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Good news for Kabul’s Tourism Bureau: The city’s air is unhealthy, but not full of feces

by f45 Posted on January 22, 2013

Good news for Kabul’s Tourism Bureau: The city’s air is unhealthy, but not full of feces

By Philip Bump

Particulate matter is a particularly (pun intended and embraced) dangerous form of air pollution. Particulates are usually in the air as soot, small bits of burned fossil fuels which may cause millions of premature deaths annually. It was largely soot pollution that caused Beijing’s Bladerunner-esque pollution last week.

jdennesDust over KabulAs I said, particulate pollution is usually soot. It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, the polluting particles are something … much less pleasant. Take Kabul. From the Times:

It has long been a given that the air pollution in this city gets horrific: on average even worse than Beijing’s infamous haze, by one measure.

For nearly as long, there has been the widespread belief by foreign troops and officials here that — let’s be blunt here — feces are a part of the problem.

Canadian soldiers were even warned about it in predeployment briefings, which cited reports that one test had found that as many as 30 percent of air samples contained fecal particles. The Canadians were worried enough that the government ordered a formal investigation, officials say.

There’s reason to think that this apocryphal pollution assessment could be accurate. Kabul is bursting at the seams. The Times indicates that only five percent of homes are connected to sewage systems, in a city that now holds ten times what it was designed for. And a common heating source is dried dung.

But not to worry. Science, history’s greatest killjoy, suggests that Kabul’s air is nearly feces-free. Not that this means it’s great to breathe.

When the United Nations Environment Program did a study that included air sampling, in 2008, it found plenty to worry about, but mostly what would be expected of a traffic-congested city: a lot of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides. Plus a very high concentration of particulates, known in the trade as PM 10 — which means particles smaller than 10 microns, small enough to penetrate deeply into the lungs, and an important indicator of air pollution — but no specific fecal bits. …

In fact, when the Canadians investigated the matter in response to their worried soldiers, the investigators said that some fecal matter in the air was normal — even in Canada. Some of it could just be bird and flying-insect droppings.

Kabul’s bigger problems are dust and geography — it lies on a plateau surrounded by mountains, limiting airflow. Breathing the air in the city is a health hazard regardless of what it is you’re inhaling, making this little consolation to residents or visitors.

But on the long list of reasons tourists might choose not to visit Kabul, at least the city can cross off “you will be inhaling feces.” Small victories.

Source

Despite a Whiff of Unpleasant Exaggeration, a City’s Pollution Is Real, New York Times

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Good news for Kabul’s Tourism Bureau: The city’s air is unhealthy, but not full of feces

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New York’s Sandy-flooded South Ferry subway station is still a useless mess

by RubinkJoseph Posted on January 18, 2013

New York’s Sandy-flooded South Ferry subway station is still a useless mess

By Philip Bump

In 2009, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority proudly announced the reopening of the South Ferry subway station following an extensive, $530 million remodel. The station is right at Manhattan Island’s tip, under the terminal from which the Staten Island Ferry docks and departs. And when Sandy hit, South Ferry became an aquarium.

This is what the station looked like immediately after the storm.

MTAPhotos

And this is what it looked like yesterday.

benyankee

That’s from a gallery of photos taken by Benjamin Kabak, who runs Second Avenue Sagas, a blog focused on New York transit. He took a tour of South Ferry station yesterday, and marveled about how little progress has been made. Here’s how he described the tour:

Led by Wynton Habersham, a 30-year vet of the MTA, I saw a station in ruins. Tiles have fallen from the ceiling and walls, debris is everywhere and the electronics — the hidden aspect of the station — are completely wrecked. “It’s like throwing a computer into seawater,” Habersham said of the rampant destruction. The station filled up with 80 feet of water, and crews eventually pumped out 14.5 million gallons of damaging brackish saltwater.

While the station looks bad, the cosmetic impact is nothing compared to the destruction to key signal systems and train control infrastructure. All of the equipment inside the signal relay room will have to be replaced, and in fact, the entire signal system south of Rector St. will likely have to be completely overhauled as well. Vital infrastructure — the very systems that keep trains from colliding with each other and on the right tracks — is useless, corroded from saltwater exposure. …

[I]f all goes according to plan, perhaps we’ll see South Ferry reactivated in 2014. But the MTA has to decide how to repair the station and what hardening takes place.

benyankee

Storm debris left on top of a sign in the station.

