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Does organic food make you a jerk?
This is the question that's been popping up in all kinds of anti-organic food blogs over the past week or so. And it all started after a new study suggested organic foods reduce prosocial behavior and harshen moral judgments.
What a load of crap!
Before I even read the study, I suspected it's findings would be about as reliable as Chinese drywall. And I was right. Although one of my favorite writers today, Jess Zimmerman, did the best job at proving how ridiculous this study was to begin with. You can read her piece on this one here.
Who Says Wall Street Can't be Trusted?
It always cracks me up when folks act surprised that something shady went down on Wall Street. As if this is something new.
Last Friday, as those lowly retail investors rushed to get a piece of the much-hyped Facebook IPO, Wall Street hustlers were laughing their asses off – all the way to the offshore bank. And you know what – they're already on to the next one. Because that's how it goes.
Of course, I don't mean to criticize a system that can allow average folks to build wealth. Certainly such a system has benefited me over the years. And if you know how to play it right, you can be quite successful. But ignoring the fact that the game is rigged – and not in your favor – will only lead to more losses and more anger directed towards Wall Street.
As far as the Facebook fiasco is concerned? Well, Mark Gongloff over at the Huffington Post offers a pretty spot-on analysis, suggesting that the Facebook stock collapse has contributed to mistrust of Wall Street. You can check it out here.
As reported in Reuters, a robotic “fish” that helps monitor pollution levels in the ocean is having its first sea-based test run in the Spanish port Gijon.
While the fish may look a bit like something from “Terminator” the technology isn’t nearly as frightening. If the fish works, it will detect specific types of pollution in seconds rather than weeks.
Currently, the fish are 5 feet long and cost around $31,600. In addition to being designed to swim like real fish, the entire body is outfitted with sensors that can detect pollutants leaking from ships or pipelines.
“Chemical sensors fitted to the fish permit real-time, in-situ analysis, rather than the current method of sample collection and dispatch to a shore based laboratory,” said Luke Speller, a scientist at BMT Group, the consultancy firm that led the project. Additionally, these fish are able to avoid obstacles, communicate with each other and know when to return to base when their eight-hour battery is low.
The development of the fish was partly funded by the EU and used technological expertise from institutions such as the University of Essex, University of Strathclyde, Ireland’s Tyndall National Institute and a division of Europe’s largest defense electronics group Thales.
The makers also say that they could make other types of robotic fish that could aid in oil spill clean up, underwater security, diver monitoring or search-and-rescue missio
Environmental and Alaska Native groups are appealing and protesting an air permit given by the EPA to Shell Oil.
The permit allows the ship Kulluk to be used in the Arctic Ocean, within arms reach of Alaska's northern shore.
As reported in the Huffington Post, the anti-drilling groups contest that such a ship and supporting vessels could pump extremely harmful toxins and greenhouse gases into the skies, exacerbating an area of the world already taking it on the proverbial chin because of climate change.
In addition, the groups also say the EPA gave the permit without paying attention to national environmental laws and regulations. The eight anti-drilling groups have asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to send permits back to the EPA, one for Kulluk and one for another Shell drilling ship called the Noble Discoverer. The EPA Appeals board has refused to review its decisions on both permits.
Shell is expecting a victory over the eight anti-drilling groups, its Alaskan spokesman Curtis Smith saying “The EPA finding of no significant impact to the Arctic Air shed and the subsequent validation of that permit by the EAB gives us a great deal of confidence that the permit, like the others we have achieved, will be upheld by the court.” Should the permits be upheld, the Noble Discoverer will drill three exploratory wells off the northwest coast while the Kulluk will drill two exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea off the northern coast.
The reason for the anti-drilling groups’ trepidation regarding drilling in Alaska (besides the obvious oil spill hazard that comes with all drilling projects) is because cleaning up a spill in waters that contain ice is very tricky as skimmers and other mechanical clean up devices have trouble working in that water.
If you want to see what happens when the fit hits the shan in the Arctic, take a look at what would've gone down had the BP spill taken place in those icy waters.
In a very surprising turn, demand for fresh water is driving sea levels up faster than melting glaciers according to a new report.
As reported in the Guardian UK, trillions of tons of water have been pumped from underground reservoirs then put into fields and pipes to help keep communities the world over watered.
The result, however, is that much of this water eventually ends up in the oceans.
The study was led by Yadu Pokhrel at the University of Tokyo and published in Nature Geoscience.
According to sea level expert Dr. Robert Nicholls of the University of Southampton, “The water being taken from deep wells is geologically old—there is no replenishment and so it is a one way transfer into the ocean…in the long run, I would still be more concerned about the impact of climate change, but this work shows that even if we stabilize the climate, we might still get sea level rise due to how we use water.”
Research has found that sea levels could rise anywhere from 30-100cm by 2100, which would put many coastal cities at risk. The new research has found that groundwater is a major contributor to this rise because in the past 50 years over 18 trillion tons of water has been removed from underwater aquifers without being replaced.
