Thu, Nov 11, 2010 from Yale360: China Turns to Biogas to Ease Impact of Factory Farms His farm is also different than the American pig farms you usually detect with your nose before you see any animals: it smells only faintly of waste. He says that's because it's an ecological CAFO, which sounds a bit like an oxymoron. "The whole system is pollution-free, zero-emission, and energy saving," says Ye. "The key is the biogas digester." Biogas digestion takes the nuisances of most large animal farms -- solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes -- and turns them into resources that farmers can use and even sell. Raw pig waste is usually a liability for farmers: It's full of pathogens and compounds like ammonia that can ruin crops and soil if applied directly. It also is prone to running off into waterways and leaching into groundwater.... The South China Sea today is largely a dead zone with frequent red tides and little remaining life because of run-off from upstream agriculture.... Ye thinks his biogas digester may be part of the solution. It cost about $600,000, but Ye only paid for half while the central, provincial, and local governments picked up the rest with subsidies.... To avert future environmental disasters like leaks or spills of wastewater from large farms and to capture methane, the government has decreed that all farms with more than 1,000 cows, 10,000 pigs or 100,000 chickens must install biogas digesters. In Zhejiang province, one of China's richest and most environmentally progressive, the local government recently decided that all farms with more than 50 pigs must have biogas digesters.
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Y'know, in this country we'd call that socialism. We like our freedom to do whatever the hell we want to others.
Tue, Nov 9, 2010 from Associated Press: PNC To Halt Mountaintop Mining Financing PNC Bank has announced it will stop financing projects that extract coal using a controversial form of surface mining known as mountaintop removal.
The Pittsburgh-based company is the latest of a group of major commercial lenders that have backed away from underwriting mountaintop removal projects after pressure from environmental activists.
PNC said in a statement it will not fund individual projects or "provide credit to coal producers whose primary extraction method is" mountaintop removal.
The surface mining practice has for years attracted the ire of activists and Appalachian residents, who say it contributes to environmental degradation and water pollution. In June, a group of 50 activists gathered at a downtown PNC bank branch in Lexington to protest the bank's alleged lending to mountaintop removal projects. ...
Especially given election results, PNC's decision is delightfully Politically Not Correct.
Mon, Nov 8, 2010 from LA Times: Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming skeptics Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.
On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.... "The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed." ...
Oh, right -- that "data" thing scientists rattle on about.