By DON CUDDY
doncuddy@s-t.com
May 12, 2012 12:00 AM 

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An emergency action by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Friday closing a large area off the coast of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to scallop fishing was welcomed by the fishing industry.

"This is a benefit to me," said local scallop boat owner Dan Eilertsen, who has one trip to the Delmarva remaining on his boat Justice. "It's a long steam down there and it was getting a little scratchy," he said. Eilertsen held off on making that last trip, hoping that such a move would be approved.

"This is the first news I've heard of it," he said when informed by The Standard-Times of the decision Friday. "But it's good news for me."

Scallop boats such as Justice with unused trips will now be compensated with trips to Closed Area 1, a New England scallop ground much closer to New Bedford that opens to fishermen on June 15. The New England Fishery Management Council had asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to take this action and to move quickly to prevent economic losses to the boats that still had Delmarva trips.

According to a new release from NOAA late Friday, the closure is intended to prevent high levels of fishing in the area that could reduce the catch and affect the overall health of the scallop biomass in Delmarva. Fisheries managers, and the industry, feared that weakened stocks could compromise the rotational management program that has successfully rebuilt the scallop fishery.

The Delmarva closure remains in effect for the rest of the 2012 fishing year, which runs through March 1, 2013.

Obama is twice over responsible for Occupy Wall Street's existence. On the one hand, the failures and disappointments of his administration have been well documented and have totally undercut his campaign promises of hope and change, leaving former supporters completely disillusioned.  On the other hand, his 2008 campaign trained young people in organizing and that skill has been used to give birth to the OWS movement.

South Dakota's Black Hills, home to the granite faces carved into Mt. Rushmore, should be restored as Native American tribal lands,

Anaya said land restoration would help bring about reconciliation. He named the Black Hills as an example. He said restoring to indigenous people what they have a legitimate claim to can be done in a way that is not divisive "so that the Black Hills, for example, isn't just a reminder of the subordination and domination of indigenous peoples in that country."

The Black Hills, home to Mount Rushmore, are public land but are considered sacred by the Sioux tribes. The Sioux have refused to accept money awarded in a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision and have sought return of the land. The Black Hills and other lands were set aside for the Sioux in an 1868 treaty. But Congress passed a law in 1877 taking the land.

Previously unreleased photographs from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show boxes and bags full of oil-covered and dead endangered sea turtles and a group of sperm whales swimming through an oil sheen.

The photographs were obtained by the environmental group Greenpeace through a Freedom of Information Act request sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in July 2010.

The Heartland Institute has killed its offensive climate change-denying billboard campaign after climate change deniers — including a right-wing GOP Senator — and activists all decried the ads. Heartland, a so-called think tank that specializes in producing questionable campaigns and questionable “evidence” for climate change deniers to then spread, created the billboards which feature images of the Unabomber and the words, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?,” suggesting that climate change adherents are mass-murderers, for no apparent reason. They have refused to apologize.

...

But the real probable reason for the end of the “experiment” — one Congressman threatened to pull his support of Heartland. The Hill reports that the billboard campaign “also rankled at least one Capitol Hill supporter of the group. Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), a climate skeptic who opposes emissions regulation, threatened to cancel his speech at the conference over the billboard.”

“The congressman will not participate in the upcoming Climate Change Conference if the Heartland Institute decides to continue this ad campaign, and he raised those same concerns to the Heartland Institute. He is glad to hear that these ads are coming down and wants to get back to the issues. He feels we can win this debate without the name-calling,” said Sensenbrenner spokeswoman Amanda Infield in an email.

Asked if he would attend the conference in light of the decision to yank the billboard, she replied, “If the ads are coming down, the congressman is planning to still participate.”

When a right wing radical like Jim Sensenbrenner thinks you’re too radical, you’re too radical.

 

It's true.

And so begins the destruction of the Eastern Seaboard that all the Wind mill, "Drill Baby Drill" people have been waiting for.

It's all about energy independence, right? Reducing global warming, green energy, not letting the Chinese beat us in the "Green Race"

Well. It's gonna cost us, and it's gonna cost a lot more than money. It's gonna cost a lot of marine life, and this is only the beginning as this administration opens up the North West Atlantic to energy production.

I wonder if my green friends thought it would only be the "passive" windmills that would be in that big energy Super Highway that they couldn't wait to see develop.

One in particular claims to be an environmentalist, or so it seems. That broad brimmed hat does not fool me.

Well, here ya go. Just what you've been waiting for.

I received an email from Jim Lovgren, forwarding his written comment's to BOEM, made at BOEM’s public hearing, the only one scheduled for New Jersey  to voice their opposition to these proposed seismic surveys that will be taking out whales, dolphin's and anything else in the survey area in the quest for energy, green or black.

borehead, don't know whether you saw these or not, but these are my written comments to BOEM, feel  free to use the comments, they need to be spread around as much as possible. This issue could be used to clearly define the eco frauds from the true environmentalists. There has been no sign of PEW  PEG or EDF so far as I have heard regarding this proposed massive slaughter of marine mammals.  NRDC has been hot in opposition, and it was their Micheal Jasny who had an opinion piece published in the Asbury Park Press a couple weeks ago, that made me aware of the estimated marine mammal takes.  Clean Ocean Action of which I am a board member then reviewed the EIS and  confirmed NRDC's numbers, while breaking down individual takes of each species. COA  really organized and energized the AC hearing and many of their affiliated groups presented testimony in opposition. Also Food and Water watch has been on the right side of many fishery issues and  presented testimoney along with Surfriders, and NJ sierra club.  Although NRDC is not anywhere near or dear to me, at least they have moral standards that they are abiding by,  and are not toeing the pew line for the money.  I can respect that.  Jim

Author: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Gulf of Mexico OCS Region

 http://www.savingseafood.org/images/boem-2012-005-vol1.pdf

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Blasts shake up fishermen. Seismic blasts in search of oil would likely affect marine life in area

CLEAN OCEAN ACTION ASKS FOR PUBLIC SUPPORT

FISHERMEN CALL FOUL

OTHERS POTENTIALLY AFFECTED BY SEISMIC BLASTS SPEAK OUT

SEISMIC BLASTS ARE PART OF THE PRESIDENT’S PLAN

WHAT COMES NEXT

A VICTORY ALONG THE WAY TO PRESERVING THE OCEAN

http://starnewsgroup.com/weekly/2012/04.27.12/blasts_shake_04.27.12_63780.html#.T5sL2_uRLJ4.newsvine

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These are Jim Lovgrens remarks.

My name is James Lovgren and I am a commercial fishermen representing the Fishermans Dock Co-op of Point Pleasant, and the Garden State Seafood association. GSSA  represents hundreds of fishermen from New Jersey and some neighboring states plus various support industries.

Thank you for holding this hearing on an issue that is vitally important to the east Coast fishing industry.  Seismic testing is known to have devastating effects on the marine ecosystem and the sea life that my industry depends on for our livelihood’s.  It has the potential to cause huge financial loses on an industry struggling to meet government imposed stock rebuilding targets.  The fishing industry already has to deal with an overzealous NMFS, but at least they notify us when they are holding public hearings concerning matters that affect our livelihood’s. In this case BOEM has not made the slightest effort to contact fishermen, or their organizations,  docks, ect,  of what they are planning.  We simply do not exist in your world. I’m here to tell you we do, and we have enormous concerns about your proposed actions.  We will be submitting detailed written comments in the near future but for now, in my generously granted 3 minutes, I will touch on some of our major concerns.

          The most outrageous aspect of this seismic testing proposal is its impact on marine mammals. Your environmental impact statement  estimates up to 138, 612 Level A takes over an 8 year period starting in 2013.  This includes an estimated 10 critically endangered Northern Right Whales. Amazing.  NMFS has held the fishing industry to what amounts to a zero tolerance of marine mammal  takes in many fisheries, and caused the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to the fishing industry and its supporting infrastructure in the last decade. In the last two weeks NMFS has announced a two month closure of the Gill net fisheries in the Gulf Of Maine due to Porpoise interactions, and a coming massive closure of 40 different gill net fisheries due to atlantic Sturgeon interactions.  Yet your department, and the oil industry that runs you, can cavalierly nuke every whale, Dolphin, and endangered species, on the east coast into oblivion and no one cares. We want an answer to this seemingly contradictory action by two different departments of our government. Why can big oil kill anything they want but the poor little fishermen, gets crucified if he looks crossed eyed at a whale or dolphin?  Scoreboard shows; Big Oil,  38, 637 marine mammals a year.  Fishing industry zero.  I know some Congressmen and Senators who are going to be a little bit upset by this seeming double standard.

Level B takes, which are not as serious but could still result in eventual death as these now deaf dumb and blind creatures stumble around disoriented in a shell shocked stupor is an astounding 13, 586, 251 marine mammals over the 8 year period.  Has NOAA leadership seen these numbers? Because if they have and they do nothing about it, someone should go to jail.

          Seismic testing around the world has been controversial everywhere it has taken place. Unfortunately definitive data proving ecological harm is  scarce as little research has been done to monitor and document its effects. Presently seismic testing is being done off the coast of Peru by a US company, that has assured the Peruvian government that seismic testing has no impact on the marine environment. Curiously within weeks of the start of testing hundreds of dead dolphins started washing up on the beaches, hundreds more were observed at sea. It must have been some renegade fishermen and their walls of death.

But enough about mammals, Australian  fishermen have watched as their scallop beds have died a few months after seismic testing took place. It seems the testing weakened their immune system and they then succumbed to disease.  The scallop industry in the Mid Atlantic is the largest and most profitable in the region with an  annual dockside value in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Economic multipliers taking into account the cost of the scallop from the sea to the dinner plate is over a billion annually.

          70 percent of the summer flounder quota  is allocated to the states from NJ to North Carolina. This ranges from 6 to 12 million pounds a year, 10 to 20 million dollars annually. Loligo and Illexx squid are major fisheries in the mid atlantic, with annual landings of 20 to 50 million pounds each. Squid have been shown to be affected by high frequency sound waves,  and suffer disorientation, sensory problems and susceptibility to predation because of them.  These are just a few of the fish species that fishermen will come knocking on your door seeking just compensation for. How about Bluefin tuna, red snapper, striped bass, weakfish, sea bass, surf clams, quahogs, grouper, mackerel, herring ect…  Research has also shown that fish eggs and larvae are also detrimentally impacted by seismic testing. 

Someone needs to explain how after 20 years of suffering from reduced catches due to government imposed regulations to restore our fish stocks, another government agency can come along and ruin our sacrifices in an instant.  I sure hope you indemnify this project with a ton of money, you’re going to need it. And I  haven’t  even mentioned the potential impacts on the recreational sector. Just double the number and you’re  in the ballpark.

I would be remiss if I didn’t question why we even need to do this testing, There is an estimated 60 day supply of oil on the whole of the east coast, and that is estimated to be able to reduce the price of gas by 3 cents in 20 years. Goldman Sachs will guarantee we never see a penny of that difference. Lastly there has to be a better less environmentally destructive way of  searching for oil and gas deposits then air gun testing.  Think about this, if I were to light off an M80  explosive in this building every 10 seconds you would all run as quickly away as you can, possibly with hearing damage, and I would be arrested.  Air gun testing is equivalent to that example, only many of the sea creatures cannot run away and predictably will die.  The few survivors will probably die in a few years from an oil spill. There has to be a better way.

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources acted this week to close waters along the Gulf Coast to shrimping due to [EDIT: amidst] widespread reports from scientists and fishermen of deformed seafood and drastic fall-offs in populations two years after the BP oil spill. ['Official' reason is now reported to be smaller than average shrimp.]

All waters in the Mississippi Sound and Mobile Bay, and some areas of Bon Secour, Wolf Bay and Little Lagoon were closed to shrimpers. Reports of grossly deformed seafood all along the Gulf from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle have been logged with increasing urgency, but Alabama is the first state to actually close waters to the seafood industry.

 If you are in need of a place to print an angry rant full of falsehoods the Cape Cod Times is the place to publish. No need to worry about facts or truth you can make those up to suit your arguments without worrying. Let's take a look at a case in point...

 An article called, Fishing Industry Decimates Herring by a self proclaimed scientist named...

ARTHUR C. COSTONIS

I can't print the entirety of the article here but will happily post the most ludicrous parts for the purpose of proving my point.

Ever heard of the monster herring tandem trawler technique? It's a dandy process whereby fast and electronically advanced ships (up to 165 feet long) work together to tow a small-meshed net the size of a football field between them. Sonar tracking determines the necessary depth.

    He is trying to refer to mid-water herring trawling which utilizes six foot meshes to catch herring while allowing other species to escape. The boats are not fast only making around ten miles per hour. As far as electonically advanced goes...Alaska is way ahead of anything I have ever seen here.

The sonar technology can distinguish between herring and other fish species, but not between sea and river herring. They also can't avoid catching declining populations of striped bass, cod, haddock, squid or mackerel. In fact, the net traps anything in its path such as sea turtles, seals, tuna and dolphins.

 I can't believe a, "scientist," would deviate so far from the facts. Test tows are used to protect river herring for which there was a minimal bycatch for 2011. Mid-water herring and mackeral fisheries  have the best by-catch ratio on the East Coast and the best record for marine mammal avoidance of all of the net fisheries on the East Coast.  (Now I will back that up with facts)

These unfortunate creatures become part of a category called "bycatch." They get sucked into a high-pressure vacuum gun and thrown back into the sea, dead or dying, never to reproduce. Meanwhile these same vacuum guns shoot the live herring into stocking boxes.

   Where did they get this guy?  Vacuum guns?? Thrown back into the Sea?? Shooting live herring....

