population” was its cause, many people are just waking up to that. On the energy front, an example would be that for the last 100 years we should have been rationing oil and using it for only the things that it was absolutely necessary for. Guess what? Gasoline and Plastics are two that would not be remotely near the top of the absolutely necessary list. Plastic bags would be ludicrous. Similarly, food should have been planted everywhere. I mean everywhere, yards, parks, ditches. Over the last 100 years good land should have been totally devoted to food and bad land left alone. We did not do that. In fact we did the exact opposite. If 100 years ago every couple could have produced no more that 2 kids….THINK about what our world would be like…Anyway the peak oil people and a lot of environmentalists are suddenly realizing that Thomas Robert Malthus was right:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus

We (homosapien) have suffered die backs before. People like to ignore the fact that Malthus had already been RIGHT when he wrote his first pamphlet. Populations of Humans, and our close cousins Neanderthal, Erectis and Hablis have fluctuated radically in the last several million years. This to the extent that the cousins are extinct. No one has ever considered that we just got lucky on that one or even worse yet that we only made it because we could hang on. That is, when our numbers get small we cooperate and stave off the end by any means necessary. These episodes are called “bottle necks” in the populations sciences and they are frightening to contemplate. Just as an example sometime roughly 50,000 years ago there may have been as few as 5,000 humans on this planet in an area the size of New York State in eastern South Africa. Humbling isn’t it? Why did we go from a population of several hundred thousand spread all over the Mediteranian and the Middle east…maybe even extending to the west coast of India…BACK to our home in Africa? Was it war, volcanic eruptions, changes in climate, famine or even disease? Who knows but this planet can not sustain 9 billion people. It just can’t. So maybe the reason I have taken up with the agricultural types is that old marijuana saying, Food will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no food.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buXJlBd3Mf8&feature=related

So here are a couple of food ideas from the people at Peak Oil:

http://www.peakoil.com/

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/news/article/710876

Urban farms the wave of future?

Published Friday June 26th, 2009

Permit granted for experimental farm in Moncton neighbourhood

A5

By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff

It’s always risky to count your chickens before they’re hatched, but it looks like a go for a plan to raise egg-producing hens in a suburban Moncton neighbourhood.

The Greater Moncton District Planning Commission has granted a local group a one-year temporary permit to run an urban experimental farm. The project, sponsored by Post Carbon Greater Moncton, will involve the keeping of up to four hens within the city boundaries. The group hatched the plan as a response to concerns that rising oil prices will one day force people to return to being more involved in their food production.

Is having your own hens laying eggs all it’s cracked up to be? Will the quiet hamlet (or is that omelette?) of Sunny Acres West (or is that Sunny Side Up Acres?) ever be the same? What’s the best way to run a hen-house without running off half-cocked?

That’s what the folks of the local post carbon group hope to find out through a careful study. This is not simply a “let the chicks fall where they may” approach to the issue of farm animals and humans co-existing in an urban setting, but rather something that will be carefully monitored.

And bad puns aside — the “eggspectations” of the headline is Post Carbon spokesman Michel Desjardins’ own contribution to this article, lest anyone think we’re making fun — the purpose is serious. Desjardins said yesterday the pilot project is a step towards more self-sufficiency and food security in the region. “We think food security and self-sufficiency will be a huge issue in the future.”

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aXY2pM2sA&feature=related

Then there is this:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/uow-pfe062509.php

Contact: David Zaks
zaks@wisc.edu
608-890-0337
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Projected food, energy demands seen to outpace production

MADISON — With the caloric needs of the planet expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important, according a new report released today (June 25).

The report, produced by Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s leading global investment banks, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, provides a framework for investing in sustainable agriculture against a backdrop of massive population growth and escalating demands for food, fiber and fuel.

“We are at a crossroads in terms of our investments in agriculture and what we will need to do to feed the world population by 2050,” says David Zaks, a co-author of the report and a researcher at the Nelson Institute’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

By 2050, world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people, up from 6.5 billion today. Already, according to the report, a gap is emerging between agricultural production and demand, and the disconnect is expected to be amplified by climate change, increasing demand for biofuels, and a growing scarcity of water.

“There will come a point in time when we will have difficulties feeding world population,” says Zaks, a graduate student whose research focuses on the patterns, trends and processes of global agriculture.

Although unchecked population growth will put severe strains on global agriculture, demand can be met by a combination of expanding agriculture to now marginal or unused land, substituting new types of crops, and technology, the report’s authors conclude. “The solution is only going to come about by changing the way we use land, changing the things that we grow and changing the way that we grow them,” Zaks explains.

The report notes that agricultural research and technological development in the United States and Europe have increased notably in the last decade, but those advances have not translated into increased production on a global scale. Subsistence farmers in developing nations, in particular, have benefited little from such developments and investments in those agricultural sectors have been marginal, at best.

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Me I am headed for the refrigerator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxEjENrSdV0&feature=related

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George Will And Robert Murray Defend The Carbon Economy With Lies

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The State Journal Register is just the same old Republican Rag that wants to shine Big Coals boots to stay in business. They ran 3 Right Wing Pundits today and 2 of them Commented on the Green Economy. One who says it won’t work and the other who says that Cap and Trade will destroy the US Economy. The first one, George Will:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/24/LI2005032402294.html

Who admits in the very article that the report he cites is the product of,  a right wing radical libertarian economist, was published by a right wing think tank that opposes any change in energy policy besides “Drill here, Drill now” and that has neither been replicated nor peer reviewed. BUT none the less it is TRUE to point out that Spain has an unemployment rate of 18% (which is disputed by many) and that every green electricity production job costs  700,000 to 1.5 million $$$ counting subsidies and green corruption.

The unemployment figures are probably 3 to 4 % lower then he reports and at 12-14 % where the United States will end up by September or October BECAUSE we are in the greatest economic downturn since the GREAT Depression (though no one can tell me what was so great about it) that was caused by rightwing attacks on our financial sector, our housing sector and on labor (car manufacturers). These are his wealthy buddies yah know. He then tosses off another “source”, a report by rightwing Missourian, Kitt Bond who may or may not know anything about economics which comes to a similar conclusion, “Oil good when cheap – Wind and Solar bad” and concludes that a failed policy in EDUCATION will have the same results in ENERGY policy. Did George have a cup of coffee today? It is always tough when your biases show like your butt crack.

http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x998784623/George-Will-Reality-of-green-spending-not-promising 

George Will: Reality of green spending not promising

THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted Jun 25, 2009 @ 12:02 AM

WASHINGTON — The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating “green jobs” in “alternative energy” even though Spain’s unemployment rate is 18.1 percent — more than double the European Union average — partly because of spending on such jobs?Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report which, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration’s green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.Calzada says Spain’s torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources — on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada’s report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies — wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital. (European media regularly report “eco-corruption” leaving a “footprint of sleaze” — gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain’s economy.:}

Normally I would not even dein this kind of obvious “paid to play” kind of Drivel, because if I wrote a blog for everytime George Will was wrong or lying I would never get anything done, but when the SJ-R follows that with an attack on Cap and Trade (the industries OWN proposed solution) written by known liar and coal mine owner Robert Murray that is just way over the line. Please note their web site:

http://www.murrayenergy.net/ 

These people are proud that they are longwall miners and mountain TOP destroyers and even ash producers. To wit:

Murray is the largest privately owned coal company in America
Murrary Energy CorporationProducing approximately 30 million annual tons of bituminous coal that provides affordable energy to households and businesses across the country. We have eight (8) underground and surface mining operations, plus 40 subsidiary and support companies. Transporting coal via truck, rail and waterways, we operate the second largest fleet of longwall mining units in the country. With a support team of 3,000 hard-working, dedicated, and talented employees in six (6) states, Murray Energy Corporation provides efficient, safe, and affordable high-quality coal to the country’s leading electric producers, domestically and abroad.

Energy, Efficiency, Effective leadership . . .
Celebrating 20 years of building America’s energy future, and utilizing the industry’s most modern mining technologies today to enhance safety, improve productivity and reduce costs. We credit our employees and talents of the team assembled to provide this reliable, low-cost energy source. Murray is transforming America’s most abundant natural energy resource into electricity, powering America’s future. Murray Energy’s team, from the CEO to the coal miner, along with their effective managers use state-of-art technology and engineering principles, all to the production of energy..

