If you consider carbon dioxide a “dangerous contaminate” and want to get rid of the carbon dioxide in say the soda, before you drink it, then shake the bottle first. Fizzing allows dissolved carbon dioxide gas to be released in the form of bubbles. 

But here’s a dilemma, since the fizz in the soda is actually dissolved carbon dioxide gas, shouldn’t you really be trying to keep as much of the gas in the bottle as possible as suggested by US scientists, Steve Spangler? 

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Notes and Links

 “Since the fizz in the soda is actually dissolved carbon dioxide gas, the goal is to keep as much of the gas in the bottle as possible.”  Steve Spangler, Scientist
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/content/experiment/00000103

“At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.” Barrack Obama, June 23, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/23/obama-climate-change-congress

Via Tom Nelson, via Marc Morano

The proposal will see the EU go from a risk-based assessment of chemicals to a hazard-based one.

The results, released today in Mt Isa, confirm stories in The Australian in recent weeks and years.

The study shows that of 400 children aged one to four in the mining town, 45 had blood levels higher than 10 micrograms per decilitre.

Read more here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23741342-601,00.html

story via: Stephen T. Thanks.

Article here in Accountancy Age.

Something else for Apple Board member Al Gore to tackle?

Apple’s environmental policy is here.

It was not so many years ago that John Berlau emailed me about the Murray River and also bushfires. He was writing a book. It’s now published. Called ‘Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health’ the book includes chapters on DDT, Asbestos and Hurricane Katrina.

I’ve only read the first three chapters. There could be something in the following few about the Murray River and Australia or he may be saving that for another book.

Anyway, while the focus in ‘Eco-Freaks’ is on America, the issues Berlau chooses to explore are relevant to the whole world.

The second chapter on DDT, and entitled ‘Rachel Carson Kills Birds’, will have Tim Lambert in a spin. In fact Berlau references Lambert’s blog ‘Deltoid’ (footnote number 128). But it’s not complementary.

I have read a lot about DDT, Rachel Carson and environmentalism, but I still learnt a lot from that chapter.

And I was amused by the anecdotal. In particular, that Joseph Jacobs, a chemist who worked to mass-produce DDT to protect American troops during World War II, ended up with DDT poured over him when the valve at the bottom of a large vessel was accidentally opened. In his autobiography, Jacobs wrote:

“When it dried, I had DDT an inch thick all over me. In my hair, in my ears, and in my mouth and nose. I took off my clothes, showered, and scrubbed, but probably ingested more DDT during that one incident than is today considered safe to absorb over any years.”

Berlau goes on to comment about the fate of Joseph Jacobs:

“After all, in the years after Silent Spring, DDT was called ‘double death twice’. One touch could kill you. And sadly, after being exposed, Jacobs did die – more than sixty years later in 2004, at the tender young age of eighty-eight.”

‘Eco-Freaks’ is available from Amazons.com.

By 1999 atmpospheric levels of manmade ozone destroying chemicals had leveled off and since 2003 there has been a 7 percent drop in the amount of chlorine and bromine in the lower stratosphere (10-25 km). This is apparently where most ozone loss occurs.

Given its original objectives, the Montreal Protocol has been a huge success and reduced concentrations of ozone-depleting gases.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been predicting for some time that the reduction in concentrations of ozone-depleting gases will result in a recovery in the ozone layer and also the Antarctic ozone hole.

So what happened this year?

Over the last few weeks we have heard report after report that the ozone hole over the Antarctic has expanded to a near-record size despite the successful global ban on chlorofluorocarbons.

An incredible 40 million tonnes of ozone had been lost over Antarctica this year, exceeding the record 39 million tonne loss in 2000 with the depth of the ozone hole now rivaling the record low ozone values of 1998.

Discussion, including at this blog, has focused not on chlorofluorcarbons as the cause of the now growing ozone hole, but on atmospheric temperatures and other phenomena.

It is interesting to reflect on what some skeptics were writing 10 years ago.

At that time S. Fred Singer was sounding something like a global warming skeptic with his piece entitled ‘Ozone politics With a Nobel imprimatur’ in the Washington Post.

He wrote: “Further research will likely prove the CFC-ozone issue to have been a minor environmental problem. In the meantime, hasty policies to ban CFC production by the end of 1995, though a financial windfall for chemical companies and appliance manufacturers, will impose substantial economic costs — up to $100 billion — on U.S. consumers and make life worse for the poorest everywhere — especially in developing nations.”

There is even mention of hurricanes and Al Gore in the article.

Anyway, it is interesting to ponder why, given the success of the Montreal Protocol, there has not been a reduction in the hole over the Antarctic?

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Thanks to Bob Foster for sending me the S. Fred Singer paper.

A note to commentators, I am interested in better understanding this issue and I’m interested in your opinion. But comments that don’t add new information and/or that are disrespectful may be edited and /or deleted.

The Institute of Public Affairs* has published several proponents of DDT, including Roger Bate in an article titled ‘The Ban on DDT is Killing Millions in the Third World’.

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*I’m a Senior Fellow at the IPA.