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Most random use of global warming as an excuse

Byoliveridley

Anaheim council OKs Disney-adjacent housing development – Los Angeles Times

In a new argument Tuesday, Disney officials provided city officials with an inches-thick packet asserting that the residential project would exacerbate global warming because of the traffic it would generate.

It is nice when Disney expresses concern about global warming, but why???

Over the strong objections of Disney and dozens of tourist officials, the Anaheim City Council voted 3-2 early this morning to approve a controversial residential project in the city’s resort district.

The six-hour public hearing, which began Tuesday night and spilled into this morning, was the council’s second attempt to settle the dispute that had lingered for nearly a year.

About 150 resort workers, many from Disney, attended the meeting in support of the development, some wearing stickers that read “Yes in Mickey’s Back Yard” (YIMBY). The dozen employees remaining at the meeting cheered when the project was approved.

Ah, I get it, they don’t want people working at Disney living near Disney!! So, go ahead, use global warming as an excuse! If it were not disgustingly hypocritical, it would be funny.

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Glass baby bottles making comeback

Byoliveridley

More Bisphenol A blowback, apparently, SF parents are switching to glass.

Glass baby bottles making comeback / Stores selling out after health alarms raised about plastics

Glass baby bottles, replaced decades ago by unbreakable plastic, are making such a comeback that parents can’t get their hands on them.

Online and brick-and-mortar retailers report a run on glass baby bottles in recent weeks that they say was spurred by reports that the most common type of plastic in baby bottles may leach a toxic chemical.

San Francisco resident Sean Mullins said he decided to switch his 6-month-old son, Mickey, from plastic to glass bottles last month despite manufacturers’ insistence that plastic bottles are safe.

Independent tests done for The Chronicle and reported in November found bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics estrogen, in a baby bottle and several toys. Bisphenol A is also found in the lining of food cans, some anti-cavity sealants for teeth, and electronics.

Watch for plastics manufacturers to fight back, this study ought to provide some ammo.

Comparison of six samples of each of three brands of water available in both glass and polyethyelene terephthalate (PET(E)) showed that the waters bottled in glass contained approximately 57, 30, and 26 times more Pb due to leaching from the containers. Our study includes 25 brands of bottled water from Canada, and the median Pb concentration in these samples was 15.9 ng/L (n = 25), with a range from 2.1 to 268 ng/L. For comparison with the bottled waters, pristine groundwater from six artesian flows in southern Ontario, Canada, where some of the bottled waters originate, yielded a median concentration of 5.1 ng/L Pb (n = 18). In fact, all of the waters tested were well below the maximum allowable concentration established by the EU, Health Canada, and the WHO for Pb in drinking water (10000 ng/L).

It all depends on which bolded sentence you chose to emphasize! So, glass bottles do leach some lead out, but nowhere near the amount needed to cause any effects whatsoever. I guess this is all the American Chemistry Council can come up with as a problem with glass.

It’s irrefutable that glass can shatter, Hentges said. But there is “no scientific basis to conclude that BPA is something to be concerned about … at the extremely low levels that people might be exposed to from use of consumer products.”

There is plenty of scientific basis to conclude that Bisphenol A has some very subtle effects at ambient doses. But science has never stopped the American Chemistry Council!

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Melamine Adulteration investigation gets cracking

Byoliveridley

FDA agents raid pet food plant, offices – Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Federal agents searched facilities of a dog and cat food manufacturer and one of its suppliers as part of an investigation into the widening recall of pet products, the companies disclosed Friday. Food and Drug Administration officials searched an Emporia, Kan., pet food plant operated by Menu Foods and the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra Inc., according to the companies. Menu Foods made many of the more than 100 brands of pet food recalled since March 16 because of contamination by the chemical melamine. ChemNutra supplied the manufacturer with wheat gluten, one of the two ingredients tainted by melamine used in recalled pet products. Both companies said they were cooperating with the investigation.

The initial “let’s blame China for everything” drumbeat is subsiding a little as the FDA finally begins its inspections, and we find the tangled web of the food import business unraveling just a little bit. At this point in time, the charges are flying like crazy.

The origin within China of the wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate remains murky. For example, ChemNutra’s source for the twovegetable proteins, Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co., told The AP that food ingredients aren’t part of its business — but that employees often take on side deals. Stern said ChemNutra dealt with the company’s president.

Side deals? How quaint? The solution is simple: Quarantine every food item from China until it has been tested for melamine. You do not know the extent of the problem yet. It only seems to get worse everyday. Make the manufacturers pay for the testing.  Tighten up the paperwork, exercise tighter control over where the ingredients come from, get everything in writing.

