RoguePundit

Swineless Flu

The flu wasn't what made some of the world's major religions consider pork unclean.  But, it can sometimes help people confirm what they already believe.  Egypt hasn't had any cases of swine flu during the ongoing scare.  But just in case...

Egyptian leaders ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs [yesterday] to help protect against swine flu, prompting angry protests from the poor Christian farmers who feed their animals with a country's food scraps. The decision was also criticised as a "real mistake" by a senior UN food expert.

The Arab world's most populous nation has been been badly hit by the H5N1 bird flu virus in recent years and the move to cull up to 400,000 pigs--seen by Muslims as unclean animals--was designed to calm fears of an impending pandemic.

But it left Egypt's large Coptic Christian minority up in arms, especially the slum-dwelling "Zebaleen" rubbish collectors who rely on the hogs for their livelihood. Scores of them blocked the streets and stoned the vehicles of Health Ministry workers as they arrived to carry out the government's order at pig farms on the outskirts of Cairo this afternoon.

“Our pigs are healthy. They are our capital and they have no diseases,” said Adel Ishak, who feeds his pigs from the rubbish he collects in Manshiet Nasser, northeast of Cairo.

The World Health Organization says there's no evidence this new virus is found in or spread by pigs.  In response to Egypt's actions, WHO announced that it will stop using the term swine flu to help protect the pigs.  It's probably too late. 

Magdy Rady, a Cabinet spokesman, put the number of pigs that could be culled at between 300,000 and 400,000. “If you see the conditions of the swine farms in Egypt, they are not healthy at all. They are hazards in themselves, even without the swine flu. That’s why people are really getting afraid,” he told the Reuters news agency, even before the decision was taken.

Officials said that the farmers would be offered compensation of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (£120) per pig but there seemed to be little confidence that the money would ever materialise.

Mr Ishak said that his community receives 6,000 tonnes of organic rubbish every day, but if the pigs die there will be nowhere to put the waste. “What is the use of compensation? It will feed us only for several months, what then?" he asked.

The extra rubbish lying around could increase the health problems there. 

James Hansen and Bidder 70

Tim DeChristopher is the 27-year-old University of Utah economics student who monkeywrenched a BLM oil-and-gas lease auction late last year.  He bid on a number of parcels of land, winning several of them and driving up the prices of others.  Beyond that, there wasn't much to his plan. 

DeChristopher said he didn't regret bidding on 13 drilling parcels near Arches and Canyonlands with no intention of paying the $1.8 million for them. But he did believe the Obama administration might see the seriousness and morality of his mission to protect the future against global climate disruption.

"Those hopes were misplaced," he said. "Now my hopes rest on a jury of my peers."

DeChristopher faces up to 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines under charges he organized and participated in a scheme to "defeat" federal law and made a fraudulent statement when he registered as a bidder at the BLM's Dec. 19 lease sale in Salt Lake City.

DeChristopher pled not guilty yesterday.  About 200 people showed up at the courthouse to support him, get seen, etc.    

"They're trying to scare all of you," [DeChristopher] told the crowd, many of them carrying posters with his bidder number, 70. "They're trying to discourage all of you from standing up."

As DeChristopher walked to the courthouse at the head of a line of supporters, climate scientist James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration walked alongside him much of the way. Hansen called DeChristopher's actions "extremely important." Hansen thanked him for providing a platform to test a new legal argument regarding climate change: the notion described in a letter by Thomas Jefferson that "we are using property that belongs to others, to our children and grandchildren and future generations."

...

University of Utah economics professor Hans Ehrbar said he was disappointed that more supporters didn't show up Tuesday.

"People are ready to clap if someone else acts, but the urgency has not yet sunk in."

Like so many high-profile climate change activists, Hansen jetsets around the globe to ask others to make sacrifices that he won't.  And Professor Ehrbar sounds guilty. 

Breweries Per Capita

I would have figured that with all we hear about our microbreweries, Oregon would have the most breweries per capita in the nation.  Actually per 2008 data from the Brewers Association, we come in third.  And, we have the fourth highest number of breweries.

