+- +-

+-User

Welcome, Guest.
Please login or register.
 
 
 

Login with your social network

Forgot your password?

+-Stats ezBlock

Members
Total Members: 48
Latest: watcher
New This Month: 0
New This Week: 0
New Today: 0
Stats
Total Posts: 16867
Total Topics: 271
Most Online Today: 1208
Most Online Ever: 1208
(March 28, 2024, 07:28:27 am)
Users Online
Members: 0
Guests: 571
Total: 571

Author Topic: Pollution  (Read 59343 times)

0 Members and 7 Guests are viewing this topic.

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #525 on: May 24, 2017, 02:15:38 pm »
April 28, 2017

Environmental InJustice: The Poisoning of East Chicago


 Lead in the water. Arsenic in the soil. East Chicago residents sound off on representatives from EPA and HUD, about how their community resources were contaminated for decades by industry.


http://therealnews.com/t2/story:18943:Environmental-InJustice%3A-The-Poisoning-of-East-Chicago
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #526 on: May 24, 2017, 02:27:53 pm »
So Goes Nature So Goes Us

May 22, 2017

Leading conservationist, Jamie Rappaport Clark speaks about the dangerous levels of species extinction and deforestation



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #527 on: May 27, 2017, 07:32:57 pm »
World's Largest Beach Clean-Up: Trash-Ridden to Pristine in 2 Years

By Joe McCarthy

A lot of people take part in community clean-up efforts—spending a Saturday morning picking up litter in a park, mowing an overgrown field or painting a fence.

But not everyone has the drive to do what a young lawyer and environmentalist in Mumbai recently accomplished.

In 2015, Afroz Shah moved to an apartment near Versova beach, an ignored strip of ocean near slums. He was shocked by the pollution that he saw—the beach was covered in rotting garbage. Nobody could walk along the beach, let alone swim in the water, without being assaulted by the smell.

"[The plastic] was 5.5 feet high. A man could drown in the plastic," Shah told CNN. "I said I'm going to come on the field and do something. I have to protect my environment and it requires ground action."

At first, Shah and his neighbor, an 84-year old man, would go out and pick up as much trash as they could.


After a while, Shah realized that he had to expand his team if he was going to make a dent in what was essentially an environmental crisis. He began knocking on doors and talking with local residents, explaining the harm caused by marine pollution. His determination inspired a lot of people and soon dozens, hundreds and eventually more than a thousand volunteers from all walks of life pitched in.

https://www.ecowatch.com/beach-clean-up-mumbai-2421608193.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #528 on: May 28, 2017, 03:40:04 pm »

May 27, 2017, 03:49:13 AM

Agelbert Note: Quote from the above article:

Quote
Innovation does not solve problems, it creates them.


The above is an excellent example of a half-truth. The author is focusing, without mentioning it, on Dilworth's  idea that humans are too smart for their own good, as discussed in his the peer reviewed book Dilworth wrote showing how we-the-people had to pay about $468 a barrel  :o  :P (effective price to police the middle east for oil) in the FIRST Gulf war instead of using that money to become independent of Middle East oil. He showed how TPTB "justified"  that stupidity in the quote below:

Quote
Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists.
 
Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.


Yes, making we-the-people pay for war and other polluter fun and games IS a form of INNOVATION that CREATES problems and certainly DOES NOT solve problems; it exacerbated TWO problems: 1) the pollution problem AND 2) the concentration of wealth in fewer hands democracy destroying problem.

But it continues to be a half truth. From Dilworth's point of view, the innovation in human medicine of washing our hands and other other methods of antisepsis CREATES a bigger problem than it solves, simply because that boosts the human population beyond the available resources. (see: bacteria consuming agar n a petri dish quicker as the population increases, thereby hastening their demise - despite the instinctive ring circling delay attempt).

To take that argument to its logical end, the "innovation" of a large brain that gave us tool making created more problems than it solved for our ancestors, who proceeded to kill and eat anything or anybody that was either in their way, was edible, or both.


