Published on Jan 30, 2013
A song I wrote when I visited the site after 9/11; always thought a little heavy, but it is time to get it out there. All photos taken from the web, if there is any infringement, please contact me, I will include credits. Included on my CD “Renegade of the Light Brigade” during the remix and urging of the late, great Steve Burgh.
The many economical and ecological benefits to using human excrement and urine as fertiliser are not to be sniffed at. Fred Pearce gets to grips with a sorely underused resource.
An hour into their journey from Tung Chung pier, the 20 members of the boat party finally got what they had been waiting for – a close encounter with the remaining pink dolphins who still make their home in Hong Kong waters.
But as the boat edged closer to the dolphins in the Lung Kwu Chau Marine Park and the eager tourists reached for their cameras, their excitement quickly turned to shock and distress.
“There were about four or five dolphins in the water and it seemed at first as if they were trying to get hold of something and support it,” said Ho Tak-ching, 34, a guide with Hong Kong Dolphinwatch. “It really wasn’t normal behaviour.”
The dolphins were trying to help a mother support the body of her dead calf and stop it slipping below the water’s surface.
“I started to film and it was then that I noticed the dead baby calf. From its size and colour, I guessed it was a newborn. It was so depressing and so very sad. While I was taking the video I couldn’t stop myself crying.
“There was a group of four or five dolphins taking turns with the mother to try to keep the baby on the surface of the water. We watched it for about 30 minutes.
“At first, I didn’t want to mention it to the passengers. But then some of them noticed the dead baby. They asked me, ‘How has this happened?’ They seemed very upset. They asked if there was something we could do to help, but I said there was nothing we could do.”
Grieving and unable to accept their calves’ deaths, the mother dolphins will spend up to two weeks trying to keep them on the surface of the water, exhausting themselves and going without food as other dolphins rally to help them.
These displays of epimeletic, or care-giving, behaviour demonstrate the intelligence and compassion of dolphins.
Disturbingly, they have also become an increasingly common sight in Hong Kong waters, where dolphin numbers are already in rapid decline.
The sad scene a week ago – captured on video and widely shared on Facebook – was the third separate incident of a dead calf being supported by its mother and other dolphins in Hong Kong waters last month alone.
In a scenario that paints a bleak picture for the future of the Hong Kong population, the calves are believed to have been killed by polluted water ingested by the mothers and then passed on to their offspring in their milk.
Video: Hong Kong Dolphinwatch
Despite being a protected species and a symbol of Hong Kong, figures to be released next month are expected to reveal a further sharp decline in the number of Indo-pacific humpback dolphins – also known as Chinese white dolphins or pink dolphins because of the change in their skin colour as they grow older.
Their abundance – or the number of them in Hong Kong waters at any given time – fell from 158 in 2003 to 78 in 2011.
Figures for last year are being finalised but will show a further “significant” decline, according to the experts compiling the data.
The death of the calves was almost certainly caused by pollutants in the seawater around Hong Kong, said Dolphinwatch spokeswoman Janet Walker.
“The toxins from pollutants accumulate in body fat because the dolphins can’t metabolise it and I am told dolphin milk is 40 per cent fat,” she said.
“The milk is very rich and fatty so it doesn’t disperse in the water when the mother squirts it out.
“That means all the toxins which are collected in the fat cells over 10 or 11 years of the mother living in polluted water goes straight to the first born.”
Walker described the death of three newborn dolphins in one month as “horrendous”.
She said: “There are not many things that kill babies that little. They are not as likely to get tangled in nets as they used to and I wouldn’t think the deaths were cause by a vessel collision because they stick really close to their mothers. So we think it’s toxins in the mother’s milk.
“Ideally, these dolphins should live 30 to 40 years. But here, if they get into their 20s, they are doing well. Half the dead ones every year are juveniles and babies.
“It is so frustrating. We have known about the problems facing dolphins for a long time, but no one is doing anything.
“The government claims to be doing something but then it is building this bridge to Macau and the third runway at the airport. That is an awful lot of construction in the dolphins’ habitat.”
Samuel Hung Ka-yiu with the skull of a dolphin. Photo: Nora Tam
Samuel Hung Ka-yiu, chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society, said he hoped the pitiful video would help people wake up to the reality that Hong Kong is on its way to losing for good the dolphin population first recorded in its waters in the 1600s.
“It is heartbreaking to watch,” he said. “You can feel for the mother. Why is she not giving up on the dolphin? It’s because she cannot accept that it has died. And why did it die? It is not the fault of the mother. It is our fault. We are causing this.
“The dolphin’s mother has to hold the baby the entire time otherwise it will sink to the bottom and she will do this for a week or two weeks, not eating at all. She is grieving.
“And what is causing that grief? It is because of us and everything we have done. I really hope people reflect on that.”
Hung, whose group has monitored and campaigned for the conservation of Hong Kong’s dolphin population since the 1990s, said: “I ‘ve never been so pessimistic about the future of our dolphins as I am now.
“I always tried to think that we could turn things around. We are able to maybe sustain the population with good conservation measures and good monitoring. But I think the pace of development pressure and the unwillingness to deal with threats like vessel traffic and the reluctance to deal with anything that hinders economic development is just too huge.”
In previous years, Hung said, his dolphin group had to deal with two or three threats at a time to dolphin habitat.
“Now we are dealing with seven or eight projects at a time,” he said. “It is crazy. There are so many battles to fight.
Read Full Article and Watch Video Here
Last-ditch lobbying to sway vote in Brussels to halt use of killer nerve agents
Europe is on the brink of a landmark ban on the world’s most widely used insecticides, which have increasingly been linked to serious declines in bee numbers. Despite intense secret lobbying by British ministers and chemical companies against the ban, revealed in documents obtained by the Observer, a vote in Brussels on Monday is expected to lead to the suspension of the nerve agents.
Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed on disease, loss of habitat and, increasingly, the near ubiquitous use of neonicotinoid pesticides.
The prospect of a ban has prompted a fierce behind-the-scenes campaign. In a letter released to the Observer under freedom of information rules, the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, told the chemicals company Syngenta last week that he was “extremely disappointed” by the European commission‘s proposed ban. He said that “the UK has been very active” in opposing it and “our efforts will continue and intensify in the coming days”.
Publicly, ministers have expressed concern for bees, with David Cameron saying: “If we do not look after our bee populations, very serious consequences will follow.”
The chemical companies, which make billions from the products, have also lobbied hard, with Syngenta even threatening to sue individual European Union officials involved in publishing a report that found the pesticides posed an unacceptable risk to bees, according to documents seen by the Observer. The report, from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), led the commission to propose a two-year ban on three neonicotinoids. “EFSA has provided a strong, substantive and scientific case for the suspension,” a commission spokesman said.
