Comments katesisco has made

  • Grrrrrr!!!!

     

    More of the PBR stuff, Call in, caller; tell us what you think!!

     

    What I think is that we are the most passive bunch of cows ever.  Everything we do is after the fact!!  Complain about the war, sure.  Complain about -------(fill in the blank)!!!

    And now our media plays as well.  All that means is that there is no longer any reason to uphold the status quo, all is used up.  

    On Sustainable ag meets the MSM -- and wins! posted 3 months, 1 week ago 14 Responses

  • swill milk

    I will be reading this book!  

    Does it make a difference if the cow is fed fermented exhausted mash?  
    Wasn't it common then for the poor people to breast feed and the wealthy to use other choices?  
    Wasn't it at that time common to see hogs in the streets and this was before Fredrick Law Omstead received his commission to create Central Park from the slum where the Irish lived?  
    New York City sent oysters to France packed in ice.  The Hudson valley was lined with ice houses.  
    Was the difference that the milk was skimmed of its cream?  
    Babies need milk with fat.  Take the fat, damage the infant.  
    Typhoid ran amok during the summer months when water was more polluted; the rich left for the sea shore and came back after summer.  
    If 50% of the new generation died; how many were poor?  How many lived to be 1, or 2, or 3, when many babies began to be water drinkers like their parents?  
    Brewing may have been the original way to purify their water supply that had been polluted; remember any congregation of humans would have located next to water.  
    Our belief in domestication of plants, for example the sunflower, has been genetically determined to be, of all places, not central Mexico, but Siberia.  The oldest domesticated sunflower comes from Siberia.  
    And the oldest domesticated us now is projected to be far older than imagined.  First, they were lots of us on the seashore, then we traveled inland, and then there were so many of us we began to occupy a single place just to make sure it wasn't occupied by somebody else when we went back.  Agriculture begins.  How long before water became polluted?

    One of the big questions now is what caused the glacial icing on Greenland, which, until 2 million years ago had a small glacier (think Alpine) and was a heaven on Earth.  Scientists wonder.  On The Environment Report naively pushes Monsanto-related study praising rBGH posted 1 year, 1 month ago 2 Responses

  • printing $$$$

    Great info!  Thanks.
    Infrastructure to me has the connection to the existing corporate bureaucracies.  I consider public works something entirely different.  The corporates use their existing "infrastructure" for profit; any change in the existing refineries, existing tankers for transport, existing dispensing truck/tractor/transport over roads, any change in the existing dispensing/fueling stations means less profit.  Which also means any 'new' fuel will also use the existing methods.  Probably means methane as methane (natural gas) is more readily available and convertible with less cost to fit the (again) existing infrastructure.
    My guess is that unprofitable (to repair) parts of the infrastructure will be cut off and left to rot.    See repeat of the inner city ghettos.

    I can't resist another example here from when I was homeless and living at the SA shelter in Bowling Green KY.  Walking around the area one day I saw distantly over the small homes and tree tops a expanse that one associates with a wide park or lake; when I wove through the streets to get there, I found a wide expanse alright, green grass without trees right up to the enormous empty abandoned since WWII factory once owned by GE but obviously no longer profitable; so much for capitalism concept of built-in infrastructure maintainence.    

    And as we all can see war is an almost constant as it is a substitute for a genuine GDP growth.  

    My favorite comment regarding GDP was from one of the eco mags and it stated that from the point of GDP, the best possible scenario was a wealthy cancer patient dying in the hospital and under going an expensive divorce.  Now war makes sense.  On Bridge to the 21st century? posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

  • corn to ethnol

    Quote from Organic Consumers Org:  
    In the past 12 months, the global corn price has doubled.
    Because corn is the most common animal feed, this affects the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, as well as corn-based sweeteners and cereals.
    In the U.S., milk prices have nearly doubled.
    Butter prices in Europe have spiked by 40%.
    Pork prices in China are up 20%.
    In Mexico there have been riots in response to a 60% rise in the cost of tortillas.
    In six of the past seven years, global grain consumption has exceeded production. As a result world grain reserves have dwindled to 57 days. This is the lowest level of grain reserves in 34 years.
    While the UN lists 34 countries as needing food aid, 30% of next year's grain harvest in the U.S. will be converted to ethanol to fuel cars.

    Well, what that says to me is that this is yet another devious method of the US to force the rest of the underdeveloped world to "choose" GM foods provided by the US in preference to their own or ungeneticly modified food.  

    Current reading lead us to believe that many areas are and will continue to face water scaricity.  Leading to growing food shortages.  More crises in war among populated starving countries.  And what we are offering the same GM modified rice, corn, etc that was turned down in a previous African famine.  

    There is no sufficient reason for the US gov to provide subsidises for ethnol/corn when the most provident approach to alternative fuels would be to use a grass/prenennial grain, ect.  

    Sadly, after reading Zbignew B book on our "Second Chance" it seems to me that we had had our second and third chance.On An eco-lexical eco-spasm for the modern eco-age posted 2 years, 5 months ago 12 Responses

  • can you hear me now?

    I also think multiple assaults on the immune system are the problem.  Dr Tyrone from the UC system gave a talk here in Duluth MN for the Duluth Greens.  His work resulted in years of results that allowed him to give in-depth descriptions of the assaults on frogs from Atrazine which allowed an internal parasite to evince multiple extremities.  Inside was a lot worse:  the male frogs were being feminized to the extent of producing eggs.  He pointed out we are merely higher up the food chain.  

    Birds as well as bees use the Earth's magnetism to allow themselves to fly home.  So are we seeing disorientation of birds?  What about sea turtles?  
    Bumble bees are the sole pollinator of red clover--are they failing to reproduce?  

    The French have an interesting history of their wine vines--they almost lost their complete winery to an imported pest from America.  It was found in the 18th century and for decades almost no progress was made.  Eventually the extremely complicated life cycle was identified in total and almost no French wine vines were left.  The answer:  French vines are now and have been since the parasitic discovery grafted onto American rootstock which survives the parasite.  French vines exist in toto in only just a few isolated sites such on islands.  You might say they no longer exist.  

    Such accommodation to crises in the environment take place and after a time almost no one remembers the original reigning natural condition.  
    Will we wind up with some form of artificial pollination?  Quite possibly.  

    Is it far fetched to say that the humans in the future will have to depend on artificial pollination?  Well, after 3 generations will we even know the difference?   On Is the information age killing off honeybees? posted 2 years, 7 months ago 17 Responses

  • gov a criminal syndicate?

