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Oklahoma scientists pressured to downplay link between earthquakes and fracking

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Fossil fuel interests donated millions to Clinton charities. Is this a problem?

by YTVBrianna Posted on February 26, 2015

Fossil fuel interests donated millions to Clinton charities. Is this a problem?

By John Lighton 26 Feb 2015comments Share

At the same time that Hillary Clinton was pushing to make it easier for major corporations — including oil and gas companies — to do business abroad, many of those same companies were donating to the Clinton Foundation, which she administers with her family. At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state also donated a combined total of more than $26 million to the foundation, and played a role in philanthropic projects through the Clinton Global Initiative.

ExxonMobil and Chevron were among the donors to give to various Clinton groups and initiatives. So was Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, and Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department, which is tasked with promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.

From The Wall Street Journal:

As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embark on a race for the presidency, she has a web of connections to big corporations unique in American politics — ties forged both as secretary of state and by her family’s charitable interests. Those relationships are emerging as an issue for Mrs. Clinton’s expected presidential campaign as income disparity and other populist themes gain early attention. …

In some cases, donations came after Mrs. Clinton took action that helped a company. In other cases, the donation came first. In some instances, donations came both before and after. All of the companies mentioned in this article said their charitable donations had nothing to do with their lobbying agendas with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

Is this a big enough conflict of interest to concern environmentalists? Green groups disagree … or are silent on the topic. From Reuters:

“It’s hard to believe that [companies] don’t think they are getting something for their contributions,” said Ben Schreiber, head of climate and energy at Friends of the Earth, one of the largest environmental groups in the United States. …

Uncharacteristically, many green groups normally quick to attack politicians linked to oil and gas companies shied away from commenting on the Clinton Foundation’s relationship with these donors.

The Environmental Defense Action Fund had no comment because it does not have anyone with knowledge of the subject, a spokesman said. Another business-friendly green group, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, also declined, saying it would discuss the issues “when we have declared candidates.” The World Wildlife Fund had no comment.

While secretary of state, Clinton championed oil and gas development in Eastern Europe as a check on Russia — she even went so far as to fly to Bulgaria in an attempt to convince the government there to lift its moratorium on fracking. Meanwhile, many U.S. environmental groups have been pushing for domestic bans on fracking.

But at least some environmentalists understand that the issue has different implications abroad than it does at home. “Introducing fracking to produce natural gas in Eastern Europe was an element of national security — the less dependence those nations have on Russian gas, the better off they are,” Daniel Weiss, the League of Conservation Voters’ senior vice president for campaigns, told Reuters.

Another environmental litmus test for politicians — the litmus test of late — is the Keystone XL pipeline. But even as Barack Obama is shutting down Republican attempts to fast-track Keystone, Clinton is pointedly saying nothing at all. “You won’t get me to talk about Keystone because I have steadily made clear that I’m not going to express an opinion,” she said during a recent speech in Canada. “It is in our process and that’s where it belongs.” Her last statement on the topic came back in 2010, when, as secretary of state, she said she was “inclined” to approve the pipeline.

Yet on this, too, many activists are reluctant to take a hard-line stand. “Of course I wish she would say something, but I don’t go to bed at night worrying that Hillary Clinton isn’t talking about Keystone,” Bill McKibben — whose group 350.org helped make Keystone a key political issue — told National Journal. (McKibben also serves on Grist’s board of directors.)

Greens recently did get one encouraging sign from the presumptive candidate’s presumptive campaign. Former Obama top advisor John Podesta, who played a key role in hardening the administration’s stance on climate change and who staunchly opposes Keystone, has signed on to advise Clinton. So even if she doesn’t have an opinion on the pipeline at the moment, she’s got a powerful player on her team who certainly does.

Is Podesta’s influence enough to firm up Clinton’s wishy-washy record on dirty energy, and to counterbalance the coziness with the fossil fuel industry that six- and seven-figure donations might imply? That’s anyone’s guess, and one that environmental groups — at least at this early point — seem reluctant to make.

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Who needs Keystone when you could build a tar-sands pipeline through Alaska?

by DarnellVXI Posted on February 10, 2015

Who needs Keystone when you could build a tar-sands pipeline through Alaska?

By John Lighton 10 Feb 2015comments Share

The folks invested in Canadian tar sands are growing tired of twiddling their thumbs. After years of pushing and waiting, they still don’t have enough capacity to move all the oil they want to extract. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline through the lower 48 has become a symbol for environmental activists and American conservative legislators, resulting in a protracted political drama. At this point, it’s unclear whether the project will ever be built.

