tagged w/ Natural Resources
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This, pretty much, tells it like it is with regard to what capitalism is all about and why we need to end it.This, pretty much, tells it like it is with regard to what capitalism is all about and... more
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Still reeling from a civil war that toppled long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, minsters from Libya’s new interim government continue to unveil new members to assist in leading the North African country to elections in seven months’ time.
http://www.simbarusseau.com/exclusive-interview-with-tariq-saeedi-on-libya/Still reeling from a civil war that toppled long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi,... more
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Adam Yamaguchi, a ravenous sushi consumer since childhood, examines the cost of the world's insatiable appetite for raw fish, namely the Bluefin tuna.
"Sushi to the Slaughter" premieres on Tuesday, July 12 at 9/8c on Current TV.
"Vanguard" is Current TV's no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.
Current Media, the Peabody-and Emmy Award-winning television and online network founded in 2005 by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, engages viewers with smart, provocative and timely programming -- stories that no one else is telling in ways that no one else is telling them. Current's programming shines a light where others won't dare and boldly explores important subjects -- opening minds, sparking conversations and forming deep connections with its viewers. The channel's audience is comprised of affluent, curious, social and connected adults who crave the kind of entertaining, enlightening, witty and informative programming found on Current's TV and online properties. Current is now available via cable and satellite TV in 75 million households worldwide -- 60 million households in the US -- through distribution partners Comcast (Channel 107); Time Warner ; DirecTV (Channel 358 nationwide); Dish Network (Channel 196 nationwide); Verizon and AT&T. In the UK and Ireland, Current is available on BSkyB (Channel 183) and Virgin Media (Channel 155), and in Italy, Current is available on Sky Italia (Channel 130). Viewers can also find Current online at http://www.current.com.Adam Yamaguchi, a ravenous sushi consumer since childhood, examines the cost of the... more
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So often there's the sense that only with dramatic change can we bring about a more sustainable world -- but in reality, sometimes all it takes is the imagination of a child. Meet Mason Perez, a 9-year-old from Reno, Nevada, whose science fair project has helped save his community tens of thousands of gallons of water. Two years ago, at age 7, the gradeschooler discovered an all-too-common point of waste that had been overlooked by grown-ups for ages.
:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/06/9-year-olds-science-fair-project-saves-city-thousands-of-gallons-of-water.phpSo often there's the sense that only with dramatic change can we bring about a... more
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Best watched on YouTube itself, in HD (720 pts) and with the larger screen. Enjoy!
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The Huffington Post Nick Wing
First Posted: 02/16/11 08:07 PM Updated: 02/16/11 08:52 PM
"God is not capricious. He's given us a creation that is dynamically stable," Beard told MinnPost. "We are not going to run out of anything."
"Our farm was mined for coal three times," Beard said. "And, now we stand on a point and look over barley and wheat and pines. Did we temporarily disrupt the face of the earth? Yes, but when we were done, we put it all back together again."
"It is the height of hubris to think we could [destroy the earth]," Beard told MinnPost, before saying that even devastating nuclear events shouldn't cast doubt on his theory that the earth can always be repaired.
"How did Hiroshima and Nagasaki work out? We destroyed that, but here we are, 60 years later and they are tremendously effective and livable cities. Yes, it was pretty horrible. But, can we recover?" Beard asked. "Of course we can."
http://www.minnpost.com/donshelby/2011/02/15/25784/picking_science_that_fits_politics_rep_mike_beard_on_climate_change
By Don Shelby | Published Tue, Feb 15 2011 12:01 am
"Our farm was mined for coal three times," he told me.
"And, now we stand on a point and look over barley and wheat and pines. Did we temporarily disrupt the face of the earth? Yes, but when we were done, we put it all back together again."
Abraham told me Sunday: "This is an opportunity for a dialogue. Maybe there is a way to bridge the partisan chasm and allow a free-market champion to propose solutions." Abraham then added: "I'm glad to hear Representative Beard cares about humanity. That's a helpful place to start."
A lot of what Beard knows he learned in church. One Congressman, talking about global warming, recently said that God wouldn't allow man to do anything to destroy the planet. Beard told me, "It is the height of hubris to think we could." I asked him about nuclear war. He said: "How did Hiroshima and Nagasaki work out? We destroyed that, but here we are, 60 years later and they are tremendously effective and livable cities. Yes, it was pretty horrible," he said, "But, can we recover? Of course we can."
'We are not going to run out'
Beard believes that "God is not capricious. He's given us a creation that is dynamically stable. We are not going to run out of anything."
I called Dr. Ben Santer. He is a climate researcher with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and was the convening lead author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 "IPCC Working Group Report."
There is another study floating around, but Santer says that, too, has been found to be bad science. An exasperated Dr. Santer told me, "Unfortunately, the wrong information is still out there."The Huffington Post Nick Wing
First Posted: 02/16/11 08:07 PM Updated: 02/16/11... more
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The New York Times
December 21, 2010
A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning
By JUSTIN GILLIS
PART ONE…
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii — Two gray machines sit inside a pair of utilitarian buildings here, sniffing the fresh breezes that blow across thousands of miles of ocean.
They make no noise. But once an hour, they spit out a number, and for decades, it has been rising relentlessly.
The first machine of this type was installed on Mauna Loa in the 1950s at the behest of Charles David Keeling, a scientist from San Diego. His resulting discovery, of the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, transformed the scientific understanding of humanity’s relationship with the earth. A graph of his findings is inscribed on a wall in Washington as one of the great achievements of modern science.
Yet, five years after Dr. Keeling’s death, his discovery is a focus not of celebration but of conflict. It has become the touchstone of a worldwide political debate over global warming.
When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. That means every million pints of air, for example, contained 310 pints of carbon dioxide.
By 2005, the year he died, the number had risen to 380 parts per million. Sometime in the next few years it is expected to pass 400. Without stronger action to limit emissions, the number could pass 560 before the end of the century, double what it was before the Industrial Revolution.
The greatest question in climate science is: What will that do to the temperature of the earth?
Scientists have long known that carbon dioxide traps heat at the surface of the planet. They cite growing evidence that the inexorable rise of the gas is altering the climate in ways that threaten human welfare.
Fossil fuel emissions, they say, are like a runaway train, hurtling the world’s citizens toward a stone wall — a carbon dioxide level that, over time, will cause profound changes.
The risks include melting ice sheets, rising seas, more droughts and heat waves, more flash floods, worse storms, extinction of many plants and animals, depletion of sea life and — perhaps most important — difficulty in producing an adequate supply of food. Many of these changes are taking place at a modest level already, the scientists say, but are expected to intensify.
Reacting to such warnings, President George Bush committed the United States in 1992 to limiting its emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Scores of other nations made the same pledge, in a treaty that was long on promises and short on specifics.
But in 1998, when it came time to commit to details in a document known as the Kyoto Protocol, Congress balked. Many countries did ratify the protocol, but it had only a limited effect, and the past decade has seen little additional progress in controlling emissions.
Many countries are reluctant to commit themselves to tough emission limits, fearing that doing so will hurt economic growth. International climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, this month ended with only modest progress. The Obama administration, which came into office pledging to limit emissions in the United States, scaled back its ambitions after climate and energy legislation died in the Senate this year.
Challengers have mounted a vigorous assault on the science of climate change. Polls indicate that the public has grown more doubtful about that science. Some of the Republicans who will take control of the House of Representatives in January have promised to subject climate researchers to a season of new scrutiny.
One of them is Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California. In a recent Congressional hearing on global warming, he said, “The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rather undramatic.”
But most scientists trained in the physics of the atmosphere have a different reaction to the increase.
“I find it shocking,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the government monitoring program of which the Mauna Loa Observatory is a part. “We really are in a predicament here, and it’s getting worse every year.”
As the political debate drags on, the mute gray boxes atop Mauna Loa keep spitting out their numbers, providing a reality check: not only is the carbon dioxide level rising relentlessly, but the pace of that rise is accelerating over time.
“Nature doesn’t care how hard we tried,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Columbia University economist, said at a recent seminar. “Nature cares how high the parts per million mount. This is running away.”
CONTINUED…The New York Times
December 21, 2010
A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning... more
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The natural gas industry made Joe Todd an offer he couldn’t refuse.
