think of the many 'risk society' effects and read the comments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crY9fRdrkto&NR=1
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Risk Society, Catastrophe, and the "Relations of Definition" battles in the coal ash flood in the State of Tennessee, Late 2008
3. In late 2008, a coal ash 'flood' behind a weak dam was released catastrophically by weather changes, thawing and unthawing the frozen ground. When the dam collapsed, it released billions of gallons of coal ash suspended in the freezing water. It carried away whole valleys of communities. It has left hundreds of times 'established safety levels' of many heavy metals in the water, the soil, and in the people. It's now working its way through the ecology, down multiple Tennessee Rivers. One-third of all people in a huge area are complaining of sudden breathing problems. Meanwhile, it doesn't exist as a problem despite happening, since the official government scientists deny the data. Note how this is tailor made to demonstrate issues of Beck's view about forms of politics based on distrust of institutions in risk society--when they are seen as covering up their own previously authorized and 'tolerable' risks when these estimations were wildly wrong. The institutions of safety are delegitimated as the legalizers of risk instead.
It additionally shows the "social invisibility" of risk. The whole article is about the social construction of something that clearly happened, though the battle is over the "relations of definition" after the fact in the aftermath. Note the public relations editing that occurred in the institution to hide the original announced cause of the environmental testing--for health and environmental risk. Beck described this as the strange context of following the forms of liability though designed to leave zero blame attached, without any assurances that it won't happen in the future either! These "relations of definition" become core to Beck's view of risk society politics in an era of institutionally-introduced and institutionally-defended catastrophe, or as he called it "organized irresponsibility:" claims of liability despite no fault blame for disasters such as these.
At least so far. How do you calculate durable forms of integenerational damage this will cause? Think about the SCALE of the heavy metals they have found. And think about the same type of waste slurry 'accidentally' (not really, institutionally approved as 'low risk' then happening catastrophically) in the canalized Korean rivers, into Korean agriculture, ecology, etc.--while the government assuredly would downplay or 'question' any scientific danger estimation not of its own invention.
Remember this case when we talk about "Ulsan Disease". This was a social constructed issue of a previously denied ailment in the 1980s. The Korean government and Korean government scientists denied it was an environmental work-related danger. However, it turned out it was. "Ulsan Disease" was a big issue for the 'relations of definition' battles between Korean activists armed with science versus the government armed with its own scientists. This happened in the latter days of the Korean Presidential/dictatorship arrangement before 1987. We'll read about it in the So and Lee reading about South Korean environmentalism in the 1970s-1980s.
----------------------
Tennessee's Dirty Data
Comment
By Kelly Hearn
This article appeared in the April 20, 2009 edition of The Nation.
April 2, 2009
A shorter version of this article appeared in the April 20 issue of The Nation. Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
The Tennessee Valley Authority manipulated science methods to downplay water contamination caused by a massive coal ash disaster, according to independent technical experts and critics of the federally funded electrical company.
Toxic Coal in Tennessee
Tennessee
Kelly Hearn: A massive coal sludge spill reveals the Tennessee Valley Authority has become a poster child for the failures of self-regulation.
The TVA is the largest public provider of electricity in the nation, providing power to 670,000 homes and burning through some 14,000 tons of coal per day. On December 22 the authority made headlines when one of its [safe] retention ponds collapsed, letting loose an avalanche of coal ash--the toxic residue left over when coal is burned. More than 5 million cubic yards of ashy mud pushed its way through a neighborhood and into Tennessee's Emory River, knocked houses off foundations and blanketed river water with plumes of gray scum that flowed downstream.
New evidence indicates that in the wake of the disaster, the TVA may have intentionally collected water samples from clean spots in the Emory River, a major supplier of drinking water for nearby cities and a popular site for recreational activities such as swimming and fishing. Third-party tests have found high levels of toxins in the river water and in private wells, while the TVA has assured residents that tap water, well water and river water are safe.
Contrary Data
In the days after the spill, the TVA assured the public that the coal ash was "inert material." But soon questions emerged about the chemistry of the ash, particularly the presence of toxic elements like selenium and arsenic. [State/TVA] Scientists said the toxins were dissolving unseen into the Emory, which feeds into two other rivers--the Tennessee and the Clinch--and supplies municipal water treatment plants.
Trust in the authority, a massive local employer and an icon of the Roosevelt administration, has faded. In February an internal TVA memo obtained by the Associated Press showed that the authority was polishing its public statements. In that document, TVA officials changed the description of the disaster from "catastrophic" to "sudden" and "accidental" [no fault, they were their own judge and jury!] and removed the phrases "risk to public health" and "risk to the environment" as reasons for measuring water quality.
At least four lawsuits have been filed since the December spill, and a federal judge has ordered the authority not to destroy any documents. Meanwhile, a recent survey by Tennessee's state health department said that one third of the residents living near the spill are reporting breathing problems.
Many residents question government claims that water treatment facilities will effectively filter tap water for toxins such as arsenic and selenium. They also voice deep concerns about a longer list of toxins swirling in untreated river water and those appearing, according to private water samples, in private drinking wells. Some residents have complained of a gray film in their tap water and of a burning sensation on their skin and in their eyes after taking a shower.
Officials have consistently maintained that the drinking water is safe. On December 23 the [federal] Environmental Protection Agency tested water near a municipal drinking water treatment plant and found arsenic 149 times higher than that allowed by federal drinking water standards. Yet in a public notice the agency said the heavy metal, which is linked to cancer, would "likely" be filtered out by municipal water treatment.
Days later, with outrage and litigation mounting, a TVA environmental officer, Neil Carriker, told reporters that the gray goo in the river was made up of unsightly but harmless microscopic spheres of glass called cenospheres, which float in plumes downriver. In a December press conference, he assured the public that the river water and drinking water were safe, points consistently reiterated by the TVA.
But technical experts cite persistent, stark differences between water quality reported by independent parties and the reassuring reports offered by state and federal authorities.
Early in the disaster, for example, on January 9, the environmental group Appalachian Voices, working with a biology professor at Appalachian State University, took water samples from the Emory, Clinch and Tennessee Rivers, in which they found arsenic levels 300 times higher than the drinking water standard. The group documented wide differences between official TVA data and data collected by the group and other watchdog organizations.
The TVA later reported data showing arsenic levels to be twenty times lower than safe standards.
A little earlier, on December 30, two other environmental organizations--the Tennessee-based United Mountain Defense and the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), a Washington, DC, group founded by a former EPA regulator--found arsenic in local river water to be eight times higher than safe levels. At another point, a Duke University test of standing water in a tributary of the Emory River showed arsenic was nine times higher than safe standards. Again, TVA tests were the only outliers. The authority's subsequent tests on January 14 found arsenic levels to be forty times lower than safe drinking water standards.
[regional local subpolitics] EIP and United Mountain Defense reported the results of further tests in February, which showed that water quality criteria for arsenic, lead, selenium, cadmium and copper had all been violated and that drinking water standards had been exceeded not only for arsenic but also for antimony, beryllium and lead--which are toxic [deadly] at certain doses.
Experts say that, given the dynamics of river flow and contamination, test results will often vary, sometimes greatly. "You expect to find fluctuations," said Jeff Stant, a trained biologist and EIP official. "What's troubling is that TVA's data is suspiciously consistent." Gregory Button, an anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee, shares Stant's concern. "In disaster situations like this, science is always a point of contention," he said. "But the difference is so large in this case that there's no trust."
When asked about early reports showing water quality differences, TVA spokesperson Barbara Martocci, speaking during a December interview with The Nation, chose not to comment on the data, saying only that the TVA uses EPA-certified laboratories. (Data reported by EIP and United Mountain Defense also came from EPA-certified labs.) The TVA is "eager to review the findings of any reports or studies that might show differences between TVA's water quality reports, and we will take those reports seriously," said TVA spokesperson Gil Francis. "I don't understand why [sic] the TVA, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the EPA aren't finding the same problems as these private groups," Francis added.
Fixing the Results?
Chris Irwin, a lawyer with United Mountain Defense, said, "The gap between our data and theirs strongly suggests that the TVA has practiced selective testing." He pointed out that the cenospheres tell the naked eye where the chemical contamination is. "If you want to test clean," he said, "then you simply go to the side where the plume isn't." Charles Norris, the senior geochemist with the Colorado-based environmental geology firm Geo-Hydro, said that Tennessee's state-approved program for representing river water quality "has demonstrably been unable to account for the variability that's being picked up by third-party sampling."
In recent weeks, an inquiry in conjunction with The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund uncovered satellite positioning locations for the authority's water sampling stations inside a TVA dredging permit application. The data were pinpointed on aerial maps and shown to independent experts in an effort to determine whether the TVA skewed its choice of water sample sites.
Donna Lisenby, a river monitor for Appalachian Voices, said the location data gave critics a smoking gun. "You can skew the data by putting testing points in odd locations, such as behind a sandbar or far upriver away from the spill," she said. "The GPS locations show that that is what the TVA has been doing." Bob Gadinski, a former hydrologist for the State of Pennsylvania, said that the TVA's use of only five testing locations was "too few." He said the agency planned to test at a single depth for each location rather than at multiple depths and pointed out that at least three locations were placed at points in the river where contamination was less likely to reach (for example, one sample location should have been in the main channel of the river and was instead placed near the bank). After reviewing the GPS data, Gadinski concluded that "the TVA isn't interested in properly mapping the contaminants in that river."
Representatives from EIP and United Mountain Defense, as well as a biology professor at Appalachian State University, all viewed the site locations; all agreed the locations were "intentionally biased for nonsignificance" in ways that would not give a true reading of the contamination map.
In addition, Norris said the river monitoring programs of independent groups are "better programmed" to find and map contamination than the authority's testing program. According to Stant, "They either didn't know that this testing scheme was poorly designed, or they knew and didn't care."
[Organized irresponsibility, going through what are now empty motions of rationality, with interests to cover up and don a mantle of science in a process of legitimating state institutions despite them being the ones that contributed to the disaster.]
At a March 5 community meeting, state and federal officials again reiterated that government testing shows air and water near the site to be safe. Meanwhile, Rick Cantrell, a member of Tennessee Coal Ash Survivors, an advocacy organization formed in the wake of the disaster, told the Associated Press that his group's water quality data has "either been disregarded or just brushed off by TVA."
Button shares Cantrell's assessment. TVA officials, he said, "make these global statements and avoid having to answer real questions about the data discrepancies." At the minimum, he said, the authority should be more forthcoming about its science protocols.
Further Health Risks
Another issue raises concerns: the TVA's claim that cenospheres are inert. A study conducted in the 1970s by Alex Gabbard, now a retired scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, seems to show that the TVA misrepresented what is known about these particles. "It's true that cenospheres by themselves are harmless," said Gabbard, but his research determined that metals including uranium bind to the otherwise benign cenospheres, potentially turning them into a vector for [bioaccumulative] toxins.
"A main question, is," he said in an interview with The Nation, "What about all the other stuff in the ash?"
A cloud also hovers over the TVA's approach to well water sampling. By February 3 TDEC had sampled more than 100 private groundwater wells within a four-mile radius of the plant, announcing that all sample results were within safe drinking water standards. But, again, critics suggest the data lacked credibility.
"Our data showed all kinds of heavy metals in private wells," said Jeff Stant of the EIP. "I don't understand how official data can show otherwise." Stant told The Nation that while his team was not able to test wells at the spill site because they had been sealed off by the TVA, [that tested them without competition!] the wells EIP tested showed high levels of sodium, which poses a risk for people with heart problems, as well as the metals aluminum and manganese.
TDEC has issued an enforcement order against the TVA for violating water quality standards that protect aquatic wildlife, but an agency spokesperson said that "results to date have not indicated exceedances of the primary drinking standards for metals."
---
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/hearn
So what are you going to do in the risk society?
Video of this normal disaster:
TVA Coal Ash Spill Emory River Tennessee
Sandra Diaz, National Field Coordinator for Appalachian Voices, Hurricane Creekeeper John Wathen and Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby paddle up the Clinch and Emory Rivers to record the conditions after a 5.4 million cubic yard spill of coal waste from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Coal Plant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ats3dClc0No
1:17 min
Tenn.'s Toxic Sludge Spill, CBS News, Water for Millions in Tennessee Now Endangered, Five Miles from the main river
The Tenn. Valley Authority is working to contain [are they?] a spill of 2.6 million cubic yards of potentially toxic pollutants after a breach at a local power plant.
1:49 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtJVSwdfEZ0&feature=related
[has a nice graphic map to get an overview of what is at stake when potentially hundreds of times above safety levels of many toxic metals get into the main Tennessee River now.]
Aerial Footage of Retaining Wall Failure (Footage from TVA website)
A retaining wall holding 80 acres of flyash failed at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-fired power plant early monday morning. 2.6 million cubic yards of fly ash were released and covered 250 to 400 acres with four to six feet of ash. Eleven homes were damaged and evacuated. Thankfully, no injuries or fatalities were reported.
7 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYGO7O30moM&feature=related
1. Mark Whitaker
ReplyDelete2. Risk Society of Microwave-Based Internet : Convenience versus Inherited Chromosome Damage
2. WiFI microwave-based internet is a good exmaple of a type of 'new material risk' that is socially introduced under previous institutions without any of the systemic reseach being done. It's a 'socially invisible' risk like many others of our era. Microwave-based communication occurred after Beck wrote Risk Society. However, it is an area that I am watching closely--since the same 'organized irresponsibility' is responsible for introducing the technology starting in the USA from the mid 1990s without adequate long-term tests. It was legalized based on analogy with radio emissions. It has subsequently been found, surprise, that it doesn't act like radio emissions and has very different pernicious biochemical effects.
Many countries have banned some form of WiFi from schools (Austria, Frankfurt/Germany, Canada's University of Guelph, etc.). In the U.S., says one microwave radiation researcher Dr. George Carlo, since many schools make money from rent via telecommunications towers on their properties, schools have an economic incentive to ignore the rising tide of concern about this.
Ewha has many cell phone towers and WiFi systems throughout its buildings.
Seems the contention over this is strong in the U.K. now.
--------------------------------
'Wi-fi networks must be removed from schools to stop children getting cancer,' teachers insist
By Laura Clark
Last updated at 8:53 AM on 09th April 2009
* Comments (21) [read them at the link for the 'contention over definitions' in this risk society issue]
Wireless 'wi-fi' technology should be removed from schools to prevent millions of children suffering a heightened risk of cancer and sterility, teachers have demanded.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers called for classroom wireless networks to be suspended immediately until research has properly considered the threat to health.
Members said they were concerned by scientific reports linking wi-fi with impaired concentration, loss of short-term memory, chromosome damage and increased incidence of cancer.
Risk: Teachers are concerned by scientific reports linking wi-fi with chromosome damage and increased incidence of cancer
But there have been no long-term studies into the health effects, they said, even though 70 per cent of secondary schools and 50 per cent of primaries have already introduced it.
Wi-fi systems use high frequency [microwave band] radio waves to transmit and receive data over distances of several hundred feet.
They allow users to surf the internet on demand within range of a wireless transmitter and remove the need to connect via a cable.
Colin Kinney, Cookstown High School, in Cookstown, Northern Ireland, who highlighted the issue at the ATL's annual conference, cited international experts who had called for caution when introducing wi-fi technology.
He said research from Sweden had warned about the increased cancer risk and the Government there now funds shielding agents, such as foil covered rooms and anti-radiation point [paint?].
Mr Kinney said a Government scientist from Austria had called for wi-fi to be removed from schools claiming there was evidence of 'increased symptoms as well as increased cancer rates'.
He said Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, had called for a precautionary approach when siting masts near schools.
But now this prudent course of action had been all but abandoned and attitude of the Government was to 'roll it out and don't stop until someone proves a risk', Mr Kinney added. [That's exactly the onus of blame that Beck wants to see changed due the catastrophic, interactive quality of many risks currently.]
'Have we the right to avoid the moral warnings simply for access to a few more computers?' he told the union's annual conference in Liverpool.
'Are our pupils going to thank us in the years to come if they have become sterile or suffer from cancer, brought on by or exacerbated by the exposure to wi-fi?
'Perhaps they would just be eternally grateful that we enabled them to finish their power point presentation for geography.
'By all means let us here today as individuals use wi-fi, after all we are mature enough to make our own minds up.
'Should we force our pupils to use it without long-term safety studies being carried out? I don't believe we should.'
He added: 'Let's stick to wired computers and other wired devices for the time being.
'Ok, so teachers may have to wait a little longer for their IT suite to become available but at least we will be safeguarding health.
'Let's ask for an independent investigation taking into consideration the biological as well as thermal effects of wi-fi and for the results to be made public.' [UK has incredible secrecy laws related to government--just like Korea.]
The union pledged to lobby the Government for a full investigation into the effects
of wi-fi.
---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/
article-1168547/Wi-fi-networks-removed-
schools-stop-children-getting-cancer-
teachers-insist.html
1, Martin Weiser
ReplyDelete2. Black Carbon and Sulfats
3. Besides the emission of gases, emission of small particles like aerosols into atmosphere are said to have a big effect on warming in Artic. Although black carbon and aerosols only stay in the atmosphere up to some weeks, they are said to have the same effect on Arctic warming like carbon gases. Ironically, reduction in net cooling sulfates emissions in the USA and Europe due to health reason had even accelerated global warming. And while sulfate was declining in the western countries, black carbon was steadily increasing in Asia.
The described study has some severe social implications. First of all, the more important role of aerosols and thereby "diminishing" the role of reduction in CO2 emissions. However, not bad in general this will give more pressure to Asian countries to curb coal burning and increase the use of filter technology.
--------------------------------------
Aerosols May Drive A Significant Portion Of Arctic Warming
ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.
Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun's radiation. The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity.
A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.
The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience.
Though there are several varieties of aerosols, previous research has shown that two types -- sulfates and black carbon -- play an especially critical role in regulating climate change. Both are products of human activity.
Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.
At the same time, black carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia. Black carbon -- small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels -- absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere.
In the modeling experiment, Shindell and colleagues compiled detailed, quantitative information about the relative roles of various components of the climate system, such as solar variations, volcanic events, and changes in greenhouse gas levels. They then ran through various scenarios of how temperatures would change as the levels of ozone and aerosols -- including sulfates and black carbon -- varied in different regions of the world. Finally, they teased out the amount of warming that could be attributed to different climate variables. Aerosols loomed large.
The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, where aerosols play less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F).
That makes sense, Shindell explained, because of the Arctic's proximity to North America and Europe. The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world's aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there, so the particles remain in the air longer and have a stronger impact than in other parts of the world.
Since decreasing amounts of sulfates and increasing amounts of black carbon both encourage warming, temperature increases can be especially rapid. The build-up of aerosols also triggers positive feedback cycles that further accelerate warming as snow and ice cover retreat.
