“This festival is Australia’s leading Indigenous cultural exchange event and a national hub for major forums with discussion, policy and action formulation. It brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through youth forums, art, music, film, song, dance and stories.
“NITV is the official media supporter for the 19th Garma festival, which kicks off on Friday 4 – Monday 7 Augustin Gulkula, Arnhem Land. The channel will present a special four-day broadcasting slate, sharing Indigenous stories, from an Indigenous perspective, through an Indigenous lens. …
“This year sees inspiring women leading powerful discussions, with Sonia Smallacombe,
former Social Affairs Officer for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues,
joining NITV as political analyst, Natalie Ahmat as anchor and Karla Grant, Nakari Thorpe and Rachael Hocking as presenters. …
“2017 is a special year for Garma as it is the next major meeting for the nation’s Indigenous leaders
in the wake of the historic Uluru summit. Momentum is building for a nationwide Makarrata
– a Yolngu word for bringing peace after conflict leading to an agreement or treaty,
which forms the central theme this year. … “
Dahr Jamail | Scientists Warn of “Biological Annihilation” as Warming Reaches Levels Unseen for 115,000 Years, July 31, 2017By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report Camp 41, Brazilian Amazon –– Less than 30 years ago, the Earth’s tropical rainforests held the carbon equivalent of half of the entire atmosphere. But as atmospheric CO2 has escalated along with the deforestation of so much of the tropics, that is no longer the case. Nevertheless, carbon stored in tropical rainforests is still significant. According to NASA, “In the early 2000s, forests in the 75 tropical countries studied contained 247 billion tons of carbon. For perspective, about 10 billion tons of carbon is released annually to the atmosphere from combined fossil fuel burning and land use changes.” This is one of the countless reasons why losing them would be catastrophic to life on Earth.
I’m writing this dispatch just having emerged from the heart of the Amazon, the most biodiverse place on the planet. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Tom Lovejoy, known as the “Godfather of Biodiversity,” at the famous Camp 41, which is filled with researchers and scientists. Throughout our conversations, Lovejoy emphasized the staggering amount of biological diversity in the Amazon, which has thousands upon thousands of species of trees, fish, birds, plants and astronomical numbers of insect species.
“We’ve only scratched the surface, and are discovering new species of birds all the time,” said Lovejoy, who was the first person to use the term “biological diversity” in 1980 and made the first projection of global extinction rates in the “Global 2000 Report to the President” that same year……..
Lovejoy warns that as anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) progresses and temperature limits continue to be exceeded, we are losing parts of the biosphere that we don’t even know exist……..
Having long since warned that the Sixth Mass Extinction event is already well underway, in a study recently published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers said that billions of populations of animals have already disappeared from Earth, amid what they called a “biological annihilation,” and admitted that their findings revealed a situation that was worse than they’d previously thought. The study showed that more than 30 percent of all vertebrates are experiencing declining populations, and the prime drivers of the annihilation are human overpopulation and overconsumption, especially by the rich, as well as habitat destruction, pollution and of course, ACD…..
“We’re going to have more people on less land and sooner than we think,” lead author Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell, said. “The future rise in global mean sea level probably won’t be gradual. Yet, few policy makers are taking stock of the significant barriers to entry that coastal climate refugees, like other refugees, will encounter when they migrate to higher ground.”…..
Water: As usual, there is ample evidence of ACD’s impacts across the watery realms…..
Tillerson says he and Trump disagree over Iran nuclear deal, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-retaliation-economy-idUSKBN1AH4S1 Yeganeh Torbati, 2 Aug 17, WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged on Tuesday that he and President Donald Trump disagree over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and said the two men discuss how to use the international agreement to advance administration policies.
Trump at times vowed during the 2016 presidential election campaign to withdraw from the agreement, which was signed by the United States, Russia, China and three European powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting most Western sanctions.
Trump has preserved the deal for now, although he has made clear he did so reluctantly after being advised to do so by Tillerson.
