People Before Profit blog

Shell to resume Arctic drilling, gives safety cold shoulder

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 14:58:00 +0000

Due to a series of mishaps and protests from environmentalists worldwide, oil giant Shell withdrew its plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, after sinking $5 billion on the failed project. Now, in spite of this, the corporation is determined to resume operations there in 2014. It's already contracted a new drilling rig, which will replace the one that ran aground near an island in December 2012. Activists, meanwhile, are already raising their voices in opposition to what most see as another slew of accidents waiting to happen.

In an immediate reaction to Royal Dutch Shell's announcement, Ben Ayliffe with Greenpeace International declared, "Shell's Arctic bravado is a desperate attempt to reassure its investors, but the facts tell a different story. Brushing off the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars and casually scrapping a drilling platform are not the actions of a company that is in control of its operations."

The reassurances to which Ayliffe refers are Shell's desperate attempts to alleviate distrust even in the business world, in light of its previous costly wasted venture in the Arctic. It also didn't help that Shell's quarterly profits this year fell below analysts' expectations.

"In 2012," Ayliffe continued, "Shell proved that it is completely unfit to drill in the remote Arctic, a place of unrivaled beauty where any spill would be an environmental disaster. In April [2013, the company] signed a joint deal with Russia's state-owned giant Gazprom, one of the world's most polluting oil companies with a record of serious negligence. Shell has run out of options, and is prepared to gamble its reputation on projects and partnerships that other oil companies have dismissed as far too risky."

Greenpeace has long eyed these oil companies with fiery disapproval, and lately Shell and Gazprom have both been fanning the flames: 30 activists who boarded a Gazprom-owned rig in protest of drilling have been jailed in Russia (where they remain) and slapped with increasingly brutal charges. The ongoing case is surely taken into account by all whom decry Shell's decision to make deals with such a company.

"While 30 people languish in a Russian jail," said Ayliffe, "Shell's board sits in the comfort of an Amsterdam office planning the next phase of a wreckless hunt for Arctic oil. Greenpeace stands with the millions of people who are ready to oppose Shell or any other company that chooses to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean."

Other facts suggest that Shell is only setting itself up for further embarrassment, on top of the continued risk for an oil disaster. The rig, for example, that Shell is replacing 2012's doomed Kulluk with is, like its predecessor, an outdated 30 year-old rig. It was built by offshore drilling contractor Transocean, to boot; that company has been linked to environmental crimes and inappropriate conduct. There will also be regulatory and safety inspection processes Shell must go through before it is given approval for drilling.

Many environmental groups intend to fight Shell on its bid to pass such processes, noting the absurdity of approving a company that was involved with so many incidents during its previous Arctic drilling campaign. Said Michael LeVine with conservation group Oceana, "Shell's 2012 drilling proved these companies are ill-prepared for the harsh conditions in the [Arctic's] Chukchi and Beaufort seas. If companies refuse to learn from their mistakes and make more responsible choices, the government must step in and say 'enough is enough'."

Susan Murray, also with Oceana, remarked, "Companies need to recognize [that] they simply are not ready to operate in the harsh and remote Arctic Ocean environment. There is no proven technology that would allow companies to drill safely in Arctic Ocean conditions, and the risks far outweigh any potential benefits."

Photo: After the failure of previous rig Kulluk (pictured), Shell plans to replace it with an equally old, outdated model as they prepare to resume drilling operations in the sensitive Arctic Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard/AP

First big North Dakota oil spill since boom began

Tue, 29 Oct 2013 17:23:00 +0000

A pipeline was found to have spilled 20,600 barrels of oil onto a wheat field, Sept. 29, near Tioga, North Dakota. The pipeline has now, finally, been shut down, and the cleanup begins as crude seeps into the environment, causing the first big disaster in the state since its oil boom began in 2006.

This latest incident happened in the Bakken formation, a rock unit in North Dakota from which large amounts of oil are extracted. That formation is the centerpiece of the current oil boom there. A pipeline carrying oil from that location to a facility outside Columbus was the one that burst. It spewed crude and ruined parts of a nearby 1,800-acre farm, which belonged to farmer Steven Jensen.

Jensen, 56, noted the oil was at least six inches high on his land where he harvested durum wheat. The pipeline had likely been leaking before he noticed.

"It had been leaking for a while," he said. "I found a perfectly round, quarter-inch hole with about 100 lbs. pressure in the pipeline where the oil was coming from. It was pretty ugly. Nearby crops had disintegrated; you wouldn't have known they were wheat plants."

The pipeline was first built by BP, but is now owned by the Tesoro Corporation, which purchased it in 2001. Tesoro sent in a response team a day after Jensen reported the leak, digging containment ditches and scooping up as much crude as possible. But they did not report it to the public until October 10.

The company has now plugged the leak. What they will not be able to do is avert the ecological consequences that will surely follow this incident. The company noted that no lakes or rivers were nearby, and therefore not exposed, and also argued that no wildlife was affected. Environmentalists remain skeptical.

