...fuel derived from corn "is about the dumbest idea I've ever seen."

Quote of month - I tend to agree with Charlie Munger when he recently said running cars on fuel derived from corn "is about the dumbest idea I've ever seen." But no matter how much the investing geniuses and I agree on the economics, I think the political tailwind behind ethanol is unstoppable."

 

Read more here

Colbert: The Word on Global Warming

Thanks Grist!

Green Clean Schools Act sails through Illinois Senate

With a 52-5 vote in the Senate Wednesday, Illinois became only the second state to enact legislation requiring green cleaning in schools. The act will require all elementary and secondary schools in Illinois to purchase environmentally sensitive cleaning supplies, which are now cost-comparable and equally effective to conventional cleaning products. The bill authorizes the Green Government Coordinating Council to determine specific standards for green products within six months. Schools will develop plans for meeting the standards within three months of the standards' development, but may continue using their current stock of cleaning supplies until it is depleted. Source: Healthy Schools Campaign, (VIA- glrppr.org)

Biofuels displace indigenous people

Indigenous people are being pushed off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, threatening to destroy their cultures by forcing them into big cities, the head of a U.N. panel said Monday. Read here

New EPA Environmental Steward Site

EPA has launched a Web site to help business, government and private citizens make intelligent choices on sustainable environmental benefits.

The environmental stewardship Web site can be found at http://www.epa.gov/stewardship.

 

Environmental stewardship is the responsibility for environmental quality shared by all those whose actions affect the environment. Everyday, more than 300 million Americans make countless choices that can impact our environment. By being an active environmental steward you can reduce those impacts and make a difference in the kind of world we live in today and pass on to future generations.

As the leading environmental agency in the United States, EPA has an important role to play in promoting environmental stewardship-by individuals, communities, businesses and other organizations, and by our partners throughout government.

Search EPA Programs Supporting
Environmental Stewardship

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New chemical catalyst that can help remove and destroy perchlorate in contaminated water

UIUC's LAS News - When a plume of contaminated groundwater from a manufacturing plant near Las Vegas seeped into the Colorado River, the contaminant "perchlorate" spread throughout the Southwest. The cleanup could take decades.

To aid with such catastrophic cleanups, LAS researchers from the University of Illinois have developed a new chemical catalyst that can help remove and destroy perchlorate in contaminated water.  Read the full story

By Laura B. lib.wmrc.uiuc.edu (thanks! ;-)

BIOFUELS CUTTING GRAIN CROPS, SPEEDING DEFORESTATION

TIM WEBB, INDEPENDENT, UK - Biofuels have also driven up food prices, hitting the world's poor the hardest. According to the International Grain Council, at the end of this financial year the world's grain stocks (corn, wheat and barley) will be the lowest since the 1970s, mainly because of soaring demand from biofuels. Some of these "green" energy sources also use up more energy during the manufacturing and refining process than they save.

Politics - particularly the interests of big agricultural businesses - is starting to dictate the biofuel market. The US has imposed punitive import tariffs on Brazilian-made ethanol - one of the world's most efficient biofuels - and subsidises the export of its domestically made corn-based ethanol, which is one of the least efficient. This subsidy could lead to a trade war between the EU and the US.

The biggest drawback with biofuels is the deforestation that it directly and indirectly causes. How much deforestation takes place is hard to measure, but if new demand emerges - such as from biofuels - more land has to be found from somewhere.

WI - State seeks to expand emergency rules aimed at containing deadly fish disease

MADISON – Reports over the weekend that a new viral fish disease likely killed fish in the Lake Winnebago System is spurring Wisconsin fisheries officials to seek to expand the reach of emergency rules aimed at preventing viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, from spreading to new waters.

Fisheries officials will ask the state Natural Resources Board to meet in a special session Thursday, May 17, to consider expanding key emergency rule requirements beyond Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, the Mississippi River and their tributaries. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. in Room 613 of the State Natural Resources Building (GEF 2), 101 S. Webster St., Madison.

"When we originally went to the Natural Resources Board in April, they made it clear to us that if VHS was found outside Lake Michigan, Lake Superior and the Mississippi River, they wanted us to come back and they would consider extending the rules to new waters or statewide," Staggs says. "That's what we're doing now that initial tests indicate the disease has spread to the Lake Winnebago system."

 

VHS is not a health threat to people who handle infected fish or want to eat their catch, but it can kill more than 25 fish species, causing them to bleed to death.