Initial estimates of the cost to repair the station run about $600 million. But that is only listed as a “restore” project by the MTA; it’s not clear the extent to which it includes preventative measures for a station more at risk from future flooding than most. As Curbed NY notes:

The $600 million cost to rebuild it will be even more than the $545 million renovation it underwent in 2009. It will cost about $350 million to repair physical damage to the station, $200 million to replace the 600 electromechanical relays, circuit breakers, and switch boards that were corroded by the salty water, and $30 million to replace third rails.

The MTA must also decide if they should move the electronic equipment to higher elevation, which would require changing the layout of the station. This decision has to be made before any signal repair work begins, and the challenges to replacing all of this equipment highlight post-storm issues faced by the whole system.

30,000 people a day passed through the station in 2011, putting it in the top 10 percent of stations. In 2013, that figure will be zero. After that? Who knows.

benyankee

A service alert issued before the storm lies on the empty platform.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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New York’s Sandy-flooded South Ferry subway station is still a useless mess

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Guess which North American country produces the most garbage. Wrong!

by greenenergy4 Posted on January 17, 2013

Guess which North American country produces the most garbage. Wrong!

By Philip Bump

Despite how demure its citizens are, Canada sometimes feels a little insecure about always being promoted as second-fiddle to the United States. There is a famous T-shirt which suggests that Canada is America’s hat; while this is largely true, Canada yearns to occasionally suggest that the U.S. is Canada’s boxer shorts. (Your Florida is hanging out.)

In one thing, though, Canada emerges victorious: garbage production. From the CBC:

The Conference Board of Canada gave Canada a C grade on Thursday and ranked it in 15th place among 17 developed nations studied across a host of environmental-efficiency metrics. …

While Canada earned a few A grades in categories such as water quality, endangered species and the use of forest resources, overall the country scored a D average. …

Canada fared dismally in terms of the amount of waste we produce. In 2009 (the data year on which the study was based), Canada produced 777 kilgrams of garbage per citizen. Across all 17 countries studied, the average was only 578 kg produced.

pedalfreak

This is actually a dump in Canada. Really. With bears.

This is what happens when you have a ton of extra space — it fills up with junk you don’t need to keep. Been there, Canada! We feel you!

[This spot could have been used for a hacky joke about the things Canadians throw away — Tim Horton’s cups, moose antlers, empty syrup bottles, retired NHL players — but we’re too mature for that.]

So congratulations to our head-warming neighbors to the north. You’ve done it. You’ve bested America in a field that most people would assume the U.S. would win in a walk. On garbage production, we are truly Canada’s underpants.

On nearly every other factor studied, though:

The 15th-place [overall] ranking put Canada only ahead of the U.S. and Australia …

The report found Canadians use 1,131 cubic metres per capita of water per year. The only country that uses more water is the United States, which consumes 1,632 cubic metres per capita.

U-S-A, motherf*ckers. U. S. A.

Source

Canadians produce more garbage than anyone else, CBC

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Another urgent need for infrastructure spending: Levees

by iscciaglewstrone123 Posted on January 17, 2013

Another urgent need for infrastructure spending: Levees

By Philip Bump

One source of contention during the House’s aggrieved, extensive debate over providing aid to Hurricane Sandy victims was how much money should be spent on preventative measures. To what extent, that is, should the government spend money now in order to save money in the future — spend money bolstering coastlines in New York and New Jersey so that the next time a big storm comes through, damage is less severe. The preferred answer of the House Republican majority was: zero dollars.

usacehq

An intentional levee breach in Iowa.

The GOP’s refusal to spend on prevention is looking all the more shortsighted in light of a new assessment by the Army Corps of Engineers of the strength of the nation’s levees. What the Corps is finding is not encouraging, raising the specter of another massive infrastructural need. From the Associated Press:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue ratings for a little more than 40 percent of the 2,487 structures, which protect about 10 million people. Of those it has rated, however, 326 levees covering more than 2,000 miles were found in urgent need of repair.

The problems are myriad: earthen walls weakened by trees, shrubs and burrowing animal holes; houses built dangerously close to or even on top of levees; decayed pipes and pumping stations.