 That is a horrible misrepresentation of the fishery and is nothing short of deliberate slander. Herring are pumped aboard with a standard fish pump that is used in all of the herring fisheries in the United States, Norway, Europe, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. A centrifugal pump that isn't capable of producing high pressures it is used to pump seines and mid-water nets in many other pelagic fisheries as well providing food for people around the world. The herring fishery has industry observers and there is no shooting of anything back into the sea with any kind of gun.

What happens to our ocean when enormous volumes of sea life are removed on a regular basis? Reproduction can't keep up and a balanced ecosystem becomes an unbalanced desert. The "bycatch" tragedy goes beyond the irreparable harm to non-herring and includes unseen microorganisms, micro fauna/flora, fish eggs and spat, all of which are necessary for sea life reproduction and sustaining viable fish stocks.

    Ok now we have gone completely into fantasyland. The herring fishery doesn't remove enormous volumes of anything. The vessels catch exactly what the management council allots for any given year. The tiny quota that is available off of Cape Cod is of no consequence to the fishery and most would rather see it moved elsewhere if it would stop the crying, whining, and squealing that occurs every time some herring are caught there. Since there is no, "by-catch tragedy," or damage to unseen micro-organisms and fish eggs I am going to ride right past the rest of this screed and sum up.

 This sad attempt to malign herring fishermen is both unnecessary and pathetic. It is hard enough to make a living today without every person with a factless rant getting published in the newspaper. The herring campaigners of Cape Cod are stepping up their rhetoric and lies in the hopes of duping even more of the public and inciting hatred against the few remaining herring fishermen left. I am not sure what they are putting in the water on the Cape but it's starting to look a lot like vinegar.

Here are the supporting articles...

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/28/10897339-the-top-ten-reasons-you-should-support-the-mid-water-herring-industry

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/04/06/11059592-help-wanted-third-reich-style-propagandist-needed-to-crush-small-group-of-fishermen-with-original-nv-cartoonactual-job-available

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/04/14/11202570-should-wal-mart-sell-seal-meat

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/28/10897069-do-the-poor-deserve-to-starve

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/21/10798171-herring-fishermen-told-to-go-back-to-ireland-by-herring-campaigners

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/15/10700148-bitter-harvest-the-truth-about-marine-mammals-being-killed-in-the-new-england-fisheries

and the original article cited..

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120427/OPINION/204270333

By Colleen King and Eric Colvin

OCEAN COUNTY — Local fishermen and environmental protection groups are joining forces to protest the proposed seismic surveys planned from Florida to the Delaware Bay, which have the potential to damage local marine life and marine ecosystems.

The seismic surveys involve towing airgun arrays behind survey ships, and regularly and repeatedly blasting sound waves through the ocean and deep into the ocean floor to pinpoint locations of sub-seabed oil and gas deposits.

Recently, the United States Department of the Interior announced it was taking steps to assess the conventional and renewable energy resource potential in the Mid and South Atlantic.

“For the first time in over 25 years, the Atlantic Ocean is under the gun,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of COA. “We must not sacrifice the region’s vibrant, clean ocean economy as the mainstay of the Atlantic seaboard — it’s killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

“The [federal] administration is searching for oil in all the wrong places under the pretense of reducing gasoline prices,” Ms. Zipf continued.

Scientists have been alarmed and puzzled by declines in bee populations in the United States and other parts of the world. They have suspected that pesticides are playing a part,

published studies suggesting that low levels of a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that they keep bumblebees from supplying their hives with enough food to produce new queens.

The authors of both studies contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids.

Four European countries have begun banning these poisons, and some bee populations are already recovering. But Bayer, the largest producer of neonicotinoids, has lobbied hard to keep them on the market. Now, massive global pressure from Avaaz and others has forced them to consider the facts

It’s a big agenda that Occupy has identified, nothing less than maximizing values that are important for life AND so a complete renewal of U.S. society and the U.S. role in the world. Chomsky sees not only the radical agenda but also the radical practice of the Occupiers. “Part of what functioning, free communities like the Occupy communities can be working for and spreading to others is just a different way of living, which is not based on maximizing consumer goods, but on, maximizing values that are important for life” he concludes. 

Chomsky is both optimistic about the energy of Occupy and realistic about the challenges it faces. He appreciates the “just do it” ethos and embraces its radical approach to participatory democracy. But he reminds his audiences that all social movements reach further than they can grasp. The influence of money on U.S. politics, the huge weight of the military-industrial complex, the rapaciousness of financial speculation: these are forces not easily dislodged by people gathering together in public spaces and voicing their opinions.

And yet, as Chomsky points out, the mostly non-violent, non-funded, and non-partisan set of actions radiating out from Zuccotti Park in Manhattan managed to change the national discussion about economic inequality. 

This inequality, he argues, is the result of a 30-year-long class war that has hollowed out the middle class and put great pressure on the poor in the United States. The neoliberal push for privatization and lower trade barriers has carried that war to every corner of the globe. The Occupy movement is pushing back against the actors, the actions, and most importantly the consequences of this class warfare. Not surprisingly, given the vested interests being challenged, the pushback of the 99 percent has generated pushback in turn from the 1 percent.

The Department of Agriculture today confirmed a case of mad cow disease found in a dairy cow in central California.

In a press briefing today, John Clifford, the USDA's chief veterinary officer, said the cow's meat did not enter the food supply and the carcass will be destroyed.

The animal was found at a rendering facility run by Baker Commodities in Hanford, Calif. The disease was discovered when the company selected the cow for random sampling, Baker Commodities executive vice president Dennis Luckey told The Associated Press. Read more; 

• April 25—1T Day: Break the link between higher education and the banks on the day student loan debt passes $1 trillion. Students across the country will demand affordable education by taking direct action against banks as well as administrators/regents/trustees who are in the pockets of big banks. 
• April 25—GE Shareholder Meeting: For the last three years, General Electric has received billions of dollars in tax refunds while spending millions on lobbyists who write loopholes into the tax code.
• May 1—May Day: People are organizing an international day of action for May Day—a people's holiday—Everyone from Occupy, immigrants rights groups, and labor unions will be organizing actions around the country for the 99%.
• May 3—Verizon Shareholder Meeting: From the pay raise of $7 million to $23 million for CEO Lowell McAdam, to the poor treatment of workers and the communities where they operate, Verizon continues to profit off the 99%. 
• May 5—Connect the Dots: It's time to connect the dots between extreme weather and climate change caused by the influence of dirty fossil fuel corporate interests in politics.
• May 9—Bank of America Shareholder Meeting: Bank of America's profits-over-people-and-planet business model has foreclosed on millions while simultaneously leading as the biggest funder of coal, from mining to power plants, in the U.S. 
• May 24—Sallie Mae Shareholder Meeting: Sallie Mae has rigged and grossly profited off of the student debt crisis, leaving many students with crushing debt. 
• June 1—Walmart Shareholder Meeting: The Waltons make billions a year off of Walmart, while many Walmart associates struggle for respect on the job and enough pay just to make ends meet.

I rolled to a stop and cut the engine. John Bolenbaugh leaned forward in the passenger seat and surveyed the scene. "We can walk over there," he said, and we stepped out onto a gravel track overlooking a marshy bottomland behind Sheet Metal Workers Local 7 in Marshall, Michigan

lmost every day for more than a year, this had been Bolenbaugh's daily activity—shooting video of the slow-going cleanup of one of the worst inland oil spills in American history. And on that day he wanted me to see "ground zero," the exact spot where, in late July 2010, an underground pipeline owned by Canadian-based Enbridge, Inc., ruptured and spilled more than a million gallons of crude derived from the Alberta tar sands—enough to flow out of this pond into the distant creek and on to the Kalamazoo River. A former cleanup worker himself, Bolenbaugh was fired in October 2010 by Enbridge contractor SET Environmental, because, Bolenbaugh says, he refused to follow top-down instructions to cover up oil.

Thus, this case could provide a judgment—perhaps the only official judgment, since federal regulators have largely looked the other way—on Enbridge's handling of the whole oil spill. That determination is about far more than legal fingerpointing. Roughly 20 percent of America's crude oil, according to the US Interior Department, is now imported from Canada, and most of that is derived from tar sands. With the national jobless rate still high, more and more Americans are willing to accept the environmental and health risks associated with pipelines that carry tar sands crude. And as oil prices continue climbing, Canadian companies are racing to cash in. Enbridge is poised to become the largest transporter of tar sands crude in the country, and its top competitor TransCanada is seeking to build the controversial $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline across the Great Plains to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

It was the worst oil disaster in U.S. history, though for much of the nation, it remained a worrying but distant drama. 

Julie Creppel raises six children here, steps away from the lapping waves of the Gulf of Mexico. Her modest mobile home, on a narrow peninsula roughly an hour and a half south of New Orleans, puts her about as close as anyone to where, two years ago today, a BP offshore drilling operation went terribly wrong, spewing 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf's constant saltwater churn.

Creppel says that for her and her family, the impacts were very clear and very present. The spill, she says -- and the months of efforts to stop it -- made them sick.

One son, 2-year-old Wyatt, struggles with constipation and severe skin rashes, Creppel says. Daughters Kylee and Atrea suffer massive headaches almost daily. Kasie, meanwhile, is due for an electrocardiogram for her heart palpitations. Just about everyone in the house relies on a steady supply of Nasonex nasal spray to clear their permanent congestion. Creppel counts 17 prescriptions filled for the family's ailments just last week.

“It was like a war zone,” Creppel says, recalling the squadrons of military and support planes overhead, the smoky air and the unforgiving chemical stench that characterized the summer of 2010. “When we would walk out on the porch, we couldn’t breathe. Our eyes and throats would burn.”

Creppel's complaints are not unique.....Read more;

The bottlenose dolphins of Barataria Bay, Louisiana, are showing signs of severe ill health, according to a report from NOAA.

Based on comprehensive physicals of 32 live dolphins from Barataria Bay in the summer of 2011, preliminary results show that many of the dolphins in the study are underweight, anemic, have low blood sugar and/or some symptoms of liver and lung disease. Nearly half also have abnormally low levels of the hormones that help with stress response, metabolism and immune function. Researchers fear that some of the study dolphins are in such poor health that they will not survive. One of these dolphins, which was last observed and studied in late 2011, was found dead in January 2012.

Last summer’s Virginia earthquake continues to reverberate in the scientific community.

The 5.8-magnitude tremor August 23 wasn’t huge by global standards, but punched above its weight. Scientists were struck by the way the tremor near the town of Mineral managed to damage the nation’s capital 84 miles away, putting cracks in the Washington Monument and toppling a spire at the National Cathedral. So: How’d it do that?

They’re also studying the ongoing aftershock sequence. The Mineral event isn’t truly over, because the fault is still generating small quakes, though fewer and fewer. Herein lies a research opportunity for understanding enigmatic East Coast tremors — how long does it take for the earth to calm down?

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Tuesday pointed to the fact that there were no sport utility vehicles (SUVs) or oil refineries on Mars as evidence that claims of global warming on Earth were a hoax.

Following a segment about how European climate change activists were like a “religious cult,” Robertson explained that he was “not a disciple of global warming.”

“This is weird,” he noted. “You wonder is there a desire to punish themselves? Is it some kind of innate guilt that is eating at the Europeans? They just seem to be intent on destroying themselves.”

 

BARNEGAT LIGHT — To the untrained eye, the big rust-colored steel triangles don’t look all that different from dredges that have been harvesting American sea scallops for a half-century.

In fact the new turtle deflector dredge, or TDD, totally reworks the layout of the traditional New Bedford scallop dredge to eliminate accidental capture of sea turtles – promising to finally resolve a years-long debate over how to best protect those threatened and endangered species.

Where the old-style dredges have a flat front with two plates to scoop up scallops, TDD designer Ronald Smolowitz and his team realigned the front end to an angle and eliminated gaps in the frame where turtles could get lodged, creating something like the cow catcher on an Old West steam locomotive.

“The industry had to do it. Solved our problem,” said James Gutowski of the Viking Village scallop boat fleet, which worked for years with Smolowitz to learn about turtles, particularly loggerheads, and how they interact with scallop gear.

“It does a great job of pushing the turtle up and out of harm’s way,” said Gib Brogan of Oceana, an environmental group that for years has pushed to reduce accidental turtle deaths and injuries from fishing gear. “This is a great example of the fishing industry stepping up and doing the right thing for the turtles and for themselves

Somewhere off Cape Cod a gillnet lies in the ocean . It's monofilament strands of thin plastic impossible to see, negating thousands of years of evolution that have given marine mammals an edge through intelligence, excellent sight, hearing, and the ability to hold their breath for long periods of time. They have no chance of avoiding this invisible killer, and once entangled there is little chance of escape. Marine mammals die there alone and frightened. The ability to hold their breath, which was once an evolutionary advantage, now only prolongs their suffering. There is no hope anyone will come and get them out, and these nets may never be hauled at all. Gillnets are lost and dumped when gillnetters deem them to be ineffective or too costly to repair. "Ghost trawls," are dumped back into the environment where they continue to kill and maim all manner of sea life.

 When the gillnets are hauled, even if there are multiple marine mammals entangled and dead, they will be set right back out when fishing is good. The only public notice given to the sad carnage, is a few complaints about damaged netting caused by the struggle of marine mammals to survive. The bodies of dead mammals are thrown over the side and left to drift serving as a sad reminder to the depredations of man to others.

 The fact that gillnetting is made possible by donations from the Wal foundation (Of Wal-Mart origin) leads to the question....

 Should Wal-mart Sell Seal Meat? 

 It is a valid question and one that deserves some consideration. The large seal populations in the North East and particularly the Cape Cod area are currently in no danger of collapsing from any kind of fishing activity. Despite the fact they are often killed and injured by fast boats, entangled in plastic, drowned in gillnets, poisoned by oil spills, and even intentionally shot, their population continues to thrive. As the death toll from fishing activity in the region by traditional small boats is finally observed ( The same fishery that enjoys so much environmental group and foundation support), the public are ignorant of such practices and it's high time for a discussion about the illegal dumping of dead seals and whether it would be better to utilize their bodies for food.

