Karimov’s human rights record is abysmal. He has been known to boil political dissenters alive. He has repressed religious rights, ostensibly as part of the war on terror. When it comes to human rights in Uzbekistan, there aren’t any. Karimov has detained human rights workers and ordered his troops to fire into crowds of demonstrators. Political opponents end up in prison and are tortured or killed.

The violent restriction of human rights grows from the paranoia so commonly seen among totalitarian dictators. Karimov even banned the playing of billiards because he was afraid that people would talk about politics while playing. While that may sound humourous, it goes a long way towards demonstrating the depth of Karimov’s paranoia.

Despite all of the well-documented problems in Uzbekistan over a decade of Karimov’s rule, the United States and allies such as Britain welcomed Karimov into the war against terror. In exchange for military aid, the US received the use of the Karshi-Khanabad air base and facilities for 800 US troops. The Bush administration ignored criticism of having such a brutal regime as an ally until last year.

Even with the criticism of their relationship with Karimov, a relationship that echoed the Reagan administration’s relationship with Saddam Hussein, The US maintained a relationship with Uzbekistan while choosing to ignore Karimov’s abuses in exchange for his cooperation. While the need for an ally in the war on terror is often cited, Uzbekistan is strategically located between Russia and China and has sizable natural gas reserves, estimated in 2005 to be 1.875 trillion cubic meters, and a small amount of oil. Considering the strategic importance of energy in the area, relations with Uzbekistan could have more to do with natural gas reserves than the war on terror.

The relationship between Uzbekistan and the US, as well the European Union did finally begin to sour in 2005, however. A small armed uprising in the province of Andizhan was followed by a large, peaceful demonstration. Reports vary, and there may or may not have been a few armed militants among the protestors, but the Uzbek military responded to the demonstration by firing into the crowd. The true extent of the casualties is not known, but human rights experts have responded to the incident as being on a par with the Tiananmen Square massacre. The government crackdown on political opponents and human rights advocates since the massacre is brutal and repressive, with torture, disappearances, and politically-motivated murder becoming commonplace.

After the incident in Andizhan, pressure began to grow in the EU for sanctions to be put in place against Uzbekistan and the accounts of officials in the Karimov regime frozen, although no comprehensive action was taken. There was little reaction in the United States, with aid ( $91.6 million in 2005) continuing to flow, but some harsh words about human rights from the Bush administration caused Karimov to kick the US military out of the Karshi-Khanabad air base. Since that time, both Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Congressman Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey) have introduced bills calling for an end to all aid to Uzbekistan and the freezing of foreign accounts and travel restrictions for Uzbek officials.

Karimov is now currying favour with Russia and China, who have far less interest in human rights abuses than western countries claim to have, and are even more likely to ignore, or partake in, gross abuses to gain access to energy reserves or strategic military advantage.

The spectre of further human rights abuses and the poverty that is so pervasive under totalitarian regimes points to an unhappy future for the people of Uzbekistan, but making things worse is trying to eke out a living in a country that has suffered serious environmental damage.

During the Soviet era the excessive use herbicides, pesticides, defoliants, and other chemicals combined with the diversion of water for irrigation from two major rivers devastated the environment. The diversion of the Amu Darya and Syrdariya Rivers has caused the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest inland body of fresh water, to shrink in size. The Aral Sea is now less than half the size it was in the 1960s, holding only about one third of the water it once did.

Widespread irrigation has contaminated what water still exists with agricultural chemicals. Naturally occurring soil salt, has become concentrated from excessive irrigation. The dried lake bed where large portions of the Aral Sea used to be now produces dust storms full of agricultural and industrial chemicals which, combined with the salt, blow for up to 800 miles. The contaminated dust in these storms kills plant life, causing desrtification.

The environmental devastation continues. Although Uzbekistan is a signatory to several environmental treaties, including clean air and water agreements and the Kyoto protocol, less than half of the smokestacks in the country have filtration devices. The most common method of chemical disposal remains dumping it into a rudimentary sewer system if one exists in the area.. Only about 50% of urban areas and 25% of rural villages have sewers in Afghanistan, so chemicals are often just dumped in the nearest ditch or river.

The result is that most of the underground water supplies are contaminated and the rivers and ditches are basically open sewers. Water-borne illness is common and chemical-related disease is not unusual. Respiratory illness is common in both rural and urban areas.

All indications are that the environmental situation will continue to worsen under the reign of Islam Karimov. Those who speak out against it risk imprisonment, torture, and death. Complaints from international agencies have little impact on the Karimov regime and local activists are silenced, so the environmental issues worsen with the human rights abuses.

There is no end in sight to the suffering of the people of Uzbekistan. The west failed to help them for strategic and economic reasons. Russia and China have shown even less of a compunction to use their influence to better human rights or environmental conditions. Unless some way is found to intervene, Uzbekistan will continue to be one of the worst places on earth in the foreseeable future.

Lately the U.S. Federal Government has been making a lot of noise about green fuel. It started with President Bush’s comment about “switch grass” in his State of the Union Address. He got a few chuckles out of that. While we’ve all heard of using corn to make ethanol, and the importance of trading our SUVs for hybrids, I don’t know anybody who is talking about using switch grass.

Since January, the photo-ops broadcast on television networks have been touting Bush’s concern for the environment. Since this is the administration that turned the Clean Air Act into the Clear Skies Initiative, while lowering the standards of environmental safety that energy companies are required to uphold, we should probably ask: how green is green anyway?

Take ethanol, for example. There is a refinery in Goldfield Iowa that has been making ethanol since late last year. It’s been hailed as the “clean, renewable fuel of the future.” But it uses fossil fuel to power the ethanol refinery, so just exactly what are we gaining from this experiment in so-called green energy?

According to a report from the Christian Science Monitor, Carbon Cloud Hangs Over Green Fuel, while other ethanol plants use natural gas, the Goldfield plant burns 300 tons of coal a day to make this clean, renewable fuel. In fact, Goldfield is the first of its kind to use coal. In Nevada, Iowa, just south of Goldfield, another coal-burning ethanol plant is currently under construction and there are, reportedly, plans to build at least three more in the mid-west.

There are now an estimated 200 similar plants under construction. So, environmentalists are getting a little worried. As well they should. According to the climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, the coal producing ethanol plants may undo the environmental benefits of using ethanol in the first place.

So why would the industry deliberately build plants that feed on coal? The answer: the almighty dollar. It costs too much to use natural gas and it’s relatively cheap to retrofit plants to burn coal instead.

They’re calling it “clean coal” technology, but plants using it produce twice the environmental toxins that plants run on natural gas would create. This was substantiated by a group of scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, who concluded that running the almost 200 ethanol plants now under construction on “clean coal” would mean that all the benefits of running vehicles on ethanol would be eliminated by virtue of the CO2 emitted during the ethanol production process.

So what are the alternatives? According to a spokesperson for the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) it is possible to use methane from cattle dung to fire up the ethanol plants. Apparently, it is also possible to use a variety of plant material as well — which is likely where the switch grass reference came from — meaning it is possible to create ethanol without burning either coal or wood. But even if ethanol is produced by boiling switch grass, you can’t run a vehicle on straight ethanol.

Currently, E85, which uses 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, is being touted as the fuel of the future. According to the RFA web site, there is growing interest in E85 and the “flexible fuel vehicles” or FFVs that can run on it. But current ethanol/gasoline mixtures are using a much smaller percentage of ethanol–more like 10%.

Still according to a study done by Smog Reyes in 2004, even a 10% ethanol mix will reduce tailpipe fine particulate matter by 50%, and carbon monoxide emissions by up to 30%. So if we can push the industry to use cleaner fuel for firing up the ethanol plants, rather than relying on coal, as the newest plants appear set to do, we may actually see some progress.

The recently enacted Energy Policy Act (EPACT), which was signed into law by President Bush in August 2005, includes a Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) which some believe will considerably impact our dependence on foreign oil and our ability to create jobs, thus strengthening our economy while simultaneously improving our environment.

In a study conducted by LECG, LLC in May 2005, analysts project that adherence to the RFS will, by the year 2012, allow us to reduce crude oil imports by $2 billion and save $64 billion in payments to foreign oil producers. In addition, they are predicting that ethanol production will add $200 billion to the GDP between 2005 and 2012, create close to $240,000 jobs and increase household income by 43 million. All of which sounds great, but it doesn’t appear as if their study took into account just how the growing number of ethanol plants are going to be fueled. And if coal is used in the majority of the new plants being planned for construction in the coming years, who knows how valid any of these predictions will actually turn out to be?

In the meantime, while we struggle to reduce our dependence on foreign oil for powering cars and other gas guzzling vehicles, we mustn’t fail to consider all the other things we use oil for. Here’s a short list of things you might not think to connect to oil consumption. For the full list you can check out the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) web site:

clothing ink, heart valves, crayons, parachutes, telephones, deodorant, pantyhose, rubbing alcohol, hearing aids, motorcycle helmets, electrical tape, candles, denture adhesive, refrigerator linings, hair coloring, toilet seats, loudspeakers, movie film, tires, floor wax, electric blankets, lipstick, eyeglasses, life jackets, insect repellent. . . and the list goes on

This is not to say we aren’t making progress. After all, we can’t expect to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil overnight, despite the newest legislation and increasingly frequent lectures by the President about America’s shameful “addiction” to oil.

But I can’t help but wonder, in all the hoopla over green energy–just how green is green, anyway?

Photography By Bastian, Robenalt, Automatt via Creative Commons

If you drive far enough on Interstate 580, you’ll begin to see, scattered across the countryside, what look like bladed sentinels standing guard over the land.

Wind turbines.

Though wind energy, in various forms, has been used for centuries, its modern-day inception came in the 1980’s. The state of California, along with federal agencies, began offering tax incentives for alternative energy solutions. To date, the United States has wind farms operating in approximately 27 states and is ranked third highest in wind energy production (behind Germany and Spain, respectively).

The concept of wind energy is fairly simple; a two or three-bladed “propeller” is turned by the wind, the propeller turns a couple of shafts and a gear box that power a generator. The generator produces electricity. Kinetic energy is transformed into mechanical or electrical energy. The current design of wind turbines enables them to produce in winds as low as 8mph.

The main parts of a wind turbine are the blades (of course), low-speed shaft, high-speed shaft, gearbox, controller, rotor, and generator. Basically, the blades are attached to the low-speed shaft, which is turned by the rotor at speeds of about 30 to 60 rpm. The low-speed shaft is connected, via the gear box, to a high-speed shaft. Rotations are increased to between 1200 and 1500 rpm, which is the speed required for most generators to produce electricity. The gearbox is a very heavy and expensive part of a wind turbine. Engineers are currently trying to develop “direct drive” generators that would operate at lower rotational speeds, eliminating the need for the gearbox.

The three-bladed turbine design is preferred, for a variety of reasons. Primarily because, as the blades turn, stress is placed on the tower, and a three-bladed design distributes the stress more evenly than a two-bladed design.

At a cost of about four cents per kilowatt-hour, wind energy is one of the cheapest forms of electricity. It’s also one of the cleanest. It doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, which emit toxins that pollute the air and contribute to the greenhouse affect. The electricity produced can also be used to electrolyze water, which can then be stored and transported as hydrogen. It’s similar in concept to the storing and transporting of natural gas. If the hydrogen is stored, it can then be used during times when electrical needs exceed the amount being naturally generated by the wind.

In addition, the hydrogen can be used for hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Estimates that hydrogen fuel could cost as little as $1.40 per equivalent gallon of gasoline, combined with ever-rising gasoline prices, makes hydrogen fuel an increasingly attractive alternative.

Hybrid vehicles are usually gasoline/electric. The ones that support full electric operation can be recharged via the wind through some home modification.

Plug-in capabilities mean that the vehicles can even be recharged from a wind-powered electric grid, easing the transition to a sustainable transportation infrastucture.

Currently, every major automotive manufacturer has a hybrid car on the market or in the planning stages. According to hybridcars.com, hybrids are currently available from Toyota, Honda, Ford, Lexus, Mercury and GM. Only Toyota and Honda currently mass produce hybrid power trains used in production vehicles. At this time no hybrid models have been released to market by Nissan, DaimlerChrysler, Volkswagen, BMW, Renault, Fiat, or Citroen.

The biggest disadvantage of wind energy is the initial cost. It is higher than the initial investment required for other forms of energy; however, given the competitive price per kilowatt-hour, the investment proves worthwhile. The wind’s inconsistency can also be a disadvantage. But if wind energy can, in fact, be stored as hydrogen, it can be accessed when the wind doesn’t cooperate.

Wind turbines can also greatly benefit farmers and ranchers. Since the best wind sources are typically in rural area, farmers and ranchers can lease the land to wind farm developers. Only about 2% of the land area is required, enabling the farmers the retain the use of most of their land while simultaneously helping preserve our environment.

The greatest advantage is that wind is inexhaustible. Warming of the earth’s atmosphere, the earth’s rotation, and the inconsistencies of the earth’s terrain all combine to create wind. Consequently, as long as these three factors exist, so does wind and the energy it produces. Inexhaustible energy sources are hard to find. Fossil fuels will eventually run out, or completely destroy our environment. Conversely, with some basic maintenance, wind turbines can run indefinitely.

And “indefinitely” with “inexpensive” is a good combination.

You’re seeing an oil spill off of the coast of Qatar. Spills like this are part of the job when working with oil tankers and huge volumes of fluids. They happen almost all the time.

Exploiting the vast reserves of petroleum in the Persian Gulf region has left unintended, if predictable consequences:

“The maritime people of the Gulf always depended on and cared for the marine and coastal environmental resources on which they depend. Since the discovery of oil, a rapid development process began, with some highly impressive results. This converted an area of extreme environmental hardship into one of the world’s highest per capita income groups. Some of the side-effects of this development process, however, are not entirely desirable. These include declining fish stocks, habitat loss and fragmentation, loss of biological diversity, declining primary marine productivity, as well as the pollution of water, biota, and inter tidal substrates. Perhaps not surprisingly, ecological degradation is also occurring from oil production, oil spills and oil transport. More oil from spills has been released into the Gulf than into any other region on Earth.” UNESCO

The practice of waging war also has a special impact on the natural world:

"One source of pollution that is often overlooked but is of particular interest to the Gulf is the effect of war and armed conflict. The speaker cited statistics of pollution in the Gulf produced through the Iran – Iraq War. The disturbing numbers relating to the Gulf War in 1991 of some 6 to 8 million barrels of oil being discharged into the Gulf dwarfs the numbers of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of some 500,000 barrels off the coast of Alaska." Qatar Petroleum

"Until the late 1960s, it had been almost taken for granted that the oceans were so vast that they would be able to cope with whatever pollution and wastes were dumped into them. Yet it was recognized early that ships, especially oil powered ships, could cause pollution. Both the United Kingdom and the United States introduced legislation in the 1920s to curb discharges of oil resulting from operations such as tank cleaning. Attempts to tackle the problem at an international level were unsuccessful, however, and the outbreak of World War II resulted in the problem being deferred."
Oceans Atlas

Now, of course, there are many many international maritime laws about pollution.

Many people are familiar with the Exxon Valdez spill. It was the largest oil spill in the United States since the 1968 Mandoil spill (pdf), and the largest tanker spill ever in Alaska. Yet Valdez ranks 41st in this list of the largest tanker spills in the world. But oil development spills oil all the time, not just when a particularly destructive if predictable accident happens. Prince William Sound has still not yet recovered.

"At first, many people repeated what was then thought as common knowledge, oil dissipates, nature heals quickly, all will be well in a year or two. This has not been the case with the Exxon Valdez. This massive 987-foot tanker has left a lingering, long-term effect on the natural habitat that surrounds these pristine waters, along with an enormous socio-economic effect that has left many people wondering when and where the next oil spill will be. Many associated with the recovery process, and its more than one hundred projects per year, say it will take longer than a human lifetime to determine if a full recovery is possible (Fine 1999)." Exxon Valdez

It usually takes a disaster to motivate people to change things for a while, and the Valdez wreck was no different. It spurred the passage of the Oil Pollution Act, which among other things banned single-hull vessels in U.S. waters. The EU may be in the process of banning them, but there seem to be some procedural issues.

Some bacteria thrive in oil contaminated seawater. They have evolved to prefer such environments due to natural underwater features called oil seeps.

"Not all oil in the ocean was put there by people. Natural seeps have been discharging petroleum hydrocarbons into the marine environment for millions of years. About 200 natural underwater oil seeps have been identified around the world. In Canada, natural seepage has been observed off the coasts of Labrador as well as the north coast of Baffin Island in the Arctic." Environment Canada

"Because spills are much more concentrated, their impacts on marine organisms are more intense, and in many respects qualitatively different than those of seeps… Toxic constituents are released steadily, but gradually, over the region, allowing currents and natural mixing to dilute their concentrations. Tar mounds on the ocean floor are colonized by bacteria, forming the basis of productive meiofaunal communities. Seep oil does not accumulate on the surface in very thick layers, nor does it cause oiling of many birds or result in heavily tarred beaches. Rocks and cliff faces in some areas show localized deposits of weathered tar.

Major spills, however, may blanket the sea surface of a large area with fresh oil. A thick, gooey water-in-oil emulsion, or “mousse,” often forms on the surface after oil spills, eventually falling to the ocean floor in large amounts or fouling the intertidal zone, beaches, rocky shores, and salt marshes. Organisms including larvae may have no opportunity to escape the sudden influx of oil and high concentrations of its dissolved toxic fractions. Spills often kill large numbers of animals including sea birds and marine mammals. For these reasons, Burger states that, “in any given area, the amount of oil from a catastrophic spill far overshadows the oil coming from natural seeps." County of Santa Barbara

"Sub-lethal effects that impair the ability of individual marine organisms to reproduce, grow, feed or perform other functions can be caused by prolonged exposure to a concentration of oil or oil components far lower than will cause death. Sedentary animals in shallow waters such as oysters, mussels and clams that routinely filter large volumes of seawater to extract food are especially likely to accumulate oil components. Whilst these components may not cause any immediate harm, their presence may render such animals unpalatable if they are consumed by man, due to the presence of an oily taste or smell." ITOPF

Sublethal toxic effects of oil spills are important for people who eat farmed fish, which can’t naturally escape elevated levels of toxins in the water, and lack a locally bred instinctive drive.

The United States has a lot of illumination, and as the home to the inventor of the electric light, that makes plenty of sense. It’s too bright to see the stars in most highly populated areas. It’s not just the astronomers who are complaining, although surely the migrating birds and sea turtles would complain if they could. Bright light is a stressor and has been shown to cause cannibalism in fowl.

It’s ironic because the streetlights are there for "safety" — in other words to keep people from killing themselves and each other. But what does it mean to have turned out the stars?

As much as 25% of electricity consumption (by far the #1 source of air pollution) in the United States goes towards lighting. We could save conservatively $2 BILLION a year and millions of tons of coal with more efficient use. A typical 100-Watt incandescent bulb could consume 750 pounds of coal and emit 2000 pounds of CO2 in one year – just one bulb! Choose energy efficient, downward directed, full cut-off, lighting fixtures in key locations only where needed. And please don’t aim them UP. Our Vanishing Night

Surely that makes sense. If the lights are bright and visible from orbit using spacecraft launched thirty years ago, then obviously there’s a lot of power being pumped into space.

My favorite lights right now are based on white LED lights. They’re ultra low power, don’t burn out, and throw a nice clear white light.

Girlina happened by this humorous image of the urban landscape transformed into natural representations.

The bright pink of the gas meter warms what would otherwise be a cold image as the flamingo in its natural environment caught unaware, balancing as they do on one foot.

In the same way the residents of the urban jungle are often unaware as elaborate and ugly hardware and industrial flotsam are imposed on them by lowest-cost decisions made elsewhere. Or as their neighbors remove the trees.

This photo represents people endeavoring to overcome these limitations and restore nature to their concrete environs.

That, or the owners painted it because they didn’t afford a proper covering.

As we saw last week, agriculture since the Green Revolution means extensive use of fertilizer from natural gas. Because of this there is going to be lots of anhydrous ammonia (NH3) somewhere to distribute to lots of farms. It’s relatively easy to manufacture. It’s also very dangerous to store, transport, and use, unless handled very carefully, acording to safety protocols, all the time.

The stuff is also hard to secure, mostly because people are always trying to steal it for who knows what reason. So there’s a danger there, because the people who are ripping this stuff probably don’t read safety instructions. Another danger is of course the sabotage risk. But mostly, like with lots of things in life, the real danger is from accidents. Complex systems can fail, people can fail, organizations can fail, and according to the EPA, over a million people would be harmed if there was a worse-case failure here.

The danger is real. The biggest problem with making this stuff is that you start with natural gas, which means you’ve got a pipleline somewhere. Pipeline accidents happen somewhere in the world a few times per year (see this pdf for 2002 incidents). Most sabotage happens outside of the United States closer to where the fuels are extracted such as Nigeria, rather than in Lima, Ohio, but leaks and pressure blasts seem to happen everywhere.

As we zoom in we notice a regular pattern on the ground, a field of big white blips. This is where Google Maps fails us as their images are far too low resolution to be of any help. To make this work we need to go over to TerraServer.

Here you can see part of the three General Dynamics plants, where among other things they make the M-1 Abrams tank, as well as the BOC Gases Hydrogen Production Plant. In this image the black areas in the upper left are the City of Lima Wastewater Treatment Plant, where all of the waste water is treated, first built in 1930 and later renovated and rebuilt at great expense. This message from the treatment plant’s home page does not inspire confidence:

Throughout the plant each stage of treatment is monitored and controlled by a computerized process control system (PCS). Lima’s wastewater PCS consists of distributed programmable logic controllers which are monitored using a desk top computer network.

I feel better already.

Oddly enough if you search for anhydrous ammonia in Lima very not much comes up, but look up the word plant and you get all kinds of industrial supply companies. Let’s try looking in the water.

The drinking water there tested in 2004 (pdf) for Nitrate, Atrazine (a herbicide runoff), Choloform, Chlorine, Coliform… in other words, normal, safe to drink. Hmmm. No wonder Americans spent $7.7 billion for bottled water in 2002, and $8.3 billion in 2003.

Ohio seems to be a pollution friendly state; in 1998 they gave a special air permit to BP Chemical so that they could expel Butanediol into the air. This is toxic stuff that turns into the drug GHB among other things when the body metabolizes it. They can legally dump this stuff into the air? I could not be making this stuff up.