"CO2 – less" coal power plant draws green ire anyway

Makes me ask the question… “What is the real Environmental Adgenda?”

Anthony, this article really does not go into much detail about why “the greens” are disgruntled.
But reading this quote,
“Vattenfall managers talk a lot about supposedly environmentally friendly coal power stations but they are still planning and building conventional coal-fired power stations with high levels of CO2 emissions,” BUND’s energy spokesman Thorben Becker said.
It makes me wonder if it is “progress in general” as you state, or “progress as usual” that is the issue…? It’s difficult to draw strong, broad-brush conclusions based on that little blurb..no?
John D.

So they say no to this stuff and no to nuclear. I wonder how they expect to generate a base load? If global warming turns out to be real, nuclear is the only option unless we want to return to the 16th century with a reduction in population to match.
I wonder how many Germans believe that Global Warming is a bunch of bull?

it would be interesting to know
– how much the efficiency is reduced by the capture process
– how many trucks they use to transport to CO2 to the storing site
– the emergency scenarios and plans in case of leakage of CO2 from the storing site.

Pumping pressurized fluids into the ground is a common tactic in recovering oil. And the pressure will be a lot higher than the pressure _before_ you pop the top of the can. IOW, bubbling and fizzing is unlikely.

You guys don’t get it. They don’t expect us to generate a base load, or to even continue to live, really. Failing the elimination of humans (except for themselves), they want us to return to the Stone Age, as hunter/gatherers supposedly “at one” with nature.

Many environmentalist are religious cult members with the Earth as their god and man as the devil. Logic has no place in their cult. I’ve seen these cult members in action all over the West Coast of the US where I live. From burning down seed banks at the University of Washington, to protest tree sitting at the University of California, they are against progress of any kind. Unfortunately, many formerly great magazines like National Geo, etc. are gradually getting sucked into this cultic behavior as so many of their articles end with critical comments about human behavior. Discover Magazine regularly publishes wildly inaccurate articles on enviro and evil man. For example, they published an article that wildly exaggerated the amount of water it takes to grow corn, raise a lb of beef with the implication that eating meat is tough on the environment.

johnnyb, the Germans were made to believe, that someone elese will bear the cost of their good-naturedness to green causes. With rising energy bills and the knowledge of their dependency of the energy bully in Moscow appearing on their horizon, things will change. The German governement is still trying to hide the consequences of its politics in the past decades. It accuses the energy providers of ripping off consumers while keeping up the high taxes on gasoline, heating oil etc. This is seen and felt by lots of people directly in their pockets. So the cover of somebody else paying the costs is coming apart.
This, at last, is a reason for hope.

CO2 is already ROUTINELY pumped into oil reservoirs to increase oil recovery. This is not much different. The CO2 liquid (well, its not strictly liquid; its dense-phase CO2) it pumped in to occupy the pore space in the reservoir sands. Provided its in a depleted reservoir, it should be fairly safe – certainly no more risk of subsidence than with normal oil & gas mining. In fact – less.
The only real risk is if it leaks out, which is why depleted reservoirs are a good option – they have proven seals.

Coal is no “bridging” technology, it’s a long-term solution. “Coal – the once and future king”

As a couple of other commentators have pointed out, this sequestration carries the risk of unintended consequences. That is the problem the Greens have with it. Specifically, the have mentioned the strong potential for acidifying the water table. It is nothing to do with halting progress, they just don’t like anything that might upset the environment. On our collective past experience of unchecked industrial emissions they are obviously correct. It is the same with CO2: I have a strong feeling they don’t really believe the science either but they just don’t like to take the chance that this is the one emission that might have no effect on the environment.

JamesG
Cheers

Greens are not afraid of this being a smokescreen. This article clears the green’s smokescreen enough, so we can see their real agenda.
Anti-man
Anti-technology
Pro-nothing
Greens are the ultimate pessimists.
Mike Bryant

It appears that England will be one of the first nations to walk silently back to the sixteenth century. Maybe their story will become a cautionary tale for those who look longingly back to earlier times.

