Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics over the last week. This is a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI.
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Drugs and syringes have become such a problem in Starbucks bathrooms that the company is installing needle-disposal boxes in certain locations – Starbucks is installing boxes for safe disposal of syringes in the bathrooms of certain locations, following workers’ reports of discarded needles and sometimes concerning conditions. The coffee giant is exploring remedies after employees expressed fears about being pricked by uncapped needles and experiencing related health risks. Starbucks is testing solutions, including installing sharps-disposal boxes, using heavier-duty trash bags to prevent needle pokes, and removing trash cans from certain bathrooms.”These societal issues affect us all and can sometimes place our partners (employees) in scary situations, which is why we have protocols and resources in place to ensure our partners are out of harm’s way,” Starbucks representative Reggie Borges told Business Insider. As of Wednesday, more than 3,700 people have signed a petition on Coworker.org, calling for Starbucks to place needle-disposal boxes in high-risk bathrooms.
CDC says it’s another severe flu season with up to 7.3 million people sick so far – Flu seasons have been particularly severe in recent years and this one in no different. An estimated 6.2 million to 7.3 million people in the United States have been sick with the flu since October, federal health officials said Friday. At least half of those people have sought medical care for their illness and 69,000 to 84,000 people have been hospitalized during the Oct. 1 to Jan. 5 period, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated. This is the first time the CDC has provided such flu estimates for the 2018-2019 season. The estimates are extrapolated from data from about 27 million people, or about 8.5 percent of the U.S. population, federal health officials said. The CDC wouldn’t provide data on how many people have died from flu-like illness so far this season, adding it will do so once “there is sufficient data to support a more precise estimate for that outcome.” The flu season typically runs from October to as late as May, with activity tending to peak between December and February, according to the CDC. The agency recommends getting vaccinated early, ideally by the end of October, before the flu starts spreading. Thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults were estimated to have been vaccinated last flu season, down 6 percentage points from the previous year, according to the CDC. It estimates that the flu killed more than 80,000 people and caused more than 900,000 hospitalizations last year.
Routine FDA Food Inspections Suspended by Shutdown –Americans only just survived the great romaine lettuce scare of 2018, and now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has postponed routine domestic food safety inspections due to the partial federalgovernment shutdown, the agency’s commissioner said on Wednesday.FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb tweeted that the agency usually conducts about 160 domestic inspections on manufacturing and food processing plants each week. About a third of that inventory are foods considered at high risk for causing foodborne illnesses, such as seafood, dairy products, fruits and vegetables. The ongoing government impasse, however, has postponed much of these inspections. “It’s not business as usual, and we are not doing all the things we would do under normal circumstances. There are important things we are not doing,” Gottlieb told NBC News. The FDA oversees the manufacturing and distribution of the vast majority of the nation’s food, pharmaceuticals and other consumer products.About 41 percent the agency’s 17,000 employees are currently furloughed due to the shutdown, according to NBC News.Gottlieb told The New York Times he wants to bring back 150 inspectors by next week to restore food safety surveillance, especially at high-risk domestic facilities, but he was not sure how to do it. “These are people who are now furloughed and can collect unemployment insurance or take a second job,” he explained to the newspaper. “If we pull them in and tell them they have to work, they can’t collect. I have to make sure I’m not imposing an undue hardship.”
There’s a Toxic Weedkiller on the Menu in K-12 Schools Across the U.S. – Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in the U.S. Its use has skyrocketed during the last 20 years because of the popularity of genetically-modified crops that are tolerant of this weedkiller. Health concerns about glyphosate have also skyrocketed since 2015, when the World Health Organization evaluated its ability to cause cancer. The above graph was created by the Center for Environmental Health using data from the study “Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally” by Charles M. Benbrook. Glyphosate’s evaluation as a probable carcinogen is scary and was recently validated by a jury that awarded a school groundskeeper a multimillion-dollar judgment against Monsanto/Bayer because he had developedcancer after years of Roundup use. The decision has paved the way for thousands of other cancer patients and families to seek justice and compensation in court.Glyphosate is now in most of us: Recent biomonitoring studies have detected it in the urine samples of 70 to93 percent of the U.S. population.Even scarier, recent research has demonstrated that glyphosate can disrupt our body’s hormones, those vital molecules that manage growth, development, behavior, sex and more.Exposing children, with their developing bodies, to a chemical that can cause cancer and hormone dysfunction is wrong. It’s especially wrong for children simply eating breakfast at school, who often are from low-income families. This fact has spurred the nonprofit Center for Environmental Health (CEH), where I serve as the senior scientist, to measure glyphosate contamination in breakfast cereals and bars served at schools. Although our study was small, the results were striking. We found significant contamination in 70 percent of the products we tested, including big name brands like Quaker, whose glyphosate contamination was more than six times the safety threshold developed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Cheerios, whose glyphosate contamination was more than five times the EWG safety threshold.Our findings corroborate a growing list of recent studies demonstrating the presence of glyphosate in children’s foods, including preliminary findings by CEH in August, as well as those by the EWG, Moms Across America, Food Democracy Now and the Food and Drug Administration.
Russia’s GMO debate looks a lot like America’s – with more geopolitics – When faced with something new, Russian lawmakers have generally found it easier to ban it than to debate it, even if such prohibitions often prove dysfunctional in the long run. A case in point: Russia’s legislation banning any production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which was nominally implemented in order to keep Russia’s food supply “pure.” The passage two years ago of the law, which prohibits “cultivation of genetically engineered plants and breeding of genetically engineered animals on the territory of the Russian Federation,” had a practical side, mainly to protect Russia’s slowly reviving agricultural sector from becoming dependent on seeds produced by big US biotechnology firms like Monsanto. And in follow-up legislation in late 2018, Russia’s parliament ordered detailed labeling for any products containing GMOs – as many foreign imports still do – in the name of consumer transparency. The law has strong public support, even if opposition to it is rife in Russia’s scientific community. But, as in other cases where Russia has taken a vocal, single-minded official stand, the anti-GMO measures have been framed as a rejection of “degenerate” Western practices and an upholding of Russian values. Inevitably, they have become a bone of East-West ideological contention, with some in the US accusing Russia of anti-GMO “disinformation” meant to undermine confidence in American farming, which is the world’s leading producer of genetically engineered crops. “There have been a lot of pseudo-documentary films shown on Russian TV that give the idea GMOs are bad, that they cause disease or something like that,” says Alexander Panchin, a computational biologist at the official Institute of Information Transmission Problems, which studies the way information is passed – or fails to pass – through systems. “Anti-GMO advocates do get a lot of media attention in Russia…. Maybe part of the idea is that GMOs come from the West, and they are our enemies.”
U.S. Taxpayers on the Hook for Insuring Farmers Against Growing Climate Risks — Like every Midwestern farmer, Jerry Peckumn relies on a few things going right every season. Rain, but no deluge. Sunshine, but no heat wave. A timely cycling of the seasons.Peckumn is a progressive, conservation-minded farmer who’s deeply concerned about the impact of the changing climate on his farm. He knows nature isn’t controllable and the weather is getting more erratic. So, like hundreds of thousands of American farmers, he relies on federal crop insurance.”I’d quit farming if I didn’t have crop insurance,” Peckumn said, sitting at his kitchen table in central Iowa this summer, surrounded by corn and soybeans in every direction. As climate change stokes more extreme weather, American farms will depend on insurance even more. And as they do, the insurance system will exacerbate the risks of global warming, imposing lasting consequences on the nation’s agricultural production, the global food supply and the climate itself. “The current U.S. crop insurance program encourages farmers to adopt production practices that will not be sustainable in the face of climate change, and in the short term contribute to greenhouse gas emissions,” said Vincent Smith, an agricultural economist at Montana State University who has written extensively about the crop insurance program. “Crop insurance encourages people to adopt production practices that are riskier, and by definition, reduce resiliency.”
Undercover Investigations Will Be Legal Again at Iowa Animal Farms – On Thursday the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa struck down the Iowa Ag-Gag law, holding that the ban on undercover investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses violates the First Amendment. In 2017, a coalition of animal, environmental and community advocacy groups, including Center for Food Safety, challenged the law’s constitutionality. Federal courts have similarly struck down Ag-Gag laws in Idaho and Utah as unconstitutional.Iowa’s Ag-Gag law criminalizes undercover investigations at a broad range of animal facilities including factory farms, puppy mills and slaughterhouses; preventing advocates from exposing animal cruelty, environmental harm, workers’ rights infractions and food safety violations. The law achieved its goal of suppressing undercover investigations – no investigations have taken place since the law’s passage in 2012.”Ag-Gag laws unconstitutionally allow Industrial Ag to hide in the darkness, and today’s decision is another important pulling back of that curtain,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety. “This decision is a victory for all those who support humane treatment of farm animals and safe food.” For more than a century, the public has relied on undercover investigations to expose illegal and cruel practices on factory farms and slaughterhouses. No federal laws govern the conditions in which farmed animals are raised, and laws addressing slaughter and transport are laxly enforced. Undercover investigations are the primary avenue through which the public receives information about animal agriculture operations.
Guatemalan farms shift to palm oil, fueling family migration (Reuters) – In the poor, hot region of Guatemala that was home to a seven-year-old migrant girl before she died in U.S. border custody last month, palm oil cultivation is taking over from subsistence farming, adding to pressure on people to leave. Many villagers around the municipality of Raxruha have sold land to palm oil producers, residents and local officials say, helping to make Guatemala one of the world’s biggest exporters of the versatile product in the space of just a few years. Supporters of the industry say it has created jobs and investment in an area where poverty and violence have long been the main drivers of migration. But critics say farmers have given up land that long fed them, with many then entering a state of co-dependency with palm oil companies that have become major employers, but do not pay well enough to stop people migrating. Cesar Castro, Raxruha’s mayor, said money raised from land sales had been used to pay people smugglers, a major factor in a surge in families leaving Guatemala. “These people get the money, and they go to the United States, and the vast majority come back to find more poverty and end up employed as workers on their own land,” Castro said. More than 50,000 Guatemalans were apprehended in family groups at the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2018 fiscal year, more than double the year before, U.S. government data shows. Most get deported. Jakelin Caal, who died in U.S. custody after succumbing to a fever, left Raxruha with her father because he was struggling to earn enough to support his family as a corn farmer, relatives said. Smugglers tell families that having children with them can make it easier to enter the United States. While her father had not sold his land, others in the family have worked on palm plantations that surround their village. Dorrian said he earned 60 quetzales ($7.80) a day working from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. last year for local producer Industria Chiquibul, which has been listed as a supplier by international commodities purchasers including ADM and Cargill .
Fortnite Creator Buying Thousands of Acres of Forest to Stop It From Being Cut Down – Creator of the online video game Fortnite, Tim Sweeney, is best known for founding the video and 3-D software company Epic Games in the 1990’s. In addition to these popular gaming titles, the billionaire philanthropist has made good on his promise to protect undeveloped and bio-diverse land in the picturesque western Carolina mountains for future generations.Since 2008, Sweeney has spent millions on conservation projects in his home state of North Carolina to protect and preserve its forest land. He has purchased nearly 40,000 acres over the last decade, making him one of the largest private land owners in the state. Sweeney has also donated money to several conservation parcel projects, including a 1,500 acre expansion to Mount Mitchell State Park.In November 2016, Sweeney donated $15 million for a conservation easement to protect 7,000 acres of the The Box Creek Wilderness. The forest, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, had been targeted by a company that wanted to carve up the land and run power lines through it. By purchasing the land, Sweeney helped protect hundreds of endangered plant and animal species.According to Biologist Kevin Cadlwell, “ecologists documented more than 130 rare and watch-list plant and wildlife species, and several new-toâ€science wildlife and plant species, including three moths and a new spiderwort species.”
A Mysterious Leaf Disease Is Killing Beech Trees – and It’s Spreading – lf you’ve seen lovers’ initials carved in a tree, it’s probably a beech. The iconic species – known for its smooth, delicate bark – is not just a favorite canvas for bark carvers, they provide shelter and food for a large range of wildlife, including birds, squirrels and bears. But scientists are raising flags on a mysterious, deadly and rapidly spreading beech leaf disease that’s been described as “an emerging forest epidemic.”The disease (Fagus grandifolia) was first discovered in 2012 on beech trees in northeast Ohio and has since spread to forests in 10 counties in Ohio, eight counties in Pennsylvania and five counties in Ontario, Canada, according to a study published last month in the journal Forest Pathology. Early symptoms of the disease are characterized by dark green banding on the leaves between the veins. Later symptoms are characterized by solidly darkened leaves that are shrunken and crinkled. The symptoms then seem to progress through the buds, causing them to fall off and produce no new leaves. The affected tree eventually dies. As the North American beech is native to the eastern United States, the researchers “fear this disease has the potential to drastically alter the Eastern deciduous forests of the United States on its own and through potential compounding disease effects,” the study states. The study was authored by researchers and naturalists from Ohio State University and metroparks in northeastern Ohio.
