Tag Archives: europe

Europe really wants America’s oil and gas

by Frances52Z Posted on July 9, 2014

Hand it over!

Europe really wants America’s oil and gas

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It isn’t just oil companies that are pushing the U.S. to drop its near-total ban on crude oil exports. European Union negotiators are trying to convince America to not only end the ban but agree to a “legally binding commitment” that would guarantee both oil and gas exports to its members.

The Washington Post got its hands on a secret E.U. document describing negotiations related to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The free-trade agreement could affect $4.7 trillion in trade between the U.S. and Europe — and energy supplies are at the forefront of the European negotiators’ minds.

“The EU proposes to include a legally binding commitment in the TTIP guaranteeing the free export of crude oil and gas resources,” the “restricted” European Council document states.

So far, it seems that U.S. negotiators have been stonewalling the bid for such a legally binding commitment. “The U.S. has … been hesitant to discuss a solution for US export restrictions on natural gas and crude oil in the TTIP through binding legal commitments,” the document says.

Environmentalists are not happy about this E.U. push. “We find it particularly outrageous that a trade agreement negotiated behind closed doors is being used as a means to secure automatic access to both crude oil and natural gas,” Ilana Solomon, director of the responsible trade program at the Sierra Club, told the Post. “By lifting the ban, you’re creating a whole new market for the oil industry to export to, and windfall profits for oil companies, which means more money to frack more, to produce more, to burn more.”

Why are the Europeans currently so anxious to get their hands on American fossil fuels? The negotiators are pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory, which they say highlights European vulnerability to potential disruptions in the supply of natural gas from Russia.

“The current crisis in Ukraine confirms the delicate situation faced by the EU with regard to energy dependence,” the document states. “Building a strong and comprehensive chapter in TTIP, which would combine our support for procompetitive regulation while also lifting bilateral restrictions on gas and crude oil, will show our common resolve to increase security and stability through open markets.”

In other words: If you don’t trust Russia, send us your oil.


Source
A leaked document shows just how much the EU wants a piece of America’s fracking boom, The Washington Post

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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The EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” Starts to Take Concrete Shape

by JustinYQON Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

A few days ago, Google announced that it was beavering away on the 41,000 requests it had gotten from people demanding that it remove links to unflattering articles about themselves. So just what kind of people are making these requests? Brad DeLong directs me to the BBC’s Robert Peston, who gives us a clue:

This morning the BBC received the following notification from Google:

Notice of removal from Google Search: we regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/10/merrills_mess.html

What it means is that a blog I wrote in 2007 will no longer be findable when searching on Google in Europe….Now in my blog, only one individual is named. He is Stan O’Neal, the former boss of the investment bank Merrill Lynch.

My column describes how O’Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made.

Is the data in it “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”?

Hmmm.

I wonder if there’s a way to make this backfire? How hard would it be to create an automated process that figures out which articles Google is being forced to stuff down the memory hole? Probably not too hard, I imagine. And how hard would it then be to repost those articles in enough different places that they all zoomed back toward the top of Google’s search algorithm? Again, probably not too hard for a group of people motivated to do some mischief.

Maybe someone is already working on this. It wouldn’t surprise me. And I wonder if Google’s surprisingly quick response to the EU decision isn’t designed to spur exactly this kind of backlash. That wouldn’t really surprise me either.

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The EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” Starts to Take Concrete Shape

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Your clothes dryer is a huge energy waster

by JoleenPercy Posted on June 12, 2014

All wet

Your clothes dryer is a huge energy waster

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Buy a new major appliance today and it’ll be a lot more energy efficient than what was on the market 20 or 30 years ago. Unless, that is, you’re buying a dryer.

The Natural Resources Defense Council on Thursday put out an issue brief and call to action regarding money- and energy-wasting clothes dryers. While manufacturers have boosted the efficiency of washing machines, refrigerators, and other appliances in recent decades, their enthusiasm for doing the same thing for dryers has been damp at best. Dryers remain so energy hungry that even a new one can consume as much electricity as an efficient new clothes washer, refrigerator, and dishwasher combined.

NRDCClick to embiggen.

NRDC concluded that Americans spend $9 billion a year on the electricity used to dry their clothes. If their dryers were all upgraded to the best models available in Europe, Australia, and Asia, those costs would drop by $4 billion. And because most of the nation’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels, those upgrades would keep 16 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every year. Here are some highlights from the findings:

There are 89 million residential clothes dryers in the United States (75 percent electric models, 25 percent natural gas). Although electric dryers dominate the U.S. market, natural gas dryers typically cost 50 percent to 75 percent less to operate.

