"The good I stand on is my truth and honesty." - William Shakespeare
"Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom." - Thomas Jefferson
"Among all the world's races ... Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not a consequence of any special preference for mendacity.... It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong." - John Kenneth Galbraith
Editorial
"ExxonMobil on its own channeled some $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a campaign of misinformation fed to a network of 43 advocacy organizations, according to a 2007 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists."
Not much has been made of stories like that. It was just a blip on the nightly news and then nothing has been heard since. I think the media outlets are shaking in their boots, afraid that big oil and coal will stop advertising.
What should be done is prosecute the offenders like Exxon/Mobile. Why? First, most of the "advocacy" groups were created for the main purpose of spreading misinformation. Second, the millions of dollars was surely deducted from the "taxes" that these companies should have paid. These "advocacy" groups then went out and smeared the reputation of innocent scientists and others that were only out doing their job. Exxon alone had 43 of these groups, what about the others? While conservatives are out having "tea parties" over taxes, they are supporting the fraud perpetrated on the American public at large.
Other question has to be...how deep does this go? When is something going to be done?
The RecycleMania article is of some interest. By the way, congrats for the 515 schools that participated. I followed up on this by checking out the school that I previously worked for. I found that the school did not participate. I fought hard for this school to sign the Climate Commitment, which they dragged their feet on. Even though they finally signed, over a year ago, they failed to meet another requirement under the commitment ( "Participate in the Waste Minimization component of the national RecycleMania competition" Page 18 (PDF)). Of course RecycleMania doesn't cost anything, much like the Focus the Nation ("Participation in climate-related educational initiatives like Focus the Nation" Page 23 (PDF)) Event or the Earth Day Event.
Why do I bring this up? It sort of relates to the Exxon/Mobile story. They have put people in charge that are not doing their job while trying to capitalize on the "Greeness" of their campus. This is a typical "say that they will do something" and then do nothing or make the situation worse. Reminds me of the never funded "No Child Left Behind" program.
How are things going to change at the top when they won't change at the bottom.
RecycleMania 2009 Results Announced
More Than Tech Needed to Reduce CO2 Footprint of Buildings
Can an Ever-growing Campus Be Sustainable?
Zero Emissions Motorcycle Gears Up For The Big Race
Oil and Coal Information Campaign Ran Counter to Its Own Scientists
Free 2009 I-Codes Overview Webinars
Self-healing Concrete For Safer, More Durable Infrastructure
Angling for a piece of L.A.'s future clean-tech center
Obama Reverses Bush Rule On Mountaintop Removal Mining
>Pass the Gold...Pass the legislation
Utilities amp up lobbying over climate debate
New York-sized ice shelf collapses off Antarctica
Satellite Imagery Shows Fragile Wilkins Ice Shelf Destabilized
>Riding the Rails to Carbon Neutrality
Fire Influences Global Warming More Than Previously Thought
Levees Cannot Fully Eliminate Risk Of Flooding To New Orleans, Report Says
Open your wallet: Electric rates already moving higher to finance new nuclear power
Oceans becoming acidic 'at fastest rate for 65 million years'
Budget strengthens case for greener company cars
Plans for high-speed Vegas to Victorville train line unveiled
RecycleMania 2009 Results Announced
The results are in and congratulations go out to all the colleges and universities that participated this year. 510 schools from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Canada took part in 2009. The 4.7 million students and 1.1 million faculty and staff on these campuses collectively recycled or composted just over 69.4 million pounds of waste over ten weeks. Below are the winners of each category. To see the full rankings, visit the Results page.
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More Than Tech Needed to Reduce CO2 Footprint of Buildings
Energy use in buildings could be cut by as much as 60 percent by mid-century, but doing so would take more than just adopting energy-saving technologies. That's according to the findings of a four-year study looking at residential and commercial building sectors around the world and published Monday by the Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a global business association. The report, entitled "Transforming the Market: Energy Efficiency in Buildings," is being touted as the most rigorous study ever conducted on the subject and includes a sweeping road map for the building industry to achieve this energy-cutting goal. "Energy efficiency is fast becoming one of the defining issues of our times, and buildings are that issue's elephant in the room," said Bjorn Stigson, president of the business council, in a statement.
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Can an Ever-growing Campus Be Sustainable?
We're a little late to the party on this one, but last week's Chronicle of Higher Education feature on space planning and long-term sustainability is full of good stuff.
The issue of space planning on campus is always a sticky one, with individual professors, departments and research teams doing their best to preserve their own interests, which could be anything from always teaching at 10am in a particular room to defending unused extra storage space. And as the cost of building and Scott Carlson reports.
Aside from personnel, facilities budgets are the biggest on campus, and wasted space, even if it's just a few rooms, can cost a university millions of dollars over a building's lifetime. The situation gets worse when energy or construction prices spike, as at the University of Michigan, which lost $100 million in state appropriations and was forced to respond with an immediate assessment of its construction and renovations plans, slowing its space growth rate from 2% per year to 0.5%.