In the Antarctic, in contrast, the impact of sulfates and black carbon is minimized because of the continent's isolation from major population centers and the emissions they produce.
"There's a tendency to think of aerosols as small players, but they're not," said Shindell. "Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases."
The growing recognition that aerosols may play a larger climate role can have implications for policymakers.
"We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we're just looking at carbon dioxide," Shindell said. "If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we're much better off looking at aerosols and ozone."
Aerosols tend to be quite-short lived, residing in the atmosphere for just a few days or weeks. Greenhouses gases, by contrast, can persist for hundreds of years. Atmospheric chemists theorize that the climate system may be more responsive to changes in aerosol levels over the next few decades than to changes in greenhouse gas levels, which will have the more powerful effect in coming centuries.
"This is an important model study, raising lots of great questions that will need to be investigated with field research," said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist from Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. who was not directly involved in the research. Understanding how aerosols behave in the atmosphere is still very much a work-in-progress, she noted, and every model needs to be compared rigorously to real life observations. But the science behind Shindell's results should be taken seriously.
"It appears that aerosols have quite a powerful effect on climate, but there's still a lot more that we need to sort out," said Shindell.
NASA's upcoming Glory satellite is designed to enhance our current aerosol measurement capabilities to help scientists reduce uncertainties about aerosols by measuring the distribution and microphysical properties of the particles.
-----------
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090408164413.htm
1. Anne Severe
ReplyDelete2. Oil Drilling Banned in Costa Rica
3. Costa Rica decided to place energy, the environment, water, and mines under the authority of one minister in the 1990's. As a result, Costa Rica has factored environmental concerns into all of their energy policies, including a ban on oil. Even after discovering oil in Costa Rica, the oil ban remained steadfast. Hydro-electric, wind, & Geo-thermal are the main forms of renewable energies advocated by the government. I think this article is extremely relevant to the class, especially as we depart from our discussion of the electric car and the treadmill of production. Unwillingness to relinquish its dependency on oil led America to destroy the development and production of the EV1. Costa Rica is truly a leader in its model towards environmental sustainability.
-----------------
OP-ED COLUMNIST
(No) Drill, Baby, Drill
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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 11, 2009
Liberia, Costa Rica
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
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Sailing down Costa Rica’s Tempisque River on an eco-tour, I watched a crocodile devour a brown bass with one gulp. It took only a few seconds. The croc’s head emerged from the muddy waters near the bank with the footlong fish writhing in its jaws. He crunched it a couple of times with razor-sharp teeth and then, with just the slightest flip of his snout, swallowed the fish whole. Never saw that before.
These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system.
More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.
The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.
“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.
But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”
As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydro-electric power, wind and geo-thermal, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment! What country bans oil drilling?
Rodríguez also helped to pioneer the idea that in a country like Costa Rica, dependent on tourism and agriculture, the services provided by ecosystems were important drivers of growth and had to be paid for. Right now, most countries fail to account for the “externalities” of various economic activities. So when a factory, farmer or power plant pollutes the air or the river, destroys a wetland, depletes a fish stock or silts a river — making the water no longer usable — that cost is never added to your electric bill or to the price of your shoes.
Costa Rica took the view that landowners who keep their forests intact and their rivers clean should be paid, because the forests maintained the watersheds and kept the rivers free of silt — and that benefited dam owners, fishermen, farmers and eco-tour companies downstream. The forests also absorbed carbon.
To pay for these environmental services, in 1997 Costa Rica imposed a tax on carbon emissions — 3.5 percent of the market value of fossil fuels — which goes into a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them. And the country imposed a water tax whereby major water users — hydro-electric dams, farmers and drinking water providers — had to pay villagers upstream to keep their rivers pristine. “We now have 7,000 beneficiaries of water and carbon taxes,” said Rodríguez. “It has become a major source of income for poor people. It has also enabled Costa Rica to actually reverse deforestation. We now have twice the amount of forest as 20 years ago.”
As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire. We end up impoverishing both nature and people. Worse, we start racking up a bill in the form of climate-changing greenhouse gases, petro-dictatorships and bio-diversity loss that gets charged on our kids’ Visa cards to be paid by them later. Well, later is over. Later is when it will be too late.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12friedman.html?em
1. Young Hui Na
ReplyDelete2. Unintended, yet surprising damages done to the environment.
3. We are already aware of the enviromental damages that certain purchases, usages and disposal of products and services bring in this world. However, it is all the more surprising to find that the unintended consequences of the technology that we use are much greater than we normally - if ever - acknowledge.
When coming across these facts, I wonder if we should optimistically wait for the nature to find its way to adapt to the changing atmosphere caused by mankind, and that in a way this could be a new stimulus towards a certain evolution of the whole eco-system. Afterall, what is natural, and how much longer can we regard man-made alterations as artificial and wrong?
But regarding the adaptation of certain 'changes' - like the changes to the temperature, geography and so on- can be one thing, but being unaware and indifferent to the negative influence caused by mankind would be another. Ignoring or being careless about such phenomena doesn't make them disappear, and that is most likely the reason why we must take both intended and unintended consequences under control. 'Absolute preservation' may be impossible, just as how untangible, reciprocal systems like culture can be. Change can thus be a given factor in the organic composition of nature. The question would be, how responsible and interested are we to carry on the heritage of time and history?
3. Military sonar blamed for mass dolphin strandings
April 8, 2009
-----------------------
Mass strandings of dolphins and whales could be caused because the animals are rendered temporarily deaf by military sonar, experiments have shown.
Tests on a captive dolphin have demonstrated that hearing can be lost for up to 40 minutes on exposure to sonar. Hearing is the most important sense for dolphins and other cetaeceans, and losing it is likely to cause them to become disorientated and alarmed.
The finding by the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology may explain several strandings of dolphins and whales in the past decade. Most strandings are still thought to be natural events, but the tests strengthen fears that exercises by naval vessels equipped with sonar are responsible for at least some of them.
The study also suggested, however, that dolphins and whales would usually be able to swim away fast enough and far enough to escape any ill effects from sonar.
To induce deafness in the Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, the sonar device would have to be loud, close and would need to last for at least two minutes.
This should give the animals plenty of time to escape but in some circumstances noises can be caught in “underwater sound traps”, Aran Mooney, of the University of Hawaii, said.
Sound can become trapped if a layer of warm water lies over cold water. When sound created in the warm zone reaches the cold water it can bounce back instead of travelling though it. This, Dr Mooney said, would have the effect of trapping the sound in the warm layer, where it would bounce around “like a ping-pong ball”, giving whales and dolphins little chance of escaping it.
Similar effects could be experienced in parts of the sea with mountains and ravines, where the sound would bounce back and forth.
Dr Mooney said that this could explain three of the best-known strandings that have been linked to military sonar – in the Bahamas, the Canaries and Hawaii – because all three regions had a mountainous underwater topography.
In the Bahamas in March 2000, 16 Cuvier’s beaked whales and Blainville’s beaked whales and a spotted dolphin beached during a US navy exercise in which sonar was used intensively for 16 hours.
Sound traps might also go some way to explaining why there are only a few mass strandings compared with the frequency with which sonar is used by navy vessels.
“The big question is what causes them to strand,” Dr Mooney said. “What we are looking at are animals whose primary sense is hearing, like ours is seeing. Their ears are the most sensitive organ they have.
“What we found was if you play sound you can cause temporary hearing loss. The sounds have to be surprisingly loud and they have to be repeated over an extended period of time – two to three minutes.
“In that time you would expect them to swim away as fast as possible. They have to be within 40 metres of a ship, but when you have certain oceanographic conditions it’s hard for the animals to get out of the way.”
Observations by researchers while carrying out the tests, which are reported in the journal Biology Letters, showed that even though the dolphin involved was well accustomed to man-made noises and disturbances, it suffered subtle behavioural changes, which could cause further confusion.
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6054843.ece
1. Mark Whitaker
ReplyDelete2. They called it 'sporadic' CJD, though is it? Who do you trust? Human Mad Cow found in Tennessee
3. More on the 'relations of definition' contention over risk--just as Canada is trying to use the WTO to force open the Korean market to Canadian beef--banned for years on health grounds over mad cow; this article is a huge social construct about U.S. beef ignoring the holes in the U.S. regulatory regime that speak to Beck's ideas of systemicaly authorized risk without any way get out of it through existing institutions--that tend to lead to a lot more delegiitmation, mistrust, and 'subpolitics.'
-----------------------
One CJD case confirmed; 1 investigated
By Bob Fowler (Contact)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Tennessee Department of Health is investigating a confirmed case in Roane County of an always fatal, very rare brain disease and a second suspected case.
Only four cases of the baffling [or not so baffling...] Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease were recorded in the state last year.
Relatives of the recent victims say the odds of two cases within the same county diagnosed at about the same time are astronomical. They are questioning whether their loved ones died of a variant of CJD linked to eating beef infected with "mad cow disease."
But Health Department officials in a news release Monday [is that the same health department that said arsenic and other heavy metals were safe, above, in the same county as the coal disaster?] state that no one in the U.S. has ever contracted the variant of CJD.
[COMMENT: So they claim for public legitimacy--though is that true. I would say not: Laura Manuelidis, chief of surgery, neuropathology dept., Yale U., 1989 study: found 13% U.S. Alzheimer's patients really had CJD. Several studies including hers found autopsies show 3% to 13% of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's or dementia really suffered from CJD. Those numbers might sound low, but there are 4-million Alzheimer's cases and hundreds of thousands of dementia cases in the U.S. Small percentage of those can be up to 120,000+ CJD undetected, not included in official statistics.
