ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

EXPERTS: HURRICANES PART OF NATURAL CYCLE, NOT GLOBAL WARMING

     Apparently the American people are on to something in their view that global warming has not caused the recent rash of hurricanes (see "MOST AMERICANS SAY HURRICANES JUST PART OF NATURAL CYCLE", posted on this Blog October 2, 2005; go to "CATEGORIES" on right-hand side of this page and click on "Global Warming").  USA Today carries an article in today's edition entitled    "Record year for hurricanes part of a natural cycle":

Natural climate conditions, not global warming, created the record-breaking 2005 tropical storm season, the nation's top hurricane experts said Tuesday.

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Three ingredients combined to generate more and stronger hurricanes in 2005, said Gerry Bell, lead meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. Warm ocean water helps fuel storms, and Atlantic water temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees above average this year, he said. There was an absence of winds high in the atmosphere that can tear hurricanes apart. And winds blowing east from Africa steered developing storms toward warmer waters where they incubated into tropical storms and hurricanes.

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"It's not related" to global warming, Bell said. The same conditions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, the last period of above-normal hurricane activity. Many records set in 2005, including most hurricanes in a season — 13 — surpassed marks set then.

LITTLE-NOTICED COMMENTS ON POLAR ICE AND SEA LEVELS IN NEW GLOBAL WARMING STUDIES

     A lot of attention will undoubtedly be lavished on new studies that indicate greenhouse gases and sea levels are rising at alarming rates.  On Thanksgiving, Reuters published an article, "Oceans, greenhouse gases rising faster: reports" noting:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ocean and so-called greenhouse gas levels are rising faster than they have for thousands of years, according to two reports published on Thursday that are likely to fuel debate on global warming.

One study found the Earth's ocean levels have risen twice as fast in the past 150 years, signaling the impact of human activity on temperatures worldwide, researchers said in the journal Science.

Sea levels were rising by about 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) every year about 200 years ago and as far back as 5,000 years, geologists found from deep sediment samples from the New Jersey coastline. Since then, levels have risen by about 2 millimeters (0.08 inches) a year.

     However, for those of us who are unrepentant skeptics, two parenthetical aspects of the Reuters report stand out.  First,

Measurements also showed that, while many scientists had thought polar ice caps did not exist before 15 million years ago, frozen water at the poles did form periodically.

"We believe the ice sheet was not around all the time. It was only around during cool snaps of the climate," Miller [the researcher leading one of the studies] said.

     This passage caught my attention because of all the press about the melting North and South Pole icecaps proving the existence of global warming.  The Reuters report seems to indicate that, while the studies being reported on believe global warming is real, the studies do not support referencing such melting as an indicium of the warming phenomenon.

     A second observation by lead-researcher Miller is equally worthy of skeptics' attention:

The research, funded mostly by the National Science Foundation, also found ocean levels were lower during the dinosaur era than previously thought. They were about 100 meters (330 feet) higher than now, not 250 meters (820 feet) as many geologists had thought, Miller said.

     What, you mean up until these studies the geological community had a consensus on an incorrect conclusion?  This realization supports the common-sense notion that no one or two studies--including these latest studies being reported on by Reuters-- should be considered gospel.  There remains a lot more we don't know about the Earth's history of global cooling and warming than what we do know.

    

MORE EVIDENCE THAT USA IS NOT THE FOCUS OF THE WORLD'S ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

     On March 29, 2005, I Posted "THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT: STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES (WHICH HAVE LESS CHANCE OF BEING POLLUTED IN THE USA THAN ALMOST ANYWHERE ELSE)" (see "Environmentalists" under "CATEGORIES" on the right-hand side of this page).  The Post opined that the United States is way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to environmental protection; the Post suggested that the environmentalist movement, if it is to be productive, thus needs to focus more on foreign environmental issues.

     Yesterday's The New York Times carries an article highlighting this point:

The Chinese government's decision to cut potentially contaminated supplies of fresh water to a major city has highlighted the threat that industrial pollution poses to public health and economic development across the nation.

Almost four million people in Harbin in northeastern China are expected to be without running water until late Saturday after a chemical plant explosion on Nov. 13 contaminated the upper reaches of the nearby Songhua River with toxic benzene.

***

The threat of contamination to Harbin is a reminder that with its booming economy, China is facing a huge environmental challenge.

The combination of rapid industrialization, a vast population and intensive agriculture has led to some of the world's worst air pollution, widespread shortages of fresh water and soil degradation.

Pollution and contamination have exacerbated China's water shortages, which environmental experts and even senior officials say could threaten economic development. Data from monitoring stations in the country's seven major river drainage zones showed that 44 percent of rivers were polluted.

