This Week’s Environmental News

Well, this week seemed a bit less crazy than the preceding ones. No hostages taken to promote a green agenda and no Qu’ran burning by wacky mustached guys. Still there some interesting items did pop up.

The Nation says Monsanto used Blackwater for “Black Ops”
The Nation magazine reports it has obtained documents that it says link Blackwater (now Xe Services), a private security firm,to a number of government organizations and multinational companies. Contracts were through two companies: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC); companies owned and directed by Blackwater’s owner and founder, Erik Prince.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

Monsanto denies any illicit activities stating that all intelligence “was developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information.”

According to a statement by Monsanto,

Monsanto did not hire Blackwater nor did we approve of the firm infiltrating any groups as was suggested in the Nation article. In 2008, 2009 and early 2010, a firm called Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS) provided Monsanto’s security group with reports about activities or groups that could pose a risk to the company, its personnel or its global operations. The safety of our people is our utmost priority and we value the communities in which we operate. All information provided by TIS was developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information. The subject matter ranged from information regarding terrorist incidents in Asia or kidnappings in Central America to scanning internet blogs and websites. Prior to retaining TIS, Monsanto specifically enquired about and was informed that TIS was a completely separate entity from Blackwater. Beyond the content of the Nation article, we have not engaged people to infiltrate firms/activist groups and we do not condone that type of behavior.

The number of people chronically hungry down nearly 100 million
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports, “the new estimate of the number of people who will suffer chronic hunger this year is 925 million — 98 million down from 1.023 billion in 2009. These figures come from The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) report which will be jointly published by FAO and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The FAO and WFP hope to speed progress towards achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the first of which is to end poverty and hunger.

“[W]ith a child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment related problems, hunger remains the world’s largest tragedy and scandal,” said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. “This is absolutely unacceptable.”

Matthew Berger points out that, “Ten years after setting the goal of halving the proportion of people suffering from poverty and hunger by 2015, only mixed success can be found for the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)…Oxfam America pointed out in a report that this decrease means that the proportion of the world’s hungry has gone down by only half a percentage point since 2000 – from 14 to 13.5 percent.”

Deepwater Horizon oil spill may not be as bad as feared
According to the New York Times, “[E]vidence is increasing that through a combination of luck (a fortunate shift in ocean currents that kept much of the oil away from shore) and
ecological circumstance (the relatively warm waters that increased the
breakdown rate of the oil), the gulf region appears to have escaped the
direst predictions of the spring. ”

Civil wars not linked to global warming
“THE idea that global warming will increase the incidence of civil
conflict in Africa is wrong,”reports New Scientist. “What’s more, the
researchers who previously made the claim now concede that civil
conflict has been on the wane in Africa since 2002, as prosperity has
increased. If the trend continues, a more peaceful future may be in
store.”

The report, Climate not to blame for African civil wars, concludes that climate variability is a poor predictor of armed conflict. Instead, African civil wars can
be explained by generic structural and contextual conditions: prevalent
ethno-political exclusion, poor national economy, and the collapse of the Cold War system.”

Poland state logs a “primary forest”

Bernard Osser of the AFP news service reported on what ecologists say is “illicit logging” in “the ancient Bialowieza forest in eastern Poland.”

“Some of the trees have been cut down illegally by Poland’s National Forests service, in violation of European Union legislation,” contends Polish environmentalist Adam Bohdan, who with other campaigners has raised the alarm in Warsaw and Brussels…

“We are also ecologists,” says Andrzej Antczak, head of the Bialowieza forest service. “We log only to protect the forest from bark beetles–insects that pose a grave danger to trees. We want to help nature defend itself and we do it according to Polish legislation.”

Pacific sockeye salmon returned to spawn in record numbers

Terr Daily reports, “After years of scarcity, the rivers of the US and
Canadian Pacific Northwest are running red, literally, with a vast swarm
of a salmon species considered to be in crisis.”

In other fishy news…

Atlantic cod pulling back from the brink
According to the World Wildlife Fund in Canada, “New fisheries data suggest that after a 16 year moratorium, Atlantic cod on the southern Grand Banks have increased by 69 percent since the last assessment in 2007. While this cod stock is still near historic lows, a significant increase in the number of spawning fish is good news for the future of this once major fishery.”

