Mass Fish Die-off in Lake Cajititlan, Mexico

About 60 tons of fish die in Lake Cajititlan, Jalisco, Mexico

About a million dead fish washed up on the shores of Lake Cajititlan near the city of Guadalajara in Jalisco state, western Mexican, local media reported.

Officials say a wastewater treatment plant may have dumped untreated effluent in the lake thereby reducing the amount of oxygen in the water and suffocating the popoche chub freshwater fish.

In 2014, about 200 tons of dead popoche were removed from the lake.

NO More Coal-fired Power Plants Here!

Submitted by a CASF Member:

Too Little, Too Late?

Longleaf Energy Resources Leaves Court with a Red-Coal Face

A Georgia state court invalidated a permit to build a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Early county, citing the developers’ failure to limit emissions of carbon dioxide. A Fulton County Superior Court Judge, Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore [kudos to judge Moore], reversed a right to pollute permit [aka, air permit] issued earlier this year by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to Longleaf Energy Resources.

Southern Company’s Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Georgia is seen in this aerial photograph in Cartersville in this file photo taken September 4, 2007. One of the biggest coal-fired plants in the country, it generates about 3,300 megawatts of electricity from four coal-fired boilers. (Chris Baltimore/Reuters; caption: abc News. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice!

The judge citied a 2007 U.S. Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore decision in which carbon dioxide was ruled to be a pollutant under the existing Clean Air Act and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Anthracite Coal. Credit USGS

How much coal would it take to light a 100W light bulb for one year?

A 100-Watt light bulb consumes about 876 kWh of electricity in one year (100 W × 24 h/day × 365 days = 876,000 Wh = 876 kWh).

Energy density

The energy density of coal, expressed in kilowatt-hours per kilogram, is about 6.67 kWh/kg. The typical thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about 30%. That means only 30% of the coal burned up turns into electricity, with the rest normally wasted as heat. Coal power plants generate approximately 2.0 kWh per 1kg of burned coal.

876 kWh ÷ 2kWh/kg = 438 kg of coal

However, the above amount does not take into account a further 5–10% transmission and distribution losses caused by resistance and heating in the power lines AND the initial energy used to mine the coal and ship it to the power plant, which could be equivalent to 10-15% of the total coal consumed.

438 kg ÷ 80% = 547.5 kg of coal {Total amount of coal consumed to light a 100W bulb for one full year!}

How Much Carbon Dioxide?

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) forms during coal combustion when one atom of carbon (C) combines with two atoms of oxygen (O2). Carbon has an atomic weight of is 12, and oxygen 16, making the atomic weight of carbon dioxide 44. A kg of coal with a carbon content of 78 percent and a heating value of 32 MJ/kg emits about 2.86 kg of carbon dioxide. (Source: Carbon Dioxide Emission Factors for Coal)

547.5 kg of coal x 2.86 = 1,566 kg of CO2 {The total amount of CO2 produced.}

[Note: other nasty byproducts include sulfur, which reacts with oxygen to produce SO2, which then combines with moisture in the air to produce acid rain, nitrogen oxides, NOx, and mercury, all of which are extremely harmful to air, water, soil, trees, marine animals and humans.]

Meanwhile, back in Crawford ranch …

White House officials, congressional staff revealed, refused to open e-mail from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, that said climate-warming greenhouse emissions threaten public health and welfare!

The EPA has also told members of Congress that the Defense Department is defying orders over cleaning up toxic pollution at three military bases at Fort Meade in Maryland, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.

Related Links:

• Georgia court cites carbon in coal-plant ruling

The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish

How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish

Step One: You fill up the tank (gasoline is a processed fossil fuel product).

REUTERS/Sergio Moraes (Image may be subject to copyright!)
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Step Two: As you drive around, your car burns the fossil fuel and produces greenhouse gases and other harmful pollutants, which are spewed out through the exhaust pipe.

Houston Evacuation – Hurricane Rita
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Step three: Sunlight interacts with greenhouse gases emitted from your car, producing ground-level ozone.

Only about 12.6 percent of the gas your car consumes is used for driving!

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Step Four: High ozone levels damage crops such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, reducing growth rates and crop yields, as well as making the crops less resistant to insects and pests. (In 1995, ground-level ozone caused $2.7 billion in crop damage nationwide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.) Current estimates for the crop damages caused by ground-level ozone stand at about $3 billion each year in the US alone.

(L) Ozone-damaged plant; (R) normal plant. Photo courtesy of Gene Daniels/U.S. EPA.
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Step Five: To increase growth rates, boost crop yields and fight pests, farmer use increasingly larger amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Applying Chemical Fertilizers. Photo AVRCD. (Image may be subject to copyright!)
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Step Six: Nutrient-rich chemical runoffs (pollution) from agricultural fields are washed by rain into streams, storm sewers and rivers and end up into our oceans, seas and other water bodies.

Summer rains wash nutrients, dissolved organic matter and sediment out of the mouths of rivers, into the sea, sparking large phytoplankton blooms. South America presents two excellent examples of river outlets where phytoplankton tends to thrive. Along the northern part of the continent the mouth of the Orinoco River opens into the Caribbean. Along the Eastern side of South America, the mighty Amazon exits its thousand mile journey. (Text NASA)
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Step Seven: Dead Zones that cover tens of thousands of square kilometers of waterways are created by pollution-fed algae, which deprive fish and other marine life of oxygen.

Gulf of Mexico: sediment filled water meets the ocean.
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Step Eight: Deprived of oxygen, fish and other marine life die.

Dead fish are seen on a basket of a fish farm off a coast of Menidi village in the Amvrakikos Gulf, some 350Km northeast of Athens February 28, 2008. Local marine biologist Vangelis Dimitriou said that up to 800 tonnes of fish including sea bass and sea bream died from a lack of oxygen [hypoxia], after swimming through a large pocket of water where the temperatures suddenly dropped at a drastic rate. REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis (GREECE). Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice!

But it doesn’t have to be that way!

Related Links:

• Energy Dinosaurs
• Our Oceans Are Dying!
• Dead Zones