Environment

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.

The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.

“We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,” said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. “This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek.”

“This is a huge deal,” James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected.”

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, collapsing buildings, killing at least 16 people and downing phone lines. President Michele Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile and said the death toll was rising.

Tsunami warnings were issued over a wide area, including Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Antarctica and Australia.

"We have had a huge earthquake, with some aftershocks," Bachelet said, appealing from an emergency response center for Chileans to remain calm. "Despite this, the system is functioning. People should remain calm. We’re doing everything we can with all the forces we have. Any information we will share immediately."

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The quake hit 200 miles (325 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Santiago, at a depth of 22 miles (35 kilometers) at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT; 1:34 a.m. EST), the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The epicenter was just 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river, and 60 miles from the ski town of Chillan, a gateway to Andean ski resorts that was destroyed in a 1939 earthquake.

Source/Full Story:  Yahoo! News

Megacities are something new on the planet. Earthquakes are something very old. The two are a lethal combination, as seen in the recent tragedy in Port-au-Prince, where more than 200,000 people perished — a catastrophe that scientists say is certain to be repeated somewhere, and probably soon, with death tolls that once again stagger the mind.

In 1800, there was just one city with more than a million people — Beijing. Now there are 381 urban areas with at least 1 million inhabitants. Urbanization crossed a threshold last year when, for the first time, more people lived in city settings than rural ones. About 403 million people live in cities that face significant seismic hazard, according to a recent study by seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.

The next Big One could strike Tokyo, Istanbul, Tehran, Mexico City, New Delhi, Kathmandu or the two metropolises near California’s San Andreas Fault, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or it could devastate Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Cairo, Osaka, Lima or Bogota. The list goes on and on.

msnbc.com

The proportion of Americans who believe global warming is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities has dropped considerably this year, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 44 per cent of respondents side with this argument, down seven points since July.

Conversely, 22 per cent of Americans believe global warming is happening but is mostly caused by natural changes, and 23 per cent think global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven.

Source/Full Story: Angus Reid Global Monitor

Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]‘(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

Source/Full Story: organicconsumers.org

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol’s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

A radiation leak at Three Mile Island contaminated about 100 employees Saturday afternoon, according to a TMI official.

Source/Full Story: 6abc.com
Technorati Tags: Three Mile Island

Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, said much of the melting will take place within a decade, although the winter ice will stay for hundreds of years.

The changes will mean the top of the Earth will appear blue rather than white when photographed from space and ships will have a new sea route north of Russia.

Scientists say evidence of melting Arctic ice is one of the clearest signs of global warming and it should send a warning to world leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December for U.N. talks on a new climate treaty.

“The data supports the new consensus view — based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition — that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years,” Wadhams said in a statement. “Much of the decrease will be happening within 10 years.”

Source/Full Story: Reuters
Technorati Tags: Global warming, Arctic Ocean

The U.S. Geological Survey is also reporting an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.9 in Indonesia

A huge emergency effort is under way in the Samoan Islands after towering tsunami waves triggered by an 8.0 earthquake left dozens dead and entire villages flattened or submerged.

At least 84 people are so far confirmed dead in American Samoa and neighboring Samoa but officials fear the toll will rise as rescue workers work to reach outlying villages. Seven people were also confirmed killed in Tonga.

The quake hit the small cluster of Samoan islands in the South Pacific early Tuesday.

In Samoa, the death toll currently stands at 55, according to government minister Maulolo Tavita, but he said he feared the number of casualities would continue to rise.

In American Samoa, 22 people were confirmed dead by late Tuesday. But Salamo Laumoli, director of health services at the LBJ Tropical Medical Center in the capital, Pago Pago, said he feared more fatalities would turn up as rescue workers were still trying to access parts of the island severed by damaged infrastructure.

“I thought it was the end of the world,” said Laumoli. “I have never felt an earthquake like that before.”

Source/Full Story: CNN.com
Technorati Tags: tsunami

When major ice sheets thaw, they release enough fresh water to disrupt ocean currents world-wide and make the planet wobble with the uneven weight of so much meltwater on the move. Studying these effects more closely, scientists are discovering local variations in rising sea levels — and some signs pointing to higher seas around metropolitan New York.

