Environment – Page 330 – Infinite Unknown

GMO Sugar Beets – Monsanto Wins Again

August 18, 2010 by Infinite

Last Friday a federal judge imposed a nationwide ban on GMO sugar beets and it was overturned the next business day. Sugar beets comprise 50% of the sugar used in US food, and 95% of the sugar beets grown in the US are GMO. It is the jurisdiction of the US Department of Agriculture to determine whether plants are environmentally safe; this case is about whether the plants can cross pollinate (by wind, insects, etc) and contaminate other plants. This could have cost Monsanto billions of dollars.

Less than 2 weeks ago, wild growing canola in North Dakota was discovered to be 86% GMO. Because GMO crops are crossed with herbicide resistant plants (usually weeds), they grow like weeds and contaminate natural plants. Alarmingly, two of the canola samples collected by scientists showed that multiple genes from different species of GMO canola plants cross pollinated without cultivation, and probably for several generations. The implication of this is that GMO seeds can readily contaminate natural seeds and become out of control.

The GMO alfalfa ban lawsuit about contamination was the first GMO case ever heard by the Supreme Court, despite countless lawsuits from farmers whose fields have been polluted by GMOs. The sugar beet ban was overturned, based on a Supreme Court decision (7-1), which lifted the nationwide ban on GMO alfalfa in June.

The Supreme Court ruling stated that the nationwide GMO alfalfa ban was too broad, so it was lifted; an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to be performed by the USDA is still pending. GMO crops are environmentally dangerous because they can readily spread, as proven by the wild GMO plants found in North Dakota. The Supreme Court never addressed the issue of whether GMO plants contaminate natural plants through cross pollination.

Pakistan Forced To Take Loan From World Bank (Because Of Slow Pace Of Aid Forces)

August 18, 2010August 18, 2010 by Infinite

A displaced family wades through floodwaters in the Muzaffargarh district of Pakistan’s Punjab province. The lives of 20 million people have been disrupted by the worst floods to hit the country (REUTERS)

The world Bank has offered a $900m (£577m) loan to Pakistan to help with the country’s flood recovery programme.

As aid donations to the beleaguered nation fall short of what is needed, the body said that funds would be diverted from ongoing and planned projects in the country. “We are re-prioritising to make the funds immediately available,” said spokeswoman Mariam Altaf.

With widespread destruction of roads, bridges and other vital infrastructure, experts say that rebuilding could take many years and cost billions to complete. There are concerns that millions of people will need food aid, emergency shelter and medicine for weeks, if not months, to come. While the lives of an estimated 20 million people have been disrupted by the floods, agencies say that food and clean water have only so far been provided to 500,000. Anywhere between 3.5 million to 6 million children are said to be at risk from water-borne diseases.

Collapsing Marses Dwarf BP Oil Blowout as Ecological Disaster: ‘An International Economic And Ecological Calamity Unequaled In History’

August 18, 2010August 18, 2010 by Infinite

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) Claude Luke throttles down his 21- foot aluminum work boat. Off to the left, the snout of an alligator disappears near the mouth of a watery gash in the Louisiana marshland.

The 51-year-old Cajun crab fishermen is touring the epicenter of an unfolding environmental disaster that dwarfs the BP Plc spill and predates it by decades, according to state scientists and environmentalists. If unchecked, the destruction threatens to undermine the world’s seventh largest estuary and one of the most important U.S. energy corridors.

His boat idles near a canal dredged more than two decades ago for a petroleum pipeline. Back then it was about 15 feet (4 1/2 meters) wide. Now it sprawls 100 feet wide, opening this once-protected upland marsh to toxic salt water. Not far away, Luke nods toward a water tower visible across about 2 miles (3 kilometers) of almost open water.

“You used to be able to walk there from here,” says Luke, who moonlights as a warden on the private Harry Bourg Corp. preserve deep in Louisiana’s delta. “Before the oil companies came, this was good, solid marsh.”

More than half the 17,000 acres (6,600 hectares) of marshland purchased about 80 years ago by Bourg, a barely literate muskrat trapper, have been lost to erosion and subsidence, according to engineering surveys. The inheritance of Bourg’s descendants is vanishing under a profusion of these runaway canals. They were dug to lay pipelines or float in equipment for the drilling of 90 oil and gas wells that made Bourg one of the wealthiest men in South Louisiana before he died in 1963.

Coastal Crisis

Long before BP’s blowout menaced the Gulf of Mexico, an oil industry-related coastal crisis of another kind began unfolding all over the Mississippi River coastal delta. Dredging for navigation, oil and gas drilling and pipeline construction has ripped apart the estuary’s fragile system of fresh and saltwater marshes.

Between 1901, when drilling began in Louisiana, and the 1980s, the oil and gas industry laid tens of thousands of miles of pipelines and dredged 9,300 miles of canals in an industrial invasion of a wetland that once covered 3.2 million acres. Since the 1930s, more than a third of it has vanished, an area the size of Delaware. Each year, 15,300 acres more disappear, according to Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast.

