Vancouver was consumed with greenwashing its image even before it got the upcoming Winter Olympics. The same goes for nearby Whistler, which will host a number of the alpine events. It's gotten so bad that even David Suzuki--Canada's Al Gore--is criticizing some of the efforts. In the following, I've converted loonies into American dollars.
As the world's largest fleet of Hydrogen powered buses is set to roll in Whistler, a leading environmental group is questioning the economic sense of the project.
"It is fine to scope out potential technologies of the future, but the reality is B.C.'s public transit services are on life support as far as the financial needs go,” said Ian Bruce, climate-change campaigner for the David Suzuki Foundation.
"B.C. government should re-evaluate and come out with a financial plan to make the BC transit plan become a reality."
The 20-hydrogen bus project is funded with $42.6 million from the federal government and $42.1 million from the province and B.C. Transit, the crown agency responsible for co-ordinating the delivery of public transportation within B.C., outside of Metro Vancouver.
The money covers both capital and operating costs until 2014.
The hydrogen buses cost $2.0 million apiece, about four times the cost of standard buses. When it comes to fuel and maintenance, they cost more per mile to drive. Plus...
Added to the question of costs is the fact that the hydrogen has to be bused in from Quebec, as it cannot be produced in B.C. in great enough quantities.
This reduces green house gas emission savings from using hydrogen from 100 per cent to 62 per cent.
"When it comes to public transit, the case is unclear whether it will be a potential solution and certainly right now there are a lot more cost-effective solutions for reducing emissions and getting more people on to public transit," said Bruce.
The investment in fuel-cell buses is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1,800 tonnes per year in B.C.
What's with the pretense that driving hydrogen buses is emission-free? Besides the fact that their exhaust--water vapor--is our most common greenhouse gas, all hydrogen production methods--even those which separate it from waste streams--consume energy. Heck, about 95 percent of the hydrogen produced in the U.S. comes from natural gas. Some of the rest comes from the gasification of coal.
Canada is working to produce more of its hydrogen from renewable sources. For instance, "hydro-hydrogen" is made via hydrolysis (splitting water molecules) using hydroelectric power. Both BC Hydro and Hydro Quebec have explored making hydrogen with off-peak power...but how often is either organization forced to spill water around their hydroelectric generators during off-peak hours? Meanwhile with as expensive and wind and solar energy are, you can imagine what their use does to the price of hydrogen.
Also note that hydrogen transport over long distances is even more inefficient than the article indicates. I question whether there would be any emissions savings at all when shipping the fuel across the continent from Quebec. And the cost of that...ouch.
Unless public transportation has sufficient ridership, it can be more efficient not just financially but from an emissions perspective to avoid manufacturing and using it. How busy and full will those hydrogen buses be once the Olympics are over?
Both PETA and the Humane Society of the United States are animal rights groups that occasionally do things good things related to animal welfare. For instance, it was an HSUS investigator working undercover at a California slaughterhouse who illicitly filmed the ugly abuses of downer cattle. In the following examples, PETA wouldn't be spying on animal research facilities if they weren't trying to outlaw them and/or drive them out of business. But, if they uncover what most people consider abuses...
The animal-rights activist who infiltrated the University of Utah's animal-research labs this year is the same woman who was involved in a similar operation at the Oregon National Primate Research Center two years ago, The Salt Lake Tribune has learned.
Lindsay West, identified only as "LZ" in formal complaints filed against the U. by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), was hired as an animal support technician, then used hidden cameras to document alleged violations of animal-welfare laws and research standards at both institutions.
Oregon officials decided to name West this week because of her involvement in an undercover operation at another research institution. U. officials declined to name the Utah infiltrator, but several university sources have confirmed West and "LZ" are one and the same.
West worked at OHSU's primate lab in Beaverton for 3+ months in 2007.
In the Oregon case, PETA alleged workers sprayed high-pressure hoses to clean out cages without removing research monkeys; that monkeys suffered prolapsed rectums and other painful conditions that were not properly treated; and that monkeys displayed signs of extreme psychological trauma stemming from small cages. West's video supported those allegations, but the Agriculture Department found no evidence the lab violated animal-welfare laws.
"The USDA never interviewed our investigator or reviewed our footage," Guillermo said. But the agency did issue the lab a warning based on a follow-up complaint PETA made, which alleged that a few monkeys were victims of veterinary malpractice.
