via RAND_TR580.sum.pdf application/pdf Object.
More on this later, but according to this lifecycle analysis, oil produced from the oil sands of Alberta can be cost competitive with crude oil even if carbon costs are taken into account.
However, ramp up of production will lead to very high water usage and massive local and regional impacts.
In other words, Alberta, you’re screwed, rest of the world, you’ll die at the same rate!
A must read for anyone who likes articulate scientists writing very approachable articles about important subjects!
Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem – washingtonpost.com
If every one of the 70 million acres on which corn was grown in 2006 was used for ethanol, the amount produced would displace only 12 percent of the U.S. gasoline market. Moreover, the “new” (non-fossil) energy gained would be very small — just 2.4 percent of the market. Car tune-ups and proper tire air pressure would save more energy.
Proper tire pressure is not sexy, and does not lead to billions of dollars of profits!
The net effect is that ethanol from corn grown in the Corn Belt does increase atmospheric greenhouse gases, and this increase is only about 15 percent less than the increase caused by an equivalent amount of gasoline
Corn is such a boondongle, it’s amazing what the ADMs and Monsantos of the world can do.
This means that when tropical woodland is cleared to produce sugar cane for ethanol, the greenhouse gas released is about 50 percent greater than what occurs from the production and use of the same amount of gasoline. And that statistic holds for at least two decades.
Brazil will not solve all your problems (unless they’re samba related!). Increased demand for ethanol from Brazil could lead to clearcutting of the rain forest/other fallow grassland.
Across the full process of growing high-diversity prairie hay, converting it into an energy source and using that energy, we found a net removal and storage of about a ton and a half of atmospheric carbon dioxide per acre. The net effect is that ethanol or synthetic gasoline produced from this grass on degraded land can provide energy that actually reduces atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
It’s a very well written article.
I have written about bisphenol A recently. It’s a chemical found in polycarbonate plastics that has been linked with some crazy effects in mice at ambient levels including disruption of oogenesis (egg production) and effects two generations removed (grandmother effects).
Public health agency linked to chemical industry – Los Angeles Times
For nearly a decade, a federal agency has been responsible for assessing the dangers that chemicals pose to reproductive health. But much of the agency’s work has been conducted by a private consulting company that has close ties to the chemical industry, including manufacturers of a compound in plastics that has been linked to reproductive damage.
In 1998, the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction was established within the National Institutes of Health to assess the dangers of chemicals and help determine which ones should be regulated. Sciences International, an Alexandria, Va., consulting firm that has been funded by more than 50 industrial companies, has played a key role in the center’s activities, reviewing the risks of chemicals, preparing reports, and helping select members of its scientific review panel and setting their agendas, according to government and company documents.
This kind of work is too important to be left to contractors like Sciences International (however good they may be), which also has contracts with companies that manufacture and market products containing Bisphenol A. It’s very simple, most companies, for profit entities and even non-profits dependent on funding sources tend to maximize short term gain over long term good. While the political arm of the government does that as well, the institutions stable enough to do reliable work on policy issues that affect our long term well being are few in number. Government run research with stable funding, good employees and good management will do this work well, it’s a good match between the nature of the work and the nature of the organizations.
The ever excellent Pump Handle has more, I read their post as I was writing this one and so, nothing more to say, really, except, remember Children of Men! Fertility is not to be toyed with, any chemical that has the ability to affect egg production two generations down needs to be handled with care.
This is the NY Times headline, not mine!
Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules – New York Times
But on Friday, the court said the agency went too far in 2003 when it issued a separate new rule that opponents said would exempt most equipment changes from environmental reviews — even changes that would result in higher emissions.
With a wry footnote to Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” the court said that “only in a Humpty-Dumpty world” could the law be read otherwise.
“We decline such a world view,” said their unanimous decision, written by Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judges David Tatel, another Clinton appointee, and Janice Rogers Brown, a recent Bush appointee, joined her.
The winners this time —more than a dozen states, including New York and California and a large group of environmental organizations — hailed the decision as one of their most important gains in years of litigation, regulation and legal challenges under the Clean Air Act.
The provision of the law at issue, the “new source review” section, governs the permits required at more than 1,300 coal-fueled power plants around the country and 17,000 factories, refineries and chemical plants that spew millions of tons of pollution into the air each year.