Meanwhile, another proposed pipeline, the Northern Gateway through British Columbia, has also stalled despite preliminary federal government approval. Many in the province are worried about the environmental damage the project could do to coastal ecosystems and waterways where salmon breed, and are challenging the project in court. Another proposed pipeline project through B.C., the Trans Mountain expansion, and one to the east through New Brunswick, the Energy East project, are also going nowhere fast.

But there could be another way to get that oil out to ports: It could travel through Alaska.

Bloomberg is reporting that the government of landlocked Alberta is chatting with Alaska about shipping tar-sands oil through the state.

The Alaska plan would involve constructing a pipeline along the Mackenzie River valley and then west to existing ports on the U.S. coast, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice said Friday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. Alaskan ports have been staging points for maritime crude shipments for decades.

“It’s technically feasible,” Prentice said. “Whether it’s economically feasible has yet to be determined, so we’re working on that.”

Alaska depends on oil royalties to keep the government running, and with the price of crude way down, the state is looking at a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall. A pipeline through the state could, in theory, help with that problem. But even if both the province and the state in question are on board, it’s still unclear whether such a project would make sense technically and economically, especially with the cost of oil so low.

Alternatively, one railroad corporation is proposing shipping the tar-sands oil through Alaska by rail. But that plan might not make much sense either: It would require a 1,600-mile, $15 billion rail project that, once completed, could have 10 trains pulling 200 cars with 1.5 million barrels of oil a day.

“You would have to have at least three or four loading docks,” one transportation consultant told the Edmonton Journal. “Is it feasible? Yes. Is anything like this done anywhere else? No. That’s why pipelines exist.”

Hmm.

And then there’s the politics of all this. Activists have been having increasing success blocking efforts to move tar-sands oil — influencing public opinion, winning politicians over to their side, and generally making a lot of noise about climate change and environmental degradation. And a new pipeline between Alberta and Alaska would require approval by the U.S. president, just like Keystone does, because it would cross an international line. You can be sure activists would make it into another big symbol.

So, considering the technical, financial, and political hurdles, we might not have to worry about tar-sands oil spills coming to Alaska — yet.

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Now BP and Shell will consider the cost of climate change when doing business

by MakaylaLeonski Posted on February 6, 2015

Now BP and Shell will consider the cost of climate change when doing business

By John Lighton 6 Feb 2015comments Share

BP will support a shareholder resolution calling on the company to release information about how climate change could affect its business. It’s the second big win for climate-conscious investors this year: Shell agreed to support a similar resolution last week.

Both the Shell and BP resolutions were submitted by a coalition of activist investor groups representing more than 150 major shareholders in Europe and America, including the U.K.’s Environment Agency and the Church of England, for a combined $300 billion in assets.

The resolution asked Shell and BP to reduce emissions, to invest in renewables, to provide transparency about bonuses that reward “climate-harming activities,” and to test how their business models would hold up if governments were to take action to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. These steps are good business, the resolution argues, “given the recognised risks and opportunities associated with climate change.”

Analyses suggest that in order to stay below the 2 degree level, much of the fossil fuel in the ground will have to stay there — including all of the oil remaining in the Arctic, which both Shell and BP are hoping to tap. If governments take more stringent action to confront climate change, these resources could end up stranded, despite the high value oil companies place on them. That’s led some, like U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, to suggest that investors in extractive industries should worry about a “carbon bubble.”

“Climate change is a major business risk,” said James Thornton, CEO of ClientEarth, one of the investor groups behind the push, when the resolutions were filed last month. “BP and Shell hold our financial and environmental future in their hands. They must do more to face the risks of climate change. Investors can help them by voting for these shareholder resolutions.”

JJ Traynor, Shell’s executive vice president of investor relations, sent a letter on Jan. 29 to shareholders in the company urging them to support the resolution. And yesterday, Reuters reported that a spokesperson for BP said his company would also support the resolution. “We consider the resolution to be non-confrontational, and it gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our current actions and build on our existing disclosures in this area,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Elspeth Owens, a representative of ClientEarth, called BP’s decision “great news” and said that the victory “confirms the potential of shareholder engagement.”