In case you're wondering what a prolapsed rectum is...
Rectal prolapse normally describes a medical condition wherein the walls of the rectum protrude through the anus and hence become visible outside the body.
...
Rectal prolapse is caused by the weakening of the ligaments and muscles that hold the rectum in place. In most people, the anal sphincter is weak. Rectal prolapse is often associated with the following conditions: advanced age, long term constipation, long term diarrhoea, long term straining during defecation, high gastrointestinal helminth loads, pregnancy and stresses of childbirth, previous surgery, cystic fibrosis, COPD, and sphincter paralysis.
University of Utah officials think West his the camera in a bandana she always wore. Back to the original article.
Earlier this month, PETA filed complaints with the National Institutes of Health, USDA and the Humane Society of Utah, alleging broad-based "flagrant" mistreatment and neglect at the U. labs involving mice, primates, rabbits, pigs and frogs, as well as dogs and cats allegedly obtained from shelters. The complaints were based entirely on video, photos and field notes West compiled from February to October, when she moved away from Utah.
West passed a criminal background check when applying for the University of Utah job. Both OHSU and the University of Utah wrote her letters of recommendation upon her departure. They now regret that.
Taylor is glad Oregon officials have confirmed West's identity.
"I, for one, think I owe it to the rest of the people in my field to let them know that she is out there and may be showing up at their facility with the intention of doing something similar," he said.
...
In an ironic twist, the U. said it couldn't divulge the PETA agent's identity because of a state law passed last year shielding the names of animal-lab workers from public disclosure. U. officials lobbied hard for the law in the wake of street demonstrations outside the homes of U. scientists who use primates in their research. Last year in California, extremists allegedly assaulted researchers in their homes and firebombed their cars.
Ahhh, the best-laid plans of mice and the people who use them for research...
Squalor: Liberia has suffered two brutal civil wars in the last 20 years. While the relative peace since the middle of the decade has unquestionably brought a number of improvements, conditions for many people today are arguably worse than they were back in 1989. For instance back then, the nation had 250 doctors to serve a population of 2.5 million. Now is has 50 doctors to serve a population of 3.5 million. Meanwhile though, infant mortality rates have dropped because inoculation rates are up. Thus, many survive to live in the following conditions.
In the Clara Town slum, 75,000 people share 11 public toilets and 22 public taps; West Point's 70,000 residents must make do with just four public toilets, said Bessman Toe, head of the Montserrado County slum-dweller association, which represents over 40 slum communities in and around the capital [Monrovia].Some households build their own toilets, but these tend to collapse during the seven-month rainy season, Oxfam emergency health engineer Jennifer Lamb told IRIN, so people defecate in the narrow alley-ways between their houses, on the beach, or into plastic bags, which they dump on nearby piles of rubbish or into the sea.
A visit to a toilet in West Point costs 2.5 US cents; the young men running the latrines said there were around 500 users a day. The facilities can be smelled 160 feet away, with the floor of each squalid cubicle 6 inches deep in soiled newspaper that residents use to wipe their posteriors. Staff use gloved hands to scoop the used paper into a wheelbarrow, which they lug to the nearby river or beach to dump its contents into the water.
While the population of Monrovia certainly mushroomed due to the violence in the countryside, it's not like there were much in the way of services to overwhelm. According to a government report published last year, the entire nation still has less than 20,000 toilets. Less than one in three people has access to potable water. Little wonder the nation has appalling rates of many of the diseases spread via fecal-oral contamination.
But back to the potable water thought...
In Clara Town's aptly named "Struggle Community"--a network of haphazard, rubbish-strewn streets, many of which are flooded for several months of the year--10,000 residents share two privately owned water taps.
... Land-owners employ young men to manage the taps, who charge between 7 US cents and 14 US cents for 1.3 gallons to 4.0 gallons of water, depending on where the tap is located.
In June 2007, the nation had $4.9 billion in debt. At eight times GDP, that was easily the highest in the world. On most lists, only Burundi and the Congo (the former Zaire) have a lower GDP per capita. If one adjusts for inflation, Liberia's GDP per capita has indeed dropped since 1990.