Monarch Butterfly Numbers Plummet 86 Percent In California – The number of monarch butterflies turning up at California’s overwintering sites has dropped by about 86 percent compared with only a year ago, according to the Xerces Society, which organizes a yearly count of the iconic creatures.That’s bad news for a species whose numbers have already declined an estimated 97 percent since the 1980s.Each year, monarchs in the western United States migrate from inland areas to California’s coastline to spend the winter, usually between September and February. “It’s been the worst year we’ve ever seen,” “We already know we’re dealing with a really small population, and now we have a really bad year and all of a sudden, we’re kind of in crisis mode where we have very, very few butterflies left.” Results from the count so far show that the number of monarchs at 97 California overwintering sites has dropped from around 148,000 in 2017 to just over 20,400 this year. Counts for dozens of other sites are still being tabulated, but the outlook is troubling, Pelton said. Experts believe the decline is spurred by a confluence of unfortunate factors, including late rainy-season storms across California last March, the effects of the state’s yearslong drought and the seemingly relentless onslaught of wildfires that have burned acres upon acres of habitat and at times choked the air with toxic smoke. The Thomas Fire last year burned almost 300,000 acres, including areas important for monarch breeding and migration, Pelton said. More recently, the Woolsey Fire damaged at least four monarch butterfly overwintering sites in the Malibu area, according to Lara Drizd, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura.
George, reclusive Hawaiian snail and last of his kind, dies at 14 – George, the last known Achatinella apexfulva, a Hawaiian land snail, died on New Year’s Day. Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources George, the last of his species of Hawaiian land snail, died on New Year’s Day. He was approximately 14 years old. His death was confirmed by Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources. George was born as part of a last-ditch effort to save his species. Back in 1997, the last 10 known Achatinella apexfulva were brought into a University of Hawaii lab to try to increase their numbers. Some offspring resulted, but all of them died except for George. As the last remaining A. apexfulva, George lived out his days alone in a cage at DLNR’s snail lab in Kailua, Oahu, alongside 30 other species close to extinction. Those who knew George say he kept to himself. “For a snail he was a little bit of a hermit,” David Sischo, a wildlife biologist with the Hawaii Invertebrate Program, tells NPR. “I very rarely saw him outside of his shell.” Sischo said George likely died of old age, as 14 is “up there in snail years.” While those who knew George use male pronouns to talk about him, George was a hermaphrodite. With both male and female parts, some snails can reproduce without a partner. But seemingly not A. apexfulva: George leaves no survivors.
This GIF shows how far the 100th Meridian has shifted since 1980 – Climate change works in mysterious ways; it isn’t limited to wildfires and melting ice. Today’s climate exhibit: The 100th Meridian – the famous dividing line that separates America’s wet East from the dry West – has migrated 140 miles east since 1980.The boundary passes through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas – America’s breadbasket. Once you cross the divide, the rain-soaked grasses of the East turn into dusty plains, with the occasional cactus dotting the landscape.“Passing from east to west across this belt a wonderful transformation is observed,” remarked John Wesley Powell, famous explorer of the West, in 1890. The conservationist was the first to mark the transition line, which became known as “100th Meridian” because it closely follows the 100th meridian of longitude (a vertical line that stretches from the North to South Poles). But we may have to change the line’s name someday. The shift is the result of rising temperatures drying out parts of the northern plains and less rain falling further south, YaleEnvironment360 reports. This could be due to natural variability – changes caused by nonhuman forces – but the migration aligns with what researchers tell us to expect from global warming.
Wettest-Year Records for 2018, Take Two – Weather Underground –In a post on December 29, we noted a number of U.S. cities that had already secured their wettest year on record. Now that 2018 is a wrap, it’s time to circle back and see how the final totals turned out. Here are some of the larger towns and cities that notched records for 2018, as tallied by weather.com based on data from NOAA and the Southeastern Regional Climate Center. All of these locations have at least a 60-year period of record, and some of the records broken were truly long-standing, including Washington, D.C. (129 years) and Wilmington, North Carolina (141 years). Many of the records were smashed by impressive margins of 5″ or more. See the weather.com article for additional background on this very wet year. (see embedded list of cities) If we expand the roster of observing sites to include those with shorter periods of record, then more than 100 U.S. locations had their wettest year on record, according to The Weather Channel. You can zoom in on various U.S. regions to find those cities by using the online Perspectives tool, created by the Southeast Regional Climate Center. By clicking on each site, you can view the local records and periods of record. For the period January through November, every state east of the Rockies was wetter than average, and eight states had their wettest Jan.-to-Nov. period on record. We can expect at least some of these states to end up with records for the year as a whole when NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information publishes the final data for 2018. Note that the NOAA/NCEI website is offline indefinitely because of the government shutdown.
Heatwave wilts Australia’s southeast, fanning fire, health concerns – (Reuters) – A heatwave sweeping Australia engulfed the densely-populated southeast on Friday, boosting temperature records, spurring fire bans and arousing concern about the health of contestants in this month’s tennis Open. A week after Australia’s hottest town, in its northwest, recorded its hottest day, sweltering temperatures arrived on the other side of the continent, pushing the southeastern city of Melbourne to a near-record 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 F). Regions to the north were expected to be hotter and windy, prompting a fireban across the second most populous state of Victoria. Nine years earlier, Australia’s deadliest bushfires killed 180 people near cities forecast to experience tenmperatures of 46 C (115 F) on Friday. “The conditions are there that if a fire was to start, it could be quite difficult to contain,” said Tom Delamotte, a Bureau of Meteorology forecaster. Forecasters expected temperatures to cool later but the heat was likely to return soon after, Delamotte added, days ahead of the Jan. 14 start of the Australian Open in Melbourne. Tennis Australia, the sport’s governing body, says it has upgraded temperature testing at the Melbourne Park sports centre and introduced a 10-minute break for the men’s singles. It has also adopted a five-step “heat stress scale” that lets referees suspend play under extreme conditions. In Hobart, capital of the nearby island state of Tasmania, which is usually the country’s coolest, the mercury rose as high as 40 C (104 F), two degrees from a January record. Pictures on social media showed a striking dark-orange sky over Hobart as a bushfire swept the wilderness nearby. Campers were evacuated from the affected area, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. said, though no injuries were reported. The city council of Shepparton, north of Melbourne, sent life guards to ask holidaymakers to avoid the direct sun at the city pool during January record temperatures of 45 C (113 F).
As Lahore chokes on winter smog, Pakistan moves to cut air pollution – Pakistan’s second-largest city is choking on smog, driven in part by smoke from bricks kiln and steel mills, burning of rice stubble and garbage, growing numbers of vehicles on the road and large-scale losses of trees as the expanding city makes way for new roads and buildings, residents say. Many in the city of 11 million complain of headaches and burning eyes and throats as air pollution levels this winter have on some days hit five times the legal limit, according to a global air quality index that many in Lahore check via the AirVisual phone app. “I don’t send my daughter to school,” environmental lawyer Rafay Alam admits. “I am not going to risk permanent damage to her lungs.” Alam thinks it’s time for the government to declare a public health emergency on the worst days, when the air is full of dust and pollutants that can cause health issues including asthma, lung damage, bronchial infections and heart problems. “The air pollution in Lahore is bad throughout the year, but in the winter there is temperature inversion where a layer of warm air is prevented from rising and it traps all the pollutants below it, which renders them visible,” he said. Lahore, once known as the Garden City but now choked with cars, regularly figures on air quality indexes as as one of the most polluted cities in the world – and many of the pollutants are also drivers of climate change.
The Storm Moved on, But North Carolina’s Hog Waste Didn’t — It’s been nearly four months since Hurricane Florence battered the North Carolina coast, dumping 9 trillion gallons of water on the state in the span of four days. In Duplin County, home to the nation’s largest concentration of industrial hog operations, the storm’s deluge laid bare problems that persist in good weather and in bad. Since 1999, at least four hurricanes and tropical storms have brought enough precipitation to North Carolina to qualify as “100-year” storms. There is barely time to rebuild and recover before the next storm hits. The flooding caused by these hurricanes exacerbates problems caused by the failure of industrial hog operations, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), to adequately store or maintain the massive amounts of waste produced by the 2.2 million hogs in Duplin County alone. Each year, CAFOs in Duplin County produce twice as much urine and feces as the entire New York City metro area. Much of that waste is stored in thousands of hog “lagoons” – open-air pits clustered in the area hardest hit by Hurricane Florence. When it rains too much, these poop-filled pits – which carry E. coli, salmonella, cryptosporidium, and other harmful bacteria – overflow into surrounding rivers and streams, or sustain catastrophic structural damage. As a result of Hurricane Florence, 49 lagoons were reported to be damaged structurally, actively discharging material, or inundated with surface water, while another 60 nearly flooded, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. When all this pig poop is unleashed on the surrounding environment, local residents, who are disproportionately African American, Latino or Native American, live with the consequences – which begin with contaminated drinking water. A recent article in the News & Observer notes that several hundred samples of private well water analyzed by the state Laboratory of Public Health showed a marked increase in E. coli after Hurricane Florence. In fact, 14.9 percent of the wells tested positive for E. coli and fecal coliform bacteria – as compared to 2 percent that tested positive in the months before the hurricane hit. Out of all 50 states, North Carolina ranks second in number of people who rely on private wells for drinking water.
Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs Order to Fight Algae, Red Tide – . (AP) – Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began following up on a campaign promise to make the environment a priority by signing an order Thursday seeking to tackle Florida’s problems with blue-green algae in its rivers and red tide off its coast. DeSantis signed the order in Bonita Springs in southwest Florida, one of the areas where slimy algae have coated waterways because of pollutants flowing downstream from Lake Okeechobee. DeSantis said he will seek $2.5 billion over the next four years for Everglades restoration and water resources. The order not only touches on algae problems, but rising sea levels and the ongoing battle with Georgia over water diverted for Atlanta’s use instead of flowing downstream to Apalachicola Bay. The reduction of fresh water entering the bay has hurt the region’s oyster industry. He didn’t say where the money would come from, and his office didn’t immediately respond when asked about the funding. Late in the day, DeSantis demanded the resignations of all nine members of the South Florida Water Management District, which oversees the Everglades area. The board in November extended a lease with sugar farmers for land needed for a reservoir that is key to water purification efforts, angering DeSantis. While critics often said DeSantis’ predecessor, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, ignored science and rising sea levels, DeSantis addressed it on his second full day in office. He is creating an Office of Resiliency tasked with protecting coastal communities and wildlife from sea level rise.
A fatberg longer than the Leaning Tower of Pisa is clogging another UK sewer – Imagine holding a massive, squishy beach ball, except instead of colorful plastic, the ball is made of used condoms, wet wipes, crude oil, and congealed cooking fat from people’s morning bacon. That’s a fatberg, and it’s what sewer workers in London encounter with regularity.In 2017, a 150-ton, 820-foot-long fatberg was discovered in the sewers beneath east London. A piece of that record-breaking fatberg was put on display in the Museum of London, where it then started growing toxic mold pustules and even hatched flies. The Thames Water Authority told the AFP in 2014 that it saw nearly 80,000 fatberg clogs annually, which cost $1.6 million per month to get rid of. Almost 7,000 water authority customers experienced flooding as a result of these blockages. Now, a 210-foot-long fatberg has been found blocking a sewer in Sidmouth, England, a small coastal town. The blockage is longer than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, stretching more than six buses would if lined up end to end.A team from South West Water, the company that provides drinking water and wastewater management throughout Devon, England, is now figuring out how to remove the blockage. Andrew Roantree, a worker with South West Water, told the Associated Press that it will take the crew “around eight weeks to dissect this monster in exceptionally challenging working conditions.” The removal is scheduled to start February 4, but could be delayed due to heavy rain, according to a statement from South West Water. The statement also encouraged consumers to “stop the block by only flushing the 3Ps – pee, paper, and poo – and by not pouring fat, oil, and grease (FOG) down the drain.” South West Water noted that the fatberg “has been discovered in good time,” so didn’t impact the quality of local tap water.
‘Appalling’ toilets and rule-breaking as US shutdown hits national parks – Human waste by the side of a busy road in Yosemite. Overflowing toilets in the Grand Canyon. The Rocky Mountains inaccessible because of unplowed roads. And in all these places, ordinary people stepping in to try to save some of America’s most revered landmarks from being overrun. As the impasse over funding for Donald Trump’s border wall pushes the government shutdown into its third week, US national parks are bearing the brunt of the financial crunch. The vast majority of park service staff are furloughed during one of of the busiest times of the year, particularly in the western US. Campers and hikers who might have been pleased to skip the entry fees into unstaffed parks have been welcomed by shuttered visitor centers, locked bathrooms, and garbage cans brimming over. Many have lost the reservations they had booked months or even years in advance. At least three people have died in the parks since the shutdown began, the Washington Post reported. Two people fell, one at the Horseshoe Bend overlook in Arizona and the second in Yosemite; another was hit by a falling tree in Great Smoky Mountains national park. It is unclear if the deaths are related to the shutdown, but experts said the staffing shortage made visits potentially more dangerous. A park service spokesman told the publication that an average of six people die each week in the parks.