How big is the risk? Hard to say.

The Associated Press requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, details on why certain levees were judged unacceptable and how many people would be affected in a flood. The Corps declined on grounds that such information could heighten risks of terrorism and sabotage.

It’s up to local governments to maintain levees, just as it’s up to each of us to go to the dentist. It’s costly, it takes time, and if there’s no immediate problem, it’s easy to postpone. The longer you go without maintenance, though, the bigger the problems that result.

One would think that — following 2005 when all of New Orleans’ teeth fell out and its wisdom teeth were all impacted and so on — communities would be eager to figure out how to prevent the same thing from happening to them. Not so.

Some local officials say that the Corps is exaggerating the dangers, that some deficiencies were approved or not objected to by the federal government and that any repairs could cost them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

“It’s just not right to tell a little town like this to spend millions of dollars that we can’t raise,” said Judy Askew, mayor of Brookport, a hardscrabble town of about 1,000 on the banks of the Ohio River.

If the Ohio floods and the levee fails, someone will pay to restore Brookport — at a price tag almost certainly greater than those millions Askew doesn’t have. And these areas are very likely to flood, if the federal government’s draft climate change report is any indicator.

As we’ve noted before, government has a bias toward funding relief and an antipathy to funding prevention. A lot of this is politics; there’s much more political will to help those left homeless than there is to raise money to protect the home in the first place. It’s why each of the people who spoke out against Sandy aid were very deliberate in articulating how far their hearts went out to victims, even as they pushed measures that would ensure there’d be more victims in the future.

In the meantime:

As of Jan. 10, the agency had rated 1,451, or 58 percent, of [the nation’s levees]. Of those, 326 were unacceptable, 1,004 were minimally acceptable with deficiencies that need correcting, and 121 were acceptable. …

A number of local managers blame their “unacceptable” ratings on the Corps taking a harder line on compliance with levee construction, operation and maintenance standards.

“Since Katrina, they’re almost hyper-vigilant,” said John Sachi, city engineer for South St. Paul. “It’s almost like they’re remedying their mistakes from the past by putting the onus on us to make sure things get better.”

That’s almost exactly what it’s like.

Source

Deficient levees found across America, Associated Press

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Another urgent need for infrastructure spending: Levees

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Japan plans world’s largest offshore wind farm near Fukushima

by gerdi Posted on January 16, 2013

Japan plans world’s largest offshore wind farm near Fukushima

By Philip Bump

pjh

An offshore farm near Kent, U.K.

The world’s largest offshore wind farm is coming to Japan. Eventually.

From New Scientist:

By 2020, the plan is to build a total of 143 wind turbines on platforms 16 kilometres off the coast of Fukushima, home to the stricken Daiichi nuclear reactor that hit the headlines in March 2011 when it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.

The wind farm, which will generate 1 gigawatt of power once completed, is part of a national plan to increase renewable energy resources following the post-tsunami shutdown of the nation’s 54 nuclear reactors. Only two have since come back online.

The project is part of Fukushima’s plan to become completely energy self-sufficient by 2040, using renewable sources alone. The prefecture is also set to build the country’s biggest solar park.

The planned farm will be almost twice the size of the largest such facility currently in operation. By installing the turbines near Fukushima, utilities can leverage the abandoned plant’s now-unused grid connections.

By 2020, it is possible that the United States will still have a wind industry. Stay tuned.

Source

Japan to build world’s largest offshore wind farm, New Scientist

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U.S. renewable investment drops in 2012 – but still hits second-highest level ever

by vserko45 Posted on January 14, 2013

U.S. renewable investment drops in 2012 – but still hits second-highest level ever

By Philip Bump

This is one of those “good news/bad news” things. We’ll start with the bad news, from The Hill:

Green energy investment fell in 2012 globally after hitting record levels the year before, driven in part by reduced activity in the United States, according to new data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The research firm reported Monday that overall investment was $269 billion, down from $302 billion in 2011 …

And now the good.

… but still the second highest level ever, according to its database. …

“We warned at the start of last year that investment in 2012 was likely to fall below 2011 levels, but rumors of the death of clean energy investment have been greatly exaggerated,” Michael Liebreich, the company’s CEO, said.