"North Dakota and Bakken have become coveted areas for oil executives bent on getting the most extreme and remote fossil fuels out of the ground now that the 'easy reserves' are on the decline," said Greenpeace executive director Phil Radford. "As we saw in Mayflower, Arkansas earlier this year, pipelines spill, and as long as we let oil companies keep us locked into these forms of extreme fossil fuels, we'll continue to see spills like these."

"The spill has got to be pretty detrimental to any living organism that's in the ground," Jensen admitted. But for him, there's also a much larger problem. "I'm not going to be able to farm this land for a few years. We're looking at a two- to three-year cleanup."

Though this was the first major pipeline-related disaster the state had seen in some time, it was not the first recent incident altogether. Records obtained by the Associated Press showed that North Dakota recorded 139 pipeline leaks this year, which together spilled a total of 735 barrels of oil. In 2012, there were 153 leaks, spilling a total of 495 barrels. None of these were reported to the public.

"The public really should know about these," said Don Morrison, director of the Dakota Resource Council, a landowner group that engages in environmental activism. "If there is a spill, sometimes a landowner may not even know about it. And if they do, people think it's an isolated incident that's only happening to them." The way things are now, he said, with the exception of large-scale disasters, "You don't know if there's a spill somewhere in North Dakota unless you find it yourself."

Some experts say that, as with so many oil-related disasters this year, the incident in Tioga can partly be attributed to lack of oversight and continued usage of outdated pipelines. "As the U.S. produces more oil and gas, we have to remain vigilant," said Brigham McCown, former head of the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administrators. "If production is going to go up, inspections will have to go up as well."

Photo: Cleanup of the wheat field oil. Tom Stromme/AP

Fukushima water radiation doubles overnight

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:21:00 +0000

In the wake of a typhoon that lashed Tokyo, Japan's already-devastated Fukushima plant has increased its radioactive output twofold over the course of one night. Levels are now 14,000 times what is considered safe, as irradiated water continues to seep out of the facility and into the sea.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which had come under fire for allegedly misleading the public about the amount of radiation leaking, has finally admitted that toxicity is at an all-time high since August, when irradiated water leaked from a storage tank in the facility. Water samples taken at one location near the site on October 23 were measured at 140,000 becquerels per liter - twice the amount that was measured the previous day at the same location. Such a level is dangerous enough to cause cancers including leukemia.

The radiation increase is partly related to heavy rains caused by Typhoon Wipha, which caused 12 water storage tanks to overflow. Even now that the storm has ended, continuous rain has been pushing irradiated dirt and water into previously clean areas, which has caused not only an uptick in radiation, but has helped it spread over a greater distance.

Environmentalist Azby Brown, who is a volunteer with the Safecast independent radiation monitoring organization, said, "In terms of the ocean, this is definitely an environmental catastrophe, and it's still ongoing. Damage has been done in particular to the ocean floor near Fukushima, and it will take a long time to heal. Our only real option is to wait for nature to take its course." In the meantime, he added, "we have to redouble our efforts to fully understand the health consequences" of the radiation problem, "because that will help us prepare for the [continuing fallout] from Fukushima."

It's also quite telling that as of October 21, the Japanese government has extended the Fukushima cleanup deadline to 2017; that's a drastic change from the initial end-date. Originally, the radiation was expected to be completed by March 2014. But the government's environmental ministry has now admitted the obvious: decontamination of the site and the surrounding area is going to be a lengthy, complicated process.

Now, to make matters worse, the city is expected to get hit with another big storm in Wipha's wake: Typhoon Francisco is expected to batter Japan with more rain this weekend. The chaos continues.

Photo: Tumultuous waves get dangerously close to the Fukushima site. AP

A ridiculous irony of climate change

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 12:11:00 +0000

One of the most ridiculous, far-fetched, totally made up claims of the climate change deniers has been that scientists all over the world have just been making up claims of climate change in order to get grants. A massive conspiracy! A fraud against the public! Republicans have turned this bogus claim into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For one egregious example, see "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton, a fictional version of this claim which is jammed with footnotes to discredited denier papers by the few scientists, mostly in the direct or indirect pay of fossil fuel companies, who can be bribed to falsify science or who are blind to reality out of conservative conviction.

This is part of their campaign of confusion - claims of climate change are all made up. If it isn't made up it isn't due to human actions. If it is real and due to human activity it won't be that bad -- growing corn in the Yukon! If it will be that bad there really isn't anything we can do about it anyway. And so on.

In a rather delicious ironic turn, we can now predict, with 100 percent certainty that climate change will actually result in much more employment for scientists, not because they made it up but rather because it is already starting to affect humanity all over the world.

The increasing affects of climate change will drive the need for more scientific study, for more scientific knowledge, for more and better information to help us deal with the wide range of crises that are already starting to hit.

No scientist (particularly not the over 95 percent of climate scientists all over the world who are certain that climate change is real, is human-caused, and will get much worse) has made up research, invented statistics, nor hoped for major grants from a U.S. government still in the grips of too many climate change deniers, mainly Republicans but also coal-state Democrats.

