Plugin Hybrids even closer

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Well, that speaks for itself, no comment required.

Duke Energy, that is, not the Blue Devils!

The Supreme Court sure has a green tinge today!

newsobserver.com | Justices rule against Duke on pollution controls

The Supreme Court gave a boost today to a federal clean air initiative aimed at forcing utilities to install pollution control equipment on aging coal-fired power plants.
In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled against Duke Energy Corp. in a lawsuit brought by the Clinton administration, part of a massive enforcement effort targeting more than a dozen utilities.

Most companies settled with the government, but several Clinton-era cases involving more than two dozen power plants in the South and the Midwest are still pending. The remaining suits demand fines for past pollution that if levied in full would run into billions of dollars.

The justices ruled that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overstepped its authority by implicitly invalidating Environmental Protection Agency regulations in a way that favored Duke. The case now returns to the lower courts.

The appeals court’s decision “seems to us too far a stretch,” Justice David Souter wrote.

The enforcement program is aimed at reducing power plant emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide that contribute to smog and acid rain. Sulfur dioxide is the leading cause of acid rain.

The utility industry has long resisted installing costly pollution controls under the program called New Source Review. It waged vigorous campaigns against the program starting in the 1980s and more recently by battling it out with regulators when sued in federal courts.

Yes, strained headline!

A Toxic Hand-Me-Down — Balter 2007 (327): 1 — ScienceNOW

Environmental contamination can cause cancer and birth defects. Of particular concern are a group of toxic chemicals called endocrine-disrupters, which interfere with reproductive hormones and may cause sterility. A new study, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that these chemicals can change reproductive behavior as well, and that these behavioral changes can be passed on from parents to offspring. If correct, these changes could alter the course of evolution by giving natural selection new targets to act on.

In 2005, a team led by reproductive biologist Michael Skinner of Washington State University in Pullman reported in Science that the fungicide vinclozolin, an endocrine-disrupter used to spray vineyards and other crops, causes fertility defects in the male offspring of female rats treated with the chemical. These defects are, in turn, passed down to the males of subsequent generations. The toxin did not appear to be altering gene sequences; instead, Skinner and colleagues found, vinclozolin was somehow causing other chemical groups to latch onto certain genes, changing their expression (Science, 3 June 2005, p. 1391). The phenomenon is known as epigenetic inheritance. Last year, Skinner’s group identified 15 epigenetically altered DNA sequences in the sperm of the vinclozolin-treated rats

More signs of intergenerational effects of low levels of endocrine disruptors. I had blogged recently about Bisphenol A having intergenerational effects (where exposure to a chemical agent causes consequences for offspring and off off spring, etc).

It’s still early, but remember Children of Men (good movie, see it).