What's New List Serve Post Display

California Air Resources Board News Clips for August 27, 2009. 


This is a service of the California Air Resources Board’s Office
of Communications.  You may need to sign in or register with
individual websites to view some of the following news articles.

Protesters Have Sights Set On Capital. Hundreds of truckers,
including a few from the Mid-Valley region, will descend on
Sacramento Friday to protest clean-air rules they say will
cripple their industry in the state. Rally organizers said
pending regulations that would gradually phase out older diesel
truck engines aren't based in sound science and would cost
millions to implement. Posted.
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/regulation-85937-rally-diesel.html

Muggy Heat Waves Growing More Common In Calif.  Once rare in
California, humid heat waves that last for days on end are
becoming more intense and more common thanks to changes in ocean
patterns caused by climate change, scientists say. Researchers at
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography came to that conclusion
after studying the severe summer heat wave that struck California
in 2006, which was blamed for the deaths of 600 people and 25,000
cattle. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2009/08/27/8

U.S. Biofuel Boom Running on Empty. The biofuels revolution that
promised to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil is
fizzling out. Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity
now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel,
a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels
for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and
falling oil prices. Posted.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125133578177462487.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

CARB Giving Fleet Managers Headaches. Many of California’s
efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles
may cause headaches for  small commercial fleet owners whose
older trucks are difficult to retrofit in a cost effective
manner. According to the California Air Resources Board and the
U.S. EPA, diesel engine emissions contribute to some 3,500
premature respiratory and cardiovascular deaths and thousands of
hospital admissions annually in California. Posted.
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/08/27/carb-giving-fleet-managers-headaches/

Watermelon Juice - Next Source of Renewable Energy. Hundreds of
thousands of tons of watermelons are tossed every year because
they aren't good enough for market. A new study finds that the
juice from these watermelons could easily be used to create the
biofuel ethanol and other helpful products. According to a new
study to be published in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels,
20% of the watermelon crop doesn't go to market every year due to
imperfections, bad spots, or weird shapes. Posted.
http://www.reuters.com/article/mnEnergy/idUS371013567020090827

New Vehicles Leave MPG Standard Behind. Long the Barometer Used
to Gauge Fuel Efficiency in the U.S., the Gasoline-Based Measure
Falls Short for Electric, Hybrid Cars. General Motors promises
its forthcoming Volt hybrid electric car will push fuel-economy
levels to new heights. It also could spark an overhaul of the
miles-per-gallon standard, a number that doesn't tell consumers
enough about the next generation of vehicles. Posted.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125123863033558403.html

Officials Visit Sites Considered To Be Examples Of Neighborhood
Pollution. Estela Hernandez stood in the blistering sun Wednesday
afternoon and spoke into a megaphone about noise and pollution
she attributes to a mine and rock-crushing operation near her
home. Her audience, a group of federal, state and local
officials, listened intently and scribbled notes. The bustling
Robertson Ready Mix plant visible behind her has brought dust
clouds, early morning sirens that awaken residents and vibrations
that have shaken tiles from her bathroom walls, Hernandez said.
Posted.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/environment/stories/PE_News_Local_S_ecotour27.38a64b3.html#

Something’s Burning. Oroville Cogeneration Plant Spices Up Its
Fuel Load. But Is It Safe? For the past 25 years, a cogeneration
plant in Oroville has burned biofuel in a controlled environment
to make electricity that is then sold to Pacific Gas &
Electric—enough, it is said, to supply power to 20,000 homes. But
lately the fuel mixture used to create that energy has changed,
and some local officials are concerned. The plant, Pacific
Oroville Power Inc., or POPI, sits on 30 acres just south of
downtown Oroville in the heart of the Highway 70 Industrial Park.
Posted.
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/PrintFriendly?oid=1159491

Valley Expects To Get Delay For Ozone Cleanup. Ending years of
debate, federal officials are about to grant an 11-year delay for
the San Joaquin Valley's ozone cleanup campaign. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to publish its
proposed approval in the Federal Register in the next few days,
and it will become official by the end of September. The action
pushes the deadline to 2024, an extension the local air district
requested more than two years ago after stormy public discussions
with activists. Posted.
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1616804.html

Global Warming And The Placebo Effect. It's becoming fairly
clear that our efforts to combat global warming will tend more to
the symbolic than the real, despite their cost and the
restrictions they impose on our behavior. Kyoto was never
intended to produce actual reductions of temperature, and
America's Cap and Trade legislation will, if passed, not actually
reduce CO2 emissions. Posted.
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d27-Global-warming-and-the-placebo-effect

