Our World and Everything in It

WXYZ news announced this morning that Detroit area Coca Cola trucks would soon be running on hybrid electric motors. The trucks were purchased earlier this year from Eaton Corp.

Eaton is an impressive corporation as far as transportation and the environment. There website states: “We create innovations in hybrid power and low emission vehicles as a leading provider of diesel-electric hybrid power systems for truck and bus applications on three continents. Eaton is also developing hydraulic hybrid power systems technologies for use in refuse trucks, delivery vehicles, buses and other applications. Eaton has a hybrid truck drivetrain center outside of Kalamazoo and is a Cleveland-based Corp.

http://www.eaton.com/EatonCom/Markets/Truck/index.htm.

Coca-Cola ordered 120 of the hybrid trucks, the largest North American commercial order from Eaton’s hybrid systems according to WWJ. Coke previewed these trucks when they purchased 20 of them last year. They evidently liked their performance.

The article below said that Coca-Cola did extensive tests and found that “Eaton’s hybrid-electric drivetrain equipped trucks decreased emissions by 32 percent and fuel consumption by up to 37 percent.” This kind of fuel savings could start a trend.

http://www.wwj.com/Coke-to-Buy-Hybrid-Delivery-Trucks-From-

Eaton/1729913

Since we’re basically back to the drawing board relative to greatly lowering fossil fuel use in Michigan because of the Senate’s bad decision to cut mandates to business from our energy bills last week, Michigan has to look to other ways of cutting pollution from fossil fuel. So it’s already been suggested that our speed limit be lowered.

Personally, I don’t care if the speed limit is lower. I’ve lived through this before and it cut down road rage, traffic accidents, and therefore insurance premiums. If it’s posted 55mph, then we’ll go 70mph instead of 80mph and greater that I witness on the road all the time. Mind you, these speeders are generally juggling cell phones too.

Anyway, if the speed limit is lowered and we don’t like it, we only have ourselves to blame for not paying attention to what’s happening in our state congress relative to cutting pollution, helping the environment, creating more jobs, and enticing part of the Green Gold Rush to come to Michigan. It’s not happening for a reason. Pay attention and be pro-active in responding to our elected officials or we’re never going to turn around.

As part of the “Strange Days on Planet Earth” by National Geographic that I watched on PBS, was a segment about compounds found in plastic like bisphenol A that leached into a Missouri Tributary, and into the fish and animals in a remote area. Bisphenol A acts like estrogen, and is an endocrine interrupter. It doesn’t take much for this stuff, 30 parts per trillion, to affect estrogen response in fish because they have an extremely sensitive system.

I went to find out more about this because I’ve already written about fish in N.Y. and recently the Potomac River in Washington that have both sexes, have changed gender, or are sexless due to estrogen discharged in the effluents of sewage treatment plants. When I watched this latest presentation about fish in Missouri that are altered by bisphenol A, I thought I would rummage around and found website after website from different places all over the country with gender bender fish.

There was even a study about perch in Michigan’s lakes on jestor @ http://www.jstor.org/pss/3435861. The article listed various endocrine disruptors present in the water like the estrogen from sewage plants but also bisphenol A. Read the article because it states “gonadal intersex was observed in male white perch collected from the Bay of Quinte (22-44%) and Lake St. Clair (45%), [] Intersex was not observed in hatchery-reared white perch or in white perch collected from an uncontaminated reference site (i.e., Deal Lake) in the United States.” So the lower Great Lakes are considered contaminated.

This does not bode well for our water systems. The “Strange Days” series continued about bisphenol A in plastic from which we eat and drink. It’s dangerous for our health. That’s why we’re being told lately not to microwave anything in a plastic container. As for baby bottles it’s really bad news.

The series stated that hormones control genetic programming in developmental stages of life, so babies are really affected by bisphenol A. Heating plastic baby bottle causes 10 times the amount of bisphenol A to leach out. They didn’t have to connect the dots any further. Do not use plastic baby bottles unless it’s documented they don’t contain bisphenol A.