Read more from WDNR

Citigroup Commits US$50 Bln to Green Projects

The amount includes nearly US$10 billion in activities that the bank has already undertaken. Citigroup plans to increase to US$10 billion from about US$1 billion its commitment to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions at its 14,500 locations worldwide. The bank operates in more than 100 countries.

"It's a dramatic announcement," said Daniel Esty, a Yale University environmental law professor who co-wrote "Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage."

"To the extent it signals a sea change in Citigroup's attitude toward the environment, it could have a sweeping impact across economies globally," said Esty.

Cal/OSHA on Falk Blast & Veterans Home of California

Firm to Fight Citations in Wake of Milwaukee Blast
J.M. Brennan Inc. vows to challenge the three Fed-OSHA citations and nearly $17,000 in fines it received in connection with the December propane explosion that killed three workers and injured 45 others at the Falk Corp. plant in Milwaukee. Small Business Times
Go to the Full Story...

 

"We have a great working relationship with Cal/OSHA and they've bent over backwards to work with us." Marcella McCormack, administrator of the Veterans Home of California at Yountville, about the facility's avoidance of nearly $40,000 in workplace safety penalties Go to the full story in the Napa Valley Register

MSN - Does a story right on saving gas?

FROM MSN: It turns out that we wouldn't have to cut consumption by 40 percent or 30 percent or even 20 percent to send pump prices lower. Try 7 percent.

That's how much demand fell off last winter. After peaking at 9.7 million barrels in the week of Aug. 4, 2006, U.S. gasoline demand hit a low of 9.0 million barrels during the week of Jan. 19, 2007 — a difference of 7 percent. During the same period, the average U.S. price peaked at $3.083 in August and fell to $2.213 by the end of January — a drop of 28 percent.

 

Read more at MSN

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

True or myth... could someone email me if this is a hoax?

---

Scientists may have cured cancer last week.
Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada found a cheap and easy to produce drug that kills almost all cancers. The drug is dichloroacetate, and since it is already used to treat metabolic disorders, we know it should be no problem to use it for other purposes.

The drug also has no patent, which means it could be produced for bargain basement prices in comparison to what drug companies research and develop.
Scientists tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body where it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but left healthy cells alone. Rats plump with tumors shrank when they were fed water supplemented with DCA.

Cancer cells don't use the little power stations found in most human cells - the mitochondria. Instead, they use glycolysis, which is less effective and more wasteful.

Doctors have long believed the reason for this is because the mitochondria were damaged somehow. But, it turns out the mitochondria were just dormant, and DCA starts them back up again.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.
With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.

So, the groundwork will have to be done at universities and independently funded laboratories. But, how are they supposed to drum up support if the media aren't even talking about it?

Original research:

Boy I Called this one :-) LEDs emerge winner to fight fluorescents

NEW YORK - The light bulb, the symbol of bright ideas, doesn't look like such a great idea anymore, as lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad are talking about banning the century-old technology because of its contribution to global warming.

But what comes next? Compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative right now, but "bulbs" that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a challenger.
  
Department of Energy, and widespread use of LED lighting could cut consumption in half. By 2027, LED lighting could cut annual energy use by the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil, with the attendant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for global warming.

The energy efficiency is no doubt a draw for commercial clients like hotels, but LEDs have another big advantage: they last up to 50,000 hours, according to manufacturers. That compares to about 10,000 hours for fluorescents and 1,000 hours for incandescents. Not having to send out janitors to replace burned-out bulbs means big savings in maintenance costs.

LEDs already beat fluorescents for energy efficiency in some niche uses. For instance, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is putting LED lighting in its in-store refrigerators, where the cold dims fluorescents and incandescents produce too much heat. LEDs also starting to replace flat fluorescent backlights in liquid-crystal displays, or LCDs, where they produce better colors.

LEDs don't contain toxic mercury, which CFLs do, though the amount is very small. (Recent stories circulating on the Web about calling a hazmat team if a CFL breaks are exaggerated. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends sweeping up, not vacuuming, the fragments, then checking out local recycling options.)  The cost of LED lighting should be coming down quickly. Polybrite founder Carl Scianna said the cost of individual white-light diodes, several of which go into an LED bulb and make up much of the cost, have come down in price from about $8 to $1.50 in a year.

 
"They're going to keep going down," Scianna said. "By the middle of next year, they'll be priced for consumers."
___
On the Net:
U.S. Department of Energy on LEDs: http://www.netl.doe.gov/ssl/
Recycling options for CFLs: http://www.lamprecycle.org

http://www.cree.com
Lighting Science Group: http://www.lsgc.com/

 

Biofuels are the 'next environmental danger'

Far from being the salvation of an oil-hungry society, biofuels could actually trigger increases in food prices and deforestation, according to a report.

