Tag Archives: blue marble

British Columbia Rejects West Coast Pipeline Plan

by SherlynHa Posted on May 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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While we’ve been having a big fight over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline down here in the US, Canada has also been debating a massive pipeline for exporting tar sands oil, the Northern Gateway. And on Friday, the government of British Columbia put the kibosh on that whole idea.

BC’s environment minister said Friday that Enbridge, the company seeking to build the pipeline, had not adequately answered the government’s questions about the project, and that there were still outstanding concerns about spill prevention and response. The CBC reports:

“British Columbia thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence and submissions made to the panel and asked substantive questions about the project, including its route, spill response capacity and financial structure to handle any incidents,” said Environment Minister Terry Lake.
“Our questions were not satisfactorily answered during these hearings.”

The Northern Gateway would run from the heart of the tar sands in Alberta, through British Columbia, and to an export terminal in Kitimat. Anti-pipeline activists in the US are cheering BC’s Gateway decision as a win against tar sands development. 350.org founder Bill McKibben sent around a statement shortly after the announcement:

For years the tar sands promoters have said: ‘if we don’t build Keystone XL the tar sands will get out some other way.’ British Columbians just slammed the door on the most obvious other way, so now it’s up to President Obama. If he approves Keystone XL he bails out the Koch Brothers and other tar sands investors; if he rejects the pipeline, then an awful lot of that crude is going to stay in the ground where it belongs.

The BC government was quick to say, however, that this “is not a rejection of heavy-oil projects” in general—keeping open the possibility for another proposed pipeline, Kinder Morgan (which we also talked about here). Nevertheless, it certainly makes plans to export tar sands oil more complicated.

CLARIFICATION: As the Globe and Mail explains, British Columbia does not have ultimate authority on the pipeline decision; the Canadian government does. But this is expected to influence its decision:

It does not have veto power over what would be a federally regulated project but its opinions carry much weight in the Joint Review Panel’s deliberations, said Michal Moore, an economics professor at the University of Calgary and a former energy regulator.
“I would think that when they play a card like that, when they don’t have direct control over the decision, that card is meant to be a place marker that says, ‘This issue is really important to us and we want to make sure that you take it very seriously,'” Mr. Moore said. “It’s the moral equivalent of throwing down a gauntlet, ‘that you better address our concerns in your decision, no matter what the decision is.'”

The headline on this story has been changed to reflect this clarification.

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British Columbia Rejects West Coast Pipeline Plan

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Exploding Trains, Explained

by Larry Daichea Posted on May 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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A train and a garbage truck collided outside of Baltimore on Tuesday evening, resulting in a large explosion that released smoke that could be seen miles away. CSX, the train’s operator, confirmed that the train was carrying hazardous chemicals that caused the explosion. The Washington Post reports:

CSX spokesman Gary Sease said the sodium chlorate in a derailed car near the front of the train exploded, igniting terephthalic acid in another derailed car. Sodium chlorate is used mainly as a bleaching agent in paper production. Oklahoma State University chemist Nick Materer said it could make for a potentially explosive mixture when combined with an incompatible substance such as spilled fuel.
Another chemist, Darlene Lyudmirskiy, of Spectrum Chemical Manufacturing Corp. in Gardena, Calif., said such a mixture would be unstable and wouldn’t need even a spark to cause a reaction.
“If it’s not compatible, anything could set it off,” she said.

The incident could have been much worse if other chemicals had been involved—chemicals like chlorine gas or anhydrous ammonia. When a Norfolk Southern train derailed in Graniteville, SC in 2005 and released chlorine, nine people died and 5,000 had to be evacuated. While not nearly that bad, the Baltimore explosion has brought renewed attention to the hazardous chemicals that are transported by rail in the US.

In 2012, trains carried 189 million tons of chemicals. That only represents about 20 percent of all the chemicals shipped in the US. But trains carry 64 percent of a class of chemicals known as “toxic inhalation hazards” or TIH, like chlorine, that can be deadly if inhaled. Rail is the safest, most efficient way to transport those chemicals—one rail tank can carry as much as four trucks, and trains moving along a dedicated shipping line rather than on the highways, meaning that collisions are less likely, as researchers at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government have pointed out.