“He and I have differences of views on things like JCPOA, and how we should use it,” Tillerson said at a State Department briefing, using the acronym for the deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Tillerson said that Washington could “tear it up and walk away” or stay in the deal and hold Iran accountable to its terms, which he said would require Iran to act as a “good neighbor.”
Critics say the deal falls short in addressing Iran’s support for foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, arms shipments around the Middle East and ballistic missile tests.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tillerson’s remarks.
Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month that he predicts Iran will be judged “noncompliant” with the Iran deal at the next deadline in October, and that he would have preferred to do so months ago.
Tillerson expressed a more nuanced view of the deal’s potential benefits on Tuesday.
“There are a lot of alternative means with which we use the agreement to advance our policies and the relationship with Iran, and that’s what the conversation generally is around with the president as well,” Tillerson said.
European officials would likely be reluctant to re-impose sanctions, especially the broader measures that helped drive Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program in the first place, he said.
New U.S. sanctions on Iran in July were a breach of the nuclear deal and Tehran had lodged a complaint with the body that oversees the pact’s implementation, a senior Iranian politician said.
Tillerson acknowledged that the United States is limited in how much it can pressure Iran on its own and said it was important to coordinate with the other parties to the agreement.
“The greatest pressure we can put to bear on Iran to change the behavior is a collective pressure,” he said. Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Grant McCool
Climate change linked to suicides of 59,000 farmers in India, finds report, Researchers find extra 67 people take their own lives for every one degree Celsius of warming, The Independent, 1 Aug 17 Tom Batchelor@_tombatchelor Scorching temperatures, drought, storms and famine triggered by climate change have led to thousands of extra suicides in India, a report has found.
During the south Asian nation’s growing season, every one degree Celsius of warming above 20°C sees an average of 67 more people take their own lives, according to the study.
Experts said the findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are particularly alarming as India’s average temperatures are expected to rise another 3°C by 2050, meaning hundreds of extra deaths.India’s farmers are already regularly hit by extreme weather events, including strong storms and heat waves, and some still rely on natural rainfall to water their crops.
Scientists have shown that those weather patterns are already increasing as the planet warms.
Tamma Carleton, who conducted the research, said nearly 60,000 suicides over the past 30 years may be linked to climate change.
Looking at suicide data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau between 1967 and 2013, along with data on agricultural crop yields and on temperature change, she estimated that “warming temperature trends over the last three decades have already been responsible for over 59,000 suicides throughout India”.
“We may not be able to stop the world from warming, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do something to address suicide,” said Vikram Patel, an Indian psychiatrist and mental health expert with Harvard Medical School in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
There are many factors that can contribute to suicide, including poor crop yields, financial problems, access to easy methods of self-harm, or a lack of community support.In India, many farmers will drink toxic pesticides as a way out of backbreaking debt.
For the past month, hundreds of farmers – some carrying human skulls they say are from farmers who committed suicide in the drought-stricken southern state of Tamil Nadu – have been staging what they say will be a 100-day protest in New Delhi to “prevent the suicide of farmers who feed the nation”.
Parts of western and north-eastern India have been hit by floods that have washed away villages and crops.
Australia and New Zealand are both relatively unpolluted compared with countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, both ozone and fine particle pollution currently cause relatively few deaths in both countries. However, we found that under climate change the risk will likely increase.
This paper highlights that climate change will increase human mortality through changes in air pollution. These health impacts add to others that climate change will also cause, including from heat stress, severe storms and the spread of infectious diseases. By impacting air quality, climate change will likely offset the benefits of other measures to improve air quality.
Climate change set to increase air pollution deaths by hundreds of thousands by 2100 The Conversation, Guang Zeng,Atmospheric Scientist, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Jason West Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering , University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill August 1, 2017 Climate change is set to increase the amount of ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution we breathe, which leads to lung disease, heart conditions, and stroke. Less rain and more heat means this pollution will stay in the air for longer, creating more health problems.