(H/T Great News Network)

The Weekly Environmental Stories Roundup

What happened of note this week in environmental stories?

While others wondered whether some nut job would add to global warming by burning copies of the Qur’an, I’ve been keeping an eye on the environmental stories for you.

BP reported their findings on the Deepwater Horizon accident

The same week that investigators pulled the 300-ton blowout preventer from one-mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, BP issued an internal investigation report of the Deepwater Horizon accident found that:

  • The cement and shoe track barriers – and in particular the cement slurry that was used – at the bottom of the Macondo well failed to contain hydrocarbons within the reservoir, as they were designed to do, and allowed gas and liquids to flow up the production casing;
  • The results of the negative pressure test were incorrectly accepted by BP and Transocean, although well integrity had not been established;
  • Over a 40-minute period, the Transocean rig crew failed to recognize and act on the influx of hydrocarbons into the well until the hydrocarbons were in the riser and rapidly flowing to the surface;
  • After the well-flow reached the rig it was routed to a mud-gas separator, causing gas to be vented directly on to the rig rather than being diverted overboard;
  • The flow of gas into the engine rooms through the ventilation system created a potential for ignition which the rig’s fire and gas system did not prevent;
  • Even after explosion and fire had disabled its crew-operated controls, the rig’s blow-out preventer on the sea-bed should have activated automatically to seal the well. But it failed to operate, probably because critical components were not working.

    • Based on its key findings, the investigation team has proposed a total of 25 recommendations designed to prevent a recurrence of such an accident. The recommendations are directed at strengthening assurance on blow-out preventers, well control, pressure-testing for well integrity, emergency systems, cement testing, rig audit and verification, and personnel competence.

    The New Scientist summarized the report and listed the eight key findings the report provides.

    Given that the Deepwater Horizon’s crew had just received commendation from BP over their exemplary multi-year safety record, the BP report doesn’t pass the sniff test.

    An Economist magazine blog notes that the report sprays doubt instead of clarifying.

    The stakes here are high. If BP is found to have been grossly negligent in its role as operator the fines it faces would increase by billions, and its chances of recouping money from its junior partners in the project, Anadarko and Mitsui, would be badly damaged. On the basis of this report, hardly the last word, such a finding seems unlikely. The likelihood of protracted suits and countersuits between the companies involved, though, remains high, with damage to the reputations of all of them.

    United Nations predicts no food crisis this year.

    The United Nations announced that despite Russia’s wheat embargo due to “this year’s cereal harvest was the third highest on record and stocks are high” Hafez Ghanem, Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development. “Under these conditions we don’t believe that we are headed for a new food crisis, but we will continue monitoring the situation closely.” According to David Dawe, a senior economist at FAO and interviewed by the UN News Centre, wheat stockpiles are higher than before. “There is uncertainty out there; agriculture markets are always uncertain because of the weather… But it would be premature to think that the situation would get worse.”

    Researchers hypothesize an ‘environmental paradox’

    In a report published in the September issue of BioScience, “Untangling the Environmentalist’s Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?”, Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, et. al. say, “The [United Nations’] Millennium Ecosystem Assessment paradoxically found that human well-being has increased despite large global declines in most ecosystem services.”  According to their media release, “Raudsepp-Hearne and her coauthors accept the findings of the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that the capacity of ecosystems to produce many services for humans is now low. Yet they uncover no fault with the composite Human Development Index, a widely used metric that incorporates measures of literacy, life expectancy, and income, and has improved markedly since the mid-1970s. What is more, the index correlates with other measures of thriving. Although some measures of personal security buck the upward trend, the overall improvement in well-being seems robust.”  The researchers put forward four explanations:

    (1) We have measured well-being incorrectly;

    (2) well-being is dependent on food services, which are increasing, and not on other services that are declining;

    (3) technology has decoupled well-being from nature;

    (4) time lags may lead to future declines in well-being.

    Hypothesis #4

    The media release goes on to say, “The researchers resolve the paradox partly by pointing to evidence that food production (which has increased globally over past decades) is more important for human well-being than are other ecosystem services. They also establish support for two other explanations: that technology and innovation have decoupled human well-being from ecosystem degradation, and that there is a time lag after ecosystem service degradation before human well-being will be affected.