Seafood Industry

Not all this can be laid to oil and gas drilling; the industry rejects the notion that it is chiefly responsible. Whatever the case, the destruction of marshland reverberates far beyond Louisiana. The state’s waters and wetlands underpin a commercial seafood industry that generates about $2.4 billion a year in wages and sales and provides almost a quarter of the catch in the contiguous U.S., according to the Louisiana Seafood Marketing Board. They serve as wildlife breeding grounds, sheltering and feeding 5 million migratory birds a year, according to state data.

The wetlands also absorb and filter out pollutants and help slow storm surges. Marsh losses in the past 40 years alone could raise the height of a Category 3 storm surge by as much as 10 feet under certain conditions; marsh loss and the presence of a badly eroded navigation channel called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet may have magnified Hurricane Katrina’s surge in 2005 and helped turn the storm into a $150 billion catastrophe for the New Orleans region, according to computer modeling by Louisiana State University scientists.

‘Calamity Unequaled’

Coastal Louisiana accounts for 27 percent of U.S. energy production while an 83,000-mile infrastructure of pipelines and transfer stations transports 40 percent of its energy needs, counting petroleum from imports and offshore wells, according to data from the state’s Department of Natural Resources and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association.

The collapse of Louisiana’s coastal marshes is “an international economic and ecological calamity unequaled in history,” jeopardizing more than “$100 billion in energy infrastructure,” said America’s Wetland Foundation, a Louisiana coastal preservation group partly underwritten by the oil industry, in a 2008 report. Much of the pipeline network is buried beneath marshes. Erosion has already exposed high- pressure pipelines to storms and marine traffic, causing oil spills and accidents.

EVACUATE (EU & RUSSIA) NOW!: This is Not a Drill – Russian Wildfires To Release At Least 241 Million Lethal Doses Of Radioactivity

August 17, 2010August 17, 2010 by Infinite

Update (on what the media is telling us):

– Thanks as Russia nuke peril fades (The Standard)

“There are no threats from the forest fires to potentially dangerous sites,” Shoigu said. “Potentially dangerous sites are reliably protected.”

The head of nuclear agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiryenko, said the fire menacing the Sarov center, 500 kilometers east of Moscow, had approached the perimeter of the installation before being brought under control. But the risk of a nuclear disaster had receded.

“We can say today for sure that there is no nuclear risk, no radioactive threat and that there is not even an ecological threat on Sarov territory,” he said.

The fires have been sparked by the worst heatwave in Russia’s history, which destroyed a quarter of its crops and blanketed Moscow in a toxic smog.

There were also fears the fires could stir up particles on land contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but officials said radiation levels were normal throughout the country.

Public enemy number one, the corporate media everywhere:

– GORDON DUFF: PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE, THE AMERICAN PRESS (Veterans Today):

Another fun story the news has covered up is the fires in Russia. We are being told that the area around Chernobyl is burning and that some radiation is blowing across Europe. What we aren’t told is that the secret city of Mayak, an area with nuclear pollution a thousand times higher than Chernobyl, is on fire also. Waste from decades of building nuclear weapons covers miles of open area, radiation now moving into the atmosphere.

Reliable figures place the output as 4 times higher than the Chernobyl disaster. The Mayak facility, as Nichols tells me, is 15 times larger than Chernobyl and is putting 241 million lethal doses of radiation in the air.

He says that if you are in Europe, its time to “get out of Dodge.”

Now what? Hmmmmhh.

EVACUATE NOW!: This is Not a Drill

REUTERS / Denis Sinyakov – Forest fires hit areas remaining radioactive since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

“As of 8/15/2010 all personnel in Russia and the European Union are advised to evacuate immediately.”

(San Francisco) – Russia is burning down this summer. The smoke is engulfing Moscow and the European Union. Embassies are emptying.

What’s the deal?

Thousands of forest fires are burning all over Russia. More importantly, the nuclear weapons factories and reactors around Mayak and the former Soviet Union’s Uranium Project are going up in smoke. The smoke is toxic and radioactive in every possible sense of the words.

Russian forest fires are burning down old H-Bomb factory areas and the Chernobyl poisoned woodlands. This holds the virtual certainty of at least 241,000,000 Lethal Doses of radioactivity becoming air borne during a fire. Due to peculiar nuclear forces the tiny ceramicized radioactive particles stay in the air for months
or even years till they are “rained out” by some form of precipitation.

Snowflake edges are particularly good scavengers of radioactive particles.

Two US Air Force C130s just flew into Moscow. Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, or one of the seven other nuclear weapons labs in the US, are more than likely involved. Ask yourself this. What on earth could have scared the Russian nuke forces enough to call in their old hated Cold War foe – the US Air Force – for help?

There is a simple way to let the people of the world know what is going on with airborne Chernobyl and Mayak data. We paid for all the data, anyway, whether Russian, American or European Union Data.

