Rachel's Democracy & Health News #971
Thursday, August 7, 2008
From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #971 ..........[This story printer-friendly]
August 7, 2008
THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX EMBRACES COAL-TO-LIQUIDS
[Rachel's introduction: "Careful deliberation and thoughtful debate have been cast aside as the Air Force has set itself on a fast-track mission to bail out the coal industry."]
By Peter Montague
In his Farewell Address to the nation Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the growing influence of what he termed the "military-industrial complex." The President said,
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military- industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
It is time to pay close attention to President Eisenhower's warning. In the past six months, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has begun a major effort to define the future of energy supplies for the U.S. and for its military allies. If military brass reach their goal, the transportation fuel of the future will be based on coal.
According to Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson, the USAF plan is to:
1. Build a "network" of coal-to-liquid-fuels plants to supply the Air Force with 400 million gallons of jet fuel each year by the year 2016 -- enough to power half its North American fleet of aircraft. Plans for creating this network are on a "fast track," according to officials developing coal-to-liquids plants in Montana and Alaska.
2. Engage in "a major international initiative" to persuade the governments of France, England and other nations to adopt coal-based liquid fuels.
3. Prod Wall Street investors -- nervous over coal's role in climate change -- to sink money into similar plants nationwide.
According to Assistant Secretary Anderson, with the Air Force paving the way, the private sector will follow -- from commercial air fleets to long-haul trucking companies. "Because of our size, we can move the market along," Anderson says. "Whether it's (coal-based) diesel that goes into Wal-Mart trucks or jet fuel that goes into our fighters, all that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which is the endgame."
Matthew Brown of the Associated Press observes that, "Coal producers have been unsuccessful in prior efforts to cultivate such a market. Climate change worries prompted Congress last year to turn back an attempt to mandate the use of coal-based synthetic fuels."
In other words, the Air Force is trying to do what the Congress refused to do and the coal industry itself has failed to do -- which is to use financial and political power to steer the nation's energy policy toward coal-based fuels.
Brown goes on to point out that,
"The Air Force's involvement comes at a critical time for the [coal] industry. Coal's biggest customers, electric utilities, have scrapped at least four dozen proposed coal-fired power plants over rising costs and the uncertainties of climate change."
In other words, the coal industry is on the ropes because the electric power industry (and its Wall Street backers) are having second thoughts about investing in coal technologies that produce far more global-warming greenhouse gases than any other fuel.
So the Air Force is fast-tracking a plan to bail out the coal industry by powering military jets with coal-based fuels, explicitly intending to stimulate a coal-based fuels industry to power Wal-Mart's trucks and, presumably, the rest of the nation's -- and France and England's, if not the world's -- transport systems.
Ironically, late last year members of the Defense Science Board, which advises the Pentagon on energy policy, rejected an Air Force plan to fund the development of liquid fuels derived from coal.
"Right now, coal-to-liquids looks to me to be pretty darn low on the reasonable list of alternatives," James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told the Wall Street Journal last September. At the time, Mr. Woolsey was participating in a report being prepared by the Defense Science Board.
Another member of the study panel, Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told the Wall Street Journal the military doesn't need its own dedicated fuel supply.
"The notion that the Pentagon has to spend all this money to give itself assured supply is kind of a contrived argument," Mr. Romm said. "The consensus of just about everybody on the panel was it didn't make sense."
The Air Force marches to a different drummer.
Despite these recommendations, in the last six months the Air Force has begun aggressively pursuing coal-to-liquids technology and is urging the nation and the world to adopt it. Coal-to-liquids was developed in 1923 by German chemists because Germany has no oil supplies of its own. During World War II, liquid fuels from coal powered the Nazi army.
So coal-to-liquids technology is not new. It is a proven technology, but since there are no coal-to-liquids plants operating anywhere in the U.S., it is unfamiliar. Furthermore, coal-to-liquids is a notoriously dirty and polluting technology. Gallon for gallon, coal- based liquid fuels emit twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as the same fuels made from petroleum. CO2 is widely considered to be the main human contributor to global warming.
What's important to recognize is that the Air Force says it is committed to "green fuels." They say they are serious about their concern for the natural environment, especially global warming.
Therefore, their plans for developing a coal-to-liquids industry are all based on the assumption that the resulting CO2 will be captured and buried in the ground -- a process known as CCS (carbon capture and storage). CCS has been talked about since 1979, but it has never been implemented on a commercial scale.