    “Raudsepp-Hearne and her colleagues find little reassurance about human well-being in coming decades in these conclusions, because observable effects threaten future gains in food production, and events such as floods and droughts clearly harm people within restricted areas.

    “In general, technology provides only limited and local decoupling from ecosystem services, and ‘there is mixed evidence’ on whether humans will become more or less able to adapt to ecosystem degradation”

    Bradford Plumer at The New Republic thinks reason #4 sounds most plausible.

    “[The] researchers don’t seem to have a very good grasp on the relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being. For the moment, human existence keeps improving—in genuine and meaningful ways—even as we do widespread damage to the planet. But that doesn’t mean we can keep on our current path forever.”

    Leo Hickman at the Guardian also ponders hypothesis #4,

    “Can the environmentalist’s paradox be explained away by the fact that there is a time lag between when we degrade our finite natural resources and when our well-being begins to be negatively affected?…[C]an humans [metaphorically] keep laying the train track in front of them fast enough to avoid a nasty derailment? Can we keep perpetually delaying our fall and decline? The authors of the paper seem to be suggesting that our chances of doing so are diminishing all the time as the world becomes increasingly globalised.”

    Oh come off it Leo, says Ben Pile at Climate Resistance, the ‘environmentalists paradox’ doesn’t exist .

    “What the environmentalist sees is the consequence of the three things he has presupposed about the world. But all the data and empirical research in the world won’t make the environmentalist examine his preconceptions. Hypothesis 3 [technology has decoupled well-being from nature] is true, but it doesn’t satisfy the environmentalist’s questions about the paradox he witnesses, because he doesn’t see that it is a paradox of his own creation. There was never anything to decouple from: humans simply did not rely on natural processes to the extent he believed. The natural processes that concerned the environmentalist were never as degraded as he understood them to be. What is more, ‘ecosystems’ never existed as some whole network of interdependent sub-systems that can be understood as governed by some force keeping the system ‘balanced’ and in ‘harmony’. The ‘better understanding of the environmentalists paradox’ requires a better understanding of the environmentalist. What he needs is a mirror.”

    Matt Ridley agrees and points to a study by Helmut Haberi titled Global human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP),

    “[T]he whole paradox is misconceived. Human beings do not just live off ecosystems. They garden and nurture them so that they are more productive — and sometimes so boost their productivity that they support still more wildlife as well…[As an example, a] nuclear power plant places less strain on nature than ten thousand wood cutters gathering fuel…The environmentalist’s paradox has it backwards. The most sustainable societies on the planet are the ones that don’t rely on charcoal for fuel, or wild game for food. The richer we get the more chance we have of saving biodiversity.”

    Leaders of Greenpeace, 350.org, and the Rainforest Action Network call for direct action in the climate movement

    Bill McKibben, Philip Radford, and Rebecca Tarbotton wrote in Grist.org,

    “Global warming is no act of God. We’re up against the most profitable and powerful industries on earth: the companies racking up record profits from fossil fuels. And we’re not going to beat them by asking nicely. We’re going to have to build a movement, a movement much bigger than anything we’ve built before, a movement that can push aback against the financial power of Big Oiland Big Coal…We’re making progress, but not as fast as the physical situation is deteriorating. Time is not on our side, so we’ve concluded that going forward mass direct action must play a bigger role in this movement .”

    They got responses though maybe not the kind they were thinking of as Steve Milloy at the Green Hell blog noted, “The leaders of Greenpeace, 350.org and the Rainforest Action Network published an article today on Grist.org entitled, ‘A call for direct action in the climate movement: we need your ideas‘ — and boy did they get one.”

    “Less than one week after Discovery Channel gunman James J. Lee went down in a blaze of violent ignominy, one commenter wrote,

    … When someone is proud of taking advantage of another human being shoot the bastard. John Brown would have killed everybody who thought slavery was boss, or groovy, well we feel the same way, pollute and die, its that easy especially for Corporations and their laziest of all people CEOs. We declare war on CEOs and corporations that kill our brothers and sisters. Don’t need courts or judges, we got ropes. Scare the crap out of those who pollute, hang a few and our air will improve.” [Emphasis added by Milloy]

    Another commenter wasn’t quite so violent.