Ah, how soon we forget. Just a little over a year ago the United States Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could not bypass its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. That ruling caused a rush to court on behalf of other industry polluters, i.e., coal burning facilities. But luck ran out for the coal industry when the of U.S. Court of Appeal’s basically threw the EPA’s cap and trade program out, and told the EPA that they were wrong by taking power plants off the list of hazardous pollution sources with its “Clean Air Mercury Rule.” Now the EPA has two years to develop mercury emissions standards for existing power plants. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=232

So it seems a little redundant for citizens to have to sign a petition to send a message to our state congress to get Michigan moving. This particular petition calls for Governor Granholm to issue an executive order to immediately direct Michigan’s DEQ (Dept. of Environmental Quality) to regulate CO2 emissions from coal and other power facilities.

The real goal here is to show our state government we are indeed watching what does or does not happen in Michigan as far as legislation to move forward to bring new jobs to boost the economy, while continuing to curb pollution in Michigan. Our two houses and the governor continue to come to a stalemate regarding jobs, the environment, pollution, and our economy. We wouldn’t be as afraid to loose jobs in polluting industries like construction of coalburners, refineries, and even nuke plants, if we had a decent RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) and Energy Efficiency program to entice more green industry into our state, which seems to go hand in hand with the technical industries also.

Job growth in a new sector certainly takes the sting out of job loss and poor working conditions in waning manufacturing sectors. So get on with it Michigan! We’re missing a golden opportunity to transform ourselves quickly from old manufacturing status quo to something new completely that’s being afforded by green industry.

Perhaps signing a petition to nudge our politicians forward is a very good idea to show we want the green—both industry and paycheck green.

Take the time to sign at:   http://progressmichigan.org/page/s/globalwarming.
 

We’ll soon be seeing a new media blitz from the coal industry because people are catching on that coal is not clean. The industry is throwing $30 million dollars into an advertising and public relations campaign under the name of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). But the list that follows are all polluters like Billiton the largest mining company in the world, or CONSOL the largest producer of bituminous coal in America. They just don’t have motivation to cut into that kind power unless it’s from the kindness of their hearts.

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?
 

There is a presentation at MCCC’s Meyer Auditorium tonight called “Coming Home. State of the Straits: Status and Trends of Key Indicators. This is an effort to present the results of compiled data on the ecosystems health in the Detroit River and Lake Erie. I wanted to go but I’m 40 minutes away from MCCC’s parking lot and don’t like the looks of the weather. What I did is find the results of the program and printed out about 30 pages that comprise the comprehensive and integrative assessment.

This presentation is based on information in “50 key trend data sets and indicators” according to the report itself. However, it also states that this comprehensive and integrative assessment is initial and heavily weighted on state information with “important data and knowledge gaps.” Nevertheless, it “lays the foundation for continuous improvement in the future.”

But I can’t tell from the report what we’re improving on. There are percentages of increase or decline of contaminants with no beginning measurements given. There are also very few quantitative targets. So we don’t know what aiming for.  The study is over a 35-year time span. In 1970, we were polluted. The Clean Air and Water Act improved everything initially in a huge way. So to tell me from 1970 until now there has been an overall improvement in our water, well no kidding. What I want to know is what transpired over the past 10 years? For instance, regarding contaminants in western Lake Erie sediments, there is a record in 1971, and another in 1995 for mercury and PCB’s. Two records, 24 years apart are telling us there is a 70% decline in mercury in sediment and a 50% decline in PCB’s and other organochlorine contaminants. I don’t think that is very thorough. The mercury is 70% lower from what amount? Does this constitute a good amount? Mercury may have been 85% lower in the 90’s with pollution levels going up some 15% since then and the overall reading from 1971 will still look good at 70% reduction in pollution even though it’s rising again and quickly. Many of these reports concerning water end in 2004 too, like amounts of mercury in walleye.