Our research, published in Nature Climate Change, found that if climate change continues unabated, it will cause about 60,000 extra deaths globally each year by 2030, and 260,000 deaths annually by 2100, as a result of the impact of these changes on pollution.
This is the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of climate change on global air quality and health. Researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and New Zealand between them used nine different global chemistry-climate models.
Most models showed an increase in likely deaths – the clearest signal yet of the harm climate change will do to air quality and human health, adding to the millions of people who die from air pollution every year.
Nuclear labs endanger public with radioactive mail, USA Today Patrick Malone, Center for Public Integrity, 1 Aug 17,At least 25 times in the past five years, nuclear weapons contractors have improperly packaged or shipped plutonium capable of being used in a nuclear weapon, conventional explosives and highly toxic chemicals, according to government documents.
While the materials were not ultimately lost, the documents reveal repeated instances in which hazardous substances vital to making nuclear bombs and their components were mislabeled before shipment. That means those transporting and receiving them were not warned of the safety risks and did not take required precautions to protect themselves or the public, the reports say.
The risks were discovered after regulators conducted inspections during transit, when the packages were opened at their destinations, during scientific analysis after the items were removed from packaging, or — in the worst cases — after unwary recipients released radioactive contaminants, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigation showed.
Only a few, slight penalties appear to have been imposed for these mistakes. Continue reading →
Extent of A-bomb dust inhalation in 1945 underestimated: researchers https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170731/p2a/00m/0na/004000cJuly 31, 2017 (Mainichi Japan)HIROSHIMA— The prevalence of acute symptoms among teenage soldiers exposed to dust particles as they helped out with relief operations in the aftermath of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima has been found to be at least 10 times higher than those who were unexposed, it has been learned.
The findings came to light following a questionnaire conducted in February last year by a team of researchers including Megu Otaki, a professor emeritus of statistics at Hiroshima University, covering 142 former army cadets aged between 15 and 19 at the time of the atomic bombing.
The army cadets were gathered together outside Hiroshima on the day the bomb was dropped — Aug. 6, 1945 — before venturing into the city to assist with relief operations between noon and around 5 p.m. In the 2016 questionnaire, the former cadets were asked questions about operation content and locations, inhalation of dust particles, as well as their subsequent health conditions — eliciting responses from 64 of them in total.
In its decision on the effects of internal exposure from inhaling dust particles tainted with radioactive materials, the Japan-U.S. research organization Radiation Effects Research Foundation said that, “The amount in this case is low enough to be ignored.” This decision has been used by the Japanese government in recognizing A-bomb survivors as suffering from A-bomb related diseases.
However, Otaki states that, “It is very likely that the acute symptoms and the disorders that A-bomb victims later developed were mainly caused by internal exposure to radiation (from dust particles). The impact (of the dust particles) has been underestimated.”
The survey found that the frequency of acute symptoms such as hair loss and diarrhea was 11.7 times higher in the group (21 people) exposed to dust particles while operating within a 2-kilometer radius of the bomb’s hypocenter than those who weren’t exposed at locations 2 kilometers or more away (22 people, including some unknown). Similarly, the frequency of acute symptoms was also found to be 5.5 times higher among those who were exposed to dust particles more than 2 kilometers away from ground zero (9 people) than those who weren’t exposed. In addition, there were more cases of people developing cancer and leukemia among the groups exposed to the dust particles.
Commenting on these results, Otaki says, “Although the sample size is small, the conditions of the subjects such as age, health conditions, and the length of relief operation time are almost the same, meaning the data is very reliable.”
In addition, upon re-examining data released by the foundation in 2001 — which showed the relationship between estimated radiation dose and the frequency of chromosomal abnormalities in 3,042 atomic bomb victims — it has become clear that the radiation dose received by victims who were indoors is possibly 30 percent higher than initially thought. Based on this, the team of researchers has concluded that, “It is very likely that people developed chromosomal abnormalities after being exposed to radiation by inhaling dust particles upon going back into damaged buildings.”