Why? Because there is no regular reporting of misdiagnosed Alzheimer's disease (neurological autoposies are not required by law), so it's easy to cover up mad cow by calling it Alzheimer's while the patient is alive and then after it kills them, conduct no autopsy to prove it was Alzheimer's--both Alzheimer's and CJD are brain plaque diseases in effect that look the same...by the way ,so it's easy to misclassify, says that Yale neuropathologist study.
Besides U.s. doesn't really test it's cattle--it 'tests' less than .10% and that is being reduced as well.
Then when they do find mad cow, they do a 'retest' and they say it was a false positive in all cases so far.
Though they never retest their original tests to check, so how do we know that the test is trustworthy in the first place to return a false negative? Why only conduct a retest when you find mad cow in a cow? That's a biased testing regime. They only conduct 'retests' when they find mad cow instead of when they don't find mad cow. Why trust the test to return only negatives and not trust it to return positives? It sounds like a rigged game to me.
And the issue of the U.S. government refusing to allow private cattle ranchers to privately test their own beef for higher international standards--like japan or EU that test 100% of their beef. U.S. refused to let higher standards be privately done!]
And Dr. Jiri Safar, an expert in the disease, called the chances of the deaths being linked to mad cow disease "extremely remote or nil." [particularly if he wants to keep his job, American and British scientists have been fired for attempting to talk public health about GMOs dangers or about beef testing regimes.]
CJD is a degenerative disease that strikes the nervous system.
Kingston resident Mary Lee McGill, 69, died of classic CJD on Feb. 4. A Rockwood man, Brad Smith, 54, died March 18 of suspected CJD.
It takes extensive autopsies and weeks of tests to obtain final diagnoses, according to the Health Department.
"The best we can determine, Brad and my mom started getting sick around August," said McGill's daughter, Teresa Melton.
"As rare as it is, it just seems too much of a coincidence," said Smith's widow, Carol Smith, a registered nurse.
"I'm very concerned there's some bad meat around here somewhere," Melton said.
Health Department spokeswoman Shelley Walker said the classic form of the ailment occurs sporadically and is not contagious.
Walker said there is also an inherited form of the disease, but it affects only a small percentage of patients.
There are about six to eight cases a year of CJD in Tennessee, according to the state Department of Health.
Classic CJD develops randomly, said Safar, [does it?] associate director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center. [what if he's wrong? Or intentionally lying? Such is 'risk society' and the status of biased science as 'organized irresponsibility'.]
The disease largely remains a mystery, according to Safar, [It's not a mystery, see below link of mine] associate director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
"We don't understand exactly how it's triggered in patients," he said. [untrue, they only research one area--another area involving agricultural chemicals and soil interactions is a promising lead, though the agriindustrial lobby refuses to allow such research to be done by state scientists---'organized irresponsibility.']
Almost all cases in which the variant of CJD linked to mad cow disease was contracted involved people from 13 to 40 who lived for a significant amount of time in Europe or the United Kingdom, Safar said. [I've addressed this misconception in the link below--they are making assumptions instead of looking at the huge expansion of "Alzhimer's" (sometimes a mistaken diagnosis, from the article above it was noted) as well during the same period in different age groups or other vectors of the prion disease like blood transfusions between people or soil/agri-fertilizer interactions with certain minerals.]
The outbreak of mad cow disease was far more widespread overseas than in the U.S. or Canada, Safar said. [Perhaps another lie as well-who do you trust in the 'risk society.' And why should you trust people, says Beck? What is the effect on society of all this mistrust--that is what he is talking about in 'risk society' conceptions.]
Still, all it would have taken was one sickened cow to slip through [VIRTUALLY non-existent! and biased in administration of tests--as noted above] inspection in the U.S., Carol Smith said.
"They're [artifically] trying to prevent people from panicking, which is what we [who work for the industries of risk creation--a conflict of interest] want to avoid," she said. "Still, a possibility exists, however rare it might be."
Bob Fowler may be reached at 865-481-3625.
---
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/mar/24/one-cjd-case-confirmed-1-investigated/
my summary of mad cow issues:
Read: "MAD COW, SANE PROTESTS: Global Dangers of Shallow U.S. Beef Regulatory Regime; A Korean Way Forward"; update science and public policy to: [1] test every neurological patient with autopsy when they die (to catch misdiagnoses of Alzheimer's & other neurological problems--that may be CJD/mad cow in humans); [2] test every cow for BSE (U.S. & Korean cows). Japan & E.U. test all cows. US tests less than 1%. Link with many details: http://www.indymedia.org/en/2008/06/908309.shtml
1. Mark Whitaker
ReplyDelete2. Talk about Catastrophe and Organized Irresponsibility--where are the bees? All dying off while organized irresponsibility wants 'more data before acting' etc., unsure of pathways and what is singularly to blame, etc.
3. This brings up another example of systemic risks caused by previous forms of 'mismatched' institutions, un-researched interactions in the environment are likely here I think, as well as typical obfuscation by the powerful industrial agricultural lobbies, etc.
I put in the comments to show the scale of delegitimation and mistrust in the 'risk society' as well as one of Beck's routes of fatalism and just waiting for disaster catastrophes to expand--instead of what Beck wants, to move toward 'reflexive modernization.'
---------------------------------
Honeybees in Danger
Sunday 12 April 2009
by: Evaggelos Vallianatos, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
photo
Industrial, pesticide-dependent agricultural practices in the United States are creating a death trap for the honeybee and threatening the human-bee symbiotic relationship forged over millenia. (Photo: Getty Images)
When I was teaching at Humboldt State University in northern California 20 years ago, I invited a beekeeper to talk to my students. He said that each time he took his bees to southern California to pollinate other farmers' crops, he would lose a third of his bees to sprays. In 2009, the loss ranges all the way to 60 percent.
Honeybees have been in terrible straits.
A little history explains this tragedy.
For millennia, honeybees lived in symbiotic relationship with societies all over the world.
The Greeks loved them. In the eighth century BCE, the epic poet Hesiod considered them gifts of the gods to just farmers. And in the fourth century of our era, the Greek mathematician Pappos admired their hexagonal cells, crediting them with "geometrical forethought." [It's really just the accidental effect of putting round wet bubbles of wax all the same size next to each other, it naturally forms the hexagon shape--the bee's don't design the angles--nature does by itself, order for free.]
However, industrialized agriculture is not friendly to honeybees.
In 1974, the US Environmental Protection Agency licensed the nerve gas parathion trapped into nylon bubbles the size of pollen particles.
What makes this microencapsulated formulation more dangerous to bees than the technical material is the very technology of the "time release" microcapsule.
This acutely toxic insecticide, born of chemical warfare, would be on the surface of the flower for several days.
The foraging bee, if alive after its visit to the beautiful white flowers of almonds, for example, laden with invisible spheres of asphyxiating gas, would be bringing back to its home pollen and nectar mixed with parathion.
It is possible that the nectar, which the bee makes into honey, and the pollen, might end up in some food store to be bought and eaten by human beings. [Think about the 'authorization institutions' that allowed this risk--that is Beck's institutional mismatch, so insane it is funny more than tragic because it is so obviously wrong to do--though it is done everywhere.]
Beekeepers are well aware of what is happening to their bees, including the potential that their honey may not be fit for humans.
Moreover, many beekeepers do not throw away the honey, pollen and wax of colonies destroyed by encapsulated parathion or other poisons.
They melt the wax for new combs: And they sell both honey and pollen to the public.
Government "regulators" know about this danger. [Organized irresponsibility]
An academic expert, Carl Johansen, professor of entomology at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, called the microencapsulated methyl parathion "the most destructive bee poisoning insecticide ever developed."
In 1976, the US Department of Agriculture published a report by one of its former employees, S. E. McGregor, a honeybee expert who documented that about a third of what we eat benefits from honeybee pollination. This includes vegetables, oilseeds and domesticated animals eating bee-pollinated hay.
In 2007, the value of food dependent on honeybees was $15 billion in the United States.
McGregor also pointed out that insect-pollinated legumes collect nitrogen from the air, storing it in their roots and enriching the soil. In addition, insect pollination makes the crops more wholesome and abundant.
He advised the farmer he should never forget that "no cultural practice will cause fruit or seed to set if its pollination is neglected."
In addition, McGregor blamed the chemical industry for seducing the farmers to its potent toxins. He said:
"[P]esticides are like dope drugs. The more they are used the more powerful the next one must be to give satisfaction" and therein develops the spiraling effect, the pesticide treadmill. The chemical salesman, in pressuring the grower to use his product, practically assumes the role of the "dope pusher." Once the victim, the grower, is "hooked," he becomes a steady and an ever-increasing user.
No government agency listened to McGregor. [Organized irresponsibility, ecology outside of modernization instead of 'reflexive modernization' that takes ecology into mind in its technological and material expansions, which is what Beck wants in the latter.]
The result of America's pesticide treadmill is that now, in 2009, honeybees and other pollinators are moving towards extinction.
In October 2006, the US National Research Council warned of the" "demonstrably downward" trends in the populations of pollinators. For the first time since 1922, American farmers are renting imported bees for their crops.
They are even buying bees from Australia.
Honeybees, the National Academies report said, pollinate more than 90 crops in America, but have declined by 30 percent in the last 20 years alone.
The scientists who wrote the report expressed alarm at the precipitous decline of the pollinators.
Unfortunately, this made no difference to EPA, which failed to ban the microencapsulated parathion that is so deadly to honeybees. [Organized irresponsibility, solid serious laws and processes that entirely mean nothing, oversight without any implementation of the really big risks because they touch on the political economy "too much" and challenge scaled expansion so much.]