Reports from 1977-2004 show that mercury in walleye has seen a 60% decline between the late 70’s and early 80’s; levels have remained steady since. What? Nothing has changed in over 25 years? It may be because there is more fishing, and therefore more fish caught at an early stage. We’re told to eat the smaller fish, especially in the ocean, because they have had less time to ingest mercury. There is nothing in this report that shows the accumulative affects of mercury either like from sediment, to fish, to birds, to larger predators.

I had to consider the source and motivation of this report too when I saw the list of editors and funding. Two of the editors are from the USFWS, the controversial agency that currently aims to kill the wolves and buffalo out west without presenting a solid answer as to why.  And the funding sources include DTE, and the US EPA, another favorite controversial agency of mine. But like I said, I really wanted to hear this presentation. The presenters probably had really good slides of the wildlife that is thriving. Nothing is all bad news. If anyone attended please let me know about it.

I’ve included an article from the Toledo Blade about this presentation relative to receding shorelines and loss of water in the Great Lakes too.  http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080107/NEWS06/801070402.

These are the actual tables resulting from the compilation of data for the trends reported in the presentation. http://www.epa.gov/med/grosseile_site/indicators/sos/assessment.pdf.
 

I ran across a good website that explains RPS or Renewable Portfolio Standards. A state’s RPS spells out what is being enacted within the state to lower the state’s dependency on fossil fuels through conservation and alternative energy initiatives. And it draws jobs—many, many jobs!  An  analogy would be that an RPS is like a state’s environmental resume for new green businesses looking for a home for their headquarters/operations.

So all RPS’s aren’t the same of course. An RPS must be tailored to the state. All states won’t lean equally on the wind, solar, or geothermal power mix that are major parts of a state’s RPS.  Some states will rely on solar more than wind, or wind more than geothermal power. An article that discusses Michigan’s RPS and how it already leaves solar out of the picture is http://www.photon-magazine.com/news_archiv/details.aspx?cat=News_PI&sub=america&pub=4&parent=624. That’s too bad because solar has been really good for me this winter in Michigan.

There is a lot of reading here and it’s very interesting. Twenty-four states have already established RPS’s and are experiencing a lot of job growth. Considering Michigan barely regulates its CO2 emissions, and keeps inviting more polluting industries into the state, I don’t find it surprising that Michigan doesn’t have an RPS yet. Of all the states that have suffered heavy job loss, an RPS should have been first on an agenda for our congress. Contact our reps. and senators to get moving on “green” job opportunities in the thousands in Michigan and cut the polluters loose.

The tax benefits to states that court “green” business is good also. The sercoline website below stated that in Nevada, one geothermal plant paid “$800,000 in county taxes and $1.7 million in property taxes. In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management collects nearly $20 million each year in rent and royalties from geothermal plants producing power on federal lands in Nevada – half of these revenues are returned to the state.” In Iowa, “the 240 MW of wind capacity installed in 1998 and 1999 produced $2 million per year in tax payments to counties and school districts and $640,000 per year in direct lease payments to landowners.”

So having, as well as, advertising a good RPS will garner states more jobs, a greater tax base, and a much healthier environment while helping alleviate overall global warming. The big bonus: it entices more business to come on board, like Minnesota: “The 143 wind turbines in the 107-MW Lake Benton I project in Minnesota, installed in early 1998, brought $250 million in investment.”
 
Are Michigan’s tradeoffs to polluting industries for a few hundred jobs saved here and there being offset against higher health care expense due to bad air, or water pollution, and include the loss of new “green” jobs that bring more tax revenue, and entice more businesses to invest in Michigan?  I’d like to see that equation. I don’t think Michigan is heading in the right direction, except for the very temporary oil drilling blitz that will probably occur, whether we want it to or not. But at some point, our demand will exceed our supply and we won’t have oilmen in the White House to push that agenda any longer.
http://www.serconline.org/RPS/fact.html.

http://www.michigancleanenergy.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7B43B4E9A9-4132-4A0D-A15F-39434E54B50C%7D.
 