In my opinion I would much rather this approach (CCS) than more nuclear reactors, as I’ve never heard of a decent enough, workable plan to store or get rid of nuclear waste. I am not an expert on nuclear technology and I allow that things may have progressed somewhat, but in my book nuclear power is neither clean nor green…
From Whackypedia –
In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states that there are “millions of gallons of radioactive waste” as well as “thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material” and also “huge quantities of contaminated soil and water”.[2] Despite these copious quantities of waste, the DOE has a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025.[2] The Fernald, Ohio site for example had “31 million pounds of uranium product”, “2.5 billion pounds of waste”, “2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris”, and a “223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards”.[2] The United States currently has at least 108 sites it currently designates as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres[3][2] The DOE wishes to try and clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some will never be completely remediated, and just in one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there were for example at least “167 known contaminant release sites” in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km2) site.[2] Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, and cleanup issues were simpler to address, and the DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites.[2]
…
One of my fears is that the Greens will clamp so hard down on electricity generation from fossil fuels, that nuclear will be seen as the answer. I just don’t see how that could be…

The whole CCS push assumes CO2 is a problem. I would suggest that someone produce the evidence of this before jumping on the CCS bandwagon.

We do need electricity 24 hours a day. That means solar and wind energy require massive batteries (that haven’t been invented yet) to replace coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power.
In terms of acidification of water tables or causing the ground to become unstable, any CO2 will be pumped very deep underground, thousands of feet down and probably underneath a impenetrable layer of rock so there is close to zero risk of any of these kinds of problems.
For this idea to work and have an impact, however, we need to sequester truly massive amounts of CO2. Total emissions are now 25 billion tonnes per year. The biggest sequestration project I have heard of only sequesters about 500 thousand tonnes per year (or 0.025% of total emissions.)

Coal powered plants in countries that couldn’t give a fart about what comes out the smoke stack are yucky. And many of these same countries provide coal for open fire cooking, etc. Back in the old days, like the ranch I lived on, we had a coal burning stove in the living room. It was not very efficient and turned both the inside and outside walls black from the sooty smoke that belched out into the living room and chimney. It was eventually replaced by an oil burning stove. That wasn’t much better. The carpet around the stove also turned black from residue. I have since replaced that with a more efficient and cleaner burning oil stove. A bit of an improvement but I still know that these kinds of home stoves are notorious for sooty residue hanging in the air.
I have now installed a double burning wood stove. It is in another room. No soot or smoke that I can see and there is a secondary chamber that burns the wood gases again before they go up the chimney. It isn’t without any kind of pollution but it is better. I think the greenies are concerned about all those countries that are still belching pollution in general. I can’t say that I blame them. You would too if you could see the remaining black stain on the carpet in the LIVING room.