    “I think Karl Marx might be more relevant than Gandhi or MLK. This is essentially a PROPERTY issue. GCC isn’t really about oppression and prejudice; its ultimately about wealth and material things.

    “We don’t want to hurt people, or be hurt ourselves. But there are ways to target property that could make a statement.

    “Here’s an example: What if we start by throwing green paint on parked Hummers and similarly offensive vehicles? These vehicles are, in and of themselves, a statement. And the public roadway is a public forum vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment.

    “Why not make the potential buyer of a high-end SUV consider the fact that their vehicle might be targeted for this kind of political expression?

    “We could make it a liability to own these vehicles. It already IS a liability for all of us, and our society.”

    Well, for my direct action I’m going to sit in a patio chair and catch the last of summer. Stay cool.

    I’m sure I missed other notable environmental stories. What stories would you nominate as worthy of being noted this past week? Leave a comment and let everyone know.


    Life taking off @fter 50

    I hate to brag but since I was born in 1951 things have gotten a whole lot better. The world is a much better place to be since I was born. Things have never been so good, d’ya hear what I’m saying.

    Listen to what has happened to the average person in the world since when I was born (according to Matt Ridley in his book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves): the average person now expects to live one-third longer, earns three times as much money (corrected for inflation), eats one-third more calories of food; is less likely to die from war, murder, childbirth, natural disasters such as famine and flooding, a host of diseases including cancer, heart disease, malaria and measles, scurvy and polio. Literacy rates increased. So did the likelihood of owning a “telephone, a flush toilet, a refrigerator and a bicycle.”

    Sweet.  All since I was born.

    I expect right now you’re saying, “Correlation does not mean causation.”

    Okay. Maybe I had help. It  doesn’t matter really, does it? The world is better off than it has ever been.

    Life is sweet, isn’t it?


    I think, P.J. O’Rourke may have said it best, “In general, life is better than it has even been.  And if you think that in the past there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: dentistry.”

    Not only is the world better than it has ever been, but I am also better than I have ever been.  I rise each day eager to research the biography I am writing, interview people for my monthly newspaper column, and write environmental blog posts.  I have never been as busy as I have since I ‘retired.’  At 60, I look better than my father’s photos of him at 40, and I don’t think that I’m unique in this respect.  I think I live better, healthier, and happier than my parents did.  And, since I mentioned dentistry’s contribution to quality of life, I may not be royalty, but I have just been crowned (back molar, top right)!

    By the way:
    I’m trying to blog my way to the AARP Orlando@50 conference. This blog post is an entry in their competition to find the official blogger to travel to and cover the event. Find out more about the conference here.


    This week’s environmental stories in the news

    1. James Jay Lee takes hostages at the Discovery Channel and is subsequently shot and killed by police. (Time.com report)

    According to the Washington Post, “Lee, 43, held three men hostage — a security guard and two other Discovery employees — and forced them to lie face down on the floor, Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said. Lee had a handgun and what Manger described as a live bomb strapped to him…Lee was killed at 4:48 p.m., nearly four hours after he stalked into the building…An environmental militant, Lee held a grudge against Discovery, viewing the network as a purveyor of ideas he considered environmentally destructive and staging protests outside its headquarters, according to authorities and court records.”

    Time.com’s blog Tuned-In dismissed Lee as simply another unhinged kook:

    “[Lee’s writing’s] a big bag of crazy. (“Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.” Of course.) Doused with FULL CAPS and multiple exclamation points, it flashed the signifiers of an increasingly frustrated mind that believes it sees The One Real Truth, and—maddeningly, infuriatingly—can’t see why everyone else doesn’t just get it.”

    Ronald Bailey at Reason.com says, ‘oh yeah? What about these Malthusians?’:

    It’s long been a trope of the Left that the “rightwing” rhetoric is inciting unstable people to violence. Maybe. But surely, in this case, there can be little doubt that environmentalist rhetoric inspired this act of violence. We don’t know, but did Lee come across such rhetoric as that deployed by environmentalist radical Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who unapologetically refers to humanity as the “AIDS of the Earth”?

    Watson has lots more to say    :

    Humans are presently acting upon this body in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system.

    A virus kills its host and that is exactly what we are doing with our planet’s life support system. We are killing our host the planet Earth.

    Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach.

    Lisa Hymas over at Grist.org tries to make the case that Lee is a complete outlier.