 In the 1900's seals were hunted in the US and Canada. Harp and hooded seals were hunted for their fur gray and harbor seals were bounty-hunted to the brink of extinction by policy enacted to reduce their population. Conflicts between seals and coastal residents centered on the seals impact on fish. Predation by seals and the spread of the seal worms to valuable fish stocks caused seals to have a bounty placed on them. In the North East they were hunted and culled from the region. Since the passing of the Marine Mammal Protection act in 1972, the seal populaiton has been rising. The appropriate size of their population is the subject of much debate and presently the seals seem to have very few friends left to represent existence premised on sustainable population groups, which have a de-mimimus impact on the environment.

 Today seals are protected by laws that prohibit interfering with marine mammals and harming them. One of the reasons Cape Cod has so many seals relates to the decision many years ago to preserve portions of it's natural coastline. Cape Cod has become a massive tourist attraction with attendant destruction of near coastal and inland natural resources The seals are blamed for the decimation of river fish populations, but scientific observation presents strong evidence that points at a lack of fresh water. Water utilization and waste during the high traffic tourist season is advocated by marine scientists as the heart of the matter. Some of this blame has turned to anger against the seal population resulting in not so isolated incidents of shooting and other abuses.

 Until recently it was not widely known how many mammals were being killed by the supposed environmentally friendly fixed fishing gear industry on Cape Cod. Fixed gear fishermen enjoy the support of politicians like Governor Devall Patrick and the donations of enironmental foundations and trusts. The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fisherman's association is largely a group of gillnetters whose only hook fishing activities center on targeting troubled populations of bluefin tuna, (a species which barely avoided an endangered species listing  just a few months ago.) Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fisherman's Association's actual activities are not well known. Their championing of private ownership of fish populations and campaigns against other fishermen (Fishermen who have considerably less by-catch or environmental issues), have made them the darlings of the media. They are accorded a free pass to engage in unsustainable fishing practices and the slaughter of marine mammals at will.

  Many fishermen have recently lost their jobs due to privatization schemes. This has left a large and growing number of former fishermen who for the first time have no reason to keep industry practices secret. Like the former gillnetter, that supplied the image of a seal's dead body being lewdly dis-respected, there are many whose hearts are filled with regret. They refer to gillnets as, "Floating walls of death," and many support the outright banning of the fishery. The majority of countries in the civilized world have banned monofilament drift netting. Additionally people who think seals should be eaten for food have stated that they deserve a more humane death than slow drowning. The stories, images and video of former fishermen will be a valuable resource moving forward on this contentious issue. No matter the outcome of the debate, the truth will no longer be green washed out of it by organizations with hidden agenda. They like monofilament gillnets lie in wait for the naive and unwary, awaiting the opportunity to drown the innocent in a web of lies and deceit.

Supporting links-

Walton Foundation's donation to CCCHFA

CCCHFA website

 Grants to support this group of traditional marine mammal killers provided by...

1772 Foundation,

Alex C. Walker Foundation,

Cape Cod Economic Development Council,

GE Foundation,

Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation,

Gulf of Maine Council on the

Marine Environment,

Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust,

Marisla Foundation,

Massachusetts Department of Fish & Game,

Olive Higgins Prouty Foundation,

Pew Charitable Trusts,

Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies,

Prospect Hill Foundation,

Quebec-Labrador Foundation,

Sailors’ Snug Harbor of Boston,

Surdna Foundation, Inc.,

United States Department of Agriculture,

University of New Hampshire,

Walton Family Foundation,

amongst others.

The link provided leads to an extensive  list of businesses and organizations....

http://www.ccchfa.org/about/documents/CCCHFA_AnnualReport2010.pdf

Here is a link that describes my bias...

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/28/10897339-the-top-ten-reasons-you-should-support-the-mid-water-herring-industry

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/15/10700148-bitter-harvest-the-truth-about-marine-mammals-being-killed-in-the-new-england-fisheries

And one final link from Fishtruth.net showing the large amounts of money flowing form foundations to this group

http://www.fishtruth.net/CapeCodHook.htm

Discovered in Green: The effects of nuclear fallout on bird sex, cars powered by the human bowels (sort of), how your meat-eating habits are destroying the earth and a sad story about oysters.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (AP) -- In an unusually early and strong warning, national weather forecasters cautioned Friday that conditions are ripe for violent tornadoes to rip through the nation's midsection from Texas to Minnesota this weekend.

As states across the middle of the country prepared for the worst, storms were already kicking off in Norman, Okla., where a twister whizzed by the nation's tornado forecasting headquarters but caused little damage.

It was only the second time in U.S. history that the Storm Prediction Center issued a high-risk warning more than 24 hours in advance, said Russ Schneider, director of the center, which is part of the National Weather Service. The first such warning was issued in April 2006 before nearly 100 tornadoes tore across a large swathe of the southeastern U.S.

The latest warning covers portions of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. The worst weather is expected to develop late Saturday afternoon between Oklahoma City and Salina, Kan., but other areas also could see severe storms with baseball-sized hail and winds of up to 70 mph, forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center said Friday.

The outbreak could be a "high-end, life threatening event," the center said.

 

Montana and Idaho have killed 534 wolves out of an estimated 1150 in those states, eliminating nearly half of the population in less than a year.  Over 100 wolves have been murdered in traps and snares while the others were shot.  Wolf tags sell for less than 20 dollars and over 53,000 have been sold. Tags for other big game animals such as deer, bear and elk cost hundreds of dollars. The Idaho hunting season for wolves is not over yet, in fact, some areas will be open through denning and pupping season.  Both states plan to increase hunting in 2012-1213, while hunting groups and states discuss ways to allow private donations for wolf bounties.

The twin reactors at the San Onofre nuclear plant have been sidelined, more than 300 tubes that carry radioactive water will be scrapped because of excessive wear, and investigators are trying to figure out why tubing is rattling inside the lungs of the plant — its massive steam generators.

The troubles began to unfold in late January, when the Unit 3 reactor was shut down as a precaution after a tube break in one of the generators. Traces of radiation escaped, but officials said there was no danger to workers or neighbors.

Unit 2 was taken offline earlier that month for routine maintenance and refueling. But investigators later found unusual wear on tubing in both units. The company has said 321 tubes that were heavily damaged will be plugged and taken out of service at the two reactors, well within the margin to allow them to keep operating.

Oil and gas production may explain a sharp increase in small earthquakes in the nation's midsection, a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey suggests.

The rate has jumped six-fold from the late 20th century through last year, the team reports, and the changes are "almost certainly man-made."

The study said a relatively mild increase starting in 2001 comes from increased quake activity in a methane production area along the state line between Colorado and New Mexico. The increase began about the time that methane production began there, so there's a "clear possibility" of a link, says lead author William Ellsworth of the USGS.

The increase over the nation's midsection has gotten steeper since 2009, due to more quakes in a variety of oil and gas production areas, including some in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

 Dave Mauser walked the edge of a mudflat, peering underneath the dried brown rushes where one coot after another had gone to hide and then die.

"Now the coots are getting the worst of it," said Mauser, head biologist on the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's first large marshland preserved for waterfowl habitat. "Prior to that it was the snow geese and the white-fronted geese."

Standing in line for scarce water behind both endangered fish and agriculture, Lower Klamath Lake has watched one marsh after another dry up in recent years. Now migratory geese, ducks and other waterfowl that come here by the millions, following the Pacific Flyway, are so closely packed together that an outbreak of avian cholera has killed more than 10,000 birds, mostly pintail ducks, Ross' geese, snow geese and now coots.

 

Along with "fivedollaragallongas," the energy watchword for the next few months is: "subsidies." Last week, for instance, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez proposedending some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry with a "Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act." It was, in truth, nothing to write home about—a curiously skimpy bill that only targeted oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas, and you won't be surprised to learn that even then it didn't pas

those subsidies are worth focusing on. After all, we're talkingat least $10 billion in freebies and, depending on what you count, possibly as much as $40 billion annually in freebie cash for an energy industry already making historic profits

There is not much that links Donald Trump Jr., son of the wispy-haired real-estate mogul, with Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States. Yet the two men do share a home state, an Ivy League pedigree, and one other notable distinction: they both shot an elephant.

Roosevelt was a famously swash-buckling big-game hunter who killed or trapped more than 11,000 animals during a 1909 safari through Central Africa financed by Andrew Carnegie. The younger Trump bagged his kill last year on a trip to Zimbabwe with his brother Eric. The pair earned the ire of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently when photos surfaced of Donald Jr. hoisting severed elephant parts in the air, an ammo belt hanging slack around his waist

The Trump boys, both employees of their father, are hardly alone in pursuing the masculine ideal Roosevelt so stirringly embodied.

There’s something very basic, particularly in the masculine psyche, that requires the killing of large animals,” says Roosevelt bio-grapher.

Conservationists need to work with development, not condemn it as leading to the end of nature. In truth, nature's resilience has been overlooked, its fragility "grossly overstated." Areas blasted by nuclear radiation are bio-diverse. Forest cover is rising in the Northern Hemisphere even as it declines globally.

And it's time to stop prioritizing being alone over being with others. Thoreau, Muir, Abbey -- the inventors of the solitude myth -- were around other people in nature, from Walden to Yosemite. They suffered loneliness (sometimes of a quite prosaic sort, as in Abbey's case) when they were alone in nature. There is still room for solitude, but conservation must make room for society. "Nature could be a garden - not a carefully manicured and rigid one, but a tangle of species and wildness amidst lands used for food production, mineral extraction, and urban life. "

Happily, Kareiva and coauthors are not alone in suggesting humans may find a new kind of power through planetary gardening, not planetary preservation. Nature
correspondent Emma Marris offered a philosophical embrace of creating new natures outside of parks in her sharp-minded 2011 book, Rambunctious Garden. Too often, an attempt to protect nature in its pristine state "thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature," Marris wrote.

WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS...but the wolves need our help!!! Apparently when someone applies for a trapping license, they must attend a mandatory, one-day class in "ethical trapping"; sounds like an oxymoron to me. Obviously Todd J. Fross played hooky on that day...

 Help Wanted: Third Reich Style Propagandist Needed To Crush Small Group of Fishermen...(boy do I feel sorry for those guys.) Wait a minute, it says, "Restore herring stocks to healthy levels." Ahh damn that means they are hiring another person to beat up on the herring boats. It's getting harder and harder to have a job in America with the wealthy running all of the small business into the ground and using the regulatory sytem like it is a game to put everyone that isn't already sold out to them out of work. Since there is oil under our fishing grounds and lots of good places to site energy projects where we fish there is no way they will ever consider leaving us alone. (Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that herring is the best managed fishery in New England).

 The Pew Charitable trusts is driven by the power of knowledge.

 The position they are attempting to fill is one that would deal with energy, oceans and land issues for an environmental group but the education and experience required is for media and journalism, an ability to produce propaganda, using media and news organizations with an emphasis on broadcast and web based outlets (like facebook or newsvine). No mention of any experience or education that might help one understand the natural world is required or even mentioned as desirable. If I didn't know better that would seem strange indeed.

 The fact is a degree in biology, marine biology, ecology, or any of the natural sciences would probably be detrimental to a person seeking a position with Pew. A person with a real understanding of the natural world would very likely take issue with much of the "information," being shoveled to the public from PEG these days. I am certain a slick media type that understands how to sensationalize new accusations and demonize all who become targets of the agenda is exactly what is needed. An advocate for policy that benefits the 400 wealthy families who fund Pew is an, "advocate for the environment" only in regards to ownership of it.

 For the past two decades, the Pew Environment Group has been a major force in driving conservation policy.

 When you look at the last two decades that just makes sense. From the biggest oil spill in history to opening the formerly pristine Arctic Ocean up to oil drilling, fracking the conservation lands, a lack of oversight for big energy, big chemical, big pharma, and big agriculture. An environmental policy that is far more concerned with ownership rights and privatization than saving the natural world from industrialization and destruction at the hands of Pew's biggest donors. They preside over the National Ocean Policy (which they wrote). A policy that treats the ocean like a big piece of watery real estate and is a tool for industrialization and privatization of the ocean. Yes the last two decades haven't been pretty, can we really afford two more?

 Before I became the subject of one of Pew's campaigns of lies I thought they were the, "saviors," of the environment. Sadly they are more like the, "liberators," of the environment. Liberating it from any current users of natural resources in order to make ownership rights possible for the people that own the world's biggest printing press.There is no amount of regulation and oversight that will ever be enough to satisfy the demands of Pew for anyone who stands in their way. The US regulatory system is used like a favorite play thing to push all who stand in the way aside. Unfortunately for the tax payers that kind of thing isn't cheap and in our dotage when we are starving because the government can't afford health care or social security for us, Pew's policy campaigns will likely account for much of the reason that's true.

 Rather than say more I urge you to seek the truth. It lies beneath a veneer of clever marketing, slick media hype, and a mis-information campaign that is nothing short of amazing. They fund our polititian's campaigns and get the representation that the people hope in vain for in return. 

Read about why you sould support sustainable fishermen against false environmentalists and their dirty over-fishing industry partners by clicking here...

Enjoy some douchebaggy propaganda supplied by the the oily advocates of Pew's North East Herring Campaign.

Read about zenophobic hate campainging in the herring campaign.

Have some Wicked Pissah Tuna Compliments of the National Geographic Enquirer a publication that has recieved a lot of PEW donations.

When Pew Lies Another Baby Dies.

You can support sustainable fishing...

