The Environment

By Climate Guest Blogger on Mar 29, 2012 at 11:47 am

Acknowledging Climate Change Doesn’t Make You A Liberal

by Paul Douglas, via neorenaissance

I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real.

I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I’m a meteorologist, and the weather maps I’m staring at are making me uncomfortable. No, you’re not imagining it: we’ve clicked into a new and almost foreign weather pattern. To complicate matters, I’m in a small, frustrated and endangered minority:  a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up, long-term. It’s ironic.

The root of the word conservative is “conserve.”  A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly “global warming alarmists” are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed.

Weather 2.0. “It’s A New Atmosphere Floating Overhead.”

These are the Dog Days of March. Ham Weather reports 6,895 records in the last week – some towns 30 to 45 degrees warmer than average; off-the-scale, freakishly warm. 13,393 daily records for heat since March 1 – 16 times more warm records than cold records. The scope, intensity and duration of this early heat wave are historic and unprecedented.

And yes, climate change is probably spiking our weather.

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” 129,404 weather records in one year? You can’t point to any one weather extreme and say “that’s climate change”. But a warmer atmosphere loads the dice, increasing the potential for historic spikes in temperature and more frequent and bizarre weather extremes. You can’t prove that any one of Barry Bond’s 762 home runs was sparked by (alleged) steroid use. But it did increase his “base state,” raising the overall odds of hitting a home run. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, more fuel for floods, while increased evaporation pushes other regions into drought.

Images courtesy of NOAA. Billion dollar disasters (upper). Percentage of USA in drought/flood (lower)

Here’s what I suspect: the patient is running a slight fever. Symptoms include violent tornado sneezes, severe sniffles of flooding and raging rashes of jaw-dropping warmth. It’s 85 in March. What will July bring? It’s as if Mother Nature seized the weather remote, put America’s seasons on fast-forward, and turned the volume on extreme weather up to a deafening 10. This isn’t even close to being “normal”. Weather Underground’s Dr. Jeff Masters put it best. “This is not the atmosphere I grew up with.”

Some TV meteorologists, professionals who are skilled at predicting short-term weather, are still in denial. Why? Some don’t like being upstaged by climate scientists; we’ve all been burned by weather models, and some (mistakenly) apply the same suspicion to climate models. Others haven’t taken the time to dig into the climate science. “It’s all political” one local TV weather-friend told me recently. No, it’s science. But we’ve turned it into a political football, a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. Weather and climate are flip-sides of the same coin; you can’t talk about one without understanding the other.

Acknowledging Climate Science Doesn’t Make You A Liberal

My climate epiphany wasn’t overnight, and it had nothing to do with Al Gore. In the mid-90s I noticed gradual changes in the weather patterns floating over Minnesota. Curious, I began investigating climate science, and, over time, began to see the thumbprint of climate change, along with 97% of published, peer-reviewed PhD’s, who link a 40% spike in greenhouse gases with a warmer, stormier atmosphere.

Bill O’Reilly, whom I respect, talks of a “no-spin zone.” Yet today there’s a very concerted, well-funded effort to spin climate science. Some companies, institutes and think tanks are cherry-picking data, planting dubious seeds of doubt, arming professional deniers, scientists-for-hire and skeptical bloggers with the ammunition necessary to keep climate confusion alive. It’s the “you can’t prove smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer!” argument, times 100, with many of the same players. Amazing.

Schopenhauer said “All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally it is accepted as self-evident.” We are now well into Stage 2. It’s getting bloody out there.  Climate scientists are receiving death threats and many Americans don’t know what to believe. Some turn to talk radio or denial-blogs for their climate information. No wonder they’re confused.

“Actions Have Consequences.”

 Trust your gut – and real experts. We should listen to peer-reviewed climate scientists, who are very competitive by nature. This is not about “insuring more fat government research grants.” I have yet to find a climate scientist in the “1 Percent”, driving a midlife-crisis-red Ferrari into the lab.  I truly hope these scientists turn out to be wrong, but I see no sound, scientific evidence to support that position today.  What I keep coming back to is this: all those dire (alarmist!) warnings from climate scientists 30 years ago? They’re coming true, one after another – and faster than supercomputer models predicted. Data shows 37 years/row of above-average temperatures, worldwide. My state has warmed by at least 3 degrees F. Climate change is either “The Mother of All Coincidences” – or the trends are real.

My father, a devout Republican, who escaped a communist regime in East Germany, always taught me to never take my freedom for granted, and “actions have consequences.”  Carbon that took billions of years to form has been released in a geological blink of an eye. Human emissions have grown significantly over the past 200 years, and now exceed 27 billion tons of carbon dioxide, annually. To pretend this isn’t having any effect  on the 12-mile thin atmosphere overhead is to throw all logic and common sense out the window. It is to believe in scientific superstitions and political fairy tales, about a world where actions have no consequences – where colorless, odorless gases, the effluence of success and growth, can be waved away with a nod and a smirk. No harm, no foul. Keep drilling.