Commitment . . .
Is the driving force behind Murray Energy producing and delivering to get the most reliable and affordable energy supplied to our customers. From our leadership and management, to our workforce, commitment is the center of our focus to produce every ton of coal safely, efficiently, and to provide the most affordable energy for the benefit of all Americans and the Country

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And he says:

http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x998784635/Robert-Murray-Waxman-Markey-bill-will-destroy-U-S-coal-industry

Robert Murray: Waxman-Markey bill will destroy U.S. coal industry

THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted Jun 25, 2009 @ 12:04 AM

Perhaps the most destructive legislation in our country’s history will be voted on, maybe as soon as next week, in the U.S. House of Representatives — the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill. It is a misguided attempt to address climate change.It will have adverse and lingering consequences for every American.It will raise the cost of electricity in our homes, the fuel for our cars, and the energy that produces our manufacturing jobs, with little or no environmental benefit.Further, independent experts estimate that it will cost Americans more than $2 trillion in just over eight years. All Americans in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain regions will be drastically affected because the climate change legislation will destroy the nation’s coal industry and the low-cost electricity it has provided to these regions for generations. Wealth will be transferred away from almost every state to the West Coast and New England.The most abundant and by far least expensive energy source in our country for generating electricity is coal. America’s coal reserves rival the energy potential of Saudi Arabian oil.

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Nowhere does he cite actual sources or anything else. No one at the SJ-R calls him on it or points out that “Cap and Trade” was very effective at getting rid of sulfur dioxide.  If coal were not such a nasty energy source we would not be getting rid of it. WHAT doesn’t he understand about “Leave it in the ground”?

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Race Between Gobal Warming And Peak Oil – Hilarious take on it

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I rarely post on a weekend BUT I have been doing those dreary tax credits for the last week and I may have a week or more to go so for a day let’s do funny. Plus I never thought I would be linked to ESPN. Crikey.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=4223932

The Ultimate Ultimate Race

by Luke Cypher

And that was great news for Peak Oil! With low, low prices, there’s no profit motive, which means no reason to explore for more oil, which means sooner or later, an inevitable demand spike will be met by crippling shortages, leading to the end of civilization!

But Global Warming wasn’t going to be outdone, and was actually more impressive, when you look inside the numbers, which is the way we live now. This winter may have seemed cold, if you were a fan of the Bowdoin Polar Bears or Plattsburgh State Cardinals — and really, what right-thinking American isn’t? But the average U.S. temperature from December through February was half a degree above normal! And don’t even start on Down Under, because that’s a lot of prepositions. The Wilkins Ice Shelf crumbled like A-Rod‘s reputation, and Australia contained its wildfires about as well as Roger Clemens put out his. To complete the bad metaphor fest (because, like celebrity deaths, they always seem to come in threes), Global Warming was en fuego!

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They have been having fun with it for a long time:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/package?id=3480595

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Bataan Nuclear Power Plant And Earthquakes – Shake, Rattle and Roll

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(it’s jam band friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20Feq_Nt3nM )

This maybe the longest list of Qualifiers I have ever published and I have to start by eating crow to boot. I made a missssstaaake yesterday. The piece that I was quoting yesterday was actually a piece on seismic activity, but I thought what it said was more applicable to Volcanic eruptions. I said that the Natib Caldera had erupted 3,000 years ago, but the actual article said that a major fault shift had occurred every 2,000 years. The last major fault shift was 3,000 years ago so a major Earth Quake was overdue. The caldera last blew 14 to 18,000 years ago and not enough is known about its activity to say what its periocity is. Whew, I feel so much better…A major earthquake in the area is overdue.

( I know that Shake Rattle and Roll isn’t really a jam song but what the heck it’s Friday)

As was noted in one of the comments in the seismic piece, the Philippines is not alone in either being on the Ring Of Fire nor is it the only Earth Quake prone zone in the world.  Japan and America are both very sophisticated places technologically and also have extensive infrastructures to handle disasters in general. The Philippines is neither. Plus where are you going to evacuate too? It is an island. Not only that but the Japanese and the Americans have released a lot of radiation over the years. Look the big deal is Bataan is not fueled. Once it is fueld you might as well run it because everything is radioactive anyway. Drago in the US is just as much a threat.  I bitched about it for years while it was being built and submitted written protest to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency in DC when it was Licensed.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpT8Sd9wRlQ&feature=related )

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So having said all that, the Philippines really shakes:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=7.8686,126.8434(M5.7+-+Mindanao,+Philippines+-+2009+May+21+05%3A53%3A59+UTC)&t=h&z=7

Everyday. Why because the Philippines sits on the edge of a Techtonic Plate. So really BIG things can happen:

