News You Probably Haven't Seen

And This Just in Our Little World from Southern New Mexico to Central Colorado
Why you missed it if you don't live here.
Hint: It's "evironmental" news
We don't need no stinkin' tree hugger news
Here are a week's worth of big-time serious news, collected the New Mexico Political Report, a newsletter.

 • On Sunday, wastewater from a well operated by BPX in southern Colorado leaked into the Animas Citizens Ditch and Animas River. As a precaution, the cities of Farmington and Aztec both shut down the intake pumps that draw drinking water from the river. The Durango Herald and Farmington Daily Times

            That's the same river system that took the hit from the Gold King Mine spill. 

• Fortunately, no one was hurt on Wednesday at a Noble Energy site when thousands of gallons of diesel fuel ignited in Weld County, Colorado. Smoke was visible in Denver and residents living within a mile of the accident were evacuated. ABC Denver Blair Miller

What doesn't burn soaks right into the ground.
  • (BTW,  Colorado’s recent amendment requiring oil and gas wells be set back 2,500 feet from homes, schools, waterways and other “vulnerable” areas. (Proposition 112, by the way, failed to pass this week.) Noble (yeah, those guys with the fire above) spent millions of dollars opposing the amendment, and as reported by HCN)

• Scott Turner at the El Defensor Chieftain reported that it could take another two to three decades to clean up groundwater contamination in Socorro. The poisonous plume, which was mapped in 2014, is roughly the size of 360 acres. (Battery manufacturer waste)

•Carlsbad Current-Argus that the U.S. Department of Energy wants to reclassify certain types of nuclear waste so it can be interred at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. (Wip is close to Carlsbad)
            Oh great, This facility has already had several failures.

•And the cherry on top:  According to Felicia Fonseca Associated Press, the Navajo Nation is thinking about buying the Navajo Generating Station. 
          While these Native Americans try to save their economy, this giant CO2 gusher might stay in        action.
Olde Scooter Prediction:  This kind of news will increase in frequency and severity as the "anti-regulation" actions of the current administration take hold.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scooter Duff's Theory of Cosmology [A work in progress]

Image
 [Olde Duff Gets Seriouser] SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES  ARE MOSTLY PRIMORDIAL  DARK MATTER [Draft 8/19/2023] THE BIG NEWS.. ..Is from the James Webb Space Telescope. There were furiously active galaxies very soon after the Big Bang, not that long after the first generation stars happened. This implies supermassive black holes at the centers of the new galaxies.  The question, "how did these giant black holes get there so early?" seems not quite answered by the two main contenders, "Giant dust collapse," and "Many stellar black holes consolidating." Thus I decided to toss this hat into the ring: At the big bang, and dark matter was the first matter of any kind to form (perhaps during the mysterious “inflation” event -- my personal theory).  It’s mutual gravitational attraction and lack of interaction to any electromagnetic force allowed it to exist and start to coalesce, even in the heat of the BB, long before baryonic matter could.  There was a vast quantity
Read more

Rick and Morty

Image
A Millenial Hit Olde Folks Don't Know About Are you over 50? Have you ever heard about "Rick and Morty?" I thought not. There is a "cell" of younger people who love the show and say extravagant things about its wonderfulness. In these times when prior punditry had it we would be unified by some mysterious power in the Internet, there are more and more cells of people, unified within their cells, but isolated from most of the other cells of special interests*, tastes and proclivities.  The U.S. looks more like a pomegranate than a cantaloupe - to push the fruit/melon analogy to its extreme. I will dream up a graphic one of these days. USA, USA! society in fruit form. ANYHOO... I watched Rick and Morty at my millennial son's suggestion, and I LOVE IT. Eccentric old genius and non-genius grandson as the lead characters (faintly Back to the Future -esque) + sci-fi + Simpsons sensibilities +  intelligent satire + over-the-top imaginative creators
Read more

An Informational Present

Image
I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS SIX YEARS AGO (Surely you remember ?)  ...And in those six years, multiple research projects have affirmed and reaffirmed that SENOLYTICS is a big deal. The science of senolytics: how a new pill could spell the end of ageing                                    * I'm reminded of this by a well-researched article in The Guardian , a newspaper I respect. Aside from that hyperbolic, click-bait-ish headline, it's a fair summary of the state of knowledge on the subject. In brief: Certain drugs and several supplements help the body get rid of senescent cells, "zombie cells" that don't die after they quit doing their thing and just hang around spitting out inflammatory chemicals that damage various organs, joints, and brain cells. The senolytic agents augment apoptosis , nature's way of killing off the senescent cells. When those senescent cells are gone, things start improving measurably (see the mouse with the young look in the Guardian piece.)
Read more