by Agence France-Presse

Bill GatesPhoto: magnifynetLONG
BEACH, Calif. - Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates on Friday strayed from his
philanthropic focus on fighting poverty and disease to address another threat
to the world's poor -- climate change.

"Energy
and climate are extremely important to these people," Gates on Friday told
a TED Conference audience
packed with influential figures, including the founders of Google and climate
champion Al Gore. "The climate getting worse means many years that crops
won't grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to starvation and
certainly unrest."

He
broke down variables in a carbon-dioxide-culprit formula, homing in on a
conclusion that the answer to the problem of climate change is a source of
energy that produces no carbon.

"The
formula is a very straightforward one," Gates said. "More carbon
dioxide equals temperature increase equals negative effects like collapsed
ecosystems. We have to get to zero."

To
dramatize his point, Gates pulled out a large jar of fireflies in playful
flashback to when he unleashed mosquitoes on a TED audience a year earlier
while discussing battling malaria. "They won't bite," Gates joked of
the fireflies. "As a matter of fact, they might not even leave this
jar."

Gates
said he is backing development of TerraPower reactors that could be fueled by nuclear waste from disposal facilities or
generated by today's power plants.

Gates
touted TerraPower as more reliable than wind or solar, cleaner than burning
coal or natural gas, and safer than current nuclear plants.

"With
the right materials approach it could work," Gates said. "Because you
burn 99 percent of the waste, it is kind of like a candle." Nuclear waste
fed into a TerraPower reactor would potentially burn for decades before being
exhausted.

"Today
we are always refueling the reactor so lots of controls and lots of things that
can go wrong," Gates said. "That is not good. With this, you have a
piece of fuel, think of it like a log, that burns for 60 years and it is
done."

Researching
and testing TerraPower will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with the
building of a test reactor likely to cost in the billions.

Once
the technology is proven, market forces will drive down costs, Gates predicted.

Work
on TerraPower has been done in France and Japan, and there has been interest in
India, Russia, China, and the United States, according to the famed
philanthropist.

Gates
said that if he were allowed a single wish in the coming 50 years, it would be
a global "zero carbon" culture.

"We
need energy miracles. The microprocessor and internet are miracles. This is a
case where we have to drive and get the miracle in a short timeline."

Gates
dismissed climate-change skeptics, saying TerraPower would render arguments
moot because the energy produced would be cheaper than pollution-spewing
methods used today. "The skeptics will accept it because it is
cheaper," Gates said. "They might wish it did put out CO2, but they
will take it."

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by Agence France-Presse

OSLO -- Norway plans to build the world's most powerful wind turbine, hoping the new technology will increase the profitability of costly offshore wind farms, partners behind the project said Friday.

With a rotor diameter of 475 feet and a height of 533 feet, the 10-megawatt prototype will be roughly three times more powerful than ordinary wind turbines currently in place, said Enova, a public agency owned by Norway's petroleum and oil industry ministry.

The world's largest wind turbine will be built by Norwegian company Sway with the objective of developing a technology that will result in higher energy generation for offshore wind power. It will first be tested on land in Oeygarden, southwestern Norway, for two years.

The gain in power over current turbines will be obtained partly by reducing the weight and the number of moving parts in the turbine.

According to the NTB news agency, the prototype will cost $67.5 million to build and could supply power to 2,000 homes.

"We are aiming to install it in 2011," Enova's head of new technology, Kjell Olav Skoelsvik, told AFP.

Enova pledged $23 million to build the prototype.

"It is milestone in the efforts to develop the future's wind power," Norway's energy minister Terje Riis-Johansen said in a statement.

Environmental groups have been highly critical of Norway's government for not having invested enough in wind power. The Scandinavian country is one of the world's top oil and gas producers, but obtains most of its own energy through hydroelectric power.

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by Agence France-Presse

UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change.

The panel, to be led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, aimed "to mobilize the resources for climate change pledged at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen," Ban told reporters.

