Do kangaroos hold the key to ending the global warming?

Greenpeace wants Australians to eat more kangaroo in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture industry, in a report called, Paths to a Low-Carbon Future.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.

“It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make,” Mr Wakeham said.

Apparently killing the national symbol of Australia isn’t unheard of…

Roughly three million kangaroos are killed and harvested for meat each year. They are shot with high-powered guns between the eyes at night.

…but there is something unsettling about Greenpeace advocating shooting furry little creatures between the eyes and eating them as a way of addressing global warming.

Former US Vice President and Oscar winner, Al Gore.

Who would have imagined that a full 3 months after Al Gore’s Live Earth concert extravaganza, global warming wouldn’t be fully reversed and all of humanity wouldn’t be saved from a horrifying and painful greenhouse gas induced death? Certainly not me.

Well, it’s true, we aren’t saved yet, but thanks to science and a business professor, there is still hope.

Craig Venter, a DNA scientist, is expected to announce that he’s created artificial life, life that could possibly someday be used to save the world from global warming:

Bacteria could be created, he speculates, that could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the solution to global warming….

Releasing carbon dioxide eating bacteria to stop the global warming? Sounds like it could work, or end up being like a late night science fiction movie. The idea certainly needs to be added to the list of things science is working on to solve the global warming crisis and its pending doom.

Meanwhile, Bjorn Lomborg, a business professor and not a scientist at all, has a totally different take on the global warming doomsday scenario and how to deal with it:

Environmental groups say that the only way to deal with the effects of global warming is to make drastic cuts in carbon emissions — a project that will cost the world trillions (the Kyoto Protocol alone would cost $180 billion annually). The research I’ve done over the last decade, beginning with my first book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” has convinced me that this approach is unsound; it means spending an awful lot to achieve very little. Instead, we should be thinking creatively and pragmatically about how we could combat the much larger challenges facing our planet.

And Bjorn gives us an example of what he’s talking about:

A one-foot rise in sea level isn’t a catastrophe, though it will pose a problem, particularly for small island nations. But let’s remember that very little land was lost when sea levels rose last century. It costs relatively little to protect the land from rising tides: We can drain wetlands, build levees and divert waterways. As nations become richer and land becomes a scarcer commodity, this process makes ever more sense: Like our parents and grandparents, our generation will ensure that the water doesn’t claim valuable land.

He also has this plan to stop the decline of the polar bear population by not hunting down “300 to 500″ of them a year and killing them. But overall, Lomborg’s ideas to combat global warming-like wind power and levees and mosquito netting and not hunting the polar bears-aren’t quite as sexy as carbon dioxide eating bacteria or blocking out the sun like an episode of The Simpsons, so don’t expect them to take off any time soon.

And one more thing of note, Lomborg mentions all of the dignitaries traveling to Greenland to see glaciers melt so they could go home in a panic about global warming, (not that I’ve noticed), and he had an interesting point:

Curiously, something that’s rarely mentioned is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than they are today. Or that melt rates around Ilulissat were faster in the early part of the past century, according to a new study. And while the delegations first fly into Kangerlussuaq, about 100 miles to the south, they all change planes to go straight to Ilulissat — perhaps because the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing.

And where did our Congressional members stay while in Greenland watching glaciers melt and “studying” the global warming?

By 10:30 p.m., the lawmakers will be gone again. The delegation will spend the night in Ilulissat, have Sunday lunch with the president of the home-rule government of Greenland, tour the fjords, and fly back to Washington, D.C., Steffen said.

Of course.

This is the Indian River Power Plant, Delaware’s worst polluter. Two of the units, built in the 1950s, have never had pollution controls installed. Yummy, what’s for dinner?
Thanks to photographer Gary Cooke for the photograph that I zoomed in on.

There was some dispute this weekend when I was on the air about whether or not Sussex County would suffer power outages if one of the units at the Indian River Power Plant shut down. I have the answer to that question from both Delmarva Power and Light and the Delaware Electric Cooperative.

I spoke with the CEO of the Delaware Electric Cooperative, Bill Andrew, and DP & L spokesperson Matt Likovich, and they answered the question, “If Indian River shut down a unit, would Sussex County see any outages?”

According to Bill Andrew, “Just one shouldn’t cause blackouts or rolling blackouts on 95% of the days.” But he did have a reminder about an outage in 1999.

“In July of 1999 we lost 3 units and we had rolling blackouts.” - Bill Andrew, CEO, Delaware Electric Cooperative

Matt Likovich’s answer was, “Not necessarily,” and he pointed out that units at plants shut down for routine maintenance without power outages. He also went on to explain about “The Grid.” Yes, The Grid.

