John Kerry and the Environment

Byoliveridley

The fight in the Senate | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

Kerry, everyone’s favorite democrat summarizes the non-coal/auto democrat’s energy/environmental policy plans int he US senate.

Highlights:

  1. Increase Fuel Economy standards
  2. Increase contribution of renewable sources
  3. No drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)
  4. No liquid coal
  5. NO MORE COAL WITHOUT SEQUESTRATION!!!

This is all very sensible. He does not mention biofuels/corn ethanol, which I guess is because he’s from Mass, not exactly corn central.

He’s a good man, this John Kerry.

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  • NASA chief not worried about climate

    Byoliveridley

    Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the chief of NASA, Michael Griffin

    NASA chief not worried about climate – Yahoo! News

    I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take,” Griffin said.

    Nothing more to say other than if I were American, I would first be a little ashamed, I would then start demanding his resignation. This is the chief of one of this country’s premier scientific institutions, one that does a lot of weather and climate research, one that employs the world’s foremost scientific voice on global warming. Here’s what Hansen had to say…

    James Hansen, a top NASA climate scientist, said Griffin’s comments showed “arrogance and ignorance,” because millions of people will likely be harmed by global warming in the future.

    Wow, he was being kind.

  • Pothole power for cars

    Byoliveridley

    Via the TNR E&E blog comes this story of capturing some of the energy wasted when a vehicle moves over bumps and potholes on the road. Indian drivers are waiting with bated breath for this prototype to become a reality! The takeaway messages are that most of the mechanical devices we use today have many points where waste energy can be captured and put to use.

    A team of MIT undergraduate students has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smoothes the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers.

  • Solar plant cheaper than conventional plants

    Byoliveridley

    Generating clean electricity that's as cheap as power from fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of green-energy companies. A new solar project powering California homes appears to be closing in on that prize.

    Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy in San Diego, just took the wraps off a 10-megawatt solar farm in Nevada. That's small by industry standards, enough to light just 6,400 homes. But the ramifications are potentially huge.

    A veteran analyst has calculated that the facility can produce power at a cost of 7.5 cents a kilowatt-hour, less than the 9-cent benchmark for conventional electricity.If that’s so, it marks a milestone that renewable fans have longed for: “grid parity,” in which electricity from the sun, wind or other green sources can meet or beat the price performance of such carbon-based fuels as coal and natural gas.

    via Los Angeles Times: Sempra solar energy project makes advances in costs.

    This is great as long as the math is real. The company has made quite a few changes from conventional solar, including using cadmium telluride as the semiconductor instead of the more expensive polycrystalline silicon and fashioning them into thinner films.

    I am not a big fan of unverified claims, especially when so much money is likely to be involved. But the exact number is not important. This installation appears to get close to or greater than grid parity without the externalities of fossil fuel power generation (carbon costs, mercury mitigation, etc.) being accounted for on the “conventional” side.

    The future appears to be sunny!

    One small, niggling issue, can we stop calling coal “conventional”? Coal comes from the remains of prehistoric plants that made all their biomass by using the sun as a fuel source, got buried way underground, and, after millions of years at high pressure and no oxygen, formed a carbon rich material that if burned, releases a small fraction of the energy that the sun put in it! As such, using the sun directly as a power source is about as conventional as it gets, everything else is 2nd order, derivative and fairly inefficient.

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    March Babies not so Bright? – Pesticides to Blame?

    Byoliveridley

    An Indiana scientist makes a rather provocative argument that exposure to pesticides in the womb can explain why Indiana babies conceived in July-August (Born March and April?) have lower achievement scores than the other kids.

    ScienceDaily: Conception Date Affects Babys Future Academic Achievement

    Dr. Winchester and colleagues linked the scores of the students in grades 3 through 10 who took the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress (ISTEP) examination with the month in which each student had been conceived. The researchers found that ISTEP scores for math and language were distinctly seasonal with the lowest scores received by children who had been conceived in June through August.

    “The fetal brain begins developing soon after conception. The pesticides we use to control pests in fields and our homes and the nitrates we use to fertilize crops and even our lawns are at their highest level in the summer,” said Dr. Winchester, who also directs Newborn Intensive Care Services at St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis.

    “Exposure to pesticides and nitrates can alter the hormonal milieu of the pregnant mother and the developing fetal brain,” said Dr. Winchester. “While our findings do not represent absolute proof that pesticides and nitrates contribute to lower ISTEP scores, they strongly support such a hypothesis.”