With regard to residual radiation and internal exposure to radiation, the foundation has previously concluded that compared to the initial levels of radiation emitted at the time of the explosion, the residual radiation values are lower, making residual radiation “less of a threat to people’s health.” Based on this conclusion, the foundation devised a formula for calculating the estimated exposed dosage deriving only from the initial radiation, which the government has used to recognize “A-bomb related diseases.”
However, there has been a string of judicial rulings determining that the extent of internal exposure has been underestimated, based on examinations of symptoms and experiences of plaintiffs involved in “A-bomb related disease” certification lawsuits.
With this kind of reality in mind, Otaki says, “There are concerns that atomic bomb victims who should have been supported have actually been abandoned. We must reconsider the calculation method.”
Al Gore: ‘The rich have subverted all reason’, Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, 30 July 17 With the sequel to his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth about to be released, Al Gore tells Carole Cadwalladr how his role at the forefront of the fight against climate change consumes his life, Guardian, In the ballroom of a conference centre in Denver, Colorado, 972 people from 42 countries have come together to talk about climate change. It is March 2017, six weeks since Trump’s inauguration; eight weeks before Trump will announce to the world that he is withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Agreement.
These are the early dark days of the new America and yet, in the conference centre, the crowd is upbeat. They’ve all paid out of their own pockets to travel to Denver. They have taken time off work. And they are here, in the presence of their master, Al Gore. Because Al Gore is to climate change… well, what Donald Trump is to climate change denial……
It’s the reason why we are all here – his foundation, the Climate Reality Project, an initiative that grew out of the film, provides intensive training in talking about climate change, combating climate change denial – and the tone might be described as “activist upbeat”. This is a crisis that is solvable, we’re told. Trump is just another hitch, another hurdle to overcome. And it will be overcome. Only occasionally does a sliver of despair leak around the edges. You have to stay positive, a man called David Ellenberger tells the audience. Though sometimes, he admits: “There’s not enough Prozac to get through the day.”….
The war on the mainstream media may capture the headlines currently, but the war on climate change science has been in play for years. And it’s this that is one of the most fascinating aspects of Gore’s new film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Because if the US had a subtitle at the moment, it might be that, too, and the struggle to overcome fake facts and false narratives funded by corporate interests and politically motivated billionaires is one that Gore has been at the frontline of for more than a decade.
The film runs through a host of facts – that 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001 is just one. And the accompanying footage is biblical, terrifying: tornadoes, floods, “rain bombs”, exploding glaciers. We see roads falling into rivers and fish swimming through the streets of Miami.
The nightly news, Gore says, has become “a nature hike through the Book of Revelations”. But what his work has shown and continues to show is that evidence is not enough. The film opens with clips from Fox News ridiculing global warming. In recent weeks, the New York Times has started describing the Trump administration as waging a “war on science”, a full-on assault against evidence-based science that runs in parallel with his attacks on evidence-based reporting. And Gore is in something of a unique position to understand this. What becomes clear over the course of several conversations is how entwined he believes it all is – climate change denial, the interests of big capital, “dark money”, billionaire political funders, the ascendancy of Trump and what he calls (he’s written a book on it) “the assault against reason”. They are all pieces of the same puzzle; a puzzle that Gore has been tracking for years, because it turns out that climate change denial was the canary in the coal mine.
“In order to fix the climate crisis, we need to first fix the government crisis,” he says. “Big money has so much influence now.” And he says a phrase that is as dramatic as it is multilayered: “Our democracy has been hacked.”
“I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making. The Koch brothers are the largest funders of climate change denial. And ExxonMobil claims it has stopped, but it really hasn’t. It has given a quarter of a billion dollars in donations to climate denial groups. It’s clear they are trying to cripple our ability to respond to this existential threat.”
