2. Title : Panel: EPA smog rule fails to protect young, old Scientists urge agency to rewrite, strengthen air quality standard
3. This is an article about change of regulation for air quality. EPA(Environment Protection Agency)decided to regulate more severely the smog requirment for reducing pollution. In this decision making, we can see some dynamics which shows how the organizations accelerate EPA's will and adversly prevent that will and action.
The Clean Air committe advisory Committee had urged EPA to set a standard for ozone, whereas the business lobbyists hoped the regulations to be unchanged.
So, all these dynamics is not exactly applicable to treadmill of production theoy. However, somehow it shows similar framework in which many organizations and their power handling for their own profits are operating. I thought that this is very interesting to realize this dynamincs after learning treadmill theory.
------------------------
WASHINGTON - An advisory panel of scientists told the Environmental Protection Agency that its new air quality standard for smog fails to protect public health as required by law and should be strengthened.
In a stern letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, the advisers expressed frustration that their unanimous recommendation for a more stringent standard was ignored when Johnson set the new smog requirements last month.
Johnson on March 12 lowered the amount of ozone that should be allowed in the air for it to be considered healthy from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion. That meant 345 additional counties nationwide are in violation of the federal air quality standards for ozone, commonly known as smog, and must find ways to reduce the pollution.
While business lobbyists wanted the smog requirement unchanged, most health experts had argued that even stronger measures were needed.
The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, created by Congress to advise the EPA, had urged the EPA to set a standard for ozone of between 60 parts per billion and 70 parts per billion.
In a letter sent to Johnson earlier this week, the committee said it remained convinced that the EPA's concentration level "fails to ... ensure an adequate margin of safety" for the elderly, children and people with respiratory illnesses.
Click for related content EPA: Bush didn't decide smog rule
The April 7 letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, also criticized the EPA for not further strengthening a separate smog standard aimed at protecting forests, agricultural lands and the ecosystem, saying such action was "scientifically well justified."
The committee's criticism was viewed by some as expected since the panel's recommendations had been so clearly ignored.
The letter said the 25 scientists — seven committee members plus 18 members of the special ozone review panel — unanimously agreed they should "not endorse the new primary ozone standard as being sufficiently protective of public health."
"We sincerely hope that in light of these scientific judgments and the supporting scientific evidence, you or your successor will select a more health-protective ... standard during the upcoming review cycle," the committee wrote.
The EPA by law is required to review the health standard for ozone and a number of other air pollutants every five years.
More from msnbc.com Going to see the pope? Send photos, stories Chalabi book pt. 5: The Iran connection Red Tape: EU strikes blow against data hoarding World Blog: Honeymoon over for China and France Living in a multiracial family? Share your story So are you smart? Take our weekly quiz
3. This is an article about Ron Gonen's idea which can bring more people to recycle. Here's how it works. Every family is issued a special container with a computer chip and when garbage truck pick up the recycling, they record how much each family is recycling by weight. If people recycle, they can get RecycleBank points which can be used.
I think this would be an effective system which can bring more people to recycle. People can get an economic incentive. Also they can get satisfaction by practicing recycle which can protect the environment.
(However I'm still surprised at the fact that people capitalize everything, even environmental issues.)
-----------------------------------
I have a confession to make: I am a bad recycler. I have excellent intentions, and at my Brooklyn apartment the week always starts with assiduously divided trash: paper, plastic and aluminum. But then the days pass, the garbage builds up, and too often I find myself tossing out the milk cartons with the newspaper with the bottles of Sam Adams beer. I know — take away my green card.
But I'm not alone in my failings. There's nothing more stereotypically green than an avid recycler — and nothing more rare in real life. Though environmentalists have been pushing recycling for years now, and curbside pickup is increasingly the norm, recycling rates in America remain low. We care about reducing waste and saving the Earth, but sometimes it's Thursday night, Lost is on — and dividing the trash is just too much trouble.