    The issue here seems to be primacy as in first event; which seems to be clearly the case of permission granted by the previous owner of the land.  Old English law considers long established footpaths as legal routes regardless of who owns the land.  Consider that all unnavigable waterways are public ways.  

    No, I don't see the court ruling in the ranchers favor; maybe the Feds will get a talking to but as the lower courts have obviously seen, this case doesn't fit with unrighteous taking.   I do recognize the rule of private property as the courts  have in the past but to elevate it above a previous contract?-------------no way.On The Supreme Court considers an extortion suit against federal land managers posted 2 years, 8 months ago 2 Responses

  • injection of oil wells..............

    is an established treatment for failing fields.  The book by K Defayes---Beyond Peak Oil, is full of up to date info by a geologist who was raised in the oil fields.  In the book, he points out the Saudis have already used injection to revitalized one of their largest fields.  He also covers the Canadian sands whose demands for energy to recover the oil mean that an on-site power plant exists just to furnish the electricity necessary.  He also points out that the foothills of the Rockies are the next step.  

    When we first developed nuclear power the thinking was that we would segue into fusion from fission.  Instead, here we are with aged plants, jam packed with expended but still wildly dangerous fuel rods, ever so closer to an expanding rural population.  And the new designs, well, we have the example of the pebble bed whose ball got stuck and came just that close to melt down.  The newest step forward is the plant just awarded to France and it still uses more power than it produces.  That's the current state of affairs.  

    Actually coal is carrying the ball, and always has. G. Bush has accommodated them by allowing the old coal burners to get licensed for another 50 year go -round.  We have gasification and such but one method just produces diesel fuel, which, incidentally, is why we now have legislation requiring cleaner diesel fuel and engines, and the other needs to dispose of the increased carbon dioxide which, although we have not mastered the  technology to rid ourselves of this problem, the proposal is to inject it into old wells, salt domes, etc.  All unproven technology. So, we are back to square one. And coal.   On But Wait, There's More posted 2 years, 8 months ago 3 Responses

  • Whoa, Grist!! What happened to the expose........

    about just how many 'farmers' are now farming?  

    These farm subsidies are not supporting family farmers but factory farms!!

    Read "Raise more Hell and Less Corn!" by an insider who knows.  

    In this article, it talks about how farmers plant and don't know what price they will be selling for; that's the way it used to be but it isn't anymore.  Nowdays, the farmer is forced to obligate his crop for a price set by the big corps (Centex, etc.) before he plants.  He CONTRACTS his crop before it is even planted.  The big corps have the American farmer between a rock and a hard place and they know it.  

    The subsidies??  They are going to the factory farms.  They allow the big corps to collect government money (furnished by the tax payer) to grow (in the case of the corporate owned farmland) and to pay below-cost prices to the contracted farmers for crops (lets say corn) so they can sell this crop for which they have already been paid to members of the global trade agreement (lets say Mexico) for a price that undercuts the country's own home-grown corn and floods the market with its cheap product there by destroying the homegrown market and forcing the farmer out of business.  Its called FAIR TRADE.  

    Guess how many companies collect this subsidy?  Guess how few companies control the crop contract business?  On Why federal farm support deserves a fresh look posted 2 years, 10 months ago 42 Responses

  • lived a year and half in my car.............

    and all I knew about homelessness was what I read in my sociology class.  

    Excerpt:  choices are related to cash flow, as they have been forever throughout history.  don't you think the indentured servants would have preferred to farm their own land?  the big danger in america is bashing people over the head with their supposedly available "choices".  

    Exactly so.

    kathleen siscoOn One woman's eco-evolution, from off the grid to on the clock posted 2 years, 10 months ago 19 Responses

  • Guess what? While the rest of us were ........

    taking our Rip Van Winkle nap, Congress acted (!!)and we are now endowed with cleaner diesel fuel, beginning with this year!!  Europe already has diesel cars that get 50 mpg. We owe this not to our auto industries, Bless their greedy little hearts, but to the realization that if the stock market manipulators want us to continue to buy widgets and geegaws sent to us from overseas, the cost of getting those afore mentioned items of cheapness must be cheaper still.  Diesel fuel for those super large oil tankers and the LNG tankers has to burn cleaner and cause less wear and tear on the Diesel engine which works not with a spark but by compression.  The transportation across country of those ever-so-affordable home and body decors has to be the same profit-compliant formula.  

    So, are we going to do without SUVs; are you kidding?  with a new efficient engine using new efficient diesel fuel?  Do you live on Earth?  

    Brazil, which is the primary defoliant of the Amazon region, is clearing land to raise soybeans not corn, for the Asian markets.  Guess what?  that soy is GM.  Our own use of corn for the biofuels market, which is incidentally also GM, will continue as much of the rest of the world refuses GM crops for eating.  Remember diesels can burn almost anything, bless their little hearts.  Canada's and US's fields of canola (GM)and sunflower (GM), our corn and corn oil, cotton and cotton seed oil --Crisco(GM), soon rice and peanut products to be GM.

    Guess what?  The new 2004 Crisco is a blend of saturated fats, the same saturated fats it replaced after WWII, palm and coconut oils, and blended with vegetable oils is now trans fat free!!  Should you cheer, No, not really.  The vegetable oils it is 'blended' with (one assumes that the vegetable oil is the major component) is GM!!  And that maligned saturated fat that was in common use before Crisco, well, its not so bad for you after all.  

    All things old are new again.   On Guaranteed true, top to bottom! posted 2 years, 11 months ago 4 Responses

  • another good book "Ice"

    Has some very informative data on the ice ages history, which included some wide ups and downs, sudden rises in temperature (several year sudden) and allows some new perspective into the mix.  

    Both the magnetic reversals and the extensive warm period we're in are long extended and long over do for a change---why we don't have this change no one knows.  There is a long term lack of rain from reduced cloud cover due to jet contrails, but could it be all this carbon dioxide that is responsible for the delay?  Again, no one knows.  

    Permafrost a mile deep under lies 1/4 of the Earth; permafrost froms in very cold conditions without snow cover.  The book, "Ice" has some fantastic up to date info; it's a good read. On A new series posted 3 years, 1 month ago 24 Responses

  • ecoli spinach

    On Science Friday with Ira Plato on PBS they discussed this issue and briefly touched on the "feeding cows hay for several days before slaughter removes dangerous ecoli" and the comment was "it didn't pan out", but nothing in depth.  

