Another Cost of War: Getting Ready For War

Image credit: Lieutenant Hugh Randall Syme/Wikimedia

Democracy Now discusses another cost of war, which is the environmental cost of training for war:

On the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, thousands are commemorating the 10th anniversary of when the U.S. Navy stopped using their home as a bombing range. Since the 1940s, the Navy used nearly three-quarters of the island for bombing practice, war games and dumping old munitions. The bombing stopped after campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, but the island continues to suffer. At the current cleanup rate, the Navy says, it will take until 2025 to remove all the environmental damage left by more than 60 years of target practice. A fisherman recently discovered a giant unexploded bomb underwater. The island of about 10,000 people also lacks a hospital to treat illnesses such as asthma and cancer that may be attributed to the military’s former bombing activity.

Punishing Vieques: Puerto Rico Struggles With Contamination 10 Years After Activists Expel U.S. Navy

The explosives and fuses used in munitions are often made from volatile chemicals. Burying these chemicals in the ground can create toxic chemical hazards for decades afterward, as this Puerto Rican island knows all too well. Given that, it's not surprising that there's increased incidence of cancer in this area. Given that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, it's not too surprising that those people can't get much in the way of medical care, either.

That's what you have to expect from a country that's more interested in blowing things up than it is in the health and welfare of its own people.

Happy Earth Day, 2013

It's Earth Day again. For some reason this year, I can't think of anything to add to what I've written over the years. So how about I let this lady do some talking:

Her name is Sandra Steingraber, and she's in jail right now protesting against a company that moved into her state, bought up land, and started putting polluting chemicals into it. The video is an interview Bill Moyers did of her a few days ago.

You don't need to do that to make a difference. Most of us can do plenty of things that can make the world a cleaner place. Why not pick one or two that you haven't done yet?

Quote Of The Day

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

Bruce A. Dixon, of the Black Agenda Report discusses the upcoming presidential election:

What with choices limited to greater and lesser evils, or more and less effective evils, it might be time to ask ourselves, how is this politics of choosing evil working out for us? Can we, and why should we hold our tongues and noses to re-elect this fracking president?

Should We Really Re-Elect This Fracking President?

From the title, it is no doubt obvious that this comes near the end of an article discussing the Obama Administration's record on energy, which is pretty terrible. To know that, I think that all you need to reflect on is that the environment isn't one of my usual beats, nor Bruce Dixon's, yet we've both written about how awful this administration has been on the subject. Obama has allowed fracking to go on, as well as allowing the construction of a pipeline to carry Canadian shale oil to the Gulf Coast, the expansion of off-shore oil drilling despite the experience of Deepwater, and he's always been really sweet on "clean coal", a misnomer if ever there was one.

My answer to Mr. Dixon's question is no, we shouldn't vote for him. When you vote for evil, you're not only going to end up with evil, you're telling politicians that it's OK.

It's not OK. We can't afford it anymore.

Understanding Physics Is A Conservative Bias

It's astounding what you can learn on the Internet. Take this story, for example:

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced Wednesday that they have been able to confirm a new high-efficiency solar cell design that utilizes nearly the entire solar spectrum.

Translation: They figured out a way to make solar panels generate electricity in the dark.

Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark

Now, I would think that anyone who stayed awake through his high school physics would know that there is something lost in that translation, but let me elaborate:

No, it doesn't mean that there are solar panels that work in the dark.

During the day, tremendous amounts of solar energy hit the surface of the Earth. It's something like a kilowatt (1000 watts) per square meter. If you're not used to the metric system, think of it as being the same as a square yard, because for the purposes of this discussion, it's close enough.

At night, however, almost no light energy hits the surface, even when there's a full moon and an aurora borealis (or an aurora australis). It's hard to turn solar energy into electricity when there's no solar energy. This, one would think, is rather obvious when one thinks about it.

Image credit: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

Of course, reading the Lawrence Berkeley Lab press release on the subject confirms that they are, indeed, merely talking about how it makes use of different kinds of semiconductors to collect light energy at several different wavelengths. So, yes, this is just about being better at converting solar energy during the day. Even the caption for this picture mentions that it converts sunlight, not moonbeams.

Yet, both this article and the one it was quoting got that wrong somehow. How they got all that wrong, I don't know, but scientific literacy being what it is these days, I'm not too terribly surprised.

Curious to see whether anyone else caught onto this, I read the comments. Someone did, indeed, catch the problem:

I don't see how using the full solar spectrum translates into generating electricity in the dark. To me, it only means getting more energy when the sun is shining. They do that by using all of the sunlight. Conventional solar cells can convert only a limited range of frequencies, and the rest of the sunlight is wasted--either reflected or absorbed or transmitted without converting it to electricity. They might use only the red light and ignore the rest. Or only infrared and not visible or ultraviolet light.

Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark: Comment by Cliff Lewis

Someone was paying attention in his physics class, apparently. Someone else commented that he agreed, so there are at least a few of us still out there.

Then I read this comment:

Well if this kind of story sets off your BS detector then maybe your BS detector needs to be re-calibrated.

The naysayers, that at the slightest provocation, jump to squash enthusiasm for development of alternative energies of all kinds are quite transparent. You are conservatives, or "independents" who want things to be just like they always were. OIL is king. Period. Even if it drives us into the dark ages. No other source can exist unless it's also enviro-adverse. Like Coal. Or Gas. It just kills you to think they we might actually pull off this "Energy out of thin air" pipe dream.

Sorry buddy. We're forging ahead and it's going to happen.

Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark: Comment by Ron Brunton

Not only am I a racist, because I think Barack Obama's doing a lousy job as President, but I am apparently a conservative, because I understand physics.

I learned that today, and I was reminded that not all stupid people are conservatives.

UPDATE (Mar. 15): Earlier today, someone from the LBL domain visited this article. So far, no correction that I've noticed either in comments or via e-mail. If someone familiar with the technology does have a correction I'm glad to hear about it, even if I end up looking stupid, too.

Actually, I'm told I'm rather good at that.

How About Aiming Higher?