CCS is still nothing more than talk. There are no scientific guidelines for burial of CO2 in the ground. There are no agreed-upon criteria for selecting (or rejecting) a burial site, or for characterizing it (meaning, to examine it in detail for suitability). No one has defined "success" or "failure" for a CCS burial project. No one is exactly sure how to monitor for leakage. No one has determined how much leakage is "acceptable" during what period of time. No one has decided who will be responsible if leakage occurs. (All the coal- to-liquids plants will be privately owned, according to the Air Force plan.) All these questions, and many more, are -- or should be -- subjects of vigorous debate.
Answering these questions properly would require decades of careful work, experimentation, scientific evaluation, and public discussion. One of the biggest supporters of CCS technology -- Shell Oil -- believes CCS could not operate on an industrial scale much before 2050 -- and that assumes that all the answers to all the questions indicate a green light.
But the Air Force is trying to stimulate the creation of a 400- million-gallon-per-year coal-to-liquids industry by 2016 -- less than 8 years from now. If the coal-to-liquids industry materializes by 2016, either it will be a major contributor to global warming -- twice as bad as its petroleum-based counterpart, gallon for gallon -- or it will be playing Russian roulette with the future of the planet, burying large quantities of CO2 in the ground without proper scientific and engineering preparation, controls and oversight.
It seems that careful deliberation and thoughtful debate have been cast aside as the Air Force has set itself on a fast-track mission to bail out the coal industry.
Is this not a compelling example of the danger to our democratic processes that President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961?
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From: New Scientist ......................................[This story printer-friendly]
August 4, 2008
ARE 'DISPOSABLE' REACTORS A SAFE ENERGY SOLUTION?
[Rachel's introduction: "A country looking to get its hands on material for a nuclear weapon would find a unit like this highly desirable. As the reactor is a 'heavy-water' type, it produces large amounts of plutonium as it burns uranium."]
By Phil McKenna
Under cover of night, a fleet of nondescript freighters sets sail protected by a naval escort. The only cargo aboard each vessel is a mysterious cylindrical capsule some 3 metres across and 12 metres long. Ordinarily, there would be nothing unusual about shipping goods from the US around the world, but these 500-tonne containers are no ordinary freight. The ships are carrying a new generation of self- contained nuclear power plants destined for countries such as Libya, Namibia and Indonesia -- nations that the US government would not normally trust with the custody of nuclear material.
So far this scenario is fiction, but the US-sponsored plan to make it happen, dubbed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), is real enough. For the past two years, the US has been promoting GNEP as a way of meeting the developing world's burgeoning appetite for energy.
Nuclear power, the Bush administration claims, is the best option for cutting these countries' dependence on fossil fuels -- and thus their carbon emissions -- while maintaining a secure baseload electricity supply.
Safety and security are the key selling points for this new generation of nuclear generators. The idea is to ship out complete nuclear power plants -- including the reactor, cooling and heat-exchange systems -- in a sealed, tamper-proof capsule that will run maintenance-free for 30 years, matching the lifetime of conventional reactors. Unpack it, plug it into a turbine and generator connected to the electricity grid and you're away.
An international race to be first to ship one of these "black box" reactors has already begun. Russia and India both have advanced plans to supply the hundreds of small nuclear reactors to developing countries in the coming decades. However, advocates of GNEP say that these rival approaches are neither safe nor secure.
In April 2007, the Russian state nuclear energy company RosEnergoAtom began building the first of a batch of 35-megawatt nuclear reactors designed to be mounted on barges, towed to where they are needed, and hooked up to the local electricity grid. The units will first be deployed to provide power for the towns and cities rapidly developing along remote stretches of Russia's Arctic coastline. Later, the company plans to sell them to other coastal nations too. Critics of this approach point to their vulnerability. In particular, standard safeguards against attacks by terrorists, such as partially burying a reactor underground and surrounding it with high-impact concrete walls, aren't an option for these floating units.
The Nuclear Power Corporation of India, based in Mumbai, has built a number of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR), and hopes to export a 220-megawatt version of the reactor soon. The design has attracted criticism on security grounds. A country looking to get its hands on material for a nuclear weapon would find a unit like this highly desirable. As the reactor is a "heavy-water" type, it produces large amounts of plutonium as it burns uranium. In addition, it can be refuelled without being shut down, which might make it easier to conceal illicit activity from international monitoring agencies. "You could produce quite a bit of weapons-grade material in one year, enough for 10 bombs anyway, while you continue to operate; you're just moving the fuel through," says Tom Shea of the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.
Safeguards for spent fuelProjects like these helped spur the US to launch GNEP. Under this scheme, states that relinquish any ambition to build conventional nuclear stations will be given the opportunity to buy the new secure reactors instead. The UK, France, Canada, China and Japan are among the 20 nations -- many of whom are developing similar reactors -- that have signed up to the project. Participants agree to develop designs that safeguard against the possibility that reactor fuel could be diverted to make nuclear weapons, and to supply fresh fuel and collect spent fuel for reprocessing or storage in a way that ensures that none can go missing. They also undertake to share safety and security features in their designs. Participating nations that do not already have nuclear capacity -- a growing list including Jordan, Kazakhstan and Senegal -- agree not to develop uranium enrichment and reprocessing plants that could be used to develop material for nuclear weapons.
Over the coming months, the US Department of Energy will be inviting bids from the nuclear industry for a preliminary design that could be deployed within a decade. The winning bidder will be awarded $100 million, spread over five years, as they seek a licence for their design from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The competition is designed to jump-start the US nuclear industry, which has been at a near standstill since the accident at Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, when loss of coolant caused the reactor to overheat, melting part of the core and its fuel. Construction of the winning design could begin by 2015.
Other GNEP members are also hard at work. Argentina is planning to build prototypes for a 27-megawatt water-coooled reactor that could be ready for production within a decade, while South Korea has a 100- megawatt design running to a similar schedule. France has mature designs for a water-cooled reactor with an output in the range of 100 to 300 megawatts.
When it comes to safety, one of the key features is to build a reactor in such a way that the coolant will keep the core's temperature under control in all conceivable circumstances. Failure could result in meltdown of the core and a massive release of radioactivity. Most existing reactors use water as a primary coolant, and are fitted with back-up systems to minimise the chances of catastrophe even if there is a failure such as a burst pipe, locked valve or loss of power. But even with multiple back-ups, a run of bad luck could mean that they all fail and an accident happens.
GNEP reactors follow a new approach. "Today's reactors are not your grandpa's reactors," says Michael Driscoll, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead of relying on electrical or mechanical devices, the cooling systems will be "passive", driven entirely by phenomena such as convection or gravity. These features are being incorporated into the International Reactor Innovative and Secure (IRIS) project, a 335-megawatt reactor that is seen as a front runner in the US Department of Energy's design competition. It is being built by an international consortium of public and private organisations, led by veteran nuclear reactor manufacturer Westinghouse. IRIS's emergency cooling system exploits convection to cycle cooling water through the reactor, dramatically reducing the chances of a meltdown, Driscoll says.
The IRIS reactor is designed specifically for developing countries looking for a relatively small, inexpensive and easy-to-operate reactor that won't overload their energy grid. "The economics and design has to be something that fits for these countries that are coming up to nuclear for the first time," says IRIS's lead engineer, Mario Carelli. He says each IRIS unit would cost about $1 billion, compared with roughly $7 billion for conventional gigawatt-scale reactors.
To keep the fuel for these reactors secure, one aim of the designs is to ensure they run as long as possible without refuelling. No one is likely to steal fuel from inside a working reactor, but new fuel rods in transit or stored on site are more vulnerable -- and the same goes for spent fuel on its way to be reprocessed. At least one such theft has already occurred. In the late 1970s, two fresh fuel rods disappeared from a research reactor in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of the rods was recovered in Italy in 1998; Italian press reports suggested the Italian Mafia was caught shipping it to an unnamed country in the Middle East. The other has never been found. "If we start sending reactors en masse to countries that can't even police them, the risk of another Kinshasa - or worse -- happening could be all too high," says Edwin Lyman, a nuclear security specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC.
IRIS is designed to operate for up to four years without refuelling, a big improvement on the 18 months conventional reactors require. Even better would be a reactor that can run for its entire 30-year design life without refuelling. Would that be possible?
A design that comes close is the Super Safe, Small and Simple, or 4S, a sealed reactor designed by Toshiba in Japan. Toshiba is seeking an NRC licence with a view to installing a 4S unit in Galena, a remote town on the Yukon river in Alaska that has so far had to rely on diesel generators for its electricity. The 4S would provide a steady 10 megawatts for 30 years, after which the entire reactor vessel would be shipped to a fuel reprocessing facility. The reactor's modest output makes it ideal for remote sites like Galena, as well as installations such as mines and desalination plants. A 50-megawatt reactor has been designed for clients with a higher demand. But the 4S's design does have one potential safety weakness: it uses liquid sodium metal as its coolant. Sodium reacts violently with water -- even contact with moisture in the air could start a fire. "There is no silver bullet, no perfect system," says Dan Ingersoll, a GNEP program director at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "That's why there are 60-plus designs under development around the world. You solve one problem and introduce several more."