Both oil companies rank among the largest, by revenue, in the world. Investor activists withdrew a similar resolution filed with ExxonMobil last year after the company agreed to publish publicly a report on how future regulations, like carbon pricing, could affect its bottom line. (If you’re curious, ExxonMobil more or less said regulations won’t affect that bottom line much at all, really, because regulations aren’t actually coming. Ben Adler summarized the company’s position thusly: “Governments will allow us to keep extracting and burning fossil fuels because the economy.”)

As for BP and Shell, both resolutions still have to be voted on by their shareholders. BP will recommend that its investors support the resolution at a meeting on April 16. Shell, meanwhile, is encouraging shareholders to vote for the resolution at its annual general meeting in May.

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These 3D-printed bricks could replace your AC — except you, Florida

by ZackEnriquez Posted on February 5, 2015

These 3D-printed bricks could replace your AC — except you, Florida

By Suzanne Jacobson 5 Feb 2015comments Share

Hey, 3D printing obsessives, still looking for that killer app? Well, look over here! Maybe this killer app could help kill climate change.

Check out these cool 3D-printed bricks (seriously, they’re called Cool Bricks) that act like little air conditioners without the hefty electric bill. The bricks are made of a porous ceramic material that soaks up water like a sponge. When hot, dry air from the outside flows through the bricks, the water evaporates, and cooler, slightly damper air flows through the inside. Build an entire wall out of these puppies, and who knows what would happen! Actually, we know exactly what would happen — they’d help cool your home, and you’d lay off the freakin’ AC for a while.

(Side note: This isn’t a new concept. People have been using water-filled ceramic containers as air conditioners for millennia.)

Perhaps you’re wondering: Don’t air conditioners help dehumidify the air? Well yes, but evaporative cooling does the opposite. In order for the hot air to evaporate the water in the bricks, it has to heat up the water. That requires energy, and as energy leaves the air and enters the water, the air cools off. Voila!

Unfortunately, since evaporative cooling adds moisture to the air, the bricks, made by California-based company Emerging Objects, would only be useful in dry regions, not in humid areas like Florida, where the air is already full of water vapor.

I know what you’re thinking — if you’re in the desert, where are you gonna find water for the bricks to soak up? Good question. I never said these Cool Bricks were perfect. I just said they were cool.

Listen, here’s the bottom line: We’re looking for ways to save the planet, and techies are looking for ways to make 3D printing ubiquitous. Maybe we should all grab coffee sometime.

Source:
These 3D-Printed Bricks Cool Rooms Without Air Conditioning

, Fast Company.

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

by MAQReginavpus Posted on February 3, 2015

EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

By Grist staffon 3 Feb 2015comments Share

Extracting tar-sands oil from Canada would lead to “a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” says the U.S. EPA.

Since the Keystone XL pipeline would facilitate tar-sands extraction, and President Obama said he would only approve the proposed pipeline if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” the EPA is in effect saying to the president, “Reject it!”

Right now the pipeline project is being reviewed by the State Department, which will make a recommendation to Obama on whether to give it an OK or a KO. State asked eight other federal agencies, including EPA, to offer their views on the project by yesterday. EPA did so, arguing as it has before that the pipeline would have major environmental and climate impacts. The EPA’s use of the word “significant” is, well, significant, as that’s the same word Obama used in laying out his criteria for making a decision.

Says climate activist (and Grist board member) Bill McKibben, “In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close. Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department’s relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment.”

The EPA has been unenthusiastic about Keystone for years, but it’s even more skeptical now that oil prices are so low. Fuel Fix explains:

In a letter to the State Department released Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency said plummeting crude prices could make the proposed pipeline vital to Canadian oil sands developers who face higher costs to ship their crude by rail.

An earlier State Department analysis of the project found that Alberta, Canada’s oil sands likely would be developed with or without Keystone XL. But the EPA noted that “this conclusion was based in large part on projections of the global price of oil.”

With domestic West Texas Intermediate crude hovering around $50, it’s important to revisit that analysis, said EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement Cynthia Giles.

Says the Natural Resources Defense Council, “There should be no more doubt that President Obama must reject the proposed pipeline once and for all.”

Now we just have to wait to see if Obama agrees.

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

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Pesticides just got a whole lot smaller. Is that a good thing?

by FrancesBenoit Posted on January 22, 2015

Pesticides just got a whole lot smaller. Is that a good thing?

By Liz Coreon 22 Jan 2015comments Share

Nanoparticles are basically the X-Men of the molecular world, in that they are unpredictable, elusive, and come in a dizzying array of forms.

