Tim Dechristopher and Oil Leases in Utah Update

newsobserver.com | Apex fire spreads toxic gas

APEX – Fire crews have not begun to fight a fire at a hazardous waste plant that has spread a cloud of dangerous chlorine gas across Apex this morning, forcing more than 15,000 people to evacuate.Officials say they planned to send a hazardous materials crew in at daybreak to evaluate the fire. In the meantime, they’ve been letting it burn, out of concern that pouring water or foam on it would make things worse, said town manager Bruce Radford. The rain that started falling around 7 a.m. “doesn’t make anything better,” Radford said.

The fire that followed a series of late-night explosions at Environmental Quality Co. just east of downtown has closed all Apex schools and school bus routes that start inside the Western Wake town. In addition, the Wake County Public School System said bus transportation elsewhere in Western and Southwestern Wake County would likely be delayed this morning. Green Hope High School in Cary, which is being used a shelter for evacuated residents, will also be closed.

Officials urged people to evacuate an area bounded by U.S. 1, N.C. 55 and U.S. 64 highways in Apex and unincorporated areas. Police are blocking roads into the center of town, and Radford urged everyone to stay away.

Well, possibly the biggest climate change science news of the day, sequestration with a twist. Now if we can only get those friendly little carbon dioxide molecules to march down a couple of miles down to the ocean sediments to sequester themselves! But seriously, it will take a lot of pumping.

Permanent carbon dioxide storage in deep-sea sediments — House et al., 10.1073/pnas.0605318103 — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Stabilizing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 may require storing enormous quantities of captured anthropogenic CO2 in near-permanent geologic reservoirs. Because of the subsurface temperature profile of terrestrial storage sites, CO2 stored in these reservoirs is buoyant. As a result, a portion of the injected CO2 can escape if the reservoir is not appropriately sealed. We show that injecting CO2 into deep-sea sediments <3,000-m water depth and a few hundred meters of sediment provides permanent geologic storage even with large geomechanical perturbations. At the high pressures and low temperatures common in deep-sea sediments, CO2 resides in its liquid phase and can be denser than the overlying pore fluid, causing the injected CO2 to be gravitationally stable. Additionally, CO2 hydrate formation will impede the flow of CO2(l) and serve as a second cap on the system. The evolution of the CO2 plume is described qualitatively from the injection to the formation of CO2 hydrates and finally to the dilution of the CO2(aq) solution by diffusion. If calcareous sediments are chosen, then the dissolution of carbonate host rock by the CO2(aq) solution will slightly increase porosity, which may cause large increases in permeability. Karst formation, however, is unlikely because total dissolution is limited to only a few percent of the rock volume. The total CO2 storage capacity within the 200-mile economic zone of the U.S. coastline is enormous, capable of storing thousands of years of current U.S. CO2 emissions.

Dog bites man news o’ the day!

ScienceDaily: European Union Outpaces United States On Chemical Safety

In the 1970s and ’80s, the United States effectively set many global product standards for consumer and environmental protection. Today, Europe is playing this role, while U.S. government and industry oppose the resulting standards in Europe and in international arenas.

The size of the European market (more than 485 million citizens) will push manufacturers in the United States and Asia to meet European standards and will increase the availability of “green” products globally, contend the authors. Additionally, the new toxic risk information generated by REACH may allow environmental advocates in the United States and elsewhere to focus their efforts with specific, supportable data.

Amen to that, you can either lead, or be forced to follow. EU policies are far from perfect, and as vulnerable to politics, hypocrisy and competing interests as any other “country’s” policies. But, you can never fault them for lack of effort, and they do not seem to have suffered from any consequences to using the precautionary principle.

When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

Not so hard to grasp. But here’s the precautionary principle the US of A uses. I propose calling it the plutocracy-protectionary principle^TM.

When a proposed regulation raises threats of harm to the short term shareholder returns of an industry, precautionary measures to oppose this regulation must be taken even if cause and effect relationships are clearly established, or if scientific research has shown the opposite effect to the industry claim being made.