178 replies to this topic

[Traveler]

Zinke sounds insane with this one.

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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is partially blaming “radical environmentalists” for the dozens of wildfires burning in California and elsewhere in the West.

In a USA Today opinion piece published Wednesday, Zinke said “active forest management” — including logging, prescribed burns and clearing brush — is the way to minimize wildfires on federal land.

But green groups sue the federal government to stop such management practices, Zinke charged, exacerbating the problem.
“Every year we watch our forests burn, and every year there is a call for action,” he wrote.

“Yet, when action comes, and we try to thin forests of dead and dying timber, or we try to sustainably harvest timber from dense and fire-prone areas, we are attacked with frivolous litigation from radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods.”

Which is actually only somewhat true. Here is a good summary of the facts. But the fact that there is any truth to this is reprehensible. Like voting for the greens.

[golden_valley]

Traveler, on 08 August 2018 - 09:54 AM, said:

Zinke sounds insane with this one.

Which is actually only somewhat true. Here is a good summary of the facts. But the fact that there is any truth to this is reprehensible. Like voting for the greens.

There's a good book about that 1910 fire mentioned in the article The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan. It really isn't much about TR at all.

[LFC]

Traveler, on 08 August 2018 - 09:54 AM, said:

Which is actually only somewhat true. Here is a good summary of the facts. But the fact that there is any truth to this is reprehensible. Like voting for the greens.

"Somewhat true" being the operative words. I remember Bush's "Healthy Forests" initiative that was pushed using the same justifications. When the details of the proposed bill came out it turned out that, predictably as for any Republican initiative, it did exactly the opposite of its name. It would have allowed timber companies to come in, take the most valuable trees, and leave behind all the branches they stripped off of it as well as not bother with the existing tinder and brush. The fact is that proper forest management requires money or at least an additional cost for harvesters and there's no room for that in any Trump administration policy proposals.

One example where they're actually doing things well is the Michigan forest management for Kirtland's Warbler. Habitat has been increased in a sustainable manner and without destruction of other valuable habitat. It can happen, just not under Trump.

[JackD]

There's also the fact that they've already harvested most of the old growth and now they want the rest.

[LFC]

JackD, on 08 August 2018 - 01:06 PM, said:

There's also the fact that they've already harvested most of the old growth and now they want the rest.

Estimates on the amount of old growth left in the U.S. run 5-7%. As I posted elsewhere, "how much is enough?"

[LFC]

Vox covers the California wildfires. Here's a figure that surprised me. Maybe I just never really thought about it all that much.

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A study published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, or PNAS, found that 84 percent of wildfires are ignited by humans, whether through downed power lines, careless campfires, or arson.

“Human-started wildfires accounted for 84% of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season, dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning fires, and were responsible for nearly half of all area burned,” the paper reported.

The Carr Fire near Redding, for example, was ignited by a “mechanical failure of a vehicle,” according to fire officials. Transmission lines appear to be the culprit behind the 2017 wine country fires, but officials are still investigating other causes.

The utility serving the region, Pacific Gas and Electric, has previously been billed for firefighting costs for fires stemming from its transmission lines and could have to pay billions of dollars in damages for some of the current blazes.

John Abatzoglou, a climatologist at the University of Idaho who studies wildfires and is an author of the PNAS study, noted that some of the fires in California last year ignited in multiple places around the same time, hinting at arson. “That is a possibility in play here,” he said. Whatever the cause, these fires don’t seem to be “natural” disasters, he said.

[LFC]

Putin continues to attack our nation through his proxy puppet Donald Trump. There is no justification for this.

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Conservationists on Wednesday notified the Trump administration that they would sue over its reversal of a 2014 decision prohibiting bee-killing pesticides and genetically modified crops on U.S. wildlife refuges.

The reversal, issued on Aug. 2 in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service memo, suggested that neonicotinoid pesticides, or neonics, were needed for “farming practices” in refuge areas where that was allowed.

