BMEWS
 
Sarah Palin's enemies are automatically added to the Endangered Species List.

calendar   Thursday - November 07, 2013

comrades alive and well and growing

More stuff from comrade commissars in glorious european union.

Comrades in Brussels want to suck the power from peasants vacuum cleaners in a move designed to help conserve energy and save planet for politburo members, gypsies and muzzies.  Maybe Christians and Jews too if follow orders.

These guys are on a roll.  They also want I have heard, a European army.  Would not be a bad idea if Groucho Marx were still alive to lead it.

Look, a couple of yrs ago they managed to take away my light bulbs.  Then they came up with a diktat regarding toilet flushes, and now ...


Now Europe wants to make it harder to clean your carpets with new rules BANNING powerful vacuum cleaners

Regulations will ban any new machine that exceeds 1,600W next year

That figure will fall to 900W by 2017, according to Brussels bureaucrats

At present, the average vacuum cleaner has a 1,800W motor

By Lucy Osborne

Whoa ... say what? 
ok.
Time to buy a back up for the time when the one we have now packs it in.
I want something that exceeds whatever it is the eu doesn’t approve of.
By 2wice.

It is the bane of every household – and following a ruling by Brussels bureaucrats it is about to get worse.

Home owners will find their armoury in the battle against dust and dirt weakened by a ban on powerful vacuum cleaners.

Under European Commission ‘eco’ rules that will come into force next September, the power of new vacuum cleaners must not exceed 1,600 watts.

Under threat: The 2,300W Hoover Dust Manager , which will be outlawed by new EU regulations
and the Vax U90-MA-R, which outsells its rivals on Amazon.co.uk

That figure will be lowered further to 900 watts by 2017. Current cleaners boast an average of 1,800 watts.

The move angered manufacturers, who say it will do nothing to make cleaners more environmentally friendly and will simply reduce efficiency in the home.

Justin Binks, director of Sebo UK, which produces a range of vacuum cleaners, said the regulations would limit performance using ‘unrealistic criteria’.

‘If the proposed regulations come into force as planned next year, they could hugely frustrate anyone trying to clean their home,’ he said.

Critics say cleaners satisfying the new rule may use less power, but householders will have to use them for longer so they are likely to use the same amount of electricity in the long run.

Under the regulations, appliances will be rated from A to G depending on how much noise they make, the energy efficiency of their suction and the levels of dust pumped out by their ‘exhaust air’. Similar labels are already displayed on washing machines.

Despite his company not producing any vacuum over 1,400 watts, Sir James Dyson, the billionaire entrepreneur who pioneered ‘bagless’ vacuums, is also angered by the proposal.

He says the eco-labels will be misleading because they will not take into account the cost and waste of vacuum bags and filters and will give an advantage to competitors who use ‘bag’ technology. He is seeking a judicial review of the proposal at the European Court of Justice.

The new measures will be extended to other appliances, including water pumps, water heaters and tumble dryers.

The Brussels bureaucrats have also angered British farmers with changes to meat labelling.

Meat and poultry is currently labelled with information about where the animal was born, reared and slaughtered.

But in a proposal to deal with the trade in animals raised in one country and fattened for market in another, they will be required to spend only a few weeks in the UK for the meat to be labelled British.

UK farmers fear the new rules may trigger imports of cheap chickens from former Eastern Bloc countries.

SOURCE

THE VACUUM CLEANERS ABOUT TO BE SUCKED UP BY EC REGULATIONS

Here are five of top selling vacuum cleaners on Amazon.co.uk that will be banned when new regulations come in

1. Numatic HVR200A Henry A1 Bagged Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner. 1,200W.

BANNED BY 2017

2. Vax W90-RU-P Rapide Ultra 2 Pre-Treatment Upright Carpet and Upholstery Washer. 1,000W.

BANNED BY 2017

3. Vax U90-MA-R Air Reach Multicyclonic Upright Bagless Vacuum Cleaner. 1,200W.

BANNED BY 2017

4. Sebo X4EXTRA Automatic Upright Vacuum Cleaner. 1,300W.

BANNED BY 2017

5. Hoover Smart Pets SM1901 Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaner. 1,900W.

BANNED BY NEXT SEPTEMBER


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 11/07/2013 at 05:10 AM   
Filed Under: • CommiesDemocrats-Liberals-Moonbat LeftistsEnvironmentEUro-peons •  
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calendar   Wednesday - October 30, 2013

Get The Lead Out

And Then There Were None

Last Lead Smelter In USA To Close Down

EPA Regs Too Costly To Comply With

Repercussions Destroy Local Community

Anything using lead (like bullets) now subject to import/export rules

There. That tells the whole story in the headlines I think. Nice and fast.

[October 2010] Herculaneum Missouri - Doe Run Co. will close its lead smelter in Herculaneum in three years and will pay $65 million to correct violations of environmental laws at 10 of its lead processing facilities in southeast Missouri, the company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.

Environmentalists, who have called attention to the dangers of lead poisoning, heralded the news while local officials worried what the future holds for Herculaneum, the Jefferson County town that has relied on the smelter for jobs and tax money for more than 100 years.

The company said it will end operations at the lead smelter, the only primary lead smelter in the United States, by Dec. 31, 2013.
...
Doe Run must establish financial assurance trust funds, at an estimated cost of $28 million to $33 million, for the cleanup of Herculaneum and other active or former mining and milling facilities, the EPA said.

In addition, the company must pay a $7 million civil penalty for violating a series of environmental laws. Doe Run said half of that will go to schools in Iron, Reynolds, Jefferson and Washington counties.
...
270 people work at the Herculaneum plant, many of whom could retain jobs if the new plant goes there. If it doesn’t, Pyatt said, only a few employees will remain to carry out duties such as supervising remediation in Herculaneum.

Pyatt said local officials have been lobbying hard to keep the company in Herculanuem.

“They really want to keep the jobs and the tax base there,” Pyatt said.  It’s not surprising — the plant paid $933,000 last year in property taxes.

So the evil polluting smelter, that’s been there since teh end of the Civil War, employs the whole town and pays most of the taxes, has to be punished and driven out of business. Gee, I wonder what happened next?

