The PFAS boogeyman again
The scare meisters will never let this one go, regardless of the repeated findings that PFAS is NOT harmful to humans in concentrations normally encountered. Even water can kill you if you have enough of it and PFAS is about as toxic as water. As ever, the toxicity is in the dosage
Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo will feature in a new Australian documentary exposing the multibillion-dollar David and Goliath battle to hold the world’s largest chemical companies to account for decades of toxic contamination.
Revealed: How To Poison A Planet exposes the shocking extent to which man-made “forever chemicals” used in dozens of household products from school uniforms and contact lenses to make-up and cookware have spread globally and can now be found in the bloodstream of 98 per cent of the world’s population.
“There were companies and people that knew the nature and extent of this threat but did it anyway,” Ruffalo says in the documentary. “This is so incredibly evil.”
The documentary, which will screen on Stan, is an investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age journalist Carrie Fellner in collaboration with director Katrina McGowan of iKandy Films. Stan and this masthead are owned by Nine Entertainment Co.
The trailer for the documentary was released on Thursday after a US court finalised the details of a $US12.5 billion ($19 billion) settlement to be paid by chemical giant 3M Company, one of the world’s largest forever chemicals manufacturers.
The funds will go towards compensating thousands of drinking water providers across the United States for the contamination of their supplies with forever chemicals contained in a firefighting foam sold by 3M.
The per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, also known as PFAS, were invented in the 1930s and became a billion-dollar industrial powerhouse because of their stain, water and oil-repelling properties.
They are called “forever chemicals” because they never break down in the environment and linger for years in the human body.
The documentary chronicles a years-long crusade for justice as tens of thousands of communities worldwide discover their blood, properties and water supplies are contaminated with PFAS.
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Defueling the US Navy: The Story of Red Hill
On March 28, the Department of Defense announced that it had completed the defueling of the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill bulk oil storage tanks for the Pacific fleet.
It did so six months early.
The permanent closure of Red Hill was a thrilling achievement, said many—Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Pentagon and Navy spokesmen, Hawaiian officials, environmental groups, and the chemistry-terrified citizens of Hawaii.
Mr. Austin, a retired army general, said, “The Department of Defense and the United States Navy remain deeply committed to protecting the public’s health and preserving the environment.”
He also said they are committed to continuing to rebuild trust with Hawaii.
“This is the right thing to do,” he said. “It likely made sense in 1943, when [it] was built ... a lot less sense now.”
Why Did the US Build Red Hill?
The United States was blind lucky the Japanese failed to target oil tanks at Pearl Harbor. So, since 1943, at Red Hill in Oahu, Hawaii, the oil reserves of the Seventh Fleet were located in 20 underground steel-lined concrete reservoirs safer from enemy attack than aboveground tanks.
What was once the U.S. Navy’s fuel supply to defeat the Japanese in World War II is now denied the U.S. Navy as it faces the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rapidly enlarging and newer Navy.
How did the unilateral surrender of fuel necessary for the U.S. Navy to cross the Pacific Ocean occur?
The Sierra Club
The Sierra Club’s end objective at Red Hill was Water Justice—“fighting against the military industrial complex and capitalist corporate-controlled industries.”
In December 2012, the Sierra Club, among others, alleged that there were 5,000 ill persons and 3,000 families displaced at the Pacific fleets’ oil reserves at Red Hill.
The Sierra Club stated that it wanted to end “an existential and unprecedented threat.”
“Millions of gallons of fuel still sit in the Red Hill fuel tanks directly above the aquifer, continually threatening to poison our water again,” it stated.
The Sierra Club was allied with Shut Down Red Hill Coalition, Water Protectors Rising, Water Protectors Legal Collective, One Health Pacific’s Sustainability Pledge, Hawai’i Workers Center, and Hawai’i Alliance for Progressive Action.
Demon Oil
Underground oil and gasoline tanks and their owners have been under regulatory attacks for decades. In California, regulators closed an estimated 170,000 leaking underground gasoline storage tanks. Very few family-owned, independent gasoline stations survived.
In perspective, the present danger is an aggressive, militarized CCP, not a chemical present in water in parts per trillion killing an unknown number of people, if any, decades later.
The math of correlations is not causation; it is mere association, a matter of serious interest, not proof.
Overall, there were very precise measurements of substances in parts per million, billion, and trillion to discover the last scary molecule on earth.
While measurement is precise, and enforcement is heavy and ever expanding, the science of health effects is largely politically mobilized, declared, presumed, or speculated.
