You can't win! Now PAPER straws are cancelled
We may all think we're doing our bit for the planet by sipping our drinks out of a paper straw.
But the 'eco-friendly' alternatives contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals, a new study has concluded.
In the first analysis of its kind in Europe, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws for the group of synthetic chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo.
The synthetic chemicals are used to make everyday products, from outdoor clothing to non-stick pans, resistant to water, heat and stains.
They are, however, potentially harmful to people, wildlife and the environment.
The substances break down very slowly over time and can persist over thousands of years in the environment, a property that has led to them being known as 'forever chemicals.'
They have been linked to a number of health problems including lower response to vaccines, lower birth weight, thyroid disease, increased cholesterol levels, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer.
The research team purchased 39 different brands of drinking straw made from five materials – paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic.
The straws, which were mainly bought from shops, supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, then underwent two rounds of testing for PFAS.
PFAS contamination has been detected in water near manufacturing facilities as well as military bases and firefighting training facilities where foam containing PFAS is used.
They also enter the food supply through food packaging materials and contaminated soil.
Analysis revealed the majority of the brands – 69 per cent - contained PFAS, with 18 different PFAS detected in total.
Paper straws were most likely to contain the synthetic chemicals.
The most commonly found PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has been banned globally since 2020.
Also detected were trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (TFMS) - 'ultra-short chain' PFAS which are highly water soluble and so might leach out of straws into drinks.
The PFAS concentrations were low and – since most people tend to only use straws occasionally - pose a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.
The authors advised people use stainless steel straws, or avoid using straws at all.
'Straws made from plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo, are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly than those made from plastic,' said researcher Dr Thimo Groffen, an environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp, who was involved in the study.
'However, the presence of PFAS in these straws means that's not necessarily true. 'Small amounts of PFAS, while not harmful in themselves, can add to the chemical load already present in the body.'
The findings were published in the journal Food Additives and Contaminants.
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Biden’s Incoherent Energy Policy Continues
President Joe Biden says he wants a carbon-free future for the United States and acknowledges that to realize that future, nuclear energy is essential. Judging by the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars that Biden is throwing at his version of “green energy,” combined with a willingness to strangle consumer choice, his commitment to his cause would seem rock solid—even though his policies make neither environmental nor economic sense.
Now, Biden has issued a proclamation establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which effectively bans any new mining claims, including for uranium, on the nearly 1 million acres covered by the monument.
Some may think that such a policy is reasonable. No one wants to see an industrial mining operation in the Grand Canyon. Furthermore, respect for ancestral lands is laudable.
But that’s not the real story.
The Biden administration presents the decision as a choice between protecting the Grand Canyon and ancestral lands or allowing mining to occur, which, by implication, would destroy both.
This framing is simply not accurate.
The modern mining industry is perfectly capable of undertaking commercial operations while also protecting public health, safety, and the surrounding environment. Indeed, strict state and federal regulatory oversight ensures that mining operations are safely carried out and that disturbed landscapes are appropriately restored.
Further, the designated area lies to the north and south of the 1.2 million-square acre Grand Canyon National Park, so there is no threat that a tour of the Grand Canyon would one day be highlighted by a uranium mine pit stop.
Unfortunately, this move is just one more in a long line of policy decisions from the Biden administration that creates barriers to domestic energy development and mineral mining.
While Biden likes to talk about green energy and energy independence, his policies toward reliable clean energy alternatives like nuclear and natural gas make it almost impossible for the American mining industry to develop the resources necessary to manufacture and fuel the president’s vision.
And in this case, it matters a lot.
The United States gets around 20% of its electricity from 93 commercial nuclear power reactors, and these reactors are powered by uranium fuel, of which the United States imports 95%. Though friendly countries like Canada, Australia, and Namibia provide about 36% of imports, the United States also depends on Russia for 14% of its uranium.
Interestingly, this was not always the case. Though there were ups and downs in production, the United States produced much of its own uranium until 1980, when the declines never recovered.
No one cared much about this dependence on Russian uranium until the spring of 2022, when it became abundantly clear that America’s reliance on Russian uranium was a real problem. Not only was America energy dependent on Russia for uranium and related nuclear fuel services, but roughly a billion dollars were flowing to Russian state-owned enterprises annually as a result.
This situation alone should have made removing from potential domestic production any uranium resources that could have been used to offset our Russian dependence a nonstarter. But it is worse than that, and here is why.
Uranium is produced in some of the least politically stable countries in the world, including Niger, which produces about 5% of the world’s uranium and is in the midst of a military coup. While America is not dependent on Nigerien uranium per se, the situation in Niger could have an effect on America.
That is because uranium is a global commodity and supply disruptions will raise global prices, affecting everyone who uses uranium. Though a near-term challenge, disruptions from Russia, Niger, or anywhere else should not be an issue for a uranium-rich country like the United States.
But it is.