Free the Data. Release it to the InterNet all over the world and let people decide for themselves which country is safe enough for their families to live in.

If you are planning a trip to Europe or Russia – don’t go. If you are already there – leave immediately. If you have family or friends there – get them out if you can. This is not a drill. It is the real deal.

Another way to look at the Mayak national sacrifice zone in Russia is that the old Soviet Union manufactured 30,000 global thermonuclear weapons. There were numerous “accidents” at Mayak that weren’t supposed to happen and “officially” never did happen. The government lied, of course.

Thousands of forest fires are burning in Russia around old H-Bomb factories.

The 1,000 sq km around the Mayak bomb factory is one of the most contaminated areas on Earth because the Mayak Uranium Project manufactured the most poisonous substances on Earth for the most lethal weapons on Earth.

Manufacturing thermonuclear weapons is a really nasty business. As far as Weapons of Mass Destruction goes, there are the real McCoy.

As of 8/15/2010 all personnel in Russia and the European Union are advised to evacuate immediately. I repeat. This is not a drill. If you can’t leave, get your kids out. It may be too late already.

Pakistan Floods: Cholera Spreads, Water Levels Continue To Rise, 20 Million Made Homeless In Worst Natural Disaster In Pakistan’s History

August 16, 2010 by Infinite

More than 1,600 people are confirmed to have died with millions made homeless as water levels continue to rise

A Pakistani mother carries her children through floodwater in Muzaffargarh, Pakistan. (AP)

Two weeks into the worst natural disaster in its history, Pakistan is braced for further flooding as waters in the upper reaches of the swollen Indus river reach critical levels.

With more than 1,600 people confirmed dead and as many as 20 million made homeless, the country is reeling from the scale of the catastrophe wrought by torrential monsoon rains. The prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, said Pakistan now faced challenges similar to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent when as many as 500,000 people were killed.

He called on Pakistanis to rise to the occasion, amid growing fears of social unrest or even a military takeover given the government’s shambolic response to the floods. “The nation faced the situation successfully at that time of the partition and, God willing, we will emerge successful in this test,” he said.

Germany: ‘Radioactive boars’ on loose

August 16, 2010August 16, 2010 by Infinite

What else have we not been told about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster?

Nine of the 56 boars analysed in Bavaria last year showed contamination above the allowed level

BERLIN — Radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still poisoning Germany’s boars nearly 25 years on, with authorities fighting to keep toxic meat off the market as the wild boar population rockets.

The boars feed off mushrooms, truffles and wild berries which still contain high levels of caesium-137, carried in the radioactive cloud that spread across Europe following the 1986 accident at the Ukrainian nuclear plant.

“In some regions, especially in the south, the radioactivity found in boars is 10 times higher than normal,” Florian Emrich, spokesman for the Federal Agency for the Protection Against Radioactivity, said on Saturday.

A sharp increase in wild boar numbers has meant more boar meat — prized as a delicacy in Germany on a par with venison — is ending up on diners’ plates, raising concerns for human health.

“No one has fallen seriously ill after eating boar meat,” said Emrich, but all boar hunters in high-risk areas must have their game tested for radioactive contamination before it can go on sale on market stalls.

Bolivia: Over 1 Million of Dead Fish and Thousands of Alligators, Turtles, Dolphins and Other River Wildlife are Floating Dead in Rivers

August 14, 2010 by Infinite

I have NOT seen any proof that this could have been caused by Corexit.

Corexit is certainly lethal stuff. Make no mistake about that:

– Scientists: Evidence Of Gulf Oil And Dispersant Mix Making Its Way Into The Foodchain

– The Growing Health Crisis in the Gulf of Mexico:

Corexit also contain arsenic, cadmium, chromium, mercury, cyanide, and other heavy metals. Dispersing oil with it increases toxicity 11-fold ….

– EPA Whistleblower On Gulf Health Risk Cover-Up: ‘People Who Work Near Corexit Are Hemorrhaging Internally.’:

People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do.EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic-it’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.

COREXIT KILLS MILLIONS OF FISH AND ALLIGATORS IN BOLIVIA 8-7-2010

What the Chinese really think of ‘Man-Made Global Warming’

August 12, 2010 by Infinite

Low-income coal miners rest before starting their shift in a privately run coal mine close to You Fang Liang, Ningxia Province, north eastern China (EPA)

One of the great lies told us by our political leaders in order to persuade us to accept their swingeing and pointless green taxes and their economically suicidal, environmentally vandalistic wind-farm building programmes is that if we don’t do it China will. Apparently, just waiting to be grabbed out there are these glittering, golden prizes marked “Green jobs” and “Green technologies” – and if only we can get there before those scary, mysterious Chinese do, well, maybe the West will enjoy just a few more years of economic hegemony before the BRICs nations thwack us into the long grass.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Chinese do not remotely believe in the myth of Man-Made Global Warming nor in the efficacy of “alternative energy”. Why should they? It’s not as if there is any evidence for it. The only reason the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has penetrated so deeply into Western culture is… No. I’m going to save that stuff for my fairly imminent (Nov?) book on the subject which I hope you’re all going to buy.