In fact, the climate-change deniers in Congress (and several years ago in the Bush White House) have been busy trying to defund climate science, eliminate money for satellites that would give us more and better measurements of the climate, force scientists to avoid testifying to reality in front of Congressional committees, censor scientific government reports, and other efforts to make sure the public doesn't hear the distressing proof about the direction the earth is headed.

We do need more scientists, more scientific studies, more research, and more scientific analysis to help us deal with climate change. The stupid claim that scientists were making this all up has made greenhouse gas emissions worse and helped delay serious efforts to address climate change by Congress, leading to our need for even more science to help deal with our new reality.

Virtually all the scientific uncertainty about climate change is about how bad it will become, not about whether or not it is real. And we need more science so we can dispel that kind of uncertainty.

There are dangerous tipping points in the environment, and we absolutely need to learn about them through more science, not by going over any climate cliffs.

Three of those potential tipping points are:

1. The melting permafrost in the Artic, which as it melts releases some of the billions of tons of greenhouse gases that have been frozen for millennia.

2. The frozen methane lying in the bottom of the ocean, which is rapidly changing due to increasing acidification and warming-another instance where billions of tons of methane is just waiting to overwhelm our atmosphere

3. Potential changes in the ocean's currents, driven in large part by salty water sinking to the bottom of the ocean in the North Atlantic-as fresh water melts from the ice sheets on Greenland, the change in ocean salinity in that part of the world could affect the currents of the ocean all over the world (the phenomenon nicknamed the "conveyor belt." )

We do not know exactly where the last straws of these tipping points are and we need to know. Finding out by crossing them into massive environmental catastrophe is the wrong way to find out-we need more science.

These are all on top of recent studies of the health of the world's oceans, which offer dire warnings about the changes already taking place, in ocean acidity, warming, sea level rise, and fishery health

So the delay caused by the climate change deniers and their corporate overlords has led to the need to fund more grants to more scientists to save humanity from itself! The irony shouldn't blind us to the reality of our need for more knowledge.

Photo: Smoke from chimneys of a cement plant in Binzhou city, in eastern China's Shandong province. China, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, is directly feeling the man-made heat of global warming, scientists conclude in the first study to link the burning of fossil fuels to one country's rise in its daily temperature spikes. The study appeared online in late March 2013 in the peer reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters. AP

Uranium mining and the elections in southern Virginia

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:33:00 +0000

DANVILLE, Va. - Virginia's race for statewide office is getting closer to being over.

That may come as a relief to voters who may select the next governor based on which candidate they dislike the least, Democrat Terry McAuliffe or Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. The odd duck in the mix is Libertarian Robert Sarvis who is pulling votes away from the Republican.

Rural southern Virginia has been graced by visits from most of the candidates on the ballot.

One of the most controversial issues here is maintaining the current moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia. One of the largest uranium deposits is located 30 minutes north of Danville, which is smack in the middle of the Virginia-North Carolina border. Virginia Uranium dangles 2,000 new jobs in front of local governments if the ban is lifted. Some communities have balked at the idea that uranium waste could get into their ground water and flow into their river and streams.

Cuccinelli says he's not against the idea if it can be done safely. That's like saying he's not against firing a gun as long as the bullet doesn't hurt anyone. McAuliffe's position isn't much different. McAuliffe wants to see if mining and cleanup can be done safely. But no report has given a resounding yes to those questions.

Like his friend, Republican Governor. Bob McDonnell, Cuccinelli is mired in his own scandal. He also took gifts from Star Scientific, but not as much, and until recently, he wasn't giving anything back.

"To talk about real gift caps and types of gifts, I think that opportunity exists now and I'm going to drive hard for it as the next governor," Cuccinelli said in Danville.

Cuccinelli will drive for strong ethics reforms if the lobbyists provide the car.

McAuliffe met with local civil rights leaders in Danville during the 50th anniversary of Bloody Monday. Bloody Monday took place in Danville in June of 1963, when local police and deputized garbage workers attacked about 50 civil rights protesters with freshly minted billy clubs. However, the anniversary crowd was small because no one got the word out.

As Election Day gets closer, Republicans hope for solid turnouts in the 5th and 9th Congressional Districts in Southern Virginia. Democrats only have a few pockets of strength in these localities. Both the 5th and 9th Districts went solidly for Mitt Romney for president in 2012.

The McAuliffe campaign has all but pulled out of areas where they don't expect to do well. The job of identifying voters and getting people to the polls rests on the shoulders of local Democratic committees

This move has hurt at least two candidates running for the General Assembly in this party of Virginia. Democrats are putting their dollars in races where McAuliffe will perform well.Republicans egg on mostly older and nearly all-white crowds with the fear message of the day.

And, this election season closed with a brief recruiting drive by one of the branches of Ku Klux Klan seeking new members in racially mixed neighborhoods.

Photo: Uranium mining in Danville, Virginia.