Writing, E-mailing to tell them, "No More Needless, Wasteful Regulation Designed to Cause Failure," is a good start. Just say no to all of the proposals in herring amendment 5 and the wealth foundations and the mis-informers that proposed them. (The herring industry has come to a consensus that they would rather pay for 100 percent observer coverage than be forced to endure more regulation based on lies.)

Written public comments must be received on or before 5 p.m. EST, Monday, April 9, 2012. Comments may be sent to Paul J. Howard, Executive Director, 50 Water Street, Mill #2, Newburyport, MA 01950 or emailed to: comments@nefmc.org (attention/subject line: “Comments on Draft Amendment 5”).

Here is a sample letter that you can copy and paste...

NEFMC  "Comment on Draft Amendment 5"

As a concerned tax payer I request that you do not waste my tax dollars on this campaign of over-regulation of the sustainable herring fishery. Please direct valuable resources to ending the over-fishing of endangered and over-fished species that are in crisis and collapse due to lack of attention.

signed_______

Ps-Please recommend more water allocation for the poor river herrings.

Video,

Animal abuse -Dogs kept in cages not big enough for a large bird, covered with dirt and feces. Puppy mills are criminal, and much more than be found.

People who buy animals from pets store, and many too often from unscrupulous breeders contribute to a problem of a glut of animals where others end up in shelters and put to death.

Charles and David Koch are each worth about $25bn, which makes them the fourth richest Americans. When you combine their fortunes, they are the third wealthiest people in the world. Radical libertarians who use their money to oppose government and virtually all regulation as interference with the free market, the Kochs are in a class of their own as players on the American political stage. Their web of influence in the US stretches from state capitals to the halls of congress in Washington DC.

Koch industries, the second largest privately-held company in the US, is an oil refining, chemical, paper products and financial services company with revenues of a $100bn a year. Virtually every American household has some Koch product - from paper towels and lumber, to Stainmaster carpet and Lycra in sports clothes, to gasoline for cars. The Koch’s political philosophy of rolling back environmental and financial regulations is also beneficial to their business interests.

The Kochs rarely talk to the press, and conduct their affairs behind closed doors. But at a secret meeting of conservative activists and funders the Kochs held in Vail, Colorado this past summer, someone made undercover recordings. One caught Charles Koch urging participants to dig deep into their pockets to defeat Obama. "This is the mother of all wars we've got in the next 18 months," he says, "for the life or death of this country." He called out the names of 31 people at the Vail meeting who each contributed more than $1m over the past 12 months.

 

Scientists have been alarmed and puzzled by declines in bee populations in the United States and other parts of the world. They have suspected that pesticides played a part, but to date their experiments have yielded conflicting, ambiguous results.

In Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, two teams of researchers published studies suggesting that low levels of a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that they keep bumblebees from supplying their hives with enough food to produce new queens.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offered an unusual contract (PDF) this month, soliciting bids from private software developers for a trial program that would scour the Internet for detailed information on all animal sales, potential animal welfare abuses and other unlawful economic activities relating to animals within the U.S.

In other words, the U.S. government is preparing to spend taxpayer money to spy on Americans’ Internet use, so that it can better protect animals and ensure their handlers have paid for all the proper licenses.

The program, according to a contract publicly available on FedBizOpps.gov, would see a third party developer creating a system that scours forums, websites, usenet groups, social media — and even live chat rooms — for any information relating to sales of pets, exotic animals, animals used for exhibit, teaching, testing or other experimentation, and, particularly, any and all potentially unlicensed hose shows or auctions.

 

Dan Bacher

There is no doubt that John Muir, who fought successfully for the preservation of the Yosemite Valley and unsuccessfully for the preservation of the Hetch Hetchy Valley on the Tuolumne River, and Teddy Roosevelt, the founder of the country's National Parks, would be outraged about these so-called "marine protected areas" being called "Yosemites of the Sea" if they were still alive.

Unlike the corporate "environmentalists," grassroots environmentalists, in their comments regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Marine Protected Area (MPA) proposals covering California’s North Coast Study Region, are now demanding that true, comprehensive marine protection be provided. A 45-day public comment and review period will run through April 16.

“If you can take the time to send in comments on this EIR, please ask why the ‘marine protected areas’ negligently do NOTHING to protect the closed areas from oil drilling, wind and wave industrial projects, ocean mining, navy testing, fish farming, or any other human impacts on the ocean BESIDES throwing the people of California off of their water,” said Ed Oberweiser and Elaine Charkowski, the newsletter editors for the Ocean Protection Coalition. “These are located in areas that are of obvious commercial and economic interest to the very people who conjured up this version of the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act.”

Sometimes, it just ain't what it seems!

If you brushed your teeth this morning or flushed the toilet or had a cup of coffee, consider yourself lucky. Actually, if you turned on your tap and potable water freely came out, consider yourself truly blessed. Because so many of us in the United States are in this situation it can be easy to forget that nearly 900 million other people aren't so lucky. It can be easy to forget that globally we face a frightening water crisis. And it can be hard to notice that even here in the US there are dire threats to our water supply right now.

1. Racial and Economic Inequalities

While an international law recognizes the human right to water, unfortunately there is no binding enforcement and in the US there are no laws guaranteeing that you'll have clean water or that you'll be protected from water shut-offs if you can't afford it. One of the areas that has been hardest hit is Detroit, a city that is majority African American. The unemployment rate is 1 in 6 and in some neighborhoods as high as 50 percent. As a result, water use went down too -- Detroit's water utility supplied 20 percent less water in 2009 than it did in 2003.

2. Privatization

We all know the water we drink comes at a price, but many of us may not think about who "owns" our water. Does it matter if our water comes from a public utility or a private company? Sometimes it may matter a great deal.

3. Aging Infrastructure

One of the reasons municipalities are faced with difficult choices when it comes to their water systems is because a whole lot of our infrastructure is old -- 100-plus-years old in some places -- and the cost of repairing or rebuilding that infrastructure has become expensive at the same time communities are struggling economically in other ways. The federal government used to pay for most new water projects. Prior to the 1980s, 78 percent of funding for new water infrastructure came from the federal government, but that's down to only a few percent now. And money once doled out through the Sate Revolving Fund has been drastically cut as well.

4. Licenses to Pollute

How have we done in the 40 years since the Clean Water Act was passed? Back when the Cuyahoga River was flammable, about two-thirds of our rivers and lakes weren't safe for fishing and swimming. Today, the number is around 40 to 50 percent. Better, but not great. Why? Because the law has been chipped away over the years -- and it was an imperfect law to start, particularly because of its exemption for agriculture.

The battle over our energy future is already in full swing. As fossil fuels become harder to get to, will we continue to use more and more outrageous practices to extract them, or will we make the switch to clean energy? So far, as the BP spill in the Gulf reveals, we are still trying to get to fossil fuels that are well out of reach. Oil companies are clamoring to drill in the Arctic; coal companies are using destructive mountaintop removal mining; gas companies are resorting to hydrofracturing (or fracking) shale; and Alberta is being plundered in the dirty pursuit of tar sands.

All of that will have huge implications for our water supply -- how much we have to use and how clean it is.

5. Dirty Energy

The battle over our energy future is already in full swing. As fossil fuels become harder to get to, will we continue to use more and more outrageous practices to extract them, or will we make the switch to clean energy?

Turning Crisis into Opportunity

Much like the climate crisis staring us down right now, our water woes offer a chance to rethink business as usual. Water puts us at a crossroads of food, agriculture and energy. All are areas that need to be overhauled if we are to stave off crisis and get this country back on track. But to do that we'll need leaders capable of seeing further down the line than the next election cycle. And leaders who aren't in the pocket of corporations because the water crisis is also a crisis of politics, democracy and economics. And we'll also need not just elected officials, but people in their communities who are willing to fight back against polluters, against inequality in distribution, and for greener and more holistic solutions to water management.

This is not something we should do; it is something we have to do.

- The oil industry recently laid out a set of proposals it believes will instantly lower gasoline prices.

THE PROVERBIAL CARROT AND THE STICK

The proposals call for more domestic oil production, fewer environmental regulations, and for not raising taxes on the industry. They're basically what the Republican presidential candidates are calling for.

But analysts say those ideas will do little to lower gas prices in the short term

 

Herring Fishermen Told To Go Back To Ireland By Herring Campaigners

 Traveling to Fairhaven Massachusetts to speak at the Public comment meeting for Herring Amendment 5 of the Herring Management plan on Monday my thoughts were all about what I would say and how nervous I was to speak in public again. The meeting put on by David Pierce and Lori Steele was the 4th of 8 scheduled and being held next door to our nation's number one fish port was an important one. Fairhaven is just down the road from Cape Cod which has long been the center of the Sea Herring Campaign and I expected to hear a lot of angry rhetoric and calls for crushing regulation for the herring boats from many of the speakers. It was not going to be an easy crowd.

 In many ways I do not blame the fishermen for their anger, fear and confusion about what is going on with the ocean eco-system. The ocean has never been so warm this past decade and there is strong evidence that we are enduring some very plankton poor years. The herring that normally would be on the surface all summer eating plankton stay on the bottom of the ocean eating anything that is small enough to fit in their mouths (baby cod, haddock, and even their eggs) herring can be voracious eaters and studies have shown will cause population decline in ground fish stocks when their numbers are higher than the forage in the eco-system will support.

 Change is a scary thing and when people become fearful they cast about in the hope of finding someone or something to blame. Two very popular scapegoats on Cape Cod is the large population of seals and the ten or so mid-water boats that fish for herring. A Sea Herring campaign financed by 400 or so of the wealthiest families in America and administered by the Pew Trusts regularly provides support, money, fresh accusations, and anything else needed to pillory and disparage the mid-water herring fishermen of New England.

The job of herring campaign organizer is a very high paying position (records show around 170k per year plus a nice expense account). With lucrative wages like that it is small wonder they have managed to ride right past mountains of facts and data that refute their accusations, anecdotal stories and slander of the industry. They gather together concerned citizens that genuinely care about the environment and just want to help in any way possible and tell them stories about how wonderful things were and how terribly it all went wrong due to an evil group of "Industrial trawlers," that must be causing it all. They dismiss data from observation that they insisted was necessary and cost the tax payers tens of millions of dollars to collect and collate because it does not support the agenda of their cult of belief.

 That mid water herring has the cleanest by-catch ratio in New England (see chart at bottom of article) and a documented history of avoiding marine mammals and other fishes is never considered by them. For some reason it is just unbelievable that mid-water trawl for herring in New England could be as clean, responsible, and sustainable as so many other mid-water fisheries in the world which feed more people with less waste of target species (generally around 99 percent of the catch.) Fishermen feed the world and mid-water fishermen do the heavy lifting selling fish to poor peoples that would starve without it. None of these facts mean anything to the Herring Campaigners. They are paid to publish propaganda and preach prejudice, bigotry and now apparently hatred.

 At the meeting I attended in Gloucester anti-herring commenters made enough remarks about getting the "Foreign boats out," that it prompted former Gloucester City Councilman Vito Calomo to ask if there were still foreign vessels fishing in US waters as he had heard that they have been gone from US waters for the last twenty years. The owner of the boats I work for Peter Mullen is an American citizen with a proud Irish heritage of hard work, honesty, and putting every cent he had back into his fishing business. A US citizen whose father was a US citizen it couldn't have felt good to hear that.

 In Fairhaven it was worse. One of the commenters said that not only should the foreign boats be banned but that the herring fishermen should be sent back to Ireland. Some folks in the audience even applauded. Nobody from the PEW or CHOIR campaign groups has disavowed these statements even though they organized the hatred. Their silent approval speaks volumes about where this message comes from.

 The comment didn't really hit home right away I was nervous and about to speak on behalf of our poorest customers. We sell fish to some very poor people. In Nigeria 2 out of 5 children are starving and I wanted the council to consider the fact that when they needlessly restrict the herring fishery or create inefficiency in it they cause the price of fish to rise in places where people don't have enough money and food to feed their children. I wanted that to bother them some before they sign another, "Death by a thousand cuts piece of regulation," on behalf of an agenda set by wealthy people, campaigners, donation fishermen and sport pole guys whose customers are so rich they can afford to eat the most expensive fish in the world (bluefin tuna). Fish that are so biologically difficult to produce that each pound of flesh costs enough herring to feed a village for a week. I wish I could have spoken better for them or that someone else would care enough to. Where is Governor Patrick on this?

 That it had been said I should be sent back to Ireland didn't hit home until Owen from Norpel asked me what I was going to do when they send me back to Ireland. Since I am not even from there, have never seen the place and have no family there it was a valid question. I was born here..... It made me think about all of the other people who have experienced the exact same thing and how they must have felt. Perhaps it is appropriate that I came to speak for the people nobody cares about. That I feel like I failed them is tempered by the fact that I probably never had a chance. Hatred, bigotry, and prejudice are alive and well in this world and some days the preachers of those faiths are just too strong.

 I am proud of my industry and the people I work for. We have spent millions of dollars and a lot of hard work to put out the highest quality fish and eliminate all possible waste due to spoilage or handling. Our herring and mackerel are often refrigerated to 29 degrees in one hour. Since they never start to rot it gives them a long shelf life in bait sheds in Maine and little markets in Africa where a load of rotten fish could cost children's lives. We worked hard to build the efficiency that makes our detractors so angry. Our clean emissions engines are so fuel efficient that we can afford to look for fish burning very little fuel and be extremely selective about setting out the net. The secret to our clean, responsible and sustainable fishing methods.

 JJ Engineer Western Venture

 Some source articles-

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/15/10700148-bitter-harvest-the-truth-about-marine-mammals-being-killed-in-the-new-england-fisheries

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2011/09/07/7650662-fish-in-the-northwest-atlantic-are-going-hungry-new-science-from-maines-department-of-marine-resources-helps-to-explain-why

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2010/10/20/5321323-herring-boats-pushed-off-of-georges-bank-by-unfair-regulations

http://jjthefisherman.newsvine.com/_news/2010/10/22/5334224-being-starved-out-in-america-by-the-government-herring-boats-pushed-off-of-georges-graphs-and-charts-further-explained-w-glossary-of-terms?threadId=1111418&commentId=20900355#c20900355

I may add more later...