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Zero Emissions Motorcycle Gears Up For The Big Race
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2009) -- It has the ability to reach speeds of 102mph, race around a 38 mile mountainous course and is powered by batteries which can be charged from a standard household socket. It's Kingston University's new, green motorbike. Designed by six final-year engineering students, the bike is set to make history by competing in the world's first zero-emissions Grand Prix this summer. The Kingston team will join 24 eco-bikes from America, India, Italy, Germany and Austria on the start line at the 2009 Isle of Man TTXGP.
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Oil and Coal Information Campaign Ran Counter to Its Own Scientists
As long ago as 1995 scientists and technical experts, working at a coalition funded by industries that produced or relied on fossil fuels, reported that human emissions of greenhouse gases had a role in global warming. Yet the group, called the Global Climate Coalition, ignored its own scientists and embarked on a multi- million dollar campaign to sow doubt and confusion with the public.
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Free 2009 I-Codes Overview Webinars
ICC is pleased to introduce Free 2009 I-Codes Overview Webinars, a snapshot preview of the new I-Codes, bringing the reality of the classroom to your desktop. Log in and learn - for free.
These Free 2009 I-Codes Overview Webinars provide a general look at the code and cover a select number of the significant changes that have taken place between the 2006 and 2009 versions, providing viewers with a good technical preview of the new code. Each webinar is approximately 40 to 50 minutes in length and available online 24/7.
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Self-healing Concrete For Safer, More Durable Infrastructure
A concrete material developed at the University of Michigan can heal itself when it cracks. No human intervention is necessaryjust water and carbon dioxide.
A handful of drizzly days would be enough to mend a damaged bridge made of the new substance. Self-healing is possible because the material is designed to bend and crack in narrow hairlines rather than break and split in wide gaps, as traditional concrete behaves.
"It's like if you get a small cut on your hand, your body can heal itself. But if you have a large wound, your body needs help. You might need stitches. We've created a material with such tiny crack widths that it takes care of the healing by itself. Even if you overload it, the cracks stay small," said Victor Li, the E. Benjamin Wylie Collegiate Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of Materials Science and Engineering.
A paper about the material is published online in Cement and Concrete Research.
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Angling for a piece of L.A.'s future clean-tech center
Jockeying has already begun for a piece of Villaraigosa's ambitious plans for a 2,236-acre project near downtown that the mayor hopes will transform L.A. into 'the global capital of clean technology.'
The showpiece of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's vision for a clean technology manufacturing corridor east of downtown isn't much to look at. The scraggly 20-acre plot, dotted with weeds and pipes venting deep soil gases, was once envisioned as the site of a state prison.
But the mayor and his team are marketing this industrial parcel, dubbed the CleanTech Manufacturing Center, as a business incubator in the mold of Silicon Valley.
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Obama Reverses Bush Rule On Mountaintop Removal Mining
Mining is mining -- it involves tearing up earth to reach valuable deposits. It's inherently destructive.
But no mining method reaches the level of destructiveness of mountaintop removal mining, a practice that employs mind-bogglingly large machinery to lop off mountaintops in Appalachia, dump the debris into mountain streams and valleys, and walk off with the coal.
It's brutally efficient, as long as you don't care about the environmental impacts. The impact, to put it succinctly, is the sure death of those buried streams and whatever life had thrived there.
The Bush Administration saw that destruction as minimal, compared to the economic benefits of mining and burning coal. The Obama Administration, though, is taking a much more progressive and long view on the subject. It is moving to reverse an 11th hour Bush Administration rule that would have made it easier for companies to obliterate Appalachia to exploit coal deposits.
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Pass the Gold...Pass the legislation
As always, Congress is driven by the Golden Rule -- whoever gives the gold, makes the rules:
Electric utilities, oil and gas corporations, coal producers and other energy industry interests poured more than $375,000 into the coffers of House Energy and Commerce Committee members during the first three months of 2009, according to an E&E examination of campaign finance records.
The dollars flowing to Energy and Commerce members -- particularly Democratic moderates -- further highlights the high stakes for the industry as lawmakers prepare to mark up a Democratic climate change and energy legislation next month.
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Utilities amp up lobbying over climate debate
WASHINGTON -- Fifty of the nation's largest electric utilities amped up spending on lobbyists by 30% late last year to influence the debate in Congress just underway on one of the biggest issues facing lawmakers: climate change.
From Duke Energy, with 4 million customers, to American Electric Power (AEP), which sells energy in 11 states, the companies spent a total $51 million in the last six months of 2008, $12 million more than the same period in 2007, a USA TODAY review of lobbying reports shows.
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New York-sized ice shelf collapses off Antarctica
An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said today.
"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.
Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km of ice - bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York - has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.
She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the UN Climate Panel to global warming.
The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula.
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Satellite Imagery Shows Fragile Wilkins Ice Shelf Destabilized
ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2009) -- Satellite images show that icebergs have begun to calve from the northern front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf - indicating that the huge shelf has become unstable. This follows the collapse three weeks ago of the ice bridge that had previously linked the Antarctic mainland to Charcot Island.
