EU's REACH Program's cornucopia of toxicology data

Freaky and scary, first the bees, now the fishes…

Fish-Killing Virus Spreading in the Great Lakes – New York Times

A virus that has already killed tens of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading, scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways.

The virus, a mutated pathogen not native to North America that causes hemorrhaging and organ failure, is not harmful to humans, even if they eat contaminated fish. But it is devastating to the ecosystem and so unfamiliar, experts said, that its full biological impact might not be clear for years. It is also having a significant impact on the lakes’ $4 billion fishing industry.

There is no known treatment for the virus. As a result, scientists are focusing on managing its spread to uncontaminated water — quite a challenge since the Great Lakes are linked and fall under the jurisdiction of several states and provinces in Canada.

Premier Gordon Campbell says he won’t bend to northern concerns about his carbon tax, but avoided saying so yesterday in a keynote speech to a meeting of northern B.C. communities, who have challenged him to revise the tax.

reportonbusiness.com: ‘We are not changing the carbon tax. No,’ B.C. Premier says

One of the loudest arguments being made against BC’s pioneering carbon tax proposal is that communities in Northern BC, much colder and much more rural than Vancouver and Victoria, will pay an “unfair” share because they need more carbon to heat their homes and drive their cars/trucks longer distances. The weather and lack of density ensure that they will pay higher carbon taxes, so it is unfair.

Well, sorry! Victoria and Vancouver have been paying a fair weather premium for years in higher home prices, higher property taxes, higher prices on lots of things because that’s what city dwellers do without complaint. You can buy an average single family home in Prince George for $125,000, which may get you a garage in Vancouver!

Cities are more efficient, and use far less energy per capita because of the density and transit options. Pricing carbon starts bringing some of these efficiencies to the forefront and that is a good thing.

BC’s carbon tax is not perfect by any means. But, it is a start and it gets people thinking about consumption. Believe me, carbon’s on a lot of people’s minds here in BC. There’s tons of talk about carbon sinks and sources in the media. The carbon tax has definitely contributed to an increase in conversation about choices and their consequences. The funny thing is that the proposed carbon tax on gasoline has been dwarfed by actual market driven increases in gasoline prices. The important difference is that a carbon tax is a revenue stream that goes to funding carbon free energy sources. So, a tax, however small, is still preferable to the profits going to companies that deal in carbon.

Hurray for BC and its carbon tax attempts. It is a decent start and one that I hope will be adopted by the rest of Canada and that wee country south of the border!

Sometimes, you have to read what you’ve written in order to keep writing. I have not felt like writing at all, except in 140 character snippets. There are lots of people saying lots of things all the time, so who really cares, right? But I came back and read a post or two I had written on this blog, they weren’t half bad.

Consider myself a little more encouraged, I shall write more, soon, no pressure 🙂

You may remember from a few weeks back when the supremes in a very rare unanimous decision ruled that the Duke Energy would have to install new pollution controls if it made modifications to its power plants that increased annual emissions without increasing hourly emissions. Well, never mind that, the EPA released a “rule” that “clarifies” this issue.

EPA Accused of Flouting Supreme Court – washingtonpost.com

The government proposed a pollution standard for power plants Wednesday that critics said flouts the spirit of a Supreme Court ruling on clean air enforcement.

The proposal would make it easier for utilities to expand plant operations or make other changes to produce more electricity without installing new pollution controls.

The proposal would allow the use of average hourly smokestack emissions when determining whether a plant’s expansion or efficiency improvements require additional pollution controls. The EPA hopes to make the proposal final before year’s end.

Opponents of the hourly standard recently argued before the Supreme Court that this standard lets a plant put more smog-causing chemicals and other pollution into the air, even if hourly releases do not increase.

Environmentalists long have contended the EPA should continue using annual emissions to determine whether new pollution controls are needed under the Clean Air Act.

Let’s get this straight, “environmentalists contend”? There is nothing to contend here, it’s simple math. If you keep hourly rates the same and run your plant for longer, you will emit more pollution, which is not good. Less pollution good, more pollution bad, there is no point of contention here. Hourly standards and annual standards are used for two different things. The hourly standard sets a lower limit on the efficiency of the pollution control operation for the plant. The annual standard measures the plant’s overall impact. Both of them need to be regulated. It is only common sense that if you put out twice the amount of pollution in a year because you run 20 hours per day instead of 10, you need to control it. The Supremes rightly tagged this argument as dishonest, only to see the EPA very happily turn around and reissue it as an official rule.

James Hansen: Obama’s Canada trip defines our critical carbon moment | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The tar sands of Canada constitute one of our planet’s greatest threats. They are a double-barrelled threat. First, producing oil from tar sands emits two-to-three times the global warming pollution of conventional oil. But the process also diminishes one of the best carbon-reduction tools on the planet: Canada’s Boreal Forest.

This forest plays a key role in the global carbon equation by serving as a major storehouse for terrestrial carbon – indeed, it is believed to store more carbon per hectare than any other ecosystem on Earth. When this pristine forest is strip mined for tar sands development, much of its stored carbon is lost. Canada’s Boreal Forest is also the reservoir for a large fraction of North America’s clean, fresh water, home to some five billion migratory birds, and some of largest remaining populations of caribou, moose, bear and wolves on the planet.

Nothing more to say, except that he does a good job of connecting both the inefficiency of the extraction process, a carbon source, and the destruction of the boreal forest, the removal of a carbon sink. If carbon accounting was in place, the economics would not work. Harper knows this, hence all the aggressive PR to get ahead of the game.