( Elvis shake those hips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBT7PfAEgc&feature=related )

http://www.drj.com/drworld/content/w1_116.htm

Earthquake Devastates Philippines

By Cathy Clark and Jim Taylor

On July 16, 1990 at 4:26 p.m. local time, a severe earthquake registering 7.7 on the Richter scale struck the northern Philippines. The earthquake caused damage over a region of about 7700 square miles, extending northwest from Manila through the densely populated Central Plains of Luzon and into the mountains of the Cordillera Central.
Over 5,000 people were reported dead or injured, and in excess of 2300 infrastructures were either destroyed or seriously damaged. While the quake was devastating, it was not an unusual occurrence in the Philippines; since 1950 alone there have been six major earthquakes at various locations in the archipelago, having magnitudes ranging from 7.3 to 8.3.

STRUCTURAL DAMAGE

Buildings were decimated by ground shaking, soil failure and liquefication (causing them to settle into the ground), and landslides.
Nearly all multistory buildings in the Philippines are constructed of reinforced concrete frames, supporting slab floors. Short-column failure was evident in many buildings observed to have the classic diagonal cracking where the column was acting as a short shear wall and could not carry the loads. Many unreinforced masonry infilled walls separated from the concrete frames and collapsed.
In the heavily shaken regions, two general types of disastrous failure to multistory, larger reinforced concrete buildings were observed–failed first stories and total building collapse.

First-story (or Soft-story) Failures

The ground floor of a building is frequently the weakest part of the structure. It is seldom enclosed on all four sides by walls capable of resisting shear forces, and it is also generally taller than upper floors. Ground floor shops, stores, lobbies, or garages normally allot most of their front wall area to doors or plate glass, leaving one side of the building with no shear resistance. Bending and shear forces induced by strong ground shaking are therefore concentrated in the ground-floor columns. As a result, the building may fail by collapse of only its first story, with the stronger upper section of the building remaining intact.

Multistory Failures

Many multistory building failures or “pancake” collapses (typically with structures of six to ten stories) were observed in the city of Baguio. One such collapse included a nine-story hotel which killed over a dozen occupants on the ground floor. This type of damage has been observed repeatedly in numerous earthquakes throughout the world where design and construction deficiencies exist.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_SOmE5tfNo&feature=related )

Not only that but it appears to happen about once every 20 years or so:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/1968_Casiguran_earthquake

Ph Locator Aurora Casiguran

 The 1968 Casiguran earthquake occurred on August 2, 1968 at a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale. The earthquake’s epicenter was located in Casiguran
Casiguran is a 3rd class Philippine municipality in the northern part of the Philippine province of Aurora province, Philippines. It is located 121 km from Baler, Aurora, the provincial capital…. Quezon

Quezon is a Provinces of the Philippines of the Philippines located in the CALABARZON Regions of the Philippines in Luzon. The province was named after Manuel L….(now part of Aurora province).The city of Manila, or simply ‘Manila’, is the Capital of the Philippines and one of the 17 cities and municipalities that make up Metro Manila…. was the hardest hit with 268 people were killed and 261 more were injured. Many structures that suffered severe damage were built near the mouth of the Pasig River

The Pasig River is a river in the Philippines and connects Laguna de Bay into Manila Bay. It stretches for and divides Metro Manila into two….on huge alluvial deposits. A number of buildings were damaged beyond repair while others only suffered cosmetic damage. Two hundred and sixty people died during the collapse of the 6-story Ruby Tower, located in the district of Binondo. The entire building, save for a portion of the first and second floors at its northern end, was destroyed. Allegations of poor design and construction, as well as use of low-quality building materials, arose. In the District of Santa Ana is a district of the City of Manila in the Philippines, located at the southeast banks of the Pasig River, bounded on the northeast by Mandaluyong City, Makati City to the east, southwest is the Manila district of Paco, Manila, and to the west, Pandacan, Manila…. one person was injured by debris from a damaged apartment building.
Two more people from Aurora sub province and Pampanga  is a Provinces of the Philippines of the Philippines located in the Central Luzon Regions of the Philippines. Its capital is the City of San Fernando, Pampanga….
died as a direct result of the quake. Around the town of Casiguran, there were several reports of landslides, the most destructive one at Casiguran Bay.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t61oJT-d900&feature=related  )

So let’s put our thinking caps on here. The Luzon Earth Quake happened in 1990 and Pinatubo happened in 1991. What if the Luzon earthquake had hit Manila like the Casiguran. I don’t think I would have wanted to have had to worry about a Nuclear Reactor popping off. Guess what it has been about 20 years…

