Dan Laks, a neuroscience researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles stated: “My study found compelling evidence that inorganic mercury deposition within the human body is a cumulative process, increasing with age and overall in the population over time.” He also said, “”My findings also suggest a rise in risks for disease associated with mercury over time.”

And not surprisingly during the Bush administration concentrations of mercury in whatever we ingest rose rapidly. Laks reported, “The overall population average of blood inorganic mercury concentration also increased significantly from 1999-2006.” Between 2005 and 2006 30% of women had mercury in their blood compared to 2% in a study done from 1999 to 2000. There’s nothing like a good dose of deregulation in industry to get a positive rise in pollution is there?

The article on ENS website mentions chronic diseases associated with mercury to include autism.

Read the whole article: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2009/2009-09-01-092.asp.

The 7-year study tested more than a 1,000 fish. The USGS warns Americans to limit the amount of large predator freshwater fish they eat like WALLEYE! Hear that Michiganders? Enjoy, but limit the amount you eat.

Even worse about a quarter of all those fish have mercury levels higher than what the EPA says is safe. If you followed my blogs through a few years of the Bush Administration, the EPA was corporate friendly to say the least.

The article then defers to the National Fisheries Institute’s response to this study: “If you have a family member that’s out there fishing in a stream, beware.” That pretty much supports the story. The Fisheries Institute just wanted to make it clear that the fish you buy in a store isn’t as bad as that fish you caught in what you thought was a nice clear stream. I did a blog on this long ago. You’ve got a choice of wild caught fish with mercury or farm raised fish with PCB’s.

Since I sit in my TV room that overlooks the canal while I write this, I’m also looking at the wetlands behind my house. I can’t help but think of the huge chain of animals that call the canal home–all the little baby geese, and ducks that I’ve fed that swim up every spring, the little muskrats that run up my berm and grab one of my apples on the ground, the turtles that sun themselves on the downed logs, and all the birds in the mix including swans. I can’t help but think what we’ve done to them. Not fair, not fair at all.

And just what causes mercury in the water EVERYWHERE? Gee I wonder. Did you know that the coal lobby managed to gouge holes in the House version of the American Climate and Energy Security Act so that coalburners will still supply half of our electricity until 2025 and the rate of pollution will go unchanged for the next 15 years? According to Earthjustice, not only will they keep polluting but may expand with 27 new coalburners that will also be exempt from having to curb or capture any pollution.

When you consider the fuss Americans made at the American auto industry for producing gas guzzling, polluting SUV’s because the same American’s demanded those types of cars, you can clearly see this is a really unfair playing field as to who is towing the line on pollution or not. The coal industry is no different than oil—they are fat with money unlike our auto industry. Money talks. That’s what every other polluting industry thinks too. As Earthjustice reports, “The concessions the coal industry has gained so far have encouraged other fossil fuel lobbyists to step up their efforts to maintain the disastrous status quo.” That means some pretty hefty offers heaped on our congress people.

And everyone is already saying the Senate will never pass the House version. The Senate will undoubtedly water it down more. Unless of course we voice our opinion to our reps to move forward and not weaken the bill but fill those unfair gaps in a bill that must include all industry not just a chosen few.

We’re going to shoot off our foot before long and continue working up our leg if we don’t see that reform isn’t a choice but a necessity.

http://unearthed.earthjustice.org/blog/2009-july/trip-van-noppen/lets-defend-climate-change-bill.

The report went on to show one Duke coal plant that traps all the CO2 emissions, liquefies the stuff, and pumps it underground. The problem is this plant cost $1.5 billion to build. And I’ve read this over and over again, and Rogers says the same, there is no scientific data about the results of pumping enormous amounts of liquid CO2 underground. Enormous is not an exaggeration. The 60 Minute report showed how much coal one particular Duke Energy coal plant uses per day. The rail cars were one mile long! That’s a lot of CO2 to capture without knowing what exactly will happen when we pump it underground. We’ve already become like human mosquitoes, poking upwards of a million holes in the earth for mining coal, oil, or gas in this country alone. This is quite a bloodsucking scenario we’ve perpetrated on earth already. Now we’re prepared to poke holes to put stuff back in. I guess big bloated landfills aren’t enough for the earth to digest. We need to pump stuff into it too.

