Naturally Interesting

Hulu is a web based TV and Movie service. Here is what they say about themselves:

We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection from more than 50 content providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more to deliver premium programming across all genres and formats, television shows, feature films, and clips. Watch full-length episodes of current primetime TV shows such as The Simpsons and The Office the morning after they air, classics like Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Nip/Tuck, and others. Hulu also offers full-length feature films like The Usual Suspects, Ice Age, Three Amigos!, and The Big Lebowski as well as clips from films such as Napoleon Dynamite, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Devil Wears Prada and many more. Hulu is free and ad-supported — available anytime in the U.S.

You can find all sorts of TV shows and movies there and the quality is a lot better than Youtube. It might just make you cancel your cable subscription. I went through and tried to find all the Green shows. There were only a couple full length episodes, the rest were short clips, though still worth watching.

You can find them all here.

Joseph Romm on solar thermal/concentrated solar power (CSP) in Salon. Mr. Romm thinks that CSP is “the technology that will save humanity.” Actually, I’m not sure if he wrote that or if that is just the copy that Salon stuck in. Either way I hate it when such hyperbole is attached to the environmental movement. People can only hear so many Paul Ehrlich-esque The Sky Is Falling statements before they tune out and stop listening.

That point aside the rest of the article is, as usual, excellent. Here are some tidbits:

Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States.

…That means Congress and the president must renew the 30 percent solar energy investment tax credit through 2016. After all, it’s the least they can do. From 2002 to 2007, fossil fuels received almost $14 billion in electricity-related tax subsides, whereas renewables received under $3 billion. From 1948 to today, nuclear energy R&D exceeded $70 billion, whereas R&D for renewables was about $10 billion.

This is a technology that is available now. Why aren’t we pouring money into it?

It appears climate denier Lawrence Solomon (of the National Post) was trying to do some creative obfuscation editing of science historian Noami Oreskes wikipedia entry when he got caught.

From the comments at Mr. Solomon’s site:

Mr. Solomon writes an excellent article - but unfortunately most of it is significantly biased and subject to interpretation.

Wikipedia cannot take Mr. Solomon’s word that Peiser has communicated with him - or that his interpretation of Peiser is correct. That can only be established via what Wikipedia calls reliable sources. So no matter how much Mr. Solomon complains it wouldn’t matter.

Wikipedia has such a reliable source - a communication from Peiser with the Australian ABC. And we have to rely on that.

Now a bit of background here. Naomi Oreskes paper (the one mentioned here) has been published in the rather prestigious scientific journal Nature. While Peisers critique is unpublished and available on his website.

Normally this would mean that Peiser’s critique wouldn’t be mentioned at all on Wikipedia - since there is a hard rule on not allowing self-published sources. But in this case Peiser has been commented on so much, that it merits a mention on Oreskes biographical article.

Mr. Solomons edits were significantly partisan (as is his article above), and these kinds of edits are routinely reverted, especially when done on a biography of a living person - and doubly so - when the only documentation for the claims is an anonymous editors claim that “he got this from Peiser himself”. (Yes - Mr. Solomon didn’t identify himself).

Seen at DeSmogBlog.

The mere mention of resuming commercial whale hunting sends people around the world into conniptions. Why do we oppose hunting whales so vehemently?

For the average person when they think of whales they envision Flipper and Shamu. And killing such a playful and intelligent creature just seems wrong. Whales and other cetaceans are what environmentalists call charismatic megafauna. People like and want to protect cute and cuddly animals like whales, dolphins, tigers, and spotted owls. They could care less about all the insects, bugs, and other creepy crawlies. In practice this is how a lot of environmental protection has come about. The public rallies to the cause of the endangered elephant or dolphin or other cute and cuddly creature, a vast swath of land gets protected, and fortunately enough all the endangered insects, bugs, and creepy crawlies in that area get protected as well.

But at the same time this love of the cute and cuddly animals and loathing of the creepy crawlies prevents us from viewing them dispassionately as resources and utilizing them each to their full potential. In the case of a renewable natural resource such as forests and fish stocks (and whales) it would be better to regulate the market than to abandon the resource to the tragedy of the commons or the black market. Until such time as we view unchecked population growth as the true environmental threat we must consider all potential sources of food as viable.

What is food?