The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, "will develop practical proposals to significantly scale up long-term [public and private] financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries," he added. The U.N. boss said the group would specifically seek to marshal new and innovative resources to reach a $100 billion target by 2020 to fund "adaptation, mitigation, technology development and transfer, and capacity building in developing countries, with priority for the most vulnerable."

The panel was set to include heads of state and government, top officials from ministries, and central banks as well as experts on public finance, development, and related issues.

Ban said the composition of the panel would be announced shortly and revealed that he planned to ask Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to join.

The secretary-general, who was linked by videoconference with Brown and Meles, said he expected the panel to deliver a preliminary report at the May-June meeting of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which provides a planetary arena for tackling climate change.

"Finance for adaptation and mitigation and transfer of technology are of central significance for developing countries in general and the poor and vulnerable countries in particular," the Ethiopian premier said from Addis Ababa.

Meles said while the funding provisions of the Copenhagen accord fell below the expectations of many in the developing world, "they have nevertheless been welcomed by most of our leaders as exemplified by the endorsement of the accord by the recently concluded summit of the African Union." But, he warned, "This time around the promises made have to be kept because the alternative is irresponsible management of the climate, followed by catastrophic changes."

Meles voiced optimism that the work of the panel would make it possible for poor nations to join the developed world in Mexico for a final and binding treaty on climate change "with the confidence that promises made on finance will be kept."

Mexico is to host the next U.N.-sponsored climate summit from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 in the beach resort of Cancun.

"We must put in place the transparency for measurement, reporting, and verification and we must take forward the cooperation on technology and we must deepen international agreement through a detailed set of rules and government arrangements under the United Nations to be finalized in Cancun later this year," Brown said.

Meanwhile, Oxfam International warned that Ban's high-level panel "cannot be another talking shop" and must make concrete recommendations on how the funding should be raised.

"The $100 billion has to start flowing soon," Oxfam adviser Robert Bailey said in a statement. "Poor countries desperately need this money to cope with a changing climate and reduce their emissions, and rich countries need to show that they can be trusted to deliver on their promises of climate action. Trust must be rebuilt if a global climate deal is to be achieved."

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by David Roberts

On Thursday the Obama administration released its annual Economic Report of the President, which assesses the nation's economic progress, the challenges ahead, and the administration's domestic and international priorities. There is a meaty chapter on "Transforming the Energy Sector and Addressing Climate Change" (PDF).

Its most striking feature is that it doesn't back off, at all, on the priorities Obama identified during his campaign: investing in clean energy, implementing a market-based system to reduce carbon pollution, and working to forge international cooperation on climate change. In fact, it's one of the most cogent presentations of the president's energy thinking I've seen.

The chapter begins on a somewhat academic note, arguing for why public policy is justified in the face of climate change:

... two market failures provide a motivation for government policy. First, greenhouse gas emissions are a classic example of a negative externality. As emitters of greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, they impose costs on others that are not taken into account when making decisions about how to produce and consume energy-intensive goods. Second, the development of new technologies has positive externalities. ... the developers of new technologies generally capture much less than the full benefit of their ideas to consumers, firms, and future innovators, and thus underinvest in research and development. [p. 236, my emphasis]

If the two principal market failures are underfunded research and unpriced carbon, the task for public policy is to fund research and price carbon, and that's what the administration says it is focused on. (The third leg of the climate policy stool, regulation, goes unheralded as usual, though there's plenty about specific regulations in the report.)

Investing in clean energy

Many progressives (including greens) have been disappointed in the Obama presidency, perhaps overly so. One thing that's obscured the administration's accomplishments is that many of them were lumped together under one bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which came to be discussed as "the stimulus" and got mired in generic arguments about fiscal policy. Inside that act, however, was not only one of the biggest middle-class tax cuts of all time, but a whole bundle of investments in progressive priorities. Here's how ARRA's energy-related investments add up, according to the Economic Report of the President:

The Recovery Act is investing in 56 projects and activities that are related to transitioning the economy to clean energy. Forty-five are spending provisions with a total appropriation of $60.7 billion, and another 11 are tax incentives that the Office of Tax Analysis estimates will cost $29.5 billion through fiscal year 2019, for a total investment of over $90 billion.