Ron Gonen, though, is going to make recycling worth your while. The former management consultant co-founded RecycleBank in 2004 with a simple idea: that people want to recycle, but they just need a little push. So Gonen decided to appeal to their pocketbooks. Here's how it works: every family on a garbage route is issued a special container with a computer chip. When garbage trucks pick up the recycling, they weigh the container and record how much each family is recycling by weight. The more you recycle, the more RecycleBank points you earn, which can be redeemed for offers at merchants like CVS/pharmacy. It's that easy. Since RecycleBank launched in Philadelphia in 2006, its formula has led to unqualified success everywhere it has gone — and it now operates through much of the Northeast U.S. Recycling rates in one of the first Philadelphia neighborhoods that RecycleBank served rose from 7% to 90% in a matter of months and total waste sent to landfills is down considerably. "Recycling is something you can do today that has a significant environmental impact on the way you live," says Gonen. "It touches your life." (Hear Gonen talk about RecycleBank on this week's Greencast.)
To Gonen, the key to RecycleBank's success isn't just the economic incentive; it's also about a sense of accomplishment. By actually tracking what individual families recycle, the service gives people a more accurate idea of what they're doing for the Earth. You know that your recycling is being counted, not just tossed down a landfill. Metrics matter — measuring something is the first step to encouraging better behavior. "There's so little measurement around recycling," says Gonen, a Columbia Business School grad who came up with the RecycleBank concept in class. "But RecycleBank tries to ensure that everything we do is measured — and we share those numbers."
Gonen, whose company is being flooded with offers from venture capitalists, wants to grow RecycleBank gradually. But earlier this year he went after a new target: college campuses. Starting with a pilot program at New York City's Columbia University, RecycleBank is putting special kiosks in cafeterias and dorms. Each student gets a RecycleBank card and takes their recycling to the closest kiosk, where they swipe their card, weigh their recycling and claim their points. The campus model required a little tweaking on Gonen's part — the dorm kiosks, he notes, are prank-proof (you can douse them in beer, and they'll still work) — but it's been an early success at Columbia, where school officials are happy for any way to green their university. "Columbia recycles, but there's always room for improvement," says Nilda Mesa, Columbia's assistant vice president in the office of environmental stewardship. "This was a way to reinforce the message that recycling is really important."
Just how important recycling is becomes clear when you see the lines of trucks taking away New York City's waste, much of which has to be shipped to Pennsylvania or even as far away as South Carolina. More recycling means less waste in the landfill, which means fewer garbage trucks, which means fewer carbon emissions. As commodity prices for raw materials like aluminum or plastic rises in response to global demand, recycling makes even better economic sense as well. Coca-Cola, which currently recycles 10% of the plastic it uses and is aiming to raise that to 30% by 2010, recently began building a massive recycling facility — Coke wants to save money, not just the Earth.
But the biggest benefit to recycling might be psychological. Start recycling regularly — and successfully — and you'll begin thinking a bit more about your impact on the Earth. "There are so many environmental initiatives out there that are important," says Gonen. "Solar, wind, biofuels. But these are all huge, capital-intensive projects. Most of us can't do that, but everyone can recycle." I just hope RecycleBank comes to Brooklyn soon — my newspapers are piling up.
3. That is a great idea. That idea is wonderful. Carbon dixide is a pollution meterial. But that idea change Carbon dixide to new metirial. Carbon dixide removed from smokestact emisson could become a material for the production ofpolycarbonate plastics. In addition to that that process is very safe, and less expensive. I hope this way spread to the world.
------------------- Here's an idea. Carbon dioxide removed from smokestack emissions could become a valuable raw material for the production of polycarbonate plastics in eyeglass lenses, car headlamps, DVDs, CDs, and drink bottles. The processes involved would offer less expensive, safer and greener products, researchers suggested in two separate reports presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
"Carbon dioxide is readily available, especially from the smokestack of industries that burn coal and other fossil fuels," says chemist Thomas Müller. "And it's a very cheap starting material. If we can replace more expensive starting materials with CO2, then you'll have an economic driving force." There's already a huge market, and millions of tons of polycarbonates are sold each year. But what hasn't been factored in is that these hard, tough materials represent what Müller calls "intriguing sinks" for exhaust carbon dioxide. In fact, there's no other consumer product with such potential for removing CO2 from the environment.