     China's air, as well as its water, need help.  See my Post of September 2, 2005, under the CATEGORY "Global Warming", entitled "Space Sensors Show Massive Surge In Chinese Air Pollution" .

     Moreover, even some mature, industrialized nations are not doing as good a job as is the United States in protecting the environment.  See my Post of November, 10, 2005 (under the CATEGORY "Global Warming"), IN THE "PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES SHOULDN'T THROW STONES" DEPT.

    The data in this Post and in the September 2 and November 10 Posts buttress the conclusion that the United States actually leads the rest of the world in environmental protection.  Environmentalists, take note.

    

SUPERFUND SITE CLEANUP PROGRESS TOUTED BY FEDERAL EPA IN PRESS RELEASE

Yesterday, November 22, 2005, the federal EPA issued a press release stating the accomplishments of the Superfund cleanup program during Fiscal Year 2005.  To quote EPA:

... EPA completed work at 40 sites, for a cumulative total of 966 sites with work completed -- 62 percent of the top priority sites ranked on the National Priorities List. EPA conducted 665 ongoing cleanup projects at 422 sites (includes projects led by EPA, projects led by potentially responsible parties and federal facility sites). EPA funded new work at 17 projects across the country. Superfund also continued to prepare for future cleanup efforts by listing 18 new sites and proposing 12 sites to be added to the NPL.

     More interesting stats from the press release:

As the Superfund program matures, so does the size, complexity and cost of sites under or ready to begin construction. In FY 05, 50 percent of the budget for long-term, ongoing cleanup work was committed to 11 sites. Even so, EPA was also able to provide $70 million to start cleanup work at 17 projects across the country.

Underscoring EPA's commitment to the "polluter pays" principle, the agency secured private party commitments of more than $1.1 billion in FY 05. Of this amount, potentially responsible parties agreed to conduct more than $857 million in future response work, and to reimburse EPA for $248 million in past costs.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES PUBLISHES POLITICALLY INCORRECT PERCHLORATE STUDY

  You probably won't read about this in mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, the Washington Post or The Los Angeles Times, but lookey here:  on October 31, 2005 the prestigious National Academy of Sciences published on line a study concluding:

Perchlorate is a goitrogenic anion that competitively inhibits the sodium iodide transporter and has been detected in forages and in commercial milk throughout the U.S. The fate of perchlorate and its effect on animal health were studied in lactating cows, ruminally infused with perchlorate for 5 weeks. Milk perchlorate levels were highly correlated with perchlorate intake, but milk iodine was unaffected, and there were no demonstrable health effects. We provide evidence that up to 80% of dietary perchlorate was metabolized, most likely in the rumen, which would provide cattle with a degree of refractoriness to perchlorate. Data presented are important for assessing the environmental impact on perchlorate concentrations in milk and potential for relevance to human health. 

^***

^{A  60-kg pregnant woman could consume in excess of 3.7 liters of milk containing 11.3 ng of perchlorate per ml without exceeding the RfD, and this quantity of milk would be well in excess of average daily consumption.}

^{(emphases added).}

    ^{Don't hold your breath waiting to hear our legislators and regulators cite this study as at least some evidence that caution is needed in allocating scarce resources to perhaps more pressing problems.  In environmental politics, the keyword remains politics.}

NORWAY AND NEW ZEALAND GLACIERS ADVANCE

     Despite the popular belief that global warming is causing glaciers everywhere rapidly to recede, a new study concludes that glaciers in Norway and New Zealand have actually expanded since the 1980's.  From the November 16, 2005 edition of CO2 SCIENCE:

The coldest period of the current interglacial or Holocene was likely the Little Ice Age, when land-based glaciers around the world achieved their maximum extensions and ice volumes.  Once the planet was safely on its way to recovering from this unprecedented multi-century cold spell, however, they began to lose mass and recede.  In Norway and New Zealand, "as in many other glacier regions," in the words of Chin et al. (2005), this recession was most strongly expressed in "the middle of the 20th century," which they describe as "a period of spectacular retreat as the glaciers responded to climate warming that occurred since the end of the cooler 19th century."  However, as they add, "glaciers in [these] two widely separated regions have recently shown the opposite behavior towards the end of the 20th century."

In Norway, the international team of researchers reports that the main glacial retreat "ended during the late 1950s to early 1960s," and that "after some years with more or less stationary glacier front positions, [the glaciers] began to advance, accelerating in the late 1980s."  Around 2000, a portion of the glaciers began to slow, while some even ceased moving; but they say that "most of the larger outlets with longer reaction times are continuing to advance."  In fact, they report that "the distances regained and the duration of this recent advance episode are both far greater than any previous readvance since the Little Ice Age maximum, making the recent resurgence a significant event."

