RoguePundit

An Almond Glut

Though the final numbers aren't out yet, there's little doubt that California has had another record almond harvest.  The numbers are up for several reasons.  Over the last decade, almond acreage has risen by 43 percent and the number of trees per acre has risen by 11 percent.  When it comes to harvest per acre, 1998 was a bad year, so I'll average 1997 and 1999, both of which set records at the time.  Using the latest estimate, this year's harvest per acre will be 32 percent higher.         

Put all that together, and the tonnage harvested this year is 88 percent higher than 1997/1999.  Heck, it's 34 percent higher than the harvest just two years ago, which at the time was a record.  Pollination hasn't proven to be an issue, but too much production is now another story.

Tejon Ranch Co., the Lebec ranching and real estate development company, said in a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it received $1.78 per pound for almonds in September. That’s down from a peak of $3.80 in the last three years.

Today, almonds are going for $1 to $1.25 a pound, said Mike Young, an almond grower and president of the Kern County Farm Bureau.

In the SEC report, Tejon Ranch warned investors it is keeping an eye out for overproduction.

Oh, and the nation should also watch out for a housing bubble. 

In the meantime, “We have the extra cost of warehousing them every month, which is another 15 cents a pound that’s going to come off the price,” Young said.

Market weakness comes at a time when many almond growers are already smarting from a mandatory pasteurization rule that took effect in California last year.

It requires raw almonds to be fumigated or heated before they can be sold to American consumers. Foreign growers have no such obligation, which some domestic producers argue puts them at a disadvantage. Critics have asked courts to overturn the mandate.

The article suspiciously failed to mention that the Almond Board of California pushed for the requirement because of two salmonella outbreaks related to raw almonds that threatened sales (previous blogs here and here).  About 95 percent of almonds sold were already cooked in some way: roasted, blanched, baked, etc.  Now the raw foodies have to buy imports, which of course aren't necessarily any safer than domestic raw almonds were last year.  Organic producers have been hit the hardest.

California produces about 80 percent of the world's almonds.  If necessary, the nuts should keep for a year or so.

In the Nose of the Beholder

Luleå, a university town of about 45,000 in northern Sweden, was home to Europe's first indoor shopping mall way back in 1955.  There's a practical reason for that...the average high temperature there is below freezing five months of the year.  However, the Lush store that opened there two years ago is in a pedestrian shopping area in the city center.  When weather permits, Lush opens its doors to welcome shoppers...and engage in some scent-emitting advertising.  That's a standard marketing strategy for the chain.  But, not everyone appreciates the olfactory assault. 

The Swedish Asthma and Allergy Association has argued that the scents emanating from the Luleå branch of the international chain Lush are a health hazard and the store should be ordered to close its doors.

"Our demand is very simple. We simply want the store to be told to close its doors so that people do not get sick and feel queasy," said the association's chairperson Birgitta Alstergren to local newspaper Norrländska Socialdemokraten (NSD).

...

The association has submitted two letters to the Luleå county health and environmental protection committee on the matter. The committee has twice rejected the association's demands, satisfied that having installed a new ventilation system, Lush has met its obligations.

But the association has decided to appeal the committee's decision to the country administrative board.

Lush Cosmetics and its owner claim to be very environmentally conscious.  I blogged recently about some unflattering publicity they received for supporting radical causes.  Then as now, they're unapologetic for their actions.

The store's manager Lena Hallebjörk told NSD that she can't understand why Lush is being singled out.

"Of course I understand that there are people who have problems with strong scents. But we use only natural ingredients in our products and people who are sensitive are surely more affected by all the people who smoke along Storgatan and they should therefore demand restrictions against them."

Just because something smells good doesn't mean it's less harmful than something that doesn't.  Just because something is natural doesn't mean that it's less harmful than something which is synthetic.  And of course there's also the issue of dosage.  

Maybe Swedes notice the smells of Lush more because they have the lowest smoking rate in Europe...though it's still higher than ours.   

Organic Fraud

Organic produce is generally more expensive than its conventional counterparts because the farmers choose not to use certain products.  The same goes for organic fertilizers...at least the ones by reputable manufacturers.