Cultivation of biotech crops, engineered to resist pests and withstand herbicides, has helped maximize crop production on dozens of wildlife refuges.

A certain amount of agricultural activity has been permitted on some refuges, where typically a share of the crops is harvested by farmers for profit while another share is left as food or habitat for animals.

Conservationists said in Wednesday’s notice of a pending lawsuit that neonics and pesticides to which biotech crops are immune are known to injure and kill imperiled creatures that rely on refuges whose fundamental purpose is wildlife conservation.

“It’s shameful that the government is promoting agents that its own scientists say harm threatened and endangered species,” Hannah Connor, attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Reuters.

The notice by the Arizona-based group and the Center for Food Safety to U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, an Interior agency, said the lawsuit would be filed in federal court in 60 days unless the new policy is rescinded.

A spokeswoman for Zinke referred inquiries to the U.S. Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[LFC]

Trump's EPA continues doing everything it can to allow the coal industry externalize their costs. What's next? No limits on sulfur-dioxide so they can bring back acid rain?

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President Donald Trump’s EPA will unveil a plan in coming days that unravels an Obama-era regulation meant to wean the U.S. off of coal power plants in favor of cleaner forms of energy, according to a Tuesday Politico report.

The proposal would let states write their own lax regulations, or opt out of regulations altogether, for coal-burning power plants. The EPA has reportedly acknowledged that the new proposal would result in increased levels of greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants, undermining President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

The plan essentially will disregard regulations to let the plants burn more coal at a cost-efficient pace, thus encouraging businesses to use them instead of sources that don’t harm the environment.

Per Politico, environmental activists and Democratic states plan to fight the proposal when it is finalized. The EPA reportedly plans to argue that the Obama-era regulation would illegally regulate the power sector, and that the costs of compliance would be insurmountable.

[LFC]

More on Trump's push to legalize asbestos again.

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In the Russian city of Asbest in the Ural Mountains, life and work revolves around a dark pit more than 1,000 feet deep and six miles long, the largest asbestos-producing mine in the world. The future of every household in this community of about 70,000 people depends on chrysotile, the white mineral from which asbestos fibers are extracted—fibers so extremely carcinogenic that 65 countries have banned them.

The World Health Organization is unequivocal: “Exposure to asbestos, including chrysotile, causes cancer of the lung, larynx and ovary, mesothelioma (a cancer of the pleural and peritoneal linings) and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs).” The WHO estimated in 2014 that 107,000 people die each year because of asbestos related diseases (PDF). Worldwide, asbestos is responsible for about half of all the work-related deaths from cancer. In the United States every year mesothelioma kills from 12,000 to 15,000 Americans.

Not surprisingly, given such statistics, the company that operates the enormous mine, Uralasbest (also written as Ural Asbest), has lost many of its buyers and significantly cut down both its production volume and staff. Since 2013 more than 1,000 of some 5,000 workers have lost their jobs, and panic has gripped the city like an epidemic.

But Russia continues to insist that chrysotile is safe if used in controlled conditions—and so, enthusiastically and notoriously, does President Donald Trump.

In June, when the disgraced Scott Pruitt was still head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA enacted the “significant new use rule” for asbestos opening the way for it to be used in a number of manufactured and imported products and judged on a case by case basis.

He's loved the stuff for decades.

Quote

Trump’s fortune was made in real estate development, and long after asbestos health concerns led to regulations in the 1970s, he remained a fan of asbestos as a building material. In 1997 Trump said in his book, The Art of the Comeback, that asbestos was “100 percent safe.” In 2005, he floated the idea at a Congressional hearing that the World Trade Center buildings would not have burned and collapsed as they did on Sept. 11, 2001, if they’d had more asbestos in them. (In the event, they had enough to raise continuing health concerns for the people who worked in the rubble and dust after the attack.) His main concern appears to have been the cost of removing asbestos from his buildings, a process he has described as a scam that originated with “the mob,” which he said controlled that business.

