Eau Claire sacked with 14.3 inches of snow

Early Sunday morning it started snowing in Eau Claire and it didn't stop for a full 24 hours. All told Eau Claire got a full 14.3 inches of snow. According to the the Leader-Telegram "A full residential plowing operation is in currently in progress. Because of the amount of snow and need to re-plow the arterial streets following additional snowfall in the early morning hours, the full residential plowing is expected to take longer than normal to complete. The residential plowing is anticipated to be completed between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday afternoon."

The bad weather grounded flights out of Minneapolis, and there were numerous weather related traffic accidents "including a jackknifed semi that closed a westbound lane of Interstate 94 near Menomonie about 2 a.m. Monday." 

The sustained snowfall is indicative of a cold front and an extra tropical cyclone. 

Chemical Spill in New Jersey

The train cars in the Mantua River. Photo from the South Jersey Times. 

New Jersey can't seem to catch a break. According to the South Jersey Times a bridge collapse has caused a train derailment and chemical spill into Mantua Creek in Paulsboro, New Jersey early this morning. Three tanker cars spilled their contents in to the creek. One car spilled the chemical vinyl chloride and the chemicals spilled by the other cars are still unknown. Vinyl chloride is poisonous. Certain areas like a nearby school have been locked down and people experiencing respiratory prob;lems re being told to go the emergency room. The South Jersey Times provided a list of facts about vinyl chloride.

• It's used to make PVC which is used in a variety of common plastic products such as pipes, cable coatings, packing materials etc.
• Heavier than air and can travel along the ground
• Burns easily is not stable at high temperatures
• Exposure may cause eye or throat irritation, headache, shortness of breath.
• Breathing high levels of Vinyl Chloride can cause dizziness and/or sleepiness
• Breathing very high levels can cause loss of consciousness
• Breathing extremely high levels can cause death

This accident is an example of a technological hazard. What is also surprising to me is that according to the South Jersey Times this bridge has collapsed before. It collapsed in 2009 and a coal train spilled 16 rail cars into the same creek. There is always risk associated with using and transporting hazardous materials, but it is outrageous that the root cause of this technological hazard is shoddy bridge construction. There is a reasonable expectation for a bridge that was built to carry trains to last more than four years. The fault here lies with whoever built or repaired this bridge after the 2009 accident.

This reminds me of The Airborne Toxic Event from the book White Noise, by Don DeLillo. 

Also According to the EPA,"vinyl chloride emissions ... may reasonably be anticipated to result in an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible, or incapacitating reversible illness. Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen that causes a rare cancer of the liver." So yeah, awesome news for New Jersey. 

Staten Island feeling neglected as NYC and other areas regain power

Staten Island. Image from the NY Times. 

The people of Staten Island are feeling angry and forgotten as NYC and New Jersey recover form Sandy. IT seems that the media attention and Red Cross presence has been lacking in Staten Island, one of the hardest hit areas by the storm.
This seems to me to be an example of media and public attention being captured by the big important areas while other lesser known areas suffer because of a lack of attention. Although now it seems that Staten island is getting some recognition. Like this article in the NY Times and this video form Rock Center with Brian Williams.

New York Times Posts Infographics of Sandy Flooding

This is not what Sandy actually looked like.

Floodwaters from Hurricane Sandy rushing into the PATH station in Hoboken, New Jersey through an elevator shaft. Source NYTimes.

As hurricane Sandy crashed into the North East yesterday many people found themselves without power. Because of this power outage many websites that are headquartered on the east coast were and still are down. For a while The Huffington Post's website was down, and Gawker Media's blog sites are all still down as of noon central time Tuesday 10/30. To understand the impact that Sandy has had on the East Coast The New York Times posted several info graphics and accompanying images, here. The Huffington Post reported that 33 people are dead in New York City, and there is standing water in the subways under the East River. According to the Huffington Post, Joseph Lhota, chairman of the regional Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the damage was the worst in the 108-year history of the New York subway. Sandy even caused blizzards in Maryland and West Virginia.

Frankenstorm!

A monster of a storm is headed for the east coast just in time for Halloween. Hurricane Sandy swept through the Caribbean and if now headed up the east coast. At the same time a nor'easter is headed across the country towards the same area. This article from CBS says that the two storms could meet on tuesday over New York or New Jersey and form a "Frankenstorm" that could inundate most of the east coast with rain.

This image from CBS shows the expected path and arrival time of Sandy.

News coverage of Sandy has been focused on its arrival in New York and New Jersey around Halloween and news sources have had a field day with halloween puns like this one from CBS "Meteorologists expect a natural horror show of high wind, heavy rain, extreme tides and maybe snow to the west beginning early Sunday, peaking with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy on Tuesday and lingering past Halloween on Wednesday." The media has not focused on the at least 40 deaths in Haiti and Cuba which is more horrific or gruesome but much less appropriate for the media to make puns about so these stories have been relegated to the back burner of the media's consciousness.

Canadian Government Allegedly Knew About Iron Sulfate Dumped in Pacific

The name of the company that is is working with the American businessman Russ George has come to light and they are claiming that they had the knowledge and consent of the Canadian government to go ahead with their massive geoengineering project. The company is called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) and they seeded the pacific ocean with 100 tons of iron sulfate back in July.
HSRC claims that multiple departments within the Canadian Government have known about the project for years. According to The Toronto Star, " 'If this (experiment) happened, it would be in violation of Canada’s Environment Protection Act,” Peter Kent, the Minister of Environment, told the Star. He declined to comment on allegations that Environment Canada was aware if it but did not stop it." HSRC also claims to have been in contact with the U.N. and that they approved a small scale iron seeding project.
Science blog io9.com points out that the are effected by the project is 3,861 square miles, which hardly seems small. Io9.com also points out that the likely motivation for George and HSRC is carbon credits. Quebec has a cap and trade carbon emissions management system. IO9.com surmises that if the experiment goes the way the George and HSRC want it to they will try to get carbon credits from Quebec when their program begins in January, they would then sell these carbon credits to carbon producing industries for a profit. 

100 tons of Iron Sulfate Dumped into Pacific Ocean

According to this article from science blog io9.com, U.S. businessman Russ George, in concentration with a private company and with the (probably coerced) cooperation of a Canadian First Nations Tribe dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the pacific ocean.

Io9.com is calling it "the world’s most significant geoengineering project to date." And, as a bonus, the project was super illegal. According to British newspaper The Guardian "International legal experts say George's project has contravened the UN's convention on biological diversity (CBD) and London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea, which both prohibit for-profit ocean fertilization activities."

George and his team of private scientists dumped the iron sulfate into the ocean because they believe that the iron sulfate will cause an algal bloom that will trap carbon and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. According to The Guardian “Scientists (independent of the dumping experiment) are debating whether iron fertilization can lock carbon into the deep ocean over the long term, and have raised concerns that it can irreparably harm ocean ecosystems, produce toxic tides and lifeless waters, and worsen ocean acidification and global warming.”  Algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico have led to massive dead zones that are depleted of oxygen and cannot sustain life.

In addition to defying UN rules, George also coerced cooperation and funding out of a First Nations village on the island of Haida Gwaii. The village let the scientists dump the iron sulfate off the coast of the island and even donated 1 million dollars to the project. They were told that the project would help the ocean’s ecosystem and the salmon population. A representative for the village said they were not informed of any violations of UN rules or of possible negative effects and if they had known they would have not supported the project.

For me this project is a huge violation of public trust and of the general rules of how you conduct a scientific experiment. They are putting the ocean and the people that base their livelihoods on it at stake. To me this has all the markers of a technological hazard. It could have been avoided if Russ George was not suffering from some sort of eco-warrior world saving hubris.

Image from The Guardian. Red and oreange areas indicate algal blooms.