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| Rivers in China Pearl River is the one at the bottom |
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| Left to right: Black Lake, Steel Mill, Frozen Kurdulun River, Baotou, China |
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| Wild Alaska Pollock |
Separately, because consumers are starting to look at sustainability in more ways than fisheries management, the Wild Alaska Pollock industry funded a study to determine what the carbon footprint of Wild Alaska Pollock actually is when compared to other proteins. The study, conducted by the world-renowned consultancy Quantis International, looked at several key impact categories such as global warming potential, energy use, use of land and water resources, and waste outputs. When the results were released, it showed that Wild Alaska Pollock is not only good for you, but good for the planet too!The findings concluded that Wild Alaska Pollock fillet has an impact of 3.77 kg CO2-eq per kg of protein, significantly lower than comparative statistics reported for other protein sources.
- Wild Alaska Pollock: 3.77
- Chicken: 12.50
- Pork: 19.65
- Plant-Based meat: 20.83
- Beef: 115.75
I'm suspicious of anyone making disparaging remarks about cows, so I'm going to call it bullshit. However, lets see what diesel produces, because diesel is what fishing boat use for fuel, and they burn it in thousand gallon lots. Burning one gallon of diesel will produce 10 kilograms of CO2. Burning three pints of diesel will produce 3.77 kilograms of CO2. So fishermen are burning three pints of diesel for every kilogram of fish fillets they produce.
As for fish farting, the answer is mostly no, but some, like herring, do.
Picked up a Doc Ford novel, Salt River by Randy Wayne White, at Powell's this afternoon. Waiting for my wife, I open the book and start reading the Author's Note and I am just entranced. What he is describing here sounds just like the political arguments we hear about on social media. Shoot, sounds like any controversy. It's so great I've copied the bulk of it here:
Organisms that contribute to destructive algae blooms are found in most water environs, salt and fresh, throughout the world, year around. "Pollutants" they are not. Indeed, the global food chain would collapse without these microorganisms and macro algae. Keep this in mind the next time you read about small quantities of "red tide organisms" found at your local beach. This is not news. The micro flora are always present-and, sadly, so is the hysteria associated with the word "algae."
There isn't much that biologists agree upon regarding harmful algae blooms (HABs) save for a worldwide consensus that the phenomenon, while naturally occurring and massively destructive, can be enhanced by human activities. The degree to which humans cause, or contribute, to these events is at the historic epicenter of disagreements SO passionate that opinions too often have more in common with theology than science.
In this book, the fictional Doc Ford attempts to provide readers with an overview of the subject that is dispassionate and, above all, factual. This was a challenge. As I explained in an editorial I wrote for the Sunday New York Times (September 29, 2018): “During my 50 years on this coast, I've experienced four killer algae blooms as a fishing guide (1974, '82, '96 and 2004). As a novelist, I've researched the subject, yet my understanding lacks the certainty or rage of those newly acquainted with these blooms." [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/red-tide-florida-tourism.html] (paywall)
In other words, the more I learn, the less likely I am to be persuaded by those whose convictions are unshakable, for they invariably have a financial stake in whatever "solution" they advocate. This includes organized camps representing the phosphate, sugarcane, and agriculture industries as well as low-profile developers who view agriculture as a waste of acreage that would become a goldmine if bulldozed and transformed into golf courses and gated communities.
This is another element to keep in mind when ferreting through arguments regarding the solutions to red tides.
The newer, booming "environmental industry" also has a stake in the controversy. According to Environmental Business International Inc., a publishing and research firm, the industry grew by 4.8 percent in 2017 and produced $370 billion in annual revenue. This amount dwarfs the $10.1 million collected in 2016 by the Everglades Foundation, one of fourteen Florida-based nonprofit organizations that have a vested interest in the causes and effects of harmful algae blooms. I do not doubt the altruistic motives of these groups, nor do I think it unfair to acknowledge a simple fiduciary fact: to survive, to continue their good work, each must motivate the public sector to provide funding.
