Fossil Fuels // Current TV

Gulf oil spill killing birds and sealife

Pictures of the extent of this ecocide as the oil continues to gush out of the well 31... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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BP Begins Continuously Spraying TOXIC Oil Dispersants

The US Environmental PROTECTION Agency has approved the use of the toxic chemical... more

julesrs007
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2 years ago
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33 comments

Bill Nye the Science Guys Says: Save Our Earth (and Comments on the First Earth Day, 40 Years Ago)

'The Science Guy' says: 'Save the Earth' By Bill Nye, Special to... more

EthicalVegan
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2 years ago
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Protesters Disrupt Congressional Coal Hearing

Yesterday, protesters wearing surgical masks interrupted a congressional hearing on... more

captainplanet71
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Coal Industry Well Positioned for Climate Bill Battle

The White House's elation over the passage of health care reform won’t... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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Farmers to DOJ -- "Break up Big Ag"

"Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life" -Joel Greeno

While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday's antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.

Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers. Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings - four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

To his credit, Attorney General Eric Holder seemed to be trying not to mince words in Iowa - always tough for an attorney - and particularly so for one under the right's atomic microscope. Noting that farming "has been at the core of the American economy ever since there was an American economy," he went on to say, "[W]e've learned the hard way that . . . long periods of reckless deregulation can foster practices that are anti-competitive and even illegal. . . . We know that a growing number of American farmers find it increasingly difficult to survive by doing what they've done for decades. And we've learned that some of them believe the competitive environment may be, at least in part, to blame."

Farmers who attended a pre-hearing meeting Thursday evening made the case for themselves. Noting that farming goes back "forever in my family," Todd Leake, who grows wheat, soybeans, sunflowers and navy beans in North Dakota, said, "The crops we grow are the basis of civilization. If anything belongs to the public domain, if anything belongs to the people of the world, it's the crops we grow for food."

Iowa hog farmer Larry Ginter, a long-time opponent of factory farms, also made the connection between the plight of American farmers and the struggles of so many people outside our borders, saying," "Labor, family farms, democratic rights are in a pitched battle against the dictatorship of capital. We've got to understand that this is an international struggle. Those Mexican workers coming up here are family farmers. Those Sudanese workers in the packing plants are family farmers and workers being driven off by the big dictatorship of capital. We have to understand that we are not alone in America." Urging his fellow farmers to action, Ginter concluded, "Nothing can happen on the farms unless farmers turn the wheel and plant the seed."

Wisconsin dairy farmer Joel Greeno, said "My parents' 29th wedding anniversary was a farm foreclosure. Their 30th anniversary was a sheriff's auction on the courthouse steps. My neighbor's farm was stolen from him that was owned since 1942 by his family. He came to ask how to get food stamps because he'd always lived off his farm, no longer had that, and said that his social security of $9,000 a year couldn't feed him. This has got to end. Washington has got to step up. DOJ is our only lifeboat. They have to fix this. They have to correct it. Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life, my work, and the food I produce. Kraft Food does not have the right to set the price of my milk, which they do without question."

Patrick Woodall, a research director for Food and Water Watch, and a panelist at the hearings said, "At the end of the day, farmers and activists could speak truth to power and delivered a tough message to the regulators that action was long overdue, it was time to bust the agribusiness trusts and level the playing field for farmers and consumers. Many audience members, like Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from Pesticide Action Network North America, also challenged the reliance on agrochemical inputs and the false hope of genetically modified crops.""Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life" -Joel... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Solar power could provide 10% of US energy by 2030: report

The United States could source 10 percent of its electricity from solar power by 2030,... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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13 comments

All Aboard Please

All aboard, please take your seats and fasten your seatbelts. There is a 25% chance... more

GreenhouseNeutralFoundation
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2 years ago
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Arctic ice melt is changing the world's weather and releasing contaminants into the food chain

Rapidly melting Arctic sea ice is changing the world's weather, releasing contaminants into the food chain and threatening the survival of whales and polar bears, a massive international study on climate change has found.

Some 300 scientists from 27 countries spent months on an icebreaker in 2009 studying the effect of climate change in the Arctic and they released their preliminary results Friday at a youth summit in Winnipeg.

