Health and Oil Articles
Hope You Like Beets, Because The Bee Crisis Could Soon Be Hitting the U.S. Food Supply
The effects of colony collapse disorder have been masked by imported bees, but a perfect storm is brewing, and it will leave no grocery store unscathed.
Recently we've explored several seemingly unrelated subjects.
* For the last several years, 30% or more of the commercial honey bee colonies in the U.S. have perished each winter due to starvation, disease and pesticides.
* During the summer, that many and more perish for the same reasons, but they are partially replaced by beekeepers by dividing their remaining colonies... but colonies are vanishing so fast that beekeepers can't keep up.
* We have to import thousands of Australian honey bee colonies each spring because the the U.S. can't produce enough bees to replace those we lose each winter, but even with imports, we still aren't staying even.
* The USDA thinks there might be problems with Australian bees and, finally, it is investigating. But USDA keeps changing the importation rules, so it seems that no matter what, Australian bees can keep coming.
* Somebody in Congress is finally upset about contaminated, cheap, illegal Chinese honey being smuggled, sneaked into this country, putting U.S. beekeepers out of business, and feeding you something you weren't expecting in your Honey Nut Cheerios.
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ANALYSIS-Toxic fish could help Obama hit 2020 climate goal
WASHINGTON, July 26 (Reuters) - A proposed rule on mercury, a pollutant bad for fish and the people who eat too many of them, could help the Obama administration get near its short-term climate goal -- even if Congress fails this year or next to pass a bill tackling greenhouse gases directly.
Senate Democrats crafting an energy bill have abandoned until September, and probably through the rest of the year, debate on climate measures like carbon caps on power plants and mandates for utilities to produce more power from renewable sources like wind and solar.
But while many people concerned about climate control have been focusing on the Senate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under its Administrator Lisa Jackson, has been quietly preparing to crack down on coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel, like never before.
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B.C.'s shellfish industry can't aid oil spill recovery
West Coast oyster farmers are fielding calls from farmers on the Gulf of Mexico as the work begins to replace the shellfish breeding beds damaged by the massive oil spill.
But while shellfish farmers in the Pacific Northwest are anxious to help, they say they have little to offer.
Climate change has wreaked havoc on seed oyster hatcheries on the west coast, leaving no extra capacity to send to the Gulf shellfish farmers who are looking at totally rebuilding their stock following the explosion April 20 of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Though no one knows for sure how much oil has leaked it is estimated to be about 39 million U.S. gallons.
"Our company, and I know others as well, have received calls," said Bill Dewey of Washington-based Taylor Shellfish farms, the largest producer in the Pacific Northwest and owner of Fanny Bay Oysters, near Buckley Bay just north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
"Unfortunately for us we don't really have the supply to respond to the increased demand.
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Threatening Ocean Life from the Inside Out ( Preview )
Carbon dioxide emissions are making the oceans more acidic, imperiling the growth and reproduction of species from plankton to squid
"Slow sperm ... now that's a problem," said Jonathan Havenhand, his British accent compounding the gravity of the message. "That means fewer fertilized eggs, fewer babies and smaller populations." We were sharing a hilly cab ride along the glistening northern coast of Spain to attend an international symposium about the effects of climate change and excess atmospheric carbon dioxide on the world's oceans. As researchers, we were concerned about the underappreciated effects of changing ocean chemistry on the cells, tissues and organs of marine species. In laboratory experiments at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, Havenhand had demonstrated that such changes could seriously impede the most fundamental strategy of survival: sex.
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Bug Outbreaks Mostly Not Due to Warming
From a ship overrun with spiders to bedbug infestations at major clothing stores, is this the time of plagues?
Recent headlines have reported bedbugs in Manhattan outlets of Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie and Fitch, a boat from Guam that was turned away from port because it was swarming with thousands of non-native spiders, and a bumper year for ants in the nation's capitol.
Do these infestations of crawlies have any connection, like the super-warm weather this season or the long-term warming of our climate?
Not much, say experts, although climate is driving certain insect population changes.
One of the three recently reported "plagues" -- D.C.'s particularly pesky ants this summer -- may be caused by weather. An early warm spring followed by cooler weather allowed plants to thrive, said University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp, creating ideal conditions for aphids and other small insects that ants feed on to boom. This in turn allowed the ants to multiply beyond their usual numbers, creating a nuisance in many people's kitchens.
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Urban Air Pollutants Can Damage IQs before Baby's First Breath
A study in Krakow, Poland, corroborates New York City findings that link children's lower IQ scores with mothers' exposure to compounds created by burning fossil fuels
In a sweltering summer in New York City back in 1999, Yolanda Baldwin was eight months pregnant with her first child. She lived near a gas station and across the street from an intersection choked with exhaust-spewing cars and buses. Sometimes the air was so thick with pollution that she could see it, breathe it, smell it, even taste it. And she often wondered what it might be doing to her unborn child.
Now Baldwin and several hundred other mothers whose sons and daughters have been monitored for a decade have an answer: Before children even take their first breath, common air pollutants breathed by their mothers during pregnancy may reduce their intelligence.
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Millions wasted on shipping food aid
JOHANNESBURG, 13 July 2010 (IRIN) - US taxpayers spend about US$140 million every year on non-emergency food aid in Africa, and roughly the same amount to ship food aid to global destinations on US vessels; money that could have been used to feed more people says a new study by researchers at Cornell University in the US.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has accounted for more than half of the world's food aid every year for decades, but has been "the last and slowest donor to reform its food aid policies", noted Christopher Barrett, a leading food aid expert, and his colleagues, Elizabeth Bageant and Erin Lentz.