In 2008, before it became fashionable to bash climate science, I had the honor of welcoming Iraqi war veterans back to Minnesota for a banquet. The keynote speaker was my hero, Senator John McCain. At dinner I asked him point blank “is it possible this warm, freakish weather is all one great big, cosmic coincidence?” He rolled his eyes, smiled and said “Paul, I just returned from the Yukon. The Chief Elder of a local village presented me with a 4,000 year old tomahawk that had just melted from the permafrost. The short answer? No.” How did we get from there – to here, with an entire party in perpetual denial? Is it still Al Gore? Fear of a government land-grab? My party needs to step up and become part of the solution, which, this century, will generate far more jobs and GDP than legacy, carbon-based industries.

“You’re obsessing,” my wife of 28 years complained recently. “People don’t like having this rammed down their throats.” Fair enough. I’m genuinely concerned, because I’m in touch with America’s leading climate scientists. They are beyond concerned; bordering on apoplectic. We fiddle while Rome burns.

Biblical Scripture: “We Are Here to Manage God’s Property”

I’m a Christian, and I can’t understand how people who profess to love and follow God roll their eyes when the subject of climate change comes up. Actions have consequences. Were we really put here to plunder the Earth, no questions asked? Isn’t that the definition of greed? In the Bible, Luke 16:2 says, “Man has been appointed as a steward for the management of God’s property, and ultimately he will give account for his stewardship.” Future generations will hold us responsible for today’s decisions.

I understand this: capitalism requires growth. Growth requires energy. Anything that gets in the way of insuring an uninterrupted flow of (carbon-based) energy must be inherently evil. My fellow Republicans have an allergic reaction to regulation, but do we really want to go back to the 60s, a time of choking smog and combustible rivers?  There’s a palpable fear that Big Government will ultimately prevent the energy industry from extracting (and burning) trillions of dollars of carbon still in the ground; the fuel we think we need to keep America competitive, growing and healthy.

U.S. reserves of carbon based fuels are 586 GtCO2, according to the Congressional Research Service.  Think Progress’s Brad Johnson estimates U.S. energy companies have roughly $10 trillion worth of carbon resources still left in the ground (coal, gas and oil). “A cap on carbon emissions designed to limit warming to 2 degrees C. will mean sovereign states and public corporations must strand 80% of their $27 trillion of proven (global) reserves and related assets, a loss exceeding $20 trillion” he said. This is what the fight is about.  Big Energy wants to keep us addicted to carbon-based fuels indefinitely; shareholders want to keep the money-spigot flowing, and lock in future profits. Surprised? Me neither. But in business, as in life, you hedge your bets. We can slowly, methodically, wean ourselves off carbon-based fuels, while investing in carbon-clean alternatives. That doesn’t mean government picks winners. That’s anathema to free enterprise.

Climate Change: The Ultimate Test for Capitalism. Let The Markets Work

I’m an entrepreneur. The eight Minnesota companies I’ve created ultimately employed hundreds of professionals. Where others see chronic problems I see opportunity. One of my companies is Smart Energy, with a new level of wind forecast accuracy for global wind farms. Last summer, in response to the most severe two years since 1816, my partners and I launched a new, national cable weather channel (“WeatherNation Television”) – to keep Americans updated with 24/7 storm reports. “Global Weirding” has arrived. Why bother? Because it’s the right thing to do. And because going green will generate green. As in profits. We won’t drill our way out of this challenge; we’ll innovate our way into a new, lower-carbon energy paradigm. Something we’re pretty good at. Professional skeptics will hold up Solyndra as a reason why this will never work. For the sake of our nation’s future – don’t believe them.

Every Day Is April Fool’s Day In Washington D.C.

Amazingly, America already has the technology and creative minds necessary to ensure future growth and more jobs, without treating Earth like a battered ATM card. We can tackle this problem, like we’ve tackled every other problem in our nation’s history. But do we have the political will? Our political system is broken, utterly incapable of dealing with long-term threats. Compromise is seen as weakness; our natural resources put at risk by political paralysis. Will getting serious about climate change require a third political party: a pro-jobs, pro-clean-energy Common Sense Moderate Middle – to prove that America can move forward and thrive, without trashing the land and air we value?  Perhaps.

The climate is warming. The weather is morphing. It’s not your grandfather’s weather anymore. The trends are undeniable. If you don’t want to believe thousands of climate scientists – at least believe your own eyes: winters are warmer & shorter, summers more humid, more extreme weather events, with a 1-in-500 year flood every 2-3 years. For evidence of climate change don’t look at your back yard thermometer. That’s weather. Take another, longer look at your yard. Look at the new flowers, trees, birds, insects and pests showing up outside your kitchen window that weren’t there a generation ago.

This is a moral issue. Because the countries least responsible will bear the brunt of rising seas, spreading drought and climate refugees. Because someday your grandkids will ask what did you know…when…and what did you do to help?  We’ve been binging on carbon for 200 years, and now the inevitable hangover is setting in. Curing our addiction to carbon won’t happen overnight. But creative capitalism can deal with climate change. I’m no fan of big government or over-regulation. Set the bar high. Then stand back and let the markets work. Let Americans do what they do best: innovate.

“The Mother of All Opportunities”: Turning America Into The Silicon Valley of Energy

We can figure this out. Frankly, we won’t have a choice. But I’m a naïve optimist. We can reinvent America, leaving us more competitive in the 21^st century, launching thousands of new, carbon-free energy companies – supplementing, and someday surpassing anything we can expeditiously suck out of the ground and burn, accelerating an already-warming planet.  We don’t have to bury our heads in Saudi sand – we’ll never “frack” our way to a sustainable future. It’s time for a New Energy Paradigm. There’s no silver bullet. But there’s plenty of (green) buckshot, if we aim high and point America in the right direction. We need real leadership, and a viable, bipartisan blueprint for inevitable energy independence from President Obama and Congress. Yes, healthcare is important. So is the long-term health of our air, land and water.

There are steps all of us can take today.  I own one hybrid, another on order. I bought a home a mile away from my office, to reduce my carbon footprint (and preserve some sense of sanity). But there’s much more I can do. Let’s challenge ourselves to reinvent our own energy ecosystems.

America 2.0. The Best Way to Predict the Future? Invent It

I don’t pretend to have the answer key. But the same Tenacious, Fast-Forward, Can-Do American Spirit that built the transcontinental railroad, the Internet, lasers and the first artificial heart – sending men sent to the moon in a breathtakingly short period of time – will ultimately figure this out. My youngest son is graduating from the Naval Academy in May, then heading to Pensacola. He’ll be flying choppers or jets; F-18s that can already run on biofuels. The Navy is serious about renewables and alternative fuels. Because it’s the best way forward – protecting our troops, securing supply lines, creating economies of scale that will make biofuels more competitive, leaving the Navy less vulnerable to price shocks in the oil markets. Hedge your bets. Put fewer troops at risk. Think ahead. Only the paranoid survive. In the words of my Eagle Scout brethren “Be Prepared.”  Go Navy. Beat Army.

We don’t have much time. Earth Day is April 22, but every day is Earth Day. Native Americans remind us of the sacred responsibility we have for all those who come next:

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors…we borrow it from our children.”

Paul Douglas is a nationally-respected meteorologist, with 32 years of broadcast television and 36 years of radio experience. He is the founder of several companies and author of two books, “Prairie Skies, the Minnesota Weather Book”, and “Restless Skies, the Ultimate Weather Book.”

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/29/454476/a-message-from-a-republican-meteorologist-on-climate-change/

 by Paul Gallay, President, Hudson Riverkeeper

Posted: 04/ 2/2012 4:21 pm

It’s like some in the gas industry are living in a different universe from the rest of us, when it comes to the risks from shale gas extraction via fracking. Call it the “Spin Zone.”

At a Wall Street Journal conference last week, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon told attendees he’s unaware of any problems resulting from the thousands of fracking wells drilled in Fort Worth, Texas in recent years. McClendon peevishly referred to the fracking-related air pollution concerns I raised at the conference as “environmental nonsense.”

Well, read on. Then decide who’s talking “nonsense”:

• In December 2011, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) reported that oil and gas operations in the Dallas-Fort Worth region emit more smog-causing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than all cars, trucks, buses and other mobile sources in the area combined. This wasn’t true before the fracking boom: TCEQ’s data shows that VOCs from oil and gas production have increased 60 percent since 2006.
• Ozone, a corrosive gas that can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory diseases, is created when VOCs from petroleum operations mix with heat and sunlight. In 2011, Dallas-Fort Worth violated federal ozone standards on more days than anywhere else in Texas. Dallas-Fort Worth is a “particularly extreme” example of higher air pollution in Texas, according to David Allen, a chemical engineering professor and state air-quality program director.
• In 2010, TCEQ found elevated levels of benzene around 21 gas fields out of the 94 it tested in the Barnett Shale. According to TCEQ toxicologist Shannon Ethridge, their monitors in the Barnett Shale pulled up “some of the highest benzene concentrations we have monitored in the state.”
• In Texas, which had about 93,000 natural-gas wells in 2011, up from around 58,000 a dozen years ago, a hospital system in six counties with some of the heaviest drilling, including the Barnett Shale region, found that “children in the community ages 6-9 are three times more likely to have asthma than the average for that age group in the State of Texas.” According to Baylor University, in 2009, childhood asthma rates in the Tarrant County area of the Barnett were more than double the national average, prompting a new study to evaluate asthma and pollution sources.