Image credit: Cosmic Beaver

Economist Dean Baker wrote this at his blog yesterday:

It is unlikely that drivers would even notice the difference between a policy where we told the oil industry that it could drill wherever it wants and pay no attention to the number of people it kills in the process or the resulting damage to the environment and local economies and a policy where we banned all new offshore drilling. Over the next 2 years the difference would be virtually non-existent and even after 10 years it is unlikely to change the price of gas by more than 2-3 percent.

There Is Little Disagreement That Drilling Off the U.S. Coast Will Have Almost Zero Impact on the Price of Gas

Why is that? Part of the reason is something I wrote last year, when I was discussing the Obama Administration's decision to open up more areas of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling:

According to the CIA World Factbook entry on the United States, we use roughly 19.5 million barrels of oil a day. Just multiplying that number by 365 shows that we use about 7.1 billion barrels a year. Subtracting our domestic oil production from that total, we import roughly 4 billion barrels a year. Everything they hope to find in the areas Obama is proposing to open up is about seven month's worth of consumption, or a year's worth of imports. For this, we will risk turning valuable beaches and fisheries into oil slicks.

Change, Baby, Change

Understanding why this would make almost no difference requires only the most modest understanding of mathematics. Most of the available oil is elsewhere. We are the world's biggest importer of oil. We are also the world's tenth largest (See NOTE 1) producer of oil. We produce lots of the stuff, and yet we continue to import large quantities. Drilling in all the offshore deposits we know about won't change that one bit.

As Dr. Baker mentions, there is a single market for oil. There is no reason to think that the oil extracted from the Gulf of Mexico won't end up in European or Latin American gas tanks.

What will make the price of oil products easier to live with, and lower our imports of them, is to reduce demand for them. There are a number of ways to do that. Conserving energy is one way to do that. Finding alternative fuels is another, which is why this program may have at least as much impact on our oil imports as anything else the Obama Administration has done:

Caption: From the original article: An F-16 from the 180th Fighter Wing undergoes preflight checks before taxiing down the runway, Feb. 12, 2012, at Ohio Air National Guard Base. The jet is operating on a 50/50 blend of conventional and biofuel as a part of a field service evaluation.

Image credit: Master Sgt. Jeremy Lock/USAF

In a joint effort by Airmen from the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, and Airmen from the Ohio Air National Guard's 180th Fighter Wing, the F-16 Fight Falcon is currently undergoing a field service evaluation of biofuel.
...
Although other airframes, such as the C-17 Globemaster III, have been certified to use biofuel for unrestricted operations, this is the first evaluation of the F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Two F-16s from the 180th FW fleet have been designated to test the 50/50 blend of Jet Propellant-8 petroleum and Hydroprocessed Renewable Jet fuel derived from the camelina plant. Camelina is essentially a weed that grows throughout the United States and requires very little horticulture.

Ohio Airmen help F-16 go 'green'

The article goes on to explain that the biofuel is produced using algae. Taking something that is basically yard waste, then applying some goo to it that can be produced locally to make jet fuel is, potentially, a much bigger reduction of our foreign oil demands. In all, we burn the equivalent of a half billion barrels a year of petroleum as jet fuel. Reducing that by half could save at least a quarter of a billion barrels a year in imports.

How troublesome is this new kind of fuel? After all, jet engines are finely balanced machines. It doesn't take much at all to turn them into clattering junk. The Ohio Air National Guard article explains:

Another goal for the researchers and developers was to make the transition as seamless as possible. To date, there has been no additional training, equipment or maintenance required to begin using the fuel.

"When we first started this we were a little concerned because a few years ago we made the switch from JP4 to JP8 jet fuel," said Col. Scott Reed, the 180th Maintenance Group commander. "The difference between the two caused a few hiccups initially. Some of the gaskets and O-rings didn't expand as they normally would in the presence of the fuel, so we had leaks."
...
"The truth of it is there has been absolutely no noticeable difference whatsoever," Reed said. "There have been no fuel leaks, no operational impact."


Ohio Airmen help F-16 go 'green'

In short, it's been less of a problem than transitioning from an earlier version of purely petroleum-based fuel, and the planes that use it can use either that or the Air Force's standard fuel.

We're a lot of testing and a couple of hundred biochemical plants away from producing that much biofuel, but it's a resource we'll never run out of. In the long run, it makes a lot more sense to try things like this than to expose our beaches and fishing grounds to the kind of damage we saw last year.

Some of the earlier biofuels efforts by the Pentagon were initiated by the Bush Administration. I think that fact alone should show that not wanting to be dependent on imported fuel for our own defense is something of a no-brainer. Of course, there are plenty of other good reasons to make ourselves less dependent on petroleum products, particularly those we import from politically unstable parts of the world. We can keep risking our recreational areas, our wilderness refuges, and our food supply by continuing to open up more potentially hazardous areas to drilling, or we can, umm, aim higher.

NOTE 1: That list has us at number eleven, but the members of the European Union are also listed there. We are tenth, whether you count Norway as part of the EU, or ignore the EU as being double-counted.

Profiles In Fierce Advocacy: Sometimes You Have To Make A Decision...

Image credit: Cosmic Beaver


You know, being a Fierce Advocate can be trying sometimes. People expect you to decide things. In fact, if they're liberals, they always seem to expect you to decide things in a way that isn't terribly easy. Take this for instance:

More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.

Keystone XL: Ring Around the Rose Garden

Liberals are always on about the environment this, the ecology that, "global warming", blah, blah. You'd think they never had to run a political campaign. If you were a Republican, of course, you could just ignore them. Unfortunately, Fierce Advocates can't be Republicans. It's a rule or something. Anyway, if you're a Democrat, you can insult liberals sometimes, but after a while even the really dumb ones will catch on. So you can't do that too often.

And, you know, they really, really go on about that environment thing.

What's a Fierce Advocate to do?

Well, hey, that's easy! You procrastinate:

Obama said in a statement that he supports delaying a decision.

“Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised through a public process, we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood,” Obama said. “The final decision should be guided by an open, transparent process that is informed by the best available science and the voices of the American people. At the same time, my administration will build on the unprecedented progress we’ve made towards strengthening our nation’s energy security, from responsibly expanding domestic oil and gas production to nearly doubling the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks, to continued progress in the development of a clean energy economy."

Obama punts Keystone XL pipeline

Put it off until after the election. Genius!

