Category Archives: pollution

Fracking Should Be Banned In Illinois – But apparently the frackers have decided to forge ahead

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I got an email from Southern Illinois that said 30 big rigs had rolled through town yesterday morning. I figure that that is enough for 2 wells. It seems like some drilling company has decided to “go for it”. Which makes sick and disgusting sense. Many of the leases die at the end of April. I suspect that these will be test wells, because no one knows what is down there. It takes about  7 days to to drill a well and frack it. That would have the wells beginning to come in as the lease expires. This is what I said in print.

Thursday, April 11,2013

Letters to the Editor 4/11/13

Fracking and litter control act

By Letters to the Editor

 

FRACKING STINKS

I am writing to argue for a moratorium against fracking in Illinois (SB 1418). Chicago environmentalists argue that “fracking is going to happen anyway.” That is a total capitulation to the industry. The bill that the environmentalists endorse (HB2615) is amazing in the things it does not prevent. It does not force the frackers to recycle their water, allows for methane flaring, allows wells within 300 feet of water sources, allows wells within 500 feet of a house, does not allow adequate testing of produced waters especially for radiation and then allows that waste to be deep well injected and finally allows for the state to overrule counties and municipalities who do not want fracking or more protective measures.

Many states have tried to establish hydraulic fracturing regulations that would allow the industry to drill safely. The problem is regulations do not work. The industry always violates the regulations and when caught pays the fine as part of standard operating procedure. These violations include injecting radioactive water underground, open pit storage of fracking and waste waters even where not permitted, the production of toxic fumes and the sickening of residents, well water contamination and the direct dumping of toxic water into springs and streams. They have gone so far as to sell toxic water to county townships to suppress dust in the summer and to de-ice roads in the winter as if that was safe. Homeowners are duped into selling mineral rights without being told that it will make their houses impossible to sell and wreck their mortgages. In Pennsylvania their violations include:

– 224 violations of “failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of residual waste.”

– 143 violations of “discharge of pollutional material to the waters of Commonwealth.”

– 140 violations of “pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.”

This does not include the actual damage that they do to the environment, like damaging the roads where they work, and flaring the natural gas that should be harnessed as a fuel source and the constant noise pollution that the above activities produce. I was visiting a friend in Colorado when such a well was put in and the noise and smell alone were enough to sicken me.

Doug Nicodemus
Riverton
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Go there and read. They did a whole 5 page article on the issue. More later.

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Is There A Pandemic Building In China – Oh God let’s hope not

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There are many things that environmentalists have said over the years. The 2 most consistently true ones are that there are too many people on this planet and the other is that we will pay a price for befouling our planet. This has led some to talk about the possibility of a human “die back”. Is this what the beginning of one might look like?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/01/is_this_a_pandemic_being_born_china_pigs_virus

 

Is This a Pandemic Being Born?

China’s mysterious pig, duck, and people deaths could be connected. And that should worry us.

BY LAURIE GARRETT | APRIL 1, 2013

Here’s how it would happen. Children playing along an urban river bank would spot hundreds of grotesque, bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, angry citizens would protest the rising stench from piles of dead ducks and swans, their rotting bodies collecting by the thousands along river banks. And three unrelated individuals would stagger into three different hospitals, gasping for air. Two would quickly die of severe pneumonia and the third would lay in critical condition in an intensive care unit for many days. Government officials would announce that a previously unknown virus had sickened three people, at least, and killed two of them. And while the world was left to wonder how the pigs, ducks, swans, and people might be connected, the World Health Organization would release deliberately terse statements, offering little insight.

It reads like a movie plot — I should know, as I was a consultant for Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. But the facts delineated are all true, and have transpired over the last six weeks in China. The events could, indeed, be unrelated, and the new virus, a form of influenza denoted as H7N9, may have already run its course, infecting just three people and killing two.

Or this could be how pandemics begin.