A typical household pays over $100 in annual utility bills to operate an electric dryer and $40 for a gas dryer. Homes with electric dryers pay at least $1,500 over the dryer’s lifetime for the electricity to power the machine. …

U.S. policies for clothes dryers lag behind those for other appliances. …

How a consumer uses a dryer is almost as important as which dryer is purchased. Choosing a lower operating temperature can slow the drying process a little, but it cuts energy use significantly. Stopping the dryer before all of the clothes are bone-dry saves time and energy, while reducing wrinkles and helping clothes last longer.

Of course, a brighter solution for reducing the costs and climate impacts of drying clothes is out there, just blowing in the wind.


Source
A Call to Action for More Efficient Clothes Dryers, NRDC

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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The Scorecard in Ukraine Is Murkier Than Most Pundits Think

by VirginiaGwl Posted on May 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Doyle McManus says that Vladimir Putin has played a shrewd game in Ukraine:

Here’s the score card: Putin has pocketed Crimea, the first territory in Europe to be seized by force since World War II. (On paper, the United States and the European Union are still demanding that he give the peninsula back to Ukraine, but in private, their leaders concede that’s unlikely to happen.) He has forced the European Union to put the brakes on Ukraine’s progress toward membership in the Western economic club. He has kept most of Russia’s business with the West intact and signed a big new natural gas deal with China. Now all he has to do is wait for Western attention to Ukraine’s travails to wane, as it probably will.

….”Even Petro Poroshenko is saying it’s time for normalization with Moscow,” she noted. “He knows who’s going to call the shots over Ukraine’s future: not Brussels, not Washington. It’s Moscow.”

This isn’t a ridiculous read of the situation, but I think it’s missing something key: compared to what? Sure, Putin might have found a way to salvage his disastrous intervention in Ukraine, but the right way to look at this is to compare Russia’s situation now to its situation in, say, October of last year. It’s true that Putin scuttled Ukraine’s free-trade deal with the EU, but look at the fallout. In order to turn things around after his incompetent diplomatic efforts failed, Putin was forced to intervene so clumsily that it inspired the Maidan protests that ended up causing Ukraine’s president to flee. He massed troops on Ukraine’s borders and used Russian special forces—again, disguised so clumsily that no one was fooled for even a second—to try to force a secession of the east. When that failed, Putin was forced to back down. He can pretend that he never had any intention of using military force in the first place, but no one takes that seriously and he knows it. His threat failed because the Russian military is weak and the American/EU sanctions had already begun to bite. He was hoping for a bloodless takeover, but he miscalculated badly and failed to get it.

So what’s the scorecard? On the plus side, Putin has Crimea. Maybe all by itself that was worth it—and if he’d been smart enough to stop there he might have come out ahead. But on the downside, Putin has demonstrated once again that Russia isn’t a reliable supplier of natural gas and will use it as a club whenever it feels like it. He’s earned the enmity of most of his neighbors. He’s gained nothing in Ukraine except the end of the EU association agreement, which was never a huge threat in the first place and will probably end up being implemented piecemeal over the next few years anyway. He’s damaged the Russian economy and set back relations with Europe. And sure, Poroshenko is saying it’s time for normalization with Moscow, but Putin had that back when Viktor Yanukovych was president.

So….Crimea. And possibly a slowdown in the pace of Ukraine’s integration with the West. That’s about it. But I wouldn’t underestimate the cost of this to Putin. Threats of military force are flashy, but unless you’re willing to back them up regularly, they do a lot more harm than good. I’m not sure why so many people who are generally clear-sighted about the drawbacks of military action suddenly get so smitten by it when it’s wielded by a thug like Putin. Hell, he doesn’t even use it well.

When the dust settles, it’s hard to see Putin gaining much from all this in the places that count. Regardless of the brave face they put on it, I’ll bet there aren’t many people in the inner sanctums of the Kremlin who think of the past six months as much of a triumph for Russia.

Link – 

The Scorecard in Ukraine Is Murkier Than Most Pundits Think

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Could a bullet train take you from the U.S. to China to Europe?

by rzana79 Posted on May 23, 2014

Could a bullet train take you from the U.S. to China to Europe?

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If the Chinese government is to be believed, the U.S. could one day be connected with Moscow, Paris, Turkmenistan, and Beijing by bullet train. The proposed high-speed rail network might resemble one of those maps you absentmindedly stare at in the back of in-flight magazines.

Chinese media is reporting that construction of the 8,000-mile system could begin next month. If actually completed, it could ferry passengers over a substantial swath of the Northern Hemisphere at speeds greater than 200 miles per hour.

The China Daily reports that China plans to fund and build the railway itself. Here’s how the newspaper says the new line would link the continental U.S. with China — a long-ass trip that would reportedly take two days:

The proposed journey will start from China’s northeast region, cross Siberia to Bering Strait, and run across the Pacific Ocean by undersea tunnel to reach Alaska, from Alaska to Canada, then on to its final destination, the US. To cross Bering Strait will require approximately 200km [125-mile] undersea tunnel.

A project like this would obviously require extensive international cooperation, and reaching the U.S. would only be possible if Canada were on board with the idea. Ben Makuch of Vice’s Motherboard blog did some digging and found that China might just be putting the cart before the horse:

I asked the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade if the “discussions” one Chinese engineer claims are happening between the four nations​ on the proposed next-generation rail system have begun with China. DFAIT media relations spokesperson Claude Rochon was categorical.

“To answer your question, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada is not informed of this project,” said Rochon. …

Diplomatic obstacles with the Harper government aside, any proposed Chinese rail line through land in British Columbia or the Yukon is sure to face serious domestic opposition. Besides the prevalence of wildlife and native reserves to negotiate along the corridor, future land use is a contentious issue in BC.

We’ll hold off on popping any bottles of Chinese-made champagne until conversations about an intercontinental high-speed rail network actually begin bubbling through international bureaucracies.


Source
China mulls high-speed train to US: report, China Daily
China’s Plan for a Canadian Bullet Train Is News to Canada, VICE

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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Could a bullet train take you from the U.S. to China to Europe?

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Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot

by Myrna Posted on May 17, 2014

Chinese officials and preservationists have embarked on an ambitious effort to protect historic sites that could become a model for saving antiquities elsewhere. Read original article:  Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot ; ;Related ArticlesPanel Questions Experts on Closed Reactor RisksColin Pillinger, Who Set Europe’s Eye on Space, Dies at 70Rescuers Seek Survivors in Turkish Mine Disaster ;

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Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Paradox

by 0ge7rota Posted on May 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Fareed Zakaria is the latest columnist to acknowledge that although President Obama’s foreign policy decisions have been largely correct, they’ve been sadly unaccompanied by any magic powers:

President Obama has not made a major mistake. He has done a skillful job steering the United States out of the muddy waters he inherited — Iraq, Afghanistan — and resisted plunging the country into another major conflict.

….Obama’s strategy of putting pressure on Moscow, using targeted sanctions and rallying support in Europe is the right one — and might even be showing some signs of paying off.

….From the Asia pivot to new trade deals to Russian sanctions, Obama has put forward an agenda that is ambitious and important, but he approaches it cautiously, as if his heart is not in it, seemingly pulled along by events rather than shaping them. Once more, with feeling, Mr. President!

I’ll concede that as a political partisan, maybe I’m cutting Obama too much slack. But I still wonder what all these critics want. I don’t mean the Bill Kristols and John McCains of the world. I know what they want: maximum confrontation, maximum bluster, and maximum military intervention. But what about the others? Like Zakaria, they sort of grudgingly recognize that Obama’s actual foreign policy actions have been about as good as they could have been, and yet they’re still unhappy. They want inspiration, dammit! They want the rest of the world to fall immediately into line. They want victory! That’s how it happens in the movies, after all. The president gives a big speech, and everyone swoons.

I wonder: Has any president in history been so widely criticized for doing everything right but not crowing loudly enough about it? I mean, it’s nice to think that a silver tongue would have gotten congressional Republicans to support intervention in Syria and Germans to approve harsher sanctions against Russia, but it’s just not so. I think everyone knows this perfectly well, but we find it so frustrating that we blame Obama for it anyway. It’s as if we’re all five-year-olds.

Which, come to think of it, maybe we are. We want this circle squared—triumph on every front but without any actual exercise of military power—and when we don’t get it we demand someone to blame, logic be damned. Before long we’re going to be holding Obama responsible for the fact that pi doesn’t equal three.

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Paradox

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Playlist for an Aging Rock Goddess

by NicholXVPT Posted on May 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Anna Brundage is a “too-tall red-headed woman with bangs who rides her bike to school from the East Village” to teach carpentry to little girls in safety goggles. But she used to be a rockstar—a bohemian, coked-out siren with a devoted following and an unreplicable sound. After her second album tanked, she left the scene. Now, seven years later, bruised, divorced, and a lot less innocent, Anna wants to reclaim her old life and yearns to be back “wandering, tracing an unpredictable path.” Life on the tour bus, take two—only this time, she’s 44.