As Shutdown Drags on, National Parks Will Use Entrance Fees to Take Out Trash – As the government shutdown continues into a third week, the Interior Department has made the controversial and unprecedented decision to use visitor fees collected at national parks to help deal with the maintenance and safety issues that have emerged as iconic public lands remained open but understaffed when the government failed to pass a budget in December, The Washington Post reported.”We are taking this extraordinary step to ensure that parks are protected, and that visitors can continue to access parks with limited basic services,” National Park Service (NPS) Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith wrote in the NPS statement announcing the plan Sunday.The unusual decision, formalized by a memorandum signed by acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt Saturday, authorizes park managers to use entrance fees to pay staff to clean restrooms, remove trash, patrol parks and reopen areas closed to tourists during the shutdown, The Washington Post reported. The Trump administration had broken with past precedent by deciding to keep the parks open to the public while a majority of their staff has been furloughed. When shutdowns took place during the Clinton and Obama administrations, the parks had closed their gates. The decision to keep them open has put the safety of wildlife and visitors at risk as trash and waste piles up and unsupervised guests endanger protected habitats.
Joshua Tree will temporarily close to address shutdown damage – California’s Joshua Tree National Park will completely shutter Thursday so that officials can address damage wrought during the ongoing government shutdown. The 790,636-acre park between Palm Springs and Joshua Tree in southern California has felt the effects of the government shutdown that started Dec. 22, which left the park unattended because workers could not work. The park is experiencing overflowing trash cans, clogged toilets, and destruction of habitat. While the shutdown furloughed park rangers and suspended basic amenities such as trash collection and road clearing, the Trump administration opted to leave gates open so that the public could continue to visit. The National Park Service (NPS) announced in a press release Tuesday that the park will temporarily close beginning Thursday in order to “to allow park staff to address sanitation, safety, and resource protection issues in the park that have arisen during the lapse in appropriations.” Officials say the park will be reopened “in the coming days.” Government employees will pay for the maintenance needs by pulling from funds collected through park entrance fees. While maintenance workers will be paid through those coffers, other essential NPS staff–such as law enforcement officers–will still not be paid, due to the shutdown.
Joshua Tree national park announces closure after trees destroyed amid shutdown -For 17 days, a host of volunteers and a skeleton staff kept the trash cans and toilets from overflowing at Joshua Tree national park.But on Tuesday, 18 days after the federal government shutdown furloughed the vast majority of national park staff, officials announced that vandalism of the park’s distinctive namesake plants and other maintenance and sanitation problems will require closure starting Thursday. “While the vast majority of those who visit Joshua Tree do so in a responsible manner, there have been incidents of new roads being created by motorists and the destruction of Joshua trees in recent days that have precipitated the closure,” spokesman George Land said in a news release.Land told the Los Angeles Times that, with only eight rangers currently overseeing the nearly 800,000 acre park, the gates would likely remain closed until the shutdown ends. But a different spokesman for the National Parks Service, Mike Litterst, subsequently told the Times that the park may not close after all if staff are able to complete cleanup work before Thursday. National Park Service officials did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.
Off-Roading, Chopped Joshua Trees, Overflowing Toilets: Our National Parks During a Shutdown — Ever wanted to cut down an iconic Joshua tree in order to create space for some off-roading? No? Well, we thank you. But during the government shutdown, some fine folks did just that. National parks are filling with garbage, and not just the kind that comes in trash bags. Since the government shut down 20 days ago, Joshua Tree, which is about the size of Delaware and located two hours east of Los Angeles, has been forced to reduce its number of rangers from 100 to only eight. The lack of staff is making it difficult to keep up with the mayhem that is illegal off-roading and road creation, damage of federal property, overflowing garbage and toilets, out-of-bounds camping, and the chopping down of literal Joshua trees. During the shutdown, with Joshua Tree National Park open but no staff on duty, visitors cut down Joshua trees so they could drive into sensitive areas where vehicles are banned.“We had some pretty extensive four-wheel driving.” https://t.co/EbSB4bF8hKpic.twitter.com/8kVFClVqxZ – John Upton (@johnupton) January 10, 2019And it isn’t just Joshua Tree bearing the brute force of the barbaric human. Reports have been surfacing of human waste and trash pile-up in a number of national parks, from Yosemite to Death Valley.“I think there are a number of things that are not very obvious to the general public, like the trash and toilets [are], that are pretty consequential when you have a shutdown,” National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis told the the National Parks Traveler.While the sight of overflowing waste and cut Joshua trees is shocking (and quite frankly repulsive), there is also major damage happening out-of-sight. The longest-running research initiative in the Shenandoah National park – 200,000 acres in the mountains of Virginia – has come to a grinding halt during the government shutdown. The study examines the impact of acid rain in the mid-Atlantic forests, and the research has been used to understand the effects of air pollution on natural systems. No big deal, unless you like breathing clean air.
Joshua Tree National Park Will Stay Open After All – Joshua Tree National Park will not shut its gates after all as it works to recover from the effects of the ongoing government shutdown, the park announced Wednesday. “By immediately utilizing revenue generated by recreation fees, National Park Service officials have been able to avert a temporary closure of Joshua Tree National Park that had been previously scheduled for January 10,” the park said in a statement.The park had originally said it would close temporarily in order to repair damage done to the unique desert ecosystem by unsupervised visitors who had created new roads and destroyed the protected Joshua trees. Instead, the park remained open and even restored access to campgrounds that had been closed early in the month when toilets reached capacity.The park was able to avoid closing because of a controversial Interior Department decision to allow parks to use visitor fees to address the maintenance and safety issues that have arisen as the parks remained open to the public while a majority of their staff has been furloughed. “National Park Service officials have determined that by using Federal Land and Recreation Enhancement funds to immediately bring back park maintenance crews to address sanitation issues, the park will be able to maintain some visitor services, including reopening the campgrounds. The park will also bring on additional staff to ensure the protection of park resources and mitigate some of the damage that has occurred during the lapse of appropriations,” Joshua Tree said.
Three dead in national park system accidents as shutdown wears on – Three days after most of the federal workforce was furloughed on Dec. 21, a 14-year-old girl fell 700 feet to her death at the Horseshoe Bend Overlook, part of the Glen Canyon Recreation Area in Arizona. The following day, Christmas, a man died at Yosemite National Park in California after suffering a head injury in a fall. On Dec. 27, a woman was killed by a falling tree at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the borders of North Carolina and Tennessee. The deaths follow a decision by Trump administration officials to leave the scenic – but sometimes deadly – parks open even as the Interior Department has halted most of its operations. During previous extended shutdowns, the National Park Service barred public access to many of its sites across the nation to substantially decrease the risk of park damage and visitor injury. National Park Service spokesman Jeremy Barnum said in an interview that a total of seven people have died in national parks since the shutdown began. Officials believe that four of the deaths were suicides, he added. An average of six people die each week in the park system, he said, a figure that includes accidents like drownings, falls, and motor vehicle crashes, natural causes such as heart attacks and suicides. Drowning, automobile accidents, falls and suicides are among the top causes of death at national parks. In 1995 and 2013, respectively, the Clinton and Obama administrations made the decision to close the parks altogether. Officials concluded that keeping the parks open would jeopardize public safety and the parks’ integrity, but the closures also became a political cudgel for Democrats because they exemplified one of the most popular aspects of federal operations that had ground to a halt.
Oregon begins killing sea lions after relocation fails (AP) – Oregon wildlife officials have started killing California sea lions that threaten a fragile and unique type of trout in the Willamette River, a body of water that’s miles inland from the coastal areas where the massive carnivorous aquatic mammals usually congregate to feed. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained a federal permit in November to kill up to 93 California sea lions annually below Willamette Falls south of Portland, Oregon, to protect the winter run of the fish that begin life as rainbow trout but become steelhead when they travel to the ocean. The adult male sea lions, which weigh nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) each, have learned that they can loiter under the falls and snack on the vulnerable steelhead as the fish power their way upriver to the streams where they hatched. The trout travel to sea from inland rivers, grow to adulthood as steelhead in the Pacific Ocean and then return to their natal river to spawn. They can grow to 55 pounds and live up to 11 years. The sea lions breed each summer off Southern California and northern Mexico, then the males cruise up the Pacific Coast to forage. Hunted for their thick fur, the mammals’ numbers dropped dramatically but have rebounded from 30,000 in the late 1960s to about 300,000 today because of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. With their numbers growing, the dog-faced sea lions are venturing ever farther inland up the Columbia River and its tributaries in Oregon and Washington – and their appetite is having disastrous consequences, scientists have said. Last winter, a record-low 512 wild winter steelhead completed the journey past the Willamette Falls, according to state counts. Less than 30 years ago, that number was more than 15,000. The sea lions are eating so many winter steelhead at Willamette Falls that certain runs are at a high risk of going extinct, according to a 2017 study by wildlife biologists. Wildlife officials moved about a dozen sea lions to the coast near the small city of Newport last year, but the animals ended up swimming back to the falls within days. So the state petitioned federal officials for permission to start killing the animals, which are listed as a federally endangered species.
EcoWatch Exclusive: Ocean Conservation Expert Carl Safina on the Tuna That Sold for $3 Million – Bluefin tuna made the news this week when a 612-pound specimen of the fascinating but vulnerable fish sold for a record $3.1 million at a New Year’s auction at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market Saturday. The purchaser was Japanese sushi chain owner and self-proclaimed “Tuna King” Kiyoshi Kimura. But what do auctions like this mean for a fish whose Pacific population has declined by 96 percent over the last 400 years, as Al-Jazeera English reported in the clip shown below?EcoWatch spoke with renowned conservationist and writer Carl Safina to find out.”The prices accorded these fish in Japan have long been insane,” Safina told EcoWatch in an email. “The fish become an ego contest for wealthy restaurateurs one-upping each other to display their wealth. The higher the price, the more they devalue the actual fish as the magnificent wild creature that it is.”Safina explained what made bluefin tuna so incredible.”Bluefin tunas, largest and most wide-ranging of all tunas, are several species of warm-blooded, ocean-crossing giants that can travel at highway speeds and can weigh almost a ton,” he wrote.However, the fish are in serious trouble throughout the world’s oceans. In addition to their depletion in the North Pacific, they have been apparently wiped out in the South Atlantic due to overfishing. In the North Atlantic, they are at around 18 percent of their 1950 numbers, according to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna.But the valuable bluefin are one of the world’s most exploited fish, and their desirability has consequences. When management practices led to a resurgence in their Atlantic population, catch quotas were raised by 50 percent for 2017 to 2020, an article published in ScienceAdvances reported. “They are completely awesome creatures,” Safina told EcoWatch. “If it was up to me, they would never be fished commercially or sold and they would be allowed to return to their former abundance and their role in nature.”
WATCH: Poachers Ambush Sea Shepherd Vessel Protecting Nearly Extinct Vaquita –The environmental organization Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says its crew was attacked Wednesday by roughly 35 fishing boats inside a vaquita refuge in Mexico’s Gulf of California.Sea Shepherd released a video showing fishermen shouting, hurling objects and trying to foul the propellors of the M/V Farley Mowat, a Sea Shepherd vessel used in campaigns against illegal fisheries activities.SEA SHEPHERD SHIP ATTACKED INSIDE VAQUITA REFUGE – YouTube The vaquita is the world’s most endangered marine mammal, with only about a dozen left in their habitat in the Sea of Cortez, according to experts. The porpoises are not directly hunted but get entangled and drown in illegal gillnets set for capturing totoaba, a large and critically endangered fish that’s prized for its swim bladder as a Chinese delicacy.The fishermen were participating in “obvious illegal poaching” of totoaba, according to a Sea Shepherd press release sent to EcoWatch. The video shows some of the skiffs carrying gillnets, even though they are banned within the vaquita reserve.Sea Shepherd said:The poachers attacked by hurling leadweights, anchors, trash, dead fish and even Tabasco sauce at the vessel and its wheelhouse windows in addition to threatening ship’s crew with Molotov cocktails, spraying gasoline at the ship and pouring gas in the sea around the vessel.The video also shows the crew on the Farley Mowat using a hose to repel some of the boats.Sea Shepherd said that while its vessel was temporarily immobilized after the propeller fouling, five fishermen boarded the ship and looted multiple objects from the deck.”During the illegal boarding, the Sea Shepherd crew was able to keep the poachers from entering into the ship, and used an emergency firehose to repel the boarders, while waiting for naval forces to arrive,” the press release said. “At this time a Mexican Naval Helicopter made several passes above the scene and the skiffs began to disperse.”The vessel’s captain was eventually able restart the engines and headed to the port of San Felipe where the ship was met by the regional Navy Commander and reinforcements, according to Sea Shepherd. Sea Shepherd conducts maritime patrols inside the vaquita refuge and had recovered three illegal gillnets in the morning before the attack. The group’s operations are conducted with the knowledge and cooperation of the Mexican government to help detect illegal fishing activities, the Associated Press noted.
