Monday, March 18, 2024

Massive 1940 Hercules Explosion - an Act of Domestic Terrorism?



by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

On September 12, 1940, twenty-five tons of freshly manufactured gunpowder exploded at the Hercules Powder Plant in Kenvil, N.J., leaving a 13-foot crater in the ground. It generated a shock wave felt 90 miles away and leveled nearly one thousand acres of the plant. Fifty-two workers were killed in the blast, and several hundred more were injured. Victims were laid out on the lawn of Dover General Hospital because there were too many to fit inside.
 

The FBI, under Herbert Hoover, was in charge of the investigation. There were local rumors that the explosion was the work of German undercover agents. One contemporary news article reported that the FBI was already investigating these rumors when Hercules blew up. That account said that the FBI already collected information on everyone who worked at the plant before the blast. The article then mentioned that there was a large pro-Nazi, German-American Bund organization operating out of Camp Nordland in Andover, New Jersey. This was true, but was there a connection?



Early into the investigation after the explosion, the FBI informed the press that the explosion was most like the result of an industrial accident. Most newspapers didn’t mention that the FBI already had an open investigation into an alleged plot to blow the Hercules plant. Rumors of German American sabotage remained just that… rumors.

Exactly two months after the huge Hercules explosion, three smaller U.S. military-industrial plants were blown up within twenty minutes of each other. One was in New Jersey and two in Pennsylvania. These plants manufactured torpedoes, signal flares, and ammunition. Sixteen more workers were killed in these apparent attacks.

This did not appear to be a coincidence. The whiff of sabotage now seemed unmistakable. Today, we know that America was under attack, but who was responsible for killing 68 workers at four of our military manufacturing plants? Where are the FBI’s findings? Why was no one brought to justice for these murders?

A fog settled over these questions leaving a memory gap for everyone who lived through it. To this day, if you ask area residents what caused the Hercules explosion, they echo the same response as those who lived through it eighty years ago… It was either an industrial accident or German sabotage. Even as recently as 2015, Roxbury Township, New Jersey, posted a tribute to those who died in the Hercules blast and gave a description of the event. It concludes:
“Still unanswered is the real cause of the fatal 1940 explosion: Industrial Accident or Nazi Spies?”
But, a fresh review of the evidence points to domestic terror as the most likely cause. This makes the Hercules explosion the seventh deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history. If you search the internet for U.S. domestic terrorist attacks, however, you won’t find Hercules on that list. The fascist extremists who carried out this attack were never publicly identified or brought to justice.


Rachael Maddow reported new details and took a fresh look at the Hercules explosion in Episode 3 of her podcast, Ultra. Her review points convincingly to a terrorist attack by American fascist extremists. The chain of evidence pointing to a domestic attack at Hercules begins in Los Angeles, California, and runs through the United States Congress. Among the principal suspect organizations that planned the attack is the German American Bund in California. 

The German American Bund was originally founded in Buffalo, New York. It was led by Fritz Julius Kuhn. Another suspect organization was the Silver Legion founded by William D. Pelley in Ashland, North Carolina. Both these groups openly aspired to take over the United States government before the United States entered World War II. Both organizations had active branches in California and New Jersey. 

Los Angeles was a hotbed of antisemitic propaganda and pro-Nazi paramilitary groups in the 1930s. These right-wing groups shared a cluster of ideas, values, and actions with the Klu Klux Klan, enough so that political resistance to investigating the Klan helped shield pro-Nazi groups as well. Like the Klan, pro-Nazi groups considered themselves to be true American Patriots as they actively recruited conscripts, raised funds, purchased weapons, trained militia members, and organized military-style marches and demonstrations in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and many other towns and cities across the country. They held large rallies to indoctrinate the public. They coordinated with pro-Nazi organizations in other states to create a large national network determined to overthrow American democracy. 

While they denied it at the time, it was later shown that these right-wing pro-Nazi groups secretly took instructions and money from Hitler’s Germany. By the late 1930s, their violent rhetoric and extreme anti-semitic propaganda became so strident that it alarmed many ordinary citizens.