However, despite the above logic, which boils down to "Humans, like T-Rex, just DO WHAT THEY DO",  the argument is flawed.

HOW SO ? ???
 


The argument ignores the FACT that at each and every innovation event in human history, a bifurcation of he future viability level of the species, projected just before that innovation, occurred. The ASS-U-MEption that a more stable biosphere would have been obtained had our population been kept in check by disease, dumbness or whatever cannot be proven because we didn't go that route. It's just an assumption, like the deep ecologists have that humans are a disease on earth and the biosphere will be better off without us.

True, innovations SEEM to increase the rate we use up available resources in a fixed biosphere area, which temporarily increases the species footprint on the biosphere while decreasing the long term viability of that species as its increasingly bigger footprint crowds out the other species it needs to survive.

They way things look NOW, the trajectory is extinction for humans, of course. That cannot be denied by any person with critical thinking skills (unless they work for the fossil fuel industry - they don't hire people with those skills  ;D).

BUT, at each and every bifurcation brought by innovation, an ETHICS BASED QUESTION WAS ASKED AND ANSWERED BY TPTB. Consistently, corrupt leaders with short term horizons ignored the Precautionary Principle of Science. And as specialization in human fields of endeavor increased, less and less people in decision making authority at the top had the skills or the inclination to look at the total biosphere cause and effect picture to determine if the human innovation was deleterious to it, to our eventual detriment. And EVEN when an obvious detriment to life was evidenced, profit over people and planet prevailed.

So, the PROBLEM is NOT the INNOVATION itself, but LACK OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR by TPTB.

So, are we doomed if we CONTINUE to allow TPTB to refuse to make ETHICAL BEHAVIOR sine qua non in our society?

Absolutely. But we are not doomed because we are self aware, can innovate and do stupid things. WE are doomed because we made a conscious CHOICE to do so. It's called SIN (missing the mark). We DO have free will, despite what many, like the deep ecologists, claim to the contrary. But all these modern Darwin worshiping "highly evolved" intelliburros out there want to eschew, demean, disdain, ridicule and reject forget all concepts of ethics, right and wrong, morality, the concept of SIN or absolutely anything that gets in the way of them doing their selfish thing.

So much do the intelliburros fastidiously cling to to their relativist and rebellious mindset, that rather than ADMIT humanity made mistakes, and needs to correct them through ethical behavior, they claim that we rigidly just DO WHAT WE DO and throw up their hands, as the author of the article is doing.

I wrote some time ago, when discussing Dilworth's information about the Fossil Fuel Industry Capitalists:

The Fracking, pollution and GW we are being assaulted with are SYMPTOMS of the DISEASE killing our biosphere, not the disease itself.

If we don't seriously address this DISEASE of Sh it Canned Ethics for Short Term Profits of the fossil fuel FOOLS that are despoiling our biosphere and accelerating planetary pollution, the big die offs (including large segments of the human population) begin at 2030.

This totally unjustified profit, never mind the needless lose of lives, then increases the power of the fossil fuel corporations to perpetuate a biosphere harming dirty fuel status quo. How? By "funding" politicians with rather large "donations" to keep renewable energy from competing with dirty energy.

If all this was just about power politics, I might not be that concerned. Humans, particularly the overly ambitious and aggressive ones, have always fought and schemed to control and fleece the population at large.
 
But now we know the future of our biosphere is at stake. Now we know the entire edifice of dirty energy is a knife in the back of the biosphere that will destroy our species and many others.

 

The system, as defined by the fossil fuel fascist dystopia that currently runs most of the human affairs among the 1 billion population in the developed world that is saddling the other 6 billion, who are totally free of guilt for causing it, with this climate horror we are beginning to experience, IS quite stubborn and does not wish to change the status quo.

Mother nature will force it to do so.

Whether it is done within the next two decades or not (i.e. a switch to 100% PLUS bioremediation Renewable Energy steady state economy) will dictate the size of the consequent die off, not only of humans but thousands of other species as well.

We are now in a climate cake that has been baked for about 1,000 years according to atmospheric, objective, proven with experimental data, science.