    In the huge mega cities of the third world they are surround with slums and outside that small farms and where do the fresh vegtables come from----not from Salinas valley-----and guess where the sewage from all that humanity's sewage goes-----right into the farm fields.  But Golly!! they haven't had any outbreak of this dangerous ecoli which indicated we have something they don't-------they do have grass or even garbage fed cows, they use the milk, they use human fertilizer for the veggies.  

    Our problem:  
    Maybe we have damaged our immune system with mercury, arsenic, toxic metals and what all else who knows.  
    Maybe it's the fluoride in the water that's been there for over two decades now; long enough for our children to be having aches in their joints, the early symptoms of skeltal fluorosis.  
    Maybe they were using some kind of water that is not filtered; organic standards have morphed into a franken food now that the government has set its own standards which have nothing to do with real organic.  

    Chances are the truth will be long in coming and we'll get the business-friendly interpretation.On Latest E. coli outbreak should prompt rethink of industrial agriculture posted 3 years, 2 months ago 8 Responses

  • oil and more oil-- the real science

    Quote from comment:

    Unless of course Jason you are a supporter of the theory that this oil is being generated from some unknown process within the earth.  Last night on the radio I heard Jerome Corsi the co-author of "Black Gold Stranglehold" speak of the abiotic theory of oil where there are vast, deep levels of oil not derived from fossils but rather the earth's minerals.  It was an hour long segment before the UFO portion of the show.

    THE REAL SCIENCE: Remember Professor Gold's theory that oil is produced deep in the earth and migrates to the surface?  Remember that the Russians have proved that oil is produced by inorganic processes?  
    Now let's consider G Bush's created war and Gosh, the price of oil went up, Surprise! Surprise! and now deep sea drilling of oil is suddenly profitable!  Wow! Who could have guessed?  On Vast untapped oil reserve discovered in the Gulf of Mexico posted 3 years, 2 months ago 15 Responses

  • our place in the web

    Any reading of the workings of the natural world support your concept; that we, as part, need to see our use of the animals as necessary but not exploitave.  The native American spiritualism in thanking the animal's spirit for sacrifice; the concept of the sacredness of the cow in India which gives milk and dung for fuel without which would create additional hardship are examples.  

    Sustainability is correctly stated as seeing ourselves as an irrevocable part of the natural world, not as above it.  Our past included small villages which were examples of sustainability where each worked for the good of all; only when there is sufficient 'wealth' in the form of excesses (and only can there be excess wealth if there is excess people) do we separate ourselves from our integeral part of the natural world.On No environmentalism is complete without consideration of animal welfare posted 3 years, 2 months ago 64 Responses

  • future environmentalism

    Read WHEN THE RIVERS RUN DRY, exceptional book.  Europe has gone back to allowing flood plains for their rivers after the extraordinary flooding in the past years.  Dam problems are clearly identified:  silting, overstating of enery production, elimination of thousands of productive fields flooded by the retainment pond, unnotified release of waters during flood to save the dam, methane dissemination over decades, not years,  etc.  Huge water diversion projects: Khadafi's Great Man Made River, the diversion of river waters to create crops for export profit at the expense of traditional crop methods.  

    The answer is a return to the local, the small and managable as in the Indian tankas, the quants, the formerly productive shallow wells that were destroyed when tube wells were sank by the Peace Corps, non-profits, at the direction of the World Bank.  Huge rises in fluoride and arsenic poisoning due to this thoughtless procedure.  A return to catching the monsoon rains into ponds, rooftops are necessary.  

    Never has the gap between the stated goals of capitalism and its actual results been so clearly identified.

    This 'beating of the drum' for a new alternative smacks of the same tired old argument of the next 'new thing' in education.  We do not need any more experimentation, surely that is plain.  We do not need more management, we need less.  We do not need to lable things as either brave or cowardly.  We need only to see clearly that profits have created the destruction of our families and the land we so desperately need to work in harmony with.  

    And, Yes, we are manipulated by fear, by patriotism, by any number of our human failings.  but, as the damage clearly seen by the sinking of the tube wells, by the 'green revolution' that need more and more fertilizer, by the GM crops that appear to yeild large but in truth lack the essential minerals smaller, non genetically modified crops do have, by our quest to improve things we have done as much damage as the wars of the world.  

    We have taken the prevailing view of the dominant culture (first Britian, then America) and applied what works here to there and the results are dismal.  Even in trying to help.  

    Do you think it is because of the "we know best" mind set?  It's their land but we know best how to dam the river that in their land carries essential silt to fertilize their river side fields.  And of course, we make a profit of selling the dam technology and coincidentally we site our American mining firm next to the dam to use the electricity that was advertised as a way to instill a productive economy-------and on and on.

    We have yet to work with Mother Nature and seem destined to end our days as a footnote of yet another failed civilization that the future will delve into to explore why we failed----silted up canals like the Kymers, salt encrusted fields such as the Aztec, over use crop land without maintainence of crop rotation, etc.  

    And the most damaging--------endless wars.    On Reason. Compassion. Forbearance. Selflessness. These are not the hallmarks or our time. posted 3 years, 3 months ago 6 Responses

  • new nucs

    Well, and I thought the pebble bed reactors would leave a more toxic waste, what kind of reactor would this be, you know, we've had the pebble bed before with bad results.  
    Would the requirement that disposal be on site be so bad?  Seems to me that making the state that wants the revenue be responsible for the waste kind of fair; and it would allow the citizens of that state to make a fight of it instead of haveing federal laws to fight in Washington.  I was for the state that makes toxic waste be the one to be responsible for it.  Needless to say, the government recognizes the ability of the people to organize locally which is why you don't have the instate requirement; instead they use the multi-state cooperative agreement as for toxic wastes.  I think Tennessee incinerates toxins for 3 states.  Avoids the local organized oppostion.  

    This use of national lands is scary.  Northern Michigan is one of the few truly unconstructed areas left (after the trees were cut and the minerals dug).  Northern Wisconsin also has huge tracts of National forest lands currently being used for tourism and logging.  Where do you think the toxins are going to go?  To some people the left over mine site would sound good.  Can't make nuc waste sites in mountians; Yucca mountain told us that.  Forest county Wisconsin is over 40% national forest land, has 3 native American reservations, and is economically depressed.  We just finished a long battle with Noranda mining when the Pottawatomi bought them out.  Heaven forbid the energy companies start eying federal forest lands in Northern Wisconsin for a toxic depository.   The Upper Penninsula of Michigan has lots of room and closed military bases.  Huge tracts of national forest.  

