SMOGTOWN

From the story titled, Electrical pollution from cell phones and WiFi may be hazardous

“In 1990, the city of La Quinta, CA, proudly opened the doors of its sparkling new middle school. Gayle Cohen, then a sixth-grade teacher, recalls the sense of excitement everyone felt: “We had been in temporary facilities for 2 years, and the change was exhilarating.”

But the glow soon dimmed.

One teacher developed vague symptoms — weakness, dizziness — and didn’t return after the Christmas break. A couple of years later, another developed cancer and died; the teacher who took over his classroom was later diagnosed with throat cancer. More instructors continued to fall ill, and then, in 2003, on her 50th birthday, Cohen received her own bad news: breast cancer … ”

This one falls under the environmental “Duh” category. Can you believe that Chinese smog drifts over the Pacific Ocean, adding to the West Coast’s pollution problem. It’s only a phenomenon that’s been heavily reported for years, and makes it way into our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution In Los Angeles based on a 2005 Wall Street Journal story. Well, the L.A. Times is catching up. Hooray. They can use a “recent study” to explain why they’re just awakening to a seriously scary pattern of atmospheric assault. Story link.

“Ozone from Asia is wafting across the Pacific on springtime winds and boosting the amount of the smog-producing chemical found in the skies above the Western United States, researchers said in a study released Wednesday.

The study, published in the journal Nature, probes a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists in the last decade: Ground-level ozone has dropped in cities thanks to tighter pollution controls, but it has risen in rural areas in the Western U.S., where there is little industry or automobile traffic.

The study, led by Owen R. Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, examined nearly 100,000 observations in the free troposphere — the region two to five miles above ground — gathered from aircraft, balloons and ground-based lasers.

It found that baseline ozone — the amount of gas not produced by local vehicles and industries — has increased in springtime months by 29% since 1984. The study has important implications both for the curbing of conventional pollution that damages human health and for controls on greenhouse gases that are changing the planet’s climate, experts said.”

Finally, Bill gets a little digital ink in the Huffington Post with a book review about the Southwest’s perennial drought. That silky prose dances on the page.

From the Los Angeles Times story:

“The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the nation’s strictest-ever smog limits this morning, a move that could put large parts of the country in violation of federal air quality regulations.

The EPA proposed allowing a ground-level ozone concentration of between 60 and 70 parts per billion, down from the 75-ppb standard adopted under President George W. Bush in 2008.

That means cracking down even further on the emissions from power plants, factories, landfills and motor vehicles which bake in sunlight and form smog.

Obama administration officials and environmental groups say the new standards align with the levels scientists say are needed to safeguard against increased respiratory diseases, particularly in children, and that they could save $100 billion in heath costs over time. The EPA also said compliance costs could total up to $90 billion nationwide.

A 65-ppb standard — the middle of the proposed range — would avert between 1,700 and 5,100 premature deaths nationwide in 2020, compared to the 75-ppb standard, the EPA estimates. The agency projects the stricter standard would also prevent an additional 26,000 cases of aggravated asthma, compared to the Bush-era standard, and more than a million days when people miss work or school …”

If you read our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, you’d know ozone sounds whimsical but is pretty deadly.

The new year could well ignite fireworks anew over the Anne Sholtz caper, a story we showcase in our book Smogtown and in Chip’s freelance articles about her intriguing case. It’s a tangled, air-pollution market story involving fraud, red flags, the CIA, a secretive prosecution and much more, with sticky lessons for the carbon market Pres. Obama wants enacted nationally. So far officials at Southern California’s smog-fighting agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, hasn’t wanted to acknowledge that their cap-and-trade, known acronymistically as RECLAIM, has been vulnerable to white-collar troubles, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice-L.A. office still probably wishes their mixed-bag prosecution of Sholtz went the way of Compuserve. As George Bush I would say, “Not gonna happen.” Probably.

From the Wall St. Journal/Dow Jones New Service story:

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. legislators have obtained a court order unsealing documents in a case involving a multi-million-dollar cap-and-trade fraud.

Republican legislators say the records–due to be opened to the public in early January–could shed light on the potential challenges of policing a new, trillion-dollar commodities market that would be created under climate legislation that Congress is considering.

In a rare filing by House lawyers, Reps. Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Greg Walden (R., Ore.), the ranking members respectively of the Energy Committee and the Oversight Subcommittee, asked a federal district court in California to unseal all the closed records regarding the successful prosecution for fraud of Anne Masters Sholtz, a former California Institute of Technology economist.

