1. Standard memberScriabin
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    11 May '09 20:27
    HIGH COURT DENIES STATES’ REQUEST TO REVIEW YUCCA MOUNTAIN CLAIMS
    The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that state utility regulators argue will greatly impact their ability to ensure that electricity ratepayers are compensated for the government’s failure to permanently store radioactive waste from nuclear power plants at Yucca Mountain, NV -- a situation the state regulators claim has increased electricity rates because power plants have to store the waste on site
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    12 May '09 22:09
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    Do we have to talk about climate change?

    I'm actually in favor of global warming -- I hate cold weather; I've got a beach house on the Delaware shore that is 3 blocks back from the sea and I've always wanted beach front property.

    Is climate change really the most important environmental issue to discuss?

    How about coal ash, which contains selenium ...[text shortened]... out these subjects and leave the political hot potato of climate change for another thread?
    very good point

    all the talk about global warming causes almost every other environmental issue to be ignored.

    and there's too much emphasis on scaring people -- there are so many beautiful, mysterious things out there in the environment that need to be preserved, if only because they're beautiful and mysterious. The biggest issue should be persuading people to just get out and see what's out there.
  3. Standard memberScriabin
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    13 May '09 21:211 edit
    Originally posted by Melanerpes
    very good point

    all the talk about global warming causes almost every other environmental issue to be ignored.

    and there's too much emphasis on scaring people -- there are so many beautiful, mysterious things out there in the environment that need to be preserved, if only because they're beautiful and mysterious. The biggest issue should be persuading people to just get out and see what's out there.
    I conducted a seminar this morning for a class of US Army War college colonels, with guest exchange students from the Armies of Germany, Roumania, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia.

    We discussed how US EPA works with or enforces against other federal agencies.

    The discussion broadened to allow me to recommend to my Saudi guest a solution to his question on how to make US troops do a better job with respect to environmental matters in war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq.

    I told the class that while US EPA does not have legal jurisdiction over the US military beyond the borders of US territory, the US military is bound by its own regulations and executive order to obey the law of the host country.

    This, of course, makes life easy in countries without comparable environmental laws to those of the USA or European countries.

    So I recommended to the Saudi officer that his government could advise those other governments to adopt US law and regulations and accept the science on which the US standards for protecting public health are based -- thus saving the cost of doing the risk assessments themselves.

    One has opportunities here in town that you don't or can't encounter out there in the field. That Saudi officer, I knew in advance, is very highly connected in his own government and close to the Royals.
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    18 May '09 04:09
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    I conducted a seminar this morning for a class of US Army War college colonels, with guest exchange students from the Armies of Germany, Roumania, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia.

    We discussed how US EPA works with or enforces against other federal agencies.

    The discussion broadened to allow me to recommend to my Saudi guest a solution to his question on h ...[text shortened]... er, I knew in advance, is very highly connected in his own government and close to the Royals.
    Can the military fire depleated Uranium munitions inside the United States? I ask this because it is my understanding that tungsten could be used instead. If Iraq were to adopt us environmental laws would that make the military have to use tungsten over there if depleated uranium is illegal here.
  5. Standard memberSleepyguy
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    18 May '09 16:14
    Here's an interesting article I found today. Basically it says the scattering effect pollution in the air has on incoming sunlight increases the natural sequestration of C02 by plant life. In other words, polluting the air (by burning coal for example) has a net effect of REDUCING the overall amount of C02 in the atmosphere, or something.

    http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43094/title/A_little_air_pollution_boosts_vegetation%E2%80%99s_carbon__uptake

    ---SNIP---
    The world’s vegetation soaked up carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than it would have under a pristine atmosphere, a new analysis in the April 23 Nature suggests. The trend hints that relying on forests and other vegetation to sequester carbon may not be effective if skies continue to clear, researchers say.

    Major volcanic eruptions throw large quantities of aerosols, such as small bits of fractured rock and droplets of sulfuric acid, high into the atmosphere. Those particles scatter incoming solar radiation, preventing some of it from reaching Earth’s surface and thereby cooling climate temporarily (SN: 11/5/05, p. 294).

    That scattering also, however, boosts how much carbon vegetation takes in, says Lina M. Mercado, an ecosystem modeler at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Wallingford, England. Although aerosols, including many types of air pollution, decrease the overall amount of light falling onto a tree, the particles diffuse the radiation that reaches the ground so that it actually illuminates more leaves. In that case, leaves below the tree’s outer canopy are less likely to be shaded.