    I am for making the nuc site permanently hold the waste; might slow the progess of proliferation down and make nuc energy not so tempting if the costs were closely associated with the profits.  Wouldn't be so much of 'out of sight, out of mind.'When, oh when, are we going to get serious about solar?  On Nuclear plant licensed posted 3 years, 5 months ago 10 Responses

  • Moyer's comments

    Here's the books Moyer's said he's reading:   The Long Emergency: Surviving the Convergence Catastrophe; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; The Winds of Change: Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations.

    I was thinking along these lines myself today; wondering why so much of the time decisions seems to be made by politicos and beauracrats that are ignorant of the wealth of information accrued that would be relavant to their decision.  Why is so much of what we have learned ignored in present and future decisions?

    I believe it has to do with making money; so much of the time in reviewing our history, we see we went wrong because we took the short term profitable action over the long term less damaging action.  But do we care---not, it seems, if we can't make it profitable.  

    I believe we are wilfully ignorant and intentionally stupid; I believe that the profit motive has us locked into actions that have in the past shown harm and will continue to do so.  

    I believe that we will pass as all other civilizations have.  If our gift of intelligence limits us to short sighted actions, it is not a gift, it is a detriment.  We, the legacy of the few who survived the population bottleneck of 70,000 are here because of our canny ability to survive when almost no one else did, seem locked into using this intelligence application in now-harmful ways.  Nature solved our survival problem but left us with irresolvable mutations; these mutations are seen in aggression, violence and an inability to see the long term as a better choice.  

    Bill Moyers says we might be reduced to yet another small inclusion of humans living on the edge; if the past reductions of humans left us with these poisonous mutations of actions, what will come out of yet another desperate survival scenario?  

    We are creating a race of super survivors witout the capability of what we like to describe as humanity.  That old saw:  what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is incorrect; what doesn't kill you makes you harder to kill, less human.  We will survive but you won't recognize us when we do.  

    The dinosaurs lived for millenia; the climate was temperate, the weather peaceful.  That is what produces a moderate personality; moderate environments.  At the micro level, our social scientists encourage us to provide happy and safe childhoods for our babies so they can grow to be loving and sharing individuals; what do you think the opposite will be on the macro level?On Moyers and humility posted 3 years, 6 months ago 1 Response

  • The price is wrong because of mega farms.......

    that do not include the true cost of the product produced.  

    We now in America have hundreds of brownfields in every community; a legacy of manufacturing in which the true cost was not covered.  Slag and waste was just 'dumped' into the environment or into the water, whichever was cheaper.  

    Right now, this very minute, mountaintops in Kentucky and West Virginia are being removed and 'dumped' off the mountain side into shady glens where springs that furnish water for the residents of the mountains originate.  Sitting on the mountain tops are processing facilities that reduce the coal slurry that currently sits in huge retaining ponds ( 214 in Kentucky out of the over 6oo) to convenient dry waste; they are not used because it would add a dollar ($1.00) to the cost of a ton of coal.  

    Interesting reads:  Raise Less Corn and More Hell, which opens the eyes of the purchaser of 'cheap food.  Farmers were led to sign agreements to raise a product for a guaranteed
    price but carry all of the costs.  The 'egg farmer' scandals were typical of this scam.  The individual farmers raising beef and pork were forced into price agreements also; the farmers went bankrupt.  And in their place is the factory farm which sells round steak for $1.98 a pound which the same sale price I paid for it at the beginning of my marriage over 25 years ago.  Cheap food is the end result of feeding animals animal parts, and antibotizing them due to the cramped pens they lead their short lives in.    

    Authors of reports critical of mountain top removal have been crippled through assaults and beatings.  Residents who complain are harassed and driven off the road to their deaths.  Being against the coal mine owners has been a dangerous occupation since the coal was acquired by slick operators who purchased the underground rights of farmers.  It does not seem a surprise that the owners of coal properties are out-of-state corporations who use shell corporations to avoid the penalties and who bargain these down to pennies through their powerful connections in government.

    Lastly, mega farms of rice and sugar and heavily subdized by the government (read the lable of your product and see that the product contains sugar) which is sold to developing countries at less cost than their farmers can raise it; this destroys the developing economy and allows global corporates to buy the land and set up mega farms of their own.  This sad practice is typical of what happens when the world trade agreements are forced on developing nations.  

     On Umbra on the cost of organics posted 3 years, 6 months ago 6 Responses

  • oil shales

    I'm sure oil-shale harvesting will be at least as efficient as, say, the tar sands.

    Well, the above quote is frightening as the Athabaska tar sands require humungous amounts of energy to extract; the power plants have to be sited on the complex itself it uses so much energy.  About the best that can be stated is that the technology should become more effient with time.  
    Read Beyond Hubbert's Peak by K Deffeys.
    As to using ethenol, Bush wants to expand energy production (read coal fired power plants) to make ethenol.  Circular reasoning here, poison the environment to use a fuel to save the environment.    On The military-industrial complex wins again posted 3 years, 6 months ago 1 Response

  • peak oil

    I loved Ken Deffey's book, BEYOND PEAK OIL.  
    He tells it like it is.  He's not running scared, he points out the Rocky Mt front has lots of in-ground oil.  
    The biggest users of oil, after the container ships that use this s-o-o-o-o-o cheap oil in their diesels so we can buy gee-gaws and fooraws for pennies, is the diesel haulers that transport those containers from one coast to the other.  And you thought your cars were the reason we went to war, wrong.  Military travels not on its stomach these days but gas.  So, we don't even come in third, the public is out of the running entirely.  
    If we go to global war, it won't be for the public's cars. First is trans-oceanis shipping, then cross country shipping, and then military.  

