Coal mining does great harm to human life — not just in the mines, but in the surrounding communities.

In what may be a death blow to the coal industry, a large group of scientists tested water and studied peer-reviewed environmental and health data in Appalachia, and gave their opinions on coal mining last week in the journal Science. (Abstract here).  Science is a peer-reviewed publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the top journals in the world.   Their findings explode the myth of “clean coal” and finds that mountaintop removal is so damaging it should stop.  The scientists said they were puzzled the media doesn’t report on this damage more often, despite the “debates”.

The 11-author study, “Mountaintop Mining Consequences” found in the conclusion that: Research priorities to reduce Appalachian health disparities should focus on reducing disparities in the coalfields. The human cost of the Appalachian coal mining economy outweighs its economic benefits. They also found that reclamation and reforestation of a mined site to pre-mined conditions has never happened, despite claims by coal mine owners.

Their recommendation amounts to: shut the coal mines down.   Coal mining is irreparably damaging the environment and harming, sometimes killing, the people of Appalachia;  men, women and children.  The health risks are across the board.  The environmental damage is permanent.  Their conclusion doesn’t even include the burning of the coal and the storage of the coal sludge waste, which are also toxic and very dangerous to human health.  A couple of excerpts of the paper follow.  First, in a press release titled, Eminent Group of Scientists Call for Moratorium on Issuance of Mountaintop Mining Permits:

“Based on a comprehensive analysis of the latest scientific findings and new data, a group of the nation’s leading environmental scientists are calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to stay all new mountaintop mining permits. In the January 8 edition of the journal Science, they argue that peer-reviewed research unequivocally documents irreversible environmental impacts from this form of mining which also exposes local residents to a higher risk of serious health problems.

The authors — hydrologists, ecologists and engineers — are internationally recognized scientists, including several members of the National Academy of Sciences. They argue that the U.S. should take a global leadership role on the issue, as surface mining in many developing countries is expected to grow extensively in the next decade.

“The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable,” says lead author Dr. Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. “Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes.”

One thing is clear (and was before this study) — coal is dirty and harmful to human health. We need to stop mining it and burning it because it’s killing [...]

Flying less won’t be a big deal to some people, but to business and the military it will be a big challenge. Developing massively polluting military transportation has been a big, profitable business for the U.S. and the Defense Dept.  will probably be the last to change.   We could solve a lot of the military emissions problem by ending our wars, but even that wouldn’t stop the DoD from ordering development of new military aircraft for sale to other countries.

Eventually, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, people are going to have to fly less.   Airplane traffic accounts for a large amount of global warming, about 15-20%.  That vacation to your favorite island by air might become an impossibility in the future.  (Has anyone invented the Holodeck yet?)

Naturally, it would be better for the climate if people telecommuted rather than fly somewhere in person, when possible — at least to climate change conferences!  The Copenhagen climate conference had an enormous carbon footprint:

The Copenhagen climate talks will generate more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference, equivalent to the annual output of over half a million Ethiopians, figures commissioned by hosts Denmark show.  Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights.

You’d think people who really want to solve climate change would stop adding to it by encouraging so many people fly to that conference, which was in a rather remote location for most of the world.   Some people took trains,  but of course that wasn’t possible for everyone.  Why did so many people who weren’t delegates or heads of state have to be there in person when our remote media capabilities have never been better? The air travel itself didn’t exactly set a great example for the rest of the world and the footprint handed climate skeptics a lot of ammo.  Air travel is going to be a real barrier in solving climate change, not just commercial air travel but private jets and military aircraft, which will probably be exempt from any carbon trading.  The military and commercial airliners are taking what steps they can to reduce emissions, like landing differently, but eventually they will need to replace their fuel with something that emits no carbon at all, or be taxed for every mile they fly.  If that happens, only the very rich will be able to fly anywhere.

According to Climate Progress, citing the journal Nature, aircraft vapor trails are responsible for 15-20% of Arctic Warming.

Nature (subs. req’d) reports on an analysis presented by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson to the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting last week:

The first analysis of emissions from commercial airline flights shows that they are responsible for 4–8% of surface global warming since surface air temperature records began in 1850 — equivalent to a temperature increase of 0.03–0.06 °C overall.