Up north in the Mountain States, the problem is just as serious:

• According to a 2012 study from the Colorado School of Public Health, cancer risks were 66 percent higher for residents living less than half a mile from oil and gas wells than for those living farther away, with benzene being the major contributor to the increased risk. This same study reminds us that chronic exposure to ozone, prevalent at gas production sites, can lead to asthma and pulmonary diseases, particularly in children and the aged.
• A recent study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found elevated levels of methane coming from well sites in Northeastern Colorado. NOAA scientists say initial results from another study show high concentrations of butane, ethane and propane in Erie, east of Boulder, where hundreds of natural-gas wells are operating.” “We are finding a huge amount of methane and other chemicals coming out of the natural-gas fields,” said Russell Schnell, a NOAA scientist in Boulder. NOAA estimates that gas producers in this area are losing about 4 percent of gas to the atmosphere — not including losses in the pipeline and distribution system.
• Levels of ozone in Wyoming’s fracking country are higher than in Los Angeles (Wyoming levels have been as high as 124 parts per billion, two-thirds higher than the federal EPA’s maximum healthy limit). In 2009, Wyoming’s environmental agency concluded “that elevated ozone at the Boulder [Wyoming] monitor is primarily due to local emissions from oil and gas (O&G) development activities: drilling, production, storage, transport, and treating.”

Finally, let’s not forget the 2011 Duke University study proving that drinking water wells near fracking sites have 17 times more methane than wells not located near fracking, and that this extra methane has a chemical fingerprint which shows it’s coming from deep drilling. Fracking operations have generated billions of gallons of radiation-laced toxic wastewater that weren’t managed properly and fracking has forced families to abandon their homes after they were poisoned by dangerous levels of arsenic, benzene and toluene.

Most drillers remain in deep denial, routinely choosing to circle the wagons rather than acknowledge environmental and public health problems. As one Wall Street Journal conference blogger pointedly observed, after I suggested that the gas companies deny problems and demonize critics, McClendon’s next move was, well, to deny and demonize. To be fair, other pro-fracking conference panelists like former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell were somewhat more critical of the industry, arguing that the gas companies must accept blame for rushing fracking and relying on “cowboy” drillers.

In the end, conference attendees weren’t buying the drillers’ “don’t worry, just keep buying more of our gas” message. After my and McClendon’s mini-debate, an astonishing 49 percent of this business-friendly audience said that we need federal regulation of the gas industry. Only 7 percent thought the answer to our problems lies with self-regulation by the frackers.

Fracking and its impact on public health, in particular our children’s health, is a serious issue that calls for swift action — action that the gas industry repeatedly tries to block. In New York, for example, the industry recently helped kill a legislative proposal for a public health impact assessment which hundreds of medical professionals had joined community activists and environmentalists in supporting.

Let the gas companies continue to deny fracking’s proven link to air and water pollution. The public isn’t buying their spin. They know where the “nonsense” is coming from.

Follow Paul Gallay on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@riverkeeper_ny

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-gallay/gas-industry-spin-cant-co_b_1392676.html

August 22, 2011

Read the original article here

As the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill approaches, some scientists have deemed the health of the Gulf of Mexico as “nearly back to normal,” though countless workers involved in cleaning up the aftermath of the disaster are reporting mysterious and unexplained illnesses.

The Associated Press reports that scientists have graded the Gulf’s ecosystem health now as just a few points below where it was before the spill. Granted, the scientists go on to voice concern for the mysterious deaths of hundreds of young dolphins and turtles, dead patches of sea floor, and stained crabs.

Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, the Gulf is “much better than people feared, but the jury is out about what the end result will be.”

What exactly are people defining as “the Gulf” when they say it is better than expected? It seems the workers who helped to clean the Gulf during the oil spill and local residents are not counted in this “better than people feared” assessment.

Jamie Simon’s health is certainly not back to normal. According to the AFP, Simon worked on a barge for six months after the oil spill, cooking for the cleanup workers. When dispersants were sprayed, she tells the news organization, “I was exposed to those chemicals, which I questioned, and they told me it was just as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid and there was nothing for me to worry about.” Now, the 32-year-old suffers from dizziness, vomiting, ear infections, swollen throat, poor sight in one eye and memory loss.

The health effects of oil spill dispersants are a hotly contested issue, and many doctors maintain that exposure to the spill and dispersants cannot be directly linked to adverse health effects being reported. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, long-term exposure to dispersants can cause central nervous system problems or damage to blood, kidneys and livers.

A TIME article released after the oil spill explained that “oil isn’t just oil — it also contains volatile organic compounds like the carcinogen benzene.” It cited doctors who said there is evidence that “short-term lung, kidney and liver functions could be affected” by exposure to volatile organic compounds from oil spills.

Beyond Jamie Simon, 415 other people in the state of Louisiana are also not “back to normal.” According to the AFP, the state has reported 415 cases of oil spill-related health problems. Symptoms include sore throats, irritated eyes, respiratory tract infections, headaches and nausea.