If the crash program to switch to renewable energy is to begin soon, I expect the trigger for the crash program will be the first ice free arctic summer (according to my estimates) in 2017. But millions of people demanding a transition to 100% renewable Energy will give us a fighting chance to win the Climate Victory.

You can help us leave dirty energy sources that are killing us behind.


All we have to do is use Common Sense, admit we were WRONG, and make ETHICAL BEHAVIOR sine qua non in human affairs.

We HAVE A CHOICE. But how can we make that choice if people no longer believe there is a difference between good and evil behavior? The short answer is that we can't. The apparently "easy" choice will always be taken. THAT IS WHAT GOT US HERE. THAT IS WHAT UNTHINKING, NON-TOOLMAKING, NON-SINNING BACTERIA DO in a petri dish with agar running out (after their instinctive ring 'circling' attempts collapse).

WE ARE NOT BACTERIA. WE HAVE A CHOICE TO DO THE right THING.

All we have to do is stop pretending otherwise. WE understand nature pretty well. It's time we obeyed her and put everybody who doesn't in jail. THAT is the INNOVATION in human affairs that would NOT create a bigger problem than the one it solved. You don't have to believe in God to admit you were wrong and that biosphere math MUST be our guide, but it helps;D



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #529 on: May 29, 2017, 08:14:04 pm »
Churches, Schools and Water Tanks: Made of Bottles!    ;D


Plastic Bottles To Build With
This is just beautiful to behold: buildings of all kinds in South America, made using earth and plastic bottles.

You will see not just residential structures, but water tanks, aqueducts, churches and schools made of water bottles!

Enjoy this video in full screen mode, because only then can you see that these are indeed made with the soda and water bottles we throw away every day.

According to this video, 80% of the 160 billion bottles we throw away every day are not recycled. This type of architecture can be a durable, inexpensive solution all over the world.

--Bibi Farber

This video was produced by Eco Tec.




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #530 on: May 30, 2017, 01:34:48 pm »
Gas Cars Much Dirtier Than Expected

May 29th, 2017 by Steve Hanley

Originally published on Gas2.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that pollution from diesel engines was far worse than from gasoline engines for two reasons: First, diesel exhaust fumes are known to contain nitrous oxide emissions. Second, they also contain particulates, small molecules that are too small to see. Both are believed to cause serious damage to human lungs.

Particulate Emissions From Gasoline Engines

Now it turns out that conventional wisdom is wrong. ;D A study by researchers at the Materials, Science, and Technology Laboratory in Switzerland claims that particulate emissions from gasoline engines can be far greater than those from diesel engines.

The laboratory studied the emissions of 7 gas engine vehicles equipped with direct-fuel-injection systems. The research found that they emit from 10 to 100 times more particulates than modern diesel engines. In fact, they have higher particulate emissions than older diesel without particulate filters.

Wait, did you read that right? Gasoline engines spew out up to one hundred times more particulates that a modern diesel engine equipped with a particulate filter? Yes, you read that right. Yikes. And people wonder why the incidence of asthma and other lung related diseases is on the rise!

Researchers Find Carcinogens In Gas Engine Exhaust

The researchers, led by Norbert Heeb, who has 25 years of experience analyzing emissions from diesel engines and designing filter systems, showed that the particles are the same size as those from older diesel engines. They measure between 10 and 20 nanometers and clump together into particles between 80 and 100 nanometers before they leave the exhaust system.

The gas engines were also found to discharge unburned hydrocarbons in the form of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), along with other liquid and solid toxins which accumulate on the surface of the emitted particles.

Particulates Penetrate The Lungs

Heeb says the particles are so small they penetrate lung tissue and pass into the bloodstream, bringing those toxins with them. Is this beginning to sound like the days when researchers first told the world about all the nasty stuff contained in cigarette smoke? It should, because it turns out there is a connection to smoking. The researchers also found that the exhaust gasses coming out ot the tailpipes of the cars with gas engines also contain benzo-α-pyrene, a carcinogenic produced when tobacco is burned.

