And lots of nuclear news there is after the jump, including problems in reactor complexes in California and Britain.
We begin with an apocalyptic warning from The Physics arXiv Blog:
Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin, Says Black Swan Author
Experts have severely underestimated the risks of genetically modified food, says a group of researchers lead by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In 2012, for example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science declared that genetically modified crops pose no greater risk than the same foods made from crops modified by conventional plant breeding techniques.
Today, Nassim Nicholas Taleb at New York University and a few pals say that this kind of thinking vastly underestimates the threat posed by genetically modified organisms. “Genetically modified organisms represent a public risk of global harm,” they say. Consequently, this risk should be treated differently from those that only have the potential for local harm. “The precautionary principle should be used to prescribe severe of limits on genetically modified organisms,” they conclude.
Taleb and co begin by making a clear distinction between risks with consequences that are local and those with consequences that have the potential to cause global ruin. When global harm is possible, an action must be avoided unless there is scientific near-certainty that it is safe. This approach is known as the precautionary principle.
Other global ag woes from the Thomson Reuters Foundation:
Climate change a “threat multiplier” for farming-dependent states-analysis
Climate change and food insecurity are “threat multipliers”, and 32 countries dependent on farming face an “extreme risk” of conflict or civil unrest in the next 30 years, a global analytics firm said on Wednesday.
Food shortages and rising prices have the potential to worsen political, ethnic, class and religious tensions, the risk advisory firm Maplecroft reported in its annual “Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas (CCERA)”.
Analysts noted that several nations’ military leaders are ahead of their governments in focusing on such risks.
In Nigeria, for instance, the rise of the Muslim insurgency Boko Haram may be linked to population movements caused by a west African drought a decade ago, the UK-based company said.
Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Nigeria, Chad, Haiti, Ethiopia, Philippines, Central African Republic and Eritrea face the highest level of risk, the Maplecroft report said.
And controversy ensues, via Science:
A disagreement over climate-conflict link heats up
A debate among scientists over climate change and conflict has turned ugly. At issue is the question of whether the hotter temperatures and chaotic weather produced by climate change are causing higher rates of violence. A new analysis refutes earlier research that found a link, and the two lead researchers are exchanging some pointed remarks.
Last year, a team of U.S. researchers reported a robust connection between climate and violence in Science. But in a critique published online yesterday in Climatic Change, a team of mostly European researchers dismissed the connection as “inconclusive.” The Science authors are hitting back, claiming that the critics are fudging the statistics and even manipulating their figures. The new analysis “is entirely based on surprisingly bold misrepresentations of our article, the literature, basic statistics, and their own findings,” says Solomon Hsiang, the lead author of the Science paper and an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Numerous past studies have found a correlation between heat waves and violence, manifesting as conflicts between individuals and between groups. Demonstrating a direct connection between climate change and violence on a global scale, however, is tricky. It requires a meta-analysis of hundreds of already published studies that have slightly different techniques and measurement scales. Hsiang’s team performed just such a meta-analysis and grabbed headlines with their findings that a changing climate appeared to be amping up conflict.
Still more ag woes from Al Jazeera America:
Salt-ruined farmland costs billions of dollars every year, study finds
Irrigation methods that fail to employ proper drainage leads to degradation of 5,000 acres a day
Salt residue from soil irrigation degrades around 5,000 acres of farmland every day at a global annual cost of $27 billion dollars in lost arable revenues, according to a study released Tuesday.
Using cheap, short-sighted ways to water land without adequate drainage methods are the chief reason behind the land spoilage, according to the report by the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water (UNU-INWEH). The total area being affected, the report notes, has shot up over the last two decades — from 111 million acres in 1991 to 160 million in 2013, representing some 20 percent of the world’s irrigated lands.
Researchers warn that big investment is necessary to reverse the trend.
The authors of the study said the most vulnerable parts of the world are arid regions in developing countries, where pressure to increase crop yields in the short term may lead governments to forgo installing or maintaining the simple, but costly, drainage systems necessary to keep salt away from the soil.
Water woes on the Subcontinent from the Hindu:
Cut water, power supply to industries polluting Ganga: SC
Observing that its “last hope” rests on the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the Supreme Court referred to it the responsibility to monitor and inspect industrial units along the Ganga and even cut off water and power connections if the units are found to be polluting the river.