The Republican Party isn’t exactly known for its environmental activism.

Reagan refused to take action on one of the biggest environmental issues of his era-acid rain-and systematically weakened the clout of the EPA. George H.W. Bush ended his term with a freeze on environmental regulations, and his son refused US support for the Kyoto Protocol.

Yet rarely have Republicans been so overtly hostile to existing environmental protections as the current legislators in the 112^th Congress.

Since the most recent election, Republicans in the House of Representatives have led a series of unprovoked assaults on the EPA. The attack has been two-pronged, with one focus on the EPA’s budget and the other on its powers of regulation.

The Republican’s budget proposal would slash the EPA’s budget by an unprecedented $30 billion—one third of the EPA’s budget, and the biggest cut to any other federal agency.

It would also do away with the critical posts of the energy and climate advisor to the President and the State Department envoy to UN climate negotiations.

As if slashing funding weren’t enough, Republicans are also working to dismantle the EPA’s regulatory powers.

Hunters are up in arms over an Arizona-based conservation group latest bid to get the federal government to ban lead bullets, which the environmentalists claim contaminates the food chain.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which claims 220,000 members, has sent a petition  to the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of nearly 100 groups in 35 states asking the agency to regulate lead right out of ammunition. It's the second time the group has attempted to get the EPA to take up the cause, and the group is currently suing the federal agency for rejecting the previous bid.

Hunting groups scoff at the Center's claims that lead left in the carcasses of animals they shoot but don't collect harms the food chain and that spent casings can contaminate groundwater. They say the group has long sought to curb their rights to hunt and own firearms.

The unnecessary poisoning of eagles, condors and other wildlife is a national tragedy that the EPA can easily put an end to," Miller said. "There are safe, available alternatives to lead ammo for all hunting and shooting sports, so there’s no reason for this poisoning to go on.

“This isn’t about hunting — it’s about switching to nontoxic materials to stop preventable lead poisoning,

At least half the elephants in Cameroon's Bouba N'Djida reserve were slaughtered because the west African nation sent too few security forces to tackle poachers, the World Wide Fund for Nature said on Thursday.

In what was described as one of the worst poaching massacres in decades, as many as 200 elephants have been killed for their tusks since January by poachers on horseback from Chad and Sudan, the fund said.

"WWF is disturbed by reports that the poaching continues unabated," Natasha Kofoworola Quist, WWF's representative in the region, said in a statement.

It was the second major elephant-poaching report out of Africa this month. On March 5, the warden at Virunga National Park, a U.N. World Heritage Site in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said poaching had become so severe that rangers began using bloodhounds to track down poachers. TheVirunga elephant population has fallen to fewer than 400 from an estimated 3,000 in the 1980s.

 

Bitter Harvest The Truth About Marine Mammals Being Killed In The New England Fisheries

 Every year thousands of marine mammals are accidentally caught by fishing gear. The tragic result of these events is often grevious injury usually followed by death. In this article I bring to light the sad death toll of observed marine mammals in the New England fisheries. Every year millions of dollars are spent on collecting this data and yet the average citizen is not aware or has many misconceptions about the effects of various types of fishing activity on the marine mammal population. I would like to change that by sharing some of the data the tax paying public has financed the collection of.

 In New England today there is little doubt that we have healthy populations of marine mammals. The whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals have all made comebacks from population low levels and appear to be thriving in a healthy eco-system. The replenishment of their numbers during  stock rebuilding years should raise questions as to what will happen once fishing for those stocks resumes at higher levels of sustainability. Will the increased fishing activity once again diminish their numbers like before? Many people seem to believe that a few herring boats are responsible for the majority of marine mammals being killed in the North East due to a decade long campaign of negative propaganda. The data clearly shows those claims to be false and brings to light a credibility gap in the organizations involved.

 The NMFS observer program has a data base of incidental takes of marine mammals, birds and even turtles (mostly down by North Carolina for turtles). Thousands of observed fishing trips and millions of tax payer dollars have gone into finding out what is going on in fishing. Since none of it ever seems to see the light of day I decided to go through it and share my findings with my fellow tax payers. NMFS appears to only publish any of it when the data supports the current political agenda. Whatever the agenda the outcome of draconian measures being taken is severe curtailment of midwater fishing.

The Data:
The data used in this article comes from the North East Fisheries Science Center. It was compiled from the January 2009 to January 2011 monthly reports of all fisheries observation in the North East. I used the most current data available and utilized a two year report because it was the largest period I could effectively graph. I deviated from the original data in two cases. Three whales that were severely decomposed were removed from the bottom trawl data due to the fact that a bottom trawl would not be deployed long enough for a whale to become severely decomposed. All Incidents where the marine mammal survived were not used or included. None of that would have any effect on Midwater data.

Findings:
  Of the 368 seals killed, 89.4% were killed by Gillnetting, 9.2% were killed by Bottom Trawling, and 1.4% were killed by Midwater Trawling.  Of the 161 Dolphins, 9.3% were killed by Gillnetting, 88.8% were killed by Bottom Trawling, and 1.9% killed by Midwater Trawling. Of the 117 Porpoises killed, 96.6% were killed by Gillnetting, 3.4% killed by Bottom Trawling, and none killed by Midwater Trawling. Of the 21 whales killed, 4.8% were killed by Gillnetting, 95.2% were killed by Bottom Trawling, and none killed by Midwater Trawling. Of the 667 marine mammals killed, 68.7% were killed by Gillnetting, 30.1% killed by Bottom Trawling, and 1.2% killed by Midwater Trawling.

As you can see by this data very few of the marine mammals killed were caught by Midwater Trawling. Most of the 667 observed marine mammal kills were caught by Gillnetting with their greatest danger being to seals and porpoises. While Bottom Trawling killed less than half the number of marine mammals compared to Gillnetting Bottom Trawling posed the greatest danger to whales and dolphins.

Going through the data I was shocked, not just by the sad death toll but by the misconceptions being pushed by some inside the fish administration. Midwater kills of marine mammals are very few in number, in a two year study I found only 8 animals observed taken. There were times the herring industry observer coverage levels reached 80 percent. Groundfish vessels had many  observed kills and not very high observer coverage levels at all. As of May of last year the observer coverage levels for groundfish were supposed to rise to thirty percent for observation of catch shares. The coverage came up a little short but the increase in the number of observed marine mammal takes is there in the data. If one was to utilize the current fad of extrapolating the data from partial coverage to full coverage by multiplication, gillnet alone would be over one thousand mammals a year.

 What I found to be most surprising is that the fixed gear fishery (gillnet) enjoys so much support from organizations that are the self appointed protectors of the environment. Have the environmental professionals and foundations of corporate America entirely abandoned the marine mammals to their fate? Why would they support a fishery that is so destructive to wild life with donations, grants to buy quota, and even money to campaign against other fishermen in the name of the environment? I think that these are questions worth asking and if you are an environmentally concerned person that has been duped by mis-information from sources that should have been credible, I urge you to seek the truth. All of the information in the tables and graphs is available online and can be easily verified.

I intend to publish more of this data as it becomes available and to graph more of the past data as well.

 Mechanics-
 
Gillnetting is generally done by (relatively) small boats close to shore. The gillnets mentioned in this study are sunken gillnets with a medium mesh size. Set out like an invisible wall in the ocean they indiscriminately catch everything that swims or is swept into them by the tide that cannot fit through the mono-filament mesh. Marine mammals are more intelligent than the fish these nets are deployed to catch but their smarts are no protection from  gear they cannot see. Swimming into the net and becoming entangled they drown and are hauled up with the net and discarded (perhaps to be caught later by a bottom trawler).

Bottom trawling is done by small to large vessels deploying a net that is shaped like a long sock with a wide mouth. The width of the net varies but can be as much as 160 feet. The net is towed along the bottom at up to 5 miles per hour catching up everything on the bottom that cannot get out of the way and will not fit through the meshes. Due to the nature of the gear it is quite effective at catching fish and mammals that are already dead as well as lost or discarded fishing gear (like all of the gillnets lost every year). This type of fishing gear causes bottom damage in some types of bottom and has a high un-intended catch of other species and as the data shows can be quite deadly to marine mammals.

Midwater Trawling is done by medium to large vessels deploying a net that is shaped like a long sock with a large opening often said to be the size of a football field. The large opening is made possible by the light construction of the net which results in a net that is too delicate to deploy on ocean bottom that isn't entirely smooth. This net style has large meshes that most marine mammals can swim right through. Made of light ropes that are easily broken most whales that fail to avoid the slow moving net can break through the meshes and escape. This type of fishing is extremely selective due to the fact that the vessels participating do not deploy their gear unless they see the fish they want to catch. Marine mammals seem to easily avoid this gear type but occasionally are caught at night when they are unable to see to avoid it or swim through the meshes. 

 I wrote this article early in 2011 and have been reluctant to publish it.  I am publishing it now because there is already enough new data for an update. The trends shown here are worse in the new data and there is talk of closures in the gillnet fisheries because of it.   The fact that Oceana and other organizations openly support gillnetting as an alternative to trawl fisheries leads me to seriously question their motives. Promoting high bycatch fishing gear with high rates of marine mammal kills over cleaner methods of fishing should be the exact opposite of what a truly environmental organization goals look like, sadly goals change with priorities like job security, future campaigns, and ultimately preserving a campaign issue that has been extremely lucrative.

This  information was compiled from government sources and is completely available to anyone that wishes to utilize it. Please use the links below to see the most current data available from the National Marine Fishery Service Observer Program.

http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/fsb/TakeReports/NEFSC_NEFOP_Incidental%20Take%20Reports.htm

http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/fsb/TakeReports/NEFSC_ASM_Incidental_Take_Reports.html

About 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide andrisk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming, according to new research.

By far the most vulnerable state is Florida, the new analysis found, with roughly half of the nation’s at-risk population living near the coast on the porous, low-lying limestone shelf that constitutes much of that state. But Louisiana, California, New York and New Jersey are also particularly vulnerable, researchers found, and virtually the entire American coastline is at some degree of risk.

Filming of the second season of HBO's horse-racing drama "Luck," starring Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, continues, but any work involving horses has been suspended after a third horse died during production on Tuesday. 

According to the American Humane Assn., the horse had been inspected and passed by California Horse Racing Board official veterinarian Dr. Gary Beck and was being walked back to its barn at Santa Anita Park when it "reared up, fell backwards and was injured."

After it was determined that the only humane course of action for the horse was to euthanize it,

According to the necropsy report, both of the previous two horses had been in severe pain and were under heavy medication at the time of their deaths.

Donald Jr. and Eric went on safari in Zimbabwe last year, where they shot everything from an elephant and a civet cat. Fun! And there are grisly photos! Funner! Would you be shocked to learn wildlife groups are not thrilled that a couple of millionaire Trump scions went on an exotic animal killing spree?

Does any of this impact the environment? (Hint: Yes)

If individual shale gas wells are less productive than industry predicted, companies say they will simply drill more wells or simply re-frack wells repeatedly to get more gas flowing. That means more open spaces lost to industrial activity, more billions of gallons of clean water used, plus billions of gallons of contaminated and radioactive water produced. It means millions of exhaust-spewing truck trips and toxins being churned into the air by drilling-site generators and compressor stations. It also spells bad news for renewable energy sources like wind and solar, as natural gas slowly puts them out of business.

There is also a broader lesson here about good government and the way that federal energy officials go about calculating energy estimates. To a large degree, the EIA outsources its research for these estimates to private contracting firms that have deep ties to the oil and gas industry. This presents a major conflict of interest, since these firms aren't about to anger their primary clients by questioning the hype about shale gas. That could have dire consequences for Wall Street and foreign investment in these drilling companies.

Protest erupts in Salt Lake City Utah. The proposed mining area in Utah is the first permitted tar sands mining in the United States.

For More information:
TarSandsUtah.blueskyinstitute.org
FarCountry.org
EarthFirstJournal.org

Then watch the next video about the Tar Sands mining in Alberta to see why we do NOT want this.

In this video, http://www.WatchMojo.com speaks with Walsh about the tar sands, and their effect on the environment.

The controversial natural gas fracking process that has driven an explosion of natural gas drilling across the nation caused a dozen earthquakes in Ohio, state regulators confirmed:

At least five Native Americans were arrested in South Dakota on Monday after a six-hour standoff that temporarily blockaded trucks from moving equipment thought to be destined for the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Lakota activist Olowan Martinez told Raw Story that members of the tribe were working to obtain a restraining order that would allow them to confiscate any future shipments coming across Pine Ridge Indian land. The group opposes the pipeline because of health and environmental concerns.

Mar 05, 2012 (Al Jazeera - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- NEW ORLEANS, La -- Hundreds of thousands of people living along the US Gulf Coast have hung their economic lives on lawsuits against BP.

Fishermen, in particular, are seeing their way of life threatened with extinction -- both from lack of an adequate legal settlement and collapsing fisheries.

One of these people, Greg Perez, an oyster fisherman in the village of Yscloskey, Louisiana, has seen a 75 per cent decrease in the amount of oysters he has been able to catch.

"Since the spill, business has been bad," he said. "Sales and productivity are down, our state oyster grounds are gone, and we are investing personal money to rebuild oyster reefs, but so far it's not working."

Perez, like so many Gulf Coast commercial fisherman, has been fishing all his life. He said those who fish for crab and shrimp are "in trouble too", and he is suing BP for property damage for destroying his oyster reefs, as well as for his business' loss of income.

