MORE NEWS, 2-23 (READ IF YOU LIKE BREATHING; READ IF YOU LIKE BREATHING, II; WHICH ALGAE?; CLIMATE CHANGING FASTER)

READ IF YOU LIKE BREATHING
Obama EPA to Act on Global Warming Emissions from New Coal Plants; Decision Will Overturn Unlawful, Last-Minute Bush Administration Effort to Block Action on Global Warming
Virginia Cramer and Josh Dorner, February 17, 2009 (Sierra Club)

"President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today took the first step toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. EPA, under the new leadership of Administrator Lisa Jackson, granted a petition from the Sierra Club and other groups calling for reconsideration of an unlawful, midnight memo issued by former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson which sought to prohibit controls on global warming pollution from coal plants. EPA announced in a letter to the Sierra Club that it will publish a proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register and seek public comments on the decision in the near future.

"Today's decision is consistent with a previous ruling by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) in the Bonanza case, which found that there was no valid reason for the Bush administration's refusal to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new coal-fired power plants. The so-called Johnson Memo sought to unlawfully overturn that decision…"

From 350org via YouTube.

"…David Bookbinder, Chief Climate Counsel for the Sierra Club[:] "Today's victory is yet another indication that change really has come to Washington, and to EPA in particular. This decision stops the Bush Administration's final, last-minute effort to saddle President Obama with its do-nothing policy on global warming…Not only does today's decision signal a good start for our clean energy future, it also signals a return to policy based on sound science and the rule of law, not deep pocketbooks or politics…With coal-fired power plants emitting more than 30 percent of our global warming pollution, regulating their carbon dioxide is essential to making real progress in the fight against global warming… Today's announcement should cast significant further doubt on the approximately 100 coal-fired power plants that the industry is trying to rush through the permitting process without any limits on carbon dioxide. New coal plants were already a bad bet for investors and ratepayers and today's decisions make them an even bigger gamble.”


READ IF YOU LIKE BREATHING, II
Nations to Write Treaty Cutting Mercury Emissions
Juliet Eilperin, February 21, 2009 (Washington Post)

"More than 140 countries have agreed to negotiate a legally binding treaty aimed at slashing the use of the metal mercury (Hg), with the goal of reducing people's exposure to a toxin that hampers brain development among infants and young children worldwide.

"The agreement, announced at a high-level United Nations meeting of environmental ministers in Nairobi yesterday came after Obama administration officials reversed U.S. policy and embraced the idea of joining in a binding pact. Once the administration said it was reversing the course set by President George W. Bush, China, India and other nations also agreed to endorse the goal of a mandatory treaty…

"'Only a few weeks ago, nations remained divided on how to deal with this major public health threat which touches everyone in every country of the world,' [Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environmental Program] said. 'Today, the world's environment ministers, armed with the full facts and full choices, decided the time for talking was over -- the time for action on this pollution is now.'"

How mercury (Hg) invades. (click to enlarge)

"'The United States will play a leading role in working with other nations to craft a global, legally binding agreement that will prevent the spread of mercury into the environment and improve the health of workers, pregnant women and children throughout the world,' said Nancy Sutley, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality…

"...[A]ctivities, including the production of chlorine and the burning of coal, release mercury, which then falls to the earth and the sea in precipitation. The neurotoxin accumulates in fish and marine mammals in the form of methylmercury, which poses a threat to humans when consumed…

"'For six or seven years, the Bush administration had absolutely blocked any attempt to create a legally binding instrument,' [Environmentalist Susan Egan Keane, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council ]said. 'The Obama administration, within three or four weeks of inauguration, was able to put that into reverse.'"


WHICH ALGAE?
Kent BioEnergy, With Decades of Algae Experience, Predicts Biofuel Innovation Will Come From “A Guy on a Tractor”
Bruce V. Bigelow, February 20, 2009 (Xconomy)

"…Jack Van Olst and Michael Massingill are co-founders of San Diego-based Kent BioEnergy, a startup that has developed a variety of proprietary algae technologies over the past 37 years…Kent BioEnergy…holds a variety of patents and exclusive licenses for aquaculture wastewater treatment systems, algae-based water recycling systems, and algae-based environmental remediation technology. It also has patents pending for making algae easier to harvest, methods for maintaining algae monocultures (ensuring that a pond has just one species of algae), and for genetically modifying algae to enhance algal production of valuable oils that can be used to make fuels.

"While many algae-based energy technologies have just begun to develop system designs, Kent BioEnergy has been refining its systems development under Massingill since he joined the company in 1980…The company also has worked since the mid-1980s with Clemson University researchers to develop a variety of proprietary processes for efficiently growing and harvesting algae. Van Olst says harvesting in particular is…not a trivial issue…because algae basically have the same density as the water where they grow. You can’t just use a net to scoop out the algae. (It’s possible to use a centrifuge to separate the algae, but Van Olst says it is too costly.)"

click to enlarge

"…Kent BioEnergy has adopted a multipurpose strategy that emphasizes a systems approach and seeks to maximize efficiencies by using algae in many different ways. For example, algae can be optimized to produce methane gas in an anaerobic digester, and the leftover biomass sludge can be used as livestock feed or as an agricultural soil amendment. Because algae absorbs carbon dioxide, Van Olst also is intrigued with the concept of developing techniques for using algae ponds to capture carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pumped out by coal and gas-powered power plants.

"So hypothetically, at least, algae could produce the methane gas used to fuel a power plant and also absorb at least some of the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.

"… few competitors developing algae-biofuels technologies have been working at the same scale as Kent BioEnergy. The company, which now has 26 employees in San Diego and Imperial County, operates algae production ponds on a 250-acre desert site near Mecca, CA, and it has acquired an additional 350 acres along the western shore of the Salton Sea. But Massingill says making algae biofuels economical will likely require expanding algae production to an agricultural scale that could require 10,000 acres of algal growing ponds…"


CLIMATE CHANGING FASTER
Pace of global warming speeds up
Randolph E. Schmid, February 15, 2009 (AP via Cape Cod Times)

"Despite widespread concern over global warming, humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere even faster than in the 1990s, researchers warned…Carbon emissions have been growing at 3.5 percent per year since 2000, up sharply from the 0.9 percent per year in the 1990s, Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Past projections for declines in the emissions of greenhouse gases were too optimistic, he added. No part of the world had a decline in emissions from 2000 to 2008."

click to enlarge (Support President Obama to reverse)

"Anny Cazenave of France's National Center for Space Studies told the meeting that improved satellite measurements show that sea levels are rising faster than had been expected…Rising oceans can pose a threat to low level areas such as South Florida, New York and other coastal areas as the ocean warms and expands and as water is added from melting ice sheets…[T]he fastest rising areas at about 1 centimeter — 0.39 inch — per year in parts of the North Atlantic, western Pacific and the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica…

"…[E]fforts to curb carbon emissions through the use of biofuels may even backfire…Demand for biologically based fuels has led to the growing of more corn in the United States, but that means fields were switched from soybeans to corn, explained Michael Coe of the Woods Hole Research Center…[O]ther countries, such as Brazil, increased their soy crops to make up for the deficit…Brazil created more soy fields by destroying tropical forests…Instead [of absorbing CO2] the forests were burned, releasing the gasses into the air…[swamping] any declines recorded by the United States… if crops like sugar and oil palm are planted after tropical forests are burned, the extra carbon released may be balanced by lower emissions from biofuel in 40 to 120 years, but for crops such as corn and cassava it can take hundreds of years to break equal…"