Jellyfish sting more than 5,000 holidaymakers on Queensland’s coast — More than 5,000 people were stung by bluebottles on Queensland’s Gold and Sunshine coasts over the weekend as weather drove a wall of jellyfish onto the shore. Conditions eased on Monday but remnants of the bluebottle armada (the correct term for a bunch of bluebottles) still dot the beaches and more than 200 people were treated for stings, mostly at the Sunshine Coast. The latest figure for the weekend is almost double initial estimates released by Surf Life Saving Queensland and includes people treated by council lifeguards. Across Queensland, but mostly in the south-east, 22,282 people sought treatment for bluebottle stings between 1 December and 7 January compared with 6,831 in the same period last year. That was a “hell of a lot” of people stung, Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Service director Lisa-ann Gershwin said. “That is unusual,” she said. “The numbers I have seen published are 25,000 to 45,000 per year for the whole of Australia. “Those figures, the 22,282, are for about five weeks and that’s just one teeny tiny smidgin of Australia, so that is a lot.” Thousands were treated by lifesavers and several people reportedly suffered anaphylactic shock and were treated by paramedics. In a matter of hours on Sunday, 476 bluebottle stings were treated on the Gold Coast and 461 on the Sunshine Coast. Unusually strong north-easterly swell conditions pushed the bluebottles onshore. Gershwin said the striking blue jellyfish lived in armadas in the middle of the ocean and had trailing tentacles and a keel-like crest that acts like a sail. “When you look at a bluebottle, and you see the bubble and the blue fringes and the long blue tentacles, that is actually a colony, that is not an individual,” she said. “Those colonies also live in these armadas – sort of a population of the colonies – in the middle of the open ocean.
A jellyfish ‘epidemic’ has Australian scientists wondering whether climate change is to be blamed – Authorities in Queensland, Australia, were forced to close beaches across the region over the weekend amid what local officials said was a jellyfish “epidemic.” Thousands of stings were recorded in Queensland last week, according to rescue organizations. While the vast majority of those stings were not life-threatening and were caused by “bluebottle colonies,” researchers say the number of more serious injuries from less common jellyfish is also at above-average levels. Some researchers also say this jellyfish infestation could be one more thing to blame on climate change. “Unlike other species, jellyfish are stimulated by just about any change to the ecosystem. So, it’s reasonable to say that the jellyfish might potentially be responding to the warmer-than-usual weather,” said marine life researcher Lisa Gershwin, who works with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, which is Australia’s national science agency. While researchers are still examining how much recent heat waves may have contributed to the current jellyfish bloom off Australia’s coasts, they can already say with certainty how they got to the beaches: strong and unusual winds pushing toward Queensland. Gershwin and other scientists say that the surge in stings is unlikely to be coincidental. “Jellyfish are demanding our attention right now and we should be giving it to them. Those stings are an indication that something is wrong with our oceans – and we’re silly that we’re not listening,” Gershwin said. While some scientists have been more careful about linking climate change and jellyfish blooms, given a lack of long-term data so far, most researchers agree that jellyfish populations respond positively to a number of human-induced changes, including pollution, overfishing and warmer water. “All of this takes out their predators and competitors, so they’re the ‘last men standing,’” Gershwin said.
Vital ecosystems in tidal flats lost to development and rising sea levels — Coastal development and sea level rise are causing the decline of tidal flats along the world’s coastlines, according to research that has mapped the ecosystems for the first time.Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Queensland used machine-learning to analyse more than 700,000 satellite images to map the extent of and change in tidal flats around the globe. The study, published in Nature, found tidal flat ecosystems in some countries declined by as much as 16% in the years from 1984 to 2016.Tidal flats are mud flats, sand flats or wide rocky reef platforms that are important coastal ecosystems. They act as buffers to storms and sea level rise and provide habitat for many species, including migratory birds and fish nurseries.Almost 50% of the global extent of tidal flats is concentrated in just eight countries: Indonesia, China, Australia, the US, Canada, India, Brazil and Myanmar. Because tidal flats were often at least partially covered by water they had been difficult to monitor in the past. The research team worked with Google and used its computing resources to analyse every satellite image ever collected of the world’s coastlines. They found that tidal flats, as an ecosystem, were as extensive globally as mangroves and that coastal development and sea level rise, in particular, were causing their decline.In parts of China and western Europe, they found tidal flats that were up to 18km wide. In Australia, they occur all over the country, including places such as Moreton Bay in Queensland and along the Gulf of Carpentaria.For 17% of the world, there was enough data available to measure declines from 1984 to 2016. In these locations, which were mostly in China, the US and countries in the Middle East, they found declines in tidal flats of 16%.
Building blocks of ocean food web in rapid decline as plankton productivity plunges – They’re teeny, tiny plants and organisms but their impact on ocean life is huge.Phytoplankton and zooplankton that live near the surface are the base of the ocean’s food system. Everything from small fish, big fish, whales and seabirds depend on their productivity.”They actually determine what’s going to happen, how much energy is going to be available for the rest of the food chain,” explained Pierre Pepin, a senior researcher with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in St. John’s.Pepin says over the past three to four years, scientists have seen a persistent drop in phytoplankton and zooplankton in waters off Newfoundland and Labrador. “Based on the measurements that we’ve been taking in this region, we’ve seen pretty close to 50 per cent decline in the overall biomass of zooplankton,” said Pepin. “So that’s pretty dramatic.”Scientists say local testing reveals half the amount of plankton in a square metre of water today. It’s not just a problem here, declining plankton numbers are a global phenomenon.It’s a difficult idea to convey to the average person who might not understand the ocean ecosystem, but Pepin likens it to walking into a grocery store and instead of seeing the shelves full, they’re only half-full. “You know if you saw half the number of birds, if you saw half the number of fish in the water you’d pay attention. Well, this is a signal to say we need to pay attention.”
World’s Oceans Warming 40% Faster Than Previously Thought – An analysis of four recent studies of ocean temperatures has corrected some of the discrepancies between climate models that projected higher levels of ocean warming and observational data that turned up lower temperatures, concluding that the higher numbers were right.The article, published in Science Friday, shows that the world’s oceans are in fact warming about 40 percent faster than previously thought.”The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2013, showed that leading climate change models seemed to predict a much faster increase in ocean heat content over the last 30 years than was seen in observations,” study author and University of California (UC) Berkeley graduate student Zeke Hausfather said in a UC Berkeley press release. “That was a problem, because of all things, that is one thing we really hope the models will get right. The fact that these corrected records now do agree with climate models is encouraging in that is removes an area of big uncertainty that we previously had.”But what is encouraging for scientists in terms of better understanding climate change may also be alarming for marine life and coastal residents, especially in the tropics. Ocean warming can have the following serious consequences, according to The New York Times.
- 1. Sea Level Rise: Warm water expands, contributing to rising sea levels, and most of the sea level rise observed up until now is more because of this effect than because of melting glaciers. Ocean warming predicted to take place this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced would be enough to raise sea levels around one foot, the paper found.
- 2. Stronger, Wetter Storms: Warmer oceans contribute to storms that are both stronger and rain more, like this 2018’s Hurricane Florence. As oceans warm, extreme weather events like these will become even more common.
- 3. Ocean Life: A fifth of all corals have already died because of warmer oceans, which have a harder time sustaining life. This could also be a problem for people in the tropics who depend on fish for protein. “The actual ability of the warm oceans to produce food is much lower, so that means they’re going to be more quickly approaching food insecurity,” Oceana Deputy Chief Scientist Kathryn Matthews told The New York Times.
Global warming of oceans equivalent to an atomic bomb per second — Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research. More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a few per cent heating the air, land and ice caps respectively. The vast amount of energy being added to the oceans drives sea-level rise and enables hurricanes and typhoons to become more intense. Much of the heat has been stored in the ocean depths but measurements here only began in recent decades and existing estimates of the total heat the oceans have absorbed stretch back only to about 1950. The new work extends that back to 1871. A Guardian calculation found the average heating across that 150-year period was equivalent to about 1.5 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs per second. But the heating has accelerated over that time as carbon emissions have risen, and was now the equivalent of between three and six atomic bombs per second. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.” She added: “But obviously, we are putting a lot of excess energy into the climate system and a lot of that ends up in the ocean,” The total heat taken up by the oceans over the past 150 years was about 1,000 times the annual energy use of the entire global population. The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and combined measurements of the surface temperature of the ocean since 1871 with computer models of ocean circulation.
Warming oceans likely to raise sea levels more than 30cm (11.8in) by end of century –The world’s oceans are warming at a faster rate than previously estimated, new research has found, raising fresh concerns over the rapid progress of climate change. Warming oceans take up more space, a process known as thermal expansion, which the study says is likely to raise sea levels by about 30cm by the end of the century, on top of the rise in sea levels from melting ice and glaciers. Warmer oceans are also a major factor in increasing the severity of storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall. Rising sea levels will claim homes around English coast, report warns Read more Oceans store heat so effectively that it would take decades for them to cool down, even in the unlikely scenario that greenhouse gas emissions were halted urgently. The report, published on Thursday in the journal Science, found that the warming of the oceans was accelerating and was matching the predictions of climate change models, which have shown global temperature rises are likely to lead to extreme weather across the world. Zeke Hausfather, co-author of the paper and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “While 2018 will be the fourth warmest year on record on the [earth’s] surface, it will most certainly be the warmest year on record in the oceans, as was 2017 and 2016 before that. The global warming signal is a lot easier to detect if it is changing in the oceans than on the surface.” Oceans absorb more than nine-tenths of the excess energy trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, and play a key role in regulating the world’s climate. Only in recent years have scientists come to realise the full importance of oceans, which have effectively absorbed much of the impact of climate change in recent decades, but are now understood to be reaching their capacity as a buffer.
Researchers find bottom of Pacific getting colder, possibly due to Little Ice Age — A pair of researchers, one with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the other Harvard University, has found evidence of deep ocean cooling that is likely due to the Little Ice Age. In their paper published in the journal Science, Jake Gebbie and Peter Huybers describe their study of Pacific Ocean temperatures over the past 150 years and what they found. Prior research has suggested that it takes a very long time for water in the Pacific Ocean to circulate down to its lowest depths. This is because it is replenished only from the south, which means it takes a very long time for water on the surface to make its way to the bottom – perhaps as long as several hundred years. That is what Gebbie and Huber found back in 2012. That got them to thinking that water temperature at the bottom of the Pacific could offer a hint of what surface temperatures were like hundreds of years ago. To find out if that truly was the case, the researchers obtained data from an international consortium called the Argo Program – a group of people who together have been taking ocean measurements down to depths of approximately two kilometers. As a comparative reference, the researchers also obtained data gathered by the crew of the HMS Challenger – they had taken Pacific Ocean temperatures down to a depth of two kilometers during the years 1872 to 1876. The researchers used the data from both projects to build a computer model meant to mimic the circulation of water in the Pacific Ocean over the past century and a half. The model showed that the Pacific Ocean cooled over the course of the 20th century at depths of 1.8 to 2.6 kilometers. The amount is still not precise, but the researchers suggest it is most likely between 0.02 and 0.08° C. That cooling, the researchers suggest, is likely due to the Little Ice Age, which ran from approximately 1300 until approximately 1870. Prior to that, there was a time known as the Medieval Warm Period, which had caused the deep waters of the Pacific to warm just prior to the cooling it is now experiencing.
The True Complexity Of Plastic Pollution | OilPrice.com – While the number of plastics regulations is proliferating globally, how to deal with the problem of plastic pollution is complex, particularly when viewed through the prism of climate change and carbon accounting. Plastics sequester both carbon and energy. While the period of carbon sequestration is negligible when it comes to single-use plastics, some plastics, for example in the built environment, represent long-term carbon sequestration, often with significant energy conservation attributes. The lowest-hanging fruit when it comes to emissions savings for heat and power is simply to use less. Three of the cheapest means of household energy savings are roof insulation, wall cavity insulation and UVPC double glazing. The most economical materials in all three areas are petrochemicals based. Even for single-use plastics, there are emissions benefits. Plastic-wrapped foods reduce waste, which in effect reduces the oil intensity of food production because more produce is delivered for the same upstream inputs, for example fertilizer or the diesel used in agricultural machinery. Plastic wrapping is also integral to the concept of ‘light weighting’. Light plastic packaging, which includes plastic bottles, has to be set against the increased weight of the alternatives, and the emissions created in their production and recycling. The replacement of plastic bottles with glass increases both product weight and size, which in turn raises transportation costs…
Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and geologists don’t know why Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move. On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones. The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 – but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information. The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet. Liquid churning in Earth’s core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change. In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission tracked the shift. By early 2018, the World Magnetic Model was in trouble. Researchers from NOAA and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh had been doing their annual check of how well the model was capturing all the variations in Earth’s magnetic field. They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors.