A three-judge Bench led by Justice T.S. Thakur said official apathy and “failure at various levels” in both the State and the Central Pollution Control Board had led to the Ganga dying at the hands of “highly” and “grossly” polluting units, which flushed their untreated effluents into the river without any checks.
The inaction had continued even after numerous orders were passed by the Supreme Court directing the authorities to protect the river since 1980s, when a PIL was filed before the court by lawyer M.C. Mehta highlighting the alarming state of the river and its depletion owing to pollution.
Notable buzz from Al Jazeera America:
Tiny bugs could be the key to saving honeybee populations
Freshman student’s research on phages being touted as breakthrough against American foulbrood, a scourge of beekeepers
Tiny bacteria devouring viruses could hold the key to saving the U.S. honeybee population from a devastating disease that is destroying hives, according to research from a college freshman that is already yielding results.
American foulbrood, a bacterial infection that attacks bee larvae, has wiped out entire colonies and contributed significantly to worldwide agricultural losses. In order to prevent a larger infestation, affected hives are often burned to the ground to prevent further spread.
But a study into the use of bacteriophages — tiny viruses that infect and consume bacteria known as phages — to fight the bee disease by Bryan Merrill, a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), has raised hopes of a natural remedy to the bee blight. Merrill recently published his findings in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Genomics.
A beekeeper, Merrill is now working to identify the perfect phage for the job. So far, he has identified five phage candidates for honeybee treatment, a release from BYU said.
Hogging profiteers from MintPress News:
Density Of Industrial Hog Farms In North Carolina Prompts Civil Rights Investigation
People living near North Carolina’s large-scale hog farms have complained for decades about health and quality-of-life issues, with communities of color reportedly disproportionately affected. The EPA is now considering whether to launch a full investigation.
U.S. regulators are currently looking into whether the extraordinarily high density of industrial hog farms in eastern North Carolina is having a disproportionate negative impact on minority communities, as alleged in a new complaint.
In the coming days, the Environmental Protection Agency will make an initial decision on whether the filing satisfies basic administrative requirements. If EPA officials find that it does, the agency will then begin a full investigation into whether the North Carolina permitting process is in effect discriminating against minority communities in the state’s eastern regions.
While local frustration around this situation is longstanding, the complaint marks the first time that the issue has been appealed to the federal government on civil rights grounds.
“I was at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the early 1990s, and people from eastern North Carolina were telling us these swine facilities were destroying their lives – that they could no longer sit on their porch and that this was a civil rights issue,” Marianne Engelman Lado, the lead attorney on the complaint, told MintPress News.
The Ecologist covers an all-too-familiar crisis:
Ghana’s farmers battle ‘Monsanto law’ to retain seed freedom
Ghana’s government is desperate to pass a Plant Breeders Bill that would remove farmers’ ancient ‘seed freedom’ to grow, retain, breed and develop crop varieties – while giving corporate breeders a blanket exemption from seed regulations. Now the farmers are fighting back.
Farmers in Ghana are on the frontlines of a battle. The national parliament has just returned from its summer break – and the first item on their legislative agenda is the government’s controversial Plant Breeders Bill.
The proposed legislation contains rules that would restrict farmers from an age-old practice: freely saving, swapping and breeding seeds they rely on for their own subsistence, and to feed the country.
Under the laws, farmers that use seed varieties claimed under new intellectual property rights by individuals and companies anywhere in the world risk hefty fines or even imprisonment.
According to the Ghanaian government and its corporate backers, the new laws would incentivise the development of new seed varieties and ensure crops are safe and saleable.
From the New York Times, and dam straight!:
Reversing Course on Beavers
Once routinely trapped and shot as varmints, their dams obliterated by dynamite and bulldozers, beavers are getting new respect these days. Across the West, they are being welcomed into the landscape as a defense against the withering effects of a warmer and drier climate.
Beaver dams, it turns out, have beneficial effects that can’t easily be replicated in other ways. They raise the water table alongside a stream, aiding the growth of trees and plants that stabilize the banks and prevent erosion. They improve fish and wildlife habitat and promote new, rich soil.
And perhaps most important in the West, beaver dams do what all dams do: hold back water that would otherwise drain away.