People like Perez make it possible for Louisiana to provide 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US.

But Louisiana's seafood industry, valued at about $2.3bn, is now fighting for its life.

'The shrimp are all dead'

Perez is not alone.

"They said they'd make things right and they never did," said Nicholas Harris, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman in eastern Louisiana. "Business has been s****y, and BP kept low-balling us with how much money they said they'd give us for compensation, so we got our attorneys involved."

Harris, like Perez, is suing the oil giant for property damage and loss of income.

His family has a 4,000-acre private lease for oysters, but it was destroyed when the State of Louisiana diverted fresh water from the Mississippi River in a failed attempt to flush BP's oil from the oyster fishing grounds in his area.

The situation in Mississippi for shrimpers is nearly as grim.

"I was at a BP coastal restoration meeting yesterday and they tried to tell us they searched 6,000 square miles of the seafloor and found no oil, thanks to Mother Nature," Tuan Dang, a shrimper, told Al Jazeera while standing on a dock full of shrimp boats that would normally be out shrimping this time of year.

President Obama has failed to shut down Guantanamo, has not released prisoners he should and could have released, and there are no "dark secrets" that cannot be made public for legitimate reasons of national security.

The truth is "much more mundane" than "some huge national security secret.... It's about cruelty, incompetence, embarrassment ... issues where senior officials and senior lawyers are responsible for things that might rise to the level of war crimes.

But above all, it's about the torture, abuse, coercion and bribery that was in Guantanamo. There was a 'house of cards' of evidence built out of nothing except the testimony of prisoners and their fellow prisoners, who were abused or persuaded in other ways to produce what masquerades as the evidence. That's the true secret."

Taking an even deeper look into Guantanamo Prison's "true secret," Leopold described an interview he conducted with a Guantanamo lawyer defending a so-called "high-value detainee." Leopold could not even ask the lawyer what he'd had for lunch when meeting with the detainee, which Worthington confirmed was representative of how "nothing has been made unclassified" about those prisoners designated as high-value detainees.

"Why would that be? Would it happen to be coincidental that these were the guys who were held in secret CIA torture prisons for all these years, and the government is determined to keep a lid on any mention of that whatsoever? I can't see that there could possibly be any other conclusion," said Worthington

The group of twenty advanced democracies—the major countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, the Nordic countries, Canada, and others—can be thought of as our peer nations. Here’s what we see when we look at these countries.

To our great shame, America now hasthe highest poverty rate, both generally and for children; the greatest inequality of incomes; the worst score on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index; the highest infant mortality rate; the highest consumption of antidepressants per capita; the shortest life expectancy at birth;the highest homicide rate; the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita; the highest military spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP; & more.

This is a truly inspirational tale involving a woman, a horse, and a group of dedicated rescuers on a beach in Australia.

Given teh central role that democracy is supossed to play in our lives, Im always concerned that 99% of the people I talk to tell me that virtually none of our political, entertainment or business leaders share their basic values. So what gives? In fact, typically people tell me that their values are clearly diametrically opposed to their own..... So what is broken?

Why can't we align what is good for us with who gets rewarded in our system? Is there any wonder our largest institutions can never seem to produce the results we expect when we reward all the wrong things? More importantly, how do we fix this?
?

Documents published online this month show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization known for its uncompromising animal-rights positions, killed more than 95 percent of the pets in its care in 2011.

Fifteen years’ worth of similar records show that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 27,000 animals at its headquarters in Norfolk, VA.

In a February 16 statement, the Center said PETA killed 1,911 cats and dogs last year, finding homes for only 24 pets.

 

By Peter Wilson

You'd have to be a dim bulb -- perhaps one of those 13-watt compact fluorescents -- to believe that forcing utilities to purchase expensive offshore wind power will lead to economic prosperity.  Yet this is precisely the reaction of the Boston press to a recent deal brokered by Gov. Deval Patrick.

Gov. Patrick has been in a bind.  With the Green Communities Act of 2008, the state legislature enacted a clean energy mandate requiring that 20% of Massachusetts' power come from renewable sources by 2025, joining 36 other states with "Renewable Portfolio Standards."  Renewable energy, however, is expensive and especially hard to find in New England, and most voters don't like paying high prices for green electricity that behaves exactly like cheap electricity from natural gas or coal.  Patrick no doubt fears that the clean energy bandwagon could roll backwards and crush his re-election chances.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/on_the_cusp_of_a_natural_gas_bonanza_massachusetts_bets_on_wind_power.html#ixzz1nKMocUT7

By Col. Gary Wamsley
Berthoud, CO

When I read the original articles on the release of confidential documents from the Heartland Institute board meeting, I was infuriated.

I reacted by sending a strongly worded email to the president and all the board members of the Heartland Institute.

Surprisingly, one board member and Institute president Joseph Bast responded to my email.

Bast’s response is one that I would consider threatening. He said he was turning the email over to their legal department, the forensic staff and the FBI. He also warned me not to delete any emails.

Apparently, I was supposed to be frightened by the specter of this multimillion dollar non-profit (?) spending resources on an old veteran. The whole idea seems ludicrous and they know it.

Still, I am not afraid of the battle if it comes. This is a tactic that big money often used to suppress free speech. See Gleen Greenwald’s article in Salon “Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics.”

During my career I have been in position for many sensitive positions and have had top secret clearances, I have been investigated by the Civil Service Commission, the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I feel secure that the government knows who I am.

I decided to publish these emails so that you can judge the exchange for yourself.

From: Gary Wamsley [mailto:editor@berthoudrecorder.com] Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 5:16 PMTo: Joseph BastSubject: Heartland Institute disinformation campaign

You should be ashamed of yourself. The United States already has a problem in keeping up with the rest of the world in science education and now you want to play a role in further destroying our nation as well as our planet.

You are a traitor to your own country. I did not spend 30 years in the military to protect the likes of you.

Gary Wamsley
Colonel, USAF, Retired

From: Joseph Bast <JBast@heartland.org>Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:46:00 -0600To: Gary Wamsley <editor@berthoudrecorder.com>Cc: Jim Lakely <JLakely@heartland.org>Subject: RE: Heartland Institute disinformation campaign

Mr. Wamsley,

much more at this link...

As the state prepares to lift a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, many people debate the risks of leasing mineral rights to extraction companies.

 thousands of others along the Pennsylvania border, where rich natural gas deposits underlie forests, pastures and towns. As New York prepares to lift a moratorium on new permits for hydraulic fracturing — which carries environmental risks — landowners are debating whether to lease mineral rights to extraction companies.

The process, also called fracking, involves injecting water infused with chemicals and sand into shale formations at high pressure, which requires millions of gallons of water and produces millions of gallons of wastewater. Critics say it can lead to contamination of water wells, rivers and streams. Other risks include leaks, spills and explosions.

 

General economic theory holds that companies will produce more of a good if its price is higher, or if it receives subsidies. Funny that these rules didn’t seem to apply to Big Oil in 2011, when the highest oil price since 1864 and $2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—yielded loweroil production than in 2010. But these five oil companies combined made a record-high $137 billion in profits in 2011—up 75 percent from 2010—and have made more than $1 trillion in profits from 2001 through 2011.[1] This exceeds the previous record of $136 billion in profits in 2008.

President Barack Obama unveiled a new $5 billion veterans jobs plan Friday that the administration says will put thousands of men and women who once wore their country's uniform back to work.

The new Veterans Jobs Corps initiative, first mentioned in the president's State of the Union address last week, involves partnerships with the Veterans Administration and the Interior Department, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies.

Under the blueprint, the administration will award $166 million in grant money to communities that show a preference for hiring post-9/11 veterans for new law enforcement positions. In addition, $320 million in grant money will be awarded to various fire departments who pledge to hire and train new veterans.

 

So forget arguing, arguing, arguing with a tribe unmoored from reality. Start organizing, organizing, organizing the cohorts that are amenable to reality. Prepare them for when it’s their turn to take over. Time will do the rest.

Great article on why it's a waste of time to argue with global warming deniers and who global warming deniers are. It also talks about some of the other strange beliefs this cohort has. They're detached from reality and this article hits it on the head.

Mainstream environmental groups have struggled to find the right line on shale natural gas and the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process. Gas has a much smaller carbon footprint than coal—according to most scientists—and produces far fewer air pollutants. That was enough for many major green groups to give support to gas as a “bridge fuel” to a cleaner energy future—the next best domestic alternative to coal as an electricity source while alternatives like wind and solar scaled up. But for grassroots members of those groups—especially in parts of the country where fracking was already underway—the risk of local pollution wasn’t worth the national and global climate benefits of greater gas consumption, especially as media and scientific attention on the potential threats to water supplies grew. It was a major challenge for environmental leaders: how to balance local concerns about traditional pollution with planet-sized worries over climate change, and how to work with corporate America without being seen as selling out.

Between Occupy Wall Street and the Keystone protests, this isn’t the best time for any environmental group to trumpet its corporate ties. And Brune is right that both the size—and more importantly, the secrecy—of the gift would have made it impossible to see the Sierra Club as an honest broker on natural gas, just as environmentalists criticize politicians who take fossil fuel money. Still, I wouldn’t give up on seeking cooperation with industry on these issues, just as I wouldn’t give up on natural gas as a better and cleaner alternative to coal in the short term, provided it’s well regulated. It feels good and righteous to be among the grassroots, but a threat as vast as climate change needs bigger solutions, as Pope himself told the Los Angeles Times when he stepped down late last year:

I’m a big-tent guy. We’re not going to save the world if we rely only on those who agree with the Sierra Club. There aren’t enough of them. My aim is getting it right for the long term. I can’t get anything accomplished if people think: ‘This guy is not an honest broker. He’s with the Sierra Club.’

The Sierra Club took a step towards honesty. The question may be whether it can still be that kind of broker—or whether it still wants to be.

Now the biggest and oldest environmental group in the U.S. finds itself caught on the horns of that dilemma. TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It’s also sure to anger ordinary members who’ve been uneasy about the Club’s relationship with corporations. “The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy,” Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director since 2010, told me. “The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldn’t take money from industries and companies you’re trying to change.”

WASHINGTON- Earlier this week the Pentagon put out a call to all weapons manufacturers to research into the next generation of tactical warfare: environmentally friendly bombs and missiles nicknamed "ecobombs" or "biobombs".

The Pentagon wished to ensure that the prototypes they received were truly green technology, so included in their call was a checklist of demands and features for this new technology. First and foremost, the bomb must be a bomb, and the power of the bomb cannot be weaker than the current generation of bombs. Secondly, the bomb must be able to lower the air pollution in the surrounding region by no less than 2%, meaning that not only will it leave no footprint (besides an impact crater, a blast radius and dead bodies), but it will "clean up" the local atmosphere.

General Roy G. Biv, the chief backer of this project, praised the potential of the new weapons, saying, "Warfare is an enormous pollutant and burden on our planet. The Pentagon and the United States government wants to ensure that when we blow other countries up, we wish to do so in not only a secure [meaning no one survives] manner, but an environmentally advancing way as well."

The push has attracted many vocal opponents as well. A member of the Russian embassy said that his country was against the measure, because they saw it as yet another excuse for Washington to go to war. 

"If tensions between our two countries ever reach a boiling point again, Moscow could disappear and Washington could say that they were helping us increase our air quality. And if such a missile were to be fired, it would not be just one bomb, but hundreds, since each bomb would help the earth more than the next."

PETA was the second most outspoken group (after the other nations) saying that innocent animals would be killed by the new bombs, however we could not get a direct quote because they had to leave to support a man-eating cow that had gotten loose in Montgomery.

There is no date set for the prototypes of this new bomb to emerge, however experts are guessing an initial test may take place in late 2016.

The difficulty and uncertainty in predicting natural gas resources was underscored last week when the Energy Information Administration released a report containing sharply lower estimates.

The agency estimated that there are 482 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the United States, down from the 2011 estimate of 827 trillion cubic feet — a drop of more than 40 percent. The report also said the Marcellus region, a rock formation under parts of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, contained 141 trillion cubic feet of gas. That represents a 66 percent drop from the 410 trillion cubic feet estimate offered in the agency’s last report.

The Energy Information Administration said the sharp downward revisions to its estimates were informed by more data. “Drilling in the Marcellus accelerated rapidly in 2010 and 2011, so that there is far more information available today than a year ago,” its report said. Jonathan Cogan, a spokesman for the agency, added that Pennsylvania had made far more data available than in previous years.

The estimates are important because they underpin policy decisions on energy subsidies and exports. Market analysts look to these estimates in making investment decisions. Historically, they have varied widely based on assumptions about the future of technology, coming regulations on drilling and the long-term price of gas.

In private discussions, some federal energy officials have raised questions about the way oil and gas companies may be inflating estimates of the amount of recoverable gas.

Last summer, the New York attorney general and the Securities and Exchange Commission sent subpoenas to several companies to see whether they were accurately portraying the amount of recoverable gas to investors. The offices declined to comment about the subpoenas.

“This is what my kids are made of. They are made of water. They are made of the food that is grown in the county that I live in. And they are made of air. We inhale a pint of atmosphere with every breath we take... And when you poison these things, you poison us. That is a violation of our human rights, and that is why this is the civil rights issue of our day.”

A small penguin caused hysterics in a US state senate chamber when it defecated in the middle of a senator's speech.

Republican senator Katie Stine had brought the sea bird into Kentucky State Senate in Frankfort on Tuesday in honour of the local Newport Aquarium that was being recognised for its work protecting sea life.

Footage from the chamber shows the African black-footed penguin happily perched on the edge of a desk as Ms Stine addresses the floor.

But just as Ms Stine begins talking about the aquarium's work with animals, she is interrupted by Republican Senate President David Williams.

"Are we talking about the penguin that just defecated on the floor?" Mr Williams says, causing the chamber to erupt into laughter.

