Canada and Greenhouse Gases – Epic Fail

Byoliveridley

Canada’s greenhouse emissions soaring: UN report

The figures are based on the 2009 national inventory report that Environment Canada quietly filed last week with the United Nations to meet its international reporting obligations. The full 673-page inventory is available on the UN’s website and shows Canada has the dubious distinction of having its emissions climb more since 1990 than any other G8 nation.

Canada ranks “first among the G8 nations” for increasing emissions, the report notes, even though Canada had committed to cut them. It notes that while Canada’s emissions have soared, Germany chopped its emissions by 18 per cent between 1990 and 2006, and the United Kingdom slashed its by 15 per cent.

Hey, we’re first in the G8 in something! The increase was driven primarily by increasing Tar Sands emissions thanks to the oil boom. Cars and coal also contributed.

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    Most random use of global warming as an excuse

    Byoliveridley

    Anaheim council OKs Disney-adjacent housing development – Los Angeles Times

    In a new argument Tuesday, Disney officials provided city officials with an inches-thick packet asserting that the residential project would exacerbate global warming because of the traffic it would generate.

    It is nice when Disney expresses concern about global warming, but why???

    Over the strong objections of Disney and dozens of tourist officials, the Anaheim City Council voted 3-2 early this morning to approve a controversial residential project in the city’s resort district.

    The six-hour public hearing, which began Tuesday night and spilled into this morning, was the council’s second attempt to settle the dispute that had lingered for nearly a year.

    About 150 resort workers, many from Disney, attended the meeting in support of the development, some wearing stickers that read “Yes in Mickey’s Back Yard” (YIMBY). The dozen employees remaining at the meeting cheered when the project was approved.

    Ah, I get it, they don’t want people working at Disney living near Disney!! So, go ahead, use global warming as an excuse! If it were not disgustingly hypocritical, it would be funny.

  • Wow, Conventional Milk makes Twins!

    Byoliveridley

    44m.jpgHoly tentacular twins, Batman! This is crazy news, the first study linking the incidence of twins with environmental factors. The culprit is growth hormone fed to cows to increase milk production. According to this Wikipedia article, a third of all dairy cattle use Monsanto’s rBGH (or rBST) brand Posilac®, so obviously, use is widespread.

    FEED – July 2006 (from the Union of Concerned Scientists)

    1. Engineered hormone in milk may be linked to twinning. A recent study found that women who consumed dairy products were five times more likely to give birth to twins than vegan women. The study suggested that the use of engineered bovine growth hormone/bovine somatotropin (BGH/BST) to boost milk production in dairy cows may be related to the higher level of twinning. BGH is known to increase twinning in dairy cows. In addition, the rate of human twinning is twice as high in the United States, where BGH is used, as in Britain, where BGH is banned. BGH affects twinning rate by increasing insulin-like growth factor (IGF), a protein produced in the milk of both animals and humans, that promotes ovulation and may help early-stage embryos survive. A separate study found that levels of IGF were 13 percent lower in vegan women than in women who consumed dairy products. Read a press release about the study, which was published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine.

    If true, no woman should ever drink “conventional” milk (non-organic, non rGBH free, etc). Twins are fun, I love my twin nieces very much, but they are much more difficult to carry and deliver, and there are more complications.

    Scary, but I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg as far as environmental effects on childbirth are concerned.

  • Environmental Racism at work

    Byoliveridley

    Could not get any clearer than this.

    ScienceDaily: Study Verifies More Hazardous Waste Facilities Located In Minority Areas

    The other side of that argument is that the hazardous waste facilities came first, which causes the neighborhood demographics to change. As that argument goes, the more affluent white people move out, and poorer minority people are forced to stay or move in, said Paul Mohai, a professor in the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. However, done in collaboration with Robin Saha, a former U-M PhD student and post-doctoral scholar, now an assistant professor at University of Montana, shows that minorities were living in the areas where hazardous waste facilities decided to locate before the facilities arrived. Their study also shows that the demographics in the neighborhoods were already changing and that white residents had already started to move out when the facility was sited. “What we discovered is that there are demographic changes after the siting but they started before the siting,” Mohai said. “Our argument is that what’s likely happening is the area is going through a demographic shift, and it lowers the social capital and political clout of the neighborhood so it becomes the path of least resistance.”

    This is not just about the money. Over and above social capital and political clout, it seems that race trumps all.

    Using the new method, researchers have found that racial disparities in the location of hazardous waste facilities are much greater than previous studies have shown. Furthermore, the disparities persist even when controlling for economic and sociopolitical variables, suggesting that racial targeting, housing discrimination and other factors uniquely associated with race influence the location of the nations’ hazardous waste facilities.

    Depressing.

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    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.

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    Scientist speaks up

    Byoliveridley

    Vote for [Liberal Party Leader] Stéphane Dion; don't vote for the Green Party," Weaver said in an interview promoting Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World.

    "If the Green Party has a strong candidate who's going to beat out the Liberal and Conservative candidates, then, okay, go ahead and vote Green. But, by and large, a green vote is not a Green vote. A green vote is for a Liberal government and Stéphane Dion. There is no other candidate you can vote for.

    Scientist speaks up.

    Victoria’s most prominent scientist wants you to vote for a Liberal Party candidate in this Canadian election.

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    NC House Smoking Bill passes committee

    Byoliveridley

    Updates on the smoking bills I mentioned last week….

    Bill Would Extinguish Indoor Smoking Statewide :: WRAL.com

    Dismissing North Carolina’s heritage as a tobacco state, a House committee on Tuesday passed a far-reaching indoor smoking ban.

    The Judiciary Committee passed the ban by a 9-4 vote. The measure would prohibit smoking in all indoor workplaces in North Carolina, including bars and restaurants. The rules also would apply to private clubs, except those with nonprofit or tax-exempt status.

    The measure would be complaint-driven — local health departments would act on complaints from the public — and violators would first receive warnings.

    “This was a significant and important event to advance the public’s health in North Carolina,” said Dr. Leah Devlin, director of the state Division of Public Health.

    But critics of the legislation, House Bill 259, pointed out that it faces an uphill battle on the House and Senate floors.

    “What they really want is a complete prohibition of indoor smoking in North Carolina,” said state Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake. “We all know smoking is nasty and dangerous. The question is whether, in a free society, you let people do some things that are nasty and dangerous.”

    Some opponents said passing the bill could set the stage for similar bans inside personal vehicles and homes.

    “You want to smoke and you own the building. Is it really that bad for the public?” asked state Rep. Ronnie Sutton, D-Robeson.

    Yes Paul and Ronnie, not only did you construct a straw man, you blew smoke on it, gave it lung cancer, tortured it with cigarette butts and finally set it on fire. Sheesh, what asses.

    Update

    From Laura Leslie, WUNC (our local NPR affiliate) reporter who maintains a reporter’s blog at WUNC

    Under the current version of the bill, which isn’t available on the web just yet, only NON-profit clubs could allow smoking – like the Elks Lodge, for example.

    So for the standard nightclub or bar, smoking would be banned.

    Hope it helps – and thanks very much for reading!!
    Laura

    So, that’s a lot of progress on the house bill, making it very close to the senate bill.