So it should come as no surprise that scientists are now researching a new type of nanotechnology that could revolutionize modern farming: nanopesticides. (Cue: Ooo, ahh) Recent studies have suggested that the nano-scale pesticide droplets could offer a range of benefits including raising crop durability and persistence, while decreasing the amount of pesticide needed to cover the same amount of ground. But they’re also looking at the hefty potential for trouble: No one knows if the nanopesticide particles will seep into water systems, and, if they do, if they will harm non-pests like bees, fish, and even humans.

As we’ve written before, nanotechnology involves engineering particles that are tinier than the tiniest tiny. (More technically, we’re talking anything measured in billionths of a meter.) Scientists find this useful, since most substances behave much differently at that scale. Already, nanotechnology has changed the medical world, with nanoparticles used to purify water, protect against UV rays, and detect contamination.

The same could be true in farming. By shrinking the size of pesticide droplets down to nano-scale, scientists could help decrease overall pesticide use in U.S. agriculture. Which is a big thing — although we’ve come down a bit from the pesticide heyday of the 1980s, we still poured out 516 million pounds of pesticides in 2008 alone. Yipes. Here’s more on the potentially game-changing tech, from Modern Farmer:

By shrinking the size of individual nanopesticide droplets, there is broad consensus — from industry to academia to the Environmental Protection Agency — that the total amount of toxins sprayed on agricultural fields could be significantly reduced. Smaller droplets have a higher total surface area, which offers overall greater contact with crop pests. As well, these tiny particles can be engineered to better withstand degradation in the environment, offering longer-lasting protection than conventional pesticides.

Because many pesticides have been linked to birth defects, nerve damage, and cancer, scientists are pretty damn jazzed about the idea of using less of them.

But wait! Before we all lose our heads over the extreme tinification of agricultural chemicals — scientists still believe there could be a dark side to spraying our food and land with untested substances unknown to nature and immune to the usual kinds of breakdown (whaaa?! no way!).

So researchers across the world are slipping into lab coats and digging in. One project, led by Oregon State researcher Stacey Harper, is currently looking into how the compounds interact with their environment in “nano-sized ecosystems.” The research is still in its beginning stages, but the findings are slated to be published by the end of the year.

There is an obstacle and, surprise, it’s money. Scientists need more — more even than the $3.7 billion the the U.S. has invested through its National Nanotechnology Initiative to date — to assess fully the possible risks and rewards of nanotechnology.

Meanwhile, we giants here in the macro-world will continue enjoy the benefits of nanotechnology in our sunscreen, clean water, and scrumptious caramelly treats — even if invisible to us. As long as they don’t start manipulating magnets …

Source:
Everything You Need To Know About Nanopesticides

, Modern Farmer.

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Don’t call Uber and Lyft “ride-sharing,” says AP

by ElviaV49ekeomjt Posted on January 15, 2015

Fare economy

Don’t call Uber and Lyft “ride-sharing,” says AP

By Sam Blisson 15 Jan 2015comments Share

Henceforth, the services offered by companies like Uber and Lyft are not to be referred to as “ride-sharing,” because that is a load of crap, according to a new update to the AP Stylebook, a.k.a. the journalist’s bible. Instead, services that “let people use smartphone apps to book and pay for a private car service” are to be called “ride-hailing” or “ride-booking services.”

Thank you, AP, for confirming this misuse of English. Sharing means partaking of, using, experiencing, occupying, having, or enjoying with others, according to Merriam-Webster. Carpooling is sharing. So is picking up a hitchhiker, using Craigslist rideshare, even co-owning a car when it’s done without a middlecorporation.

These share-washing companies are just taxi services that aren’t subject to regulations that protect drivers and riders. Much has been written about how they exploit their drivers (there’s even a lawsuit in Boston). And while your Uber driver (who hopefully isn’t a creep) will be happy to tell you how much he or she loves the work, drivers interviewed for a Jacobin article on the subject say they lie about that because they can be “deactivated” (fired) if they don’t average 4.7 out of 5 stars from customers. Off the clock, one employee calls Uber an “exploiting pimp” that takes 20 percent of his earnings, treats him like shit, cuts prices whenever it wants, and tells him to fuck off if he complains.

Hey, at least these corporations are keeping drunk drivers off the road!

Ultimately, though, calling ride-hailing apps “sharing” distracts attention from actual, uncommodified sharing, which is what this was all supposed to be about in the first place, no? For-profit transportation services are part of what we should call “the bullshit sharing economy.” Can we put that term in the AP Stylebook?