Shakespeare asked if he should compare his lover "to a summer's day." A New York zoo suggests cockroaches instead.

Ahead of Valentine's Day next month the Bronx Zoo wants New Yorkers to pay $10 for the right to give their sweetheart's name -- or perhaps that of an ex -- to one of its Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

For $25, lovebirds can name a cockroach couple.

The students spoke, and the school board vetoed: One high school opening in Utah won't be calling themselves the "Cougars."

Students across the Canyons school district voted to select the "Cougars" as the new mascot for Corner Canyon High School -- slated to open in fall 2013. But the Board of Education decided that victorious mascot -- selected by 23 percent of voting students -- is too offensive toward women, KSTU-TV reports. The term "cougar" is often informally used to reference an older woman seeking a sexual or romantic relationship with a significantly younger man.

 

A new study suggests that the impact of predation on juvenile Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska has been significantly underestimated, creating a “productivity pit” from which their population will have difficulty recovering without a reduction of predators.

Scientists using “life history transmitters” to study Steller sea lions found evidence of age-structured predation by orcas (killer whales) and other large predators in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and adjacent areas, which may change with the population density of the sea lions.

Results of the study are being published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

“It is generally accepted that most pinniped populations suffer from high attrition in the juvenile years, but this study suggests that predation accounts for most, if not all of this attrition in the case of Steller sea lions,” said Markus Horning, an Oregon State University marine mammal expert and lead author on the study.

“The focus of predators on juveniles has the end result of heavily capping female recruitment – or the number of females that survive until they are old enough to have pups,” Horning added.

Previous studies have pointed to a reduction of birth rates as a possible explanation for the decline of Steller sea lions in Alaska. But the newly published study by Horning, who works at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., and Jo-Ann Mellish of the Alaska Sea Life Center and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, counters that and suggests that predators increasingly are targeting younger Steller sea lions as populations of the marine mammal decrease – reducing the numbers of potential breeding females.

The end result may be the same: Not enough Steller sea lions are being born each year to rejuvenate the population, which has declined by 80 percent over the past four decades.

Writing in the latest issue of "Nature," a trio of scientists — two of whom are associated with NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco's longtime advocacy for catch share fisheries — have proposed a similar "catch and trade" allocation policy to help bring to an end commercial whaling.

The authors, Christopher Costello, Leah R. Gerber and Steven Gaines, argue that, by allocating whale shares to nations based on "historical whaling patterns ... transactions would reduce the number of whales harvested, quite possibly to zero, unlike existing protocols (that) seem to be increasing the catches."

In the Jan. 12 Nature article, headlined "A market approach to saving the whales," the authors explain that, by their estimates, global profits from commercial whaling of $31 million were nearly matched by the expenses, $25 million, of anti-whaling activism.

Moreover, considering what they said were current market prices — $13,000 for a minke whale to $85,000 for a humpback — under a catch share market for whales, "whale prices should therefore be within reach of conservation groups and even some individuals" to gain control of the harvest.

"Whalers would be suitably compensated," they wrote, "and because trades are voluntary, the market would have the potential to make all parties better off, and simultaneously improve whale conservation."

This signal step — adding whales to the global commodity investment market — lies at the heart of the case for gaining control of and gradually reducing commercial whaling.

Writing in 2008 for then-President-elect Obama, Gaines and Costello — together with Lubchenco — helped coauthor a script for converting fisheries to the catch share management system that is now effect in New England and elsewhere.

But their pamphlet, "Oceans of Abundance," neglected to discuss how linking fisheries — which remain largely locally- and operator-owned — into global investment commodities trading also exposes them to acquisition and control by external interests.

"For example, application of the catch-and-trade system to global whaling can be used to eliminate commercial whaling — whoever has the most money wins. But is this an ethical approach to resource allocation?" Rothschild wrote in an email to the Times.

"Many of our resources are owned by the 'public,' or by 'society,' or are 'the common heritage of mankind (such as national parks and air space),'" he added. "Should they be for sale?"

As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to climb, a team of California scientists has created a new material that will help reduce the amount escaping from smokestacks and power plants. The material, called polyethylenimine, or PEI, acts like a carbon dioxide fly-tape trap, attracting the greenhouse gas molecules and sticking to them so they can't escape.

Indeed, carbon dioxide is so attracted to the material that the team says it can pull the molecule right out of the air, something other carbon filter materials have not been able to do well. "This is really an important quality," said Alain Goeppert, a senior researcher at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California. In the near future, it will enable small-scale removal of carbon dioxide from air in enclosed spaces, such as submarines and manned spacecraft, where carbon dioxide buildup can be hazardous, or in laboratories, where carbon dioxide can hinder engineering or the chemical reactions of certain products. PEI may have long-term applications, too, for wide-scale removal of the gas from air. In addition, the team says PEI is cheaper and more easily produced than other materials already being used to extract carbon dioxide from smokestacks and industrial flues

In a new package of policies criticized even by some hunters, the Alaska Board of Game on Tuesday opened the door to aerial gunning of bears by state wildlife officials. It also debated a measure that would allow more widespread snaring of bears — including grizzlies, which are officially considered threatened across most of the U.S.

The controversial "intensive management" moves are the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive control methods targeting bears and wolves in Alaska. In some parts of the state, wolf pups can be gassed in their dens, bear cubs and sows can be hunted, and wolves shot from helicopters.

"In this larger war on bears and wolves, the Board of Game has created a number of hunting methods which we find objectionable," said Jim Stratton, Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Assn. "It's all being done to manipulate the population of predators, to reduce them so you can grow more moose and caribou, and that is in direct conflict with how the park service is supposed to manage their land. They have a management policy which specifically says you don't manipulate the population of one species to benefit the hunting of another."

One doesn’t usually expect a crowd when the Youngstown, Ohio City Council holds a subcommittee meeting. But then Youngstown doesn’t usually have earthquakes. In fact, prior to 2010 you could go back more than 100 years and not find record of a single one.

In 2011, however, this city of just under 70,000 experienced 11 earthquakes. The most recent and most serious was a 4.0 that struck on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. So when the Chair of the Utilities Subcommittee called a public hearing on the earthquakes – and the possibility that they were linked to the controversial gas drilling process known as fracking – the crowd was so large they had to hold the meeting in the local convention centre.

For the last few years, new efforts have been radiating outward from Indian country to develop energy policies that will better serve our communities and our descendants.  I was privileged to be involved in one recent initiative in South Dakota.  In the summer of 2009, leaders from the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy (COUP)(http://www.intertribalcoup.org/), invited representatives from Dakota Resource Council, Dakota Rural Action, and Plains Justice (http://plainsjustice.org/) for a full day meeting on energy issues at Sinte Gleska University (http://www.sintegleska.edu/) in Mission, South Dakota.  University President Lionel R. Bordeaux graciously welcomed the participants, who viewed an exciting joint project with COUP in progress:  the construction of a new, highly efficient strawbale building that would house a bison husbandry program. 

Warming, what warming?  Is it getting hot here or is it just us? 

The U.S. should declare a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are better understood, doctors said at a conference on the drilling process.

Gas producers should set up a foundation to finance studies on fracking and independent research is also needed, said Jerome Paulson, a pediatrician at George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington. Top independent producers include Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Devon Energy Corp., both of Oklahoma City, and Encana Corp. of Calgary, according to Bloomberg Industries.

“We’ve got to push the pause button, and maybe we’ve got to push the stop button” on fracking, said Adam Law, an endocrinologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, in an interview at a conference in Arlington, Virginia that’s the first to examine criteria for studying the process.

Fracking injects water, sand and chemicals into deep shale formations to free trapped natural gas. A boom in production with the method helped increase supplies, cutting prices 32 percent last year. The industry, though, hasn’t disclosed enough information on chemicals used, Paulson said, raising concerns about tainted drinking water supplies and a call for peer- reviewed studies on the effects. The EPA is weighing nationwide regulation.

Conservative members of the Supreme Court seemed outraged Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s actions in a four-year battle with an Idaho couple whowant to build a house on land the EPA says contains sensitive wetlands.

Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared troubled by the EPA’s position that Mike and Chantell Sackett do not have the right to go court to challenge the agency’s wetlands decision.

But some justices got more worked up about the case than others, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. led the parade.

“If you related the facts of this case . . . to an ordinary homeowner, don’t you think most ordinary homeowners would say this kind of thing can’t happen in the United States?” Alito asked Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart, who was representing the EPA.

To what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector's hydraulic fracturing process, known as fracking, have been cropping up like Freud's repressed. The latest ominously arrived in Republican-dominated Ohio on New Year's Eve, quickly prompting Youngstown's mayor to buy earthquake insurance and lament, "You lose your whole house, that's your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?"

That's easy, Mayor Charles P. Sammarone, and anyone else finally learning these hard lessons: You stop fracking, which is to say you stop messing with the geological integrity of your cities, and their water tables. If you're Ohio, then you stop giving GOP industry stooges like Speaker of the House John Boehner and Governor John Kasich access to your precious natural resources. If you're the rest of the world, you accept that you have a serious problem with fossil fuel consumption, detach your complicity and support, and start planning for a future in which deregulated shale gas extraction, and its frackquake-causing disposal wells, are a desperate cry for psychoanalysis rather than an acceptable peak oil market.

Either that, or you sit back and watch as more unassuming fissures threading through your cities swell into destabilized faults in search of frackquakes, or worse.

Days after Ohio's wake-up call, a fracking well owned by Chesapeake subsidiary Nomac exploded in Oklahoma, after drilling into a pressurized gas pocket. The same day, the Environmental Protection Agency considered trucking fresh water to northeast Pennsylvania to serve the needs of households whose water had been poisoned by fracking wells. New York state lawmakers are seeking to extend a moratorium on fracking, because of this increasingly worrisome data, as well as the brutally frank assessments of previous fracking regulators like Paul Hetzler.

"Let me be clear," Hetzler wrote in a letter, "hydraulic fracturing as it's practiced today will contaminate our aquifers. Not might contaminate our aquifers. Hydraulic fracturing will contaminate New York's aquifers."

The division:

Securing the nations toughest regulations or winning an outright ban?

This is what happens when 'the People' stand up for our environment AND say something to the President...

As Meteor Blades noted Friday, the Obama administration has decided to extend the Grand Canyon uranium-mining ban for 20 years. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made the announcement Monday.

At an early afternoon event, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a 20-year ban on new mining claims on public land surrounding the Grand Canyon. On two previous occasions the secretary had imposed temporary bans on new mining claims. On Monday, he said that while uranium remains an important part of a comprehensive energy strategy, the Grand Canyon is a national treasure that must be protected.

The Grand Canyon attracts more than 4 million visitors a year and generates an estimated $3.5 billion in economic activity, Salazar said. Millions of Americans living in cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles rely on the Colorado River for clean drinking water.

 

"A withdrawal is the right approach for this priceless American landscape," Salazar said in a speech at the National Geographic Museum. "People from all over the country and around the world come to visit the Grand Canyon. Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place, and millions of people in the Colorado River Basin depend on the river for drinking water (and) irrigation."

 

 

As Interior secretary, he has been "entrusted to care for and protect our precious environmental and cultural resources," he said, adding that he has chosen "a responsible path that makes sense for this and future generations."

 

I have been paying attention to the 'water' issue here in California for some time now...and was very upset when this 'inserted' item got passed into 'law'...An article in our 'opinion' section of the paper today lays it out in black/white...Here is the text below...

 Viewpoints: Water barons will corner market in new 'Chinatown'

By Patricia Schifferle
Special to The Bee

"There is more money in selling water in California than there is in farming.
A one-sentence provision inserted in the 2012 budget bill by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein will allow a handful of powerful San Joaquin Valley water oligarchs to sell federally subsidized agricultural water in a private market for as much as 150 times more than what they pay for it.
This relaxation of publicly owned water supplies for private gain strips out protections approved by Congress in 1992.
They call them "water transfers," and for the last 15 years California has been quietly edging into a very lucrative privatized water sales market that seeks to expedite the movement of cheap agricultural water from Northern California to thirsty Southern California and Bay Area cities.
The cast of characters in this new water wars drama reads like a who's who of California corporate agriculture:
• Westlands Water District, west of Fresno, which is the largest irrigation district in the United States and is controlled by a handful of privately owned agribusiness corporations.
• Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick, who runs the privately controlled Kern Water Bank, a 19,900-acre underground reservoir capable of holding more than a million acre-feet of water. The reservoir was created by the state before being taken private. Resnick, a longtime backer of Feinstein, owns Paramount Farms and Roll International, key players in California's billion-dollar private water market.
Like derivatives, subprime mortgages and deregulated electricity, the privatization of federally owned water rights is a puzzle palace of complexity. Here are some of the pieces:
Winter and spring runoff from Northern California rivers, which flow through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, are crucial to the ecological health of the Delta, San Francisco Bay and the state's fishing industry. The Feinstein legislation allows high water flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers to be diverted to a private water market rather than replenishing the Delta and the Bay.
The legislation makes it easier to move federally subsidized $20-an-acre-foot water from growers with federal project water contracts to private interests with water rights. Once in the hands of these buyers, the water can be resold in the open market to the highest bidder.
Westlands Water District and others who will benefit from the legislation will not be required to fully compensate the U.S. taxpayers for the public investments in the storage facilities, conveyance systems, electricity to pump the water or the operation and maintenance costs that make these private windfall transactions possible.
In short, it socializes the costs and capitalizes the profits, leaving U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill. Sound familiar?
The Kern Water Bank was originally owned by the state of California and built to store water in high water years to provide agriculture with water in drought years and to leave more in the Delta. In 1994, Resnick persuaded the state to turn over this invaluable public resource to the Kern County Water Agency. Within a short time the water agency turned over control of the water bank to a handful of local water districts.
When the dust settled, Resnick's Paramount Farming controlled more than 50 percent. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently admitted that Resnick's Kern Water Bank is on the list of beneficiaries of Feinstein's deregulation measure.
In addition, Feinstein's budget rider streamlines environmental review of these privatized water transfers by disguising the environmental impacts of individual transfers. One only needs to remember the "rape of the Owens Valley" and its reincarnation in Roman Polanski's classic movie "Chinatown" to understand the potential environmental impacts of moving water and water rights from one geographical area to another.
In anticipation of this Christmas gift to Westlands, the bond-rating agency FitchRating last year noted the benefit to Westlands from deregulating the federal water to allow Westlands to engage in more private water sales:
"The WWD (Westlands Water District) potentially has the ability to sell and transfer water rights outside the district should agriculture cease to be economic, as the demand for water in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area by users with connectivity to the CVP (federal Central Valley Water Project) is very high."
Climate change and global warming studies predict future water shortages for California. Feinstein's deregulation of vital public water paid for by taxpayers will enrich a handful of powerful water oligarchs. The measure will make it possible for a handful of these high rollers to dominate the California water market and squeeze whatever profits they can out of thirsty urban water users, leaving the fish and wildlife at the mercy of so-called free market economics.
The Congress must take a closer look. A privatized water supply paid for by U.S. taxpayers but controlled by one person or a handful of people is just plain wrong."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/08/4168916/water-barons-will-corner-market.html#storylink=cpy

As usual the public paid for the 'Federal Water', we also paid for the pipeline, and the 'storage' facilities the water is used by...Now it's all given to 'private' entities to re-sell at many, many times more...that's ALL profit for the private parties involved...Which could have been 'public' profits instead...Thanks to our representatives allowing this happen...