[2012] For 25 years, the smelter didn’t meet federal air standards for lead, and now, after decades of battling government regulators and angry parents, Doe Run is leaving town at the end of next year.

The battles over contamination turned this town on its head, pitting neighbor against neighbor, uprooting and bulldozing the center of town. It all culminated in a storm of lawsuits: one of them—against the Environmental Protection Agency -- forced the federal government to revise the national air pollution standard for lead, tightening it by a factor of ten.

Now, unable to meet the tough new standard, Doe Run is finally closing the plant: the last primary lead smelter in the United States will be dismantled at the end of next year. In June, Doe Run made it final – the company won’t be rebuilding in Herculaneum with a new cleaner plant, as they had earlier planned on. That would be “an unacceptable financial risk.”

So the town, it’s greedy lawyers, and the corruptocrat bastards at the EPA put the screws to Doe Run so bad that they said to hell with it, and shut things down. And don’t you just bloody LOVE how the company’s suit against the government’s singling them out for persecution FORCED the EPA to make the lead pollution rules TEN TIMES more onerous? Forced them! Twisted their arms to make them come up with new regs impossible for anyone to comply with. Rather similar to Obama and his quest to kill the coal industry.

And now? Well ... the laws of unintended consequences being what they are ...

About 145 employees of the Doe Run lead smelter have learned they will lose their jobs at the end of December because of the plant’s closure, the Doe Run Co. said Wednesday. An additional 73 contractor jobs also will be eliminated.

The EPA says the company decided to close its plant instead of installing pollution control technologies.

City Administrator Jim Kasten said Friday he was worried about potential job losses and the crushing financial blow, especially to the school district, that the company’s departure would cause.

“This is a big deal, and how we’re going to counteract these things, I don’t know at this point,” he said.

Doe Run contributes 11 percent of the local revenue for the Dunklin School District, which includes Herculaneum, said Superintendent Stan Stratton.

The loss of that income would “force a heavier burden on our taxpayers,” Stratton said. The district’s annual budget, including state and federal money, is about $13 million.

The effects go further. Doe Run uses about half the water the city contracts to buy. Kasten estimated that when smelting stops, the average household’s water bill would increase by $30 to $40 a month.

“If Doe Run’s not buying it, someone’s got to,” Kasten said.

So the town will soon be pretty much out of business, with a whole domino cascade of missing taxes and absent money spreading the poverty far and wide. But those empty homes and businesses will have less pollution!

And as for sportsmen ... hunters and shooters ... not to mention any business in the nation that uses solder in its electronics ... or X-ray shielding ... or anything lead has always been used for ... possibly a national security issue (and now we know why DHS bought up all those billions of rounds! And why the military came up with “green” bullets with tungsten cores, because reducing pollution in the middle of a war is so so important, right??) ...

Doe Run made significant efforts to reduce lead emissions from the smelter, but in 2008 the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead that were 10 times tighter than the previous standard. Given the new lead air quality standard, Doe Run made the decision to close the Herculaneum smelter.

Whatever the EPA’s motivation when creating the new lead air quality standard, increasingly restrictive regulation of lead is likely to affect the production and cost of traditional ammunition. Just this month, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will ban lead ammunition for all hunting in California. The Center for Biological Diversity has tried multiple times to get similar regulations at the federal level by trying, and repeatedly failing, to get the EPA to regulate conventional ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

At this time, it’s unclear if Doe Run or another company will open a new lead smelter in the United States that can meet the more stringent lead air quality standards by using more modern smelting methods. What is clear is that after the Herculaneum smelter closes its doors in December, entirely domestic manufacture of conventional ammunition, from raw ore to finished cartridge, will be impossible.

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 10/30/2013 at 01:29 PM   
Filed Under: • EconomicsEnvironmentGovernment •  
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calendar   Monday - September 23, 2013

scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temp.hasn’t risen for the last 15 years.

Is Gennifer Flowers still making news in the USA?  Cos there was a full page on her in the paper Friday last.

In case you forgot or maybe would like to forget, she’s the woman who some years ago while Clinton was campaigning for the WH, claimed to have had an affair of some long standing with him.  Twelve years in fact. Clinton finally owned up his dalliance with her.  Some 6 years after she said they were an item.

Well now, this really large headline greeted us Friday with a quote from her that says, “I’d still be with Bill Clinton if it hadn’t been for the birth of Chelsea”. 

She still has a crush on the dude? Does anyone care anymore? Did anyone ever care to begin with? Well, except for his wife and now his grown daughter.

What I find interesting though isn’t all of that.  I find it interesting that a paper here would print Flower’s claim that Hillary Clinton is Bi-Sexual.
Woo-hoo.  Did papers in the US pick up this story?

Ok, that wasn’t supposed to be my post anyway. I just found it weirdly interesting that they’d publish here.
What I actually intended to post was this, which won’t come as a shock to anyone.

World’s top climate scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years

Leaked United Nations report reveals the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years

Politicians have raised concerns about the final draft

Fears that the findings will encourage deniers of man-made climate change

By Tamara Cohen, Political Correspondent

Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.

But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries.

Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.

The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter.

The last IPCC ‘assessment report’ was published in 2007 and has been the subject of huge controversy after it had to correct the embarrassing claim that the Himalayas would melt by 2035.

It was then engulfed in the ‘Climategate’ scandal surrounding leaked emails allegedly showing scientists involved in it trying to manipulate their data to make it look more convincing – although several inquiries found no wrongdoing.

The latest report, which runs to 2,000 pages, will be shown to representatives from all 195 governments next week at a meeting in Stockholm, who can discuss alterations they want to make.

But since it was issued to governments in June, they have raised hundreds of objections about the 20-page summary for policymakers, which sums up the findings of the scientists.

What it says will inform renewable energy policies and how much consumers and businesses will pay for them.

source

And that my friends is, the bottom line. Innit? What’s it gonna cost?


