EPA sued over E15 ethanol waiver
A number of trade associations have filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency for its decision to allow the amount of corn-based ethanol injected into gasoline to be raised from 10 per cent to 15 per cent. The groups say the EPA’s decision will adversely affect food prices for the consumers who can least afford it — the poor. The EPA allowance for more corn-based ethanol is expected to raise food prices and damage gas powered engines (cars manufactured after 2007 are capable of using the mix.)
The lawsuit was filed (according to Prairie Pundit) by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American Petroleum Institute and other lobby groups (such as Coca-cola and Tyson Foods).
“Not only will this decision adversely affect millions of consumers who don’t drive brand new cars, but also countless Americans who are struggling to feed their families in a recovering economy,” Scott Faber, vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a written statement. “Recent spikes in corn prices due to supply concerns will only be exacerbated by this decision.” (Source: UPI)
Despite the EPA’s claim of being based on firm science, the lawsuit seems pretty solid. Robert Bryce, managing editor for the Energy Tribune wrote in October about the EPA’s considering the increase of ethanol.
[D]espite more than three decades of subsidies costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, the ethanol industry cannot point to any decline in oil imports during the period when it experienced its most rapid growth.[4] And yet:
- Tax subsidies provided to corn ethanol producers have been larger than those given to producers of any other form of renewable energy.[5]
- Corn ethanol subsidies are now costing U.S. taxpayers about $7 billion per year, the Congressional Budget Office reported in July.[6] The CBO found that producing enough corn ethanol to match the energy contained in a single gallon of conventional gasoline costs taxpayers $1.78.[7]
EPA subpoenas Halliburton over its fracking methods
According to a Los Angeles Times’ story, the Environmental Protection Agency has subpoenaed “Halliburton Co., the nation’s largest oil field services company, to provide complete information on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method the company pioneered to extract natural gas by injecting fluids into tight rock formations deep underground.” Eight other companies had voluntarily complied with the EPA. “The EPA is under a congressional mandate to study potential adverse effects on drinking water and public health posed by hydraulic fracturing [fracking], which has been used extensively in the west and is part of plans to develop shale gas fields in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Louisiana and other states.”
EarthFirst! protesters arrested at wind turbine construction site
While environmentalists recognize dangerous global warming as the existential threat to the earth, that apparently doesn’t mean they think renewable energy production should be used, and not when such projects end up in undeveloped land.
Maine’s Portland Press Herald reports “Five people were arrested [November 8] after they refused to stop blocking construction vehicles at the Rollins wind energy project here…Most of those arrested were affiliated with the Maine branch of the national activist group, Earth First!”
EarthFirst!’s blog said, “Activists with Maine Earth First! stood in protest alongside Friends of Lincoln Lakes this morning in opposition to the ‘Rollins Wind Project’, an industrial wind project that will clearcut over 1,000 acres of ridge-line above the 13 Lincoln Lakes, erect 40 giant wind turbine generators and construct 20 new miles of power line. The two groups are calling for an immediate halt to the projects that are already underway in the towns of Lincoln, Lee, Burlington and Winn.”
In addition to the environmental cost of such “clean energy” the turbines are more expensive than other methods, Ronald Bailey of Reason.com notes, “[A]ccording to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), if one includes all the capital, operating, and fuel costs, electricity from wind still costs about 50 percent more than conventional coal and 100 percent more than natural gas.” Consider that this is for 40 turbines, according to Bailey, “the U.S could cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 16 percent if it replaced all of its coal plants with… 200,000 2.5-megawatt wind turbines by 2020” (but ignoring intermittency and energy storage issues).
Orange Maize to Curb Vitamin A Deficiency
“Vitamin A deficiency blinds up to 500,000 children annually and increases the risk of disease and death, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many people in this region are too poor to afford expensive vitamin A-rich foods such as orange fruits, dark leafy vegetables, or meat,” HarvestPlus reports. “However, they eat large amounts of white maize—up to a pound—daily. In this context, orange maize could provide a substantial portion of their vitamin A needs.” In Zambia, the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI), is working with HarvestPlus to biofortify maize.
AllAfrica.com’s article notes, “Most Zambian children regularly tuck in to ‘nshima’, a stiff maize porridge, but if they can be persuaded to eat an orange-coloured variety made of biofortified maize, their health prospects could be greatly enhanced. More than half of Zambia’s under-five children are affected by vitamin A deficiency, which can increase the risk of illness, retard growth and cause blindness.”
