How about toxic magic fairies then?

Believing in clean oilsands like believing in ‘magic fairies,’ top scientist says

OTTAWA — Claims that Alberta’s oilsands are environmentally harmless are “lies” and won’t convince anyone in Washington, one of this country’s most famous ecologists said Friday. 

Political leaders in Alberta and Ottawa “seem to think that Americans believe in magic fairies — just shut your eyes and say the oilsands are clean four times and it happens,” said David Schindler of the University of Alberta. 

He said this reflects the current federal ideology — not anti-science, but “anti-some kinds of science. Anything with ‘environmental’ in it seems to be anathema.” 

Schindler, a freshwater scientist, was speaking at Carleton University. He has been a leading researcher on pollutants ranging from phosphates to acid rain to toxic waste, and in 2001 won the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, a national award given to the country’s top scientist. 

Showing his audience an aerial photo of a scarred landscape in oilsands country, he said environmental assessments commissioned by oil companies show there is no impact and those same companies claim the damage is later remediated. 

“Why are people allowed to lie to the public like this? I just don’t understand this. We have to challenge them,” he said. “Obviously the people who used to challenge them, the civil servants, are no longer allowed to. 

“If you got towns around the world to nominate the village idiot from every town and flew them over the oilsands, and asked them: ‘Yes or no, is this a significant impact?’ I think I know what the answer would be. 

“It gives you an indication of how stupid this must seem to people in Washington. They must think we’ve all just fallen off a turnip truck ... We’ve had premiers and prime ministers and ministers of the environment spouting this stuff.” 

He said tailings ponds in the region total 170 square kilometres, forming “a toxic Great Lake.”

From Swedes to Sketches...

Scandinavian humor (with explanations!)

And of course, if we discuss Sweden at all, we must include: (bork bork bork)

   

Prehistoric monster snake invades New York. Think I saw this movie....

The true cost of coal:

This presents a bit of a challenge, given that the Appalachian communities where the mining takes place are extremely poor, and poverty and low education are associated with a lot of health problems. In addition, many of the problems associated with coal mining—particulates from the mining process and water contamination—don't respect the county borders that divide up the health care data. But even after adjusting for the variations in things like income and education, counties with active coal mines came out far worst in many measures of health. These include the problems you'd expect from mining, such as cardiopulmonary and respiratory issues, black lung, hypertension, and kidney disease. But they also include things like a 25 percent increase in birth defects in mining counties. Ahern summed up the fate of people located near mines rather grimly: "Their property value goes down to zero, then they get ill, then they die."

Shutting down a California Monsanto office for a day.

Etch a Sketch will live on now in perpetuity ....

The EPA is evil

Because it prevents corporations from poisoning your food, dumping toxic waste, befouling the air. Bring back the good old days when people died from eating canned goods and breathing polluted air!!

...Just how stupid are these people?

Maybe THIS will get their attention?

Those manly men who don't want to acknowledge Rachel Carson did good work or that pollution should be controlled or that going green really is a good and healthy thing to do for ourselves and our planet:

Atrazine, one of the most widely-used weedkillers, can turn male frogs into females, researchers reported on Monday. “Atrazine-exposed males were both demasculinized (chemically castrated) and completely feminized as adults,” Tyrone Hayes of the University of California Berkeley and colleagues wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The atrazine can turn male frogs into females that are able to mate and successfully reproduce.

Previously the chemical had been shown to disrupt development and create hermaphroditism in frogs, whereby they develop both male and female features. This latest study of 40 male frogs shows the process can go even further, Hayes said. “Atrazine has caused a hormonal imbalance that has made them develop into the wrong sex, in terms of their genetic constitution.”

Although banned in the European Union in 2004, atrazine is still one of the most commonly used herbicides across the globe. Its endocrine disruptor effects, possible carcinogenic effect, and epidemiological connection to low sperm levels in men has led several researchers to call for banning it in the US. Like many herbicides, it is sold under numerous trade names (see next page).

“Approximately 80 million pounds are applied annually in the United States alone, and atrazine is the most common pesticide contaminant of ground and surface water,” the researchers wrote. It can be transported more than 621 miles from the point of application via rainfall and, as a result, contaminates otherwise pristine habitats, even in remote areas where it is not used.

Besides nuking your house or spraying with DDT

This may work on bedbugs....(my bold)

How to Build Your Own Bedbug Detector.

Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey have created a homemade bedbug trap using a plastic cat-food dish, an insulated jug and some dry-ice pellets. According to Wan-Tien Tsai, who reported her findings in December at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, the dry-ice-and-thermos combo captured the bloodsucking critters in an infested apartment just as effectively as, if not more so than, equipment used by professional exterminators.