    To estimate the way pollution and other aerosols affect the rate at which the world’s plants take up carbon, Mercado and her colleagues adjusted an ecosystem model to include the effects of diffuse radiation on vegetation. Then the team plugged in meteorological data gathered worldwide since 1901.

    From the 1950s through the 1980s, many regions received less solar radiation overall — a phenomenon that atmospheric scientists term global dimming (SN: 9/24/05, p. 168) — and received a larger proportion of diffuse radiation. Since the 1980s, however, in many areas — especially some industrialized parts of the Northern Hemisphere, where pollution control measures have been instituted — skies have brightened.

    Those atmospheric changes show up in the Earth’s carbon balance, the team’s model suggests. From 1960 through 1980, the researchers estimate, Earth’s land plants stored about 440 million metric tons of carbon each year on average, but from 1980 to 1999 vegetation stored only 300 million metric tons annually.

    “Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as 25 percent from 1960 to 1999,” Mercado notes.

    Short-term variations in atmospheric aerosols, such as those seen in the wake of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, triggered the same effect. In 1992 and 1993, land plants worldwide stored at least 1 billion metric tons of carbon more than they would have if the eruption hadn’t occurred, the team’s data suggest.

    If pollution control measures continue to increase atmospheric clarity, the boost in natural carbon sequestration provided by diffuse radiation will abate to near zero by the year 2100, the researchers note.

    “I’m quite impressed that they’ve improved their [ecosystem] model to include the effect of diffuse radiation,” says Dennis Baldocchi, a biometeorologist at the University of California, Berkeley. The productivity-boosting effect of diffuse radiation has been measured at many individual sites but hasn’t been estimated on a long-term basis at the global level with such models before, he adds.

    “It takes a long time for such effects to make their way into climate models,” agrees Michael Roderick, an environmental physicist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “This is a big advance.” Researchers, he notes, could use the revised model to estimate the long-term effects of geoengineering — of which artificially adding large quantities of aerosols to the atmosphere to ameliorate the effects of global warming would be one example.

    --UNSNIP--
  6. Standard memberScriabin
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    18 May '09 17:13
    Originally posted by joe beyser
    Can the military fire depleated Uranium munitions inside the United States? I ask this because it is my understanding that tungsten could be used instead. If Iraq were to adopt us environmental laws would that make the military have to use tungsten over there if depleated uranium is illegal here.
    depleted Uranium ammo can be legally fired in the US. However, very high ranking military officials must approve its use, according to DoD regs. As to whether DoD components and their contractors actually follow those regs, well, let's just say I remain somewhat skeptical.

    Tungsten has been found also to pose health risks when placed in the environment -- not as must risk as Uranium, but the experiment with tungsten small arms ammo as "green ammo" failed.
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    19 May '09 17:23
    --snip--

    (Reuters, May 19).

    A joint logging venture in Indonesia threatens to undo decades of work to reintroduce endangered orangutans, tigers and elephants into the wild, a report from five conservation groups said today.

    Asia Pulp & Paper and the Sinar Mas Group have acquired a license to clear 123,600 acres of forest near Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in Jambi to supply a nearby pulp mill, a plan that would decimate the forest home of 100 orangutans, the report says.

    "It took scientists decades to discover how to successfully reintroduce critically endangered orangutans from captivity into the wild," said Peter Pratje of the Frankfurt Zoological Society. "It could take APP just months to destroy an important part of their new habitat."

    Critically endangered Sumatran tigers and elephants would also be forced from their homes and into increased conflict with humans, the report notes. The forest harbors an estimated 100 of the last 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild.

    Sinar Mas Group said the area of forest slated for clearing was already zoned for development and was not a protected forest.

    "We think our presence is good to help prevent any illegal logging, and reduce trespassing of animals that could destroy crops of local farmers," said spokeswoman Joice Budisusanto, adding that the company typically allocates around 30 to 40 percent of its forest concession for conservation purposes.

    --unsnip --
  8. Standard memberScriabin
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    20 May '09 16:291 edit
    ABC's Diane Sawyer Pleads for European-style Gas Tax

    "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer on Tuesday aggressively lobbied for the Obama administration to install a European-style gas tax on the United States. Talking to Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, about Obama's plans for increased fuel standards, she began, "Why not just go to a gas tax, for instance, which would accomplish a reduction in the use of gasoline, dependence on foreign oil right away?"