Tunnels Concentrate Air Pollution By Up To 1000 Times. A toxic
cocktail of ultrafine particles is lurking inside road tunnels in
concentration levels so high they have the potential to harm
drivers and passengers, a new study has found. The study, which
has been published in Atmospheric Environment, measured ultrafine
particle concentration levels outside a vehicle travelling
through the M5 East tunnel in Sydney. Posted.
http://yubanet.com/life/Tunnels-concentrate-air-pollution-by-up-to-1000-times_printer.php

United Kingdom Faces A Quandary Over New Nuclear Or Coal. London
-- The United Kingdom is nearing a crucial decision as it tries
to tackle the climate crisis -- whether to make a major push into
new nuclear power or to proliferate coal-fired power plants
constructed so their carbon emissions are captured and safely
stored. While U.S. officials and America's utility industry
continue to mull this question, Britain's decisional clock is
ticking much faster. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2009/08/27/1

Great Rivalries: Diesel vs Gasoline. The only thing more
volatile than a can of gasoline and an open flame is what happens
when you put a diesel geek in a room with a gasoline junkie. The
diesel fan will point out that his fuel doesn't explode, it just
burns slowly. In return, the gas freak will accuse the diesel fan
- and his fuel - of being boring. At the risk of angering both
sides, we say that neither is the "better" choice - any
allegiance comes down to personal preference. Posted.
http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/0909_diesel_vs_gasoline_great_rivalries/index.html

Lubchenco To Stress Climate Impacts On Oceans In Geneva Talks.
The global debate over how to limit and adapt to climate change
has largely overlooked how rising greenhouse gas emissions will
affect the world's oceans, a top Obama administration science
official said yesterday. "There has not been enough attention [to
oceans] in pretty much any of the climate dialogues," National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told
ClimateWire. "Oceans are so critical to the climate system and
they are being very significantly impacted by climate change."
Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2009/08/27/4

Firefighters Battle Blazes In Forest Near LA. Los Angeles—Two
wildfires northeast of Los Angeles fouled the air breathed by
millions of Southern Californians on Wednesday, but the flames
were burning away from suburbs on the foothills of the San
Gabriel Mountains and no homes had been lost. Posted.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/nationandworld/ci_13208410

Valley Heat Will Also Bring 'Unhealthy' Air Quality. Conditions
in the San Bernardino National Forest are ripe for fire, but not
serious enough to warrant a dreaded "red flag" warning from the
National Weather Service. Local fire officials are on guard today
as temperatures are expected to reach as high as 105 degrees
while humidity will slump to about 13 percent, said Stan
Wasowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in
San Diego. Posted.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_13209054

BLOGS

Obama’s Fuel Rules Keep Rolling. It looks like the Obama
administration is on the road to unveiling its proposed
automobile fuel-economy standards for model years 2012 through
2016. The eyeshades are of the drawers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
where the Transportation Department’s proposal landed on Tuesday,
the White House Office of Management and Budget said. In some
ways, this development is a bit anticlimactic. President Barack
Obama announced in May that his administration would require the
nation’s auto makers to boost the fuel economy of the new vehicle
fleet to 35.5 mpg by 2016, four years faster than federal law
requires. Posted.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/08/27/obamas-fuel-rules-keep-rolling/tab/print/

The Virtues Of Biochar. A New Growth Industry? Biochar could
enrich soils and cut greenhouse gases as well. CHARCOAL has
rather gone out of fashion. Before the industrial revolution,
whole forests disappeared into the charcoal-burners’ maw to
provide the carbon that ironmakers need to reduce their ore to
metal. Then, an English ironmaker called Abraham Darby discovered
how to do the job with coke. From that point onward, the
charcoal-burners’ days were numbered. The rise of coal, from
which coke is produced, began, and so did the modern rise of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Posted.
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14302001

Smog-Producing Leaf Blowers Can Be Exchanged For Cleaner Models.
Give us your tired, your old, your smog-producing leaf blowers,
yearning... to be replaced by more environmentally friendly
blowers. Registration is ongoing at locations around the region
in an annual exchange for professional gardeners and landscapers
to trade in older, highly polluting backpack leaf blowers for
quieter, low-emission units. The exchange is organized by the
South Coast Air Quality Management District. Posted.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/leaf-blower-exchange.html