In this novel, you will meet Mack, the owner of Dinkin's Bay Marina. Mack has strong opinions on this subject. Even the unflappable Marion Ford cannot convince Mack that hysteria mongering has become a dangerously misleading fundraising tool.
For decades, I've collected newspaper accounts and research on algae blooms that date back to the 1800s. My file contains hundreds of clippings, many acquired at Florida libraries, after scanning through reels of microfiche. The historic overview they provide suggests a predictable cycle, and that cycle has not changed much. When acres of dead fish begin to wash ashore, there is a sustained, communal panic. Civic leaders demand action - and an explanation.
A few examples: According to a study issued by the University of Miami in 1955, a series of lethal red tides between 1844 and 1878 were, according to local fishermen, caused by a "poisonous" flow of freshwater from the Everglades into Florida Bay. A December 1918 headline in the Punta Gorda Herald asserted "Seismic Explosion Under Gulf Kills Many Fish Between Boca Grande and Marco." In July 1937, the St. Pete Times suggested that "the discharge of chemicals from freighters at Port Tampa" was to blame for the sudden death of "fish and eels rarely caught." An article in a November 1940 edition of the Fort Myers New-Press claimed that a massive fish kill was the result of a mysterious "subterranean disturbance." A Miami Herald article, dated February 1954, referenced the devastating red tides of 1947-50, and reported that scientists had traced the cause to excessive amounts of phosphorus found in the Peace River. A year later, in February 1955, the News-Press, under the optimistic headline "Red Tide Seen Under Control in Three Years," cited a study that concluded that phosphate had nothing to do with red tide, then reassured readers that "government scientists" had discovered that dusting algae blooms with copper sulphate (sic) was an 1 inexpensive and effective solution.
Problem solved? Of course not, and it is ironic to note that, as recently as 1989, the idea of dusting algae outbreaks was revisited - but with phosphatic clay, a residue produced by Florida's controversial phosphate industry.
I posted a couple of pages about another of White's books: Cuba Straits. Page 1 here. Page 2 here.
Nice Guys is funny, clever, and expertly manages a purposely convoluted and over-the-top plot ala The Big Lebowski (1998) and Fargo (1996). Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling perfectly play off each other’s strengths, and bring a sense of ironic humor and style to an otherwise bleak and cynical world.
Automakers and their Dark, Deadly Conspiracies by Yves Engler October 28, 2015In a much bigger scandal, a half century ago information surfaced implicating auto companies in a conspiracy to keep the population in a toxic haze. The “smog conspiracy” was revealed in 1968 when the US Department of Justice filed an anti-trust case against the Big Three. They were accused of colluding to withhold the installation of catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce pollution. “Beginning at least as early as 1953, and continuing thereafter,” alleged the Department of Justice, “the defendants and co-conspirators have been engaged in a combination and conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of the aforesaid interstate trade and commerce in motor vehicle air pollution control equipment.”In the early 1950s smog became increasingly common. Los Angeles (the car capital of the world) became the centre of the pollution debate. In a bid to quell mounting criticism of car generated air pollution, GM, Ford, Chrysler and the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) agreed in 1953 to collectively research pollution-reducing technologies. The automotive manufacturers claimed their alliance was driven by a concern for public health. It was not. As time passed evidence emerged that the Big Three had in fact united to block the installment of anti-pollution devices. Their agreement stipulated they would wait for unanimous agreement to move forward on smog-busting technologies. In Taken for a Ride, Jack Doyle writes that “the automobile manufacturers, through AMA, conspired not to compete in research, development, manufacture and installation of [pollution] control devices and collectively did all in their power to delay such research, development, manufacturing and installation.” The public had been hoodwinked.
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| Summit Carbon Solutions Pipeline Project |
Sounds to me like they are selling snake oil. They are drawing up all these grandiose plans and talking a big game hoping to collect a zillion dollars in grants and tax write-offs. Then someone will realize the decimal point in their pile of calculations is in the wrong place and their project is not going to work. At which point they will throw up their hands and say 'it doesn't quite pencil out', they will crawl back under their rock with as much money as they can grab and the whole project will vanish without a shovelful of dirt having been moved.
