Where to track Northwest Environmental Bills
March 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment
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Tagged: environment, law, oregon, washington
Bad News for Salmon from Fisheries Management Council
March 13, 2009 · 2 Comments
Pacific Fisheries Management Council’s press release indicates commercial salmon fishing is likely to be closed south of Point Falcon, Oregon again this year.
At its April 5-9 meeting in Millbrae, the Council will narrow the three options to a single season recommendation to be forwarded to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for their final approval before May 1.
Also, check out StateoftheSalmon.org a very cool website from The Wild Samon Center and Ecotrust showing the health, status, and trends of Pacific Salmon populations.
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Tagged: fishing, salmon
Regulated Industries under EPA’s proposed GHG rules
March 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment
via JD Supra
Under the proposed rule, affected facilities and suppliers would be required to begin collecting data on January 1, 2010. The first emissions report would be due on March 31, 2011, for emissions emitted during 2010.
The following industries will likely be regulated under the EPA’s proposed greenhouse gas monitoring and reporting regulations:
General Stationary Fuel Combustion
Sources
Electricity Generation
Adipic Acid Production
Aluminum Production
Ammonia Manufacturing
Cement Production
Electronics Manufacturing
Ethanol Production
Ferroalloy Production
Fluorinated GHG Production
Food Processing
Glass Production
HCFC-22 Production and HFC-23 Destruction
Hydrogen Production
Iron and Steel Production
Lead Production
Lime Manufacturing
Magnesium Production
Nitric Acid Production
Oil and Natural Gas Systems
Petrochemical Production
Petroleum Refineries
Phosphoric Acid Production
Pulp and Paper Manufacturing
Silicon Carbide Production
Soda Ash Manufacturing
Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) from Electrical Equipment
Titanium Dioxide Production
Underground Coal Mines
Zinc Production
Landfills
Wastewater Treatment
Manure Management
Suppliers of Coal
Suppliers of Coal-based Liquid Fuels Suppliers of Petroleum Products
Suppliers of Natural Gas and Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs)
Suppliers of Industrial GHGs
Suppliers of Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Manufacturers of Mobile Sources
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Tagged: Energy, environment, EPA, ghg, global warming
Environmental Google Tech Talks Roundup
March 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Saw this interesting talk on Liquid Fluoride (Molten Salt) Reactors on youtube:
Afterwards I clicked through to the Google Tech Talks channel. There are currently 1040 videos, I didn’t browse them all, but here a few of the interesting ones I found. The Google Tech Talks Energy and Environment Playlist can be found Here.
How to Count all Human Carbon Emissions in the U.S.
The Business Case for Protecting the Climate
Carbon Trust Innovations — addressing market failures in the development of low carbon technologies
Charismatic Megafauna – How photography of big marine and land animals can Improve our World
The Truth About Biofuels in America
Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, Cheap, Nuclear Power…
CREA – Saving Tropical Ecosystems
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Tagged: biofuel, Climate, Energy, environment, nuclear
Invasive Fish Eating All Our Salmon?
March 2, 2009 · Leave a Comment
From March 2009 BioScience via Enn.
Predation by six nonindigenous fish species: catfish, black and white crappie, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, and yellow perch. Hundreds of thousands to millions of juvenile salmonids were being consumed by these species
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Tagged: environment, fish, salmon
Are we over spending on cancer research if most cancer is preventable?
February 27, 2009 · 2 Comments
More than a third of the most common cancers in developed countries could be prevented by healthy eating and exercise, says a report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).
These figures do not include smoking, which alone accounts for about a third of cancers. Source.
So over 2/3 of all cancer is preventable?
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus package) and President Obama’s proposed budget include a lot of money for cancer research. Including at least:
- $10 billion to NIH, including $1.3 billion for the National Cancer Institute
- $1 billion to CDC for prevention and wellness programs, including cancer screening and education.
- From the budget proposal: another $6 billion
Details are hard to find (without actually reading the entire stimulus bill), but I gather from the American Cancer Society that the passed bill eliminated funding increases for prevention measures and tobacco control.
Assuming the World Cancer Research Fund is correct, than aren’t we spending in the wrong place. If, as appears to be the case here, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, than why are we not directing the majority of that money to prevention efforts, rather than cure efforts.
What is the appropriate response to self-induced cancer? Today everyone knows the risk of smoking. If you continue to smoke and tomorrow are diagnosed with cancer what funding should be available to you. Should we, as a society, be spending billions of dollars every year to save you after your protracted suicide effort? Tobacco prevention programs are far more cost effective than lung cancer research. But since you are an unsympathetic individual do we fund neither? And what about healthy diet and exercise education? It is also very cost effective. But instead we are funding research, because research is sexy. Telling you to diet and exercise – not so much.
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Tagged: government, health
Chevron Manipulated Lab Results
February 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment
In a remarkable finding, Beltman discovered that in Ecuador Texaco [now Chevron] used a clean-up standard of 1,000 mg/L of oil that leaches into water from soil in the TCLP test to determine whether it had properly remediated the soil — a threshold level physically impossible to reach because the water solubility of crude oil is typically 10 mg/L or less.
“If nothing were done at a site contaminated with pure crude oil, a sample measured using the TCLP test would still easily pass Texaco’s clean-up standard” Source
Make sure your clean up methods are adequate by creating an impossibly easy standard. Awesome.
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Interesting BPA Facts
February 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Just five companies make BPA in the United States: Bayer, Dow, Hexion Specialty Chemicals, SABIC Innovative Plastics (formerly GE Plastics), and Sunoco. Together, they bring in more than $6 billion a year from the compound. Each of them referred questions about BPA’s safety to their Arlington, Virginia — based trade association, the American Chemistry Council.
Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted — 14 in all — has found no such effects.
I pulled these quotes from a much longer article on BPA in Fast Company.
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Environmental Idealism Taken too Far
February 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Proposed Powerline Route
The Sunrise Powerlink: A proposed power line from the California coast to the solar, wind, and geothermal rich Imperial Valley.
The Route: Would likely be extended to avoid a state park, an Indian reservation and most of a forest, in addition to avoiding harm to any endangered species.
The Opposition: The Sierra Club, Centre for Biological Diversity, other similarly situated environmental groups are “holding out for a guarantee that the line will be used to transmit electricity solely from renewable sources.”
This is environmental idealism at its worst. Pursuit of the perfect preventing the good. We need new transmission lines. Holding out for exclusive access is ridiculous. Particularly in light of the existing renewable energy regulations. Progress cannot be achieved in one go. It requires gradual change. The shift to renewable sources is not going to happen over night. It will take time. Litigating for perfection in a case like this does nothing but harm environmental progress.
To an extent this is a dispute between pragmatism and idealism. Politicians like Mr Schwarzenegger tend to believe that energy projects should be judged on whether they improve on current practice. Activists, by contrast, prefer to measure them against an environmental ideal. “A little bit better than the status quo isn’t good enough,” explains Bill Magavern, the Sierra Club’s California director. He wants power to be generated close to those who will use it, and envisages a rash of solar roofs in San Diego.
Solar powered roofs in San Diego? Pipe dream.
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Tagged: big green, Energy, environment