I dislike conspiracy theories with great intensity as they are usually nothing but garbage. But in this case if you follow the trails of smoke you are bound to find the fire eventually.
The entire Green movement is a ‘smokescreen’ in itself on this issue of climate change. How can I deduce this? Because the main backers of the climate change issue are transnational politico types such as predominates the ranks of the UN and the EU. Al Gore and James Hansen are typical of the American manifestation of this type. This is not really a ploy to set mankind back into the “Stone Age”. Anyone in political power would see in an instant that going back to pre-Industrial days, however much this might satisfy some of the radical Greenies, is not compatible with any form of modernized government. The Greenies, however, are a useful tool in keeping people in line and keeping enviromental concerns foremost in the public mind. The threat and fear of radical climate change, along with the glaze of scientific credibility it has, is all that is needed to motivate a public that would otherwise be against such changes that are blatantly damaging to their economic interests. Climate change is the dominant issue of the day, and the most versatile with almost any action being able to be justified under this aegis that would otherwise stand out as unusual, absurd, or even criminal.
Think of all the technologies that are being advocated and at times deployed. What do they all have in common? They substantially raise the price of electricity. This threatens millions of lower income earners. When people are deprived of something that only then government has the power to offer them, they become a mob and a tool of those in power. Very useful. If you are beholden to someone else for that which you need to live, you bascially have to do whatever they say. If you want the privilege of having electricity, and all the conveniences that provides, then you will tow the line of the Government.
And in the EU that is not in Berlin, or London, or Paris, but in Brussels. The EU is thus far a case-study in how disparate groups of people will manage under a transnational government. It’s basically a gigantic experiment. You will find a great many ties between its leadership and the UN. And within the lab of the EU, they are setting up England as the first test sample. With the Continental disdain for the British, you can liken this (with a bit of historical irony) to how the British felt about Austraila. Massive immigration combined with an eventual shortfall in electricity generation is going to spark some kind of popular reaction, and you can bet that it will not go unlearned from or undirected.
It can’t be done all at once because people would notice that and take action against it. So it is done slowly over years or even decades allowing people to get adjusted to the change, and allowing for indoctrination via the media for two generations. See the recent posting by Dee Norris for an example.
I prefer to think of the current situation as wanting to blend the idealism of the early and mid twentieth century as regards the viability of international governing bodies (i.e., The League of Nations and its successor the UN) with the elitism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where the wealthy and powerful had much but the middle class had yet to really emerge in most places so the common man had very little and was thus largely at the mercy of his ‘betters.’ Controlling energy is the first phase in this.
Controlling information will be the next, and this is already underway in the EU with that government considering what to do with bloggers, particularly the anonymous ones that are critical of it (though that will not be the reason given of course). The traditional MSM (e.g., the BBC) is already under the sway of the EU as it provides massive subsidies in it’s so-called efforts to reach out to the public it attempts to govern and ‘educate’ it on the benefits of being European. After that is well in motion, the control of currency will come next. You can expect the EU to drop its leniency that is has thus far shown to nations not adopting the euro as their currency. They will want every nation in the single-market system to dump their national currencies (pounds, francs, marks) and exchange them for the euro exclusively. You will also see the EU want to absorb the ECB (European Central Bank) into its “institutional framework”. While the euro is in circulation now, it is not as pervasive as the dollar is in the United States, and that is the eventual goal.
All of these are not really ‘coming.’ They are in developing form now in the EU and they are being promulgated with varying speeds depending upon successes and setbacks. And the lessons are being well learned you can bet too.
If you want an idea of what is being contemplated there, think of the United States federal government being replaced by the United Nations. You have an unelected beauracratic administration at the top interacting with democratically elected provincial governments. This preserves the tradition of voting while at the same time rendering it largely impotent. Yet the governors of these provincial governments are inextricably part of the top level of governnment too. So you see the EU Council of Ministers is about the equivalent of the UN Security Council. And the EU Commission with its president is much like the UN’s Office of the Secretary General, except that for now the former rotates among the chief executives of various provincial governments (i.e., national governments) – but they are working on making it an electable position from the European populace much as the Sec Gen is elected by the General Assembly. The fraud that there is a European populace at all (instead of British, French, Germans, Poles, Italians, Romanians, etc) is the same fraud that says that an unelected transational governing body (the UN) can help bring peace and good to the world. It sounds good, and it can actually be made to work with the right set of conditions (think of what the UN could do if it were directly in charge of the US Armed Forces for example), but it does not really benefit anybody except those in power.
And to have true power you must control energy, information, and currency. If you can control those three, you can control trade. Once you control the wealth generation that trade provides you can more effectively control politics. After all, our own current system of lobbyists illustrates what happens when government becomes the primary mover and shaker in markets. And of course markets employ people – people like you and me, ordinary Joes and Jennifers. Once you control something, you can take it away if needs be, and people will go to any length to not have something as vital as those three taken away from them. Imagine your life without electricity, the Internet, or the ability to purchase things. Now try to imagine modern society functioning without these.
And that’s my point. We are not to do without these. We are just to be controlled by our need for these. It will probably be offered to us at first as something good, and will be freely chosen. After that, however, the project will not stop for any one or for any reason until it is completed. Some of it has already begun. Or else, after its various scandals, why do you suppose we still have the UN and are still members of it?

I have a strong luddite streak in me too. I would have loved to be an indian. Live in a teepee. Wake up in the morning, strech and try to figure out if I wanted to go hunting or fishing that day, while I cooked a chunk of buffalo over an open fire.

That kind of life is colloquially known as “short and brutal”. No thanks.

The motives of the environmentalists have little to do with science or ecosystems. I have posted a bunch of stuff on my blog about the self feeding government structures which need AGW to survive.
On another point, I just compiled the latest hockey stick data, which many don’t realize is constructed by collecting random information which may be temperature, and throwing away data which won’t contribute to the blade of the stick. I think the graphs I made show clearly the selection bias used and how it reduces the past ‘temperature’ signal relative to modern times.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/manns-statistical-amplification-of-local-data/

As Heinlein said, it is easy to mistake stupidity for malice. I’d like to think most Greens are sincere and mislead. Some of their leaders are another matter. They want the benefits of technology (at least for themselves) but want the rest of us to live ‘in harmony with nature’ or at least their definition of it. That means higher taxes and less freedom.
It is always for a good and noble cause, of course, and what could be more important than ‘saving the planet’?
We now see the result of growth and progress. 150 years ago, most folks worried about putting food on the table. Basic survival. Today, we have the ‘luxury’ of giving voice to the Disaster and Crisis types who would have been laughed off the stage a few generations ago. Given the lack of scientific knowledge (and common sense) of the general public, the D&C’s have a willing audience. It is always easier to blame someone else.
It would be comforting to think that the pendulum will swing back, but that requires an educational system that teaches young people to think, rather than ‘feel good.’ A few may rise above, not a majority in my experience.
And when the lights do go out, the rest will just blame someone else.