- Per Capita

1. Vermont      one per 32,698
2. Montana                  35,831
3. Oregon                    40,753
4. Maine                      42,466
5. Colorado                  47,956

- Number of Breweries

1. California             221
2. Colorado              103
3. Washington          100
4. Oregon                  93
5. Pennsylvania          75

Portland has 32 of Oregon's breweries, highest per capita of any major city in the nation.  The unhappiest city in the nation (previous blog here) has a tasty coping mechanism.

Conserve and Pay More

If too many people reduce the amount of trash they help generate, the rates go up.

Thrift-driven Americans are fixing up, making do and reusing so much to cope with the recession that the drop in throwaways means less fill for landfills.

To deal with the drop-off in dropoffs, landfills are laying off workers, reducing hours of operation and hiking disposal fees, with the increases passed along to cities, businesses and consumers.

"You can look at waste and see what the economy is doing," said Tom Houck, manager at the Defiance County Landfill in northwest Ohio. He's watched the amount of trash arriving at the landfill plunge 30 percent in the past year.

With consumers cutting back on new purchases, there is less packaging to throw away. The downturn in new housing means less waste from construction materials such as insulation and from discarded drywall and lumber. Restaurant waste is down because people are eating out less.

At least this means landfills fill up more slowly.  Of course, it also means that waste-to-energy facilities can't generate as much electricity.  

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If too many people save water, the rates go up.

The [Raleigh NC] City Council voted Monday to phase in higher rates for customers on the municipal water system, with a 9 percent increase taking effect Friday.

The average residential customer will see the monthly water bill increase from $29.69 to $32.36, officials said.

The increase is needed because the city is selling less water and making less money because of the economic downturn and because area residents adapted to the conservation measures officials urged during North Carolina's record-setting drought in 2007-08. 

Conservation during last year's drought resulted in the city receiving 10 percent less revenue via water bills.  Later this year, most residents will face a second rate increase through the institution of tiered billing.   

The bottom residential tier would be for customers who use less than 3,000 gallons a month, while the second tier would be for those who use between 3,000 and 7,500 gallons. The top tier would include anyone using more than 7,500 gallons a month.

The city would charge Tier 1 customers $2.80 each every 1,000 gallons, while Tier 2 customers would pay $4.15 and Tier 3 customers would pay $5.50 per 1,000 gallons.

From a conservation perspective, that's a start...but water is still pretty cheap there.  In California's East Bay water district...

Ninety percent of the district's costs--salaries, debt service--are fixed, Breaux said. Only about 10 percent of its costs fluctuate - electricity, chemicals and certain maintenance fees.

But a whopping 80 percent of the agency's monthly revenue comes from the amount of water it sells. When customers use a normal amount of water, the system works. But during a drought or a cool summer, revenue tumbles. Because water districts operate at a break-even level, they are forced to react with price increases when demand plunges.

Some districts in California, historically those with plentiful supplies, charge a flat monthly fee for water. Although those districts recoup costs, experts agree that such an approach doesn't promote conservation, and many of the agencies are switching to volume pricing.

Salaries are fixed...ha, ha, ha.  The East Bay already has tiered billing, but the water there is even cheaper than it is in Raleigh. 

High fuels costs are a drag on the economy.  The same is true with water, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.  Thus, raising prices in the name of conservation understandably draws resistance.

Random Nature #211

Turbines or Cooling Towers:  After lengthy studies, the UK recently announced 11 possible sites for new nuclear reactors.  Helping reduce the NIMBY concerns is the fact that nine of these new sites are next to existing reactors.  One of the other two "greenfield" sites would involve displacing a different type of power plant that doesn't produce carbon emissions.  

The tall turbines of Haverigg wind farm, only the second commercial one to be built in Britain, have been turning for 17 years between the hills of the Lake District and the waters of the Duddon estuary on the Cumbrian coast. 

...