Ninety billion for clean energy in the first year of the administration ain't too shabby.

How did that $90 billion break out? The answer here is actually much more heartening than I realized:

Again: not too shabby.

The problem on the investment side is that the bad economy has the public nervous about spending. In a sane world, elites and journalists would help educate the public that the federal budget is not like a household budget, and that spending -- to boost demand and soak up idled capital and labor capacity -- is an appropriate federal response to high unemployment. Instead, elites and journalists help fuel the myth that the government should "tighten its belt" because the long-term deficit picture is grim. Indeed, Obama himself is helping to fuel the myth by indulging it.

In that political environment the administration is unlikely to get anything like a second recovery package. And it's unlikely to make the case for maintaining and elevating the level of investments in ARRA. It's allowing the stimulus to be defined as a one-time thing instead of the beginning of an ambitious, historic effort to spur a clean energy economy.

Putting a price on carbon

As it always has, the administration retains its support for a market-based mechanism to incorporate the social costs of carbon pollution. Two things in this section are notable though.

First, the report specifically singles out for praise the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) passed by the House last year. For reasons having entirely to do with the, er, behavioral quirks of U.S. senators, the House bill has come to be seen as a piece of radicalism. Republicans and conservadems aren't clear on what they want, but they know they don't want to vote for that bill. The report shows how silly that myth is; as it notes, several independent analyses of the bill show that its benefits will be large and costs relatively small.

Maybe I'm projecting, but I like to see this as a high-five from the White House to Pelosi, Waxman, and Markey, who did yeoman's work passing a responsible piece of legislation and have gotten nothing but grief for it ever since.

The second item of note is that the report takes care to explain that a utility-only cap-and-trade system (of the kind implemented in RGGI and now being discussed in the Senate), far from saving money, would cost more:

Costs are also affected by the number of industries covered by the cap, with the general principle being that greater coverage lowers the marginal cost of emissions reductions. A recent study comparing alternative ways to achieve a 5 percent reduction in emissions found that the cap-and-trade program’s costs to the economy were twice as large when manufacturing was excluded as they were under an economy-wide approach (Pizer et al. 2006). [p. 253, my emphasis]

As I said in an earlier post, this is another area where the purported motive for weakening the bill -- to spend less, to be more fiscally responsible -- achieves the opposite. A weaker bill is more expensive, not less.

Ultimately the administration can't determine the shape of the bill and hasn't shown much appetite for twisting arms. But what it does do quite well in this report is explain and substantiate its own policy preferences.

De-subsidizing

A final note: the report also re-emphasizes the administration's goal of gradually eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, something G20 countries agreed to last year.

It puts a dollar number on U.S. subsidies: "In the United States, these subsidies—including tax credits, deductions, expensing practices, and exemptions—are worth about $44 billion in tax revenues between 2010 and 2019." It's worth noting that a recent report from the Environmental Law Institute put the figure somewhat higher -- $70.2 billion between 2002-2008:

Importantly, the report also quantifies the level of emission reductions this policy will achieve:

One model estimates that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the major non-OECD countries alone would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent, enough to fulfill almost 15 percent of the agreed-upon G-8 goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2009). [emphasis mine]

Fifteen percent of the 2050 target is nothing to shake a stick at. Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies is the kind of policy that, should Congress fail to pass climate legislation, the administration can take to international climate talks as quantifiable evidence of its efforts.

Honestly, I've been wondering why this tough talk about eliminating subsidies hasn't been getting a bigger reaction from the fossil fuel lobby. I've seem some ritualistic denunciations of "new taxes," but nothing like a full-court press. Do they just not believe it will happen?

Given the Democrats' limited ability to transform plans and principles into legislation thus far, perhaps Big Oil is wise to be cynical. When it comes to domestic policy, it doesn't matter all that much what the executive branch thinks. In the end, the administration's economic report does little but reinforce yet again how nice it would be if the U.S., like most developed democracies, had a parliamentary system of government in which majority parties with popular leaders could actually implement policy. Wouldn't that be something?