One of Trump’s first acts after his inauguration was to remove all mentions of climate change from federal websites. More overlooked is that one of Theresa May’s first actions on becoming prime minister – within 24 hours of taking office – was to close the Department for Energy and Climate Change; subsequently donations from oil and gas companies to the Conservative party continued to roll in. And what is increasingly apparent is that the same think tanks that operate in the States are also at work in Britain, and climate change denial operates as a bridgehead: uniting the right and providing an entry route for other tenets of Alt-Right belief. And, it’s this network of power that Gore has had to try to understand, in order to find a way to combat it……
Fate of U.S. Nuclear Now Hinges on One Utility in Georgia, Bloomberg, By Jim Polson
August 2, 2017
Nuclear revival rests with Southern after Scana scraps project
Regulator urges Southern to make final decision by year-end
With a multibillion-dollar nuclear project in South Carolina dead, the fate of America’s nuclear renaissance now rests on one utility: Southern Co. Scana Corp. dropped plans for two reactors Monday, leaving the two that Southern is building at the Vogtle plant in Georgia as the only ones under construction in the U.S. And even they are under threat: The utility had to take over management of the project from its bankrupt contractor Westinghouse Electric Co., and the plant is still years behind schedule and billions over budget. Now it must decide whether to finish them.
Southern calling it quits could prove to be the final nail in the coffin for the long-awaited U.S. nuclear renaissance that has failed to materialize in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident. In 2012, Southern and Scana became the first companies to gain approval to build U.S. reactors in more than 30 years — only to find themselves in troubling times for the industry.
Climate change before your eyes: Seas rise and trees diehttps://www.guelphtoday.com/world-news/climate-change-before-your-eyes-seas-rise-and-trees-die-686109PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. — They’re called “ghost forests” — dead trees along vast swaths of coastline invaded by rising seas, something scientists call one of the most visible markers of climate change. Canadian Press 1 August 17 PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. — They’re called “ghost forests” — dead trees along vast swaths of coastline invaded by rising seas, something scientists call one of the most visible markers of climate change.
The process has happened naturally for thousands of years, but it has accelerated in recent decades as polar ice melts and raises sea levels, scientists say, pushing salt water farther inland and killing trees in what used to be thriving freshwater plains.
Efforts are underway worldwide to determine exactly how quickly the creation of ghost forests is increasing. But scientists agree the startling sight of dead trees in once-healthy areas is an easy-to-grasp example of the consequences of climate change.
“I think ghost forests are the most obvious indicator of climate change anywhere on the Eastern coast of the U.S.,” said Matthew Kirwan, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science who is studying ghost forests in his state and Maryland. “It was dry, usable land 50 years ago; now it’s marshes with dead stumps and dead trees.”
It is happening around the world, but researchers say new ghost forests are particularly apparent in North America, with hundreds of thousands of acres of salt-killed trees stretching from Canada down the East Coast, around Florida and over to Texas.
The intruding salt water changes coastal ecosystems, creating marshes where forests used to be. This has numerous effects on the environment, though many scientists caution against viewing them in terms of “good” or “bad.” What benefits one species or ecosystem might harm another one, they say. Continue reading →
Climate change: Al Gore gets inconvenient againMichael E. Mann, Nature, 27 July 2017
Michael Mann views the US statesman’s second film probing climate change.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Bonni Cohen & John Shenk Participant Media/Actual Films: 2017. Nobody (and given my experiences with climate deniers, I speak with some authority here) has been more vilified for their efforts to communicate the climate threat than Al Gore.
As US vice-president under Bill Clinton, Gore became the figurehead of the movement to combat human-driven global warming. He also became the preferred punchbag for climate-change cynics in search of a straw man. Gore is such a towering, seemingly unassailable figure in this arena that critics have gone after him with all guns blazing. As Tom Toles and I noted in our book The Madhouse Effect (Columbia Univ. Press, 2016; see D. ReayNature538, 34–35; 2016): “They have criticized his weight, his energy bills, and incidents in his personal life — indeed, pretty much anything else they can scrape up.”
There’s one problem with taking on Gore. He punches back, and above his weight. After all, he’s up against arguably the most entrenched, wealthy and powerful industry the world has ever known: fossil fuels. And this pugilist is still very much in the fight. Witness his new film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power — the follow-up to his 2006 An Inconvenient Truth.