Coming typhoon an ill wind for nuke-nervous Japan

Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:59:00 +0000

Typhoon Wipha - a once-in-a-decade storm - is making its way across the Pacific and is expected to hit Tokyo by the morning of October 16. It will bring hurricane-force winds, rain, and flooding to a city that is already enduring the now-global Fukushima disaster. Many in Japan are fearful, as Wipha could worsen the aftermath of the incident, which includes an ongoing leak of irradiated water into the sea.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operates the decimated nuclear power plant, said it will cancel offshore work, and may suspend onshore work in the facility, in light of the storm. Such measures have been deemed necessary in cautious preparation for the storm, which is the strongest to approach eastern Japan since a cyclone that occurred in October 2004, killing nearly 100 people, forcing thousands to evacuate, and causing billions of dollars in damage.

The storm is currently making the transition from a cyclone to a full-fledged hybrid storm, with characteristics of both a tropical storm and an extratropical system - a combination similar to that of Hurricane Sandy, which tore up much of the U.S. East Coast when it hit last year.

Meteorologist Ryan Maue said that the storm poses a "huge flood potential" for the Fukushima area, meaning that the toxic water currently there could be at risk of spilling out in mass amounts and spreading. As an example of this, one could look at the recent flooding in Colorado, which was also caused by severe storms and which spread spilled oil and toxic chemicals throughout various towns.

Maue explained, furthermore, that the storm will likely strengthen and grow as it gets closer to Japan, aided by strong jet stream winds in the upper atmosphere. "And Wipha," he added, "is extra-large already, size-wise." Rainfall will also be severe: "Deep convection on the westward flank of the storm," he said, "plus the topography of Japan, means heavy rain for the coastline regardless of the typhoon's path."

Meanwhile, typhoons notwithstanding, experts are scrambling to curb the fallout from the Fukushima fiasco, with a team of 16 experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency currently visiting the site and attempting to advise the Japanese government on how to deal with the scope of the disaster and the subsequent challenge of disposing of large amounts of radioactive material.

The experts will remain on-site for nine days, during which they will assess the extent of the radiation exposure and visit villages near the plant. Residents of some of those villages have still not returned because of contamination, despite the government's lifting of evacuation advisories. This is seen as a larger part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's overall plan to finally accept global assistance on this matter.

It could also be seen as a reactionary move in light of the public's growing dissatisfaction with TEPCO, which has allegedly failed to fully disclose the extent of damage and water contamination caused by the disaster. Some experts are also dissatisfied with the government's handling of the situation so far.

"Japan is clearly living in denial," said medical doctor Kiyoshi Kurokawa. "Water keeps building up inside the plant, and debris keeps piling up outside of it. This is all just aimed at pushing off the problems until the future."

But if Typhoon Wipha shakes things up as predicted, those problems will only grow.

Photo: A worker points to storage tanks at the Fukushima facility. The site is at risk of being hit by Typhoon Wipha. Kyoto News-Pool/AP

Workers hit with radioactive water as Fukushima disaster continues

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:57:00 +0000

As fresh horrors in the global Fukushima disaster continue to unfold, workers are the latest victims. Six of them, who were working at the plant, were accidentally splashed with highly irradiated water this week while accidentally removing the wrong pipe from some equipment. The incident is the newest in a laundry list of dilemmas connected with the plant. The other main issue - the continued seepage of toxic water into the Pacific Ocean - is ongoing.

Yoshimi Hitosugi, spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), said the radioactive water spilled onto the workers and the entire floor of the facility in which they were working. The area in which the incident occurred houses three units that are used for the treatment of water in the plant.

TEPCO has recently come under fire for allegedly misleading the public about safety levels and oversight at the Fukushima plant. The latest controversy has been the company's apparent failure to publicly acknowledge the full scope of the leakage of irradiated water into the sea.

Though the workers were wearing face masks and hazmat suits, their exposure to radiation is still cause for concern. It will undoubtedly continue to shake the confidence of the Japanese people in TEPCO's ability to get the Fukushima chaos under control.

The workers' operations were rather routine. In order to keep the melted reactors cool, they must continuously be doused with water, which then becomes contaminated and must be periodically pumped out and stored in tanks. It was during this basic maintenance that the workers were put at risk.

Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, downplayed the hazard, saying, "It was serious in that it was a problem caused by carelessness, but I do not believe they were exposed to a seriously troubling dosage" of radiation.

The pipe was later reconnected and the water was contained and cleaned up. But concerns remain. Many believe, for example, that workers helping with cleanups are being unnecessarily exposed to radiation.

One such person is 73-year-old retired steel industry engineer Yusuteru Yamada. He suggested that having young workers participate in the cleanup is unwise. "I'm 73 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live," he said. "Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 to 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer." He said that over 200 retirees have offered their skills, and have much to contribute. "The Fukushima site should be a national project independent from TEPCO," he added. "Such a job can't be handled by a profit-oriented company."

Furthermore, according to Tanaka, the morale of younger workers is low simply due to the extent of the disaster. "Careless mistakes are often linked to declining morale," he said. "People usually don't make silly, careless mistakes when working in a positive, healthy environment. The lack of [focus], I think, may be related to the recent problems."

