Recycled beer yeast can remove lead from water: breakthrough discovery
This is very good news. Lead is a very harmful pollutant and there was a notorious episode of it contaminating the water supply at Flint, Michigan in 2014
Today, according to the National Resources Defense Council, high levels of lead have been found in Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark, New York, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported that almost 70 percent of children under six in Chicago are exposed to lead in their home tap water
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech have found a way to use recycled beer yeast to make water cleaner by removing lead, the schools announced.
The breakthrough builds on their 2021 research that a year’s worth of discarded beer from a sole brewery could treat Boston’s entire water supply.
A process called biosorption, where yeast can quickly suck in traces of lead along with other heavy metals from the water, was key to the project. Researchers packaged yeast inside special hydrogel capsules that created a de facto lead filter for water.
They’re easy to remove from water once it is drink-ready, scientists said.
“We have the hydrogel surrounding the free yeast that exists in the center, and this is porous enough to let water come in, interact with yeast as if they were freely moving in water, and then come out clean,” researcher Patricia Stathatou said of the study, now published in the journal “RSC Sustainability.”
“The fact that the yeast themselves are bio-based, benign and biodegradable is a significant advantage over traditional technologies.”
Next, the team is brewing up a concept to modify the faucet water in homes or for mass quantities at treatment plants.
“We think that there’s an interesting environmental justice aspect to this, especially when you start with something as low-cost and sustainable as yeast, which is essentially available anywhere,” researcher Devashish Gokhale said.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/15/lifestyle/recycled-beer-yeast-can-remove-lead-from-water-study/
***********************************************Another Glorious Climate Triumph
For years Canada’s Liberal administration under Justin Trudeau have been touting their carbon tax as the best thing since sliced bread or possibly bread itself: efficient, effective, and popular.
The last has become clearly untenable and the former was never a sensible claim since those economists who favour carbon taxes want them to be a substitute for a hoorah’s nest of regulations not an addition to it.
But now comes the sad news that it and its red-tape buddies didn’t even work. Even with economically devastating and sanctimonious COVID lockdowns, Canadian GHG emissions rose from an estimated 686 million tonnes in 2020 to 698 million in 2021 and then 708 million in 2022, the latest year for which the feds have numbers.
Like many politicians, Canada’s prime minister has a sublime confidence in his own capacity to achieve wonderful things that is not, how shall we put it, evidence-based. Long in the fang after eight years in office, he resists all suggestions that he step down, instead crowning himself the only man who can save Canada from the forces of evil who want to oppress women and gays while burning up the planet:
“Are we a country that will choose to move backwards in the fight against climate change? To move backwards in the rights of women and LGBT communities? Are we going to be a country that invests less in green growth? […] Because that’s all that the conservatives are proposing.”
Sunny ways indeed. But what if you are going backward in the fight against climate change anyway because your carbon tax, for all the hardships it imposes on citizens when heating their homes and filling their vehicles, isn’t cutting emissions even in company with all the regulations, subsidies and other heavy-handed interventions? Then what?
As the Toronto Sun noted tartly in an editorial, the latest tally:
“means Canada is moving further away from Trudeau’s target of reducing emissions to at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.”
It also means he was completely wrong about what his policies would do, are doing and, presumably, will do.
He’s not alone. In her ongoing retreat from reality, Trudeau’s deputy and also his finance minister, once a public intellectual world-famous in Canada, now makes fantasy claims like:
“the investments that Canada is attracting today are coming to Canada in large part because foreign investors recognize that we have a price on pollution and we have a strong climate plan and that means they want to be here and make stuff here in Canada and create good jobs here in Canada”.
In large part? Where did that one come from? Who ever called her up and said wow, your energy is artificially expensive, where do we sign? Yet on she goes, also insisting that:
“The only way for us as an open trade-exposed economy, to have an economic plan actually work, to actually be able to attract foreign investment, to actually be able to sell what we produce, is to have a strong and credible climate plan.”
Um and do you? She thinks so, approvingly quoting her colleague Jonathan Wilkinson, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources (formerly of Environment and Climate Change and evidently nostalgic for it), that:
“Climate change is altering our environment in a myriad of harmful ways that disrupts our daily lives and the Canadian economy. In this context, the federal government has developed an ambitious climate plan that is driving real results.”
Yes. Falling productivity, stagnant real wages outside the public sector and… what’s this? Rising emissions. Those results are real, all right. Just not the ones you were looking for.
