Daily Quick Read - July 10, 2019

“Pollution is peace. Solar is slavery. Ignorance is our salvation.” – Donald Trump

The New York Times concluded that Trump’s environment speech on Monday was Orwellian.  While touting his environment achievements, Trump failed to mention the following:

Trump allowed more dumping of mining wastes into streams and rivers; revoked the Clean Power Plan provisions against emissions of particulates; sent the EPA to court to fight against its own rules on heavy metals from power plants; overturned rules on the release of methane gas; and kept pesticides on the market known to cause breast cancer. And all that was in just his first six months.  Under Trump, the EPA has become a cruel joke, as scientists have given way to fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists, and rules meant to protect the public have been replaced with gifts meant to boost his billionaire supporters.

Japan Reinstitutes Commercial Whaling 
Last week Japanese whalers went to sea to conduct commercial whaling once again. For the first time in 30 years the whalers will hunt in Japanese controlled waters. Japan left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) officially on June 30th. As a member of that group, Japanese whalers were prohibited from taking whales for commercial use and whaling in areas around Japan. However, there is a silver lining here. For decades, Japanese whalers exploited a loophole in IWC agreements that allowed them to take whales in the Antarctic for “research” purposes. 

Kitty Block, president of Humane Society International, said: “Japan leaving the IWC and defying international law to pursue its commercial whaling ambitions is renegade, retrograde and myopic, it is undermining its international reputation for an industry whose days are so clearly numbered, to produce a product for which demand has plummeted.

Can A For Profit Company Restore Jaguar In Arizona?
Biologist Ron Pulliam has an innovative plan to help restore jaguars in the southwest. He thinks it’s the best approach to pull public and private interests together. 

Wildlife Corridors is just one part of a larger effort to stimulate a restoration economy. The company works closely with nonprofit and limited-profit organizations that Pulliam and collaborators created to bring in additional revenue by restoring habitat. For example Borderlands Restoration L3C is a limited-profit corporation that sells native and pollinator plants to federal agencies for regional restoration projects. Collectively, according to Pulliam, this Borderlands Restoration Network boasts a US$3 million budget and employs about 20 local people — jobs that Pulliam claims are better than those offered by the mining industry because they are sustainable and will last long into the future.

Giant Floating Solar Farms
OK. So the idea is to build these massive floating solar farms that would use the energy they generate to convert seawater to methanol. Methanol is a CO2 generating greenhouse gas, so where the win here? Methanol emits much lower levels of CO2. It burns cleaner and in this model requires less energy and pollution to extract than oil. Global transportation will never be all-electric, so maybe this is not such a bad idea. 

Millions of solar panels clustered together to form an island could convert carbon dioxide in seawater into methanol, which can fuel airplanes and trucks, according to new research from Norway and Switzerland and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, PNAS, as NBC News reported. The floating islands could drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.

Caribbean Coral Under Attack
A mysterious disease is wreaking havoc on coral colonies throughout the Caribbean. Called stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) scientist know little about its cause or cure. They do know it is potent and that it spreads rapidly. 

In the Caribbean, the disease is now ravaging about a third of the region’s 65 reef-building species, scientists estimate. Yet researchers aren’t even sure if the disease is viral, bacterial or some other microbial mix. Whatever the cause, “it’s annihilating whole species,” says coral ecologist Marilyn Brandt, who is leading a science team trying to tackle the outbreak from multiple research angles.