Kirsten Mortensen's blog

You may have seen the headlines recently when Consumer Reports released new a study reporting BPA (Bisphenol A) levels in canned foods.

Here’s a more extensive write-up of the Consumer Reports report.

You may also have heard that organic companies didn’t do any better in the study.

I don’t eat a lot of canned foods, but there’s a couple of organic soups in Hain’s Imagine line that aren’t bad — my daughter’s fond of them, so I’d been keeping some on hand for those times when she needed a quick snack.

I’d just as soon her quick snacks aren’t dosed with endocrine disruptors, however. So I wrote Hain’s to ask if they use BPA-free cans.

Just got my answer.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding our Imagine Soup. We strive to maintain the highest quality products and appreciate your patronage.

Most metal food and beverage packaging has a thin coating of an epoxy containing BPA on the interior surface. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a compound used in most metal food and beverage packaging. The interior surface of the can has a thin coating of an epoxy containing BPA, which protects public health by preventing corrosion of the can and contamination of food and beverage by not coming in contact with the metal. This is one of the very few FDA approved coatings that will provide the safety and shelf life that consumers expect from our products. Tests have indicated that trace amounts of BPA may be present in these can coatings. The minute amounts detected are well below levels deemed to be of concern for public health according to the FDA.

The United States Center for Disease Control and The American Council on Science and Health, along with other Regulatory agencies worldwide, have extensively researched Bisphenol A and concluded there is no risk to human health. All coatings that come in contact with our products undergo stringent testing and comply with US Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

We are currently looking for other alternatives.

As the Atomic News piece linked above notes, it’s not easy for companies to find suppliers of epoxy-lined cans. But Eden has managed to do so:

The Ball Corp. eventually agreed to produce custom runs of cans with oleo-based C-enamel linings for Eden. It’s also doing research to develop BPA-free can coatings that could work for more acidic foods such as fruit, which Eden now markets in glass containers. “It’s costing me 14 percent more for these BPA-free cans, but I said I have to do this because not only do I eat canned foods, but so do my kids and grandkids,” [Eden Foods President and Chairman Michael] Potter says.

Eden’s canned foods, incidentally, still contain traces of BPA, but at far lower levels than Consumer Reports found in other canned foods.

Consumer Reports tested Eden cans, confirming they are BPA free.

So where does the contamination come from? Who knows. The results, CR says, suggest “that food can have multiple sources of exposure.”

Great.

To my environmentalist friends, this is one reason why I have trouble jumping on the global warming bandwagon. Endocrine disrupters are having an effect on the environment right now. Alarming numbers of male freshwater bass are now growing eggs, for instance — their sexual organs are being messed up. That’s scary stuff, because it means something is going on with our water, and ya know, I like to drink water.

I’d rather see us tackling these more immediate problems of environmental contamination than pouring trillions into preventing a problem that is, so far, a figment of a computer model’s imagination.

Scientists form hypotheses and then subject them to rigorous review and testing.

Propogandists attempt to shape public perception and opinions.

Given the contents of the files leaked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglica University, it’s pretty clear the global warming community has been led by propogandists.

Their priority was not science.

It was controlling information. It was influencing the public’s perception of issues related to their pet cause.

If you’re looking for more reading on this, may I suggest:

• General background piece by an assistant professor of political science at the  University of Rochester.

• This piece on the CBS News blog is also useful background if you need to catch up on the basics of the story.

• Charlie Martin, who holds an MS in Computer Science from Duke University, takes a look at a so-far under-reported angle on the story: the computer code CRU researchers used to model their data.

• Longtime global warming skeptic Jeff Id (“an aeronautical engineer by training but work as an optical engineer”) published this blog post yesterday. It explains why he’s had longstanding issues with the Global Warming researchers’ use of “proxies” and suspect correlations.

• Here’s a thorough and enlightening reconstruction of CRU’s attempts to evade Freedom of Information requests, developed by Willis Eschenbach, a researcher who got involved when he asked CRU to share its temperature data.

• Greek hydrological engineer Demetris Koutsoyiannis likewise shares his experience in trying to work with leading global warming scientists.”

