With about five weeks until it plays host to the Olympic sailing regatta, the coastal city of Qingdao, China, is experiencing a huge algal bloom that covers a third of the course.  Local officials have mobilized 20,000 people and 1,000 boats to help with the clean-up and haul away the algae.  They believe the sailing area should be clear by July 15, and the government plans to install a fenced perimeter in the Yellow Sea more than 30 miles long in attempt to block the algae from floating into the area.

Water quality has been a concern for the sailing events, given that many coastal Chinese cities dump untreated sewage into the sea.  At the same time, rivers and tributaries emptying into coastal waters are often contaminated with high levels of nitrates from agricultural and industrial runoff.  These nitrates contribute to the red tides of algae that often bloom along sections of China’s coastline.

However, Qingdao officials say there isn’t a “substantial link” between the pollution & poor water quality and the current algal bloom.  They instead blame it on increased rainfall and warmer waters in the Yellow Sea.

Either way, algal blooms can result in dead zones (where many fish and aquatic insects cannot survive) like the one in the Gulf of Mexico.  With the world watching the upcoming Olympics, I hope that this event will bring more needed attention to what’s happening to the oceans and seas as a result of our actions.

If I told most of you this in person, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

Seriously. If I told you that it’s illegal to drink raindrops rainwater in Colorado, you’d probably have me fitted for a tin  foil hat.

But it’s true.

And here’s the link to the law and the law itself:

Q. Why can’t Denver Water customers reuse their own gray water for outdoor use?

A. Colorado water law allows each customer just one use of the water before it goes down the drain, through a wastewater treatment plant and back into the river for others to use. By law, Denver Water customers are not permitted to take their bath or laundry water (commonly referred to as gray water) and dump it on their outdoor plants or garden. After this water is used once by Denver Water customers, it must return to the South Platte River where it will be used seven or eight more times before it gets to the state line (Nebraska). State water laws are enforced by the State Engineer’s office (PDF). Denver Water does not endorse any gray water systems.

However, Denver Water customers are encouraged to catch unused clear water in a bucket or other container as it comes out of the tap and then use this water once; to mop floors, refresh pet water or water plants. For example, try catching water that comes out before the shower water warms up and then use this water to flush toilets or rinse the shower.

Q. Why doesn’t Denver Water have rebates for rain barrels so we could catch our rain and put it on our plants?

A. Colorado Water Law requires that precipitation fall to the ground, run off and into the river of the watershed where it fell. Because rights to water are legally allocated in this state, an individual may not capture and use water to which he/she does not have a right. We must remember also that rain barrels don’t help much in a drought because a drought by its very nature supplies little in the way of snow or rain. The reuse of household water (gray water) is regulated by the Colorado State Board of Health Guidelines On Individual Sewage Disposal Systems (PDF). Local health agencies are responsible for implementation and enforcement of the Guidelines.

So you have no rights to the rain that falls on your own property and can be sanctioned, technically, for drinking rainwater.

And of course, that nasty graywater - don’t even THINK of re-using it. The Greywater Police in Colorado have been issued tasers and they’re itching to use them.

So. Feeling ‘free’ lately?

I toured the Metro Parks Green Building on Saturday. The building is brilliant, but not many people came. That was unfortunate because people should see how easy it is to save on energy. Plus, they had really great cookies!

The new Metro Parks Rangers building features just some of these features:

• Outside: Rain barrels, solar panels, solar film, green roof, rain garden, smart pavers which allow rain drainage, and native greenery.
• Inside: Recycled materials for countertops, reclaimed lumber for furniture and structure, recycled carpet, recyclable office furniture, waterless urinals, low VOC paints, motion sensors for lights, bamboo floors, reused technology, original bricks and floor tiles.
• Basement: Composting toilet machine, geothermal heat system, and Hybrid car.

This building demonstrates how easy it is to reduce our impact on the planet, be healthier, and save money on energy costs. And live comfortably at the same time. The lockers were made from recycled milk jugs and the marble-looking kitchen counter top was made from newspapers!

The tour was well-staffed with cheerful and helpful volunteers. I look forward to the next Metro Parks event. They are truly leaders in our community, setting an example for all of us to leave a light footprint.

Gee I wonder how that fucking asshole Limbaugh and the rest of the know-nothings who listen to him will be making fun of Hansen’s testimony yesterday that barely registered a blip on the radar of our so-called ‘liberal’ media?

Toronto Star from CommonDreams

“We have reached a point of planetary emergency,” he said.