The dangers of trace elements of asbestos, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perchlorate, heavy metals, and solvents in petroleum are exaggerated. They smell bad, but there is little evidence that their concentration in water is a health risk in parts per billion and trillion. They are everywhere but are not proven dangerous to human health.
For example, the federal standard of danger from PFOA of 20 parts per trillion is equivalent to waiting 32,000 years for 20 seconds to pass.
In telling contrast, the CCP’s cyberattacks travel 186,000 miles a second. They are a nanosecond away and are happening every day. Similarly, a nuclear armed hypersonic missile at Mach 10, 7,000 miles per hour, takes only 30 minutes to travel from coast to coast.
In 2022, President Joe Biden, trying to lower the price of gasoline before the midterm elections, sold off hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve, reducing it to a forty-year low. At least a million barrels of American oil was sent to oil-poor China, fueling China’s promised and rehearsed Taiwan invasion as early as 2024.
Complicit in reducing oil reserves was Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who spoke twice with China National Energy Administration Chairman Zhang Jianhua, a senior member of the CCP, before the White House announced selling off emergency oil stocks.
In late October 2022, America’s top brass arrived in Hawaii to discuss “The Red Hill Defueling, Closure, and Health Response Plan.” Among them were Mr. Austin as well as the Secretary of the Navy, the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the Chief of Naval Operations, the INDOPACOM Commander, and finally Joint Task Force Red Hill Commander Rear Admiral John Wade.
Mr. Wade stressed protecting the population and the environment and closing Red Hill, but not fuel oil for his own Pacific fleet.
The Coal Option
While China consumed over 4 billion tons of coal in 2022—more than the rest of the world combined—U.S. environmentalists instead focused on hysterical attacks on capitalists and military bases. While coal prepared the CCP for war, U.S. environmental regulations harmed the national security of the United States.
Similarly, the environmentally enlightened state of Hawaii stopped coal shipments and shut down Hawaii’s last coal power plant. Fossil fuels for Hawaii’s citizens and the Pacific fleet are radically reduced.
The U.S. Navy was left to compete for a share of oil from leaking tankers, an environmental risk far worse than Red Hill’s dribbling underground tanks.
U.S. Navy environmentalists had accelerated the defueling of Red Hill, while the Biden administration was slow-walking prepaid military aid to Taiwan. Also neglected were trade and military sanctions on China.
In Defense of Red Hill
The level of water contamination from a 2014 leak from one of the fuel tanks was in compliance with federal and state concentrations for drinking water.
Indeed, the USEPA website on Red Hill still concluded in July 2022, “All drinking water supplies in the vicinity of Red Hill continue to meet all federal drinking water standards.”
Angering the zealous and hysterical mob was the U.S. Navy’s claim that its investigations had yet to find health consequences.
Effectively equivalent to an order from the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army, in January 2022, for lack of “trust,” the Honolulu City Council sent a letter to Mr. Biden threatening to throw all of America’s 14 military operations permanently out of their seven-year land leases in Hawaii.
In February 2022, the Navy, claiming that the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) was overstepping its emergency powers, filed a lawsuit opposing the DOH’s order to suspend operations at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.
On Nov. 20, 2021, an aboveground fire suppression, a PFA drain line, released water a quarter of a mile downhill of the Red Hill fuel tanks, contaminating the Red Hill Shaft, a single water well. This aboveground leak triggered the mobilization of hysterical fears about poisoned water coming from underground tanks rather than the actual aboveground source.
Civilians and the Navy compete for oil tankers.
Former Maersk executive Steve Carmel stated in a gCaptain editorial, “The Department of Defense is projected to need on the order of one hundred tankers of various sizes in the event of a serious conflict in the Pacific. … The U.S. … has no identifiable roadmap to obtain it.”
Few oil reserve locations remain.
As long ago as February 1998, the Department of Energy (DOE) sold the 47,000-acre Naval Petroleum Reserves in the Elk Hills and Buena Vista oil fields in Kern County, California to Armand Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum.
Armand Hammer, a capitalist friend of Lenin and Stalin, was a go-between for five Soviet general secretaries and seven U.S. presidents and won the Soviet Union’s Order of Friendship of Peoples.
Communists and their friends understood the strategic value of oil storage.
What Will the Navy Do Now?
The Pentagon’s fabricated answer is a new “distributed” strategy of storing fuel at various points around the region, as well as “afloat locations” aboard unavailable tankers. It declared that the new plan would provide “resilience” and flexibility.
Contracted private tankers removed fuel from Red Hill and redistributed it to West Oahu facilities run by Island Energy Services at Campbell Industrial Park as well as to San Diego, Singapore, and Subic Bay.
Good luck with that!