The ice bridge, which effectively formed a barrier pinning back the northern ice front of the central Wilkins Ice Shelf, collapsed on 5 April removing about 330 sq km of ice. As a consequence of the collapse, the rifts, which had already featured along the northern ice front, widened and new cracks formed as the ice adjusted in the days that followed.
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Riding the Rails to Carbon Neutrality
Light rail on campus promises many advantages: quicker and cheaper transportation for students and staff; enhanced opportunities for evening and weekend classes; and increased access to employment and community social events for students. It also plays a role in reducing a school's overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The University of Denver's goals for reducing its overall energy consumption will involve improvements in HVAC and lighting systems as well as other building upgrades, but the school is also on a journey to reduce its emissions through more efficient travel. Although most University of Denver (DU) students live on or near campus--within a 20 minute walking distance--many go off campus for work and social activities. Two thousand staff and faculty also make the daily commute to campus.
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Fire Influences Global Warming More Than Previously Thought
ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2009) -- Fire's potent and pervasive effects on ecosystems and on many Earth processes, including climate change, have been underestimated, according to a new report.
"We've estimated that deforestation due to burning by humans is contributing about one-fifth of the human-caused greenhouse effect -- and that percentage could become larger," said co-author Thomas W. Swetnam of The University of Arizona in Tucson.
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Levees Cannot Fully Eliminate Risk Of Flooding To New Orleans, Report Says
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2009) -- Levees and floodwalls surrounding New Orleans -- no matter how large or sturdy -- cannot provide absolute protection against overtopping or failure in extreme events, says a new report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. The voluntary relocation of people and neighborhoods from areas that are vulnerable to flooding should be considered as a viable public policy option, the report says. If relocation is not feasible, an alternative would be to elevate the first floor of buildings to at least the 100-year flood level.
The report is the fifth and final one to provide recommendations to the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET), formed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to examine why New Orleans' hurricane-protection system failed during Hurricane Katrina and how it can be strengthened. The previous four reports by the NAE and Research Council examined various draft volumes of the IPET. This report reviews the 7,500-page IPET draft final report, reflects upon the lessons learned from Katrina, and offers advice for how to improve the hurricane-protection system in the New Orleans area.
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Open your wallet: Electric rates already moving higher to finance new nuclear power
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A ghost from the nuclear industry's early years has reappeared.
It is not public apprehension about safety or disposal issues this time, but the staggering cost of building nuclear reactors.
A wave of new reactors now in the works is intended to solve at least part of the nation's energy problems as it attempts to shift away from fossil fuels. But cost is likely to plague every upcoming nuclear project.
This month in Missouri the first of the next generation reactors was put on hold because of the $6 billion price tag.
The cost of labor, raw materials and technology have all grown exorbitantly. Because much of the new technology and building techniques are untested in the U.S., construction will be lengthier, more expensive and riskier, according to a report issued by Standard & Poor's.
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Oceans becoming acidic 'at fastest rate for 65 million years'
The oceans are becoming more acidic at a faster rate than for 65 million years as a result of climate change, a report warns.
The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) report card said the increasing acidity of the oceans caused by carbon dioxide could affect the climate further and hit wildlife.
The "ecosystem linkages" report, which looked at the links between different impacts of climate change, also said there had been large reductions in Arctic sea ice and declines in some seabirds as a result of changes to the seas around the UK.
It warned climate change could increase the likelihood of non-native species thriving in the UK's marine environment, while coastal communities faced threats such as flooding and opportunities including tourism in the future.
The different impacts of a changing climate on our seas are magnified because of their links to one another, the report said, and a "bigger picture" approach is needed to address the problems.
The oceans are a huge store of carbon dioxide, which dissolves in the water, and therefore play a significant role in maintaining stability in the climate.
The absorption of more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a result of higher emissions makes the seas more acidic, and in the last 200 years ocean acidity has increased by 30%.
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Budget strengthens case for greener company cars
Lower-emission vehicles vital to reduced fleet costs, say industry experts
Changes to the company car tax regime announced in last week's Budget will further strengthen the financial case for switching to lower-emission vehicles, according to industry experts.
Under the new rules, the vehicle emission threshold for determining company car tax rates is to be tightened by five grams per kilometre (g/km) from April 2011, ensuring that the basic threshold for the lower 15 per cent company car tax band will be reduced from 130g/km to 125g/km of CO2.
Chancellor Alistair Darling also said that the company car tax system will be overhauled from 2012/13 in an attempt to incentivise firms to use only the greenest vehicles available in their fleets.
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Plans for high-speed Vegas to Victorville train line unveiled
A high-speed rail alternative to the oft-discussed magnetic levitation train to Southern California would be privately funded, create up to 3,000 jobs during construction and prompt the displacement of some desert tortoises, representatives of the Federal Railroad Administration and an environmental consultant told a crowd of about 100 people Tuesday evening.
The alternative, called DesertXpress, would connect Las Vegas to Victorville - not Anaheim, as the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission proposes for its fledgling maglev project. DesertXpress would operate at a speed of 150 mph - half that of maglev. A one-way ticket would cost about $55.
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