For up to seven years, California Liquid Fertilizer sold what seemed to be an organic farmer's dream, brewed from fish and chicken feathers.

The company's fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.

But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.

A huge number of organic consumers have been defrauded, paying premium prices for produce which wasn't actually organic.  The farmers, retailers, and wholesalers were also defrauded, but it may have made them money...the profit margins are typically higher on organic products. 

A whistle blower filed a complaint in June 2004, claiming that California Liquid Fertilizer had been spiking its fertilizer that way for five years.  It took the state a year to start an investigation.  The inspector had testing done on multiple samples of Biolizer XN--the company's leading product--and found the presence of ammonium sulfate.  He even tracked down a couple of rail tank cars which were to deliver ammonium sulfate to California Liquid Fertilizer.  Finally...

In January 2007, the agriculture department agreed to a settlement with Townsley [then president of California Liquid Fertilizer] that removed his product from the market but kept the reasons obscure. The violation was recorded as "improper labeling." In a letter to the Eugene, Ore.-based nonprofit Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), which had approved the product for use on organic farms, Townsley said he was pulling the product because of an inadvertent chemical substitution.

The outcome of the case surprised Dave DeCou, the Oregon institute's executive director. State investigators had contacted him for information about Biolizer.

"I was expecting (the state) to come out with some kind of indictment," he said. "My sense was that they didn't want to have another dirty mark on California agriculture.

...

The Organic Materials Review Institute does investigate complaints and now gives special scrutiny to fertilizers, according to spokesman Miguel Guerrero. But each year the organization routinely inspects only about a dozen of the 570 companies whose products it certifies. If it finds a violation, the institute can withdraw certification, but it lacks the authority to pursue stiffer penalties.

OMRI is mostly a paper tiger...it's federally authorized to evaluate products, but it's not an organic certifier.  California Liquid Fertilizer lied on its application and got away with it.  "Another dirty mark" refers to the September 2006 E. coli outbreak related to spinach from the Salinas Valley.     

Meanwhile through no fault of their own, a bunch of organic farmers have lost their certifications, right?  After all, the fields can't have any prohibited substances applied during the three years preceding a harvest for it to be certified organic.  However...

State officials knew some of California's largest organic farms had been using the fertilizer, the documents show, but they kept their findings confidential until nearly a year and a half after it was removed from the market. No farms lost their organic certification.

The nonprofit California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), which certifies about 80 percent of the state's organic acreage, decided not to penalize farms that had used the product on the grounds that farmers did not know they were using an unapproved chemical.

The state could have pursued harsher penalties against California Liquid Fertilizer, including violation of the California's organic product law, which carries fines of up to $5,000, according to agriculture department spokesman Steve Lyle. It also could have referred the case to the attorney general's office for civil action as an unfair business practice.

"We did not pursue those courses of action because our priority was to remove the product from the market," Lyle said. "More process would have delayed that." The investigation took as long as it did, he said, because the case was complex.

About 60 percent of the nation's organic produce comes from California, and CCOF certifies about 80 percent of California's organic acreage.  Earlier this year, the CCOF proudly announced that it had topped 500,000 acres in its certification program, with about half of that being field acreage.  But, it's obvious that from a customer perspective, their certification isn't worth spit. 

And, the state's lax attitude isn't much of a deterrent.

The trouble has continued. In November 2007, the distributor of another organic liquid fertilizer, representing about 5 percent of the market, pulled its product in the middle of another state investigation. Rumors in the industry point to another major disclosure as soon as this month.

What percentage of the organic produce coming out of California is actually organic?  Same question for the organic products that include ingredients from California?  If I was an organic producer in another state, I'd be highlighting California's problems and explaining why my products could be trusted...at least if I knew I could stand up to similar scrutiny. 

And what's happened to California Liquid Fertilizer and its leadership?

Though the state forced California Liquid Fertilizer to pull its leading product, [then president] Townsley stayed in business at the Gonzales plant. In January 2008, the factory was sold to Converted Organics Inc., a publicly traded fertilizer maker headquartered in Boston. Townsley is now a technology officer for Converted Organics. His base salary is $200,000 a year.

Note that there are now several Biolizer fertilizers by Converted Organics on the OMRI list of approved products.  

