January 26, 2012

Source: Atlantic Wire

Earlier this week, a story circulated about a drone hobbyist whose photos of a Dallas-area meat-packing plant dumping blood into a river got the feds to investigate the plant. Environmentalism seems to be a perfect use for the new breed of cheap drones, something activists are just now starting to figure out. Last month, Sea Shepherd activists used a drone to track and photograph a Japanese whaling fleet. But compared to their counterparts’ organizing protests and reporting news, environmental campaigners have been relatively slow to adopt drone technology. They shouldn’t be.

With things like the Drone Journalism Lab and the occucopter, simply and easily seeing and filming activities on the ground from above, out of reach of the police or other grounded obstructions, is easier than ever. For environmentalists, these drones can do double duty as environmental monitors as well as camera platforms.

The story from Dallas is a great example of why drones are so efficient at spotting environmental problems: Using a $75 airframe fitted with a point-and-shoot camera, the drone operator shot pictures of discoloration in the water, which he could show to regulators. From what he wrote to the drone news site sUAS News, he wasn’t necessarily even looking for evidence of pollution, but when he saw it, he had instant evidence. Had he been drone-free, he’d have had to somehow get a water sample or some other proof, which would require getting to the edge of the river close enough to the plant. Environmentalists tend to get busted for trespassing when they try to collect evidence from suspicious sites, so being able to snap photos from a distance gives them a huge advantage.

The Sea Shepherd drone illustrated how a relatively cheap aircraft could be used to survey a huge area in order to find whalers. The Sea Shepherd, for those who’ve never seen Whale Wars, tries to harass and get in the way of Japanese “factory ships” that still do an annual whale hunt. Their whole direct-action campaign is a big cat-and-mouse game, and they’re often stymied because the whalers follow them around and give away their position. But this past season they used a donated, $16,000 drone known as the Osprey, which has a 190-mile range and streams high-definition video. This particular model’s expensive, though nowhere near the $25 million Israeli Heron drones Brazil bought in November to monitor illegal logging. With the ability to see over hundreds of square miles, environmentalists can use drones to take in more of their environment than they ever could from the ground, for a lot less money than a manned aircraft.

Looking forward, it’s easy to imagine climate activists using drones to monitor air quality. NASA already does so on a pretty sophisticated level, using military surplus Global Hawks to model climate patterns. And the EPA uses drones to take air quality measures. The same way sophisticated camera-carrying drones have migrated from the military to the civilian world over the last couple years, so will climate-measuring aircraft. In fact, it already has. Mundus Air Drone already makes a vertical takeoff drone that it can fit with air-quality sensors. Last year, farmers in Oregon started experimenting with sensor-packed drones for monitoring farms.

Given the ease with drones can be put to work on environmental projects, and the constantly improving technology, it’s clear our two recent examples of drone environmental activism are among the first in what will soon be a crowded field.

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January 15, 2012

Source: Montreal Gazette

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, Canadian health officials assured a nervous public that virtually no radioactive fallout had drifted to Canada.

But last March, a Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine (an isotope released by the nuclear accident) in rainwater, the data shows.

The level easily exceeded the Canadian guideline of six becquerels of iodine per litre for drinking water, acknowledged Eric Pellerin, chief of Health Canada’s radiation-surveillance division.

“It’s above the recommended level (for drinking water),” he said in an interview. “At any time you sample it, it should not exceed the guideline.”

Canadian authorities didn’t disclose the high radiation reading at the time.

In contrast, the state of Virginia issued a don’t-drink-rainwater advisory in late March after iodine levels in rain in a nearby city spiked to 3.4 becquerels per litre on a single day. That was less than half of the level seen in Calgary during the entire month of March.

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December 20, 2011

Source: Market Watch

PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count.