Photo: Workers are briefed about tanks containing radioactive water. Many of these workers, some feel, are unnecessarily exposed to radiation. AP

Fukushima now a global disaster

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 16:02:00 +0000

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown is now a worldwide disaster.

More than two years after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl and after more than two years of denial and cover-up, the Japanese government on Oct. 6, through Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has requested global aid. The request came as radioactive water leaks continued to contaminate the Pacific Ocean's ecosystem and therefore the world food supply chain.

The latest leaks of radioactive water into the already-contaminated Pacific Ocean result are coming from an overfilled storage tank.

The Japanese Communist Party is calling for a declaration of national emergency, while even the Institute of Energy Economics, which takes a pro-nuclear stance, is showing concern and calling for immediate action. Scientists, who suspected the persistent leakage even before it was made public on July 22, remained unsurprised by the news, as radiation levels in the sea near Japan had been holding steady, rather than declining, as they would if the situation had been resolved.

The leak began beneath the plant, when three of seven underground storage ponds holding toxic water overflowed. The company's monitoring system failed to spot the breach. The ponds are now - finally - being fixed and replaced. Prior to the breach, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was charged with continuous inspections of the ponds, as well as all of the storage tanks, but their efforts were considered by experts to be shoddy, with just one worker assigned to 500 tanks over a period of two hours.

Another contributing factor, according to experts, was the ordinary movement of groundwater, which often flows into the basements of the damaged reactors, becomes contaminated, and eventually drains back out into the ocean. This means that the leak will continue even in the midst of efforts to repair the ponds.

"Big surprise; water does flow downhill," said Janette Sherman, a radiation expert and former chemist with the now-defunct U.S. Atomic Energy Commission which was replaced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "If you've ever had a leak in your house during a storm, you know how hard it is to contain water. There's a lot of water going into the plant, and it's got to go someplace. It's very hard to stop this."

Though workers at the plant erected an underground barrier to try and prevent that water's movement into the sea, those efforts failed; the irradiated water was able to get past it. Although TEPCO is working on a sophisticated filtration system that will supposedly remove radioactive materials from water and purify it, initial testing of the system has reportedly "not accomplished the expected result." Successful filtration, then, is likely a long way off if at all possible. And anyway, said Sherman, its level of success would be negligible, given the scope of the disaster. "You can precipitate these things out in a laboratory," she remarked, "but you're talking about millions of gallons here."

TEPCO, moreover, is largely seen as a profiteering corporation that has misinformed the public about the disaster. The company's ability to carry out the cleanup and decommission of the Fukushima site is being called into question.

Japanese Communist Party parliamentarian Shiokawa Tetsuya said that TEPCO failed to grasp the full extent of the leak, and at this time does not have concrete data concerning just how much contamination has gotten into the ocean. Furthermore, party chair Shii Kazuo has asked that TEPCO and the Japanese government retract their false statements to the public that "the situation is under control," and their insistence that people should not "turn against nuclear energy."

As both the government and corporations seemingly seek to pacify the public through dishonesty, other aspects of the Fukushima fallout are seen as just as problematic as the water leak: deformities have been observed in insects and fish, and traces of radioactive cesium have been found in bluefin tuna as far from Japan as the coast of California. And the effects on people have not yet been ascertained. Meanwhile, radiation in the ocean is expected to reach the U.S. Pacific coast in five years - less, if current leakage amounts increase.

The Japanese Communist Party, meanwhile, has long maintained an adamant stance on the nuclear issue. As far back as 1976, party secretariat head Fuwa Tetsuzo remarked, "Nuclear power is a dangerous and unproven technology with great potential risks. It can bring about a very dangerous outcome." Such an outcome is now plainly evident in the waters near Fukushima. But people are waking up, even if corporations aren't.

Tokyo resident and office worker Hitoshi Iwata, who participated in a demonstration against nuclear power, remarked, "Never in my 39 years of life have I tried to voice my views out loud like this. I expected that the Fukushima case would turn society away from nuclear power." But when Big Business, including corporations like TEPCO that spread misinformation, felt differently, "my sense of disappointment was so strong that I felt a compelling need to voice my protest."

Miho Igarashi, another demonstrator, added, "After the disaster, I knew that the government and vested interests would tell us lies about nuclear power being safe. It's time to raise our voices against the danger of atomic power."

Photo: Tokyo police wear special suits to protect them from radiation as they search for victims during the tsunami in 2011. Takuya Yoshino/AP

Climate: good news, bad news, really good news

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 13:58:00 +0000

Climate change is in the news - good, bad and really good. First big item: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released the summary and first part of its latest every-seven-years report on climate change and the most recent scientific knowledge and consensus. Second: 350.org continues its battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, among many popular struggles that are growing.