Lawmakers say Sholtz’s case could expose the weaknesses of a federal cap-and- trade system because it involved the same market mechanism meant to cut emissions …”

Be forewarned there are a lot of errors in these Republicans’ understanding of Sholtz’s case. It involved cap and trade for two smog-forming chemicals unrelated to global warming, and did NOT involve counterfeit credits. However, the federal case against Sholtz did NOT even mention an earlier action involving 500,000 in RECLAIM credits that allegedly bankrolled a CIA-associated currency repatriation effort. See here for that.

For more on this story, here is Rep. Barton’s comments about it and the judicial order lifting the veil of secrecy thrown over many of the case’s key documents.

Meanwhile, some European shenanigans … story link

“The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading has fallen prey to an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion — a massive fraud that lawmakers and energy experts say should send a “red flag” to the U.S., where the House approved cap-and-trade legislation over the summer amid stiff opposition.

In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe’s cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

“These criminal activities endanger the credibility of the European Union Emission Trading System and lead to the loss of significant tax revenue for governments,” Rob Wainwright, Europol’s director, said in a statement …”

* From the L.A. Times story:

“A solar energy project proposed for development on public land in the Mojave Desert would create jobs mostly for Las Vegas and electricity for San Francisco at the expense of the relatively pristine area of east San Bernardino County where it would be built, San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said …

‘Obviously, there is a lot of political pressure to get this project expedited and under construction,” Mitzelfelt said. “But its impacts in San Bernardino County and sensitive and scenic Mojave Desert environment are not worth the benefits.’ … ”

* Hmm, does this sound familiar – a green Ponzi scheme that slipped past the regulatory watchdogs? Not that many honest politicians want to discuss this. From the New York Times post

“Federal regulators have accused four people and two companies of using bogus claims about “green initiatives” to entice more than 300 investors into what was really a $30 million Ponzi scheme.”

* Power to … ummm, the windmills. Sorry, that’s politically incorrect green jabber. Power to the windturbines, micro or massive, whether they spin horizontally or merry-go-round style. Interesting story about this in the L.A. Times (link). Stay tuned on this subject.

* In a scene straight from our book, Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, comes this latest effort to beat back global warming with “geo-engineering.” Anyone have an air pollution sewer blueprint ready to roll. What I find interesting isn’t the scientific bravado and ingenuity that some might otherwise tab hubris but a discussion of the unintended consequences of messing with Mother Nature.

From the L.A. Times piece:

“If there were some kind of panic button to stop global warming, what would it look like?

How about billions of tiny mirrors, launched into orbit to deflect solar rays away from Earth? Or big, fluffy clouds, artificially whitened so they reflect more sunlight back into space? Or maybe mechanical trees, ugly but effective at sucking carbon dioxide from the air along busy highways?

Outlandish as some of these proposals may seem, scientists and engineers are paying increasing attention to such ideas amid mounting evidence that human-caused climate change is wreaking havoc in some parts of the world.

The proposals belong to a field known as geo-engineering, or manipulation of the environment on a grand scale …”

* Think we’re too cynical here. Read on about what’s happened in China here.

* If that doesn’t depress you about what’s happening in Asia, you always have super-duper dirty L.A. Break out the bubbly – we’re the 7th most toxic city in America (depending on how you calculate that.) Link.

WAS CONVICTED SMOG-CREDIT SWINDLER ANNE SHOLTZ PART OF SHADY INTERNATIONAL ‘MONEY REPATRIATION’ SCHEMES?

August 20, 2009

By Chip Jacobs for the Pasadena Weekly

The demise of Anne Sholtz’s once-grand life is evident in the smaller things. It’s there in the GPS-tracking bracelet — standard issue for felons in home detention — that looped around her ankle for a year, and in her near-dormant passport. It’s traceable in her pillow, which rests today in leased home miles from the $5-million hillside estate that had broadcast her transformation from Caltech economist to business phenom.

Yes, the wreckage from that existence — the economizing, the isolation from connected friends who now shun her — is graspable.

Where the picture turns as murky as whisky-brown Southern California smog is how Sholtz, as a then-thirtysomething go-getter, was able to deceive the very air-pollution market she helped conceive, and the lessons that holds for keeping financial crooks out of the trillion-dollar, greenhouse-gas trading system that President Obama has trumpeted as a key to curbing global warming.

Unless you’re in the arcane field of emissions trading, chances are you’ve probably never heard of Sholtz before. Last April, the former Pasadena emissions-broker was convicted in federal court of fraud relating to a multimillion-dollar deal for credits in Southern California’s novel smog-exchange. Despite pleas that she sock Sholtz with years behind bars, US Central District Court Judge Audrey Collins gave her just a year in home confinement.