Six of Haverigg's eight turbines actually fall within the proposed footprint of the Kirksanton nuclear power station, where RWE wants to build up to three reactors. The German energy giant confirms that they would have to be dismantled if the power station were built.

The average wind turbine lasts 20-25 years.  By the time the new power plant gets approved--if it ever does, those turbines will likely be on their last legs.  

When it comes to the scale of the plants, the power company (RWE) noted the following.

"The wind farm currently produces 3.5 megawatts of energy while a nuclear power station would produce 3,600 megawatts, enough to power five million homes. So, from a climate change point of view, if the wind farm had to go it would not be such a bad thing."

Obviously there are a number of climate change activists who disagree.

Winding Down Wind:  Chicago-based Invenergy LLC is a company that generates electricity via natural gas and wind.  One of its subsidiaries--Beech Ridge Energy, LLC--is trying to build a 1.5 MW, 124-turbine wind farm in West Virginia.  As part of the approval process, the Public Service Commission there mandated that Beech Ridge prepare a decommissioning plan.  The company hired a civil engineering firm which offered the following last October. 

Booty said the steel wind turbine towers generally are 15 to 16 feet in diameter and about 230 feet tall. The blades of the turbine make up the remainder of its height and are not salvageable, Booty said.

Copper is used in the sections of the turbines where electricity is created, he said. Each of the towers was estimated to have $102,000 worth of salvage value, Booty said.

“To decommission a turbine, it costs about $45,000 per turbine and to haul it off the site would nearly double the cost to about $70,000,” he said.

Removing the 160 steel anchor bolts from their foundations and returning the land back to its former look would cost about another $14,000 per turbine, Booty said.

To decommission all 124 turbines, Booty testified, would cost about $1.7 million, but its salvage value would be $2 million, depending upon steel and copper prices, giving Beech Ridge an economic incentive to tear them down.

Last fall, copper and scrap steel prices were busy collapsing after having been very strong earlier in the year.  It makes a big difference whether the engineer used up-to-date prices or ones that were a couple of months old.  Nonetheless, there is a fair chance that when the time came Invenergy would be financially motivated to dismantle the wind turbines rather than leave them standing.  Regardless, no public service commission should leave that result to chance.

Half Deaths:  Decommissioning a nuclear power plant is just a wee bit more involved.  Quoting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...

NRC has very strict rules for shutting down a plant. The NRC requires plants to finish the process within 60 years of closing. Since it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant, the NRC requires plant owners to set aside money when the plant is still operating to pay for the future shutdown costs.

Nuclear power plants can be decommissioned using three methods:

1. Dismantling -- Parts of the reactor are removed or decontaminated soon after the plant closes and the land can be used.
2. Safe Storage -- The nuclear plant is monitored and radiation is allowed to decay; afterward, it is taken down.
3. Entombment -- Radioactive components are sealed off with concrete and steel, allowing radiation to “decay” until the land can be used for other purposes.

A small number of nuclear plants in the U.S. have been decommissioned and are now greenfields.  For instance, there's the Yankee Rowe--the Yankee Nuclear Power Station--near Rowe, Massachusetts. 

Physical decommissioning of the former Yankee Rowe plant was completed in 2007. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) notified Yankee in August 2007 that the former plant site had been fully decommissioned in accordance with NRC procedures and regulations and formally approved Yankee Atomic’s Final Status Survey Reports in accordance with the License Termination Plan . The federal license for the site was reduced to the approximately 2 acres surrounding the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation site.

...

The transfer of Yankee's used fuel from wet to dry cask storage was successfully completed in June of 2003. Yankee’s mission and focus going forward is the safe storage of the plant’s spent nuclear fuel and Greater than Class C waste at the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation until the U.S. Department of Energy meets it’s statutory and contractual obligation to remove the material. The storage will be conducted in accordance with the NRC requirements and applicable regulations while the company pursues opportunities with our stakeholders and others to expedite the removal of the material from the site.

Over 100,000 pounds of spent fuel rods encased into concrete and steel are being stored on the decommissioned site.  With President Obama having recently stripped the funding from Yucca Mountain, that situation likely won't change for a long while. 