Lets face it, there’s just no pleasing some people.

same thing in Canada. Alberta is derided as polluting eco-nightmare, but when the Alberta government announced a CCS plan, Suzuki et al jumped all over it.
Apparently facts have nothing to do with the propaganda. Alberta has the toughest environmental regulations in Canada, and even in North America. Alberta is the only jurisdiction that requires new power plants to have the same emissions or less, as a gas fired plant. This applies to CO2, mercury, NOX, PM10 etc.
Alberta also has 1/2 of the total wind generation capacity in Canada. Alberta has literally 1000 times more wind generation than Ontario, which has 4 times the population of Alberta. Most of the eco-criticism, comes from Ontario, of course.

All: As for carbon sequestration into underground formations, the technology is decades old. The oil industry has been using it since the 50s.
It is safe. Its exactly the same mechanism that stores oil and natural gas for millions of years.
Your natural gas for heating will come from temporary underground storage, during the winter. Natural Gas is pumped underground during the summer, closer to the market, for storage. During the winter its released to the pipeline system. Trillions of Cubic feet of gas are stored this way, every year. Right now, there is nearly 3 trillion cu ft in storage.
Gas (CO2 in this case) is pumped into a permeable rock horizon. The formation is itself isolated. It has impermeable shale above and pinching it off at the zonal boundaries. It holds oil and natural gas in place for millions of years. It will hold CO2 for millions, too.
Assuming, of course, that we actually NEED to dispose of CO2. If we don’t need to dispose of CO2, its an expensive, useless, add-on.

Stu (05:49:16) :
We have all this nuclear waste needing to be stored.
Why?
France has been generating 75% of their electricity with nukes for the last 25 years. Total waste is stored in a single room about the size of a large basketball court.
Why?
Because France recycles their nuclear fuel. Most of the material in the fuel rods (95%) consists of uranium and plutonium. Both of these can be used to make new fuel rods. A lot of the remainder is used in nuclear medicine. In fact, the US must import such medicinal isotopes as we want to store ours away in big waste areas.
Why?
After the publication of the book The Curve of Binding Energy by John McPhee, the Carter administration became convinced recycling nuclear fuel rods was a national security risk because someone might steal the plutonium and build a bomb. However, the problem with using plutonium from spent fuel rods for nuclear devices is you must separate the isotopes responsible for poisoning the chain reaction. This almost brought and end to the use of plutonium in the first atomic bomb. For awhile Oppenheimer despaired of getting around the problem. However, the implosion design was designed, allowing the Los Alamos group to use plutonium even with the undesirable isotopes present. This is all documented in the book Making the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
In any event, why couldn’t the US secure the fuel rod recycling process?
Is it better to have used fuels rods stored in over 130 locations throughout the US with little or no security?
Evidently it is, because that’s what the US is doing.
We are all smarter than those French, right?
For the whole story see http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/

The creation of an extremist environmental party after WW II and the eventual collapse of the Communists, could have been predicted, since these people are the natural heirs of these extremist groups. They can’t be reasoned with, only opposed. We have to be careful not to let such a group get this kind of power and clout here. The proper use of coal (hydration) is essential for a good energy solution. Carbon sequestration is a waste of money.

Les,
Most of the eco-criticism, comes from Ontario, of course.
Followed closely by British Columbia, where we have a carbon tax on our gasoline.

My guess is that things will have to get worse before they can get better. The utility companies have not been building coal or nuclear plants for quite a few years. But the existing plants are approaching the end of their design life, about 40 years. Some of the utilities are doing life extension work on the existing plants but sooner or later they will have to be reitired. If nothing new gets built then we will start having brownouts. When the lights start going out people will become more positive about proven technologies like coal and nuclear.