Fortunate with a light sentence in that downtown LA courtroom, Sholtz nonetheless sustained heavy losses outside of it, squandering, among other potential, her chance to build a unique and lucrative pollution-trading business, with access to Obama or Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as an industry confidante. Those opportunities gone, she now drives her mother’s car, not the Mercedes or SUV she once did. Rather than expanding her ideas into climate change, she checks in with her parole officer.

Blown prosperity for Sholtz, it’s been no bonanza for others, either.

Between criticism over its secretive, mixed-bag prosecution of her and evidence of Sholtz’s role in a scheme to extract millions in overseas US aid with men purporting to be American intelligence and military operatives, the Department of Justice’s LA office probably wishes she would just fade away. Local smog regulators at the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), whose market-based regulation proved vulnerable to her deceptions, can relate.

Trouble is some events are just too big to disappear. And the Sholtz case, no matter its relative obscurity or connection to complex regulations, fits that mold because it underscores the need for vigorous oversight of emissions markets against seemingly inevitable Wall Street-style chicanery.

(more…)

Can the GM Volt really get 230 MPG? Story

If you’re skeptical about that, how do you feel about carbon sequestration. Count us as skeptics here, until that “ah-ha” moment of truth in science and consensus in D.C. Link.

The public’s de-prioritizing environmental cleanup during hard economic times is both common sense and old hat in Los Angeles, where anti-smog campaigns often were killed, delayed or made all marshmellow-like whe those jobless numbers went up and the booster types snarled that detoxifying the air was polluting the California business cliimate. Read our book Smogtown for a stroll down memory lane. This latest poll is pretty insightful about the American mind right now.

Idealab and solar power. What a marriage! Story.

Of all the recent enviro stories, this one from the New York Times about how climate change may wind up being a national security threat might be the most important.

If you’re interested in making it for this panel discussion, Q&A with the audience and signing at the downtown Central Branch, click here for details. They put on a wonderful program. Ours will be in the Mark Taper Auditorium.

Here’s the promo:

Tuesday, June 9 7:00 pm

SMOGTOWN: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles How did smog help mold the modern-day culture of Los Angeles? Join this discussion about pollution, progress and the epic struggle against airborne poisons.

A panel discussion with authors Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly; Tom Hayden, author and former state legislator; and Martin Schlageter, Coalition for Clean Air. Moderated by Kevin Roderick, Editor, LAObserved.com

CENTRAL LIBRARY • Mark Taper Auditorium
Fifth & Flower Streets, Downtown L.A.
PARKING: 524 S. Flower St. Garage. $1 until 8:45pm with LAPL Card validation which must be obtained.
FREE, RESERVATIONS: (213) 228-7025 or www.aloudla.org
Limited Seating, Reservations Recommended.

P.S. Apologies for the non-existent posting of late. Chip has been on assignment.

The final order of gold, silver and bronze medals will be announced later this month. Award page link. Here’s the verbatim block o’ copy from the IPBA’s people:

“You Can Save the Earth: 7 Reasons Why & 7 Simple Ways, edited by June Eding (Hatherleigh Press); The Little Green Book, by Joseph R. Provey and Owen Lockwood (Creative Homeowner); Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, by Chip Jacobs & William J. Kelly (Overlook Press); Where Have all the Flowers Gone? by Charles Flower (Papadakis Publisher); Grand Canyon: River at Risk, by Wade Davis (Earth Aware Editions); The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World, by Steven Kazlowski (Braided River).”

To say we’re thrilled would be an understatement.

And just when you thought you could. According to the American Lung Assoc., a terrific organization that we try to give historically due to in our book Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, the L.A.-area and California still wear some rather unfavorable crowns for emissions ozone and particulate matter. And 60 percent of Americans live in areas with unhealthy air. MSNBC reports.

Those two-wheelers are finally drawing the environmental scrutiny they deserve from California’s smog check program.

From the L.A. Times blog post:

“Cars do it. Trucks do it. And now the state of California may require motorcycles to do it too. Biennial smog checks would be required for motorcycles manufactured in the 2000 model year and later under a bill making its way through the California Legislature.

Motorcycles account for 3.6% of registered vehicles in the state, and they make up just eight-tenths of a percent of vehicle-miles traveled, yet they account for 10% of passenger vehicles’ smog-forming emissions, according to the California Air Resources Board, which backs the measure. Although fuel-efficient bikes emit significantly less carbon dioxide per mile than cars, the ARB says they are, on average, 14 times more polluting per mile when it comes to emissions of oxides of nitrogen and hydrocarbons – smog-forming pollutants that have been shown to trigger asthma attacks and worsen respiratory and cardiac illnesses.”