The good news (relatively speaking, anyway): The IPCC report offers further confirmation of what we already knew, that climate change is real, escalating, and mainly caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Why is this is good? Because more scientists, more scientific facts based on deeper research, and public coverage of climate change are all moving humanity closer to the significant actions that need to be taken to avert the worst impacts. It is another brick in the wall of public scientific understanding against climate denialism, against the cynical and manipulative efforts of the fossil fuel industry and ultra-right political hacks to avoid or at least delay action.

The other good news from the report: Human actions can still make a huge difference in how much warming the world experiences over the next 100 years. Way too much climate change is already "baked" into the system due to the carbon dioxide emissions already in the atmosphere, but we can make it worse or we can reverse course and keep it from getting truly apocalyptic. What humanity does over the next 10 or 20 years matters, as the range of predictions in the various IPCC models shows: It can be bad (it is already guaranteed to be) or it can be terrible - that is our choice. We can make a difference.

The bad news: The IPCC report doesn't address all the issues that may make climate change worse. They have good scientific reasons - there is still uncertainty about many aspects of the interactions between the climate and other natural and human systems. And it is hard to put numbers into computer models when we don't yet have accurate numbers. But it does mean that the IPCC predictions underestimate the danger of climate catastrophe.

For example, one potential tipping point is that the northern hemisphere is warming faster than the rest of the planet, which leads to melting of the permafrost. The permafrost contains many millions of tons of frozen greenhouse gases, and as it melts, those gases are released into the atmosphere. This has already created a feedback loop, in which global warming melts permafrost, releasing more greenhouse gases, making global warming worse, melting more permafrost, and so on. However, no one yet knows how fast this will happen, exactly how much greenhouse gas will be released and when, and how big an impact this will have on the global climate. This uncertainty makes it impossible to include this very real danger in the IPCC models. That doesn't make the danger disappear, however. So as dire as the IPCC predictions are, they are incomplete.

Another example: As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they eventually release large amounts of fresh water that end up in the ocean. In one way this is a good thing, in the sense that it dilutes the increasing acidity of the ocean, already affecting fish, shellfish, and coral reefs. However, this amount of fresh water has the potential to cause shifts in the massive currents that drive the circulation of the ocean. And much of the weather of northern Europe depends on those ocean currents, which affect not just the long-term climate, but also the year-to-year weather patterns that enable northern Europe to maintain robust agricultural production. How much fresh water will be melted into the oceans? When? How much can be released before there is any significant impact on ocean currents? We don't yet know the answers to these questions, and the IPCC certainly can't report on any scientific consensus, but that doesn't make the potential problem vanish.

That's some of the bad news - it is going to be bad, and it may get even worse than we know, due to factors we do not yet understand enough to accurately measure or predict. Since the world is massive, the world's climate system is massive, and it interacts with all other systems, natural and man-made: ocean acidity, soil fertility, the weather, rainfall, drought, forest fires, pollution, and how hospitable the world is to human life flourishing (or not). It intersects and interacts with humans' systems of production, distribution, transportation, agriculture, habitation, construction, and more - all human life is a subset of the larger world ecology, and depends on that larger system for the resources and conditions necessary for human life to function.

The really good news: As climate change is escalating, the fightback is escalating as well.

350.org is leading two crucial current struggles, the effort to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and the growing movement of campuses and in cities and states to divest from fossil fuel companies. In one recent innovative effort, activists built a solar-powered barn in Nebraska right in the path of the Keystone pipeline.
Communities in the Pacific Northwest and anti-coal activists are campaigning against efforts to massively increase railroad traffic and port capacity to ship more dirty coal to China. A totem pole titled "W e draw the line" is traveling the country as part of the campaign, carved by members of the Lummi Nation and supported by other Native American tribes and nations. Communities all along the path of the increased rail traffic are mounting local protests, petition drives, and public education efforts. Environmental activists are pointing out, as the "Do the Math' video demonstrates, that much of the remaining fossil fuel needs to stay in the ground for the future of humanity.
The scientific community is fighting back. Tired of being a punching bag for right-wing loonies (Ted Cruz's "wacko bird" caucus), scientists are fighting back with facts, more in-depth studies, more publicity for scientific facts, and are engaging in the public discourse. Many scientists have realized that it is not enough to just have the facts on your side, you also have to join the public battles over what to do with those facts. James Hansen, for example, has gone from just testifying before Congress to getting arrested at a demonstration earlier this year, and regularly writes op-eds for major newspapers and magazines, as does scientist Michael Mann.
Unions, at least some of them, are recognizing their interest in these battles, and joining environmental organizations as partners. This has been building for several years, with the Blue-Green Alliance, between the Steelworkers and the Sierra Club, campaigning for jobs building a new energy economy. The Connecticut AFL-CIO recently adopted a resolution on climate change.
Environmental organizations, at least some of them, are realizing that they need an alliance with unions and workers in order to win. An appeal to the recent AFL-CIO c onvention by dozens of environmental groups called on the labor movement to take a leading role in the struggle, in the long-term interests of its members. In a recent speech to a Canadian union convention, Naomi Klein argued for unions to join the environmental battles.
Many industries and small businesses are confronting the reality of climate change and its impact on their work.