Because, you see, it's a really, really complicated thing. Either we let some foreign company build a leaky pipeline through the Midwest so that a few people can have some low paying jobs for a while, or we don't. Doesn't that sound really, really complicated?

Of course, it plays better when you can say that in your really serious voice, but if you can't manage that, there's always the option of a press release.

Once the election is over, then you can let those nice Canadians build that pipeline with Indian steel using their Japanese heavy equipment, pick up your speaking fee, and move on. After all, there's no rule that says you have to live in the Midwest, right?

I know what you're thinking, there's a catch. What about all those liberals? I mean, you need the silly buggers to vote for you, but they they complain about everything we do!

Now, that's easy.

You see, there are liberals who are smart enough to figure out what's going on. But some of them can be persuaded to go along to get along. Isn't it just great that the economy is so bad? Others, as we've mentioned already, aren't all that bright. So that leaves just a few troublemakers who aren't quite smart enough to be bought, and not quite stupid enough to believe what they're told by those who are. But there aren't that many, really. Just call them mean, old racist poopyheads who want to burn everything down, and no one will listen to them.

After all, even arsonists don't want to be called racists, and I suspect racists don't want to be called arsonists, either. No one likes being called a poopyhead. It's a sure-fire winner of a rhetorical strategy.

So, there you have it. Anything else we can help you with, Mr. President?

Happy Earth Day, 2011

Once again, it's Earth Day, which is a day to inspire people to think about the planet we live on, and our place in it.

Caption: Mt. Rainier from the BPA Trail, last December.

Image credit: Cujo359

I like to remember the wisdom of George Carlin on this day:

[T]here is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat?
...
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does.

George Carlin's "The Planet Is Fine"

Earth Day, whether its organizers are aware of this or not, is really about preserving our place on this planet. It's about making it safe for us for as long a time as possible. The planet, as Carlin said, will be just fine whether we're here to enjoy it or not.

There's lots that you can do to make the world more livable, with little or no expense. No, you don't have to build a solar panel array in on your roof, or live like a hermit. What we all need to do is true to reduce our use of resources wherever possible.

• Buy a shopping bag instead of always taking home disposable paper or plastic bags. Many grocery stores in the U.S. now offer a small discount if you bring one of these, though some have given up the practice, because they've seen so little effect on demand for disposable bags. Mine have paid for themselves several times over already.


• Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs in overhead lighting. In parts of the country where air conditioning is used a good portion of the year, replace them everywhere you can. You save four fifths of the electricity used to create light, and in hotter parts of the country, you'll save money on air conditioning, as well.
  
  
  Caption: A typical compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb replacement for an incandescent light bulb socket.
  
  Image credit: Lamps Plus (see NOTE 1)
  
  In lights you use a lot, CFL's will pay for themselves in less than a year. Since they last several years, that means a net savings on your electricity bill.
  
  While CFL's don't work on dimmer circuits, there are many places in the house that they can be used.


• While we're on the subject of light bulbs, turn off the lights you're not using. One of the big reasons oil prices are going through the roof right now is that much of the world is using more energy. Much electricity, particularly of the peak demand sort, is generated using oil. Saving energy means less greenhouse gas, and less dependence on foreign oil.


• 
  Caption: A reusable bag for bulk coffee. Use this until it won't close anymore, and you can lower energy, materials, and landfill use.
  Image credit: Photo by Cujo359 (See NOTE 2)
  
  If you buy food in bulk, as I buy coffee, try using the little bags until they don't work anymore. I usually get a half dozen or so uses out of a bulk coffee bag, which means that there are at least five of those bags that I don't throw out. That's energy and materials saved, and less landfill required to get rid of them.

Those are just a few things we ordinary folks can do to make the Earth more hospitable to us. If you've already done that, there are plenty more suggestions.

NOTE 1 This image came from the Lamps Plus site, because it was labeled as being reusable. I got a picture, and they got a link. Lamps Plus did not contribute to, endorse, or even know of this article's existence. Similarly, no endorsement of Lamps Plus is intended by the author of this article.

NOTE 2 Did you read NOTE 1? Most of that applies here, except that I took the picture of the Tully's bag. Tully's is the owner of the "Tully's" trade name, and if they object I'll just fuzz out their trademark and leave everyone to wonder what brand of coffee I like.

Quote Of The Day

There have been many good posts on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by current and former oil workers. I just want to highlight this one, by a Daily Kos diarist named Fishgrease, about how oil booms should be deployed to catch on oil spill such as this one:

Not only is Oil Spill Booming a large industry in the USA, teaching Oil Spill Booming is a large industry in the USA. Most of BP's production and pipeline employees in the USA have attended at least one booming school. Many have attended two or three. Most oil and gas production employees in the USA have attended booming school. Some of us have attended really good, really extensive, week or two-week booming schools. BP's production employees have attended the best booming schools. I know this. I've seen them there.

BP's drilling folks have mostly not attended booming school. They're sometimes sent to booming school, but they fuck off in the bar and their bosses sign off on that being okay. Because for Drilling Hands, booming is for pussies. This is a generalization. Not all drilling hands think that, but most of them do and I guarantee BP's drilling executives think that booming is for pussies -- and that's if they think about booming at all or even know what it is. That's not so shocking. In the major oil companies, there are likely a few drilling executives that don't even know what drilling is. I'm not kidding.

Fishgrease: DKos Booming School

As Fishgrease goes on to point out, BP was clearly not prepared for this event. It's also clear that they weren't interested in properly doing quality assurance on, or testing, the blow out preventer (BOP) that failed to operate.

Here's the problem: drilling creates profits, at least if the drilling ends up finding oil. Things like quality assurance, testing, and disaster preparedness are overhead. They eat into profits. Few company executives, in any business, are going to voluntarily do more of those things than they deem absolutely necessary. I've worked in the aerospace, and defense industries, and I've followed the computer industry enough to feel like I worked there. I have yet to see an example of this not being true.

This is why the libertarian philosophy that allowing huge court settlements and otherwise let the markets run free is, to put it mildly, exactly the opposite of what is going to prevent something like this. To put it more accurately, thinking that such a policy will prevent or minimize these sorts of catastrophes is batshit crazy. Executives will always take current profit over preventing a possible disaster later. They know that they can hire good lawyers, and with a little prior planning, they can get the sort of federal judges appointed who will look favorably on their shenanigans. We're seeing that at work right now.