A Similar Story:  The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant near Rainier OR is also mostly dead.  Starting with a Wikipedia quote...

In 2005, the reactor vessel and other radioactive equipment were removed from the Trojan plant, encased in concrete foam, shrink-wrapped, and transported intact by barge along the Columbia River to Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington where it was buried in a 45-foot-deep pit and covered in six inches of gravel, which made it the first commercial reactor to be moved and buried whole.

And the rest?

Portland General Electric says it is largely finished decommissioning the former Trojan nuclear power plant bordering the Columbia River south of Rainier. Spokesman Steve Corson said the company finished tearing down Trojan’s “containment building,” which once housed the plant’s nuclear reactor, this fall.

“There are no plans to remove anything further,” Corson said.

The demolition, which involved smashing apart super-thick concrete walls, was one of the final steps in the decades-long process of removing buildings from the landmark plant after it shut down in 1993. The plant is the first large-scale commercial nuclear facility in the U.S. to be decommissioned, the company said.

All that remains of the nuclear facility, which began operating in 1976, are radioactive fuel rods, contained in concrete casks and guarded around the clock. Those, Corson said, will remain at the site until the federal Yucca Mountain radioactive storage facility opens in Nevada. 

That waste is now awaiting a new plan.

Passing on Stones

We often hear that soda is a poor substitute for water for a number of reasons, including the fact that the caffeine so many sodas contain is a diuretic.  Thus, one would figure that folks with kidney stones should drink water, not soda, right?  Well...

Patients with stone disease could benefit from drinking diet soda. New research from the University of California, San Francisco suggests that the citrate and malate content in commonly consumed sodas may be sufficient to inhibit the development of calcium stones. The study was presented at the 104th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA).

Increased alkalinity is proven to augment citraturia, a known factor for calcium stones. Malate increases the amount of alkali delivered. Researchers measured the citrate and malate content of 15 popular diet sodas. The researchers found that Diet Sunkist Orange contained the greatest amount of total alkali and Diet 7-Up had the greatest amount of citrate as alkali.

"This study by no means suggests that patients with recurrent kidney stones should trade in their water bottles for soda cans," said Anthony Y. Smith, MD, an AUA spokesman. "However, this study suggests instead that patients with stone disease who do not drink soda may benefit from moderate consumption."

"May be sufficient"...the concept hasn't been tested yet.  

The researchers used diet sodas because they felt that they're healthier than sugary sodas.  And then there's this thought.

"It's not clear how all of these products got their alkali," said Dr. Eisner. "The drinks with the highest alkali in our study presumably got it from the orange or lemon-lime juices that were added to them."

Gee, scurvy and possibly kidney stones...

A Solar Indulgence

No doubt some folks will proudly buy the following.

With the economy swooning and high-priced discretionary purchases not uppermost in peoples’ minds, The Home Theater Specialists of America has put together what it is calling the Guiltless Green Home Theater setup. In association with Sharp, the HTSA has assembled a variety of components, coupled them to an appropriate number of solar panels and is touting the setup as a way to have a high end home theater without having to worry about spending money to power it up.

The components include a Sharp front projector and Blu-ray player, an Integra audio receiver, Speakercraft in-wall speakers, home theater chairs, a screen, and home lighting controls, among other things.

The gear demands 1154 watts per hour to run. To get that power for free, the HTSA has installed four Sharp solar panels; 4 1/2 hours of sunlight per day is enough to generate the necessary electricity to power up the system for 19 hours per week.

Never mind that watts per hour isn't a valid unit of measure. 

Evidently the customers aren't expected to watch much television in their home theater...the average American watches 28 hours of television per week. 

And just how expensive is this solar home theater anyway?  

Total cost of the package: just shy of $30,000. But in Pennsylvania, where the setup was installed, Federal and state solar tax credits would reduce that price by $3,770, according to the HTSA’s executive director, Richard Glikes.

What a waste of taxpayer dollars that would be.