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California are pursuing a different type of reactor that runs for just as long without refuelling. Called the Small Secure Transportable Autonomous Reactor, or SSTAR, this is a 20-megawatt device contained in a vessel 3 metres in diameter and 12 metres long that ships fully assembled with a 30-year fuel supply sealed in. The unit is encased in a tamper-proof cask protected by an array of alarms that will warn of any attempts at interference via secure satellite radio channels.
The SSTAR unit leaves the factory with a layer of lead roughly 1 metre thick surrounding the reactor core. After the reactor starts up, the lead melts and from then on convection of the molten metal is enough to carry heat away from the core. Unlike sodium, lead isn't flammable.
"Such a reactor system would operate with minimal intervention and little maintenance," says Craig Smith, a project leader on SSTAR for the LLNL. "I don't think you could flip the switch and walk away, but on the other hand you wouldn't need a very large operational or security force to maintain it."
So how safe and secure will sealed reactors be? One thing that seems certain is that the host country will always be able to get hold of the fuel inside if it is determined enough. "The countries could always kick out the inspectors, then you have to worry about compliance," says Hal Feiveson, a physicist and arms control expert at Princeton University "Over 30 countries are actively considering embarking upon nuclear power programmes. We see the trouble we are having with Iran right now -- you could imagine having five or six Irans out there."
There is also the possibility of a catastrophic accident. "The notion of small, self-contained reactors where there is no advanced industrial infrastructure or expertise, no regulatory infrastructure for system monitoring, where emergency planning is sub-optimal or non- existent is really a recipe for disaster," says Lyman. Sabotage remains a possibility, too.
Ben Ayliffe, head of anti-nuclear campaigns at Greenpeace in the UK, thinks the whole plan is misguided. "It's one of those ideas you look at and ask: are these people for real?" If providing electricity- generating technology to developing countries is our goal, then there are far more secure technologies -- including solar, wind, hydropower, and increased energy efficiency -- that don't have the waste and military use issues that come with spreading uranium around the world, he says.
Ingersoll, however, sees these reactors as a positive discouragement to the proliferation of nuclear technology compared with the alternative. "If we say to the developing world, just wait 30 years and we'll give you the perfect solution to your energy needs, they are going to say no thank you and grab whatever power sources they can," he says. "Renewables are not even going to come close to meeting our current demands and won't come anywhere near where we are expected to go."
He concedes that total security is probably unachievable. "We will never have a completely proliferation-proof reactor, just like there will never be an 'accident-proof' car," he admits. But he still thinks it's a goal worth striving towards. "We should continue to improve the designs, at least to the point where the consequences are insignificant."
Judging by the pace at which less secure alternatives are being developed, and the urgent need for a quick source of clean energy, we may have little choice.
Phil McKenna is a writer based in Boston
Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
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From: Nature Magazine .....................................[This story printer-friendly]
August 07, 2008
ALMOST HALF OF PRIMATE SPECIES FACE EXTINCTION
[Rachel's introduction: "We knew the situation was bad, but these numbers are shocking."]
By Matt Kaplan
The first comprehensive review in twelve years on the conservation status of primates is revealing that our closest relatives are in serious danger.
The review, presented today at the 22nd International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, UK, shows that of the 634 known primate species and subspecies, nearly 50% are threatened with extinction in the next decade. That soars to more than 70% in Asia, with individual countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia seeing at least 80% of their primate species threatened. Cambodia was at the top of the list, with 90% of its primate species in imminent danger.
"We knew the situation was bad, but these numbers are shocking - particularly in Southeast Asia," says Mike Hoffman, a specialist in biodiversity assessment at the non-profit environmental advocacy group Conservation International, which played a major part in generating the review.
Studies are conducted constantly on the status of individual species, but collating statistics for so many species at the same time has yielded an unusually clear picture of the global situation. The data strongly suggest that further efforts are desperately needed if mass extinctions of primates are to be avoided.
A key point of concern long known to primatologists is habitat destruction, particularly from the burning and clearing of tropical forests. But researchers were not expecting to discover that hunting, for both food and the sale of primate parts for traditional medicine, is having an even more dramatic effect than previously known.
These findings will probably lead to a change in conservation efforts, as current strategies focus on preserving habitat above all else. Habitat preservation will certainly not be ignored, but programmes developed to educate local communities about the status of the animals that they are eating and selling for medicinal purposes are clearly needed, the report concludes.
Silver lining
But the survey also has good news. It reports that species given considerable conservation resources are beginning to recover, suggesting that the situation can be reversed. Golden lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia) and black lion tamarins (Leontopithecus chrysopygus) in Brazil, both thought to be doomed thirty years ago, are recovering. Although the species are nowhere near losing their endangered status, as their habitats have been ravaged and are in need of regeneration, they are at least stable.
"The fact that some species are able to rebound following tireless conservation efforts illustrates what can happen when we engage in concerted conservation activity," says primatologist Sylvia Atsalis at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
The mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is also on the verge of being reclassified as endangered, instead of critically endangered, because the population is increasing. But political chaos in the countries where the species lives -- Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- is delaying this shift.
And at the same conference, a separate study revealed a major rise in the population of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) -- currently classed as endangered -- in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society says that their survey found more than 125,000 gorillas in the northern parts of the country, putting the estimated population at between 175,000 to 225,000.
"The presence alone of scientists has been shown to protect primates, acting as a deterrent to habitat destruction and hunting," says Atsalis. "The more people we can send, the more we can help to protect endangered primates."
Copyright 2008 Nature Publishing Group
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From: New York Times (pg. A1) ............................[This story printer-friendly]
August 3, 2008
SWARMS OF STINGING TENTACLES OFFER HINT OF OCEANS' DECLINE
[Rachel's introduction: In recent years, there has been a steady increase in swarms of stinging jellyfish, worldwide. Jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, but for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world's oceans.]
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Barcelona, Spain -- Blue patrol boats crisscross the swimming areas of beaches here with their huge nets skimming the water's surface. The yellow flags that urge caution and the red flags that prohibit swimming because of risky currents are sometimes topped now with blue ones warning of a new danger: swarms of jellyfish.
In a period of hours during a day a couple of weeks ago, 300 people on Barcelona's bustling beaches were treated for stings, and 11 were taken to hospitals.
From Spain to New York, to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread, and they are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before, scientists say. The faceless marauders are stinging children blithely bathing on summer vacations, forcing beaches to close and clogging fishing nets.
But while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world's oceans.
"These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending us saying, 'Look how badly you are treating me,' " said Dr. Josep-Maria Gili, a leading jellyfish expert, who has studied them at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona for more than 20 years.
The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows.
These problems are pronounced in the Mediterranean, a sea bounded by more than a dozen countries that rely on it for business and pleasure. Left unchecked in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, these problems could make the swarms of jellyfish menacing coastlines a grim vision of seas to come.
"The problem on the beach is a social problem," said Dr. Gili, who talks with admiration of the "beauty" of the globular jellyfish. "We need to take care of it for our tourism industry. But the big problem is not on the beach. It's what's happening in the seas."
Jellyfish, relatives of the sea anemone and coral that for the most part are relatively harmless, in fact are the cockroaches of the open waters, the ultimate maritime survivors who thrive in damaged environments, and that is what they are doing.
Within the past year, there have been beach closings because of jellyfish swarms on the Cote d'Azur in France, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and at Waikiki and Virginia Beach in the United States.
In Australia, more than 30,000 people were treated for stings last year, double the number in 2005. The rare but deadly Irukandji jellyfish is expanding its range in Australia's warming waters, marine scientists say.
While no good global database exists on jellyfish populations, the increasing reports from around the world have convinced scientists that the trend is real, serious and climate-related, although they caution that jellyfish populations in any one place undergo year-to- year variation.
"Human-caused stresses, including global warming and overfishing, are encouraging jellyfish surpluses in many tourist destinations and productive fisheries," according to the National Science Foundation, which is issuing a report on the phenomenon this fall and lists as problem areas Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, the Black Sea, Namibia, Britain, the Mediterranean, the Sea of Japan and the Yangtze estuary.
In Barcelona, one of Spain's most vibrant tourist destinations, city officials and the Catalan Water Agency have started fighting back, trying desperately to ensure that it is safe for swimmers to go back in the water.
Each morning, with the help of Dr. Gili's team, boats monitor offshore jellyfish swarms, winds and currents to see if beaches are threatened and if closings are needed. They also check if jellyfish collection in the waters near the beaches is needed. Nearly 100 boats stand ready to help in an emergency, said Xavier Duran of the water agency. The constant squeal of Dr. Gili's cellphone reflected his de facto role as Spain's jellyfish control and command center. Calls came from all over.
Officials in Santander and the Basque country were concerned about frequent sightings this year on the Atlantic coast of the Portuguese man-of-war, a sometimes lethal warm-water species not previously seen regularly in those regions.
Farther south, a fishing boat from the Murcia region called to report an off-shore swarm of Pelagia noctiluca -- an iridescent purplish jellyfish that issues a nasty sting -- more than a mile long. A chef, presumably trying to find some advantage in the declining oceans, wanted to know if the local species were safe to eat if cooked. Much is unknown about the jellyfish, and Dr. Gili was unsure.
In previous decades there were jellyfish problems for only a couple of days every few years; now the threat of jellyfish is a daily headache for local officials and is featured on the evening news. "In the past few years the dynamic has changed completely -- the temperature is a little warmer," Dr. Gili said.
Though the stuff of horror B- movies, jellyfish are hardly aggressors. They float haplessly with the currents. They discharge their venom automatically when they bump into something warm -- a human body, for example -- from poison-containing stingers on mantles, arms or long, threadlike tendrils, which can grow to be yards long.
Some, like the Portuguese man-of-war or the giant box jellyfish, can be deadly on contact. Pelagia noctiluca, common in the Mediterranean, delivers a painful sting producing a wound that lasts weeks, months or years, depending on the person and the amount of contact.
In the Mediterranean, overfishing of both large and small fish has left jellyfish with little competition for plankton, their food, and fewer predators. Unlike in Asia, where some jellyfish are eaten by people, here they have no economic or epicurean value.
The warmer seas and drier climate caused by global warming work to the jellyfish's advantage, since nearly all jellyfish breed better and faster in warmer waters, according to Dr. Jennifer Purcell, a jellyfish expert at the Shannon Point Marine Center of Western Washington University.
Global warming has also reduced rainfall in temperate zones, researchers say, allowing the jellyfish to better approach the beaches. Rain runoff from land would normally slightly decrease the salinity of coastal waters, "creating a natural barrier that keeps the jellies from the coast," Dr. Gili said.
Then there is pollution, which reduces oxygen levels and visibility in coastal waters. While other fish die in or avoid waters with low oxygen levels, many jellyfish can thrive in them. And while most fish have to see to catch their food, jellyfish, which filter food passively from the water, can dine in total darkness, according to Dr. Purcell's research.
Residents in Barcelona have forged a prickly coexistence with their new neighbors.
Last month, Mirela Gomez, 8, ran out of the water crying with her first jellyfish sting, clutching a leg that had suddenly become painful and itchy. Her grandparents rushed her to a nearby Red Cross stand. "I'm a little afraid to go back in the water," she said, displaying a row of angry red welts on her shin.
Francisco Antonio Padros, a 77-year-old fisherman, swore mightily as he unloaded his catch one morning last weekend, pulling off dozens of jellyfish clinging to his nets and tossing them onto a dock. Removing a few shrimp, he said his nets were often "filled with more jellyfish than fish."
By the end of the exercise his calloused hands were bright red and swollen to twice their normal size. "Right now I can't tell if I have hands or not -- they hurt, they're numb, they itch," he said.
Dr. Santiago Nogue, head of the toxicology unit at the largest hospital here, said that although 90 percent of stings healed in a week or two, many people's still hurt and itched for months. He said he was now seeing 20 patients a year whose symptoms did not respond to any treatment at all, sometimes requiring surgery to remove the affected area.
The sea, however, has long been central to life in Barcelona, and that is unlikely to change. Recently when the beaches were closed, children on a breakwater collected jellyfish in a bucket. The next day, Antonio Lopez, a diver, emerged from the water. "There are more every year -- we saw hundreds offshore today," he said. "You just have to learn how to handle the stings."
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From: Climate and Capitalism .............................[This story printer-friendly]
July 10, 2008
ECUADOR: NATURE HAS RIGHTS
[Rachel's introduction: "If adopted in the final constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights," says Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.]
On July 7, the 130-member Ecuador Constitutional Assembly, elected countrywide to rewrite the country's Constitution, voted to approve articles that recognize rights for nature and ecosystems.
"If adopted in the final constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights," says Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
The following clauses will be included in the constitution that will be submitted to a countrywide vote, to be held 45 days after Assembly finishes its work later this month:
Chapter: Rights for Nature
Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.
Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non-renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.
Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.
Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.
Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.
The environmental services cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.
"Public organisms" in Article 1 means the courts and government agencies, i.e., the people of Ecuador would be able to take action to enforce nature rights if the government did not do so.
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From: Daily News (New York, N.Y.) ........................[This story printer-friendly]
August 7, 2008
THE LESSONS OF LOVE CANAL LOST UNLESS SUPERFUND IS FIXED
[Rachel's introduction: After the toxic disaster at Love Canal was discovered in 1978, Congress passed the Superfund law to tax polluting industries to create a fund to clean up toxic sites nationwide. Now Congress has reneged.]