A series of high-profile scientific studies has linked neonicotinoids to huge losses in the number of queens produced and big increases in “disappeared” bees – those that fail to return from foraging trips. Pesticide manufacturers and UK ministers have argued that the science is inconclusive and that a ban would harm food production, but conservationists say harm stemming from dying pollinators is even greater.
“It’s a landmark vote,” said Joan Walley MP, chairwoman of parliament’s green watchdog, the environmental audit committee, whose recent report on pollinators condemned the government’s “extraordinary complacency”. Walley said: “You have to have scientific evidence, but you also have to have the precautionary principle – that’s the heart of this debate.”
A ban has been supported by petitions signed by millions of people and Paterson has received 80,000 emails, an influx that he described as a “cyber-attack“. “The impact of neonicotinoids on the massive demise of our bees is clear, yet Paterson seems unable to escape the haze of sloppy science and lobbying by powerful pesticide giants,” said Iain Keith of the campaign group Avaaz. “Seventy per cent of British people want these poisons banned. Paterson must reconsider or send the bees to chemical Armageddon.” Andrew Pendleton of Friends of the Earth said a ban would be “a historic moment in the fight to save our bees”.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “As the proposal currently stands we could not support an outright ban. We have always been clear that a healthy bee population is our top priority, that’s why decisions need to be taken using the best possible scientific evidence and we want to work with the commission to achieve this. Any action taken must be proportionate and not have any unforeseen knock-on effects.”
“This plan is motivated by a quite understandable desire to save the beleaguered bee and concern about a serious decline in other important pollinator species,” said the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, “but it is based on a misreading of the currently available evidence.” He said the EC plan was a serious “mistake”.
Julian Little, a spokesman for Bayer Cropscience, said: “Call me an optimist, but I still believe the commission will see sense. There is so much field evidence to demonstrate safe use [and] an increasing number of member states who reject the apparent drive towards museum agriculture in the European Union.” However, Bulgaria is the only nation known to have changed its voting intention and it will reverse its opposition.
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EU member states vote ushers in continent-wide suspension of neonicotinoid pesticides
Europe will enforce the world’s first continent-wide ban on widely used insecticides alleged to cause serious harm to bees, after a European commission vote on Monday.
The suspension is a landmark victory for millions of environmental campaigners, backed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), concerned about a dramatic decline in the bee population. The vote also represents a serious setback for the chemical producers who make billions each year from the products and also UK ministers, who voted against the ban. Both had argued the ban would harm food production.
Although the vote by the 27 EU member states on whether to suspend the insect nerve agents was supported by 15 nations, but did not reach the required majority under voting rules. The hung vote hands the final decision to the European commission, which will implement the ban.
Tonio Borg, health and consumer commissioner, said: “Our proposal is based on a number of risks to bee health identified by the EFSA, [so] the European commission will go ahead with its plan in coming weeks.”
Friends of the Earth‘s head of campaigns, Andrew Pendleton, said: “This decision is a significant victory for common sense and our beleaguered bee populations. Restricting the use of these pesticides could be an historic milestone on the road to recovery for these crucial pollinators.”
The UK, which abstained in a previous vote, was heavily criticised for switching to a “no” vote on Monday.
Joan Walley MP, chair of parliament’s green watchdog, the environmental audit committee, whose investigation had backed a ban and accused ministers of “extraordinary complacency”, said the vote was a real step in the right direction, but added: “A full Commons debate where ministers can be held to account is more pressing than ever.”
Greenpeace‘s chief scientist, Doug Parr, said: “By not supporting the ban, environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has exposed the UK government as being in the pocket of big chemical companies and the industrial farming lobby.”
On Sunday, the Observer revealed the intense secret lobbying by Paterson and Syngenta.
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Exxon sign image
http://media.townhall.com/townhall/reu/ha/2013/99/2013-04-09T182048Z_1_CBRE9381EYT00_RTROPTP_3_EXXON.JPG
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Exxon Valdez
![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
Emergency Management
http://www.epa.gov/OEM/content/learning/exxon.htm
On March 24, 1989, shortly after midnight, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. The spill was the largest in U.S. history and tested the abilities of local, national, and industrial organizations to prepare for, and respond to, a disaster of such magnitude. Many factors complicated the cleanup efforts following the spill. The size of the spill and its remote location, accessible only by helicopter and boat, made government and industry efforts difficult and tested existing plans for dealing with such an event.
The spill posed threats to the delicate food chain that supports Prince William Sound’s commercial fishing industry. Also in danger were ten million migratory shore birds and waterfowl, hundreds of sea otters, dozens of other species, such as harbor porpoises and sea lions, and several varieties of whales.
Since the incident occurred in open navigable waters, the U.S. Coast Guard’s On-Scene Coordinator had authority for all activities related to the cleanup effort. His first action was to immediately close the Port of Valdez to all traffic. A U.S. Coast Guard at USCG investigator, along with a representative from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, visited the scene of the incident to assess the damage. By noon on Friday, March 25, the Alaska Regional Response Team was brought together by teleconference, and the National Response Team was activated soon thereafter.
Three methods were tried in the effort to clean up the spill:
- Burning
- Mechanical Cleanup
- Chemical Dispersants
In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which required the Coast Guard to strengthen its regulations on oil tank vessels and oil tank owners and operators. Today, tank hulls provide better protection against spills resulting from a similar accident, and communications between vessel captains and vessel traffic centers have improved to make for safer sailing.
http://www.uscg.mil/history/img/ExxonValdez8294sm.jpg
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4128/5009794200_118438152d_z.jpg
http://eagainst.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/exxon_valdez.jpg
http://mccarterbiology.edublogs.org/files/2010/08/oil-spill-whale1.jpg
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/valdezlegacy
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images: 1. Flickr/Jim Brickett
2. Flickr/Daquella Manera
When the Exxon Valdez ran ashore off Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, it wasn’t the first tanker to founder at sea. It was, however, the first tanker to deposit its load — 11 million gallons of crude oil, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean — in such an economically and environmentally important ecosystem, and thus squarely in the public eye.
To this day, images of oil-choked birds and oil-fouled shorelines are burned into the memories of a generation. Local and national outrage forced Exxon into paying billions of dollars to clean the mess. Some of this money went to scientists who monitored the region’s recovery. For the first time, researchers had the resources necessary to thoroughly study an oil spill’s effects. These proved even uglier than they first appeared.
Researchers expected the oil to break up in a few years. Instead, it will take more than a century. They found that oil’s compounds, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — carcinogenic molecules that attach to fat, and refuse to break down in water — are toxic at levels hundreds, even thousands of times lower than was previously believed.