    Lee is giving us sane and humane enviros and childfree people a bad name.  And Ishmael fans too, but they kinda had it coming.

    Then a minority of her loyal following kinda undermine her.

    • So, what is wrong with his logic that he deserved to be shot? He wasn’t wrong
    • I pretty much agree with what he said …. the deterioration of the environment is at least as much due to population growth as it is to lifestyles ….. the current lifestyle of americans would be fine for the whole world if the population was 25% of what it is ….. if one person pisses and shits into the river, that’s fine ……. if millions do it, you have a problem …..
    • Honestly, I agree with about everything this guy says. It’s too bad that he felt so powerless in voicing his opinions in this culture that he had to take such drastic measures. Really, his arguments make sense and all have been voiced in much more passive tones at one time or another in Grist. If Lee had a pro-life perspective and rant would he have been shot? I wonder…

    2. The InterAcademy Council (IAC) released its review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . They noted a flawed process:

    “The commitment of many thousands of the world’s leading scientists and other experts to the assessment process and to the communication of the nature of our understanding of the changing climate, its impacts, and possible adaptation and mitigation strategies is a considerable achievement in its own right. Similarly, the sustained commitment of governments to the process and their buy-in to the results is a mark of a successful assessment. Through its unique partnership between scientists and governments, the IPCC has heightened public awareness of climate change, raised the level of scientific debate, and influenced the science agendas of many nations. However, despite these successes, some fundamental changes to the process and the management structure are essential…”

    One of the Economist’s blogs noted –

    “The report finds problems with the way the IPCC handles reviews of its work, the degree to which it shows fairness when considering areas that are disputed, and the way it communicates the certainty, or lack of it, wherewith it speaks. It calls for new rules on conflict of interest (or more accurately, it calls for rules—at the moment the panel has none), a new full-time leadership position and a new executive committee. Perhaps most strikingly, the report can also be read as a call for Mr Pachauri to resign, though neither Mr Pachauri [the head of the IPCC] nor Mr Shapiro [the report’s lead author] have characterised it in quite that way.”

    Roger Pielke Jr. summarized the IAC’s findings.

    It is an excellent, thoughtful report.  While the report focuses on procedural questions and does not address any questions of scientific content, its recommendations have far-reaching substantive implications, such as for how to deal with uncertainty.  The report also directly addresses difficult subjects such as conflict of interest, policy advocacy and tenure of the IPCC chairman.

    Ron Bailey of Reason magazine commented.

    In the wake of last year’s Climategate scandal, the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an Amsterdam-based organization of the world’s science academies, is issuing its critique of the U.N. Intervovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) processes and procedures. In the measured language of science, the critique appears to be fairly damning.

    The New York Times reported.

    The United Nations needs to revise the way it manages its assessments of climate change, with the scientists involved more open to alternative views, more transparent about possible conflicts of interest and more careful to avoid making policy prescriptions, an independent review panel said Monday.

    Spiked-online weighed in.

    [W]hat the recent climate-science scandals reveal is that such dodgy science becomes more likely the more that science is politicised and used to motor social policy and social-control initiatives. The elite flattering of scientists as oracles of wisdom whose work can help both to illuminate and possibly offset what is allegedly the worst crisis mankind has ever faced – global warming – must inevitably pollute and distort the scientific process.

    While Climate Central noted many of the same issues the skeptics did, it had a different take on the report.

    If you look at the climate skeptic blog Watts Up With That?, however, you’ll get the false impression that the report is some sort of scathing indictment.

    And indeed it was. William Briggs says the report is hot stuff:

    “If you’re not used to reading peer reviews, I can tell you that this appendix is hot stuff. Rarely have I seen so strong a rebuke.”

    Matt Ridley, on his Rational Optimist blog agreed:

    Yesterday, after a four-month review, a committee of scientists concluded that the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “assigned high confidence to statements for which there is very little evidence”, has failed to enforce its own guidelines, has been guilty of too little transparency, has ignored critical review comments and has had no policies on conflict of interest”…These are not merely procedural issues. They have real consequences for science and society. All the errors and biases that have come to light in recent months swerve in the direction of exaggerating the likely impact of climate change. According to the economist Richard Tol, one part of the 2007 report (produced by Working Group 2) systematically overstated the negative impacts of climate change, while another section (written by Working Group 3) systematically understated the costs of emissions reduction.