The proposed rule would have allowed powerplants to avoid putting new controls in as long as the cost of equipment did not exceed 20% of the replacement cost of the plant. Fuzzy math, anyone! This would have let to major incentives to not build new plants using cleaner technology, but keep the “grandfathers” running. A lot of the old plants were exempted from some of the strict controls by being grandfathered into the act. Well, call me cruel, but grandfathers eventually die! I thought of this proposed rule as the “Bionic Grandpa” provision! Glad that the courts did not like it.
In a vote today, the Canadian Parliament voted to keep debate on Bill C-311 alive. The vote was 155-137. This is good news, though the bill likely faces an uncertain future even if it passes parliament, thanks to Canada’s nominated and recently conservative majority senate. It was heartening to see the liberals vote en masse in favour of realistic targets. I am also attaching in verbatim, an email received from Michael Ignatieff’s office this morning on the bill.
On behalf of Michael Ignatieff, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your recent email regarding Bill C-311, The Climate Change Accountability Act.
Mr. Harper is isolated on the environment – he’s behind the provinces and our peer countries when it comes to taking leadership on climate change and the environment, and has undermined international progress at every turn.
The Liberals are taking the Harper Conservatives to task over their failure to commit to a principled environmental policy backed up by real action. We’re calling on the government to immediately put in place a national climate change plan with economy-wide regulations on emissions and strategic investments in renewable and clean energy.
Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party are also supporting Bill C-311 as part of our staunch opposition to Mr. Harper’s laissez-faire approach to the environment and climate change. We support its central principle – that Canada needs to take immediate, ambitious action to get us back on track to reducing emissions and improving our renewable energy sources.
We must be clear, however: Bill C-311 is not a climate change plan. It picks targets, but it does not lay out a plan on how Canada can reach those targets. That’s where it comes up short. The Liberal Party has put forward a credible, achievable climate and clean energy strategy that will create jobs and make our economy – and our country – one of the cleanest and most competitive in the world. Canada cannot afford to miss this opportunity.
Thank you for taking the time to write the office of Michael Ignatieff on this important issue.
As part of blog action day, today’s a day when every blog features a post about the environment. Turns out that this is an environmental blog where most of the posts are about the environment. But nothing like a deadline for a noble cause to make me blog, so here goes…
What the rich use and throw away, the poor are reduced to scavenging to earn a meager living. Yes, while climate change rightly takes up a lot of attention, more mundane problems including landfills in poor communities, the export of waste from the first world to the third world, and the “shocking” poverty that drives this export of waste all deserve their fair share of attention.
U.N.: ‘Shocking’ conditions at Kenya dump – World Environment – MSNBC.com
“Willis Ochieng, 10, scavenges through smoking refuse piled as high as a house at one of Africa’s biggest rubbish mountains, his friends sitting nearby sucking on dirty plastic bottles of noxious yellow glue.
Located near slums in the east of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the open dump receives some 2,000 tons of garbage daily. A U.N. study published on Friday says it is seriously harming the health of children and polluting the city.”
And boy, do the people there suffer. Asthma, anemia, high levels of lead in the blood, chronic cough, and a smorgasbord of other acute and chronic conditions.
This dump is not alone, of course. Landfills are a feature of every country, and in my current home state of North Caroiina, are located with disproportionate frequency in African American communities. the free market advocate would say that this represents an opportunity for the people in the community to gain some employment and make some money. The truth of the matter, however, is that we do not pay the right price for waste generation. The people who live near, and make a living off the “dump” subsidize our profligate selves.
The enormity of climate change and its impact is on everyone’s lips in this cold desert where over 80 per cent of the farmers depend on the snow melt for their needs. Water is almost a luxury now. There is no authoritative study done so far to estimate the impact of receding glaciers in Ladakh, points out Ms Nisa Khatoon, project officer, of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Leh. Scarcity of water has led to people digging bore wells in Leh, which is likely to have an impact on the underwater springs. Ms Khatoon also notes a reduction in pasture lands affecting the migration routes of the Changpas, a nomadic tribe that lives near the lakes in the upper reaches of Ladakh.
The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The glacier melt.
I seem to remember a certain Environment minister claiming that climate change mitigation policies were irresponsible because they would lead to a small drop in GDP growth in his country. If only the people of Ladakh had this luxury. Believers in reincarnation may wish that Mr Prentice be reborn as a farmer in Ladakh circa 2060, but there may not be any farmers in Ladakh come 2050, nor any glaciers, so I guess that would make him a lonely man!
Picture courtesy Rich Drogpa’s Flickr Photostream, used under a creative commons license