• Not directly related to the CRU scandal topically, but this 2008 paper by Steve McIntyre describes the work he had done to date in auditing climate data. It provides useful background on why so-called skeptic’s questions have validity.

• UPDATE: one more — the most comprehensive write-up of pro- and anti-global warming arguments on the planet.

I haven’t found one of these since I was a kid . . .

Isn’t it gorgeous?

Most the ladybugs we see anymore are non-native species that were imported by the U.S. Dept of Agriculture in the 70s to control agricultural pests.

Sounded like a good idea at the time, but they’ve driven out many of our native species.

The law of unintended consequences.

And look what else I found: Cornell University is asking kids to find and photograph native ladybugs and submit the photos with a little supporting data (date and time seen, location, habitat).

To be able to help the nine spotted ladybug and other ladybug species scientists need to have detailed information on which species are still out there and how many individuals are around. Entomologists at Cornell can identify the different species but there are too few of us to sample in enough places to find the really rare ones. We need you to be our legs, hands and eyes. If you could look for ladybugs and send us pictures of them on Email we can start to gather the information we need. We are very interested in the rare species but any pictures will help us. This is the ultimate summer science project for kids and adults! You can learn, have fun and help save these important species.

The website tells about how a couple of kids found a nine-spotted ladybug in Virginia in 2006 — the first sighting of this species in the Eastern U.S. in 14 years. Isn’t that cool?

And what a great environmental science-based summer activity!

Glenn Reynolds has been advocating the adoption of flex-fuel technology for our cars. The basic idea is that if our cars could run on ethanol and methanol as well as gasoline, we’d reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

The cost to convert our cars would be about $100 per.

Leave aside the ominous suggestion–on odd one coming from the good professor–that the technology be government-mandated, and it may well be a fine idea. But there’s another option that would be simpler to implement and would cost a whole lot less.

I first read about it in this article about hypermiler Wayne Gerdes.

Hypermilers try to improve their gas mileage by changing the way they drive.

Gerdes has taken the idea to an extreme–including doing things that are arguably unsafe.

But there’s still something here for the rest of us those of us–stuff like not accelerating so quickly at green lights, using cruise control for highway driving, and coasting to stops when possible.

The upside: according to this article on CNN.com, adopting some of the hypermilers’ techniques could reduce our national gas consumption by 35 percent.

It would help, of course, if we could get immediate feedback on how much gas we’re using, as we use it. And we can: according to Gerdes, it would cost only $10-20 to install fuel consumption gauges in our cars.

Personally, I don’t want our politicians mandating any auto upgrades–too much potential for mischief. But I’d gladly spend an extra $20 myself to be able to monitor my gas consumption in real time.

And hey, if that 35 percent figure is anything like correct, the gauges would about pay for themselves by the time we get home from the new car lot.

Technorati Tags: hypermilers, flex-fuel, gasoline consumption, foreign oil

Salon has published an article excerpted from a new book titled Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger; the piece argues that environmental alarmism has “had the opposite of [its] intended effect,”

provoking fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among readers and the lay public, not the rational embrace of environmental policies.

Ya think?

Not to mention the out-and-out backlash — the ridicule (richly deserved much of the time) and “there you go crying wolf again” reaction every time we’re served yet another predication of environmental disaster.

The article makes quite a few other points I’ve raised myself for years. Here’s a taste:

The eco-tragedy narrative imagines humans as living in a fallen world where wildness no longer exists and a profound sadness pervades a dying Earth. The unstated aspiration is to return to a time when humans lived in harmony with their surroundings. That tragic narrative is tied to an apocalyptic vision of the future — an uncanny parallel to humankind’s Fall from Eden in the Book of Genesis and the end of the world in the final Book of Revelation.

Original sin, anyone?

For many environmentalists, Science is and should remain at the center of any politics aiming to overcome ecological crises. It is outside of history, society, and values. It is environmentalism’s touchstone, the central criterion on which the value of environmentalism should be judged. But to believe that the sciences were behind the passage of environmental laws is a faith — a scientism, not a science — one that overlooks the specific historical and social conditions that gave rise to the ecological values.

Amen!

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal printed a piece by Stephen Moore last Friday that relates these findings from a new United Nations report called “State of the Future”:

* World-wide illiteracy rates have fallen by half since 1970 and now stand at an all-time low of 18%;
* More people live in free countries than ever before;
* The average human being today will live 50% longer in 2025 than one born in 1955;
* In 1981, 40% of the world’s population lived on less than $1 a day, while today that percentage is only 25%, adjusted for inflation;
* At current rates of growth, “world poverty will be cut in half between 2000 and 2015″;
* Trade and technology are closing the global “digital divide”.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger conclude their article by calling for a “new politics” which, they say

requires a new mood, one appropriate for the world we hope to create. It should be a mood of gratitude, joy, and pride, not sadness, fear, and regret. A politics of overcoming will trigger feelings of joy rather than sadness, control rather than fatalism, and gratitude rather than resentment.

Excellent idea. And isn’t it nice to know we don’t even have to fake it. We just have to learn to discount pronouncements from gloom and doomers as a matter of course ;-)

(Oh, and a little tax revolt to wake up our politicians might be nice for a quick change of pace!)

Technorati Tags: environmentalism

Well, part of my lawn. It turns out I didn’t order enough compost.

Here it is scattered in its little piles.

Next step: I had to rake it all to spread it — or more precisely, knock it off the leaves of the grass so it won’t kill it, which would have rather defeated the purpose.

About halfway through doing this I realized that I am, as my English sweetie might put it, “barking mad.”

Composting a lawn?

There is a reason that uniform, green-all-year-round lawns and eco-awareness don’t mix. They aren’t supposed to.

And since my front lawn is that compost-awkward size — too small for two yards of compost, two big for one — and since I decided during a rare burst of fiscal prudence to err on the side of too little compost when I ordered it on Saturday — I have now a 1/2 composted lawn.

I’m toying with what would be wiser. Leave the other half uncomposted as a test to see if the effort is really worth it?

Or shell out for another load to spread next weekend . . .

We’ll see.

In the meantime, one of the things compost won’t really help of course is weed control (yeah I know, theorectically if your grass is happy it will compete better — but compost nourishes weeds too now, doesn’t it). As I’ve mentioned in another post, I’ve been applying corn gluten in the spring; it inhibits seed germination and so over time will cut down on weeds. Some weeds — if they’re annuals or short-lived perennials. Any perennial that lives on like grass, otoh, will be unaffected by corn gluten — and speaking of the English, one of the weeds I have the most problem with, Glechoma hederacea, is a non-native plant brought over here by someone on that side of the pond.

I suspect the English. Wikipedia mentions an English herbalist, John Gerard, who said a brew of it cures tinnitus, and that

Glechoma was also widely used by the Saxons in brewing beer as flavoring, clarification, and preservative, before the introduction of hops for these purposes; thus the brewing-related names, Alehoof, Tunhoof, and Gill-over-the-ground.

Some descriptions say it smells minty but that’s only one aspect of its odor. Excuse me, “odour.” Its smell is unlike anything else — strong, bitter, mediciny.

It’s happy in sun and shade, doesn’t mind being cut low, is happy to grow right over top your grass if you cut it high. It loves to take over the edges of things — the edge of a garden, the edge of the driveway, the edge of a new patch of lawn you’ve reseeded for some reason.

The good news. Wikipedia and this article both say you can get rid of it by using Borax, which is relatively non-toxic.

I may give that a try . . .

On the other hand, I have tinnitus . . . hmmm . . .

Technorati Tags: organic lawn care

Does anyone really think it’s okay to scare the bejeezers out of our kids with predictions of environmental doom?

“I worry about it,” says this girl who has yet to lose all her baby teeth, “because I don’t want to die.”

I understand that if you believe the worst case global warming scenarios you’ll advocate taking actions to avert them.

But frightening children about these issues, in my opinion, is unconscionable.

The fact is, NOBODY knows for certain what the future holds. It could bring horrors as bad or worse than those suggested by Al Gore’s scare graphs. (Asteroid impacts. Nuclear war. Flu pandemics. For instance.) Or it could be that people will get their s**t together and manage to make the world a nicer place than it is today. Or — the scenario I think is most likely — it could be a mix, kind of like it is today.

Nobody knows.

So why is it okay to trash a child’s PRESENT wellbeing in the name of a future we can’t predict, and over which children have even less control than adults?

This is Psyche 101 stuff. Worrying about the future, worrying about things over which you have no control, is debilitating — it’s a form of low-grade madness. Yet we not only foist these emotional non-coping skills on our children, we are downright pleased with ourselves when we do it.

. . . when 9-year-old Alyssa Luz-Ricca’s mother returned from a business trip to Costa Rica with a T-shirt of a colorful frog and the words “Extinction is forever” . . . Alyssa looked at the T-shirt and, she says, “I cried.”

“She cried very hard,” clarifies her mother, Karen Luz of Arlington.

Isn’t that wonderful? Alyssa’s “motivated” now! Happy day!

Not!

We should be ashamed.

We should be ashamed that we’ve laced what used to be called “biology” in our school curricula with environmental fire-and-brimstone messaging.

We should be ashamed that we, the adults, aren’t adult enough to shoulder the burden of our terrors ourselves, instead of asking our children to share the weight.

We should be ashamed that we have so little faith in ourselves that we can’t sit our kids down and say, “yes, there are troubles. But lots of grown-ups who really care about these issues are working very hard to find ways to solve them that are fair to everyone.” And believe that we’re telling the truth, because you know what? That IS the truth.

And what’s more, it’s the only truth that matters to a nine-year-0ld child.

Technorati Tags: global warming

Here’s a worthwhile read by Kurt Anderson on the New York magazine website on the “frisson of smug or hysterical pleasure” that characterizes contemporary “apocalypse preoccupations” — including those that have leached into “less-fantastical” — i.e. secular/Western/post-Enlightenment — “thought and conversation.”

My only beef is that Anderson goes a little too easy on environmental doomsayers, conceding that they may be “sincerely fearful of climate change” while focusing most of the piece on people who conceive apocalypse through the mechanics of religious prophecy.

It would be more fair to note that religious fanatics are “sincerely fearful” of moral corruption, believing it propels us toward global disaster. The ingredients are therefore identical. Start with widespread evil and thick-headedness. Then swap in some scary physical processes for a wrathful deity and voila, ya gots your post-modern secular kablooey.

The question is: who are you going to believe?

*(and I feel fine.)

I can’t afford to spend a whole lotta money on wine. I tend to buy bottles in the $10-15 range (below that price point I seem to run into wines I don’t find particularly drinkable); I drink them a glassful or so a day to make them last; and I generally only buy a bottle or two at a time.

I hate opening a bottle and finding it skunky.

That’s never happened to me with bottle that’s been closed with a fake cork.

Here’s an piece by Mark Fisher of the Dayton Daily News about fake corks — read the comments, too, a number of knowledgeable people chimed in.

Unfortunately, phasing out cork wine stoppers may have an environmental price: as long as cork wine stoppers have value, it’s a good bet cork oak tree forests will be left intact.

These scattered pockets of cork oaks, mostly in Portugal and Spain, thrive in the hot, arid conditions of the southern Mediterranean, sheltering a wide array of biodiversity and helping to protect the soil from drying out. In addition, some wildlife depends upon cork oak forests for their survival, including the Iberian lynx and the Barbary deer, as well as rare birds such as the Imperial Iberian eagle, the black stork and the Egyptian mongoose.

Figures, doesn’t it?

(Hey, can I drink fake corked wines with a clear conscience if I install cork flooring somewhere? I’d love to install cork flooring somewhere . . . )

Terry L. Hunt, anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, proposes a new explanation for the environmental degradation of Easter Island.

What Hunt believes happened is that people brought rats with them, and the population of rats mushroomed ( “the rat population could have exceeded 3.1 million”). The rats fed on the island’s palm nuts, and that’s what led to the deforestation.

His theory undermines the validity of Easter Island as a 1:1 parable for the consequences of population and deforestation; he thinks it’s unlikely that the local population grew to as many as 15,000 people, or that it was man’s deforestation of the islands (for building and fuel) that rendered it inhabitable.

The article is a long one with a lot of detail on how Hunt came to his conclusions. Reluctantly, btw.

Technorati Tags: Easter Island