    I don't really see how the market is independent; I believe market volatility and stability are created applications by big money manipulations.  Remember the huge loss of 50% in the 90's; were Wall Street Investers hurt in this?  The investing public was gutted, not the wealthy.  
    The Peak Oil conference should produce some genuine information; hope to hear more.  On Peak oil: catastrophic or merely unpleasant? posted 3 years, 7 months ago 13 Responses

  • wind farm

    I remember this when it was first proposed from our current admistration; it came at a time when there was a challenge from Mr Kennedy as to the mercury in our lakes from energy facilities.  
    It appeared to be yet another hit-'em-where-it-hurts punch from the guys that know they don't have to play fair.  
    It served to take the steam from the mercury issue and redirect it to removing this eregious plan-that-wasn't-a-plan from Cape Cod.  On Cape Wind, R.I.P. posted 3 years, 7 months ago 17 Responses

  • mercury contamination

    I wish we had a simple test for mercury; didn't I read in an article that some fish markets have such a worth-its-weight-in-gold test for mercury and actually do test their fresh-from-the-sea fish and display the results?
    They wouldn't do that if there wasn't concern about mercury.  
    I would like to take Omega 3 from fish oil but am concerned about mercury so was eating a lot of walnuts that contain lots of Omega 3 even though it is a different source, vegtable.  Lo and behold I discovered that the body has preferences and will only use the energy intensive to process vegtable source when you're pregnant!  
    So, I am once again looking for a safe source of Omega 3 from fish.  
    I am a northern Wisconsin resident and if you care to examine the DNR website, you will be as astounded as I was at the number of lakes in WI that carry a mercury contamination of do-not-eat-the-fish warning.  
    This mercury is from our energy plants, which is why the Sierra Club is energetically pursuing a policy of eliminating the mercury from the exhaust smoke stacks. If it wasn't for the bacteria that process the harmless mercury to deadly mercury we might not have to worry but they do and we do.     On Is FishScam.com a scam? posted 3 years, 7 months ago 8 Responses

  • Well, another boon for big business..........

    as this program is another kick in the seat of the pants for the small farmer.  It is correct to say that the issue of diseasesd meat in our food chain will not be addressed by this bill; indeed one suspects that when a huge contamination occurs the same tactic that now successfully scuttles all uproar--there will of course be a congressional hearing leading to an investigation completed months (years) down the road when the furor has died down--end result--nothing but the red-hot rhetoric that cools to slag with a verbal slap on the wrist for big business.  
    Remember that farmers wishing to certify their herds free from bovine spongiform encyphilitis cannot do so, would, indeed, be liable for federal government prosecution if they do, as it is illegal.  Why is it illegal?  To protect the big guys of course.  On USDA ID-tag plan for farm animals has some small-scale farmers unhappy posted 3 years, 8 months ago 10 Responses

  • general comment on man/nature

    I am interested in the latest research that indicated there were not one but two dispersals of humans from our African home.  The former one coexisted for only a short while with the 1.8 million dispersal that seemed to 'take over.'  
    I take the view that the man vrs nature issue is mostly moot as it appears that what drives nature is a control beyond man's overt choices.
    In other words, life will survive in whatever form, not particularly ours.  

    I see our natural resources being exhausted for profit and the natural following is that once the environmental resources are used, the next in line resource is us; the humans.  Don't we now see people being used as resource--I point particularly to big Pharma.

    But these action of ours are so insifnificant in the 'big picture'; even though life can be twisted and manipulated by us humans currently at the top of the intellectual heap, the results will not be permanent for nature, just for us humans.  

    Nature does not do thing once.   On Environmental ethics III: The biocentrist pipes in posted 3 years, 8 months ago 1 Response

  • tea and fair trade

    As I understand the article, India now imports cheaper tea from abroad.  What is not made clear is that this is the aspect of fair trade that concerns the emerging nations.  Individual countries cannot, under fair trade, maintain protective import duties to keep their own native industry alive and profitable.  

    This is what fair trade is about.

    The article further fails to make clear that the tea workers are farming organically, thereby creating a specialized niche for their product in the world.  The remaining farms who do not for various reasons, farm organically, are victims of "fair trade" who leave them with a product they cannot sell at a profit.  
    The article scarcely cover the major impact of "fair trade", the extinction of the small landowner and farmer.  
    Just the one scentence dedicated to the result of "fair trade" is included in the article; that more and more of the plantations are reverting the the colonial era style of ownership---huge acreage amassed into a single ownership.  The only difference between colonial ownership and the huge land-owing corporations formed under "fair trade" is that one is now promoted and the other out of favor.  
    In actual fact there is no difference to the worker who now has to work at the global conglomerate on land that is not his and never will be for a pittance so he will make the product sellable on the world market where somebody else always makes lower wages than him.  
    Fair Trade is not fair for the worker force to compete; fair trade is a disguise for global corporates to be heralded as the new enterprise! On In India, fair trade is changing a centuries-old industry posted 3 years, 10 months ago 1 Response

  • Liked your comment...............

    and sifting through the chaff seems to be one of the few pluses that come with age; myself being 59 in one week.  I find myself being as critical and suspicious of the political system as my dad was.  I like Ken Deffeys treatment of oil, his book, Beyond Hubert's Peak, was terriffic.  He wasn't writing to the times (my biggest complaint of any writer from Hemmingway THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA to Ayn Rand's capitalism in any form is great), just telling it like it is.  He is secure in his teaching and soon-to-be retirement so he doesn't have a dog in this fight.   Naturally, if you look at our resource depleated environment, we the cows calmly chewing our cud are next exploitable target.
    So, are we losing our oil production, yeah, but refineries will be build for gasification of coal which we have, Australia has, China has, Russia has, etc. so lets not consider canibalism just yet but that doesn't mean that enough fear can be generated so that we will once again be engulfed in war if it is profitable enough and when is it isn't?  
    The future world looks more like sci-fi to me; mega cities mostly modern with huge underclasses mired in not just poverty but something like the untouchables in India.  And did you read the NYT article about the new 4 lane highway in India, all for the new sacred cow, the cars.  The efficient rail road will be allowed to disintegrate in favor of the road transport; much like how we nipped burgeoning rail here in the US in favor of profitable cars.  
    We have another generation or two before all the world is used up.  Mars next?
    On What's a prediction worth? posted 3 years, 12 months ago 17 Responses

  • Research may reveal......................

    episodes similar in the distant past. I remember reading that trappers discovered that they first had to clear out those ever-so-cute flying squirrels because they raided every single trap and ate the meat bait.  Yes, those dark-eyed darling are meat eaters.  Squirrels eating meat is not so far fetched but attacking enmass; that's a stretch.  Observation should clarify this matter if indeed the forest is bare of seeds; something like this incident will occur again. If it proves to be true, one would have to accept the fact that this is not new behavior, just old behavior reoccuring. On Oh. Em. Gee. posted 3 years, 12 months ago 2 Responses

  • electric cars

    I just love the idea of electric cars but wait-----there's that darn battery to replace and if you consider the green aspect there's the toxins from the manufacturing of the electricity at the point of origin, the power plant.  
    So, why not diesel?  Improvements in the diesel engine have been humming right along and there is the 50 mph right on the horizon.  Power plants are toying with the idea of coal gassification to produce power and with a few modifications, also right on the horizon, dimethyl ether is the product, an almost perfect diesel fuel.  With the right attitude toward cleaning up the power plant emissions such as sulfur and mercury, we can make it to the 22nd century and cheaper solar generated electricity.On Electric cars are looking good, but not quite there in terms of quality posted 4 years, 1 month ago 10 Responses

  • solar power for the world from Germany?