What do the Chinese think about CAGW? Well, until now it was largely a question of educated guesswork, based on inferences like the fact that it was the Chinese who derailed the Copenhagen negotiations. But thanks to a new book called Low Carbon Plot by Gou Hongyang we know exactly what the official view is.

Ozboy – one of the finest commenters in this parish as well as proprietor of the Liberty Gibbet website – sets the scene nicely:

The argument [that China leads the world in renewable energy technology investment] rings a little hollow when you consider Beijing plans to build coal-fired power stations at the equivalent rate of one Australia, per year, for the next twenty-five years. The reputed Chinese fascination with renewable energy looks at best, a very long-term fallback position; at worst, a façade.

That’s what makes what you’re about to read even more startling. It’s a book called Low Carbon Plot, by Gou Hongyang and, as it’s freely available in China’s government-controlled bookstores, carries Beijing’s nihil obstat. No English translation is currently available, but our own China correspondent, Locusts, has translated the introduction from the original Mandarin, and (not entirely without risk to himself) has asked me to make it publicly available on this forum. At four thousand words, it’s a little long to insert onto a blog page, but you can navigate to it from the Rare Scribblings menu option at the top, or just click here.

It’s not so much an eye-opener as it is a bombshell. If true, it shows the Chinese government as rejecting CAGW in its entirety, believing it a conspiracy between Western governments and business to protect their own way of life, at the expense of the entire developing world-in other words, 80% of the world’s population.

Ozboy does not exaggerate.

Here, for example, is the author’s damning verdict on the Climate Change industry. Noting the irony of the spate of freezing cold weather that greeted the Copenhagen summit, the author wrily notes:

It was as if the freezing cold winter was having a laugh at all of these “Global Warming” theories. If the world was warming at an ever quickening pace, as all of these environmentalists say, then whence from such extreme cold? Whenever there are any doubts about Global Warming, it is almost as though environmentalists turn everything around and claim that this is too, a result of Global Warming. The Greenhouse Effect has turned in to a big basket, no matter what bad thing it is, just chuck it in.

He is even more damning about solar power in which, let it not be forgotten, China is supposed to be the world’s most shining example of just how well it can work.

Russians fear worst as wildfires reach Chernobyl fallout zone

August 12, 2010 by Infinite

Scepticism as officials try to play down threat of radioactive residue in smog

Firefighters tackle flames near the village of Kustaryovka in the Ryazan region of Russia yesterday as the wildfires continued to fan out across the country and head towards the contaminated Chernobyl nuclear plant

Radiation levels near Chernobyl could rise and pose long-term health dangers as deadly forest fires spread to land contaminated by the world’s largest nuclear-reactor disaster, Russian environmentalists said yesterday.

Activists said that the effect of the flames, fanned by the hottest weather in the region in 1,000 years, is bound to be serious. “This is radiation that will be dangerous for the local population living near the fires and firefighters managing the fires,” said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia’s energy unit. “What is not clear is what could be the danger of the combined radiation effect and toxic effect of the smog. No one knows how these effects multiply each other.”

If the weather situation changes, particularly with heavy winds, the toxic smoke could blow westward, he warned. However he added: “Moscow and the EU states are out of the risk zone.”

Radioactive residue from the explosion at Chernobyl, a massive nuclear power plant in Ukraine, continues to line the earth in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia. Experts have been warning for more than a week that the fires that have blanketed much of western Russia in thick smoke could stir nuclear debris from the accident, adding a potentially deadly pollutant to the carbon monoxide-thick smog.

But as officials admitted that the fires had reached areas affected by fallout from the 1986 nuclear explosion, they insisted that there was no reason to panic.

On Tuesday, Russia’s chief sanitary official, Gennady Onishchenko, criticised environmentalists for raising alarm over the nuclear issue. “There is no need to sow panic,” he said. “Everything is fine.” (Sure!)

China: Landslide Death Toll Climbs To 1,117

August 11, 2010 by Infinite

More pistures here: Death toll climbs to 1,117 in China mudslides (CNN)

Zhouqu landslide in figures

1,117 people confirmed dead and more than 627 missing
45,000 people in Zhouqu county evacuated
7,000 soldiers, firefighters and medical staff deployed
300 buildings buried under mud
66% of county without power

The number of people confirmed to have died after massive landslides in north-western China has risen to 1,117, with 627 others missing, officials say.

Hopes of finding survivors are fading and rescuers are turning their efforts to recovering bodies and preventing outbreaks of disease.

Large areas in Zhouqu county, Gansu province, were enveloped by landslides triggered by rain on Saturday night.

Rain is forecast for later this week, prompting fears of further landslides.