The analysis, by [...]

This visualization is a time-series of the global distribution and variation of the concentration of mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide observed by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the NASA Aqua spacecraft. For comparison, it is overlain by a graph of the seasonal variation and interannual increase of carbon dioxide observed at the Mauna Loa, Hawaii observatory. This is nothing less than the people on earth using the sky as a toxic dump for waste from their energy and transportation sources. How could anyone think this is OK and would have no consequences? This visualization was done in late 2009.

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Scientific Visualization Studio

Her boyfriend, Sheeni says, writes “futurist percussive poetry,” and Nick agrees: “He certainly seems to have a gift for smashing ungraceful words together and deeming it a poem.”

From the new film Youth in Revolt, starring Michael Cera

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Below is the most spot-on intro to a climate change article I have ever read.  Lesson: It’s time to stop beating around the bushfire and get real. (There are many behinds the scenes climate villians not included here, including politicians and their legions of non-questioning accolytes.)

“The science of climate change is pretty basic: humans dig up fossilized carbon to fuel power plants and internal combustion machines, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.  Result: greenhouse effect global heating. Around 50% of all the species on the planet are predicted to become extinct by 2100 in the CO2-as-usual model. Our own species will face drought, famine, rising tides, soaring temperatures, calamity and chaos. Hundreds of millions will become climate refugees. Billions may die from starvation, genocide and war. We have precious little time to mitigate this looming global catastrophe.

Those of us still denying the depressing facts are either tragically stupid or profoundly corrupt or both. If there’s anyone alive to write the history of corporate funded climate science denial, the following list of 15 Heinous Climate Villains will, by the sheer magnitude of death their lies wrought, make the infamous dictatorial monsters of the 20th century seem like incompetent children. Enjoy!”

The following list is of the “worst climate villians” or those who are pushing the lie that global warming is a hoax and/or we have nothing to worry about and/or are the world’s biggest polluters. You know the type — people like Rep. Michele Bachmann who say that CO2 is good for us because it’s a natural part of nature. Like butterflies and lambs. I used “public” in the title because many villians work behinds the scenes, and much money changes hands. Bribes and increased pollution result. Anyway, here is the list, compiled by Michael Roddy and Ian Murphy (of the Buffalo Beast and reprinted at Alternet).  These people are the enemy of every living thing on earth.

1)Don Blankenship, CEO Massey Energy

Misdeeds: According to the EPA, Massey’s mountaintop removal coal operation is filthier than a Tiger Woods text. When a West Virginia Circuit Court fined the energy giant $50 million, it wasn’t a problem for Blankenship, because he owns the West Virginia Supreme Court.  Massey Energy is the fourth largest coal company in the US.

2) George Will, Columnist

Misdeeds: The errors Will has committed to print over the years are both more numerous and irresponsible than his bow tie collection, for which he also feels no remorse. He claimed in a February 2009 Washington Post column that “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.” The Center responded: “We do not know where George Will is getting his information…[out of his ass] . . .  global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979.”

3) James Inhofe, Senator from Oklahoma

Stupider than all the world’s dumb blonde jokes put together, Inhofe struggles to understand [...]

The latest Big Idea for storing CO2 from carbon capture and sequestration or CCS (still a technology in development) is to force it into basalt, which is volcanic rock. This rock is plentiful off the U.S. east coast, where 1/4 of Americans live. But obviously not the whole country lives on the east coast, so this basalt won’t help anyone else in the country, unless they can move the basalt.  Also, many people who live on the coasts might be moving inland as climate change escalates in future decades.

Reportedly, basalt can absorb a huge amount of CO2 (though not all that we emit for the next 100 years)  and after it’s absorbed, it turns into a limestone-like rock.  That means there is no danger of the CO2 escaping. The problem with this seemingly good idea is that they aren’t even started on this yet, it’s merely an idea, and we don’t have time to depend on unproven technologies to mitigate climate change at this late date. We are in a climate crisis situation, trying to avoid tipping points, and this process and technology development is yet to be made and implemented. The Waxman-Markey bill devotes more money to CCS, inexplicably, than renewable energy, but that doesn’t mean we have to throw money away on this now. We can throw money away on it later. It would make more sense now to put money into things we know will work to try to get the carbon dioxide levels down as quickly as possible. CCS could take 20-30 years to develop and then there is no guarantee it can be done on a large enough scale to have the necessary impact.

This is discussed in the latest Climate Files podcast and the article below from SolveClimate.   The article’s author claims:

A July 2008 study by the same researchers found that 208 billion metric tons could be stored in the offshore basalt formations of the U.S. Northwest’s Juan de Fuca tectonic plate — that is as much as 150 years’ worth of U.S. emissions. . . . . In a study released Monday, ABI Research predicted that new CCS projects will keep 146 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Their estimates are based on markets for carbon emissions allowances encouraging firms to seek out technologies like CCS to limit their emissions.

The problem with that claim is that the U.S. emits about  7.1 billion metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) of greenhouse gases per year,  (my estimate of 5.7 billion metric tons in the podcast was low) and that means only about 34 years of U.S. emissions could be forced into basalt, if the procedure even works.  Considering that our emissions have to peak and then taper off starting in about 10 years or less, and the technology might not be developed for 20 or more years, it’s hard to see where planning to store CO2 in basalt gets us.  Look at all the money they want to [...]

Was she inspired by the Rome ‘Butterfly’ exhibit which included this work by Balla?

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Lines of Force: The Futurist Influence on Modern British Art
- Emily Braun, a distinguished professor at Hunter College and CUNY’s Graduate Center and curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 – 7pm
Wolfsonian-FIU
1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach
FREE

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Braun will explore the works of British Vorticists on view in the museum’s exhibit “Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939” in the context of the style, iconography and cult of speed invented by the Italian Futurists.

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Kambayashi/AP - Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama speaks during his first press conference of the year.

Japan released its New Policy Agenda of Japan on Climate Change in English in mid-December.  (Download the agenda here).   According to their document, it both verified their proposed reductions of 25% and proposed new substantive reductions.

“. . . . Prime Minister Hatoyama stated that the new mid-term target to reduce emissions by 25% compared to 1990 levels was hinged on establishing “a fair and effective international framework in which all major economies participate,” but made no clarification whatsoever of his standards for “fairness.” In fact, perhaps equitability criteria have not yet been defined even within the government. . . .

“The new mid-term target, or “30% reductions below 2005 levels” represents the most stringent of the four options discussed in the Mid-Term Target Review Committee under the former administration. It had once been dismissed because it would have too large an impact on the economy and the policy tools and scale that it called for were unrealistic.”

The U.S. is only proposing a 17% reduction in emissions based on 2005 levels, which is about a 4% reduction based on 1990 levels.  It must be tough for the U.S. government to be “bettered” in this way by countries as small but ambitious as Japan.  Can’t the U.S.  do more?  We need to at least try.  More ideas from the Japanese agenda:

Actually the number of 17% of the U.S. is with respect to 2005.

Vision for a Developed-Developing Country Cooperation Model: For International Contribution by Industry to Climate change Solutions
(1) Industry should also consider ways to “bridge” developed and developing countries. Contributions should be centered on substantively reducing GHG emissions through energy and environmental technology transfer and international intersectoral cooperation and agreement and supplying products that will contribute to creating a global low-carbon consumption society in terms of LCA (life cycle assessment).

(2) Japan, the US and China should launch a model project of developed-developing country cooperation based on public-private partnership in areas including energy conservation, renewable energies and nuclear energy. Reductions generated in the project should be trilaterally accredited among the three countries as offset credits that could be used for the purpose of staying in compliance with domestic schemes.

(3) Furthermore, industry could also look into setting up a new organization provisionally called the Institution for Engineering
Solutions for Climate change, which would be based on public-private partnership to promote the projects described above, to implement the Voluntary Action Plan in wider international dimensions and to collect benchmarking data.

They make a good point below about individuals versus countries (which is also an idea I like since Copenhagen collapsed into political fighting Individuals and their cities and states will make up a huge part of fighting climate change, but how much is possible is yet unknown).

However, in order to employ equalized emissions per capita as an equitability standard, fundamental rules under the Kyoto Protocol [...]

GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases

A storm of Republican protest is erupting over the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases pose a public danger, with the latest wave coming from a state among those most at risk from the effects of climate change.