As we’ve said before, the “backlash” against climate policy is driven partly by the real pain it is delivering. But also by the conspicuous lack of gain. It’s meant to improve the weather but none of them think the weather is improving or is about to.
https://principia-scientific.com/another-glorious-climate-triumph/
******************************************Biden’s Green-Energy Price Shock
Do White House officials pay electric bills? They strangely keep saying the President’s climate agenda is reducing electric-power rates even as the cost of running your dishwasher is sky-rocketing, as illuminated by the Labor Department’s consumer-price index.
The nearby chart shows the average change in electricity prices over the last decade. Electric rates remained relatively flat in the seven years before President Biden took office, rising 5%. Thank cheap natural gas. Yet since January 2021 electricity prices have soared 29.4%—about 50% more than overall inflation.
By our calculation, electricity prices have increased 13 times faster under Mr. Biden than across the previous seven years. His policies aren’t entirely to blame. But most of it is a result of the left’s climate agenda, and the price increases will get worse.
Federal regulations, renewable subsidies and state green-energy mandates are forcing fossil-fuel and nuclear plants to retire prematurely. Solar and wind need backup from so-called peaker gas plants, usually at a hefty premium. During power shortages, spot prices can hit $10,000 per megawatt hour compared to $30 to $60 on a normal basis.
State net-metering programs also subsidize people with solar panels for excess power they remit to the grid. People without solar then pay more for the grid’s fixed costs, which are also growing as more renewables are added. In California an average customer without solar pays 10% to 20% more to subsidize solar.
The costs of hardening the grid to support the government’s green energy transition are also increasing, including new high-voltage transmission lines, power transformers and battery storage. The Biden Administration’s electric-truck mandate alone will cost utilities $370 billion to upgrade their networks. Utilities will pass on their increasing costs to customers over time.
Higher interest rates are also increasing the cost of new green-energy projects. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credits can offset up to 50% of a project’s cost, but offshore wind developers say this isn’t enough and are demanding to be paid higher rates—often four times more than natural gas plants.
By driving more baseload power plants out of business, IRA subsidies will increase electric bills even more. Businesses pass on their higher energy costs to customers. U.S. manufacturers will become less competitive, which is why some Members of Congress of both parties are pushing for a carbon tariff. Watch as the prices for cars and appliances rise.
The Inflation Reduction Act may be the biggest legislative misnomer of all time. Our friends on the left wonder why Americans are in a sour mood about the economy. Perhaps they all have solar panels.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/opinion-biden-s-green-energy-price-shock/ar-BB1ltv7N
********************************************Australian court upholds coal mine approvals. Defies Global warming argument
The Federal Court has upheld Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek's refusal to assess the climate impacts of coal mine expansions at Narrabri and Mount Pleasant near Muswellbrook.
The Environment Council of Central Queensland took Ms Plibersek and Narrabri Coal Operations (a subsidiary of Whitehaven Coal) and MACH Energy to court for failing to protect the environment from climate harm resulting from new coal and gas projects.
It had argued the minister's refusal to act on the climate risks of the mining expansions was irrational, illogical and unlawful.
The mining companies joined Ms Plibersek in court to defend the case.
The court found on Thursday that, under existing environment laws, the minister was not legally required to assess risk to the environment from the climate harm of the coal mine expansions.
"We are devastated and heartbroken by today's decision," Ashleigh Wyles from the Environment Council of Central Queensland said.
"We're afraid this decision will open the floodgates for the Minister to approve dozens of new goal and gas projects currently on her desk.
"Instead of standing up to fossil fuel companies, our Environment Minister is standing with them in court, defending her refusal to act on the climate harm of new coal and gas mines."
The minister employed the "market substitution" argument or "drug-dealers defence" to defend her decisions.
But the ECoCeQ argued this was dangerous logic because it was out of step with the law, with science and with public expectations.
"Our client is dismayed that under law as it currently stands, it is somehow not the role of the Environment Minister to protect our environment from the climate harm of new coal and gas mines," Environment Justice Australia co-chief executive Elizabeth McKinnon said.
"This judgement today does not change the science. What it does show is that Australia's environment laws are utterly broken.
"Our laws are failing to keep up with the climate crisis. They are failing to protect the iconic places, plants and animals of this country from the devastation of climate change."
***************************************
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)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment