Scientists say quick action needed to reduce Gulf dead zone

This gives an idea of how pervasive and serious this problem is for all of us.

Chemurgy without hemp is almost like fire without heat. Hemp alone could produce more products than all other touted chemurgic candidates combined! Any serious mention of chemurgy should boldly list hemp as the absolute superstar, but as usual...there’s the political stench of Big Oil and its petrochemical empire. Their latest subterfuge involves giving "biofuels" a bad name. By using their legendary clout to help ramrod ethanol from corn, they have not only contrived the "food-versus-fuel" controversy, but also greatly expanded the massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico fed by petrochemical runoff from all the new acres of corn—all the while enhancing their profits with soaring use of petrochemical fertilizers and other petrochemical inputs http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/5924145.html It takes as much if not more fossil energy to produce a gallon of corn ethanol as the energy available from that gallon. The energy equation is helped somewhat by corn byproducts, but the bottom line in this heavily taxpayer subsidized boondoggle is: corn is one of the very worst crops we could choose for making ethanol, and hemp is probably the very best; incredible political complications muddy this reality, but under the mud things are very clear.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) however, are not too happy about Lisa Jackson as EPA pick. I will have to read up more on her then. Getting AWAY from industry influence is what is needed now, not the same old. I don't think we can address this serious problem without doing that.
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From the link:

Obama's EPA pick Jackson followed the Bushie playbook when she used her power as DEP's administrator to concoct a "task force" stuffed with industry servants to oversee DEP's work. Jackson's intial nineteen "task force" picks were all from industry: undr public pressure, she added three enviros (including Tittel) as greenie window dressing. Amazingly enough, Jackson's pet task force effectively stymied DEP's work: just as Bushies' industry servants placed at USDA, FDA, and EPA snuffed out Federal agencies' work to protect us.

What did Jackson and her hand-picked fifth column do at DEP? According to PEER:

Jackson later convened an industry-dominated task force to rewrite DEP policies and relaxed pollution enforcement through policies more business-friendly than those under Gov. Christie Whitman. Relying on closed-door deal-making with regulated industry executives and lobbyists, Ms. Jackson produced decisions, such as -

* Invoking "executive privilege" to block a request filed by PEER under the state Open Public Records Act for a copy of her schedule and sign-in logs;

* Pushing to privatize pollution control through outsourcing of toxic clean-ups to industry;

* Abolishing the DEP Division of Science & Research after it produced damning reports on continuing contamination following state-supervised clean-ups.

The audacity of posion? The transparency of smoke? Does Obama want EPA to protect us, or to protect industry by internally sabotaging enforcement of enviro regualtions

If Jackson at EPA is a change from the Bushie posioners' lobby there, the Borgia family were really confectioners.

Change we can believe in? We'll know it when we see it. Dumping toxic swill down our legs and telling us it's "protection" is just same 'ol, same 'ol. Any community organizer knows that.

Round Up herbicide toxicity

Monsanto says their Roundup herbicide is 'as safe as table salt.' That's just evil greed run amok. And it's running into your waterways.
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Called the wonder herbicide, RoundUp is one of the top-selling herbicides. Made by Monsanto, it is now used on plants that have been genetically engineered to tolerate RoundUp without dying.

This means:

Higher residues of RoundUp in our food chain

Over 90 percent of soy and canola in our food chain are 'RoundUp Ready' genetically engineered to withstand large quantities of RoundUp

Increased RoundUp usage by farmers

More danger to the public

RoundUp Herbicide has been touted by its maker, Monsanto, as safe and environmentally friendly. As such, it has become the most popular herbicide in use today. Advertising by Monsanto has led the public to believe that RoundUp is "safe as table salt," a phrase used quite often by its proponents to describe it.

Studies used for RoundUp's initial registration were fraudulent. There is no indication that these studies have been replaced with other, more valid, studies. The public perception of RoundUp as safe, environmentally friendly, and no more harmful than table salt has impeded the normal scientific study to which a pesticide would normally be subjected. Research grants have been concentrated in the areas of pesticides perceived to be more detrimental to humans.

New York State's Attorney General has sued Monsanto for claiming that RoundUp is "safe" and "environmentally friendly." This suit ended in a settlement with Monsanto in which Monsanto agreed to cease and desist from using these terms in advertising RoundUp in the state of New York. Monsanto, while not admitting any wrongdoing, paid the state of New York $250,000 in settlement of this suit. When Monsanto violated the first settlement agreement by advertising within New York that RoundUp is "safe," a second agreement was negotiated.

Most of the studies identifying RoundUp's true toxicity are recent, and certain areas of RoundUp's toxicity have yet to be thoroughly studied. Case law involving RoundUp victims is almost non-existent due to this lack of scientific information with which to prove causation.

It is for these reasons that it is important to also look to anecdotal information about RoundUp's toxicity to humans in order to develop a full picture of the symptomology it causes.

Suffocating Dead Zones Spread Across The World's Oceans

"With more than 400 oxygen-starved dead zones in global coastal waters, scientists are calling for such dead zones to be recognised as one of the world's great environmental problems

Man-made pollution is spreading a growing number of suffocating dead zones across the world's seas with disastrous consequences for marine life, scientists have warned.

The experts say the hundreds of regions of critically low oxygen now affect a combined area the size of New Zealand, and that they pose as great a threat to life in the world's oceans as overfishing and habitat loss.

The number of such seabed zones - caused when massive algal blooms feeding off pollutants such as fertiliser die and decay - has boomed in the last decade. There were some 405 recorded in coastal waters worldwide in 2007, up from 305 in 1995 and 162 in the 1980s.

Robert Diaz, an oceans expert at the US Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, at Gloucester Point, said: "Dead zones were once rare. Now they're commonplace. There are more of them in more places."

Marine bacteria feed on the algae in the blooms after it has died and sunk to the bottom, and in doing so they use up all of the oxygen dissolved in the water. The resulting 'hypoxic' seabed zones can asphyxiate swathes of bottom dwelling organisms such as clams and worms, and disrupt fish populations.

Diaz and his colleague, Rutger Rosenberg of the department of marine ecology at the University of Gothenburg, call for more careful use of fertilisers to address the problem.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say the dead zones must be viewed as one of the "major global environmental problems". They say: "There is no other variable of such ecological importance to coastal marine ecosystems that has changed so drastically over such a short time."

The key solution, they say, is to "keep fertilisers on the land and out of the sea". Changes in the way fertilisers and other pollutants are managed on land have already "virtually eliminated" dead zones from the Mersey and Thames estuaries, they say.

Diaz says his concern is shared by farmers who are worried about the high cost of fertilisers. "They certainly don't want to see their dollars flowing off their fields. Scientists and farmers need to continue working together to minimise the transfer of nutrients from land to sea."
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What affects even the smallest crustacean and the lowest end of the food chain comes back to affect us. That is the dot so many need to connect in order for us to change our ways.