Nerds, Nurdles, LNG, Radiation and Seaweed

There have been many reposts this year from March and April 2011 regarding radiation from Fukushima and North Coast California seaweed, all mentioning radioactive iodine.

Two companies on the North Coast tested seaweed samples throughout the harvest last year, from March on through summer. No elevated levels of anything. 2 different labs were used, UCB and ESRI.

Enivros and health concsious folks may be reading the wrong news sources. The very same articles appeared in energy business wires and algal biofuel blogs. So which came first, the market mechanism of fear based rhetoric or the green bleeding heart attack? Algal biofuel is all the rage as Dupont and other algal biofuels companies lease large tracts of nearshore ocean waters in Southern California.

The formation of the deep water of the ocean is part of the conveyor belt circulation pattern of the world oceans. This pattern is not well understood. The North Atlantic deep water (NADW) flows southward at depth from its source in the high latitudes of the North Atlantic Ocean and meets a northward-flowing current (the Antarctic Bottom Water, ABW) whose water originated by sinking in the Weddell Sea near Antarctica. The currents merge and part of the water flows into the deep Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Water upwells to the surface in all basins of the ocean. In addition, warm water returns from the Pacific and Indian Oceans into the Atlantic Ocean at about the depth of the thermocline. We believe these return flows to the Atlantic Ocean occur through the Drake Passage between Antarctica and South America and through the Bering Sea into the Arctic Ocean and thence to the Atlantic Ocean. The return flows in the high latitudes of the North Atlantic sink as the NADW.

Upwelling is an important process in the ocean. It involves the upward movement of water and dissolved constituents from depth in the ocean to the surface. Upwelling occurs in the coastal regions of offshore Peru, California, Namibia, Mauritania, and Somalia, and in open ocean equatorial regions and the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. To upwell the volume of the ocean with an average depth of 3,800 m at the mean upwelling rate of 4 m/yr would take 3,800 m ÷ 4 m/yr = 950 years.

Because of this pattern of circulation, the deep water of the world's oceans generally gets older from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The time the water stays out of contact with the atmosphere, that is, its residence time, increases toward the Pacific Ocean. The residence time of the bottom waters of the Atlantic Ocean is 200-500 years; that of the Pacific Ocean is 1,000- 2,000 years.

Add to this that only 8% of precipitation formed over the ocean falls on land, the toxicity of ocean borne fallout from the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe (not inclusive of surface flotsam from the tsunami) – would likely not reach the western shores of the US or Canada for upwards of hundreds of years.

Tsunami Flotsam: Plastics, Micro-plastics
Toxins are known to have a special affinity with plastics. Plastics float, and as they breakdown into smaller and smaller bits, the attached molecular size and weight of the toxins can be greater than the plastic particle and cause the plastic to sink.

What will be the impact of raining radiation on the Pacific Ocean as it encounters miles and miles of existing toxic degrading plastic? How will the molecular constituents of hormone disrupting plastics combined with radioactivity going impact this vast area’s ecology?

This is where the real dangers, the politics, the global plastic economy, green revolution fertilizers, petrochemical and LNG nurdle processing plants, pipelines, large scale environmental destruction, import/export terminals on our shores, and the lies, align.

California Makeover Licensing and Privatization Act - Big Green with Billion Dollar Foundations forced closures on Northern California nearshore ocean waters where no documented problems existed that weren't already covered by law and as quantifiable data could prove, any and all stocks were rebuilding. MPA's will do nothing on the North Coast, as it has been stated - it is the management between MPA's that will determine the MPA's contribution to the Goals of the MLPAi (questionable at best) and fish stocks, benefits to the ecosystem, local cultural communities, etc.

Buy The Numbers:
All that enlightened ecosystem management talk - prohibiting (2) species take in an MPA and calling that Ecosystem Management while speaking elaborately and condescendingly of DFG single species management – the computer models that project MPA results out to a biological steady state some 35-50 years into the future, are single species oriented. Computers and the scientists can't model interactions and ecology of more than one species at a time. Language which adrressed protections against hydrocarbon transport through MPAs or extraction from under MPAs were deemed to not be applicable.