A Call For Particulate Filters

He urgently suggests that carmakers begin equipping their gas-powered cars with particulate filters. “New exhaust emission technologies launched on the market typically need about 13 years to become fully effective. Only after that period of time will 9 out of 10 cars in the vehicle fleet be replaced,” he says. “So, the faster particle filters are mandatory in gasoline cars, the better it will be for everyone’s health.”

Direct Injection Is The Cause

The culprit in all of this appears to be direct-injection systems themselves. Gasoline engines do not inherently form particulates in the exhaust. In older electronic fuel injection systems with an injector located in the intake tract, fuel is added at the end of the exhaust stroke as the piston is travelling away from the combustion chamber.

In direct injection engines, the fuel is added as the piston is headed back toward the combustion chamber after the end of the intake stroke. This gives the fuel less time to evaporate, claims Heeb, which results in more more unburned hydrocarbons, which means more soot.

Direct injection allows more precisely controlling the fuel delivery process, leading to better fuel economy and lower carbon dioxide emissions. Apparently, few people have tested gas-powered cars equipped with direct-injection systems for anything other than CO2 until now.

Another Reason To Go Electric   


What’s the bottom line? Just this: Thanks to the Swiss researchers, now we know that our cars are slowly killing us and the planet we live on. It is time to end the reign of the internal combustion engine and push forward with the transition from fossil fuel cars to zero-emissions electrics. Our health depends on it.


https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/29/gas-cars-much-dirtier-expected/

Agelbert NOTE: Take THAT, Charles Hall, Gail Tverberg  and all you other bought and paid for "energy expert" prevaricating propagandists cheerleading fossil fuels to the detriment of people and planet! LIARS! CROOKS!

And you too, you propagandized intelliburros defending the "real world" of fossil fueldom "high energy density" BALONEY!   

 

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #531 on: June 02, 2017, 10:33:41 pm »
The 6th Mass Extinction Event is here * Geologic History shows why CO2 caused Global Warming before
Marc Haneburght


Published on Jun 1, 2017

Runaway Climate Change is causing exponential major flooding (happening now) due to more heavy rainfall on Earth, and are taking too much nutrients by rivers into the oceans, creating anoxia events. A deadly purple sulfur bacteria. Too much is never a good thing. It's what made oil deposits happen in the past.

In the past the dinosaurs roamed the planet during the start of an extinction event, now it will be us. The next clever beings might learn in time what we did wrong, maybe not.

The planet might turn into Mars because of nobody being at the controls of nuclear power plants that will destroy the ozone with massive amounts of radiation.

Oceanic anoxic events or anoxic events (anoxia conditions) refer to intervals in the Earth's past where portions of oceans become depleted in oxygen (O2) at depths over a large geographic area. During some of these events, euxinia, waters that contained H2S hydrogen sulfide, developed. Although anoxic events have not happened for millions of years, the geological record shows that they happened many times in the past.

Anoxic events coincided with several mass extinctions and may have contributed to them. These mass extinctions include some that geobiologists use as time markers in biostratigraphic dating. Many geologists believe oceanic anoxic events are strongly linked to slowing of ocean circulation, climatic warming, and elevated levels of greenhouse gases.

Global warming. The biggest story ever. Too big for the general public.  >:(

Agelbert NOTE: MUST SEE video! To skip ancient history, begin at the 32 minute mark.

This video is tremendously educational and instructive because it demonstrates exactly how our scientists accurately determined CO2 levels in the distant past, as long ago as 200 million years, when today's oil deposits are believed to have been formed.

How did they do it? ??? They found 200 million year old fossils of a plant called a Ginko, that did NOT "evolve" AT ALL  ;D, all the way to the present (leaf structure is identical to modern Ginko leaves).

Permian Ginko leaf fossil on left  - Modern Ginko Leaf on right

The Ginko has pores in the underside of the leaves. The number of pores it forms is a function, as has been determined by empirical evidence, of the available atmospheric CO2. IOW, the more  CO2, the more pores.

The fossilized Ginkos leaf pore totals, exactly as the leaf pore totals of modern Ginko test plants grown in increasingly higher CO2 containing atmospheres, evidence 4 times the CO2 level of pre-industrial human civilization. THAT was an ice free world.

HOWEVER, that was NOT a "tropical paradise", as the fossil fuel fascist propagandist crooks and liars want you to believe.

Once the ice is GONE, some death dealing chemical processes begin until just about every macroscopic oxygen breathing life form is dead. It begins with the death of most of the species populating the Marine Trophic Pyramid. HOW? ???

When the ice is gone, the ocean currents that circulate oxygen throughout the oceanic depths in a 500 year cycle come to a HALT. This makes more and more parts of the ocean anoxic, so all the oxygen breathers die or flee closer to the still oxygenated shallows.

Meanwhile, the high CO2 levels acidify the oceans, killing off the Oxygen producing phytoplankton (can't make their Calcium Carbonate structure - like mollusks also can't - despite having more CO2 "food" available) that had become widespread with the early initial increase of CO2 levels (see massive algae blooms going on as we speak).

The dead Phytoplankton begin to sink through the shallows, triggering bacterial feeding frenzy activity of a type of purple bacteria that decomposes phytoplankton, hates oxygen, but needs sunlight (it uses the sun but excretes H2S - Hydrogen sulfide poisonous gas, not  oxygen).

So THEN the shallows become anoxic too. Then what is left of the oxygen breathers die. This not "just evolution", as the idiots who compare our fossil fuel based civilization's stupid and suicidal greedy activity to massive volcanic eruptions, as if  humans have as little free will as a volcano, ridiculously claim. But the imbeciles who wish to perpetuate the fossil fuel burning status quo frequently resort to this craven attempt to avoid responsibility for the harm being done.

Allowing the CO2 to get so high that it triggers the death of most marine life is Genocidal Criminal Negligence.


What just happened in the death of the Great Barrier reef is just the beginning of the heating process resulting from too much CO2. There is still a lot of ice. There is still oceanic circulation and oxygenation.

But ALREADY, JUST THE HEAT is killing the most important marine life nurseries in the oceans.


SO WHAT, you might ask. The dinosaurs were around for millions of years. Don't we have lots of time too?   

WHY? ???

Because the RATE we are putting CO2 in the atmosphere is THOUSANDS of TIMES FASTER than when the massive volcanic eruptions caused CO2 triggered extinctions!

When the  ice is gone and that rotten egg  smell from ubiquitous  Hydrogen sulfide poisonous gas reaches your nostrils, expect a VERY brief growth industry in canned oxygen.  But don't expect the Fossil Fuel Fascist "industry"   to admit they destroyed the biosphere for short term profit.

Coming soon to your home: DOOM WEEK ON PLANET EARTH


The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
« Last Edit: June 03, 2017, 06:18:15 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #532 on: June 04, 2017, 04:29:13 pm »


WATCH NOW: We're Taking Trump to Court

President Trump is waging an all-out war against our climate, our clean air and water and our health. But NRDC is striking back against every attack from his administration — and one of our best shots at winning is by taking them to court.

Please, take a moment to watch this powerful new video from NRDC Chief Counsel Mitch Bernard about our legal strategy to face off against Trump in the pivotal months and years ahead — then please consider making a tax-deductible gift to NRDC's Stop Trump Legal Fund to help support our critical litigation work for as long as it takes to win.


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #533 on: June 11, 2017, 08:47:07 pm »
Biological Extinction | Paul R. Ehrlich


ublished on Mar 2, 2017
How to Save the Natural World on Which We Depend


PAS-PASS Workshop
Casina Pio IV, 27 February-1 March 2017

On our 4.54 billion year old planet, life is perhaps as much as 3.7 billion years old, photosynthesis and multi-cellularity dozens of times independently around 3.0 billion years old, and the emergence of plants, animals, and fungi onto land, by at least the Ordovician period, perhaps 480 million years ago, forests appearing around 370 million years ago, and the origin of modern groups such as mammals, birds, reptiles, and land plants subsequently.

The geological record shows that there have been five major extinction-events in the past, the first of them about 542 million years ago, and suggests that 99% of the species that ever lived (5 billion of them?) have become extinct. The last major extinction event occurred about 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, and, in general, the number of species on earth and the complexity of their communities has increased steadily until near the present.


Agelbert NOTE:
Biodiversity hot spots of 80% of biosphere's species endangered by Global Warming Pollution 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #534 on: July 06, 2017, 01:34:16 pm »
Here's some news that brightened my day: Columbia Court of Appeals judges rule against Pro-Pollution Pruitt.
 
The lid stays shut on methane emissions despite Pruitt’s wishes, Columbia Court of Appeals judges rule
 

LAST UPDATED ON JULY 6TH, 2017 AT 5:51 PM BY ALEXANDRU MICU 

SNIPPET:

Quote
The Trump administration has shown great interest in making these rules (good rules in general) go away. Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt first announced his intention of starting a reconsideration process for these rules back in April but changing legislature set in place is an often lengthy and difficult task.

So Pruitt also announced that the Environmental Pruitt Agency won’t bother with mere technicalities such as “law,” “facts,” or “ethics” and will simply not enforce four items specified in the rules — including regulation of low-production wells and the requirement that a professional engineer certify well vent system designs — in the meantime. This was a reasonable course of action, Pruitt argued, as Obama’s administration didn’t give all stakeholders an opportunity to comment on the rules’ final wording.

Nope!  ;D

A host of environmental groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Integrity Project, Earthworks, the Clean Air Council, and the Sierra Club, naturally challenged this in court. A panel of three judges was appointed to the case, and on Monday they announced their ruling: the rules still stand, so EPA has to enforce them.

“As we have explained, ‘an agency issuing a legislative rule is itself bound by the rule until that rule is amended or revoked’ and ‘may not alter [such a rule] without notice and comment.'”

“The administrative record […] makes clear that industry groups had ample opportunity to comment on all four issues on which EPA granted reconsideration, and indeed, that in several instances the agency incorporated those comments directly into the final rule,” the panel wrote.

The judges further pointed out that the EPA can start a reconsideration process for the rules at any time, but until they’re overturned the agency is obligated to stand by and enforce them.


http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/methane-regulation-court-ruling/

Agelbert NOTE: It is refreshing to see that these judges have learned biosphere math. 

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #535 on: July 10, 2017, 02:07:53 pm »


July 10, 2017

Has the Environmental Movement Failed?  :(

A Conversation with Dr. David Suzuki

Dr. David Suzuki discusses the environmental movement's failure to sustain its victories and the vision that will be needed to ensure public support for environmental protection



SNIPPET from video interview above:


Dr. David Suzuki: So long as we look at air, water and soil as resources, and all we're debating is how much will it cost to use them, we haven't really come to grips with the reality that we are biological creatures. If you don't have air for more than three minutes you're dead. If you have to breathe polluted air, you're sick. So, I would've thought clean air is the highest priority of any group of people on the planet, and it's the same with water. You and I are 60 to 70% water by weight, but the water leaks out of our skin, and our mouth, and our crotch, and we lose water. If you don't have water for four to six days you're dead. If you have to drink polluted water you're sick.

So, clean water is like clean air. And I can go through; clean soil that gives us our food and clean energy that comes from the sun. Those things are what keep us alive and healthy. I would've thought that any society would have used those as the foundation of the way that we live. Indeed, I call those things, that indigenous people around the world call the four sacred elements; earth, air, fire and water. Those are sacred. You can't put a value on them — they're sacred. I would've thought any group would fight like mad to protect those sacred things.

The problem today is that we're constantly left with saying, "Well, you environmentalists, you want to do this. What about the jobs? You're going to destroy the economy." We had a prime minister for 9-1/2 years who said we can't do anything about climate change, it'll destroy the economy. I don't think he believed that climate change was real, but Stephen Harper elevated ... the very air that keeps us alive, he elevated the economy above that. If that isn't suicidal, I don't know what is. The challenge, I believe, is to shift people's way of seeing the world, and realizing that we are biological creatures embedded in a world that allows us to live happily and healthily and with prosperity.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19507

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #536 on: July 10, 2017, 06:03:59 pm »
A jaw-dropping list of all the terrible things Trump has done to Mother Earth (Mother Jones)



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Investor-Owned Companies 
 Are Huge Emitters , Report Finds

Only 25 countries are responsible for half of all global industrial emissions since 1988, a new study has found.

CDP's latest Carbon Majors Report, which focuses on emissions from investor-owned companies, also finds only 100 companies  are responsible for more than 70 percent of industrial emissions since 1988.

The report also identifies oil giants ExxonMobil, , BP and Chevron as some of the highest-emitting investor-owned companies.

The amount of investor-backed emissions illustrated in this report "puts a significant responsibility on those investors to engage with carbon majors and urge them to disclose climate risk,” Pedro Faria of CDP told the Guardian.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072017/fossil-fuel-companies-responsible-global-emissions-cdp-report
[/quote]
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #537 on: July 11, 2017, 08:42:59 pm »


Amory Lovins:  Natural Gas is worse than Coal

Climate State


Published on Jul 6, 2017

In this July 2017 interview with CarbonBrief, Amory Lovins talks about gas plants, nuclear, and about Germany's Energiewende. Read the interview summary at https://www.carbonbrief.org/carbon-brief-interview-amory-lovins

Agelbert NOTE: Fracked "Natural" Gas has never been anything but a Bridge (Fuel) to Nowhere.


A bridge to nowhere- methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/24906340/methane-as-a-greenhouse-gas-and-food-web-fuel-in-some-boreal-lakes

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #538 on: July 12, 2017, 03:06:53 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: The Sixth Mass Extinction is here, no matter how much wishful thinkers deny it!


“As scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”

Like all extinction events, so far this one has been phased and complex, spanning tens of thousands of years and starting when our kind left Africa. Other mass extinctions buried deep in earth’s history have similarly played out over tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years. To future geologists, then, the huge wave of extinctions a few thousand years ago as First Peoples spread out into new continents and remote archipelagoes will be all but indistinguishable from the current wave of destruction loosed by modernity and its growing appetites. Surely we’ve earned our place in the pantheon next to the greatest ecological catastrophes of all time: the so-called Big Five mass extinctions of earth history. Surely our Anthropocene extinction can confidently take its place next to the juggernauts of deep time—the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous extinctions.

Erwin says no. He thinks it’s junk science.

“Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were,” he wrote me in an email. “It is absolutely critical to recognize that I am NOT claiming that humans haven’t done great damage to marine and terrestrial [ecosystems], nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”

I had a chance to sit down with Erwin after his talk at the annual geology conference. My first question—about a rumor I had heard from one of his colleagues that Erwin had served as a sort of mass extinction consultant to Cormac McCarthy while the notoriously secretive author was constructing the post-apocalyptic world of The Road—Erwin coyly evaded. But on the speculative sixth mass extinction, he was more forthcoming.

“If we’re really in a mass extinction—if we’re in the [End- Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago]—go get a case of scotch,” he said.

If his power-grid analogy is correct, then trying to stop a mass extinction after it’s started would be a little like calling for a building’s preservation while it’s imploding.


“People who claim we’re in the sixth mass extinction don’t understand enough about mass extinctions to understand the logical flaw in their argument,” he said.  “To a certain extent they’re claiming it as a way of frightening people into action, when in fact, if it’s actually true we’re in a sixth mass extinction, then there’s no point in conservation biology.”   

“The only hope we have in the future,” Erwin said, “is if we’re not in a mass extinction event.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/?single_page=true

 


Erwin is wrong. We ARE in the Sixth Mass Extinction. The evidence is overwhelming, and can't be ignored with pejorative descrptive adjectives like "facile" to describe the serious scientific research that proves we are in the Sixth Mass Extinction.