Via Zerohedge
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| Owens Lake, from the northeast in April 2019 |
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about 5 miles south of Lone Pine, California. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to desiccate by 1926. A 2004 court order required the LADWP [Los Angeles Department of Water and Power] to reestablish a small flow from the river into the lake. Nevertheless, as of 2013, it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States. - Wikipedia
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| View of the four lock system from the downstream end - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers |
The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is 187 miles long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Oregon Coast Range and the Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form the Willamette Valley, a basin that contains two-thirds of Oregon's population, including the state capital, Salem, and the state's largest city, Portland, which surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia.
The Willamette Falls Locks are a lock system on the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Opened in 1873 and closed since 2011, they allowed boat traffic on the Willamette to navigate beyond Willamette Falls and the T.W. Sullivan Dam.
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| Willamette Falls (top left) and Locks (along the right hand side) |
The place has been a fixture of the landscape and a fixture in my mind, but not much happens there, it just sits there, letting all that water just flow on by.
The big industrial looking place on the island between the locks and river proper is a paper mill. It was closed several years ago, but then reopened a few years later. Now they make paper from pulp that comes from a pulp mill up in Washington state. That pulp is made from wheat straw. The pulp is shipped in bales and they add water before they feed it into the paper making machines. At full capacity, the mill could produce 260,000 tons of paper per year. To haul that much pulp with trucks they would need a bunch, like 50 trucks a day. There is a rail line, but it is on the other side of the river.
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| Columbia Pulp plant in Lyons Ferry near Starbuck |
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| Potash Evaporation Ponds, Moab, Utah |
By American railroad standards, the Cane Creek Branch is a newcomer. In the late 1950s, plans took form to tap massive potash deposits found along the Colorado River in eastern Utah. By 1960, development of what would evolve into today’s sprawling potash mine and processing facility south of Moab and near Cane Creek were rapidly taking form, and the Denver & Rio Grande Western agreed to build a new branch from its main line at Brendel. Grading and construction of the new branch line was contracted to Morrison-Knudsen and work began in August 1961. Morrison-Knudsen completed its work in September 1962 and D&RGW crews moved in to lay the tracks.
The potash mine and facility at the south end of the line began production in late 1964 and the branch was operated by D&RGW as its Cane Creek Branch until the road’s merger into Union Pacific (D&RGW was combined with the Southern Pacific in 1988 and merged into Union Pacific in 1996). While there have been fluctuations in the amounts of potash being moved over the Cane Creek Branch, it has been in nearly continuous use since the 1960s.
Remarkably, the Cane Creek line gained a second purpose – and source of extensive tonnage – in 2008. Moab had long been the site of a Uranium mill which closed in 1984, leaving approximately 12 million tons of dirt tailings behind. While these tailings are only modestly radioactive, the risk of their erosion into the nearby Colorado River required eventually reclamation. Under the auspices of the United States Department of Energy, a burial site for the tailings was developed at Brendel and train loads of the contaminated soil began moving over the length of the Cane Creek Subdivision to Brendel. These unusual rail movements, nicknamed “the dirty dirt trains,” are expected to continue until approximately 2028. Given that both the potash and contaminated soil tonnage involves carrying loads northbound, the climb from Potash and Moab to Brendel requires plenty of horsepower.
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| Train Entering North Portal of Potash Tunnel |
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| Cut near South Portal of Potash Tunnel |
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| Crescent Junction Disposal Cell |
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| Cane Creek Branch from Brendel to Moab |
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| Broke down old office chair |
One of the problems faced by our materialistic culture is how to get of what we don't want. I have an old office chair that is broken in couple of places. I could have throw it away and gotten a new chair, but getting rid of the old one would be a problem. I could cut it up and stuff it into my trash can, but it's going to consume most of the space in my trash can, which means it could take several weeks to dispose of it, depending on how much other trash there was. Thank god I don't live in Portland where they only collect trash once every two weeks.