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 09/23/2013 at 01:35 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-WeatherEnvironment •  
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calendar   Friday - January 25, 2013

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we’ve no place to go,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (1945)

image

Final blast of the big freeze to hit rush hour tonight with up to four inches of snowfall due across UK in 12-hour blitz before the thaw

Band of heavy snow will sit over Midlands, North, Wales and Scotland before temperatures rise overnight
Up to 7ins of snow will fall over high ground in parts of the country, with many areas getting 4ins by late tonight
But Saturday will see temperatures soar to as high as 9C when snow and ice will start to thaw
On Sunday rain warnings are in place for most of the UK and heavy rain is predicted to cause flooding
Deaths due to cold hits double figures after man found dead in freezing Suffolk woodland

By Larisa Brown and Anna Edwards

The cold-spell that has gripped Britain for more than a week will give a final ferocious bite this afternoon as a band of heavy snow will sit over much of Britain and dump up to 4ins (10cm) over many areas.

Roads are likely to be treacherous during rush hour for millions of motorists trying to get home for the weekend, while rail services and flights could also be disrupted.

The Met Office has put out amber warnings for the north of England, east of England and East and West Midlands, and much of Scotland, where there are already blizzards. Yellow warnings hang over Wales, south west England and London and the South East.

It warned that strong winds will also lead to drifting and blizzard-like conditions, particularly over higher level roads in the north. Head of special operations at the AA Darron Burness said: ‘It looks likely that the current cold spell will go out with a bang’.

This will be the final 12-hour blast of snow for most of Britain, with temperatures to reach up to 9C accompanied by gusts of wind reaching 50mph in exposed areas during a warmer spell lasting until at least Wednesday.

But forecasters now fear flooding tomorrow, as heavy rain moves in and rising temperatures spark a rapid thaw of the built-up snow and ice.

image

NEVER MIND THE ARTICLE, SEE ALL THE PHOTOS AND A CUTE BIG CAT VIDEO

Actually has warmed up some here in the South.  Was out chopping ice this morning but wasted time as had I waited a few hours, it was all to melt anyway. What the heck, needed xersice anyway. 


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 01/25/2013 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • EnvironmentUK •  
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calendar   Tuesday - December 18, 2012

Something besides the other two news stories

Crivens. I’m sick of it. There are only two stories on the news in the entire darn country. The “national conversation on guns” which appears to be nothing more than the far left media ramming their fantasy based opinions down our throats, and “the fiscal cliff” which is more smoke and mirrors from DC. Cliff? Please. Such BS. Infinite stepped abyss is more like it. Neither Obongo nor Boner have any intention of reigning in out of control spending. When what we need is a major slash across the entire federal budget - a good 40% across the boards, just to start - and a major thinning of entire entrenched departments of that government to shrink it so that it’s merely thrice the size it ought to be, the absolute best any “deal” is going to do is to slightly reduce the rate at which deficit spending increases. Seriously, that’s the best they will be able to do: a minor decrease in the rate at which they continues to expand the national debt. So it’s all just a bunch of crap. Smoke and mirrors.

So what do I have to post about then?

Well, New Jersey has a new, more domineering lawn fertilizer law, designed to “save the oceans” by nickel and diming small businesses to death and by screwing over homeowners who come afoul of the new “Yard Police” or whatever expansion of government this will entail. You see, Republican Governor Chris Christie has signed legislation that makes it illegal for you, the New Jersey homeowner, to fertilize your lawn after early November. And you can’t hire someone to do it either. And the fertilizer used won’t have any more phosphorous in it, and by next year we’ll all be using the special “NY/NJ formula” grass grower that has only slow release nitrogen in it. Plus, now Juan, Raul, and Jorge are going to have to go to government run classes and pay a fee to get “certified” so they know how much Scotts to lay down. And the yard crew boss has to pay a bigger fee. And you the homeowner will get slapped upside the head with some significant fines if the Yard Cops catch you spreading the 5-5-5 out of season. Or - get this Ex Post Facto rule - you get fined if you fertilize and then it rains. Seriously. I am not kidding.

Screw “it’s for the children”. Now we’ve got “it’s for the ocean”. NJ, paving the way to save the oceans.

Is fertilizer runoff a bad thing that’s harming the seas? It’s possible. But we’re now going to let our lawns suffer to try and help. Guess they’re going to rename Fairlawn NJ to Brownlawn.

image

“Healthy Lawns, Healthy Water” link.
Fertilizer Law FAQ from Rutgers link.
Clean Ocean Action, a related link.

You know, Conservatives can care about the environment too. And we can each do what we can to eliminate fertilizer runoff. It’s just nanny-state laws like this that irritate me, because in my naive mind everyone should take the responsible course of action on their own, without having a law and yet another government busybody looking over their shoulder forcing compliance.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/18/2012 at 01:56 PM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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calendar   Sunday - December 09, 2012

so then, has the usa been missed by the bullet or are we joining the greens and urope?

I heard on the radio that the US didn’t sign on to this.  Hope that’s all there is to it but, being somewhat cynical and not having much faith in the word of politicians and especially this administration, I really don’t know.  In other words, I should say little as I clearly would not know what the hell I was talking about when it comes to the deeply scientific stuff.  Mostly I hear from the folks who want to ban cars from downtown and make all sorts of claims with regard to planet poisoning and of course, saving the children of the next generation from choking to death on carbon fumes.  Locally, they may be small in number but they make far more noise than they deserve. And they are very quick to shout down opposition cos we all know folks on the other side of this argument are Nazis and anti social types and money ppl who are not interested in anything but profit. 

So anyway, I caught this article and wondered if by chance America has missed being hit by this left wing bullet. But reading further I found this disquieting quote.

vital step towards a new global pact meant to be agreed in 2015 and enter force five years later, which will for the first time set legally-binding targets for every nation, including China, India and the US.

AND the USA? 
So, we’ve joined or on the brink of joining the EU?  OK not that and yeah, that is meant with extreme unpleasantness and in a snide manner.

Britain poised to sign costly climate deal that could tie us into stringent new emissions targets

By Nick McDermott

Britain is set to sign a new international climate treaty which could require us to meet stringent — and expensive — new emission targets.

After a fortnight of fraught negotiations between 194 nations at the UN climate talks, which are expected to conclude in the early hours of today, a deal to replace the historic Kyoto Protocol is almost on the table.

Under the deal, Europe is committed to cutting its emissions by a fifth by 2020, with each member state set an individual target. But Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Ed Davey is supporting a bid to raise that pledge even further later this decade, which would force Britain’s to reduce greenhouse gases by up to a quarter more than the current ambitious level of 34 per cent.

The UK has already pledged £2.9 billion to support windfarms in Africa and greener agriculture in Colombia, known as climate aid, over a four-year period ending in 2015.

And only last month, the Government announced a green energy strategy which will treble the costs levied on power bills from £2.35billion a year to £7.6billion. So any further environmental pledges would likely prove unpopular at home.

Peter Bone, Conservative MP for Wellingborough, said: ‘We need to expand our economy and focus on growth, and we won’t do that by increasing the cost of power and signing up to increased targets.

Can it get any dumber?  Can it get any more crazy? What’s with this govt.?  Windfarms where? And is that figure right? Almost $4 BILLION. And “climate aid” for who?  They are cutting services left and right and falsely claiming that, “We are all in this together.” Oh come on. There isn’t one single solitary person anywhere in the UK who actually believes that BS.  Not even the left are that stupid and self delusional. As usual, the bureaucrats are telling lies.
Sure thing England. Tighten your belts some more so that the govt. can grab the cash to make friends in Africa and Columbia. What utter tosh. Rubbish.

‘A lot of carbon targets could be met in the future with new technologies, so by signing this deal we are just handicapping ourselves and hard-working families.’

The new pact has already come under fire for lacking any real ambition as it is only expected to cover a mere sixth of the world’s polluters — Europe, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine and tiny Lichtenstein — but does not require action from the biggest emitters, the US and China.

To fulfil Europe’s commitment to reduce emissions by a fifth by 2020 compared to 1990, the UK must produce 34 per cent less carbon dioxide. This is the same figure set out under British domestic law.

A clause within the new agreement will allow signatories to set tougher legally-binding targets for 2020 later this decade.

If Europe raises its ambition to a 30 per cent reduction — a pledge supported by Mr Davey — Britain would face much tougher and more expensive green commitments, with estimated emission cuts of 42 per cent needed.

A DECC spokesperson said: ‘This is speculation as the final text of the agreement has not yet been decided.

‘If this scenario does occur, it would commit all parties in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol to review their level of ambition by a set date. This date has not yet been finalised.’

Speaking yesterday between negotiations, Mr Davey said: ‘That money has actually helped change the dynamics of these negotiations. Our early pledging of that money has catalysed others.’

The new deal is seen as a vital step towards a new global pact meant to be agreed in 2015 and enter force five years later, which will for the first time set legally-binding targets for every nation, including China, India and the US.

The goal of the UN talks in Doha, Qatar, is to keep temperatures from rising more than 2C, compared with pre-industrial times — the level scientists say is needed to prevent dangerous climate change.

I found this photo caption amusing.

Qatar has come in for criticism as it has so far failed to set clear targets for reducing its own emissions, despite having the world’s highest per capita carbon footprint

Right. Go after those Arabs you gween activists.

HERE FOR THE REST

On the other side of things there was this. I’ve done a lot of editing for space so see link for all. Pretty interesting stuff.

Thought we were running out of fossil fuels? New technology means Britain and the U.S. could tap undreamed reserves of gas and oil

By Nigel Lawson

Blackpool is sitting on one of the biggest shale gas fields in the world with a reserve of 200 trillion cubic feet lying under the Lancastrian countryside.

sections of U.S. manufacturing are even repatriating their activities from China.

Sadly, however, Europe’s leaders have wholly failed to face up to this energy revolution and many European policy-makers are blocking shale gas developments.

There are a mere two dozen test drills around Europe, compared with an estimated 35,000 fracturing sites in the U.S.

As a result, instead of benefiting from cheap shale gas, new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs, Europe is constraining itself with self-imposed green limits to growth.

This is despite the fact that gas-fired power stations emit roughly half the carbon dioxide that coal-fired power stations do, which is why the U.S. is the only country to have significantly reduced its CO2 emissions in recent years.

By going for those green energy targets, countries such as France and Germany are making their energy-intensive industries increasingly uncompetitive. Germany’s largest companies have warned that they are already losing out against their U.S. competitors thanks to rising energy costs.

A LOT MORE HERE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/09/2012 at 07:13 AM   
Filed Under: • EnvironmentInternationalOil, Alternative Energy, and Gas PricesScience-Technology •  
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calendar   Monday - November 26, 2012

this flea on an Elephant’s ass

It’s interesting how planned posts are forgotten or put aside because one of our readers makes a comment on a subject which leads me to alter plans.
In this case, I had no intention of posting anything this early.
In fact, I booted so that I could email our repeat Rx. for medications into the doctor’s office. Something I should have done yesterday and didn’t. So I thought I would check here as long as I was online anyway, and see what we had.

The last post from me was yesterday and the headline was:

Spain sends Algerian criminal to live in the UK

and there’s nothing we can do about it

and TimboToo wrote to say;

the UK is the only country which slavishly adheres to the EU rules. Others “interpret” them and nothing happens…

followed by CenTexTim who asked.

What would happen if the UK basically said ‘f*** off’ to the EU rules? Would the EU declare war? Or just kick the UK out of their club?

CenTex also suggested that it,

Might be worth finding out…

Now that is a sentiment a good number of Brits have also asked but received nary an answer.

And so those two short comments prompted me to post a reply comment. But instead, I found myself writing an entire post in reply. And so, to clear the air a bit and with apologies to so many of my Brit friends, and not to mention my Brit wife who agrees with some frustration, my reply follows here instead of under the comments section of bmews.

the UK is the only country which slavishly adheres to the EU rules. Others “interpret” them and nothing happens

And so I wrote with some frustration;

Exactly right. Wife has been saying that for years. The Brits do tend towards slavishness in their approach to things.  They are more German than the Germans in that regard. It’s in the book and so we can not deviate one iota.  Their approach to a green planet is much the same. You should see the arguments that rage even in our little amateur local paper, The Hampshire Chronicle.  Most of the letters for example are from the sky is gonna fall any minute unless we ban everything that emits carbon, people.  And even the professional Daily Mail got on its high moral horse and started some kind of silly ban the plastic bag campaign. They want to discourage use of the plastic bags in grocery stores, and some stores have already started to charge a small sum for every bag. Of course, they also sell the planet saving bags you can reuse.  But the thing is, this little island, this insignificant little dot on the landscape, in relation to global warming or climate change or whatever other term is in vogue at the moment, is less then a single spit in both oceans. (A&P)

To read the papers and to read the comments the tree huggers write to editors, one would think the world depended on this flea on an Elephant’s ass, one small dot on the planet, to save it from itself. And they are VERY religious about it too.

I know I got way off the topic of the post, but Timbo’s comment was so 100% on the mark that it applies to everything these guys do. AND, too damn many approach political correctness with the same verve and religiosity. They can not deport hardened criminals because the vermin have something called “rights” and they MUST obey the European Court of Human Rights. Hardly anyone else does, but not the Brits. Oh no.  They’ll hold a gun to their collective heads and dare you to dare them to shoot. 

Go ahead ....  make my


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 11/26/2012 at 05:59 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINEEnvironmentUK •  
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calendar   Wednesday - July 18, 2012

A Sort Of Green Solution

50 tons of litter cleaned from Hawaiian reef

It’s always nice to see the world getting cleaned up a bit.

The crew of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship Oscar Elton Sette pulled 50 metric tons of marine debris out of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the northwestern Hawaiian Islands last month, part of an ongoing mission since 1996 to clean up the shallow coral reef environment.

“What surprises us is that after many years of marine debris removal in Papahanaumokuakea and more than 700 metric tons of debris later, we are still collecting a significant amount of derelict fishing gear from the shallow coral reefs and shorelines,” Kyle Koyanagi, the chief scientist for the mission, said in a NOAA statement. “The ship was at maximum capacity and we did not have any space for more debris.”

NOAA has been sending out garbage-removing ships every year since 1996. On the mission that ended Saturday (July 14), 17 scientists cleaned up the coastal waters and shorelines of the Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll, Pearl Atoll, Hermes Atoll, Lisianski Island and Laysan Island, all in the northern section of the Hawaiian Islands.

About half of the marine junk was broken fishing gear and plastic from Midway Atoll. Though the researchers looked, they found no evidence of debris from 2011’s tsunami in Japan.

Midway must be a mess, but it sounds like good progress to me. Now how can they recycle this junk or make a good use of it?

The massive amount of garbage pulled from the ocean will now be put to use as fuel for electricity generation. Hawaii’s Nets-to Energy program removes metal from broken-down nets and cuts them up for combustion. The steam from the fires runs a turbine to create energy.

The entire process is done by donated labor, a cooperative effort amongst a dozen or more island businesses. Well done.

OTOH, they’re burning plastic to fire boilers? Horry Clap, doesn’t that pollute the air like mad???

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See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 07/18/2012 at 08:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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calendar   Wednesday - March 21, 2012

A Supreme Bitchslap for the EPA

SCOTUS: 9-0 Ruling in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency

The Supreme Court handed down a major win for both property rights and due process rights today in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. At issue was the EPA’s use of so-called administrative compliance orders, which are government commands that allowed the agency to regulate the use of private property without also subjecting its actions to judicial review. In a 9-0 ruling, with the majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia and separate concurring opinions filed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court declared that these EPA actions must be subject to judicial review.

Four years ago, Mike and Chantell Sackett bought property to build a home near a lake in Bonner County, Idaho. After obtaining local permits the Sacketts began work, pouring in some land fill. But their work came to a screeching halt when they were visited by officials from the Environmental Protection Agency. The couple was slapped with a compliance order asserting that the land is subject to the Clean Water Act and that they had illegally filled protected wetlands. They were told to stop filling in the lot, and to restore it to its pre-construction condition or face thousands of dollars in potential liability.

The Sacketts sought to challenge the EPA’s finding in court, but were told that that they needed to go through a permitting process first, and only after the EPA moved to enforce the order could they seek judicial review.

Today, a unanimous Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and found that the Sacketts may bring a civil action under the Administrative Procedure Act, which provides for judicial review of “final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in court.”

Justice Alito, concurring:

The position taken in this case by the Federal Government—a position that the Court now squarely rejects—would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) employees.

The reach of the Clean Water Act is notoriously unclear. Any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year is in danger of being classified by EPA employees as wetlands covered by the Act, and according to the Federal Government, if property owners begin to construct a home on a lot that the agency thinks possesses the requisite wetness, the property owners are at the agency’s mercy. The EPA may issue a compliance order demanding that the owners cease construction, engage in expensive remedial measures, and abandon any use of the property. If the owners do not do the EPA’s bidding, they may be fined up to $75,000 per day ($37,500 for violating the Act and another $37,500 for violating the compliance order). And if the owners want their day in court to show that their lot does not include covered wetlands, well, as a practical matter, that is just too bad. Until the EPA sues them, they are blocked from access to the courts, and the EPA may wait as long as it wants before deciding to sue. By that time, the potential fines may easily have reached the millions. In a nation that values due process, not to mention private property, such treatment is unthinkable.

Volokh Conspiracy: “He urges Congress to clarify the scope of the CWA so that property owners will at least have a clearer indication of the scope of EPA authority over their land. Despite these limitations, the decision is a significant victory for property rights, and a rare case of unanimity on an important property rights issue.”

Decision here

It’s just as upsetting to me that the government would allows such an Act to be written in the first place as it is that they would, showing an utter lack of either common sense or common decency, take the Act all the way to the Supreme Court TO GET THEIR WAY. This is NOT what the federal government of the US of A is supposed to be like. I call for a general flogging of the case’s lawyers, the dingbats at EPA who went on an uppity hissy fit forcing their crap down citizen’s throats, and a double lashing for the rat bastards in the Legislature who authored this crap. Writing and enforcing law should not be “We’ll do whatever we want, and we’ll get away with it until the Supremes shoot it down, in half a dozen years or so, maybe.” Tar, feathers, horsewhip; some user creativity required. The next bunch gets the tree and the rope.

Perhaps I am remembering the details wrong, but I think the Sackett case was one where the EPA forced them to quit building because they had a “wetland” on their property, which was caused by a drainage culvert being jammed up? And then when they cleaned out the culvert and all the water drained away, and then they put in some fill dirt to level the ground off, and the EPA condemned them for destroying a “wetland”. Asshats. But I may be thinking of some other case, and some other outrageous action by the EPA. Lord knows they’ve got plenty of that to go around.