Their study, Food Aid and Agricultural Cargo Preference, has come up with the numbers to back a long-standing call for reforms, and goes a step further in showing that the policy designed to "nurture" or subsidise the US shipping industry "under the guise of humanitarian assistance" is not doing either effectively.
Most donors have moved towards cash transfers or vouchers to buy food, instead of providing food as aid, but the paper points out that most countries only had agribusiness and some NGO interests to contend with while reforming their food aid policy.
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Plankton, base of ocean food web, in big decline
WASHINGTON - Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world's oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world's oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.
And they are declining sharply.
Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The likely cause is global warming, which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say.
The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist.
"It's concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean," said Dalhousie University biology professor Boris Worm, a study co-author. "It's almost like a recession ... that has been going on for decades."
Half a million datapoints dating to 1899 show that plant plankton levels in nearly all of the world's oceans started to drop in the 1950s. The biggest changes are in the Arctic, southern and equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans. Only the Indian Ocean is not showing a decline. The study's authors said it's too early to say that plant plankton is on the verge of vanishing.
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Susan Shaw: The oil spill's toxic trade-off
Break down the oil slick, keep it off the shores: that's grounds for pumping toxic dispersant into the Gulf, say clean-up overseers. Susan Shaw shows evidence it's sparing some beaches only at devastating cost to the health of the deep sea.
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Clean Your Plate, Save Energy
Conservation: The U.S. wastes as much energy in tossed-out food as Sweden consumes in a year
When you look to conserve energy around your house, you might insulate drafty windows or replace incandescent light bulbs. But a new study suggests that you should focus on your kitchen's trash can.
Researchers now estimate that the U.S. throws away about 2000 trillion Btu of energy each year as food waste-a figure equivalent to Sweden's annual energy consumption (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es100310d).
This year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that food production accounted for 15.7% of the nation's total energy demand. But the last time the USDA calculated how much food people throw away was 15 years ago. In that 1995 study, the department reported that 27% of food produced in the U.S. went to waste.
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Exxon Mobil sees 91% jump in profit
Exxon Mobil Corp.'s profit rose 91 percent in the second quarter as the economy sputtered toward recovery.
The Irving oil giant enjoyed higher crude oil and natural gas prices. But Exxon sold less diesel, jet fuel and gasoline, indicating consumers are doing less shopping, traveling and driving to work.
"We're certainly seeing some recovery in demand in the U.S., not as strong as Asia," said David Rosenthal, Exxon's vice president of investor relations.
"But it's really hard to tell, given the level of activity and the level of economic progress," he said. "I think we need a couple more quarters to go before we can answer that question affirmatively."
Exxon's net profit rose to $7.56 billion for the second quarter, or $1.61 a share, from $3.95 billion, or 81 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 24 percent to $92.49 billion.
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Be wary of "Mission Accomplished" claims for BP disaster clean up
Back in early May, I interviewed experts on dispersants and oil spill clean up and wrote "Out of Sight: BP's dispersants are toxic - but not as toxic as dispersed oil."
Chemically dispersing oil spills "solves the political problem of visible oil but not the environmental problem," Robert Brulle, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran and an affiliate professor of public health at Drexel University, told me. These dispersants "do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the environment," as a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report on the subject put it. Nobody has any idea what will be the impact of massive exposure to these toxic chemicals on organisms that live on the bottom or feed off the bottom of the ocean.
In short: out of sight, out of mind. But not out of the body of marine life.
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Michigan oil spill harms wildlife, forces residents to evacuate
On Monday, a disastrous leak in one of the world's largest pipeline systems gushed over 1 million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River, located in southwest Michigan. Think Progress has the story in this cross-post.
Already, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has declared the area a disaster zone, quickly activating State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) to ensure all state resources are devoted to oil spill response. "From my perspective, the response has been anemic," Granholm said. Spill workers and volunteers have been hard at work, cleaning the horrifyingly oily water.
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Mainstream Media Helps BP Pretend There's No Oil
WASHINGTON (AFP) - With BP's broken well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone's lips is: where is all the oil?"
NEW ORLEANS (Mother Jones) - I don't know who the fuck these everyones are, but I'm happy to help out them, and ABC, and this AFP reporter writing that due to BP's stunningly successful skimming and burning efforts, "the real difficulty now is finding any oil to clean up."
I sent one text message to Bloomberg's Lizzie O'Leary, who's standing on Grand Isle, Louisiana, right now, asking how the beach looks. "Lower part past the barrier untouched with globs of oil that washed up last night," she said. By "untouched," she means by cleanup crews, and that "barrier" she's talking about is the one the press isn't allowed past. I sent another text to Drew Wheelan, who's also in Southwestern Louisiana, doing bird surveys for the American Birding Association, asking him how big the biggest tar mat on Grand Terre-the scene of those now famous horrifying oiled-bird photos-is. "20 feet by 15," he said. "But bigger ones submerged slightly."
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"Disasters are Just a Normal Part of Doing Business for These Oil Companies"
This week alone a pipeline in Michigan dumped up to 1 million gallons of oil into a river and a tugboat hit a wellhead in a Louisiana marsh causing a 100-foot geyser of oil and gas to erupt-and this, of course, on top of BP's massive spill. Due to the Gulf disaster, oil catastrophes are getting some more ink now, but this obscures the fact that minor (and sometimes major) disasters go unnoticed in the US all the time.
A new report, released today by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), details a number of these accidents over the past years. While the Deepwater Horizon disaster has surpassed previous spills to become the worst in US history, thousands of smaller spills, explosions at oil drilling or refining facilities, fires, and leaks have claimed dozens of lives and wreaked havoc on the environment in the past decade alone alone. Most of these accidents have never made national headlines, but serve as a reminder that oil and gas is a dirty (and deadly) business.
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