Even if rail is safer than trucks, there are plenty of reasons to want to limit the amount of dangerous chemicals carried by rail. There’s always a chance of an accident, as Tuesday’s explosion demonstrated, and local governments and first responders don’t even know what’s traveling on those trains until an accident happens. Then there’s also the threat of a deliberate attack on either the rails or the chemical facilities where the tankers eventually end up. The best solution, says Greenpeace legislative director Rick Hind, is getting companies to shift from a “catastrophic chemical to a non-catastrophic substance or process”—that is, using chemicals that won’t explode or give off noxious fumes. These chemicals would be safer to transport, and safer to use when they reach their destinations.

Some companies and municipal water systems have already started phasing out the use of deadly chemicals like chlorine. But it would take a stronger regulatory push to make a larger switch happen. There was some effort to do so immediately after September 11, at the height of terrorism fears. But the Bush White House did not back it due to pressure from the chemical industry, recalls Bob Bostock, the homeland security adviser to the then-EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman. “That effort died before it really got started,” he says.

Now Bostock hopes that the EPA will use its regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act to “to require facilities to at least evaluate safer technologies.” “It’s very feasible to do so,” he says. “A lot of facilities have done it. A lot have not.”

Railroad operators aren’t particularly jazzed about transporting hazardous chemicals, either. But because a few companies control the majority of major railroads, they are required under federal “common carrier” rules that say they can’t refuse to carry TIH or other hazardous chemicals. The Association of American Railroads, the industry trade group, has asked Congress to allow them to “decide for themselves whether to accept, and at what price they are willing to accept, such materials for transportation.” AAR has also called for safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals as a means of reducing their own risk as carriers.

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Exploding Trains, Explained

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Press Release of the Day: Downton Abbey’s Mrs. Patmore Visits Chinese Moon Bears

by dfonis5 Posted on May 28, 2013

Mother Jones

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And the winner for today’s greatest press release:

English actress Lesley Nicol, star of international hit TV show Downton Abbey, has completed a visit to Animals Asia’s China Bear Rescue Centre (CBRC) in Chengdu, China.

Via Animals Asia

Nicol—who plays the “highly-strung and quick-tempered” cook Mrs. Patmore—has previously tweeted her love for the Chinese bears:

Animals Asia, headquartered in Hong Kong, is an organization dedicated to protecting “moon bears” in China; here’s an example of moon-bear abuse.

Lesley Nicol isn’t even the first actor in the acclaimed British period drama to go rescue tortured bears in China. That honor belongs to Peter Egan, who earlier this year traveled to Chengdu, a city in southwest China, to work with Animals Asia. Egan played the Duke of Argyll in a Downton Abbey Christmas special.

On a related note, there was that one episode of Downton Abbey in which under-butler Thomas Barrow teaches kitchen maid Daisy Mason an old dance move called “the Grizzly Bear“; Mrs. Patmore shows up in that scene near the end.

So now you know.

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Press Release of the Day: Downton Abbey’s Mrs. Patmore Visits Chinese Moon Bears

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Farewell Froggy, the Age of Ribbet is Nearing an End

by Mike Herman Posted on May 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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Amphibians are disappearing horrifyingly fast worldwide, with a third of species imperiled. But they’re disappearing even faster than believed in the US—and probably worldwide (more on that below)—according to the first ever analysis of the rate of population losses among frogs, toads, salamanders, and newts.

Eastern newt: Patrick Coin at Wikimedia Commons

Even amphibians presumed to be relatively stable and widespread are declining. With species everywhere—from the swamps of Louisiana and Florida to the high mountains of the Sierras and Rockies—all disappearing with mind blowing speed.

Toad mountain harlequin frog: Brian Gratwicke at Flickr

A team of researchers with the USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative analyzed the rate of change in the probability of 48 amphibian species occupying ponds and other moist habitats in 34 sites over a period of nine years (see map/figures below).

Gray tree frog: Robert A. Coggeshall at Wikimedia Commons

What they found: overall occupancy by amphibians declined 3.7 percent a year from 2002 to 2011. That seemingly small number adds up to particularly virulent form of extinction hunting down these species within two decades if the rate of decline remains unchanged.

California newt: jkirkhart35 at Wikimedia Commons

Much worse, species Red-listed as threatened or vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declined on average 11.6 percent a year.

Yosemite toad: Natalie McNear via Flickr

Surprisingly, declines occurred even in protected lands, like national parks and national wildlife refuges. “The declines of amphibians in these protected areas are particularly worrisome because they suggest that some stressors—such as diseases, contaminants and drought—transcend landscapes,” says lead author Michael Adams.

American bullfrog: Dave Menke at Wikimedia Commons

Amphibians seem to be experiencing the worst declines documented among vertebrates, but all major groups of animals associated with freshwater are having major problems.