The Valdez pollution set off a cascade of environmental effects that have yet to be fully understood, but have at least been measured. Few of the region’s fish, bird and marine mammal populations have recovered. To the naked eye, Prince William Sound is beautiful and wild — but beneath the surface, it is profoundly damaged. As the Exxon Valdez Oil
Spill Trustee Council recently reported, oil in many areas “is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill.”The federal economic stimulus package passed in January contains roughly $4 billion for clean water, of which $1.2 billion is earmarked for “green infrastructure” — green roofs, porous concretes, and other technologies that can at least reduce the surges that cause sewage plants to overflow.
It’s a welcome investment, said Baer, but the EPA estimates that $390 billion is needed to upgrade water systems nationwide, and Gann called the stimulus figure “a down payment” on what’s needed. Moreover, said Baer, “Global warming is going to be one more added stress on our infrastructure. Storms will be more intense, and you’re going to see more intense runoffs and overflows.”
The effects of all this oil have yet to be quantified. Unlike Prince William Sound, researchers haven’t spent decades looking for damage caused by chronic oil exposures in
America’s waters. It’s not inconceivable that a state of permanent toxicity has come to seem natural.If oil “kills all these organisms through long-term exposures in
Prince William Sound,” said Peterson, “think what it’s doing in Boston
Harbor and San Pedro and every other place where this is going on.”
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Administrator Bill Reilly at the Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup site, August 1989
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2009
Exxon has not yet recovered a responsible reputation to this day, even if it has slowly introduced green energy and renewable energy resources in the market. The name Exxon, to this day, is still synonymous to the concept of man-made disaster. After all, the damage caused by the oil spill was massive and affected sea and water creatures, as well as ruined the livelihood of thousands of people dependent on fishery resources off the coast of Alaska.
After the billions of dollars spent on restoring the Exxon image, the company has failed to restore its reputation after the oil spill incident. Exxon still has one of the dirtiest company images on earth. The accident is touted to be one of the worst ways to handle a crisis. Exxon has gotten one of the most damaging portrayals in mass media, due entirely to the company’s fault of not communicating properly with the publics right after the incident.
In a time of environmental consciousness, Exxon has remained in the minds of people as a company that is environmentally damaging and irresponsible. The perception of the public is the cause behind the fact that Exxon has never survived the crisis.
To eradicate its irresponsible image, Exxon has to do the opposite: be environmentally responsible. This is a tall order to overturn public perception that has festered through two decades. While it has already put technological measures in place so as not to repeat the disaster, the issue has always been one of public image and reputation.
No matter how Exxon passed a good part of the blame after the spill to other groups such as the Coast Guard and
its distribution subsidiary whom it expected to be responsible for moving the oil, the world saw the disaster as purely Exxon’s fault and problem .
It can be concluded that Exxon’s long delay in responding publicly to the problems, in the many ways and means that it could have had, caused the company’s irreparable reputational damage.
To this day, the Exxon Valdez incident remains one of the most glaring examples of how not to handle a crisis.
Twenty years after the oil spill disaster on March 24, 1989 that released 10.8 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, Exxon has spent more than $2 billion in massive clean-up campaigns. However, oil still remains and some wildlife habitats will still take a long time to recover.
The Exxon Valdez incident is one of the worst environmental disasters in recent times. It is also a classic case of how a massive crisis was poorly handled. The management did not act quickly nor on time, making the damage bigger than it even was in the perception of the public.
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http://whyfiles.org/168oil_spill/2.html
2002
By 1992 or so, the 37,000-ton spill in Prince William Sound had been washed (at Exxon’s expense) off the rocks and beaches, or simply weathered away. Now, 13 years after the Exxon Valdez spill, a casual observer won’t see oil.
Oiled duck after the Exxon Valdez spill. Courtesy Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.
Oil does remain in sheltered locations – immune to wind and wave – mainly on about 20 acres of rocky shore, according to an extensive 2001 survey. Although that’s a lot less than the 149 kilometers of shoreline that were heavily oiled during the spill, “In terms of critical habitat for wildlife, that is a significant amount, because there is not a large amount of suitable habitat, you have sheer rock, or rocky transition zones,” says Phil Mundy, science director of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, which administers a research and restoration program in the sound, funded by a bank-ful of Exxon settlement money.
Valdez oil moved from Prince William Sound to the Gulf of Alaska. Courtesy David Page
Totally toxic?
Oil loses some of its toxic components through exposure to the weather, but the deep pockets left in the sound are still surprisingly toxic. The report from the 2001 survey said:“Twenty subsurface pits [of 6,775 dug in Prince William Sound] were classified as heavily oiled. Oil saturated all of the interstitial spaces and was extremely repugnant. These ‘worst case’ pits exhibited an oil mixture that resembled oil encountered in 1989 a few weeks after the spill — highly odiferous, lightly weathered, and very fluid.”
Oiled otter may be doomed by hypothermia Courtesy Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.
Mundy finds this surprising. “If you’d asked in ’89, would we still have oil around in 2002? I’d have said it’s highly unlikely. One thing we have learned, contrary to what you find in the literature, especially in literature sponsored by the oil companies … is that oil that’s not exposed to the atmosphere … can surface time and again, to do damage at local scales.”
In general, says Robert Spies, a marine biologist and former chief scientist for the trustee council, “Oil tends to clean itself up, it’s a curve. You get rapid loss in one to two years, then the rate begins to fall off. Where there was protection from the physical energy of the ocean, it can take a long time to break down.”
Before we exonerate Exxon in the Valdez spill, let’s focus on the oil remaining under the rocks. “You can go to Prince William Sound and dig down in the rocky cobble beaches, and find oil as toxic as the day it was spilled,” says Richard Charter, a marine conservation advocate with the non-profit Environmental Defense. (Full disclosure: the author is a member of Environmental Defense.)
The 1989 picture shows pools of oil on an exposed boulder beach. In 1992, the same beach shows no oil. A combination of natural and human processes removed most of the oil by 1992. Courtesy David Page
Some studies, Charter says, show that tiny concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (a group of toxic hydrocarbons ) from crude oil cause mutations in pink salmon eggs. “That means that components of oil, the fractions with the most toxicity, have mutagenic properties at levels much lower than we thought, and are much more persistent in the food chain than we ever believed possible.”
In a report cited by a 2002 National Research Council book Oil in the Sea III), researchers from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center tried to sum up the effect of oil on pink salmon, the big commercial fish in Prince William Sound before the spill:
“Laboratory studies designed to emulate post-spill conditions in [Prince William Sound] verified that embryos are sensitive to long-term exposures to weathered oil in the low part per billion (ppb) range of PAH [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons ]. Mortalities, abnormalities, histopathological damage, and other biological effects increased with embryo exposure to ppb concentrations of PAH. …Sensitivity of salmon embryos to weathered crude oil at ppb concentrations is unprecedented…”
Another indication that spilled oil does not just disappear comes from researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who found fuel oil 30 years after a spill on Cape Cod. Woods Hole couldn’t bother talking with us, but their press release said samples from 2 to 11 inches deep in the marsh “contained petroleum hydrocarbons in similar concentrations to those observed shortly after the1969 spill. … the team found that compounds consistent with No. 2 fuel oil were still present in the sediments and may remain there indefinitely.”