    Well, that is a bold leap of faith, and use of a correlation=causation argument that I don’t appreciate in most cases. Has this kind of work been done in other countries, or in urban environments without pesticide use?

    I am sure that many chemicals have subtle, but significant effects on developing fetuses. And the chemicals the authors mention have links with hypothyroidism..

    Nitrates and pesticides are known to cause maternal hypothyroidism and lower maternal thyroid in pregnancy is associated with lower cognitive scores in offspring.

    There is a link, but without further data, I think the conclusions are a stretch. But, something to keep in mind I guess if you live in Indiana and want to plan a baby!

    Disclaimer: I was conceived in June, and was in the upper echelons of achievement through school. So, by the power of personal experience, I am predisposed to scepticism. OTH, I grew up in a big city with consistently high pollution levels throughout the year and not much pesticide exposure.

  • |

    FDA decides to breed super bugs

    Byoliveridley

    Well, what else can you say about it. This is insanely moronic. Read this sierra club release about the overuse of antibiotics brought on by the overcrowding of animals in food production factories (aka “farms”). Read the whole article and see how much everyone will be endangered so that Intervet, Inc. can make money.

    FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug – washingtonpost.com

    The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency’s own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people. The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine’s last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.

    Note, a powerful and potent antibiotic that works well, but is not used much because it’s the last line of defense. But the drug company that manufactures this product cares little about long term efficacy. Their only goal is to maximize short term shareholder value. I don’t blame them, I blame the government for not doing its job, that is, to balance these short term and long term goals and protect the people that pay them a lot of money for this protection.

    The wording of “Guidance for Industry #152” was crafted within the FDA after a long struggle. In the end, the agency adopted language that, for drugs like cefquinome, is more deferential to pharmaceutical companies than is recommended by the World Health Organization.

    Cefquinome’s seemingly inexorable march to market shows how a few words in an obscure regulatory document can sway the government’s approach to protecting public health.

    There’s a reason this present U.S government works in secrecy, so these “obscure” (I am sorry, but nothing that directly affects human health can be called obscure) rule changes will not hit the public eye before it’s too late. Apparently, the FDA can now only consider resistance to food borne diseases in considering an application. That’s like saying that a hospital will only treat victims of food borne diseases, so if you catch the cold, we won’t treat you! This is the Food and Drug Adminstration (all food and all drugs), not the food borne disease protection council.

    This drug is absolutely unnecessary for the following reasons:

    1. The disease it treats (respiratory distress in cows) is brought about by insane levels of animal overcrowding
    2. There are currently a dozen antibiotics for this particular problem, none of which are considered susceptible to resistance
    3. The FDA has previous history with similar public health threats with fluoroquinolones
    4. This drug is considered a last resort drug for antibiotic resistant strains of diseases in cancer patients – So strains resistant to this drug will evolve shortly after the antibiotic is overexposed . This is a death sentence for a lot of very vulnerable people.
    5. A similar drug used in Europe for the last 10 years has resulted in an increase in resistant strains of bacteria.

    This is what you get when you vote for an ideology that hates government. You get a government that hates itself and is busy pawning parts of itself off to its cronies.

  • Deep Sixing California’s Prop 65

    Byoliveridley

    House mulls bill on food label removal – Boston.com:

    “This bill would strip state governments of the ability to protect their residents through state laws and regulations relating to the safety of food and food packaging,” the attorneys general wrote.

    The obvious target, they said, is California’s Proposition 65, a law passed by voters requiring companies to warn the public of potentially dangerous toxins in food. The law has prompted California to file lawsuits seeking an array of warnings, including the mercury content in canned tuna and the presence of lead in Mexican candy.

    Prop 65 is a California Law that requires the state of California to “publish, at least annually, a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity” and for businesses to post warning labels. Well naturally, it kinda depresses sales of canned tuna if you have mercury warnings on the labels, mmm, lead in my candy, so delicious…

    This is obviously not good for the consumer, I undestand that businesses feel the burden of extra labeling, depressed sales, etc, but why should the onus always be on the consumer? If the assumption that it is the consumer’s responsibility to find out that there is mercury in his/her tuna and that the informed consumer will make informed choices, why not make it easier on the consumer to find out and then rely on him/her to make that choice? What are the companies afraid of, exactly?

    Update 4:24 PM 3-3-2006

    More here,  here and here