An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST at http://www.radiation.org . Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores. Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of radiation in air, water, and milk hundreds of times above normal across the U.S. The highest detected levels of Iodine-131 in precipitation in the U.S. were as follows (normal is about 2 picocuries I-131 per liter of water): Boise, ID (390); Kansas City (200); Salt Lake City (190); Jacksonville, FL (150); Olympia, WA (125); and Boston, MA (92). Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, said: “This study of Fukushima health hazards is the first to be published in a scientific journal. It raises concerns, and strongly suggests that health studies continue, to understand the true impact of Fukushima in Japan and around the world. Findings are important to the current debate of whether to build new reactors, and how long to keep aging ones in operation.”Mangano is executive director, Radiation and Public Health Project, and the author of 27 peer-reviewed medical journal articles and letters. Internist and toxicologist Janette Sherman, MD, said: “Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here may be as high as 18,000, with influenza and pneumonia, which were up five-fold in the period in question as a cause of death. Deaths are seen across all ages, but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults.”Dr. Sherman is an adjunct professor, Western Michigan University, and contributing editor of “Chernobyl – Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” published by the NY Academy of Sciences in 2009, and author of “Chemical Exposure and Disease and Life’s Delicate Balance – Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer.”The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues weekly reports on numbers of deaths for 122 U.S. cities with a population over 100,000, or about 25-30 percent of the U.S. In the 14 weeks after Fukushima fallout arrived in the U.S. (March 20 to June 25), deaths reported to the CDC rose 4.46 percent from the same period in 2010, compared to just 2.34 percent in the 14 weeks prior. Estimated excess deaths during this period for the entire U.S. are about 14,000.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A streaming audio replay of a related news event will be available on the Web at http://www.radiation.org as of 4 p.m. EST/2100 GMT on December 19, 2011. Embargoed copies of the medical journal article are available by contacting Ailis Aaron Wolf, (703) 276-3265 or aawolf@hastingsgroup.com.

SOURCE Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman, International Journal of Health Services

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Japan: Scientists Call for Dumping Radioactive Soil Into Sea

December 5th, 2011

Via: Asahi:

Scientists have proposed dumping soil contaminated by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the deep sea, an idea certain to meet opposition both at home and abroad.

A group led by Isao Tanihata, a professor at Osaka University’s Research Center for Nuclear Physics, and Kozi Nakai, a former professor at the Tokyo University of Science, said the best way to get rid of the radioactive soil is to place it in noncorrosive, pressure-tight vessels and dumping them at least 2,000 meters deep near Japan.

“The sea, away from all residents, would pose no problem,” Tanihata told about 30 researchers at a study meeting at Osaka University on Dec. 3.

The participants, including nuclear physicists and researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, did not object to the proposal from a scientific point of view.

But former education minister Akito Arima, who was also present, said, “The sea is common property of all humankind, and the key is whether fishermen and the general public will support the proposal.”

Tanihata and Nakai, who have been involved in compiling the science ministry’s soil contamination map, drafted the proposal as the government faces difficulties finding a final disposal site for soil contaminated with radioactive materials from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The group plans to submit a formal proposal to the government.

But it will be difficult to realize the project partly because dumping contaminated soil into the sea could constitute a violation of the London Convention, designed to prevent marine pollution.

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November 12th, 2011

Via: ABC News:

The hunt is on for the source of low level radiation detected in the atmosphere “across Europe” over the past weeks, nuclear officials said today.

Trace amounts of iodine-131, a type of radiation created during the operation of nuclear reactors or in the detonation of a nuclear weapon, were detected as early as three weeks ago by Austrian authorities and then two weeks ago by the Czech Republic’s State Office for Nuclear Safety. Today the International Atomic Energy Agency released a statement revealing similar detections had been made “in other locations across Europe.”

The IAEA said the current levels of iodine-131 are far too low to warrant a public health risk, but the agency still does not know the origin of the apparent leak and an official with the agency would not say where else it has been detected. Considering iodine-131 has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days, continued detection means the leak occurred over a period of several days at least and is possibly ongoing.

The IAEA said it does not believe the radiation was left over from the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in March and the Czech Republic’s State Office for Nuclear Safety said it was unlikely to have been caused by an incident at any nuclear plant’s core. A meltdown there, the Czech agency said, would have released several other radioactive isotopes in addition to iodine-131.