From the PLOS ONE paper: (A) Location of monitoring areas. (B) Distribution of species among IUCN categories. (C) Number of years monitored in each time series. (D) Mean annual estimates of probability of site occupancy and number of occupancy estimates (N). Credit: Michael J. Adams, et al. PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064347.g001

While the PLOS ONE paper didn’t address causes, another recent study found a multitude of natural and manmade stressors affecting amphibians, including human-induced habitat destruction, environmental contamination, invasive species, and climate change.

“An enormous rate of change has occurred in the last 100 years, and amphibians are not evolving fast enough to keep up with it,” says Andrew Blaustein, author of the 2011 paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and professor of zoology at Oregon State University. “With a permeable skin and exposure to both aquatic and terrestrial problems, amphibians face a double whammy. Because of this, mammals, fish and birds have not experienced population impacts as severely as amphibians—at least, not yet.”â&#128;&#139;

Shenandoah salamander: Brian Gratwicke at Wikimedia Commons

“Amphibians have been a constant presence in our planet’s ponds, streams, lakes and rivers for 350 million years or so, surviving countless changes that caused many other groups of animals to go extinct,” says USGS Director Suzette Kimball. “This is why the findings of this study are so noteworthy; they demonstrate that the pressures amphibians now face exceed the ability of many of these survivors to cope.”

I’ve written more about climate-induced amphibian disappearances here, about worrisome trends in reptile numbers here, about problems with herbicides on farms here, and about how pesticide cocktails kill amphibians even in “safe” doses here. And for a long read on the problems with the loss of biodiversity here. Plus one spot of bright news on some incredible and successful efforts to breed super endangered amphibians in captivity here.

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Farewell Froggy, the Age of Ribbet is Nearing an End

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WATCH: What Does 400 ppm Mean? Talking with Climate Scientist Michael Mann

by f3x43zg0 Posted on May 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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Last week in Washington, DC, leading climate scientist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania sat down with Climate Desk Live to talk about the significance of an planetary milestone—we’ve reached 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As Mann explained, humans are altering the content of the atmosphere at an alarming rate—one perhaps never seen before in the history of Earth itself.

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WATCH: What Does 400 ppm Mean? Talking with Climate Scientist Michael Mann

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How Hitler’s U-Boats Are Still Attacking Us

by LauraFore Posted on May 21, 2013

Mother Jones

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some fresh news from World War II: Thirteen Merchant Marine ships sunk by the German navy in the Battle of the Atlantic threaten to release oil from their watery graves.

The finding comes in an assessment presented to the Coast Guard that analyzed 20,000 shipwrecks in US waters, and identified 36 as posing a significant threat of oil pollution. Seventeen of those are recommended for further assessment, which could lead to missions to remove their fuel oil and oil cargo. Besides the Merchant Marine vessels, the worrisome ships include a barge lost in bad weather in 1936; two ships sunk in separate collisions in 1947 and 1952; and a tanker that exploded in 1984.

The 17 wrecks NOAA recommends for further investigation. NOAA

“This report is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the potential oil pollution threats from shipwrecks in U.S. waters,” says Lisa Symons, resource protection coordinator for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. “Now that we have analyzed this data, the Coast Guard will be able to evaluate NOAA’s recommendations and determine the most appropriate response to potential threats.”

An initial screening of the 20,000 shipwrecks found 573 that could pose substantial pollution risks based on the vessel’s age, type, and size. Ships built of steel, made to be a tanker or to carry over 1,000 gross tons got on the list. Further investigation narrowed the number to 107 wrecks. Some were deemed navigational hazards and demolished, and others were salvaged. But most of the 107 have not yet been directly surveyed for pollution potential. In some cases little is known about their current condition.

Locations of some of the 20,000 shipwrecks. NOAA

The report is part of NOAA’s Remediation of Underwater Legacy Environmental Threats (RULET) project, which hunts down potential sources of oil pollution from sunken vessels. Knowing where these ships lie helps oil response planning efforts, and may assist in tracking down mystery spills—sightings of oil where a source is not immediately known or suspected.