Sea level may rise faster near New York than at most other densely populated ports due to local effects of gravity, water density and ocean currents, according to four new forecasts of melting ice sheets. The forecasts are the work of international research teams that included the University of Toronto, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., Florida State University and the University of Bristol in the U.K., among others.

Scientists are laboring to make their predictions more reliable. While they do, New York has become an urban experiment in the ways that seaboard cities can adapt to climate change over the next century. For their part, the city’s long-term planners are taking action but are trying to balance the cost of re-engineering the largest city in the U.S. against the uncertainties of climate forecasts.

Source/Full Story @:  WSJ.com

General Electric Co predicts that water purification could grow from a drop in the corporate bucket to a major growth driver within years, just as its wind unit did.

The largest U.S. conglomerate has taken about a decade to build its water unit, which focuses on large-scale treatment and purification for municipal and industrial water users, through five takeovers costing about $4 billion.

With an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue, the water business remains a sliver of the $156 billion in sales the world’s largest maker of jet engines and electricity-producing turbines is expected to generate this year.

The unit’s small size has lead some investors to wonder if GE might prefer to sell it to focus on businesses where it can better enjoy the benefits of scale.

But executives with Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE said water has the potential to become a major profit contributor.

“What GE tries to do is to align the company with some of the mega-trends, the mega-challenges of the world. Energy is one, healthcare is the other, and the third one is water,” said Heiner Markhoff, president and chief executive of GE Water & Process Technologies.

While arid areas of the world, from the Middle East to the southwestern United States, have long coped with water shortages, rapid population growth and rising environmental regulations are making water scarcity and purification a more prominent issue in temperate, wetter areas.

GE does not disclose the profits or revenue of its water business, but the unit has been hit by the global recession.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

The large impact on Jupiter’s south polar region as captured by Nasa’s infrared telescope facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Photograph: Nasa/AP

An amateur Australian astronomer looking through his backyard telescope has discovered that a large comet or asteroid has crashed into Jupiter, creating a hole the size of the Earth in the planet’s atmosphere.

Anthony Wesley, 44, a computer programmer who lives in a small town outside the capital, Canberra, discovered a large scar on Jupiter when he was photographing the giant gaseous planet.

He tipped off Nasa about his discovery, and images taken by the US space agency’s infrared telescope in Hawaii show a scar in the atmosphere near the south pole of the planet.

In a remarkable twist of fate, the discovery was made on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the 15th anniversary of another large comet strike on Jupiter.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

Co-author of:  Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed.

Must read the entire piece at zombietime.com

Releases of mercury, PCBs, lead and dioxin into the environment increased significantly between 2006 and 2007, according to the annual “Toxics Release Inventory,” published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“This information underscores the need for fundamental transparency and provides a powerful tool for protecting public health and the environment,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “Serving the public’s right to know is the crucial first step in reducing toxic chemicals in the places where we live, work and raise children.”

The “Toxics Release Inventory” classifies all releases together, including legal and illegal dumping, disposal in mine reclamation ponds (which leach into groundwater) and disposal in toxic dump sites.

Between 2006 and 2007, PCB releases increased by 40 percent, due to disposal of supplies manufactured before the substances were banned in 1979. Mercury releases, mostly due to mining, increased by 38 percent. Dioxin releases increased by 11 percent, and lead releases increased by 1 percent. Overall releases of all persistent, bioaccumalitive and toxic chemicals or metals increased by 1 percent.

Source/Full Story: naturalnews.com

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The bill requires that large U.S. companies, including utilities, oil refiners, manufacturers and others, reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases associated with global warming by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels.

They would do so by phasing in the use of cleaner alternative energy than high-polluting oil and coal.

At the core of the bill, which is around 1,500 pages long, is a “cap and trade” program designed to achieve the emissions reductions by industry.

Under the plan, the government would issue a declining number of pollution permits to companies, which could sell those permits to each other as needed.

‘BIGGEST JOB-KILLING BILL’

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House Republican leader John Boehner called the measure “the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House of Representatives.”

Representative Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee that played a key role in the bill, said it would set unrealistic targets for cutting carbon pollution. “You would have to reduce emissions in the United States to the level that we had in 1910,” Barton said.

Both predicted higher prices for energy and other consumer goods and more U.S. jobs being shipped abroad as companies try to avoid the tough pollution-control requirements. Democrats said consumers mostly would be protected from price hikes. 

Source/Full Story: Reuters