Fewer Coasters

Last week, Germany's Katz Group declared bankruptcy.  Who, you might ask?

The world's biggest beer mat company, Katz Group, has declared itself bankrupt. Tucked away in Weisenbach in the south-west of Germany, Katz Group, which was founded as a sawmill in 1716, had been in the beer mat business since 1903. Katz International Coasters controlled around two-thirds of the European market and 97 percent of the US market.

...

The cardboard beer mat made its debut back in 1880. Friedrich Horn, a German printing and board mill company, created small cardboard mats and printed messages on them. Before long, their simple invention had become a firm fixture under beer glasses across the country. Bar keepers liked them as they protected their tables, didn't need washing and didn't cost them anything--advertisers footed the bill in a bid to reach new customers.

The Katz Group's presence in the U.S. is under the American Coaster Company of Sanborn NY.  Switching links...

The provisional administrator announced that a total of 240 jobs were affected. However, company operations are still running without any interruptions. Garry Hobson, CEO of Katz, explained that beer deliveries to the gastronomy industry and the attendant potential for coasters had been falling since 2007/2008. Furthermore, consolidation among international brewery giants had a negative impact on sales of the Katz Group.

The company, which is trying to restructure, is trying to blame its troubles on external factors.  Yes, changing drinking habits and smoking bans are having an adverse impact on beer sales in pubs and restaurants.  For instance over the last 30 years, per capita German beer consumption has dropped by about 25 percent.  However in 2006, the Katz Group was acquired by a group led by the private equity fund CBR Management.  High debt loads during the economic downturn have proven fatal to a number of companies.   

Returning to the original article.  

Worried beer mat fans are asking themselves what the future holds. Over the decades, a whole scene has built up around the cardboard coasters. Some collectors travel to buy, exchange and admire at swap meets held across Germany. Others flaunt their collections on the Internet.

And despite its small surface area, the beer mat has been daubed with everything from political messages to adverts to saucy slogans. "A girl and a little glass of beer cures all woes," reads one, which features a beer mug-toting girl.

If the Katz Group doesn't emerge from bankruptcy, others will step in to fill some of the void.  Coasters haven't suddenly become obsolete.

Reacting to the Mouse Louse

Here's part of a short article on another piece of research into the hygiene hypothesis.

According to research conducted at the University of Nottingham (PDF link), some parasites may reduce their hosts' risk of developing immune dysfunctions like asthma, allergies, and some forms of arthritis. The study analyzed the effects of various parasites on the immune activity of wild wood mice and discovered that the louse Polyplax serrata triggered an immunosuppressive effect in mice. While this sounds like a negative effect, the finding supports the idea that modern, parasite-free populations have heightened immune responsiveness, and it is this heightened immune response that might increase the risk for allergic diseases.

Polyplax serrata is the mouse louse, a common blood-sucking parasite of various species of mice.  The mouse louse can also serve as a vector for several bacterial infections.

"Much like laboratory mice, people in developed countries are currently exposed to a very different profile of infections than encountered by their ancestors," explains lead researcher Janette Bradley in a press release. "It is possible that the immune dysfunctions we see today are the result of immune systems calibrated for a set of challenges completely different to those they now routinely face."

Since parasites like Polyplax serrata dampen innate immune responses, they help protect against immune dysfunctions like asthma or allergies. According to the study, populations without immunosuppressive parasites may have "unnaturally" elevated levels of innate immune activations, and therefore increased risk of immunopathology.

Pediculosis is far from being eliminated in industrialized nations.  Somewhere between 6 and 12 million Americans suffer from head lice alone each year.  But let's not forget that it hasn't been that long since typhus outbreaks related to lice infestations killed millions (previous blog here).  We may still be learning about some of the trade-offs in ridding ourselves of lice.

Some Family Time

I have family visiting for a few days.  Thus, there will be little-to-no posting until towards the end of next week.  The weather looks ominously dry, but that sure makes it easier to schedule outdoor activities.  I'm sure my back would appreciate a couple days of rain.