Heavy rain was already said to be falling in Zhouqu on Wednesday and as much as 90mm (3.5in) of rain was forecast for Friday, the National Meteorological Centre reported.

It said the chance of more landslides was “relatively large”.

Moscow’s Heat Wave And Smog Double Daily Death Rate To An Average Of 700 People A Day

August 9, 2010 by Infinite

Tourists wear protective face masks as they walk along the Red square in thick smog, with Saint Basil’s Cathedral partially visible in the back, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Aug. 6, 2010. The city of Moscow was shrouded Friday by a dense smog that grounded flights at international airports and seeped into homes and offices, as wildfires that have killed 50 people nationwide continued to burn.

Russia’s summer of heat, drought and fire is starting to take a human toll in Moscow, Europe’s most populous city.

Deaths in Moscow have doubled to an average of 700 people a day as the city struggles with a deadly combination of record hot temperatures and poisonous smog from wildfires.

Andre Seltsovky, Moscow’s health chief, blamed weeks of heat and smog for the jump in mortality compared to the same time last year.

The average death rate in the city during normal times is between 360-380 people a day, he said. Today, we have around 700.

He added that the city’s morgues are filled with 1,300 bodies, close to their capacity. In addition, he said, ambulance trips are up by almost one third, to 10,000 a day. And city officials have ordered 3 million face masks for the population, estimated to be 11 million.

Matt Simmons Dies In An ‘Accidental Drowning’ At His Home

August 21, 2010August 9, 2010 by Infinite

Hmmmh, I do not know what to make of this. Was Matt Simmons, a CFR member, coming clean at the end of his days?

Was he killed because of this?:

– Matthew Simmons: ‘We’ve Now Killed The Gulf Of Mexico’:

“What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the hole…and 120,000 minimum of toxic poison has now covered the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. So what they’re talking about is the biggest environmental cover-up ever. And they knew that that well, that riser, would finally deplete. And then they could say it’s over. And unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico.”

– Matt Simmons: BP Cap Is A Fraud – ‘It’s The Biggest Cover-Up We have Ever Seen’

– Matt Simmons: ‘We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states.’

– Matt Simmons on Bloomberg: There Is A Much Larger Leak, Creating A Gigantic Plume; US Military Should Take Over And Use Nuclear Weapons to Seal The Blowout

Matthew Simmons & Ellen Simmons

(Bloomberg) — Matthew R. Simmons, an energy investment banker and a leading proponent of the “peak oil” theory that claims the Earth is running out of crude, died yesterday.

Simmons, 67, died in an accidental drowning at his home in Maine, local officials said.

Simmons started Houston-based Simmons & Co. in May 1974 with a focus on the oil-services industry, according to the company’s website. The firm expanded to offer research, institutional sales and investment banking in the energy industry. Simmons promoted the idea that world oil reserves are peaking, and he explored the implications in a 2005 book called “Twilight in the Desert.”

“In the history of the petroleum era, Matt Simmons will be remembered for calling attention to ‘peak oil,’” T. Boone Pickens, chairman of BP Capital LLC, said in an e-mailed statement. “You had to admire his advocacy and his ability to focus on the need to better prepare for a new energy future.”

Emergency medical workers responded to Simmons’s home a little before 10 p.m. local time yesterday, said John Dietter, a crew chief in North Haven, Maine. The official cause of death is drowning, and he was found in a hot tub, said Tara Harrington, medical associate at Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

Matthew Simmons: ‘We’ve Now Killed The Gulf Of Mexico’ (Flashback)

August 21, 2010August 9, 2010 by Infinite

Don’t miss: Matt Simmons Dies In An ‘Accidental Drowning’ At His Home

Added: 21. July 2010

“What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the hole…and 120,000 minimum of toxic poison has now covered the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. So what they’re talking about is the biggest environmental cover-up ever. And they knew that that well, that riser, would finally deplete. And then they could say it’s over. And unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico.”

Gulf Oil Blowout: Matt Simmons Was Right!

August 21, 2010August 9, 2010 by Infinite

Matt Simmons died today:

– Matt Simmons Dies In An ‘Accidental Drowning’ At His Home

1 of 4:

2 of 4:

3 of 4:

4 of 4:

“What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the hole…and 120,000 minimum of toxic poison has now covered the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. So what they’re talking about is the biggest environmental cover-up ever. And they knew that that well, that riser, would finally deplete. And then they could say it’s over. And unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico.”

– Matt Simmons: BP Cap Is A Fraud – ‘It’s The Biggest Cover-Up We have Ever Seen’

– Matt Simmons: ‘We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states.’