For example, in the Pacific Northwest, oyster farmers have had to open seeding beds in Hawaii, since the traditional beds in Southwest Washington are experiencing too much ocean acidity for the oysters to begin forming shells. Once the oysters have successfully begun the process of shell growth, they are brought to the Northwest. But the traditional practices are no longer working. This brings home to many people in many areas that climate change science is real and we need to act.

Similarly, wine growers are realizing that in the future, the areas of the world that are best for growing wine grapes are going to be moving, and the entire industry needs to adapt, and to recognize that this shift has impacts far beyond just moving vineyards.

Increasingly, it is only the coal and oil industries that refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change.

As extreme weather events escalate around the country, from Hurricane Sandy to torrential rains and floods in Colorado, the hypocrisy of Republican anti-science anti-government elected officials is exposed. They are the "Only in My Backyard" caucus, voting against emergency assistance to anyone, except when it is in their own districts and might affect their chances of re-election.
Fracking is also seeing many battles, as the leaks from processing shale oil pollute the drinking water of local communities, as the harmful chemicals used in the process spread to surrounding areas, and as the claims of safety by the industry are exposed as fraudulent.
Many cities and states are receiving the results of studies of how climate change will impact them, and as a result there are battles at every level against Republican deniers - as in Norfolk, V a., and other coastal cities.
With a recent legislative deal in Congress, several Obama appointees who had been unable to get congressional confirmation managed to get around the Republican roadblocks, including Gina McCarthy as director of the Environmental Protection Agency. She has moved aggressively to institute carbon emission limits for new power plants and begin the process for existing power plants. While this is of course not enough by itself, it is a major positive step forward, a down payment on President Obama's commitment in his inaugural and State of the Union speeches earlier this year, where he promised executive branch action on climate change, saying "We don't need a meeting of the Flat Earth Society."

All these signs of a growing fightback are encouraging. We do have reason to know that what we do can make a difference, that we are not all doomed to a hot hell on earth.

Building struggles, forming coalitions, engaging in public education, winning workers to understand their self-interest in climate change battles, supporting legislators who are ready to take action, exposing right-wing and fossil fuel industry lies are all worthwhile efforts.

People no matter where they are can find ways to link up with one or another of these struggles, movements, and organizations. And that's a good reason for our hope for the future of humanity to grow and flourish.

Photo: Ted Nation, longtime activist, sits beside a sign during a protest against coal trains shipping dirty coal to China, at the Legislative Building in Olympia, Wash., Jan. 14, 2013. Brylie Oxley/Wikipedia Commons.

Fracking site unleashes radioactive water into Pa. creek

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 15:40:00 +0000

In the latest incident of environmental poisoning caused by fracking, a wastewater treatment facility in Pennsylvania is spewing radioactive water into the local Blacklick Creek. Fracking involves injecting water and chemicals into the ground to obtain natural gas, and when that dirty water comes back to the surface, it is normally taken to treatment plants for purification. But in this case, researchers discovered, the water is being re-released whilst still contaminated.

The discovery was made during a two-year Duke University study, with the latest water sample - taken in June of this year - confirming to researchers that harmful radioactive material is indeed present, even after supposed cleansing at the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility in Indiana County, Pa. Although the facility did remove 90 percent of the toxicity in the water, the study found that it wasn't enough; the remaining contamination posed a major health and environmental risk.

"The levels that we found are much higher than what you allow in the U.S. for any place to dump radioactive material," said Avner Vengosh, a Duke University professor who co-authored the study. "The radium will be bio-accumulating; you eventually could get it in the fish" in Blacklick Creek.

Shale gas production like that which is taking place in Pa. is terribly unregulated, as is the disposal of wastewater used in the operations. Fracking is exempt from legislation such as the Clean Water Act and the Safe Water Drinking Act. Frackers are allowed to monitor their own waste production due to a loophole rammed through in 2005 by Congress (at the urging of Dick Cheney) excepting corporations from federal scrutiny in regard to fracking chemicals. As a result, the natural gas industry has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted to be thorough and responsible in cleaning up after its operations (which themselves present a significant environmental threat).

Researchers involved with the study underscored how dire the situation in Indiana County is, noting that radium levels in the creek where supposedly purified wastewater was released were "200 times greater" than elsewhere in local waters. Study co-author and Duke professor of environmental science Robert Jackson added, "Each day, natural gas producers generate two billion gallons of wastewater. We have to do something with that. This wastewater is a consequence of our reliance - our addiction - to fossil fuels."

Vengosh remarked, "We were surprised by the magnitude of radioactivity we found. It's unusual to find that level" of toxicity.

Overall, fracking in the U.S. generated 280 billion gallons of wastewater in 2012, according to a new study by Environment America. That's reportedly enough to flood all of Washington, D.C. beneath a 22 foot-deep toxic lagoon. Fracking by the Numbers, the report based on the study, stated, "Our analysis shows that damage from fracking is widespread and occurs on a scale unimagined just a few years ago." And the wastewater that is supposedly cleaned at treatment facilities is not, in fact, being 100-percent purified, they learned.

