Biology
Breach
November 7, 2011, from San Francisco Chronicle
A Pacific Gas and Electric Co. natural gas pipeline ruptured Sunday afternoon during a high-pressure water test that ripped a hole in a Peninsula hillside, sending a deluge of mud and rocks onto Interstate 280 and partially closing the freeway for four hours.
The pipeline is the same one that exploded in San Bruno last year, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes.
November 7, 2011, from Center for Public Integrity
...Americans might expect the government to protect them from unsafe air. That hasn't happened. Insidious forms of toxic air pollution -- deemed so harmful to human health that a Democratic Congress and a Republican president sought to bring emissions under control more than two decades ago -- persist in hundreds of communities across the United States, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News and NPR shows.
Congress targeted nearly 200 chemicals in 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which the first Bush administration promised would lead to sharp reductions in cancer, birth defects and other serious ailments. But the agencies that were supposed to protect the public instead have left millions of people from California to Maine exposed to known risks -- sometimes for years.
November 7, 2009, from Catskill Daily Mail
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has made Lafarge Cement Plant's Title V Operating Air Permit available for public comment.
The permit, which is up for renewal, would limit mercury emissions at the plant to 176 pounds a year -- more than the company's own estimated emissions for 2008, which were 146 pounds....In September, state Wildlife Pathologist Ward Stone released his findings on mercury levels in the area around the Lafarge plant. He said that in parts per million, there was much more than the average level of mercury to be found and he also reported that he found mercury in everything he tested in the food chain, from grasshoppers to larger animals.
The plant is located in close proximity to both the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk junior and senior high schools.
November 7, 2009, from Los Angeles Times
In September I wrote about an unsettling incident in which I'd found high levels of lead in the chard I'd grown in a backyard planter box filled with store-bought soil. According to the head of the lab that did the testing, I shouldn't have eaten more than one-quarter pound of the leaves a day or I'd risk lead poisoning.... I decided to do some testing... The findings: None of the soils contained toxic levels of lead, zinc or arsenic. The bad news: All contained at least some contaminants...
November 7, 2009, from London Guardian
Two-year-old children are being exposed to dangerous levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals in domestic products such as rubber clogs and sun creams, according to an EU investigation being studied by the government.
The 327-page report says that while risks from "anti-androgen" and "oestrogen-like" substances in individual items have been recognised, the cumulative impact of such chemicals, particularly on boys, is being ignored....Phthalates, one of the main anti-androgen chemicals, which are used as softeners in soap, rubber shoes, bath mats and soft toys, have been blamed for blocking the action of testosterone in the womb and are alleged to cause low sperm counts, high rates of testicular cancer and malformations of the sexual organs.
|
Climate
Chaos
November 7, 2013, from CNN
Thousands of people in vulnerable areas of the Philippines are being relocated as the strongest storm on the planet so far this year spins toward the country.
With sustained winds of 305 kph (190 mph) and gusts as strong as 370 kph (230 mph), Super Typhoon Haiyan was churning across the Western Pacific toward the central Philippines as one of the most intense tropical cyclones ever recorded.
Its wind strength makes it equivalent to an exceptionally strong Category 5 hurricane... The storm is so large in diameter that clouds from it are affecting two-thirds of the country.
November 7, 2013, from Planet Ark
World governments are likely to recoil from plans for an ambitious 2015 climate change deal at talks next week, concern over economic growth at least partially eclipsing scientists' warnings of rising temperatures and water levels.
"We are in the eye of a storm," said Yvo de Boer, United Nations climate chief in 2009 when a summit in Copenhagen ended without agreement. After Copenhagen, nations targeted a 2015 deal to enter into force from 2020 with the goal of averting more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.
The outline of a more modest 2015 deal, to be discussed at annual U.N. climate talks in Warsaw on November 11-22, is emerging that will not halt a creeping rise in temperatures but might be a guide for tougher measures in later years.
November 7, 2013, from Wall Street Journal
Water shortages are threatening energy output and increasing costs in some of the world's most prolific sectors including shale gas in the U.S., crude oil in the Middle East and coal in China, and the situation is set to worsen, Wood Mackenzie said Thursday.
The energy sector is already the world's largest consumer of water for industrial purposes, using over 15 percent of global supply, and this is rising, the consulting firm said in a report, noting huge quantities are needed to increase pressure at oil fields, in technologies like hydraulic fracturing and to upgrade coal quality.
Growing water needs will pit energy companies against other users, and increase production costs significantly, it said.
November 7, 2011, from Pittsburg Post-Gazette
As development of the Marcellus Shale spreads across Pennsylvania, Penn State University has taken a central role in doing research about the industry, from its economic impact to its geological properties.
Some of the research is paid for by companies extracting the gas, according to petroleum geologists who do the work. But the state-related university, which took in $214 million in taxpayer funding last year, declined to say how much individual companies spend or what the money pays for.
Universities welcome the money and say there's no impact on their research, but critics are concerned that the lack of transparency is dangerous to independence.
|
Resource
Depletion
November 7, 2011, from Scitizen
We are entering what may be the longest stretch of no growth in world oil production since the early 1980s. But the reasons for that lack of growth differ in ways that ought to make us all uncomfortable.
Starting in 1980, production slumped because for the first time in history people needed less oil. After the huge oil price increases in the 1970s, cars suddenly got smaller. People became more careful about combining trips to save gas....
Six years from the ostensible topping out of conventional petroleum production, prices remain considerably higher. Oil prices finished 2005 around $50 a barrel. As of this writing, they are around $90 for Nymex crude and around $110 for Brent crude. This, of course, is exactly the opposite of the trend which occurred in the six years following the 1980 peak....
When I ask audiences how long a billion barrels of oil will last the world at current rates of consumption, I often get replies that range anywhere from three months to 5 years. The correct answer is 12 days. Just multiply these multi-billion-barrel discoveries by 12, and you'll realize right away that they are not going to overcome the constraints we are experiencing in oil supplies.
November 7, 2011, from Huffington Post
Some believe this lush farm in the unlikeliest of places also sits atop a partial solution to Southern California's water woes.
By tapping into an aquifer the size of Rhode Island under the 35,000-acre Cadiz ranch, proponents say they can supply 400,000 people with drinking water in only a few years....
"Do we need additional water supplies? Yes. Do we need groundwater storage? Yes," said Winston Hickox, a Cadiz board member who headed the California Environmental Protection Agency. "The question is 'OK, environmental community, what are your remaining concerns?' I don't know."
But conservationists including the Sierra Club remain worried. Critics say the company has misrepresented the size of the aquifer and that mining it could harm the threatened desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, as well as the nearby Mojave National Preserve which has some of the densest and oldest Joshua tree forests in the world. Concerns over rare desert species were also echoed by state Department of Fish and Game biologists in March.
Conservationists also worry tampering with an aquifer in a place where water is so scarce could cause dust storms.
|
Recovery
November 7, 2011, from Bloomberg Businessweek
...Cemeteries and funeral homes across the country have been offering eco-friendly death care, from biodegradable caskets to formaldehyde-free body preparation, for much of the past decade. But in recent years the green burial business has gotten bigger -- there are close to 300 funeral homes in 40 states offering green services in 2011, as opposed to roughly a dozen in 2008 -- and noticeably more eccentric. Just a few years ago a green funeral might have meant a pine or wicker coffin made without toxic materials. Today it could mean burying the dearly departed in an acorn-shaped urn made of recycled paper, erecting a tombstone with a solar-powered Serenity Panel that plays the deceased's favorite songs and videos, or casting out to sea a "reef ball" made of cement mixed with cremated ashes -- your loved one's and others'.
|
ApocaDocs