The Gulfstate before it was torpedoed in 1943. NOAA/SSHSA Collection, University of Baltimore Library

The vessel ranked worst on the NOAA’s risk assessment scale is the WWII tanker the Gulfstate, torpedoed and sunk off the Florida Keys in 1943. Here’s a casualty narrative for the ship, as excerpted by NOAA, that tells the terrifying tale of how the vessel went down after an attack by a Kriegsmarine U-Boat:

At 09.03 hours on 3 Apr, 1943, the unescorted Gulfstate (Master James Frank Harrell, lost) was hit by two torpedoes from U-155 about 50 miles southeast of Marathon Key, Florida while steaming a nonevasive course at 10.5 knots. The first torpedo struck on the port side directly under the bridge and ripped a large hole in the hull at the waterline, causing immediate flooding and setting the cargo on fire. The second torpedo struck at the engine room. The fire leapt 100 feet in the air and spread from the bridge to the after part of the vessel. The master ordered the engines secured and the ship abandoned, but the vessel sank bow first within four minutes. None of the lifeboats could be launched and all rafts were lost in the fire. Only a single doughnut raft managed to break free of the tanker. The eight officers, 34 crewmen and 19 armed guards (the ship was armed with one 5in, four .50cal and two .30cal guns) had to jump in the water and swim through 600 feet of burning oil surrounding the tanker. The survivors clung to floats and the single raft for seven hours before being discovered by a U.S. Navy blimp, which dropped two rubber life rafts. An U.S. Coast Guard seaplane picked up three of the most seriously wounded two hours later and took them to Miami. One hour later the remaining 15 survivors (five of them wounded) were picked up by the American patrol craft USS YP-351. Three of the wounded were later transferred to USS Noa (DD 343) for medical treatment. All survivors were landed at Key West. Eight officers, 26 crewmen and nine armed guards were lost.

Gulfstate ranks as the number one priority for the Coast Guard to assess and potentially to attempt to salvage or remove its oil, according to the NOAA rating system. That’s in part because it might still be holding almost 84,000 barrels (about 3.5 million gallons) of oil, and in part because of its location near Florida’s coral reefs. Unfortunately no one knows exactly where the Gulfstate went down, though it’s thought to lie in more than 2,800 feet of water. So NOAA is recommending steps to find the vessel, including asking Florida’s commercial and recreational fishermen to report oil spottings that could lead back to the ship.

Many of the 20,000 wrecks in US waters date to before 1891, when US shipping began switching to fuel oil. Most of these earlier wrecks from the age of coal and sail pose little or no environmental threat. You can find the full list of potentially polluting wrecks here.

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How Hitler’s U-Boats Are Still Attacking Us

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VIDEO: 97 Percent of Climate Scientists Can’t Be Wrong

by Burt Bollman Posted on May 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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Telling Americans that scientists don’t agree is the classic climate denial strategy. It’s been over a decade since consultant Frank Luntz famously furnished the GOP with strategies to kill climate action during the Bush years, recommending in a leaked memo PDF: “you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue.” Oh, yeah, and avoid truth: “A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.” It seems to have worked: Only a minority of Americans believes global warming is caused by humans: 42 percent, according to a 2012 Pew study.

That “consensus gap”, as it’s known, has proven fertile ground in which to sow resistance to climate action, says John Cook, a climate communications researcher from the University of Queensland in Australia. He has led the most extensive survey of peer-reviewed literature in almost a decade (published online this week in Environmental Research Letters). And what he found, just as in other attempts to survey the field, is that scientists are near unanimous.

A group of 24 researchers signed up to the challenge via Cook’s website, Skeptical Science (the go-to website for debunking climate denial myths), and collected and analyzed almost 12,000 scientific papers from the past 20 years. Of the roughly 4,000 of those abstracts that expressed some view on the evidence for global warming, more than 97 percent endorsed the consensus that climate change is happening, and it’s caused by humans.

His team pulled work written by 29,083 authors in nearly 2,000 journals across two decades. “People who say there must be some conspiracy to keep climate deniers out of the peer reviewed literature, that is one hell of a conspiracy,” he said via Skype from Australia (watch the video above). That would make the moon landing cover-up look “like an amateur conspiracy compared to the scale involved here.”

Cook is hoping to capitalize on the simplicity of his findings: “All people need to understand is that 97 out of 100 climate scientists agree. All they need to know is that one number: 97 percent.”

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VIDEO: 97 Percent of Climate Scientists Can’t Be Wrong

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John Kerry Updates His Climate Change Creds at the Arctic Council

by Emily Collins Posted on May 14, 2013

Mother Jones

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Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to Kiruna, Sweden, tomorrow, 14 May, for a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council, the only diplomatic forum focused exclusively on the Arctic region. Members represent the eight nations with territory north of the Arctic Circle (Canada, the US, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden), plus representatives of Arctic indigenous peoples. The Council’s concerns include a broad swath of environmental issues stemming from a wildly changing global climate amplified in the Arctic.