So, we may be drinking from a CO2 plastic bottle (well, hopefully not) and watching movies on waste-CO2 DVDs (well, preferably streaming) soon. "I would say it's a matter of a few years before CO2-derived polymers are available to the public," says Müller.
Good idea: make polycarbonates from waste CO2. Better idea: make less pollution and less polycarbonate plastics.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
3. Yes, yes, yes. Exam week finally! I know all of you might be very busy. However, in this weekend, I want to tell you about one of the upcoming great earth-friendly event, ‘Earthday 2008’. This morning, I had wonderful time to prepare 'Earthday 2008' with my team member. (I’m involved in ‘UNEP angel’ which is university students’ organization under UN Environmental Programme Committee for the Republic of Korea.) Making some stuff for program, I can take off burden thoughts…. about profit, interest, powerful link among them… who kills EV1 and so on. It is truly sad that many things are cannot be appeared and presented by ‘them’ so far. At the same time, I can smile I believe the power of nice and fragile individual. We need to keep a close eye on them for criticizing and exposing, and also need to actively participate in everyday life whether it is small or not. I hope everyone get into this kind of event… change their lifestyle and walk together for the better life in earth, finally. 20th April, 2008. At City hall plaza- Come and join us, make your minutes more eco-friendly!
------------------------------ 4. Follow that link below; you'll get a lot of information about Earthday 2008. (That is all written Korean, I guess Mark is already know about this event )
----------- > Official site for Earthday 2008 http://www.earthday.or.kr/2008
1. Keonhwa Sung 2. Curious cloud formations linked to quakes 3. Do you know the fact that the earth keeps telling its change to us? This case is the right evidence. Before earthquakes occur, there are curious cloud formations. Even though it is not about environmental problems, people have to think about it seriously. Does it mean a signal of environmental danger? Also, is there any change after cloud formation? ----------------------------------- CAN unusual clouds signal the possibility of an impending earthquake? That's the question being asked following the discovery of distinctive cloud formations above an active fault in Iran before each of two large earthquakes occurred. Geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that precisely matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran. It stretched for hundreds of kilometres, was visible for several hours and remained in the same place, although the clouds around it were moving. At the same time, thermal images of the ground showed that the temperature was higher along the fault. Sixty-nine days later, on 22 February 2005, an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 hit the area, killing more than 600 people. In December 2005, a similar formation again appeared in the clouds for a few hours. Sixty-four days later, an earthquake of magnitude 6 shook the region (International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol 29, p 1921). Guo and Wang suggest that an eruption of hot gases from inside the fault could have caused water in the clouds to evaporate. Another idea is that ionisation may be involved: Friedemann Freund at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, recently demonstrated that when rocks are squeezed, positively charged ions form in the air above. The trouble is that ions usually help to form clouds, not dissipate them. The authors say that if recognisable cloud formations precede large quakes, they could be used for prediction, but other seismologists are sceptical. "There is no physical model that explains why something would suddenly occur two months before an earthquake, and then shut off and not occur again," says Mike Blanpied of the US Geological Survey's Earthquake Hazards Program. ------------------------------------- http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826514.600-curious-cloud-formations-linked-to-quakes.html
3. This article reminds me of Schnaiber's eco-Marxist theory. The state of Peru encourages the exploration and exporting of oil, which could undermine the protected areas on the coast and in the forests along the border with Brazil.
-----------------------------------
WITHIN a decade, says Peru's prime minister, Jorge del Castillo, his country will be a net exporter of energy. While other Latin American governments are tightening the screws on foreign investment in oil and gas, Peru is courting it. It has opened up swathes of the country to exploration, and is encouraging the $1 billion modernisation of a state-run oil refinery and the construction of an export terminal for a huge liquefied natural gas project, which would be the biggest investment in Peruvian history.
Alan García, Peru's president, dreams of a petrochemical industry that will attract at least $3 billion and create thousands of jobs by mid-2011, when he leaves office. But campaigners for the environment and for indigenous peoples are not so enthusiastic. They believe the rush to develop Peru's oil and gas jeopardises both the Amazon and coast, and the welfare of some of the country's most vulnerable citizens.