Republicans are stepping up their efforts to stop climate change legislation. They are also continuing their campaigns of propaganda to create confusion in the public’s mind about global warming.

We really have to keep pushing back at the deniers and climate change skeptics before they do any more harm to public opinion, because they are pulling out all the stops.  Their new campaign is “CO2 is Green”.   This is from Media Matters:

A new group named “CO2 is Green” (really) is contending that “CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 makes Earth green because it supports all plant life. It is Earth’s greatest airborne fertilizer.”  (Astoundingly inaccurate!)

The Washington Post wrote:

The man behind the latest entry to the climate legislation wars is H. Leighton Steward, a veteran oil industry executive, co-author of the “Sugar Busters!” dieting books, and winner of an Environmental Protection Agency award for a report on damage being done to Mississippi wetlands. Now retired, he says he wants to “get the message out there” that carbon dioxide, which the Supreme Court has ruled a pollutant and which most scientists regard as a dangerous greenhouse gas, “is a net benefit for the planet.”

Steward has joined forces with Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties. Its revenues were $291 million in 2008.

Not only have Steward and Robertson founded “CO2 is Green” to take misinformation to the airwaves, they’ve also launched “Plants Need CO2″ to educate Americans about the joys of carbon pollution.

They have formed two groups — CO2 Is Green designated for advocacy and Plants Need CO2 for education — with about $1 million. Plants Need CO2 has applied for 501(c)(3) tax status, so that contributions would qualify as charitable donations, said Natural Resource Partners general counsel Wyatt L. Hogan, who also serves on the group’s board.

This has to be fought against.  Some kind of climate legislation has to get  passed this year, preferably a tax and dividend bill.  (See the Larson bill in the House. America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009).   The cap and trade bill isn’t good enough because it won’t right climate change aggressively enough,  but we can work on making that stronger.

In the meantime, working against us will be this denier cult, which is really driven by money and greed. (Join the CO2 is Green Facebook group here and have some fun setting them straight.)  Wherever people see climate deniers online, my recommendation is to respond to them with as many facts as you can.*   They are using new tactics, straw man arguments, red herrings, blatant lies, you name it, [...]

Lisa Murkowski, R-Nutville, Alaska

The EPA is finally doing its job, after 8 years of not doing its job. The Bush EPA was a disaster and bad for human health.  The new EPA is a complete 180 from the old one.

That makes some people in Washington, D.C. quite unhappy.  Several Congressmen are trying to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, which is the job of the EPA.

The Congressmen were used to the EPA being a do-nothing agency or worse, such as when they gave the “all clear” for air quality very shortly after 9/11.  We know now that the air was not safe to breath and many people who worked in NYC at “ground zero” are now dying of lung diseases and cancer.  The EPA’s job is to protect the public from dangerous and hazardous environmental issues that can be controlled; like pollution, like air quality, like water pollution, and like CO2.  If we put CO2 into the air, we can stop doing it or do much less of it.  But it’s Congressional Republicans, mainly, that don’t want the EPA to do their job. They are worried it will negatively impact their state’s workers (or big corporation donors like Massey Coal, Exxon, etc.).  Their obstructionism against EPA regulations is growing, and it is happening pre-emptively, because the EPA hasn’t even begun to regulate CO2 yet.

The other reason the EPA has an obligation to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases is that they made an endangerment finding on ruling of the Supreme Court of the U.S. back in 2007. The Bush EPA did nothing about that ruling but the Obama EPA acted as ordered to:  they published an endangerment finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases threaten the health and welfare of Americans and it follows that they should be regulated. That’s a simplification of a complex legal case that was 66 pages long and passed by a 5-4 vote, but it did pass.  (Details on that below).

But now the Republicans in Congress are having a fit because they’re worried about re-election.  Such is politics in the U.S. — elections trump all common sense and everything else, including the future of the human race, or if we even have one.  We have to not let these Congressmen and women  stand in the way of the EPA’s potential and probably regulations of greenhouse gas.  The health and lives of everyone are at stake.  As noted recently:

A storm of Republican protest is erupting over the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases pose a public danger, with the latest wave coming from a state among those most at risk from the effects of climate change.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of the party’s rising stars, launched a letter-writing offensive from Baton Rouge this week to protest the possibility of EPA regulation that the finding now allows. His own letter focuses on the economic dislocation he says such regulation might bring; it doesn’t mention the economic threats climate change poses [...]

