Daily Archives: Monday, December 7, 2009

Don’t Fart!

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 7, 2009) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a final ruling that methane poses a danger to human health and to the environment.

E.P.A. administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced that the 2007 Supreme Court decision required the agency to regulate methane because it threatens human health and welfare.

The E.P.A. website states that “Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that … is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period and is emitted from a variety of natural and human-influenced sources.” The primary human-influenced source is flatulence, Ms. Jackson said.

There are also high levels of antimony tri-oxide in flatulence (it provides some flame retardance against afterburner ignition) in human-sourced methane.

In her prepared remarks, Ms. Jackson reported on the Methane to Markets Partnership. “It is intended to reduce global methane emissions, with a focus on cost-effective, near-term methane recovery from colorectal sources primarily in the United States,” she said. “A healthy individual releases 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission, or more than a pint every single day.”

Beginning in early-2013, the E.P.A. will phase in a program to capture all human-sourced methane at each originator. “Our research shows it is far more effective to issue each citizen with an individual, belt- or shoulder-mounted, man-portable collection and storage tank (MOST).” The program will begin in ten large urban areas including New York City, Los Angeles, and Orlando in the first two years, then fan out across the country.

“My Agency is working with three prime contractors to produce prototypes now,” Ms. Jackson said. Recycling centers will be tasked to retrieve the MOSTs for emptying and return to other users.

Industry groups have criticized the decision, saying that the regulation of the near-ubiquitous methane, will be technically challenging, legally complex, and will impose huge costs on an already challenged economy.

“The fake-leaked British climate research group e-mail messages have stirred doubts among a number of people about the integrity of some climate science,” Ms. Jackson said, “but we have serious research to back up the methane regulations we are announcing today.”

Writing — It’s Not for Sissies

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Last week, I began what will become a four-or-more-part series on writing. As I wrote, I didn’t realize that my pedantic need for encyclopediana would pop up here. A friend’s comments brought me up short immediately after I posted, “My job as a writer is to get it right.”

My friend expressed surprise at “a bunch of white guys defending Sosa’s skin bleaching.”

Unfortunately, that piece was about writing. Equally unfortunately I broke two rules, one of which is my own.

About a century ago in Internet time meaning in about 1997, Inklings Magazine commissioned me to codify the rules of editorial writing. The result was a pretty good article (if I do say so myself), Dick Harper’s 10-1/2 Hot Tips for Small-town Op-ed Writers .

Tips doesn’t explicitly say “Write so well that your readers understand you.” Tips does explicitly say:

2. Keep to exactly one (1), uno, single point.
Multiple arguments in an op-ed confuse the reader, the editor, and, probably the writer.

Regular readers know my strong points do not necessarily include staying on task. In Writing — It’s Not Just Cosmetic Anymore I blew the stay-on-task rule because I introduced three points in that piece: (1) writing well, (2) “problematic” portraits of people of color in literature and, indirectly, (3) Sammy Sosa’s relative blackness.

Some readers noticed the diversion into writing while black or white. Other readers thought my mention of Sammy Sosa’s name meant I had taken Mr. Sosa’s side. Or, perhaps, Mr. Pitts’. Not enough readers recognized that I wanted only to talk about writing well.

Means I must not have done that. I’ll try to do better next time.

I have edited the original piece in this series to remove some of the ambiguity. Next I shall look at wilful disregard on both the writer’s and reader’s part as well as at “writing while black.”