Meanwhile, the manufacturers are getting their press releases out. From Blue Buffalo foods…

We at the Blue Buffalo Company have just learned that American Nutrition Inc. (ANI), the manufacturer of all our cans and biscuits, has been adding rice protein concentrate to our can formulas without our knowledge and without our approval. This is product tampering, and it apparently has been going on for some time. The can formulas that we developed, and trusted them to produce, never contained any rice protein concentrate. It appears that only an FDA investigation of ANI’s rice protein concentrate supplies forced them to reveal this product tampering to us.

While this activity by ANI is in itself unlawful, the situation is further clouded by the fact that ANI has been receiving rice protein concentrate from Wilber-Ellis, some of which the FDA has determined to be contaminated with melamine.

If this is true (and we don’t know that for a fact), it’s plain ol’ cheating and food adulteration. What does American Nutrition have to say?

The FDA has urged American Nutrition to issue a voluntary recall of pet foods manufactured using Wilbur-Ellis rice protein. None of these products is sold under an American Nutrition brand, but are sold through other independent companies. No American Nutrition brands or other products they manufacture for other businesses are affected by this recall.

Why would I trust the word of anyone who’s accused of adding ingredients off the label? This story gets curiouser and curiouser, and it is pretty clear that between the “side dealers” in China and some greedy middlemen suppliers here, we have plenty of blame to go around.

Stay tuned for more…

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Grad student measures hazardous levels of air pollution at cigar show

Byoliveridley

Sure makes my graduate work in air quality seem a little tame!

The man behind the subterfuge (Researcher 2, male) was Ryan David Kennedy, 34, a scrappy Canadian graduate student with crooked glasses who is studying the impact of tobacco on air quality.He crossed the border at Buffalo on Monday morning and on Tuesday crashed the giant cigar party and trade show sponsored by the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

At a Cigar Show, an Air-Quality Scientist Under Deep, Smoky Cover – New York Times

Well, what did he find? Particulate matter readings four times higher than “hazardous”. Sometimes I think of strapping on a sampler and going to the local bar just out of curiosity. I can leave the bar if it gets smoky, the bartenders and wait staff can’t. I don’t see why this is not a clear case of hazardous working conditions leading to an immediate indoor smoking ban.  but what do I know, I’m just a scientist!

Happy Thanksgiving.

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E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars

Byoliveridley

Shameful. I did not blog much, or anything about the recently passed energy bill because I thought it was a watered down compromise that subsidized coal, oil and ethanol industries at the expense of renewable energy, public transportation and public health. But these are the consequences of passing such a bill, it allows the EPA to claim that something major has already been done, so noting needs to be done any more .

The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming.

E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars – New York Times

This is truly absurd. The energy bill does not address CO2 emissions. California has used its right to set stronger standards many times in the past, and nothing in this bill preempts this right.

I guess this is Supreme Court bound, where that one man decision making machine Justice Kennedy will no doubt set the standards for this country.

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Organic, Schmorganic, who cares!

Byoliveridley

That’s what the USDA is saying, anyway.

USDA may relax standards for organic foods – Los Angeles Times

With the “USDA organic” seal stamped on its label, Anheuser-Busch calls its Wild Hop Lager “the perfect organic experience.” “In today’s world of artificial flavors, preservatives and factory farming, knowing what goes into what you eat and drink can just about drive you crazy,” the Wild Hop website says. “That’s why we have decided to go back to basics and do things the way they were meant to be … naturally.” But many beer drinkers may not know that Anheuser-Busch has the organic blessing from federal regulators even though Wild Hop Lager uses hops grown with chemical fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides. A deadline of midnight Friday to come up with a new list of nonorganic ingredients allowed in USDA-certified organic products passed without action from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, leaving uncertain whether some foods currently labeled “USDA organic” would continue to be produced.

Whatever you think about the virtues of organic food, this amounts to dilution of the label, misleading labeling, almost amounting to adulteration favoring the big boys at Anheuser-Busch and General Mills, ADM, etc. Knowing fully well that the average consumer has no time to read every frigging label behind every food item, knowing that they would see the “organic” label and assume that the whole thing is organic.

The USDA rules come with what appears to be an important consumer
protection: Manufacturers can use nonorganic ingredients only if
organic versions are not “commercially available.”

But food makers have found a way around this barrier, in part because
the USDA doesn’t enforce the rule directly. Instead, it depends on its
certifying agents — 96 licensed organizations in the U.S. and overseas
— to decide for themselves what it means for a product to be available
in organic form.

Despite years of discussion, the USDA has yet to provide certifiers with standardized guidelines for enforcing this rule.

Ah, good old ill-defined “voluntary enforcement” mechanisms, we all know how that works!
Why not have a second label “mostly organic”!! How about “I can’t believe this is organic!!”.