    Now that the World Bank and the US have signed off on abating African debt, not all but significant most, the dark continent will be able to go bright with solar power.  There is not the power infrastructure, not the roads or railroads, to allow electric lines even if that was the choice, which it isn't.  Currently, telephone service is through cellular; next will be solar electricity.  Africa will leapfrog through the messy and tacky environmental poles and wires, right into the cheapest and safest technology.  And Germany has positioned itself to be the world's supplier and leader:  Do not as i say, but as I do.On Germany says auf Wiedersehen to nuclear power, guten Tag to renewables posted 4 years, 2 months ago 1 Response

  • New Paris

    The Missississippi; how that rolls off my tongue like the mighty river itself rolls along, rubbing shoulders against the Delta levees, heaving strings of barges onto sand bars, and removing them as easily. Detouring into oxbows to wash reed beds and the mussles at their roots, diving deep to move the moss on the shells of snappers as big as Volkswagens, this river of our country strolls along.  
    And the place it wants to stroll has been often changed. Crecent lakes are created when oxbows are closed and the river charges across the temporary impediment of land.  Down river, at Old River, the mighty Missississippi has been undermining the determined work of the Corps for years.  The Mississippi has taken it into its head to go West.  

    The Katrina disaster reminds men that nature always wins.  New Orleans side-by-side relationship with the river has been a wonder to behold.  This lacy-edged city of jubilant sounds lords over the quiet, glassy bayous.  People have come here, first the Arcadians, then the French, and more, until New Orleans became the premiere southern city of America, fuller and more flavorful than any other melting pot.  
    The flood waters this time have called for enormous effort to shovel out and truck out; to uncover New Orleans and clean the streets, to have people vibrant and active in going about everyday business again.  This will happen.  Nature and New Orleans have a long history.  
    The government response to the hurricane is going to be a long story of rebuilding, one foot in front of the other.  More than at any other tragedy, the people of New Orleans will determine the direction of the reconstruction of New Orleans.  New Orleans' face will be wiped clean by the people who gave her her smile, her jazz, her moves.  
    Up river, the possibility of yet another alteration to New Orleans lies in wait.  At Old River, the Mississippi waits to go west.  West to a new outlet in the Gulf of Mexico.  At some time in the future, the river will take her water to a new outlet.  In the future, her rolling waves could pass a new city created by necessity, nursed by necessity, taught to walk by necessity.  This new city, New Paris, could be an example of an ecological success on a grand scale.  
    Here, waiting for the river, would be the New Paris, a city built from scratch, from planners who had the time to design a whole town would be downtown centers, and citizen friendly parks and housing that complimented human needs.  Solar and fuel cell technology would furnish power.  Like LaEnfant's Washington, this new city would be a monumental effort to portray a new century in environmental housing concepts.  
    This opportunity to develop new systems of living, while reconstructing the old, would be the best of both worlds.  New Orleans for the living; New Paris for the future.  While the world watches and wonders if New Orleans can be restored; New Paris, a step into the future, could be building along with old Orleans.  The US has the technology, the need, the assets, and the strength to take the future in hold, to be proactive, not just reactive.  
    Our past of magnificent displays of pending technology in millenium celebrations and expositions have shown us that we are capable and inventive; now is the time to put such ability into action in New Paris.
    On What New Orleans could look like the second time around posted 4 years, 2 months ago 5 Responses

  • reply to comment

    While it is true that most complain while few look for answers; the answer to our fuel problems, and the even larger problems of society as a whole, have become tied to our structures.  Our support system of refineries and gasoline distrubution systems demanded years and billions of dollars of investment; the investors are loath to depart the systems while even pennies of profit are returned. That is why there will not be any turning away from the existing structure until there is sufficient profit in the new system to replace the system now in place.  How this will happen I profess complete ignorance.  

    Bear in mind that cities here in the US are abandoned financially due to the enormous costs of cleaning up contaminated lands, razing existing sturctures, and rebuilding.  Why do that when you can build new cheaper outside of the city?  Hence the money poured out of city, county, state coffers to lure redevelopment on inner city sites.  This problem is indivisible from society's progress.  How to move ahead when the past is in the way?  

    No one wants to incorporate the true costs, including identifying and landfilling the waste stream, correctly identifying long term costs  related to uses of products, setting aside monies to maintain the infrasturcture, and many others that the capitalist system ignores. It is not too great a mistatement to say as we move ahead, we trash the path behind us.  At some point there will be no new path; at least not on this planet.   On Hurricane Katrina brings a foretaste of environmental disasters to come posted 4 years, 2 months ago 7 Responses

  • your comment in grist

    I went to college late, in my fourties, and perhaps had more life view than some of the other students.  I took sociology and particularly felt the events of the time.  I did understand that racism, an an overt practice, is hardly ever seen.  What is seen, if one looks, is institutionalized racism; racism made a part of the existing social structure whithout any laws to keep the restrictions in place.  Surely you cannot be so uninformed as to believe that this insidious form of racism does not exist: it does and is completely upheld by society and demonstrated by the examples you set forth in your statement.

    I understand you will probably attack me for this reply, but I have become convince that evil in this world is accomplished by the permissiveness of good people who allow harm by their reluctance to speak out.  On Slow Katrina evacuation fits pattern of injustice during crises posted 4 years, 2 months ago 7 Responses

  • If I were Queen....................

    I would have immediately opened the closest closed military bases, transferred military stores of food to the bases, mobilized the military infrastructure to man them, and began to shuttle the people forced to evacuate to them.  

    STOP AND THINK; have we at any other time in the past in a natural emergency not opened the closest public facility for evacuation?  The govenor of the State of Louisianna goes on national television and tells the whole world that New Orleans is being evacuated, the television shows what seems to be miles of bumper-to-bumber cars exiting the city but THINK, where are they going?  Where is almost half a million people going?  Are they going to civic centers set up for their care?  Are they going to municipal buildings, shcools, churches?  NO, they are disappearing in the sunset like the happy ending of a Gene Autry movie!  

    STOP AND THINK, that exodus has no destination--no way to get more gas when their money runs out, no way to pay for the motels and hotels, no way to pay for food.  What unimaginable failure of public planning coalesced to permit this fiasco?  Is the most important aspect of public planning for emergencies being able to ignore what requires federal dollars and support?  