Following the UN climate summit known as COP15, the international youth climate movement sent the following message to world leaders: “You’re not done yet. And neither are we.”

Now keep in mind that world leaders are not the only type of leaders we have that we can work with to solve climate change.  For that reason, to spur people to action, it might be a positive thing that people perceive Copenhagen/COP15 as a failure.  That puts the responsibility back on to us, and on to everyone else in every country.   We now know for sure we don’t have the luxury of sitting back and letting the world’s leaders solve climate change for us.  The decision-making and idea generation also falls back to every one on the planet.  We all need to think more creatively about what we can do and who we can work with.  This might kick-start people into starting work that was previously only an idea. What we can visualize, plan, invent and solve with others will have a big impact in the next 10 years.

We also have city, state and federal leaders.  Every country, every state and province and city can do its own environmental work.   A group in my city just won a “Make a Difference” award for promoting sustainable farming and local food, and working with new citizens from countries like Somalia to do that.  Things like that will help solve climate change.  It’s all about changing what people think is important.  My state leaders are putting together ideas for transportation that will take much of the pressure off people commuting and traveling in their own vehicles.  They are planning more light rail and new high-speed trains  to connect the people of Minnesota with Chicago and Winnepeg and all cities in between. That would be huge progress for transportation in my state, where nearly everyone owns a car and depends on it every day, due to current lack of mass transit, or even something as simple as dependable bus service.  Cars and trucks are responsible for almost a quarter of annual US emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Evolving and solving private transportation issues are essential to solving climate change.

What we all do matters.

It’s like Pete Seeger said to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.

“. . . . today we’ll end this tribute to Pete Seeger in his own words. Back in our interview in 2004, the last question I asked Pete.

AMY GOODMAN: And for someone who isn’t so hopeful, who is listening to this right now, trying to find their way, what would you say?

PETE SEEGER: Realize that little things lead to bigger things. That’s what Seeds is all about. And this wonderful parable in the New Testament: the sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don’t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don’t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply [...]

A new year, a new decade, has us wondering what the next will bring. This video excerpt from Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan, comments on our tiny place in the universe, and our history. Think of all the blood that has been spilled — for a speck of a dot. (a paraphrase)  Humans aren’t really all that significant or important, but we are slowly changing an entire planet’s climate and rendering it unsupportive of life as we know it.  We are sort of like suicidal parasites.

The future is now being formed in the minds of people who see that we need to live another way in the coming decades, starting soon, or people won’t live at all. I hope that in this new decade, these ideas start to be taken seriously.  People should not be in battle with nature, but realize it’s where we get everything necessary for life from,  and take much better care of it.  We don’t have a spare planet.

The following is excerpted from James Hansen’s “Storms of My Grandchildren,” the climate scientist’s new book about what is needed to stop global warming.  [This is a book I got recently and from reading it so far, one I definitely recommend. You can order it from Amazon by clicking on it in the right-hand column.]  Hansen never thought Copenhagen was the right approach or that it would amount to much, so he’s always had a “let’s move on and do something” approach to global warming, which is what his book is about.

“We have finally arrived at the main story: what we need to do to solve the climate problem, and how we can save a future for our grandchildren.

The problem demands a solution with a clear framework and a strong backbone. Yes, I know that halting and reversing the growth of carbon dioxide in the air requires an “all hands on deck” approach– there is no “silver bullet” solution for world energy requirements.

People need to make basic changes in the way the live. Countries need to cooperate. Matters as seemingly intractable as population must be addressed. And the required changes must be economically efficient. Such a pathway exists and is achievable.

Let’s define what a workable backbone and framework should look like. The essential backbone is a rising price on carbon applied at the source (the mine, wellhead, or port of entry), such that it would affect all activities that use fossil fuels, directly or indirectly.

Our goal is a global phaseout of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions. We have shown, quantitatively, that the only practical way to achieve an acceptable carbon dioxide level is to disallow the use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels (such as tar sands and oil shale) unless the resulting carbon is captured and stored. We realize that remaining, readily available pools of oil and gas will be used during the transition to a post-fossil-fuel world. But [...]