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updated 7/6/2011 12:08:54 AM ET
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http://www.epa.gov/yellowstoneriverspill/
At approximately 11 p.m. Friday, July 1, 2011, a break occurred in a 12-inch pipeline under the Yellowstone River 20 miles upstream from Billings, Montana. The ruptured pipeline is owned by ExxonMobil Pipeline Company. According to the company, an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil entered the river before the pipeline was closed. EPA is leading the response in close coordination with the state of Montana and other federal agencies. EPA’s primary concern is protecting people’s health and the environment and will remain on-site to ensure cleanup and restoration efforts do just that. EPA continues to hold ExxonMobil, the responsible party, accountable for assessment and cleanup.
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http://www.fondriest.com/news/montana-still-investigating-yellowstone-river-oil-spill.htm
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May 18, 2012
Nearly a year after an Exxon Mobile pipeline leaked 60,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River, Montana environmental officials are looking for remaining contamination on the stream after workers recently spotted sheens on the water downstream from the leak site, according to a report from the Associated Press.
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http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UPVCAG0.htm
The Associated Press May 16, 2012,
The July 1 accident spilled an estimated 1,500 barrels of crude, or 63,000 gallons, into the Yellowstone River near Laurel.
In recent weeks, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks workers have found sheens or other evidence of oil at several sites downstream of the spill, said agency spokesman Bob Gibson.
Department of Environmental Quality scientist Laura Alvey said that includes a sheen she saw last week on an island east of Laurel. She said there was “no question” the sheen came from oil.
Homeowner Jim Swanson had contacted the DEQ after seeing sheens along the river. His property suffered extensive contamination last year, which Exxon workers attempted to remove as part of an estimated $135 million in cleanup and pipeline repair work.
The company recovered an estimated 1 percent of the oil spilled.
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Exxon Montana Yellow River spillage image
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http://investorplace.com/2013/02/exxon-escapes-paying-1b-for-polluted-drinking-water/
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Feb 27, 2013
Some residents of Jacksonville, Maryland, won’t be getting a $1 billion jury award for punitive damages from Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM).
The verdict stemmed from the contamination of drinking water supplied to 160 homeowners due to a gasoline leak, Bloomberg noted. The oil giant argued that the 2011 jury award was excessive. A state appeals court agreed and ordered a new trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
Additionally, the appeals court reverse the jury’s finding of fraud against Exxon Mobil. That, too, will be a question in the new trial.
The leak, which lasted 37 days, caused 26,000 gallons of gasoline to seep into groundwater in the rural Maryland community. The jury awarded residents $495 million in compensatory damages in addition to the punitive award
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http://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-drilling-plan-threatens-drinking-water-delaware-river-basin
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Wed, 2011-06-01 22:44
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) held a public hearing today to review a proposal from ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy to remove massive amounts of water from the Delaware River Basin for unconventional gas exploration.
The dirty energy giant is hoping to withdraw up to 250,000 gallons per day of surface water from Oquaga Creek near the Farnham Road bridge crossing on Route 41 in Sanford, New York. Roughly 300 residents showed up to comment on the proposal, which has stirred public anger and concern over the potential impacts on the local environment and water supplies.
The Exxon subsidiary’s draft docket stipulates that the surface water will be used for unconventional gas drilling via hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking). XTO says the clean water will be used to mix cement and create a “drilling mud/fluid” cocktail. No waste problem, of course.
Beneath the Exxon PR spin, the true costs of withdrawing a quarter million gallons of water per day are estimated at around $17,700 - for a tiny patch of land.
Consider the fact that the fracking rush is exacting these very same direct costs on many North Americans.
Recently, ExxonMobil has continued with its misleading media blitz to pacify the public’s real concerns around the dangers of unconventional gas exploration. Exxon’s misdirection appeared this month on TV and in full-page ads [pdf] in The New York Times and Washington Post. The ads falsely presented fracking for unconventional gas as a time-tested way to unlock “cleaner-burning” fuel from shale rock. The problem with Exxon’s efforts to greenwash unconventional gas is that according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [pdf] as well as a recent Cornell study, unlocking this dirty energy is perhaps just as polluting if not moreso than coal. Unconventional gas, despite what Exxon would have us believe, is just another polluting fossil fuel.
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http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/_refresh/whats-fracking
How does hydraulic fracturing work?
Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.
What is horizontal hydraulic fracturing?
Horizontal hydrofracking is a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling. Vertical hydrofracking is used to extend the life of an existing well once its productivity starts to run out, sort of a last resort. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack. This water then becomes contaminated and must be cleaned and disposed of.
What is the Halliburton Loophole?
In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.
What is the Safe Drinking Water Act?
In 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was passed by Congress to ensure clean drinking water free from both natural and man-made contaminates.
What is the FRAC Act?
The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) is a House bill intended to repeal the Halliburton Loophole and to require the natural gas industry to disclose the chemicals they use.
How deep do natural gas wells go?
The average well is up to 8,000 feet deep. The depth of drinking water aquifers is about 1,000 feet. The problems typically stem from poor cement well casings that leak natural gas as well as fracking fluid into water wells.
How much water is used during the fracking process?
Generally 1-8 million gallons of water may be used to frack a well. A well may be fracked up to 18 times.
What fluids are used in the fracking process?
For each frack, 80-300 tons of chemicals may be used. Presently, the natural gas industry does not have to disclose the chemicals used, but scientists have identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
In what form does the natural gas come out of the well?
The gas comes up wet in produced water and has to be separated from the wastewater on the surface. Only 30-50% of the water is typically recovered from a well. This wastewater can be highly toxic.
What is done with the wastewater?
Evaporators evaporate off VOCs and condensate tanks steam off VOCs, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The wastewater is then trucked to water treatment facilities.
What is a well’s potential to cause air pollution?
As the VOCs are evaporated and come into contact with diesel exhaust from trucks and generators at the well site, ground level ozone is produced. Ozone plumes can travel up to 250 miles.
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http://8020vision.com/2011/04/17/congress-releases-report-on-toxic-chemicals-used-in-fracking/
The Democratic Committee staff analyzed the data provided by the companies about their practices, finding that:
- The 14 leading oil and gas service companies used more than 780 million gallons of hydraulic fracturing products, not including water added at the well site. Overall, the companies used more than 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products containing 750 different chemicals and other components.
