People Before Profit blog

Cold spring linked with melting sea ice

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:37:00 +0000

Across large portions of North America and Europe, the beginning of spring has been anything but warm so far. Scientists have now attributed that to the intense loss of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change. Last autumn, that ice fell to a record-breaking low, and experts say it's only going to get worse.

Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science, noted, "The sea ice is going rapidly. It's 80 percent less than it was just 30 years ago. There has been a dramatic loss. This is a symptom of global warming, and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic. This is what is affecting the jet stream and leading to the extreme weather we are seeing in mid-latitudes. It allows the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. The pattern can be slow to change because the [southern] wave of the jet stream is getting bigger."

Vladimir Petoukhov, professor of earth system analysis at Germany's Potsdam Institute, conducted research on the matter that led to the same conclusion. "The ice was at a record low last year," he agreed, "and is now exceptionally low in some parts of the Arctic like the Labrador and Greenland seas."

And as scientists have warned time and again, climate change is also triggering increasingly aggressive and unstable weather.

"With more solar energy going into the Arctic Ocean because of lost ice, there is reason to expect more extreme weather events, such as heavy snowfall, heat waves, and flooding in North America and Europe," said the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in a statement.

Meanwhile, cattle and livestock in the UK have paid the price for the lingering cold with their lives. Emergency crews were helping with rescues this week in Scotland and Wales in order to save flocks of sheep on snow-covered farms. Animals on very rural farms in Northern Ireland have been dying from the cold. In response, helicopters were deployed today to drop food off for some of these animals.

Ireland agriculture minister Michelle O'Neill said, "It is a severe situation. People are angry and concerned. We have an animal welfare issue. Some of the scenes are harrowing - to see farmers bring in sheep that have died from the snow."

A spokesman for the National Farmers Union of England and Wales added, "Severe weather warnings are still in place, and the majority of farmers are out there battling freezing temperatures to protect their livelihoods, families, and incomes."

The Government of the United Kingdom's chief scientific adviser, John Beddingon, remarked, "The current variation we are seeing in temperature and rainfall is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are having more droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges, and we are going to have more storms. These are the sort of changes that are going to affect us in quite a short timescale."

Photo: Scientific data shows how the new record-low sea ice compares with the average minimum extent over the past 30 years (depicted in yellow). NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio/Flickr (CC)

Just outside of Vegas, coal plant gambles with lives

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:21:00 +0000

For years, the NV Energy-owned Reid Gardner coal plant just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada has been poisoning the Moapa tribe of Paiute Native Americans. Coal ash is dumped in landfills and the plant's particulate output - which includes lead, mercury, and arsenic - contributes to global warming. After filing an open records request, the Paiutes learned that NV Energy has been falsifying its pollution output reports since at least 2006.

Year after year, particulate data was just cut from previous reports by the company, and pasted into "new" ones, which have been exposed now only by the scrutiny of the Paiutes, who have been at the receiving end of the pollution as it went unreported for over seven years. The tribe also discovered that the company routinely exceeded its "heat input" permit limits at the plant, which also caused pollution emissions to increase.

Perhaps more disturbing is that the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) learned of these transgressions last year, but did nothing more than write the incidents off as products of "human error" and let NV Energy off with a warning. There was neither a penalty nor a fine. Meanwhile, the NDEP did not see fit to tell the Paiutes about the falsified data at the time.

Now, after their own digging has revealed the truth, the Paiutes are filing a lawsuit against NV Energy and fighting to have the Reid Gardner plant shut down once and for all. In fact, doing just that would have significant economic benefits - in addition to the obvious health improvement - according to the Sierra Club of Nevada.

This is not the first time the Native Americans have come to blows with the energy company, which is the product of a merger between the Nevada Power Company and the Sierra Pacific Power Company. In fact, the Paiutes have often voiced their opinion that the Reid Gardner plant ought to be dismissed in exchange for renewable energy projects. There has been some progress on that front: The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power agreed in October 2012 to purchase the power produced by the 250-megawatt Moapa Solar Energy Center that is being built on the Paiute reservation, and which has the tribe's approval. However, the Paiutes' hopes that the facility will lead to the shutdown of Reid Gardner have, so far, come to no avail.

Others, too, have spoken out against NV Energy's toxin-spewing facility. In August 2012 at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., called for the plant's closure, remarking that it was a "dirty relic" responsible for "immense environmental pressures and chronic illnesses."

"The soot," he said, "and the dangerous chemicals [within] it, is literally killing the Paiutes. It's no secret that coal plants kill. Each year more than 24,000 deaths are attributed to coal-fired power plant emissions in the United States alone."

It's true; there is a disproportionately high rate of respiratory illnesses amongst the Paiutes, according to Indian Country Today. Paiute tribal chairman William Anderson said, "Every home has someone using a breathing apparatus or inhaler. We see frequent deaths - the most recent being someone in the home closest to the plant."