Wishful thinking
is the flaw in Erwin's argument (see Erwin having his morning coffee below:).


Erwin is CLEARLY ignorant (or in willful denial) of the following empirically obtained, irrefutable scientific evidence:

Industrial civilization has BOTH exceeded the maximum upper margin of the GHG (Greenhouse Gases) band by a huge margin AND has done it at a rate far above the ability of most complex non-microscopic organisms to adapt to these violent changes. Mammalian vertebrates, among the complex organisms on Earth, are the least able to adapt to rapid GHG concentration changes.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #539 on: July 12, 2017, 10:47:13 pm »
Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Already Underway

Biodiversity hot spots of 80% of biosphere's species endangered by Global Warming Pollution 


Scientists warn in a new study that Earth is undergoing a sixth mass extinction that is "more severe than perceived."

Not only that, human activity—including pollution, deforestation, overpopulation, poaching, warming oceans and extreme weather events tied to climate change—is to blame for this massive loss in biodiversity, according to an analysis published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For the study, researchers from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico analyzed data on 27,600 species of birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles, comprising nearly half of known terrestrial vertebrates.

The results were shocking—about one-third of the species decreased in population size and range. Even common species are in decline.

"We find that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is extremely high—even in 'species of low concern,'" the authors wrote.

Ecologist Gerardo Ceballos, an author in of the study, explained to the Atlantic how barn swallows, for instance, still number in the millions but are declining in many parts of their range.

"Even these common species are declining," Ceballos said. "Eventually, they'll become endangered, and eventually they'll be extinct."

Furthermore, in a detailed study of 177 mammals, the scientists found that all of the mammals have lost at least 30 percent of their geographic ranges between 1900 and 2015. More than 40 percent of those mammals—including rhinos, orangutans, gorillas and many big cats—have seen the land they once roamed shrink by more than 80 percent.

Without mincing words, the scientists described Earth's ongoing loss of wildlife as "biological annihilation" that will have "negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization."

Earth has witnessed five mass extinctions in its geological past during which the majority of living species were wiped from existence. The most well-known and recent extinction killed the dinosaurs. But instead of a massive asteroid, volcanic activity or other natural causes kicking off such an event, researchers in the new study argue that humans are to blame.

"In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare vertebrate species," the study stated.

"Several species of mammals that were relatively safe one or two decades ago are now endangered," such as cheetahs, lions and giraffes, it said.

Biologist Paul Ehrlich, one of the scientists in the study, told the Guardian that their paper serves as a serious warning to humanity's own survival.

"The serious warning in our paper needs to be heeded because civilization depends utterly on the plants, animals and microorganisms of Earth that supply it with essential ecosystem services ranging from crop pollination and protection to supplying food from the sea and maintaining a livable climate," he said.

Quote
"The time to act is very short," Ehrlich added. "It will, sadly, take a long time to humanely begin the population shrinkage required if civilization is to long survive, but much could be done on the consumption front and with 'band aids'—wildlife reserves, diversity protection laws—in the meantime."

https://www.ecowatch.com/earth-sixth-mass-extinction-2457269841.html

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

+-Recent Topics

Future Earth by AGelbert
March 30, 2022, 12:39:42 pm

Key Historical Events ...THAT YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF by AGelbert
March 29, 2022, 08:20:56 pm

The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth by AGelbert
March 28, 2022, 01:12:42 pm

Electric Vehicles by AGelbert
March 27, 2022, 02:27:28 pm

Heat Pumps by AGelbert
March 26, 2022, 03:54:43 pm

Defending Wildlife by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 02:04:23 pm

The Koch Brothers Exposed! by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 01:26:11 pm

Corruption in Government by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 12:46:08 pm

Books and Audio Books that may interest you 🧐 by AGelbert
March 24, 2022, 04:28:56 pm

COVID-19 🏴☠️ Pandemic by AGelbert
March 23, 2022, 12:14:36 pm