Leon Lewis was a World War 1 veteran active in the Disabled American Veterans organization. He was a resident of Los Angeles. In 1938 he became alarmed by the violent rhetoric and threats being made by the German American Bund and other pro-Nazi groups in the area. Seeing that law enforcement agencies were reluctant to investigate these groups, he set up his own private spy operation. He recruited four men from Disabled American Veterans and two of their wives to join fascist hate groups, gain the leader's trust, rise up the ranks, and report back to him every day about what these groups were doing. Lewis kept careful logs of what they saw and heard and accumulated detailed records of their plans and operations. It was through Lewis' spy operation that one of his private spies, Neil Ness, learned of plans to target Hercules Powder Company in Kenvil and several other munitions manufacturing plants for an attack.


A year earlier, Martin Dies, was a Democratic Congressman from Texas when he and Samuel Dickstein created the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities, (HUAC). The Committee was initially called the Dies’ Committee, and Dies was its chairman. The committee was created to root out right-wing and left-wing subversives in the government and other organizations. The committee mainly targeted communist infiltrators and left-wing sympathizers, but also right-wing pro-Nazi organizations. Some members of the Committee were reluctant to investigate the "Klan". When the committee’s Chief Counsel announced that the Dies Committee would not be investigating any KKK activities he said, "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe", to which the ranking Committee member John E. Rankin added: 

"After all, the KKK is an old American institution."
Lewis wrote to Congressman Dies about the trove of information he had collected on the activities of right-wing groups. In 1939, Martin Dies invited Leon Lewis to come to Washington D.C., to testify before his Committee. Lewis accepted the invitation and brought with him Neil Ness who had direct eyewitness information about the plot to sabotage the Hercules and other manufacturing plants.



In October of 1939, Neal Ness testified under oath before the HUAC in Congress. He detailed his involvement and high position in several German American and right-wing pro-Nazi groups in Los Angeles. He provided shocking testimony on how these groups were making plans to blow up military defense plants. He said specifically, “We talked about blowing up the Hercules Powder Plant.” These coordinated attacks were referred to as Der Tag. The phrase "Der Tag" (The Day) was a popular German toast to an imminent military engagement.

Ness’ testimony was so shocking the Committee found it hard to believe. Nevertheless, the Committee made a criminal referral to investigate the reported plot and sent the transcripts to the FBI.  Eleven months later Hercules blew up. 

After the explosion, Congressman Martin Dies, the Chairman of the HUAC, gave a statement to the press in which he said:
"Everyone laughed when a man named Ness testified before our committee a year ago about plans to blow up the Hercules Company. When the plant blew up, it happened the way he said it would.”
While the FBI managed to interrupt many death threats against Jews, Jewish organizations, and other targets of right-wing fascist extremists during this period, its eleven-month lead in the Hercules plot was not enough time to stop it. Nor did an additional two months of investigation foil the three additional attacks. Eighty-four years later there is still no vindication for the victims. We end up today with the same questions people asked from the start. Who was responsible for killing 68 workers at four of our military manufacturing plants? Where are the FBI’s findings? Why was no one brought to justice for these murders?

We have a few additional questions to ask ourselves today. Where did all the fascist extremists go after Pearl Harbor? They seem to have disappeared into the woodwork. What became of the children they were grooming in German American Bund camps to be their movement's future leaders? Is there a link between these fascist youth camps from the past and the dangerous parallels that exist today with this dark history?  Most critically, what lessons from the past can we apply to help understand and navigate the resurgence of fascist extremism today? 








Monday, February 26, 2024

Can Electric Cars Save the Planet?

 

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW*



A discussion with an engineer friend of mine regarding electric vehicles and electric energy production in the United States prompted me to do a brief survey of thermal efficiency rates for various carbon-producing and carbon-free electric power generation options. The results are below.

For me, the whole discussion is animated by the nearly unanimous conclusion of hundreds of climate scientists that we have only six years left to make carbon dioxide reductions sufficient enough to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. We lost a half-century of time to a well-funded disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industries, whose corporate leaders were the first to discover that their products would eventually lead to a global warming crisis.
Can a rapid transition to electric vehicles save us from global warming?

No! This was never the case. At any rate, it is already too late for half-measures. There are many other major sources of carbon dioxide emissions that need to be brought under control. There are other factors that expedite the problem as well, such as the loss of jungles and forests that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Added to other much-needed actions, however, transitioning to electric vehicles is STILL a necessary step.

RENEWABLE ELECTRIC ENERGY
I confirmed that currently, about 60% of our electricity generation is from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 18% was from nuclear energy, and about 21% was from renewable energy sources. Our renewable energy sources increase by about 1.5 percentage points per year at this time. So, the current energy mix on our electric grid is about 60% carbon-based and 40% alternative sources. In six years, at the present growth rate of renewable energy sources, it will be about 49% carbon-based and 51% alternative sources. This is still bad news for Earth's climate. It's way too slow to be a determinative factor at this point. 


EV vs. ICE
"Electric vehicles (EVs) are generally 60–73% efficient, depending on the drive cycle. However, when you include the energy recaptured from regenerative braking, EVs can be over 77% efficient. This is because regenerative braking captures energy that would otherwise be lost as heat."

"Modern gasoline engines (ICE) have a maximum thermal efficiency of more than 50%, but most road-legal cars are only about 20% to 40% [efficient] when used to power a car."

CARBON FOOTPRINT OF EV AND ICE VEHICLES:
"The researchers found that, on average, gasoline cars emit more than 350 grams of CO2 per mile driven over their lifetimes. The hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions scored around 260 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, while the fully battery-electric vehicle created just 200 grams. Stats from the U.S. Department of Energy tell a similar story: Using the nationwide average of different energy sources, DOE found that EVs create 3,932 lbs. of CO2 equivalent per year, compared to 5,772 lbs. for plug-in hybrids, 6,258 lbs. for typical hybrids, and 11,435 lbs. for gasoline vehicles."

Thermal Efficiency in Electric Power Generation



ZERO CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS OPTIONS


Wind

What is the ultimate efficiency of wind power generation?

That number is 16/27, or 59.3%. On a practical level with utility-scale wind turbines, the best turbines achieve roughly 75–85% of this 59.3% value, meaning roughly 44–50% efficiency. This is under the most optimal operating conditions.

Solar Thermal

Solar thermal energy is around 70–80% effective at converting solar energy into heat. Solar water heaters are the most common method for converting solar energy into thermal energy. Solar thermal collectors convert solar radiation into heat, which can be used in industrial, residential, and governmental sectors.

Solar Photoelectric

Though most commercial panels have efficiencies from 17% to 20%, researchers have developed PV cells with efficiencies approaching 50%.

Nuclear

New nuclear plants have a thermal efficiency of around 34–36%, while new reactor designs can reach 39%.

Hydro

The efficiency of today's hydroelectric plant is about 90 percent. Hydroelectric plants do not create air pollution, the fuel--falling water--is not consumed, projects have long lives relative to other forms of energy generation, and hydroelectric generators respond quickly to changing system conditions.



CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSION OPTIONS

Coal

New coal-fired plants are about 40% efficient, while CCGT plants can reach 60%.

Natural gas

Natural gas plants can be 39–60% efficient, depending on the type of plant. A simple cycle natural gas power plant is usually 33–43% efficient.

Gas turbine

A simple cycle gas turbine can achieve 20–35% energy conversion efficiency.

Fossil fuel


State-of-the-art fossil fuel plants can reach 46% efficiency.

Combined-cycle systems

Combined-cycle systems can reach higher values, such as over 60% efficiency.

______________________________________


* The main reason I put my degree (MSW) after my name on this blog is because there are so many people named Brian T. Lynch on the internet. 

Friday, January 19, 2024

Duck Pond and a Better Way to Think About Land

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Let me introduce you to a 12,000-year-old feature of Roxbury, New Jersey, that has been off limits to the general public for more than 150 years.

This photo, courtesy of Ashland Chemical Corporation, is likely your first peek at the beautiful Duck Pond. It was mine as well. It is a 15-acre, spring-fed pond in the northeastern corner of the 1,000-acre Hercules property in Kenvil. 

Duck Pond appears on the earliest maps of the area. It has no natural inlet or outlet and apparently never did. Spring water vents up into the pond and then infiltrates back into the shallow, unconfined aquifer upon which it sits. This has likely been true since it was created when the Wisconsin Glacier receded thousands of years ago. 

Old historical documents I've read tell us that this whole tract of land was once the summer home of the Leni Lenape natives who undoubtedly fished and swam in this pond. It was these original people who referred to the southern wetland on the property as the Great Spring. They called the Black River, which flows from this wetland, “Alamatong.” The word means “gentle flowing.” It is a reference to the rapid, yet smooth flow of its water over a bed of glacier sand. 

The reason most of us have never seen Duck Pond is that it is situated within a polluted industrial tract of land that has been off-limits to residents and the public for well over one hundred and fifty years. The making of explosives stopped three decades ago, but there are still hot spots of pollution on the land. It isn’t a safe place to freely roam around. 

What motivates me to write this now is a PowerPoint slide presented by Hartz Mountain Corporation during this Wednesday’s Roxbury Planning Board hearing. For those who may not know, Hartz Mountain is seeking to build 54 acres of warehouses on a 200-acre parcel on the property. One of the PowerPoint slides labeled Duck Pond as a drainage area. 

I was struck by this sterile language. I've seen similar language in other Hercules-related documents. Indeed, Duck Pond is a drainage area, as is every freshwater lake in the world. However, the use of the term within the context of clean-up operations conveys how the pond was utilized while explosives were manufactured on the property. It is perhaps how the pond is still viewed by its present owners, their environmental contractors, and the prospective buyers giving the presentation. Duck Pond is yet another place to be dealt with;  A place that has been horribly abused for a century and a half. 

Just as groups of people can be marginalized and robbed of their personhood through word choices, so can it also happen to portions of the biosphere that we call “property.” Property is a lifeless term that allows our consciences to treat a piece of land as something other than habitat. 

My point is that viewing Hercules as a compromised, yet beautifully complex habitat should be the starting place for all considerations that follow. Whether taking active measures to clean up our mess or allowing nature time to renew the land on its own, the language we choose to describe it will influence our decisions and the outcomes that follow. We should always be respectful, even reverent, of biological spaces and how we use land. We should not treat the Hercules property with any less consideration because of its troubled past.

————
An 1887 map of “Suckasunny” showing Duck Pond in the McCainsville District of Roxbury. 

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

A Word About Self-help Against Disinformation Campaigns

 by Brian T. Lynch, MSW


We have all become targets of professional-grade media influence campaigns of one sort or another, and highly effective disinformation attacks are among these. When we are unaware of, or think we are immune to these cyber campaigns, we are, in fact, most vulnerable to them.

Real, personal inoculation against malicious cyber-influencers begins once we accept that we are all capable of falling under the influence of professional disinformation campaigns. Self-inoculation from cyber disinformation begins when we acknowledge that we are all at risk of manipulation by powerful techniques arrayed against us on social media. The most effective attacks are invisible to us. Our change of opinion feels rational to us. It also helps me to know that a lot of money and planning is behind these malicious "cyber attacks" on our thinking [more accurately, on our endurable mental frameworks that influence how we think about things]. It isn't just me, and it isn't happening by chance or as a natural impact of social media.

To protect myself, I have developed a healthy skepticism of any claims that sound extraordinary, emotionally wrought, or discordant with the things I can observe for myself. When this happens, I take the time to investigate (or research) and validate the information, its source, and its proponents. It is time-consuming, but I find it worth my time (usually). It is how I protect myself. In the process, I have come to view people who express grossly invalidated opinions as casualties of cyberwarfare rather than my opponents, political enemies, conspiracy nuts, uninformed, etc., [pick your choice of judgemental terms.]


Here is an early history lesson

Russian use began with a "special disinformation office" in 1923. Disinformation was defined in Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1952) as "false information with the intention to deceive public opinion". From this point on, disinformation became a tactic used in Soviet political warfare called active measures. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_disinformation#:~:text=Russian%20use%20began%20with%20a,political%20warfare%20called%20active%20measures. 

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

2023, The Warmest in 100,000 Years

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW


IT IS OFFICIAL!

New York City in June 6, 2023


Last year, 2023, the year when the Canadian wilderness caught fire, was the hottest year on record... by far. In fact, scientists believe it was the hottest year in the last 100,000 years. Global warming is no longer just our future; It is our past and present reality. Quotes from the New York Times:
"On average, in 2023 the planet was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"This has been a very exceptional year, climate-wise... in a league of its own, even when compared to other very warm years," C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said.
C3S confirmed 2023 as the hottest year in global temperature records going back to 1850. When checked against paleoclimatic data records from sources such as tree rings and air bubbles in glaciers, Buontempo said it was "very likely" the warmest year in the last 100,000 years."
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/2023-was-worlds-hottest-year-record-eu-scientists-confirm-2024-01-09/
The fossil fuel industry did an impressive job forecasting this outcome back in the early 1960s. They did an even more remarkable job of concealing it from the public for years and then creating a false counter-narrative to convince us that global warming is a hoax.
We have to stop listening to them and to all the victims and benefactors of their lies. The electric vehicles we buy this year are purchases delayed over 40 years when it would have made a big difference. Everything we do from here out to lower our carbon footprint impacts only the margins. Let's hope we can still prevent the worst possible outcomes.

ADDENDUM: JANUARY 2024 WAS THE WARMEST JANUARY ON RECORD.

Monday, January 8, 2024

Black River Origin in Mount Arlington Also? Who Knew?

 by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Am I the only one just learning that Mount Arlington hosts the Northernmost tip of the Black River? 

If this isn't already common knowledge, then let's welcome Mount Arlington to the list of many municipalities that share a portion of the Raritan River Basin, the largest river basin entirely within New Jersey's border. The upper Black River tributary in Mount Arlington stretches for about 1.6 miles north, up past Dunlop Pond. There may be another branch heading west along Seasons Drive. 

I don't yet know to what extent the tributary may be spring-fed, but where it crosses under Rt. 80, it is a moderate-sized creek (meaning you can jump over it) under normal weather conditions. It is only one of two natural water sources that enter Hercules. The other tributary is the man-made pipeline that directs water from Drakes Pond under Rt. 46 and into the Great Spring wetland area. All other inputs are from storm drains along Howard Blvd. and Rt. 46. 

If you live in the area and didn't know this, it could be due to a discontinuity observed in the aerial photograms that NJDEP uses to map the states' streams. An old underground pipeline on the 1,000-acre Hercules property in Kenvil creates the apparent discontinuity. 

The normal amount of water volume in this tributary is about a third less than the Drakes Pond inflow. This information is important to me in my quest to estimate how much spring water vents up from the Great Spring within the southern wetland. 






Thursday, January 4, 2024

NEWS FLASH: U.S. Lost 88,000 Acres of Natural Forests Last Week

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

NEWS FLASH: 
The United States lost over 88,000 acres of natural forests last week. The world's tropical rainforests lost 200,000 acres just yesterday.

[NEWS UPDATE: Rate of deforestation in 2023 halved in Amazon rainforest: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67962297 ]


An aerial photo released by Greenpeace shows smoke billowing from forest fires in the Amazon basin in northwestern Brazil.
 
(Victor Moriyama / AFP-Getty Images)

If you missed seeing the headlines, it's because this wasn't reported. This isn't news. The U.S. loses 88,000 acres of forest every week, and tropical forests are disappearing at a rate of 200,000 acres daily.
At current rates, no forests will be left in America in 135 years. Half of the world's tropical forests are already gone and will be gone entirely within 100 years at the current rate. Amazon rainforest alone produces 20% of our global oxygen and removes huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Agriculture is said to be the leading cause of deforestation, but the real underlying cause is our exponential population growth. 

We reached 8 billion people living here at once. The planet cannot sustain the current rate at which we consume natural resources. What is the biggest driver of overpopulation? Impoverishment and scarcity of food and healthcare. There is a correlation between family size and survival uncertainties. The more people fear for their children's survival, the more children they have to ensure survival. Global wealth disparity is a major contributing factor.

Hunger and poverty in the world are not just caused by a lack of food or production but by the unequal and unfair distribution of human essentials. In the U.S. alone, 38% of all food goes unsold or uneaten. That means 149 billion meals end up in landfills each year. The scale of the problem is similar in Europe and many parts of the world.
 
So, the best place to start addressing all of these issues is by reducing wealth inequality on a global scale. Distributive injustice is the root cause of global impoverishment. There is enough food and other goods produced for everyone to have a basic sufficiency. Global impoverishment causes survival uncertainties that result in overpopulation in third-world countries. Overpopulation puts stress on natural resources and the need for more farmland. Families living in the Amazon rainforest slash and burn acres of land each year to feed and care for their families. The loss of natural forests accelerates global warming and the loss of species due to the destruction of their habitat. This is a death spiral that we can and must fix. 


 

Thursday, December 21, 2023

How is Electing a Person Disloyal to the Constitution Somehow Unconstitutional?

by Brian T Lynch, MSW


I can’t believe how many otherwise intelligent, non-MAGA people in the media are flummoxed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision preventing seditionists from holding public office. The hang-up seems to be that finding Trump ineligible to be President again somehow violates people’s rights to vote for whoever they want. But, such a right never existed in our Constitution. 


There have always been qualifications for public office. Age, citizenship, and term limits have never caused political consternation before. Why, then, is electing a person with no loyalty to the Constitution somehow unconstitutional? If you are elected within the framework of the Constitution, you cannot be permitted to dismantle it from within. That is akin to changing the Constitution by a simple majority vote. The Constitution requires that any changes to it require passage by a super majority in Congress and the consent of a super majority of States. 

Think about it! If Donald Trump is elected, he would first have to swear an oath to uphold the very Constitution that he has already violently violated and is promising to destroy on day one. His oath would be his biggest lie ever.  How can we logically permit it? 

Our Constitution is the highest expression of the people’s will. It is the bones of our democracy and the sinew that holds our union of states together. We have already fought one war of rebellion by a minority of disloyalists. It was a severe test in which 600,000 Americans died to preserve our constitutional union.
 
After the war, the Constitution was amended to clarify that it applied to all men. An oath of allegiance to the Constitution was added for every public office holder. No one who has already broken that oath can hold public office. 

Our democratic republic and Constitution are one. Any impulse to ignore or dismiss sections of it violates the "Will of the People." It weakens our union and threatens majority rule.
 
The Civil War firmly established that we don’t have a right to oppose our democracy. To this day, it is sustained by the vast majority of the people it serves. Disloyalists or seditionists are not allowed to vote it out of existence.
 
So, let’s ignore all this talk about disenfranchising Trump’s supporters. It isn’t true. The overarching will of the people has already spoken. Seditionists who lie about preserving our Constitution are not allowed to serve in public office.

Friday, December 15, 2023

 by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

IT’S DONE!


It has been done since September 2023.

Ashland Chemical, the private company that bought the highly polluted Hercules property more than two decades ago, finally created its first public information website about its clean-up operations in Kenvil. The public website, they said, was to be the centerpiece of Ashland’s first-ever public meeting to discuss their operations and take questions from the general public.

Despite a successful petition drive in late Sumer by the Raritan Headwaters Association, which legally obligated NJDEP to arrange that public hearing, Ashland Chemical has yet to set a date for that meeting. They did promise to create a public-information website, but they launched their new website into obscurity within the vast internet universe. You can find it if you search for it, or I can just give you the link here: [ www.hercules-kenvil.com]

Please! Take some time to explore the new website. Admire the photographs. Read the history. Wonder (as I did) if the subtitle "Committed to progress since 1871" contains a typo on the date. 

Just be sure to visit the library section. That's where the real treasure is. It contains many documents, some over a thousand pages long. These are the documents that Ashland has chosen to make public from the tens of thousands it submitted to NJDEP regarding clean-up efforts. Even though the volume of these documents may overwhelm you, they are a fraction of the total. I can't in good conscience hold on to this information any longer. I have waited for Ashland's to launch this officially for the past three months. The year is drawing to a close, and the company has had plenty of time to hold its public meeting. 

You will notice that the website contains no Q&A feature to carry on a dialogue with the public. It doesn't even have a Frequently Asked Questions section curated by the company. What it does have is a "Contact Us" feature with a privacy disclosure statement that guarantees no one else will ever see your question or any response you might receive. Public communication is now open, but only in one direction.

CALL TO ACTION:

If all your questions are answered after browsing the "Kenvil Works Facility" website, then maybe Ashland and the NJDEP have met their public obligation. If you still have questions, please use the Contact Us feature to ask them your questions and demand a public hearing to discuss the answers. Let them know that, for you, the website doesn't replace a public meeting. Take a screenshot of your writing and save it, or post it online. Once you hit send, you may never see what you wrote again. 

If you are reading this on my blog, please add your comments on the blog page or go to my Facebook group, Mine Hill Environmental, where you can leave your comment or participate in the chat box I will open there. 

Monday, December 4, 2023

Carbon-based Extinction, Petro-industry Radicals Sabotaged the Global Climate Summit

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW


The global climate summit this year ended with a whimper. This year's president of the COP28 summit was Sultan Al-Jaber, who is the UAE's environment minister, and the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. At the conference, he said that in coming to the climate conference, he was "... not signing up to any discussion that is alarmist."

The former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, asked him if he would lead on phasing out fossil fuels. His response:
"...there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuels is what's going to achieve 1.5 [degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels]"
Al Jaber's statement is either an intentional distortion or an admission of great ignorance. Anyone with responsibility for policy decisions about climate change knows that too little CO2 in the atmosphere would cause the planet to freeze, and too much would cause the oceans to boil. Carbon dioxide is not the most potent greenhouse gas, but at 0.04% of the air we breathe, it is by far the most common. Methane, for comparison, makes up 0.00017% of the atmosphere. Very small changes in CO2 concentrations have big climate consequences. 

While Carbon dioxide is a small component of Earth's atmosphere, small changes in its atmospheric concentrations have played a leading role in the past five mass extinction events. 

Ordovician Mass Extinction
Carbon dioxide played a central part in the first extinction event on Earth, 630 million years ago. Neoprotozoa in the ocean evolved an ability to use energy from sunlight to bind carbon atoms together to make sugar (food). The first plants! Photosynthesis made them hugely successful. Their growth was unchecked. They captured vast amounts of CO2 from the air, filled the atmosphere with oxygen, and formed a thick layer of biomass over the surface water. The biomass blocked sunlight from directly warming the ocean waters and the drop in CO2 caused global temperatures to freeze. This caused most of the oceans to freeze and deprived it of oxygen. Eighty percent of all life in the ocean became extinct.

Devonian Mass Extinction
Carbon dioxide played a significant role in Earth's second extinction event (or geologically quick series of events) 440 to 460 million years ago when the Earth's climate became unstable and switched quickly between cooling and warming events. Eighty-six percent of all life on earth died off.

Permian Mass Extinction 
Carbon dioxide played a significant role in Earth's third and largest extinction when a very prolonged and massive area of volcanic eruptions in an area half the size of the United States (in Pangea) caused acid rain and pumped huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, heating up the earth and killing 96% of all life on earth.

Triassic-Jurassic Mass Extinction
Carbon dioxide played a major role in Earth's fourth extinction after another atmospheric carbon dioxide spike. Global warming started again, with scientists speculating it lasted eight million years and killed 76% of all living things on Earth.

Cretaceous-Tertiary (or the K-T) Mass Extinction
The fifth major extinction event may have been triggered when a giant asteroid smashed into the earth 65 million years ago. The initial impact caused a blanket of dust and smoke that blocked out all sunlight, killing plant life and starving the most herbivores. But CO2 levels also rose from the global conflagration of the earth's forests following the asteroid's impact.  A very hot climate followed the "asteroid winter" and lasted for thousands of years. Eventually, an atmospheric balance of CO2 returned and ushered in the longest period of temperate climate in Earth's history. It is during this period of climate stability that humans first evolved. 
   
Holocene Mass Extinction (today)
Sultan Al Jaber and most of us may not know or don't believe that the sixth great extinction is unfolding right now. It is called the Holocene extinction. It is an ongoing extinction of the Earth's flora and fauna due to human activities. This is the sixth mass extinction since the existence of Earth in 450 billion years, and an increase of carbon dioxide in the air is again playing a major role. The sixth mass extinction is driven entirely by human activity that includes many factors such as: 
  • Increased atmospheric Carbon dioxide due mostly to the burning of ancient fossil fuels 
  • Deforestation and the rapid loss of habitat 
  • The global spread of toxic (forever) chemicals
  • The depletion or degradation of water resources and aquifers 
Every mass extinction event in the past had natural causes over which we would not have any control if it happened again today. But the Holocene Extinction is of our own making. Therefore, we do have the ability to blunt its impact or even reverse course if we change our behaviors. Many people I talk to can't imagine that people's behavior can have a global impact on such a huge planet. But then all of us living today find it impossible to imagine eight billion people sharing the earth's resources at the same time. There have never been nearly so many people alive at one time. The collective actions or inaction of eight billion people can and does have a global impact for the first time in history. 

The COP28 Climate Summit was a real opportunity for the world to come up with global solutions. Instead, it was captured by the petroleum extremists for whom maintaining profits for the rich is the first priority.  

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