We had a fast breeder reactor that used “spent” fuel rods for fuel, and which was inherently safe due to the use of metallic fuel rods. It was called IFR. The prototype was up and running in SE Idaho at the Argonne-West facility. It was the dawn of a bright new age – we have enough spent fuel rods lying around to provide all of our electricity for hundreds of years. But Bill Clinton killed the IFR in 1994 with encouragement from NRDC.
Greens at the core of radical environmentalism don’t oppose solutions because they’re Luddites. It’s because they’re Malthusians. They think there are too many people on the planet. Elimination of DDT killed a lot of people, but didn’t really make a dent in the population. Converting food to fuel might accelerate the pace of starvation. Lowering the standard of living will knock off a bunch due to starvation, lack of medical care, etc. If those don’t work, I suppose total economic collapse and global war might work. Hang on to your hats, folks. Until the general populace gets wise to what’s really going on, it’s going to be a rough ride!

can I recommend this link on the crazy economics of carbon capture
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/09/knee-jerk-politics.html

Mike Hodges (10:37:37) :
Everytime I read environmental quotes/policy/desires, I can’t help but think about Orwell’s 1984: “Some are more equal than others.”
Hrrmmph. Wasn’t that “Animal Farm”?

Tony Edwards:
Thanks for correcting my brain cramp.

Tony:
I should have responded.
No. It is “1984”.
Sincerely,
Winston Smith
Ministry of Truth

Jeff A., I’m a conservation biologist/ natural resource consultant who often works on behalf of the building, timber and ranching industries. I’ve spoken out on a few local environmental issues and been labled “wacko-environmentalist” and “anti-progress” as a consequence, I’m not sure where the line is drawn.
I have many friends who by no means are “anti-progress”, or “anti-people” who have spoken out about one conservation issue or another, and as a consequence have gotten labeled, packed into an extreme wacko-box and shipped to La-La-Land where the crazy cavemen live.
Extremist diaologue and name-calling do not help, hardly ever, no matter which side is doing it; that’s my point. It tends to oversimplify very complex issues. By the way, there are a lot of extreme views and name calling to be found in the Bloggosphere; it’s unfortunate, but true.
By the way, do you personally know anyone who “doesn’t want progress, period”?…really? Even in the article posted by Anthony regarding this coal-plant issue, if the article is carefully read, one can see that the “Green” opponents may not even be opposing this particular plant, or this new technology, or progress in general.
Rather, as I previoulsy pointed out in the third post under the article provided by Anthony… “Vattenfall managers talk a lot about supposedly environmentally friendly coal power stations but they are still planning and building conventional coal-fired power stations with high levels of CO2 emissions,” BUND’s energy spokesman Thorben Becker said.
As I wrote in response to Anthony’s comment about greens, I wrote…
“It makes me wonder if it is “progress in general” as you state, or “progress as usual” that is the issue…? It’s difficult to draw strong, broad-brush conclusions based on that little blurb..no?
By the way, under my last post…I meant to write “quite a few extremists”…not “quite few”..just slightly different meanings there..
Jd

George B.
Not really, the bottom line is those Eastern Block industrial economies did not benefit from, or adjust to the voice of concerned citizens; because there, concerned citizens had no voice. With no voice, there is no expression of concern (environmental, economic or otherwise), without expression of environmental concerns on behalf of citizenry, there’s no government response, with no government response, there’s no resulting environmental law…no environmental law…voila…you get a lousy place to live, work and play…filthy, disgusting, ugly, unhealthy; barbaric and dehumanizing actually (but at least nobody has to suffer the foolishness of “Greens” and wacko-environmentalists there!).
Ultimately you can blame the dismal state of the Eastern Block environment on the failure of totalitarianism. Proximally though, it arises out of inability of citizens to express or respond to social concerns (environmental or otherwise), and of course, a government that really doesn’t care counts for something too.
It supports my argument precisely; if not, I apologize, as I don’t exactly understand your reasoning.
John D.

There does seem to be a lot of tempests in teapots. They strain out knats and swallow camels.

Evan,
What reason do you have for hope in the human race? History,
theology, the law of compound interest?

Evil loves a hierarchy,
God needs no such thing.
It you want to bring on evil
bring on that one-world thing.
Stalin was by some accounts a coward yet look what he ruled over.
a rule of thumb:
A good idea does not have to be forced on people and a bad one shouldn’t be.

Or be smashed by an errant comet? It is dangerous out in the universe. For a while some thought we did not need God but some dangers are beyond human ability at this time and forseeably. And then there is Yellowstone. The logical consequence of a cold uncaring universe is a cold uncaring universe.
I think God saves fools first in many cases. A form of heavenly triage.

I’ve taken the fool’s path to wisdom. What is a trend?

No luddite here. “Better living through thermonuclear biochemistry” is my motto. Did I miss any toes?