All of this uncertainty about pumping CO2 into the ground hasn’t deterred the U.K. Its Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband announced last Friday: “Any new coal-fired power stations built in Britain will have to be fitted with cutting-edge technology to capture their carbon emissions.” http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/clean-coal-is-future-for-energy-supplies-1673412.html. While this will probably prove to be too costly for the U.K., at least the government isn’t allowing any more coalburners to be built the old fossil fuel way. Duke plans to build two more coalburners in the near future.

Duke Energy is of the notion that phasing out all coal burning facilities in the next 20 years is a “no-can-do.” That’s a pretty definite answer from a company that admits it’s part of the problem. Besides, how many times have we heard “it can’t be done” about airplanes, autos, refrigerators, television, air conditioning, microwave ovens, pc’s, etc? I distinctly remember working on some of the first desk top computers at U of M hospital in 1974. The main frame took up a room. Now our cell phones are morphing into mini computers. And of course new technology costs. Look at digital watches when they first came out compared to today where you can buy one at the dollar store.

I believe most of the cost of changing technology and moving in a new direction comes from fighting the guys that don’t want to let go of their moneymaker, whether it kills us or not.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minutes/video/video.php?cid=927554855&pid=1ycm_ajYxX_wB8aWbGnAICZ_G9ytgdmf&play=true&cc=0.

Since a great deal of America’s youth were involved with our latest election and clearly view climate change as important as anything else that faces our nation, their disappointment is understandable. I’m saying this again. One of the worse acts perpetrated on the American public by the Bush administration was instilling doubt about global warming. It politicized something that affects every living thing on earth, which has nothing to do with U.S. party lines. I’m also sick and tired of people here pointing fingers at China. We have no control over China. But we have all responsibility for how we act here. If enough civilized nations reel in their emissions and begin to unleash the ingenuity that brings new invention and prosperity, China will do likewise or suffer trade embargoes in the future. We’ve already suffered from tainted imports from China, and stopped importing them.

It’s called being a model for the rest of the global community, something America has not been for quite awhile relative to the environment. The youth of this country and groups like 350.org have plans to make Americans more aware of global warming, and it doesn’t look like they will give in easily. A good thing and none too soon.

It’s funny that doubters about global warming think steering away from oil and fossil fuels is impossible and will cause some sort of financial collapse and an altered lifestyle where we would be deprived of conveniences. Doubters think we would go in reverse.

Believers of global warming see a whole new frontier of invention yet to surface if the web of doubt could just be lifted long enough to allow all that inventiveness to progress. Believers feel like hostages to the big bucks of the oil and coal industry, which is mired in the past. To go green is to progress.

It’s the same old story all right. Doubters = reverse or reverting back to the usual. Believers = progress or advancing to the unusual. We’re in the 21st century for Pete’s sake. A little progress is due. Heck I’m still disappointed were not zipping around like the Jetsons.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2008/2008-12-01-01.asp

World Wire presented an article about the latest recipient of the Heinz Award for the Environment. It announced that Thomas Fitzgerald of Louisville, Kentucky, “an influential voice in improving the environmental landscape within his home state and across the nation, is among five distinguished Americans selected to receive one of the $250,000 awards, presented by the Heinz Family Foundation.” That’s quite a nice prize for being environmental, which is not such an easy task for an individual.

Tom Fitzgerald, 53, has been at it for almost 30 years. It states that:

He is an authority on the enforcement of the national Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977, the federal law designed to protect against the adverse environmental and societal effects of surface coal mining operations, as well as other regulatory issues affecting the environment. After earning his law degree, Mr. FitzGerald worked as a law clerk and environmental specialist for the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, and in 1984, reshaped the Kentucky Resources Council, providing free legal assistance on environmental matters, pursuing environmental advocacy and making the name “Fitz” synonymous with environmental protection in Kentucky.