Nor do I think that the threat of putting a company out of business that fails to prevent or handle such disasters is likely to change things. Arthur Andersen's departure from the world of accounting didn't prevent the sort of abuses we've seen with the finance industry since Enron. There are several reasons for that, I think. First of all, unless there's gross incompetence, disasters of this sort are an unlikely event. We can argue about whether that situation applies here, but I'd bet real money that BP executives didn't think that either they or their employees were unusually incompetent. Besides, disasters like this always happen to the competition, who are inevitably less competent, and less gifted with fashion sense, than they are. Executives usually have huge egos. Disasters don't happen to them, they happen to stupid people.

Executives of publicly held corporations are also required by law to maximize return on investment. Profligate spending on overhead items doesn't get you there, at least not in the short term.

The only thing, in my opinion, that is ever likely to prevent things like this in the future is to make sure that the proper safeguards and procedures are in place before the companies responsible see a dime of profit. Any approach that doesn't do that effectively will make the current attempts to corral all that oil look like a smooth operation in comparison.

Sunday Photo(s)

Since in some sense it's Earth Day today, let's continue on with the theme of beautiful, unspoiled places. This is Denny Creek, in Western Washington:
Image credit: Cujo359

It was taken last summer, in late August. By then most of the streams in our area are starting to run dry. Right now, I suspect most of those rocks are covered with water, thanks to glacial runoff and the rain we normally see in Spring.

Walk far enough along that creek and you'll end up here:
Image credit: Cujo359

It's Franklin Falls. As you can see, it's a popular spot in the summer. It's near a highway overpass, but you still have to hike a bit of a ways to get there. Even so, it feels isolated enough that you can enjoy time away from the city. It's one of those places worth preserving.

As usual, click on the pictures to enlarge them. Enjoy your Sunday.

Change, Baby, Change

Caption: Areas proposed to be opened to offshore oil drilling by the Obama Administration as part of the new energy bill.

Image credit: found it here

No one who actually understands what went on during the health care reform fiasco should be in the least bit surprised by any of this:

In proposing a major expansion of offshore oil and gas development, President Obama set out to fashion a carefully balanced plan that would attract bipartisan support for climate and energy legislation while increasing production of domestic oil.

Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t

By "domestic production", this New York Times article mostly means offshore oil drilling:

The American Petroleum Institute, using the high end of government estimates, hopes that the opening of the areas on the Atlantic and eastern gulf alone would make available more than four billion barrels of oil and more than 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — enough to fuel more than 2.4 million cars and heat eight million households for 60 years.

Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t

According to the CIA World Factbook entry on the United States, we use roughly 19.5 million barrels of oil a day. Just multiplying that number by 365 shows that we use about 7.1 billion barrels a year. Subtracting our domestic oil production from that total, we import roughly 4 billion barrels a year. Everything they hope to find in the areas Obama is proposing to open up is about seven month's worth of consumption, or a year's worth of imports. For this, we will risk turning valuable beaches and fisheries into oil slicks.

Speaking of oil slicks, where they might occur if this new legislation is enacted should be no surprise, either:

Mr. Obama’s plan, delicately pieced together by the Interior Department with White House input, carved out a large coastal buffer zone in the eastern gulf to mollify Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, an opponent of drilling there. It also included continued access to the oil fields off the North Slope of Alaska to win the support of Alaska Senators Mark Begich, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican.

Most New England officials, including Maine’s two Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, are considered swing votes on energy legislation. They strongly oppose offshore drilling, and the North Atlantic was exempted. And because there is almost no support for drilling and there is little recoverable oil off the Pacific Coast, the whole area was declared off limits, said Ken Salazar, the interior secretary.

But by opening the mid-Atlantic region, from Delaware south to Central Florida, for oil exploration, Mr. Obama angered New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, who have been generally supportive of Mr. Obama’s push for climate legislation.

Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t

Lautenberg and Menendez didn't present a problem for Obama during the health care "reform" campaign, so I'm pretty sure they'll be pushed out of the way here, too. Nelson, Snowe, and Collins are people who matter, so you can bet there won't be oil washing up on their shoreline.

It gets better, of course. "Clean coal", that magical substance that only exists in the fevered imaginations of politicians from coal-producing states, is another big part of the upcoming bill:

He also announced a new task force to forge a plan for rolling out affordable carbon capture and storage technology in 10 years, including having 10 commercial demonstration projects up and running by 2016.

Carbon capture and storage is meant to capture the emissions from carbon-polluting coal plants and bury them underground rather than spewing them into the atmosphere but the technology is still being researched.

Obama Eyes Biofuels, Clean Coal In New Climate Push

Caption: A coal slurry pond in Martin County, KY from around the year 2000.

Image credit: Mine Safety and Health Administration/Red, Green, and Blue

Coal isn't clean. The detritus that remains after it's burned is among the most toxic substances on the planet. Using coal to generate electricity guarantees that there will be vast pools of toxic sludge like the one that broke not too long ago in Tennessee.

On December 22, 2008, the containment pond at the TVA Kingston plant collapsed, spilling more than 4.1 million cubic meters of ash into the surrounding environment.

In the weeks following the spill, the Duke [University] team analyzed toxic elements – including radium, arsenic and mercury – in ash, sediment and water samples they collected from standing water in a tributary of the Emory River in Tennessee that had been dammed by the sludge spill, and from multiple locations downstream and upstream on the Emory and Clinch rivers.

...

Their analysis of ash samples revealed that the spilled sludge contained high levels of toxic metals and radioactivity, including 75 parts per million of arsenic, 150 parts per billion of mercury, and eight picocuries of per gram of total radium. A picocurie is a standard measure of radioactivity.

Toxic Coal Ash Threatens Health And Environment

To its credit, the Obama Administration's Environmental Protection Agency has begun looking at new regulations for this waste, but that process is a long way from satisfactory completion. To its discredit, the real power in this area appears to belong to Cass Sunstein, who is infamous among environmentalists for weakening restrictions on toxic chemicals released by the coal industry. As is this Administration's penchant, the reformers are left to flail about, while the people who make things worse are getting a pass.