From CBC News, scum of the sea:
BP spill left big oily ‘bathtub ring’ on seafloor
BP says researchers failed to identify source of oil
The BP oil spill left an oily “bathtub ring” on the sea floor that’s about the size of U.S. State of Rhode Island or a little larger than Canada’s Manitoulin Island, new research shows.
The study by David Valentine, the chief scientist on the federal damage assessment research ships, estimates that about 37 million litres (10 million gallons) of oil coagulated on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico around the damaged Deepwater Horizons oil rig.
Valentine, a geochemistry professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, said the spill from the Macondo well left other splotches containing even more oil. He said it is obvious where the oil is from, even though there were no chemical signature tests because over time the oil has degraded.
After the jump, the Great Barrier Reef in peril — and banksters are the solution?, killer amphibians proliferate, Chinese ports polluted, another source of pollution profiteering, while the Russians stake a huge Arctic oil claim, Japanese schools in tsunami peril, and on to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, including a visit by decommissioning experts, a nuclear dump site protest, a nuclear plant in a volcanic zone wins a restart vote while another complex gets a seismic green light, fire at yet another reactor complex, major violations at Japan’s fast breeder reactor, Taiwan mulls nuke checks on Japanese food imports, plus allegations of major problems at nuke plants in California and Old Blighty. . .
From BBC News, Reefer Madness:
Protection plan ‘will not save Great Barrier Reef’
Australia’s Academy of Science says an Australian government draft plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef will not prevent its decline.
The group said the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan failed to address key pressures on the reef including climate change and coastal development.
Much bolder action was needed, said Academy Fellow Professor Terry Hughes.
“The science is clear, the reef is degraded and its condition is worsening,” said Prof Hughes.
And banksters are the solution? From the Guardian:
US banks vow not to fund Great Barrier Reef coal port, say activists
Big lenders have closed off finance to Abbot’s Point, says US environment group Rainforest Action Network
US banking giants Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase have become the latest big financiers to rule out funding a major coal port expansion in Queensland, environmentalists say.
Rainforest Action Network, a US environment group, said it had received written commitments from each of the banks to not back the development of the Abbot Point port, which is adjacent to world heritage site the Great Barrier Reef.
The project is being overseen by Indian mining giant Adani, which has government approval to build a new port terminal in order to export coal it will extract in central Queensland, taken to the port via rail.
Several avenues of finance have already been shut off to the $16.5bn project. Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays all ruled out funding the development, before the US banks’ refusal.
While killer amphibians proliferate, via the Guardian:
Cane toads scourge set to worsen as NT government refuses to renew funding
Wet season expected to bring ‘onslaught’ of amphibian invaders after conservation group stripped of funds to control toads
Attempts to slow the advance of devastating cane toad populations have faced a setback due to a refusal by the Northern Territory government to renew funding. This has meant toad-busting measures could not be carried out ahead of the approaching wet season.
Darwin’s Frogwatch organisation has accused the Country Liberal party (CLP) government of downplaying anything to do with conservation, even if it means condemning the city and its surrounds to an “onslaught” of amphibian invaders.
Frogwatch focuses their manual efforts to control cane toads around Darwin during the dry season when populations are smaller and concentrated around the reduced number of water sites. But since the loss of future funding it has had to rely on volunteers and has not been able to control the numbers ahead of the peak breeding time.
Polluted ports from South China Morning Post:
US report says China’s war on pollution is being lost at ports
Report says Beijing’s war on pollution has not extended to shipping sector
China is waging war on pollution, closing factories and targeting dirty coal-fired power plants, but its ports are pumping out pollution virtually unchecked, according to a report by a US environmental group.
The thousands of ships that plied China’s waters were delivering a toxic cocktail of pollution, with just one ship capable of emitting the same pollution as half a million trucks each day, the report by the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) said.
“China is paying a high price for pollution associated with shipping,” it said, citing studies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
“An estimated 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010 were caused by ambient air pollution, and shipping is a significant source of these air-pollution and health problems.”
Another source of pollution profiteering from CCTV:
Smog mask couture at China fashion week
Who says you can’t live in a smoggy city and look good too? Smog masks appeared to be a running theme this year during China’s fashion week.
Models on the catwalk boasted an impressive array of masks in different styles and colours, from the #normcore plain white, to cyberpunk chic.