By Lois Marie Gibbs
Thirty years ago Thursday, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster area. The decision came after the discovery that the Niagara Falls neighborhood was built on top of 20,000 tons of toxic waste that had been dumped by a chemical company.
The Love Canal contamination tragedy is very personal to me. In 1978 I was living there with my husband and two children when I began to wonder whether the kids' recurring illnesses were connected to the chemical waste. Research conducted by myself and several of my neighbors, coupled with our complaints, eventually led the New York State health commissioner to declare a state of emergency and close the area's 99th Street School (where my son Michael attended). That was followed by the evacuations of mothers and children under the age of 2.
Then, Carter stepped in and the federal government was ordered to provide funds to relocate more than 200 families living within the first two rings of homes encircling the Love Canal toxic waste site.
As one of those living beyond the first two rings of homes, I was told my family was not at risk. As if toxic chemicals which had leaked from their "protective" drums into my son's schoolyard could never cross the streets into our own yards.
I remember the feelings of disgust and anger and fear when I learned that this toxic reality was likely the cause of my son's illness. I remember the looks on the faces of my neighbors as I went door to door and learned that they, too, had children with rare health issues or had lost a child over something so preventable, so cruel and unthinkable.
That was in 1978, and sometimes a colleague or someone in the media will now ask me when I am going to "let Love Canal go?" After I shake my head in disbelief, I tell the person that no mother could ever let go of something that threatened her children and the children of those living around her. Worse, even today children continue to be at risk to toxic chemical threats simply by living in communities and attending schools that are located within 1 mile of a site considered toxic by the EPA.
What good mother could let that go?
All these years after the tragedy that happened at Love Canal, the creation of the Federal Superfund cleanup program is in jeopardy. Superfund -- started by Carter in 1980 -- makes polluting companies and industries pay to clean up their mess. A tax on toxic chemicals that are found in contaminated sites creates the trust fund, which grew to $1.6 billion at one point.
My neighbors and I were relieved that the government had finally taken responsibility for protecting people and land from toxic pollution. The source of the program's funding, "polluters pay fees" was the most important aspect of this legislation. It held the polluters accountable, and was a major victory for communities fighting toxic and chemical threats everywhere.
But in 1996, Congress chose not to renew the polluters pay principle. This means the trust fund dried up of polluters' fees in 2003.
So who foots the bill now? You guessed it. Taxpayers, not polluters. I always told my children, "you make the mess, you clean it up." The rules should not be different for companies who bring toxic or chemical threats into the communities where our children play and attend school. How can Congress side with the companies who cause toxic contamination instead of the people threatened by that very contamination?
Now, the responsibility falls entirely on the taxpayers, to the tune of $1.2 billion. Something smells funny and it's not just the toxic odors. We need to make sure Congress makes the polluters, not the taxpayers, pay for the Love Canals of today.
Let Love Canal go? Never. I continue the battle for all of our children. For me this journey started at Love Canal. And I need everyone to continue on this journey with me.
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Gibbs is founder and director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (www.chej.org). She lives in Falls Church, Va.
Copyright 2008 NYDailyNews.com
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From: Scientific American ................................[This story printer-friendly]
August 7, 2008
CEMENT FROM CO2: A CONCRETE CURE FOR GLOBAL WARMING?
[Rachel's introduction: A California company says it has found a way to capture carbon dioxide -- the main global warming gas -- and turn it into cement.]
By David Biello
The turbines at Moss Landing power plant on the California coast burn through natural gas to pump out more than 1,000 megawatts of electric power. The 700-degree Fahrenheit (370-degree Celsius) fumes left over contain at least 30,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2) -- the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming -- along with other pollutants.
Today, this flue gas wafts up and out of the power plant's enormous smokestacks, but by simply bubbling it through the nearby seawater, a new California-based company called Calera says it can use more than 90 percent of that CO2 to make something useful: cement.
It's a twist that could make a polluting substance into a way to reduce greenhouse gases. Cement, which is mostly commonly composed of calcium silicates, requires heating limestone and other ingredients to 2,640 degrees F (1,450 degrees C) by burning fossil fuels and is the third largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S., according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Making one ton of cement results in the emission of roughly one ton of CO2 -- and in some cases much more.
While Calera's process of making calcium carbonate cement wouldn't eliminate all CO2 emissions, it would reverse that equation. "For every ton of cement we make, we are sequestering half a ton of CO2," says crystallographer Brent Constantz, founder of Calera. "We probably have the best carbon capture and storage technique there is by a long shot."