- The components used in the hydraulic fracturing products ranged from generally harmless and common substances, such as salt and citric acid, to extremely toxic substances, such as benzene and lead. Some companies even used instant coffee and walnut hulls in their fracturing fluids.
- Between 2005 and 2009, the oil and gas service companies used hydraulic fracturing products containing 29 chemicals that are known or possible human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for their risks to human health, or listed as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
- The BTEX compounds – benzene, toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene – are SDWA contaminants and hazardous air pollutants. Benzene also is a known human carcinogen. The hydraulic fracturing companies injected 11.4 million gallons of products containing at least one BTEX chemical over the five-year period.
- Methanol, which was used in 342 hydraulic fracturing products, was the most widely used chemical between 2005 and 2009. The substance is a hazardous air pollutant and is on the candidate list for potential regulation under SDWA. Isopropyl alcohol, 2-butoxyethanol, and ethylene glycol were the other most widely used chemicals.
Many of the hydraulic fracturing fluids contain chemical components that are listed as “proprietary” or “trade secret.” The companies used 94 million gallons of 279 products that contained at least one chemical or component that the manufacturers deemed proprietary or a trade secret. In many instances, the oil and gas service companies were unable to identify these “proprietary” chemicals, suggesting that the companies are injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot identify.
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Stolen Land
What happens if you’re a land owner who lives on a profitable mineral site, but doesn’t want corporations fracking on your land? Well, apparently, they will maneuver a way to frack your land anyway.
In a new report published last week, Reuters explored oil and gas companies’ nationwide land grab. The report focused on Chesapeake Energy Corporation, which has become the leader in petitioning state agencies when land owners refuse to sign over their land to fracking or oil drilling companies. In Texas, since 2005, Chesapeake had made 1,628 requests to drill on land that owners refuse to lease— nearly twice as many sought by its rival Exxon Mobil — and the state has only rejected five of them.
Chesapeake has made land-leasing one of its top priorities, controlling 15 million acres and spending more than $31 billion to acquire drilling rights. Playing the land grab game allows corporations to attain prospective drilling locations while locking out competition. With such a profitable opportunity, Chesapeake is making sure it’s getting its way by any means necessary. One employee was even caught saying on tape: “If properties don’t want to sign, if we have 90 percent secured of the well that we need, we have the power to put these people in the lease without their permission. …We can do whatever we want.”
When it comes to profit, property rights just don’t seem to matter. And a mix of money in politics, as well as a desire for profit, has weakened regulation.
“I don’t think the state should be able to take a landowner’s rights to generate a profit for a private company,” said David Conrad, an Ohio resident who opposes fracking, but will soon have a Chesapeake well under his home.
However, as Reuters reported:
In its petition, Chesapeake told regulators its proposed drilling unit could produce 4.5 million barrels of oil and 3.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas — if the plots of the 49 land owners who didn’t lease their property to Chesapeake were included.
If not, Chesapeake said, the unit would be 75 percent less productive and would miss out on an additional $71 million in revenue, according to its application. That math carried the day.
Waste-Filled Wine
If you don’t hate fracking already, what if you learned that it can affect wine? Furious? Me too.
Vineyard owners in California are growing increasingly wary of fracking as gas companies begin preliminary operations. Venoco has started exploring Monterey Shale for both oil and gas drilling. Last year, the company filed an application for drilling permits in Monterey County, according to Simon Salinas, a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors, and it already holds hundreds of thousands of acres in the formation, has drilled more than 20 wells and has invested $100 million in oil exploration.
With vineyards and farmlands covering 200,000 acres of Monterey that help make up an $8 billion agricultural business, Salinas told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Anything that can taint our water and food supply could be devastating to our economy.”
Paula Getzelman, a grape-grower in Monterey, said, “If you don’t have a good water supply, your land is worthless.”
Besides fears of contaminated water, Salinas also mentioned that when residents realize the fracking process uses millions of gallons of water that they need for their crops, they will be quite upset.
But even if these threats don’t come to fruition, residents are still concerned that fracking will have a negative effect on their marketability. After all, with cities like Napa and Sonoma not too far away, who’s going to want Monterey’s fracking wine?
Across the country, in Brooklyn, NY, a winery with similar fears about fracking in the Marcellus shale, recently hosted an anti-fracking benefit.
The winery stated on its Web site:
The potential for fracking affects Brooklyn Winery, as we source grapes for our wine from a number of vineyards in New York state and many of our wine bar’s seasonal menu items include ingredients grown on upstate farms.
Dairy Cows At Risk
Got milk? Maybe not for long. According to research from Penn State University, fracking has been found to reduce dairy production.
The university researchers set out to uncover how fracking in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region is affecting dairy farming, the state’s top agricultural sector. The researchers examined dairy cow numbers, milk production and fracking activity among various counties in Pennsylvania between 2007 and 2010. They found that counties with 150 or more Marcellus Shale wells saw a 19 percent decrease in dairy cows, while counties with no wells saw only a 1.2 percent decrease. In a similar fashion, milk production in these counties with 150 or more wells declined by an average of 18.5 percent, while counties with no wells had about a 1 percent decline.
This research seems to challenge the popular narrative that farmers use the money they receive from fracking companies through leasing their land to improve their farms. The researchers note that additional research is needed to figure out the exact cause of the decrease of dairy production. One researcher wondered whether farmers were taking the money they received from their leases and going into a new occupation, or if they are being forced out of farming due to fracking’s environmental effects or a decrease in their farm’s marketability.
Contaminated Food, Stillborn Calves and Poisoned Animals
Imagine fracking fluid seeping out of your next burger — not appetizing? It may be a reality as more and more livestock are raised near fracking sites. Hundreds of animals have already been affected after coming into contact with fracking fluid. Last year, 28 beef cattle in Pennsylvania were exposed to the fluid. Only three of the 11 calves these cattle gave birth to survived. In Louisiana a few years ago, 16 cows dropped dead after drinking fracking fluid.
As New York Governor Cuomo soon decides whether or not to frack in the state’s economically struggling areas, Rita Yelda of Food & Water Watch recently wrote a commentary urging him to consider fracking’s detrimental effects on food.
She wrote:
New York is a national leader in a variety of agricultural products, and about 25 percent of the state’s land area is used for food production. This space may end up being shared with thousands of air polluting drill rigs, and could also be affected by soil contamination from leaks, flares, explosions, fires and experimental waste disposal methods.
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http://landscapeurbanism.com/fracking-november-21st-delaware-river-basin-commission-votes/
2011
According to Energy Tomorrow, a site sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, of the 2,000+ wells drilled since 2008, there has been $2.8 million in direct economic benefits spending on wages, payments on capital, and taxes; $1.2 million in indirect (business-to-business) benefits; and $1.5 million in induced (business-to-consumer and consumer-to-business) benefits—per well! The regional economic impact in 2010 alone was $11.2 billion. And two million dollars was paid—per well—in federal, state, and local taxes.
