ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Biology Breach" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Biology Breach scenario and stories]
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Sun, Jun 26, 2011
from New York Times:
Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush
Natural gas companies have been placing enormous bets on the wells they are drilling, saying they will deliver big profits and provide a vast new source of energy for the United States.
But the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells.
In the e-mails, energy executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts and question whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves....
"Money is pouring in" from investors even though shale gas is "inherently unprofitable," an analyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investment company, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail. "Reminds you of dot-coms."
"The word in the world of independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and the economics just do not work," an analyst from IHS Drilling Data, an energy research company, wrote in an e-mail on Aug. 28, 2009.
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Madoff... Enron... Disaster Capitalism... Inverse Credit Default Swaps... what is the best comparator?
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Sat, Jun 25, 2011
from SightlineDaily:
Trouble on the Half Shell
Four summers ago, Sue Cudd couldn't keep a baby oyster alive.
She'd start with hundreds of millions of oyster larvae in the tanks at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts, Oregon. Only a handful would make it....
A hatchery that has supplied seafood businesses for three decades had virtually nothing to sell for months, said Cudd, who owns the hatchery.
"They would just sort of fade away... It was really devastating. We're kind of the independent growers' hatchery, and we had always been reliable up until that point. People were just shocked. I heard a lot of times how it was ruining people's businesses."
It's tough to say with scientific certainty that ocean acidification is the sole cause of the die-offs that have plagued two of the Northwest's three major oyster hatcheries in the last few years.
But this much seems clear: young oysters have a hard time surviving in conditions that will only become more widespread as carbon dioxide from cars, coal plants and other industries cause the fundamental chemistry of the ocean to become more acidic. ...
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Thankfully, there's news about the Royal Couple I can focus on!
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Fri, Jun 24, 2011
from The Indypendent:
What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?
While the U.S. media has been occupied with Anthony Weiner, the Republican presidential candidates and Bristol Palin's memoir, coverage of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has practially fallen off the map. Poor mainstream media coverage of Japan's now months-long struggle to gain control over the Fukushima disaster has deprived Americans of crucial information about the risks of nuclear power following natural disasters....
Months of spraying seawater on the plant's three melted-down fuel cores -- and the spent fuel stored on site -- to try and cool them has produced 26 million of gallons of radioactive wastewater, and no place to put it.
After a struggle, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), finally managed to put in place a system to filter radioactive particles out of the wastewater, but it broke down soon after it started operating. A filter that was supposed to last a month plugged up with radioactive material after just five hours, indicating there is more radioactive material in the water than previously believed. Meanwhile, TEPCO is running out of space to store the radioactive water, and may be forced to again dump contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. ...
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I think the media has been distracted by covering the ocean scientists who can't believe what they're seeing. "Shocking" declines that they didn't expect for another century or two. They fear it is the ocean's death sentence. You heard about that, right?
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Thu, Jun 23, 2011
from Discover:
Are Toxins in Seafood Causing ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's?
The cause of ALS is unknown. Though of little solace to the afflicted, Stommel used to offer one comforting fact: ALS was rare, randomly striking just two of 100,000 people a year.
Then, a couple of years ago, in an effort to gain more insight into the disease, Stommel enlisted students to punch the street addresses of about 200 of his ALS patients into Google Earth. The distribution of cases that emerged on the computer-generated map of New England shocked him. In numbers far higher than national statistics predicted, his current and deceased patients' homes were clustered around lakes and other bodies of water....
"I started thinking maybe there was something in the water," Stommel says.
That "something," he now suspects, could be the environmental toxin beta-methylamino-L-alanine, or BMAA. This compound
is produced by cyanobacteria, the blue-green algae that live in soil, lakes, and oceans. Cyanobacteria are consumed by fish and other aquatic creatures. Recent studies have found BMAA in seafood, suggesting that certain diets and locations may put people at particular risk. More worrisome, blooms of cyanobacteria are becoming increasingly common, fueling fears that their toxic by-product may be quietly fomenting an upsurge in ALS--and possibly other neurological disorders like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's as well. ...
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We can start calling them "TFC" illnesses: Top of the Food Chain.
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Thu, Jun 23, 2011
from ChronicleHerald:
Canada single-handedly keeps asbestos off UN hazardous chemicals list
Canada has single-handedly blocked listing chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous chemical, the United Nations confirmed Wednesday, even as the Conservative government maintained its silence back home.
At a summit in Switzerland, Canada's delegation ended days of silence and speculation by opposing the inclusion of asbestos on a UN treaty called the Rotterdam Convention.
"Yes, I can confirm they intervened in the chemicals contact group meeting this afternoon and opposed listing," Michael Stanley-Jones of the UN Environment Program said in an email.
Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan also initially opposed the listing. However, Stanley-Jones said one-by-one they switched positions after India announced it would support the listing.
That left Canada as the lone voice against the listing.
"All had consented when Canada announced its position opposing listing," Stanley-Jones said....
"The Conservative government is living in some other universe in which asbestos is safe, while we spend billions of dollars in Canada ripping it out of our homes."
Until Wednesday, it appeared Canada's strategy was to abstain while other asbestos-exporting countries blocked the move. ...
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O Conservatives, I single-fingeredly salute you.
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Wed, Jun 22, 2011
from BioCycle:
DuPont Herbicide Label Says 'Do Not Compost' Grass Clippings
So when Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont began aggressively marketing a new post-emergent broadleaf herbicide to landscapers, lawn maintenance professionals and turfgrass managers -- under the name Imprelis and containing the active ingredient aminocyclopyrachlor -- some organics recyclers became concerned....
The red flag wasn't so much that the active ingredient sounded to the ear very much like other chemicals that have plagued the industry in recent years (and is in fact quite similar chemically). It had more to do with an ominous label restriction, which states:
"Do not use grass clippings from treated areas for mulching or compost, or allow for collection to compost facilities. Grass clippings must either be left on the treated area, or, if allowed by local yard waste regulations, disposed of in the trash. Applicators must give verbal or written notice to property owners/property managers/residents not to use grass clippings from treated turf for mulch or compost." ...
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Is there an "away" that I can throw that trash?
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Mon, Jun 20, 2011
from SciDev.net:
Small hydro could add up to big damage
A belief that 'small' hydropower systems are a source of clean energy with little or no environmental problems is driving the growing interest in mini, micro, and pico hydro systems that generate from less than 5 kilowatts up to 10 megawatts of energy.
Hydropower appears to be the cleanest and most versatile of renewable energy sources. But experience shows that optimism about its potential can be misplaced....
By the end of 1970s it had become clear that the very optimistic, almost reverential, attitude towards hydropower projects that had prevailed during the early 1950s was misplaced. These projects damaged the environment as seriously as did fossil-fuelled power projects....
A turbine here or there may not affect the river noticeably; but if we are to use the technology extensively and put turbines in every other waterfall in a river, and make small dams on most of its tributaries or feeder streams, the environmental degradation -- per kilowatt of power generated -- will likely be much higher than that caused by large hydropower systems.
The factors that harm a river habitat with large hydropower projects are also at play with small projects: interrupted water flow, barriers to animal movement, water loss from evaporation and loss of biodiversity from the sacrificed portion of river are some examples. ...
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There goes all my plans for our Three Gullies Dam.
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