The Individual and Combined Impacts of a Real Pollutant versus an Imagined One: How Elevated Ozone and Elevated CO2 Affect Chickpea Growth and Yield
Tropospheric ozone (O3) is a gaseous air pollutant that results from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. It negatively affects plant growth, gaining entry through stomatal openings where it dismutates and generates reactive oxygen species that damage cell components and disturb metabolic processes.
In the United States alone, crop losses due to ozone pollution presently are estimated at $1-3 billion annually. But for much of the developing world, which lacks the pollution-control technologies employed by developed countries, the percent of ozone-related crop damage is much greater due to higher regional ambient or background levels of ozone pollution. And to make matters worse, ozone-related crop damage is expected to increase worldwide in the future, with ozone concentrations rising at a rate of 0.5 to 2 percent annually over the next century (IPCC, 2007).…
Continue Reading” … it is time for an energy awakening – for the natural gas and oil supply chain and the government at all levels to open a new era of working together to ensure that essential energy resources are unlocked; to encourage investment opportunities and accelerate infrastructure development; and to strengthen global energy security, affordability and reliability.” (API, below)
The American Petroleum Institute (API) has represented the larger integrated oil companies since its founding just over a century ago. Much of its early mission was to standardize machinery specifications as well as accounting practices to modernize and streamline the industry. But API’s other major function has been politics, which became so great that the trade group moved from New York City to Washington, D.C. in 1969.
Often, the self-interest of the majors was the free market, particularly in the troubled 1970s.…
Continue Reading“With 11 million Americans dedicated to ‘keeping the lights on and fuels flowing,’ President Biden should visit the oil patch and tip his hat–and even throw it in the air with a mighty hurrah in defiance to his handlers who have messed up Energy 101.”
You invited them to the White House, and they came. Now it’s your turn, Mr. President. You are formally invited by letter from 28 leading oil and gas trade associations to visit a refinery, an interstate oil pipeline, and an offshore rig.
Amid the Biden Administration’s clown show, it is fun to see the hydrocarbon sector get a little sassy and ask the President to visit the home team before he jets away to visit the opposition.
“Before you board Air Force One for the Middle East, we hope you will consider taking another look at made-in-America energy,” the American Petroleum Institute et al.,…
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