The government has granted more than 80 exploration contracts so far, covering around 540,000 square kilometres (210,000 square miles), an area the size of France). The state agency that promotes investment in oil and gas, Perupetro, auctioned 24 blocks last year alone and is now promoting a further 16.
Daniel Saba, the chairman of Perupetro, says that exploration is yielding results again after decades in which little was found. Last year Argentina's Pluspetrol increased its estimate of the reserves in the Camisea gasfield in southern Peru by nearly 25%. Other firms operating nearby have also announced new finds. In the north, Perenco, a French company, is developing an oilfield that is expected to produce 100,000 barrels a day by the end of 2010. Other foreign firms, such as Spain's Repsol YPF and Brazil's Petrobras, are prospecting in adjacent lots. Perupetro expects between $800m and $1 billion in investment in the coming year. It is hoping this activity will win the attention of the biggest international oil firms, such as Royal Dutch Shell, which discovered Camisea but later sold its Peruvian holdings.
But critics contend the government is cutting corners in its enthusiasm. To make way for exploration, it has scrapped plans for protected areas on the coast and in the forests along the border with Brazil. Last year the government renounced a bill that would have opened parts of an existing national park to the oil industry only after the ensuing row threatened to undermine a proposed free-trade deal with America.
Other exploration blocks overlap reserves for indigenous groups, including some that have no contact with the outside world. Earlier this year activists claimed that Petrolifera Petroleum, a Canadian company exploring in remote jungle, had stumbled on one such group. The company denies it.
Indigenous groups are suing Occidental, an American oil company, for contaminating a huge swathe of jungle during three decades of operation in Peru. Occidental has sold its Peruvian business to Pluspetrol, which now produces almost half of the country's oil—and has also sparked controversy. Most recently, a clash between indigenous protesters and police led to deaths on both sides.
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
6 comments:
1. Name : Gowoon JUNG
2. Title :
Panel: EPA smog rule fails to protect young, old
Scientists urge agency to rewrite, strengthen air quality standard
3. This is an article about change of regulation for air quality. EPA(Environment Protection Agency)decided to regulate more severely the smog requirment for reducing pollution. In this decision making, we can see some dynamics which shows how the organizations accelerate EPA's will and adversly prevent that will and action.
The Clean Air committe advisory Committee had urged EPA to set a standard for ozone, whereas the business lobbyists hoped the regulations to be unchanged.
So, all these dynamics is not exactly applicable to treadmill of production theoy. However, somehow it shows similar framework in which many organizations and their power handling for their own profits are operating. I thought that this is very interesting to realize this dynamincs after learning treadmill theory.
------------------------
WASHINGTON - An advisory panel of scientists told the Environmental Protection Agency that its new air quality standard for smog fails to protect public health as required by law and should be strengthened.
In a stern letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, the advisers expressed frustration that their unanimous recommendation for a more stringent standard was ignored when Johnson set the new smog requirements last month.
Johnson on March 12 lowered the amount of ozone that should be allowed in the air for it to be considered healthy from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion. That meant 345 additional counties nationwide are in violation of the federal air quality standards for ozone, commonly known as smog, and must find ways to reduce the pollution.
While business lobbyists wanted the smog requirement unchanged, most health experts had argued that even stronger measures were needed.
The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, created by Congress to advise the EPA, had urged the EPA to set a standard for ozone of between 60 parts per billion and 70 parts per billion.
In a letter sent to Johnson earlier this week, the committee said it remained convinced that the EPA's concentration level "fails to ... ensure an adequate margin of safety" for the elderly, children and people with respiratory illnesses.
Click for related content
EPA: Bush didn't decide smog rule
The April 7 letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, also criticized the EPA for not further strengthening a separate smog standard aimed at protecting forests, agricultural lands and the ecosystem, saying such action was "scientifically well justified."
The committee's criticism was viewed by some as expected since the panel's recommendations had been so clearly ignored.
The letter said the 25 scientists — seven committee members plus 18 members of the special ozone review panel — unanimously agreed they should "not endorse the new primary ozone standard as being sufficiently protective of public health."