On March 10, residents of China’s powerhouse metropolis, Shanghai, noticed some dead pigs floating among garbage flotsam in the city’s Huangpu River. The vile carcasses appeared in Shanghai’s most important tributary of the mighty Yangtze, a 71-mile river that is edged by the Bund, the city’s main tourist area, and serves as the primary source of drinking water and ferry travel for the 23 million residents of the metropolis and its millions of visitors. The vision of a few dead pigs on the surface of the Huangpu was every bit as jarring for local Chinese as porcine carcasses would be for French strolling the Seine, Londoners along the Thames, or New Yorkers looking from the Brooklyn Bridge down on the East River.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Global Warming Revealed – It will involve upper atmospheric pulses

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What the planet can expect in the future and humans should be prepared for. A pulse starts some where when it is either cooler or warmer than the rest of the world. This temperature variant then pulses around the world until splat, it strikes a particular area with an unknown effect. Fire here, drought there, and a flood occasionally.

http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/201816/weather-extremes-atmospheric-waves-and-climate-change

Weather Extremes: Atmospheric Waves And Climate Change

Authored by:

Joseph Romm

By Vladimir Petoukhov and Stefan Rahmstorf, via The Conversation

The northern hemisphere has experienced a spate of extreme weather in recent times. In 2012 there were destructive heat waves in the U.S. and southern Europe, accompanied by floods in China. This followed a heat wave in the U.S. in 2011 and one in Russia in 2010, coinciding with the unprecedented Pakistan flood — and the list doesn’t stop there.

Now we believe we have detected a common physical cause hidden behind all these individual events: Each time one of these extremes struck, a strong wave train had developed in the atmosphere, circling the globe in mid-latitudes. These so-called planetary waves are well-known and a normal part of atmospheric flow. What is not normal is that the usually moving waves ground to a halt and were greatly amplified during the extreme events.

Looking into the physics behind this, we found it is due to a resonance phenomenon. Under special conditions, the atmosphere can start to resonate like a bell. The wind patterns form a regular wave train, with six, seven or eight peaks and troughs going once around the globe (see graph). This is what we propose in a study published this week together with our colleagues of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Planetary waves

Normally, an important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating irregularly between the tropical and polar regions. So when they swing northward, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US; and when they swing southward, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic. This is a well-known feature of our planet’s atmospheric circulation system

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Fukushima Catastrophe – 2 years later it is still a mess

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It is sad but true that at roughly 3:00 pm Japanese time the world changed. While not one event starting with a powerful earthquake at 9 on the Richter scale that did not itself cause much damage but, followed by a tsunami that washed 20,000 people out to sea. This then was followed the next day with with a nuclear meltdown. 4 of them to be exact. What cast radiation into the air, probably to most areas of Japan. I am not trying to downplay the nuclear disaster but a woman on the radio said that it was clear where the Japanese had built in flood zones.  Which unfortunately could not readily be discerned before the flood because all of the clutter that had accumulated over the years (fences, roads and trees etc.) I hope they do not rebuild there again.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/every-day-is-a-fukushima-memorial/

Every Day Is a Fukushima Memorial’

TOKYO, Mar 10 2013 (IPS) – Japan prepares to mark the second anniversary of the Mar. 11 triple disaster – an earthquake, tsunami and a critical nuclear reactor accident – with much soul searching across the country.

For Yukiko Takada from Otsuki-cho, a scenic fishing town in Iwate prefecture that was turned into rubble in a few hours on that fateful day, the upcoming memorial Monday will simply be another day.

“For me, as it is like for the survivors who experienced the horrible tragedy, everyday remains a memorial, not just March 11, as we struggle to accept what happened and to get our lives back after the devastation,” she tells IPS.

The young woman represents one of the more poignant stories in lessons learnt following the disaster. Takada launched her own community newspaper last June. It was a project, she says, that was imperative to the recovery of the local community.

Otsuchi Shimbun, published weekly, provides up to date information on issues such as relocation of families, temporary housing, employment opportunities and local government decisions. It plays a crucial role in the rebuilding of people’s confidence.

Supported mainly with revenue from local ads, the newspaper, a one-woman show, carries diverse voices, and includes a focus on women. Takada says women have displayed mind-boggling will power to restart their lives for the sake of their families.

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Go there and read. More next time.

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Are People Who Are Opposed To Nuclear Power Also Opposed To Science – I always try to be fair

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First this person loads this article with oblique invective. Not all liberals are opposed to nuclear power. In fact he never even defines what a liberal IS. Second, he bases his arguement on health issues while dismissing the costs of the power stations and the displacement of that cost to investments in renewable sources of energy with no evidence to support those dismissals. Then there is the issue of waste storage which proved so decisive in the Fukushima accident – eg. causing the most destruction and the most danger. From a larger perspective, we have our own nuclear fusion plant going on with the Sun, and we got back up in the Moon causing the tides. We don’t need no stinking nuclear power.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ropeik/are-antinuke-liberals-sci_b_844783.html

Are Anti-Nuke Liberals Science Deniers?

