150,000 penguins die after giant iceberg renders colony landlocked | World news | The Guardian

Horrible side effect of man-made climate change. Innocent creatures pay the bill. Who is morally and ethically responsible?



150,000 penguins die after giant iceberg renders colony landlocked | World news | The Guardian

Pure Michigan - Really?: State agency plans to monitor dioxane plume in Ann Arbor

By - Associated Press - Friday, February 5, 2016
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) - The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will closely monitor a dioxane plume that’s been slowly expanding in Ann Arbor as it moves closer to the Huron River, according to the agency.

Currently, agency officials are limited by state law and court orders on what they can do from an enforcement standpoint. The department can’t force Pall Corp., which dumped large amounts of the chemical into the environment from 1966 to 1986, to do a full-scale cleanup, and the pollution is still spreading despite ongoing pump-and-treat remediation efforts to reduce the amount of dioxane in the groundwater.

 ...
Under current state law and court orders, the plume is allowed to continue to spread and contaminate more groundwater and eventually reach the Huron River.


A map produced by MLive showing Ann Arbor's underground dioxane plume, based on the county's interpretation of monitoring well data in 2013, and more recently based on newer data from the third quarter of 2015 as mapped by Roger Rayle, co-founder and chairman of Scio Residents for Safe Water. Officials monitoring the plume say it's still spreading.

Read the full story here.

For me the biggest "take home message" of this article is to realize that we can NOT depend on the current laws and legislation to protect the health of the planet and its people. We have to ENFORCE much stricter laws to ensure that corporations like the Pall Corp in this case, Tecumseh Product, the Adrian car interior manufacturer Dura, who sold the plant to an LLC that essentially scrapped the more valuable components of the building and left a mess of asbestos pollution behind, and the asbestos companies in this nation that poisoned thousands if not millions of miners, builders and home residents can get away with their CRIMINAL and UNETHICAL conduct and can be FORCED- if necessary - to cleanup their mess and re-tribute some of the damage they have done to this planet! Grandfathering-in old sins and putting the burden of proof to the victims of environmental crime are MEDIEVAL practices - any country that does not step up to modern ethical standards and enforces stricter laws on CRIMES against humanity and the planet is unworthy to call themselves civilized! People and the Environment are not externalities that can be written off by accounting!!!!


More info on this unbelievable criminal conduct committed by the Pall Corp. here

Reconciling divergent estimates of oil and gas methane emissions

More science: "Measured oil and gas methane emissions are 90% larger than estimates based on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory and correspond to 1.5% of natural gas production. This rate of methane loss increases the 20-y climate impacts of natural gas consumed in the region by roughly 50%."



Zavala-Araiza D, Lyon DR, Alvarez RA, Davis KJ, Harriss R, Herndon SC, Karion A, Kort EA, Lamb BK, Lan X et al. . 2015. Reconciling divergent estimates of oil and gas methane emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112(51):15597-15602.



Full text of this study:



Reconciling divergent estimates of oil and gas methane emissions

A single gas well leak is California's biggest contributor to climate change | Environment | The Guardian

The first direct overhead photos of the leaking Aliso Canyon well pad in Los Angeles. Photograph: Earthworks

A single gas well leak is California's biggest contributor to climate change | Environment | The Guardian

A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas - Howarth - 2014 - Energy Science & Engineering - Wiley Online Library

So much about the so called "bridge" function of shale oil and gas. Why not getting solar and wind NOW???



For the full scientific publication from Cornell University click the below link:



A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas - Howarth - 2014 - Energy Science & Engineering - Wiley Online Library

Plugging Methane From Oil Wells Seen Topping $125 Million - Bloomberg Business

Finally the Obama administration is attacking this waste and pollution. The industry is up in arms to spend the money because they are used to be able to do what they want. Too bad that the Feds cannot enforce this on ALL land - even here in Adrian where Savoy flared perfectly good gas from 10 wells for more than 2 years!!!!!



For the full story click below:


Plugging Methane From Oil Wells Seen Topping $125 Million - Bloomberg Business

Daily Telegram Published a Propaganda Piece About Inhumane and Dirty Lenawee County Factory Farms

How can cows be "happy" when they are abused all their life being confined in hundreds and thousands in large battery barns - a practice that is ILLEGAL in Europe where the owners of many CAFO farms in the US originate from. In addition, the Daily Telegram in its "Hurray Lenawee County" article portraits the farms as "environmentally conscious", which is an outright audacity as they were and still are violating the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's much too relaxed regulations and patchy and inconsequential enforcement. This is what Pam Taylor had to say about this - and this woman and her group ECCSCM (Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan) know these issues very well for many years:

Re the Daily Telegram article, 1.30.16, about Milk Source.

Please read the timeline attached in the OneDrive below.

Lime Lake is about 1/2 mile downstream (and downhill) from a dairy CAFO (Hudson Dairy, with 3,485 cows and 40 calves according to their 2014 annual report, although it says "Southern Michigan Dairy" on the map).  The only thing between the barn/lagoons and Lime Lake Inlet is a field where manure is regularly applied. MDEQ found samples as high as 20,000/100mgL E. coli at the inlet point at the lake.   There is/was a tile pipe running directly from a "stormwater lagoon" and barn area that discharges into the inlet a bit farther upstream from the lake (see the map).   We took samples of a slimy green substance in Lime Lake in August, 2015 and sent them to Wayne State University's Helix Lab for testing.  Positive for cyanobacteria, positive for microcystin, and the bacteria DNA test was positive = bovine (cattle).  We phoned MDEQ several times during August about this, e-mailed to follow up on Sept. 21 (to make sure we followed proper channels), brought it up to MDEQ Surface Water Div. Chief W. Creal directly in a face-to-face meeting on Nov. 2.  Then we brought it up again, asked for follow-up and offered to pay for further testing ourselves, not only in Lime Lake but in several other neighboring small lakes where the same situation was reported, in another face-to-face meeting on Nov. 22 w/Jackson MDEQ staff.  During late August, the same situation was reported by residents in Fisher Lake, just east of the facility (across from U.S. 127).  MDEQ inspectors came down, knowing about the situation a couple miles away on Lime Lake, but refused to take samples.

Just thought you'd like to know that there may be additional parts to this story.  You can decide for yourselves if there is any connection between what happened in Lime Lake and the dairy.

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=905e55fad267e6fa&id=905E55FAD267E6FA%211574&authkey=%21AG9WECZY_0Xv4gQ