 

So Kentucky is a Fitz state. It’s appropriate considering he has effectively curbed mining in some areas without litigation. In order to preserve areas like Black Mountain, which is Kentucky’s highest peak and watersheds that provide local drinking water, “he regularly leverages a generally ignored provision of SMCRA to persuade regulatory officials to declare areas of local or regional importance unsuitable for coal mining operations.” It appears Tom knows his stuff. Michigan could use more individuals like him because “he has helped draft ordinances to protect communities from sewage sludge disposal and factory hog farms as well as negotiated state statutes providing environmental protections related to Brownfield redevelopment, the siting of new power plants, solid and hazardous waste management, renewable energy and energy efficiency.” Heck my area was the dumping ground for the Black Lagoon cleanup and I’m on Lake Erie! Michigan has given too much leeway to CAFO’s. We could use much more Brownfield redevelopment for old factory sites. And don’t get me started on solid and hazardous waste management in Michigan. We’re full of dumps. And of course we are nowhere near many, many states as far as renewable energy, conservation, and energy efficiency.

Tom Fitzgerald is a stellar example of what one citizen can do. Imagine if every state could come up with just 10 people like this? What a difference it would make for the health and welfare of the people, land, air, water, and wildlife of our nation. Evidently he’s covered this base also because he “has developed plans for an environmental leadership training program designed to cultivate the next generation of environmental watchdogs and create teams of volunteers, drawn largely from retired state environmental employees, to assist citizens and communities impacted by pollution.” Hopefully more states will be getting their “Fitz on” in the near future and not a day too soon.

Read more about his accomplishments that earned him the $250,000 award: http://world-wire.com/news/0809090001.html

We’re hearing a lot lately about drilling for oil. There are people so naive to think that by drilling in the Arctic or anywhere else we will see an instantaneous reduction in prices at the pump. Anyone with any street smarts should know that an instant price reduction like that means that the whole scenario about oil and availability is a fabrication. Some people evidently think that drilling for oil is like sticking a straw in a glass of chocolate milk when in reality the process of extraction is getting tougher and more expensive as the world’s oil supplies get more elusive.

A quote from a National Geographic article from 4 years ago states:

Others think that by curbing our oil use and developing sustainable alternatives now, we can delay the peak and wean ourselves more easily when the inevitable happens. There are many things you can do to ease the transition, says Alfred Cavallo, an energy consultant in Princeton, New Jersey. And you can have a very nice life on a sustainable system. Of course, not everyone is going to be driving SUVs.

 

This was the idea in 2004, yet in 2008, people in the U.S., some of the biggest fossil fuel hogs in the world are still arguing about global warming, and just curtailing the movement to replace fossil fuels with clean alternative energy sources once and for all.  In 2002, George Bush even admitted that global warming is man made and exacerbated by the fossil fuel industry. Yet the argument against environmentalism continues. Think how far ahead we could have been by now, and how many people could have had new employment with progressive companies in green business.

The Bush/Cheney administration has loosed so many environmental laws and/or ignored them that many citizens in many states are experiencing the result of companies like Halliburton devastating the terrain in search of natural gas and/or oil. Think of humans as giant mosquitoes. We’ve bit the earth in search of oil like blood over 500,000 times. The U.S. alone has approx. 500,000 abandoned/operating mines also. We’re abusing the earth plain and simple. Now we want to keep using coal fired plants and forcing the resulting CO2 emissions from them deep into the earth. Forcing gas into the earth has a bad sound to it, and is not an exact science yet. We don’t know what will happen.

When we think of environment we immediately think of air and water, but the earth is taking an awful hit too. Before we even think to drill more, more, more, we need to gage how much fossil fuel we really need, not what we currently, hungrily devour. And in order to do that we need to establish a baseline, which can’t be done until we restrict all extraneous usage and lower speed limits, car pool, change light bulbs, use a clothesline, shut off our techie equipment–you know, the easy stuff. It’s the least we can do.

Until we’ve done our part, we shouldn’t expect poor Mother Earth to keep doing hers to the extreme. Our world is sick and could use some TLC. Conserve first, drill later if at all.

.http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_the_us_lack_sufficient_oil_refining.html

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/fulltext.html

I’ve already blogged that Idaho and Wyoming’s own state statistics show elk and deer populations are far over the limit for their species. The proper scientific limit for wolves to be secure from extinction should be near 3000, yet the number 1500 seems to be the norm for these states to begin to eradicate wolves because they pose a threat to deer and elk populations???

The hunt has already begun. Defenders of Wildlife states: “Locals have organized weekend eradication “wolf hunts” to kill any wolf that they find. One group tracked a wolf for 35 miles on snowmobiles before shooting it dead.” Now that’s real sporting. You know we’ve had a war going on for how long, isn’t that enough blood thirst for most Americans, or has it heightened the sense of the kill for some so much that they can’t turn it off? On the other hand, has it desensitized us to pain, suffering, and death that we just bury our heads anymore? To look forward to killing animals that are clearly being eradicated for no viable reason except for the sport is an indication of a nation’s decline in my book.

But the biggest testament to a nation’s decline is knowing full well we’re being lied to about many, many things, and doing nothing about it, even something that could be championed like this wolf slaughter issue. A study by the Dept. of Agriculture proved wolves are not attacking cattle in huge numbers either. And this N.Y. Times article just 2 years ago shows how badly the wolf populations were suffering from the parvo disease. It shows a pack of new wolf cubs that died shortly after the picture was taken. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/national/15wolf.html So in 2006, the gray wolf population declined from disease, yet two years later wolves are out of control?  What a pack of lies, and the liars head up departments in our U.S. government.

A lot of people think no big deal. But it was a big deal when the first gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone not very long ago. The rangers there have good things to say about the balance the wolves restored to the forest. As part of this reintroduction and study, many wolves are numbered, their packs have names, and some of the wolves have been viewed so much they gained notoriety and names, like Limpy, number 253M. Defenders says: “Limpy was many things to many people – to wolf-watchers, he was the hobbling member of Yellowstone’s famous Druid Peak Pack. To Utahans, he was the first wolf to be seen in the state for more than 70 years.”

For wolf novices the Druid Peak Pack was the second pack introduced to Yellowstone from Canada, and one of the most observed. Check out one girls sighting at her visit to Yellowstone and her video of the Druid pack on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNeFetdSHrQ. We’re talking tourism and educational fodder here.

I don’t know if the girl saw Limpy with hind legs that were crippled in a fight. No matter now, Limpy was shot dead in Wyoming on elk feeding grounds the first day wolves were taken off the endangered list. Remember elk numbers are beyond where they should be in these states. The wolves were out doing their job. Limpy obviously wasn’t speedy enough as a cripple. Two other wolves were shot with him.

So what we have here is the beginning of a slaughter perpetrated by lies from U.S. officials to practically eradicate a species that have only reached half their peak. Meanwhile, people have posted pictures on You Tube and commented on their trips to Yellowstone and the opportunity to see the notorious wolves.

You know what this reminds me of? Natives in Africa, deprived of an education, with very little means of sustenance for survival that kill endangered species in order to take the habitat over for farming, as well as, eat the bushmeat. Once the natives are taught that protecting the animals brings tourism to the area to view the animals, and all types of new income opportunity is opened to them, they embrace it wholeheartedly and the animals begin to flourish under the native’s good stewardship.

What’s the excuse for the states of Idaho, and Wyoming? They are neither stupid nor starving, but appear to be shooting themselves in the foot relative to tourism by killing the wolves, or there are ulterior motives worth a heck of a lot more money. It can’t be the hunting industry. It will only flourish from wolf hunts for so long. A few hunting seasons and the wolves will be gone, and then what’s to shoot? Oh yeah, all those excessive deer and elk populations.

My best guess for ulterior motives still lies with Bush’s plan to reverse the Roadless Rule, where Idaho might find themselves stripped of a heck of a lot more than the wolf population. If that happens, the second largest forest in America will slowly disappear from mining, drilling, and logging. Wolf hunters could face eminent domain issues in the future and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

Click on Defenders at the right to sign a petition to stop this senseless slaughter.

As for Limpy, he’s famous.  Just search “Limpy the Wolf” on the internet. There are pages of urls for him.