Tribal member Calvin Meyers said that the pollution was negatively affecting the lifestyle of his people. "I cannot practice my religion anymore, I cannot eat my natural foods that we gather, I cannot use the skins anymore of the rabbits that we use for clothing, I cannot use the willows for housing...they are all contaminated. It's not just the will of the Paiutes to stop [a coal plant]. It's our will that we survive."

"They don't care about us," Anderson concluded. "They think we're nothing, but our people and our culture were here long before they were."

Photo: A cloud of coal ash blows over the Moapa River Indian reservation in Nevada. On the left, the coal plant itself can be seen in the distance. KCET.org/Moapa Band of Paiutes

Impending disaster uncovered at Louisiana refinery

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:38:00 +0000

BATON ROUGE, La. - A surprise Environmental Protection Agency inspection in the middle of 2012 uncovered numerous air quality and job safety and health violations that ExxonMobil did not report at the nation's second largest oil refinery here. Unfortunately, say the Steelworkers - whose union includes tens of thousands of refinery workers - such hidden violations are common.

The EPA's full inspection report, posted this week on the website of the Bucket Brigade, a non-profit group that monitors and critiques safety and air quality practices by Louisiana's dominant oil industry, includes a release of carbon monoxide - the poisonous gas of auto exhaust - into the atmosphere that sent nine people to the hospital.

ExxonMobil didn't even report that May 7, 2009, accident to EPA within six months, as federal rules require, the agency says. The firm claimed the refinery was "clean" for the last five years, but the EPA found eight other accidents besides that one.

Federal rules "require the (refinery) owner or operator shall include in the 5-year accident history all accidental releases from a covered process that resulted in deaths, injuries, or significant property damage on site, or known offsite deaths, injuries, evacuations, sheltering in place, property damage or an environmental damage," EPA's report says. The 48-page report contains a litany of other problems at Baton Rouge.

That's unacceptable, say the Steelworkers. It's also common in the industry. A Steelworkers safety rep, acting on behalf of the refinery's workers - as allowed by law - accompanied the EPA team to the ExxonMobil plant. USW represents its workers.

And the union adds the fine EPA slapped on ExxonMobil won't solve the industry-wide safety problems.

"USW appreciates the inspection and supports the areas of concern identified. We also think it is past time for issuing only monetary fines to these industries," it said in a statement. "Until corporate leaders are held accountable for actions taken and not taken to protect workers and the community, these infractions will continue.

"We repeatedly see companies paying their fines without correcting the situation. It is time for management to be held accountable for their reckless behavior and to be put in jail for breaking health and safety laws. Until that day, we will continue to see no change in this industry. The problems cited at the Baton Rouge refinery are universal."

The Baton Rouge refinery, which now stretches over 2,100 acres, employs 2,200 people and produces 502,000 barrels of petroleum products daily. The accident that brought the EPA swooping down unannounced occurred on June 14, 2012.

That's when a bleeder plug at Tank 801 in the refinery's aromatics production unit leaked, at 4:35 in the morning. The refinery told the state police about it half an hour later, but ExxonMobil "did not consider the incident to be an emergency release," EPA said. The firm told the police "there was a release over the reportable amount" of hazardous chemicals and gases "but [ExxonMobil] had not calculated the amount or estimated how much was released and did not want to alarm or set off a panic."

After the EPA came in for its unannounced inspection a month later, Louisiana's environmental quality department launched its own probe. It initially found the leak released "28,688 pounds of benzene, 10,882 pounds of toulene, 1,100 pounds of cyclohexane, 1,564 pounds of hexane, and 12,605 pounds of additional volatile organic compounds," EPA said. A later state report said that 31,022 pounds of benzene leaked.

The federal probers also found more than 1,500 uninspected pipes in the refinery complex, 57 with ruptures and leaks and another 250 lines "with less than minimum (required) thickness" of their pipes. "Thin and corroded pipes can lead to leaks, explosions and fires," the union noted.

"The lack of mechanical integrity in refinery equipment has been a contributing cause in many of the worst accidents this industry has experienced," including a fatal fire in 2010 in Washington state and the infamous BP Texas City refinery explosion and fire that killed 15 people and injured more than 100, the Steelworkers pointed out.

"U.S. refineries are old and refiners need to be diligent with inspection and repair schedules to keep them in a safe operating condition. It is not enough that a refinery has a good written plan. It needs to follow the plan," the union said. It also noted Baton Rouge was chronically short-staffed on safety and lacks enough people to quickly shut it down if an emergency hits. EPA criticized ExxonMobil for that, too.

ExxonMobil did not respond directly to the Steelworkers. Instead, through a trade group for Louisiana's oil industry, it slammed the Bucket Brigade, accusing critics of "doing whatever they can to attack job creators," including "making [data] up."

"The petrochemical industry should hire more people to prevent accidents. This is why the United Steelworkers partner with Louisiana Bucket Brigade," the brigade replied. The union "realizes that a common sense approach of regular maintenance and accident prevention would help our economy."

Photo: ExxonMobil's oil refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. AP