If you think the Gulf of Mexico has been returned to its pristine state after the BP oil spill, think again. Check out this video that was filmed yesterday:
I’m so glad, I say in jest, that the “liberal media” is spending its time covering the 2012 presidential campaign — 14 months out for God’s sake — instead of covering stuff like this. I swear, they’re like a pack of wolves protecting their own; making sure we don’t know about the dirty deeds of a fellow corporation.
This is just sad and it bodes so poorly for our country that science teachers are being made to tell their students that the existence of climate change is “controversial.”
I tell you, the money the energy companies have spent propagandizing about the alleged doubts about climate change has really paid off (for them, not for us):
An informal survey this spring of 800 members of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) found that climate change was second only to evolution in triggering protests from parents and school administrators. Online message boards for science teachers tell similar tales. Unlike biology teachers defending the teaching of evolution, however, earth science teachers don’t have the protection of the First Amendment’s language about religion. But the teachers feel their arguments are equally compelling: Science courses should reflect the best scientific knowledge of the day, and offering opposing views amounts to teaching poor science. Most science teachers don’t relish having to engage this latest threat to their profession and resent devoting precious classroom time to a discussion of an alleged “controversy.” And they believe that politics has no place in a science classroom. Even so, some are being dragged against their will into a conflict they fear could turn ugly.
Geezus. Sometimes I feel like the United States has reverted back to the Dark Ages.
The oil and gas lobby freaked out about this and it looks like it paid off:
The Obama administration is backing away from a plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo to his agency that officials will not designate any public lands as “wild lands.” Instead Salazar said the agency will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Associated Press.
“…[W]ill work with members of congress…” I.e., will work with members of congress who are owned by the oil and gas industry.
This is another notch against Obama on my this-isn’t-what-we-voted-for notch pole.
Brazil has taken a big step towards passing new laws that will loosen restrictions on the amount of Amazon rainforest that farmers can destroy, after its lower house of parliament voted in favour of updating the country’s 46-year-old forest code.
In a move described as “disastrous” by conservationists, the nation’s congress backed a bill relaxing laws on the deforestation of hilltops and the amount of vegetation farmers must preserve. The law also offers partial amnesties for fines levied against landowners who have illegally destroyed tracts of rainforest.
This is a photo of the Amazon rain forest per the article above.
This is a photo of the Amazon rain forest I knew as a kid:
(That river? It’s the Amazon.)
The Brazilians who chop their forests down are people who have no other means of survival, so they turn to logging.
As I write, tornadoes are roaring across Oklahoma, heading toward Norman, Enid and Oklahoma City. MSNBC and CNN are both airing live coverage but Fox, of course, can’t stop propagandizing.
That said, MSNBC’s Cenk Uygar just spoke to NBC meteorologist Bill Karins
Bill Karins
about what’s happening and as he ended their conversation, Uygar asked Karins what he thought was causing this rash of terrible tornadoes. Karins speculated that it could be climate change but “the one thing we know for sure” is that this is an El Nino year so the climate is more volatile than usual. Back to climate change, Karins said he couldn’t “prove” climate change was a factor.
Bottom line? Weather people hesitate to name climate change as one of the reasons for this wild weather but when someone like Tim Pawlenty lies through his teeth while announcing he’s running for president (hey, no problem):
“Truth” was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s buzzword today when he announced his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He said he will tell the truth about hard choices facing the nation while others — President Barack Obama notably among them — do not.
A parsing of Pawlenty’s opening-day statements shows they were not the whole truth.
Here is a sampling of his claims today and how they compare with the facts.
PAWLENTY: “The truth is, people getting paid by the taxpayers shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers themselves. That means freezing federal salaries, transitioning federal employee benefits, and downsizing the federal work force as it retires.” — Campaign announcement.
THE FACTS: A federal pay freeze is already in effect. Obama proposed and Congress approved a two-year freeze on the pay of federal employees, exempting the armed forces, Congress and federal courts.
So ,there’s no rhyme or reason when it comes to “proof” or fact in the American “news” media. Beltway pundits listen to lies every day but the weather guys have to have “proof” before they say a thing.
If you’re like me you’ve had the sense, all along, that Japanese “officials” and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCo) were minimizing what was happening at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. I mean, trusting TEPCo for news about what’s going on is like trusting the people who make Twinkies to tell us how “healthy” they are:
Japanese officials decided Tuesday to raise nuclear crisis alert level to 7 highest, equal to Chernobyl.
Earlier Tuesday, the operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant says workers discovered a small fire near a reactor building at its tsunami-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi complex but it was extinguished quickly.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the fire at a box that contains batteries in a building near the No. 4 reactor was discovered at about 6:38 a.m. Tuesday morning and was put out seven minutes later.
It wasn’t clear whether the fire was related to a magnitude-6.3 earthquake that shook the Tokyo area Tuesday morning. The cause of the fire is being investigated.
I can’t help but wonder what’s next. Over the course of a month — today is the one month anniversary of the quake/tsunami — we’ve gone from no problem to getting better to Chernobyl.
There is no “nuclear crisis alert level” above 7. So I guess from here on out, we’re on our own as to gauging the severity of what’s going on.
I hadn’t really given much thought to the debris that washed out to sea after the tsunami in Japan until I came across this animation. Looks like it could hit the west coast, but then again, it might just swirl back to toward Japan. At any rate, it’s going to be on the move for years.
Oh my God. The mayor of the Japanese city of Minami-soma has posted a YouTube video asking the world for help:
The banks are closed and people are “literally drying up.” Basic materials are running short. We don’t have enough gasoline to reach people who are stranded. All residents of the area are totally devastated. 1,260 are missing and now we are facing the nuclear power plant accident. People can’t get supplies delivered to their homes. “Before the contamination extends further, please give us your hand to help these people. … Please help us through.”
“I would like to ask medias [sic] of all over the world for support, as well as reporting the earthquake and disaster, that we are fighting against the invisible threat of radiation and contamination.”
“Here is my sincere request to you, from all over the world, I beg you as the Mayor of Minami-soma city, to help us. Helping each other is what makes us human being. I would like to ask for your continuous support. Thank you.”
Amazing, isn’t it, how the US media latches onto YouTube videos of cute babies but gosh, golly, gee, despite their staffs of hundreds if not thousands, they have thus far missed this. (I heard someone on the radio today say the reporting on this nuclear disaster is going to be one of the biggest cover ups in human history.)
The forecast is for 80º here in Boulder today and we’re almost there:
The humidity is about 4% and we haven’t had any rain or snow for weeks. I take that back. We had about an inch of snow last Monday.
We’re under a wildfire warning until 8:00 p.m., something that usually doesn’t happen until the fall, after a dry summer. But we’ve had a dry winter so we’re facing wildfires ahead of a potentially dry summer. It’s cockamamie.
So glad climate change is a farce perpetrated by tree-hugging hippies. Days and days of rain are undoubtedly just around the corner. (The forestry people say we need two weeks of rain to replenish the moisture in the trees.)
Heads up to folks in the L.A. area — here is a real-time chart from the EPA (one of those useless government entities Republicans want to do away with) showing radiation levels in your area.
Check out this animation, produced by the French Weather Bureau, of how radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant will likely spread, literally, around the world.
The animation obviously shows varying degrees of density but generally it makes sense that a layer of new radioactive material will spread around the globe, carried, obviously by air currents.
I mean, it’s inescapable. The Earth is a closed system.
A U.S. government source monitoring radiation in Southern California reports that the plume expected from Japan has reached the state but that first readings are a billion times less than what would be health threatening NBC News reports.
The source, who asked not to be identified, is a diplomat with access to the UN tracking data but does not work directly with it, Tracie Potts with NBC News reported Friday morning.
The story slowly unfolds. First, it would never get here and now, oh, the levels are so low as to be inconsequential, according to a “source who asked not to be identified.”
Why did the source ask not to be identified?
Excuse me but is it any wonder people don’t trust their government?
We keep hearing that radiation from the decaying reactors in Japan will never, ever reach the U.S. This morning the weather guy on CNN went so far as to say, “Don’t worry!”
Well, like most reporting on this situation, I believe about 10% of it.
Here’s a map that shows how, depending on predicted wind patterns, radiation could easily reach the U.S., by as early as tomorrow. Click on the “Play” tab on the upper left.
On Friday NOAA posted this graphic on how a tsunami propagates across the Pacific:
Propagation of the March 11, 2011 Honshu tsunami was computed with the NOAA forecast method using MOST model with the tsunami source inferred from DART® data. From the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research, located at NOAA PMEL in Seattle, WA. See here.