– Matt Simmons on Bloomberg: There Is A Much Larger Leak, Creating A Gigantic Plume; US Military Should Take Over And Use Nuclear Weapons to Seal The Blowout

Russian: Heatwave kills 5,000 as wildfires rage totally out of control

August 7, 2010August 7, 2010 by Infinite

– Russia Declares State Of Emergy Emergency As Forest Fires Rage

– Russia: Worst drought in a decade, high temperatures damaged 32 percent of land under cultivation, grain prices may double

Russia’s devastating summer heatwave has cost almost 5,000 lives, according to officials who conceded yesterday that the state was struggling to gain control over the worst wildfires in decades.

Moscow’s landmarks, including the Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral, are shrouded in a thick, acrid haze (AP)

The ministry for emergencies issued an urgent call for volunteers to join fire brigades to bolster the fight against the peat and forest fires raging out of control around Moscow.

Temperatures in Russia have hit records for the time of year on at least six occasions in recent weeks. Forecasters said there would be no respite from temperatures above 97F (36C) for at least another week.

Death rates have escalated steadily since the heatwave began, according to statisticians. “We recorded 14,340 deaths in Moscow in July, that is 4,824 deaths more than in July, 2009,” said Yevgenia Smirnova, an official from the Moscow registry office.

Almost half a million acres are still burning and Nasa images have shown smoke from the fires visible from space (EPA)

Firemen are battling to stop the flames encroaching on the capital. Moscow’s landmarks, including the Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral, were shrouded in a thick, acrid haze. Those workers not ordered to stay at home wore masks as they struggled through the streets.

As many as 140 flights were cancelled or delayed as visibility at Moscow’s airports was reduced to 1,148 feet (350 metres). Carbon monoxide in the city’s air rose to as high as 4.8 times the admissible maximum level before tapering off slightly as night fell.

The health ministry advised people to stay indoors, limit physical activity and wear a mask when going outside.

The authorities have warned of the risk of fires reactivating contamination in an area to the south and west of Moscow that was affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The risks posed by the fires encompass dozens of sensitive sites built up in the Soviet era. Military units were mobilised to remove artillery and missiles from bases around the capital and warnings were issued of the peril facing Sarov, a closed city that is home to Russia’s nuclear research headquarters.

Scientists: Car fuel ‘could be made from thin air’

August 7, 2010August 7, 2010 by Infinite

Car fuel could be created from thin air using an enzyme from a common soil bacterium, say scientists.

Cars could one day create their own fuel out of thin air, according to scientists. Photo: BLOOMBERG

It is hoped that this will lead to a cheap way of making environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral ‘green’ fuel that can be used without major redesigns of car engines.

Azotobacter vinelandii, a microbe found around the roots of various food plants, creates an enzyme – vanadium nitrogenase – which in nature produces ammonia from nitrogen gas. But now it has been shown that it can also create propane, the fuel commonly used in camping gas stoves, out of carbon monoxide – a common byproduct of industrial processes.

Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico Has Stalled From BP Oil Disaster!

September 14, 2010August 6, 2010 by Infinite

Update:

– Life on this Earth Just Changed: The North Atlantic Current is Gone

Global Consequences if Current Fails to Reorganize

This could be the most significant man-caused Earth Changes news thus far in my lifetime. This morning, Lesie Pastor informed the New Energy Congress of a report by Your Own World USA that as of July 28,

Oceanographic satellite data now shows that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill [volcano] disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy.

He further notes that the effects of this stall have also begun to spread to the Gulf Stream. This is because the Loop Current is a crucial element of the Gulf Stream itself and why it is commonly referred to as the “main engine” of the Stream.

The concern now, is whether or not natural processes can re-establish the stalled Loop Current. If not, we could begin to see global crop failures as early as 2011.

Wheat Prices Soar On Russia Export Ban, Trade Halted

August 5, 2010August 5, 2010 by Infinite

– Russia: Worst drought in a decade, high temperatures damaged 32 percent of land under cultivation, grain prices may double

WINNIPEG Manitoba (Reuters) – Chicago wheat markets jumped 8 percent to near two-year highs on Thursday, twice triggering trading curbs to restore order before easing back after Russia said it would temporarily halt grain exports.

Russia’s worst drought on record has devastated crops in parts of the country and sent international grain prices soaring as markets placed bets that without shipments from one of the world’s leading exporters, global supplies would be restricted.

Wheat has risen seven of the past eight days at the Chicago Board of Trade and buying by funds and traders spilled across the grain markets. Corn and soybeans were 2 and 0.5 percent higher, respectively.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed an order banning grain and flour exports from August 15 to December 31, with a spokesman saying this would apply to contracts that had been already signed.

Pakistan: Floods Spread Into Populous Punjab Region

August 5, 2010 by Infinite

Pakistan’s prime minister has demanded his cabinet speed up relief to 3.2 million people hit by the worst floods in 80 years as devastation spread when floodwaters surged into the south of the country.

Yousuf Raza Gilani, prime minister, told his cabinet to speed up relief work and try and estimate the financial scale of the damage.

