Climate-change. Our future. Our fears, and our hopes...

[skyward]

Some Fukushima updates...

Over 700 Fukushima waste bags swept away by torrential floods

19th September 2015
Extensive and destructive floods across eastern Japan have swept more than 700 bags containing Fukushima-contaminated soil and grass into Japan’s rivers, with many still unaccounted for and some spilling their radioactive content into the water system.
Authorities in the small city of Nikko in Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture, some 175 km away from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, have said that at least 334 bags containing radioactive soil have been swept into a tributary of the Kinugawa river, The Asahi Shimbun reports.

Anon URL

MORE RADIOACTIVE WATER FLOWS INTO PACIFIC OCEAN AFTER DRAINAGE CANAL OVERFLOWS AT FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR PLANT

30th July 2015
Severe Tropical Storm Nangka brought strong winds and heavy rains as it made landfall over western Japan on July 16, 2015. Approximately 360,000 people in nearby towns were advised to evacuate and seek shelter. To make matters worse, the heavy rain from the tropical storm caused a drainage channel at the Fukushima power plant to overflow with radioactive water and spill into the sea.

The Fukushima Daiichi power plant can’t get a break. It was struck by a tsunami in March 2011, which caused three nuclear reactors to melt and unleash hundreds of tons of radioactive material into the ocean. The radioactive water from the drainage channel contributes even more waste to the Pacific Ocean.

Water is constantly being pumped into the reactors in order to keep the melted fuel cool. The contaminated water has been leaking into both the ocean and groundwater for over four years.

Anon URL

 

[skyward]

BP reaches $18.7 billion settlement over deadly 2010 spill

2nd July 2015
BP Plc will pay up to $18.7 billion in penalties to the U.S. government and five states to resolve nearly all claims from its deadly Gulf of Mexico oil spill five years ago in the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history.

The agreement adds to the $43.8 billion that BP had previously set aside for criminal and civil penalties and cleanup costs. The company said its total pre-tax charge for the spill now stands at $53.8 billion.

Anon URL



And in relation to a separate oil spill you might not even have heard of...



2004 Gulf of Mexico oil spill could leak another 100 years

16th May 2015
An oil leak that occurred when an offshore platform toppled during Hurricane Ivan in 2004 has continued to spill oil into the Gulf of Mexico – and could keep leaking for another 100 years, according to doents obtained by The Associated Press.

Anon URL

Here is Matt Simmons on Bloomberg speaking about the 2010 spill:



Sadly,3 weeks later, his life ended. RIP.

He had spend years working tirelessly to raise awareness of environmental issues, renewable vs. non-renewable energy, and peak-oil.

 

[skyward]

Volkswagen Allegedly Openly Violated EPA Diesel Laws, Could Face Billions in Fines

On 2009 through 2015 Jetta, Beetle, Golf, and Audi A3 TDIs and 2014–2015 Passat TDI models, Volkswagen installed software that allows 10 to 40 times the allowable level of nitrogen oxide, a predominant exhaust gas from diesel engines. The EPA, after receiving a tip from transportation researchers at West Virginia University, found “a sophisticated software algorithm” referred to as a “defeat device” that let the vehicles exceed lawful NOx emissions levels on the road while blocking them when the car detected it was undergoing EPA emissions testing. The software uses steering angle, speed, engine run times, and atmospheric-pressure information that “precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure used for emission testing,” according to the EPA.

Anon URL

Shame on VW. Fines are not enough, arrests should be made, and stiff prison sentences handed down. Sadly I have a feeling that auto-execs are like banking execs -too powerful, too venerated, to incarcerate.

 

[gb2000ie]

Volkswagen Allegedly Openly Violated EPA Diesel Laws, Could Face Billions in Fines

On 2009 through 2015 Jetta, Beetle, Golf, and Audi A3 TDIs and 2014–2015 Passat TDI models, Volkswagen installed software that allows 10 to 40 times the allowable level of nitrogen oxide, a predominant exhaust gas from diesel engines. The EPA, after receiving a tip from transportation researchers at West Virginia University, found “a sophisticated software algorithm” referred to as a “defeat device” that let the vehicles exceed lawful NOx emissions levels on the road while blocking them when the car detected it was undergoing EPA emissions testing. The software uses steering angle, speed, engine run times, and atmospheric-pressure information that “precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure used for emission testing,” according to the EPA.

Anon URL

Shame on VW. Fines are not enough, arrests should be made, and stiff prison sentences handed down. Sadly I have a feeling that auto-execs are like banking execs -too powerful, too venerated, to incarcerate.

If those allegations prove to be true that's really shocking

B.

 

[skyward]

I wonder if this kind of thing can happen in the auto industry could similar things be happening in relation to nuclear power plants and big oil companies. Perhaps we don't know the half of how much pollution is being pumped into the environment. :thinking:

 

[gb2000ie]

Following on from another scandal (IMO) that came to light last month where VW knew their keys were insecure, and had been since 2012, when the researchers told them. Rather than fixing the problem, VW thought it would be better to just sue the researchers to try prevent them from publishing.

I don't see how anyone can have any faith in VW until and unless some very high up heads roll.

Seeing video of their American CEO say "we messed up" but not actually announcing any real actions was pathetic.

I once really respected VW, not anymore.

B.

 

[dargelos]

The published emission and economy figures of today's cars are impossibly good. Engine design has changed only in tiny details over the years while environmental performance has, in theory, seen miraculous improvements.
Compare the situation to that of a school trying to improve it's exam grades. Put enough pressure on the teachers and they'll find out the questions and teach strictly to the exam. The kids don't learn anything except how to pass exams but the school gets praised because it's percieved performance has improved.
All the car manafacturers know the exam questions in advance so they teach the cars how to pass the exam. No car owner in the world will ever be a carefull enough driver to obtain those results in everyday use. Is it cheating if everyone doses it? That is the $$$$$$$$$ question.
What is shocking is that a company with German technology, the best you can get, has done it in such an obvious way that it leaves a smoking gun. It hardly seems fair to make VW the fall guy when all manafacturers of conventional engines have to have tricks up their sleeves. The rest just have longer sleeves.

 

[skyward]

Fukushima reactor could have suffered total meltdown – report
Anon URL

 

[gb2000ie]

Fukushima reactor could have suffered total meltdown – report
Anon URL

Ugh - what a horrible situation.

Even in Japan - one of the most technically advanced nations on earth, Nuclear is not safe.

B.

 

[gb2000ie]

Also even aside from the risk it is by far not the great solution it was celebrated as.

Indeed!

Unless or until we find a real solution for what to do with the waste, it's every bit as short-sighted as burning all the fossil fuel out there, and leaves our kids with just as much of a problem.

The only form of energy that is not stealing our children's future is renewable, because by definition, it doesn't get exhausted!

B.

 

[dargelos]

If Japan, with it's high level of technical sophistication cannot make nuclear safe, do you think that China would be able to do a better job? A country where something is safe because the party says it's safe, no matter what the engineers may say. George Osborne has chosen China as the partner country that will build for him a new British reactor. No this is not a joke. The United Kingdom is going to have a large atomic device within it's borders which will be part owned by a potentialy hostile communist government.
Have we taken leave of our senses?. I think so.

 

[skyward]

Robert L. Hirsch is a former senior energy program adviser for Science Applications International Corporation and is a Senior Energy Advisor at MISI and a consultant in energy, technology, and management. His primary experience is in research, development, and commercial applications. He has managed technology programs in oil and natural gas exploration and petroleum refining, synthetic fuels, fusion, fission, renewables, defense technologies, chemical analysis, and basic research, for example the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor.

Previous management positions include Senior Energy Analyst, RAND... Manager of Exxon’s synthetic fuels research laboratory... Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration... Manager of Petroleum Exploratory Research at Exxon... Director of fusion research at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and ERDA.

In 2008, Hirsch stated that declines in world oil supply caused proportionate declines in world GDP. His suggested framework for mitigation planning included:
"(1) a Best Case where maximum world oil production is followed by a multi-year plateau before the onset of a monotonic decline rate of 2-5% per year; (2) A Middling Case, where world oil production reaches a maximum, after which it drops into a long-term, 2-5% monotonic annual decline; and finally (3) a Worst Case, where the sharp peak of the Middling Case is degraded by oil exporter withholding, leading to world oil shortages growing potentially more rapidly than 2-5% per year, creating the most dire world economic impacts."

Anon URL

 

[skyward]

Michael T. Klare is a Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies, whose department is located at Hampshire College, defense correspondent of The Nation magazine, and author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency (Metropolitan). Klare also teaches at Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Klare also serves on the boards of directors of Human Rights Watch, and the Arms Control Association.

Anon URL

 

[Otage]

For our future, you don't need to start driving Prius. The most fatal error is to continue consuming meat as much as we do. If you go vegetarian, it doesn't really matter if you have 5 SUV's. The amount of wheat and water that it takes to make one kilogram of meat is staggering... Just check out how much doest it take to produce one kilo of meat compared one kilo of for example beans. The effects of meat producing meat is more hazardous to climate change than traffic.

For industrial emission one can't have too much impact, but personal eating habbits are the way to go. I actually reacently realized, that meat isn't really all that good. It always need spices to make it eatable. Fruits never neet nothing to add And milk products contain caseine, which causes cancer, but because of cheese and milk products industries, this isn't videly regodnized broblem. Caseine is the most important milk protein, and ofcourse we all want much protein these days for our hot muscles. I don't know, but I know many vegan body builders, and they are doing just fine Compare the nutrition values of meat and lenses. They are not equal, but lenses have vitamins and other good stuff more.

Our food industries destroy our world, and causes hunger, drought etc. And make us fat and sick. China before industrialims didn't really have much heart diseases etc. They all came with the growing consumption of meat. We are no carnivores, we don't even have the teeth for that.

 

[W!nston]

:agree::agree::agree::agree::agree::agree::agree:

While I still eat a little meat it has lost it's appeal for me. I don't care for beef at all. Likewise with pork. I've eaten so much chicken I'm spitting out feathers. Fresh fish is okay but too expensive.

My diet consists of lentils, grains, fruits and I admit it... dairy and eggs. It would be hard to cut out all dairy and eggs but I could do it if I really wanted to.

Meat is murder as they say...

 

[skyward]

You are 100% on the right track Otage by emphasising the need to avoid wastefulness & that we need to seriously re-think modes of food production.

In relation to hybrid cars, I agree that it's not a panacea, but better than ignoring wastefulness in relation to transport altogether.

Some more practical suggestions...

-Upgrade the rail system and encourage use as much as possible.

-Walkable communities.

-Encourage bicycling as much as possible -lot's of scope to do that in cities.

-Locally producing food. Cut down as much as possible on the need to transport food great distances.

There is a lot to be done. Sadly, no one thing is a panacea. Even simple ideas can make a difference in the coming years...

 

[gb2000ie]

I remember as a kid there used to be ads on the TV encouraging responsible behaviour, and the catch-phrase has stuck with me:

"Reduce, Re-use, Recycle"

The three Rs were listed descending importance.

It's still a good message today, but you just don't see that kind of ad on TV any more.

B.

 

[skyward]

‘Strongest on record’: Hurricane Patricia barrels toward Mexico prompting evacuations

The strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere is making its way towards Mexico’s Pacific Coast, as hotels scramble to evacuate guests and locals stockpile supplies in preparation for the storm’s arrival.
Hurricane Patricia grew at an “incredible rate” on Friday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. It became a hurricane overnight, carrying maximum sustained winds of about 200 miles per hour (325 km per hour) as it moved north-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph).

“This is really, really, really strong,” WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told a UN briefing in Geneva on Friday, adding that “the winds are enough to get a plane in the air and keep it flying.”

Anon URL

Let's hope that enough preparations can be make, there is time to evacuate as many as possible, and that maybe the hurricane will somehow abate before it reaches the coast. :/

 

[skyward]

Huge ice flash flood sweeps across Saudi Arabia



Saudi Arabia has been hit by unprecedented ice flash floods, as seasonal low pressure brings huge downpours to Iraq and Iran as well. The shocking video shows chunks of ice the size of large ball bearings.

Extreme weather conditions have been lashing the country since October 28, as the low pressure area concentrated over the northern part of the Persian Gulf, according to climate scientist Dr Abd al-Aziz al-Rubaie...

Anon URL

 

[skyward]

Exxon's climate lie: 'No corporation has ever done anything this big or bad'
October 14, 2015

In the last three weeks, two separate teams of journalists — the Pulitzer-prize winning reporters at the website Inside Climate News and another crew composed of Los Angeles Times veterans and up-and-comers at the Columbia Journalism School — have begun publishing the results of a pair of independent investigations into ExxonMobil.

Though they draw on completely different archives, leaked doents, and interviews with ex-employees, they reach the same damning conclusion: Exxon knew all that there was to know about climate change decades ago, and instead of alerting the rest of us denied the science and obstructed the politics of global warming.

Anon URL