With the current rhetoric around the economy, job creation, and the need to build national and state revenue, these numbers are difficult to ignore as well as what this money has brought to Pennsylvania and New York during, and since, the 2007 recession.
However, after a company asked for drilling rights to his land, Josh Fox began to research the mining process, a project that eventually developed into his controversial documentary Gasland. In one dramatic sequence in the film, drinking water from a kitchen faucet burst into flames due to its high methane content. Several residents testified that natural gas mining practices caused their subsequent health problems, as methane and a mixture of 596 chemicals used in the drilling process contaminated well water supplies. In doing so, the contamination also destroyed the homeowners’ property and resale values, rendering these residents no recourse to sell and move elsewhere.
Lower 48 States Shale Plays. Plays refers to geologic areas targeted by drilling companies. Image from here.
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By CNN Staff
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/08/us/arkansas-oil-spill/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter
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A duck from Mayflower is washed at The HAWK Center, a wildlife rehabilitation center. / http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/08/us/arkansas-oil-spill/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter
Oil covers the water and underbrush in Dawson Cove on April 6. / http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/08/us/arkansas-oil-spill/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter
Image of Gavel
http://media.katu.com/images/120504_gavel_2.jpg
Associated Press / April 9, 2013
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Exxon Mobil Corp. was found liable Tuesday in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination caused by the gasoline additive MTBE, and the jury ordered the oil giant to pay $236 million to New Hampshire to clean it up.
The jurors reached their verdicts in less than 90 minutes, after sitting through nearly three months of testimony. Lawyers on both sides were stunned by the speed with which they reached the verdict on liability and even more stunned when the jurors took barely 20 minutes more to fill out the damages verdict.
Juror Dawn Booker of Pembroke told The Associated Press that all 12 felt ‘‘very, very confident about our decision.’’
Attorney General Michael Delaney said he anticipates an appeal and doesn’t expect to see the money ‘‘anytime soon.’’ He said the case and the verdict are historic.
The verdict is more than twice the $105 million jurors awarded the New York City Water District in 2009 in its case against Exxon Mobil over MTBE contamination. That case is on appeal.
Jessica Grant, the state’s lead lawyer, said it was the largest verdict ever in an MTBE case, though a financial analyst noted that the award represents about two days’ worth of profit for the company.
Jurors found that Exxon Mobil was negligent in adding MTBE to its gasoline and that it was a defective product. They also found Exxon Mobil liable for failing to warn distributors and consumers about its contaminating characteristics.
The jury determined that the hazards of using MTBE gasoline were not obvious to state officials, who opted into the reformulated gasoline program in 1991 to help reduce smog in the state’s four southernmost counties.
Jurors also rejected Exxon Mobil’s defense that more than 300 junkyard and gas station owners not named in the lawsuit were responsible for much of the contamination. They also absolved the state of responsibility for the contamination.
‘‘Exxon will probably make close to a $40 billion profit this year, Gheit said. ‘‘That’s (the award) two days’ work.’’
He said it’s no surprise that Exxon Mobil would take the 10-year-old lawsuit to trial, saying the company ‘‘will make you sweat for every dollar you think you’re going to get.’’ Company leaders view it as a matter of principle, he said.
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— Mar. 4 4:00 PM EST
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/exxon-mobil-begins-defense-gas-additive-case
New Hampshire filed its product liability lawsuit a decade ago against 26 oil companies and distributers, claiming that MTBE — methyl tertiary butyl ether — is a defective product because of its propensity to travel farther and faster and contaminate larger quantities of water than gasoline without additives. The state is seeking more than $700 million to test and monitor 250,000 private wells and clean up an estimated 5,600 contaminated sites, and so far has collected more than $120 million in settlement money.
Lawyers for Exxon Mobil, the only defendant that has not settled with the state, argue that MTBE did exactly what it was supposed to do — replace lead in gasoline and cut smog in compliance with the 1990 Clean Air Act. They opened their case by attempting to cast doubt on state witnesses who claimed to be surprised by memos Mickelson wrote describing environmental concerns about MTBE. Former Department of Environmental Services Commissioner Robert Varney testified earlier that he was shocked Exxon Mobil did not share Mickelson’s findings with the state, but Mickelson said the information was widely available at the time.
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By Don Jeffrey and Sarah Earle on January 16, 2013
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-15/exxonmobil-knew-in-1984-mtbe-would-contaminate-ground
Fogg testified the additive can zigzag through fractured bedrock in unpredictable patterns and remain in groundwater longer than other compounds. Fogg said the additive poses unique risks to drinking water when leaked from underground storage tanks, based on its chemical properties and the state’s geology.
“The contaminant will tend to move along fractures that are open and connected,” he told jurors. “Those fractures can be quite complex.”
As a result, MTBE creates a hazard that is difficult to detect and equally difficult to clean up, Fogg said, showing jurors slides that demonstrated the way MTBE can bleed into water supplies. The state sought to counter claims by the oil companies that MTBE has largely disappeared from the water supply, as well as claims that the additive is safer than some of the chemicals it displaces when mixed with gasoline.
Chemicals such as benzene “don’t move very fast or very far, Fogg said. ‘‘They tend to stabilize because of biodegradation.’’
The state claimed in opening arguments that the oil companies knew that if they added MTBE to gasoline it would increase the risk and costs associated with contamination.
‘‘Exxon decided to disregard the recommendation of its own employees and put MTBE in gasoline,’’ Jessica Grant, a lawyer for the state, told jurors Jan. 14. ‘‘In 1984, Exxon anticipated that if it added MTBE to its gasoline, the number of contamination incidents would triple. These incidents would take longer to clean up and cost five times as much.’’
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http://www.ktvb.com/news/business/195297501.html
Dugan says Exxon Mobil delayed using MTBE as a gasoline additive to study its health and environmental impacts. He said some company executives criticized his study committee for taking so long and reducing Exxon Mobil’s competitive edge in the marketplace.
Dugan said the study committee in June 1985 recommended using MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, saying the environmental risks were manageable. He testified that the committee’s final report included concerns raised by former Exxon Mobil engineer Barbara Mickelson, including that MTBE would move farther and faster if leaked into water supplies and be more costly and difficult to remediate.
“We wanted management to be fully aware of all the concerns raised,” Dugan said.
Dugan said they rejected using methanol as being too hazardous, with as little as a teaspoonful capable of causing blindness. Ethanol was ruled out, he said, because it could cause vapor lock in car engines and some auto manufacturers were warning consumers that they would not honor warranties if the car owner used gasoline with ethanol.