Source:
The AP bans the term “ride-sharing” for Uber & Lyft

, Greater Greater Washington.

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Scientists dig up a new weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria

by Leonore6263 Posted on January 12, 2015

Soil Money

Scientists dig up a new weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria

By Amelia Urryon 12 Jan 2015comments Share

Kids, forget everything your pre-school teachers told you: Go play in the dirt all you like!

This month, scientists — after much hand-wringing and years of expensive drug development — plucked a promising new antibiotic from the ground. Not only is new-kid-on-the-block Teixobactin another tool to fight infections, it could be the first of an entire class of antibiotics that could save us from drug-resistant superbugs.

The researchers, who published their results in Nature last Wednesday, found the bacteria by isolating and domesticating 10,000 strains of microbes found in the soil. Teixobactin — which, like so many good things, apparently comes from “a grassy field in Maine” — was the most promising of the bunch. It managed to clear up a deadly MRSA infection in mice, and did so in such a way that the bacteria showed no signs of developing resistance.

In fact, this is not all new news. It turns out that most of the antibiotics we use today were cultivated from strains found in dirt — but this new technique uses the natural environment of the soil to grow bacteria that cannot be cultivated in a traditional lab culture. It could turn up hundreds of new compounds that could fight infections, even cancer, according to researchers.

Don’t get too excited: Though the new drug was a hit with the mice, it is still probably two years away from human trials, which will take another couple of years. It’s possible that the superdrug will have unforeseen consequences that make it dangerous to people as well as microbes. And some other scientists are skeptical about the claims that diseases will never develop resistance to Teixobactin and family: “The way bacteria multiply, if there weren’t natural mechanisms to limit their growth, they would have covered the planet and eaten us all eons ago,” infectious disease researcher William Schaffner told the New York Times.

I’m being told that hasn’t happened, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see just how wonderful this wonder drug really is, or what others are still hiding in the mud.

Source:
New Antibiotic Stirs Hope Against Resistant Bacteria

, New York Times.

Antibiotics: US discovery labelled ‘game-changer’ for medicine

, BBC.

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Texas city in fracking area is rocked by 11 earthquakes in 24 hours

by LarhondaFUQC Posted on January 8, 2015

Texas city in fracking area is rocked by 11 earthquakes in 24 hours

By John Lighton 8 Jan 2015 12:04 pmcomments Share

On the heels of a report linking 77 earthquakes in Ohio to fracking, a Texas city in an area rife with drilling operations was hit with a wave of 11 earthquakes in 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. The most intense registered 3.6 on the Richter scale, well over the level at which people would feel it — the local 911 service received more than 300 calls from residents trying to figure out what was going on.

Dallas Morning News

These recent quakes bring the total number to 26 since October in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. James Joiner reports at The Daily Beast that north Texas has seen more than a hundred quakes since 2008, when fracking operations began to ramp up, a dramatic increase from years previous.

Something similar is going on in neighboring Oklahoma, where, as we mentioned yesterday, there have been 586 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in just one year — the most of any state in the contiguous U.S. in 2014. Between 1975 and 2008, the state only got, on average, three earthquakes of this magnitude per year.

Scientists are pretty clear that Oklahoma’s booming oil and gas industry holds a hefty chunk of the blame for the uptick in seismic activity. And now some residents of Irving — where, as it happens, ExxonMobil is headquartered — are asking questions too. From the Daily Beast article:

Irving itself has more than 2,000 [fracking] sites nearby, and some of the more than 216,000 state wide “injection wells” responsible for disposing of fracking’s wastewater byproduct are in close proximity. Located thousands of feet below the ground, these wells hold millions of gallons of chemically tainted h2o, and … the pressure and liquid combination can combine to “lubricate” fault lines. And that may well be what is happening in the Barnett Shale region around, yes, Dallas and Irving.

Barnett Shale is the largest land-based gas field in Texas, with an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of natural gas just waiting to be hammered out of the ground … It’s a nearly bottomless potential bank account for corporations with the resources to drill and grind. But, as the people of Irving are now discovering, all of this poking and prodding is not without potential consequences.

Furthermore, seismologists warn that these drilling-related quakes have a good chance of getting worse as more and more wastewater is injected into to the ground. That’s bad news for the folks in Irving, Texas (and in Oklahoma, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and Colorado … ).

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