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A Big Oil foe runs for Congress — as a Republican

by ElouiseR69 Posted on February 6, 2014

A Big Oil foe runs for Congress — as a Republican

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@IowansForShaw

At first blush, Monte Shaw, a newly announced GOP candidate for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, sounds like any other conservative. He denounces talk of new taxes, pledges to defend the Constitution, and speaks reverently of his “hero” Ronald Reagan. “Conservatives must hold this seat if we’re to have any hope at all of stopping the leftward plunge of our federal government,” Shaw said this week in announcing that he would run to replace Rep. Tom Latham (R), who is not seeking reelection.

Yeah, yeah, yada yada. But get this: “Big Oil,” as Shaw calls the industry that controls so many House Republicans (and some Democrats), is his professional enemy. Supporting renewables is currently his full-time job. He’s the executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.

A Big Oil opponent running on a Republican ticket? Whaaa?

The catch is that Shaw’s association doesn’t champion solar panels or wind turbines. It promotes biofuels derived from the region’s cornfields.

The biofuel and oil industries are locking horns over how much ethanol the federal government should require to be blended into gasoline under its Renewable Fuel Standard program. Here’s what Shaw had to say about the issue in an op-ed published in The Hill last year:

Big Oil is back to its old tricks, this time trying to convince Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency that the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) cannot work and should be eliminated.

To combat Big Oil’s monopoly on transportation fuels, the RFS requires refiners to gradually increase the amount of renewable fuels available to consumers over time. However, refiners now say it cannot be done. Once again, they are wrong.

We call this the Big Oil Bluff.

While it’s refreshing to hear a GOP candidate calling out “Big Oil” on its bullshit, it’s not so refreshing that he’s pimping for the ethanol industry — which has been wrecking havoc on the environment and the climate as corn fields expand into natural areas to help satisfy our thirst for gasoline.

But it could still be fun to watch a Republican run against the oil industry.


Source
Monte Shaw kicks off bid for Congress, says conservatives must hold seat, The Des Moines Register

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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A Big Oil foe runs for Congress — as a Republican

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What the State of the Union Missed

by Posted on January 29, 2014

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What the State of the Union Missed

Posted 29 January 2014 in

National

Viewers of last night’s State of the Union address got the impression that President Obama supports an “all of the above” approach to America’s energy policy. But despite this rhetoric, the President’s own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to cut back on renewable fuel in 2014 by slashing obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard. This proposal threatens severe economic and environmental effects: drivers will pay billions in increased fuel costs, oil companies stand to increase their profits by more than $10 billion and, according to a recent analysis, 30 million additional metric tons of carbon dioxide will be released into the air as a result of increased petroleum consumption. That’s the equivalent of 5,600,000 more cars on the road.

By signaling a retreat on renewable fuel, the Administration is also threatening the immense progress the industry has made toward commercialization of advanced fuels like cellulosic ethanol. This map, based on data from the Biotechnology Industry Organization, details 68 facilities and more than $5.9 billion of investment in the fuels of tomorrow:

We hope the Administration and the EPA listen to the thousands of comments sent by farm families, small business owners, labor groups and environmental advocates in defense of renewable fuel and revise their proposal for the sake of a clean energy future.

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What the State of the Union Missed

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How the West Virginia Spill Exposes Our Lax Chemical Laws

by ElouiseR69 Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The West Virginia chemical spill that left some 300,000 people without access to water has exposed a gaping hole in the country’s chemical regulatory system, according to environmental experts.

Much the state remains under a drinking-water advisory after the spill last week into the Elk River near a water treatment facility. As much as 7,500 gallons of the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, which is used in the washing of coal, leaked from a tank owned by a company called Freedom Industries.

A rush on bottled water ensued, leading to empty store shelves and emergency water delivery operations. According to news reports, 10 people were hospitalized following the leak, but none in serious condition.

The spill and ensuing drinking water shortage have drawn attention to a very lax system governing the use of chemicals, according to Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who specializes in chemical regulation. “Here we have a situation where we suddenly have a spill of a chemical, and little or no information is available on that chemical,” says Denison.

An empty West Virginia store shelf Foo Conner/Flickr

The problem is not necessarily that 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, is highly toxic. Rather, Denison says, the problem is that not a great deal about its toxicity is known. Denison has managed to track down a description of one 1990 study, conducted by manufacturer Eastman Chemical, which identified a highly lethal dose, in rats, of 825 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. But how that applies to humans at much lower doses in water isn’t necessarily clear.