The Natural Resource Defense Council’s Rocky Kistner recently wrote for The Huffington Post about Andre Gaines, 27, a single father of two sons, who recently spoke at the Power Shift 2011 conference about his work on the oil spill cleanup:

During the hot summer cleanup last summer, Andre says planes would fly overhead spraying chemical dispersants that would drift over the workers, burning people’s skin and making it hard to breathe. Andre says he watched workers collapse from exposure to toxic fumes of the oil. Soon, Andre says he succumbed himself and spent days in the hospital with “tubes and IV coming out of everyplace in my body.”Later, Andre says BP promised him $21,000 to pay his medical claims, but when he followed up, the phone had been disconnected.

Mike Robichaux is a local doctor who has seen up to 60 patients in recent weeks with a mysterious sickness that some attribute to BP’s oil spill. Dr. Robichaux has been making house calls because many of the “stoic” workers don’t want others to know that they are sick. Yet, Dr. Robichaux tells the AFP, “Ninety percent of them are getting worse… Nobody has a clue as to what it is.”

Reuters reports that the U.S. National Institutes of Health has launched a ten-year study on the health of 55,000 oil spill clean-up workers and volunteers. Perhaps it will take ten years to get an answer for Dr. Robichaux.

Not everyone blames the oil spill for the health problems plaguing Gulf cleanup workers. Namely, BP does not blame the BP oil spill for the health problems plaguing Gulf cleanup workers. In a BP comment to the AFP, the company wrote, “Illness and injury reports were tracked and documented during the response, and the medical data indicate they did not differ appreciably from what would be expected among a workforce of this size under normal circumstances.”

As for compensating sick workers, this would fall under state law and “must be supported by acceptable medical evidence.” Are the 415 Louisianans suffering from respiratory tract infections, nausea, and headaches evidence enough?

It will take more than a one-year anniversary for the health of many oil spill cleanup workers to go “back to normal,” and for solid scientific evidence to determine whether the mysterious illnesses that plague them are truly the result of the oil spill, as they believe them to be.

60 Minutes Presents: Japan using Fukushima people as human Guinnea Pigs

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The speaker in the above video is Helen Mary Caldicott

Helen Mary Caldicott (born 7 August 1938) is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate.  She hosts a weekly radio program, If You Love This Planet.  Born in Melbourne, Australia, Caldicott attended the Fintona Girls’ School, and received her medical degree in 1961 from the University of Adelaide Medical School. In 1977 she joined the staff of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston, and taught pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School from 1977 to 1978.  She has been awarded 20 honorary doctoral degrees and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling. She was awarded the Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2003, and in 2006, the Peace Organisation of Australia presented her with the inaugural Australian Peace Prize “for her longstanding commitment to raising awareness about the medical and environmental hazards of the nuclear age”. The Smithsonian Institution has named Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th century. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, a progressive think tank in Spain.

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Michio Kaku on CNN: Fukushima – “They Lied to Us” – June 21, 2011

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Fukushima Day 99- Infant Deaths up 48% in Philadelphia USA since Japan meltdowns – June 19, 2011

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Lethal Levels of Radiation at Fukushima Infer Millions Dying – August 8, 2011

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Experts warn off-scale levels of radiation, which are at their highest levels since the disaster began almost 5 months ago, infers hundreds millions dying from the nuclear fallout.

Deborah Dupre, Human Rights Examiner
August 5, 2011

Fukushima nuclear power plant radiation recordings of external gamma radiation have been so high this week, they went off scale said veteran nuclear expert Arnie Gunderson on Thursday after the famous physicist, Dr. Chris Busby told the Japanese people this week that radioactive air contamination there now is 300 times that of Chernobyl and 1000 times the atomic bomb peak in 1963, possibly inferring that hundreds of millions of people are now dying from Fukushima radiation, including people in the United States.

If noticing unusual amounts of hair falling out, confusion, nose bleeds or other odd symptoms typical of radiation sickness, it might be due to the United States record high levels of radiation, now multiple times acceptable safety limits not only on the west coast, but also in other locations around the nation.

Because Fukushima radiation data retrieval and interpretation has been so complex or non-existent for the concerned public, citizen reporters in Japan and United States have now established easily accessible ways to view radiation levels on the internet.

Fukushima radiation depopulation unfathomable: Possibly 100s of millions deaths

Dr Janette Sherman, a highly respected physician and acknowledged expert in radiation exposure who has reported a north-east United States 35% baby death spike since Fukushima fall-out reached the nation, concurs with estimates that world wide, the Chernobyl Kill is one million people killed to date reported NOVA News. Extrapolating, worldwide deaths by Fukushima radiation could eventually be hundreds of millions of people, becoming the most significant depopulation event to date.

Dr. Chris Busby, world famous physicist, said tests conducted at the respected Harwell Radiation Laboratory in England demonstrate that airborne radiation in Japan is 1,000 times higher than radioactive “fallout” at the peak in 1963 of H-Bomb detonations by nuclear powers. In March, Busby had estimated that Fukushima radiation to be 72,000 times greater than what the United States released at Hiroshima.