“We’re connected to the PJM Grid that serves the Mid Atlantic region for 51 million people, 13 states and DC…PJM keeps the grid stable and there are fail-safes and backups, there is reserve capacity…You can feel confortable knowing you’re being serviced by the model grid in the US.” - Matt Likovich, spokesperson DP&L

Likovich also explained that if there was a major problem with a plant that, “PJM would ask other utilities to put more units online and conservation would be advised.”

You can read more about the PJM Mid Atlantic grid HERE, on their website. Likovich noted that PJM is the “oldest grid in the US.”

And we’ll see for sure in 2010 and 2011, when NRG Energy will be shutting down the two oldest units at Indian River as part of their current deal with DNREC. This deal was reached after NRG Energy appealed the 2009 deadline to curb harmful emissions set by DNREC last year.

Image of the phytoplankton bloom off of the Galapagos Islands.

Everyone knows that we’re all facing a horrifying end at any minute because of the global warming. With this in mind, aren’t we all glad that our dying Earth is full of people brimming with frantic ideas to save us before it’s all over? Like this, another plan to start a phytoplankton bloom in the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide:

A New Mexico Tech scientist believes he has found a way to head off dangerous climate change. Oliver Wingenter said the idea is simple — fertilize the ocean so that more plankton can grow.

But, just like the last “Create a Phytoplankton Bloom Plan,” when the World Wildlife Fund mentioned something about a potential “domino effect through the food chain,” this latest plan has it’s skeptics, too:

Caldeira said that, in principle, Wingenter’s idea looks like it might work. But he suggested a cautious approach, with more research to understand the effect fertilization might have on both ocean and climate.

“It might be relatively benign,” he said. “It might not. We just don’t know.”

Some of the other ideas that have come up over the years to save us from the global warming are far more interesting. For instance, “Meatout” says that “global warming threatens planetary survival…,” and wants you to end global warming by going vegan. Meanwhile, Ric Oberlink, from Californians for Population Stabilazation, had this to say:

“If we had half as many people, we wouldn’t have much of a climatic warming problem,” argued Oberlink.

Ouch, I think we all know what CPS’s solution to global warming is….while astronomer Roger Angel has another solution that’s a little less personal:

He thinks that by putting a giant sunshade - consisting of 16 trillion glass discs – in space, he can limit some of the Sun’s energy reaching Earth.

16 trillion glass disks, incidentally, would cost $4 trillion and take 30 years to get going. In the meantime, we can try this plan from a Nobel Prize winner:

His solution would see hundreds of rockets filled with sulphur launched into the stratosphere. He envisages one million tonnes of sulphur to create his cooling blanket.

“Hydrocarbons are burnt to lift the rocket material, and the rocket then goes into the stratosphere. In the stratosphere, hydrogen sulphide is burnt, and the sulphate particles reflect solar radiation,” he explains.

But, if all else fails, there’s always the fall back plan provided to us by a former Canadian Defense Minister:

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change. “I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,” Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Our greatest attempt at combatting global warming to date, the Live Earth Concert Event, has so far failed to stop global warming. Other recent actions to stop global warming have also been fruitless, like getting naked with hundreds of other people and lying on a melting glacier, and helicoptering politicians to Greenland.

In November of 2006, DNREC issued “Secretary’s Order No. 2006-A-0056″ which directed the coal burning energy producers in the State, including Sussex County’s own Indian River Power Plant, to reduce their output of mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. DNREC took the step of putting out that order after their other, more radical effort failed:

The Department undertook the exercise of its power to regulate only after the EGUs were afforded an opportunity to provide their voluntary reductions to the emissions of these three harmful pollutants. The Department’s efforts at voluntary compliance were unsuccessful, as the EGUs have not invested in the necessary pollution control equipment.

Voluntary compliance was “unsuccessful,” according to “Secretary’s Order No. 2006-A-0056,” because of the cost. What a surprise. And now, that Order has been unsuccessful, and DNREC is really cracking down, particularly on the Indian River Power Plant, by cleverly getting NRG Energy to enter into a “handshake” deal where they will meet the previous DNREC deadlines for cutting mercury emissions, but the deadlines for the other two pollutants will be pushed all the way back to 2012:

The handshake agreement between NRG and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control would allow NRG to miss deadlines for limiting emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide by 2009. But it would require NRG to surpass state requirements before 2012, when more stringent rules go into effect.