I think “mostly organic” food is still better than conventional factory food, but it should be labeled as such so the consumer can understand why General Mills “organic cereal” is 2 bucks  less expensive than your average small organic manufacturer’s cereal. Absent honesty in labeling, the average customer is apt to assume that the factory approach is always superior because it produces the same goods at lower prices, instead of coming to the correct conclusion that the factory producers constantly rig the game to their benefit.

A pig
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Jeffrey Simpson and Lazy Writing aka I wrote a letter to the editor

Byoliveridley

Jeffrey Simpson wrote an interesting article on the politics of tarsands pipelines that had some good insights:

  • Harper lecturing Obama on playing politics is a bit rich
  • The opposition is multi-faceted, not just based on the carbon footprint
  • The opposition is widespread, and opposition is not tarsands specific, but against expanding fossil fuel in a world poised to warm at an ever increasing rate
  • Tarsands oil is dirty oil, and no amount of lobbying can take that away
  • Alterate pipeline routes such as Enbridge’s Northern Gateway are not going to be easy to construct given significant First Nations’ opposition

It was on the last point that Jeffrey Simpson’s otherwise useful Op-Ed degenerated into what can be charitably described (by a PR hack) as an “unwise choice of words”.

The route must traverse huge tracts of land claimed by aboriginals who, for a variety of reasons, don’t want a pipeline. Maybe they’re pigheaded. Maybe they don’t want to join modernity.

This is insulting and ignorant to begin with. Surely Jeffrey Simpson does basic research before he writes these columns, and google searches will reveal many many articles, including one in the newspaper that pays his salary that clearly explain the rational reasons behind First Nations’ concerns on pipelines. Simpson seems to have no trouble finding rational reasons to buttress other opposition claims. He says Nebraska’s opposition was due to the pipeline passing over environmentally sensitive areas. He also uses a Royal Society of Canada report judging Canada’s green house gas mitigation efforts as inadequate to make a larger point about the pollution caused by the tarsands and fossil fuels.

However, for First Nations’ concerns alone, he resorts to the irrational, tired and racist tropes of First Nations people being “pigheaded”, or “opposed to modernity”. What exactly is Mr Simpson trying to imply?

I was angry enough to dash a letter off to the Globe and Mail, which they promptly published, thanks folks.

Here’s what they published

Jeffrey Simpson’s column (Pipe-Altering Lessons – Nov. 16) offers some good insights into pipeline politics and government hypocrisy and states accurately that people are opposed to most fossil fuel expansion, not just the oil sands. However, his speculation on First Nations’ opposition to the Northern Gateway project as “pig headed” or not wanting “to join modernity” are offensive and misstate the valid concerns voiced by more than 60 indigenous communities. They are concerned about irreparable damage to the land and salmon migration routes and are well aware how little of the large profits made by energy companies accrues to the First Nations whose land these projects are frequently based on. Their reasons are well founded and well documented by many First Nations, including the Wet’suwet’en.

Here’s what I wrote.

Jeffrey Simpson’s Opinion, Pipeline-altering lessons offers some good insights into oilsands pipeline politics, government hypocrisy and states accurately that people are opposed to most fossil fuel expansion, not just the oilsands . However, Simpson’s speculation on First Nations’ opposition to the Northern Gateway project as “pig
headed”, or “not wanting to join modernity” are offensive and misstate the valid concerns voiced by more than 60 indigenous communities. They are concerned about irreparable damage to their land, and salmon migration routes. They are well aware that little/none of the large profits made by Enbridge and other oil companies accrue to the First Nations whose land these projects are frequently based on. Their reasons for opposing are well founded, and well documented by many First Nations including the Wet’suwet’en.

If Mr Simpson were a little less “pig headed”, or “more willing to join modernity”, he would fire up that marvellous modern invention, the web browser and look up wetsuweten.com. His unnecessary slurs take away from what is a otherwise a sensible and well written article.

They did leave out my rather snarky last paragraph 🙂

Pig picture from jm999uk’s flickr stream used under a creative commons licence.

One Comment

  1. Random this oliverridley:

    Hydrate contains twice the carbon of all fossil fuel, and whereas fossil fuel needs to be burned to emit GHG, hydrate needs only to melt.

    Briefly, carbon in the soil is “eaten” by microbes, and in the absence of oxygen the microbes emit methane (CH4). Some of that methane gets trapped in ice called hydrate.

    There is about 400 billion tons of methane trapped in permafrost hydrate (20% of the land on earth is permafrost). 50% of the surface permafrost is expected to melt by 2050, and over 90% by 2100.

    A release of less than 30 billion tons of methane would be like doubling the CO2 in the air.

    Worse, there is an estimated 10,000 billion tons of methane hydrate under the ocean. Substantial quantities of this has melted before with catastrophic results (55 million years ago-the PETM ushered in the Age of Mammals, and 250 million years ago-the “Great Dying” killed most life on earth).

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