In the United States, cheap fossil fuel has eroded communities. We’re the first people with no real practical need for each other. Everything comes from a great distance through anonymous and invisible transactions. We’ve taken that to be a virtue, but it’s as much a curse. Americans are not very satisfied with their lives, and the loss of community is part of that.
— Bill McKibben

Cars, cars everywhere

That’s a quote from an interview with activist and author Bill McKibben.  He’s right about cheap fossil fuels, and the erosion has not just been social. It’s also been an erosion of our healthy atmosphere. The cheaper gas became, the more people drove, flew in planes, turned on the air conditioning and cranked up the heat.  When something is cheap, people obviously feel they can use more of it.  Cheap indicates plentiful, even if it’s not true.  If gasoline and jet fuel were much more expensive (and they will be some day soon anyway) via a tax, it would seem a very bad idea to waste it.  Obviously, wasting non-renewable resources is a bad idea to begin with.

Raising the price of gasoline and all fossil fuels is a no-brainer way to reduce their use.  Taxing gasoline would be a simple way to reduce the use of it and we’ll probably see that start to happen in 2010, or 2011, as the EPA cuts down on emissions from all sources as they are expected to under the Clean Air Act. As with reducing cigarette smoke in public places, this will also improve air quality and public health!  (And Republicans should love this idea, because improving public habits to improve health is their health reform plan.)  Actually, some Republicans do like the idea quite a bit.  Republican Dick Lugar, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a Republican from Indiana, and wrote this for the Washington Post:  Raise the gas tax, a revenue-neutral way to treat our oil addiction. He wrote:

“A gasoline tax is transparent, easy to administer and targeted at the one sector that burns most of our oil. We know it would cut imports. When gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon last year, Americans chose to use less, leading to a major drop in gasoline consumption. The gains from accurately priced gasoline would grow as Americans demanded more fuel-efficient vehicles, chose non-petroleum alternatives to power them and found public transit options that work. Pricing gasoline to reflect its true cost to the nation would help spur a vast market in which oil alternatives such as advanced biofuels would become competitive and innovation would flourish.”

He’s absolutely right.  Taxing coal, natural gas, and putting a price on all carbon will be the next logical steps.

Solar EVC

It makes sense to focus heavily on cars,  since nearly everyone in the U.S. drives personal vehicles, and much more than in other countries. We could easily cut emissions by taxing gasoline more, and that could lead to more money for states [...]

Thank you for your continued support and interest in ItalianFuturism.org.  Your scholarship and enthusiasm has made this year’s centenary celebrations a success.

Capitalizing on this year’s momentum, I look forward to providing you with up-to-the-minute information in the new year.

?

Grazie per il vostro continuo sostegno e interesse per ItalianFuturism.org. La vostri studi e l’entusiasmo ha reso le celebrazioni del centenario di quest’anno un successo.

Capitalizzando sulla moto di quest’anno, sono lieti di fornirle con informazioni aggiornate nel nuovo anno.

AUGURI,

Jessica Palmieri

Please consider supporting ItalianFuturism.org

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First of all, the Futurism Now podcast is moving to Climate Files Radio.   It will return in January 2010.

Second, if anyone reading this can attend EPA public hearings in Atlanta, you can witness the  EPA public hearings on air quality standards for sulfur dioxide.   Proposed revisions are here.  This looks like another step in the process of regulating emissions from gas, oil and especially, coal plants.  The hearings are January 5 and the address is below.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will hold a public hearing on the agency’s proposal to strengthen the nation’s sulfur dioxide (SO2) standards. Exposure to SO2 can aggravate asthma, cause respiratory difficulties, and result in emergency room visits and hospitalization. People with asthma, children, and the elderly are especially vulnerable to SO2’s effects. EPA is taking comment on a proposal to establish a new national one-hour SO2 standard, between 50 and 100 parts per billion. This standard is designed to protect against short-term exposures ranging from five minutes to 24 hours. Because the revised standards would be more protective, EPA is proposing to revoke the current 24-hour and annual SO2 health standards.”