Evan,
Dentistry is a big one for me. Just in my lifetime (I’m 58), a trip to the dentist has gone from a thing of dread to dang near a social event…flirting with the girls and talking about fishing with my dentist. No anticipation at all except for the price tag on the crowns.
Often, I’ve told him how good he is. He gives technique some of the credit. But, also he says their equipment is so much better these days. One example: Needles. They’re laser sharpened now and used once. Painless!, when he uses his special technique. Way back when, they were autoclaved, got dull over time and would tear tissue when jammed in. Hurt like hell. That tearing of tissue is what caused most all the discomfort after the deadening would wear off, also. Gawd, I’m long-winded.
[Reply – I bet I can trade you wind for wind! ~ Evan]

Anthony Watts wrote: I’ve always thought that the biggest issue with greens was not CO2 and AGW, but “progress in general”.
My brother, you’re not alone. See this article, which drew some fire over at Realclimate in last Friday’s Roundup (starting at about comment 60). Definitely worth a read.

The German people are lacking in logic, Living in Germany and watching the German public get eaten alive used to give me nightmares but realizing that they were lacking in logic I close my eyes to the problem. G. Schroeder took €385,000 a year for life after arranging a German government loan to finance a Russian pipeline to transport gas to Germany, he also conveniently destroyed most of the energy laws not related to Russian energy, the Germen people ? they thanked him for securing ‘reliable’ energy for Germans future, for believing a man that has been married 5 times ( and about to be single again) and cost the country hundreds of billions of € it shows how stupid the German public really is.

I thought coal ash had a bit of thorium, not uranium.
While there are thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods that could be recycled, 90% of the total waste is leftover from the weapons programs. Hanford, Oak Ridge, etc. Not nearly as useful, far more dangerous, with proper handling, could still be a source of energy. It takes a commitment of many folks to make it happen. Serious safety issues. We’ll have to deal with them. We won’t get one millijoule by just talking about it.
That’s the real problem – energy. To maintain or improve the quality of life, it takes energy. We can and should conserve, and be as efficient as possible. We still need energy, particularly in developing countries. Wind and solar may have a small place at the table, but serious energy means coal, gas, or nuclear. The first two have problems of supply and pollution. So does the third, but we can deal with them, particularly if we reprocess what we already have.
Transportation at the individual level will depend on room temperature liquid fuels for a long time. Absent a major breakthrough in batteries, nothing else has the energy density. Joe Sixpack isn’t going to pump cryogenics or high pressures with much degree of safety.
All of which is a moot point if the folks with influence and power don’t want it to happen. If the Greens, Enviros, AGW’s and the like get their way, it won’t happen. When the lights do go out, it may be too late.

James G.
Your wariness of self-regulated industry is warrented.
Great case-studies of self-regulating industries might be found in the history of the California sardine fishery, the Atlantic cod fishery, the Atlantic Sworfishery, and the old-growth-dependant North American timber industry. What do all of these have in common? Moslty unregulated, rampant harvest with increasingly clever and efficient technologies, to the point of diminishing return and industry collapse. A portion of the citizenry starts to recognize the problem and expresses concern, and then governement trys to impose regulations that yes, protect the environment, but also lead ultimately to sustainability of said industries. Then members of said industries call those trying to impose some rules “wacko environmentalists” that are killing their respective industries. Circular reasoning?
I remember once when I was working for the USFS in northeast California in the early ’90’s; it was a Friday night at Laufman Station and a bunch of harvest inspectors, timber markers and cruisers were around the BBQ, along with a handful of “ists”…(biologists, hydrologists, archeologists, etc). The timber folks were complaining about that damn spotted owl and all of those tree-huggers destroying the old-growth timber economy. One of the biologists, getting a little impatient asked the timber folks…”ok, let’s say you guys were able to mark and cut the big timber here on the Plumas, Lassen and Modoc, as fast as you want, like you did in the late 70’s and 80’s; how long would it last? With some feet shuffling and mumbling, they confessed, about 7 to 10 or so years!
So if left unregulated, at this point in time, old-growth timber in Northeast California would last about a decade..maybe more! Who’s at fault at the sad state of the timber industry..the “Greens”…the “Guvinment”…or unregulated industry?
John D.

Jeff, in the first half of your post, you’ve taken a very, very small part of my contribution completely out of context. But, I completely agree with you on the concern over third-arms though, if that’s really what’s been said. Regarding whether or not GM foods have been tested, I personally don’t know; perhaps you can share?
John D.

Sorry, forgot to finish the sentence properly, but I think you get my point.