Greetings of the Season

My sincerest wish is that war would end and that we could find common ground with ones that hate us. Pray for peace in our life time.

Bligh Reef Strikes Again

Tug grounds on same reef as Exxon Valdez tanker - Yahoo! News

Anchorage Alaska - The Coast Guard said Thursday that a 136-foot tug with six crew aboard had just completed an ice survey and was heading back to port in Valdez when it grounded on Bligh Reef. This is the SAME reef hit by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

Two of the tug's fuel tanks that were damaged contain an estimated 33,500 gallons of diesel fuel. The Coast Guard said Thursday that there was a fuel sheen about 3 miles long and 30 feet wide that had drifted away from the vessel.

We are told not to worry because the diesel, unlike the oil on the Exxon Valdez, will evaporate quickly.

I guess no one has thought of

• the residue that diesel leaves behind when it evaporates
  
• the impact on the fish and wildlife in the area
• what this means to the health of Prince William Sound, which has never truly recovered from the Exxon-Valdez spill in 1989.

Can we mark the Bligh Reef with, I don't know, a system of buoys, a light house, an alarm system, a guard rail or traffic light?

Tags: bligh reef, exxon valdez, diesel spill, tug hits bligh reef

Copenhagen : Too Little, Too Late?

Time is Not on Our Side

A new draft by the global climate change conference in Copenhagen has leaked to the press. The draft has been named the Copenhagen Accord. While any reference to the end of 2010 as a deadline for reaching a legally binding treaty was removed, a limit of a maximum two degree Celsius global average temperature rise remained.

From http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=3062

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Two degrees does not sound like much, does it?
It is too much! 2 degree Celsius = 3.6 degree Fahrenheit
Please review what two degrees means to the world in the film below.





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Or, you may want to view the hypothetical changes made in Six Degrees Could Change The World. Or just look below for a synopsis of changes expected with each degree rise in temperature. If you look at One Degree, you will see that we are already experiencing these changes.

• At One Degree, the world will experience a new American desert, massive coral bleaching, and lost Australian rainforests.
  
  
• At Two Degrees, oceanic acidity will rise drastically, India will begin to face extreme Monsoon seasons, and water shortages will spell trouble in China and South America.
  
  
• At Three Degrees, the Arctic will face 80% ice loss, New York City suffers from flooding, and Southern California will be constantly at risk for fires.
  
  
• At Four Degrees, Asia will suffer from melting permafrost and Florida residents will become climate refugees.
  
  
• At Five Degrees, the desert dry belt in Africa will expand drastically, and human colonies will begin to pioneer Antarctica.
  
  
• At Six Degrees, the carbon cycle will explode and the human race will be struggling for survival.

Tags: cop15, global warming, six degrees to extinction, copenhagen climate conference

Ogallala Aquifer and Radioactive Waste Dump

I have had a few comments and contacts regarding my post on the radioactive dump site in West Texas. Mostly, the sentiment seems to be that if people want a radioactive dump, then they should be able to have one. While I agree that land owners' rights take first place in most decisions, the radioactive waste dump could affect the Ogallala Aquifer for 238,000 years.

The Ogallala Aquifer, known as the High Plains Aquifer System, occupies the High Plains of the United States, extending northward from western Texas to South Dakota. The entire system underlies about 174,000 square miles of eight states.

Erosion has removed the deposits between the mountains and the existing western boundary of the Ogallala, so there is no longer water recharge being received from the Rockies.

The Ogallala Aquifer (shaded area) is in a state of overdraft due to overuse. If withdrawals continue, the aquifer could be depleted in only a few decades.

Lack of recharge may doom the Ogallala Aquifer, but that is no reason to fill it with radioactive waste.

I hope this explains my position more clearly. I get fired up sometimes and forget to put the background of an issue in my post.

Tags: ogallala aquifer, radioactive waste dump

Say No to Radioactive Dump in Texas

Radioactive Waste Commission Punts [in Texas] | NukeFree.org

Last week, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission postponed decision making for 30 days. The contentious issue the import and export of radioactive waste to and from Texas to a waste dump near Andrews County, Texas.

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Excerpt from http://www.savetheogallalaaquifer.com/images/pdf/utig_earthquake.pdf

Chapter 12 of, State of Texas Hazards Analysis, by the Governor's Division of Emergency Management, Department of Public Safety, Austin, Texas, 1998.

Introduction: Earthquakes in Texas

For Texans, three essential facts about earthquakes are important to remember. First, earthquakes do occur in Texas (see Figure 12A). Within the twentieth century there have been more than 100 earthquakes large enough to be felt; their epicenters occur in 40 of Texas's 257 counties.

Second, in four regions within Texas there have been historical earthquakes which indicate potential earthquake hazard. Two regions, near El Paso and in the Panhandle, should expect earthquakes with magnitudes of about 5.5-6.0 to occur every 50-100 years, and even larger earthquakes are possible.

Third, while Texas does face some earthquake hazard, this hazard is very small in comparison to that in many other states . . . . For reasons of safety, economy, and (in some cases) law, Texans need to consider earthquake hazard when designing or siting various structures which are essential for providing medical or emergency management services, which house sensitive manufacturing processes, or which store hazardous wastes.

Figure 12A Locations of earthquakes and earthquake sequences that have occurred in Texas, or that were felt by Texas residents. Numbers are the year of occurrence.

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NOTE: The Ogallala Aquifer sits underneath the radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, Texas. This puts the primary source of drinking and agricultural water for eight states at significant risk.

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Take Action: If you agree, please send an email to Kay Bailey Hutchinson at http://hutchison.senate.gov/contact.html. Feel free to use anything in this post (above) or my message to Senator Hutchinson (below).

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The Ogallala Aquifer sits underneath the radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, Texas. This puts the primary source of drinking and agricultural water for eight states at significant risk.

For reasons of safety and economy, Texans need to consider earthquake hazard when designing or siting various structures which store hazardous wastes.

Texas is not the dumping ground for nuclear waste that will remain active for 28,000 years.

Solar power, wind power, geothermal power, hybrid and electric cars, and aggressive energy efficiency are climate solutions that are safer, cheaper, faster, more secure, and less wasteful than nuclear power.

Please read the TCEQ Interoffice memo dated August 14, 2007:
http://www.savetheogallalaaquifer.com/images/pdf/letter_of_aug_14_2007.pdf

Please do not allow a nuclear waste dump in Texas.

Tags: ogallala aquifer, take action, nuclear dump, texas andrews county

Wind Farm or Coal Mine? You Decide . . .

Please watch a video about an alternative to mountain top mining in Appalachia.

Greenland Ice Swiftly Disappearing

Tags: arctic ocean, northwest passage, polar bears, whales, endangered

EPA Finding is Good News

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced an "endangerment finding" with regard to greenhouse gases. Essentially, the EPA is saying that these gases -- a major cause of global warming -- are a threat to public health, and it will be taking steps to regulate emissions.

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling that greenhouse gases are pollutants and can be regulated by the EPA under the 1970 Clean Air Act. The Bush administration, which was in office at the time, did not act on this finding. However, on Monday, December 7, the EPA issued an "endangerment finding" on greenhouse gases.

Once the EPA decides that a pollutant endangers public health, the agency is "authorized and obligated to take reasonable efforts" to reduce emissions under the Clean Air Act. In the near term, the EPA is expected to introduce new regulations on auto emissions. Later, it is expected to target other sources of emissions, such as power plants and oil refineries.

Baby Steps toward a more Sustainable Future for Us All!
C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E

Tags: good news, epa finding, endangerrment finding

Negative Forces at Work in Copehagen

ClimateGate involves emails from climate scientists that appear to support a cover up of the real truth about global warming.

One of the emails from Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, references a "trick" used to represent tree ring data showing a cooling trend since 1960.

Penn State University Professor Michael Mann, originator of the "trick" used to display the tree ring data, stated that mathematicians often use the term "trick" to describe a clever approach, a nice way of solving a problem, a trick of the trade,

All that ClimateGate and "The Danish Text" (see yesterday's post on this blog) has accomplished is to muddy the waters and put participants of the United Nations Climate Change Conference at odds with each other.

With the negative energy surrounding the conference, it is easy to lose sight of the true goal and that is a shame. . . .

If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate. Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility. It’s not an option. COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard.