“Let’s wipe the Tokyo Electric Power Company and the General Electric officials and policy makers off the face of the Earth, as they manifestly deserve,” asserted Dr. Busby when addressing the Japanese this week.

Thirty-nine year nuclear industry veteran Arnie Gunderson of Fairwinds stated Tuesday,”There will continue to be enormous spikes for at least ten years.”

Dr. Busby advocates not only independent studies of the nuclear catastrophe. He received a resounding applause when he told the Japanese people this week that in his opinion, scientists who said this accident was not a problem must be prosecuted.

“Many nuclear scientists said it was not a problem when the knew it was a serious accident. People who listened to those scientists and did not run away when they should have. Because of that, people will die.”

Busby explained that the World Health Organization is tied to the Nuclear Industry so their research is bogus. In studying Fukushima, the World Health Organization expects to find no effects “and so that’s what they’ll find,” he said.

According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, WHO’s subjugation to the nuclear industry has been widely known since May 28, 1959, when at the 12th World Health Assembly, WHO drafted an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) granting the right of prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the IAEA, the group many people, including some journalists, think is a neutral watchdog but is, “in fact, an advocate for the nuclear power industry.”

”The agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity through the world,” the founding papers state, as reported in The Age.

Latest nuclear ‘peace, health and prosperity’ spike

TEPCO discovered a hot spot location on the Fukushima nuclear power plant site a few days ago with lethal levels of external gamma radiation.

How the latest radiation spike at Fukushima might have been deposited and also how similar radioactive material would have been released off-site was presented this week by Gunderson, with over 25-years of experience in nuclear decommissioning oversight, co-authored the first edition of the Department Of Energy (DOE) Decommissioning Handbook. (See embedded Vimeo, “Lethal Levels of Radiation at Fukushima: What Are the Implications?“, Arnie Gunderson, Fairwinds)

Gunderson noted that over 1000 REMs were released according to TEPCO earlier this week, an amount that, “if there, would mean death within a couple of days.”

“Those kinds of exposures cause extensive neurological breakdowns that can’t be reversed medically,” Gunderson reported.

Fukushima nuclear power plant radiation recordings of external gamma radiation have been so high this week, they went off scale said veteran nuclear expert Arnie Gunderson on Thursday after the famous physicist, Dr. Chris Busby told the Japanese people this week that radioactive air contamination there now is 300 times that of Chernobyl and 1000 times the atomic bomb peak in 1963, possibly inferring that hundreds of millions of people are now dying from Fukushima radiation, including people in the United States.

If noticing unusual amounts of hair falling out, confusion, nose bleeds or other odd symptoms typical of radiation sickness, it might be due to the United States record high levels of radiation, now multiple times acceptable safety limits not only on the west coast, but also in other locations around the nation.

Because Fukushima radiation data retrieval and interpretation has been so complex or non-existent for the concerned public, citizen reporters in Japan and United States have now established easily accessible ways to view radiation levels on the internet.

Read the rest of the article here…

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Read the original article here

This article was published in the Stuart Smith Blog, written by Smith Stag, LLC 2011

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has confirmed – for the first time since the BP disaster – that fish are sick in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, the number of “sick fish” sightings has risen so dramatically, primarily in federal waters off Alabama, and the risks to humans are becoming such a serious concern that NOAA has released guidelines on what anglers should do when they come across visibly sick fish, including a “minimal to no handling” warning.

Many of the reports describe large lesions on the fish, particularly red snapper. And with the June 1 opening of recreational red snapper season, the reports of sick fish are bound to keep rolling in and the risk of human exposure will grow exponentially.

Some experts, including many with whom I work, suspect the BP oil spill is connected to the spike. Not much of a surprise there. We’ve been seeing an undeniable trend toward “unexplained” occurrences of sick, stranded and dead marine life – like record numbers of dead dolphins and sea turtles – for months now. The prime suspect, of course, is the 200 million gallons of crude and the 2 million gallons of the toxic dispersant Corexit that continue to foul the Gulf of Mexico.

From a May 25 article in the Pensacola News Journal (PNJ):

The reports of sick fish correlate with areas most impacted by the BP oil spill, said Jim Cowan Jr., the Louisiana State University Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences scientist who is at the center of the sick fish studies off the Alabama coast.

The “sick fish” sightings first raised eyebrows nearly two months ago. An April 17 article in the St. Petersburg Times describes the severity of the deformities:

The fish had dark lesions on their skin, some the size of a 50-cent piece. On some of them, the lesions had eaten a hole straight through to the muscle tissue. Many had fins that were rotting away and discolored or even striped skin. Inside, they had enlarged livers, gallbladders, and bile ducts.

The St. Pete Times quoted Professor Cowan as saying: “The fish have a bacterial infection and a parasite infection that’s consistent with a compromised immune system. There’s no doubt it’s associated with a chronic exposure to a toxin.” Hmmmm, I wonder what that could be? Any ideas?

