Supreme Court to decide if CO2 is a “pollutant”

Byoliveridley

Well, I am not sure if the Clean Air Act has all the right tools to regulate CO2, but the kind of vehicle-to-vehicle and plant-to-plant focus that the Clean Air Act brings could be a good starting point. If the court decides in favor of the states, and the EPA can get its rule making together, we can start seeing regulation in 5 years. I am not sure if this is early enough, and it is definitely insufficient. A “pollutant” as ubiquitous as CO2 needs a a comprehensive national and global policy effort even bigger than the Montreal Protocol to be effective. Kyoto was meant to be a starting point, but is stalled at the moment.

Forcing motor vehicles to lower their emissions and increase efficiency is a no-brainer. If it takes the Clean Air Act to make this happen, I am all for it! But this will not really address the power plants that are the other huge contributor, most of the existing plants will be grandfathered in and as we know from previous experience, these grandaddies are bionic and immortal!

Any chance that the Supreme Court will find in favor of this addition? I don’t think so. I predict 6-3 for the government on this one.

Supreme Court to Hear Key Environment Case – New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming, setting up what could be one of the court’s most important decisions on the environment. A dozen states, a number of cities and various environmental groups asked the court to take up the case after a divided lower court ruled against them. They argue that the Environmental Protection Agency is obligated to limit carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles under the federal Clean Air Act because as the primary ”greenhouse” gas causing a warming of the earth, carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

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  • Recycling better than landfilling even to China

    Byoliveridley

    Sending old newspapers and plastic bottles 10,000 miles for recycling in China produces more carbon savings than landfilling it in Britain and making new goods, reveals a study from the government body charged with reducing UK waste.In the last 10 years annual exports of paper, mainly to India, China and Indonesia, have risen from 470,000 tonnes to 4.7m tonnes, while exports of old plastic bottles have gone from under 40,000 tonnes to half a million tonnes.Now the counterintuitive conclusions of the report from the Waste Resources Action Programme (Wrap) suggest that the advantage of recycling over landfilling is so great that it makes environmental sense to ship waste right round the world if it can be used again.

    Waste Resources Action Programme reveals recycling in China saves carbon emissions | Environment | guardian.co.uk

    One of the issues with carbon footprint calculations like these is that they are very dependent on the assumptions made and the calculations used. So, without going through the study line by line, I don’t know if this is true or not, but it is good to know that sending recycling waste many thousands of miles at least does not result in increased resource use. However, the environmental justice implications are still weighted against the receiving country, especially in the recycling of toxic electronic waste. This particular study only dealt with plastic and paper, so the toxic implications were fewer.

    Of course, reducing the stuff you use and reusing your stuff always beats recycling, oh ye iphone lusters, let your old phone die first!

  • More Focus on China – Pesticides and Food Safety

    Byoliveridley

    I begin to wonder how much of this was not known previously, and is coming out now, pushed by US domestic food interests who can suddenly become a little more competitive.

    Reuters AlertNet – Pesticides next frontier in China food safety

    China’s farmers overuse pesticides, skip protective clothing and have at their fingertips an array of banned and counterfeit products, raising another area of concern in the country’s fragile food chain. Spraying chemicals on crops improperly or using products that may be fake or banned risks the health of China’s hundreds of millions of farmers and could lead to unsafe levels of residues in fruits and vegetables, experts say. “The government has to stop banned or illegal pesticides being available in the market,” said Angus Lam, a Greenpeace Campaign Manager for Food and Agriculture based in the southern city of Guangzhou. China banned five high toxicity pesticides as of Jan. 1, but Lam said old stock was still in the market, in the hands of traders, retailers and farmers themselves. The government pledged last week to step up inspections in its food industry, saying checks on fertilisers and pesticides would be one of the priority areas.