It is estimated that water pulled from deep wells has caused an average rise of a millimeter to the sea level every year since 1961. While 40% that is offset by the storing of freshwater in reservoirs, scientists believe this effect is rapidly diminishing as reservoir storage has leveled off recently.
As reported in the Huffington Post, the environmental group Living Rivers is disputing regulators' claims that a future oil sands project won’t cause any environmental harm, specifically to the groundwater.
Regulators say that test drilling in the proposed area found no groundwater until a depth of 1,800 feet.
“It would take thousands of years for any water to travel through an unsaturated zone that thick, and even longer for contaminates to travel the distance,” manager of groundwater protection for Utah Division of Water Quality Robert Herbert said.
That said, Herbert was repeatedly admonished by the judge at the hearings for failing to give simple answers in addition to at first claiming Utah only has to protect “usable” groundwater.
Living Rivers claims that tar sands mining can leave behind solvents and petrochemicals in waste pits that when affected by snowmelt and rain could wash the toxins into the ground.
US Oil Sands claims that a citrus-based solvent renders the oil-soaked sands as clean as beach sand, but that hasn’t stopped Living Rivers.
If the project is approved, the production of this oil sands would be a massive economic boon for Utah as an estimated 12 billion barrels of oil are buried in the state’s tar sands.
A site called Romney Marshes near the English city Kent has been chosen to house a nuclear dump, which has sparked a furious debate among local politicians.
According to the Guardian UK, being chosen as the first British nuclear waste storage facility is not something the leader of the Kent county council and a local MP want their city known for.
“Let’s not sell Romney Marsh short; I believe it has and deserves a better future than being the dumping ground for all of Britain’s high level nuclear waste,” MP Damian Collins said in a statement on his own website. Paul Carter, the leader of the Kent council, additionally points out the “utter madness” of building a nuclear waste storage facility in an area that is not only an earthquake zone, but also one of the busiest shipping lanes on the planet.
The problem for Kent is that the British government is really hoping to push through this nuclear waste storage facility because of its commitment to build more nuclear power plants whilst cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions. However, as recently reported, many top electric companies are abandoning the idea of building nuclear power plants due to high investment and non-immediate returns.
Other communities are also asking the question posed in Kent: Where should the nuclear waste be buried then? The Shepway council, which is located rather close to reactors at Dungeness, sent out letters to 10,000 local residents asking them their views regarding nuclear waste disposal. Supporters of nuclear power such as David Godfrey are arguing that a facility would bring about more jobs in the area while also saying those with negative views are entitled to their own opinion, but he’s not “quite sure where some of the sensational views are coming from.”
My three word response to Mr. Godfrey: Chernobyl and Fukushima.
By the end of the year, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) plans on powering its main data center exclusively with renewable energy.
Company reps recently announced they will be buying equipment from SunPower Corp (NASDAQ:SPWR) and Bloom Energy in an effort to complete a solar farm near its core data center in North Carolina. Once it's up and running, it will generate 84 kWh of energy a year. In addition, Apple plans on using coal-free electricity at all three of its data centers.
“I’m not aware of any other company producing energy onsite at this scale…the plan we are releasing today includes solar farms and together they will be twice as big as we previously announced, thanks to the purchase of some land very near to the data center in Maiden, which will help us meet this goal,” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently stated.
Montana officials recently stated they are currently investigating several sites suspected to still be tainted with oil from last year’s ExxonMobil pipeline break. This, despite one recent test showing one site downstream of the spill is clean.
As reported in the Huffington Post, the spill in question happened July 1, 2011 when an estimated 63,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Yellowstone River. While ExxonMobil claims everything is copasetic now, workers for the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks have found sheens and other signs of contamination at several sites downstream of the spill.
Some witnesses claim the sheen had to be oil-based and could have come from high waters from mountain snowmelt shifting sandbars and thus releasing previously trapped oil.
However, there is controversy with these claims. Tests on water and sediment samples at other sites have all come up negative, including testing on waters that had experienced a fish kill. In addition, Department of Environmental Quality scientist Laura Alvey, who had previously seen an oil sheen on an island east of Laurel has postulated some of the sheens may be naturally occurring, coming from sources such as algae or decomposing organisms. Also, while fish are still found with traces of oil contamination, state biologists claim the levels are low enough not to cause any problems to humans consuming the fish.
Pardon my skepticism, but I'll pass on the rainbow trout.
Moving on, many homeowners are still feeling the effects of the spill. Jim Swanson owns property along the river, which suffered extensive damage from the spill. ExxonMobil was able to recover only 1% of the oil, which had already contaminated over 70 miles of shoreline and islands in the river channel.
While tests on sheens on his property came back negative for toxic compounds, he said it still “boggles my mind” that the sheens could be from something besides oil. Additionally, Swanson said he can still see rings of degraded oil around trees and rocks on his property that was just left to break down naturally, even though ExxonMobil has a responsibility to clean up waste as part of its settlement with the state and its residents.
Swanson is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Exxon from riverfront landowners who justifiably say that the spill has affected their property values.
“The fact remains they only recovered 1%,” Swanson said.
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