    Judge for yourself:
    The IAC’s review: http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/

    The IPCC’s webpage: http://www.ipcc.ch/

    3. Greenpeace campaigners scale oil rig 100 miles from Greenland


    According to a Greenpeace announcement, “Campaigners have evaded a huge military security operation to scale a
    controversial oil rig in the freezing seas off Greenland. At dawn this morning four expert climbers in inflatable speedboats dodged Danish Navy
    commandos before climbing up the inside of the rig and hanging from it
    in tents suspended from ropes, halting its drilling operation (video and
    stills available).”

    Sim McKenna from the United States, one of the campaigners hanging fifteen metres above the bitterly cold Arctic ocean, said: “We’ve got to keep the energy companies out of the Arctic and kick our addiction to oil, that’s why we’re going to stop this rig from drilling for as long as we can. The BP Gulf oil disaster showed us it’s time to go beyond oil. The drilling rig we’re hanging off could spark an Arctic oil rush, one that would pose a huge threat to the climate and put this fragile environment at risk.”

    Apparently, the protesters have have stopped this rig from drilling for as long as they could; according to Greenpeace the protesters have been arrested.

    A New York Times, Green blog post quoted Greenland’s prime minister, Kuupik Kleist, “It is really worrying that Greenpeace uses all means to break the
    safety rules made to protect human lives and the environment in its
    quest for media coverage.”


    Rob Lyons at SpikedOnline says, “What a misanthropic bunch of stunts.”

    What really galls environmentalists is what this current exploration of the icy waters of the Arctic symbolises: the potential that humanity might finally become truly global in its reach. Currently, most of the world’s population lives in the relatively comfortable surroundings of the temperate and tropical regions. But there’s a whole swathe of the world we’ve barely touched. Could we be making more of the Arctic and Antarctic for the benefit of all? Such a prospect is clearly terrifying to those who would prefer we human beings reined in our ambitions and settled for what we have.

    4. In other oil development news, an oil platform exploded caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico

    The New York Times reported:

    An oil platform exploded and caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning (September 2, 2010), touching off flurries of conflicting reports about sightings of oil slicks in the water and whether any workers had been injured in the blast…All 13 members of the work crew on board Thursday were accounted for, the Coast Guard said.

    New Scientist has what appears to be a good briefing/synopsis they note:

    The first report of a fire on a platform owned by Mariner Energy came at 1420 GMT on Thursday. The safety valves appear to have shut down the wells and the 13 men on the platform all jumped overboard to safety. Most had on survival suits and nobody sustained major injuries. The fire has now been extinguished.

    Newsweek says this oil rig would have received little media attention if the Deepwater Horizon explosion hadn’t happened.

    By contrast [to the Deepwater rig] the Mariner Energy’s platform that caught fire yesterday is a humdrum vessel in the oil world. The shallow water platform isn’t involved in seeking out new wells. It has been where it is for 20 years and isn’t going anywhere. The platform’s only job is to pump oil from an existing well through pipes and back to shore…While fires on platforms are common, they are considered far safer than drilling rigs. Over the last 10 years there has been about 850 fires or explosions on platforms.

    There were others of course. What environmental stories do you think should be on the list?

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    The rate of alarming rates rising at alarming rate

    To paraphrase Andy Rooney, “Have you ever noticed that every environmental concern, worry, or boogeyman happens at an ‘alarming rate’?”  Here’s some of the alarming news:

    • “Honeybees are disappearing all over the world at an alarming rate.”
    • “Snakes declining at alarming rate, say scientists.”
    • “(Kenya) losing wild animals at alarming rate.”
    • “Mankind using Earth’s resources at alarming rate.”
    • “Ocean acidification rising at alarming rate.”
    • “…primary forests continue to become degraded or converted to agriculture at alarming rates in some regions.”
    • “World deforestation decreases, but remains alarming in many countries.”
    • “Photos reveal Himalayan ice melting at alarming rate.”
    • “World’s mangroves retreating at alarming rate.”
    • “Genetically Modified foods and toxic chemicals are finding their way into the food you eat and other products at an alarming rate.”

