And so it begins

But, will it make tea? File it under the “too good to be true” department. I’ll believe it when it happens.

From Wales, a box to make biofuel from car fumes: Scientific American

The world’s richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it.

They have developed a box which they say can be fixed underneath a car in place of the exhaust to trap the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming — including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — and emit mostly water vapor.

The captured gases can be processed to create a biofuel using genetically modified algae.

So, what they’re saying is that they have designed a device that can safely sequester most of the toxic components of automobile exhaust for a little while. Then, you take this “magic box” down to your local refinery where this sequestered gas is mixed with some algae. The algae then uses this CO2 as fuel to make biodiesel.

Very cool in concept. Kinda hard to critcize without the details, No?

A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.European nations dominate the top places in the ranking, which evaluates sanitation, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural policies, air pollution and 20 other measures to formulate an overall score, with 100 the best possible.The top 10 countries, with scores of 87 or better, were led by Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The others at the top were Austria, France, Latvia, Costa Rica, Colombia and New Zealand, the leader in the 2006 version of the analysis, which is conducted by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities.

U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment – New York Times

Gee, I wonder why??

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Dog bites man news o’ the day!

ScienceDaily: European Union Outpaces United States On Chemical Safety

In the 1970s and ’80s, the United States effectively set many global product standards for consumer and environmental protection. Today, Europe is playing this role, while U.S. government and industry oppose the resulting standards in Europe and in international arenas.

The size of the European market (more than 485 million citizens) will push manufacturers in the United States and Asia to meet European standards and will increase the availability of “green” products globally, contend the authors. Additionally, the new toxic risk information generated by REACH may allow environmental advocates in the United States and elsewhere to focus their efforts with specific, supportable data.

Amen to that, you can either lead, or be forced to follow. EU policies are far from perfect, and as vulnerable to politics, hypocrisy and competing interests as any other “country’s” policies. But, you can never fault them for lack of effort, and they do not seem to have suffered from any consequences to using the precautionary principle.

When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

Not so hard to grasp. But here’s the precautionary principle the US of A uses. I propose calling it the plutocracy-protectionary principle^TM.

When a proposed regulation raises threats of harm to the short term shareholder returns of an industry, precautionary measures to oppose this regulation must be taken even if cause and effect relationships are clearly established, or if scientific research has shown the opposite effect to the industry claim being made.

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. 

Well, I guess if Gore had become president of the US, this would not have happened (among other things that would not have happened). On the other hand, the U.S would have conceivably taken a leadership role in the issue (if the senate and congress would have cooperated).

Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize – New York Times

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

”I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,” Gore said. ”We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

Gore’s film ”An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary on global warming, won an Academy Award this year and he had been widely expected to win the prize.

What does this do for climate change? Well, nothing! Unfortunately! Good for the IPCC, though. And, good for Gore. I thought at the beginning of 2007 that this was the year that worldwide perceptions about the threat of global warming would change, Gore’s movie and the IPCC report had a big hand in making that happen.