I think it's also a safe bet that no Senators who matter live near one of those sludge ponds.

This is all on top of the Administration's proposal that nuclear energy be part of our energy strategy, to the tune of $8 billion in loan guarantees. There is something absolutely crazy about proposing that we build more plants whose waste products we cannot find a home for.

Somehow, mention of nuclear power, offshore oil drilling, and more coal plants never made it into the Obama campaign's "fact sheet" on their energy and environment plans. Curiously, that document mentions that energy conservation will be an important part of their plan, along with a general cap and trade policy. Both, if implemented wisely, would be effective in reducing environmental hazards and making us more independent of foreign oil. Yet one hardly ever reads about these things, except in the negative.

Go figure. NOTE: The UPDATE below has a slight correction to this statement.

Kevin Drum sums up the political ramifications pretty well:

I guess this makes me a bad environmentalist, but I've never really had a big problem with opening up these offshore tracts as long as (a) the affected states are OK with it and (b) oil companies don't get sweetheart deals. But here's what I don't get. When it comes to energy, conservatives are crazy about two things: nuclear power and offshore drilling. Now Obama has agreed to both. But does he seriously think this will "help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation"? Wouldn't he be better off holding this stuff in reserve and negotiating it away in return for actual support, not just hoped-for support? What am I missing here?

Obama Opens Up The Coast

As was true in the health care non-reform effort, compromising with Republicans is not the point. The point is keeping oil, utility, and coal dollars from migrating to GOP campaign funds.

Once again, the Obama Administration will propose legislation that will not actually solve the problem it is supposedly meant to address, but will make some of their supporters rich. The ultimate expression of the policy will have little or nothing to do with what candidate Obama promised. Most of the progressives who have been extolling the health care bill will be telling us how it's important to compromise, and to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

When did "something that actually does more good than harm" become "perfect"? Probably about the time this country was predominately populated by idiots who never bother to understand what they're talking about.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign also released a "fact sheet" on energy. It does mention nuclear energy, but states that it should only be considered once safety and other issues are addressed. It does not mention offshore drilling, though it does float the possibility of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Perhaps that should have been our clue. They don’t mention expanding the use of coal, but do mention that it should be made "cleaner". I suppose that was a clue, as well.

Sunday Photo(s)

You could call this a brief photographic essay on the importance of wetlands.

This is Panther Lake, which is located in Federal Way, Washington, back in late August:
Image credit: Cujo359

This is the same lake, from almost the same location, earlier this week:
Image credit: Cujo359

If it were from the exact same position, I'd have had to be wearing hip waders. That's the corner of a park bench in the lower right hand corner of this picture. I was standing in front of it when I took the pictures in August.

Needless to say, our summers are usually very dry, and our winters pretty wet. This has been a relatively dry winter, but with temperatures higher than normal, I expect we're seeing more runoff than usual.

Had it not been for a referendum that demanded municipalities do urban planning, there might have been houses in the middle of that lake by now. There almost certainly would have been some nearby, lakefront property being as valuable as it's become here. As it happens, we could probably stand to have another several feet of water show up there before we'd have to worry about the Little League fields next door being flooded, and several feet more before any buildings are threatened.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them. Have a good Sunday.

Happy Earth Day

Today is the 2009 edition of Earth Day. I've been trying to get a story together, but as usual it's taking about four times as long as I have to do it. So, here's another picture of a place I've been:



That's part of the road through the White Sands National Monument, in New Mexico. Believe it or not, that's not a snowstorm. That's what it looks like when the wind picks up.

The federal government owns quite a bit of the land in that area, including the White Sands Missile Range, Fort Bliss, and the Monument. As a result, much of it is in its natural state, or as near to natural as it gets in the Lower 48 states.

Happy Earth Day.

Glenn Beck: April Fool

Glenn Beck and his producer on the hunt for alternative energy Image credit: Walter Lantz

Of course, Glenn Beck is a fool any time of year, but since today is so special, why not take a look at his latest foolishness? The first comes courtesy of Think Progress:

For almost a year, Glenn Beck has been warning with increasing panic that America is headed toward socialism. Tonight, he issued a correction: “They” are are not marching the United States toward socialism, Beck explained, but actually fascism:

It all adds up to me, having to admit that I was wrong. Our government is not marching down the road towards communism or socialism. … But now I have to tell you that they’re not marching us that direction. They’re marching us to a non-violent fascism. Or to put it another way, they’re marching us to 1984. Big Brother. … Like it or not, fascism is on the rise.

Though Beck claimed he didn’t mean “Adolf Hitler kind of fascism” and that he was talking about “fascism with a happy face,” he illustrated his point with more than a minute’s worth of Nazi footage, played dramatically on the full screen behind him.

Glenn Beck: I was wrong. We’re Not Marching To Socialism, We’re Marching Toward Fascism

Of course, Beck isn't the first damn fool to redefine fascism so he can invent new ways to insult liberals, but this strikes me as a particularly pathetic example of that pathetic rhetorical strategy. Boiled down to its gooey essence, his argument is:

That kind of socialism that I made up so I could call Democratic fiscal policy socialist? I was wrong, it's really more like this kind of fascism I just made up.

Fox News' dwindling audience numbers might be an indication that even their audience isn't far enough round the bend to fail to grasp this, but there are probably lots of alternative explanations.

For instance, there's Glenn Beck on alternative energy:

[T]he really special moment in the broadcast came when he started talking about wind power as an alternative form of energy with Tom Borelli of the "Free Enterprise Action Fund" -- a right-wing anti-environmental outfit -- about the Obama energy plan, and this burst out:

Beck: You can't make wind energy work without nuclear energy as well. Wind stops --

Borelli: You know that, but Congress doesn't know that.

Beck: Use your common sense! Hey America! Use common sense here! Let just try this out!

Wind, when it blows, makes energy. When it stops, you can't store it, so what's making the energy? Wind energy doesn't work without something else making energy for when the wind stops, which it does -- especially if Al Gore controls the temperature, and all the winds and everything else, so we never have blowy days!

Agh!

The problem with Beck is that he packs so much ignorance and misinformation into a single rant that it's hard to figure out where to start. Suffice to say that one can easily find out that there are numerous strategies for dealing with the unreliability of wind power[.]