Trump Threatens to Halt Disaster Aid to California Fire Victims – President Donald Trump threatened to halt federal disaster assistance to victims of California wildfires unless that state changes its forest management practices, though much of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government. “Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest fires that, with proper Forrest Management, would never happen,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, using an alternative spelling for forest. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency, also known as FEMA, administers federal disaster assistance.
Trump Threatens to Cut Off California Wildfire Aid – What does Trump have against California? Without prompting or explanation, the president tweeted Wednesday that he ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to halt funding for itswildfire relief unless “they get their act together.””Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen,” he wrote. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!” An earlier tweet that misspelled the word “forest” was replaced with the one that’s up now.This isn’t the first time the president pointed the finger at California’s forest management. Last year, Trump threatened to withhold relief funds and incorrectly blamed its infernos on the state’s “gross mismanagement of the forests” even though most of the fires burned on federal land.Trump has also brushed aside the role of climate change making the fires worse, saying “a lot of factors” contributed to the fires. He even suggested that California’s problem was it didn’t rake its forests enough, a comment that was widely ridiculed.Firefighters associations blasted the president’s latest missive, calling them particularly insensitive after the deadly and overwhelming destruction caused by the 2018 blazes. For one, Northern California’s record-breaking Camp Fire that ignited in early November killed 86 people, incinerated thousands of buildings and destroyed the town of Paradise.
Editorial: PG&E’s disastrous string of wildfires should not lead to state bailout – San Francisco Chronicle — Pacific Gas and Electric Co., its customers and taxpayers are facing a future that’s nothing but bleak. The options include selling off gas operations, legal fury from a federal judge and a retreat into uncertain bankruptcy. None of it is reassuring. The giant utility is collapsing in other ways with its sinking stock price and departing executives accompanied by a call for fresh figures on its board of directors to steady the company. Tens of billions in liabilities along with court sanctions stemming from a wave of wildfires linked to faulty equipment are taking a toll. Bankruptcy would shield the company from many of its financial worries but devastate its market value. If PG&E is mulling its options, it should toss one away right now. No Sacramento bailout should be in the mix. In September, the Legislature and former Gov. Jerry Brown approved a plan for bonds to cover wildfire costs to be borne by ratepayers. It was a too-big-to-fail gambit: The state’s largest investor-owned utility needed state help to prevent hitting the financial rocks. While fires burned, that threat was good enough to win political support. Now it turns out PG&E was thinking back then of other financial paths that didn’t impose a burden on customers. It was considering selling off its gas operations to pay down future liabilities from wildfire fines and lawsuits. It wasn’t leveling with Sacramento while it dickered over the bond bailout plan. Gov. Gavin Newsom knows this history well enough and should make it clear he won’t endorse another round of financial forgiveness. The company must put all the cards on the table. It needs a management shakeup and reorganization that places safety at the top of the list, a pledge it endorsed nearly a decade ago after the deadly San Bruno pipeline explosion. Bankruptcy comes with costs beyond financial rebuilding. The state’s ambitious goal of moving to all renewable power currently includes PG&E’s help. A utility in the throes of bankruptcy might not be able or obligated to deliver on the climate change policies this state needs. But dumping the utility’s problems on Sacramento to solve goes too far. PG&E needs to take the serious steps needed to resolve the crisis it created.
3 PG&E electric executives departing amid ongoing wildfire scrutiny – Three of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s top executives on the electric side of its business are retiring this month, marking a major shift in key leadership as the utility endures heavy scrutiny over its role in recent devastating Northern California wildfires. Patrick Hogan, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, is retiring effective Jan. 28, but his replacement assumed the title Tuesday, the utility and its parent company said in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also retiring are Kevin Dasso, the vice president of electric asset management, and Gregg Lemler, the vice president of electric transmission, according to an internal email obtained by The Chronicle. PG&E spokesman Matt Nauman confirmed that Hogan, Dasso and Lemler are retiring this month. He provided no further comment and said the executives were not available for interviews.
What would happen if PG&E sold its gas business or filed for bankruptcy? – California’s largest power company faces an existential crisis as it confronts the looming possibility of tens of billions of dollars in wildfire liability. Shares of PG&E Corp. – which owns Pacific Gas & Electric Co. – sank 22.3% to $18.95 on Monday after reports that the utility could face at least $30 billion in liability related to fires and has considered filing for bankruptcy protection or unloading its natural gas operations.The consequences of bankruptcy or an asset sale could ripple far beyond the utility’s shareholders, some experts say, affecting 16 million Californians who depend on PG&E for energy and potentially threatening the state’s ability to meet its climate-change goals. The utility has faced tremendous scrutiny over the last decade, starting with a 2010 gas explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno and continuing with among the deadliest and most destructive fires in state history, some of which may have been sparked by PG&E’s infrastructure. The California Public Utilities Commission is considering breaking up the company as part of an investigation into PG&E’s safety culture. Some PG&E critics have called for a government takeover or for the massive company to be replaced by smaller, municipal utilities. But it’s far from clear that local governments across Northern and Central California have the ability or the desire to take control of PG&E’s infrastructure, and to assume the huge liabilities that running the power grid entails. And state officials aren’t likely to support a takeover because then the utility’s problems would become Sacramento’s problems instead.
Either/Or – Eucalyptus plantations, “gasoline trees” as South American community peoples call them because they’re so incendiary, burned in Portugal in 2017 killing over sixty, burning them alive in their cars. The plantations burn in Chile, in Africa, in Australia, and soon GMO plantations will bring flaming death to the US Southeast. And the same fires burn across the globe, everywhere the natural habitats have been devastated and parched. This civilization will burn every last BTU’s worth it can, will burn every last splinter, will dry every last clod of soil, will pump every last molecule of carbon, will poison every drop of water, will kill every plant and animal, will be as a mythologist of modernity wrote “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy”, until Gaia finally puts an end to the horror. It’s self-evident that profit-seeking corporations can never seek any goal other than power and profit. By definition they can’t be enlisted toward any other goal. Any other goal automatically would constitute a constraint on maximal profit-seeking. This is logically self-evident. And for those who don’t trust logic, we have the entire evidence record of capitalist history proving it out. Without exception every example where profiteering was enlisted on behalf of a goal outside the pentacle of power, the venal motive always hijacked, distorted, destroyed the nominal goal. And that’s not even taking into account technocratic religious hatred of nature and freedom. This has been most obvious through the tragic and treacherous history of the environmental movement, whose mainstream quickly decided to become an adjunct of the corporate state with results which easily were predicted. This is obvious to anyone who knows history or who has common sense. At this late date, at this extreme of the crisis, anyone who still claims to believe it’s possible to seek a climate goal through a corporate tollbooth is a liar or an idiot. There’s no other option.
The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists – – The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists – When devastating wildfires were sweeping the West last fall, Ryan Zinke, who recently announced his resignation as Interior secretary, lay the blame for the blazes on a ragtag group of environmentalists. “We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access, that refuse to allow the harvest of timber,” Zinke said in an interview with Breitbart News. Environmental activism has long put protesters at odds with government officials. But instead of dismissing climate-conscious demonstrators as hippies or “tree huggers,” government officials have begun using more dangerous labels – including “terrorist.” It’s happening all over the world, from the U.S. to the Philippines to Brazil (which just inaugurated particularly anti-environmental/indigenous President Jair Bolsonaro). It even happened at the recent United Nations climate talks in Poland. More than two dozen climate activists headed to the summit in Katowice were deported or refused entry on the pretext of being national threats. “I had absolutely no time to react,” said Zanna Vanrenterghem, a staff member at Climate Action Network Europe who was pulled off a train from Vienna to Katowice by border patrol agents. “The fact that this happened to 15 other people for similar reasons is very frightening. This is just a very small symptom of a larger disease.” When it comes to justifying (and promoting) extreme actions, language matters. Activists say this is part of an aggressive campaign by fossil fuel companies and their government allies to increase criminal penalties for minor violations – such as trespassing on a pipeline easement – as a way of suppressing climate action. Eighty-four members of Congress sent a bipartisan letter to the Department of Justice last fall, asking officials to prosecute pipeline activists as “terrorists.” And bills introduced in Washington and North Carolina would have defined peaceful demonstrations as “economic terrorism.” And as we know in the U.S., branding a group of people as “terrorists” is kind of a big deal.
US carbon emissions see largest yearly gain in 8 years, data show – U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions saw a yearly increase of 3.4 percent in 2018, according to preliminary estimates released Tuesday. The rise represents the second-biggest yearly gain in over two decades, independent research provider the Rhodium Group said in a note. The figures are based on “preliminary power generation, natural gas, and oil consumption data.” The increase was only surpassed by the 2010 figures when the economy was bouncing back from the global financial crash, it said. Breaking the figures down, the transportation sector remained the largest source of emissions in the U.S. for the third year in a row, with “robust growth in demand” for both diesel and jet fuel offsetting a “modest” drop in gasoline consumption. While a record amount of coal-fired power plants were shut in 2018, emissions from the power sector grew by 1.9 percent, the note said. This was down to natural gas replacing the majority of this lost generation and feeding the majority of growth in electricity demand. The buildings and industrial sectors also showed “big year-on-year emissions gains.” This was in part down to “unusually cold” weather at the beginning of 2018. The estimates in Tuesday’s note refer to energy-related CO2 emissions only.
U.S. Carbon Emissions Spiked 3.4% in 2018, Second-Largest Increase Since 1996 – Carbon emissions in the U.S. experienced a sharp upswing in 2018, despite a record number of coal-fired power plant closings, according to new data. An analysis released by the research firm Rhodium Group Tuesday shows that emissions rose by 3.4 percent last year – the second-largest gain in more than twenty years.The analysis also found that emissions from industrial manufacturing rose 5.7 percent, while transportation emissions rose 1 percent. The analysis describes these as industries “most often ignored in clean energy and climate policymaking” and significant drivers in the increase. “The big takeaway for me is that we haven’t yet successfully decoupled U.S. emissions growth from economic growth,” Rhodium analyst Trevor Houser toldThe New York Times.As reported by The Washington Post:“The latest growth makes it increasingly unlikely that the United States will achieve a pledge made by the Obama administration in the run-up to the Paris climate agreement, that the country would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.A large part of President Barack Obama’s plan for meeting that goal turned on key climate policies, including new regulations for vehicle fuel efficiency and power plants. These policies alone were not enough – the United States has never been on target to fulfill its Paris promises. But the Trump administration has moved to reverse or weaken them.” “The U.S. has led the world in emissions reductions in the last decade thanks in large part to cheap gas displacing coal,” Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who was not involved in the analysis, told The New York Times. “But that has its limits, and markets alone will not deliver anywhere close to the pace of decarbonization needed without much stronger climate policy efforts that are unfortunately stalled if not reversed under the Trump administration.”
Oil industry makes landmark investment in CO2 air capture — Chevron Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. are forming the first major collaboration between the oil industry and a company deploying technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air. In an announcement yesterday, Chevron’s venture capital arm and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures LLC, an Occidental subsidiary, said they would invest in Carbon Engineering, a Canadian-based firm supported by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and other entrepreneurs. “It is a very important time for the air capture field right now,” said Steve Oldham, the CEO of Carbon Engineering. “CE’s relationships with Occidental and Chevron, and these new investments, will allow us to accelerate the deployment.” The companies did not disclose the dollar amount of the Carbon Engineering partnership, but a CE spokeswoman said the company is on track to reach a goal of raising $60 million by the end of the first quarter of this year. The move is the latest boost for direct air capture, which envisions sucking greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and storing it or converting it to fuel. Last year, Congress passed legislation that would allow direct air capture to qualify for federal tax credits for carbon storage, and multiple groups, universities and former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced air capture initiatives. Noah Deich, executive director of the organization Carbon180, said the announcement was “big,” considering it is the first time oil companies have provided public equity investment in a direct air capture company. “Energy companies have the financial capital and technical knowledge needed to scale direct air capture companies swiftly and effectively, and this announcement shows that these energy companies believe that it is a smart investment,” Deich said.
Macroeconomic System for Climate Change – J.d. Alt – Abstract: A macroeconomic system including the issuing of a fiat currency by a sovereign government; the establishment of a tax regime on the government’s citizens wherein the taxes levied can only be paid with the sovereign government’s fiat currency; the sovereign government’s debiting of its tax collection account to purchase goods and services from its citizens and their commerce; the sovereign government’s issuing of future fiat currency certificates – to be redefined as “treasury bonds” – which it trades, at a discount, for existing fiat currency held in private financial markets; the sovereign government then spending the traded-for existing fiat currency to purchase goods and services from its citizens and their commerce over and above what it is able to purchase by debiting its tax collection account; the management of the value of the said fiat currency relative to goods and services by the general means of draining the currency from circulation through the sovereign tax regime – and by the specific means of controlling the discount and time-to-maturity of the issued future fiat currency certificates (treasury bonds); and wherein the sovereign government’s spending is thereby enabled to be orders-of-magnitude greater than what the government collects in taxes – without encumbering the government with debt, and without devaluing the fiat currency with respect to the citizens’ commerce; said macroeconomic system thus enabling a sovereign government to spend whatever fiat currency is necessary to enable and assist its collective society to mitigate and adapt to climate-change.