It’s not the first fashion week that Chinese designers have used face masks as a key accessory. This year’s Paris fashion week also saw a number of models traipse the catwalk in jewel and bead studded pollution masks.
While the Russians stake a huge Arctic oil claim, via RT:
1.2 million sq.km, 5 billion tons of fuel: Russia to apply for Artic shelf expansion
Russia will address the UN on the expansion of its Arctic shelf next spring. If successful the move would see the country adding an area of 1.2 million sq. kilometers in the Arctic Ocean, holding 5 billion tons of standard fuel, to its territory.
A field investigation to make such an appeal possible has been successfully completed in the area, Sergey Donskoy, the country’s natural resources minister, said.
The results of the new research will allow for updating Russia’s initial application, which the country filed to the United Nations in 2001. Russia intends to add another 1.2 million square kilometers of territory in the Arctic ocean to its continental shelf.
Schools in peril from Jiji Press:
2,860 Public Schools in Japan at Risk from Massive Tsunami
As many as 2,860 public schools in Japan are at risk of being affected by a tsunami of a magnitude estimated as possible, a government survey revealed Tuesday.
They included 1,442 elementary schools and 671 junior high schools, according to the survey conducted by the education ministry in May.
The survey looked at how many schools are located within areas that a massive tsunami would likely reach, based on estimates by the central and local governments.
In the March 2011 earthquake, a huge tsunami hit 131 schools in the northeastern Japan prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. The ministry plans to urge public schools to take safety measures soon.
On to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, starting with a visit by demolition experts, via NHK WORLD:
Nuclear scrapping experts see Fukushima plant
Four nuclear experts from abroad have inspected decommissioning efforts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
They are Mike Weightman — a former chief of Britain’s Office for Nuclear Regulation — and other specialists on scrapping efforts and treating water contaminated with radioactive substances.
They visited the stricken plant on Wednesday as special committee members of the government-backed Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation.
A protest from NHK WORLD:
Town submits petition opposing waste facility
Residents of Shioya Town, Tochigi Prefecture, have petitioned the Environment Ministry to drop a site in their town from consideration to host a facility for storing radioactive waste.
The site in Shioya, north of Tokyo, is one of five the government wants to build permanent storage facilities on for designated waste. The waste is material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that has radiation levels exceeding 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.
The mayor of Shioya and the leader of a group of residents handed their petition to State Minister of the Environment Yasuhiro Ozato at the ministry in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Shioya has a population of about 12,000. But the petition was signed by about 173,000 people from across Japan.
Another nuclear plant wins a restart vote, from the Japan Times:
Local government gives OK to restart Sendai nuclear plant in Kagoshima Prefecture
The municipal assembly in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, voted Tuesday to approve the restart of the local nuclear power station, another step forward in the fraught process of reviving an industry left idled by the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe.
The city of 100,000 that hosts the two-reactor Sendai plant operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co. has long relied on the facility for government subsidies and jobs.
In September, the plant became the first nuclear facility to meet beefed-up post-Fukushima safety requirements.
Nineteen of the 26 assembly members voted in favor of restarting the plant, while four members voted against and three abstained, an assembly member said.
More from RT:
Japan to reopen 1st nuclear plant after Fukushima disaster – despite volcano risks
A survey conducted by the local Minami-Nippon Shimbun newspaper earlier this year said that overall, 60 percent of those in the region were in favor of Sendai staying shut. In Ichikikushikino, a 30,000-strong community just 5 kilometers away, more than half of the population signed a petition opposing the restart. Fewer than half of the major businesses in the region reported that they backed a reopening, despite potential economic benefits.
Regional governor Yuichiro Ito has waved away the objections, insisting that only the city in which the plant is located is entitled to make the decision.
While most fears have centered around a lack of transparency and inadequate evacuation plans, Sendai is also located near the volcanically active Kirishima mountain range. Mount Ioyama, located just 65 kilometers away from the plant, has been experiencing tremors in recent weeks, prompting the Meteorological Agency to issue a warning. The government’s nuclear agency has dismissed volcanic risks over Sendai’s lifetime as “negligible,” however.
While another complex gets a seismic green light, via NHK WORLD:
Regulator accepts nuclear plant quake projection
The operator of the idled Ohi nuclear power plant in central Japan may be a step closer to its goal of restarting 2 reactors.