The problem is that opening new mines in the United States is extremely difficult and policies like Biden’s decision to take domestic supplies out of service prevent domestic uranium markets from responding to foreign supply disruptions.
Not only do domestic uranium miners miss out on the opportunity to provide secure supplies of uranium to American reactors, but American reactor operators have no choice but to continue their dependence on foreign suppliers.
This problem is about to get far worse as the world could be at the beginning of a massive expansion of nuclear energy. This means greater demand for uranium in the future, tighter uranium markets, higher prices, and greater dependence on foreign suppliers for America’s energy.
The president’s supporters say his monument designation protects the Grand Canyon from uranium mining, but no one wants to mine in the Grand Canyon. To suggest as much is disingenuous.
With his announcement, Biden is protecting foreign uranium suppliers from American competition and preventing American reactors from accessing domestic fuel supplies. This is a loss on both the environmental and economic fronts for America and a win for foreign competitors and our adversaries.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/23/bidens-incoherent-energy-policy-continues/ ?
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Who fact checks the fact-checkers?
Toby Young
Last week, a retired physics professor called Nick Cowern said it was time to get tough with ‘climate denialists’. ‘In my opinion the publication of climate disinformation should be a criminal offence,’ he posted on Twitter. He was ridiculed, but what sounds ludicrously over-the-top today could easily become the norm tomorrow. At least four EU member states have made it a criminal offence to spread disinformation – Hungary, Lithuania, Malta and France – and others including Ireland are preparing to do the same. In the UK, the Online Safety Bill will introduce a new false communications offence.
I have a dog in this fight since I run a news publishing website that’s frequently accused of spreading false information about climate change. Scarcely a week goes by without a fact-checking agency concluding that an article we’ve published – often by Chris Morrison, the environment editor – is false or misleading. If support for free speech continues to deteriorate, it’s possible that in about five years I’ll be found guilty of ‘denialism’ and sentenced to hard labour.
One of the problems with criminalising ‘climate disinformation’ is there’s no infallible authority the courts could rely on to determine whether a particular claim about something climate-related is true or false. Advocates of net zero and other measures designed to reduce carbon emissions often use the term ‘climate deniers’ to describe their opponents, thereby persuading themselves that proving them wrong would be easy. But even the most hardened sceptics wouldn’t dispute that average global temperatures have increased in the past 150 years. Rather, the argument is about the role of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, in global warming and how much impact changing our behaviour would have. We also dispute just how catastrophic rising global temperatures are, and are unimpressed by the hyperbole of the environmental lobby (‘global boiling’). In other words, proving us wrong isn’t as straightforward as pointing to temperature data.
I suppose the prosecution could summon distinguished climate scientists as expert witnesses, but then so could the defence – for instance Dr John Clauser, last year’s joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, who’s just signed a declaration stating there is no climate emergency. No doubt the would-be jailers would invoke the ‘97 per cent of scientists agree’ canard, but not only is that stat dubious, it’s also a non-sequitur. As Einstein said when 100 physicists published a book rubbishing his theory of relativity: ‘Why 100? If I was wrong, one would have been enough.’
Perhaps Exhibit A for the prosecution would be a ‘fact check’ by a reputable news organisation. Last year Reuters took issue with a piece by Chris Morrison in which he noted that Arctic sea ice was making a comeback and the coverage was well above a 2012 low point. This was said to be ‘misleading’, although the figures came from an official EU weather source. Reuters’ experts said that the sea ice was not recovering, pointing to a declining trend over a longer time period. One of them didn’t dispute the ice had recovered since 2012, but said it was a ‘wiggle’ and should not be cited as evidence that ‘climate change isn’t real’, which Chris hadn’t claimed. Nevertheless, he was accused of ‘cherry-picking’, although the sea ice improvement continues to this day. Send him down m’lud.
Or maybe not. I doubt the evidence of an ‘independent fact-checker’ would be taken as gospel by a jury. A defence barrister could ask them during cross-examination why they never scrutinise the statements of climate alarmists like Greta Thunberg. Last week, she pulled out of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, claiming the sponsor, Baillie Gifford, ‘invests heavily in the fossil fuels industry’. But wasn’t that a tad ‘misleading’? A spokesman for Baillie Gifford says just 2 per cent of its clients’ money is invested in companies with businesses related to fossil fuels. But assertions such as Greta’s, along with her pretence that western governments have done ‘nothing’ to tackle climate change, are never fact-checked.
Setting aside the difficulty of securing convictions, what would be the point of criminalising ‘climate disinformation’? History teaches us that you cannot legislate against ‘fake news’. Far from stopping its spread, it just adds to its allure. As the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, the best way to counter what you think of as false speech is not enforced silence but more and better speech. If Nick Cowern is so sure he’s right, he shouldn’t be afraid to debate the ‘climate denialists’ in the public square.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/who-fact-checks-the-fact-checkers/
*************************************************Australia-California: A climate partnership made in la-la land
Last week, Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a memorandum of understanding in Sacramento on climate change. It should have been called a memorandum of waffle, as both governments jointly promised to do precisely nothing.