Stay focused. Do not let the perception management sway you from your goal. As Carl Sagan said, "You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet. "

Tags: cop15, cophehagen, climategate, danish text, perception management

!4 Days to Seal History's Judgment

The following editorial was published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like The Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page. The Guardian, the editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons.

Copenhagen climate change conference: Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

Tags: global warming, copehagen, climate change, 14 days to seal history's judgment

The Danish Text is Just a Straw Dog

Delegates in Copenhagen are in an uproar about a draft for a political agreement on climate change leaked to the Guardian newspaper. The document, supposedly written by delegates in Denmark, the UK and the USA, is only a straw dog.

Anyone who has worked on a large committee or board knows that it is easier to get people to agree on what they do not like, rather than starting fresh. Whoever wrote this document expected it to be used as a starting place, not an ending point.

According to the Guardian, developing nations say the text is biased against them, and they object to its being created without their input. Others, including delegates for Environmental Defense Fund, point out that any draft document is only a starting point for negotiations.

Why this document was leaked is a mystery. Was the purpose to put all delegates at odds? Maybe to unite developing countries against the developed countries? I hope all delegates can put this behind them.

Tags: copenhagen, danish text, staw dog

Give Green Gifts This Season

You can give unique holiday gifts this year from The Nature Conservancy and share your passion for conservation. Choose from many new gifts of nature which include a personalized certificate to commemorate your generosity:

• Help Save the Northern Jaguar and protect the large landscapes these animals need to flourish.
  
  
  
  
• Protect Hummingbird Habitats and ensure safety and security for all species along these birds' migratory paths.
  
  
  
• Give the Gift of Clean Water and help protect the flow of freshwater ecosystems around the world.
  
  
  
• Adopt a Coral Reef in Palau or two new locations, Papua New Guinea and the Dominican Republic.
  
  

You can also adopt an acre in the United States, the stunning savannas and grasslands of Africa, or adopt in Australia’s Gondwana Link which contains one-third of Australia's known flowering plants and the Karri tree, which is the world's second tallest flowering plant.

Tags: the nature conservancy, give green gifts, gift of water, save northern jaguar, protect hummingbirds

Tell EPA : Make Mega-Polluters Clean Up

Did you know that only a handful of factories and power plants emit over half of all U.S. global warming pollution? Under a proposed rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), these mega-polluters would be forced to clean up their act.

But the EPA must solicit public comments before it can take action. Will you send the EPA a message today encouraging them to hold big polluters accountable?

Click here to send a message to the EPA.

This proposed rule marks one of the EPA's most important commitments to moving us towards a clean energy economy and away from dirty, non-renewable energy sources. It would require the biggest polluters – like new coal plants – to install technology to clean up pollution they emit that causes global warming. It would also require existing polluters to utilize this technology when they expand or modify their plants.

Cracking down on big polluters benefits both the planet and its inhabitants since it would reduce global warming pollution as well as other kinds of pollution that cause smog and lung disease. It will also help to create good paying clean energy jobs, which will help the economy.

Click here to send a message to the EPA.

Tags: epa, global warming, mega polluters, dirty coal, dirty power plants, clean up

Dirtiest Drilling Project on Earth

Help Stop the U.S. from Importing Oil from the Dirtiest Drilling Project on Earth from Canada . . . !



The Canadian tar sands, a massive oil drilling operation in northern Canada, is such a polluting and dirty project, that if it were to be fully exploited, all other efforts to reduce carbon emissions worldwide would be nullified.

The Obama Administration is currently considering issuing a Presidential Permit to build a pipeline to import up to 900,000 of barrels of tar sands crude oil into our country – an amount that even oil executives say is excessive.

Click here to let the Obama administration know you want to make the United States a global leader on clean energy, not lock us into Big Oil's "dirtiest project on earth."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has the power to protect our national interest from more dirty tar sands oil pumped in on pipelines from Canada. She and other members of the Obama Administration can help secure a clean energy future that will create jobs for Americans and reduce the effects of climate change.

It is up to us to stop this dirty oil from coming into our country. Contact the Obama Administration today.

No More Drilling
No More Pipelines
No More Fracking
No More Dirty Oil & Gas
No More Greenwashing