Continuing heavy rain in the northwest triggered more flood warnings and some 15,000 houses were destroyed in the south as rivers carried the floodwaters into Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Survivors were facing starvation after four-fifths of food stocks had been washed away, the United Nations’ World Food Programme warned.

DEC launches Pakistan floods appeal

Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous area and contains nearly three fifths of the nation’s people. It is also holds swathes of farmland, earning it a reputation as the country’s breadbasket.

Flood waters receded in the worst hit northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but the area remained devastated by landslides and flash floods from last week’s record monsoon that dumped a foot of rain in 36 hours.

In southern Punjab more than 130,000 people were evacuated by the army, but fears for further casualties grew as many were stranded when they ignored flood warnings.

At least 1.1 million acres of crops have been destroyed in the Punjab agricultural heartland alone the National Disaster Management Authority said.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection: Pollution Makes 25 Percent Of Water Totally Unusable

August 17, 2010August 5, 2010 by Infinite

‘Made in China!’

Fishermen load bags of dead fish onto a forklift at the Mian Hua Tan reservoir in Yongding county, Fujian province, July 13, 2010. Credit: Reuters/China Daily

BEIJING (Reuters) – Almost a quarter of China’s surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on Monday.

Inspectors from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection tested water samples from the country’s major rivers and lakes in the first half of the year and declared just 49.3 percent to be safe for drinking, up from 48 percent last year, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website (www.mep.gov.cn).

China classifies its water supplies using six grades, with the first three grades considered safe for drinking and bathing.

Another 26.4 percent was said to be categories IV and V — fit only for use in industry and agriculture — leaving a total of 24.3 percent in category VI and unfit for any purpose.

China: Garbage Islands Threaten Three Gorges Dam

August 4, 2010August 4, 2010 by Infinite

Update:

– Giant rubbish islands threaten China’s dams and bridges (Guardian):

Rivers choked with islands of debris after recent floods, threatening to block floodgates of dams and topple bridges.

Vast floating islands of rubbish and debris, accumulated after torrential rains and flooding, are threatening to topple a bridge and jam two big dams in China, state media reported on Wednesday.

One layer of garbage covering 15,000sq m – had lodged under a bridge in the north-eastern city of Baishan in Jilin province and was blocking water flow, the China Daily reported.

Officials fear a fresh wave of flooding, if crews fail to clear the debris, could bring down the bridge. If the island is washed downstream, it could block floodgates at the Yunfeng dam, now operating at full capacity.

Emergency services were scrambling to clean up the waterway, near the border with North Korea, but fear it could take days.

“We have collected 40 trucks of the trash, but the remaining trash might fill another 200 trucks,” the official Xinhua agency quoted police officer Wang Yong as saying.

A worker clears floating garbage washed down by recent torrential rain on the Yangtze River in Wuhu, Anhui province, August 2, 2010.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Thousands of tons of garbage washed down by recent torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, and is in places so thick people can stand on it, state media said on Monday.

Chen Lei, a senior official at the China Three Gorges Corporation, told the China Daily that 3,000 tons of rubbish was being collected at the dam every day, but there was still not enough manpower to clean it all up.

“The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the miter gate of the Three Gorges Dam,” Chen said, referring to the gates of the locks which allow shipping to pass through the Yangtze River.

The river is a crucial commercial artery for the upstream city of Chongqing and other areas in China’s less-developed western interior provinces.

Pictures showed a huge swathe of the waters by the dam crammed full of debris, with cranes brought in to fish out a tangled mess, including shoes, bottles, branches and Styrofoam.

Some 50,000 square meters of water (more than half a million square feet) had been covered by trash washed down since the start of the rainy season in July, the report said. The trash is around 60 centimeters (two feet) deep, and in some parts so compacted people can walk on it, the Hubei Daily added.

“Such a large amount of debris could damage the propellers and bottoms of passing boats,” Chen said, “The decaying garbage could also harm the scenery and the water quality.”

Pakistan: Floods threaten third-largest dam

August 4, 2010August 4, 2010 by Infinite

Update:

– Mass evacuations as flood threatens to destroy dam (Independent):

Rising water levels were last night threatening one of Pakistan’s largest dams, forcing the authorities to evacuate more people even as raging floods surged south into the country’s heartland, destroying communities and ruining livelihoods. Officials in the country’s north-west said unprecedented flooding had caused the water level at Warsak Dam near Peshawar to soar, already prompting the voluntary evacuation of some of the city’s residents and forcing the authorities to draw up plans to move those who sought to stay. “If needed, forced evacuation will be started,” said Adnan Khan of the Disaster Management Authority of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Even while waters recede in some parts of the north-west, it is far from clear that the country’s misery is over. Aid agencies estimate more than 3.2m people have now been affected by the nation’s most severe floods in recent history and the water that has caused such chaos is now reportedly moving south, sweeping into Punjab province.