In response to the crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency have determined that a level of 1 part per million in water is safe. The drinking water advisory is now slowly being lifted on an area-by-area basis.

So why do we know so little? All of this traces back to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, the law under which the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the production of chemicals. According to EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson, MCHM is one of a large group of chemicals that were already in use when the law was passed, and so were “grandfathered” under it. This situation “provided EPA with very limited ability to require testing on those existing chemicals to determine if they are safe,” she says.

There are more than 60,000 such grandfathered chemicals, according to Johnson. A leak involving any of them into water could trigger to a similar situation of uncertainty—meaning that this spill has served to underscore a major gap in how we regulate chemicals.

“What we have now is a situation where because our system, our policies, and regulations don’t require this information be developed, we’re left scrambling when something like this happens,” says Denison.

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How the West Virginia Spill Exposes Our Lax Chemical Laws

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Why We Should Still Be Worried About Running Out of Oil

by KarolinBraund Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil”—the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline—was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave.

As the year went on, the eulogies came in fast and furious. “Today, it is probably safe to say we have slayed ‘peak oil’ once and for all, thanks to the combination of new shale oil and gas production techniques,” declared Rob Wile, an energy and economics reporter for Business Insider. Similar comments from energy experts were commonplace, prompting an R.I.P. headline at Time.com announcing, “Peak Oil is Dead.”

Not so fast, though. The present round of eulogies brings to mind Mark Twain’s famous line: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Before obits for peak oil theory pile up too high, let’s take a careful look at these assertions. Fortunately, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based research arm of the major industrialized powers, recently did just that—and the results were unexpected. While not exactly reinstalling peak oil on its throne, it did make clear that much of the talk of a perpetual gusher of American shale oil is greatly exaggerated. The exploitation of those shale reserves may delay the onset of peak oil for a year or so, the agency’s experts noted, but the long-term picture “has not changed much with the arrival of shale oil.”

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Why We Should Still Be Worried About Running Out of Oil

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Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

by HannahLombardo Posted on January 8, 2014

Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

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L.E.MORMILE / Shutterstock

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t want carbon trading in his state, but he might not have a choice.

Last year was a good one for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon-trading program in nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. And on Wednesday, environmentalists will push forward with a bid to make 2014 an even better year — by dragging New Jersey back into the program.

RGGI, the first mandatory carbon-trading program in the U.S., caps the amount of CO2 that can be released by power plants and allows those facilities to buy and exchange the rights to release the pollution. RGGI revenue, which could hit $2 billion by 2020, is poured back into clean energy programs – mostly into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

New Jersey was a participant in RGGI when it launched, but in 2011 Gov. Chris Christie (R) directed his administration to withdraw the state from the program – and it did so without calling for any kind of public comment or debate. Christie and other conservatives at the time lamented the costs to electricity ratepayers and said RGGI wasn’t performing as expected. “This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future,” Christie said. “It’s a failure.” The majority of state lawmakers today want New Jersey to rejoin RGGI, but they don’t have enough votes to overcome an inevitable Christie veto.

So attorneys with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environment New Jersey are rolling up their lawyerly sleeves and heading into an appellate court on Wednesday to battle it out against the state’s legal team. Here is NRDC’s Dale Bryk with an explanation of the groups’ lawsuit:

In court this week, we will be arguing that the state did not follow proper administrative procedure when, in 2011, it simply posted a statement on the Department of Environmental Protection’s website declaring an end to the rules requiring pollution reductions from power plants. Rather, according to New Jersey’s Administrative Procedure Act, the agency must give the public a chance to comment before taking such action. Had it done so, the state would have heard from the many businesses and residents who benefited from RGGI when the program was still in effect in New Jersey, and who see the program as a boon to the state’s burgeoning clean-energy economy.

The department, for its part, is arguing that it followed the proper procedures when it posted information about the state’s withdrawal on its website.

Environmentalists point out that the litigation could be avoided if Christie would wake up to the growing benefits of the carbon-trading market and agree to rejoin. Again from Bryk:

As part of President Obama’s important climate plan, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue carbon pollution standards for existing power plants this June, and states will be required to develop proposals to meet those standards by 2016. If they don’t, the EPA will develop a plan for them. In all likelihood the EPA will consider RGGI to be an appropriate compliance mechanism.