    We hear daily on the tv that millions of tons of water and foods stuffs are being shipped into New Orleans, the city that is being evacuated.  Where is that food going to be stored?  Why wasn't it sent to a nearby base that should have been opened up as emergency shelter?  

    The stupendous goof that has led to forwarding the refugees of the flood from a building used to shelter them from the storm, the Superdome, to the same kind of immediate crisis shelter 350 miles away in Texas, boggles the mind.  Any kind of emergency planning at all whould have identified housing far ahead of any crisis.  

    FEMA, prior to being swallowed by the new agency of Home Care, had the best record of any federal agency; the most dedicated people, the most capable shock teams.  After the roll-up, FEMA became the whipping boy for one mess after another.  An outstanding federal agency doing outstanding work thrown on the trash heap of do-gooders the administration seems determined to weed from its garden of GM monster plants.

    If I was in New Orleans, I would refuse to get on the bus.  I would insist that I be provided housing for the long term, not just another stop-gap measure.  I would insist my child be able to attend school.  I would insist I have access to health care.  This is not pie-in-the-sky talk; we are the most technologically advanced, the richest nation on the planet.  That does not give us the right to ignore what should be common sense.  That does not give us the right to act without responsibilities; the Bush administration seems to think politics is best conducted without any input from social agencies as to how to provide for its citizens.  

    So, after the gas tanks run empty, what?  After bussing Louisiannians 350 miles so they can sit on hard chairs without any privacy, what?  What collossal failure of thinking is allowing this unfolding tragedy?  Where is the forward thinking that will allow the refugees a destination?  Somebody answer this question?  Where are the centers that people can go to and stay---where are the military bases that should have been opened up for the evacuees?On Resources for news and opinion on the hurricane posted 4 years, 3 months ago 10 Responses

  • petition against changes in Nat'l Parks

    Where Oh Where, can I go to sign the petition?!!

    Some things have got to stay sacred!!On New National Park Service guidelines proposed posted 4 years, 3 months ago 1 Response

  • co2 caused decrease in micronutrients........

    is one of the most important investigations today.  This article, and many more like it, will shed new light on some things like the demise of the dino, perhaps even early man.

    From the article:
    A particularly disturbing study suggests that the mechanisms of CO2 nutrient depletion may already be causing a decline in the quality of our food supply. Josep Penuelas of the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications in Barcelona, Spain, compared historical plant samples grown at preindustrial levels of atmospheric CO2 with modern equivalents. He found that today's plants had the lowest levels of calcium, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, sodium, sulfur, and zinc than at any time in the last three centuries.

    Isn't that interesting.  Remember that lightening discharges are one of the primary ways that the nitrogen in the earth is recharged. Sugar maples and other trees shed nitrogen rich leaves.  Tremendous volcanic activity in the past left the earth in a vaporous cloud of co2 for years.  Lots of questions.  So few answers.   On In a warmed world, even food won't be as good for you posted 4 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

  • co2 increase connection with guns, etc.

    Reading this new article on co2 and its effects on plants, is something we all need to be aware of.  It is the next big crisis.  
    Micro nutrients are of enormous importance.  They are the body essential components; without them we die.  Consider that about 5 mil years ago we lost the ability to store vit c in our bodies; consider that only 3 other living mamals share this fault out of the hundreds of thousands alive today.  
    This film article on guns, steel ect, which I watched, poses the long-established theory that domestication of wheat and barley led to civilization and hence animal husbandry. One reading of this article on co2 enhanced growth of wheat and barley actually contains slashed amounts of nutrients, up to 20%, is shocking in its applications.  
    Our Earth has many times in its past not only was devasted by space material, it has also suffered many cataclsmic volcanic explosions, which produce as we all know co2 in abundance.  
    Do you think this is the explanation for the dino's demise?  Do you think early humans were affected in some genetic way due to eating materials lacking in micro nutrients?  

    As to the guns, steel commentary; I accepted this in college, that farming led to civilization.  I no longer do.  I beleive the early civilizations established themselves on water shores, and as Otzi shows, carried on trade way before our current theories predict.  I even suspect that the effort put into having to stay to cultivate a crop and keep animals may have been a way of life that was forced on a people who would not have chosen this if there was any other way to survive.  It is hard work, even though the author used the New Guinean day of collecting and making taro seem the more difficult choice.  He fails to point out they fished.    On The rise of civilization, part one posted 4 years, 4 months ago 2 Responses

  • oh heavens! the easiest way .....................

    is to remove hair with just plain tweezing, or another use for the ubiquitous duct tape, although less worthy than saving oneself from terrorist attack, is to use it for the latter part of the frightening 'sugaring', adhere it to the skin and pull.  
    Tweezing doesn't coarsen the hair like shaving; the Native American used this method and lo and behold they didn't have tweezers or duct tape!
    On Umbra on shaving, part two posted 4 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

  • Nature Conservancy land

    I lived for a while in Tennessee and while in college at Volunteer State, was told about a conserved site up on the 'ridge.'  The Ridge is the rim of the depressed bowl Nashville sits in.  The rocky slanted land was always difficult to develop and has only marginally been farmed.  Back in the hollows are lovely fragments of barely touched natural landscape.  One is called Taylor Hollow is off of Bear Carr Road.  There is a stream that flows from a waterfall through a small, steeply-edged glen.  I have walked the limestone karst on the top; it has huge old beeches reaching for the sky straddling holes deep enough to fall into.  One side has a patch of ginseng laced with poison ivy, the ivy leaves disguising all the sing by summer.  Fossil crinoids line the creek bed.  From the early saxifrage to the later bluebells and wild hyacinth, the glen is a nature millefleur.  

    When we get past the debate and immerse ourselves into the raison de ette for the Conservancy, the lands themselves give the best reason for not repudiating the efforts of the Conservancy.  

    It is signifincant that this expose comes at a time when the political winds are blowing up a hurricane of economic advancement for a well-set few.  This attack on a way to shelter land against development can be seen as another loosening of the purse strings of ecology, and spilling its contents of lands, lakes, trees, and bogs into developer's laps.  