More Beck Babble: Wind Power Needs Nukes To Work

The Crooks and Liars article I quoted goes on to list a few, but I didn't read them. What makes his position so foolish is that you don't store energy when there isn't any. You store it when it's available. There are plenty of means for storing energy that could be, and have, been put to use. If you're not a physicist or an engineer, it's possible that you wouldn't see through that argument, just barely. If you are a physicist or an engineer who didn't see through that argument, sit at the back of the class and start paying attention.

Everyone has to talk about things they don't know about. I can't fault Beck for not knowing what energy is, or that it is conserved. What I do blame him for is not taking a few minutes out of his day to either inform himself, or find someone who knows a lot about the subject already. He could have interviewed Jerry McNerney, a Representative who made a living as an engineer of alternative energy (wind turbines, as it happens). Oh, wait. He's a Democrat, and therefore a socialist, no a fascist. I get so confused sometimes. Instead, he chose a guest who seems to know as little about the subject as he does.

OK, so Rep. McNerney's not acceptable. Let's do something called an Internet search to find authors, scientists, or engineers who have some expertise in this area, and could possibly have answered Beck's absurd statements. Look, here's a college that has an alternative energy engineering curriculum. Maybe he could call the professor in charge? That was the second hit in my first Google search. That wasn't terribly difficult, was it?

It should go without saying, I suppose, but I'll say it anyway - Beck's on TV not because he ever says anything that makes sense. He's on TV because he's useful to the people who control what you see on the TV. As with Jonah Goldberg's presence in newspapers, there's no reasonable alternative explanation. Frankly, this penguin could out-think either one of them.

UPDATE (April 2): Over at En Tequila Es Verdad, Efrique left this comment, which I'll reproduce in its entirety because it's freaking hilarious:

Interesting that Beck seems to have decided that Hitler was a fascist - when of course he was a Nazi. Mussolini was fascist (the fasces, being a Roman concept, having resonance for the Italians wishing for Empire, not the Germans).

Here's a helpful primer for Fox News personnel:

Shirt Colour	Country	Fought Indy?	Rightwing Ideology
Black	Italy	No	Fascist
Brown	Germany	Yes	Nazi

I don't think tables work in comments, so hopefully the extra characters will help space it out roughly right (it's fine in Preview, but that doesn't mean a lot)

April Fools

Fortunately, I can make tables in an article.

Airliners Of The Future?

[The Sky Sailor (PDF) experimental solar-powered aircraft design. It's designed to operate autonomously in the Martian atmosphere. Image credit: Blazing Wings.]

There was an interesting bit of news in the New York Times today about biofuels:

Air New Zealand tested a jet fuel made from the jatropha plant on Tuesday as the airline searches for an affordable and environmentally friendly alternative to crude oil.

For two hours, pilots tested the oil, in a 50-50 blend with conventional jet fuel in one of the four Rolls-Royce engines powering a Boeing 747-400 aircraft — the first test flight by a commercial airline using jatropha oil.

Airline Flies a 747 on Fuel From a Plant

In contrast to other biofuel sources like corn, jatropha is easy to grow:

Unlike other biofuel crops like soybeans and corn, jatropha needs little water or fertilizer and can be grown almost anywhere — even in sandy, saline or otherwise infertile soil. Each seed produces 30 to 40 percent of its mass in oil, giving it a high per-acre yield, specialists said.

Airline Flies a 747 on Fuel From a Plant

There's a site called Jatropha World, which promotes the growing of jatropha for biofuels, among other uses. It even has a form page that has individual reports on how the plant can be grown in a number of countries. From the look of the list of countries, a tropical or subtropical climate is required. Nevertheless, that includes quite a few countries, including India and Australia, that can grow the stuff.

Maybe the most significant part of the NYT report is buried at the bottom of the article:

The International Air Transport Association, which represents 230 airlines, wants its members to use 10 percent alternative fuels by 2017. The association has the goal that airlines will be able to fly carbon-free in 50 years, with the help of technologies like fuel cells and solar energy.

Airline Flies a 747 on Fuel From a Plant

Since airliners typically have a useful life of thirty years or so, this would imply that the next generation of airliners will have to include at least some carbon-free designs. Whether that will be possible remains to be seen, since jet engines don't run on either solar energy or fuel cells. I'm not aware of any such designs now. The only things I'm aware of are experimental designs. These are low powered, and more like gliders with small engines than commercial airliners. It's quite an ambitious goal, given the circumstances.

Attack Of The Giant Squid

Image credit: National Maritime Museum UK. The caption reads:

Illustration showing giant squid attack, p.275 from Jules Vernes, 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea', First English edition, 1870. F5715-004.

Apparently, the Pacific Northwest has something new to be very afraid of:

WASHINGTON — They aren't your normal calamari. But the jumbo squid now lurking off the Pacific Northwest coast could threaten salmon runs and signal yet another change in the oceans brought on by global warming.

The squid, which can reach seven feet long and weigh up to 110 pounds, are aggressive, thought to hunt in packs and can move at speeds of up to 15 mph. In Mexico, they're known as diablos rojos, or red devils. They reportedly will attack divers when they feel threatened.

'Voracious' jumbo squid invading Pacifc Northwest waters

Despite the lurid headline, the squids seem to be more of a problem for fishermen than anyone else. They're feasting on the local salmon and other fish. Not especially good news for the local economy, but you'd think that everyone in the Northwest was in danger if you just read the headline and the lede.

We'd gone almost half a day without any lurid tales of monster sea creatures attacking people. As they say in the news business:

Dog bites man isn't news. Now, giant sea creature bites man - send a film crew!!

Needless to say, American news organizations have left it to their British counterparts to put things in perspective:

Local MP Ian Cohen has been urging people not to use this as an excuse to attack sharks. He is quoted in ABC local news saying:

“There is nothing more horrifying than a shark attack obviously, but we [need to] look at it and look at the figures and the frequency, I just hope that there is not a reaction to see that people would go out and start slaughtering sharks or support that...

"It happened when Steve Irwin got hit by the stingray - there was a spate of hunting rays.
"There are people who don't think in a broader way. If we vilify the shark as a creature as has happened for so many years, then there is not the pressure to acknowledge the need for conservation of these species."