Colorado is bearing the brunt of an increase in bark beetle bugs that have killed millions of acres of lodge pole pines. These pines are exactly what their name describes, tall, tall trees pine trees whose needled branches are disproportionately at the top third of the entire trunk, think Q-tip. The bottom portion of the trunk is a straight shot of wood, used to build log lodges.

An article on abcnews.com stated 1.5 million acres are already wiped out and all of the lodge pole pines may be gone in 3 to 5 years. It said the infestation was first noticed in 1996. What the heck takes so long for our agencies to act on anything? I lost my ash tree, and the whole time Bayer brand systemic spray would have worked. By time I applied anything to my tree, it was already too late. I know what I found for news before that. Our state officials said nothing worked against the ash borer…so people failed to act. State officials were wrong!

Colorado officials said, “the infestation was concentrated in five northern Colorado counties straddling the Continental Divide and has reached southern Wyoming.” The amount of trees taken by the beetles increased 1500 percent last year and “forest officials attributed the spread of the beetle to warm winters and drought. Susan Gray, group leader for forest health management with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, said only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles.” Keep an eye on your spruce trees! Spruce and aspen pines are susceptible to the beetle also.

To add insult to injury relative to our trees and forests, the Bush administration looks to weaken the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This rule protects millions of acres of trees in Idaho against the oil, natural gas, timer, and mining industries. According to Earthjustice, Idaho contains more unspoiled wild forest than any state outside Alaska, providing the last intact forest habitat for countless fish, wildlife, and plant species. These areas are enjoyed by hunters, anglers, hikers, and all who treasure the backcountry. Earthjustice disclosed why Bush is pushing the Roadless Rule aside:

The administration’s proposal will open the door to logging millions of pristine acres, risk dangerous toxic contamination from mining, degrade clean fish-bearing streams and important wildlife habitat, and fail to live up to the public’s overwhelming desire to protect all of these areas for future generations.

This forest giveaway could lead to 545 million tons of phosphate being mined on nearly 8,000 unspoiled acres near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Any increase in phosphate mining would worsen the already serious problem of selenium poisoning in local streams and aquifers. Selenium is an extremely dangerous contaminant known to cause birth defects, which bio-accumulates in the food web — persisting for centuries after entering the environment.

Read more about this and sign a petition to stop President Bush before he weakens the Roadless Rule even more. We’re already losing trees and a lot of our landscape from extreme weather, i.e., floods, fires, tornadoes, and now bugs. Does the Bush administration have a clue about conservation? Do they even care? Trees protect us from the sun, and take CO2 out of the air for Pete’s sake, and the powers that be want to give them away to big money.

About the pine beetle infestation:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4133205

More about Bush sidestepping the Roadless Rule: http://www.earthjustice.org/our_work/campaigns/roadless_rule.html
Sign the petition to save our national forests: http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/roadless_ID_0308
 

AMEREN, American Electric Power, Arch Coal, Arkansas Electric Coop, Associated Electric Coop, Association of American Railroads, Basin Electric Power Coop, BHP Billiton, Buckeye Industrial Mining, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Group, CONSOL Energy, CSX, Detroit Edison, Duke Energy, Edison Electric Institute, First Energy Corp, Foundation Coal, Hoosier Energy, Massey Energy, National Mining Assoc., National Rural Electric Coop, Norfolk Southern, Peabody Energy, Southern Co., Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Union Pacific Railroad, Western Farmers Electric Coop.

This group is using other groups like America’s Power and Clean Coal USA to advertise across the country to make their coal look green. So be alert. There is nothing new. There is not a new kind of coal plant that generates electricity with lower CO2 emissions. There is coal that has very low sulfur content. And sulfur content and other particulates can be removed by what is termed “scrubbers.”  That’s not new technology, but it will help alleviate lung problems. Until something drastically changes coal users like the cheap dirty stuff because everything else costs money. This is a good article about it from the Wall Street Journal: http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/Clean-Coal-Oxymoron-WSJ.htm

In 2001 President Bush committed to more advanced clean coal technologies. According to an article on DOE’s website: “The Clean Coal Power Initiative is providing government co-financing for new coal technologies that can help utilities meet the President’s Clear Skies Initiative to cut sulfur, nitrogen and mercury pollutants from power plants by nearly 70 percent by the year 2018. Also, some of the early projects are showing ways to reduce greenhouse emissions by boosting the efficiency by which coal plants convert coal to electricity or other energy forms.” Come on, 10 more years to just get sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury pollutants down? That’s lame. http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/cleancoal/.

