“Frack is Whack”
February 27, 2011
So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.
But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
Carbon trading tempts firms to make greenhouse gas
December 17, 2010
by Fred Pearce
A handful of Chinese and Indian chemicals companies seemingly have the world over a barrel – or rather a large number of barrels of a super-greenhouse gas called HFC-23, which is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
…As a result, the “waste gas” HFC-23 has become much more profitable to refrigerant factories than HCFC-22 itself. Watchdog groups like the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) say the compensation system ends up providing a strong incentive to overproduce HCFC-22, using methods that maximise the output of HFC-23.
Fearful of a burgeoning scam, CDM officials recently began a review. The European Union wants all credits for HFC-22 outlawed. But last week CDM officials in China threatened that factories there would respond by releasing the gas into the atmosphere….
Sorry, New York Times: The Bee Die-Off Case is Not Closed
October 21, 2010
By Tom Laskawy
…As I wrote last January, many scientists believe that a novel class of pesticides called neonicotinoids–which are insect neurotoxins-has played a major role in CCD [Colony Collapse Disorder] worldwide. An Italian entomologist at the University of Padua, Vincenzo Girolami, has research currently undergoing peer review showing that bees can be exposed to lethal levels of these pesticides through the use of seeding machines that sow neonicotinoid-coated seeds. These devices throw up a toxic cloud of pesticide as they work: bees fly through the cloud and either die or take the pesticide back to the hive. Once inside, even at low doses, it can cause disorientation or, as Girolami calls it, “intoxication” of whole hives.
The maker of this pesticide is Bayer CropScience. What does a corporation do when it discovers it may have developed and marketed a dangerous and potentially devastating product? Here in America, you confuse, you obfuscate, and you buy off scientists….
http://civileats.com/2010/10/15/sorry-new-york-times-the-bee-die-off-case-is-not-closed/
The “other” carbon problem — ocean acidification by Dave Cohen
August 18, 2010
Humankind’s assault on the oceans continues apace. A short time ago, we considered the loss of 40% of the phytoplankton in the oceans since 1950. In my post How We Wrecked The Oceans, marine ecologist Jeremy Jackson explains why he believes the sea will be devoid of fish and other large marine organisms sometime in the 2040s. [WHAT?!] And now comes the “other” carbon problem—acidification of the oceans.
As we burn fossil fuels, carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere. Everyone knows that part, but what they often don’t know is that the oceans act as a enormous carbon “sink” which absorbs as much as 1/3rd of the released carbon dioxide. So the CO2 is no longer acting as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which sounds good, but unfortunately, we have shifted the problem of dealing with the excess gas from the air to the oceans. Through some fairly simple chemistry, the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result. In other words, through a natural process, the ocean becomes a giant waste dump for our fossil fuel emissions.
Drastic Decline in Marine Life
July 30, 2010
Scientists may have found the most devastating impact yet of human-caused global warming — a 40% decline in phytoplankton since 1950 linked to the rise in ocean sea surface temperatures….
…“plant plankton found in the world’s oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world’s oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.”
This Is What An Oil-Soaked Ocean Wave Looks Like
June 28, 2010
http://www.businessinsider.com/oil-spotted-waves-alabama-2010-6
As long as cars are driven, airplanes are flown, and other gigantic machinery propelled, we will see more and more of these waves. It is simply a side-effect of industrial civilization.
Mis-education unleashed
May 18, 2010
Obama just said, “Never mind the naysayers, the fact is our economy is growing again, we gained 290,000 jobs….”
You don’t want to grow the economy, guy.
We have one sphere to work with, Earth, and it is finite, like all other spheres. Fuck it up with more growth fueled by fossil energy, and we all have dead oceans of toxin, magnitudes more smog-caused death and disease, and less species to sustain life.
More growth is an awful idea, President Obama. Truly awful. Unless you mean growth of ecosystems, resilience, and cooperation. 290,000 more ecologists and land stewards would be a good start. Not a third of a million more tools of Wal-Mort.
An Astute Comment
May 10, 2010
This is a reader comment responding to Jim Kunstler’s latest blog post.
“the Deepwater Horizon disaster (still ongoing) has gotten so boring to the editors of The New York Times that further news about it has been banished from the front page of the paper. Too depressing, I guess.”
If it’s depressing now, what will it be three months from now ? It will take at least that long to drill a relief well. Question: what happens if the relief well blows out too ? Or doesn’t work ?
The northern Gulf of Mexico is going to turn into a vast stinking toxic lagoon that will snuff out every form of life in and around it. The hurricanes will come and blast oily water all over every town and hamlet up and down the coast. Everything and everyone will reek of stinking oil. Maybe this is the way it all ends. Peak pollution.