The state claims MTBE is a defective product and that Exxon Mobil failed to warn state officials about potential adverse effects.
Over the state’s objections, Dugan testified Tuesday that Mickelson shared her concerns with EPA officials.
Attorney Jessica Grant, representing the state, told Superior Court Judge Peter Fauver that Exxon Mobil’s lawyers “are trying to mislead this jury into thinking they were candid with the EPA when they weren’t.” Fauver allowed defense attorney David Lender to ask whether Mickelson shared her findings with the EPA but would not permit Dugan to elaborate.
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http://whyfiles.org/168oil_spill/4.html
The Ixtoc I exploratory well blew out in June, 1979, in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico. The well spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of oil, the second-largest spill in history.NOAA
More people + more industry = more oil floating on water
At any rate, more oil will be moving across the ocean in the future, as a rising standard of living and growing population feed an overwhelming thirst for fossil fuels.To Charter, these factors are central to the oil-spill equation. “We have been ignoring for quite a few decades the fact that oil consumption, which we take for granted in industrial societies, has an environmental cost that is paid by living resources. Things die in nature so we can get this oil. … Somewhere, some part of the environment is being poisoned for every gallon of gasoline that arrives in a filling station.”
And it’s not just tankers that spill oil, Charter adds. The largest peacetime oil spill in history, the Ixtoc I well, spewed 140 million gallons in the Gulf of Campeche, in the southern Gulf of Mexico.
That was a shallow well. As offshore drills work in the Arctic ice, and in deeper water in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, “You can create accidents you can’t fix,” says Charter.
1997
As of 1997, Fucus had not yet fully recovered in the upper intertidal zone on shores oriented towards direct sunlight, but in many locations, recovery of intertidal communities had been substantial. In other habitat types, such as estuaries and cobble beaches, many species did not show signs of recovery when they were last surveyed in 1991. Studies on the effects of clean-up activities on oiled and washed beaches showed some invertebrates, like molluscs and annelid worms were still much less abundant than on comparable unoiled beaches through 1997. It is undetermined how much recovery has occurred in these locations since 1997, because further work has not been conducted.Lingering oil is still present in some intertidal areas within the spill zone. Recent studies indicate that at beaches with pockets of buried lingering oil, high amphipod mortality is associated with elevated hydrocarbon concentrations. Moreover, the recovery objective states that the intertidal zone must provide uncontaminated food to top predators, including human subsistence users. As recently as 2009, some bird species which rely exclusively on the intertidal zone (harlequin ducks) were still being exposed to hydrocarbons. Although the route of oil exposure has not been established, it is possible they are consuming contaminated prey during feeding. In addition, the slow recovery of some soft-sediment intertidal invertebrates, the presence of lingering, bio-available oil, the continuing oil exposure of obligate intertidal foragers that are known to eat bivalves, and the lack of recent data characterizing the intertidal community indicate that this resource has not fully recovered from the effects of the oil spill.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/04/opinion/sutter-arkansas-oil-spill
The Mayflower, Arkansas, spill is nothing compared to the Gulf disaster, of course. Fourteen ducks, two turtles and one muskrat were oiled as a result of the Friday spill, according to ExxonMobil. Two ducks died. About two-dozen homes were evacuated. The full toll of the Gulf Coast Oil Disaster (the news media started calling it that because “spill” wasn’t big enough to be accurate) is still being tabulated, but the numbers are of another magnitude: 210 million gallons of oil, as well as 464 oiled sea turtles and 8,567 affected birds, many of them dead, according to an April 2012 report compiled by two federal agencies and five states.
Both incidents, however, are pieces in a bigger puzzle.
They highlight, once again, that America is addicted to fossil fuels and needs to invest more seriously and urgently in alternatives like wind, solar and nuclear.
These events never seem to really stick in our collective memory.
But they should
If they did, they would inform our decision-making.
The way things work now, oil spills are seen by some politicians as expected — as externalities of our condition, like lung cancer to a smoker.
U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, reportedly told a local radio station on Wednesday that we have oil pipeline accidents “just like we have car accidents” and that he supports further development of the system that caused the spill in his state.
How silly, right?
We shouldn’t expect oil spills to be part of modern reality.
There are much better ways forward.
Environmental groups are right to use the Arkansas spill as a cautionary tale — as one of many reasons that the Obama administration should reject a proposed pipeline, called the Keystone XL, which would carry this risky type of crude from Canada to the Gulf Coast of the United States for processing.
The groups contend this thicker “oil sands” material is more corrosive to pipelines and therefore more dangerous to transport across the United States.
The National Resource Defense Council, in a recent blog post, says oil sands crude also is transported at higher temperatures, putting additional stress on pipelines; and it’s thicker and harder to clean up than conventional crude.
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Crews work to clean up from an oil pipeline spill in a Mayflower, Ark., neighborhood Wednesday, April 3, 2013. An ExxonMobil pipeline ruptured last week and spewed thousands of barrels of crude oil. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
The ExxonMobil Corp. has been honored with a “Green Cross of Safety” medal, bestowed as the oil giant was cleaning up thousands of barrels of heavy Canadian oil spilled by a pipeline rupture onto the streets and backyards of a small town in Arkansas.
ExxonMobil was hit with a $5 million lawsuit Monday by residents of Mayflower, Ark., who said in their filing: “This Arkansas class action lawsuit involves the worst crude oil and tar sands spill in Arkansas history.” The suit estimates that up to 20,000 barrels spilled: ExxonMobil has estimated the spill at 3,500 to 5,000 barrels.
Rex Tillerson, Chairman/CEO of ExxonMobil, accepts “Green Cross of Safety” medal while crews from the oil company clean up a pipeline spill in Arkansas.
The mess in Arkansas didn’t stop ExxonMobil Chairman/CEO Rex W. Tillertson from accepting accolades from the National Safety Council. “It is an honor to receive this medal on behalf of the men and women of ExxonMobil,” said a proud Tillertson. “We hold this award in high esteem because it recognizes the deep commitment of our company and our people to a culture of safety.”
ExxonMobil is a sensitive oil giant. It waged a 15-year battle against a $5 billion punitive damages award from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, eventually reducing the award to $500 million. Lawyers from the Los Angeles firm of O’Melveny & Myers argued at a federal appellate court hearing in Seattle that Exxon had suffered enough and paid out enough already.
The National Safety Council, on whose board sits an ExxonMobil vice president, commended the oil giant for its “leadership and comprehensive commitment to safety excellence. In bestowing the Green Cross of Safety, it said:
“ExxonMobil distinguished itself over a period of years for outstanding achievements in workplace safety, community service, environmental stewardship and responsible citizenship.”