That means that if New Jersey rejoins RGGI, it can meet the forthcoming federal regulatory requirements, while reaping all of RGGI’s benefits: consumer energy savings; new and much-needed jobs for the Garden State; and a reduction in the kind of pollution that turbocharges our weather, making extreme events like like Hurricane Sandy more common. Not a bad bargain, if you ask me.

The 2014 cap for CO2 pollution under RGGI was lowered from from 165 million to 91 million tons, a reduction of 45 percent, which will help the region keep shrinking its carbon footprint. The move also “spurred a recovery after years of undersubscribed auctions clearing at the price floor and illiquid secondary market trading,” wrote Thomson Reuters Point Carbon in a recent analysis of worldwide carbon markets. This is one reason why carbon markets are flourishing in North America while more established programs flounder elsewhere.

RGGIThe shaded states are members of RGGI. Click to embiggen.

See also: Chris Christie is no moderate on the environment


Source
As Court Reviews NJ’s Repeal of Power Plant Rules, State Should Rejoin Regional Climate Change Program, NRDC
Court to re-consider New Jersey’s exit from U.S. carbon market, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Not just bad for bees: Neonic pesticides could damage babies’ brains

by NeilMcgehee Posted on December 19, 2013

Not just bad for bees: Neonic pesticides could damage babies’ brains

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The fruit and vegetables that Americans bring home and cook up for their families are often laced with pest-killing chemicals known as acetamiprid and imidacloprid, members of the neonicotinoid class.

That sounds gross. Even grosser than these nearly unpronounceable chemical names are new findings out of Europe that the compounds may stunt the development of brains in fetuses and young children.

The discovery, by scientists working with rats for the European Food Safety Authority, has led to calls in Europe to further restrict the use of the neonic pesticides. From a press release put out by the authority:

The [Plant Protection Products and their Residues] Panel found that acetamiprid and imidacloprid may adversely affect the development of neurons and brain structures associated with functions such as learning and memory. It concluded that some current guidance levels for acceptable exposure to acetamiprid and imidacloprid may not be protective enough to safeguard against developmental neurotoxicity and should be reduced.

We say “further restrict” because the use of imidacloprid is already severely restricted in Europe, barred for two years from being used on flowering crops and plants because it kills bees and other pollinators.

In the U.S., by contrast, both chemicals are freely used. Federal government tests have detected imidacloprid on one-fifth of produce sampled, including on 60 percent of broccoli and cauliflower. About 10 percent of produce samples tested positive for acetamiprid, including half of the samples of summer squash.

The New York Times reports that both chemicals are widely used in pesticide products:

Imidacloprid is one of the most popular insecticides, and is used in agricultural and consumer products. It was developed by Bayer, the German chemicals giant, and is the active ingredient in products like Bayer Advanced Fruit, Citrus & Vegetable Insect Control, which can be purchased at stores internationally, including Home Depot in the United States.

Acetamiprid is sold by Nisso Chemical, a German branch of a Japanese company, though it was developed with Bayer’s help. It is used in consumer products like Ortho Flower, Fruit & Vegetable Insect Killer.

The action by European regulators could affect the entire category of neonicotinoid pesticides, however.

James Ramsay, a spokesman for the European Food Safety Authority, which conducted the review, said the agency was recommending a mandatory submission of studies related to developmental neurotoxicity “as part of the authorization process in the E.U.”

“We’re advising that all neonicotinoid substances be evaluated as part of this testing strategy, providing that they show a similar toxicological profile to the two substances we’ve assessed in this opinion,” he said.

Beekeepers, food safety groups, and environmentalists are suing the EPA in an effort to ban neonic insecticides such as these. The new findings out of Europe will create a new sense of urgency for those groups — and hopefully for the federal government, which needs to be doing more to protect Americans and wildlife from the insidious effects of agricultural poisons.


Source
EFSA assesses potential link between two neonicotinoids and developmental neurotoxicity, European Food Safety Authority
EU Officials Warn Of Health Risks From Pesticides Common On U.S. Fruits And Vegetables, Environmental Working Group
European Agency Warns of Risk to Humans in Pesticides Tied to Bee Deaths, The New York Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Not just bad for bees: Neonic pesticides could damage babies’ brains

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Panel Set to Recommend Modest Changes to NSA Surveillance Programs

by RamonitaPalladi Posted on December 13, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’ve been wondering recently whatever happened to that task force on surveillance activities, and today brings news that they’re just about to release their recommendations. First up is this:

The proposal likely to gain the most attention would revamp the NSA phone records program….The proposal to have that data held by a phone company or a third party would effectively end the controversial NSA practice known as bulk collection. NSA could collect data only after meeting a new higher standard of proof.