(more below including a map where you can look up your county’s sulfur pollution)

The EPA has a lot of information on its site concerning sulfur dioxide, and no matter where you are in the country, you can look up your county’s sulfur dioxide output.  It’s obviously a big human health concern, and most sulfur dioxide comes from burning coal. Here are some of the health concerns caused by sulfur dioxide and burning coal:

Current scientific evidence links short-term exposures to SO2, ranging from 5 minutes to 24 hours, with an array of adverse respiratory effects including bronchoconstriction and increased asthma symptoms.  These effects are particularly important for asthmatics at elevated ventilation rates (e.g., while exercising or playing.)

Studies also show a connection between short-term exposure and increased visits to emergency departments and hospital admissions for respiratory illnesses, particularly in at-risk populations including children, the elderly, and asthmatics.

. . . . .   SOx can react with other compounds in the atmosphere to form small particles. These particles penetrate deeply into sensitive parts of the lungs and can cause or worsen respiratory disease, such as emphysema and bronchitis, and can aggravate existing heart disease, leading to increased hospital admissions and premature death.

Regulatory actions by EPA on sulfur dioxide can be found here.  You can find your county on the EPA’s map to find out your local sulfur dioxide pollution and what is causing it.  The map is here.

In my county, the total emissions of sulfur dioxide from fossil fuel emissions (not including gasoline) in 2005 was 1506 tons.  In a neighboring county, where there is a coal plant (the 13th dirtiest coal plant in the country) the total emissions of sulfur dioxide that year was only 78 tons, but from electricity generation it was 22,840 tons!  The coal plant is near the city of Becker, Minnesota and [...]

A final assessment of Copenhagen analyzes the process and breaks the conference into two phases.  It’s worth analyzing whether a world-wide conference run by the UN and political leaders trying to reach a political and economic agreement is the best way to approach this problem.  It’s certainly not the only way to approach a global warming solution.  Immediate action is called for, at this point.

The first phase they analyzed was the first week — chaotic.  Nothing was getting done. The second phase was more political and an accord was arrived at, but that was not the best outcome either.

The outcome of the second phase, when a small group – around 30 – heads of State took the lead, is a minimalist agreement, disappointing in substance, and hectic in process. It proves that the pileup of countries redlines did not leave room for an ambitious agreement: the agreement found is somehow the lowest common denominator. This is not the deal we hoped, but given the context, and especially given the perception that States had of their own national interests, this was probably the best possible deal.

You can download the entire analysis here. (PDF)   It was done by the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI).

Sonar image of methane plumes rising from the Arctic Ocean floor (Image: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton)

The agreements so far are great, but they are static, and non-action based.  The world needs real action on global warming.  That means real leadership, on a country-by-country basis.  Real leaders need to tell citizens what can be done, and how they can be involved, for starters.

The reason we can’t wait for the next COP or the plodding pace of the UN meetings anymore is that we are running out of time.   The methane that is escaping from the Arctic sea, as it warms up,  especially means we don’t have time to wait for the countries to get together again to start cutting emissions.   In the U.S., we need to support the EPA’s immediate regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and other actions like re-forestation (and ending deforestation) to undo the damage of coal plants and all the damage of burning fossil fuels.   This will cost money but we can’t let that be a barrier to action.   Every country has to act now, and stop waiting for a global agreement which may never come, and if it does come, is likely to be too weak.  Individually, countries may arrive at their own conclusions out of necessity like an obvious situation of dwindling resources, or flooding damage, and take stronger action.  The many demands within these conferences have gotten the world only to a stalemate.

Methane is being released from the sea floor due to global warming and no one is sure how much is down there, but scientists know it’s “megatons“.  Depending on how fast this methane is released, this could very quickly accelerate climate change.  See below for new information on the latest methane threat.

New [...]

This EPA has done more in the last 8 months than the previous EPA did in the last 8 years. They are currently deciding whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. You can weigh in with your comments, but the deadline for that is December 28th. This is the easy way to send your comment, from CREDO:

Earlier this month, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency issued a formal declaration that global warming pollution is a threat to public health and welfare — something that the rest of us have known for a long, long time.

The way is cleared for the Clean Air Act to become an crucial weapon in our fight to stop climate change. The Obama administration is now in a position to regulate global warming pollution without having to wait for Congress (which has been lured into writing weak climate policies by industry lobbyists with deep pockets).