[pnwguy]

LFC, on 15 August 2018 - 12:09 PM, said:

Trump's EPA continues doing everything it can to allow the coal industry externalize their costs. What's next? No limits on sulfur-dioxide so they can bring back acid rain?

Future News Network -
The Trump administration will withhold federal funds from states that fail to require that building codes mandate ALL new construction have coal furnaces. Existing (white-owned) homeowners can apply for a 100% tax credit to tear out any solar panels and openly burn coal in their fireplaces.

[LFC]

pnwguy, on 15 August 2018 - 12:42 PM, said:

The Trump administration will withhold federal funds from states that fail to require that building codes mandate ALL new construction have coal furnaces. Existing (white-owned) homeowners can apply for a 100% tax credit to tear out any solar panels and openly burn coal in their fireplaces.

After the attempt by Rick Perry to force the use of coal by power companies that is not very far off.

[pnwguy]

Future News Network -

In the spirit of Making America Great Again, the Trump administration will be announcing their initiative to revitalize the Whale Oil and Cattle Dung fuel industries. And as part of their Infrastructure Leadership campaign, the federal government will provide matching funds and loan guarantees to municipalities to replace efficient LED street lamps with an extensive network of gas lights on every street.

Also, since American children have been in a decades long decline in lead levels, the administration will reinstate requirements for lead-based fuel additives and paint.
"We can't let American children fall behind Chinese and Indian children in this competitive economy", said WH press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But in a chess move in the White House's brilliant trade campaign, she did announce that imports of high mercury content fish will no longer be subject to tariffs.

[Rich T Bikkies]

And that's SH-S, not Andy Borowitz?

Hm. Things certainly are moving on.

[pnwguy]

Rich T Bikkies, on 15 August 2018 - 01:59 PM, said:

And that's SH-S, not Andy Borowitz?

Hm. Things certainly are moving on.

Just my tip of the hat to Borowitz, who has been doing a great job this past year. Of course, the stories practically write themselves now.

[pnwguy]

I love coal because it's as black as my heart

[LFC]

More destruction of America based on a mix of greed and a hate for anything Obama did.

Quote

The Trump administration has proposed a major rollback in Obama-era restrictions on climate-changing emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The plan announced Tuesday gives the states more discretion in choosing how to regulate pollution from the plants.

The Environmental Protection Agency says the move “promotes energy independence.” Environmental groups say it will harm the fight against global warming.

The move targets a major climate change effort of the Obama administration, which sought to reduce release of climate-changing emissions and other pollutants from the coal-fired power plants.

An EPA statement calls the Obama plan “burdensome.”

[pnwguy]

Future News Network:

In another move to Make America Great Again, the Trump administration ruled that open burning of garbage piles and toxic waste should no longer be prohibited. The only requirement is that the remaining ash be transported by barge and dumped in the ocean off the shores of a designated list of African shithole countries, maintained by the US State Department.

Since the ships would otherwise be returning empty, the administration has authorized a limited transport of African human chattel to work in the agricultural sector of the southern US. First Lady Melania Trump is leading a trade delegation this month, to the region.

[LFC]

pnwguy, on 21 August 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

Since the ships would otherwise be returning empty, the administration has authorized a limited transport of African human chattel to work in the agricultural sector of the southern US.

Gen. Beauregard Sessions would be touching himself if he read this.

[pnwguy]

LFC, on 21 August 2018 - 12:16 PM, said:

Gen. Beauregard Sessions would be touching himself if he read this.

Yes. The ones he still owns are too old now to pick more than a half bale of cotton per day.

[LFC]

Aaaaaand the Trump decision on coal is, of course, even worse than it appears. Gotta' read the fine print.

Quote

The Trump administration on Tuesday made public the details of its new pollution rules governing coal-burning power plants, and the fine print includes an acknowledgment that the plan would increase carbon emissions and lead to up to 1,400 premature deaths annually.