Chief of oil spill inquiry sees no proof BP skimped on safety to save money
“To date, we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” general counsel Fred H. Bartlit Jr. told the panel during a lengthy presentation on the causes of the April 20 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. It killed 11 workers and triggered the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. (Source: LA Times)
Apparently it was not greed over safety but a ‘culture of complacency.’ The LA Times reports, “The panel’s investigators uncovered “a suite of bad decisions,” many still inexplicable, involving tests that were poorly run, alarming results that were ignored, proper equipment that was sidelined and safety barriers that were removed prematurely at the high-pressure well.”
Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming skeptics (UPDATED)
The Los Angeles Times reports, “The American Geophysical Union, the country’s largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.” This comes partly due to the Republican’s winning the House of Representatives and gaining the ability to investigate and hold hearings. “Prominent Republican congressmen such as Darrell Issa of Vista, Joe L. Barton of Texas and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin have pledged to investigate the Environmental Protection Agency‘s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions” along with the ClimateGate emails…”People who ask for and accept taxpayer dollars shouldn’t get bent out of shape when asked to account for the money,” said James M. Taylor, a senior fellow and a specialist in global warming at the conservative Heartland Institute in Chicago. “The budget is spiraling out of control while government is handing out billions of dollars in grants to climate scientists, many of whom are unabashed activists.”
Dr. Roy Spenser, climatologist, former NASA scientist, and noted climate skeptic says, WTF!? “After 20 years, billions of dollars in scientific research and advertising campaigns, cooperation from the public schools, TV specials and concerts by a gaggle of entertainers, end-of-the-world movies, our ‘best’ politicians, heads of state, presidents, the United Nations, and complicity by most of the news media, it has been decided that the American public is not getting the message on global warming!? Are they serious!?…Those few of us who are publishing climate researchers and who are willing to take the risk of speaking out on the biased science on this issue are now late in our careers, and we have seen the climate research field be transformed from one where ‘climate change’ used to necessarily imply natural climate change, to one where nature does not have the power to cause its own change — only mankind does.” Please note, “Dr. Spencer’s research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE. He has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. Not even Exxon-Mobil.”
UPDATE: “In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate skeptics or congressional conservatives,” says Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union. “AGU will continue to provide accurate scientific information on Earth and space topics to inform the general public and to support sound public policy development.”
CAL Fire is now accepting seasonal firefighter applications
If you have dreamed of fighting forest fires, doing worthy public service, and living in a barracks setting, now is your chance. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) is now accepting applications for their seasonal firefighter (Fire Fighter I) position through January 31, 2001.
“Fate of the world” video game unveiled
If saving forests, homes and people seems too prosaic, how about saving the whole world?
The holidays have arrived and you still don’t know what to get that dystopian gamer in the family, do you? You know the one, the moody, militant, and neo-Malthusian who says that SimCity is for pussies. He’s sure that we humans suck down the earth’s resources faster than Gary Busey snorted cocaine, and we have overpopulated, overused, and under-appreciated all that the earth has done for us.
Well look no further, that gift will have to be “Fate of the World.” According to the game’s designers, your couch-potato gamer will be able to “Decide how the world will respond to rising temperatures, heaving populations, dwindling resources, crumbling ecosystems and brave opportunities.” You heard correct: Global warming and overpopulation. Not since Y2K’s hollow earth-destroying threat (you remember, the world’s computers were going to reset to year zero on January 1, 2000 and we would be plunged into chaos as planes fell from the sky and…don’t remember huh?) has an impendo-catastrophe gripped us the way global warming has. And, toss in three billion more people on the planet, ” who are demanding ever more food, power, and living space,” and well it just gives one chills, does it not?
“We imagined covering the full human drama that climate change will cause – there will population issues, land issues, possibly resource wars, mass migration; a whole range of disasters and impacts, in fact.” – Gobion Rowlands, Chairman and co-founder of Red Redemption.
The UK Guardian’s Jack Arnott’s review of the game: “The action takes the form of a turn-based data-management simulator – think Football Manager, but with biofuels. You’re given a budget with which to implement various schemes across different geopolitical areas, each of which have different long- and short-term costs…wars and natural disasters are often triggered inadvertently by your decisions, and you’re informed each time a major species becomes extinct – really brings home the enormity of the impact of climate change.”
On second thought, get him a DVD of Soylent Green.
Nullius in Verba 
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