Biology
Breach
May 6, 2014, from New York Times
After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in the Gulf of Mexico some 50 miles from the nearest land, responders were left to cope with a search area of nearly 40,000 square miles, as well as wind and currents that kept evidence of damage away from the more easily searchable coastline.
Patrollers recovered fewer than 3,000 dead birds. But some had suspected that many more were unaccounted for.
Now a team of scientists has tried to quantify the extent of damage inflicted on the gulf's bird population from the oil spill caused by the explosion. Based on models using publicly available data, the studies estimated that about 800,000 birds died in coastal and offshore waters.
May 6, 2013, from Environmental Health News
Cobalt in plastic building blocks and baby bibs. Ethylene glycol in dolls. Methyl ethyl ketone in clothing. Antimony in high chairs and booster seats. Parabens in baby wipes. D4 in baby creams. An Environmental Health News analysis of thousands of reports from America's largest companies shows that toys and other children's products contain low levels of dozens of industrial chemicals, including some unexpected ingredients that will surprise a public concerned about exposure. The reports were filed by 59 large companies, including Gap, Mattel, Gymboree, Nike, H&M and Wal-Mart, to comply with an unprecedented state law.
May 6, 2013, from Detroit Free Press
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICH.-- Operators of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in southwestern have removed it from service because of a repeat water leak from a tank that caused seepage into the control room last year.... The plant is owned by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. and has been under extra NRC scrutiny after numerous safety issues. There were four shutdowns last year and at least two this year.
May 6, 2013, from InsideClimate News
A key piece of data related to the biggest tar sands oil spill in U.S. history has disappeared from the Environmental Protection Agency's website, adding to confusion about the size of the spill and possibly reducing the fine that the company responsible for the accident would be required to pay. The July 2010 accident on an Enbridge Inc. pipeline dumped thousands of barrels of Canadian dilbit into the Kalamazoo River and surrounding wetlands. But almost three years and two federal investigations later, one of the most important questions about the spill remains unanswered: Exactly how much oil spilled from the pipeline?
May 6, 2011, from Center for Public Integrity
Almost four years ago, a federal jury convicted Citgo Petroleum Corp. of two criminal violations of the Clean Air Act, having found that the company's refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, afflicted a nearby community with toxic air pollution.
For nearly a decade, the jury found, emissions of benzene and other hazardous chemicals -- from two hulking, uncovered tanks -- regularly swept into a mostly poor, minority neighborhood known as Hillcrest.
That was in June 2007. To the dismay of the refinery's neighbors, Citgo still hasn't been sentenced -- a delay legal scholars say is unusual.
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Climate
Chaos
May 6, 2013, from The Keeling Curve
Want to watch the slow-motion trainwreck of our climate in real time? Go to the Keeling Curve web site and see current ppm rate of CO2 concentration as we march inexorably to 400.
May 6, 2013, from BBC
Scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region....
It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air.
Absorption is particularly fast in cold water so the Arctic is especially susceptible, and the recent decreases in summer sea ice have exposed more sea surface to atmospheric CO2.
May 6, 2013, from Reuters
A U.S.-led plan to let all countries set their own goals for fighting climate change is gaining grudging support at U.N. talks, even though the current level of pledges is far too low to limit rising temperatures substantially.
The approach, being discussed this week at 160-nation talks in Bonn, Germany, would mean abandoning the blueprint of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set central goals for industrialized countries to cut emissions by 2012 and then let each work out national implementation.
May 6, 2011, from The Telegraph
... As Dyson puts it in his foreword:
Because of shale gas, the air in Beijing will be cleaned up as the air in London was cleaned up sixty years ago. Because of shale gas, clean air will no longer be a luxury that only rich countries can afford. Because of shale gas, wealth and health will be distributed more equitably over the face of our planet....