I’m sorry to read that Michigan persists with pollution policy instead of sound environmental policy. We need to get the corporate friendly senate moving in a cleaner direction. We have an obligation in this state to at very least try to keep the water clean. If we keep goofing off, someone might decide we are poor stewards and should share the wealth and management of our water. Does adding more coalburners to the list of 19, including the country’s second largest in Monroe, sound like anyone here pays attention to health issues, future problems with water shortages, or the earth? The latest out of MI senate is a push to alter abortion issues in Michigan. That’s the big priority? People need jobs; we need a decent and moral economy. By moral, I mean we do our utmost not to disturb life in the process of living and producing.  A green economy can offer plenty of jobs but that ride is being held up either on a state or federal level and benefits the oil industry.

We know for instance about oil leases that have been sold in pristine areas and/or habitat for polar bears, seals and all types of birds. Drilling there is pending and the oil industry wants to get moving. It’s becoming obvious that placing the polar bear on the endangered list is purposely being stalled. All that is needed is a great motivator. Bingo, gas will go up beyond $4.00 per gallon shortly. We’re already being taunted by that forecast. People are expected to cry drill, drill, drill and to hell with the animals. And we’ll probably do that, instead of seeing the big picture and how we’re being manipulated by the utilities. Even Warren Buffet commented that we’ve been sticking straws into the earth and sorry but it’s a finite practice. We will eventually run out. We collectively had over 500,000 wells. Our demand is ridiculous, and growing and it all revolves around the same fossil sources.

Heaven forbid we advance in technology and perfect wind and solar power for the individual home, and make it cheap. Houses would stand-alone without need for utilities. It’s almost laughable isn’t it? We are street smart enough to know the powers that be won’t let that happen. Anyway, our airwaves will be controlled shortly. Can’t even get free air anymore, besides there is that ever lovin entertainment/sports world that’s always going to charge too.

We could practice conservation. We could develop an RPS for Michigan, (more on that in another blog), which would entice green developers to come here. I’ve been saying this for quite awhile. What green industry is going to plant themselves next to a bunch of pollution? We’ll never get away from polluting industries once they are established without paying for it dearly. The buck will pass on to us for corporation’s stubborn business sense if and when in the future a big conservation effort needs to be enacted because, gee, we really are polluting ourselves to death. 

I was reading the Sierra Club’s “The Mackinac” and it states what I’ve been reading elsewhere, that many places in this country are not giving permits to more coalburners. The front-page article said 44 proposed coal-fired plants were either denied or withdrawn in 2007 thanks to The Sierra Club. So what happened here? 

There were five more coalburners looking for environmental permits in Michigan, with three more new plants under discussion the article said. It also stated that the challenge to put a moratorium on coal-fired plants in Michigan is daunting. Well I guess, especially with a corporation friendly senate. It said, “The state has refused to regulate the CO2 from coal plants that contribute to global warming (so long as the applicants address other pollutants, the state will let them be built). So that’s why the rush to install scrubbers? The scrubbers address other pollutants that are breathing irritants, but not the mercury that is permeating through the water to the fish, to the birds, and eventually anyone who drinks the water—one of the world’s largest freshwater supplies that is no longer so fresh. Or the CO2, that’s warming us up and causing some really bad weather—almost tornado season. What’s the sense of the Great Lakes Legacy Act?  What a tail chase, and meanwhile the water and Michigan loses, while the polar bears, seals, fish, and birds, the entire earth, take a back seat to our excess.

 Take a stand and participate. Read: http://michigan.sierraclub.org/.

There was more on the news today about water contamination in America on ABC news. It seems trace amounts of hormones, antibiotics, and antidepressants are turning up in fish everywhere. This time it was Lake Mead near Las Vegas. Our filtration methods seem to be failing more and more.