Around the world people eat a wide variety of different foods. If it is edible, you can pretty much guarantee that somebody, somewhere, eats it. Our view on what constitutes food is largely determined by our culture. In America “food” is beef, pork, chicken, lamb, fish, and shellfish. For Hindus the cow is often considered sacred. No Big Macs at McDonalds India. In China it is easier to find frogs, turtles, and scorpions on the the menu than a filet mignon. There are thousands of different species of edible animals available to us, but in most of the West we view only a select few as “food.” Instead we look at Japan, a small, island nation and say: How dare you harvest resources from the sea in what is most likely a sustainable manner. I can just imagine the reaction here were India to condemn the U.S. for eating cows and destroying our environment in the process.

This limiting of what we eat has resulted in massive resource concentration in those few species to the detriment of all others. The industrial production of just a few species uses huge amounts of water, energy, and industrial chemicals while polluting the environment with herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers, and animal waste products. Diversifying our diet would place an economic value on more species, thereby driving protection of their populations and habitat, as well as reducing the need for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

One of the best things you can do for the environment is reduce or eliminate your consumption of meat. Short of that you can choose meat products that are farmed our harvested in an environmentally sustainable manner. And one of those meats should be whale. If you don’t eat meat this doesn’t apply to you - I understand all the arguments for not eating any animal at all.

Whale Intelligence

Many people (who eat meat) seem to try to draw some line based on the comparative cognition of the animal they are eating. Id est it is ok to eat a clam or fish because it is of lesser intelligence or because it feels less pain. But it is not ok to eat a gorilla or dolphin because they are smart and feel pain, and are somehow more like us. The more foreign to us the creature is, the easier it is to eat.

As Dr. Tim Flannery says:

What people fail to realise is that the Cetacea (the group to which whales and dolphins belong) is an extraordinarily diverse group of mammals. It includes relatively large-brained hunters like dolphins and killer whales (which have the demonstrable intelligence of land-based hunters such as dogs) and tiny-brained filter feeders such as the blue whale. These leviathans are aquatic vacuum-cleaners, whose need for intellectual power is slight indeed.

If these animals are closer in intelligence to the sheep than the dog, is it morally wrong to eat them if they can be harvested sustainably? My view is that at present the anti-whaling lobby is frustrating the attempt to develop a sustainable industry based on these creatures, and is therefore frustrating good management of marine resources.”

In short: If you are willing to eat a cow, or sheep, or pig, why not a whale.

A Humane Harvest

The manner in which whales are killed is troubling. Generally they are shot with a harpoon. Sometimes this can lead to a period of suffering before death. In modern slaughterhouses, in theory, the animals are killed quickly and feel relatively little pain. The trade off for this quick death is spending their entire lives in a CAFO. For me, I would rather know that my meal lived free in the ocean followed by a relatively quick death rather than the long-term suffering of a factory-farmed animal.

Many of the nations that oppose whaling on this ground are rather hypocritical. These nations take the position that there is no humane method of killing whales. Yet many of them permit recreational hunting, which allows for just as much, if not more animal suffering. Even worse are those countries that oppose whaling yet permit hunting with dogs. In Washington State there is vicious opposition to the Makah tribe’s wish to pursue a very limited traditional (and humane) whale hunt. Yet these same groups who fly in from around the world to protest the traditional capture of a few whales pay no attention to the state sanctioned dog hunts for cougar, bear, fox, and coyote. This attitude is nothing more than cultural bigotry.

Economics

Some believe there is greater benefit in whales as a tourist attraction than a food and products source. They believe that once the economic benefits of hotels, restaurants, and boat trips are factored in, hunting whales is a net economic loss. This seems a red herring to me, there is no competition between the two industries. Most whale watching takes place in coastal waters, whereas commercial whaling happens out at sea. Any regulated whaling is going to limit the catch to sustainable numbers, that is, such that it won’t have an effect on whale tourism.

Whaling: Good for the Environment

The environmental nightmare that is beef, pork, and poultry production is well documented. In contrast, whale is among the most environmentally friendly meat sources. Like other wild (and especially ocean) food sources, whaling requires no environmentally intensive farming techniques. They grow themselves, we just have to go get them. The environmental costs associated with whaling are entirely contained within the activities of the whaling vessels, there are not the myriad externalities associated with industrial farming.

The High North Alliance, a pro-whaling organization, conducted a study which showed that 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of whale meat represented just 1.9 kilo (4.2 lbs) of greenhouse gases against 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken. Rune Froevik of the Alliance says

“Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat…Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat”

A Sustainable Harvest

History is replete with examples of the spectacular failure of prohibiting all access to a desirable item. Prohibition takes the power and control out of the hands of regulators and hands it over to the free/black market. Prohibition, the War on Drugs, and the IWC ban on whaling have all been spectacular failures.