And hey presto, before the shale gas industry can properly take off the image has already been planted in a susceptible public's brain: shale gas is bad because it involves a process called "fracking", which sounds unnatural and frightening and a bit swear-wordy, and because it involves gas leaks into the water table and methane leaks into the atmosphere or something like that, and because all the "experts" say it ought to be investigated further (ie delayed indefinitely) on the "precautionary principle." We have been here before, haven't we?...
[I write to] remind you of the horrendous socio-political crisis we in the free world are facing today: one in which economic progress and commonsense threaten to be undermined at every turn by an insidious, mendacious and terrifyingly powerful global green movement which has its tentacles in almost every pie from the Obama administration to David Cameron's Coalition to the EU to the UN to the MSM to the schools, universities and NGOs. The ideology of these Watermelons has virtually nothing to do with saving the environment (if it were, they'd be embracing shale gas wholesale) and almost everything to do with an instinctive loathing for economic growth combined with a bullying, puritanical urge to impose energy policy by diktat rather than by allowing the market to decide the most effective method.
May 6, 2011, from Guardian
But even if we can accept an expansion of infrastructure, the technocentric, carbon-counting vision I've favoured runs into trouble. The problem is that it seeks to accommodate a system that cannot be accommodated: a system that demands perpetual economic growth....
Accommodation makes sense only if the economy is reaching a steady state. But the clearer the vision becomes, the further away it seems. A steady state economy will be politically possible only if we can be persuaded to stop grabbing. This in turn will be feasible only if we feel more secure. But the global race to the bottom and its destruction of pensions, welfare, public services and stable employment make people less secure, encouraging us to grasp as much for ourselves as we can....
The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they'll switch to ultra-deep reserves (using underground gasification to exploit them) and methane clathrates. The same probably applies to almost all minerals: we will find them, but exploiting them will mean trashing an ever greater proportion of the world's surface. We have enough non-renewable resources of all kinds to complete our wreckage of renewable resources: forests, soil, fish, freshwater, benign weather. Collapse will come one day, but not before we have pulled everything down with us.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
May 6, 2011, from Chicago Tribune
One of the nation's dirtiest power plants is shutting down, a move that will scrap a major source of lung- and heart-damaging air pollution in the Chicago area.
Facing a federal complaint, more stringent pollution limits and smaller profit margins, Virginia-based Dominion Resources is writing off the State Line Power Station, an aging coal-fired generator sandwiched between Lake Michigan and the Chicago Skyway at the Illinois-Indiana border.
In a recent conference call with financial analysts, Dominion executives announced they had decided it isn't worth upgrading the plant to comply with the federal Clean Air Act.
May 6, 2009, from BBC
A new wave energy device known as "Anaconda" is the latest idea to harness the power of the seas.
Its inventors claim the key to its success lies in its simplicity: Anaconda is little more than a length of rubber tubing filled with water.
Waves in the water create bulges along the tubing that travel along its length gathering energy.
At the end of the tube, the surge of energy drives a turbine and generates electricity.... [T]he problem holding back wave energy machines is that devices tend to deteriorate over time in the harsh marine environment.
"Anaconda is non-mechanical. It is mainly rubber, a natural material with a natural resilience, and so has very few moving parts to maintain."... It is claimed that a group of 50 full-size Anacondas -- each 200m long -- could provide electricity for 50,000 homes.
May 6, 2009, from University of Montreal, via EurekAlert
"It's a revolutionary battery because it is made from non-toxic materials abundant in the Earth's crust. Plus, it's not expensive,'" says Michel Gauthier, an invited professor at the Université de Montréal Department of Chemistry and co-founder of Phostech Lithium, the company that makes the battery material. "This [LiFePO4] battery could eventually make the electric car very profitable."...
"It is a battery that is much more stable and much safer," says Dean MacNeil, a professor at the Universite de Montreal's Department of Chemistry and new NSERC-Phostech Lithium Industrial Research Chair in Energy Storage and Conversion. "In addition, it recharges much faster than previous batteries."
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