Fortunately between write-offs and paying three cents on the dollar, Liberia's debt was reduced earlier this year to about $1.7 billion...which is still almost $500 per person. The average Liberian lives on about a dollar per day.
One Despot After Another: In 1980, Samuel K. Doe led a coup in which it's claimed by many that he and some of his men disemboweled the Liberian president in the Executive Mansion. Within 10 days of Doe's takeover, all 14 cabinet members were tried by kangaroo court, sentenced to death, and with one exception publicly executed. Charles M. Taylor supported the coup and was put in charge of purchasing for the government. Unfortunately, Taylor eventually ran afoul of the boss.
He fled the country, only to be arrested in 24 May 1984, by two US Deputy Marshals in Somerville, Massachusetts [near where he went to college], on a warrant for extradition to face charges of embezzling $922,000 of government funds, intended for machinery parts. Citing a fear of assassination by Liberian agents, it was announced by Taylor's lawyer, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, that Taylor would fight extradition from the safety of jail. He was detained in a House of Corrections in Plymouth, Massachusetts. ... Taylor [escaped and] managed to flee the United States and shortly thereafter it is assumed he went to Libya where he underwent guerrilla training under Muammar al-Gaddafi, becoming Gaddafi's protegé. Eventually he left Libya and used the training he gained there to begin a civil war in Liberia.
Libya funded Taylor's rebel effort, which was based in neighboring Ivory Coast. It was Prince Johnson, one of his allies in the rebellion, who actually overthrew Doe in 1990. Johnson was filmed drinking a beer while his men were torturing Doe...who was eventually executed. It wasn't that long until he and Taylor had a falling out, and Johnson fled the country until 2004. A year later, he was elected Senator. At Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission last year, Johnson claimed that Taylor didn't escape from jail in the U.S., but was released to orchestrate an overthrow of Doe. Anyway...
Liberia didn't have an official leader until the first civil war was over. Taylor won election in 1997, but was soon battling another rebellion in the northern part of the country--likely supported by neighboring Guinea. The civil war didn't settle down until Taylor finally resigned in 2003. As you might have guessed, he was no angel either.
Slowly But...: After a long build-up, the UN began (and is still) trying Taylor for 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Because the conflicts straddled multiple borders, the jurisdiction is the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone. From an article on the testimony last year.
Charles Taylor celebrated his rise to power in Liberia with a ceremony involving a human sacrifice, burying a pregnant woman alive in sand, one of his former military commanders has testified.
The admission came during a trial at The Hague where the former president is accused of war crimes. During a day of grim testimony, Joseph "Zigzag" Marzah described the ceremony and acknowledged committing hundreds of other murders on Taylor's orders.
"We executed everybody - babies, women, old men. There were so many executions. I can't remember them all," Marzah told the court. Among the victims were Taylor's opponents and former allies who he thought had betrayed him, Marzah said.
...
Under prompting from Courtenay Griffith, defence counsel, Marzah said: "It's not difficult to kill a baby. Sometimes you just knock them on the head, sometimes you throw them in a pit, sometimes you throw them in the river and they are dead. Then you give the report to Charles Taylor."
Ugh. And from testimony earlier this year...
Taylor is accused of arming, training and controlling Sierra Leone's notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, blamed for many of the mutilations, in exchange for diamonds used to fund warfare.
...
Alusine Conteh told the Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone that he, his wife and four-year-old son had encountered a group of soldiers on the road in January 1999 while fleeing attacks in the capital Freetown on foot.
After being made to watch as a man in civilian clothes chopped off a family friend's hands on the soldiers' instructions, Conteh was himself ordered to step forward.
"The only thing I asked of them, was 'What have I done?'. I put my left hand on the slab. He raised the axe and hacked once.
"My child screamed out: 'Don't cut off my father's hand'. The soldiers said he was making a noise and they said we should untie him from his mother's back.
"I said: 'Instead of you chopping off his hand, chop off both of mine'. They said I should place my right hand, and they hacked it twice."
As you can imagine, the civil wars and associated chaos have left thousands--probably tens of thousands--of amputees in both nations.
Begging for Aid: Sadly, one could go on and on with the horrors and devastation still impacting life in Liberia. Instead, let's just cut to a pet peeve.
This past week at the launch of the UN Population Fund's 2009 State of the World Population report...