The pneumatic cylinder supporting the chair has collapsed so I propped it up with a 2 x 4 block. The foam in one of the arms collapsed and edge of the underlying plastic arm was digging into my arm so I wrapped with an old terry cloth towel.
I could get a bigger trash can, but then garbage hauler is going to want a hundred bucks a month instead of fifty, and I don't need to throw away an office chair every week. I needed to rid of a couch a while back so I loaded it into the truck and took it to the dump. Cost me like $60 to leave it there.
We spent a couple, maybe three grand getting debris hauled away from the new house remodeling project over the last couple of years. I really hated to throw some of that stuff away, it could have been really useful! But I know I am not going to do actually do anything with it. I did post a couple of ads on Craig's List to see if I could give some of it away. I did manage to get rid of the entire set of kitchen cabinets along with the granite countertops. We also sold a fancy electric range and I gave away a couple of solid core doors, but they didn't really amount to a hill of beans compared to the stuff we sent to the landfill, which was at least 3 big dumpsters worth.
We were scrambling last week to get the new house cleared out to make it ready for sale which means our recycling bin is stuffed to the gills with cardboard. Even without outside input it is still over half way full each time. All those Amazon boxes, I expect.
We got that all under control but we still have a bunch of styrofoam which is like a monster from your under your bed. It has no weight, it can't hurt you, but it won't go away and you can't get rid of it. Nobody wants it. Until now.
Now we have Agilyx, a 24 hour facility in Tigard that takes styrofoam. It's a 30 minute drive but we got rid of a big pile of styrofoam with no fuss and no bother.
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| Agilyx reactor where post-use plastic is broken down through the pyrolysis process |
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| Aerial view of Enviva Biomass facility in Northampton County [Courtesy of Dogwood Alliance] |
On one hand it seems like a good idea, on the other it just seems a little shady.
People are trying to be 'green', so they are burning wood pellets instead of coal, the idea being that growing trees suck as much CO2 out of the air as is produced when they are burned, so burning wood is considered carbon neutral. If you are one of Greta's acolytes, you might think that's a good thing.
Problem is the world burns about 8 billion tons of coal a year. I don't know if there are enough forests on the planet to compete with those kind of numbers. Whatever, demand has been growing and now there are a bunch of wood pellet factories operating in the southeast United States, cutting down forests, grinding the logs into wood pellets, and shipping them all over, including Europe.
Here's the shady part:
Biomass is contentious not just locally for the adverse impacts on those who live near wood pellet plants, but also globally for the unusual way its carbon emissions are tallied.
Under global accounting rules, emissions from burning wood are calculated where the trees are harvested, not where the material is burned.
That means countries can avoid counting emissions from their wood-fired plants while reporting the coal displaced as a greenhouse gas reduction. - Aljazerra
Wood pellets also cost more than coal:
Anthracite coal costs a lot less than wood pellets per unit of heat (BTU). A pound of Anthracite coal has almost twice the heat as a pound of wood pellets, therefore pellets have to be almost 1/2 the cost of Anthracite coal to be at the same cost per unit of heat. The cost of pellets would have to drop to $140/ton to be equal to the cost per unit of heat (BTU) of Anthracite coal that cost $250/ton. - Heet
Coal, if you buy it by the trainload, is much cheaper, like $40 per ton.
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| Phillips 66 Rodeo refinery on San Pablo Bay - Google Maps image |
Business Insider Africa understands that only 5% of all the crude oil that were pumped through the pipeline between October 2021 and February 2022 were received by producers. The rest were lost to illegal oil bunkering, a problem that seems to have taken a turn for the worse since global oil prices skyrocketed.