The most important part of this MacGyverized contraption is an insulated one-third-gallon jug--like the kind sold in camping-supply stores--filled with 2½ lb. of frozen carbon dioxide, which costs about $1 per lb. (and should be handled only with gloves). As the dry-ice pellets slowly evaporate, the open thermos spout lets the CO[subscript 2]--which falsely signals bedbugs that a breathing, blood-filled meal is nearby--seep out overnight. That's usually enough time to entice the nocturnal insects into the other key component of the trap: the overturned food-and-water dish on which the thermos sits. The bugs climb the outer surface of the dish, which can be scuffed with sandpaper for better traction, and get stuck in its moat, made slippery-smooth with a dusting of talcum powder.

This trap was designed to give consumers a cheap way to determine if they have--or, in many cases, still have--a bedbug problem that requires a proper extermination. Bedbugs have made a serious comeback in North America over the past few years, especially in big cities like Toronto and San Francisco.

This would be wonderful if it works. I'm still getting hits and the occasional argument in favor of bringing back DDT. Which would really make Rachel Carson turn in her grave.

Will it be Katrina all over again?

Or will the DHS actually step in to help a town BEFORE we have thousands of deaths? This is Leadville, Colorado.

Given the history of the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, you have to wonder just how much "homeland security" the federal government really cares to provide. That tunnel was apparently blocked, which caused an estimated billion gallons of water to back up behind it and start seeping from hillsides.

This water was not pure mountain snowmelt, either. It's in a mining district that has sulfide ores. When water sits amid such rocks, it becomes acidic. The acidic water dissolves minerals and carries cadmium and zinc. There are legitimate fears that the toxic water could push past the blockage and surge out the portal, then down to the Arkansas River, sweeping away some homes as it destroyed aquatic life as far down as Pueblo Reservoir, more than 100 miles away.

What Leadville is doing to deal with this danger:

LEADVILLE, Colo. - Emergency sirens and loudspeakers have been tested and sensors installed. Bulldozers have cut an escape route. Townspeople have been warned to assemble "grab-it-and-go" kits with first aid supplies, water, flashlights and blankets.

A concealed threat is hanging over this old Wild West mining town: A billion gallons of toxic water is trapped in a collapsed drainage tunnel in the hills overlooking Leadville and could blow at any moment with devastating effect, sweeping away mobile homes in the town of 2,600.

[snip]

Between the mid-1800s and the 1990s, gold, silver, lead, zinc and finally molybdenum, a substance used to harden steel, were extracted from the ground around this 10,200-foot-high town 100 miles west of Denver.

In the 1940s and '50s, the federal government built a two-mile mine drainage tunnel to carry off contaminated rainwater and snowmelt into the Arkansas River. But a tunnel collapse that was detected in 1995 caused water to back up behind the rubble.

Because of years of bickering between the state and the federal government over what to do about the buildup and who would assume responsibility for it, nothing was done and the water kept rising, finally prompting nervous Lake County officials to declare a state of emergency on Feb. 13.

[snip]

On Wednesday, the EPA began pumping water out of a nearby shaft to try to relieve pressure on the tunnel. In about five weeks, the EPA will drill into the tunnel and pump water directly out of it.

"I'm angry. No, I'm damn angry," said county Commissioner Mike Hickman. "I have three heads of federal agencies here who I'd like to call The Three Stooges. Three years ago they knew what the problem was." Of the emergency declaration, he said: "It's a shame that we need to come to this sort of display to get the attention of these federal agencies."

Not everyone here was thrilled with the emergency declaration. The mayor said it came as a surprise to city officials, who later learned that the city's liability insurance carrier was canceling its policy.

Nice touch, that last sentence.

Update 3/11:

Bureau of Reclamation engineers Monday were able to treat 2,100 gallons per minute of contaminated water at the Leadville Mine Drainage site, a rate that gives them confidence that cleanup can be successful.

The Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel is supposed to drain water from the mine but collapsed more than a decade ago, and water has built up ever since.

Officials fear that the pressurized water could burst through the tunnel or an earthen dam, sending zinc-, cadmium- and lead-laced water through a trailer park and into the Arkansas River.

Pumping the water out is complicated by the fact that the water is contaminated with heavy metals from Leadville's long mining history.

The risk caught the attention of federal lawmakers who last month pressured the bureau to take prompt action.
Monday, beginning at 8 in the morning, Reclamation engineers began increasing the amount of water being treated at the drainage tunnel's treatment plant, in 200-gallon-per- minute increments.

When the rate reached 2,100 gallons per minute, they kept it there for several hours, before easing back to 1,100 gallons per minute, said Peter Soeth, spokesman for the bureau.

The more metal in the water, the slower the treatment must go, so the fact that 2,100 gallons per minute could be sustained is satisfying.

The EPA should complete its well and the piping to Reclamation' s treatment plant by late May, Soeth said.
At a rate of 2,100 gallons per minute, it could take about a year to treat the 1 billion or so gallons of water trapped inside the mine.

Good job, guys. Nice to see that someone is actually caring about the environment and trailer parks.