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/defueling-the-us-navy-the-story-of-red-hill-5620204
*********************************************************Biden Administration Approves Major Offshore Wind Project In Massachusetts
The Biden administration has given the green light to a new offshore wind project off the coast of Massachusetts that promises to provide more electricity than the state's former coal-fired generating station. Avangrid’s New England Wind project is set to become the eighth large offshore wind project in the United States to be approved and is one of the largest projects to date.
While the project was initially planned to have a maximum capacity of 2,600 megawatts, it is now expected to generate around 1,900 megawatts due to a reduction in the number and size of turbines. This output could power up to 1 million homes and businesses in southern New England, making a significant contribution to the region's clean energy goals.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is another major project on the horizon, with a capacity of 2,600 megawatts and plans to be located off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia.
The closure of the last operating coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts in 2017 marked a shift towards cleaner energy sources. The former Brayton Point plant, which produced 1,600 megawatts of electricity, will now be repurposed to support the offshore wind industry.
Ken Kimmell, Avangrid’s chief development officer, emphasized the significance of the New England Wind project, highlighting the need for clean energy to replace retiring coal and nuclear plants. He described the approval as a major milestone that will help meet the region's energy demands.
The project will be located south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and will be constructed in two phases. Avangrid is also involved in the construction of the Vineyard Wind project, which has already begun delivering electricity to the grid and will eventually power 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts.
The Interior Department has been actively approving clean energy projects, with over 10 gigawatts of offshore wind energy approved in less than three years. This progress underscores the growing importance of renewable energy sources in meeting the nation's energy needs.
With the approval of projects like New England Wind and others, the transition to cleaner energy sources is well underway, signaling a shift towards a more sustainable energy future.
https://gcaptain.com/biden-administration-approves-eighth-offshore-wind-project/
***************************************************Solar Panel Waste Predicted to Hit 1 Million Tonnes by 2030: Australian Research
The volume of solar panel waste is rising rapidly in Australia, predicted to reach 280,000 tonnes within one year and one million tonnes within a decade.
According to a new study by the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, led by experts from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the challenge of dealing with significant levels of solar PV waste would come within the next two or three years.
A photovoltaic (PV) cell, also called a solar cell, is a non-mechanical device that converts sunlight into electricity. It is the basic building block of a PV system and typically produces one to two watts of power.
The study showed that the cumulative volume of end-of-life solar panels would reach 280,000 tonnes by 2025, 680,000 tonnes by 2030, and a “significant milestone” of 1 million tonnes between 2034 and 2035.
“This finding contradicts earlier forecasts, which predicted significant volumes of PV waste would not appear until post-2030,” the researchers said.
Researchers also noted that by 2030, more than 80 percent of the discarded solar panels will come from small-scale distributed PV systems, due to the earlier evolution of Australia’s residential PV market.
Meanwhile, on an annual scale, the waste volume in Australia is expected to exceed 50,000 tonnes in one year, and reach 100,000 tonnes from 2030 to 2035.
“This projection is four times higher than earlier predictions because it accounts for the pre-mature decommission of residential solar panel systems,” the study noted.
The solar panel waste is predicted to mainly concentrate in major Australian cities, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
However, from 2030, the waste volume of PV is expected to accelerate in regional and remote areas as large-scale PV systems reach their mid- or end-of-life cycle.
The Challenge Of Recycling Solar Panel Waste
Like most electronic waste, solar panels are made from potentially reusable materials such as glass, aluminium, and copper. However, due to the amounts of heavy metals it contains, solar panel waste could become hazardous waste and contaminate the environment if left in landfills to degrade.
The UNSW researchers noted that there is a lack of financial incentive to recycle solar panels. For example, it costs about $20 to recycle a typical 20-kilogram solar panel, and about $2 to send a panel to a landfill.
“Recyclers face slim margins due to intricate technology, insufficient material returns to offset costs, especially when operating at a small scale,” the study noted.
Finding markets for recycled solar panel materials is also a challenge, as up to 70 percent of solar panels are made of glass—an extremely low-value material.
“The challenge extends beyond glass, as the highly mixed nature of the components makes it challenging to find markets for their use.”
The researchers also noted the logistical difficulties of transporting separated materials to distant waste management infrastructures.
“This includes utility-scale solar farms in regional and remote areas. Coordinating collection points and recycling facilities to take into account the widespread distribution of panels across the country will be a significant barrier.”
The paper proposed a 12-year industry roadmap to tackle the challenges. This includes building a “national product stewardship scheme” that defines management structures, optimising waste logistics by creating a streamlined network to transport waste efficiently, investing in full-recycling technologies, and establishing large-scale PV waste treatment in major Australian cities.
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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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