    And my favorite from the Onion:

    • “U.S. ice cubes melting at alarming rate.”

    Run for your lives–the killer Canola has escaped!

    In mid August, a host of frantic tweets on Twitter reported a great disturbance in the Force. Being the intrepid green chronicler that I am, I immediately sprang into action—and made coffee.

    The disturbance? Well right now, as you read this, genetically modified rape plants (Brassica spp., a European plant of the mustard family) rampage about the countryside, tormenting roadsides in North Dakota (it’s been off the Canadian reservation for years). With a name like rape it must be inherently evil, which is why it usually goes by its trade name–Canola. Canadian agricultural scientists bred it for less acid. Canola stands for “CANadian Oil, Low Acid.”

    The Mother Nature News site breathlessly related, “This is the stuff of my nightmares. Genetically modified (GM) plants escaping the confines of agriculture and invading the wild.” On its website, the Sierra Club uses up its hyperbole allotment going for simple lizard-brained terror, calling GM crops, “radically new and environmentally hazardous technology.” And Greenpeace is just plain scared. “Do you ever eat major brands of bread, crackers or cereal? Are there canned soups or frozen dinners in your diet? If so, there’s a good chance you’re ingesting genetically engineered soy.” Oooh, boogedy-boogedy, I’m scared now.

    That people already eat GM (also called GE for “genetically engineered”) soy, wheat, corn, rice, canola, tomato, sugar beets, cassava, and other crops with no ill effect should tell us something about their safety. Never mind that by definition most of our agricultural crops are ‘genetically modified’; corn and wheat bear little resemblance to the grasses they started from. Still, we just can’t be too safe when it comes to our health and that of the earth now can we? Well, yes, yes we can be too timid.

    Sierra Club and others advocate the ‘precautionary principle’ toward GM crops; that is protection measures should be taken in advance “even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” The idea sounds so commonsensical, that being against it sounds crazy. Call me crazy. Rather, it’s expecting anything to be proven completely harmless is insane. As Michael Crichton noted, “Many of my friends who want to label or ban genetically modified foods because they have not been adequately tested, communicate with fellow advocates by cell phone, even though cell phones haven’t been adequately tested. Certainly they’ve never been proven safe.”

    If the precautionary principle were to be applied to every food (organic or factory-farmed), we would have nothing on our plate or our drinking glasses. Did you know that “99.99% (by weight) of the pesticides we eat are naturally present in plants “? Did you know that the coffee I drink contains thousands of chemicals, of which 19 of the 26 that have been tested are known carcinogens in rodents . (How’d coffee squeak through?) Had we applied the precautionary principle in the early days of fire and cooking, we probably would still be sitting in trees delousing one another rather than irradiating food in microwave ovens.

    So, if we eat genetically modified food already—and we do—without ill effect, is there anything to worry about? Well yes, biodiversity, say many greens. This argument, and the plants involved, flew that field a long time ago. They are not natural. Agriculture itself means domesticating wild plants and animals for our purposes. “The moral choices aren’t quite so easy. Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety,” wrote family farmer Blake Hurst. “Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river.” So more insects and animals can live when we grow GM crops. Less impact from pesticides and erosion means more biodiversity.

    So, never mind that a thousand million meals from GM crops have been eaten with no ill effects; the precautionary principle must stringently applied no matter the cost. ‘Protecting’ Zambia from GM ‘Frankenfood’ led to very real starvation of thousands of Africans at the turn of this century. Margaret Karembu of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, said, “Greenpeace has a very loud voice, but most of what they say is not factual.”

    Dr. Florence Wambugu of Kenya puts the protest against GM more tartly, “You people in the developed world are certainly free to debate the merits of genetically modified foods, but can we please eat first?”

    The USA leads the way

    Hans Rosling again, this time explaining to the US State Department that datasets beat mindsets. He shows them (among other things) that even in sub-Saharan Africa has countries as advanced and well off as the US. is today. He says to beware of lumping all of Africa together. Within parts of the poorest sub-Saharan countries are areas of prosperity. Aid needs to be targeted and the US has led the world in doing aid correctly.

    http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

    Should there be a new way of living for the top one billion? – The Hans Rosling edition

    TED video, “Hans Rosling explains why ending poverty” and increasing wealth “– over the coming decades – is crucial to stop population.”
    http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf