Hunters, fishers press for climate change bill

From terrapass.com:

Adam Stein | November 1, 2009

This isn’t exactly a new trend — I remember writing about it several years ago — but it seems to be picking up some steam:

More than 13,000 hunters and anglers from across the country joined a “virtual town hall” teleconference on Tuesday to hear a discussion of the impact of climate change on fish and wildlife populations, and to voice their support for federal action to limit carbon emissions.

Recently I whined about how environmentalists are a perennial whipping boy. Part of the issue, I think, is that most people view environmental issues as interest group politics. Where topics like employment or security are seen as matters of national importance, environmental issues — even transcendent ones like climate change — remain stuck in the green ghetto.

So I’m always a little bit heartened when I see these issues getting picked up in other venues. Evangelical Christians have likewise become increasingly vocal in their support for climate change legislation:

Remember the Christian Coalition of America?

Under the political operative Ralph Reed in the 1990s it was an electoral force to be reckoned with as it mobilized millions of conservative Christians to vote for mostly Republican Party candidates and causes.

It has since lost influence and political ground to other “religious right” groups such as the Family Research Council. But it remains a sizeable grassroots organization and is still unflinchingly conservative.

So it will no doubt surprise some to see that this week it has joined with the National Wildlife Federation – whose 4 million members and supporters includes 420,000 sportsmen and women – to run an ad urging the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that among other things addresses the pressing problem of climate change.

Good. This is how you know that progress is inevitable.

The Price of Inaction

From www.terrapass.com

Pete Davies | October 13, 2009

Clearing up after a flood costs money, wastes energy and reduces productivity. Just like climate change.

We’re in the middle of the first storm of the season on the West Coast. As I write this I’m looking at a pile of industrial hairdryers that are going to be used to deal with our soggy office: a couple of blocked drains on a patio at the top of the building caused a pretty severe flood in the early hours of the morning.

I’m not qualified to suggest (and don’t intend to imply) that this particular storm is any worse than usual. The reality is that if we didn’t get flooded today, it would happen in a month or two when the winter storms blow through.

As the Water Remediation company (it’s what you look for in the Yellow Pages when your floor is too wet for a mop) plugs in the various dryers and dehumidifiers I’m seeing the miniature version of climate change disaster-response unfolding in front of my desk.

• There’s a lot of money being spent. Thankfully it’s our landlord’s insurance that pays for the cleanup and repairs. In the big world it is taxpayers and society that do it.

• We’re using a lot of energy. This kit is going to do bad things to our energy bill. It doesn’t matter how many CFLs we’ve installed and how conservative we were with the A/C this year, three days with the dryers and dehumidifiers running will dwarf those savings.

• There’s a tremendous loss of productivity around the office. As a company we’re well adapted to people working remotely, so I suppose it could be much worse. But bailing out patios with recycling bins isn’t going to get us funding a carbon reduction project at a dairy farm any quicker is it?

Simple and concise then: more expense, more energy and huge loss of productivity.

And all avoidable, if there was a little money spent earlier. Reminds me of something… I wonder what that could be…

Compact Flourescents: A Debacle?

Article taken from http://www.terrapass.com/

Adam Stein | October 5, 2009

L Prize competition tries to sidestep early mistakes in quest for better light

Philips may claim the “L Prize,” a $10 million award from the Department of Energy for any light that can reproduce the color and intensity of a 60-watt bulb using only 1/6 the power. Further, the winning entry must last at least 25 times as long as a standard incandescent.

The L Prize was established, in part, to prevent a recurrence of the problems with CFLs:

The department considers the introduction of compact fluorescents, today’s alternative to standard bulbs, to have been a debacle.

At first, the department set no standards for compact fluorescent bulbs and inferior products flooded the market. Consumers rebelled against the bulbs’ shortcomings: the light output from compact fluorescent bulbs was cold and unpleasant, their life was much shorter than claimed, many were large and undimmable, they would not work in cold environments and they contained polluting mercury.

In another article, the Times notes that CFL sales are falling:

In a September 18 letter to C.F.L. industry stakeholders, Richard Karney, Energy Star products manager, said that national sales of the bulbs have declined 25 percent from their peak in 2007, with sales in some regions such as Vermont and parts of Massachusetts declining 35 to 50 percent…

Despite more than a decade of costly C.F.L. promotions — including giveaways, discounted prices and rebates — the bulbs have failed to capture the hearts (and sockets) of American consumers. Mr. Karney said that in regions where C.F.L. campaigns have been heaviest, 75 percent of screw-based sockets still contain incandescents. Nationally, about 90 percent of residential sockets are still occupied by incandescents, D.O.E. has reported.

I’m not sure the situation with CFLs is as bad as all that. 25% market share strikes me as pretty decent for a new product from a young industry still working out cost and quality issues. Consumers tend to be pretty conservative, particularly if they lack a strong motivation to switch. I wonder to what extent the slowdown in sales reflects the fact that a) CFLs don’t need to be replaced very often, and b) most early adopters have already switched over.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that much could have gone better with the introduction of the CFLs, and perhaps the L Prize will smooth the transition to the next phase of lighting technology. Philips is the first company to submit a contest entry, which now must undergo a year of testing to determine if it claims the prize.

Philip’s entry is a bulb-shaped LED, and the rub, as always, is cost. The company claims that in the long-term, they can get the cost down to $20 - $25 per bulb. This may not seem like much of a bargain, although the decreased power consumption and long lifetime of the bulbs should more than make up the difference.

Use of Lead-based Paint is Global Concern

In a new study conducted by the University of Cincinnati (UC), environmental health researchers found that major countries in three continents fail to acknowledge the hazards of lead based paint, allowing manufacturers to continue selling consumer paints containing dangerously high levels of lead. According to study, 73 percent of consumer paint brands tested from 12 countries representing 46 percent of the world’s population exceeded current U.S. standard of 600 parts per million (ppm). Additionally, 69 percent of the brands had at least one sample exceeding 10,000 ppm. Scott Clark, a professor of environmental health at UC, stated that "lead paint exposure remains a serious global health threat" considering the majority of American consumer goods are being produced overseas.

The study was published today in the journal Environmental Research online. According to a press release issued by UC, "the report comes on the tail of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s enforcement of heightened restrictions on lead in American consumer paints, which will take effect Aug. 9, 2009, and will lower the allowable lead limit from 600 ppm to 90 ppm."

Professor Clark’s research team has been studying the global use of lead-based consumer paints for several years, publishing one of the first scientific reports in September 2006 showing that unregulated Asian countries produced and sold new consumer paints that greatly exceeded U.S. lead safety levels. According to the earlier study, "75 percent of the consumer paint samples tested from countries without controls— including India, Malaysia and China—had levels exceeding U.S. regulations."

Lead poisoning in children is a widely recognized health concern, yet lead based paints remain widely used. Why? Is the cost of lead based paint cheaper and therefore more essential in these developing nations? Apparently no. According to the UC press release, Clark states "our studies have shown that when comparing the prices of the same size can of paint produced by several companies within India with a wide range of lead concentrations, there is no significant consumer price difference between leaded and unleaded consumer paint."

Maybe the technology needed to create high-quality unleaded consumer paint is not available? Not according to the study. During the course of the UC study, one large multi-national company produced low lead paint in each country studied and another manufacturer was found to cease the use of lead in paints in at least one of the countries studied. Clark further states that the "technology is available to manufacturers, which do not need to use lead to produce high-quality paint...there is no legitimate reason paint manufacturers should knowingly distribute a product that has long been known to be dangerous to people."

This article was taken from www.enn.com/health/article/40311

How to Dispose of Old Paint

A common problem I see as a painter is homeowners with a bunch of old paint in the garage. Who knows when it was used or what color is in the can, but it would be great to get rid of it.

Don't throw it away!

Old paint can be donated, reused, recycled, or as a last resort... properly disposed at a licensed facility.

It is illegal to dispose of paint in the trash or down storm or sewer drains, because paint can contaminate drinking water and ocean water. Special collection programs have been established to accept paint for recycling or proper disposal.

Here in San Diego County, there are several locations that accept old paint. You can find the closest location to you at http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/deh/chd/hhwfacilities.html

Reuse Options
If you have leftover, unwanted paint in good condition, consider contacting a local charity, high school drama department, or church to see if they will accept paint for reuse. Examples of nonprofit organizations that may be interested in leftover paint include local Habitat for Humanity chapters and Keep America Beautiful affiliates.

Recycling Options
Local paint reuse and recycling programs collect paint from residents and commercial businesses. The paint is then taken to a company that will then recycle it into recycled-content paint. This type of paint is created through two processes - reprocessing and reblending.

Reprocessed paint is mixed with virgin materials, tested and then packaged for distribution or sale.

Reblended paint is remixed, screened and packaged for distribution or sale. Typically reblended paint comes in only a handful of basic neutral colors. It has a much higher percentage of recycled content paint then reprocessed paint, which may influence its overall quality. Reblended paint can be used for interior/exterior painting, graffiti abatement, and local improvement projects.

When disposing of paint:

• Read the label and follow for the manufacturer’s instructions for proper disposal.
• Check with your local recycling or household hazardous waster coordinator regarding acceptable practices in your community for the disposal of dried latex paint.
• Empty containers may be thrown in the trash. A container is considered “empty” if no paint can be removed with a brush or by holding it upside down.

Solar Paint Could Produce 4,500 GW-Hours A Year!

Universities have been working with steel companies for years. These companies produce those marvelously beautiful sheets of steel that cover buildings all over the world. While working on ways to help steel not degrade in sunlight, a Swansea student figured out how to make paint actually harness that energy and covert it to electricity.

The University announced that the 100 million square feet of steel that they produce could add 4,500 gigawatts to the grid annually. To that, I say "whoops... you seem to have made a typo," because I'm pretty sure they mean 4,500 gigawatt-hours.

But that is still an enormous number. 4,500 gigawatts is about a third of the generating capacity of the entire world... so I think it's safe to assume that every single publication (and there are lots) running this story has overlooked a pretty glaring typo.

The steel would be "painted' with the solar cells in the factory, hopefully at a rate no slower than current paints are applied. The research has spawned a $3M grant and has been expanded to include several universities including Bangor University, University of Bath, and the Imperial College London.

The technology remains lab-bound for now. Scientists working on the project hope to have 5% efficient solar steel paint in the relatively near future.

Two questions remain: Will it be worth redesigning the electricity grid to accept and pay for power from such small providers? And will the added cost of the solar "panels" and a DC to AC inverter prohibit the technology?

See the original press release (complete with glaring typo) at Swansea University

Why is the world's biggest landfill in the ocean?

In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence

The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. But before we discuss those, it's important to look at the role of plastic. Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans [source: LA Times]. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic [source: UN Environment Program]. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean [source: Greenpeace]. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [source: Greenpeace]. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore.

Info pulled from: http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm

Wind Farms

Sweden might be the host for Europe’s largest wind farm if the Swedish government approves the proposed plans. The wind farm will be located in Markbygden near Piteå in northern Sweden and will have a total of 1,101 wind turbines.

“This would be Europe’s, if not the world’s, biggest wind farm,” Caj Noren, a spokesman for the board, told AFP. Construction could begin in two-and-a-half years and would be completed after about a decade, Noren said.

Once constructed the wind farm will produce between 8 to 12 terawatt hours per year and would alone meet Sweden’s national wind power target to reach 10 terawatt hours by 2015. The wind farm is expected to cost about 55 billion Swedish Kronor (around $6.9 billion or €4.5 billion) to construct.

The Swedish right-wing government recently announced that they will reverse a nearly 30-year-old ban on building nuclear power plants. Its madness when we can get cheap, clean renewable energy and at the same time create thousands of new jobs from wind farms like this one.

Simon Leufstedt

Simon Leufstedt is the founder and editor of Green Blog – an environment blog with authors from around the world. He is also the admin of Enviro Space - a place to meet, discuss and interact with other people who share your interests and ideas.