AOC’s Green New Deal as Policy -Lambert Strether -As is well known, one of the first things Alexandria Orcasio-Cortez (AOC) did when she came to Washington was to join a sit-in, in Nancy Pelosi’s office, sponsored by the Sunrise Movement, that publicized a Green New Deal (GND). The GND is obviously an enormous topic, so in this post I’m going to focus only on the GND as a policy proposal, as opposed to a pleasing slogan. (I also won’t be looking at the history of programs proposed under the GND moniker, as from the Green Party, the Data for Progress version, precursor bills introduced in Congress, or a 2008 version proposed by the UK’s New Economics Foundation). In a subsequent post I’ll look at the GND as politics; it does poll well (and not just the phrase, but the actual program). Amazingly enough,Indivisible supported the GND almost immediately (although they don’t support #MedicareForAll). The original version I read at https://ocasio2018.com/green-new-deal as a cellphone-friendly, swipe-intensive document with large type; that URL now redirects to a Google[1] Doc, here, which is the proposed rule for the establishment of a Select Committee For A Green New Deal (which Pelosi and the liberal Democrat leadership, sadly, gutted, something I’ll talk about in the post on GND politics). “Draft text“) has two parts: The proposed “Addendum,” and a “Frequently Asked Questions” section, in different fonts. In the Addendum, two “paragraphs” (legislation-ese for “section”) are key from the policy perspective: “(2) (A) LEGISLATIVE JURISDICTION” and “(6) SCOPE OF THE PLAN FOR A GREEN NEW DEAL AND THE DRAFT LEGISLATION.” I think the question “How will the government pay for these investments?” is the most important. The entire document, including the FAQ, is only eleven pages long, so I suggest you grab a cup of coffee and read it. Here are the articles I looked at as preparation for this post, in no particular order:
- “The Green New Deal, explained” Dave Roberts, Vox. A Vox explainer, with a respectful treatment of MMT. Well worth a read.
- “With a Green New Deal, Here’s What the World Could Look Like for the Next Generation” Kate Aronoff, The Intercept. A backgrounder.
- “Corporations See a Different Kind of ‘Green’ in Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’” Whitney Webb, Mint Press. A critique from the left, with more close reading than most.
- “We Have To Make Sure the ‘Green New Deal’ Doesn’t Become Green Capitalism” In These Times. A conversation with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson.
- Meet the scholar crafting the ‘Green New Deal’ E&E News. There seem to be several; this is “The New Consensus.”
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Will Be The Leading Democrat On Climate Change Alexander C. Kaufman, HuffPo
Shutdown risks delays to U.S. drilling, ethanol, wind initiatives (Reuters) – The partial government shutdown is increasing the chances of delays in U.S. energy initiatives from the release of President Donald Trump’s proposed offshore drilling plan to allowing higher levels of ethanol in gasoline during summer months, energy industry groups said on Friday. The U.S. Department of Interior had been expected to release its highly anticipated 2019 to 2024 offshore oil and gas drilling plan in early January. The Trump administration has made opening up greater areas to offshore drilling, and holding more frequent lease sales, part of its energy dominance agenda to boost fossil fuel output for both domestic use and exports. Industry interest in several lease sales has been tepid, but the administration has said more interest is expected in the future. The Interior Department is operating at reduced staffing levels due to the partial shutdown, which has stretched two weeks. Nicolette Nye, a spokeswoman at the National Ocean Industries Association, said her group is expecting the shutdown will lead to a delay in the proposed plan’s release. But she said members of her group should not be overly affected as long as the final drilling plan, expected to be released this summer, comes on time.
EPA says it is committed to rule for higher ethanol blend by summer driving season (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday it would complete a rule to boost sales of higher-ethanol blends of gasoline by the summer driving season, despite a partial government shutdown. The statement from the environmental regulator came after the agency warned at least two lawmakers that the shutdown had delayed its timeline for initially rolling out the rule, according to two sources briefed on the matter. President Donald Trump pledged in the run-up to November’s congressional elections to lift the summer ban on sales of so-called E15 gasoline, in a boost to an ethanol industry upended by trade wars and weak demand growth at home. The Trump administration hoped to have the rule published by February and approved by June, but the EPA recently told lawmakers that the timeline would be delayed because of the partial government shutdown, said the two sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. An EPA spokesman said the agency would still complete the rule before the summer driving season. “This is a priority for both President Trump and Acting Administrator Wheeler. The ongoing partial shutdown will not impede EPA’s ability to keep to our deadline,” Michael Abboud said in an emailed statement in response to a request for comment. The acting EPA administrator is Andrew Wheeler. The EPA currently bans the higher ethanol blend, called E15, during summer because of concerns it contributes to smog on hot days – a worry biofuels advocates say is unfounded. E15 gasoline contains 15 percent ethanol, versus the 10 percent found in most U.S. gasoline. Trump’s decision to lift the ban of summer sales of E15 was applauded by corn-belt farmers and lawmakers and criticized by the oil lobby as an illegal overreach by the EPA and its acting administrator. The proposal is expected to be coupled with a slew of reforms to the credit-trading market that underpins the nation’s renewable fuel policy.
The Supreme Court just declined to hear Exxon Mobil’s appeal in a climate change lawsuit – The Supreme Court on Monday issued a significant ruling for ongoing legal battles around climate change by declining to hear oil giant Exxon Mobil’s appeal in its suit with the state of Massachusetts. In the appeal, the company was attempting to block the release of records of its knowledge of how burning fossil fuels changes the climate. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed suit against the company in 2016 alleging that Exxon, the world’s largest investor-owned oil company, violated state consumer protection rules and misled investors about the impacts of fossil fuels on climate change as well as risks of climate change to its business. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided last April that Exxon would have to start turning over internal documents about its knowledge about the impacts of fossil fuel combustion on the global climate. Exxon appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Massachusetts attorney general doesn’t have jurisdiction to compel the company to release documents. But the high court declined to hear the appeal – a blow to Exxon that may lead to more damaging revelations about the company. The company has not yet responded to a request for comment, but the company website says it has followed the scientific consensus on climate change.
Court Rules EPA Must Release 20,000 Emails Between Wheeler, Other Top Officials and Polluting Industries -A federal court has ordered that top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – including Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler – must release about 20,000 emails exchanged with industry groups, The Washington Post reported Monday. The December 26 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California was the result of a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club after the EPA missed its deadline in responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The environmental group had sought the emails to see how industry contacts might be influencing decisions by officials like Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, to roll back Obama-era regulations on climate-change causing emissions and other pollutants. “The law is clear: the EPA must produce these documents, it must do so quickly, and if necessary it must re-allocate staff to speed things up and lift the curtain on the toxic relationship between Trump’s appointees and the polluters they are supposed to be protecting us from,” Senior Sierra Club Attorney Elena Saxonhouse, who helped argue the case, said in a press release. The EPA had said it was so inundated with FOIA requests that it needed until 2022 to release the documents, but the Sierra Club argued successfully that the release could not wait that long, in part because President Donald Trump has indicated he will nominate Wheeler to officially replace former Administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned in part because of scandals revealed through previous Sierra Club FOIA requests. “The Senate should not act on Wheeler’s expected nomination until we know exactly what he is up to behind the scenes. The revelations which FOIA’d emails uncovered about Scott Pruitt were unprecedented, shocking, and helped bring about his rapid downfall,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in the press release. “Now, we await tens of thousands of emails between Andrew Wheeler, his industry-conflicted deputies, and the polluters they are supposed to be protecting us from. Given Wheeler and Wherum’s history of exclusively protecting polluter profits, we can only imagine what abuses these documents are likely to uncover.”
McNamee won’t recuse himself from resilience debates unless they ‘closely resemble’ coal bailout –Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ethics officials have advised Commissioner Bernard McNamee to not recuse himself from FERC’s grid resilience proceeding, the regulator said in a Monday letter to Senate Democrats, unless it comes to “closely resemble” the debate over the coal and nuclear bailout proposal he helped craft at the Department of Energy.FERC set up the resilience docket last January after rejecting the plan McNamee helped design. Democrats and environmental groupspressed him to recuse himself from the resilience proceeding, but the letter says McNamee told ethics officials he would only step aside if the original bailout plan comes before FERC again. Democrats also pushed McNamee to recuse himself from issues “pitting one fuel source against another” after the release of a February video critical of renewable energy. Ethics officials wrote they would take those issues on a “case-by-case basis,” but final decisions about any recusal rest with the commissioner himself. McNamee’s letter to Senate Democrats attempts to draw a distinction between FERC’s rejection of the DOE’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) to prop up coal and nuclear plants and the longer-term resilience docket regulators set up in its wake. The letter includes a correspondence between McNamee and FERC Associate General Counsel Charles A. Beamon about an ethics briefing on Dec. 12. It was supplied to Utility Dive by a source close to the issue who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to release it publicly.
New electric generating capacity in 2019 will come from renewables and natural gas – EIA – According to EIA’s latest inventory of electric generators, 23.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity additions and 8.3 GW of capacity retirements are expected for the U.S. electric power sector in 2019. The utility-scale capacity additions consist primarily of wind (46%), natural gas (34%), and solar photovoltaics (18%), with the remaining 2% consisting primarily of other renewables and battery storage capacity.
- Wind. A total of 10.9 GW of wind capacity is currently scheduled to come online in 2019. Most of the capacity will not come online until the end of the year, which is typical for renewable capacity. Three states – Texas, Iowa, and Illinois – will be home to more than half of the 2019 planned wind capacity additions.
- Natural gas. Planned natural gas capacity additions are primarily in the form of combined-cycle plants (6.1 GW) and combustion-turbine plants (1.4 GW). Most of the natural gas capacity is scheduled to be online by June 2019 in preparation for high summer demand. 60% will occur in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Louisiana.
- Solar photovoltaics. Nearly half of the 4.3 GW of utility-scale electric power sector solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity additions are located in three states: Texas, California, and North Carolina.
Scheduled capacity retirements for 2019 primarily consist of coal (53%), natural gas (27%), and nuclear (18%), with a single hydroelectric plant in the state of Washington and other smaller renewable and petroleum capacity accounting for the remaining 2%.
- Coal. Most of the coal retirements are scheduled to occur at the end of 2019. Half of the planned retirement capacity for coal is at a single plant, Navajo, located in Arizona that first came online in the 1970s. The 4.5 GW of coal-fired capacity expected to retire in 2019 is relatively small compared with the estimated 13.7 GW that retired in 2018, which was the second-highest amount of coal capacity retired in a year.
- Natural gas. The scheduled natural gas retirements (2.2 GW) consist mostly (2.0 GW) of steam turbine plants. The natural gas steam turbine plants that are scheduled to retire are all older units that came online in the 1950s or 1960s. Most of the retiring natural gas steam turbine capacity (1.6 GW) is located in California.
- Nuclear. Two nuclear plants totaling 1.5 GW are currently scheduled to retire in 2019. The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, located in Massachusetts, is scheduled to retire in May, and the remaining unit at the Three Mile Island Power Station, located in Pennsylvania, is scheduled to retire in September.
American Electric Power takes another swing at adding Midwestern wind power capacity -Two units of American Electric Power Co. announced requests for wind energy proposals yesterday, less than six months after the company decided to cancel its $4.5 billion Wind Catcher project.The new approach reflects continued interest in wind at AEP’s Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) and Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO), despite Texas regulators’ rejection of a Wind Catcher application last year.That AEP project called for acquiring a 2,000-megawatt wind farm that Invenergy LLC had been working on in Oklahoma, with about 1,400 MW slated for SWEPCO and 600 MW linked to PSO. The plan also envisioned a 765-kilovolt power line, which would have run hundreds of miles in Oklahoma.Now, SWEPCO is requesting proposals for as much as 1,200 MW of wind energy that would be in commercial operation by Dec. 15, 2021. The plans must have a nameplate rating of at least 100 MW and are due March 1, SWEPCO said. The company said it’s looking to acquire new or existing projects that qualify for at least 80 percent of a federal production tax credit.Another requirement, according to SWEPCO, is that projects will need to be interconnected to the Southwest Power Pool grid in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas or Oklahoma. The new approach to wind expansion is different from Wind Catcher in part because it involves a competitive process. PSO, which operates in parts of Oklahoma, said yesterday that it’s also seeking proposals for wind resources that would be operating commercially by late 2021. Stan Whiteford, a PSO spokesman, said the amount of wind pursued by the company will depend on what the responses show and could be in the hundreds of megawatts. Whiteford said PSO already has more than 1,100 MW of wind under contract through power purchase deals.
Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, others fight back against AEP solar project — The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the Ohio Coal Association and other groups say American Electric Power Ohio’s plan to develop solar power in southern Ohio is expensive, unnecessary and goes against the state’s goal of deregulated markets. At a public hearing held by state regulators last month, residents and environmental groups gushed about an American Electric Power Ohio proposal to develop two solar farms in southern Ohio. Now, several groups, led by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, are fighting back, saying the AEP plan is expensive, unnecessary and goes against the state’s goal of deregulated markets. “If indeed these renewable energy projects are economical, then market forces should be sufficient to see these or other renewable energy projects through development,” according to testimony filed last week with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio by the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association. That group, the Ohio Coal Association, Industrial Energy Users-Ohio and Kroger are among the opponents to the project along with the Consumers’ Counsel. AEP Ohio announced in September its proposal to develop 400 megawatts of solar power in Highland County as part of a commitment it made in 2016 to develop 900 megawatts of renewable power. The project would result in 4,000 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs. A typical residential customer who uses 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a month initially would pay 28 cents more a month to pay for the plant, but that number is projected to drop over time and lead to credits on a customer’s bill, something opponents also dispute. AEP estimates that customers will save $200 million over the 20-year life of the project compared with other energy sources for electricity. If approved by the state, the project could be operational before the end of 2021.
World’s biggest solar-plus-storage project comes online in Hawaii – AES Corporation launched the world’s largest battery plant paired with solar generation Tuesday, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is finishing up commissioning for the Lawa’i Solar and Energy Storage Project, which combines 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with a lithium-ion battery capable of storing 100 megawatt-hours.The battery alone holds more energy than all but one other U.S. plant: the 120 megawatt-hour facility AES built in Escondido in 2017. Taken as a whole, Lawa’i’s storage capacity outranks any other operational solar-paired battery system in the world, according to Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables. But the ever-growing solar-plus-storage project pipeline means that title won’t be safe for long.The plant delivers solar power when a standalone solar plant can’t: at night. That offsets the peaker plants that turn on for the evening peak; in Hawaii, those plants tend to run on imported oil, at considerable expense. Lawa’i can crank a full output of 20 megawatts for five hours. With 100 megawatt-hours of stored energy, the battery can also operate more like a baseload plant, delivering a lower amount of power for more hours through the night until the sun comes back up. AES expects to offset 3.7 million gallons of diesel each year by dispatching more cost-effectively than the fossil fueled incumbents.
MidAmerican Wind X11 site locations unknown — MidAmerican Energy has proposed an additional investment of $922 million for its Wind XII project expected to be completed in late 2020 “somewhere in Iowa.” Over the past three years, MidAmerican Energy has moved forward with its Wind XI project, that when combined with Wind XII, will provide customers with 100 percent renewable energy on an annual basis. And, like MidAmerican’s previous wind projects, Wind XII will be accomplished without the need to ask for an increase in customers’ rates. Wind X1 consists of turbines in operation in Greene, Boone, Mahaska, Adair, Grundy and Poweshiek counties. The company estimates Wind XII will create more than 300 full-time jobs related to construction and another 28 full-time positions for ongoing operations and maintenance. In addition, they say Wind XII will provide an average $6.9 million per year in additional Iowa property tax payments on wind turbines and nearly $5.6 million more in annual landowner easement payments. In 2017, MidAmerican Energy paid $19.6 million in Iowa property taxes on wind turbines. The company is currently exploring potential wind farm sites in Iowa and will announce wind farm locations prior to constructing each site. Procuring proper permits, easements, right-of-ways, and willing land owners is a tedious economic endeavor. And if the word gets out, pure speculation would drive land prices over the moon. Hence, the secrecy or uncertainty about locations until the pony’s in the barn.
ISO-NE: Offshore wind can cut costs, reduce grid stress during winter storms — Offshore wind facilities in New England could cut power production costs and reduce stress on the grid during times of extreme winter weather, according to a new study from the regional grid operator. A 1600 MW offshore wind facility would have reduced energy prices in the ISO-New England market by $11/MWh to $13/MWh during a severe cold snap that hit the region a year ago, the grid operator said in a new report. That translates to more than $80 million in production costs. The findings show how offshore wind facilities could contribute to fuel security in the region by allowing generators to burn less of their onsite oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies during periods when gas pipelines are oversubscribed. ISO-NE must file fuel security market reform plans with federal regulators by June.
Looming Supply Chain Crunch Threatens US Wind Energy Boom – While the U.S. wind energy installation outlook looks bright – more than 23 gigawatts in new capacity forecast over the next two years – looming unforeseen supply chain bottlenecks could lead to project cancellations and postponements. This could put as much as $2.1 billion of revenue at risk, according to a new study by Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. According to the analysis, if these supply chain constraint issues are not addressed, more than 23 percent of the wind energy capacity installations expected in 2019-2020 could be delayed or canceled. Moreover, turbine installations could decline by 1.1 gigawatts – 366 megawatts in 2019, 720 megawatts in 2020 – representing a loss of more than $800 million in turbine sales. PTC impacts, while more complex to estimate, could represent lost revenue of up to $1.3 billion over the 10-year tax credit period. “While we’ve seen upticks in demand put pressure on transportation capacity in the past, the total level of effort required from logistics providers this time around will be substantially higher than during past peaks,” said Shreve. “New turbine technology is producing higher-capacity turbines, but this results in further strain on the supply chain, as components are larger and heavier, and more component shipments are needed per turbine. This in turn increases requirements for highway escorts, reduces transportation equipment cycle times, and increases demand for larger cranes.” Although large players in the wind industry are preparing for rapid growth in 2019-2020, many have not anticipated the magnitude of these supply chain constraints and the losses they can cause. Unavoidable project cancellations and postponements will be difficult to absorb and can lead to knock-on declines in activity for a wide range of smaller players, as well as the local economies and work forces they support.
Saudi Arabia Closes $500 Million Wind Farm Deal – Saudi Arabia has made a first tangible step to generate electricity from sources other than oil and gas, awarding a contract on Thursday for the Kingdom’s first utility-scale wind farm. A consortium led by France’s EDF and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar has won the tender to build a 400-megawatt (MW) US$500-million wind farm in northern Saudi Arabia, AFP quoted the energy ministry of the Kingdom as saying.The first utility-scale wind project in the country is another significant step “towards creating a diversified power sector mix,” according to the Saudi ministry.Saudi Arabia has also started to work with a fund owned by SoftBank to have one day a total of 200 gigawatts (GW) of solar power in the country, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said last month.Saudi Arabia has its National Renewable Energy Program, under which the Kingdom aims to boost the share of renewables in its energy mix in coming years. The Saudis are targeting 3.45 GW worth of generation from renewable energy by 2020, which would represent around 4 percent of generation capacity. By 2023, the Saudi target is 9.5 GW, which would account for 10 percent of generation capacity.The Saudi renewable energy program is directly supporting the Vision 2030 strategy to overhaul the economy and diversify it away from oil. Ironically, the Saudis expect to fund part of the Vision 2030 plan with the proceeds they expect to reap from the initial public offering (IPO) of 5 percent in state oil giant Aramco. Saudi Arabia’s rulers, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have insisted that Aramco is worth a total of US$2 trillion.
The Middle East, Africa, and Asia now drive nearly all global energy consumption growth -Energy consumption in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa continues to grow rapidly, with about 20% growth in each region between 2010 and 2016, according to newly available data in EIA’s International Energy Statistics database. In particular, energy consumption has been increasing in the Middle East and Africa, driven by economic growth, increased access to energy markets, and quickly growing populations. Energy consumption in Asia grew even as energy consumption in China declined between 2015 and 2016. Although growth was rapid in Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania consumed much more energy overall (42% of 2016 world energy consumption, compared with 6% in the Middle East and 3% in Africa). Slower long-term energy consumption trends continued in the mature economies of North America, where energy consumption grew by 1% between 2010 and 2016, and in Europe, where energy consumption actually fell 4% between those years. Globally, petroleum and other liquid fuels (including biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel) are the most prevalent form of energy consumed. Growing use of these fuels has been supported by increasing supplies of U.S. shale oil and other international sources of liquid fuels that have kept prices relatively competitive. Global coal consumption continued to decline as a result of competition from low cost natural gas as well as some countries’ policies to limit or decrease coal use. Regional fuel use varies according to the availability of resources. In 2016, coal accounted for almost 50% of the energy consumed in Asia and Oceania, where China, India, and Australia are all significant consumers of coal. The largest shares of nuclear and renewable energy were in Europe (26%), North America (19%), and Central and South America (26%). These regions, particularly Europe and North America, have significant renewable resources as well as policies that encourage renewable energy usage, especially wind and solar. Because of the region’s rich reserves of oil and natural gas, nearly all energy consumption in the Middle East comes from either petroleum or natural gas with virtually no contribution from coal, nuclear, or renewable energy.
Before the Electric Car Takes Over, Someone Needs to Reinvent the Battery– To deliver an electric vehicle that’s cheaper, safer and capable of traveling 500 miles on a single charge, the auto industry needs a breakthrough in battery technology. Easier said than done. Scientists in Japan, China and the U.S. are among those struggling to crack the code of how to significantly boost the amount of energy a battery cell can store and bring an EV’s driving range into line with a full tank of gas. That quest has zeroed in on solid-state technology, an overhaul of a battery’s internal architecture to use solid materials instead of flammable liquids to enable charging and discharging. The technology promises major improvements on existing lithium-ion packs, which automakers say are hitting the limits of their storage capabilities and may never hold enough power for long-distance models. If it can be mastered, solid-state technology could help speed the demise of the combustion-engine car and potentially slash EV charging times to about 10 minutes from as much as several hours. The supercharger network built by Tesla Inc., now offering some of the fastest charge times, needs approximately 30 minutes to bring a depleted car to 80 percent.
Broken regional trash plant violated environmental permits because of garbage backlog, state says – The months-long shutdown of the regional trash-to-energy plant in Hartford has resulted in trash piling up inside the facility, waste being shipped out of state and now the operators storing tons of partially processed garbage in outdoor containers in violation of state permits. Connecticut’s environmental agency has ordered the plant’s operators to move dozens of the covered containers back inside the plant, citing potential odor and safety concerns, officials said Friday. The Hartford facility is already holding an estimated 20,000 tons of garbage in its main indoor space and sending thousands of tons of trash a week to out-of-state landfills and facilities. The plant’s two turbines suffered catastrophic breakdowns on Nov. 5 and the facility hasn’t been operating since then. “We’re moving the stuff back inside so far as we can,” Thomas Kirk, president of the plant’s operators, the quasi-public Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA), said of the trash containers that were stored outdoors. “The breakdown of the MIRA facility is a problem for much of the state,” Bronin said. “But as the trash mounts up there, it is becoming a particular problem for businesses and residents around the plant.” State officials say they are now considering the garbage agency’s request for emergency permission to store the partially processed trash outside in those large, Dumpster-like containers. MIRA officials now hope to have the plant back in operation by the end of this month. “ In the meantime, the plant’s operators have been sending more than 7,000 tons of garbage a week to trash plants and landfills in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia. MIRA officials estimate disposing of all that garbage cost their agency an additional $276,000 each week in December. The Hartford plant serves about 70 member cities and towns across Connecticut. Garbage haulers from non-member communities that are normally allowed to bring trash to the Hartford facility have been forced to find other places to dispose of that garbage since the Nov. 5 breakdown.
Is methane too valuable to waste? – – The methane gas produced from decomposing organic waste can be released into the air, or it can be used to produce electricity. The latter is what’s done at the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority’s Boonville facility.”Since landfill gas is 50 percent methane, then most landfills from day one, whether they’re required to or not, you design (ways to capture that gas) into a system,” said William Rabbia, executive director of the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority. “(They) want to beneficially utilize it.”Methane is a greenhouse gas, meaning scientists believe it is contributing to a warming climate. It also is more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, Rabbia said, in addition to being flammable.Since 2017, the Trump Administration has moved to reduce regulations for methane release for oil, gas and landfill operations. They have cancelled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions and revised and partially repealed an Obama-era rule to limit methane emissions on public lands, according to the New York Times.They also are working to relax requirements to monitor methane leaks and reduce methane emissions from landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency website.In New York, state regulations closely mirror federal requirements on the release of methane for landfills, Rabbia said. But that might change soon with numerous pieces of legislation aimed at bringing environmental protection rules closer to what was enacted under the Obama Administration.”They’re in rule-making now (for) how do we revise our regulations to meet those lower federal limits,” Rabbia said.The amount of methane the local landfill releases already is below those limits, he added, because the more they capture, the more they can potentially profit from. In fact, the authority is not required to capture any of the gas that they do.Rabbia said they do, however, “flare” – or burn – excess methane they can’t process. “We want to destroy it,” Rabbia said, “to control it so it doesn’t create an issue in the environment.”