This is what the EPA says nitrogen oxides can do to you:

Human health concerns include effects on breathing and the respiratory system, damage to lung tissue, and premature death. Small particles penetrate deeply into sensitive parts of the lungs and can cause or worsen respiratory disease such as emphysema and bronchitis, and aggravate existing heart disease.

And this is what the EPA says sulfur dioxide can do you to:

Peak levels of SO2 in the air can cause temporary breathing difficulty for people with asthma who are active outdoors. Longer-term exposures to high levels of SO2 gas and particles cause respiratory illness and aggravate existing heart disease.

SO2 reacts with other chemicals in the air to form tiny sulfate particles. When these are breathed, they gather in the lungs and are associated with increased respiratory symptoms and disease, difficulty in breathing, and premature death.

In “Secretary’s Order No. 2006-A-0056,” DNREC was really being firm with the facilities:

Nonetheless, this cost is one that the EGUs must accept as a cost of doing business in Delaware, which no longer will be a safe haven for the continued operation of largely uncontrolled pollution from the EGUs.

But apparently Delaware is absolutely that “safe haven,” at least until 2012, when NRG Energy can ask DNREC to shake hands again on some new deal pushing back the deadlines. (Come on DNREC, aren’t any of you people parents? You know what happens when you keep telling your kids there will be consequences and then the consequences never come).

UPDATE: Delaware Way has a post up about this issue, along with a letter from an Indian River Power Plant employee that was in the News Journal. And while the NRG employee makes some valid points about the cancer cluster study that was done, you just can’t get around the fact that mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are harmful to humans, fish, animals and the environment.

NRG needs to clean up their emissions, they’ve stalled long enough, and DNREC needs to step up and protect the people of Sussex County from needless exposure to harmful emissions.

You can also check out THIS post on Tommywonk, and take the time to read the first comment.

This morning, News Journal readers were greeted with two articles about the “cancer cluster” that was “confirmed” by the Delaware Division of Public Health.  In an earlier, August 5th article, we learned that six areas in Sussex were “examined in the report.”  Those areas are ”Dagsboro, Frankford, Georgetown, Millsboro, Ocean View and Selbyville,” and the cancer rates in those areas were found to be “17 percent higher than the national average.” 

In one of today’s News Journal articles about the “cancer cluster” titled,  Frustrated eastern Sussex residents want answers,” Tom Burke, a “professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,” discusses some of the factors that may be involved in the higher than average cancer rates:

Sprawl has a measurable effect on air and water quality, said Tom Burke, professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. More houses mean more traffic, which contaminates the air, Burke said. When it rains on rooftops and blacktop, the water does not “percolate” through the soil, but instead sends oil and fertilizer directly into the lakes and streams, he said.

More houses mean more wells and more septic tanks, he noted. People are drinking from the same groundwater into which they send their waste, he said.             

“There’s this whole cascade of environmental effects,” Burke said. “You have this taxing of a system.”             

 

The Indian River power plant, owned by NRG Energy, is also cited,

 

The Indian River power plant started operation in the late 1950s, and was bought by NRG Energy in 2001. It is the state’s top source of toxic and smog-forming pollution. The state last year passed pollution-control rules that would reduce emissions from the plant, but NRG has said it won’t be able to meet the state’s goals for reducing those emissions by 2009.

In another article in today’s News Journal, titled, State hunts cancer clusters,” there is a disturbing subtitle, “More heavily populated northern Del. needs attention before Sussex, activists argue.”  And it continues:

Sussex community groups have called for the state to study NRG Energy’s Indian River power plant near Millsboro as a possible contributor. But some northern Delaware civic leaders say that the state’s environmental monitoring resources are already stretched thin and that the state ought to devote attention to areas of Wilmington and northern Delaware where an environmental risk has been established.

So, some people in New Castle County want to push Sussex under the rug because our “environmental risks” basically haven’t been studied enough.  Sussex countians were called “the squeaky wheel,” by one Wilmington “community leader.”

As it stands now, a wind farm has been approved by the Public Service Commission for Sussex County.  But currently, Delmarva Power and Light and Conectiv are fighting that clean source of energy, while NRG is fighting any clean up of their facility in Indian River. With new development cropping up all over the county, increased congestion on our roadways, more people tapping into our natural resources, and the State’s biggest polluter in our back yard,  SUSSEX COUNTIANS SHOULD BE “THE SQUEAKY WHEEL!”    

(The original post said this, “bush Sussex under the rug.” That was obviously some kind of a Freudian typo, sorry). 

 

My withering magnolia tree and crunchy brown grass.

From WGMD News:

According to Accu-weather, the weather is expected to be dry with little if any rain through about August 10th. After that there will be a greater chance of some scattered showers and thunderstorms, but as far as any widespread significant rainfall—it doesn’t look like that is going to happen any time soon.