It doesn't suggest doing away with them altogether, but says that current targets for swapping petrol and diesel for fuel derived from crops are too ambitious.

The UK government, and the European Union have set their sights on using biofuels in 10 per cent of our cars by 2020. But the Co-op's report suggests that to produce this amount of fuel on a global scale would require as much as nine per cent of arable land being diverted to fuel crops.

Professor Dieter Helm, who sits of the government's Council for Science and Technology, told the BBC: "The sort of targets being set for biofuels will have quite radical effects on agriculture and therefore will have very substantial consequences for food prices and agriculture more generally."

He points out that rainforest is already being felled to make way for fuel crops.

"Think of the energy involved in felling those rainforests. Think about the damage to the climate being done by the loss of those trees. Think about the ploughing and the cultivation of fields. Think about the transport of those fuels, and you start to realize the carbon imprints are about much more than simply what happens to grow in a particular field at a particular point in time."

Source theregister

Switch to Cleaner Marine Fuel Will Increase CO2 Emissions

Reuters. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is cautioning that switching from fuel oil to cleaner, less polluting marine diesel in ship engines would result in a net increase in global carbon dioxide emissions, require billions in refinery investments and could boost oil prices.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is considering the switch from fuel oil to marine diesel to improve the environmental footprint of the shipping industry.

In its monthly Oil Market Report, the IEA said that studies had concluded that converting refineries to produce enough diesel for shipping demand would produce at least an extra 53 million tonnes a year of CO2, whereas emissions from ships if using diesel would only fall by 27 million tonnes.

"It may also require an additional 2 million barrels per day of crude runs, which would be the equivalent of finding another Kuwait," the West's energy watchdog said.

Read more at greencarcongress.com

President Bush Orders Agencies to Develop Regulations to Reduce Fuel Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Motor Vehicles

US President George Bush today issued an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Agriculture, Energy and Transportation to work together to begin developing regulations that will reduce gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, using the President's 20-in-10 plan as a starting point.

The order directs that the development of the regulations be done "in a manner consistent with sound science, analysis of benefits and costs, public safety, and economic growth." The Administration's goal is to finish developing the regulation by the end of 2008.

The 20-in-10 proposal calls for a 20% reduction in gasoline usage over the next 10 years, with 15% of the reduction to come from the use of renewable and alternative fuels, and 5% to come from mandated increases in fuel efficiency.

Read more at- greencarcongress.com

Minnesota legislature passes country's toughest e-waste bill

The Minnesota state legislature recently passed an innovative "producer responsibility" bill which requires electronics manufacturers to pay for collection and recycling of electronic waste from households. This is the first bill in the country to set actual targets for how much equipment the manufacturers must take back and recycle, measured as a percent of the products they are selling in the state. The bill requires each manufacturer that sells TVs, computer monitors and laptops in Minnesota to collect and recycle an amount proportional to the weight of their products sold in the state during the previous year.

 

Source: Greener Computing

SCORES OF COMMON CHEMICALS CAUSE BREAST CANCER IN ANIMALS

MARLA CONE, LA TIMES - More than 200 chemicals - many found in urban air and everyday consumer products - cause breast cancer in animal tests, according to a compilation of scientific reports published today. Writing in a publication of the American Cancer Society, researchers concluded that reducing exposure to the compounds could prevent many women from developing the disease. . . Experts say that family history and genes are responsible for a small percentage of breast cancer cases but that environmental or lifestyle factors such as diet are probably involved in the vast majority.

"Overall, exposure to mammary gland carcinogens is widespread," the researchers wrote in a special supplement to the journal Cancer. "These compounds are widely detected in human tissues and in environments, such as homes, where women spend time.". . .

The researchers named 216 chemicals that induce breast tumors in animals. Of those, people are highly exposed to 97, including industrial solvents, pesticides, dyes, gasoline and diesel exhaust compounds, cosmetics ingredients, hormones, pharmaceuticals, radiation and a chemical in chlorinated drinking water. .

Toxicologists say that other mammals, such as rats and mice, often develop the same tumors as humans do, and that animal tests are efficient means of testing the effects of chemicals. Environmental regulators, however, often want conclusive human data before taking action.. . .

