White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail

Byoliveridley

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail – NYTimes.com

No, this headline is not from the Onion, I repeat, this is an accurate account of the workings of the world’s most powerful government as it delays action on climate change!

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  • Pesticide Screening Using a CD Player and CDs.

    Byoliveridley

    Who said CDs were dead, this is, hands down, the coolest paper on screening techniques I have seen in a while. I haven’t seen the rest of the paper, not Open Access, of course, but the abstract does make it sound cool.

    Microimmunoanalysis on Standard Compact Discs To Determine Low Abundant Compounds

    “High-density competitive indirect microimmunoassays were performed in both sides of compact discs by direct absorption of immunoreagents on polycarbonate surface, using gold- or enzyme-labeled immunoglobulins as tracers for displaying the immunoreaction. The operational principle is based on the use of a low-reflectivity compact disc as analytical platform that allows the reflection/transmission (30/70%) of the CD reader laser beam ( 780 nm). The reflected light is used to scan the disc track keeping it in movement. The transmitted light is detected by a planar photodiode integrated on the CD drive. The variation of the optical transmission of the light caused by the immunoreaction products is related to the sample concentration. As a proof of concept, low abundant compounds, commonly used as pesticides, were detected in a 60-min total assay time, with a limit of detection ranging from 0.02 to 0.62 ug/L for 2,4,5-TP, chlorpyriphos, and metolachlor. The obtained results show the enormous prospective of compact discs in combination with CD players for multiresidue and drug discovery applications.”

    Why are techniques like these important in the world of environmental analysis? Because they change the paradigm from laboratory based techniques to field based analysis. You don’t have to take a bunch of samples, spend a lot of time and money shipping them to a lab and waiting for the results. You can pop your samples into a CD player and one hour later (less than a 74 minute listening time on a CD!), you’ll have results.

    Awesome stuff, I’d love to see it in action, or even try to replicate the work. It looks like you have to make some modifications to the player to make it work, but hey, there are millions of CD players that are going to be obsoleted in the next few years.

  • US, India and China Talk Climate

    Byoliveridley

    The Obama administration is hoping to win new commitments to fight global warming from China and India in back-to-back summits next month, the Guardian has learned, including the first Indian emissions trading scheme.

    The US hopes the new commitments will breathe life into the moribund negotiations to seal a global treaty on climate change in Copenhagen in December, by setting out what action each country will take. But many observers say such bilateral deals also risk seriously weakening any Copenhagen agreement by allowing the idea of a global limit on greenhouse gas emissions to be abandoned.

    The Guardian

    So, as part of Blog Action Day 2009, which is focusing on climate change, I bring you news that the US administration is back, taking some kind of a leadership role in climate change by talking to India and China. The notion that somehow what the US, Europe and Canada do in response to climate change is pointless because China and India are not going to participate is misleadingly inaccurate, sometimes deliberately so. I had written in June about India’s very ambitious solar policy, and China has similar, fairly comprehensive programs on climate change.

    The concern that bilateral talks will somehow sabotage the multilateral Copenhagen negotiations is, I think, overstated. More talk is always better, and good things happen when the world’s most high profile polluter signals its willingness to talk, and even initiate talks with countries whose development paths are at a critical stage.

    I have not been super hopeful about how things are going to turn out in the next few years. But things have changed quite a bit in the past year. The US appear to have their own climate bill brewing. Europe makes the right noises and has a head start,making the mistakes early. Unfortunately, Canada has given up the ghost thanks to our troglodyte oil man administration. Our main hope now is that the US passes a strong enough bill to affect Canada. Or there is an election leading to a change in administration and Mr Michael Ignatieff and the “liberals” are true to their word on a new, sustainable energy policy.

    Canada is now the worst laggard, having extremely high per capita emissions and policy to increase these emissions while actively sabotaging climate talks. We emit a full 2% of all global warming contributors while accounting for about 0.5% of the world’s population. It is understandable given our development path how we got there, but not trying to fix it is criminally negligent and morally bankrupt.

    Apparently, the Canadian people could care less, polls indicate that the business as usual administration is increasing its support among Canadians. What is the average Canadian’s responsibility if he/she knowingly supports policy that could lead to mass homelessness, flooding, starvation, wars, species extinction, etc?

    On Climate blog action day, I am sad to report that my adoptive country will do nothing but soldier on in its destructive behaviour. No point calling my local MP, she agrees with me!