Please contact your representatives and 'the President' to reverse this 'private' power grab...

William Winn is the captain of the fishing boat, Ocean Pearl, and said the whales followed his boat into the harbor this morning all the way to Pier 38.

"Yeah, for some reason they liked the boat. They just hung with us for like, seven days. They never left our side," said Winn.

Winn grabbed his camera to document the humpbacks, he said were docile and playful during the 800-mile fishing trip.

"It was neat to have some company out there. We've been out for almost 20 days, so it was nice to have something to look at other than my crew," said Winn with a laugh.

Five longtime activists are challenging a federal law that defines a wide spectrum of peaceful – and in some cases, otherwise lawful – animal rights activism as acts of terrorism

They have good reason to worry. In 2009, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested and indicted four California protesters for terrorism, each of whom faced 10 years in prison. Their crimes? They “marched, chanted, and chalked” sidewalk slogans outside the homes of animal researchers and distributed fliers about their campaign.

But the vague language in AETA categorizes as terrorism any activity carried out “for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise,” or which causes “the loss of any real or personal property,” including “economic damage” such as a loss of profits

The claim filed Dec. 23 by Natisha Rachal and Benjamin and Judy Pate accuses the Forest Service and the National Weather Service of not properly maintaining the severe weather and flooding warning system at the Albert Pike Recreation Area.

Bell's home for most of the past eight years has been a tent under a scraggly tree, surrounded by high shrubbery in the American River Parkway.

He is close enough to Cal Expo that – while walking to his campsite – he waves his arm at the fairgrounds' giant electronic sign and quips, "That's my television."

Arriving at camp in the afternoon, he feeds his two cats, Scamp and Lil Bit, and opens up his tent.

The years he's spent here are among the most stable of his 48 years, 49 this month.

He was born in Indiana and lived in Connecticut, Scotland, San Diego and Ohio because his father was in the military.

His family broke with him for reasons he prefers not to discuss, and he wound up in Sacramento, working as a chef at Jim Denny's, among other places.

Bell had a stable home in midtown until his friend and roommate got sick and died in their apartment.

Four fracking wells in northeastern Ohio have been shut down by the state, after an increase in seismic activity, which many believe has been caused by the fracking itself.

approximately 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead from the sky last night in the early hours of the new year.

As if the incident was not strange enough, it is the second time in two years that the birds have fallen as the calendar year changes...

Initially, last year's deaths were blamed on celebratory fireworks, with people thinking that the birds were startled to death. A flash hail storm or massive lightning strikes were all discussed as possibilities as well.

All three theories have been debunked, however, as the weather was calm in Arkansas last night and police even imposed an impromptu firework ban in an effort to prevent it from happening again.

For the first time, the top export of the United States, the world's biggest gas guzzler, is — wait for it — fuel.

Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels.

Just how big of a shift is this? A decade ago, fuel wasn't even among the top 25 exports. And for the last five years, America's top export was aircraft.

The trend is significant because for decades the U.S. has relied on huge imports of fuel from Europe in order to meet demand. It only reinforced the image of America as an energy hog. And up until a few years ago, whenever gasoline prices climbed, there were complaints in Congress that U.S. refiners were not growing quickly enough to satisfy domestic demand; that controversy would appear to be over.

Still, the U.S. is nowhere close to energy independence. America is still the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, the country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion.

Fuel exports, worth an estimated $88 billion in 2011, have surged for two reasons:

— Crude oil, the raw material from which gasoline and other refined products are made, is a lot more expensive. Oil prices averaged $95 a barrel in 2011, while gasoline averaged $3.52 a gallon — a record. A decade ago oil averaged $26 a barrel, while gasoline averaged $1.44 a gallon.

— The volume of fuel exports is rising. The U.S. is using less fuel because of a weak economy and more efficient cars and trucks. That allows refiners to sell more fuel to rapidly growing economies in Latin America, for example. In 2011, U.S. refiners exported 117 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products, up from 40 million gallons per day a decade earlier.

There's at least one domestic downside to America's growing role as a fuel exporter. Experts say the trend helps explain why U.S. motorists are paying more for gasoline. The more fuel that's sent overseas, the less of a supply cushion there is at home.

Officials at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services deny accusations that the agency "turned its back" on a memorandum of agreement it entered into with the Great Bay Coalition communities of Exeter, Newmarket, Portsmouth, Dover and Rochester.

Those claims were made last week in a memorandum from Portsmouth City Manager John Bohenko, in which he states that at a Nov. 30 meeting between DES and the coalition communities, officials at DES dismissed information that strongly suggested the health of the Great Bay Estuary can be protected by limiting wastewater treatment plants' nitrogen discharges to 8 milligrams per liter, rather than the 3 milligrams per liter being pushed by DES and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ted Diers, of the DES Coastal Program, said officials haven't dismissed any information because they have yet to see all the information.

"My understanding coming away from that meeting was that the coalition communities were preparing the results of the water quality monitoring they completed on the Squamscott River this fall and we'd be ready to respond once we saw that data and the data reports that went along with it," he said.

The memorandum of agreement was signed by the coalition communities and the DES commissioner earlier this year. The agreement allowed the communities and regulators to collaborate to conduct additional studies to resolve uncertainties with the DES's nutrient criteria.

As part of the agreement, Diers said, the coalition would provide DES with results from their studies and DES would respond.

Diers claimed that DES wasn't presented with any results at the Nov. 30 meeting, only "summary information."

"They have shown us some PowerPoint presentations of some of the results but certainly not all of them," he said.

Portsmouth officials also claimed that DES planned on staying with its 3 milligrams per liter limit recommendation without having gone through a formal rule-making process required by New Hampshire's Administrative Procedure Act and that both the DES and EPA conducted studies on the Squamscott River that were duplicative of the coalition's, without informing the coalition.

US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP employees over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, The Wall Street Journal reported online.

The charges if brought and prosecuted by the US Justice Department would be the first criminal charges over the disaster.

Citing sources close to the matter, the Journal said the prosecutors are focusing on US-based BP engineers and at least one supervisor who they say may have provided false information to regulators on the risks of deep water drilling in the Gulf.

Felony charges for providing false information in federal documents may be made public early next year, said the Journal.

A conviction on that charge would carry a fine and up to five years in prison, the newspaper said.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has already issued a second list of violations regarding BP's operation of the Macondo well that blew out in April 2010, causing the worst maritime environmental disaster in history.

The US drilling safety agency has said it determined BP had failed to conduct an accurate pressure integrity test in one area of the well.

And in four different sections of the well, BP failed to suspend drilling operations at the Macondo when the safe drilling margin was not maintained, the agency said.

It already has an international presence, but Israel’s Ormat Industries (NYSE: ORA) just made its global presence a little brighter: On December 21, Ormat’s US subsidiary Ormat Technologies announced that it will be developing its very first 10 megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) farm near one of its geothermal plants in California. Ormat is an internationally recognized geothermal company but has already signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for its newest solar plant with the local community-owned utility Imperial Irrigation District.

"We now witness the fruit born of a Marine Life Protection Act 'Initiative' that was hijacked by oil interests," said Dave Gurney, independent journalist. "A southern California oil company wants to expand it's operations - from 3.7 miles out in federal waters, further east, to within the 3-mile limit of California state waters. They are proposing to drill up to 25 new offshore oil wells."

MLPA panel chaired by big oil lobbyist

Rarely mentioned in corporate media reports on the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative fiasco is the alarming fact that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast that oversaw the creation of the so-called "marine protected areas" that will go into effect on January 1. She also served on the North Coast and North Central Coast marine task forces.

Grassroots environmentalists and fishermen strongly opposed the egregious conflict of interest posed by allowing a big oil industry lobbyist to oversee the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs), especially when these MPAs fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling and spills, pollution, corporate aquaculture, military testing, wind and wave energy projects and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering.

A corrupt 'public-private' partnership

The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a shadowy organization that funds the MLPA Initiative through a "public-private partnership" with the DFG, received the funds from these foundations to implement the unpopular MLPA process.

The David and Lucillle Packard Foundation contributed $8.2 million to fund MLPA hearings, according to Reckas. The Packard Foundation is not only the biggest funder of the MLPA, but also funded studies to build the peripheral canal, including the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) report in July 2008 calling for the construction of a canal. The peripheral canal is opposed by a coalition of fishermen, environmentalists, Indian Tribes, family farmers and Delta residents.

Julie E. Packard, the executive director and founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the foundation. Carol S. Larson is the President and Chief Executive Officer, while Susan Packard Orr serves as Chairman.

Walmart greenwashes MPAs, catch shares

Wal-Mart, through the Walton Family Foundation, is another huge contributor to ocean privatization efforts through “catch shares” programs and the creation of so-called “marine protected areas" including those created under the MLPA Initiative. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/19/wal-marting-the-oceans)

In a August 16 news release from Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Walton Family Foundation announced “investments” totaling more than $71.8 million awarded to various environmental initiatives in 2010. The foundation handed over $36 million alone to Marine Conservation grantees including Ocean Conservancy, Conservation International Foundation, Marine Stewardship Council, World Wildlife Fund and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The five top grantees were: Conservation International, $18,640,917; the Nature Conservancy,$9,305,449; Environmental Defense Fund, $7,086,054; the Marine Stewardship Council, $4,500,000; and the Ocean Conservancy, $3,757,768.

There is no doubt that the MLPA Initiative and other similar corporate-funded efforts have little or nothing to do with protecting the ocean - and everything to do with the privatization of the public trust by the 1 percent.

Changing ocean conditions have long been known to cause variability in abundance of wild fish stocks. With current conditions changing in ways not previously seen in historical times, more variability of wild fish stocks and ecosystems is to be expected.

Brad Warren, of Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, recently called attention to a paper documenting how Atlantic herring larvae react to higher CO2 concentrations in sea water. Higher oceanic CO2 concentrations are one of the consequences of more CO2 in the atmosphere, and mixed with water they form carbonic acid, and are responsible for increasingly acidic sea water.

Warren says ‘to my knowledge, this is the first paper with ‘strong indications that a commercially important fish is directly, physiological vulnerable to elevated CO2. ‘

The paper, by A. Franke and C. Clemmesen of the Leibniz-Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, examined larval survival of Atlantic herring as they were exposed to higher concentrations of CO2.

They found a strong correlation between higher CO2 levels and poorer nutrition and growth. The effect doesn't kick in until the more extreme CO2 levels are reached, which Warren says our levels that have only been recorded in a few locations in the surface and nearshore ocean so far.

The impact is not on the hatch rate or size or health of the larvae who have normal yolk sacs at all concentrations tested. The impact is no subsequent growth. At the higher CO2 levels, a marked decline in health and consequently larval survival was predicted, based on analysis of overall health of the larvae.

The suggestion is that elevated CO2 will be another stress factor that depresses survival for Atlantic herring larvae, and as a result, the acidification of ocean waters in the major herring spawning areas should be closely monitored.

Read the complete study

WASHINGTON — BP and the oil industry drilling in the Gulf of Mexico lacked the proper safety attitude to handle the large risks of deepwater drilling, leading to the many bad decisions behind the nation's worst offshore spill, a panel of expert engineers said today.

More specifically, the industry needs to radically redesign the blowout preventers that are meant to be a last line of defense against runaway wells or else risk a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the National Academy of Engineering concluded.

Before the oil spill, both the industry and federal regulators had "misplaced trust" in the ability of those emergency devices to seal off wells and keep explosive oil and gas safely locked underground, the academy and the National Research Council said in a 136-page report on the disaster.

"There was a level of confidence on the part of the crew that if anything didn't work out right they could count on the blowout preventer," said Donald Winter, the former secretary of the Navy who headed the 15-member NAE committee that investigated the oil spill.

The experts do say drilling safety has improved in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We think it is indeed in fact a reasonable process to continue drilling at this point in time," Winter said at news conference. "But further improvements in safety can in fact be made and should be made."

Despite better safety practices, the experts worried that the improvements could fade without new steps. They pointed to NASA and how lessons the agency learned after the 1986 Challenger disaster eventually dimmed, leading to the 2003 Columbia disaster.