That would be a step in the right direction. If the phone record program continues, there’s no reason the data can’t be held by a separate agency, available to the NSA only after they obtain a particularized subpoena for it. Done properly, this would provide access to all the information they need and is unlikely to slow them down in any serious way. There’s also this:

Another likely recommendation, officials say, is the creation of an organization of legal advocates who, like public defenders, would argue against lawyers for the N.S.A. and other government organizations in front of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the nation’s secret court that oversees the collection of telephone and Internet “metadata” and of wiretapping aimed at terrorism and espionage suspects. Mr. Obama has already hinted that he objects to the absence of any adversarial procedures in front of the court’s judges.

That’s also a good step. It’s absurd that the FISA court works without anyone arguing against the government’s position. Other expected recommendations include:

Civilian leadership for the NSA.
Splitting the NSA’s code making group away from the rest of the agency.
Presidential approval for spying on foreign leaders.
Codifying and announcing stricter standards to protect the privacy of foreign citizens.

In the end, I suspect that most of this will amount to very little. But it’s better than nothing. Thanks, Edward Snowden.

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Panel Set to Recommend Modest Changes to NSA Surveillance Programs

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Tossed in space: NASA plans to farm greens on the moon

by Norman87Pdk Posted on November 27, 2013

Tossed in space: NASA plans to farm greens on the moon

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Someday astronauts visiting the moon could toddle out of their space shuttle, harvest basil from their lunar garden, and sprinkle it over their 3D-printed space pizza.

NASA hopes to begin growing radishes, basil, and other plants on the moon in 2015. A two-pound “greenhouse” is planned to be delivered there using an uncrewed Google Lunar X-Prize mission. From New Scientist:

The aim is to find out if the crews of moon bases will be able to grow some of their own greens, a capability that has proved psychologically comforting to research crews isolated in Antarctica and on the International Space Station, NASA says.

Factors that could confound lunar plant growth include the virtual absence of an atmosphere and high levels of solar and cosmic radiation that bombard the moon’s surface. So the space agency is developing a sealed canister with five days’ worth of air, in which seeds can germinate on nutrient-infused filter paper. The idea is that water will be released on touchdown and sunshine will do the rest.

And NASA isn’t hoping to take just agriculture to new heights — it is working to bring food production into space as well, using 3D printing. From the agency’s website:

As NASA ventures farther into space, whether redirecting an asteroid or sending astronauts to Mars, the agency will need to make improvements in life support systems, including how to feed the crew during those long deep space missions.

NASA recognizes in-space and additive manufacturing offers the potential for new mission opportunities, whether “printing” food, tools or entire spacecraft. Additive manufacturing offers opportunities to get the best fit, form and delivery systems of materials for deep space travel.

If NASA can figure out how to grow some space grapes to make moon wine to accompany the herb-enhanced printed pizza, we’ll be up there quicker than you can say Stanley Kubrick.


Source
3D Printing: Food in Space, NASA
Lunar thyme lords: can NASA bloom the moon?, New Scientist

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Tossed in space: NASA plans to farm greens on the moon

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Obama nominates BLM leader Neil Kornze to lead the BLM

by xf0ks040u Posted on November 12, 2013

Obama nominates BLM leader Neil Kornze to lead the BLM

By

USDA

President Obama has nominated Nevadan Neil Kornze to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Kornze has championed the administration’s plans to lease public lands for solar-energy projects. He’s also worked to boost oil and gas drilling on federal land. So it seems he’s down with Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy.

The nomination shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: Kornze has been filling the BLM’s top job on an interim basis since March. (The last permanent director retired in March 2012.) Kornze joined the agency in late 2011. Previously he worked for eight years as an aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev).

The BLM oversees more than 245 million acres of public land. It leases out land for energy production and farming, manages wildlife, oversees campgrounds and other recreational facilities, and works to control fires. That first responsibility — leasing land for energy projects — will keep the agency in the hot seat in years to come as controversy bubbles up about leasing land for fracking and coal mining as well as for solar and wind projects.

Kornze’s boss, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, had this to say about him: “Neil has helped implement forward-looking reforms at the BLM to promote energy development in areas of minimal conflict, drive landscape-level planning efforts, and dramatically expand the agency’s use of technology to speed up the process for energy permitting.”