Wood pellet maker plans $200M investment in Mississippi (AP) – A company that makes wood pellets burned for fuel in overseas power plants is moving ahead with plans for a $140 million pellet mill and a $60 million ship-loading terminal on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Enviva LP spokeswoman Maria Moreno said Wednesday that the Maryland company signed agreements Monday with leaders in George and Jackson counties. The company won’t finalize its investment until environmental permits are approved for facilities in Lucedale and Pascagoula, she said. Enviva expects to hire about 90 workers in Lucedale. As many as 300 loggers and truckers could also find work supplying logs to Enviva. “We are excited to build on our success in Mississippi by investing in new facilities in George and Jackson Counties,” Chairman and CEO John Keppler said in a statement. “Enviva’s very first facility, a small plant in Amory, this week produced its one millionth ton of wood pellets.” George County Community Development Director Ken Flanagan says county supervisors approved property tax abatements, cutting a projected $13 million or more from Enviva’s property taxes over 10 years. He said the county, with state aid, plans road, water and wastewater improvements to support Enviva. The Mississippi Development Authority earlier awarded $4 million for the Enviva work. Flanagan said county officials expect Enviva to begin construction later this year, completing the work in 14 to 18 months.
Northam proposes coal ash disposal, coastal protection bills (AP) – Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam proposed a package of environmental legislation Thursday aimed at safely disposing of coal ash, helping coastal communities deal with flooding caused by climate change and continuing the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. The legislative agenda introduced includes a bill to allow the state to use an estimated $50 million in revenue from the sale of new carbon pollution credits for coastal resilience projects. Northam said the state needs to play a larger role in reducing the risks of climate change, particularly along its coastline. “In Hampton Roads, this threatens critical infrastructure like our port and the world’s largest naval base,” the Democratic governor said, referring to the Norfolk Naval Base. “It also threatens thousands of homes and puts the entire regional economy at risk.” Northam has pushed Virginia to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program among Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that mandates emission reductions in the power sector. The Northam administration expects to generate about $65 million a year in new credits from carbon-emitting power plants but needs legislative approval to spend that money or it will stay with the utilities. Northam is also proposing to use some of the money for economic development in coal communities in a bid to gain GOP support. Republican leaders did not immediately respond to Northam’s proposal but have opposed joining RGGI in the past. Last year, Northam Republicans passed a bill that would have required legislative approval before Virginia can participate in the initiative, legislation that Northam vetoed. Northam also backed legislation Thursday to require coal ash to be removed from unlined pits and either recycled or moved to EPA-approved landfills.
TVA doing up to $200M worth of business with contractor accused of poisoning coal ash workers — TVA is continuing to back – financially and publicly – the global contractor accused of poisoning hundreds of workers, including the agency’s own employees, during the clean up of the agency’s coal ash spill – the nation’s largest. TVA has awarded Jacobs Engineering contracts to the tune of as much as $200 million despite revelations the firm denied disaster relief workers at the Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant protective gear, lied and tampered with testing – and a jury’s conclusion in November the firm violated its contract with TVA. Under those new contracts, Jacobs is responsible for worker safety. And, as Roane County leaders gathered on the 10-year anniversary of the Dec. 22, 2008, disaster to honor the more than 35 workers who are now dead and the more than 300 who are dying, TVA spent $1,225 to buy a full-page ad thanking its contractors, including Jacobs Engineering. A spokesman for the nation’s largest power utility defended the advertisement – and its contracts with Jacobs – when contacted by USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee this week. The ad appeared in the Roane County News. It covered an entire page. It began with, “Kingston – a legacy of promises kept.” ‘TVA is proud of the work’ “We ran the ad because it was the 10th anniversary of the spill, and TVA is proud of the work accomplished to restore the community to as good as, or better, than we found it,” said spokesman Scott Brooks.
Trump Officially Nominates Former Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to Head EPA — In a long-expected move, President Donald Trump formally nominated acting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to officially run the agency Wednesday.Wheeler has headed the EPA for six months following the resignation of disgraced former Administrator Scott Pruitt, making him the longest-serving acting administrator in EPA history, The Huffington Post reported. His nomination is expected to clear the Republican-controlled Senate.”I am honored and grateful that President Trump has nominated me to lead the Environmental Protection Agency,” Wheeler said in a statement reported by The Huffington Post. “For me, there is no greater responsibility than protecting human health and the environment, and I look forward to carrying out this essential task on behalf of the American public.”However, many environmental groups disagreed with his self-assessment and raised concerns about his existing record on protecting environmental and public health and fighting climate change. “The only thing Wheeler is going to protect at the EPA is the profits of polluters,” Center for Biological DiversityGovernment Affairs Director Brett Hartl said in a statement. “I’m sure corporate board rooms will celebrate this nomination. But for anyone who drinks water, breathes air or cares about wildlife, this will be nothing but awful.”
New EPA Likely To Adversely Affect Environment – Federal rules on the use of mercury by the Obama government are too costly to be implemented, this is the recent comment made on the present rule by the Environmental Protection Agency. Based on this, the Trump government has proposed to bring in major changes in the way human health and safety benefits are calculated. Power plants, which use coal to generate electricity, are emitting mercury, and this mercury emission is considered bad for the environment protection. The proposed calculation or cost- benefit analysis will take into consideration only few factors while measuring the human safety. The measurement will be based only on the aspects which can be determined in dollars; the qualitative approach to health might become completely neglected in this approach. According to Robert N. Stavins, who is a professor of environmental economics at Harvard University informed this new approach will make it extremely difficult for the government to justify the environmental rules and regulations. Apparently, the rules are still against mercury emissions. But the underlying terms and conditions for this environmental law regarding mercury emission have become quite flimsy. The coal mines now might get more confidence to challenge the law in the court. The rules were first framed in 2011. These restricted not only mercury emission but also other pollutants which emerge from the coal plants. This step was also considered as one of the most significant achievements of President Obama. According to EPA, the expenses of ensuring that the mercury emission law is followed ranges between $7.4 billion to $9.6 US billion. The health benefits of reducing mercury ranged between $4 million to $6 million on an annual basis. This means, the benefits are lesser than the cost. Contrary to this, the Obama government had cited an annual benefit of 80 billion US dollars by cutting mercury.
India to bring 21 more reactors online by 2031 – India currently expects to bring 21 new nuclear power reactors with a combined generating capacity of 15,700 MWe into operation by 2031, the country’s minister of state for the Department of Atomic Energy told parliament yesterday. Jitendra Singh said: “At present, there are nine nuclear power reactors at various stages of construction. These include two units in each of the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana, plus three in Tamil Nadu. All these units are scheduled to be completed by 2024-2025. “In addition, 12 more nuclear power reactors have been accorded administrative approval and financial sanction by the government in June 2017. Thus, 21 nuclear power reactors, with an installed capacity of 15,700 MWe are under implementation, envisaged for progressive completion by the year 2031.” Singh also noted that five sites have been granted “in principle” approval to establish a further 28 reactors.
UAE postpones work at first nuclear power plant – The United Arab Emirates’ Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said yesterday that work at the country’s first nuclear power station will not begin as planned at the end of 2019. Al-Mazrouei said in a statement: “Nuclear is coming [but] there will be a bit of a delay,” without disclosing the reasons for the postponement. When operational, the plant’s four units will provide reliable and environmentally friendly energy to the UAE’s power grid as well as contribute to reducing the emission.The cost of constructing the Baraka nuclear power plants is $24.4 billion with a power generation capacity of 5,600 MW. The Korean Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) is building the plant’s four reactors simultaneously.
Hitachi set to cancel plans for £16bn nuclear power station in Wales – The Japanese conglomerate Hitachi looks certain to cancel its plans for a £16bn nuclear power station in Wales, leaving Britain’s ambitions for a nuclear renaissance in tatters.An impasse in months-long talks between the company, London and Toyko on financing is expected to result in the flagship project being axed at a Hitachi board meeting next week, according to the Nikkei newspaper.The company has spent nearly £2bn on the planned Wylfa power station on Anglesey, which would have powered around 5m homes.Another Japanese giant, Toshiba, scrapped a nuclear plant in Cumbria just two months ago after failing to find a buyer for the ailing project.Withdrawal by Hitachi would be a major blow to the UK’s plans to replace dirty coal and ageing reactors with new nuclear power plants, and heap pressure on ministers to consider other large-scale alternatives such as offshore windfarms.It would also mark an end to Japan’s hopes of exporting its nuclear technology around the world.
Nuclear Power Is Economically Obsolete – Last year the Trump administration’s Energy Department announced the launch of a media campaign to counter what an official called “misinformation” about nuclear power. We haven’t noticed an upsurge in pro-nuclear news – because there is none to report. On the first day of 2019, the energy industry trade journal Power asked whether new technology can save nuclear power by making new reactors economically feasible – not only to replace coal and natural gas but also to compete with the rapidly dropping cost of renewable energy. The verdict from Peter Bradford, a former member of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission:. . . [N]ew nuclear is so far outside the competitive range. . . . Not only can nuclear power not stop global warming, it is probably not even an essential part of the solution to global warming.His bleak outlook is shared by the authors of a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors – an engineer, an economist and a national security analyst – reviewed the prospects for so-called advanced designs for large nuclear reactors, and for much smaller modular reactors that could avoid the billions in construction costs and overruns that have plagued the nuclear energy industry since the beginning.They concluded that no new designs can possibly reach the market before the middle of the century. They cite the breeder reactor that, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, received $100 billion in public development funds worldwide over six decades and still did not get off the ground. The authors say there may be an opening for small modular reactors but that it will be very difficult to find a market for these reactors without – as is always the case with nuclear power – a massive infusion of taxpayer dollars. “For that to happen,” they argue, “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies would be needed to support their development and deployment over the next several decades, since present competitive energy markets will not induce their development and adoption.”
More cracks found in Hunterston reactors – Pressure is mounting to keep two nuclear power reactors at Hunterston in North Ayrshire closed after the company that runs them, EDF Energy, said it had found more cracks and was again postponing plans to restart.The French company now estimates that there are 370 major cracks in the graphite core of reactor three and 200 cracks in the core of reactor four. Reactor three has been closed down since 9 March 2018, and reactor four since 2 October.The day after The Ferret revealed in November that 350 cracks had been discovered in reactor three in breach of an operating safety limit, EDF postponed restarting both reactors to January and February.But there’s been a further delay, with the company now hoping to restart reactor four at the end of March and reactor three at the end of April. On 9 January the group of nuclear-free local authorities held a safety briefing on Hunterston for MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. Experts called for the reactors to stay closed rather than risking a nuclear accident, and for new jobs to be created in Ayrshire.Nuclear policy consultant, Dr Ian Fairlie, argued that the increasing number of cracks in the ageing reactors spelled their end. “There is only one thing you can do and that is close them, as they cannot be repaired,” he told The Ferret.“Although the risks of a major adverse event at Hunterston are relatively small, one has to take into account what the worst case scenario could be, and that is pretty serious indeed – the radioactive contamination and evacuation of both Glasgow and Edinburgh.” Fairlie urged the Scottish Government to take a more pro-active stance. “It needs to take a good look at the risks here and to decide whether it is really worthwhile running them,” he said. “After all we don’t need their electricity, though we need to ensure that jobs are safeguarded.”
Read the Scientific American article the government deemed too dangerous to publish –In April 1950, the US federal government raided the offices of Scientific American Magazine to destroy every printed issue. “Three thousand copies already run off were burned, type was melted down, and every galley proof and script impounded.” Three years later, Fahrenheit 451 was published without knowledge of this incident. The banned magazine contained an article, titled “The Hydrogen Bomb: II” written by Professor Hans Bethe, the “wartime chief of theoretical physics at Los Alamos.” His article had an imperative purpose: To clarify technical misconceptions in the daily press and to “take up the moral … meaning of the bomb in the general framework of foreign relations”. In current times, it is hard to imagine Scientific American as a politically charged institution or that Ray Bradbury’s caricature of Cold War hysteria was ever realized. The government not only burned every issue of Scientific American but also questioned the magazine’s political allegiance. As a reliable Federal Bureau of Investigation source stated in Bethe’s file, “Scientific American runs the sort of stuff which the Soviets would like to see in popular scientific journal, including left-wing authors on atomic energy and security questions.” The same issue in question contained an article written by Albert Einstein. After redacting four technical paragraphs, roughly 15,000 articles eventually made it to print. The article remained controversial even despite the redacted technical paragraphs and left the FBI and the Atomic Energy Commission a bit disgruntled. However, Bethe had powerful allies who vouched for his intentions, including fellow Manhattan Project physicist John Dunning. Even decades later, Bethe’s passionate urging against developing the Hydrogen bomb still resonates:“After such a [nuclear] war, nothing that resembled present civilization would remain … The fight for mere survival would dominate everything … Indeed it is likely that technology and science, having brought such utter misery upon man, would be suspected as works of the devil, and a new Dark Age would begin on earth. Can we who have always insisted on morality and human decency … introduce this weapon of total annihilation into the world?” Muckrock readers can now consult the words of Bethe and his deep insights on the destructive power of mankind, through a less flammable digital pdf of “The Hydrogen Bomb: II.” However, the original typeset remains unknown, lost in the melt of one’s imagination.