    Is the gas tax approach right or wrong? Or just politically unacceptable?


    footnote:

    In 1970, Diane Sawyer went to work for White House press secretary Ron Ziegler in the administration of President Nixon. Sawyer stayed on through his resignation in 1974 and worked on the Nixon-Ford transition team in 1974-75, after which she decamped with Nixon to California and helped him write his memoirs, published in 1978. She also helped prepare Nixon for his famous set of television interviews with journalist David Frost in 1977
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    20 May '09 21:31
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    ABC's Diane Sawyer Pleads for European-style Gas Tax

    "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer on Tuesday aggressively lobbied for the Obama administration to install a European-style gas tax on the United States. Talking to Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, about Obama's plans for increased fuel standards, she be ...[text shortened]... pare Nixon for his famous set of television interviews with journalist David Frost in 1977
    I would say that right now, it's "politically unacceptable" -- America has become allergic to taxes (while wanting ever greater amounts of spending).
  10. Standard memberScriabin
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    21 May '09 02:18
    Originally posted by Melanerpes
    I would say that right now, it's "politically unacceptable" -- America has become allergic to taxes (while wanting ever greater amounts of spending).
    What is your view of why those in the USA in favor of raising the price of fossil fuels (Tom Friedman, for example) believe it so very necessary to do that?
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    21 May '09 02:23
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    What is your view of why those in the USA in favor of raising the price of fossil fuels (Tom Friedman, for example) believe it so very necessary to do that?
    Then tax Tom Friedman and let the rest of us little people the heck alone!! 😠
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    21 May '09 02:28
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    What is your view of why those in the USA in favor of raising the price of fossil fuels (Tom Friedman, for example) believe it so very necessary to do that?
    It isn't a popular idea around here because so many people have to travel so far to work. Car pooling can help some but in a lot of cases it is not practical. There isn't a lot of public transportation either. In my situation now I only have to drive about 12 miles per day for work so I wouldn't be affected as much as those working in another town or out of town. In the big cities where there is a large part of the population it is concieveable to use public transportation and not even own a car. That may be why it is popular.
  13. Subscriberkmax87
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    21 May '09 13:21
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    What is your view of why those in the USA in favor of raising the price of fossil fuels (Tom Friedman, for example) believe it so very necessary to do that?
    I'm not up on Tom's view per se but what I do understand that unless the price differentials between that of gas and other fossils, are narrowed when compared to renewable's and cleaner fossil technologies, the market will do nothing. America will not respond to direct legislation it seems, so the only way forward is to provide investment incentives for venture capital to go into non fossil fuels. In short wipe out the price advantage to level the energy playing field a little and vioulla suddenly the energy industry tackles its problems without much further stick waving.
  14. Standard memberScriabin
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    21 May '09 15:15
    Originally posted by kmax87
    I'm not up on Tom's view per se but what I do understand that unless the price differentials between that of gas and other fossils, are narrowed when compared to renewable's and cleaner fossil technologies, the market will do nothing. America will not respond to direct legislation it seems, so the only way forward is to provide investment incentives for vent ...[text shortened]... vioulla suddenly the energy industry tackles its problems without much further stick waving.
    I agree with this analysis to a great extent.

    It isn't that America will not respond to direct legislation so much as using that method is a very inefficient and costly way to go.

    Once again the problem is basically a political one. Today's New York Times runs an editorial questioning taking funds away from completing the licensing process for Yucca Mountain on the grounds that there are scientific benefits, knowlege on how to deal with nuclear waste, that halting that process would deny us. But Harry Reid is from Nevada and wants the project killed.

    Most of us try to deal with these issues based on content or substance alone. But even scientific issues are never handled outside the political process when broad policies and a lot of money are at stake.

    So we should really be trying to understand the politics of these issues, not merely opine about their substantive merits.
  15. Subscriberkmax87
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    22 May '09 01:00
    Originally posted by Scriabin
    I agree with this analysis to a great extent.

    It isn't that America will not respond to direct legislation so much as using that method is a very inefficient and costly way to go.

    Once again the problem is basically a political one. Today's New York Times runs an editorial questioning taking funds away from completing the licensing process for Yucca M ...[text shortened]... g to understand the politics of these issues, not merely opine about their substantive merits.
    Its unfortunate that in some instances democracy or rather the political process that has sprung up around America's unique brand of it, can actually actively work against the best interests of the people. Its moments like these that you probably might wish you were French, and allow national pride to find the best scientific standardized solution, if for no other reason than to show off how good you are. Honour and arrogance can have extremely dangerous pitfalls, but they also have their blessings!
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