“Indeed, the most striking aspect of these figures is that the decline was not bigger, given the fierce headwinds the clean-energy sector faced in 2012 as a result of policy uncertainty, the ongoing European fiscal crisis and continuing sharp falls in technology costs,” he said.

One of the main drivers for the decline was the wind industry, which spent the latter half of the year being treated by D.C. the way a cat treats a mouse.

The U.S. experienced a steep, 32 percent drop amid fears that a popular wind energy tax credit would lapse (it ultimately was extended in the “fiscal cliff” deal), and as renewable power faced competition from low-cost natural gas.

The company said wind investment also fell in Spain, which enacted a moratorium on subsidies for projects that have not yet been approved; India, where wind incentives expired; and Italy.

Bloomberg

Click to embiggen.

The Energy Information Administration suggested in December that renewable costs will continue to drop in 2013, and, combined with state mandates for renewables, that could mean an increase in installation this year.

Which would be a “good news/good news” thing.

Source

Analysts: Global, US green energy investment slid in ‘12, The Hill

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Chevron is pleased with how much money it made last year, which is nice

by anjunonstennyao Posted on January 11, 2013

Chevron is pleased with how much money it made last year, which is nice

By Philip Bump

Hey, hey! Happy times at Chevron headquarters, located at 10 Satan Street in a secret city that hovers out of sight behind storm clouds. The company’s fourth quarter profits will be “notably higher” than third quarter profits! (Third quarter revenues for the company were only $56 billion. Sad face.)

Bruna CostaChevron headquarters, somewhat obscured

From Bloomberg:

The outline given by the second-largest U.S. oil producer by market value hints at a bright succession of earnings reports when the world’s biggest publicly traded energy producers begin releasing results in coming weeks, said Brian Youngberg, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. in St. Louis.

“Chevron’s results certainly provide an optimistic preview of what its peers in the integrated energy sector have in store,” Youngberg said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Hooray! Optimism in these dark times. Refreshing.

As for ExxonMobil:

Exxon, based in Irving, Texas, is expected to report net income of $43.8 billion for 2012, according to the average of six analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Clap clap clap clap! It will either spend that $43 billion by giving $6 to every living human being or by buying more things that enable it to suck more oil out of the ground more quickly to hasten the planet’s wrenching slide into a changed climate. (Sad face.)

Somewhere, behind the darkest cloud in the night sky, a toast is made. “To as much as we can get, as soon as we can get it.” Glasses clink. A single lightning bolt flashes to the ground leaving a scorched “X” that marks yet another place to drill.

Source

Chevron Strikes Optimistic Note for Quarterly Earnings, Bloomberg

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Oil company foils government inspectors with high-tech gadgets (coffee filters)

by trasze2aja Posted on January 10, 2013

Oil company foils government inspectors with high-tech gadgets (coffee filters)

By Philip Bump

For those of you who sleep well at night knowing that the government is competently and robustly working to protect the health of our environment, you may want to stop reading now. Here’s a story that flew under the radar last week from WWLTV in New Orleans:

An oil company admitted Thursday that coffee filters were used to doctor water samples and cover up the fact that it was dumping oil and grease into the Gulf of Mexico on its platform 175 miles south of New Orleans. …

[W&T Offshore] contractors used coffee filters to clean the water samples before submitting them to regulators.

Also, the company admitted that when they spilled some oil in November 2009, they not only failed to report it to the Coast Guard, but sprayed the oil into the Gulf and then hired a company that worked for three days to clean the platform to make it look like there never was a spill.

The company was fined $700,000 and will pay “$300,000 in community service,” whatever that means.

jlodder

The criminal mastermind’s tool for evading government oversight

Just to be clear, the reporting process goes like this.

  1. Company takes water sample.
  2. Company sends water sample to government.
  3. Government looks at submitted water sample and says OK.

And in order to get that OK, the company need only add step 1a: Pass them through a semiporous piece of paper. Got it.

How was W&T caught?

Inspectors from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement still found oil staining on the platform deck and visible sheen in the water, all of which W&T failed to report as required.

Thank God for irredeemable idiocy.