Stand up for strong regulation of greenhouse gases before the deadline on Monday, Dec. 28. Clicking here will automatically sign your name to a public comment at EPA.

Coal-fired power plants are by far the largest producer of global warming pollution in the U.S., and Obama’s EPA is now considering a rule that would finally allow these pollution-belching smoke stacks to be regulated. This is one of the President’s best opportunities to ensure we pass on a safer planet to the next generation, but we know that Big Coal is going to fight us at every turn.

The EPA is accepting public comments on Obama’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases from coal-fired plants and other big polluters under the Clean Air Act. But the public comment period ends at the end of the day on Monday. We only have a short amount of time to show much needed support and counter the powerful coal industry lobby.

This is urgent. Take action by 6:00pm Eastern time on Monday, Dec. 28th, and we will deliver your name along with our petition as a public comment to the EPA.

Click here to send your comment on the petition.

Coal ash waste is a dangerous and growing pollution problem in the U.S.  Watch the video on the bottom of this article describing waste problems from coal, the waste they are now hauling into poor areas of Alabama by the truckload.

Since the disaster one year ago, the Kingston “disaster ash,” as it is known here, “has spread like a cancer across the Southeast,”

An aerial view of the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill in Tennessee. (Image: Tennessee Valley Authority)

On the third day before Christmas in 2008, the people living along the Emory River in East Tennessee were listening to songs about a “white Christmas” like everybody else in the country, trying to look forward and not back. . . . . Instead of a white Christmas, though, people like Steve Scarborough of the Dagger Kayak and Canoe Company woke up to a black-gray mess of epic proportions, a river full of toxic coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal-fired power plant at Kingston, Tennessee.

“There are no excuses for this,” Scarborough said. “One of the dumbest thing humans do is dig coal out of the ground and burn it.”

The largely affluent population of the area demanded action and an immediate cleanup of the largest environmental disaster in American history in the lower 48 states, second only to the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in the spring of 1989. So within four months, by March 20, TVA began dredging the mountain of coal ash out of the river and shipping it by train to a landfill in the poor Black Belt of Alabama.

One year later, on the first anniversary of the second worst environmental disaster in American history, while the people in Tennessee are hiring lawyers and suing TVA and reading story after story in the local newspapers about their plight while the cleanup continues, the poor people of Perry County, Alabama, where TVA found a place to dump the toxic ash, are not singing Christmas carols. They are locked in their homes with their air conditioners running even in winter, trying to stay out of the gaseous fumes from the landfill where the coal ash is piling up on top of household garbage by the freight train load.

There’s not a newspaper or a TV station anywhere around telling their story, and most of them are so poor and living in such a remote, rural area that they can’t even turn to the Internet, either to voice their concerns and get organized or find out what’s going on to help them, if there is anything. They are not hearing much out of their local government officials or the congressman elected to represent them either, so they are living in the dark with a nagging fear for the future.

North of the landfill, other residents with nowhere to go to escape the gaseous smell from the liquid waste being dumped from [...]

Solar power after the sun goes down is possible and usable if the power can be stored.   This is being described as a game-changer for the solar industry.

An artist's rendering by SolarReserve

“The two farms being planned by SolarReserve of Santa Monica, Calif., would store the sun’s energy in molten salt, releasing the heat at night when it could be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Two utilities, NV Energy in Nevada and Pacific Gas and Electric, Northern California’s biggest utility, would buy the power.

The sun’s intermittent nature has made large-scale solar farms most useful as so-called peaker plants that supply electricity when demand spikes, typically in the late afternoon on hot days. But the ability of SolarReserve to store the sun’s energy for use at night would be a step forward in technology.”

These plants can hold between 7 and 12 hours of power storage.  It works with salt, but I wish they had discussed more in detail how it works.  (See the link below.)

“The solar farm features a 538-foot-tall concrete tower topped by a 100-foot receiver that contains millions of gallons of molten salt. The Rocketdyne division of United Technologies developed the molten salt technology and has licensed it to SolarReserve.

Huge fields of mirrors called heliostats focus the sun on the receiver, which heats the salt to 1,050 degrees. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.”

Molten salt storage is discussed here.

Read more here