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by Agence France-Presse

PARIS -- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-winning U.N. panel that serves as the scientific bedrock for global climate negotiations, needs a serious makeover, five of its most senior members said Wednesday.

Writing in the journal Nature, they offer recommendations that include scrapping the panel, which is run by volunteers, and replacing it by a full-time staff, or establishing a "Wikipedia-style" forum for swapping information and ideas on climate change.

Of the five researchers who wrote in the journal, most agreed the panel's process was too laborious and some suggested its review of climate change be removed from government oversight to avoid any political interference.

None, though, called for the removal of the group's chair, Rajendra Pachauri, who is under fire for his stewardship and alleged conflicts of interest related to personal finances. Pachauri has denied any wrongdoing.

Once unassailable, the IPCC, which issued its first report in 1990, has been battered over the last three months.

The IPCC comprises several thousand scientists tasked with vetting scientific knowledge on climate change and its impacts. They produce a major report every half-dozen years or so. The latest opus, the fourth in the series, was published in 2007. Governments also participate in the process, helping to nominate experts and approve a draft of the review.

Ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit in December, the IPCC was rocked by the leaking of emails between some of its scientists that, according to skeptics, showed data had been skewed to mask contradictions about the evidence for human-made global warming.

The allegations became an issue at the start of the U.N. talks, but were dismissed by most scientists as distorted and politically motivated. At least one formal inquiry since then found no wrongdoing or unethical behavior.

More damaging to the IPCC's reputation have been errors uncovered in its mammoth 2007 report.

A prediction that global warming would melt away the Himalayan glaciers that provide water to a billion people in Asia by 2035 has been dismissed by glaciologists as preposterous, and will be withdrawn.

Another passage suggesting that natural disasters including hurricanes and floods had increased in number and intensity has also been challenged.

Critics say that both assertions exaggerate the impacts of climate change and are based on sources that do not meet the IPCC's own standards of reliability.

These and other problems show the need for root-and-branch reform, said Mike Hulme, a professor at Britain's University of East Anglia and a coordinating lead author of previous IPCC reports. "The IPCC needs a complete overhaul. The structure and process are past their sell-by dates," he wrote in a hard-hitting commentary.

Hulme suggested dissolving the panel and setting up three separate bodies to take on its duties. The first would focus on hard science and issue short, timely, and policy-relevant reports. The second would evaluate regional impacts, and the third would translate all the findings into specific policy options.

Eduardo Zorita, a scientist at the GKSS Research Centre near Hamburg, Germany, called for the creation of a professional, independent climate body on the model of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), or the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. "The IPCC is currently experiencing a failure of trust that reveals flaws in its structure," pointing to a "blurring" of the space between politics and science, he said.

For John Christy of the University of Alabama, the only way to avoid bias on the part of lead authors nominated by individual governments was to create a "Wikipedia-style" forum for open debate. "The IPCC would then be a true reflection of the heterogeneity of scientific views, an 'honest broker' rather than an echo chamber," he said. "The truth -- and this is frustrating for policy makers -- is that scientists' ignorance of the climate system is enormous," he added. "There is still much messy, contentious, snail-paced and now, hopefully, transparent work to do."

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by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON -- The United States on Tuesday pressed China, India, and other emerging powers to make clearer commitments to fighting climate change, warning that last year's Copenhagen Accord risked being "stillborn."

The 194-nation U.N.-led summit in the Danish capital resulted in a brief accord that pledged to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) as well as provide billions of dollars in financing for vulnerable developing nations. It gave countries until Jan. 31 to sign on.

China, India, Brazil, and South Africa each submitted to the United Nations their plans to fight climate change, but described them as voluntary and did not formally endorse the Copenhagen deal.

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, described the positions of the four developing powers as "a bit ambiguous."

"I do believe that they will sign on to the accord because the consequences of not doing so are so serious -- in a word, leaving the accord stillborn, contrary to the clear assent their leaders gave to the accord in Copenhagen," Stern said at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.

The Copenhagen summit in December worked on a framework for fighting climate change after 2012, when developed nations' commitments to curb carbon emissions blamed for global warming run out under the landmark Kyoto Protocol.

Stern refused to predict whether a full-fledged successor to Kyoto would be ready in time for the next major meeting in December in Cancun, Mexico.

"I hope that we can get to a full legal treaty in December, but I'm not going to make any predictions one way or the other," he said. "I'm also not going to fall into the trap of saying if it's not that, we've got a failure."

Developing nations insist that wealthy nations are historically responsible for climate change and therefore should be the only ones with legal obligations.

Stern said the United States was ready to do its part, but added: "The imperative of bringing all major emitters into a regime of climate commitments is clear -- there is simply no other way to head off the coming crisis."

The United States joined other developed nations in signing on to the Copenhagen Accord, a sharp change from the presidency of George W. Bush, who rejected Kyoto as unfair.

But President Barack Obama's administration is still trying to overcome opposition in the Senate to approving the first U.S. nationwide plan to cut carbon emissions.

Obama flew to Copenhagen and negotiated with Chinese and other officials to reach the deal, which he and other world leaders acknowledged did not meet their hopes.

Stern, who said the deal was better than having the talks collapse, did not mince words about the Copenhagen summit, calling it "a snarling, aggravated, chaotic event -- and that doesn't even go into the food, the lines, and all the rest."

He accused unspecified "rabble-rousers" of trying to scuttle the conference. Under the rules of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, all agreements must have consensus for approval. A handful of developing states -- particularly Sudan, Venezuela, and Cuba -- were harshly critical of the Copenhagen accord, with the Sudanese envoy even likening Western nations' policies to the Holocaust.

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by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration announced plans Monday for a new office handling climate change, aiming to help businesses chart future plans as the nation shifts to a greener economy.

The first practical effect was the creation of a website, www.climate.gov, which came online Monday and brings together government resources on climate change for business, scholars, and the general public.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said the new Climate Service would help businesses in such industries as wind power by providing data on wind patterns.

"The bottom line is this -- the better climate information that alternative energy companies have, the more profitable they can be, the more jobs they can create, and the more they can actually meet the energy demands of our country and indeed the world," he told reporters.

Locke compared the initiative to the National Weather Service, which he said had spurred a private industry of forecasters who benefit from the government data.

The Climate Service would bring together resources now spread throughout the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency that falls under the Commerce Department. It will also have six regional offices across the country.

Locke said he expected that the Climate Service would be running before the start of the 2011 fiscal year. He said the administration would first consult with Congress, although he did not believe any new legislation was needed.

The Climate Service marks the latest effort by the Obama administration to act on climate change despite an uncertain political terrain.

The House of Representatives last year approved a landmark plan to impose the first nationwide caps on emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. But the legislation is stalled in the Senate, where Obama's Democratic Party last month lost a seat to a critic of the climate bill.

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by Agence France-Presse

Rajendra Pachauri.NEW DELHI -- The U.N.'s top climate official, who is at the heart of a controversy over a few instances of incorrect global warming data, has penned a racy novel that dishes up sex, reincarnation, and a real-life Hollywood actress.

The debut fiction work is in contrast to the dry academic tomes that 69-year-old Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has previously written.

Return to Almora, which has recently hit bookshops, is laced with steamy references to the sexual urges of the protagonist Sanjay Nath who, like Pachauri, studied engineering.

The book also weaves in lectures on the environment and the fate of Himalayan glaciers -- the issue that has triggered calls for Pachauri's resignation.

Pachauri has refused to step down over an error in which an IPCC report forecast Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

His novel charts the life of Sanjay who, as a young child in India, stuns his parents with the news he was a merchant in a past life and that his wife is still alive. The 402-page tale takes Sanjay through his university days during which loses his virginity, breathlessly describing how he was "overcome by a lust that he had never known before." Several passages from the book may interest the judges of London's Bad Sex awards, an annual celebration of the worst bedroom scenes in literature.

After university, Sanjay travels to the United States, has dinner with Oscar-winning actress Shirley MacLaine, and teaches meditation -- when he finds himself distracted by the "heaving breasts" of his students.

"You are absolutely superb after meditation," Sanjay's girlfriend tells him. "Why don't we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?"

The author, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 on behalf of the IPCC, has hinted parts of the book are autobiographical.

"Sometimes I'd be so overwhelmed trying to capture an incident of my life for the book that I would be moved to tears," the father of three told the Indian Express.

Pachauri, whose previous 20 books include titles such as Business Unusual: Championing Corporate Social Responsibility, says he wrote the romp while on international business flights.

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by Agence France-Presse

The Euro-leaf logo. BRUSSELS -- The European Union on Monday unveiled a new Green logo that will have to be shown on all pre-packaged organic products produced in Europe from July.

"I'm delighted that we now have a fresh E.U. organic food logo," said E.U. Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel as she announced that the "Euro-leaf" logo, a green leaf design incorporating the 12 stars of the E.U.
flag, had won a competition to find the right image.

"This exercise has raised the profile of organic food and we now have a logo which everyone will be able to identify with. It's a nice elegant design and I look forward to buying products carrying this logo from July this year," she added.

The winning logo -- said to combine the two themes of nature and Europe -- was the result of a pan-European contest open to art and design students. Almost 3,500 logo designs were submitted and evaluated by an international jury. The three logos chosen by the experts were then put online for a public vote and some 130,000 people made the final decision.

The Euro-leaf designed by Dusan Milenkovic, a student from Germany, was the overwhelming online favorite, picking up 63 percent of the votes cast.

From July 1, the chosen logo will appear on all pre-packaged organic products that have been produced in any of the 27 E.U. member states and meet the necessary standards. It will be optional for imported products.

Other private, regional, or national logos will be allowed to appear alongside the E.U. label.

The E.U.'s organic farming regulation will be amended in the coming weeks to introduce the new logo into law.

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by Lisa Hymas

Sarah Palin's much-anticipated speech Saturday night at the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville included a one-minute-and-20-second disquisition on energy policy.  She hit on her familiar talking points -- drill here, drill now, "cap-and-tax" sucks. But she also commended Obama for highlighting nuclear power during his State of the Union address, a brief departure from her otherwise sneering tone toward the president. ("How's that hopey-changey thing
workin' out for you?" was more typical.)

Considering that Palin was paid $100,000 for the 40-minute speech, this excerpt represents $3,333 worth of her wisdom: 

And to create jobs, Washington should jump-start energy projects.  I said it during the campaign and I'll say it now: We need an all-of-the-above approach to energy policy.  That means proven, conventional resource development and support for nuclear power.  And I was thankful that the president at least mentioned nuclear power in the State of the Union. But again, we need more than words, we need a plan to turn that goal into a reality, and that way we can pave the way for projects that will create jobs, those are real
job-creators, and deliver carbon-free energy.

And while we're at it, let's expedite the regulatory and permitting and legal processes for on- and offshore drilling.  Instead of paying billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars that now are being sent to foreign regimes, we should be drilling here and drilling now instead of relying on them to develop their resources for us.

So what we've got to do is axe that plan for cap-and-tax, that policy that's going to kill jobs and that's going to pass the burden of paying for it onto our working families. 

At another point in the speech, Palin extols the virtues of
"everyday Americans" who, among other things, "grow our
food" -- reinforcing Tom
Philpott's argument that conservatives and progressives should be able to
find common ground on food issues.

Here's video of the whole speech; the food mention is at 7:25 and the energy section is at
30:00-31:20:

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Rebecca Renner at Chemistry World January 27th, 2010 The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking a tougher stance on confidentiality claims that allow firms to prevent the names of chemicals identified as...

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When I was a kid, there was lead in paint and gasoline (which could explain a lot...). Thankfully, both uses were stopped in 1978 and 1996, respectively. As a result, blood lead levels (the way human contamination is measured) have...

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