It’s been quite a few years since I first heard about genderless, or unisex fish in the waters of New York due to unusually high amounts of human waste in some areas due to poor filtration. I started wondering if that water would have the same gender/hormonal affects on humans eventually? We know that baldness is not just hereditary but also related to hormones, and that it is on the rise. Children are reaching puberty far too early. Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

The next time I heard about gender problems in fish, it was in the Potomac River as reported by Robin Roberts of Good Morning America. That was a year, or more ago. I reported not long ago the same contaminants,  hormones and antidepressants, were found in trace amounts in Lake Michigan. This is an obvious and growing problem—that’s been ignored.

I’ve harped over and over again about CAFO’s and their practice called nutrient loading. I can clearly see a link between nutrient loading and tainted crops. Nutrient loading is when the holding lagoons from farm animal excrement is blown all over the surrounding land as some sort of fertilizer. Read the article link below. It states that: “In several recent studies of soil fertilized with livestock manure or with the sludge product from wastewater treatment plants American scientists found earthworms had accumulated those same compounds [widely used antidepressants] while vegetables — including corn, lettuce and potatoes — had absorbed antibiotics. “These results raise potential human health concerns.” This really needs to change.

If drugs show up in crops from manure, why not e-coli from manure as fertilizer on lettuce and spinach? It’s a disgusting situation any way you look at it. I saw the pics of what happened when too much spring rain caused an overflow of those CAFO lagoons down south. It killed all the fish in the subsidiaries all the way to the ocean where more fish were instantly killed.

I remember all these reports.  It seems to be spreading.  Does anyone in charge, truly care about our freshwater?  We keep getting reports that our air, water, and foodstuff is getting increasingly better. Just go ahead and drink tap water, breathe the air from around coalburners, and eat whatever is served up.  We’re just asking for poor health by not being more involved and demanding in the way we want our basic air, food and water. We should really be questioning what’s happening. With all the recalls, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see something very wrong is most certainly happening. It’s not a natural phenomenon that’s happened before. It’s us. It’s not a stretch to think we’re causing global warming, the more we’re aware of the pollution we create by something as simple as flushing our pills.  

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4422001

Back in February before the flu bug got me I read an article in the Detroit Free Press called “Beneath state: A warming solution, Friday, February 22, 2008, Section A, by Tina Lam, about Michigan being the first state to inject CO2 into the earth somewhere around Gaylord. The article said Michigan’s bedrock is perfect for storing the CO2 between layers of the rock. It also said 3 times that it is experimental.

The well head is about 8 feet high with all type of sensors and an underground pipe that sends the CO2 from DTE’s Turtle Creak natural gas plant to the well. The article said CO2 is a by-product of natural gas extracted from underground. The injection process will stop by the end of this month (March).  The well will hold 10,000 tons of CO2.  There are many of these wells that were already used for oil and gas, some 55,000 of them in Michigan! Who knew? And there’s a push to drill for more oil in the lakes? It looks like someone has been busy at it all along. How many wells are there like this in the country? Add over 500,000 abandoned mines too and it truly is a “Swiss Cheese Nation” as I called it before. The term “rape and pillage” comes to mind. Some of these wells are a mile deep. Ouch.

The gas is well below 3,000 feet of any layer from which drinking water comes and spokesman John Austerberry said the CO2 is harmless, that “even if it somehow escaped, it wouldn’t harm anyone.”
Anybody remember a blog I did with the title: “CO2 Buildup Causes Lake to Explode?” Might want to read that again. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=226. It’s the first thing I thought about.

American and European opinion differed greatly on that explosion in Africa’s Lake Nios in Cameroon.  It happened in 1986. The lake exploded from 1.6 million tons of CO2 gas being released that had settled on the bottom. Over 1700 people were asphyxiated up to 16 miles away along with all their livestock, some 3000 head of cattle. I’m thinking about the “experimental” word again and lucky us.