Department of Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse tells WGMD News that the drought situation is “bleak.”

What is Elizabeth Edwards doing to fight the global warming? She’s giving up tangerines:

In a meeting with local environmentalists in the coastal town of McClellanville today, where Elizabeth Edwards raised in passing the importance of relying on locally-grown fruit.

“We’ve been moving back to ‘buy local,’” Mrs. Edwards said, outlining a trade policy that “acknowledges the carbon footprint” of transporting fruit.

“I live in North Carolina. I’ll probably never eat a tangerine again,” she said, speaking of a time when the fruit is reaches the price that it “needs” to be.

Meanwhile her husband, Democratic Presidential hopeful, John Edwards, is doing his part to fight the global warming. Last night, during the Presidential Debate all of the candidates sans one admitted to taking private jets to the South Carolina event:

With a show of hands, most of the candidates acknowledged, after a question about energy conservation, that they had flown to the event via private jet. Ex-Sen. Mike Gravel, who once again savaged his rivals as tools of monied interests, said he took the train.

Aw, Liz, what the heck, why not just go carbon wild and eat a tangerine on the private jet your husband flies around in?

First, it was the carbon footprint of House members, lead by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, stomping it’s way to Greenland to check out the global warming:

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), lead a junket of 15 members of Congress to Greenland, so she could see “firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality,” and then add to it as much as she possibly could in one weekend.

In Greenland, Pelosi was joined by her newly created House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a committee that is so focused on Global Warming and it’s causes that they don’t bother to specify in their rules that members try to travel commercial, or travel together, or travel in energy efficient ways, in fact, they don’t even require members to submit their method of travel for approval…

Remember this part of the trip, it’s classic:

Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), who arranged for the whirlwind trip, wanted the entire House Committee to go, and, of course, a special flight was needed to make sure the Congressional delegation would have sleeping bags if they got snowed it because apparently members of Congress who are studying global warming cannot travel simultaneously in helicopters with sleeping bags.

Well, now it’s members of the Senate going on the trip to Greenland:

Sen. Barbara Boxer is heading north this weekend – way north – to Greenland with a bipartisan delegation of senators to see firsthand the effects of global warming.

Boxer, D-Calif., chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee and hopes to bring a bill to combat climate change to the Senate floor possibly after the August recess. About half a dozen different global warming bills – ranging from those with firm economy-wide emission reduction targets to more narrow measures – have been introduced this year.

The lawmakers actually picked a pretty good time of the year to go: the forecast up there calls for highs in the low 50s.

At least this time it’ll be warmer in Greenland so maybe special helicopter flights, (”special” because they only carried sleeping bags, not “special” because they were some kind of energy efficient helicopters), won’t be necessary. But what will our fossil fuel guzzling Senators do while in Greenland?

Boxer and her group will tour the Kangia Ice Fjord, have dinner with the Danish environmental minister, Connie Hedegaard, and take a boat tour of Disko Bay where they will see the world’s largest glaciers.

So, just like the House junket, the Senate junket will include watching glaciers melt. As I stated before HERE, you can watch glaciers melt in Internet videos. In fact, if Congress was really concerned about the global warming, maybe the House would have taken some video of their trip, and they could have shown it to the Senate over cocktails, and saved tax payer money and possibly even the planet if man made global warming is a reality.

Is this the person I want to get advice from on how to live my life?

When Madonna says “jump,” you’re expected jump. Just don’t expect her to do the same for you:

Madonna thanked Al Gore, the brainchild of the nine concerts across the globe, “for giving the world the wake-up call it so badly needs and for starting an avalanche of awareness that we are running out of time”.

She said: “Lets hope tonight’s concert and the concerts going on around the world are not just about entertainment but starting a revolution around the world. If you want to save the planet let me see you jump.”

But Gore apparently forgot to give Madonna her “wake-up call” about the “revolution:”

Watching the veteran star lap up the adoration, her entourage could, however, be forgiven for exchanging slightly jaded glances - having witnessed her jet in for the concert from New York.

For her 2006 World Tour, she flew by private jet, transporting a team of up to 100 technicians and dancers around the globe. Waiting in the garage at home, she has a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, an Audi A8 and a Mini Cooper S….

…Madonna alone has an annual carbon footprint of 1,018 tonnes, according to John Buckley.

So basically Madonna churns out “more than 100 times the average amount of waste produced by Britons in a year.”

Madonna don’t preach, ’cause you’ve made up your mind, you’re keeping your footprint.