Liberia’s Vice President Joseph N. Boakai says climate change poses a serious threat to the way of life in Liberia as in the rest of the world.
With the conditions as bad as they still are in Liberia, it's sad that anyone could make such a statement or view such statements as sensible...or at least politically correct. Developing nations quickly learn what terminology is selling when it comes to getting aid money.
Earlier this week...
It's tempting to present the flattening of Oregon's unemployment rate--at 11.3 percent in October--as good news. But economists, dismal scientists to the core, paint a negative picture.
First, October's number--the same seasonally adjusted 11.3 percent as September's revised rate--remains stubbornly higher than the nation's towering 10.2 percent level.
Second, Oregon's jobless rate hasn't fallen from its 12.2 percent May high because employers have embarked on a hiring spree. On the contrary the state lost another 1,900 jobs in October, officials said Monday, following a revised loss of 6,000 in September.
Instead what appears to be happening is that many job hunters--retirees and nonworking spouses who dusted off resumes as the financial sector imploded and stocks plunged--are leaving the hunt. Their disappearance from the ranks of the officially unemployed lowers the jobless rate, said David Cooke, a state labor economist.
Considering that Kulongoski claims he's a "jobs Democrat" (previous blog here), guess we shouldn't be surprised by the following reaction to that data.
Oregon's recession is over. Or nearly over, state economist Tom Potiowsky declared Thursday.
While there's no state agency that officially designates Oregon either as in or out of recession, Potiowsky told state lawmakers "we have enough indicators that technically the recession has ended in Oregon or is about to."
Don't get too excited. Potiowsky also described the state's economy as "bouncing along the bottom." And it's likely to do that for a while.
Oregon economists are sticking with predictions of a "jobless recovery."
"Jobless recovery" is a noxious oxymoron.
By the way, if Potiowsky sounds familiar, he's the guy whose "accurate" economic forecasts have allowed Oregonians to receive several large kicker checks (previous blog here).
An increasing number of people are concerned that paying developing nations not to cut down their forests does nothing to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Here's a great example.
An agreement by Norway to pay Guyana for preserving forests to help slow climate change will still allow the South American nation to increase its rate of deforestation, Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo said.
Norway could pay Guyana up to $250 million by 2015, in a possible forerunner of a global scheme where rich nations pay the developing world to preserve rainforests.
...
The memorandum, signed last week, states that Norway will compensate Guyana if it does not cut down more than 0.45 percent of its forests per year. But Guyana is felling far fewer trees than that at present.
Guyana is an impoverished nation on the steamy NE coast of South America. The article claims that Guyana has some of the world's "best preserved" tropical forests, but that implies active management was influential in the result. Not. The biggest reasons are that it's remote, sparsely populated, and has little infrastructure inland. It's a country the size of Idaho (5/6 the size of Oregon) with just 770,000 people--90 percent of them living along the coast.
Jagdeo said that Guyana's current rate was uncertain but likely between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent.
"We are going to do some detailed work between now and October 2010 when we will know what that figure is ... That may cause some adjustment," he told a briefing.
The maximum of 0.45 percent is a middle point between Guyana's estimated deforestation rate of 0.3 percent and the average rate of 0.6 percent for countries with tropical forests.
Norway is so flush with oil money that it can simply give away a quarter of a billion dollars for the sake of climate PR. That reminds me...President Obama will travel to Norway next month to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize.
The Committee recognized Obama's change of the US climate policy, saying that "thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting."
If he was truly concerned about climate change, he wouldn't waste the emissions flying to Norway.
Here's the latest deportation data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The data, from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009, shows that 10,793 people were deported from the Pacific Northwest, a drop of 117 compared to the previous year.
That marks the first time in the last five years that deportations from the Northwest have dropped. Deportations had increased from more than 4,000 in 2005 to nearly 11,000 in 2008.
But removals of people with criminal records went from more than 3,100 to nearly 4,500 between 2008 and 2009 — a jump of 39.7 percent. Since 2005, criminal removals have more than doubled.
The data "illustrates pretty vividly the priority we're placing on the removal of criminal aliens," ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said. "We believe it's the best way to enhance public safety."
Overall deportations in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, Oregon, and Washington) sure bucked the national trend for some reason.
Nationwide, deportations jumped to more than 387,000 in the same period — an increase of 65 percent over the previous year.
But when it comes to the deportation of criminals...
Federal authorities have identified more than 111,000 immigrants with criminal records being held in local jails, during the first year of a program that seeks to deport immigrants who have committed serious crimes.
Among the immigrants identified through the program, known as Secure Communities, more than 11,000 had been charged with or convicted of the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, domestic security officials said Thursday. About 1,900 of those have been deported.
...
About 100,000 of the detained immigrants identified through the system had been convicted of less serious crimes, ranging from burglary to traffic offenses, the officials said. Of those, more than 14,000 have been deported.
Can't find the statistic for how many of the 4,000 plus criminals who were deported from the Pacific Northwest were in jail for the most serious crimes. Nonetheless, more than a quarter of the criminals deported from the U.S. this past fiscal year were from prisons in this region.
It's been obvious for years now that Oregon's Business Energy Tax Credit is a money pit. Finally, the scandal is getting some legs.
In a letter to two state agency heads, Kulongoski asked for recommendations on whether the increasingly expensive Business Energy Tax Credit "is necessary for continued economic opportunity in renewable energy and, more specifically, wind energy."
He said he wants the recommendations in his hands by the end of the month -- an unusually rapid turnaround for such studies. Lawmakers had been gearing up to reduce the tax credits when the Legislature meets in February.
The governor's request comes on the heels of an investigation by The Oregonian that revealed state officials downplayed the estimated cost of the incentives before they were expanded by the 2007 Legislature at Kulongoski's urging. It also comes as the newspaper is preparing to publish an investigation into the relationship between the tax credits and the wind energy industry in Oregon.
...
Since 2007, the cost of the energy tax credits has increased from about $10 million a year to an estimated $167 million for the 2009-11 biennium. Estimates for 2011-13 approach a quarter-billion dollars.
Regardless the lies regarding the anticipated cost of the tax credit, it's appalling that any of our legislators would ever vote for a subsidy without setting an upper limit. There are only two possible excuses--incompetence and intent. Governor Kulongoski, an avowed climate catastrophist (previous blog here), clearly wanted to spend as much as possible on the program...jobs were a secondary consideration at best. Once the construction is done, it doesn't take many people to maintain and run a wind farm.
And never mind the fact that millions were invested in wildly-speculative projects that are now mired in bankruptcy. Of course, that's small change compared to the dangerously high-risk PERS investments that have tanked and cost the state billions. Oh for a governor with some business acumen...Kulongoski has done a frightening job of helping to drive this state financially into the ground.
"We're already clearly on record that there are issues that need to be dealt with," said Geoff Sugarman, spokesman for House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone. "We are committed to fixing the issues."
Hunt is one of the many irresponsible legislators who voted for the uncapped tax credit. Finally this year, he belatedly helped pass a bill (pushed by Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland) that would have set a still-excessive limit of $120 million...which Kulongoski then got away with vetoing in August. Yep, they're clearly on record.
Warning, hold your watch up...
In his letter to Mark Long, head of the Oregon Department of Energy, and Tim McCabe, director of the Oregon Business Development Department, Kulongoski said recent changes in the economy and energy policies elsewhere should be factored into the review of the incentives.
"Our economy has begun to stabilize," he said. Furthermore, neighboring Washington has begun a phase-out of tax breaks for wind companies, and California has upped its requirements for renewable energy, which makes electricity produced by windmills all the more valuable.
- Our economy has begun to stabilize at an unacceptable level...maybe it's finally time consider spending our tax dollars in ways that would help create more jobs than do energy tax credits.
- Oregon's a leader...let's do what Washington is doing.
- We'll just ignore the fact that California's utilities sign long-term contracts for wind energy. Thus, it will be years until those wind farms can try to raise prices.
And remember that gubernatorial hopeful Bill Bradbury is another climate catastrophist.
It simply amazes me that anyone could write an article on this topic and avoid the elephant in the room.
Officials [from the Oregon Employment Department] predict economic growth will add 160,300 jobs in the state from 2008 to 2018, plus about 85,000 jobs opening as Oregon digs out of the current slump. Another 430,000 jobs will become available during the decade as workers quit or retire, the economists expect.
Any forecast of job growth is welcome during a recession. But the predicted 9 percent gain on Oregon's base of 1,765,900 jobs is slightly less than the increase seen from 1998 to 2008 -- and much slower than in many prior 10-year periods.
...
Such long-term predictions can be dicey, and economists acknowledge their shortcomings. For example, Beleiciks can't predict the state's long-term unemployment rate, which averages 6 percent historically and sits at 11.3 percent as of September and October.
In 17 paragraphs, where was not one mention of the anticipated population growth over the next decade. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis produces two population forecasts, a near-term one through 2015, and a longer-term with estimates every five years through 2040. Both show Oregon's population growing by an average of over 1 percent a year. If Oregon's jobs only grow 9 percent over a decade, unemployment will rise.
"Health care is supposed to be the fastest-growing industry and the one to add the most jobs," said Nick Beleiciks, the employment department economist who coordinated the study. "We have an aging population, so we'll have more need for health care in the future."
The 10-year projection shows a state transforming from production to services. While retail trade and professional and business services add jobs, manufacturing -- both traditional and high-tech -- decline.
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Oregon will lose federal jobs, the report predicts, as the Umatilla Chemical Weapons Depot closes after cleanup and the U.S. Postal Service cuts back. State government employment will grow, as will local government especially, with gains in education hiring.
What's going to pay for that growth in state and local government?
Governments at the state and federal level make huge sums by taxing addictions. Oregon's legislature is so addicted to those revenue streams that there's a constant battle to boost sin taxes, yet squeeze the revenue dedicated to prevention and treatment programs.
Over the weekend, The Oregonian highlighted some rather impressive numbers regarding who generates how much of the lottery revenue.
More than half the money the lottery collects from video gambling -- about $375 million last year -- comes from a small number of Oregonians, many with big gambling problems.
These gamblers tell the lottery they lose more than $500 a month, every month. They represent only 10 percent of Oregon's video gamblers but account for 53 percent of the money lost, according an analysis of three years' worth of the lottery's data obtained by The Oregonian under the state's public records law.
And then we were offered this absolutely ridiculous excuse.
"People in the Legislature have no idea about these numbers and the damage that is done to people's lives," says Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie. "It's a message that frankly wouldn't be welcomed in the Legislature right now, because we've become so dependent on the lottery's money."
It must have been her week to be the designated liar. The leadership in Salem knows...and chooses to not to rank the issue very highly.
The lottery is a leading player in statewide campaigns to discourage problem gambling, and 1 percent of lottery profits cover all costs for all gamblers seeking state-funded treatment.
"We understand there is a portion of our players that have a problem with gambling," says Carole Hardy, the lottery's assistant director for marketing. "We try to educate them and their loved ones about what's available to help them."
But the lottery doesn't know how many of its players fit the profile of problem gamblers even though officials acknowledge there are ways to gauge that number. Despite spending tens of thousands a year to learn the habits of their customers, lottery officials don't ask the question.
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State officials say there are about 74,000 problem gamblers in Oregon. To get that number, researchers ask questions such as: Are you borrowing money, lying, not paying bills, or losing time at work or home -- all to keep gambling?
And that number is obviously low, as many gamblers are in denial and can't answer those questions honestly.
About $11 million in lottery profits will go to problem-gambling treatment and prevention programs over the next two years. The lottery spends an additional $1.5 million a year on advertising to discourage problem gambling. Every video gambling machine has a sticker that tells people how to reach the state's hotline, 1-877-MYLIMIT.
The problem is that those ads are like the anti-smoking campaigns designed by cigarette companies...they know what doesn't work.
Green But Not Authentic: Years ago, I had a boss who talked about knowing the difference between traditions and bad habits. There's a lot of tradition in the production of scotch.
For the past two years the [Loch Lomond Distillery], based in Alexandria near Glasgow, has been producing almost 12m litres of grain alcohol and 4m litres of single malt annually. Some has been produced using a single-still method that cuts CO2 emissions by thousands of tonnes every year. Distillery bosses say they have already smashed government climate change targets for 2011 by cutting energy use by 7%.
However, under the new definition of what constitutes "Scotch malt whisky", due to come into force on 23 November, Loch Lomond will have to close the still or see millions knocked off the value of its product because it can no longer be classified as malt whisky. According to the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), which helped draw up the amendments to the Scotch Whisky Order 1990, a true malt will only be classed as such if it is made "by batch distillation in pot stills".