Posted: 04/ 5/11 03:37 PM ET

 

David Ropeik

David Ropeik

Author, “How Risky Is It, Really?”

The first glimmers of hope begin to shine from the nuclear crisis in Japan, but they will do little to brighten the views of some about nuclear power. As the disaster at Fukushima has shown, nuclear certainly has risks, as do all forms of energy. But the disaster has also reminded us that it’s really hard to get people to change their minds about a risk, once those minds have been made up. And close-mindedness isn’t the brightest, or safest, way to make the healthiest possible choices about how to stay safe.

As a TV reporter in Boston I covered several nuclear power controversies. Seabrook. Pilgrim. Yankee Rowe. These were great stories… lead stories… because they involved possible public exposure to nuclear radiation, and everybody knows that’s really dangerous. My stories were full of ominous drama and alarm. But when I joined the Harvard School of Public Health and researched nuclear power for a chapter in a book, RISK, A Practical Guide for Deciding What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You, I was ashamed to learn how uninformed and misleading my alarmism had been. Ionizing radiation is indeed a carcinogen. But it’s not nearly as potent as most people fear.

94,000 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been followed for 66 years by epidemiologists from around the world and, compared to normal cancer rates in Japan, only about 500 of those survivors have died because of the radiation. About two thirds of one percent. The radiation also caused birth defects in children born to women pregnant when they were exposed, but no long term genetic damage. These findings are widely accepted in the scientific community. Governments around the world base their radiation regulations on them.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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The Sangamon County Board Voted Against A Wind Farm Yesterday – This is a tragedy

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Yet when I go to the SJ-Rs Website I can not find the article to share with you. That is a really really bad mistake by a paper that is on its last legs. These guys claim that their digital Product is as good as their print Product, but guess what?  Maybe not. Anyway here is the home page. You go there see if you can find it.

http://www.sj-r.com/

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In the mean time here is an article that I could find discussing or should I say disgusting the issue. This is a real brazen attempt by vested interests to keep a wind farm out of the State Capital. I do not know whether it is the Republican parties hatred of the topic of man caused global warming in general, or because of oil and gas interests in the Capital. This is the stupidest thing the County Board has ever done. There are wind farms all over this state and Sangamon County is the only one that has to have “special” zoning codes for them. This after the City Council of Springfield, at no ones request, placed height restrictions on personal wind turbines so as to render them ineffective. This county is completely gross.

http://www.sj-r.com/local/x871170515/County-board-to-debate-new-wind-turbine-proposal

County board to debate new wind turbine proposal

Posted Nov 15, 2012 @ 09:08 PM

The Sangamon County Board has scheduled a special meeting Monday to look at changes to county wind turbine rules that would increase the minimum distance between a turbine and a house.

The board imposed a moratorium on wind turbines in January so it could revamp its zoning rules. The turbines use wind energy to generate electricity.

The county now requires a large wind turbine to be at least 1,000 feet or three times the diameter of the rotors, whichever is greater, from a house. The setback from the property line must be at least 1,200 feet.

While no wind farm proposals are before the county board, Springfield Project Development, a joint development between American Wind Energy Management and Oak Creek Energy Systems, is planning a wind farm in western Sangamon County.

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I would say, go there and read like I usually do but. More tomorrow.

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Electric Car Triumphs – Fitting award for the President’s re-election

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Finally someone made a car that is better than one powered by gasoline. Really that is all they have to do.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/1113/Tesla-Model-S-wins-Motor-Trend-s-Car-of-the-Year.-Are-electric-cars-here-to-stay

Tesla Model S wins Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. Are electric cars here to stay?

Tesla Motors made history Tuesday when the Tesla Model S became the first all-electric vehicle to win Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award. Will Tesla’s honor silence critics of the electric car industry?

By David J. Unger, Correspondent / November 13, 2012

he Tesla Model S nabbed one of the auto industry’s most coveted awards this week when Motor Trend named the electric vehicle as their 2013 Car of the Year.