The recent Arkansas rupture, a 2-3″ gash in the 65-year-old Pegasus Pipeline, hit a town of 2,200 about 20 miles north of Little Rock. It forced evacuation of homes. ExxonMobil put a lid — literally — on news coverage. A no-fly zone was established over the spill. Journalists were barred from the school where ExxonMobil and state officials were meeting with local residents.
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Yale Environment 360: University of Kansas insect ecologist Orley R. “Chip” Taylor has been observing the fragile populations of monarch butterflies for decades, but he says he has never been more concerned about their future.
Monarchs are beloved for their spectacular migration across Canada and the United States to overwintering sites in central Mexico — and back again.
The space rock that hit Earth 65m years ago and is widely implicated in the end of the dinosaurs was probably a speeding comet, US scientists say. Researchers in New Hampshire suggest the 180km-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico was carved out by a smaller object than previously thought. Many scientists consider a large and relatively slow moving asteroid to have been the likely culprit.Details were outlined at the
A noble undertaking to be sure. Were it not for the simple fact that Science has not , for the most part, respected the right of creatures to exist in an environment that is suitable for their rightful existence. Science and mankind alike have, for the most part, considered only it’s pleasure and curiosity where animals are concerned. They have neither respected their lives nor their habitats. Always putting their selfish needs before anything else.
Which leads one to wonder as to the why of this undertaking? I would venture to say it is all for the greater glory of their Scientific careers. They nether care nor are concerned with the well being or happiness of any of these creatures. The proof is in the lack of impetus where pollution, experimental animal research and deforestation are concerned. Just look at the palm oil plantations flourishing at the expense of the Orangutang , the bees and pollinators dying off due to GMO’s. The Whale, porpoise and a long list of sea life. The endless list of animals that are endangered, being poached and savaged on a daily basis, and then there is always the commercialization of the creatures. Aquariums for profit, Zoos that confine these poor animals to cages or concrete pens in many cases in environments that are completely alien and detrimental to the species. Exotic animals captured and sold for the highest dollar to people who think they are pretty and since they have the money why not ? Of course if they can afford it they want what no one else has, regardless of the morality of such a desire. Avarice and social standing know no limits to satiating these desires
A lesser bird of paradise flaunts his flank plumes to entice females.
Who cares what these poor creatures had to endure to make it to that pet shop or dealer. The only thing that matters is they got what they wanted , the animal be damned. After all it is just an animal isn’t it ?
Let’s not forget the Circus, animals taken from their mothers at a young age that are savagely beaten and traumatized to conform for the amusement of those willing to pay for the entertainment and for the profit of those unethical beasts that mistreat and terrorize them on a daily basis. Their suffering is of no consequence and trivial to those who want to possess them.
In light of the cruelty and callousness with which humanity has treated the creatures of this planet, I would venture to say they are better off as a part of history than part of the next series of experiments for the glory of greedy and soulless enterprises.
~Desert Rose~
On Friday at a National Geographic sponsored TEDx conference, scientists met in Washington, D.C. to discuss which animals we should bring back from extinction. They also discussed the how, why, and ethics of doing so.They called it “de-extinction.”
There are a few guidelines for which ancient species are considered, and sadly, dinosaurs are so long dead they aren’t in the picture. Their DNA has long ago degraded, so researchers are fairly sure that Jurassic Park will never happen.
But there are plenty of other animals on the table. The list of candidates is actually pretty long, considering.
Here are the 24 animals they are hoping to one day resurrect.
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Tasmania Tigers were hunted by humans to extinction
Na Son Nguyen/AP
The intimate animal portraits, which feature everything from a featherless chicken to a pair of affectionate chimpanzees, are meant to illuminate the similarities between animal poses, gestures, and gazes, and our own.
Photographing animals on a set, as opposed to in their natural habitat comes with a unique set of challenges.
“You can never predict an animal’s mood,” Flach says on his website. “So you have to plan beforehand to get what you want.” To make the animals feel as comfortable as possible, Flach may adjust the temperature of the studio or play music.
You can purchase a hardcover copy of Flach’s animal portraits here or visit his website to see more of the award-winning photographer’s work.
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The decline in the Monarch population now marks a statistical long-term trend and can no longer be seen as a combination of yearly or seasonal events, experts say.The number of Monarch butterflies making it to their winter refuge in Mexico dropped 59 per cent this year, falling to the lowest level since comparable record-keeping began 20 years ago, scientists reported Wednesday.
It was the third straight year of declines for the orange-and-black butterflies that migrate from the United States and Canada to spend the winter sheltering in mountaintop fir forests in central Mexico. Six of the last seven years have shown drops, and there are now only one-fifteenth as many butterflies as there were in 1997.
In the Hamilton region, Monarchs have been faced with a loss of habitat for many years said Jen Baker, Head-of-the-Lake Land Trust Program co-ordinator for the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club. Milkweed, the Monarchs’ main food source as well as where they lay their eggs, has been decreasing in the region.
“Milkweed can’t necessarily grow in fields that are sprayed for weeds. It might be good for crops, but it’s bad for milkweed,” she said, adding that invasive species also pose a risk.
“Dog Strangling Vine is an invasive plant that is a cousin of the milkweed. We’ve found some females will lay their eggs on the vine and the babies die because that’s not their food.”
Both planting milkweed and trying to control the Dog Strangling Vine population are both efforts the Naturalists’ Club encourages, Baker added.
The decline in the Monarch population now marks a statistical long-term trend and can no longer be seen as a combination of yearly or seasonal events, the experts said.
But they differed on the possible causes.
There are issues facing Monarchs south of the border, too, according to experts. Illegal logging in the reserve established in the Monarch wintering grounds was long thought to contribute, but such logging has been vastly reduced by increased protection, enforcement and alternative development programs in Mexico.
The World Wildlife Fund, one of the groups that sponsored the butterfly census, blamed climate conditions and agricultural practices, especially the use of pesticides that kill off the Monarchs’ main food source, milkweed. The butterflies breed and live in the north in the summer, and migrate to Mexico in the winter.
“The decrease of Monarch butterflies … probably is due to the negative effects of reduction in milkweed and extreme variation in the United States and Canada,” the fund and its partner organizations said in a statement.
Monarchs ‘a shared responsibility’ Omar Vidal, the World Wildlife Fund director in Mexico, said: “The conservation of the Monarch butterfly is a shared responsibility between Mexico, the United States and Canada. By protecting the reserves and having practically eliminated large-scale illegal logging, Mexico has done its part.”
“It is now necessary for the United States and Canada to do their part and protect the butterflies’ habitat in their territories,” Vidal said.
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Sample Photos of Monarch Caterpillars, Butterflied and different varieties of Milkweed to assist in identifying for a butterfly garden