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November 11, 2011

Source: Washington’s Blog

Japanese Debris to Hit Western U.S. and Canada

I noted in June that debris from carried out to sea in the Japanese tsunami would hit the Western U.S. and Canada within a year or so, and that nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen urged us to demand testing of radioactivity from the American government.

It turns out that scientists underestimated the speed with which the debris would reach the Western coast of North America.

As Canada’s National Post reports today:

The largest items swept out to sea following the Japanese tsunami in March could arrive on the B.C. coastline within days, oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer predicted on Wednesday.

The main part of the 20-million-tonne debris field, equivalent in size to the state of California, isn’t expected until about 2014, but houses, fishboats and even small freighters could already be close to Canadian shores, Mr. Ebbesmeyer said.

***

“We just finished running a simulation with a drifter, a buoy that got lost in the area of the tsunami, and we find that the first of the debris would be here now,” Mr. Ebbesmeyer said.

Beachcombers along the west coast of B.C. should be on the lookout and report any unusual finds, he said.

Mr. Ebbesmeyer is a Seattle-based oceanographer, educated at the University of Washington, who tracks flotsam using computer models. He has consulted for multinational firms, working on projects such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

***

The Japanese have immense respect for belongings such as fishing boats, said Mr. Ebbesmeyer, predicting an influx of Japanese tourists coming to B.C. to see the washed-up debris.

“When people find something on the beach, they are literally putting their hands on something that a family wants to know about,” he said.

And Senator Maria Cantwell has urged lawmakers to develop plans to prevent damage from the debris. As the Olympian writes in an op-ed today:

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell is absolutely right when she says the federal government must not wait until an estimated 20 million tons of floating tsunami debris from Japan begins arriving on U.S. shorelines.

Officials say the 2,000-mile-long, 1,000-mile-wide debris field from the March 11 tsunami in Japan is expected to reach beaches in Hawaii next winter and hit the Washington coast starting in late 2013.

While there is little threat that the debris – which includes everything from televisions and refrigerators to boats and tons of wood and plastic – will be radioactive, the garbage poses a huge environmental threat.

***

Putting a plan in place to minimize the environmental damage makes good sense.

Cantwell is correct when she says the United States must prepare for whatever crosses the vast Pacific Ocean. She recently inserted an amendment into a Senate bill that instructs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to come up with a contingency plan for what could be the biggest onslaught of marine garbage ever to hit North America.

*** 

As Cantwell noted in her speech before the Commerce Committee, “After the tragic tsunami that struck Japan, whole communities were swept out to sea in an unwieldy mass of toxic debris. This field is about five times the state of Washington. We in the Washington economy depend on our waterways for a great deal of our commerce. We have everybody from workers at restaurants to tourist visitors that are all going to be impacted by this. We can’t wait until all of this tsunami trash washes ashore. We need to have an aggressive plan on how we’re going to deal with it.”

***

“We are trying to get across our message that it is coming and it’s about time to start planning some action,” [Jan Hafner, a scientific computer programmer and the principal researcher on the tsunami debris project] said.

Washington’s Sen. Cantwell took up the cause and is right in her attempt to force the federal government to begin collecting data in order to put a plan in place to handle the trash when it begins hitting U.S. shorelines. Left unchecked, the debris could threaten multimillion-dollar fishing, shipping and recreational industries 5,000 miles from Japan.

There’s too much at stake to ignore the threats of the Japan tsunami debris. The feds must adopt a plan then devote the necessary resources to ease the economic and environmental impacts of the 20 million tons of trash headed our way.

Note: While I agree with U.S. and Canadian officials who say that most the debris will not be radioactive. However, some will be … and so both governments should do thorough ongoing testing.

As the Olympian notes, this is not a solid debris mat. Rather, the debris will be spread out over a huge area.

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October 22, 2011

Source: BBC

BP has won approval to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, 18 months after a well blowout killed 11 workers and caused an environmental disaster.

Regulators approved plans for drilling to depths of up to 6,000ft about 200 miles off the coast of New Orleans.

US officials said in a statement: “Our review of BP’s plan included verification of BP’s compliance with the heightened standards.”

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October 11th, 2011

Via: Wall Street Journal:

Trace amounts of plutonium were found as far as 28 miles from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant, the first time that the dangerous element released from the accident was found outside of the immediate area of the plant.

The science ministry report issued Friday comes just as the government lifted one of its evacuation advisories, underscoring the difficulty of restoring normalcy and assuring the safety of residents around the crippled plant.

The government also reported a rare detection of strontium, another highly dangerous element, far from the crippled reactor, in one spot as far away as 50 miles. Most of the radioactive material discovered to date in the communities surrounding Fukushima Daiichi has been cesium or iodine.

The report said that the radiation from plutonium and strontium was “extremely low” compared to the high concentration of cesium, advising that the government maintain its focus on measuring and clearing the areas of cesium.

Toshiso Kosako, a Tokyo University expert on radiation said in an interview that the level of plutonium found was “miniscule and poses no health risk.”

Still, the latest discovery is a potentially disturbing turn, as it shows that people relatively far from the plant could be exposed to more dangerous elements than had been previously disclosed.

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http://blackoilredblood.com/2011/09/is-this-a-literal-bp-cover-up/

The tar balls that washed up all across the Gulf Coast post Hurricane Lee are confirmed matches for the Louisiana crude that spewed from the ocean floor after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. What’s more, a study by Auburn University revealed this week that the the oil has barely degraded over the course of the last year. Instead of cleaning it up, however, some counties are opting to simply bury the evidence. Literally. Charles Taylor of Bay Saint Louis Beach, Mississippi has been documenting an oil slick which washed up on the beach in the aftermath of Hurricane Lee. A sharp petroleum smell and the presence of an obvious rainbow sheen are clear indicators that the substance on the beach is actually oil.

Have a look: This is Clearly Oil

And here is a wide shot of the same oil slick:

Photograph by Charles Taylor

Cover-Up as Clean-Up

Rather than actually clean the substance from the beach, Hancock County has instead chosen to just cover it over with sand. What’s more, the county refuses to admit the substance is actually oil, claiming instead that it’s simply an algal bloom. See the cover-up in action here:

How to Tell the Difference Between an Oil Slick and an Algal Bloom

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “If you see a thin film that is rainbow-colored, you’re looking at oil.” Other than that, “the most reliable difference is odor. Oil slicks nearly always have a characteristic petroleum smell. Algal blooms may have a strong smell as well, but the smell is distinctly different from that of petroleum.”

Why would Hancock County Insist the Oily Substance is Only Algae?

Despite the obvious rainbow sheen visible in Taylor’s video, Hancock County insists the oily substance is simply algae. Tayor is not so sure and has collected samples for independent testing. Stay tuned to this blog for the results. In the meantime, let’s all remember who is running the show in Hancock County: Photograph by Charles Taylor Diane Castle is the author of Black Oil, Red Blood, a southern legal thriller.

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September 22, 2011

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September 16, 2011

Source: Business And Media Institute

The Washington Post might be a day late and $38 billion short, but it’s being honest about Barack Obama’s failed green jobs program. According to the Post, the “$38.6 billion loan guarantee program” has created just “3,545 new, permanent jobs” “after giving out almost half the allocated amount.”

For those not doing the math at home, that means more than $5 million per job.

The Post outlined Obama administration promises to “create or save 65,000 jobs” in the green jobs category. What it left out was that, while campaigning, Obama promised to create 5 million “green” jobs. He’s about 4,996,455 short.

The green jobs program has come under scrutiny following “the collapse of Solyndra, a solar-panel maker whose closure could leave taxpayers on the hook for as much as $527 million.”

Full article here

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September 14, 2011

Source: Daily Bail

Best friends Obama and Immelt applaud as GE screws taxpayers once again.