Residents evacuated from outskirts of Peshawar as aid agencies warn disease could become biggest killer in floods

Floods in Pakistan destroyed houses in a village near Charsadda. (AFP/Getty Images)

Further rainfall and rising water levels threatened Pakistan’s third-largest dam as relief officials warned that disease could become the biggest killer in the country’s most destructive floods in more than 30 years.

Officials asked residents in the northern outskirts of Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan, to leave their homes as water levels rose at the Warsak dam. “If needed, forced evacuation will be started,” said Adnan Khan, a spokesman for the disaster management authority of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province.

River gorges flowing from the north-west began to flood villages in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and home to many of its biggest farms. About 3,000 people were marooned in the Kot Addu area of southern Punjab after the water breached a flood bank, forcing the army to evacuate people using boats and helicopters.

The sudden surge surprised Fateh Mohammad and his family. “We just ran away with our children, leaving behind everything. All our possessions are drowned in the water. We have nothing,” he told Reuters.

Abdul Sami Malik, of Unicef, said: “What we have heard from Punjab is that 50,000 people have already been displaced and 200,000 people are being evacuated from Sindh.”

Pakistan Floods Wash Whole Villages Away, Death Toll Rises To 1,100

August 3, 2010 by Infinite

Access blocked to areas in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa as authorities try to rescue 27,000 people trapped after heavy rains

Pakistan floods strand thousands

The death toll from flooding in north-west Pakistan rose to 1,100 today as rescue workers struggled to save more than 27,000 people still trapped by the water.

The rescue effort was aided by a slackening of the monsoon rains that caused the worst flooding in decades in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province. But as the waters started to recede, authorities began to understand the full scale of the disaster.

“Aerial monitoring is being conducted, and it has shown that whole villages have washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have washed away,” said Latifur Rehman, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority. “The destruction is massive.”

The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) At Earth

February 26, 2015August 2, 2010 by Infinite

Earlier this morning, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) witnessed a complex magnetic eruption on the sun. The joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) — a mission sitting at the L1 point between the Earth and the sun — also spotted a large coronal mass ejection (CME) blasting in the direction of Earth.

It is thought that the SDO and SOHO observations are connected, making this a global magnetic disturbance affecting the whole of the Earth-facing side of the sun.

The eruption happened at around 0855 UT (3:55 am EST), when the SDO detected a C3-class solar flare originating from a cluster of sunspots (called sunspot 1092). This isn’t a large flare, but right at the same time, a filament located about 100,000 kilometers from the flare also erupted.

A “filament” is a long magnetic structure rising high above the surface of the sun filled with cool plasma. Because it is cooler than the sun’s chromosphere, when in the direct line of sight between the Earth and sun, it appears as a dark ribbon snaking across the sun’s disk. If a filament is spotted on the limb of the sun (i.e. on the side), it appears as a bright prominence arcing high into the sun’s atmosphere.

Judging by the timing, the flare and the filament erupted at the same time, suggesting they are connected via long-range magnetic field lines. The resulting shockwave emanating away from the flare site may have had a role to play in accelerating the filament when it hit the filament’s eruption zone.

Watch the video of the eruption as seen by the SDO:

This sequence of events led to a huge magnetic bubble of plasma being blasted into space. As the eruption was on the Earth-facing side of the sun, the CME is heading right for us — see the SOHO video of the CME. We can expect its arrival on Aug. 3.

Skywatchers will be on high alert that day as when that CME intermingles with the Earth’s magnetosphere, we can expect some intense aurorae around polar regions.

Far from being a frightening event, this morning’s complex solar eruption — including a flare, shockwave, filament eruption and CME — is a testament to the technological ingenuity of the solar scientists and engineers who have designed the powerful solar missions that continually monitor our tumultuous star. Now we know a CME is coming, we can prepare for its arrival.

Peru Declares State Of Emergency Amid Freezing Temperatures, Hundreds Of Children Die

August 1, 2010 by Infinite

Hundreds die from extreme cold in remote mountain villages also struggling with severe poverty

A doctor checks a child in Lima, where temperatures have also plunged and a vaccination project is now under way. (Reuters)

Peru has declared a state of emergency after hundreds of children died from freezing conditions that have seen temperatures across much of the South American country plummet to a 50-year low. In 16 of Peru’s 25 regions, temperatures have fallen below -24C.

Reports from the country say 409 people, most of them children, have already died from the cold, with temperatures predicted to fall further in coming weeks.

Worst hit are Peru’s poorest and most isolated communities, which are already living on the edge of survival in remote Andean mountain villages more than 3,000 metres above sea level.

Although those living at such high-altitude would expect temperatures to drop below zero at this time of year, NGOs and government officials say many are unable to withstand the extreme cold which they are now experiencing.

“Over the past three or four years we have seen temperatures during the winter months get lower, and people are unable to survive this,” said Silvia Noble, from Plan Peru, an NGO. “This cold weather is now extending into areas that never saw these low temperatures before and children and elderly people are especially at risk as they are not physically strong enough to last month after month of sub-zero conditions.”