The Clean Water Act prohibits “the discharge of any pollutant by anyperson,” 33 U. S. C. §1311, without a permit, into “navigable waters,”§1344. Upon determining that a violation has occurred, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may either issue a compliance order or initiate a civil enforcement action. §1319(a)(3). The resulting civil penalty may not “exceed [$37,500] per day for each violation.” §1319(d). The Government contends that the amount doubles to $75,000 when the EPA prevails against a person who has been issued a compliance order but has failed to comply. The Sacketts, petitioners here, received a compliance order from the EPA, which stated that their residential lot contained navigable waters and that their construction project violated the Act.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed, concluding that the Clean Water Act precluded preenforcement judicial review of compliance orders and that such preclusion did not violate due process.

Ok, rope and tree for that bunch. Extra high and springy branches, so they dance better for our enjoyment. It’s their DAMN JOB to know better. “precluded preenforcement judicial review” means “do as the government says, right now, or get fined. You DO NOT have a right to a hearing.” and that this DID NOT violate due process (which means “you get a hearing").  If it weren’t a “green” issue, the loonies on the left would be screaming “NAZIS!!!!111!!” and they’d be right for once.

Justice Scalia does a big old eyeroll on his keyboard at the audacity of the EPA’s actions here in the first place: the Wetlands Act is limited to “navigable waterways” (although it doesn’t say navigable by what - perhaps a duck, or a miniature canoe?) and the adjacent wetlands that feed them directly. The Sackett’s gigantic 2/3 of an acre is several pieces of property away from Priest Lake in Idaho, and those properties already have houses on them. So step off, eh?

However, this is a limited decision. All that SCOTUS ruled on is that the Sackett’s do have the right to a hearing. They did not rule that the EPA is completely full of shit in this case, nor that it is run by uppity enviro-nazi bastards with powers unchecked, nor that their Acts and Rules are tyrannical. But I’m pretty sure Scalia knows it. Today at least, they blunted one of it’s fangs. Slightly.

Oh, how I long for the day when SCOTUS will grow a big hair pair and render decisions like “Go piss up a rope. PS, we’ve decided that your entire agency is unconstitutional, so you’re all fired and your rules are completely void. Have a nice day. The end.” All the more reason to get any flavor of Conservative into the White House, because some of those Black Robes are really getting ready for the big forever dirt nap.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/21/2012 at 03:56 PM   
Filed Under: • EnvironmentGovernmentJudges-Courts-LawyersMiscellaneous •  
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calendar   Saturday - February 04, 2012

Italy … coldest in 26 years. Not gorbal warming. It’s climate change.

There are some spectacular photos at the link.

It’s pretty cold here and we are expecting some snow. Haven’t seen any sign of it yet but London, which is 70 miles away, has it.
Not too worried because every other time we’ve had snow here in the southern part of the country, it doesn’t last.

Have the radio on now and all they’re talking about is this new weather front and all the snow reported falling.

Colosseum closes and drivers abandon cars as snow falls on Rome for the first time in 26 YEARS

Italian capital grinds to halt as severe weather halts traffic

Locals shiver in tiled homes thanks to city’s heating restrictions

-36C temperatures across eastern Europe send death toll to 176

Military on alert in the UK as temperatures drop and snowfall is predicted

Over 11,000 villagers in Serbia trapped by snowdrifts and blizzards

Death toll in Ukraine now 122, with 38 people killed by cold last night

By EMMA REYNOLDS

The Colosseum and other ancient tourist sights closed to tourists as Rome saw snow for the first time in 26 years.

Traffic in the Italian capital ground to a halt as buses struggled to climb icy hills and authorities accustomed to a warm climate fought to cope.

Visitors were stopped from entering the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, the former home of Rome’s ancient emperors, over fears they could slip on ice.image

Snow began falling on Friday morning, leaving a light dusting on trees and cars and forming slush on the roads.

After easing for a few hours, wind-driven snow started falling again heavily in the city before midnight and continued into this morning.

The authorities ordered cars without tyre chains off the road till at least noon as vehicles were trapped for hours on the ring road after many cars skidded and frustrated drivers abandoned their vehicles having waited hours for accidents to be cleared.

PHOTOS AT SOURCE

Big freeze Britain: Forecasters warn 15cm of snow on the way as icy weather settles in across country

Temperatures as low as Himalayas overnight, plunging to nearly -11C in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire

Heavy snow expected in Cumbria, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, North Yorkshire and the Peak District
Third of flights out of Heathrow tomorrow cancelled

15cm?  That’s only 5.9 inches.


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 02/04/2012 at 12:08 PM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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calendar   Monday - December 12, 2011

AMERICA - CHINA - INDIA WILL BE FORCED BY NEW AGREEMENT ON CLIMATE CONTROL

I am so tired of this subject but.
Now it’s closer to home (USA) because apparently America is on the Euro-weenie climate bandwagon.  OK I know we always have been. But I just didn’t expect this, this soon.  Not very observant of me perhaps. But considering who is in the White House, and the nest of vipers on the left, I should have expected it even sooner. 

God, how I hate the idea of us co-operating with those zealots. And I think you all must know it’s going to cost us all a lot more as well.
But be careful. You know what happened to people in the past who didn’t follow the prescribed religious line.  And this is definitely the new religion.
Watch out for Torquemada. He wears a suit and tie these days.  His many adherents can be found wearing scruffy jeans and scraggly beards and some wear commie glasses and caps and with their unwashed female friends, can usually be found either occupying some public space with profound slogans on cardboard or else holding hands singing we are the world.
Sorry but these sky is falling climate freaks just annoy me.

see the link below for all the story and the video.

Durban climate change conference: Big three of US, China and India agree to cut carbon emissions

A new deal to “save the planet” will force the world’s three biggest emitters the US, China and India to cut carbon emissions for the first time, although scientists fear it will come too late to stop global warming.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, in Durban

More than 190 countries managed to finally agree a new climate change deal amid chaotic scenes in the early hours of Sunday morning in Durban, South Africa.
As the United Nations conference overran into its second day it looked like the talks were on the brink of collapse as the EU and India argued over just two words in the text.
In the end the wording was decided in an extraordinary 10 minute ‘huddle’ between the exhausted ministers to decide the fate of future generations.
The ‘Durban Platform’ will commit all countries to a global deal on cutting carbon emissions by 2015 although it will not come into force until 2020.
The UN marked it as an “historic breakthrough to save the planet”, that makes up for the collapse of the last high profile attempt for a global deal in Copenhagen in 2009.