  • |

    Conventional biofuels are evil, part 4233241

    Byoliveridley

    English to American Translation:

    Rapeseed = Canola.
    Maize = Corn.

    Turns out that all the nitrate fertilizer you use to grow all the corn and canola you need emits a lot of Nitrous Oxide. No laughing matter, this, N2O is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas.

    Rapeseed biofuel ‘produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol’ – Times Online: “Measurements of emissions from the burning of biofuels derived from rapeseed and maize have been found to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they save.

    Other biofuels, especially those likely to see greater use over the next decade, performed better than fossil fuels but the study raises serious questions about some of the most commonly produced varieties.

    Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide”

  • | |

    Indian Parliament Discusses Climate Change

    Byoliveridley

    India stresses on Kyoto standards-India-The Times of India

    The discussion on global warming in Parliament will end with the statement of environment minister A Raja, possibly on Monday. He is bound to restate the country’s position on climate change in the international arena — that countries must bear “a common but differentiated responsibility” for climate change, a phrase that is the central pin of the Kyoto Protocol.

    De-jargonised, it means, while every country is adding to the problem, there are some that are more responsible than others, and should, therefore, bear the burden and costs of cleaning up more than the smaller culprits

    More highlights…

    The US, between 1950-2003, emitted 10 times more carbon dioxide than India did. Europe emitted 8.5 times more. Yet US and Australia, two of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (which asks developed countries to reduce their emissions) on the pretext that developing countries like India and China are not undertaking emission cuts.

    Worse still, if one looks at per capita emissions from different countries, which is a more equitable way of calculating emissions if one was to go by the principle that each person has as much right to the atmosphere as another, then India ranks a mere 120 compared to US which ranks 6 and Australia 10 on the culprits’ list. This is taking the emission levels of 2003.

    Well, they are right, and they are wrong too. The developed world has a lot to more to cut back on and should make the bulk of the cuts. But India and China also need to grow using current state of the art knowledge, not using the 1950s coal intensive, energy inefficient model of increasing supply without paying attention to demand. We have also come to realize that IPCC reports, due to their consensual nature, are conservative. So, they will tend to understate the effects of climate change and overstate the costs. It may not be as expensive in India and China as long as attention is being paid to hw the infrastructure is being developed.

  • More bad news for Nalgene

    Byoliveridley

    Nalgene, and other so called safe hard plastics made from polycarbonates. Read here for background and all previous Bisphenol A postings.

    PLoS Genetics – Bisphenol A Exposure In Utero Disrupts Early Oogenesis in the Mouse

    In the course of studies to assess the effects of BPA on the mouse oocyte, we have uncovered a novel “grandmaternal” effect: exposure to BPA during pregnancy disturbs oocyte development in unborn female fetuses. When these fetuses reach adulthood, the perturbations are translated into an increase in chromosomally abnormal eggs and embryos. Thus, low-dose BPA exposure during pregnancy has multigenerational consequences; it increases the likelihood of chromosomally abnormal grandchildren. Our studies also provide mechanistic insight, and, surprisingly, suggest that BPA acts in the fetal ovary not by mimicking the actions of estrogen but by interfering with the function of one of the known estrogen receptors. Thus, our data suggest that estrogen plays a far earlier role in oocyte development than previously suspected and, importantly, raise the possibility that a variety of substances—both synthetic and naturally occurring—that mimic the actions of estrogen or act as estrogen antagonists may affect early oocyte development.

    Once again, caution is involved in the interpretation of the results, mice are more sensitive than humans to environmental exposures. The heartening part of this, and other recent studies is that work is now being carried out at doses that are more representative of ambient exposures, making results much more relevant. The part in bold is equally interesting. Estrogen is a very powerful hormone that has so many unknown effects on the body (and the mind, presumably :-;)

  • Obama: Warming must be tackled now – Climate Change- msnbc.com

    Byoliveridley

    He wasn’t expected to make an appearance, let alone a splash, but President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday delivered a videotaped message to a climate change summit convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vowing quick action to curb emissions and engage in international talks.

    You can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change," he told hundreds of scientists, executives, governors and even foreign officials gathered in Los Angeles.

    via Obama: Warming must be tackled now – Climate Change- msnbc.com

    No longer the climate outcast, is the president of the United States, that proud designation among the so called developed country leaders would now be Steven Harper.

One Comment

  1. It sounds like they were just trying to time it right, so that they could pass some new, more lenient standards without having to acknowledge the EPA’s report. Blatantly irrepsonsible.

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