Seaweed harvesting in Oregon and Washington are closed. But the TAKE of private property and public land including river basins, dunes, and National Forests continues unabated to capitalize on another lie. Another 10 year lie. At Coos Bay, Oregon, a proposed import terminal for LNG will now become an export terminal. 90 ships a year will dock headed to markets is Asia, and according to the license, many countries in South America. The closest market is Japan, which consumes 10% of the global trade and is 12 days away. The nearest competitor in Canada is 14 days away from Japan. Ever seen a LNG container ship? They can look just like floating nuclear plants, 2-3 domes, the ships are approximately 1000' long by 150' wide, the gas is compressed to 1 / 600th of it's gaseous state, and liquefied. A 3 foot diameter pipe will carry the LNG from Wyoming to the Oregon Coast. Put a few MPAs in offshore, then some wave energy tracts, and there's nowhere left to gather food.

LNG Plastics
Plastics, in the form of nurdles, are also made from LNG. The Ford plant in Norfolk. Virginia last year was retooled to produce LNG pre-plastic pellets for export. The Norfolk site could handle 30,000 tons of the pellets a month - enough to fill roughly 333 truck-sized shipping containers. It will employ 225 workers. The company, is based in Antwerp, and is the world's largest handler of the pellets.

For the past 6 years in Oregon, Citizens against LNG have fought a scheme that is one of the most dangerous and destructive in Oregon's history. The coastal towns of North Bend, Coos Bay (Empire), Bar view, and Glasgow all lie within the one to three-mile hazard zone should there be an accident or spill. That danger zone will continue for 1,800 feet across the 231 mile, 36 inch high pressure pipeline associated with the project. This will put many communities in Coos, Douglas, Jackson and Klamath Counties at risk. 


As it stands, the pipeline is slated to cross 161 miles of private land and 70 miles of public lands including the Rogue River and Klamath National Forests, five major rivers (Coos, Coquille, Rogue, S. Umpqua and Klamath) and countless streams that are key spawning grounds for salmon and steelhead. The Fish and Wildlife Service have identified 14 fish species of concern within the project area. The dredge permit has been approved for the North Spit of Coos Bay.

March 28th article 2012
http://earthfix.soptv.org/energy/article/pipeline-terminal-would-export-natural-gas-from-co/

The question at hand: Will native Olympia oysters be harmed by the construction of a 2.4 mile stretch of pipeline through Haynes Inlet? Pacific Connector, the pipeline builder, will argue that it can move oysters out of harm's way during dredging and construction in the inlet.
Citizens Against LNG, led by Jody McCaffree, will argue that the company will kill an estimated 1.4 million oysters and disturb the shellfish's wider habitat.

And on April 17, 2012
COOS BAY As expected, federal regulators have dropped the import license for a liquefied natural gas terminal and pipeline proposed by the Jordan Cove Energy Project. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made its decision Monday, after Jordan Cove had indicated it no longer wished to build a $1.4 billion LNG import facility on Coos Bay. Instead, the company wants to build a $3.5 billion export terminal here to ship LNG to Asia, where high demand commands high prices. The project includes building a pipeline to link with the Ruby Pipeline near the California Border to draw on natural gas developed in Wyoming.

http://theworldlink.com/business/ferc-drops-jordan-cove-s-lng-import-license/article_791173ba-8895-11e1-91fb-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1sK1CmW9G

It's all bs, just like the MLPA DEIR and the company that didn't read our comments, and wrote out it's own interpretation. These people couldn't work for our State. They aren't that good. Anyone who attended the dog and pony show put on by Horizon in Fort Bragg saw it was a Jerry Springer show.

Tomas DiFiore
Still free thinking, harvesting and eating North Coast Seaweeds