Source

Oil company admits using coffee filters to doctor water samples, WWL TV

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Climate change may ruin Lake Tahoe’s beautiful blueness

by hanhuogekennog Posted on January 4, 2013

Climate change may ruin Lake Tahoe’s beautiful blueness

By Philip Bump

Aaron Hiler

Lake Tahoe is pretty. The water is clear; the mountains surrounding it are beautiful. For half a century, the environmental group Keep Tahoe Blue has fought to preserve the region’s environmental sanctity, primarily by putting bumper stickers on Volvos, as far as I can tell.

Turns out that those Volvos are doing more harm than good. From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Climate change could profoundly affect the Tahoe area, scientists say, taking the snow out of the mountains and the blue out of the water. …

New climate models show that in a worst-case scenario average temperatures in the Tahoe area could rise as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That’s equivalent to moving Lake Tahoe from its current elevation of 6,200 feet above sea level to 3,700 feet, climate scientists report in a special January issue of the journal Climatic Change. That’s as high as the peak of Contra Costa County’s Mount Diablo, which gets only an inch of snow a year. …

It’s not just the mountains that would look different in a warmer climate, according to Climatic Change. The worst-case scenarios also predict a devastating ecological collapse of the lake and loss of its signature clarity and blue color.

Many lakes undergo a process every year, or every few years, that keeps the lake water well-mixed. As water temperature changes through the seasons, it creates circulation in the lake. The warm water on top of the lake in summer cools off in the fall and sinks, mixing with cold deep water. In a warmer climate, the surface water won’t cool off enough to mix with deeper water.

Without that mixture, oxygen doesn’t penetrate the lake, changing its chemistry. So long clarity. So long blue.

alishav

Sadly, there’s not a lot that can be done besides stemming climate change globally. The process is already underway; last season, Tahoe ski resorts didn’t see natural snow until January. Happily, this season started off better.

As we’ve noted before, the problem isn’t confined to Tahoe. Warming temperatures are threatening mountain climates across the country. But few have environmental legacies — and environmental success stories — as rich as Lake Tahoe’s.

A recommendation, then, for those who wish to help: Get a “Keep Tahoe Blue” bumper sticker and paste it over your car’s tailpipe.

A wintry scene from the mountains near Tahoe. Enjoy it while you can.

Source

Climate change threatens Tahoe’s snow levels, lake clarity, Santa Cruz Sentinel

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Notorious Mexican drug cartel branches out into a ‘more lucrative’ venture: Coal mining

by ansonsten Posted on January 4, 2013

Notorious Mexican drug cartel branches out into a ‘more lucrative’ venture: Coal mining

By Philip Bump

Los Zetas are a notorious cartel that evolved from a paramilitary force created by the Mexican government. In 2009, the U.S. government labelled the gang the “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico.” Savvy and brutal, the Zetas don’t constrain themselves to making money off drugs. They also seek other lucrative opportunities.

Like coal mining. From Al Jazeera:

Speaking to Al Jazeera, [Coahuila ex-governor Humberto] Moreira says that the Zetas gang is fast discovering that illegal mining is an even more lucrative venture than drug running.

“They discover a mine, extract the coal, sell it at $30, pay the miners a miserable salary … It’s more lucrative than selling drugs.” …

His accusations have been borne out by the federal government, which also announced that it has found evidence of criminal infiltration in Coahuila’s mines. Two hundred government inspectors are heading to the region to investigate mines it suspects are tied to organised crime. …

The State of Coahuila presents a tempting target for any organised crime group looking to diversify from drug smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. It produces 95 percent of Mexico’s coal, churning out 15 million tons a year. Unregulated “pozos”, small roadside mines which are often little more than a hole in the road, abound; easy targets for those looking to make quick money.

lololulula

A member of the Zetas is arrested in Guatemala.

There is no equivalence between the actions of the Zetas and domestic coal production. There is no equivalence between the Zetas and the rest of Mexico’s coal industry. The group is criminal, horrifying.

But the fact that mining coal could be as lucrative as trafficking drugs is at least astonishing and certainly ominous. As the global market for coal expands, prices will go up. If criminals can continue to extract and sell coal illegally and without concern for treatment of the miners, the urge for criminals to exploit those economics will only grow.

Source

Mexican drug gangs dig into mining industry, Al Jazeera

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