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The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant…What a dumb idea

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See, it’s not just that it’s a 1973 designed reactor on which construction was started in 1976 and finished in 1984, nor is it the fact that it had 4,000 safety violations, cost 2.4 billion $$$ and was finally paid off in 2004. No, it’s that it is inbetween an ocean and a bay, it’s on a fault line, and it’s in the flow path of a VOLCANO. One that is still ACTIVE.  Everything about this screams “retard alert” or “danger will robinson danger”…

But it isn’t just one volcano it’s 2 in a chain of Volcanoes. Both Natib and Pinatubo Volcanoes are within 60 miles of the site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo

285px-pinatubo_ash_plume_910612.jpg

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Natib is a whole nother booger that goes off about every 2,000 years and it has been 3,000 years since it went off..

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=443497&publicationSubCategoryId=75

The 1992 Torres report

While he was still at Phivolcs, Dr. Ronnie Torres, a foremost expert regarding pyroclastic flows who is now at the University of Hawaii, warned of volcanism and faulting at the site in a 1992 report, “The vulnerability of PNPP site to the hazards of Natib volcano” (Phivolcs Observer, Vol. 8 No. 3: 1-4).Quoting Dr. Torres: “Natib volcano does not erupt very often but could still erupt.” As a rough rule of thumb, the longer a volcano is in repose, the more time it has to store eruptive energy, and thus, the stronger the eventual eruption caldera on Mt. Pinatubo.

The Sonido-Umbal 2001 Report to the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority

Dr. Ernesto Sonido collaborated with Mr. Jesse Umbal to submit in 2000 an exhaustive, 38-page analysis for SBMA of the geology and geohazards of the Subic Bay area. Jess Umbal is one of the brightest, most competent volcanologists and geologists I know. Working with me during the Pinatubo eruption, he earned his Masters degree at the University of Illinois in 1993. Dr. Sonido is not a volcanologist, so we can assume that Umbal wrote those aspects in the report, which adjudged Natib as “potentially active.” The report documented two Natib eruptions that formed large calderas, one with a diameter more than twice as big as that of the new caldera on Mt. Pinatubo.

The Cabato et al. study

In 1997, Ms. Joan Cabato, Dr. Fernando Siringan and I of the National Institute of Geological Sciences of UP Diliman, collaborating with the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the National Power Corp., initiated a geophysical study of the marine geology of Subic Bay. The study was supported as “due diligence” hazard evaluation by then SBMA Chairman Richard J. Gordon.

From a slowly moving boat or ship, we gathered 125 kilometers of “seismic reflection” data. That method puts powerful pulses of low-frequency sound into the water. The sound passes down through the water and into the layers of sediment below the sea floor. Some of the sound is reflected back upwards from the different sediment layers, and is collected by hydrophones trailing behind the boat. Much as if we took an X-ray, electronic equipment automatically uses the returned signals to make a detailed picture of the structure underlying the sea, in our case down to a depth of about 120 meters.

After we processed the data and prepared the manuscript, it underwent rigorous scrutiny by our geological peers in the Philippines and abroad, before it was published in the international Journal of Asian Earth Sciences. I am proud to have been part of that effort, which earned a Masters degree for Joan Cabato, a very bright young woman who recently earned her doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

Quite by accident, we discovered a massive deposit of sediment that can only be explained as originating as a large pyroclastic flow from the large Natib caldera, in an eruption that occurred sometime between 11,000 and 18,000 years ago. That date has wrongly been called Natib’s latest eruption. A systematic study of Natib itself could find evidence of even younger eruptions.

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So here is one of the BIG Questions what happens to a reactor when it washes out to sea. I have no answer but it sounds like a very bad idea. Some people would argue that it would just melt down and be encapsulated…but I got my doubts.

http://www.bataan.gov.ph/ragingpeninsula/mt.natib.trekking.html



BATAAN NATURAL PARK
Tala, Orani

Mt.Natib is the highest summit in the entire Natib Caldera System in the Bataan Natural Park, a dormant volcano with an elevation of 1,253 meters above sea level (masl). It lies between the larger Old Caldera and the smaller Pasukulan Caldera and represents the latest of the volcanic edifice to develop in the area. The slope is characterized by very steep forested slope. Mossy forest characterized by small-stunted trees occurs approaching the peak. The peak is covered by a small patch of grassland. Also found are boulders with inscribed names of American expeditionary forces that climbed the peak way back the 1930s.