The meeting comes 25 years after Kerry hosted climate change hearing with Al Gore in the Senate and nothing happened. This year’s Arctic Council is focused on mitigating a future oil spill as drilling in the far north ramps up. Ministers will be signing of an historic Arctic Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response Agreement. The State Department describes this as an agreement that will “forge strong partnerships in advance of an oil spill so that Arctic countries can quickly and cooperatively respond before it endangers lives and threatens fragile ecosystems.”

Sounds great, except we can’t contain offshore spills, no matter the level of cooperation. Still, Kerry’s attendance will boost interest in an obscure Council and the problems—for most—of a faraway place.

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John Kerry Updates His Climate Change Creds at the Arctic Council

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We Just Passed the Climate’s "Grim Milestone"

by NigelG54 Posted on May 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over the last couple weeks, scientists and environmentalists have been keeping a particularly close eye on the Hawaii-based monitoring station that tracks how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, as the count tiptoed closer to a record-smashing 400 parts per million. Yesterday, we finally got there: The daily mean concentration was higher than at any time in human history, NOAA reported today.

Don’t worry: The earth is not about to go up in a ball of flame. The 400 ppm mark is only a milestone, 50 ppm over what legendary NASA scientist James Hansen has since 1988 called the safe zone for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, and yet only halfway to what the IPCC predicts we’ll reach by the end of the century.

“Somehow in the last 50 ppm we melted the Arctic,” said environmentalist and founder of activist group 350.org Bill McKibben, who called today’s news a “grim but predictable milestone” and has long used the symbolic number as a rallying call for climate action. “We’ll see what happens in the next 50.”

We could find out soon enough: With the East Coast still recovering from Superstorm Sandy and the West gearing up for what promises to be a nasty fire season, University of California ecologist Max Moritz says milestones like these are “an excuse for us to take a good hard look at where we are,” especially as the carbon concentration shows no signs of reversing course.

Scientists first saw the carbon scale tip past 400 ppm last summer, but only briefly; the record reported today by NOAA is the first time a daily average has surpassed that point. For the last several years concentrations have hovered in the 390s, and we’re still not to the point where the carbon concentration will stay above the 400 ppm threshold permanently. But that’s just around the corner, said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society.

“It’s clear that sometime next year we’ll see 400 consistently,” he said. “Avoiding the future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in greenhouse gases.”

Most scientists, environmentalists, and climate-conscious policymakers agree this will require, at a minimum, slashing the use of fossil fuels, and in the meantime, taking steps to adapt for a world with higher temperatures, higher seas, and more extreme weather. For example, according to Hansen, the world will need to completely stop burning coal by 2030 if returning to 350 ppm is to remain possible. What’s the holdup? Texas Tech climatologist Katherine Hayhoe blames “the inertia of our economic system, and the inertia of our political system.” But she, like most of her peers, believe it can—and must—be done: “We have to change how we get our energy and how we use our energy.”

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We Just Passed the Climate’s "Grim Milestone"

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Republicans Boycott Vote on Obama’s EPA Pick

by p555nf Posted on May 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a Thursday morning meeting in which they were supposed to vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Republicans on the committee complained that she had not yet adequately responded to their questions.

The vote had been scheduled for 9:15 a.m. on Thursday, but none of the committee’s Republican members showed up.

Politico reports on what transpired:

Committee ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) announced the boycott by all eight GOP members around 8:30 a.m., saying they would deny the panel a quorum because McCarthy and the EPA haven’t provided answers to the questions they’d posed.
Democrats have noted that the questions totaled more than 1,000 — what they call a record. Republicans also had five “requests” for EPA on issues such as how the agency handles outside groups’ threats of litigation — though Democrats said the GOP senators were actually asking the agency to offer major concessions in how it conducts public business.

Democrats on the committee were quick to attack Republicans for this “obstruction.” Committee chair Barbara Boxer noted that the vote had already been delayed for three weeks to accommodate the panel’s Republican members.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid railed on the effort to block McCarthy in a statement on Thursday, noting that the GOP has also blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Labor, Thomas Perez. “This type of blanket, partisan obstruction used to be unheard of,” Reid said. “Now it has become an unacceptable pattern.”

The blockade on McCarthy is even more noteworthy because, as we’ve reported here before, she worked for Mitt Romney back when he was governor of Massachusetts, as well as Connecticut’s Republican former Gov. Jodi Rell.

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Republicans Boycott Vote on Obama’s EPA Pick

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