Australia has one of the world's highest rates of shark attacks but few of them are fatal. The Shark Institute of Australia says sharks have killed 11 people off its shores in 50 years.

Surfer killed in fatal shark attack

More people die in auto accidents in the U.S. every day.

That's our news for you, keeping us afraid of the stuff that hardly ever happens to anyone and ignoring the stuff that kills us all.

UPDATE (Jun. 27): Someone at Pharyngula was kind enough to point me to an article on the sort of squid the article was referring to:

Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) hunt in large numbers along the coasts of both North and South America, from Chile to Baja California. They have occasionally been spotted as far north as San Francisco, but never before in large numbers or over long periods of time. In recent years, mass strandings of Humboldt squid on Southern California beaches have led to speculation that the squid might be expanding their range. This study provides the first scientific records to prove that assertion.
...
The researchers speculate that, during El Niño years, currents from the south help carry Humboldt squid northward to new feeding areas. However, Humboldt squid are believed to live for only a year or two, and El Niño events occur every three to seven years on the average. Thus, El Niño-related currents alone could not maintain a large population of Humboldt squid in this area.

This may explain why the squid that appeared in 1997 disappeared within a year or two—they came and they ate, but they did not reproduce locally and eventually died out. Since 2002, however, the authors suggest that Humboldt squid have been both feeding and reproducing off Central California.

Humboldt squid on the move

A couple of points emerge once you've read the article. One is that the squid here, while large and potentially dangerous to divers, aren't the huge form of squid mentioned in this news report. True giant squid can grow to be 50 feet (15 meters) in length. The other is that the (re-)emergence of this species may have more to do with overfishing of tuna and other predators that compete with these squid than with climate change.

Happy Earth Day

As the political e-mail is reminding me, it's Earth Day today. Apologies to any dial-up users who may be stopping by today, but this view from the peak at Carlsbad caverns is just too beautiful to reduce it further. Click on it to see it full size, without all the jaggies.

All those plants out there are tough, and they're well adapted to their environment. Yet they're also vulnerable to even small changes in that environment. Let's not change it any more than we have to, OK?

From Pig Iron To Iron Pigs

Image credit: Composite image by Cujo359 (See Note)

Every once in a while, I travel back to the area where I grew up - the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. When I was growing up here, it was an industrial center. There was a Mack truck plant and a Western Electric plant in Allentown, and a huge steel mill in Bethlehem. Bethlehem Steel was the second-largest steel manufacturer in the world back then. Mack moved their plant south many years ago, and thanks to the incompetence of its management and the intransigence of its unions, the Bethlehem Steel plant is long abandoned.

In those days, the huge blast furnaces that sat along the Lehigh River, produced pig iron from the raw ore shipped in from all over the country. These furnaces, tended by hundreds of steelworkers, plant managers, and engineers, ran around the clock, stopping only for maintenance. They were hot, noisy, and dirty machines, but they produced a vital product in what was, at the time they were built, the most modern and efficient way. Unfortunately, after the Second World War the world's steel industry was largely destroyed outside of the U.S. Bethlehem and other U.S. steel companies became lazy and arrogant, refusing to invest in new technologies. When foreign countries like Japan and Korea rebuilt their steel industries, they used more modern equipment in them, and they gradually learned to make steel better and more cheaply than their American counterparts. By the late 1970s, Bethlehem Steel and its American competitors were a shadow of their former selves. The Wikipedia article on Bethlehem Steel contains a good history of its rise and fall. In addition, a book entitled Crisis In Bethlehem, by John Strohmeyer, is an excellent chronicle of this sad time in our industrial past.

What brought all this to mind was a visit I paid the other day to the new Lehigh Valley Stadium, which will be the home stadium for the Iron Pigs, the Philadelphia Phillies' AAA minor league team. Anyone who has looked into the recent history of minor league baseball can tell you that it is nearly as difficult for a city to hold onto a minor league team as it is a major league one:

We here in Emmaus and the rest of the Lehigh Valley are the direct beneficiaries of Ottawa's loss of the Lynx. Still, it should sadden any fan to know that AAA baseball no longer will be played in Canada starting next year.

AAA baseball, and International league ball in particular, has a proud history in Canada that should not have ended the way it did. Canadian teams have won a total of 18 AAA titles.

Eulogy: AAA ball in Canada

Like many minor league baseball teams, the Iron Pigs, formerly the Lynx, got a better offer, moved, and changed their name. Lehigh County, with the help of various grants, built a beautiful new stadium with a bigscreen TV, sky boxes, and other modern features for the team to lure them here. Apparently, Ottawa decided it couldn't compete. What's especially interesting is where one of those grants came from:

Minor league baseball will return to the City of Allentown Pa. in 2008, thanks in part to a grant from EPA's Revolving Loan Fund (RLF). The Philadelphia Phillies will move their Triple A team (just a notch below the majors) to a new stadium being built on the site of a former electronics plant. The 7,000-seat stadium, located between American Parkway and Union Boulevard in East Allentown, is expected to cost $34.3 million.

We see this project as a hub around which economic development will occur. It's a perfect re-use for a former industrial property because we're taking a good portion of land and turning it into greenspace, said Glenn Solt, Manager of Capitol Projects for Lehigh County.

...

The site was originally developed in the 1940s and operated by Western Electric, AT&T Microelectronics, Lucent Technologies and Agere systems until the facility was closed in 2003. The site was used for the manufacture of electronic components such as circuit boards and computer chips. The buildings were demolished in 2004.

A Phase I environmental assessment was completed in 2005 and subsequent Phase II assessment work was completed in early 2006. A subsurface soil investigation noted an approximately 30,000-square-foot area that contained some buried electronic parts and concentrations of chlorinated solvents, mercury, nickel and silver in the soil.

Brownfield of Dreams Becoming Allentown's Reality

Silver and nickel are typically found in circuit board solder, solvents are used to clean circuit boards and integrated circuits. All of this was buried beneath the ground where Lehigh Valley Stadium, which is now called Coca Cola Park thanks to an advertising contract, now stands.

