Green Options

Blue-green algae blooms on Minnesota lakes are linked to a dog death and illnesses, and apparently caused by runoff pollution.

The death of a dog after it frolicked in a Minnesota lake plagued with blue-green algae was a sad coda for a late summer in the state. Although no necropsy was done, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said  “the circumstances and manner of death were consistent with exposure to algal toxins.” He added that the MPCA had received reports of several other sick dogs likely exposed to the algae.

Compounding the sadness, the dog that died after exposure in Fox Lake, a black Lab named Sady, was a wedding gift to the dog’s owners from a friend and soldier killed in Iraq.

The large-scale Organic dairy cooperative, “Organic Valley” has just sunk to a new low in the practice of “I will market against my farmer neighbors by stoking consumer’s fears.” They announced that they have launched an on-line calculator that is supposed to show you how much pesticide and fertilizer use is avoided when you buy their products.  The news release essentially boils down to the message, “buy our products or you will probably die!”  It also essentially accuses the 97.5% of us who don’t buy Organic of destroying the planet.

When talking about pesticides the press report says: “For adults, exposure through diet has been linked to infertility, Parkinson’s, testicular cancer, birth defects and much more. More than one million children in America age five and under ingest at least 15 pesticides daily. Early exposures are suspected in the sharp rise in health problems including autism, obesity, asthma, brain cancer and other childhood cancers.”  This broad-brush assertion is misleading on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start.  I’m not saying that there have never been any health issues with any pesticide anywhere, but we also have sufficient food in part because of pesticides.  Though many people don’t know it, there are pesticides used on organic crops as well.  Actually, the EPA has done a very good job of regulating pesticide use over the years so that people don’t need to be frightened about their food.

While carbon capture and sequestration technology remains controversial, studies to delve deeper into it are ongoing in hopes of presenting one way to alleviate emission levels. A team from MIT has been studying a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technique called pressurized oxy-fuel combustion. This process converts the carbon dioxide emissions of a power plant into a pressurized liquid stream meant to be pumped underground. Team leader Ahmed Ghoniem of MIT claims that his team is the only one conducting an academic study of “pressurized combustion system for carbon dioxide capture.”

Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electricity provider, has secured $70.5 million in stimulus funds to expand an innovative project that turns carbon dioxide emissions from a coal power plant into biofuel using algae. While part of the funds will be used to scale up the algae processing portion, some of the funds will also be used to investigate the potential benefits of turning the coal into a gas prior to burning it for power.

The concept of creating two products — electricity and fuel — from the same process is known as cogeneration. In this case, the cogeneration also helps to reduce environmental pollution. It’s an idea that has been gathering support as a way to make coal less polluting while finding an additional revenue source to pay for the pollution control itself. In fact, a while back I reported on a similar pilot project in Oregon.

This post consists of a few lines and a link to what’s happened since some of my recent posts where there has been significant action. Each item is identified and linked by the date and title of the original post.

July 2009 - Sable Antelope - One Sold for $ 385 000 and Giant Species Rediscovered in Angola.

Three more Giant Sable Antelopes, have been sighted in Angola. This brings to six the number of this rare species, which was feared to have become extinct, that have been sited in the last few weeks.

July 2009 - Mauling of Baboon by “Fighting Dogs”, Reopens the Cape Peninsular Baboon Debate

Two men were attacked by Pit Bulls in Ocean View ,the same Township in Ocean View this week, prompting a warning from welfare group TEARS.

With the numerous distressing stories on the plight of so many species, its heartening to hear of a positive development in one of the largest cities in Europe.

A century ago the Seine, which flows from the north of France, through Paris to the English Channel, hosted a large flourishing population of Atlantic salmon. The salmon migrated from the sea to their freshwater birth place to reproduce from December to June every year.

Millions of nuts, bolts, pieces of metal and carbon, and whole spacecraft from thousands of missions and launches form an orbiting garbage dump spinning around the Earth at speeds up to 22,000 mph.

After the recent collision between a Russian and U.S. satellite, concern for the growing hazard of space junk is becoming even more acute within the international space community. In recent months, NASA and the European Space Agency have both diverted resources into monitoring space debris and researching ways of mitigating and—some day—removing it.

In late June, more than 500 ring-billed gulls were found dead in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, only a couple days after the 40th anniversary of the day the river caught fire at roughly the same spot.

The legendary glaciers of the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges have been losing volume at an increasing rate over the past twenty to thirty years. And over this same time period, much data has piled up confirming the role of increased CO2 emissions in global warming trends. Given this, it would be “natural” to assume that CO2-induced warming was also to blame for the glacial melting. But it turns out that much stronger evidence points to the [...]

While there are many conservation issues that regularly top the policy bill, such as destruction of habitat, over-hunting, fisheries collapsing and so on, a new concern has recently emerged through scientific studies. Wildlife cancer.

Wastewater treatment facilities end up dumping a lot of mud that is extracted from the in-flowing water. And, like everything else, that mud takes up space. Space that could be used for other things, even at the dumping yards. But researchers from the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) have suggested, and successfully shown, that the waste mud doesn’t need to be taken to a dumping ground; rather, it can be used as fuel.