“There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.”

snip

Hansen’s second Capitol Hill appearance in 1989 was before a committee chaired by a Tennessee senator named Al Gore, but the White House edited his statement before Gore’s committee, throwing into question his certainty about the link between human activity and global warming.

Hansen was told he could accept the revisions, or he would not be able to testify.

So, in advance of the hearing, he asked Gore to question him on the edited parts, he then revealed the White House edit and the story led all U.S. network newscasts that evening. Hansen then moved out of the political spotlight for 15 years.

That’s ‘free and fair exchange of ideas’ conservative style.

He also accused corporate America of a “greenwash” in which their environmentally friendly words are not backed by actions and he supported criminal charges against CEOs of corporations such as ExxonMobil who are smart enough to know the situation but are intent on continuing their fossil fuel ways.

“When their descendants look back on them, they should not to be able to pretend that they didn’t know,” Hansen said.

“They do know.”

They are also guilty of funding and promoting contrarian views from scientists, furthering a charade that confuses the public into believing there is debate among scientists in this country, Hansen said.

“There is no debate,” he said.

Only among brain dead conservative greedheads who have no problem sacrificing their children’s future for their present comfort.

As for the CEO’s, I say, just get some rope and find a nice sturdy tree.

I doubt anything will change until it’s too late and then the capitalists will say “well, it’s too late anyway so let’s just ride it down and make money.” Greed is simply too ingrained in the human DNA which is something I’d like to seriously cross-examine God about (what the HELL were you thinking? we’d grow out of it??).

George Carlin was right about humanity. At least he won’t be around to see it collapse.

AP writers: Everything Seemingly is Spinning Out of Control

Wow, even the mainstream is noticing:

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet’s weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation’s capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

And it ends with this ominous note:

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

Now back in the late 1960s there was a similar unraveling going on. People displayed little signs - “plan ahead” with the e-a-d part falling off the line downward.

A lot of it had to do with a more slipshod attitude toward things with American car manufacturers leading the way. There was also problems with teething troubles in new computer technology.

But we didn’t have the problems with the basic supply of oil and food that we have now. And although we had the first signposts of environmental degradation, we didn’t do enough to ensure that we wouldn’t run into the problems we are running into today. Capitalism uber alles and now the generations that followed the 60s are now having to deal with the mess.

Yes we had the air pollution problem - and we went to unleaded fuel and put scrubbers on some smokestacks. But it wasn’t enough.

Yes we were warned about overpopulation, food and the Malthusian mathematics - but the cheap price of oil made it seem like we could cheat nature and science.

We were warned about the fragility of the environment and the animal species of the world - and we had Earth Day and greenwashed the whole movement so Corporate America could make money.

M. King Hubbert warned us about oil depletion. And we laughed at him.

Now we pay. And pay dearly.

Once again proof positive that the Bush administration and conservatives in general, don’t give a flying fuck about the American people - only the capitalists:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease….The Agriculture Department tests less than 1% of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows. Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too. (whoa - I thought competition was a hallmark of American capitalism! What are the big meat companies afraid of? - ed.) A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out….Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.”

You can read more about the Bush administration is strongarming the South Korean government to accept US beef from Mike Whitney in ICH.

The latest National Journal Insiders Poll asks Democrats and Republicans if “it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution.”

• 95% of Democrats answered yes, compared with 26% of Republicans.

If there’s one thing poll after poll indicates, it’s that the science is not settled on this issue.” - one Republican respondent.

Aaahhh…science by polling.

Insiders of both parties agreed, however, that the most urgent priority facing the next president and Congress will be the economy.

• 59% of Republicans said the economy is at the top of the nation’s priority list, while 44% of Democrats said the same. But global warming was the second-most pressing matter, according to Democrats, while energy took the second spot for Republicans.

Adapted from The Hotline.

Members of Congress are scheduled to begin debate next week on Senate bill 2191 “America’s Climate Security Act of 2007,” which was introduced by Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA).  The two purposes of this Act are:

(1) to establish the core of a Federal program that will reduce United States greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough between 2007 and 2050 to avert the catastrophic impacts of global climate change; and

(2) to accomplish that purpose while preserving robust growth in the United States economy and avoiding the imposition of hardship on United States citizens.

I’m sure we’ll hear the same old arguments from “global warming” deniers such as the economy will suffer, temperatures are actually cooling, and carbon dioxide is good for plants.

As a scientist, it’s frustrating to see when the waters are being muddied to produce doubt in the minds of people.  If the data for global warming and subsequent climate change were shown to be incorrect, then I would gladly acknowledge that our science is wrong.  But science seeks to explain how things happen in the universe, and science is self-correcting.  The evidence is overwhelming, and as the IPCC has previously said, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

Read Chris Mooney’s new article The Price of Planetary Gambling for a more in depth analysis of the upcoming debate.