"Fracking wastewater discharged from treatment plants can cause a problem for drinking water," said the report. Furthermore, "when bromide in the wastewater mixes with chlorine (which is often used at the plants), it produces trihalomethanes, chemicals that can cause cancer and increase the risk of reproductive or developmental health problems."

The troubling conclusion the study seemed to reach was that, throughout the U.S., there are many recurring incidents like the one in Indiana County, in which local rivers, streams, and creeks become polluted with supposedly treated water.

"What is happening is the direct result of a lack of any regulation," Vengosh continued. "If the Clean Water Act was applied in 2005 when the shale gas boom started, this would have been prevented. Environmental regulation should be imposed to prevent this kind of radioactive buildup. This is a huge issue."

Photo: An anti-fracking demonstration takes place in Pennsylvania. Robert Willett/AP

Environment threatened and 400 parks closed by government shutdown

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:43:00 +0000

At 12:01 this morning, House Republicans pushed the nation into a federal government shutdown following their inability to ram through a list of right wing demands including destruction of the Affordable Health Care Act.

Among the 800,000 federal workers having to stay home today are nine out of 10 of the Environmental Protection Administration's employees - a potentially devastating blow to the environment.

The environment is taking an extra hit, however, from the decision to continue in those very same parks activities that are harmful to it. While the people are banned from the more than 400 shuttered national parks, big oil and gas companies will have no trouble getting in.

It's big business as usual for oil and gas drillers, who will continue operations as usual in 12 of the otherwise closed national parks.

While the oil and gas industries continue to use the parks to rake in their profits, the tourism and recreation industries will take blows as rangers are put out of work.

And though, outside of the parks, the Bureau of Land Management will not process new drilling permits, fracking operations at existing sites will still go on. As for inspections and oversight? "Only minimal agency personnel will be on duty," according to Think Progress. Many will undoubtedly feel that this is a recipe for disaster.

"This means we'll have to dress like oil executives if we want to visit our national parks and monuments," said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune in a statement. He said the situation is the result of "House Republicans refusing to pass routine legislation to fulfill the most basic aspect of their job: keeping the government open and working for American families. This means that Republicans who couldn't achieve their reckless agenda through elections or legislation are willing to sacrifice the health of our families and our communities to simply score political points."

The American people," he added, must now "pay the cost in lost jobs and polluted air and water. House Republicans need to ditch the political posturing and get back to work."

While drilling companies get free reign, 93 percent of the EPA's 16,205 workers will be furloughed. Other federal services that are vital to environmental health and safety, and which will be forced to endure cuts and furloughs, include:

* the Center for Disease Control (68 percent of employees will be put on temporary leave)

* the National Science Foundation, which will stop making payments to scientists

* the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which will stop nearly all work on offshore clean energy production

*the U.S. Forest Service, which will close its offices and furlough most of its staff, save for a small number of firefighting and law enforcement personnel

* the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which will see 37 of its 40 workers furloughed, and will cease all investigations of industrial chemical spills and accidents, including its ongoing investigation of the tragic fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas

* the Department of Agriculture; though meat and grain inspectors will continue to work, the USDA will not issue any further economic or statistical reports, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which provides healthy food for low- income consumers, will cease operations in most states

This, for the most part, leaves the country stripped bare in terms of oversight and protections against potential hazards to human health and the environment. It also means that many, many federal workers will be forced out of work. And with the national parks' doors barred to all but oil and gas companies, that includes workers with the Association of National Park Rangers.

In a statement, the union remarked, "Our national parks have been a way of American life for over 141 years, and the National Park Service has withstood the test of time and fluctuating budgets. Our parks will be there when this crisis is over. Still, it is a sad day when Congress acts in such a self-serving way; when a small handful of members manufacture a budget crisis and are willing to shut the entire federal government down despite the damage it will cause."

Joan Anzelmo, spokesperson for the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, added that among the workers that have been furloughed are "people who fight explosive wildfires, save lives in outdoor accidents, rescue injured climbers on mountain peaks, search for lost children, respond to terrorist threats, and rush into places devastated by hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, and floods to help their fellow man. The National Park Service does this vital work and so much more, day-in and day-out, year-round."

Covering another aspect to this issue, Roger Dow, president of the U.S. Travel Association, remarked that due to the shutdown, there will be economic repercussions to consider. He remarked, "The closure of national parks and federal historic sites to millions of travelers will do serious and immediate harm to the economy. Shutdowns unnecessarily disrupt economic activity in communities large and small."

"It is definitely damaging," agreed Alan Rowsome, who works in government relations for conservation organization The Wilderness Society. "Restoration projects will not continue. Endangered species monitoring will not continue. Hunting will not be open on public lands. It [is going to] be very detrimental to local communities, not just to the ecology but also to the economy and to jobs."

Photo: National Park Service guide talks with visitors about the Liberty Bell at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Sept. 30, before the government shutdown at midnight. Americans soon saw the impact: National parks closed. Matt Rourke/AP