Giant Python Could Be 'Health Hazard for Small People' in USA The giant Burmese python, which can grow to more than 20 feet in length and weigh up to 250 pounds, has established a foothold in southern Florida and could spread to other warm-weather regions of the United States, posing "a health hazard for small people," scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey warned last week....You will recall in my original post on the pythons, I pointed out that toward the end of that article it stated, "The Burmese python is not poisonous and not considered a danger to humans." I guess the USGS hadn't thought about small people at that juncture. Are there still small people in the US? I thought we were all obese.
Mercury leaks found as new bulbs break Compact fluorescent lamps - those spiral, energy-efficient bulbs popular as a device to combat global warming - can pose a small risk of mercury poisoning to infants, young children, and pregnant women if they break, two reports concluded yesterday. But the reports, issued by the state of Maine and the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project, urged homeowners to keep using compact fluorescents because their energy-saving benefits far outweigh the risk posed by mercury released from a broken lamp. They said most danger could be avoided if people exercised common-sense caution, such as not using compact fluorescents in table lamps that could be knocked over by children or pets and properly cleaning up broken bulbs. The US Environmental Protection Agency and the states of Massachusetts and Vermont said yesterday that, based on the Maine study, they are revising their recommendations for where to use compact fluorescents in a home and how to clean up when one breaks. For the Maine study, researchers shattered 65 compact fluorescents to test air quality and cleanup methods. They found that, in many cases, immediately after the bulb was broken - and sometimes even after a cleanup was attempted - levels of mercury vapor exceeded federal guidelines for chronic exposure by as much as 100 times....It must be nice to have a politically correct product. I mean, can you think of another product that is a possible threat to infants, children and pregnant women with the potential to leak poison at 100 times federal guidelines, and the consumer advocates say "just use common sense"?
Farms May Be Exempted From Emission Rules Under pressure from agriculture industry lobbyists and lawmakers from agricultural states, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to drop requirements that factory farms report their emissions of toxic gases, despite findings by the agency's scientists that the gases pose a health threat. The EPA acknowledges that the emissions can pose a threat to people living and working nearby, but it says local emergency responders don't use the reports, making them unnecessary. But local air-quality agencies, environmental groups and lawmakers who oppose the rule change say the reports are one of the few tools rural communities have for holding large livestock operations accountable for the pollution they produce. Opponents of the rule change say agriculture lobbyists orchestrated a campaign to convince the EPA that the reports are not useful and misrepresented the effort as reflecting the views of local officials. They say the plan to drop the reporting requirement is emblematic of a broader effort by the Bush-era EPA to roll back federal pollution rules....A good example of a not politically correct product.
Norway Opens 'Doomsday' Seed Vault in Arctic Mountain A "doomsday" seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. "The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance policy," Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates at the opening ceremony. "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations." European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya were among the dozens of guests who had bundled up for the ceremony inside the vault, about 425 feet deep inside a frozen mountain. "This is a frozen Garden of Eden," Barroso said. The vault will serve as a backup for hundreds of other seed banks worldwide. It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the world and shield them from man-made and natural disasters. Dug into the permafrost of the mountain, it has been built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear strike....
19 years later, Exxon oil spill before high court For many in this coastal town, it is known simply as the Oil Spill, an event so crushing that hard-bitten fishermen still get teary-eyed recalling ruined livelihoods, broken marriages and suicides. But mostly, people in Cordova talk about the numbing wait for legal retribution for the worst oil spill in U.S. history. It’s been almost 19 years since the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground at Alaska’s Bligh Reef, spurting 11 million gallons of crude into the rich fishing waters of Prince William Sound. In 1994, an Anchorage jury awarded victims $5 billion in punitive damages. That amount has since been cut in half by other courts on appeals by Exxon Mobil Corp. Now the town of 2,200 looks anxiously to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments Wednesday from Exxon on why the company should not have to pay punitive damages at all....
Big birding town risks funds over cats Suspected by the feds of a few killings, Cape May's feral felines were all set to start new lives far from where endangered shorebirds nest. Then howls from the cats' backers persuaded the Cape May City Council to back down on the relocation plan and risk losing millions of dollars in federal sand replenishment. In this historic beach community, where both cats and birds are wildly popular, the debate is more than the love of fur vs. feather. Cape May is also one of the prime bird-watching spots in all of North America. The World Series of Birding is held here each year. The cats have become the top suspect in many deaths of the endangered piping plover, a fist-sized, white-and-brown fuzzball of a bird that has closed beaches and stopped development projects in the interest of protecting their habitat. Cat-lovers said people are the real threat to endangered shorebirds....Just wait 'til the pythons get up there.
The big mystery that is McCain's environmental policy Nowadays, any Republican running for president needs one liberal issue he can point to as proof that he is not the scary sort of conservative. In 2000, George Bush had education. For John McCain in the months ahead, that issue may well be the environment. His vow to tackle global warming has already won him acclaim from outlets like The New York Times editorial page. One of his top strategists, Steve Schmidt, was an architect of Arnold Schwarzenegger's green-themed 2006 reelection drive in California, when the governor traversed the state in a pea-colored bus with a Yosemite National Park vista painted on its side, unveiling solar-paneled schools and signing climate legislation. "Schmidt is a closet environmentalist," chuckles one veteran of that campaign. "He doesn't want people to know, because his clients"--including Dick Cheney--"have all been Republicans, but he's shrewd. He gets that this is an issue that ... resonates with the majority of voters." It wouldn't be wholly outlandish for McCain to follow in Schwarzenegger's steps: After all, during the early Bush years, the Arizona senator did more than just about anyone to put climate change on Congress's radar. On the other hand, his lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters is a dismal 24 percent, and he's generally more likely to side with miners, developers, and loggers than the EPA. So, while it's possible a McCain presidency could offer a Nixon-to-China moment on global warming, it's also possible McCain could say all the right things on the campaign trail and disappoint environmentalists once in office. How green is John McCain, anyway?....
EPA chief warned not to deny California on emission standard A Environmental Protection Agency official warned her boss, EPA chief Stephen Johnson, that if he denied California's bid to enforce its own tailpipe emissions rules, the agency's credibility "will be irreparably damaged" and Johnson would have to think about resigning. Margot Oge, the head of EPA's office of transportation and air quality, also told Administrator Johnson in an Oct. 17 memo that "there is no legal or technical justification for denying this," despite "alternative interpretations that have been suggested by the automakers." These internal warnings were included in EPA documents released Tuesday by Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the Environment Committee and had requested the records. Johnson turned down California's request for a waiver from the Clean Air Act on Dec. 19, after months of review. He overruled the recommendations of senior staff members, according to several media reports, and the documents released Tuesday provide some examples....
New Case of Mad Cow Reported in Canada Canadian officials confirmed a new case of mad cow disease Tuesday, the second such case in two months and the 12th since the disease was first discovered in Canada in 2003. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said no part of the carcass entered the human food or animal feed chains. The cow was detected in Alberta under a national monitoring program that targets cattle most at risk for the disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The agency says it expects to detect a small number of cases over the next 10 years as Canada moves toward its goal of eliminating the disease from its herds. U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner said Canada's latest case would not affect trade with the U.S. "This is no cause for concern," Conner said....