But when you’re lying to right wing Americans you can get away with it. They’ll believe anything.

Media Matters

On the June 17 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that “drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.” In fact, according to Energy Department researchers, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is opened for drilling for oil in 2008, the estimated peak production would yield, at most, 1.45 million barrels a day in 2028.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s May 2008 Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

In all three ANWR resource cases, ANWR crude oil production begins in 2018 and grows during most of the projection period before production begins to decline. In the mean oil resource case, ANWR oil production peaks at 780,000 barrels per day in 2027. The low- resource-case production peaks at 510,000 barrels per day in 2028, while the high- resource-case production peaks at 1,450,000 barrels per day in 2028. Cumulative oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR from 2018 through 2030 amounts to 2.6 billion barrels in the mean resource case, 1.9 billion barrels in the low resource case, and 4.3 billion barrels in the high resource case.

From the June 17 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Like I told you yesterday, gas is up 35 percent. Electricity is up 30 percent. Natural gas, which most Americans use to heat their home, will hit a record high next month, up 43 percent from last year. Oh, boy. What happens when we hit November and December?

Even with all of that, domestic drilling is still stalled by Congress. It’s like these people don’t even — they don’t even live on the same planet. And this is really too bad, since drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.

OK kiddies let’s do the math about how ANWR will save us.

Currently, the United States uses 20.6 million barrels of oil every day.

Which comes out to about 7,519,000,000 barrels of oil every year. That’s 7.5 billion barrels. And the total best case scenario from ANWR gets us 4.3 billion barrels TOTAL and then it’s ALL GONE.

So.

That means ALL of the oil in ANWR in the best case scenario can meet ALL of our oil needs in the USA for approximately 7 1/2 MONTHS. That’s all folks. And that doesn’t take into account how our consumption might continue to increase by the time that oil comes online. It may only give us the equivalent of 4 months of US consumption.

Now think of what we get for that oil. The quite possible destruction of ANWR.

So go ahead idiot Americans and let the oil companies take their last orgy of profits by drilling ANWR, drilling off shore - go ahead DRILL THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY and you STILL won’t get enough oil to make this country “energy self-sufficient.” EVER.

But that’s OK. Flail about in our usual fashion. Beats changing our “non-negotiable lifestyle.” Beats conservation, collective action and serious investment in alternative forms of energy, public transportation, etc. etc.

In the end, we’ll get exactly what we deserve. History and science have a way of making sure of that.

In the meantime just listen to lying jackasses like Glenn Beck. America is full of them.

After a side discussion in Comments about bats, I’ve been searching the Bat Conservation International site for more information about how great bats are, how they help us, and how we can help them. Essentially, bats are pretty harmless to humans, but they eat a lot of bugs that make us sick, eat our food, or kill us (think West Nile Virus). So, bats are great! They eat what we want them to eat, and otherwise leave us alone.

Bat Trivia

Baby bats are called pups. Females have one pup per year - that’s a pretty low reproductive rate.
Bats live over 30 years, making them the longest living mammal for their size.
Bats and birds are not related.

Bat houses

One way to help bats is to build or put up a bat house to provide them shelter during the day so they can eat bugs at night. The best place to put a bat house is on a building or a pole, not on a tree.

Bat Benefits

In the United States, little brown bats often eat mosquitos and can catch up to 1,200 tiny insects in an hour. An average-sized colony of big brown bats can eat enough cucumber beetles to protect farmers from tens of millions of the beetle’s rootworm larva each summer. Large colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats eat hundreds of tons of moth pests weekly.

Problems

The biggest problem is human fear.

Another big problem for bats involves some of the things we do to the places where bats live. We spray a lot of chemicals, which are dangerous. Bugs are sprayed by the chemicals, and then the bats eat the chemical-coated bugs.

And, windmills are posing a problem for bats. As we strive to find renewable energy, we must remember to not harm other species in the process. (remember though, pollution from our gas-cars harm uncountable numbers of animals) The Bats and Wind Energy Consortium has joined together with energy innovators to find solutions. The Oregon Wind Turbine (below) is safe for birds and bats.

Recently, scientists have discovered White Nose Syndrome among bats in the North East. They don’t know the cause, but the mortality rate is 95%.

We should do what we can to help animals like bats. Without knowing, we depend on others for our survival, so it’s in our interest to keep them safe.