Kudos to the Sacramento Bee for digging into this story, including filing a Public Records Act request. 

Random Nature #197

25:  Manganese--which is unrelated to magnesium--is not one of our planet's better-known metals.  Yet, it's only behind iron, aluminum, and copper when it comes the amount that man uses.  Manganese itself is hard, brittle, and rusts easily.  But as an alloy, it makes steel harder without becoming more brittle and inhibits rusting.  The steel industry consumes almost 90 percent of the world's manganese production. 

Manganese (Mn) is a key component in steel and iron production and also plays an important role in stainless steel and aluminum alloys. It is the glue that binds, hardens and prevents iron and steel products from being too brittle.

Manganese compounds are added to gasoline to boost octane and reduce engine knocking. It is used in benzylic alcohols, rust and corrosion prevention, paint, batteries, animal feed, glass production, fertilizers and medical applications.

And, it's a trace nutrient essential to all life forms.  There really is no suitable substitute for manganese.  And when nickel is expensive, some steel manufacturers will substitute with manganese. 

Access:  For obvious reasons, the U.S. has long considered manganese a strategic metal.  Yet, we weren't blessed with much of it.  There has been no domestic production since 1985, and the recent plunge in prices hasn't helped ongoing efforts to develop any production here.   

Over three-quarters of the world's known manganese reserve base is in South Africa.  The majority of the reserves which can be economically developed are in South Africa and the Ukraine.  Before WWII, the other major sources of the metal were Brazil, India and Ghana, with the latter two being British territories until 1947 and 1957, respectively.  From this link...   

Following World War II and the beginning of the "Cold War," the Soviet Union embargoed the shipment of manganese ore to the United States, traditional sources of manganese began to be depleted, and the development of new sources became a major strategic objective of Western governments. 

During this period major new mines were developed in Brazil and Mexico by a major American steel company, in Gabon by a French/American consortium, and in Australia by an Australian steel company.  Development of the Black Rock mine in the Kalahari region of South Africa led to the discovery of other deposits in the area, and finally to the recognition of the full potential of the Kalahari district.

For years, the U.S. stockpiled manganese in case of a major supply interruption.  Finally as new production came on line, the U.S. began selling off that stockpile in the mid-'60s.  Little wonder the price of manganese dropped considerably.  Using inflation-adjusted dollars, manganese has never exceeded its peak price in 1957, even with the spike during the recent commodity bubble.  Today we get just over half of our manganese from South Africa and Gabon. 

FYI, the are lots of magnesium nodules on the deep ocean floor, but at this point it's not economical to recover them. 

Manganism:  There's been manganese mining in various parts of Mexico's State of Hidalgo since 1960.  Minera Autlán doesn't believe it's at fault for the following.

With Riojas at the head of an interdisciplinary group that included the government's National Institute of Neurology, the INSP over the past decade measured the presence of manganese in the air, water supplies, soil, homes and roads near the mines, which are both open-pit and underground operations.

In 2002 and 2003, blood and hair samples were taken from 300 adults and subjected to a variety of medical tests. In 2007, the same studies were carried out for 300 children between the ages of seven and 11. One part of the samples came from residents of areas near the mines, and the rest from residents of places similar in terms of social and economic development, but not near manganese mines.

Riojas said the findings are alarming. Sixty percent of the adults who live near the mines present neurological problems and trembling similar to the effects of Parkinson's disease. In the case of the children near the mines, it was found that their intellectual and learning abilities are 20 percent lower than the comparable group that does not live near any mines.

Manganism--poisoning from long-term exposure to manganese (end of previous blog here)--was first identified way back in 1837.  From this link...

Manganism occurs when too much manganese injures the part of the brain that controls body movements. This exposure occurs primarily through inhalation. Although some of the symptoms of manganism can be treated with drugs and therapy, the damage that occurs to the brain is permanent.

In the industrialized world, exposure is more often due to welding, though some pesticides and batteries are also culprits.  Rather than wading through the legal and scientific battles over liability, this link points towards interesting reading on the subjects.  But note that manganism and Parkinsonism, while presenting some similar symptoms, are different dysfunctions.  Manganism also shares some symptoms with Lou Gehrig's disease and multiple sclerosis.  Misdiagnosis of "welding disease" is an issue.

Regular Showers:  The EPA has a limit for manganese in drinking water.  However, it's a secondary standard, meaning it's related to things like taste, odor, and aesthetics, not health.  That makes it a recommendation, not a requirement...though most communities do treat for it if levels are high.  Note that this is rarely an issue when using surface water...unless for instance there's been a major coal ash spill.  

It's usually people living on wells who may be using water high in manganese.  Sometimes that water gives a hint by either staining or stinking.  As with iron, under certain conditions manganese can stain one's laundry--usually brown or black splotches.  And also as with iron, one of several reasons that well water can smell of rotten eggs is otherwise-harmless bacteria dining upon the manganese and producing hydrogen sulfide as a waste product.  

So, does manganese in our drinking water present a health risk?  When reading the following, bear in mind that "rodents do not provide a good experimental model for manganese neurotoxicity."

A new analysis based on animal studies suggests that showering in manganese-contaminated water for a decade or more could have permanent effects on the nervous system. The damage may occur even at levels of manganese considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

...

“Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain,” said Spangler. “The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain. Once inside these small nerves, manganese can travel throughout the brain.”

Elsner and Spangler extrapolated data from rodents to estimate human exposure to manganese during showering. They found that after 10 years of showering in manganese contaminated water, children would be exposed to doses of manganese three times higher than doses that resulted in manganese deposits in the brains of rats. Adults would be exposed to doses 50 percent higher than the rodents.

The EPA published a health advisory for manganese back in 2004.  It notes that the secondary standard for manganese is 0.05 milligrams per liter, which is well below the 0.3 milligram per liter lifetime health advisory value that "will protect against concerns of potential neurological effects." 

School Air:  USA TODAY published a report earlier this month on the air quality around our nation's schools.  From this link...

USA TODAY gathered information on about 127,800 public and private schools from the National Center for Education Statistics and more than two dozen state education agencies. While we attempted to make the list as comprehensive as possible, it may not include some recently opened buildings. It also includes some schools that have closed since 2005. We also excluded some schools whose locations we could not map.

The database lists the carcinogens and other toxic chemicals that cause most of the air quality problems.  At some schools, manganese and manganese compounds are a culprit.  It defines them as follows:

Manganese is used to produce pesticides, batteries, and other industrial products.  Although trace elements are found in food and are considered essential for good health, overexposure for long periods can cause mental and emotional disturbances and slow and clumsy body movements--a disease of the brain caused manganism.  Children are more vulnerable to such exposures than adults.  EPA says that it cannot be determined if there is a link between manganese and cancer.

I looked up the nearest high school (North Valley in Merlin) and found it was in the 78th percentile in the nation--which is better than average.  The two toxins noted were formaldehyde (72%) and acetaldehyde (12%).  The three polluters supposedly most responsible for the toxics were:

- Roseburg Forest Products Co Riddle Plywood #4 (Riddle OR)

- Timber Products Co Medford (Medford OR)

- Sierrapine Ltd. Medite Div. (Medford OR)

There's no way that those volatile organic compounds came from that far away.  But for instance, both are found in auto exhaust and cigarette smoke, and formadehyde is used in several industrial applications.  North Valley HS is near the interstate, an industrial park, the little county airport, etc.

Church Taxes

One of the reasons that official church membership in Germany is low is that it comes with a stiff tax, sometimes called a tithe.  A number of people who only occasionally attend church choose not to pay.  And then around the holidays...       

German politicians have said midnight mass on Christmas Eve should be reserved for people who have paid their church tax.

Thomas Volk, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, said many regular churchgoers were angry that they can't get a seat because of the onslaught on churches at Christmas.

How much money are we talking here?  From this link:

Taxpayers, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant or members of other tax-collecting communities, pay between 8% (in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) and 9% (in the rest of the country) of their income tax to the church or other community to which they belong.

That comprises about 70 percent of church revenues.  Returning to the original article...

Germans have the right to opt out of paying tithes--by leaving their church.

So it upsets some tithe-paying religious folk to find their normally underpopulated churches crowded with people at the holidays. The head of the business-friendly Free Democrats in the Berlin city assembly gave support to Volk's proposal, telling Bild that members should be handed tickets to guarantee them a seat during a crowded service.

Germany isn't the only European nation which has a church tax.  

- Austria:  Church tax is compulsory in Austria and Catholics can be sued by the Church for not paying it. Anyone who wants to stop paying it has to declare in writing, at their local municipal council, that they are leaving the Church. They are then crossed off the Church registers and can no longer receive the sacraments. The tax amounts to about 1% of the income.

- Denmark:  All members of the Church of Denmark pay a church tax, which varies between municipalities. The tax is generally around 1% of the taxable income.

- Finland:  Members of state churches pay a church tax of between 1% and 2.25% of income, depending on the municipality. Church taxes are integrated into the common national taxation system.

- Sweden:  Until the year 2000, Sweden had a mandatory church tax to be paid if one did belong to the Church of Sweden which had been funneling about $500 million annually to the church. Because of change in legislation, the tax was withdrawn in year 2000. However, the Swedish government has agreed to continue collecting from individual taxpayers the annual payment that has always gone to the church. But now the tax will be an optional checkoff box on the tax return. The government will allocate the money collected to Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and other faiths as well as the Lutherans, with each taxpayer directing where his or her taxes should go.

- Switzerland:  There is no official state church in Switzerland; however, all the 26 cantons (states) financially support at least one of the three traditional denominations--Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, or Protestant--with funds collected through taxation. Each canton has its own regulations regarding the relationship between church and state. In some cantons, the church tax (up to 2.3%) is voluntary but in others an individual who chooses not to contribute to church tax may formally have to leave the church. In some cantons private companies are unable to avoid payment of the church tax.

Sweden's church tax, which varies by municipality, can be as much as 2%.

Ethanoholics

The ethanol industry has been suffering from overcapacity for about 18 months now (previous blog here).  However, a number of the firms with severe financial problems prefer to blame more recent events. 

The drop in price for corn, crude oil and ethanol has resulted in reduced revenues for the ethanol industry this year, prompting three of [Iowa's] 32 ethanol plants to file for bankruptcy.

...

Ethanol profit margins have declined from 31 cents per gallon last summer to just 3 cents per gallon last month.

And that's not nearly enough to pay off the hefty investment in ethanol infrastructure.  The industry as a whole isn't helping itself by building new capacity faster than drivers are being forced to use the fuel.

Despite the troubles, U.S. capacity to make ethanol has jumped 60 percent since last year to nearly 11.2 billion gallons per year.

During his short time in the Senate, President-elect Obama was a strong supporter of ethanol.  That's not surprising...Illinois is a close second to Iowa in corn production.  Additionally, Iowa is second and Illinois third when it comes to receiving farm subsidies, and Iowa is first and Illinois third in ethanol production. 

In other words, it's not a huge surprise that Obama chose someone from Iowa to be his new Secretary of Agriculture.  Former-governor Tom Vilsack's track record clearly favors agribusiness, farm subsidies (from which he personally benefits), and ethanol.  But, it seems that our nation's ethanol producers want even more, and soon.  

The Renewable Fuels Association, the industry lobby, is seeking $1 billion in short-term credit from the government to help plants stay in business and up to $50 billion in loan guarantees to finance expansion. The lobby would also like Congress to ease the 10% limit on how much ethanol can be added to gasoline for conventional cars and trucks -- never mind the potential damage to engines from such an unproven mix.

Of course, the ethanol industry wouldn't even exist without the more than $25 billion in taxpayer handouts over the past 20 years. Congress only recently passed energy and farm bills that further greased ethanol production with a 51 cent a gallon tax credit, corn subsidies, plus increasingly stringent biofuel mandates. We were told, as usual, that profitability was just around the corner.

The enormous flow of taxpayer dollars towards ethanol have attracted a bunch of speculators to the industry.  They are the lion's share of the deep pockets who now want to be bailed-out.  And how long would it be before they're back for more?  

Meanwhile just two weeks ago, First United Ethanol, LLC opened a new 100 million gallon per year plant in Georgia. 

An Elk Meat Recall

Unfortunately, the testing for chronic wasting disease (CWD) sometimes takes longer that it does for meat from slaughtered animals to reach consumers.  In Colorado this week, some elk meat had to be recalled.