In 1986 the IWC placed a moratorium on whaling. It worked something like this - everyone who wanted to stopped whaling, the rest more or less continued whaling. Today a number of whale populations are at such levels that they could be profitably and sustainably harvested. This year Japan caught 551 Minke whales. Out of a population estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, and perhaps as many as a million. The IWC has been hijacked by those interested in permanently banning all whaling, they have influenced decision making based on political and emotional considerations rather than scientific ones. The IWC’s inability to adopt a Revised Management Scheme (RMS) and lift the moratorium only hurts the whales. It is time to recognize that whales can be sustainably harvested and adopt best management practices based on scientific data.

The Bottom Line

If you are not a vegan, and consider yourself some sort of environmentalist - you should support sustainable whaling. Stop wasting your time worrying about that whale on the other side of the world and do something about the CAFO in your backyard. Now excuse me while I go throw some Pilot whale on the grill.

“I always thought this was the most beautiful place under heaven.”

But this earthly paradise is disappearing fast. The proliferation of factories, farms, and cities—all products of China’s spectacular economic boomis sucking the Yellow River dry. What water remains is being poisoned. From the canal bank, Shen points to another surreal flash of color: blood-red chemical waste gushing from a drainage pipe, turning the water a garish purple. This canal, which empties into the Yellow River, once teemed with fish and turtles, he says. Now its water is too toxic to use even for irrigation; two of Shen’s goats died within hours of drinking from the canal.

China’s economic boom has, in a ruthless symmetry, fueled an equal and opposite environmental collapse. In its race to become the world’s next superpower, China is not only draining its rivers and aquifers with abandon; it is also polluting what’s left so irreversibly that the World Bank warns of “catastrophic consequences for future generations.”

Read the rest of the story at National Geographic.

The National Institutes of Health, National Toxicology Program has released a report on bisphenol A (BPA, the bad stuff in some plastics).

In its new report, the National Toxicology Program, which reviewed about 500 laboratory animal experiments, concluded that there was “some concern” that fetuses, babies and children were at risk from BPA.

…It “reflects a significant body of science showing that BPA may play a larger role than previously thought in a host of common health problems, including prostate cancer, breast cancer and early puberty,” she said.

…Canada is expected soon to declare BPA a toxic substance, which would be followed by proposals to control its use. California and other states have considered but not adopted bans on BPA in products.

Apparently this guy read a different report:

Steven G. Hentges of the American Chemistry Council’s polycarbonate/BPA group said the findings “provide reassurance that consumers can continue to use products made from bisphenol A.”

The Great Global Warming Swindle came out about a year ago. I’d never seen it until this past weekend.  Interesting video presenting an alternative view. You can read all about the controversy surrounding it at Wikipedia and see the video for yourself here.

At AltEnergyStocks:

As I have consistently argued the people most likely to make money from biofuel are not the processors and distributors (who compete directly with petroleum or other fossil fuel-based products, and so have little pricing power), but the producers of feedstock, which, like oil, is in very limited supply, and so they will have pricing power.

The most productive biofuel source is algae (see this chart). It is up to 10x more productive than other sources and some strains of algae can be up to 40% oil. Read more on ponds v. reactors and a take on Petrosun at AltEnergyStocks.

As Prices Rise Farmers Spurn Conservation Programs

Lieberman-Warner: Bad Idea

Without Clean Electricity, Plug-In Vehicles aren’t so hot

NASA’s Top Climate Scientist Says Big Oil is Hiding a “Planet in Crisis”

GE’s new super efficient water heater

The Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including Arthur Andersen and Enron, has deferred prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years. These companies have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against criminal charges with a deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret. The problem:

companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that, if they are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good. “Some companies may bear the risk” of legally questionable business practices if they believe they can cut a deal to defer their prosecution indefinitely, Mr. Khanna said.

And of course one of those involved is Monsanto. One could expect no less from such an upstanding company.

In 2005, federal authorities concluded that a Monsanto consultant had visited the home of an Indonesian official and, with the approval of a senior company executive, handed over an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. The money was meant as a bribe to win looser environmental regulations for Monsanto’s cotton crops, according to a court document. Monsanto was also caught concealing the bribe with fake invoices.

A few years earlier, in the age of Enron, these kinds of charges would probably have resulted in a criminal indictment. Instead, Monsanto was allowed to pay $1 million and avoid criminal prosecution by entering into a monitoring agreement with the Justice Department.

In the NY Times.