Carbon capture and storage has been identified by experts ranging from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the leaders of the world's eight richest nations (G8) as crucial to the fight against climate change. The idea is to capture the CO2 and other greenhouse gases produced when burning fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, and then permanently store it, such as in deep-sea basalt formations.
Calera's process takes the idea a step forward by storing the CO2 in a useful product. The U.S. used more than 122 million metric tons of Portland cement in 2006, according to the Portland Cement Association (PCA), an industry group, and China used at least 800 million metric tons.
The Calera process essentially mimics marine cement, which is produced by coral when making their shells and reefs, taking the calcium and magnesium in seawater and using it to form carbonates at normal temperatures and pressures. "We are turning CO2 into carbonic acid and then making carbonate," Constantz says. "All we need is water and pollution."
The company employs spray dryers that utilize the heat in the flue gas to dry the slurry that results from mixing the water and pollution. "A gas-fired power plant is basically like attaching a jet engine to the ground," Constantz notes. "We use the waste heat of the flue gas. They're just shooting it up into the atmosphere anyway."
In essence, the company is making chalk, and that's the color of the resulting cement: snow white. Once dried, the Calera cement can be used as a replacement for the Portland cement that is typically blended with rock and other material to make the concrete in everything from roads to buildings. "We think since we're making the cement out of CO2, the more you use, the better," says Constantz, who formerly made medical cements. "Make that wall five feet thick, sequester CO2, and be cooler in summer, warmer in winter and more seismically stable. Or make a road twice as thick."
Of course, Calera isn't the only company pursuing this idea -- just the most advanced. Carbon Sciences in Santa Barbara, Calif., plans to use flue gas and the water leftover after mining operations, so-called mine slime, which is often rich in magnesium and calcium, to create similar cements. Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Carbon Sense Solutions plans to accelerate the natural process of cement absorbing CO2 by exposing a fresh batch to flue gas. And a number of companies are working on reducing the energy needs of Portland cement making. The key will be ensuring that such specialty cements have the same properties and the same or lower cost than Portland cement, says Carbon Sciences president and CEO Derek McLeish.
But the companies may also find it challenging to get their cements approved by regulators and, more importantly, accepted by the building trade, says civil engineer Steven Kosmatka of the Portland Cement Association. "The construction industry is very conservative," he adds. "It took PCA about 25 years to get the standards changed to allow 5 percent limestone [in the Portland cement mix]. So things move kind of slowly."
Calera hopes to get over that hurdle quickly by first offering a blend of its carbon-storing cement and Portland cement, which would not initially store any extra greenhouse gases but would at least balance out the emissions from making the traditional mortar. "It's just a little better than carbon neutral," notes Constantz, who will make his case to the industry at large at the World of Concrete trade fair in February. "That alone is a huge step forward."
"Could you take this calcium carbonate and add it to Portland cement? You sure can," Kosmatka says. "Could you add it to the ready mix to replace some of the Portland cement? You probably can do that, too." That would help to rein in the greenhouse gas emissions from buildings -- both from building them and powering them once they are built -- that makes up 48 percent of U.S. global warming pollution.
Nor are there any limitations on the raw materials of the Calera cement: Seawater containing billions of tons of calcium and magnesium covers 70 percent of the planet and the 2,775 power plants in the U.S. alone pumped out 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2006. The process results in seawater that is stripped of calcium and magnesium -- ideal for desalinization technologies -- but safe to be dumped back into the ocean. And attaching the Calera process to the nation's more than 600 coal-fired power plants or even steel mills and other industrial sources is even more attractive as burning coal results in flue gas with as much as 150,000 parts per million of CO2.
But Calera is starting with the cleanest fossil fuel -- natural gas. The company has set up a pilot plant at Moss Landing because California is soon to adopt regulations limiting the amount of CO2 power plants and other sources can emit, and natural gas is the primary fuel of power plants in that state. According to Constantz, some flue gas is already running through the company's process. "We are using emissions from gas-fired generation as our CO2 source at the pilot plant where we are making up to 10 tons a day," he says. "That material will be used for evaluations."
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has expressed interest in testing the cement, and Dynegy, owner of the Moss Landing power plant, is also intrigued. Although no formal agreement has been struck, "their proposed technology for capturing CO2 from flue gases and turning it into a beneficial, marketable product sounds very interesting to us," Dynegy spokesman David Byford says. "There are very good technologies for capturing the emissions of other pollutants. The carbon issue is something we are just turning our attention to now, and so far it's been quite elusive."
Copyright 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.
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The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy, intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and therefore ruled by the few.
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