State health officials issued a warning Wednesday after learning that unsuspecting consumers bought hundreds of pounds of elk meat this month from an animal infected with chronic wasting disease.

The elk was sold Dec. 13 at a farmer's market at the Boulder County Fairgrounds.

Although research has found no risk to humans who eat infected elk, officials at the state and Boulder County health departments recommended that the meat not be consumed.

Here's what the CDC says on the subject.

...to minimize the risk for exposure to the CWD agent, hunters should consult with their state wildlife agencies to identify areas where CWD occurs and continue to follow advice provided by public health and wildlife agencies. Hunters should avoid eating meat from deer and elk that look sick or test positive for CWD. They should wear gloves when field-dressing carcasses, bone-out the meat from the animal, and minimize handling of brain and spinal cord tissues. As a precaution, hunters should avoid eating deer and elk tissues known to harbor the CWD agent (e.g., brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, lymph nodes) from areas where CWD has been identified.

More studies are needed.  Returning to the original article...

In all, 15 animals purchased at a commercial Colorado elk ranch were processed in early December at a USDA-licensed plant. All those animals were tested for the disease.

Pape said the infected elk came from a ranch in northern Colorado and was purchased by the High Wire Ranch in Hotchkiss, which had the animal slaughtered.

Results Tuesday showed that one of the fifteen elk tested positive for CWD.

Pape, who's with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPH&E), said the animals went straight from the unnamed ranch--which is now quarantined--to slaughter at Cedaredge Processing, a USDA-licensed plant.  The towns of Hotchkiss and Cedaredge are both in Delta County, which is in west-central Colorado.  Delta and Boulder Counties have been dealing with CWD in cervid populations for years. 

Renewable Idaho

Idaho has the cheapest electricity in the nation.  A key reason for this is that nearly three-quarters of its generating capacity is hydroelectric.  And when it comes to what's actually generated, in 2006 (latest available) 84 percent of Idaho's power was hydro and another 5.3 percent came from other renewables--wood and wind.  In other words, Idaho leads the nation in the percentage of its power that comes from renewable sources.  But, the reporter in the following article either didn't know that or didn't care. 

At a time when Idaho trails others in harnessing wind resources, the Office of Energy Resources has disbanded the state's wind-power think tank and reassigned a staff member who had focused on wind projects to work on energy efficiency instead.

The staffer, Gerald Fleischman, told the Idaho Wind Power Working Group he "will no longer be able to respond to requests about wind issues and wind projects," according to a letter obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Fleischman said the working group was "concluded," with some of its tasks to be assumed by the Idaho Strategic Energy Alliance, a panel created by Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter to plan for the state's energy needs.

Energy office director Paul Kjellander said he made the changes to better coordinate renewable energy development, including biogas from dairies, solar and geothermal, under Otter's new alliance.

Still, wind industry proponents contend Kjellander's shift will hamstring efforts to develop wind power in Idaho, which ranks 13th among states in the amount of wind power it potentially could generate.

Idaho ranks 18th in installed wind energy capacity.  Buried over a dozen paragraphs down in the AP article were a couple of reasons why Idaho's wind energy initiatives have been stalled in recent years.

Washington state and Oregon have renewable energy portfolio standards that require large utilities to increase their renewable energy sources.

Consequently, Washington now has 1,367 megawatts of wind capacity; Oregon has 964 megawatts, with 353 under construction. Idaho, with no renewable portfolio standard, had just 75 megawatts of capacity in November, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington, D.C.-based industry group.

Idaho wind development was also slowed by a three-year regulatory fight between small wind power developers and utilities including Idaho Power that was resolved only last February. In addition, projects are now delayed because turbine costs have risen, making them less viable at current electricity prices. 

Let's see...Washington's renewable portfolio standard mandates that its larger utilities get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources--excluding large hydro--by 2020.  Oregon's standard, which also excludes large hydro, is for its larger utilities to get 25 percent their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. 

Meanwhile if one excludes hydro, Idaho still got 32.5 percent of the rest of its electricity in 2006 from renewable sources. 