For those fearing a preachy PowerPoint lecture on climate science, be assured: An Inconvenient Sequel isn’t that. Rather, it largely takes the scientific evidence as a given, not least because Gore has already done a whole film on that. This instalment is an attempt to show us how striking climate impacts have become in the decade since his first movie.
Early in An Inconvenient Sequel, there’s a scene on the Greenland ice sheet, where glaciologists Eric Rignot and Konrad Steffen point to the dramatic retreat of ice in recent years. We witness rivers of surface melt water gushing away from the ice sheet to the open water of the North Atlantic Ocean. Gore poses the question: “Where is all of that water going?” He then answers it. We’re transported to Miami Beach, Florida, where we witness the flooding of streets that now comes simply with seasonal high tides. If melting Greenland ice seems distant and abstract, the perennial flooding of Miami and other coastal cities, and low-lying, highly populated countries from Bangladesh to Belgium is anything but.
The drought that has afflicted Syria for more than a decade is the most pronounced and prolonged for at least 900 years (as far back as we have reliable palaeodata). Climate change has undoubtedly had a role. Gore shows us how the impact of the drought on rural farmers led to increased conflict, a civil war, mass exodus, global conflict over immigration and, as a consequence, the emergence of Islamist terrorist group ISIS. If drought in Syria seems distant or even mundane, the threat of terrorism and global political instability is immediate and visceral. Gore has a genius for joining the dots in the global mapping of climate impacts.
In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore showed a version of the famous ‘hockey-stick’ curve that my co-authors and I published in the late 1990s (M. E. Mannet al. Geophys. Res. Lett.26, 759–762; 1999), revealing a dramatic spike in temperature over the past century. There is a ‘hockey stick’ in the new film, but it charts instead the remarkable global growth in renewable energy over the past decade. Climate change is accelerating; so too is our ability to tackle it. There are reasons for cautious optimism……
Finally, the film casts an inconvenient light on humanity. It is astonishing that we’re still mired in a political debate about whether climate change even exists when, with each passing year of insufficient action, the challenge of averting a catastrophe becomes ever greater. Knowing that Al Gore is still optimistic is a shot in the arm at a time of uncertainty. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7664/full/547400a.html?foxtrotcallback=true
Uranium is caught in a protracted slump that is sharply impacting uranium miners.
Despite claims that prices will rise sentiment towards nuclear power has turned unfavorable.
Demand growth for uranium remains muted which along with growing supplies will keep pressure on prices.
There is no indication of a sustainable recovery in sight making uranium miners value traps.
There has been a surge in interest in uranium explorers and miners in recent months because of growing optimism surrounding the outlook for the radioactive metal. This has sparked a rash of upgrades for a number of uranium miners and explorers including Cameco Corp……
The marked uptick in the outlook for uranium is long over due with the radioactive metal caught in prolonged slump that now sees it trading at less than a sixth of its 2007 high………
Despite the proclamations of some analysts and market pundits there are distinct signs that point to a sustained recovery in uranium being unlikely and that the long-term prognosis for the fuel is poor.
What is driving this positive outlook? The progressively positive outlook for uranium mining stems from a belief that the current global supply glut which has been weighing heavily on uranium prices will be eliminated over the next two-years.
There is also the expectation among market pundits that as demand for the radioactive metal begins to grow global supplies will diminish. This is because the prolonged slump according to those pundits has led to a dearth in investment in exploration and mine development which will impact uranium production in coming months.
Furthermore, uranium miners have been forced to shutter high cost production because it was uneconomic at current prices. The slump in uranium particularly in the wake of the Fukushima disaster sent one of the world’s largest uranium miners Energy Resources of Australia (OTCPK:EGRAF) also known as ERA, which at its peak was supplying 10% of the world’s yellow cake, into terminal decline……(registered readers only)https://seekingalpha.com/article/4091999-death-spiral-nuclear-energy-demise-uranium-miners
Government Announces Cleanup Plan for NYC Radioactive Site THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (VERENA DOBNIK) July 28, 2017, New York (AP)— The federal government on Thursday announced its plan to clean up a Superfund site in New York City where radioactive material was once processed to develop the atomic bomb.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the $39 million job, which could take years, will force out businesses still operating on a block in Queens where buildings, the soil and sewers were contaminated with radioactive material. Protective measures have been in place since 2012.