The source of these contaminants is another example of the decline of this area's industrial base. The stadium is next door to, and on top of, what remains of the old Western Electric plant, which was once a part of AT & T, the telephone monopoly. Among other things, early research into semiconductor manufacturing was done there:

But the transistor was still a long way from becoming the mass-produced gizmo that would reshape—or create—huge industries, including radio, television, microelectronics, and aerospace. More than a decade of development—involving silicon purification, crystal growing, and the diffusion of chemical agents called dopants into semiconductors—was required before transistors could begin to assume the forms they are found in today. Much of that work took place not at Bell Labs but at two Western Electric plants in Pennsylvania, in Allentown and nearby Reading, where engineers developed the precision manufacturing processes and techniques needed to mass-produce transistors. The clean room, used today in almost every aspect of semiconductor manufacturing, was born and raised in Allentown.

The End of AT&T

Later, this plant produced the laser diodes that constituted the long links in the information superhighway. It employed hundreds of engineers, technicians, accountants, and other professionals, most of whom were well paid. When we drove past what was left of this facility on Monday, it was sporting the logo of LSI Corporation, and it had a parking lot that was almost empty. Much like the Bethlehem Steel plant, it is now too antiquated for most applications.

In a sense, these giant industries have been replaced by a small niche industry, albeit one that the local governments were happy to put up $34 million to obtain. What economic benefit is likely to accrue? The EPA estimates:

When the stadium opens in April 2008, it will have 30 full-time employees, as well as providing numerous part-time service jobs. It will also require trash hauling, food, cleaning services, advertising and printing in addition to other goods and services which will generate jobs and economic development in the area.

Brownfield of Dreams Becoming Allentown's Reality

Thirty jobs, mostly low-paid, replace thousands of high-paying jobs. This is the transition much of America is undergoing. Personally, I'd rather have the blast furnaces.

Note about the image: This is a composite of images from the Bethlehem Steel online site, and the Iron Pigs' stadium page.

UPDATE: There's no new content, but I've made several edits to clarify things. I also fixed the link to an explanation of laser diodes.

UPDATE (Mar. 24): If you're having trouble finding the Iron Pigs' schedule, I offer some advice on the subject.

Afterword (Aug., 2011): For those who landed here because they asked the online question "What is an iron pig?", or words to that effect, I think the most common answer is "a motorcycle police officer". An obscure minor league baseball team named after a failed American industrial sector is probably the second definition.

Glad I could help.

Thought For The Day

Over at Orcinus, which is holding a fundraiser, by the way, I happened on this article by Sara on some thoughts on how systems behave by some MIT scientists. I especially like this one:

There is no "away." ... In natural ecosystems, in particular, you can move something from one place to another, you can transform it into something else, but you can't get rid of it. As long as it is on the Earth, it is part of the global ecosystem. The industrial poisons, pollutants, insecticides, and radioactive materials that we've tried to "throw away" in the past have all too often come back to haunt us because people didn't understand this rule.

A lot of the people and problems ... came about because people haven’t yet given up on the naive fantasy that there is, in fact, an "away." We can send the brown and black folks "away," and that'll fix it. We can put criminals "away" in jail, and the things they learn there will never touch us. We can send our pollution "away" down the stream, where only the orcas will choke on it. We get in a lot of trouble when we overestimate the size of this tiny blue ball, and start to thinking that there's anywhere on it that's far enough "away" to hide our crimes against nature and each other.

Kauffman's Rules, 1-7

Out of sight, out of mind, in other words. So often, I've felt the urge to remind people that when they throw something away, or otherwise try to move a problem elsewhere, they're only moving it elsewhere, not fixing it. Sometimes, that's the only practical option, of course, but you can't just forget about it.

A Farm Bill Quandary

image credit: The Pennsylvania State University




Kerry Trueman asks an interesting question related to the upcoming farm bill:

Would you like to see your hard-earned dollars used to conserve precious wetlands and vital habitats, or would you prefer to see that money used to build football field-sized pools of pigshit generated by industrial pork producers?

Action Alert: Don't Let Conservation Buy The Farm

Hmmm, let's see. Pigshit or wetlands? I must have a coin around here somewhere ...

I'm nearly as stunned as Kerry is to discover that a place that's run so cheaply that they won't even pay to get rid of their pig droppings would have financial troubles, but I do know that organic farming hasn't been terribly profitable for the folks doing the work. Yet it appears that at least a few congresspeople want to divert funds from support for organic farming and other conservation measures in order to fund the pig manure pools.

Anyway, read, enjoy, and try not to let it ruin your breakfast.

UPDATE: (May 21) More on this issue Minnesota farm country by Sally Jo Sorenson at MyDD. If you have a congressman who's on the House Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy, and Research, or on the Committee on Agriculture, I hope you'll read these articles and make it clear to your congressman that you support sustainable agriculture. Better still, let them know that you think funding the development of toxic pools of pig crap instead sounds like a really bad (dare I say "stinky"?) idea.

New Farm Bill Looms

image credit: eric at ology.org


Matt Stoller over at MyDD has sent out a call of sorts for people who understand food production, the economics of food production, and food policy. There's a big new farm bill coming down the pike, and my guess, based on the history of these things, is that the agribusinesses are going to get far more out of it than farmers or consumers. Traditionally, these things have been largely interesting to the food industry and Congress, with little attention from the news. As with many of these things, some attention from bloggers could help fill in this gap and make activism more effective. If you're familiar with these things and you want to help out, I suggest you e-mail Matt or sign in and leave a comment.

What's wrong with the way we grow and sell food these days? To start with, as the MyDD article points out, it has a sort of perverse economics where carrots cost more than Twinkies on a per-calorie basis. It's also becoming increasingly clear that the food inspection system needs an upgrade, though I don't remember it being this bad before the current presidential administration took power. The other thing that concerns me is that the current system encourages overproduction, which isn't terribly good for the ecology or for long term use of farmlands.

This is one of those "I'm in a hurry" posts, so I really don't have much to add to this discussion except that I agree with Matt - we all like to eat, and making our food system more responsive to consumers' needs without making farmers' lives worse can only be a good thing.

UPDATE: For some examples of how agricultural policy can affect things like poverty and ecology all around the world, check out "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor" in this month's Foreign Affairs magazine. I'm not sure I agree with the premise that more biofuel production is necessarily bad for the poor, but it does illustrate some of the tradeoffs to any change in our agricultural policy.