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Clothianidin and the Colony Collapse Disorder

Byoliveridley

Clothianidin is the pesticide at the center of controversy. It is used to coat corn, sugar beet and sorghum seeds and is part of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. The pesticide was blamed for bee deaths in France and Germany, which also is dealing with a colony collapse. Those two countries have suspended its use until further study. An EPA fact sheet from 2003 says clothianidin has the potential for toxic chronic exposure to honey bees, as well as other pollinators, through residues in nectar and pollen.

Lawsuit seeks EPA pesticide data

Interesting story. For more on the Colony Collapse Disorder...

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  • 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.

  • Drugs in the Water

    Byoliveridley

    When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

    And it wasn’t just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

    Not at all surprising, considering that drug manufacturing releases tons of pollutants at high concentrations. The sources are very different from recent studies in the US where end users of the drug are the greatest source, and ciprofloxacin was again one of the drugs detected at the highest levels. At this rate, most bugs will be resistant to cipro in a few years.

    In the end, water treatment plants cannot deal with this toxic soup. They need to be cleaned up at the source, by the pharmaceutical companies before they hit any waste streams. After all, isn’t recapturing and reusing the kilos of drugs being wasted good economic sense?

  • Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas

    Byoliveridley

    From the annals of the utterly insane, it’s about 3 weeks early for April Fools pranks…

    Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas

    More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks’ natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks’ movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week

    Read the Tom’s Dispatch article for a bigger picture look, excellent paragraph here, one can’t help but wonder…

    To support letting inventive minds roam free outside normal frameworks is in itself an inspired idea. But I bet there’s no DARPA-like agency elsewhere in the government funding the equivalent for education 2025 or health 2025 or even energy independence 2025. To have this happen, I’m afraid, you would have to transform them into Northcom war games.

    I do not believe that throwing money into research solves all problems, but I wonder what would happen if the US of A did not spend all its spare cash and (up to the eyeballs) in debt on defense. The incredible amounts of money spent on defense makes many people rich, keeps many companies afloat, creates many jobs, etc. But so would massive amounts of government funding on pretty much any other, more worthwhile venture.

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    Opinion Polls and Yes Prime Minister

    Byoliveridley

    This story from the grist about a push poll arranged by Rasmussen showing 67% support for the reinstatement of offshore oil drilling in the United States reminded me of this most delightful exchange from Yes Prime Minister, still one of my all time favourite television shows and one that taught me almost everything I needed to know about parliamentary politics at a tender age. The show is about British politics through the eyes of an earnest but bumbling politician, his very experienced bureaucratic handler and his secretary with divided loyalties. The show is incredibly insightful and funny at the same time. But, before I get to my favourite part, some background…

    It’s that time of the year when the republicans want to enrich their oil buddies by opening up oil drilling offshore of the U.S. This year, the high price of gas provides a convenient excuse and rallying point. After all, who wouldn’t want to pay less for gas. Of course, a U.S government study done by the Energy Information Administration in 2007 indicates that at best, you would see a 3% increase in production by 2030, and we all know how much that would affect gasoline prices this summer. Yet, here’s the first question from the “poll”

    In order to reduce the price of gas, should drilling be allowed in offshore oil wells off the coasts of California, Florida, and other states

    No really, what are you supposed to say? Can such reputable firms lie to you like that? Anyway, Joseph Romm from the original gristmill post breaks it down completely so I don’t have to. but after reading his post, come back and read the following exchange from Yes Prime Minister, and do listen to the actual audio clip from the show.

    Yes Prime Minister – Season 1Episode 2 (warning: Strangely formatted website)

    Sir Humphrey: “You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don’t want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Do you think they respond to a challenge?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Oh…well, I suppose I might be.”

    Sir Humphrey: “Yes or no?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can’t say no to that. So they don’t mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.”

    Bernard Woolley: “Is that really what they do?”

    Sir Humphrey: “Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren’t many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result.”

    Bernard Woolley: “How?”

    Sir Humphrey: “Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Are you worried about the growth of armaments?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”Sir Humphrey: “Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?”

    Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

    Sir Humphrey: “There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.”

    That is what I think about opinion polls!

  • Recycling Paper

    Byoliveridley

    recycle.gifNow you’re having this conversation over dinner about recycling (yes, I have had this conversation before with lots of people), and there pipes up this voice which says “Well, I read somewhere that it costs more money to recycle than to just throw it away”, and you think, “waitaminnit, that can’t be right, but where’s the proof?” Well, at least for paper, here it is, and bless the EU for taking the trouble (I read about this in the Environmental Valuation and Cost-Benefit News Blog).

    Lifecycle Analysis and Cost Benefit Analysis on Paper Recycling

    No, I did not read all 160 pages, but sure did read the Executive Summary…

    The LCA review concludes that the majority of LCAs indicate that recycling of paper has lower environmental impacts than the alternative options of landfill and incineration. The result is very clear in the comparison of recycling with landfilling, and less pronounced, but still clear, in the comparison of recycling with incineration. The CBA review concludes that in little more than half of the CBAs, paper recycling has higher socioeconomic benefits than other management options. In the remainder of the studies, the socio-economic benefits of incineration, landfill or other options are higher than those gained from recycling. It is often said that CBAs are generally favourable to other waste management options than recycling. However due to the heterogeneity of the methodologies used in the reviewed CBAs, it is not possible to confirm or to reject this statement.

    They looked at 9 different regions and did an LCA and CBA for each. Apparently, and I did not know this, the LCA evaluation system is well standardized and codified, so it is easy to compare results between regions, but the CBA mechanisms are not as well codified, hence more sensitive to the assumptions made.

    Fascinating reading aside, the answer is clear, recycle your paper! At least they make it easy in Chapel Hill.