Not much is new with coal except for trapping the gas, and where to put it. Our Michigan CO2 well should be about full this weekend. It didn’t hold nearly enough liquid CO2. It’s not a solution. How many more holes are we going to rip into the earth? We have over 500,000 mines in the U.S. Many are old and abandoned. We have over 500,000 oil wells, many are done, fini. That’s a lot of holes in the ground. Will the earth heal quickly from the millions of holes we’ve drilled?
 

Many years of mining left behind substantial contamination of the soil and water, so that the EPA designated some former mining sites in Leadville as Superfund sites designated for clean up. Wikipedia stated that according to authorities, the town is now 98% cleaned up and the Superfund designation is about to expire. Well guess again.

The Lake County Commissioners declared a state of emergency in Colorado today. As I understand it, because mines are hollow, the water that seeps down the walls and across the floor may carry with it toxic contaminants like lead. If allowed to run free as surface water runoff, it poses a hazardous waste problem to the area. During WWII the Bureau of Mines dug drainage tunnels to direct and contain the runoff.  The Leadville mines tunnel was later sold to the Bureau of Reclamation as many of them were. According to an article in the Vail Daily News, “in 1992, a lawsuit by the Sierra Club prompted the construction of the tunnel treatment plant.” And everyone was supposed to live happily ever after.

However, there is a cave in somewhere in that mine now blocking the tunnel, and water is building up on the one side of the cave-in due to heavy snowfall and ice melt. It’s building up to a tune of “over a billion gallons of toxic acid and metal-laden water to form a pool at the headwaters of the Arkansas River, according to Commissioner Hickman. He explained that the water is now nearly 200 feet high and continues to apply pressure against the cave-in.” The same Vail Daily article said that the Denver Post stated “snow pack levels in the Upper Arkansas Valley are 163 percent of normal,” so more water than ever is going to continue to apply pressure. Commissioner Hickman said that he is afraid that the environmental degradation of the Arkansas River will be beyond anyone’s comprehension if the whole thing explodes. Lately, there appears to be a back-up situation from Leadville’s mine tunnel to the California Gulch tunnel treatment plant also.

The Bureau of Reclamation knows about the problem, has taken some steps but is moving too slowly for the commissioners. The commissioners should be on edge. This administration is not known for its quick action during human disasters, or for their prevention. The Bureau of Reclamation has been accused of failing to warn citizens when the Teton Dam in Idaho gave way in 1976. Fourteen people died and 300,000 acre-feet of water surged through the area causing one billion dollars in damages. A couple of Senators, Salazar and Wiens, have voiced their concern over the Leadville tunnel. Salazar accused the Bureau of not cooperating with the EPA or Colorado’s Dept. of Health. Other than that nothing much has been done as the water continues to build. There is a trailer park situated right where the water will rush through if the dam gives way.

All I can think of is the recent push to mine all over the country again eventually leaving more void pockets like the existing abandoned mines in Leadville. Mountain top strip mining, coal mining, and even in Michigan, mining for copper is on the agenda once again. Look at the age of the mines in Leadville that are still causing a problem and costing millions from the Superfund to clean up or contain. The U.S. hasn’t fully remedied the problems from mines that over 100 years old, but is willing to invest in new mining all over the country again? Add to that the Bureau of Reclamation’s failure to act on the behalf of citizen’s safety as it has in the past, and even though the EPA has pressured them with concern about this particular tunnel for years. Since, I don’t have much faith in the Bush EPA, this must be really bad for them to pay attention. It’s bad enough for us to pay attention and keep a watchful thumb on excessive mining in the future, especially for filthy fossil fuel like coal.

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20080214/NEWS/972891293.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadville,_Colorado.