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| 2019 photo of natural gas drill rig in Lancashire - Cuadrilla/PA |
Now, how is it that Russia got to be such a big supplier of natural gas to Russia? Could it be that they funded environmental groups to protest against anything that would make Europe energy independent? Does that sound like one of those crazy theories about Russia meddling in Western affairs that some people have been pushing?
Michael Shellenberger (Twitter) and Matt Ridley (The Critic) seem to think it's real:
The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.
The Centre for European Studies found that the Russian government has invested $95 million in NGOs campaigning against shale gas. Russia Today television ran endless anti-fracking stories, including one that “frackers are the moral equivalent of paedophiles”. The US Director of National Intelligence stated that “RT runs anti-fracking programming … reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.” Pro-Russian politicians such as Lord Truscott (married to a Russian army colonel’s daughter) made speeches in parliament against fracking.
Makes me wonder if this whole Ukraine debacle was engineered to maximize Russia's profits from natural gas because some guys in the international billionaires club have a big stake in Gazprom*, the Russian natural gas company.
* Gazprom has their own web page, but for some reason it's not loading right now. You don't suppose somebody cut the wire, do you?
Via ZeroHedge
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| 2024 Forecast Coal Production |
Some people make a lot of noise about much CO2 you get from burning coal. Some parts of the world, like India and China, could benefit from just cleaning up the smoke.
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| Sample Layout of Emissions Controls at a Coal Power Plant |
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| Dutch Boy Medallion |
The Silicon Underground has post about the history of the National Lead company and some its trials and tribulations over pollution. It's a curious story that got me looking for pictures and I found a couple I liked.
Lead oxide used to be commonly used in making white paint. Dutch Boy Paint was founded by National Lead, hence the above medallion.
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| NL Industries Houston Office 16825 Northchase Drive, Houston, Texas |
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| Mark Trail |
I just opened a bottle of champagne (cheap Costco champagne). It has a plastic cork, but it still has the traditional twisted wire retainer holding it in. I open the bottle and throw the retainer in the recycling, so now I'm wondering will it really get recycled, or is this more stuff for the landfill? We've got mixed recycling here, where you can dump paper, metal and certain kinds of plastic. Glass and motor oil are collected separately as is yard debris. As an aside, garbage is collected weekly here in Washington County, but every other week in Portland. Recycling is just the opposite. Here they alternate between yard debris one week and recycling the next. In Portland they collect both every week.
So, I throw the wire retainer in the mixed recycling. I wheel the container out to the curb Monday evening. Tuesday morning a big garbage truck comes by and picks it up with it's robot arm and dumps it in the back along with all the other stuff he's collected. When the driver has finished his route, he drives to the transfer station and dumps his load. Okay, this is the part I'm not clear about. Somebody is driving trucks to the landfill and and the main recycling center. Are they just driving the garbage trucks? Or are they repackaging the material for hauling on semi-trailers? I dunno, maybe if the landfill is less than 100 miles away, just driving straight there might be cheaper.
The material that gets dumped in the recycling bin eventually makes its way to the giant recycling center, which I think is in northwest Portland in the industrial district. I imagine some rudimentary sorting is done there, blown air can separate the lighter stuff like paper and plastic from the metal, magnetics can pick out the iron and steel. You might be able to use water to separate the paper from the plastic. I dunno, but I wonder about all the metal that's left after everything else gets shunted aside. You should be left with copper, brass, and some stainless. Then again, the amount non-magnetic heavy metal might not amount to a hill of beans. It's what's left over after all the easy pickin's have been picked up. It might be that a man with a broom sweeps up at the end of the day and dumps it in the trash.
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| 1967 plumes of industrial waste flow in the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie |
Tam does it again:
Wrecking civility is just a byproduct...
...of big companies generating revenue, much like the toxic effluvium from a very productive factory running into the river, back in the Good Old Days!
Remember, social media tends to reinforce bubbles in the interest of promoting engagement and increased screen time (and therefore exposure to advertising.)Turning people into hateful shitheads raging in echo chambers is just a side effect.Smoke (coming from your ears) means progress!
