The Onion on Conservation

Byoliveridley

This is so sad, though there is more than a kernel of truth to it. Individual efforts mostly make people feel better about themselves (hey, I recycle, makes me feel good!). It is the Onion and it does go too far. Of course individual efforts add up, and more importantly, force the important players like government and big industry to modify their behavior just a little bit (at least that is what I tell myself).

I’m Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Every day, without fail, I meticulously organize my recyclables into five distinct categories, thereby subtracting an eyedropper’s worth of garbage from the countless tons of waste that ferment in our landfills. It only takes a few extra minutes, but just think of the impact it totally lacks. I also refuse to use anything but “Earth-friendly” paper products—some of which contain up to 10 percent recycled materials. For me, it’s worth shouldering the extra cost, but, unfortunately, only a scant few of us bother to do the same. And growing some of my own organic vegetables in my backyard garden also, to my immense gratification, reduces the use of toxic chemical-based pesticides and herbicides present in corporate farming techniques by as much as 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.

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    Byoliveridley

    I had blogged recently about how one guy gamed an auction of Utah public lands to prevent the sale of sensitive land to oil and gas companies. It looks like he may be off the hook, at least temporarily.

    A federal judge on Saturday blocked oil and natural gas exploration on tens of thousands of acres of federal land in Utah, saying in an 11th-hour decision that the Interior Department had not done sufficient environmental analysis, particularly of how air quality might be degraded.The decision by the judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington, granted a temporary restraining order sought by seven environmental groups to prevent oil and gas companies from taking possession of leases they had purchased Dec. 19.

    11th-Hour Ruling Blocks Utah Oil and Gas Leases – NYTimes.com

    Tags: ,

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    Asbestos stays off global dangerous-substance list

    Byoliveridley

    NDP MP Pat Martin said Tuesday the Canadian delegation did not even participate in the discussions this year but got others to work on their behalf instead.

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    Canadians can now breathe easy. The government did not even have to oppose a notification officially, other countries did it for them.

  • Signs of the Rapture – Killer Algae

    Byoliveridley

    This time, it’s the killer algal bloom, to add to the dying bees and the dying fish.

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    A bloom of ocean algae that produces a toxic acid has sickened and killed hundreds of birds, sea lions and dolphins in California, environmentalists said.

    Birds and animals have been washing up on shores from San Diego to San Francisco Bay.

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    In previous seasons, the center might see seven birds a week, director Jay Holcomb said.

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    domoic acidDomoic acid is a naturally occuring toxin from red algae. Increased nutrient loadings into the ocean, and warming ocean temperatures are both linked with an increasing incidence of this toxic “red tide“. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon every year, so it is hard to tease out human inputs and just plain ol’ natural variation. One more thing to keep an eye on, I guess.

    Statutory Disclaimer: I don’t actually believe in the rapture – it’s just a cheap rhetorical trick.

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    Hog Factories Hit the NY Times

    Byoliveridley

    The tale is told from the pig’s viewpoint. Of course, as I have mentioned before, hog factories are evil and affect the people (mostly poor and black) who live around them in very many horrible ways.

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    Of the 60 million pigs in the United States, over 95 percent are continuously confined in metal buildings, including the almost five million sows in crates. In such setups, feed is automatically delivered to animals who are forced to urinate and defecate where they eat and sleep. Their waste festers in large pits a few feet below their hooves. Intense ammonia and hydrogen sulfide fumes from these pits fill pigs’ lungs and sensitive nostrils. No straw is provided to the animals because that would gum up the works (as it would if you tossed straw into your toilet).

    In my work as an environmental lawyer, I’ve toured a dozen hog confinement operations and seen hundreds from the outside. My task was to evaluate their polluting potential, which was considerable. But what haunted me was the miserable creatures inside.

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  • Climate Change to Hit Poor Hard

    Byoliveridley

    In case you did not know already, the IPCC is very close to releasing its report on climate change impacts.

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    Dr Parry outlined the four areas of the world now thought to be the most vulnerable to climate change. “The arctic, where temperatures are rising fast and ice is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where dry areas are forecast to get dryer; small islands, because of their inherent lack of capacity to adapt and Asian mega-deltas, where billions of people will be at increased risk of flooding,” he explained. As a result, the most severe impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest countries, the report says. “The poorest of the poor in the world… are going to be the worst hit and are the most vulnerable in terms of impact of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. Mr Pachauri said those people were also the least equipped to deal with the effects of such changes. Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries met through the night, trying to agree on the wording of a summary for policy makers. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft.

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    Feds punt on Bisphenol A

    Byoliveridley

    By studiously ignoring all the subtle hormone disruption effects of bisphenol A and concentrating on easily observable neurological effects, the CERHR essentially does the industry’s bidding.

    Some risk linked to plastic chemical – Los Angeles Times

    A federal panel of scientists concluded Wednesday that an estrogen-like compound in plastic could be posing some risk to the brain development of babies and children.

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    Culminating months of scientific debate, the decision by the 12 advisors of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction — part of the National Institutes of Health — is the first official, government action related to the chemical. Their recommendation will be reviewed for a federal report that could lead to regulations restricting one of the most used chemicals.

    The scientists ranked their concerns about BPA, concluding they had “some concern” about neurological and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children, but “minimal” or “negligible” concern about reproductive effects. The findings put the panel roughly in the middle — between the chemical industry, which has long said there is no evidence of danger to humans, and the environmental activists and scientists who say it is probably harming people.

    For a detailed look at how bisphenol research has been corrupted by industry sponsored “focused counter research” – where the goal is to show no effects and the experiment is tiled to ensure this goal, read this excellent article in the The Public Library of Science Biology Open Source Journal. Note, because it is Open Access, you can actually read it without selling a kidney! Some highlights…

    The moment we published something on bisphenol A, the chemical industry went out and hired a number of corporate laboratories to replicate our research. What was stunning about what they did,” vom Saal says with a mix of outrage and bemused disbelief, “was they hired people who had no idea how to do the work. Each of the members of these groups came to me and said, ‘We don’t know how to do this, will you teach us?’”

    More…

    The HCRA report, commissioned before Schwartz’s tenure, concluded that “the weight of the evidence for low-dose effects is very weak” [15]. Industry groups hailed the report as a comprehensive review by independent experts and quickly disseminated its findings. Yet the “comprehensive” report reviewed just 19 of 47 studies available in April 2002, and when it was published more than two years later, three panelists asked not to be listed as authors.

    What the hell, just read the whole article, especially the bit about the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and its well documented industry shillness.

    The key to understanding bisphenol research is to realize that it is a hormone disruptor that works at low doses. At high doses, normal toxicological testing doses that is, it floods the hormone receptors and slows down the receptor pathways. So, the usual technique of testing in rats and mice at high doses and extrapolating will not work.

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