He told them no, but New York State’s industry-drafted 2005 “compulsory integration” law made resistance pointless.
Todd had turned away a landman who tried last year to convince him to lease his property to a Denver-based gas driller. Then he received an official letter in January that said he had to surrender his subterranean property rights for a financial stake in the same Colorado driller’s new well operation less than a mile from his home in Big Flats, N.Y. He ripped up the letter and threw it in the trash.
The drilling started up anyway.The natural gas industry made Joe Todd an offer he couldn’t refuse.
He told... more
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Man Invents Machine to Convert Plastic Into Oil (VIDEO)
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Everyone knows China is planning to take over the world. But with most of the focus centered on their booming economy, the Asian giant is quietly putting together an entirely different strategy, one which involves domination of natural resources. As the importance of oil dwindles over the next few decades, what will become the new scarcity? The answer is "rare earth".
Rare earth elements are perhaps not so much rare as they are expensive and difficult to extract. They're used in the manufacturing of computers, LCD screens, wind turbines, car parts, cellphones, missiles, light bulbs, solar panels, and countless other technological necessities. To call them essential would be an understatement. And China controls 97 percent of them.
The United States, unaccustomed to be caught tying its shoes as the starting gun is fired for a new global race, has suddenly realized the importance of rare earths and has recently passed new legislation aimed at rapidly increasing domestic production. In 2002, Molycorp (in Colorado) was shut for a variety of reasons (including low global prices for the critical minerals), but has since re-opened and is planning to dramatically ramp-up production as a central part of the US plan to improve their position. What's shocking is that apparently China attempted in 2005 to buy Molycorp as part of Unocal, which would have essentially given it total control of all of the world's rare earth elements. Thankfully that purchase was blocked.
More recently, China halted the delivery of all rare earths to Japan, as part of a diplomatic spat over a Chinese fisherman which Japan has refused to release. This has created some problems for Toyota, and has caused the value of rare earth stock market shares to soar. What seems likely in this situation is that China is using the fisherman as political cover to test their newfound resource-clout; specifically, to see what happens when they turn off the spigot.
As governments around the world freak out and put various mining plans into action, is it perhaps too little too late? Many are predicting that demand for rare earth elements may soon outstrip supply. Once the oil dries up, will rare earth become the next flashpoint for global conflict? And in the interest of global security, is it really unthinkable that we might need to start mining the moon?
***Lots of links at the original source article below. Sorry but they wouldn't paste properly above...
http://talkingskull.com/article/china-makes-play-for-rare-earthsEveryone knows China is planning to take over the world. But with most of the focus... more
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In this scene from Vanguard's "I Heart Global Warming," correspondent Adam Yamaguchi investigates how Greeland's natural resources -- oil, natural gas, and minerals -- may be increasingly accessible as glaciers recede.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In this scene from Vanguard's "I Heart Global Warming," correspondent... more
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We are letting the criminal clean up the crime scene. While Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the oil is becoming harder to find, the Natural Resources Defense Council‘s annual report on beaches found no downturn in the number of beach closures or advisories since the spill was capped. The NRDC reports that the number of beach closures and advisories this year, 2,200, is roughly 10 times more than last year. And it predicts that the impact will last for years.
A growing number of clean-up workers have reported flu like symptoms including headaches, dizziness, fatigue, nausea and loss of concentration to just name a few. Almost all of the Exxon Valdez clean-up crews have either died or are still suffering from the effects of the use of toxic dispersant.
Senior policy analyst Hugh Kaufman of the EPA blows the whistle on the EPA for allowing BP to poison the Gulf and the workers who are trying to clean it up. When asked what evidence he has to back those claims he responds:
“Well, we‘ve seen anecdotal information of mammals in the water, like dolphins, bleeding from their orifices; some of the workers who have done the spill cleanup are having the same problem. The dispersant and oil mixtures are supposed to atomize materials like oil. Well, if that gets into your system, that atomizes your cells, and that‘s why there‘s hemorrhaging. So, there‘s anecdotal information both down there in the Gulf, similar to the anecdotal information at the Exxon Valdez case almost 20 years ago.”