Mountain climbers and nature lovers will find the mountain exciting and interesting since the forest is home to many floral and faunal species. Migratory birds are also seen in the area. A trail shelter is available for overnight trekkers to pitch their tents and enjoy a breathtaking sunrise. However local guides should escort visitors.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

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What about the Earthquakes? More tomorrow.

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Bataan Death March Repeated – How desperate is the Nuclear Power Industry to be reborn

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There is a movement afoot in the Philippines to actually fuel a long abandoned Nuclear power plant. It was built but never fueled because nuclear power makes no economic sense. The fuel is too expensive, and creating the fuel is so lethal as to be largely unthinkable. But in this particular case…much like the nukes in California built on earthquake fault zones…the Philippines in general is sooooo close to the water table as to invite the China Syndrome. For those that relate that to a mildly entertaining and scary movie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxtBJ59Jm8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnDBXGb6Nn8

The reality of the China Syndrome was suppressed at Three Mile Island where at least a 1,000 people died and 1,000s more were sickened in a 5 state region in New England:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmmdh8Xlbvg&feature=related

It was never confronted at Chernobyl where 10s of 1,000s died and 100s of 1000s of people were sickened worldwide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=101OEaksU0s&feature=related

Where unbelievably 3 Nuclear Reactors still operate today…next to a Lake..

So why intheworld would you want to fuel a reactor built in 1976 on an island near the sea in a tropical jungle? Because it cost 2.6 billion $$$ to build (thanks Ferdinand Marco…where do you think his wife got those shoes) and which is still costing the people of the Philippines 155,000 $$$ a day. As the song says, Money Money Money:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkOmcIl79s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O8gTib5rnw

But let’s start at the beginning, I was 22 in 1976 and working at Powerton, a Com Ed coal fired powerplant in Pekin, IL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant, completed but never fueled, on Bataan Peninsula, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Manila in the Philippines. It is located on a 3.57 square kilometer government reservation at Napot Point in Morong, Bataan. It was the Philippines’ only attempt at building a nuclear power plant.

[edit] History

The Philippine nuclear program started in 1958 with the creation of the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) under Republic Act 2067.[1]

Under a regime of martial law, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in July 1973 announced the decision to build a nuclear power plant.[1] This was in response to the 1973 oil crisis, as the Middle East oil embargo had put a heavy strain on the Philippine economy, and Marcos believed nuclear power to be the solution to meeting the country’s energy demands and decreasing dependence on imported oil.[2]

Construction on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant began in 1976. Following the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States, construction on the BNPP was stopped, and a subsequent safety inquiry into the plant revealed over 4,000 defects.[1] Among the issues raised was that it was built near major earthquake fault lines and close to the then dormant Pinatubo volcano.[2]

By 1984, when the BNPP was nearly complete, its cost had reached $2.3 billion.[2] A Westinghouse light water reactor, it was designed to produce 621 megawatts of electricity.[2]

Marcos was overthrown by the People Power Revolution in 1986. Days after the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the succeeding administration of President Corazon Aquino decided not to operate the plant.[1][3] Among other considerations taken were the strong opposition from Bataan residents and Philippine citizens.[1][3]

The government sued Westinghouse for overpricing and bribery but was ultimately rejected by a United States court.[4]

Debt repayment on the plant became the country’s biggest single obligation, and while successive governments have looked at several proposals to convert the plant into an oil, coal, or gas-fired power station, but all have been deemed less economically attractive in the long term than the construction of new power stations.[2]

Despite never having been commissioned, the plant has remained intact, including the nuclear reactor, and has continued to be maintained.[2] The Philippine government completed paying off its obligations on the plant in April 2007, more than 30 years after construction began.[2]

On January 29, 2008, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes announced that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 8-man team led by Akira Omoto inspected the mothballed Bataan Nuclear power station on rehabilitation prospects. In preparing their report, the IAEA made two primary recommendations. First, the power plant’s status must be thoroughly evaluated by technical inspections and economic evaluations conducted by a committed group of nuclear power experts with experience in preservation management. Second, the IAEA mission advised the Philippines Government on the general requirements for starting its nuclear power programme, stressing that the proper infrastructure, safety standards, and knowledge be implemented.[5] The IAEA’s role did not extend to assessing whether the power plant is usable or not, or how much the plant may cost to rehabilitate.
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What a bad idea.

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