Easement deal preserves Adirondack wildlands

The deal, spelled out in this newspaper article, is a win for wild nature in New York’s Adirondack Park. It’s a model for preservation of wildlands that escapes most other states, including Pennsylvania. And here is an audio report on this huge deal as aired by North Country Public Radio.

Raptors tangling with a toxin – lead

The problem highlighted in this article from the Omaha, Neb., paper has been around a long time, but still proves itself to be a threat today.

EPA limit on greenhouse gases sets up battle

And once again, I predict, the politicians and their talking-head friends in so-called cable Tee Vee will win out in the end. The planet – our planet – will lose out in the end, naturally. After all, what’s more important? Getting re-elected or doing the right thing?

Read about the EPA’s new regs that take effect tomorrow.

It’s not really Sarah Palin’s Alaska anymore, poll finds

Hah, hah. The darling of the mainstream media GOP choir gets more publicity. Read the billboard here. Geena Davis made a much better prez on the tee vee show “Commander in Chief.”

Officials closing in on cause of bat eaths in Tucson

This die-off does not appear to be caused by white-nose syndrome, the cause of the die-off of entire bat colonies here in the Northeast. But, the problem has spread wst as far as Oklahoma. Will it also spread into the Southwest?

Read about the Tucson, Arizona, case.

EPA’s cleanup plan for Chesapeake Bay is ‘monumental’

Here’s a newspaper’s coverage of the plan. Be sure and look over the sidebars. I still wish the plan called for major restoration and preservation efforts. Everyday, it seems, dozens of acres are lost to development in my little corner of th watershed alone.

Yellowstone-area grizzly bear deaths spke in 2010

As this article notes, the great majority of the deaths were attributed to human causes. No surprise there as men and women continue to push onto grizzly bear habitat.

Republican says Obama out to destroy America in the name of global warming

This Republican, Fred Upton, from Michigan somewhat naturally, is blathering that our Democratic president, Mr. Obama, is out to destroy Amurica over that stupid thing called “global warming.” This Upton guy is exactly the kind of merchant of doubt highlighted in the new book “Merchants of Doubt.” And that would be the same kind of merchant of doubt that fought long and hard to deny the murderous danger of secondhand tobacco smoke. And also fought long and hard to deny that thing known as the ozone hole. Read about Meester Upton right here. Click and have a good time, thanks to Grist.

Nuke power: Running on fumes?

Since I live less than 10 miles from a nuclear power plant that sucks cooling water from the Susquehanna River, I naturally follow the uranium-use industry pretty closely. Heres’ an item from the latest Climate Progressnewsletter that caught my attention:

This is a 12/1/10 re-post from the World Affairs Blog Network by Bill Hewitt.

I went to a debate on nuclear energy on Monday evening sponsored by the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia.  The Center is headed by Mike Gerrard, a force of nature in environmental law for over thirty years.

“Should nuclear power be an important component of U.S. strategy to combat climate change?” The pros, as ’twere, for nuclear were Susan Eisenhower, an old hand in power and proliferation circles, and Barton Cowan, a lawyer who’s been representing the industry for decades.  The skeptics — it’s not an inherently bad word, it’s just been tarred by those who would make you believe the earth is flat — were represented by Peter Bradford, a long-time utility industry regulator and a member of the Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies at the Institute for Policy Studies.

The proponents, I’m sorry, but not surprised, to tell you, had nothing in the least convincing to say.

I have heard the arguments about reliability, for instance, for decades.  But, as Amory Lovins points out in his magisterial Four Nuclear Myths, although nuclear plants in the US have had a commendable capacity factor of over 90% in recent years, they have averaged about 10.6% downtime (during 2003-7), with 2.5% of that time unplanned.  Worldwide through 2008, according to Lovins’ reading of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s data, nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.

Further, Lovins writes:

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear plants built-just over half of the 253 originally ordered-21% were permanently and prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their full-load full-time potential-a major improvement for which the industry deserves much credit-but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably running nuclear plants must shut down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to months.

The argument that nuclear represents reliable “baseload” power is, as Peter Bradford pointed out in the debate, “rapidly losing relevance.”  He echoes Lovins in saying that the new combinations available in the deployment of the Smart Grid, distributed generation (DG), renewables, energy efficiency, demand-side management (DSM), etc. render the idea of one constantly streaming power source archaic.  As Lovins points out, the grid has anyway pretty much always been about a combination of generators.

 

Quote of the week

Dismantling health and environmental regulations would diminish the quality of life and natural resources that draw many people to the Northeast and Midwest, said Jordan Lubetkin, spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office.