He confirms what many Exxon Valdez clean-up workers have warned, “The dispersants mixed with the oil and the water is extremely toxic. Sweden has done studies on this. Israel has done studies on this.”
He goes on to say, “The only real purpose of using so many dispersants with the oil was to cover up the volume of oil that was released from that well. So, that and lying about how much is coming out was a mechanism to help BP save billions of dollars in fines.”
“Right now, we‘re very limited. We‘ve got hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spread out, mixed with 2 million gallons of dispersant. And so, what we have to do is accurately monitor the air and water and be very careful with the seafood. But we‘ve now poisoned thousands of square miles of the Gulf and we have to recognize that and take precautions so that we minimize the damage that we have done.”We are letting the criminal clean up the crime scene. While Jane Lubchenco, director... more
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The New York Times today proclaimed that Afghanistan is apparently poised to become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” — a metal used to produce gadgets like iPods and laptops. The discovery will also, according to Pentagon documents quoted by the Times, fundamentally transform the country’s opium-reliant economy.
But the military (and observers of the military) have known about Afghanistan’s mineral riches for years. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Navy concluded in a 2007 report that “Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered nonfuel mineral resources,” including ”large quantities of accessible iron and copper [and] abundant deposits of colored stones and gemstones, including emerald, ruby [and] sapphire.”The New York Times today proclaimed that Afghanistan is apparently poised to become... more
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On May 21, 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several conservation organizations will observe Endangered Species Day to recognize the conservation programs underway nationwide aimed at protecting America’s threatened and endangered species.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has helped to prevent the extinction of hundreds of species. Co-administered by the Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the purpose of the ESA is to conserve imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend.
“The Endangered Species Act is the nation’s premier law protecting biodiversity today,” said Acting Service Director Rowan Gould. “The bald eagle, American alligator and gray wolf are all species which once found themselves on the list, facing the brink of extinction, but have successfully rebounded. The wood stork, Kirtland’s warbler, Louisiana black bear and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle are still listed species that are showing good progress towards achieving recovery — the ultimate goal of the ESA. These species and many others continue to benefit from the protections afforded by the ESA and the dedicated people who work through the Act to ensure their continued existence.”
The Service and Endangered Species Coalition are cosponsoring four signature events around the country to focus public support on rare and imperiled species. Events will be held in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Maine and Montana. Michael J. Bean, counselor for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the U.S. Department of the Interior, is scheduled to speak during the Washington, D.C. event, which will take place at the United States Botanic Garden.
In addition, many of the Service’s field and regional offices will be hosting events in their communities and providing unique programs to visitors on endangered species conservation. For more information on how you can find an event near you, please visit www.fws.gov/endangered/ESDay/2010.html
The Service works with other Federal agencies, state, local and tribal governments, environmental organizations, industry groups, academia, the scientific community and members of the public to help conserve our nation’s threatened and endangered fish, wildlife and plants.
Endangered Species Day honors this national commitment to recovering endangered species and their habitats and provides an opportunity to learn about what efforts are being made to conserve them.
There are currently 1,324 species listed in the U.S.: 750 plants and 574 animals. To find out what endangered species are near you, and how you can help, please visit www.fws.gov/endangered.
The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service.On May 21, 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several conservation... more
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bmltv
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Mon May 17, 2010 4:59 PM EDT
By The Rachel Maddow Show
(Times-Picayune graphic)
Years before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, before the underwater volcano of oil threatened to create a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists recognized another dead zone in the Gulf. The New Orleans Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer in 1997 for documenting the devastation around the mouth of the Mississippi River. The 7,000-square-mile dead zone was caused by algae blooms, feeding on agricultural and sewer runoff, that deplete the oxygen in the water.
http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6010
Ten years later, the Times-Picayune found this dead zone was still growing:
"You reach a point where you've shifted the ecosystem to a completely different domain, and the recovery from that may be impossible," said Don Scavia, a professor of natural resources and environment at the University of Michigan and former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist who led one of the first federal studies on the dead zone in 2000. "There will be a time where the critters that typically occupy the sediment in those areas can no longer recover."Mon May 17, 2010 4:59 PM EDT
By The Rachel Maddow Show
(Times-Picayune graphic)... more
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suzane
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