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In New Zealand, equilibrium line altitude (ELA) measurements of fifty index glaciers "spread throughout the length and width of the Southern Alps" have likewise revealed "two periods of positive mass balances from 1980 to 1987 and from 1991 to 1997."  The most spectacular of the resultant glacial advances was experienced by the Franz Josef Glacier, which "regained 1200 m from 1984 to 2000, an extension which recovered a significant 41% of length lost since 1900." 

     What is the matter with the people of Norway and New Zealand?  Haven't they heard the mainstream media's warnings about "global warming"?

"Global Warming Moved Plants Northward"--55 Million Years Ago!

     Yet more evidence that global warming may be a part of the natural Earth cycle and not a man-made cataclysmic event.  The Associated Press reported on Friday, November 11, 2005, as follows:

WASHINGTON — An increase in the planet's temperature 55 million years ago prompted major shifts in plant distribution, researchers reported Thursday.

A study of plant fossils from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming shows the arrival of plants from warm southern areas, displacing those that had been growing there previously, according to a research team led by Scott L. Wing, chairman of the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Their findings are reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The group studied a period called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when the planet warmed up over about 10,000 years, raising the average temperature by between 9 degrees and 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The warmth lasted for 80,000 to 120,000 years.

IN THE "PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES SHOULDN'T THROW STONES" DEPT.

     Despite being oft-criticized on account of our refusal to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, according to two newspaper articles the United States is in fact reducing its greenhouse gases at a rate faster than at least two other industrialized nations with more eco-friendly reputations.

     From the November 10, 2005 edition of Guardian (UK):

Bob May, president of the Royal Society, said new figures showing that UK emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases which contribute to global warming have risen for the last two years, made it difficult for British politicians to be taken seriously on the issue.

He said: "It is very difficult to criticise other countries such as the United States if we are unable to meet our commitments. Indeed, emissions by the United States have actually declined over the last two years, although they are still some 20% above 1990 levels."

And from CBC Canada:

Canada lags behind the United States when it comes to clamping down on air pollution, says an environmental watchdog.

Pollution Watch says the United States reduced air pollution emissions by 45 per cent between 1995 and 2003, while Canada reduced air pollution emissions by 1.8 per cent over the same period.

"Europe risks economic damage from Kyoto - study"

     From Reuters, Sunday, November 6, 2005:

Europe's push to meet pollution targets agreed under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change could dent its economies and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2010, according to research published on Monday.

Compliance with Kyoto's greenhouse gas reduction targets could hit gross domestic product in Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy as energy energy bills soar, said pro-business thinktank International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF).

***

ICCF predicted the loss of at least 200,000 jobs in each of Italy, Germany, Britain and Spain as governments chase greenhouse gas reduction targets set out under Kyoto, which came into force in February.

Average increases of 26 percent in electricity prices and 41 prices in gas prices by 2010 were also predicted in the ICCF's study.

Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) could be reduced by 0.8 percent from base case levels by 2010, with Spain and Britain suffering reductions of 3.1 percent and 1.1 percent respectively, the ICCF said.

     This is but one more piece of evidence that countries around the world are taking a serious second look at Kyoto.  See, e.g., my Post of August 29, 2005, "KYOTO PROTOCOL ON THE ROPES?" (click on the link).  The United States, of course, ultimately rejected Kyoto in its present form:

Although the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate. In July 1999, the United States Senate voted 95-0 to pass a resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Hagel (R-Neb.), which stated the Senate would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases. The Clinton Administration announced it would not send the treaty to the Senate for ratification.

Source: Environmental Literacy Council.

NASHVILLE FIREFIGHTERS WIN TOXIC MOLD CASE

     The Tennessean reports today that 2 Nashville firefighters and their wives have been awarded $76,000 in their suit against the City over toxic-mold related health problems.  The firefighters alleged that damp, moldy conditions at their fire station aggravated already-existing health problems.

     According to the Judge in the case:

"(Johnson) [one of the firefighters] had a pre-existing condition of chronic sinusitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease," Kurtz wrote in his opinion. "The mold-moisture at the fire hall aggravated his symptoms."

He made a similar finding for Berry [the other firefighter]. The judge also faulted the city for failing to do anything about conditions at the fire hall.

     The award, while a victory for the plaintiffs, does seem pretty mild (probably because the plaintiffs already had preexisting health problems not caused, but only allegedly aggravated, by the mold).