    Once its gone, its gone forever.  On Pat Burns writes on the uncertain fate of conservation easements and the millions of acres they prot posted 4 years, 5 months ago 4 Responses

  • Just a Viscous Rumor

    Interesting review as it ties in nicely with the book I just read, High Noon for Natural Gas.  I loved McPhee's Basin and Range, I love all of McPhee's books.  
    The note that there is almost uncountable reserves of methane hydrate is repeated here; also that the cost of natural gas is the reason we are now importing agricultural fertilizer from outside the US.
    This love affair with profiting from oil has forced us into buyers of the infamous SUV, an extenion of the road building craze, and made us into flyers instead of rail travelers.  All so the gigantic corporates can rake in more gigantic profits.  
    We are tied to an infrastructure than the corporates cannot shed even if they wanted to; so the end of big oil will happen.  The natural gas will be made into whatever for will allow the existing infrasturcture to be utilized, and when the natural gas is gone, the next in line will be bent to serve the existing infrastructure.  And so it goes.  
    I wonder if it will come down to a choice of fueling the jets and cars or the military's carriers and ships?  One wouldn't be much good without the other--the military exists to protect the profits--so there has to be enough for both.  Wars are fought over who gets the goodies when the pickins are slim.    On Kenneth Deffeyes' Beyond Oil forecasts a fast-approaching petroleum peak posted 4 years, 5 months ago 2 Responses

  • comments re pebble reactors

    I thought it was too good to be true.  France depends on nuclear power for a majority of its energy needs, if pebble bed reactors were feasible and practical, France would have build them as it is facing an aging nuclear infrastructure.  
    Germany closed its pebble bed reactor after an accident in which the recorded radiation release was first attributed to Chernobyl.  
    I do not know about the US site Peach Bottom Unit I.  
    According to the article, a reactor is being built using this format in Africa.  I wondered just how an air-cooled reactor would be sufficiently cooled by temperatures sustained in the African continent?

    URL for nuke watchdog site:
    http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pbmrfactsheet.htm

    NO REACTOR CONTAINMENT BUILDING AND REDUCED SAFETY SYSTEMS CUT PBMR COSTS

    Unlike light water reactors that use water and steam, the PBMR design would use pressurized helium heated in the reactor core to drive a series of turbine compressors that attach to an electrical generator. The helium is cycled to a recuperator to be cooled down and returned to cool the reactor while the waste heat is discharged to the environment. Designers claim there are no accident scenarios that would result in significant fuel damage and catastrophic release of radioactivity.

    These industry safety claims rely on the heat resistant quality and integrity of the tennis ball-sized graphite fuel assemblies or "pebbles," 400,000 of which are continuously fed from a fuel silo through the reactor "little by little" to keep the reactor core only marginally critical. Each spherical fuel element has an inner graphite core embedded with thousands of smaller fuel particles of enriched uranium (up to 10 %) encapsulated in multi-layers of non-porous hardened carbon. The slow circulation of fuel through the reactor provides for a small core size that minimizes excess core reactivity and lowers power density, all of which is credited to safety.

    However, so much credit is given to the integrity and quality control of the coated fuel pebbles to retain the radioactivity that no containment building is planned for the PBMR design. While the elimination of the containment building provides a significant cost savings for the utility--perhaps making the design economically feasible--the trade-off is public health and safety.

    The protective containment building also is nixed because it would hinder the design's passive cooling feature of the reactor core through natural convection (air cooling). Exelon also proposes a dramatic reduction in additional reactor safety systems and procedures (i.e. no emergency core cooling system and a reduced one-half mile emergency planning zone as compared to a 10-mile emergency planning zone for light water reactors) to provide for further reducing PBMR construction and operation costs.

    To date, however, Exelon has not submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission descriptions of challenges that could lead to a radiological accident such as a fire that ignites the combustible graphite loaded into the core. Fire and smoke then become the transport vehicle for radioactivity released to the environment from damaged fuel.

    In addition, the lack of containment would require 100%-perfect quality control in the manufacture of the fuel pellets--an impossible goal. Imperfections in fuel pellet manufacture could lead to higher radiation releases during normal operation than is the case with conventional reactors.

    End of ArticleOn An interview with doomsaying author James Howard Kunstler posted 4 years, 6 months ago 25 Responses

  • a long day's journey into night

    I have just finished reading HIGH NOON FOR NATURAL GAS which also presents a scenario in which we have peaked in oil and soon will in natural gas even as the economy builds off shore LNG docks.  The drop-off for natural gas, he says, will be sudden as gas tends to drop sharply when the field is depleting.  He covers the options of natural gas also: coal bed methane, methane hydrate, etc., and still predicts an early demise of the oil/gas based economy.  He also advocated a return to community-based economies.  Well worth a read.  Without the natural gas, there never will be a hydrogen economy on a global scale.On An interview with doomsaying author James Howard Kunstler posted 4 years, 6 months ago 25 Responses

  • climate change

    For what may be the first time in our species' history, we have the ability to communicate our thoughts with almost every other human on the planet.  Will that make us take action to preserve our species?  Or will the action taken mimic our action in the microcosm of our daily lives? Will the debate yield anything other than maneuvering for profit?  In the end will anything change?  

    From the actions that impinge on our day to day existence, to actions that impact the lives of entire nations, we seem to have a similar result.  The Earth may be seen to be vulnerable to our ant-colony expansions, but look closer, and you will see we humans impact us humans more than anything else.  As Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us. The picture of an ant colony at war with another colony is clearly provoked in imagining our impacts on planet Earth.  

    Imagine the strength of a lightening bolt.  A million times more hotter than the surface of the sun.  One strike from Mother Nature and our busy little ant colony lives are erased.  The forces of Nature are truly spectacular past anything man can imagine.  

    Now imagine that the understanding of Nature we be believed we had is upended and our understanding is completely useless in the face of new facts and working of the universe.  

    Consider that the sun, once thought nuclear, may well be electrical in nature. Consider that planetary bodies may have discharged bolts of unimagined power within the recent past, marking the Earth with deep chasms.  Consider that the waters that on slosh against the continents have drowned sea-shore civilizations in the recent past.  

    This introspective is useful for reasoning why the worry about impact on planet Earth is not as imperative as imagined.  Not sufficent reason to cease trying to improve here but good enough to consider that our impact will not be the final answer.      On To address global warming, we must harness rationality, good science, and enlightened globalization posted 4 years, 7 months ago 2 Responses

  • Walk in the woods and HIstory of Everything

    I've read both; thoroughly enjoyed both.  Laughed out loud and thought out loud.  
    The Short History of Nearly Everything deserves to be read by all who think there just is too much info out there to know where to start.  On Bill Bryson's books offer environmental ethics with a light touch posted 4 years, 8 months ago 1 Response

  • elevator pitch

    Going out walking with my granddaughter without having to plug up a respirator and explain why all of us have to use one because the air isn't what it used to be.On An elevator pitch for environmentalism posted 4 years, 8 months ago 154 Responses