In what seemed like a classic Freudian slip, Governor Newsom expressed shock at the level of interest in the MOU. “This is a hell of a turnout – we are not used to this many people, particularly for something like this,” he said. Of course, he was right.
After ploughing through 1600 words of waffle, the reader learns the MOU “does not create any legally binding rights or obligations and creates no legally recognisable or enforceable rights or remedies, legal or equitable, in any forum whatsoever”.
“This MOU may be modified at any time by mutual consent,” it concluded unnecessarily, given neither party agreed to do anything. The high point of the small section on “specific activities” was “organising joint symposiums, seminars, workshops … hosting trade and investment missions”, which in practice translates to more taxpayer-funded business-class flights across the Pacific.
Sky News host Chris Kenny says Australians are poised to learn a lot from California after Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd was seen in a conversation with Governor Gavin Newsom which focused on a climate change deal. “It's a marriage made in heaven this climate deal, because California More
A better MOU would have spelled out how California’s and Australia’s energy policies have produced among the highest electricity prices in the world at the same time as their leaders have promised to reduce them, although even Newsom hasn’t had the audacity to promise household power bills would fall by $275 a year by 2025, as Labor did at the federal election last year.
California’s power prices are now the highest in the US, except for far-flung Hawaii and Alaska. In Los Angeles residents paid an average of 28c a kilowatt hour for electricity last month, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics.
Statewide prices are more than 77 per cent above the national average, up from 37 per cent above in 2012. But, unlike Australians, at least Californians can move to states with lower prices. Despite California’s salubrious weather and natural beauty, residents have been leaving the nation’s most populous state in droves – at first pushed out by extreme Covid-19 measures, but increasingly by a cost-of-living and a broader socio-economic crisis.
The state’s population, according to the government’s own figures, has declined three years in a row, to 39 million. In total that’s almost 600,000 people, more than the population of Tasmania or Wyoming, between April 2020 and January this year.
The MOU also promised to convene “policy dialogues” with “suitable government administrators, regulators, legislators and thought leaders”. It’s uncertain whether renowned Swedish climate expert Greta Thunberg, who once derided nuclear power as “extremely dangerous”, will make the cut. Last year Thunberg acknowledged turning off nuclear power stations in Europe was a mistake given the huge increases in fossil fuel power generation that had led to.
Indeed, the word nuclear isn’t mentioned once in the MOU, which advocated instead for “participation and leadership of Indigenous peoples in climate action” and “nature-based solutions and climate-smart land management” – what on earth these mean is anybody’s guess. Solar and wind generated abut 25 per cent of electricity in both Australia and California last year, and each are near equally ambitious.
Despite the obvious advantages in reliable and emissions-free power, Australia has ruled out any nuclear energy generation (except in submarines) while holding fast to its 82 per cent renewable power target by 2030.
California has legislated 90 per cent by 2035, although the Golden State has one big advantage over Australia achieving its goal: nuclear energy. Unreliable power evangelists aren’t stupid enough to plunge their economies into darkness just yet, knowing that could turn voters against their utopian project. In January, California rescinded an earlier decision to shut down its last nuclear power station at Diablo, a 2.2-gigawatt facility that is the state’s single biggest source of power, providing a little more than 10 per cent energy.
In the similarly strong Democrat state of Illinois – which maintains a similar brand of Democrat politics as California – 11 nuclear power plants generate about 50 per cent of the state’s electricity and the average electricity price was about half of California’s in 2021, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
A more honest MOU would have included a pledge to ignore scientific and economic reality. In France, which generates around 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power and has the among the lowest carbon dioxide emissions in the world per capita, a law was passed in May to pave the way for the construction of another six to eight nuclear reactors, rather than plaster the French countryside with hideous solar panels and gigantic windmills.
“I’ve been around for a long time on the climate change debate,” Rudd said at the Sacramento launch. “Way back when I pronounced in Australia that climate change was the greatest economic, environmental and moral challenge of our generation I was ridiculed. I make no apology for saying it then. And I make no apology for repeating it now.”
California’s departing residents may disagree, pointing to other more pressing challenges. San Francisco’s social decline has become so egregious that tour guides have started offering “doom loop” tours. Major department stores are leaving the state or locking up their products. Parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco look increasingly like an open-air asylum.
Even as California’s population shrinks, violent crime and property crime have increased since 2020 by 11 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, according to the state attorney-general’s latest 2022 crime statistics.
Whatever agreements California and Australia make won’t make a scrap of difference to the global climate, given the near entirety of additional increases in carbon dioxide emissions now arise in India and China.
The idea of modern economies being powered entirely by wind and solar is a fantasy, technologically and economically, yet one that holds powerful sway among a very rich virtue-signalling elite, often living in gated communities, for whom California’s rising prices and crime mean relatively little.
California dreaming for the few, not the many.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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