It is the first time in Motor Trend’s 64-year history that the award has gone to a vehicle not powered by an internal combustion engine.

“It drives like a sports car, eager and agile and instantly responsive,” wrote Angus MacKenzie, editor-at-large of Motor Trend Magazine. “But it’s also as smoothly effortless as a Rolls-Royce, can carry almost as much stuff as a Chevy Equinox, and is more efficient than a Toyota Prius.”

The announcement is a boost for an EV industry labeled a failure by some analysts and politicians.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Bill Gates Is A Butthead – It takes everyone pitching in to make a change

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There is so much wrong about this piece but I understand his sentiment. We have to get going soon or his children’s future and his grandchildren’s future are at stake. But that wouldn’t be true if he would have gotten the message 20 years ago.

http://gigaom.com/2011/05/03/bill-gates-energy-solutions-need-to-be-big-not-cute/

Need to Be Big, Not Cute

To solve the world’s energy problems and combat a rise in global warming, the solutions need to be dramatic and powerful. And definitely not cute. That’s the blunt assessment of Bill Gates, who dismissed smaller scale technologies like residential solar installations as being “cute” but ineffective.

To solve the world’s energy problems and combat a rise in global warming, the solutions need to be dramatic and powerful. And definitely not cute. That’s the blunt assessment of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who dismissed smaller scale technologies like residential solar installations as being “cute” but ineffective.

Speaking at the Wired Business Conference in New York, Gates sounded a now familiar call for innovation in clean energy production. But he said the challenge of meeting the world’s growing energy needs while reducing the rise of carbon emissions won’t be handled by smaller deployments of technology. For example, he said solar panels attached to homes and connected to smart grids is no match for the real impact of large remote solar installations.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow

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The Audubon Institute – Is old enough to be my great grandmother

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Unlike some environmental groups, they first do no harm. And they do not support quackery. You go guys.

http://www.audubon.org/newsroom/news-stories/2012/because-conservation-doesnt-have-party

Because Conservation Doesn’t Have a Party

By Audubon President & CEO David Yarnold

Published: Oct 16, 2012

New York NY –

You have to get out of shouting range of the politicians in Washington to appreciate what’s really important to Americans.  Americans like Barbra from Arizona: “‘Environment’ is not a swear word, but too often it is treated like one in the halls of our legislatures.”

Barbra is one of thousands of Americans — Republicans, Democrats and independents — who have joined a national grassroots conversation aimed at taking the politics out of conservation and returning preservation of our wilderness land, waterways and wildlife to its original roots as a unifying, rather than divisive force in America.

Judging from responses from all across America, perhaps we are not a nation as divided as our political leaders would like us believe. We’ve heard from angry Republicans.  “Since when did breathing clean fresh air, drinking pure clean water and protecting our precious natural resources and environment become something that only Democrats should value?” wrote Lorrie from Pennsylvania.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Conservation International – An organization with a history

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These type organizations when founded (1987) were founded for “the long haul”. The belief was then that Humans might damage the Earth but not destroy it. Well here we are,  when it looks like Humans may kill off themselves and maybe permanently in some respects changing the Earth, and these organizations sort of plod on. They need to pick up the pace. While I understand the desire to do good work in the 3rd world. They may want to change the minds help the 1st world countries first.

http://www.conservation.org/Pages/default.aspx

Two Conservation International Leaders Honored by World’s Top Conservationists

September 12, 2012
Conservation International Applauds its President Dr. Russell Mittermeier and Board Member President Ian Khama for receiving Honorary Membership of IUCN at World Conservation Congress

Jeju, South Korea – Conservation International’s long time President, Dr. Russell Mittermeier, a world-renowned  primatologist, herpetologist and conservationist, was granted Honorary Membership today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest international environmental organization. The award was presented at the World Conservation Congress taking place this week in South Korea, on the recommendation of the IUCN Council to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to conservation.

“Russ Mittermeier is an innovative, proactive and scientifically informed conservationist,” declared IUCN on its website.  “A renowned primatologist and herpetologist, he has undertaken extensive field work and made major contributions to the conservation of the fauna of Madagascar, the fauna of South America (especially in Brazil and the Guianas), primates in general, and freshwater turtles worldwide.”

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go there and read. More tomorrow.

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