John Steiner, an Oreana, Idaho-based wind-energy developer, is nearing completion of two 21-megawatt wind farms near Mountain Home, Idaho. But he's looking elsewhere to build future projects, like his 38-turbine, 64-megawatt wind farm in Oregon's Umatilla County.

Kjellander's move to end Idaho's working group won't make this state more attractive, Steiner said.

But the lack of the working group won't make Idaho less attractive either.  Meanwhile, no mention that both Oregon and Washington offer more robust wind energy subsidies than Idaho. 

I sure wish that Oregon had a specific budgetary line item for the cost of the energy subsidies that we taxpayers are footing.

Brain Diseases and Our Sense of Smell

Scientists know that misfolded prion proteins can cause mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease, scrapie, etc. (previous blog here).  However, there's little understanding of what purposes prions may serve in our bodies.  Here's another intriguing clue. 

While his prion-protein free mice were still able to detect scents, they had lost some higher functions which required that smell information to be analysed and processed by the brain.

The scientists found changes in the communication between neurons in the nerve cells of the olfactory bulb, part of the forebrain which deals with odours.

When the protein was restored to this part of the brain, the ability to discriminate between odours came back.

The scientists said that while the discovery had no direct link to the diseases caused by faulty prion proteins, it might help account for some of the symptoms experienced by patients, which might be due to the failure of the proteins to do their normal job properly, rather than the damage caused by accumulation of defective prions.

This is not the first suggested role for the prion protein - in 2007, Leeds University scientist Professor Nigel Hooper said that it might help reduce the formation of "plaques" linked to the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.

Speaking of Alzheimer's and our sense of smell, from a study published last year...

Scientists have previously linked poor scent detection to a more rapid decline in thinking and memory in people who have mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. Problems with the sense of smell have also been linked to the presence of so-called tau tangles, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, in parts of the brain linked to memory.

In the current study, researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago studied 589 seniors (average age around 80) who were mentally intact. Over the next five years, they were given regular exams to measure memory and thinking skills. They were also given a smell identification test, in which 12 familiar odors, such as banana, chocolate, cinnamon, gasoline, smoke, and turpentine, were placed under their nose. They then had to match the scent with one of four possible choices.

During the study, almost a third of the participants (177 individuals) developed mild cognitive impairment. The researchers found that the worse a person did on the odor identification test, the more likely they were to develop mild cognitive impairment. Men and women who scored below average (eight or fewer correct responses out of 12) on the odor identification test were 50 percent more likely to develop the condition than those who scored above average (11 correct answers).

The link between a poor sense of smell and mental decline persisted even when investigators considered other conditions that could affect olfactory responses and cognition, including smoking or having a stroke. Poor odor identification was also associated with lower cognitive scores at the beginning of the study and with a more rapid decline in memory of past experiences, ability to recall words and symbols, and perceptual speed.

Scientists have been working on scratch-and-sniff tests for Alzheimer's.  Maybe someday there will also be ones for the various prion diseases in people.

Cut Government Services to Buy Green Power?

There are a number of state and local governments voluntarily paying premium prices for renewable energy.  That's a sign--or at least it should be--that a government has some extra money lying around.  I'm surprised with the way that the economy is souring that we're not hearing more stories like this one.

The city of Durango CO is pulling the plug on green power because of problems with green — or money.

City Manager Ron LeBlanc recommended the city stop buying power from renewable energy sources when it became necessary to cut the 2009 budget by more than $500,000. The City Council approved the budget, including his recommendation, earlier this month.

The La Plata Electric Association charges 80 cents above standard rates per 100 kilowatt hours for electricity from solar and wind power. LeBlanc said that adds $45,000 to the city's annual electric bill.

The city buys about 6,800 blocks of green power monthly, which represents about 30 percent of all the electric cooperative's green power customer purchases.

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Mayor Renee Parsons voted for the new budget but said she wasn't happy that green power was cut entirely. She said she would rather see across-the-board budget cuts rather than individual items singled out. 

She thinks Durango should be cutting money from things like city building repairs, road plowing, and even its ski hill to help pay for expensive wind and solar power?  

FYI, Durango is a college town of about 15,600 whose 2009 budget is $54.5 million.  The La Plata Electric Association purchases some of its renewable energy from PacifiCorp.