The source of the industrial waste was the Wolff-Alport Chemical Company that operated on Irving Avenue in the Ridgewood neighborhood from 1920 to 1954, according to Elias Rodriguez, the EPA spokesman in New York. The company processed monazite sand, extracting from it a radioactive element called thorium for the federal government as part of a program that began with the top-secret Manhattan Project that led to the testing of the first nuclear weapons during World War II in New Mexico.
The now-defunct company disposed of thorium waste on its property and into the Queens sewer.
Given the contaminated waste, the owner of the Celtic Custom NYC motorcycle repair shop, Sandy Frayman, said on Thursday that he wouldn’t want to stay, “but we’re worried what’s going to happen to us.”…….
The public is invited to voice concerns to the federal agency — either by email, regular mail and telephone, or by showing up for an open public hearing on Aug. 16 at a nearby day care center…..
Following an EPA evaluation, buildings will be razed and excavation will start to remove more than 24,000 cubic yards (18,000 cubic meters) of contaminated soil, sediment and debris.
No summer break for Turnbull government’s energy policy failure, Brisbane Times Richard Denniss, 28 July 17 “….. The failure of the federal government on energy policy is driving up emissions, driving up energy prices, stalling investment and harming consumers. And hasn’t it been a cold winter. Unless the Turnbull government can soon pull energy policy out of the bog Tony Abbott created, no amount of blaming the states or renewables is going to save him…….
while the ACT government is going to help people keep their heater on, the federal government is doing its best to keep them shivering.
ActewAGL said it will be establishing a $250,000 Energy Support Fund, matched by the ACT government, to help those who will struggle to pay their bigger electricity bill. In contrast, the Turnbull government currently has a bill before Parliament which will strip the clean energy supplement from new recipients of welfare from 20 September 2017.
Abolishing the clean energy supplement will put Newstart recipients 30 per cent below the poverty line, the lowest point since the measure has been kept.
So what is driving up electricity prices and forcing people to turn off their heaters? Craig Kelly blamed renewables, but he also said renewables would cause an increase in children drowning. The Australia Institute studied both wholesale and retail electricity prices and – spoiler alert – it’s not solar panels.
The federal government has used South Australia as a whipping boy on energy. But when we look at wholesale electricity prices in South Australia in detail, there is an almost perfect correlation between wholesale gas prices and wholesale electricity prices and a negative correlation between the share of wind generation in supply and wholesale electricity prices. In other words, it’s nothing to do with renewables and everything to do with gas exports……..
We’ve all heard about the “gold-plating” of poles and wires – well, it turns out poles and wires weren’t the only things gold-plated: privatisation seems to have encouraged profit gouging, with energy companies able to inflate the asset base used in calculating the permitted return on assets. The Australia Institute’s research showed an odd process in which high rates of profits are used to “gold plate” the financial asset base of energy companies without improving the ability to generate electricity, but the unproductive capital base is used to increase the price we pay for electricity.
So what should Turnbull do?
If he gives in to the extreme right wing of the Coalition, it’s a recipe for higher emissions, higher prices and more instability. They want to abolish the Renewable Energy Target, which even the government’s own review (by climate sceptic Dick Warburton) found that the Renewable Energy Target put downwards pressure on electricity prices. They oppose a Clean Energy Target that doesn’t include coal – when according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ultra-supercritical coal-fired power (ever think they’re trying too hard with that title?) is the most expensive form of new energy to build. Gas prices now make new gas-fired plants equally unappealing. So renewable energy makes the most economic sense…….http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/opinion-no-summer-break-for-turnbull-governments-energy-policy-failure-20170728-gxkohn.html
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Antinuclear 