"We sincerely hope that in light of these scientific judgments and the supporting scientific evidence, you or your successor will select a more health-protective ... standard during the upcoming review cycle," the committee wrote.
The EPA by law is required to review the health standard for ozone and a number of other air pollutants every five years.
More from msnbc.com
Going to see the pope? Send photos, stories
Chalabi book pt. 5: The Iran connection
Red Tape: EU strikes blow against data hoarding
World Blog: Honeymoon over for China and France
Living in a multiracial family? Share your story
So are you smart? Take our weekly quiz
--------------------------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24055993/
1. Nuri Na
2. Getting Green for Going Green
3. This is an article about Ron Gonen's idea which can bring more people to recycle. Here's how it works. Every family is issued a special container with a computer chip and when garbage truck pick up the recycling, they record how much each family is recycling by weight. If people recycle, they can get RecycleBank points which can be used.
I think this would be an effective system which can bring more people to recycle. People can get an economic incentive. Also they can get satisfaction by practicing recycle which can protect the environment.
(However I'm still surprised at the fact that people capitalize everything, even environmental issues.)
-----------------------------------
I have a confession to make: I am a bad recycler. I have excellent intentions, and at my Brooklyn apartment the week always starts with assiduously divided trash: paper, plastic and aluminum. But then the days pass, the garbage builds up, and too often I find myself tossing out the milk cartons with the newspaper with the bottles of Sam Adams beer. I know — take away my green card.
But I'm not alone in my failings. There's nothing more stereotypically green than an avid recycler — and nothing more rare in real life. Though environmentalists have been pushing recycling for years now, and curbside pickup is increasingly the norm, recycling rates in America remain low. We care about reducing waste and saving the Earth, but sometimes it's Thursday night, Lost is on — and dividing the trash is just too much trouble.
Ron Gonen, though, is going to make recycling worth your while. The former management consultant co-founded RecycleBank in 2004 with a simple idea: that people want to recycle, but they just need a little push. So Gonen decided to appeal to their pocketbooks. Here's how it works: every family on a garbage route is issued a special container with a computer chip. When garbage trucks pick up the recycling, they weigh the container and record how much each family is recycling by weight. The more you recycle, the more RecycleBank points you earn, which can be redeemed for offers at merchants like CVS/pharmacy. It's that easy. Since RecycleBank launched in Philadelphia in 2006, its formula has led to unqualified success everywhere it has gone — and it now operates through much of the Northeast U.S. Recycling rates in one of the first Philadelphia neighborhoods that RecycleBank served rose from 7% to 90% in a matter of months and total waste sent to landfills is down considerably. "Recycling is something you can do today that has a significant environmental impact on the way you live," says Gonen. "It touches your life." (Hear Gonen talk about RecycleBank on this week's Greencast.)
To Gonen, the key to RecycleBank's success isn't just the economic incentive; it's also about a sense of accomplishment. By actually tracking what individual families recycle, the service gives people a more accurate idea of what they're doing for the Earth. You know that your recycling is being counted, not just tossed down a landfill. Metrics matter — measuring something is the first step to encouraging better behavior. "There's so little measurement around recycling," says Gonen, a Columbia Business School grad who came up with the RecycleBank concept in class. "But RecycleBank tries to ensure that everything we do is measured — and we share those numbers."
Gonen, whose company is being flooded with offers from venture capitalists, wants to grow RecycleBank gradually. But earlier this year he went after a new target: college campuses. Starting with a pilot program at New York City's Columbia University, RecycleBank is putting special kiosks in cafeterias and dorms. Each student gets a RecycleBank card and takes their recycling to the closest kiosk, where they swipe their card, weigh their recycling and claim their points. The campus model required a little tweaking on Gonen's part — the dorm kiosks, he notes, are prank-proof (you can douse them in beer, and they'll still work) — but it's been an early success at Columbia, where school officials are happy for any way to green their university. "Columbia recycles, but there's always room for improvement," says Nilda Mesa, Columbia's assistant vice president in the office of environmental stewardship. "This was a way to reinforce the message that recycling is really important."
Just how important recycling is becomes clear when you see the lines of trucks taking away New York City's waste, much of which has to be shipped to Pennsylvania or even as far away as South Carolina. More recycling means less waste in the landfill, which means fewer garbage trucks, which means fewer carbon emissions. As commodity prices for raw materials like aluminum or plastic rises in response to global demand, recycling makes even better economic sense as well. Coca-Cola, which currently recycles 10% of the plastic it uses and is aiming to raise that to 30% by 2010, recently began building a massive recycling facility — Coke wants to save money, not just the Earth.
But the biggest benefit to recycling might be psychological. Start recycling regularly — and successfully — and you'll begin thinking a bit more about your impact on the Earth. "There are so many environmental initiatives out there that are important," says Gonen. "Solar, wind, biofuels. But these are all huge, capital-intensive projects. Most of us can't do that, but everyone can recycle." I just hope RecycleBank comes to Brooklyn soon — my newspapers are piling up.
-----
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1730187,00.html
1. Hea Joung lee
2. Lock Up CO2 In DVDs
3. That is a great idea. That idea is wonderful. Carbon dixide is a pollution meterial. But that idea change Carbon dixide to new metirial. Carbon dixide removed from smokestact emisson could become a material for the production ofpolycarbonate plastics. In addition to that that process is very safe, and less expensive. I hope this way spread to the world.
-------------------
Here's an idea. Carbon dioxide removed from smokestack emissions could become a valuable raw material for the production of polycarbonate plastics in eyeglass lenses, car headlamps, DVDs, CDs, and drink bottles. The processes involved would offer less expensive, safer and greener products, researchers suggested in two separate reports presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
"Carbon dioxide is readily available, especially from the smokestack of industries that burn coal and other fossil fuels," says chemist Thomas Müller. "And it's a very cheap starting material. If we can replace more expensive starting materials with CO2, then you'll have an economic driving force." There's already a huge market, and millions of tons of polycarbonates are sold each year. But what hasn't been factored in is that these hard, tough materials represent what Müller calls "intriguing sinks" for exhaust carbon dioxide. In fact, there's no other consumer product with such potential for removing CO2 from the environment.
So, we may be drinking from a CO2 plastic bottle (well, hopefully not) and watching movies on waste-CO2 DVDs (well, preferably streaming) soon. "I would say it's a matter of a few years before CO2-derived polymers are available to the public," says Müller.
Good idea: make polycarbonates from waste CO2. Better idea: make less pollution and less polycarbonate plastics.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
---
The bilue marble blog April. 13. 2008
1. Hyeseon Jeong
2. “Earthday 2008”
3. Yes, yes, yes. Exam week finally! I know all of you might be very busy. However, in this weekend, I want to tell you about one of the upcoming great earth-friendly event, ‘Earthday 2008’. This morning, I had wonderful time to prepare 'Earthday 2008' with my team member. (I’m involved in ‘UNEP angel’ which is university students’ organization under UN Environmental Programme Committee for the Republic of Korea.) Making some stuff for program, I can take off burden thoughts…. about profit, interest, powerful link among them… who kills EV1 and so on. It is truly sad that many things are cannot be appeared and presented by ‘them’ so far. At the same time, I can smile I believe the power of nice and fragile individual. We need to keep a close eye on them for criticizing and exposing, and also need to actively participate in everyday life whether it is small or not.
I hope everyone get into this kind of event… change their lifestyle and walk together for the better life in earth, finally.
20th April, 2008. At City hall plaza-
Come and join us, make your minutes more eco-friendly!
------------------------------
4. Follow that link below; you'll get a lot of information about Earthday 2008. (That is all written Korean, I guess Mark is already know about this event )
-----------
> Official site for Earthday 2008
http://www.earthday.or.kr/2008
1. Keonhwa Sung
2. Curious cloud formations linked to quakes
3. Do you know the fact that the earth keeps telling its change to us? This case is the right evidence. Before earthquakes occur, there are curious cloud formations. Even though it is not about environmental problems, people have to think about it seriously. Does it mean a signal of environmental danger? Also, is there any change after cloud formation?
-----------------------------------
CAN unusual clouds signal the possibility of an impending earthquake? That's the question being asked following the discovery of distinctive cloud formations above an active fault in Iran before each of two large earthquakes occurred.
Geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that precisely matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran. It stretched for hundreds of kilometres, was visible for several hours and remained in the same place, although the clouds around it were moving. At the same time, thermal images of the ground showed that the temperature was higher along the fault. Sixty-nine days later, on 22 February 2005, an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 hit the area, killing more than 600 people.
In December 2005, a similar formation again appeared in the clouds for a few hours. Sixty-four days later, an earthquake of magnitude 6 shook the region (International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol 29, p 1921).
Guo and Wang suggest that an eruption of hot gases from inside the fault could have caused water in the clouds to evaporate. Another idea is that ionisation may be involved: Friedemann Freund at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, recently demonstrated that when rocks are squeezed, positively charged ions form in the air above. The trouble is that ions usually help to form clouds, not dissipate them.
The authors say that if recognisable cloud formations precede large quakes, they could be used for prediction, but other seismologists are sceptical. "There is no physical model that explains why something would suddenly occur two months before an earthquake, and then shut off and not occur again," says Mike Blanpied of the US Geological Survey's Earthquake Hazards Program.
-------------------------------------
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826514.600-curious-cloud-formations-linked-to-quakes.html
1. Jee-Hyun Song
2. Oil and gas in Peru
3. This article reminds me of Schnaiber's eco-Marxist theory. The state of Peru encourages the exploration and exporting of oil, which could undermine the protected areas on the coast and in the forests along the border with Brazil.
-----------------------------------
WITHIN a decade, says Peru's prime minister, Jorge del Castillo, his country will be a net exporter of energy. While other Latin American governments are tightening the screws on foreign investment in oil and gas, Peru is courting it. It has opened up swathes of the country to exploration, and is encouraging the $1 billion modernisation of a state-run oil refinery and the construction of an export terminal for a huge liquefied natural gas project, which would be the biggest investment in Peruvian history.
Alan García, Peru's president, dreams of a petrochemical industry that will attract at least $3 billion and create thousands of jobs by mid-2011, when he leaves office. But campaigners for the environment and for indigenous peoples are not so enthusiastic. They believe the rush to develop Peru's oil and gas jeopardises both the Amazon and coast, and the welfare of some of the country's most vulnerable citizens.
The government has granted more than 80 exploration contracts so far, covering around 540,000 square kilometres (210,000 square miles), an area the size of France). The state agency that promotes investment in oil and gas, Perupetro, auctioned 24 blocks last year alone and is now promoting a further 16.
Daniel Saba, the chairman of Perupetro, says that exploration is yielding results again after decades in which little was found. Last year Argentina's Pluspetrol increased its estimate of the reserves in the Camisea gasfield in southern Peru by nearly 25%. Other firms operating nearby have also announced new finds. In the north, Perenco, a French company, is developing an oilfield that is expected to produce 100,000 barrels a day by the end of 2010. Other foreign firms, such as Spain's Repsol YPF and Brazil's Petrobras, are prospecting in adjacent lots. Perupetro expects between $800m and $1 billion in investment in the coming year. It is hoping this activity will win the attention of the biggest international oil firms, such as Royal Dutch Shell, which discovered Camisea but later sold its Peruvian holdings.
But critics contend the government is cutting corners in its enthusiasm. To make way for exploration, it has scrapped plans for protected areas on the coast and in the forests along the border with Brazil. Last year the government renounced a bill that would have opened parts of an existing national park to the oil industry only after the ensuing row threatened to undermine a proposed free-trade deal with America.
Other exploration blocks overlap reserves for indigenous groups, including some that have no contact with the outside world. Earlier this year activists claimed that Petrolifera Petroleum, a Canadian company exploring in remote jungle, had stumbled on one such group. The company denies it.
Indigenous groups are suing Occidental, an American oil company, for contaminating a huge swathe of jungle during three decades of operation in Peru. Occidental has sold its Peruvian business to Pluspetrol, which now produces almost half of the country's oil—and has also sparked controversy. Most recently, a clash between indigenous protesters and police led to deaths on both sides.
---------
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11023252
Post a Comment