David Barber, one of the world's top Arctic researchers, said the rapid sea-ice melt is affecting everything from polar bears to micro-organisms.

"We know we're losing sea ice. The world is all aware of that," said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba. "What you're not aware of is that it has impacts on everything else that goes on in this system. We're just starting to understand that from a scientific perspective."

The expedition discovered there is more open water than ever before in the Arctic, he said. That is creating more cyclones - Arctic storms, characterized by snow and high winds.

The storms further erode the sea ice crucial to the region's ecosystem.

"Those storms are having a very dramatic impact on the sea ice - they are melting the ice from underneath," Barber said. "The other thing the cyclones do is they bring winds with them. Those winds remove snow from the surface but they also break up the ice as well."

Scientists found the loss of that sea ice has both far-reaching and immediate consequences, from boosting temperatures further south to threatening whales and releasing toxic contaminants.

Steve Ferguson, who studied marine mammals on the expedition, said the melting ice has removed a barrier that once kept killer whales and other predators from entering the Arctic. Now there are more killer whales in the region and the loss of ice means there are fewer safe havens from the predator, he said.

Polar bears and other species who live on the ice are running out of room, he added.

"I think we will have ice for a long time, at least for part of the year, but it may only be located in a certain area in the world," said Ferguson, a biologist at the University of Manitoba. "These species are going to be crowded into a small area so that's going to be challenging."

The eroding ice is also threatening mammals in another way - by releasing contaminants into the Arctic food chain. Gary Stern, who studied the level of PCBs and mercury on the expedition, said the contaminants latch on to the increased carbon in the surface water, which is drawn downwards.

The contaminants are then consumed by zooplankton, fish and, eventually, beluga whales.Rapidly melting Arctic sea ice is changing the world's weather, releasing... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Better Place: Electric Car Project Is About Isreali Independence from Oil

Better Place, the electric car start-up, made clear when it unveiled its first vehicle... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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U.S. Defense Review Boosts Case for National Climate Action

The U.S. military could soon be drawing up disaster-response plans to prepare for... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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Weekly Mulch: Climate Change On Obama’s Back Burner

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger In his first State of the Union address,... more

MediaConsortium
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2 years ago
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Investors Applaud Shell's Newfound Caution in the Tar Sands

With Royal Dutch Shell announcing Monday that it would scale back the pace at which it... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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Ex CEO of The Weather Channel debunks Global Warming

Not made by our footprint,but natural cycles--crisis is man-made,not global warming

cyman01
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2 years ago
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Inserting Peak Oil into the Conversation

Part 1 of KrisCan's Peak Oil conversation with Richard Heinberg about the limits... more

Kriscan
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2 years ago
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Perennial Polyculture Prevails over PeakOil

KrisCan visits Eric Toensmeier in his Holyoke, Massachusetts home garden that was... more

Kriscan
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2 years ago
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Solar Could Generate 15% of Power by 2020, If US Ends Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Solar power technologies could generate 15 percent of America's power in 10 years... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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1 comment

Peter Gleick: The Real Climate Hoax

In all of the recent news about climate change, leaked emails, complex negotiations, and watered-down agreements in Copenhagen, one fact has’t received enough attention. The climate “hoax” is real. The only problem is that the real hoax is the effort by climate change deniers who argue that the climate isn’t changing, or that it isn’t because of human actions. It is, and it is. The science is unambiguous. The climate is changing, rapidly, and it is doing so because of our emissions of greenhouse gases.

I know many people have said this. I’ve been saying it for twenty-five years in my research and writings. But if the phrase “climate hoax” is going to enter the public vernacular, it should do so in the right way. So from now on, I intend to use it to refer to the efforts of climate change deniers to misinform the public and our policy makers. Some, like Senator James Inhofe (of Oklahoma), love the phrase “climate hoax.” Fine, but since he is a major elected official perpetrating this hoax (actually, I think he is probably both a hoax-er and a hoax-ee), let the words represent his own actions.

He and the other deniers are foisting a hoax on the American people by misusing and abusing science and by misrepresenting facts for narrow ideological purposes. If he and the other climate hoaxers don’t think we ought to do anything about climate change because they fear it will hurt the economy, or they just can’t bear for the government to do anything at all, fine, they should make that argument. But instead they pretend the science isn’t firm.