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority on Wednesday accepted its revised assessment of the strength of the biggest quake that could possibly strike the plant.
Kansai Electric Power Company had initially devised a scenario with a 700-gal maximum for the 2 Ohi reactors it wants to bring back online. The gal is used to measure ground acceleration in earthquakes. But the NRA rejected the figure as too optimistic.
On Wednesday, the NRA agreed to accept in principle the operator’s revision to 856 gals. The revised figure assumes simultaneous movement along 3 fault lines near the plant as well as shallower quakes that could shake the ground even more vigorously.
A fire at yet another reactor complex from NHK WORLD:
Small fire at Genkai nuclear power plant
A small electrical fire broke out in an auxiliary building at the Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture, western Japan. Workers used extinguishers to immediately put it out.
Kyushu Electric Power Company reported that the fire was handled properly and there was no leak of radioactive materials.
Officials say that smoke from an electrical breaker was detected at around 9:35 AM on Tuesday, in a building near the No.3 and 4 reactors. The fire started in a room that contains devices used to measure radioactive levels of wastewater.
Violations yet again, via NHK WORLD:
New safety breaches at prototype Monju reactor
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority says the operator of the prototype fast breeder reactor Monju violated safety regulations by failing to repair dozens of surveillance cameras.
The facility in Tsuruga, central Japan, has been idle since a sodium leak accident in 1995. Liquid sodium was used to cool the experimental reactor.
In May last year, the NRA ordered the operator, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, to halt preparations for resuming a test run after about 14,000 pieces of equipment were found to have gone uninspected.
Taiwan mulls nuke checks on Japanese food imports, from Kyodo News:
Taiwan eyes origin label, radiation check for foods from Japan
Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration has announced that it is planning to introduce regulations requiring foods imported from Japan to carry prefecture-specific labels of origin and also that some items such as baby food and dairy products will need to undergo radiation checks by Japanese authorities.
The drafted regulations, posted Tuesday, are expected to take effect as early as next year if no objections are filed within the 60-day window starting Wednesday.
After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Taiwan has banned food imports from five of Japan’s 47 prefectures — Fukushima and nearby Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi and Chiba — and has been conducting radiation checks on imported foods. Critics have said these measures are insufficient in maintaining food safety.
And we close with stories of major nuclear plant problems elsehwere, starting in California with the San Francisco Chronicle:
Lawsuit: Quake standards altered at California nuclear plant
Federal regulators secretly and illegally revised the license for California’s last nuclear power facility — PG&E’s Diablo Canyon — to mask the aging plant’s vulnerability to earthquakes, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by environmentalists.
The suit claims that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. last year changed a key element of the plant’s license related to seismic safety without allowing public input as required by law — or even notifying the public at all. The changes concern the strength of earthquakes that the plant, perched on a stretch of the Central California coast riddled with fault lines, can withstand.
And concluding in Old Bighted with the Guardian:
Photographs of Sellafield nuclear plant prompt fears over radioactive risk
Nuclear safety expert claims there is ‘significant risk’ due to poor condition of storage ponds containing highly radioactive fuel rods
Previously unseen pictures of two storage ponds containing hundreds of highly radioactive fuel rods at the Sellafield nuclear plant show cracked concrete, seagulls bathing in the water and weeds growing around derelict machinery. But a spokesman for owners Sellafield Ltd said the 60-year-old ponds will not be cleaned up for decades, despite concern that they are in a dangerous state and could cause a large release of radioactive material if they are allowed to deteriorate further.
“The concrete is in dreadful condition, degraded and fractured, and if the ponds drain, the Magnox fuel will ignite and that would lead to a massive release of radioactive material,” nuclear safety expert John Large told the Ecologist magazine. “I am very disturbed at the run-down condition of the structures and support services. In my opinion there is a significant risk that the system could fail.
“It’s like an concrete dock full of water. If you got a breach of the wall by accident or by terrorist attack, the Magnox fuel would burn. I would say there’s many hundreds of tonnes in there. It could give rise to a very big radioactive release. It’s not for me to make comparisons with Chernobyl or Fukushima, but it could certainly cause serious contamination over a wide area and for a very long time.”
