st_ouennais

The research group also is studying a possible connection between dioxin and breast cancer, particularly whether dioxin exposure in some people might cancel the general protection that pregnancy has on breast tissue against breast cancer.

1.1.10          Senator S. Syvret:

There is a wise old saying to the effect that people get the government they deserve and there is a lot of truth in that statement and the truth, I think, arises because if politicians of whatever stripe told the truth to the public, very few of them would get elected because the truths that we face in so many ways in our society - not just environmental, but in terms of energy use, source depletion, ageing societies - so many of these unpleasant truths are unaddressable and inescapable. The very, very best that society can do and hope to do in the face of such implacable physically inescapable limits is manage the retraction: damage limitation. The incinerator that we are proposing is taking us in completely the wrong direction. It may appear to some Members to be the businesslike, traditional, responsible kind of thing to do but, in truth, this incinerator is yet another example of the cornucopian fantasy that exponential growth can continue within a closed system indefinitely. It flies in the face of established laws of physics. Perhaps those laws of physics are about to be overturned through the scientific brilliance of Senator Ferguson, but I doubt it somehow. The second law of thermodynamics is pretty robust. It is worth reminding Members of that law because we have heard the incinerator being referred to quite frequently as an Energy from Waste plant. Well, even if we go along with that bit of spin and do not call it what it is, an incinerator, a more accurate and honest description of it would be an energy from energy plant. We are told that it generates energy by burning this waste and it will do, perhaps to a very little extent, but the second law of thermodynamics dictates that whatever energy in the form of waste you pump through that thing, you will get dramatically lower returns of usable energy out of it at the end of the process. Now, some people might suggest: “Well, that does not really matter to us here in Jersey” but I do not think that is responsible. I think to make cogent decisions we have to look at our position within the context of humanity and the situation that the whole-world faces right now. The fact is the world cannot continue burning through its available energy resources at the rate it is and, indeed, other material sources. We simply cannot do it and, in fact, there is an extremely good book on the subject, which I would strongly recommend to Members. There are many books on these topics but this one is particularly good and it is wisely called The Party’s Over, and it is. This is one of the unpleasant truths that politicians do not speak to their populations. The fantasy world we live in of ever-expanding economies, ever-expanding materialism - having perhaps 15 different types of giant flat screen televisions to choose from instead of 12 - it is over. I would like to address a few of the points before expanding on the reasons why we should not be going down the path of the incinerator, address a few of the points that were made by Senator Ferguson. I heard the Senator refer to Bjorn Lomborg, the statistician, as though his works were some kind of a definitive, scientifically robust, mathematically robust debunking of environmental considerations. Of course they are not and they have been roundly trashed by a variety of scientists, in effect, peer review journals. I also know from previous correspondence I have had with the Senator that she is quite a fan of this character called Martin Durkin, who is one of the founding figures behind the website known as Spike. He was the TV producer who produced the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle and a lot of the falsehoods, gross and wilful errors, that were roundly condemned, rightly so, by the regulatory authorities that appeared in that so-called documentary were repeated today, I am sure quite innocently, by Senator Ferguson. I said that the Senator repeated some of the arguments that were used in that film, such as, for example, the hockey stick graph and all of these kinds of other things that she cited. The Senator did say something that was correct. She said that climate change is a natural phenomenon and, yes, it certainly is a natural phenomenon and I am not aware of any scientist or environmental campaigner that I have ever heard who has said that climate change is not a natural phenomenon. Of course it is. The history of the planet shows that climate change varies for a variety of reasons, all kinds of factors, solar activity, the angle of the ecliptic, all kinds of things, volcanic activity, comet strikes cause dramatic and drastic changes in the planet’s climate. The Senator would have us believe, therefore, in what is a textbook post hoc ergo propter hoc argument that because natural effects impact on the planet’s climate, by extension, human activity does not. Of course, it is a complete non sequitur. Yes, climate change can occur naturally and, yes, human activity can and does contribute to and affect and add to that mix, that potentially chaotic mix of climate change. I also do not think the Senator really understands science. She said there was no such thing as a scientific consensus; there were only facts that were proven or not proven. Well, a great deal of modern science is, in fact, advanced by the publication of peer review journals of detailed science which get tested by further experiments, further developmental thought and then more papers are published, further studies are done by scientists around the world, more detailed experiments are undertaken and, thus, scientific knowledge advances. One of the ways in which the method of science assesses such difficult and amorphous questions as climate change or epidemiology, as was referred to by the Senator, is through meta-analysis, meta-analysis of a variety of the published authorities, the published papers on the subject. Let us set aside, then, because the Senator does not like the term “consensus”, and let us instead use the phrase “the result of that meta-analysis.” The meta-analysis in climate change looks at the production of climate change experiments, calculations, papers, studies across the world and the result of that meta-analysis is overwhelmingly powerfully in favour of there being a demonstrable human anthropogenetic impact on climate change. I would like to also set aside the supposed authority that the Senator referred to, and refer her and other Members to another writer, another scientist, a highly respected individual, winner of umpteen awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Science Writing, Jared Diamond. He wrote a book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Survive or Fail and I would strongly recommend it because it is one of the definitive and most easily accessible works on the subject. One cannot help but be gripped by the sheer degree of hubris that modern humanity has when reading that book and looking back over the plight of every complex organised human civilisation there has been since we had sufficient brains to get organised. Every complex society, large empire, whatever it may be, every large complex society humans have formed has collapsed. Are we imagining in our hubris that we are immune to this or perhaps we think: “Well, okay, our society will collapse too but we need not worry about it because it is going to happen such a long, long way down the path.” Well, I mentioned earlier that the incinerator is - to be pedantic about the spin if you want to be - an energy from energy plant because we are putting energy into it and energy which we will only recover to a very lesser and more minimal extent. Why does energy matter and, indeed, why do the materials that we are going to supposedly rely upon to feed the incinerator matter? They matter because, on the basis of meta-analysis by relevant scientific experts, the world has round about now hit global peak oil production. The precipitated rate of oil decline is likely to be dramatic with consequences for society that most people could not and probably do not want to imagine. I have here some figures, for example, a study on the non-O.P.E.C. (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) 12 oil-producing countries and it shows quite convincingly that the non-O.P.E.C. oil-producing countries peaked in their combined oil production in the year 2004 and have been on the downward path of decline ever since. There is another study also that comes to similar conclusions in respect of the O.P.E.C. producers, only their peak was hit later, maybe 2007, 2008. I will come on to why that matters a little later. The truth about the way we live today, and it is an unpleasant truth, is that the modern economy, ever-increasing levels of throughput, ever more use, production and disposal of material, is largely a frantic act of futility. We see this in the collapse of the world’s economy. As insolvent companies persist in covering-up their losses in order to avoid the counterparty hell of credit default swaps that would ring the world’s game-over bell, this can only go on so long. All the chatter about nationalising banks really boils down to what kind of bankruptcy workouts we will be put through, how destructive the process will be and how much of the pain can be shoved forward in time to people now in their nappies. The conventional process of economic growth based, as it was, on industrial expansion via revolving credit in a cheap energy resource era, is over. Consumerism is dead. Revolving credit is dead, at least of the scale that became normal for societies. Oil is at the core of that failure, the economic failures we are seeing now, the impacts they are having on society and I think the probable inevitability of the fact that we are descending into a depression which is likely to be worse than that of the 1930s but in order to understand just how important oil is …

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

Would the Senator give way for a moment? Point of clarification. What is the evidence on which the Senator bases his estimate of going into a depression?

Senator S. Syvret:

The evidence, I think you will find, is to be found on Wall Street in a place called the Stock Exchange. One need only look at the reality, although, of course, it is not reality. It is a fantasy-hallucinated notion but let us, for argument’s sake, call it the reality of the marketplace.

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

I am sorry, that is not evidence.

Senator S. Syvret:

I am very glad the Senator made that remark: It is not evidence. Reference to what it is the markets do is not evidence and I would agree with her because the Stock Exchanges are largely works of fantasy.

The Bailiff:

Senator, can you come back to the incinerator, please?

Senator S. Syvret:

This is to deal with the incinerator.

The Bailiff:

Can you come back more directly to the incinerator?

Senator S. Syvret:

We are dealing with spending a vast amount of money, which we do not have, on a piece of equipment which will be useless quite possibly within 5 years’ time. We must understand the complete and utter dependency of modern industrial societies on fossil fuel energy resources, as well as the inability of alternatives to fully substitute for the concentrated convenient energy source that fossil fuels provide. We have to understand the inevitability of fossil fuel depletion and the immediacy of a peak in oil production. In order to understand what it would take to replace abundantly cheap oil to enable business as usual, our throwaway consumerist society to continue, you would have to find an energy source that matched the characteristics of oil. It would have to be easily transported. Liquid fuels are more economically transported than solids such as coals or gases. Energy density: gasoline contains roughly 40 kilowatt hours per gallon. Oil is capable of being refined into several fuels, including gasoline, kerosene, diesel, suitable for a variety of applications and oil is also very, very suited for a variety of uses, including transportation, heating and the production of agricultural chemicals and other materials. Yet, the age of fossil fuels is about to end. There is no replacement for them at hand. Fossil fuels are a unique endowment of geological history that allows human beings to artificially and temporarily extend the carrying capacity and the habitat on the planet Earth. Before fossil fuels, namely coal, oil and natural gas, came into general use, the planet supported comparatively smaller numbers of people. Now, the population of the planet is vast, just as some Members of this Assembly would like to imagine the population of Jersey could likewise be made vast but, of course, it is only sustainable on the basis of a hallucinated economy built on a vanished energy source. Just to finish this point about oil, just so that people can understand the immediacy and the seriousness of the problem, I would just like to summarise the key points about peak oil. The total planetary endowment of conventional, non-renewable liquid oil was roughly 2 trillion barrels before humans started using it. Since the mid 19th century the world has burnt through roughly 1 trillion barrels of oil, half the total there ever was, representing the easiest to get highest quality liquid. The half that remains includes the hardest oil to get, lowest quality liquid semi-solids and solids. Worldwide discovery of oil sources peaked in 1964 and has followed a firm trend line downward ever since. The rate of oil use, on the other hand, has accelerated tremendously since 1950. The explosive rate of world population growth has run parallel to our rates of oil use. The world is now using 27 billion barrels of oil a year. If every last drop of the remaining 1 trillion barrels could be extracted at current cost ratios and current rates of production, which is extremely unlikely, the entire remaining endowment of oil would last only another 37 years. In reality, of course, a substantial fraction of the remaining half of the world’s total oil endowment will never be recovered. After peak, world oil demand will exceed world capacity to produce oil. After peak, depletion will proceed at 2 to 6 per cent a year while world population is apt to continue increasing, at least for a short while. More than 60 per cent of the remaining global oil endowment lies under the Middle East. The United States possesses 3 per cent of the world’s remaining oil reserves but uses 25 per cent of the world’s daily oil consumption. The United States passed its peak production in 1970 with the annual rate of production falling by half since then, from roughly 10 million barrels a day in 1970 to just above 5 million in 2003. At least as significantly, the ratio of energy expended in getting oil out of the ground to the energy produced by that oil in the U.S. oil industry has fallen from 28 to 1 in 1916 to 2 to 1 in 2004. The fact is the world’s modern industrialised economy is running on fumes and the hallucinated economy we have grown used to, the vast globalised mish-mash of vaporous Ponzie schemes and other fictitious devices that purport to demonstrate and show wealth, are gone. We face, all industrialised societies face, a very, very different future, one which to imagine requires an entire paradigm shift in our thinking. That paradigm shift, if we are to take it rather than waiting until it is imposed upon us by the physical realities of the planet, requires us to start thinking in other ways of organising, structuring and having our society and in leading our lives. If the Assembly votes to go ahead and spend this vast amount of money on this incinerator which because of global oil decline and the resulted economic collapse, even if we succeeded in building it to completion, which is doubtful, would within 5 or so years - perhaps 10 years at the outside - have virtually nothing to put through it to incinerate. Maybe, just maybe, the money we are putting into this obsolete concept of the giant industrial heavily engineered technofix ought to be put in a different direction, a direction in which it is going to be effective and used in a way which sadly this Assembly rarely displays, namely showing some long-term responsibility, some concern for the long-term well-being of this community as a whole. I urge Members to support the rescindment.

Lots of reasons exist for opposing the incinerator, including planning assumptions on future population and waste per person, assumptions about recycling rates, health concerns,operating concerns,lack of impact assessment on the RAMSAR site and so on. But what are the climate change and peak oil factors affecting the incinerator choice.

It will be said by some that incinerators are being built all over Europe, and that is true. However they are being built generally where the current waste disposal method is landfill. Landfill not only leaves a potential toxic cocktail of contaminated land, but also produces significant amounts of methane –a greenhouse gas tens of times more potent than C02. Incineration does look a good option against the possibility of landfill –but that is not the choice we face in Jersey. 

Energy from waste –sounds like a freebie, and that energy would displace other possibly more damaging energy production like burning coal. Our imported electicity energy is almost totally a hydro and nuclear mix. There are strong arguments against nuclear, but from a purely climate change and peak oil point of view EfW doesn’t compete. Lets not forget, and any gardener will confirm, you get heat and therefore potentially energy too from compost heaps. The energy back is not a freebie –its all embedded in the stuff that goes into the incinerator in the first place. That energy could be recovered in other ways than an incinerator. There is no free lunch there.

But there is also the possibility that the incinerator will end up with use burning fossil fuel to deal with waste. It all depends on the nature and content of the waste going into the incinerator. If is has a lot of energy (calorific value) then the burning can be sustained, a bit like putting new wood on an open fire. However if the input of low in calorific value, then you need to add heat – you have to burn fuel to get the temperature up to get the combustion to work properly. As it happens the waste that has the highest calorific value tends to be the stuff that is easily removed for composting or recycling, so the more we recycle and compost the more the incinerator would need to burn fuel to keep the combustion going.

 The alternatives, the approach that says we will compost more, recycle more, reduce consumption are generally more flexible. Having a multiple technology solution rather than a monolithic incinerator would remove many of these concerns, and be more flexible to deal with the different waste input volumes and compositions in the future.

A different feature of this issue is that of general food security. You may recall that when HGV drivers and other took their complaints of fuel duty to the roads the other year, supermarkets had difficulty getting supplies on the shelves. In fact the UK supply has about 3 days of food in the shops. This is discussed in a recent New Economics Foundation booklet. Its called Nine Meals from Anarchy. If you rely on shops for your food I strongly recommend you read it.

Me, I’m a long time vegetarian with sacks of dry beans, grains and my own saved seed ;-)

LINKS:
Reuters

nine meals from anarchy

In 2006, Directive 75/442/EEC on waste has been codified. Codification is a process by which legal texts that have been revised several times are codified into one new text that replaces all the previous versions. No legal or political changes are made to the text during the codification process. The new codified Waste Framework Directive (Directive 2006/12/EC) is now the only legally valid version of the Waste Framework Directive and will remain so until the substantive proposal for a revision is adopted. I believe that still stands

Article 2

1. The following shall be excluded from the scope of this Directive:

(a) gaseous effluents emitted into the atmosphere;

Not difficult for an incinerator emitting gases to conform to the directive if it is exempt.  However particles are not gases - the are small solids.

Article 4 is pretty good

Article 4

1. Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that waste is recovered or disposed of without endangering human health and without using processes or methods which could harm the environment, and in particular:

(a) without risk to water, air or soil, or to plants or animals;

(b) without causing a nuisance through noise or odours;

(c) without adversely affecting the countryside or places of special interest.


If there is a lawyer out there, or if you know a lawyer, perhaps we could be told this. What is  the Ministers personal libility, and the States corporate liability,  in the event of an action based on the above and the fact that the minister was informed and made aware that less damaging alternatives were available.

Read what the Parliamentary office of science and technology say in parliament post 149. It gives an insight in to the general issues, albeit from  8 years ago. naturally the status of gasification and pyrolisys has advanced since then.  You will note the sections on particles talks about pm10 rather than pm 2.5 or pm1. A critical difference.  I would draw your attention to  the bit about  the report from the department of health's committee on the medical effects of air pollution stating that even 'pm10 brings 8,100 deaths per year'.  http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn149.pdf


A draft report on long-term exposure to air pollution is here http://www.advisorybodies.doh.gov.uk/comeap/statementsreports/longtermeffectsmort2007.pdf
Page 4 seems to be heading in Dr Van Steenis direction ""The evidence also points to PM 2.5 as the most satisfactory index of particulate air pollution for quantitative assessments of the effects of policy interventions"

Dioxins information is here http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/  Since the Chief Medical Officer said yesterday she didn't know of any link between air pollution and breast cancer, I thought I would give her some pointers.
The link between dioxins and breast cancer is considered here http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2002/110p625-628warner/abstract.html  The presence of dioxins in incinerator flue gases is in the parliament report above, bottom right page 1.
Wasn't that hard to find was it.  Took me a good 15 minutes.

The other side is an e-mail I have been forwarded that originated in th public health department. (diagrams omitted)
Health in Jersey and waste incineration

" I am writing to you to strongly refute the recent comments made by anti-incinerator campaigner Dr Dick Van Steenis. 

 The new energy from waste plant will have a net positive effect on health in Jersey. This was the conclusion of the Health Impact Assessment commissioned from The International Health Impact Assessment Consortium (IMPACT) at Liverpool University. Their report was completed in June 2008. IMPACT is renowned as the leading research team for undertaking such work. Their assessment included a rigorous review of the research evidence in relation to energy from waste processes and health.

The current incinerator at Bellozanne fails to meet EU air quality emission standards and should be shut down as soon as possible. The new modern plant will be more efficient, producing much lower emissions that comply with current European safety standards. The new Island waste management strategy also includes an increase in recycling and a new covered process for composting which should reduce to a minimum the nuisance currently experienced by local residents due to the smell in the vicinity of the current composting site.

 Jersey is a world leader for tackling infant mortality (baby deaths from birth to one year of age). Only 4 babies die each year, a figure which is bettered internationally only by Sweden and France (figure 1). 

Jersey has a higher incidence (new cases per year) of cancer relative to the England average. This is mainly due to the high skin cancer rate which in turn is linked to the sunny climate in Jersey and highlights the need for islanders to take care in the sun to avoid sunburn (figure 2). Jersey also has relatively high rates of lung cancer and head and neck cancer. These cancers are usually caused by smoking and heavy drinking. Jersey has a historically high smoking prevalence (percentage of the population who smoke) and continues to have a very high consumption of alcohol compared with other countries. Prostate cancer is more commonly diagnosed in Jersey but the death rate is similar to England which is due to the fact that having prostate cancer may not shorten life for some men.

  My annual health report ‘Our Island, Our Health 2008’ includes more detailed figures and comment on the topics of waste disposal, infant mortality and cancer. 

Dr Turnbull, Mr Pritchard and I have made this statement at this time in response to comments made by the anti-incinerator campaigner Dr Dick Van Steensis who appears to speak as an individual without the backing of any credible organisation. I find Dr Van Steensis’s views implausible and unfounded."