In September 2010, my research team sampled red snapper caught off the coast of Pensacola – and the results are very much in line with the “sick fish” epidemic we’re seeing now. The certified lab results show (see link to my previous post below) the viscera, or internal organs, to be contaminated with nearly 3,000 PPM of total petroleum hydrocarbons. That’s a dangerous level by any standard.

Although NOAA is sticking by its claim that Gulf seafood is safe to eat (see link to HuffPo article below), the agency is recommending the following steps be taken if you catch a sick fish:

Release the fish back into the water with minimal to no handling. Use a fishhook-remover device. Avoid contact with skin, especially if you have cuts or sores on your skin.

Document where you caught the fish, and if possible, photograph it. A website is being developed on which anglers may post their findings.

Anglers are not advised to keep the sick fish because of the risks of the fish transmitting disease to humans.

If you bring in a red snapper with lesions, it does count toward your fishing quota.

The “minimal to no handling” recommendation should concern us all, signaling that it may be time take another look at NOAA’s “all clear” declaration on seafood safety. After all, the agency has publicly admitted that the fish shouldn’t be handled, and they may pose health risks if eaten raw.

Although Professor Cowan cautions that more research needs to be conducted before a definitive connection can be established, he doesn’t hide his concern: “I’m very worried because I’ve talked to both commercial and recreational fishermen who have been in the business 30 to 40 years and no one has seen anything like this.” One such fishermen is Donnie Waters: “I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before. I’m deeply concerned about the long-term impact of the fishery of the eastern Gulf.”

Like Waters, Professor Cowan also believes there are sick fish, not just off Alabama, but across the entire area of the Gulf hit by the BP spill. Research is taking place now to determine if the problem is, in fact, that widespread.

From the PNJ article:

The Sea Lab is collecting fish samples this week for further scrutiny by the FDA. A broader survey is poised to begin to determine whether the sick fish extend to areas beyond Alabama coastal waters. And NOAA is setting up a website on which recreational anglers can report any sick fish they find.

My guess is that NOAA and the FDA will ultimately confirm that there are sick, contaminated fish all over the northeastern quadrant of the Gulf of Mexico. This is a serious issue that has obvious implications for seafood safety as well as for the overall post-spill health of the Gulf. A highly contaminated link in the food chain can wreak havoc on the rest of the ecosystem.

If the government finally comes around to addressing these marine life issues head-on, before this is all through, we could very well see the re-closing of waters once deemed “all clear” for fishing. Stay tuned…

Catch up on NOAA’s “sick fish” guidelines here: http://www.pnj.com/article/20110525/NEWS01/105250328/NOAA-confirms-sick-fish-Gulf

Read my previous post on the most urgent problems, including seafood safety, that must be resolved before the Gulf Coast can realize a full recovery: http://www.stuarthsmith.com/a-year-into-the-nightmare-three-of-the-most-urgent-issues-facing-the-gulf-coast

Read my Dec. 16 post on exclusive test results that show red snapper samples taken off the coast of Pensacola to be highly contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons: http://www.stuarthsmith.com/exclusive-test-results-red-snapper-sample-from-off-pensacola-shows-dangerously-high-levels-of-contamination-%E2%80%93-nearly-3000-ppm-of-total-petroleum-hydrocarbons

See the St. Pete Times story on sick fish here: http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/wildlife/sick-fish-suggest-oil-spill-still-affecting-gulf/1164042

Read a good seafood testing story here at HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-buchanan/private-seafood-tests-unc_b_820002.html

Read the original article here

Written By Leah Zerbe

More and more science is starting to call out the practice of natural gas fracking for what it is—dirty, and a threat to everybody’s health. Get up to speed on what science says about natural gas drilling, so you can join the conversation and protect your family.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Fracking may not be a household word yet, but we’ve been talking about this form of natural gas drilling—and its potential effects on your family’s health—for some time. Now it seems more voices are about to join the conversation.

On Saturday, a ranking congressman on the House Committee on Natural Resources questioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s competence in protecting Americans from toxic exposures, after a New York Times exposé on hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a fracking, uncovered major threats to human health.

As previously reported on Rodale.com, fracking releases uranium and other radioactive material and brings them to the surface in wastewater laced with carcinogenic industrial chemicals, heavy salts, and other contaminants. Because this toxic wastewater is often trucked to other municipalities for treatment, fracking affects not just families in the immediate drilling zones, but in surrounding states, too. Inadequately treated water from fracking often contains dangerous levels of radioactive materials and other hazardous waste, and is routinely released into rivers that supply drinking water to people, according to the NYT article.

“These disturbing revelations raise the prospect that natural gas production has turned our rivers and streams into this generation’s Love Canals,” Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “The natural gas industry has repeatedly claimed that fracking can be done safely. We now know we need a full investigation into exactly how fracking is done and what it does to our drinking water and our environment.”