Twenty-nine of the chemicals are produced in volumes exceeding 1 million pounds annually in the United States. Seventy-three are present in consumer products or are food contaminants - 1,4-dioxane in shampoos, for example, or acrylamide in French fries. Thirty-five are common air pollutants, 25 are in workplaces where at least 5,000 women are employed, and 10 are food additives, according to the reports.

DEFORESTATION SECOND TO ENERGY IN CLIMATE CHANGE

DANIEL HOWDEN, INDEPENDENT, UK - In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. . The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognized as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Program, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists.

Figures from the GCP, summarizing the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total.

"Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change," said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.

Toyota 2006 47 mpg hybrid minivan...

While the Union of Concerned Scientists say the technology to build a fuel-efficient family vehicle that can meet future emissions standards is already in some of today's vehicles. And the best answers government mandates with lawyers and lobbyists, they say is 35 mpg by 2020?

 

I would contend that ANY vehicle can be modified to run "bio-fuels" and reduce emissions 50% for $1,000 - 3,000 per vehicle (the same blank check given to hybrids).  

 

Seriously, my car gets a solid 36 mpg and Toyota has been selling a 36 mpg hybrid minivan (Estima) in Japan since 2006. This is the type of vehicle that really should be used more often in the US... http://toyota.jp/estimahybrid/

 

How can't we do better by 2020?

 

China's environmental movement: The East is Green - Boing.boing!

Boing.boing:  "The China Experiment" is a fascinating read, a sweeping look at the many ways in which China is reducing its emissions and cleaning up its environment:
The mass adoption of solar power—the Chinese have purchased 35 million solar water heaters, more than the rest of the world combined—is only part of the equation. China is also encouraging investment and research in wind farms, bioenergy, and fuel cell and hybrid vehicles, and aiming to improve energy efficiency by a sizeable 4 percent annually. "It's historic," says Kishan Khoday, head of the United Nations Development Program's energy and environment program in China. "It's going to take efforts on all angles of the issue to get it done."

If China fails, the implications for the rest of the world could be grave. Sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide from China already travel across the Pacific, causing acid rain in North America and Europe. Last year in Japan, two city governments issued formal warnings about pollution from the country's western neighbor.

Environmental conditions are already approaching apocalyptic in a country where coal provides 70 percent of the country's power. Chinese scientists have predicted that the Yangtze River will die by 2011, and with two-thirds of other rivers polluted, more than 340 million Chinese lack access to clean drinking water. An estimated 400,000 Chinese die of pollution every year. By the government's own estimates released in December 2006, climate change is occurring in China at alarming rates, with temperatures due to increase by 1.3 to 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020. China is unveiling forward-thinking policies and pushing alternative energy because it has no other choice.

SEED Magazine's article Link

Very little progress since 1930's

TreeHugger has a post quoting Popular Science from 1934 on solar power.

"SUNSHINE, our greatest source of potential power, is now largely wasted. It is highly probable, however, that a few years hence science will find a way to harness the mighty energy of the sun's radiation. Solar engines and solar heating apparatus will then make it economically practicable for us to use at least a small portion of our now-wasted sunshine to run our factories, light our streets, cook our food, and warm our houses. In the United States we use, each year, something like a half billion tons of coal, a half billion barrels of oil, and fifty billion horsepower hours of water power for heat, light, and power.

If it were possible to convert all this energy into power—which of course it isn't—it would produce seven trillion horsepower hours. If it were possible to convert completely into power all the solar energy that each year falls on the United States in the form of sunshine, it would amount to seven thousand trillion horsepower hours. Of course, some of the sunshine that comes to us through 93,000,000 miles of space is needed for the general heating of the earth and for the growing of plant life: but above those fundamental needs, solar radiation provides a potential supply of power many thousand times as great as the amount now supplied by other sources".

That the use of solar radiation for power is no vague dream of the far-distant future is shown by the fact that at present a solar power plant with a thermal efficiency of 4.32 per cent —over one third of the efficiency of the best steam engine—has been built and is being operated.

Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the world's leading authority on solar radiation, says that before long we shall find a commercially practicable method of harnessing sunshine. "Financial success probably awaits the solver of the problems of collecting solar heat for power purposes," he says. "With our present outlook it seems to me likely that within another generation or two power demands will lead to the sun as the most available source of supply."

From peak oil

Saving the birds with two sones

Capturing and burning methane produced by dams.

Equipment designed to stop the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere. The technology will extract the methane from the water to supplement the energy produced by the dam turbines.