Bee experts know that insecticides cause brain damage to the bees, disorienting them, making it often impossible for them to find their way home.
This is a consequence of decades of agribusiness warfare against nature and, in time, honeybees. In addition, beekeepers truck billions of bees all over the country for pollination, depriving them of good food, stressing them enormously, and, very possibly, injuring their health.
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Evaggelos Vallianatos, former EPA analyst, is the author of "This Land Is Their Land" and "The Passion of the Greeks.
»
Comments
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I will be commenting on "
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 09:26 — Anonymous (not verified)
I will be commenting on " the beekeepers who sell the contaminated honey and wax". Monsanto, or lax regulation, "make" them do that? Of course. Farmers are forced to use more and more pesticides, and are largely prevented from farming organically because of the cost competition from the other farmers using Monsanto's stuff. Placing Monsanto and the farmers on the same level is ignorant to say the least. If an outfit is bigger, it should set the example for others to follow and not the opposite. At least this is how it worked before the empire started its decline.
Good thing "Change you can
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 08:12 — Mike S (not verified)
Good thing "Change you can believe in" Obama is sticking up for the environment and the humble, hard-working honey bee, er. oh yeah, he's not.
yes, they, the bees, have
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 07:25 — Anonymous (not verified)
yes, they, the bees, have hard, short, highly regulated lives under normal conditions. Adding the burden of a constant assault from Chevron, Monsanto, Dow, and the like is just too much. No wonder strains of really pissed off bees have evolved (e.g. "killer bees").
Monsanto has resorted to
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 05:55 — Anonymous (not verified)
Monsanto has resorted to using hit-men and depraved, backwards methods more suited to Medieval Dark Ages people. There is proof on paper enough to indict them like any other Federal Criminal. They better stop thinking they are some kind of "mafia." European and American Military Intelligence is all over their misdeeds like flies on sh*t.
Response to Byard: It is
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 05:53 — Adam (not verified)
Response to Byard: It is usually beyond the resources of small-scale beekeepers to determine whether their products have any contaminants. [social invisibility of risk]
We can try to lay all responsibility for pesticide use at the door of individual farmers, but that ignores the systemic pressures to raise production and compete with corporate producers. As with many problem with ecological consequences, individual self-regulation has always been advocated but has consistently proven not to work. The state must be involved.
Yes, but when are you folk
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 05:22 — Anonymous (not verified)
Yes, but when are you folk going to take the time to figure out what causes all these dangers to human life so you can put a stop to it? You're not going to be able to act to improve the situation as long as you are blaming greed&stupidity because, apart from the fact that they are not valid causes, those things are not curable!
Byard Pidgeon, I'm not sure
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 04:51 — jimbob (not verified)
Byard Pidgeon, I'm not sure why the drug pusher metaphor is so difficult for you to understand. It's an inescapable reality that pesticide and fertilizer use depletes soils of their nutrients. When soils lose their nutrients, farmers have to use more and more pesticides and chemicals just to maintain production. Sure, they can switch to organic, but that necessarily requires lower yields as farmers allow soils to regain their vitality. And lower yields means lower incomes, which farmers who depend on their crops for their livelihood often cannot afford. It's a vicious circle that's very difficult to break. Yes, individuals are capable of making their own decisions, but they don't control every aspect of their lives. Complete individual agency only exists in Ayn Rand novels and other fantasies. The problem is corrupt institutions like the federal agencies and multinational corporations, not just bad decisions made by individuals.
It's probably 30 years too
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 04:48 — Fempatriot (not verified)
It's probably 30 years too late to do anything to save ourselves, but yes, we can put the blame on the agribusiness giants, especially Monsanto (which appears to be run by greedy, totalitarian maniacs), our bought and paid for Congress, and the apathy and ignorance and plain stupidity of the average American who doesn't seem to realize that our days on this once beautiful planet are numbered. But I have reached an age where if the human race is exterminating itself because of the above, I just plain don't care any more. Obviously we have squandered our birthright. Maybe we don't deserve to continue as a species.
[Beck's complete withdrawal issue, waiting for apocalypse reaction instead of 'ecological modernization' reaction]
No bees in Dallas, at least
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 02:03 — frank1569 (not verified)
No bees in Dallas, at least in my part of Dallas, going on three years now. Used to be, us bee-a-phobics would be dodging em everywhere we went. Now - nada. Every time I point it out, I'm called paranoid and nutty... until a few days later, when I get the "hey, you're right - no bees!" phone call...
does anybody know the effect
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 01:16 — Anonymous (not verified)
does anybody know the effect of Bt on honey bees? please write a comment if you have something to share. thanks!
No one commenting on the
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 00:39 — Byard Pidgeon (not verified)
No one commenting on the beekeepers who sell the contaminated honey and wax? Does Monsanto, or lax regulation, "make" them do that? Are farmers forced to use more and more pesticides, prevented from farming organically? No...these are matters of choice, not regulation or lack of regulation. Individuals are making bad choices.
The media bears a huge
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 23:36 — Chris in PA (not verified)
The media bears a huge responsibility as well. When they report the story of the decline of honeybees it's always presented as a 'mystery'. [same with the 'mystery' of mad cow, sorry no blame, just catastrophe without blame--though there are groups and institutions at fault, says Beck, for allowing these socially created risks to be introduced]
The economic power of the huge chemical companies is such that they can suppress the connection between their products and this 'mystery'. Bees aren't the only ones in peril, of course, as radline9 said, cancer in humans is not only caused by the poisons chemicals these companies produce, they then charge exorbitant amounts for the poisons they choose to call "chemotherapy agents" which are nothing more than cell killers.
It has been known since I had breast cancer in 1993-4 that organochlorine chemicals are a causative agent, but you'll still see media stories about the role of 'lifestyle'--food, alcohol, smoking--in breast cancer.
[Rachel Carson talked about 'organized irresponsibility' as well--we'll deal with her soon.]
Yes, it's about food, but indirectly: food bathed in pesticides is carcinogenic. The chemical companies have also spread their disinformation about the 'cancer clusters', that they are due to statistical anomaly or 'better screening.' [relations of definition battles in the public mind over these 'socially invisible' though real risks] BULL--the Long Island cancer cluster is due to the area having been built on pesticided potato fields, the one in Marin to dioxon dumps, in Silicon Valley to buildup on former orchard and farmland. The bees are the canaries in the coal mine. Or maybe we should change the phrase to 'the bees failing to return to the hive.'
Monsanto bears a good deal
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 23:00 — Anonymous (not verified)
Monsanto bears a good deal of the responsibility... genetically modifying crops to be pesticide resistant and a slew of other changes. The bees aren't the only thing affected! The World According To Monsanto is a must-watch.
We can do a lousy job of
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 20:59 — BeForKids (not verified)
We can do a lousy job of raising our children, but we are really good at ruining a beautiful planet. [ambivalence and waiting for apocalypse]
We don't have to worry about
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 18:28 — radline9 (not verified)
We don't have to worry about the extermination of mankind because of terrorists. The human race will exterminate itself because of greed and stupidity long before that. The rise in the cancer rate should be warning enough.
---
http://www.truthout.org/041209F
My page on bees:
Silent Spring, Revisited: Bee Dieoff Shows Importance of Watershed Based Commodity Ecology Oversight
http://biostate.blogspot.com/2007/02/silent-spring-revisited-bee-dieoff.html
1. Mark Whitaker
ReplyDelete2. Polluting Treadmill or Green Treadmill: you decide--is creating lots of interest and equal hostility; huge subsidy to buy greener cars in UK
3. Seems a treadmill is in the eye of the beholder? You decide. I tend to think this as old fashioned encouragement during the economic downturn, though interesting that 'second contradictions of capital' could be integrated via ecological modernization into a 'green treadmill'? that's what ecological modernizationist argue.
-------------------
April 12, 2009
Darling will offer £2,000 reward to scrap old cars
David Smith, Economics Editor
ALISTAIR DARLING, the chancellor, is set to end months of speculation by announcing a “scrappage” scheme to encourage people to trade in old cars for new in his April 22 budget. [S. Korea is doing the exact same: 2.5 million won to buy a new car, now! quick!]
The policy has been urged on the government by the crisis-hit motor industry, which is facing an alarming collapse in output. It says that without a new sales incentive, the sector will face tens of thousands of job losses.
Details of the scheme are still being finalised in discussions between the Treasury and the business department, headed by Lord Mandelson.
It is expected to involve a £2,000 allowance for people trading in for scrap a car more than nine years old against the purchase of a new or nearly new vehicle.
Ministers and officials are said to have been impressed by the impact of such schemes in other countries. A similar scheme in Germany, involving a €2,500 (£2,250) scrappage allowance, has reversed its slide in sales. New car registrations in Germany last month were up by 40% on a year ago. In Britain, in contrast, they were down by more than 30%.
Related Links
* Darling hurtles towards scrapping cars
* Budget row over £2,000 payout to scrap a car
Whitehall sources dismissed reports that Darling and Mandelson were at loggerheads over the issue. “It is completely wrong to say Alistair and Peter have fallen out on this,” said one.
The sources said it was recognised in government that while help was on the way for the industry in the medium term, including loans from the European Investment Bank for the development of greener vehicles, help was needed in the short term to pull the industry out of its slump.
Officials have been negotiating with the car industry about sharing the cost of the scrappage scheme [subsides for capital] and about ensuring that any allowance does not take the place of existing discounts by motor manufacturers, which would defeat the object.
Industry sources said cash-strapped manufacturers were reluctant to share the cost of the scheme and warned that anything less than a £2,000 allowance would be ineffective in boosting sales.
But they insisted that firms would co-operate fully to ensure that it succeeds.
Britain’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has been pushing for the scheme for months and has criticised the government for dragging its feet in comparison with other countries.
Austria, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain, as well as Germany, had all introduced scrappage schemes with a significant impact on car sales.
China and Brazil had boosted car sales to record levels last month with tax incentives for buyers.
“A scrappage scheme will provide the incentive needed and the evidence is clear that schemes already implemented across Europe do work to increase demand,” said Paul Everitt, chief executive of the SMMT. “The UK is the only major European market not to implement a scheme.” The SMMT calculates that a one-year scheme would cost £160m.
Last week Gordon Brown signalled a £2,000 allowance against purchases of electric cars but critics pointed out that these were impractical for many road users at present and few were made in Britain.
Some environmentalists oppose a scrappage scheme, arguing that it is more environmentally friendly to run old cars until they cease to function because a significant part of their emissions occur during manufacture.
Friends of the Earth has backed the policy, saying it would persuade motorists to “swap gas-guzzlers for fuel-efficient models”. [though what about the manufacturing process, very costly? I'd like to see some numbers about CO2 and other toxins in steel, paint, plastics, electrical components manufacture versus consumer blame arguments.]
---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6078499.ece
I worked for a short time in the early 80's on an earthen dam that had been engineered to withstand 8 inches of rain over a 24 hour period. In the middle of the dam which ranged over 1000 m, was inserted a four foot wide bentonite barrier which was the design feature to stop the migration of radioactive waste from several millions of tonnes of tailing from a uranium mine that had been active from 1955 yo 1991. The problem with this construction was strictly geographical. The height of the dam was several metres above the Serpent River. The Serpent River is located north of Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. If, the above quoted 8 inches of rain over a 24 hour period should ever occur, the Serpent River would carry the tailing radioactive waste into the Great Lakes within a couple of hours.
ReplyDeleteClimate change including precipitation patterns was not even considered at the time this dam was engineered. It's design parameters were at the time only slightly better than the worst rainfall experienced in 50 years of weather history. This "earthen" dam is doomed to fail eventually. After all, rain falls on both sides of the dam and the decay rate of the waste is in the millions of years.
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
ReplyDeleteThe Military’s Pandora’s Box
By Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning
This article was prepared to provide a summary of the contents of a book written in 1995 which describes an entirely new class of weapons. The weapons and their effects are described in the following pages. The United States Navy and Air Force have joined with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to build a prototype for a ground based “Star Wars” weapon system located in the remote bush country of Alaska.
The individuals who are demanding answers about HAARP are scattered around the planet. As well as bush dwellers in Alaska, they include: a physician in Finland; a scientist in Holland; an anti-nuclear protester in Australia; independent physicists in the United States; a grandmother in Canada, and countless others.
Unlike the protests of the 1960s the objections to HAARP have been registered using the tools of the 1990s. From the Internet, fax machines, syndicated talk radio and a number of alternative print mediums the word is getting out and people are waking up to this new intrusion by an over zealous United States government.
The research team put together to gather the materials which eventually found their way into the book never held a formal meeting, never formed a formal organization. Each person acted like a node on a planetary info-spirit-net with one goal held by all — to keep this controversial new science in the public eye. The result of the team’s effort was a book which describes the science and the political ramifications of this technology.
That book, Angels Don’t Play this HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology, has 230 pages. This article will only give the highlights. Despite the amount of research (350 footnoted sources), at its heart it is a story about ordinary people who took on an extraordinary challenge in bringing their research forward.
HAARP Boils the Upper Atmosphere
HAARP will zap the upper atmosphere with a focused and steerable electromagnetic beam. It is an advanced model of an “ionospheric heater.” (The ionosphere is the electrically-charged sphere surrounding Earth’s upper atmosphere. It ranges between 40 to 60 miles above the surface of the Earth.)
Put simply, the apparatus for HAARP is a reversal of a radio telescope; antenna send out signals instead of receiving. HAARP is the test run for a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything — living and dead.
HAARP publicity gives the impression that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is mainly an academic project with the goal of changing the ionosphere to improve communications for our own good. However, other U.S. military documents put it more clearly — HAARP aims to learn how to “exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes.” Communicating with submarines is only one of those purposes.
Press releases and other information from the military on HAARP continually downplay what it could do. Publicity documents insist that the HAARP project is no different than other ionospheric heaters operating safely throughout the world in places such as Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Tromso, Norway, and the former Soviet Union. However, a 1990 government document indicates that the radio-frequency (RF) power zap will drive the ionosphere to unnatural activities.
” … at the highest HF powers available in the West, the instabilities commonly studied are approaching their maximum RF energy dissipative capability, beyond which the plasma processes will ‘runaway’ until the next limiting factor is reached.”
If the military, in cooperation with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, can show that this new ground-based “Star Wars” technology is sound, they both win. The military has a relatively-inexpensive defense shield and the University can brag about the most dramatic geophysical manipulation since atmospheric explosions of nuclear bombs. After successful testing, they would have the military megaprojects of the future and huge markets for Alaska’s North Slope natural gas.
Looking at the other patents which built on the work of a Texas’ physicist named Bernard Eastlund, it becomes clearer how the military intends to use the HAARP transmitter. It also makes governmental denials less believable. The military knows how it intends to use this technology, and has made it clear in their documents. The military has deliberately misled the public, through sophisticated word games, deceit and outright disinformation.
The military says the HAARP system could:
Give the military a tool to replace the electromagnetic pulse effect of atmospheric thermonuclear devices (still considered a viable option by the military through at least 1986)
Replace the huge Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) submarine communication system operating in Michigan and Wisconsin with a new and more compact technology
Be used to replace the over-the-horizon radar system that was once planned for the current location of HAARP, with a more flexible and accurate system
Provide a way to wipe out communications over an extremely large area, while keeping the military’s own communications systems working
Provide a wide area earth-penetrating tomography which, if combined with the computing abilities of EMASS and Cray computers, would make it possible to verify many parts of nuclear nonproliferation and peace agreements
Be a tool for geophysical probing to find oil, gas and mineral deposits over a large area
Be used to detect incoming low-level planes and cruise missiles, making other technologies obsolete
The above abilities seem like a good idea to all who believe in sound national defense, and to those concerned about cost-cutting. However, the possible uses which the HAARP records do not explain, and which can only be found in Air Force, Army, Navy and other federal agency records, are alarming. Moreover, effects from the reckless use of these power levels in our natural shield — the ionosphere — could be cataclysmic according to some scientists.
Two Alaskans put it bluntly. A founder of the NO HAARP movement, Clare Zickuhr, says “The military is going to give the ionosphere a big kick and see what happens.”
The military failed to tell the public that they do not know what exactly will happen, but a Penn State science article brags about that uncertainty. Macho science? The HAARP project uses the largest energy levels yet played with by what Begich and Manning call “the big boys with their new toys.” HAARP is an experiment in the sky, and experiments are done to find out something not already known. Independent scientists told Begich and Manning that a HAARP-type “skybuster” with its unforeseen effects could be an act of global vandalism.
HAARP History
The patents described below were the package of ideas which were originally controlled by ARCO Power Technologies Incorporated (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Company, one of the biggest oil companies in the world. APTI was the contractor that built the HAARP facility. ARCO sold this subsidiary, the patents and the second phase construction contract to E-Systems in June 1994.
E-Systems is one of the biggest intelligence contractors in the world — doing work for the CIA, defense intelligence organizations and others. $1.8 billion of their annual sales are to these organizations, with $800 million for black projects — projects so secret that even the United States Congress isn’t told how the money is being spent.
E-Systems was bought out by Raytheon, which is one of the largest defense contractors in the world. In 1994 Raytheon was listed as number forty-two on the Fortune 500 list of companies. Raytheon has thousands of patents, some of which will be valuable in the HAARP project. The twelve patents below are the backbone of the HAARP project, and are now buried among the thousands of others held in the name of Raytheon. Bernard J. Eastlund’s U.S. Patent # 4,686,605, “Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere; and/or Magnetosphere,” was sealed for a year under a government Secrecy Order.
The Eastlund ionospheric heater was different; the radio frequency (RF) radiation was concentrated and focused to a point in the ionosphere. This difference throws an unprecedented amount of energy into the ionosphere. The Eastlund device would allow a concentration of one watt per cubic centimeter, compared to others only able to deliver about one millionth of one watt.
This huge difference could lift and change the ionosphere in the ways necessary to create futuristic effects described in the patent. According to the patent, the work of Nikola Tesla in the early 1900’s formed the basis of the research.
What would this technology be worth to ARCO, the owner of the patents? They could make enormous profits by beaming electrical power from a powerhouse in the gas fields to the consumer without wires.
For a time, HAARP researchers could not prove that this was one of the intended uses for HAARP. In April, 1995, however, Begich found other patents, connected with a “key personnel” list for APTI. Some of these new APTI patents were indeed a wireless system for sending electrical power. Eastlund’s patent said the technology can confuse or completely disrupt airplanes’ and missiles’ sophisticated guidance systems. Further, this ability to spray large areas of Earth with electromagnetic waves of varying frequencies, and to control changes in those waves, makes it possible to knock out communications on land or sea as well as in the air.