It was the first time that the ‘Big 3’, the US, India and China, that make up almost half of the world’s emissions, have agreed to cut emissions as part of a legal treaty.
“What we have done today is a great success for European diplomacy. We have managed to put this on the map and take the major emitters – the US, India and China – to a road map that will secure an overarching deal,” he said.
The EU has also agreed to a second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol from 2013 as part of the deal so that the world has a legal treaty to cut emissions in place before 2020.

TELEGRAPH AND VIDEO


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/12/2011 at 05:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-WeatherCommiesEnvironmentUKUSA •  
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calendar   Saturday - October 29, 2011

Pollution? Solution!

Frack This!

New large scale efficient water purifier could silence Greenie objections to deep shale gas drilling

And save the rest of the world as a side effect



File this one under Why We Win. Via Eaglespeak.


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A new desal [desalination] technology has emerged that not only can desalinate water at an affordable cost, but can also simultaneously remove harmful chemicals and disease microbes from the water.

It all started years ago when a scientist working in a small lab at a university in Arizona, had an idea. Dr. Jim Beckman, a professor at Arizona State University, asked these questions: Why couldn’t desalination technology avoid using pressure, metal parts, and large amounts of electricity? Why couldn’t the technology use no pressure and instead rely on plastic parts to avoid corrosion, and thus use almost no electricity? So Beckman went to work – and after years in the lab, he produced a system that can do just that. In order to treat the water, Altela technology uses the simplest of Mother Nature’s processes, making rain.

What does this mean, in practice? It means that all water coming from the Marcellus Shale natural gas wells, known as “frac water,” can be made cleaner than drinking water before going into the river. It means that runoff from a landfill, water that pollutes the streams, rivers and oceans ultimately can be treated on site before it is released. And it means that every village in Africa can have a small water treatment plant to stop the deaths of 3.5 million people every year from a lack of safe drinking water.

In fact, Altela’s facility in Albuquerque is busy churning out modules to do just that. Its AltelaRain® 600 systems have also been installed in Pennsylvania and are processing water from natural gas wells to keep the industry going, despite new regulations, and sustaining 156,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.

“We set out to revolutionize the desal treatment, and we ended up finding a solution to water treatment all over the world, from the Marcellus Shale, to the smallest village in Africa,” said CEO Ned Godshall

Altela has redefined the fundamentals of water purification, which has world-changing implications, yet the AltelaRain® technology has entirely practical and realistic applications. In straightforward terms, it takes the simplest of nature’s processes for purifying water (making rain) and through revolutionary technology, re-creates that process using readily available materials and low energy compared with conventional thermal distillation.

Because it is so simple and elegant, the technology can treat the most highly-challenged water in almost any application. And it meets or exceeds even the strictest U.S. government environmental protection (EPA) standards for discharge of the purified water.

Even the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) validated that Altela’s system can successfully treat the water stream onsite, providing distilled water as the product.


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The AltelaRain® 600 is a revolutionary modular-based water desalination system that excels at treating highly challenged wastewater. Each Module consists of twelve Altela Rain Towers and one center chase that contains all the water, air and steam plumbing to and from the twelve towers, along with the required controls, steam boiler and pumps.
The Module treats approximately 25,000 gallons per day, the equivalent of 600 barrels per day.

It looks like each module can come in on 3 flatbed trucks and be assembled on site. Each module consumes either a moderate amount of natural gas (12,000 cu ft /day) and electricity (1 Kwh); they can be run on solar power. The modules are scalable, and require only 5 hours of maintenance per week. All the dirt removed from the water is collected in tanks that can be easily swapped out and emptied or trucked away. It’s a liquid; approximately 10% of the input water. A smaller model (the ARS-4000) exists that can be shipped on a single flatbed truck and produces 4,000 barrels a day.

The AltelaRain® technology recaptures energy 3 times, and thus makes 3 gallons of pure distilled water from the energy required to make 1 gallon from conventional thermal distillation. And, Altela is the only water desalination company in the world that uses no pressure (and therefore 99% of the energy is NOT from the electricity required to operate high-pressure pumps.) It is therefore perfectly married to the burgeoning sister industry of Solar Thermal (ST) – passive solar – because Altela uses (for free) the two-thirds energy of passive solar that presently now gets wasted as low-grade low-temperature waste heat.

Such low-grade waste energy is available for water desalination when co-located with such an ST location throughout the southwest U.S. in states like New Mexico, Arizona and southern California, as well as abroad in areas such as the Middle East.
...
Through the use of its proprietary patented AltelaRain® technology, Altela desalinates and decontaminates highly challenged water using an evaporation/condensation process like nature’s own process: clean rain water from undrinkable ocean salt water. The technology is simple, elegant, and disruptive. 

I like it. Fresh water from the oceans. Mine water put back into streams that’s cleaner than what comes out of your faucet. Altela is a publicly traded company. If I was a player in the stock market, I’d give them a serious look ‘n see.

As for those anti-fracker folks who cry that a) this extraction process will steal all our drinking water, and b) even if they use produced water (water found underground at far deeper levels than the regular water table), dumping such waste water back on the surface will pollute the world and kill us all ... it looks like Altela has them beat. With a nice heavy stick. Every hour on the hour. Their system removes all the oil, dissolved gas, heavy metals, and dirt. It can even remove radioactive particles.

Produced water is water trapped in underground formations that comes to the surface during oil and gas exploration and production. It occurs naturally in formations where oil and gas are found and is millions of years old. When oil or gas is extracted, they’re brought to the surface along with this produced water as a combined fluid. The composition of this produced fluid includes a mixture of either liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons, produced water, dissolved or suspended solids, produced solids such as sand or silt, and recently injected fluids and additives that may have been placed in the formation as a result of exploration and production activities.

Nice. Now all we need is another company to produce bags of minerals to add to the distilled water, to make it proper drinking water. A little salt, a little calcium, maybe a little fluoride, whatever. Just the good ones. Heck, mineral packs could come in flavors to imitate your favorite blend of bottled water. Great Bear. De Sani. Deer Park. Poland Spring. Evian. Your choice. Those water softeners already exist. So do some of the salts. Carbonation not included.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 10/29/2011 at 06:47 AM   
Filed Under: • EnvironmentHigh TechOil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •  
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calendar   Friday - September 30, 2011

Hope for Change

Dig This

Court Rules In Favor of Pebble Mine



An Alaska Superior Court judge has upheld the validity of temporary, revocable land and water use permits for mineral exploration at the Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project in the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska.

Project opponents have waged a lengthy legal and political battle against the massive project, frequently citing risks to salmon and other fishery in the Bristol Bay

Bristol Bay is the large inlet just above where the Aleutian Island Chain connects to the mainland. It is where most of the salmon swim through on their way to their spawning grounds.

Superior Court Judge Eric Aarseth delivered a major blow to the environmental activists who have been using regulations lawsuits and billions of dollars to prevent the Pebble Mine Project in Alaska from helping to provide American energy independence. Judge Aarseth handed down a 154-page ruling in favor of Alaska in the most recent lawsuit aimed at preventing the Pebble Mine Project from even being able to begin the permit process.

Pebble Mine is one of the largest copper deposits in the world. It is in the United States and could release us from our dependence on buying copper from China, which provides 97% of the copper used in the world.

The environmentalist have argued that the Pebble Mine MIGHT impact salmon in Bristol Bay, Alaska, even though the mine is over 200 miles north of the area.

The judge ruled that evidence “did not support the plaintiffs’ claims that mineral exploration activities in the Pebble Project area were significantly impacting or causing long term harm to concurrent uses.”

After summarizing the state’s monitoring of Pebble’s exploratory activity to ensure compliance with the terms of the permits, Aarseth wrote:

“All of these documented efforts support the conclusion that the state was proactive when issuing permits with appropriate restrictions on Pebble’s activity and not merely rubber-stamping the applications. Further, the review process as well as the field surveys/investigations indicate that the State was actively enforcing the permits issued and thus placing itself in a reasonable position to revoke the permits if necessary. Last, by responding to concerns by Nunamta both in the review process as well as in enforcing the [permit] conditions, the State showed a reasonable concern for the concurrent users of the Pebble Area.”

Aarseth found Nunamta did not meet its burden of proof to show environmental harm and concluded, “Moreover, contrary to Plaintiffs’ assertions, the weight of the evidence tends to show that exploration activities are not changing water quality in the Pebble study area.”

He was also persuaded that Pebble has a “successful reclamation program” and there was no evidence of damage to vegetation. Aarseth similarly dismissed claims of harm to caribou or fish populations.

“The evidence shows that more than 20 years after minerals were first discovered at Pebble, the site continues to have pristine water and support wildlife and fisheries resources,” Aarseth wrote. “The harms that Plaintiffs’ witnesses describe are speculative; they are neither harms occurring in fact nor did they show that the harm will necessarily occur.”

The case was Numanta Aulukestai v. State of Alaska, DNR, and Pebble Limited Partnership and the whole decision is here.



There is another similar case, Rosemont Copper, a copper mine near Tuscan Arizona that could employ 1000, also being held hostage in the court system by the EPA and its tree hugging minions.


While this ruling is a significant win for the goal of American energy Independence, it is not the end of the issue. Environmental groups have aggressively fought the Pebble Mine Project for years. This particular lawsuit has been ongoing since 2009. Since Judge Aarseth’s ruling, they say they are taking the case to the Supreme Court.

Want to get involved? Visit Resourceful Earth to see how.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 09/30/2011 at 11:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Big BusinessEnvironment •  
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calendar   Saturday - September 24, 2011

Another unenforced law

Here’s a link to a story I saw in the MD paper I just linked to for the stink bug post.


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Ospreys are raptors, fish hunting birds that live along the coast. For many years their numbers have been in steep decline, placing them on the Endangered Species list for most of my lifetime. In the past two decades they have started making a comeback up and and down the Atlantic coast, and are seen by many people as a bellwether of environmental pollution levels.  Their decline was a strong factor in the whole DDT ban thing. Although ospreys are off of the ES list now, it is still a significant federal offense - a $15,000 fine minimum - to hunt, disturb, trap., poison, or molest these birds or their nests.

40 years of human assistance has also helped these birds get their population back up to somewhere near it ought to be. People get together up and down the coast to build nest platforms for them and sometimes even set aside low impact “osprey zone” areas. Ospreys do not live here all year; they fly to South America for the winter. Once outside the USA they are no longer protected.



There has been a pair of breeding ospreys out at the end of a pier in Anne Arundel County for more than half a decade now, watched over and written about by author Janie Suss.

The female osprey, Olive, was recently shot. Dead. On purpose. By two boys with BB guns. For shits and giggles. The male got away, but this year’s clutch of eggs was lost. Caught in the act by the author, the boys - who knew about ospreys and even knew these two birds by name - confessed. She called the police and had them arrested. Last week all 5 charges against the youths were dropped.

Read more about it here, or break the news softly to your children if you are one of the many parents who has read Oscar and Olive Osprey to your children.

As the osprey head south this year, we say goodbye forever to one special bird: Olive Osprey.

Like many of her species, she was shot. Not over Cuba or the Dominican Republic, where fish farmers consider osprey birds of prey. Olive was shot as she sat on her eggs in her nest in Southern Anne Arundel County, where she had been welcomed and had gained celebrity.

Her killers were neighborhood boys.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 prohibits such killings, and imposes a maximum penalty of $15,000 and 6 months in jail for each offense, even though they are misdemeanors ... and such penalties have been handed out in the recent past.

Ok, maybe you can’t fine children thousands of dollars for birdicide or put them on the chain gang, but they shouldn’t have walked off scott-free. Fine the parents perhaps? Something. Why bother to have laws if they aren’t going to be enforced? Heck, the EPA agents are armed. What on earth for, if not for things like this?


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 09/24/2011 at 02:44 PM   
Filed Under: • AnimalsCrimeEnvironment •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
  1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
  2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
  3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
  4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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GNU Terry Pratchett


Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
free counters