I have new respect for tsunamis after watching some of the video coming out of Japan. A tsumami isn’t just one giant wave, it is a seemingly-endless surge as this video shows. The “wave” just keeps on coming and coming and coming until a town is destroyed — in roughly five minutes.
Check out these before and after satellite photos of various cities and towns in Japan. Use the slider thingy in the middle of each photo to move back and forth.
I think the death toll is going to be much higher than the few thousand they’re predicting now.
Thanks to the Supreme Court and its ruling in Citizens United, the fat cats don’t have to mess with those pesky lobbyists anymore. They can walk right through the door of the United States Capitol and dump piles of cash directly on the desk of the people who are supposed to represent We the People represent them:
The American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil industry’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertisements and Astroturf campaigns to support the the oil industry agenda. As CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote, API “wants to drill in fragile, sensitive places, keep government tax breaks, expanding offshore drilling without reforms, and block global warming pollution reduction requirements.”
“This is adding one more tool to our toolkit,” Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs, told Bloomberg News. “At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.” As Bloomberg pointed out, oil-supported political action committees like the Independent Petroleum Association of America overwhelmingly donate to Republican candidates.
Why in the world would the United States government even think — even think — about selling mineral rights on U.S. soil to foreign companies? And why in the world would it even think about doing that without charging a huge fee? And why would it even think about letting foreign companies drill at the edge of our Grand Canyon? And why would it even think about potentially polluting the Colorado river, which provides drinking water to millions of Americans downstream?
The natural beauty and unique species of the Grand Canyon are “in the crosshairs” because of renewed interest in the region’s uranium reserves. That is the warning from critics of the mines, ahead of the release of a government report on Friday on the potential impact of fresh mining.
Mining has been banned within the Grand Canyon National Park since President Roosevelt declared it a national monument in 1908. But since 2003, foreign companies have submitted 2,215 claims to prospect on the edge of the canyon.
Ken Salazar, the secretary of the interior, temporarily withdrew 1m acres of land from exploration in 2009 to allow time for an environmental assessment. Salazar must decide by July whether to ban “mineral entry” for two-thirds of the claims for the next 20 years.
Uranium deposits mineralise in 2,000-feet deep “breccia” pipes, a geological feature common to the world-famous golden brown sedimentary rock in the canyon. When left alone, the uranium is not harmful. But once dissolved in water, it can leach into springs and aquifers that then feed into the Colorado river, which ultimately supplies 18 million people in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The water can remain contaminated for decades after a mine shuts.
[...]
Roger Clark, air and energy director at the Grand Canyon Trust, said the post-gold rush General Mining Act of 1872 allowed the exploitation of public land to provide energy security in other countries and for foreign profit, while providing very little economic benefit to the US economy. He said: “We’re not building new nuclear power plants in this country and we haven’t for 20 years.”
“It’s a net loss to the federal government. In these [tough] economic times, when hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on this report, the mining companies are getting a service that they’re not paying for. It’s a rip-off.”
Japan ceded its spot as the world’s second biggest economy to China in 2010, following a contraction in the fourth quarter as the strong yen contributed to an export slump, the end of auto subsidies depressed car purchases and a new tobacco tax hit cigarette sales. The Japanese economy’s fall from its 42-year reign in the No. 2 spot behind the U.S. on an annual basis…
A U.S. government investigation of the Trans Alaska Pipeline has found potentially major safety issues on the line that ships 12 percent of domestic oil supply, making its operation risky until repairs are made, according to a letter sent by regulators to the operator and viewed by Reuters on Friday.
The 800-mile line known as TAPS appears to have “multiple conditions” that “pose a pipeline integrity risk to public safety, property or the environment,” according to the Feb. 1 letter to operator Alyeska from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s pipeline safety division.
Maybe a time will come when people start listening to the hippies. (Think: the Iraq war too.)
Another volcano could be about to erupt on Iceland, threatening to spew out a blanket of dust that would dwarf last year’s eruption and ground hundreds more passenger flights.
Geologists say there is a high risk of the island’s second-largest volcano Bárdarbunga erupting after an increase in the number of earthquakes around it.
Pall Einarsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, says the increased activity provides “good reason to worry”. The sustained tremors to the north-east of the remote volcano range are the strongest recorded in recent times and there was “no doubt’ the lava was rising.