The patent said:
“Thus, this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earth’s atmosphere at strategic locations and to maintain the power injection level particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise and better controlled than heretofore accomplished by the prior art, particularly by detonation of nuclear devices of various yields at various altitudes… ”
“…it is possible not only to interfere with third party communications but to take advantage of one or more such beams to carry out a communications network even though the rest of the world’s communications are disrupted. Put another way, what is used to disrupt another’s communications can be employed by one knowledgeable of this invention as a communication network at the same time.”
“… large regions of the atmosphere could be lifted to an unexpectedly high altitude so that missiles encounter unexpected and unplanned drag forces with resultant destruction.”
“Weather modification is possible by, for example, altering upper atmosphere wind patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric particles which will act as a lens or focusing device.
… molecular modifications of the atmosphere can take place so that positive environmental effects can be achieved. Besides actually changing the molecular composition of an atmospheric region, a particular molecule or molecules can be chosen for increased presence. For example, ozone, nitrogen, etc., concentrations in the atmosphere could be artificially increased.”
Begich found eleven other APTI Patents. They told how to make “Nuclear-sized Explosions without Radiation,” Power-beaming systems, over-the-horizon radar, detection systems for missiles carrying nuclear warheads, electromagnetic pulses previously produced by thermonuclear weapons and other Star-Wars tricks. This cluster of patents underlay the HAARP weapon system.
Related research by Begich and Manning uncovered bizarre schemes. For example, Air Force documents revealed that a system had been developed for manipulating and disturbing human mental processes through pulsed radio-frequency radiation (the stuff of HAARP) over large geographical areas. The most telling material about this technology came from writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisory to U.S. President Carter) and J.F. MacDonald (science advisor to U.S. President Johnson and a professor of Geophysics at UCLA), as they wrote about use of power-beaming transmitters for geophysical and environmental warfare. The documents showed how these effects might be caused, and the negative effects on human heath and thinking.
The mental-disruption possibilities for HAARP are the most disturbing. More than 40 pages of the book, with dozens of footnotes, chronicle the work of Harvard professors, military planners and scientists as they plan and test this use of the electromagnetic technology. For example, one of the papers describing this use was from the International Red Cross in Geneva. It even gave the frequency ranges where these effects could occur — the same ranges which HAARP is capable of broadcasting.
The following statement was made more than twenty-five years ago in a book by Brzezinski which he wrote while a professor at Columbia University:
“Political strategists are tempted to exploit research on the brain and human behavior. Geophysicist Gordon J.F. MacDonald, a specialist in problems of warfare, says accurately-timed, artificially-excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth … in this way one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period”
” … no matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages, to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades.”
In 1966, MacDonald was a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee and later a member of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality. He published papers on the use of environmental control technologies for military purposes. The most profound comment he made as a geophysicist was, “the key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy.” While yesterday’s geophysicists predicted today’s advances, are HAARP program managers delivering on the vision?
The geophysicists recognized that adding energy to the environmental soup could have large effects. However, humankind has already added substantial amounts of electromagnetic energy into our environment without understanding what might constitute critical mass. The book by Begich and Manning raises questions:
Have these additions been without effect, or is there a cumulative amount beyond which irreparable damage can be done?
Is HAARP another step in a journey from which we cannot turn back?
Are we about to embark on another energy experiment which unleashes another set of demons from Pandora’s box?
As early as 1970, Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted a “more controlled and directed society” would gradually appear, linked to technology. This society would be dominated by an elite group which impresses voters by allegedly superior scientific know-how. Angels Don’t Play This HAARP further quotes Brzezinski:
“Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control. Technical and scientific momentum would then feed on the situation it exploits,” Brzezinski predicted.
His forecasts proved accurate. Today, a number of new tools for the “elite” are emerging, and the temptation to use them increases steadily. The policies to permit the tools to be used are already in place. How could the United States be changed, bit by bit, into the predicted highly-controlled technosociety? Among the “steppingstones” Brzezinski expected were persisting social crises and use of the mass media to gain the public’s confidence.
In another document prepared by the government, the U.S. Air Force claims: “The potential applications of artificial electromagnetic fields are wide-ranging and can be used in many military or quasi-military situations… Some of these potential uses include dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare. In all of these cases the EM (electromagnetic) systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. In addition, the ability of individuals to function could be degraded to such a point that they would be combat ineffective. Another advantage of electromagnetic systems is that they can provide coverage over large areas with a single system. They are silent and countermeasures to them may be difficult to develop… One last area where electromagnetic radiation may prove of some value is in enhancing abilities of individuals for anomalous phenomena.”
Do these comments point to uses already somewhat developed? The author of the government report refers to an earlier Air Force document about the uses of radio frequency radiation in combat situations. (Here Begich and Manning note that HAARP is the most versatile and the largest radio-frequency-radiation transmitter in the world.)
The United States Congressional record deals with the use of HAARP for penetrating the earth with signals bounced off of the ionosphere. These signals are used to look inside the planet to a depth of many kilometers in order to locate underground munitions, minerals and tunnels. The U.S. Senate set aside $15 million dollars in 1996 to develop this ability alone — earth-penetrating-tomography. The problem is that the frequency needed for earth-penetrating radiation is within the frequency range most cited for disruption of human mental functions. It may also have profound effects on migration patterns of fish and wild animals which rely on an undisturbed energy field to find their routes.
As if electromagnetic pulses in the sky and mental disruption were not enough, T. Eastlund bragged that the super-powerful ionospheric heater could control weather.
Begich and Manning brought to light government documents indicating that the military has weather-control technology. When HAARP is eventually built to its full power level, it could create weather effects over entire hemispheres. If one government experiments with the world’s weather patterns, what is done in one place will impact everyone else on the planet. Angels Don’t Play This HAARP explains a principle behind some of Nikola Tesla’s inventions — resonance — which affect planetary systems.
Bubble of Electric Particles
Angels Don’t Play This HAARP includes interviews with independent scientists such as Elizabeth Rauscher. She has a Ph.D., a long and impressive career in high-energy physics, and has been published in prestigious science journals and books. Rauscher commented on HAARP. “You’re pumping tremendous energy into an extremely delicate molecular configuration that comprises these multi-layers we call the ionosphere.”
“The ionosphere is prone to catalytic reactions,” she explained, “if a small part is changed, a major change in the ionosphere can happen.”
In describing the ionosphere as a delicately balanced system, Dr. Rauscher shared her mental picture of it — a soap-bubble-like sphere surrounding Earth’s atmosphere, with movements swirling over the surface of the bubble. If a big enough hole is punched through it, she predicts, it could pop.
Slicing the Ionosphere
Physicist Daniel Winter, Ph.D., of Waynesville, North Carolina, says, “HAARP high-frequency emissions can couple with longwave (extremely-low-frequency, or ELF) pulses the Earth grid uses to distribute information as vibrations to synchronize dances of life in the biosphere.” Dan terms this geomagnetic action ‘Earth’s information bloodstream,’ and says it is likely that coupling of HAARP HF (high-frequency) with natural ELF can cause unplanned, unsuspected side effects.
David Yarrow of Albany, New York, is a researcher with a background in electronics. He described possible interactions of HAARP radiation with the ionosphere and Earth’s magnetic grid: “HAARP will not burn holes in the ionosphere. That is a dangerous understatement of what HAARP’s giant gigawatt beam will do. Earth is spinning relative to thin electric shells of the multilayer membrane of ion-o-speres that absorb and shield Earth’s surface from intense solar radiation, including charged particle storms in solar winds erupting from the sun. Earth’s axial spin means that HAARP — in a burst lasting more than a few minutes — will slice through the ionosphere like a microwave knife. This produces not a hole but a long tear — an incision.”
Crudely Plucking the Strings
Second concept: As Earth rotates, HAARP will slice across the geomagnetic flux, a donut-shaped spool of magnetic strings — like longitude meridians on maps.
HAARP may not ‘cut’ these strings in Gaia’s magnetic mantle, but will pulse each thread with harsh, out-of-harmony high frequencies. These noisy impulses will vibrate geomagnetic flux lines, sending vibrations all through the geomagnetic web. ”
“The image comes to mind of a spider on its web. An insect lands, and the web’s vibrations alert the spider to possible prey. HAARP will be a man-made microwave finger poking at the web, sending out confusing signals, if not tearing holes in the threads. ”
“Effects of this interference with symphonies of Gaia’s geomagnetic harp are unknown, and I suspect barely thought of. Even if thought of, the intent (of HAARP) is to learn to exploit any effects, not to play in tune to global symphonies. ”
Among other researchers quoted is Paul Schaefer of Kansas City. His degree is in electrical engineering and he spent four years building nuclear weapons. “But most of the theories that we have been taught by scientists to believe in seem to be falling apart,” he says. He talks about imbalances already caused by the industrial and atomic age, especially by radiation of large numbers of tiny, high-velocity particles “like very small spinning tops” into our environment. The unnatural level of motion of highly-energetic particles in the atmosphere and in radiation belts surrounding Earth is the villain in the weather disruptions, according to this model, which describes an Earth discharging its buildup of heat, relieving stress and regaining a balanced condition through earthquakes and volcanic action.
Feverish Earth
“One might compare the abnormal energetic state of the Earth and its atmosphere to a car battery which has become overcharged with the normal flow of energy jammed up, resulting in hot spots, electrical arcing, physical cracks and general turbulence as the pent-up energy tries to find some place to go.”
In a second analogy, Schaefer says “Unless we desire the death of our planet, we must end the production of unstable particles which are generating the earth’s fever. A first priority to prevent this disaster would be to shut down all nuclear power plants and end the testing of atomic weapons, electronic warfare and ‘Star Wars’.” Meanwhile, the military builds its biggest ionospheric heater yet, to deliberately create more instabilities in a huge plasma layer — the ionosphere — and to rev up the energy level of charged particles.
