News: Archive for February, 2009
Yet another example of the environmental consequences of military deployments. Always reassuring to hear that standard refrain, ‘releasing no radioactivity’.
‘LONDON – Nuclear-armed submarines from Britain and France collided deep under the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, causing damage to both vessels but releasing no radioactivity, a British official said Monday.’
‘Fresh data has shown that greenhouse gas emissions have grown by an average of 3.5 percent a year from 2000 to 2007, Field told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
That’s “far more rapid than we expected” and more than three times the 0.9 growth rate in the 1990’s, he said.’
‘In June 2008, NorthWind added five more turbines, raising the wind farm’s capacity to 33 MW, enabling the company to provide half the province’s power needs.
Mr. Jacobsen attributes NorthWind’s success to a combination of three factors: right timing (NorthWind started the project when wind turbines were cheaper), right financing, and support from the World Bank through its Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF), which enabled NorthWind to generate more resources through the sale of “carbon emission reduction credits” under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.’
via Philippines – WB’s Carbon Finance: No Tilting at Windmills.
‘ROCKDALE, Ill. (AP) — A holding tank at a Caterpillar facility in a Chicago suburb broke Sunday, spilling about 65,000 gallons of oil sludge and contaminating a 3-mile section of the Des Plaines River, officials said’
via The Associated Press: 65,000 gallons of oil sludge spills near Chicago.
Bloomberg keeps it interesting by framing this in personal terms. The last paragraphs reveal that at the very least some mixed messages have been going out from the Obama camp about ‘Clean Coal’.
‘Months before Obama’s campaign remarks about the promise of new technology, he said in a recorded interview with the San Francisco Chronicle last January, “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu had called coal his “worst nightmare” in a 2007 speech. At his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 13, Chu said the fuel is a “great natural resource” that the “the U.S., with its great technological leadership, should rise to the occasion to develop.”’
Nuclear power debate – an interesting read:
‘A coalition of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a controversial provision from the $900 billion stimulus bill that could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. We host a debate between independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman and Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder and member of the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.
…HARVEY WASSERMAN: Well, there’s no reason for the United States taxpayers to get stuck with another $50 billion tab for building new reactors that Wall Street won’t fund. Nuclear power has failed utterly in the marketplace, and it’s back at the taxpayer trough trying to get more money.’
See complete article: Democracy Now! | Should Economic Stimulus Bill Include Billions for Nuclear Power?.
Another report on unanticipated consequences:
‘_When an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull on the ocean is reduced and water moves away from it. That means sea levels could fall near Antarctica and rise more than expected in the northern hemisphere.
_Antarctic bedrock that currently sits under the weight of the ice sheet will rebound from the weight, pushing some water out into the ocean.
_The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet will cause the Earth’s rotation axis to shift, potentially moving water northward.
“The net effect of all of these processes is that if the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the rise in sea levels around many coastal regions will be as much as 25 per cent more than expected,” Mitrovica said in a statement.’
via Icemelt Could Shift Earth’s Rotation, Moving Water Northward.
Not the first time this has been suggested:
‘BEIJING — Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, left 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists are suggesting that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake’s geological fault line.’
via Possible Link Between Dam and China Quake – NYTimes.com.