More from an Interior Department press release:

Kornze played a key role in developing the Western Solar Plan, which established 17 low-conflict zones for commercial solar energy development and also identified lands appropriate for conservation, and the agency’s approval of 47 solar, wind and geothermal utility-scale projects on public lands, as a leader of the Department’s Renewable Energy Strike Team. When built, these projects [will] add up to more than 13,300 megawatts — enough electricity to power 4.6 million homes and support 19,000 construction and operations jobs. He also has been a leader in reforming BLM’s oil and gas program, including the upcoming launch of a nation-wide online permitting system that could significantly reduce drilling permit processing times, and in the bureau’s efforts to enhance and increase visitors to the diverse system of national conservation lands.

Alex Taurel of the League of Conservation Voters had nice things to say about Kornze: “As a westerner, he knows first-hand the importance of careful stewardship of our public lands. He’s the right choice for the job, and the Senate should act quickly on his nomination.”


Source
Secretary Jewell Applauds President’s Intent to Nominate Neil Kornze as Director of the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of Interior

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Obama nominates BLM leader Neil Kornze to lead the BLM

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Were Your Dental Crowns, Retainers, and Dentures Made in Someone’s Dirty Cellar?

by Mstyslava7ju Posted on November 11, 2013

Mother Jones

Earlier this month, the ABC News affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, aired a strange story: Police in Springfield had received a call-in report that a man was standing on a street corner and “shooting a gun off all day.” After a five-hour standoff, they arrested the man and searched his house. They found guns, knives, swords, and in the basement, hot plates, pots and pans, and boxes of teeth. Perplexed, they investigated further and discovered that the man’s brother had been running a dental lab out of the home for about a year, supplying devices such as dentures to local dentists’ offices. The photos of the basement lab are sickening: paint peeling off the walls, dust everywhere, lots of clutter. Not exactly the kind of pristine environment you’d imagine for the manufacture of something that goes in your mouth.

Amazingly, the scuzzy basement lab was completely legal. In fact, I, Kiera Butler, could go home tonight and start making dentures in my basement and selling them to dentists. Ohio is one of many states where dental labs and their employees—who produce crowns, night guards, dentures, and your kids’ braces and retainers—don’t have to be trained, licensed, or certified in any way. Heck, they don’t even have to register with the state health department. While Ohio at least asks dental labs to disclose to clients what their products are made of and where they come from, most states have no such requirement. (You can check out the rules for individual states here.)

Is your dentist even aware of this? Perhaps not. In a 2008 survey by the American Dental Association, fewer than half of dentists knew whether their state regulates these labs, and 86 percent couldn’t say whether the federal government does. As it turns out, the manufacturers of many common dental devices are actually exempt from federal rules that medical-device makers have to follow. The FDA “handles questions associated with these dental-device exemptions on a case-by-case basis,” explains David Gartner, who heads the regulatory policy division of the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

The National Association of Dental Labs (NADL) estimates that Americans spend around $7 billion on dental devices annually, and that there are some 10,000 dental labs in the United States. But the FDA has inspected only 146 of them during the last decade. Because most don’t have to register, state and federal authorities have no real record of their existence.

Domestic dental labs get a good portion of their materials (about 38 percent, the NADL estimates) from thousands of overseas labs, which are supposed to register with the FDA. But the agency has inspected only 113 of those labs in the last decade—even after lead was found in some imported Chinese crowns in 2008.

So are these unregulated devices creating problems for patients? Hard to say, says Eric Thorn, the NADL’s chief staff executive. “In the vast majority of these occurrences the patient would report it to their dentist and their dentist would address the issue,” he says. Dentists are not requires to file official reports of most problems with appliances.

The ABC reporters asked the Springfield man whether he had any training as a dental lab technician, and it turned out he did: He got certified in prison—which actually makes him more qualified than the law requires.

Both NADL and the American Dental Association are urging states to require dental labs to register. That way, at least authorities will be able to track them. “It’s really important that these devices get made in clean, hygienic labs, and that states require those labs to be registered,” says Bennett Napier, NADL’s executive director. “Otherwise, patients have no way of knowing their devices are made under acceptable conditions.”

Here are a few more pictures that the Springfield, Ohio, police took of the basement dental lab:

Police Department of Springfield, Ohio

Police Department of Springfield, Ohio

Police Department of Springfield, Ohio

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Were Your Dental Crowns, Retainers, and Dentures Made in Someone’s Dirty Cellar?

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