It is. There are plenty of uncertainties about how bad climate change is going to get, and how fast, and how the impacts will be distributed. But not about whether the climate is changing or whether humans are driving those changes.

Water Number: Because my blog is called “Water Numbers,” here is the number for today’s post. 20%. This is the expected decrease in recharge of the vitally important Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains of the United States (including important parts of Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe), if temperatures increase by 2.5 degrees C, which they almost certainly will. (”Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” IPCC Working Group II, 4th Assessment, 2007).

But there is more bad news for Oklahoma. As temperature and rainfall patterns begin to rapidly change from climate change, the yields of two of the most important crops in the United States, corn and soybeans, are expected to be severely damaged (including in Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe), according a 2009 scientific paper by Schlenker and Roberts from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This study suggests that average yields could decrease by 30 to 46% before the end of the century under the slowest warming scenario and decrease by 63 to 82% under the most rapid warming scenario. And the recent lack of action in Copenhagen pretty much ensures we’re going to see the most rapid warming scenario. The warming the planet is already experiencing already exceeds that worst scenario.

So it is time to call what the climate deniers are doing by its real name: the climate hoax: denying the reality of climate change.In all of the recent news about climate change, leaked emails, complex negotiations,... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Rocky Year for Coal Industry: 26 Power Plant Plans Shelved in 2009

espite a lack of substantive action on climate change in Copenhagen or, yet, in... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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Ice core samples confirm higher metal content in the Himalayas

Ice core samples from Mount Everest that represent 800 years of atmospheric history contain much higher levels of certain metals in the last three decades than in the previous seven centuries. The metals are linked to the rising use of fossil fuels in Asia during that same time period.

Economic growth and more burning of fossil fuels by industries and cars in central Asia since the 1970s has resulted in higher levels of metals deposited in recent layers of ice collected from Mount Everest.

Data from a recent study that examined the cores from the Himalayan Mountains are the first to show that levels of arsenic, molybdenum, tin and antimony in the ice samples have sharply increased during the last 30 years when compared to the previous 700 years. During those centuries, the metal levels varied but were fairly stable.

Researchers use core samples of lake sediments, glaciers and ice caps to show that even remote locations – like the Arctic – contain evidence of human activities, such as the use of pesticides, metals and industrial chemicals. Slices of the cores are like pages in a history book; they record when and how much pollution a region has received during past decades, centuries or even milleniums.

It is known that chemicals originating in warmer regions of the world can be carried by air currents and deposited in soil and ice at the colder, higher latitudes and altitudes. Fossil fuels burned in cars or coal-fired generating stations release metals into the atmosphere that also can be moved long distances and deposited in remote ecosystems. Several prior studies from North America, Europe and Greenland confirm the higher levels of metals found in recent layers of sediment, glacier and ice cap cores are related to heavier reliance on fossil fuels during the last century.

More recently, the number of coal-burning generating stations and industries and vehicles that rely on fossil fuels has increased along with economic growth in central Asia. As a result, Asia now releases more metals into the atmosphere than any other region of the world. Despite these rapid increases, it was not known if the metals were being deposited at higher levels now than before Asia's recent industrial growth.

This recent study was done to find out. Researchers collected ice cores high up on the northern slope of Mount Everest. The cores represented what has been deposited in this region for more than 800 years, spanning from 1205 to 2002 AD. In the cores the researchers measured the levels of several metals – arsenic, molybdenum, tin and antimony – that are primarily released during fossil fuel combustion.

The results clearly show the effects of the booming economy in central Asia. In layers of the core representing the 1970s and more recent times, levels of these metals are up to 3 times higher than what was measured in older layers.

The findings show that the increased industrialization of central Asia has led to higher metals levels in remote areas of the Himalayas and that environmental contamination in this region is mirroring what has been seen in North America.
Synopsis by Karen Kidd

Hong, S, K Lee, S Hou, SD Hur, J Ren, L Burn, KJR Rosman, C Barbante and CF Boutron. 2009. An 800-year record of atmospheric As, Mo, Sn, and Sb in Central Asia in high-altitude ice cores from Mt. Qomolangma (Everest), Himalayas. Environmental Science and Technology.Ice core samples from Mount Everest that represent 800 years of atmospheric history... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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