Other unpleasant consequences of drilling for natural gas in shale formations around the country are front and center in the documentary Gasland, a documentary that was nominated for top honors in Sunday’s Academy Awards (but didn’t win). According to recent reports, including one on Salon.com, the natural gas industry actually urged the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to withdraw its nomination of Gasland.

While the film is full of compelling, but mostly anecdotal, evidence of families falling ill and animals dying after the big drilling rigs, chemical cocktails, and compressor stations move into town, it’s important to note that a growing body of scientific evidence is finding that yes, fracking is harmful to not just the environment, but to us, too. Don’t live near a fracking site? Keep reading anyway: This still concerns you.

Here are five important natural gas facts to share with your friends and family.

1. Natural gas is not clean. Natural gas burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels, but in the course of its entire life cycle, it’s actually worse than coal, long touted as the dirtiest of our fossil fuels. Because fracking involves mixing millions of gallons of water laced with chemicals into the ground at high pressure, it creates fissures in the shale that release the natural gas. Life cycle analysis expert Robert Howarth, PhD, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, discovered that anywhere from 3.6 to nearly 8 percent of the methane from shale gas drilling escapes through venting and leaks. Methane is a greenhouse gas about 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Howarth’s latest life cycle calculations updated in January 2011 find that when considering the burning of natural gas, and the methane leaks that fracking creates, shale gas produces 1.20- to 2.1-fold more greenhouse gas emissions when compared to coal during a 20-year time period. Methane leaks are worse during the actual fracking process, but they continue to slowly seep over long periods of time. When considering this, natural gas is on par with coal when looking at greenhouse gas production over a 100-year period, the Cornell research shows.

2. Fracking chemicals are extremely dangerous. Since most natural gas drilling companies will not disclose all of the products they use in the drilling process, Theo Colborn, PhD, founder and president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, set out to figure out what’s in the chemical cocktails used to drill wells and frack. She and her team found 649 different chemicals, more than half of which are known to disrupt the endocrine system. Exposure to these types of chemicals has been linked to certain cancers, diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome (the name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes). Fifty-five percent of the chemicals cause brain and nervous system damage, and many are linked to cancer and organ damage. The threat of exposure to these chemicals occurs via contaminated air, water, and soil. “They’re getting away with absolute murder; it’s criminal, the things they’re doing,” says award-winning scientist Colborn. “If you destroy an aquifer, you’ve lost it. You’ve destroyed your drinking water supply.”

3. Natural gas drilling turns clean country air to smog. Even if drilling and the fracking process run completely according to plan with no leaks, no methane migration into drinking water wells, no explosions, and no issues dealing with wastewater, air pollution from fracking is inevitable. It’s part of the process, as huge condensate tanks and compressor stations release toxic hydrocarbons like benzene, toluene, xylenes, and ethylbenzene (BTEX) into surrounding communities. At high levels, exposure to BTEX vapors may cause irreversible damage. That, paired with chemicals used in the initial drilling process, make it very harmful to live in the vicinity of a drilling operation, Colborn says. Her study in the International Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment found that 36 percent of the identifiable chemicals used are volatile, meaning they become airborne. Among those, 93 percent have been shown to harm the eyes, skin, sensory organs, respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, or liver.

4. Fracking releases uranium. That’s right, the radioactive stuff. The 2005 Energy Act included what is known as the Halliburton Loophole, which exempts the natural gas drilling industry from many safeguards, such as the Clean Water Act, intended to protect citizens from industrial corporate activities that pollute. While the chemical cocktail used in fracking has been of much concern, new research is pointing to another fact: Contaminants and dangerous substances trapped deep underground become mobilized when fracking creates mini-earthquake-like explosions underground. A 2010 study out of the University of Buffalo found that natural gas drilling using the fracking method could potentially contaminate water supplies with uranium.

5. Fracking affects everyone. A natural gas survey released in December 2010 found that regardless of political leanings, most people are concerned about fracking. Even if you don’t live atop a major shale deposit, the pollution generated in fracking could affect you. Conrad Dan Volz, DrPH, MPH, director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities and the GSPH Environmental Health Risk Assessment Certificate Program at the University of Pittsburgh, notes that as more wells are installed in various states, there’s more toxic wastewater to deal with. Wastewater from fracking operations is often sent to municipal treatment plants that are not properly equipped to handle contamination by more than 600 chemicals, and possibly radioactive material. This wastewater is often shipped to locations where fracking isn’t even taking place, threatening rivers and drinking water supplies in those towns.

Aside from the toxic wastewater issue, fracking could also blemish your nature vacation. Drilling is allowed on public lands, and it’s particularly on display in the now not-so-picturesque parks of Colorado and Wyoming. Just last week, Pennsylvania’s new governor, John Corbett, revoked a ban on new drilling in the state’s parks (PA residents may not have noticed, since the move was announced on a Saturday).