Electronic Rain From The Sky
They have published papers about electron precipitation from the magnetosphere (the outer belts of charged particles which stream toward Earth’s magnetic poles) caused by man-made very low frequency electromagnetic waves. “These precipitated particles can produce secondary ionization, emit X-rays, and cause significant perturbation in the lower ionosphere.”
Two Stanford University radio scientists offer evidence of what technology can do to affect the sky by making waves on earth; they showed that very low frequency radio waves can vibrate the magnetosphere and cause high-energy particles to cascade into Earth’s atmosphere. By turning the signal on or off, they could stop the flow of energetic particles.
Weather Control
Avalanches of energy dislodged by such radio waves could hit us hard. Their work suggests that technicians could control global weather by sending relatively small ’signals’ into the Van Allen belts (radiation belts around Earth). Thus Tesla’s resonance effects can control enormous energies by tiny triggering signals.
The Begich/ Manning book asks whether that knowledge will be used by war-oriented or biosphere-oriented scientists.
The military has had about twenty years to work on weather warfare methods, which it euphemistically calls weather modification. For example, rainmaking technology was taken for a few test rides in Vietnam. The U.S. Department of Defense sampled lightning and hurricane manipulation studies in Project Skyfire and Project Stormfury. And they looked at some complicated technologies that would give big effects. Angels Don’t Play This HAARP cites an expert who says the military studied both lasers and chemicals which they figured could damage the ozone layer over an enemy. Looking at ways to cause earthquakes, as well as to detect them, was part of the project named Prime Argus, decades ago. The money for that came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, now under the acronym ARPA.) In 1994 the Air Force revealed its Spacecast 2020 master plan which includes weather control. Scientists have experimented with weather control since the 1940’s, but Spacecast 2020 noted that “using environmental modification techniques to destroy, damage or injure another state are prohibited.” Having said that, the Air Force claimed that advances in technology “compels a reexamination of this sensitive and potentially risky topic.”
40 Years of Zapping the Sky?
As far back as 1958, the chief White House advisor on weather modification, Captain Howard T. Orville, said the U.S. defense department was studying “ways to manipulate the charges of the earth and sky and so affect the weather” by using an electronic beam to ionize or de-ionize the atmosphere over a given area.
In 1966, Professor Gordon J. F. MacDonald was associate director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, was a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, and later a member of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality.
He published papers on the use of environmental-control technologies for military purposes. MacDonald made a revealing comment: “The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy. ” World-recognized scientist MacDonald had a number of ideas for using the environment as a weapon system and he contributed to what was, at the time, the dream of a futurist. When he wrote his chapter, “How To Wreck The Environment,” for the book Unless Peace Comes, he was not kidding around. In it he describes the use of weather manipulation, climate modification, polar ice cap melting or destabilization, ozone depletion techniques, earthquake engineering, ocean wave control and brain wave manipulation using the planet’s energy fields.
He also said that these types of weapons would be developed and, when used, would be virtually undetectable by their victims. Is HAARP that weapon? The military’s intention to do environmental engineering is well documented, U.S. Congress’ subcommittee hearings on Oceans and International Environment looked into military weather and climate modification conducted in the early 1970’s. “What emerged was an awesome picture of far-ranging research and experimentation by the Department of Defense into ways environmental tampering could be used as a weapon,” said another author cited in Angles Don’t Play This HAARP.
The revealed secrets surprised legislators. Would an inquiry into the state of the art of electromagnetic manipulation surprise lawmakers today? They may find out that technologies developed out of the HAARP experiments in Alaska could deliver on Gordon MacDonald’s vision because leading-edge scientists are describing global weather as not only air pressure and thermal systems, but also as an electrical system.
Small Input - Big Effect
HAARP zaps the ionosphere where it is relatively unstable. A point to remember is that the ionosphere is an active electrical shield protecting the planet from the constant bombardment of high-energy particles from space. This conducting plasma, along with Earth’s magnetic field, traps the electrical plasma of space and holds it back from going directly to the earth’s surface, says Charles Yost of Dynamic Systems, Leicester, North Carolina. “If the ionosphere is greatly disturbed, the atmosphere below is subsequently disturbed.”
Another scientist interviewed said there is a super-powerful electrical connection between the ionosphere and the part of the atmosphere where our weather comes onstage, the lower atmosphere.
One man-made electrical effect — power line harmonic resonance — causes fallout of charged particles from the Van Allen (radiation) belts, and the falling ions cause ice crystals (which precipitate rain clouds). What about HAARP? Energy blasted upward from an ionospheric heater is not much compared to the total in the ionosphere, but HAARP documents admit that thousandfold-greater amounts of energy can be released in the ionosphere than injected. As with MacDonald’s “key to geophysical warfare,” “nonlinear” effects (described in the literature about the ionospheric heater) mean small input and large output. Astrophysicist Adam Trombly told Manning that an acupuncture model is one way to look at the possible effect of multi-gigawatt pulsing of the ionosphere. If HAARP hits certain points, those parts of the ionosphere could react in surprising ways.
Smaller ionospheric heaters such as the one at Arecibo are underneath relatively placid regions of the ionosphere, compared to the dynamic movements nearer Earth’s magnetic poles. That adds another uncertainty to HAARP — the unpredictable and lively upper atmosphere near the North Pole.
HAARP experimenters do not impress commonsense Alaskans such as Barbara Zickuhr, who says “They’re like boys playing with a sharp stick, finding a sleeping bear and poking it in the butt to see what’s going to happen.”
Could They Short-Circuit Earth?
Earth as a spherical electrical system is a fairly well-accepted model. However, those experimenters who want to make unnatural power connections between parts of this system might not be thinking of possible consequences. Electrical motors and generators can be caused to wobble when their circuits are affected. Could human activities cause a significant change in a planet’s electrical circuit or electrical field? A paper in the respected journal Science deals with manmade ionization from radioactive material, but perhaps it could also be studied with HAARP-type skybusters in mind:
“For example, while changes in the earth’s electric field resulting from a solar flare modulating conductivity may have only a barely detectable effect on meteorology, the situation may be different in regard to electric field changes caused by manmade ionization… ” Meteorology, of course, is the study of the atmosphere and weather. ionization is what happens when a higher level of power is zapped into atoms and knocks electrons off the atoms. The resulting charged particles are the stuff of HAARP. “One look at the weather should tell us that we are on the wrong path,” says Paul Schaefer, commenting on HAARP-type technologies.
Angels Don’t Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology is about the military’s plan to manipulate that which belongs to the world — the ionosphere. The arrogance of the United States government in this is not without precedent.
Atmospheric nuclear tests had similar goals. More recently, China and France put their people’s money to destructive use in underground nuclear tests. It was recently reported that the US government spent $3 trillion dollars on its nuclear program since its beginnings in the 1940’s. What new breakthroughs in life science could have been made with all the money spent on death?
Begich, Manning, Roderick and others believe that democracies need to be founded on openness, rather than the secrecy which surrounds so much military science. Knowledge used in developing revolutionary weapons could be used for healing and helping mankind. Because they are used in new weapons, discoveries are classified and suppressed. When they do appear in the work of other independent scientists, the new ideas are often frustrated or ridiculed, while military research laboratories continue to build their new machines for the killing fields.
However, the book by Manning and Begich gives hope that the military industrial academic bureaucratic Goliath can be affected by the combined power of determined individuals and the alternative press. Becoming informed is the first step to empowerment.
Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away
ReplyDeleteby Greg Roberts
Global Research, April 19, 2009
The Australian - 2009-04-18
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ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.
Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.
However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.
East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".
Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.
"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.
The melting of sea ice - fast ice and pack ice - does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.
Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise.
Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.
Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.
"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."
Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.
A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.
Global Research Articles by Greg Roberts
Coal Ash Spills Too Dangerous to Reveal to Public, Says Department of HomeLand Security
ReplyDelete2009 06 13
By Ryan Grim | HuffingtonPost.com
Just how bad has the coal ash situation gotten in the United States?
So bad that the Department of Homeland Security has told Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that her committee can't publicly disclose the location of coal ash dumps across the country.
The pollution is so toxic, so dangerous, that an enemy of the United States -- or a storm or some other disrupting event -- could easily cause them to spill out and lay waste to any area nearby.
There are 44 sites deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency to be high hazard, but Boxer said she isn't allowed to talk about them other than to senators in the states affected. "There is a huge muzzle on me and my staff," she said.
"Homeland Security and the Army Corps [of Engineers] have decided in the interests of national security they can't make these sites known," she said.
There are several hundred coal ash piles across the nation, she said, all of them unregulated.
"If these coal ash piles were to fail they'd pose a threat to the people nearby," she said. While keeping it from the public, DHS is alerting first responders as to the location of the piles.
"I believe it is essential to let people know," said Boxer, arguing that if people knew what was in their backyard they'd press public officials to clean it up and protect the area. "I think secrecy might lead to inaction...I am pressing on this."
Boxer is sending a letter, she told reporters Friday, to DHS and the Army Corps, pressing for public release of the information and asking for a more thorough explanation and a comparison of this policy of secrecy to policies around Superfund-listed sites and nuclear sites.
"We don't need legislation if they do their job," she said.
A recent coal ash spill in Tennessee devastated the surrounding area, was 100 times worse than the Exxon-Valdez spill, said Boxer, and will cost a billion dollars to clean up.
That one's not secret.