10-13-13 death toll mounts in India cyclone (via Repost Video News)
Death toll rises after cyclone hits India.
10-13-13 death toll mounts in India cyclone (via Repost Video News)
Category: Disastrous
10-13-13 death toll mounts in India cyclone (via Repost Video News)
Salmonella
Considering how skeletal our regulatory apparatus is under “normal” conditions, this is not good news:
Over at Wired, Maryn McKenna reports on a major outbreak of the foodborne illness salmonella. So far, 278 people in 18 states have been sickened with the pathogen, which causes fever, cramps, diarrhea, and in severe cases, even death. In a press release the USDA identified the source of the outbreak as contaminated raw chicken from a producer called Foster Farms and said that the products were sold at supermarkets in Washington State, Oregon, and California. As of 11:30 AM EDT Tuesday, Foster Farms had a note up saying, “No recall is in effect. Products are safe to consume if properly handled and fully cooked.” Foster Farms’ chicken was linked to another salmonella outbreak—134 illnesses in 13 states—in July, the CDC reported.
Usually when there’s an outbreak of this scale, the CDC mobilizes to pinpoint the source of the contaminated food. However, McKenna explains that the shutdown “means that the lab work and molecular detection that can link far-apart cases and define the size and seriousness of outbreaks are not happening.” Individual states can use their own resources to trace the outbreak, but so far it looks like they won’t be able to use the federal government’s databases.
Flashback
I was just looking through some of the earliest stories I wrote over at C&L about Fukushima, and I’d forgotten just how vicious the attacks were from many of the commenters. They said I was hysterical, exaggerating and outright lying. Their main beef seemed to be that I didn’t have an engineering degree, so nothing I said could possibly be right. (Wish I had a dollar for every one of those commenters!)
It’s true that I don’t have an engineering degree, but I do have a good nose for the smell of official bullshit.
A whole new ball game when it comes to wildfires
http://youtu.be/mlrqpqEIuPg
Firefighters say they’ve never seen fires burn the way they did in 2013.
That sentiment has been heard before. In 1988, 2000 and 2007, fires grew in size and ferocity across the American West, exceeding the experience and knowledge of firefighters and scientists alike.
This year, fire returned to places that had burned before: Colorado Springs, Pine, Ketchum, Yellowstone and Yosemite. The fires of 2013 burned through many of our previous ideas about how we can live with fire.
What’s different this time? Science is connecting hotter, bigger fires and a longer, more intense fire season with changes in the climate.
–Long before fire season, the mountains are undergoing change. Winters are warmer, meaning smaller snowpacks that melt sooner. That means runoff ends earlier and the forests dry out earlier; fire season starts earlier and lasts longer. When summer arrives, hotter, drier Julys get fires started earlier and bigger. In August and September, low humidity, wind and other unstable atmospheric conditions create erratic burning that overwhelms the best prevention and firefighting tactics.
–During fire season, fire bosses are changing tactics. They might pull their crews out of the way of extreme fires and evacuate communities more promptly. The bosses work to “herd” fires into previously burned areas, making them easier and cheaper to fight. Communities can clear brush and other fuels away from homes, providing firefighters with “defensible space.” But those measures have to be regularly renewed. In some rural residential areas, topography and fuel still make them nearly indefensible, as the Fall Creek area west of Pine found this summer. And once homes in the “urban interface” do start burning, wildland firefighters have to adopt urban tactics.
Continue reading “A whole new ball game when it comes to wildfires”
Oh look, highly radioactive water from fracking!
See, this is why I love Gov. Corbett! Isn’t this great news?
In the state of Pennsylvania, home to the lucrative Marcellus Shale formation, 74 facilities treat wastewater from the process of hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”) for natural gas and release it into streams. There’s no national set of standards that guides this treatment process—the EPA notes that the Clean Water Act’s guidelines were developed before fracking even existed, and that many of the processing plants “are not properly equipped to treat this type of wastewater”—and scientists have conducted relatively little assessment of the wastewater to ensure it’s safe after being treated.
Recently, a group of Duke University scientists decided to do some testing. They contacted the owners of one treatment plant, the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility on Blacklick Creek in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, but, “when we tried to work with them, it was very difficult getting ahold of the right person,” says Avner Vengosh, an Earth scientist from Duke. “Eventually, we just went and tested water right from a public area downstream.”
Their analyses, made on water samples collected repeatedly over the course of two years, were even more concerning than we’d feared. As published today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, they found high concentrations of of the element radium, a highly radioactive substance. The concentrations were roughly 200 times higher than background levels. In addition, amounts of chloride and bromide in the water were two to ten times greater than normal.
“Even if, today, you completely stopped disposal of the wastewater,” Vengosh says, there’s enough contamination built up that”you’d still end up with a place that the U.S. would consider a radioactive waste site.”
Oops
The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy’s Road.
Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. “The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52,” Jones concludes.
The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.
“The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy,” he said. “We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here’s one that very nearly did.”
Fun with Fukushima
So the Japanese PM has ordered TEPCO to close all of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima and concentrate on cleaning up the radioactive water:
Japanese authorities ignored US calls to contain contaminated water at the stricken Fukushima power plant in 2008, officials told media. The revelation comes as the Japanese battle to stem radioactive water leaks flooding into the sea from the facility.
Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) estimates that 300 metric tons of groundwater has mixed with radioactive material at the site and is steadily flowing out to sea. Water needs to be constantly pumped over the stricken reactors at the Fukushima site to prevent them from overheating.
Four hundred metric tons of groundwater runs into the nuclear facility from higher ground every day, TEPCO estimates. Japanese authorities have so far been unable to stem the flow, although it turns out they were aware of the threat groundwater posed back in 2011 in the wake of the tsunami that decimated the facility.
Two officials dealing with the cleanup operation told Reuters that TEPCO had ignored warnings from US experts over the need to control contaminated water at the site. A plan to construct a barrier to prevent the groundwater from entering Fukushima was proposed as early as April 2011.
“It was obvious to us that there was great deal of groundwater intrusion into the plant, and we shared that with the Japanese government,” said Charles Casto, a representative of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) who was based in Tokyo from March 2011 to early 2012.
TEPCO chose to disregard the idea because the potential cost of constructing the barrier would have had an impact on investor confidence. A TEPCO memo obtained by Reuters that was sent to Japanese officials in June 2011 said the expense of constructing a barrier would fuel fears of imminent bankruptcy.
Continue reading “Fun with Fukushima”
Colorado House Republicans support flood relief
Unanimously voted against Sandy aid!
As historic floods of “biblical” proportions continue to ravage Colorado, President Obama signed an emergency declaration on Sunday — a move that was encouraged by abipartisan letter last week from the state’s nine-member Congressional delegation. But the four Republican Congressmen who are now supporting disaster relief for their own state were among those voting earlier this year against the emergency aid funding for Superstorm Sandy victims on the East Coast.
Colorado Republican Reps. Mike Coffman, Cory Gardner, Doug Lamborn, and Scott Tipton joined their delegation in asking the president to send emergency funds to help their constituents combat and recover from the more than 14 inches of rain that have flooded Colorado this month.
All four also signed onto a July 10, 2013 letter from the entire delegation to President Obama asking him for a federal major disaster declaration for summer wildfires. Their request noted that such a declaration would “provide urgently needed resources and support to the state, communities, and especially the families who have been uprooted by these wildfires.”
But back in January, a vote in the House of Representatives provided $50 billionin Sandy relief, yet among those voting against the bill were Coffman, Gardner, Lamborn, and Tipton. Their opposition stemmed, in part, because they weunable to steer some of the Sandy aid to their own state. Though he had himself sought disaster aid after damages from Colorado wildfires in June 2012, Lamborn even voted against a smaller $9 billion emergency Sandy relief bill 11 days earlier.
Though scientists have noted that climate is a key cause of these Colorado floods, Coffman, Gardner, Lamborn, and Tipton are all deniers of climate science.
Link between oil spill exposure and toxicity
Huh. And yet, it’s been mansplained to me that the dispersants were no more risky than using dish detergent!
A new study reports that workers exposed to crude oil and dispersants used during the Gulf oil spill cleanup display significantly altered blood profiles, liver enzymes, and somatic symptoms compared to an unexposed control group. Investigators found that platelet counts were significantly decreased in the exposed group, while both hemoglobin and hematocrit levels were notably increased. Their findings, reported in The American Journal of Medicine, suggest that oil spill cleanup workers are at risk for developing hepatic or blood-related disorders.
Costa Concordia pulled up right…
After a collision with a reef near Giglio Island, Italy; in January 2012, the luxury cruise ship, Costa Concordia, has been up righted, an engineering miracle…
GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy — Engineers declared success on Tuesday as the Costa Concordia cruise ship was pulled completely upright during an unprecedented, 19-hour operation to wrench it from its side where it capsized last year off Tuscany.
According to weather.com meteorologist Alan Raymond, the wenching process was delayed several hours due to choppy seas and frequent lightning strikes, caused by storms over Giglio Island.
The remarkable project now allows for a renewed search for the two bodies that were never recovered from the 32 dead, and for the ship to eventually be towed away.
The Concordia’s submerged side suffered significant damage during the 20 months it bore the weight of the Concordia on the jagged reef, and the daylong operation to right it stressed that flank as well. Exterior balconies were mangled and entire sections looked warped, though officials said the damage probably looks worse than it really is.
Not an easy task…
Shortly after 4 a.m., a foghorn wailed on Giglio Island and the head of Italy’s Civil Protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, announced that the ship had reached vertical and that the operation to rotate it — known in nautical terms as parbuckling — was complete.
“We completed the parbuckling operation a few minutes ago the way we thought it would happen and the way we hoped it would happen,” said Franco Porcellacchia, project manager for the Concordia’s owner, Costa Crociere SpA.
“A perfect operation, I must say” with no environmental spill detected so far, he said…
Parbuckling is a standard operation to right capsized ships. But never before had it been used on such a huge cruise liner.
The ship is expected to be floated away from Giglio in the spring and turned into scrap.
Here’s a neat time lapse of the parbuckling…
http://youtu.be/_91A9FzxQ78