    China is not alone in this problem. Pesticides get overused in the US as well. But it’s as if all of a sudden, the mainstream press is waking up to the reality that is China. It is a developing country with high levels of growth in manufacturing, and a burgeoning middle class. But government regulation mechanisms have a long way to go to catch up.

    The US surely knows this, and needed to have a more stringent testing regime with food imports from China. But the FDA was not given the mandate or the money. It is very easy to blame the FDA here. The fact of the matter is that any agency is only as good as the money and mandate it’s given. The political will to take a good look at where your food comes from, and how to ensure its safety needs to come first.

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  • Oceans of Carbon Dioxide?

    Byoliveridley

    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.

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    Ethanol significantly worse than gasoline for air pollution

    Byoliveridley

    So, Mark Jacobson from Stanford, an accomplished atmospheric chemist and modeler from Stanford, puts ethanol into his modeling mix as an automobile fuel and comes up with increased ozone, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN, an ozone precursor) and acetaldehyde, leading to a possible increase in mortality. Without reading his paper, I cannot comment on the assumptions used, but this is an additional issue to be concerned about as our politicians continue to binge on alcohol. It’s weird, almost as if there’s something intoxicating and addictive about this fuel :-;

    Effects of Ethanol E85 versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States

    Ethanol use in vehicle fuel is increasing worldwide, but the potential cancer risk and ozone-related health consequences of a large-scale conversion from gasoline to ethanol have not been examined. Here, a nested global-through-urban air pollution/weather forecast model is combined with high-resolution future emission inventories, population data, and health effects data to examine the effect of converting from gasoline to E85 on cancer, mortality, and hospitalization in the United States as a whole and Los Angeles in particular. Under the base-case emission scenario derived, which accounted for projected improvements in gasoline and E85 vehicle emission controls, it was found that E85 (85% ethanol fuel, 15% gasoline) may increase ozone-related mortality, hospitalization, and asthma by about 9% in Los Angeles and 4% in the United States as a whole relative to 100% gasoline. Ozone increases in Los Angeles and the northeast were partially offset by decreases in the southeast. E85 also increased peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) in the U.S. but was estimated to cause little change in cancer risk. Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline. However, because of the uncertainty in future emission regulations, it can be concluded with confidence only that E85 is unlikely to improve air quality over future gasoline vehicles. Unburned ethanol emissions from E85 may result in a global-scale source of acetaldehyde larger than that of direct emissions.

  • Biofuels are Eviil, Part 233223

    Byoliveridley

    The biodiesel boom has a high environmental cost, however. Critics say it’s contributing to global warming. Tropical forests help remove millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. Burning and clear-cutting not only eliminates one of the planet’s crucial air-filtration systems, the process also releases even more carbon dioxide into the air, in smoke or as gases released during the decomposition of forest waste. Annual clearing of Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands alone releases some 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases, according to a Greenpeace report. Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the U.S. and China, says the World Bank. “We liken what’s going on [in Indonesia] to pouring petrol on a fire,” says Martin Baker, a Hong Kong–based communications officer for Greenpeace International. “It’s completely ridiculous to produce green fuels from places like this.”

    When Biofuel is Bad for the Environment – TIME

    This just makes we want to jit my head against the wall. Tropical forests are some of the most efficient sinks of carbon, and countries that hold these sinks should be paid as well as countries that are sources of carbon. Yes, this means setting a realistic carbon pricing scheme that can eliminate this perverse incentive to destroy tropical rain forests so Western nations can claim to be environmentally friendly.

    This is not a bribe, or an incentive, it is recognition of the fact that carbon sinks have a monetary value.

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  • Goodbye Conventional Coal, for now.

    Byoliveridley

    In a move that signals the start of the our clean energy future, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board EAB ruled today EPA had no valid reason for refusing to limit from new coal-fired power plants the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. The decision means that all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must go back and address their carbon dioxide emissions.

    via Sierra Club: Email – Ruling: Coal Plants Must Limit CO2

    This is huuuuuuuuuuge.