Source – Gateway Pundit

GE was awarded 44 contracts totaling over $46,000,000 and 44 grants totaling more than$79,000,000 from the Obama-Pelosi $757 billion dollar stimulus package. Millions of dollars in stimulus funds were used by GE in green energy projects.

Today GE announced that it was going to gut its offshore wind-power plans.

Forbes reported:

General Electric, the U.S.-based industrial giant and leading manufacturer of wind-power turbines, is scaling back efforts to expand its presence in the offshore wind power market.

The rationale: there is no meaningful offshore wind market to speak of – at least not yet.  Given slower-than-expected industry growth, the offshore market may not mature as rapidly as many wind boosters once believed.  In 2009, GE moved into the offshore market by acquiring Norway’s ScanWind, a developer of direct-drive turbines, based in the city of Trondheim.

GE is considering laying off about 40 employees in Norway as it scales-back its offshore operations there, according to reports in Recharge. The company has also suspended plans to construct a manufacturing facility in the United Kingdom indefinitely.

Immelt also said the stimulus would work way back in April 2009.

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama’s Economic Advisory Panel, was invited to sit with the First Lady during the president’s speech to Congress this past week. He’s been a strong supporter of the president since he took over the White House and his companies have received plenty of government funds as well.

First lady Michelle Obama (4th L) and Vice President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, (2nd R) clap from the front row of the First Lady’s Box before the start of President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington September 8, 2011. Others in the box are: (top row 3rd L- 2nd R) General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault, AOL co-founder Steve Case, Permac Industries CEO Darlene Miller and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and (front row L-R) Philip Maung, Gracey Ibarra, Kelcie Fisher,Obama, Joseph Kidd, Biden and Marlena Clark. (REUTERS/Jim Bourg)

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FEMA and Your ‘Federal Family’

September 1st, 2011

Via: Palm Beach Post:

Don’t think of it as the federal government but as your “federal family.”

In a Category 4 torrent of official communications during the approach and aftermath of Hurricane Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has repeatedly used the phrase “federal family” when describing the Obama administration’s response to the storm.

The Obama administration didn’t invent the phrase but has taken it to new heights.

“Under the direction of President Obama and Secretary Janet Napolitano, the entire federal family is leaning forward to support our state, tribal and territorial partners along the East Coast,” a FEMA news release declared Friday as Irene churned toward landfall.

The G-word — “government” — has been nearly banished, with FEMA instead referring to federal, state and local “partners” as well as “offices” and “personnel.”

“’Government’ is such a dirty word right now,” says Florida State University communication professor Davis Houck. “Part of what the federal government does and any elected official does is change the terms of the language game into terms that are favorable to them.”

“Family” can evoke favorable thoughts of motherhood and security. But it can also conjure images of Big Brother and organized crime.

The phrase “federal family” has been used in connection with FEMA at least as far back as 1999.

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August 29, 2011

Source: Huffington Post

NEW YORK — The approach of Hurricane Irene prompted an extraordinary response from New York City officials: they shut down the city’s sprawling public transportation network, set up 81 emergency shelters and ordered the first-ever mandatory evacuation of thousands of people from their homes to avoid potentially devastating flood waters.

“Time is running out,” Bloomberg told nearly 370,000 residents of low-lying areas early on Saturday. “If you haven’t left you should leave now. Not later this evening, not this afternoon, immediately.”

In the end, many of those in evacuation zones chose to stay put — and faced few consequences for doing so. By the time Irene came ashore in New York on Sunday morning, it had been downgraded from a category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm, and while it lashed the city with high winds and heavy rains, widespread inundation of low-lying coastal areas did not occur.

Kinga Kusek, 33, rode out the storm in her home just a few blocks from Brighton Beach in southern Brooklyn. Less than two hours after the brunt of the storm had passed, she was out on the beach with dozens of others, several of whom were already wading into the ocean.

“I was scared. I was taking it seriously,” Kusek said. “In the end it was nothing.”

Read Full Article Here…

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