Here's why Loch Lomond thinks that some of the traditions are bad habits.
"We have a method that produces a very good malt spirit but are being penalised because we are innovators," said John Peterson, distilling director of Loch Lomond. "We want to make the process better and save considerable amounts of energy. As it is, we prevent more than 1,400 tonnes of CO2 being released every year and they want us to go back to the old inefficient ways.
"The SWA wants us to call it grain whisky, but it's not; if anything that's an even more misleading description. Politicians are quick to shout about climate change and how industry has to find new ways to reduce carbon output, but when we try to do something innovative we get slapped down for it."
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Environmental groups, however, have applauded Loch Lomond Distillery and the whisky industry for trying to address the climate change issue. "The Scottish whisky industry is becoming a hotbed of innovation for the adoption of renewable and low-energy technologies, and it's essential that it does so as a major employer and exporter," said Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
The primary motivation is the bottom-line...saving energy saves money. Tellingly, the company's website--which offers on-line sales (though not to the U.S.)--goes on and on about tradition but fails to mention emissions or climate change.
Helping to Spread Pathogens: The following attaches numbers to something we already knew--that food-borne pathogens tend to hit children harder.
Children under 4 are disproportionately the victims of poisoning by Campylobacter, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes and salmonella. And roughly half of all reported cases of food-borne illness affect those younger than 15. Because younger kids are smaller, it takes a smaller dose of harmful bacteria to sicken them, and their less-experienced immune systems don't combat food-borne pathogens as effectively as do those of adults.
In somewhat related research also published this past week...
A Kansas State University study has shown that when preparing frozen foods, adolescents are less likely than adults to wash their hands and are more susceptible to cross-contaminating raw foods while cooking.
"While half of the adults we observed washed their hands after touching raw chicken, none of the adolescents did," said Casey Jacob, a food safety research assistant at K-State. "The non-existent hand washing rate, combined with certain age-specific behaviors like hair flipping and scratching in a variety of areas, could lead directly to instances of cross-contamination compared to the adults."
...
Beyond the discrepancy between adult and adolescent food safety practices, the researchers also found that even when provided with instructions, food preparers don't follow them. They may not have even seen them or they assume they know what to do.
And if you thought that was a case of discovering the obvious...
They also found that observational research using discreet video recording is far more accurate than self-reported surveys. For example, while almost all of the primary meal preparers reported washing hands after every instance in which they touched raw poultry, only half were observed washing hands correctly after handling chicken products in the study.
That's an example of why it's always worth taking surveys with a grain or two of salt.
Data Blowing Both Ways: Earlier this year, the were many headlines on the following.
The study found that surface wind speeds, especially in the Midwest and the Northeast, have decreased by an average of 0.5 percent to 1 percent each year since 1973.
"We see this trend toward slower wind speeds and our unanswered question is whether this is part of global warming or something else," said Bill Gutowski, a professor of geological and atmospheric sciences and one of the four Iowa State scientists working on the study.
...
The scientists looked at surface wind data around the country from 1973 to 2005 using wind-speed measurements from anemometers and computerized climate models to reach their conclusion.
That study would have been stronger if it had just depended upon actual data...why dilute it with climate models? And if the researchers wanted to avoid suspicions of cherry-picking regarding climate change, they should have worked with data starting before the abnormally-cool 1970s. It's not like we don't have good wind speed measurements going back several more decades.
Yesterday, a study was published on the change in wind speeds over Lake Superior.
Since 1985, surface water temperatures measured by lake buoys have climbed 1.2 degrees per decade, about 15 percent faster than the air above the lake and twice as fast as warming over nearby land.
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A wide temperature differential between water and air makes for a more stable atmosphere with calmer winds over the relatively cold water. However, as warming water closes the gap, as in Lake Superior's case, the atmosphere gets more turbulent.
"You get more powerful winds," Desai says. "We've seen a 5 percent increase per decade in average wind speed since 1985."
That's an even smaller data set...too bad the researchers didn't go back a few more years to see if the wind speeds dropped during a cooling spell.
If it's blowing that much more over the lake, it has to be impacting the surrounding lands as well. Evidently, the winds in other parts of the Midwest have been slowing enough to absorb the increases around Lake Superior? Both groups of researchers used multiple sets of data, but did they use the same data. If not, why?