Continue Reading »

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Playlist for an Aging Rock Goddess

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A week after Alaska OKs a big gas pipeline, another gas pipeline ruptures

by FletcherFoulds Posted on April 30, 2014

A week after Alaska OKs a big gas pipeline, another gas pipeline ruptures

By

Patrik Sartz, Alaska DEC via Alaska Dispatch

Oily brown where there should only be white.

BP sprayed a fine mist of oil, natural gas, and water over 27 acres of tundra on Alaska’s North Slope on Monday. It’s still not known how much vaporized oil and gas were spilled during the two-hour natural-gas pipeline accident at Prudhoe Bay, where a large oilfield is located, nor how long it will take to repair the ruptured pipe. But here’s what we do know, thanks to the Alaska Dispatch:

Such a large area of snow was covered because the leak occurred in the pipe’s 12 o’clock position, on top, and the pressurized gas sprayed crude oil and water into a strong wind, said Ashley Adamczak, a spokesperson with [the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation]. …

The damage is a little more than a mile from the 2006 leak of a transit line that ultimately became the largest recorded spill on the North Slope. That spill lasted five days and discharged 200,000 gallons over two acres. BP ultimately pled guilty to negligent discharge after failing to address corrosion. …

As for the cleanup, the hope is to get the oil and water removed before the snow and ice melts, and before migratory birds arrive in perhaps a couple of weeks, Adamczak said.

And this is something else that we know: The accident came a week after Alaska’s legislature gave tentative approval to a plan by BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Keystone XL-backer TransCanada to build an 800-mile pipeline to transport natural gas drilled from the North Slope to an export terminal. The idea is to start exporting the natural gas to Europe and Asia via the $45 billion to $65 billion Alaska Pipeline Project by the mid-2020s.

What could possibly go wrong?

Patrik Sartz, Alaska DEC via Alaska Dispatch

The pipeline rupture that triggered Monday’s oil spill.


Source
Broken pipe sprays oily plume across snowy tundra at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska Dispatch
Alaska lawmakers back governor on plan to export North Slope gas, 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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Chemical banned in Europe is probably on your apple

by Glinda6958 Posted on April 25, 2014

Chemical banned in Europe is probably on your apple

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A dose of diphenylamine a day won’t keep the doctor away.

The pesticide is sprayed on American apples after they’re harvested so they can be stored for months on end and shipped around the world without turning too ugly for grocery store shoppers. Federal tests in 2010 found the chemical on 80 percent of apples in the U.S. Unless you only buy organic, the DPA is also in your apple juice, in your applesauce, and maybe on your pears and in your pear baby food.

The chemical was banned in Europe because of health concerns in 2012. So the nonprofit Environmental Working Group would like to know why it remains in widespread use in the U.S.

Of particular concern to the European authorities was the fact that DPA is thought to combine with nitrogen on the surface of apples to produce nitrosamines, a cancer-causing group of chemical compounds. “While it is not yet clear that DPA is risky to public health, European Commission officials asked questions that the chemicals’ makers could not answer,” EWG scientist Sonya Lunder said in a press release on Thursday. “The EC officials banned outright any further use of DPA on the apples cultivated in the European Union until they are confident it is safe. Europe’s action should cause American policymakers to take a new look at this chemical.”

In a statement, the EPA told Reuters that it would take action if new evidence emerges that the chemical is dangerous — but, for now, it will continue to rely on a 1997 assessment that found “reasonable certainty of no harm.”

From Thursday’s EWG press release:

The U.S. EPA has taken no action to respond to the European ban and nor to the concerns about nitrosamines expressed by European food safety officials. This year, scientists in the U.S. EPA Pesticide Office tasked with pesticide safety reviews told EWG they were unaware of the new European ban and import restrictions. …

EWG’s analysis of DPA and apples says that, according to USDA, Americans eat nearly 10 pounds per person of raw apples every year. Consequently, even low levels of nitrosamines on raw apples, or in apple juice and applesauce could potentially pose a risk to human health.

Diphenylamine is used because retailers place so much emphasis on the cosmetic qualities of fruit and because distributors are shipping apples so far from where they’re grown. If we had a more sane food system, there wouldn’t be reason to use it at all.


Source
Most U.S. Apples Coated With Chemical Banned In Europe, Environmental Working Group
Group asks U.S. to examine pesticide-coated apples banned by Europe, 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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