The scientists estimate that worldwide the technique could prevent emissions equivalent to more than the total annual burning of fossil fuels in the UK - and reduce the pressure to build new dams in sensitive areas such as the Amazon. The project follows a long-running controversy over how clean hydro-electric power really is.

Critics of the industry have claimed that in tropical areas of Brazil - which supplies more than 90% of its electricity from large dams - some reservoirs emit so much methane that their contribution to climate change is greater than an equivalent power station burning fossil fuels like coal or gas.

 

From peak oil

Just one part per billion can make a Rat grotesque obesity

New research indicates that with some pollutants, drugs, and natural substances, the effects of the toxic substance vary according to dose -- meaning that the results of high doses might mean absolutely nothing when it comes figuring out the effects of lower levels of exposure.

Take, for example, the pair of rats featured prominently in a photo accompanying the study. While in-utero exposure to 100 parts per billion of the estrogenic drug diethylstilbestrol (DES) makes for scrawny adult mice, exposure to just one part per billion causes grotesque obesity, one study found.

Does this mean higher doses of toxics are better for us? Not likely. But it does mean that since most regulation is based on apparently false assumptions, we might have a whole bunch of health standards that are too weak.  Read on Grist Lovers

ORGANIC BEE GROWERS REPORT NO COLONY COLLAPSE

No one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies. . .

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. .Click text to read full 

Chinese Water: A picture is worth a million words

 
Beijing, China: Xu Jiehua (r), the wife of the detained Chinese environmental activist Wu Yilong, sits behind water samples collected by Wu Yilong from Chinese urban rivers and lakes.
Photograph: Teh Eng Koon/AFP/Getty Images

Via - The Guardian

"Green Scare: New Laws Equate Environmentalists with Al Qaeda"

Having already done serious jail time for eco-sabotage arson, Rod Coronado is now charged and looking at jail time again -- for describing in a public speech what he went to jail for. Dean Kuipers reports in the alternative weekly Los Angeles City Beat 5/3/07.

Happy Mothers Day - DIVORCE RATE LOWEST SINCE 1970

AP - The national per capita divorce rate has declined steadily since its peak in 1981 and is now at its lowest level since 1970. . . Some experts say relationships are as unstable as ever - and divorces are down primarily because more couples live together without marrying. Other researchers have documented what they call "the divorce divide," contending that divorce rates are indeed falling substantively among college-educated couples but not among less- affluent, less-educated couples. . . America's divorce rate began climbing in the late 1960s and skyrocketed during the '70s and early '80s, as virtually every state adopted no-fault divorce laws. The rate peaked at 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people in 1981. But since then it's dropped by one-third, to 3.6. That's the lowest rate since 1970.

There is hope for the world

Best news I read this week: Whoohoo!

In TV's worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show.

 

Maybe they're outside in the garden. They could be playing.

 

 

"Name me one government leader who can articulate a plan for solving the energy crisis. The silence is deafening."

LEE Iacocca, "I've figured out nine points I call the 'Nine Cs of Leadership.' They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have."

Here they are:

1. Curiosity
2. Creativity
3. Communication
4. Character
5. Courage
6. Conviction
7. Charisma
8. Competence
9. Common Sense

From http://kauaian.net (Thanks always!)

Greenpeace: Biofuels - green dream or climate change nightmare?

By satellite360 via hugg.com

There is an advert in several of today's UK papers warning the government about the environmental risks of biofuels as an alternative to petrol and diesel.  » original news

Bottled Water - Good For Business Bad For The Environment

The world's fastest-growing beverage is a boon to the industry but a bust for the environment and for the more than 1 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean drinking water. Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater, not to mention all the wasted plastic.  » original news

 

 By stilgar via www.hugg.com

EPA Reporting Rules Reduce Toxic Information

Mike Salinero of The Tampa Tribune explains the new EPA rule on filing information to the toxic release inventory 12/27/06. EPA said it will lessen paperwork for small businesses; environmentalists say it deprives communities of information about toxic chemical releases in their neighborhoods.

Plastic waste: more dangerous than global warming

Plastic pollution is destroying the world's ocean ecosystems, but some companies are in a position to stop the devastation.
We have all seen those graphic photos depicting the fate of marine mammals tangled in discarded fishing nets. And the sight of a soft drinks bottle floating by while we are canoeing in our local lake or river of choice is not a rarity. True that...

Perfluoroalkyl acids: What is the evidence telling us?

Toxicologists are making headway in their understanding of perfluorinated compounds like PFOS and PFOA. New research is suggesting that the levels being found in both people and animals may have an impact on their health.