Category Archives: dying planet

Oh If This Were True – Humans voluntarily give up fossil fuels

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How cool would the world be if we actually stopped raping the Earth and started responsible stewardship instead. But I am suspicious around humans, so we will just have to see.

http://www.wheels.ca/news/peak-oil-are-we-looking-at-it-all-wrong/

Peak oil: Are we looking at it all wrong?

By as early as 2015, global demand for oil will begin to decline, some scientists say. Not because we’ll have run out of the fossil fuel, but because we just won’t need as much of it.

Published May 31, 2012

I don’t know about you, but when I’m skimming around on the Web and I catch sight of the phrase “Scientists now say” or “Some analysts find” I usually just click right on by. Because that article is going to be a bummer. Those analysts will find that the U.S. educational system is actually removing knowledge from children’s minds, and those scientists will turn out to say that pizza consumption is related to early-onset dementia. So I keep going until I find something about psychic twins or a baby raised by goats.

But it’s a good thing I broke with tradition when I came to the New Scientist article “Dump the pump: When oil will lose its luster.” Guess what these scientists and analysts now find? You know that whole problem with oil, how eventually it’s going to run out and trigger a global depression and maybe a breakdown of civilization and is it really such a good idea to bring children into this crazy world? Well don’t sweat it, everything’s going to be totally fine. It’s all going to be one hundred percent a-okay.

All right, that might be a somewhat simplistic rendering of the argument. What the scientists and analysts are arguing – and presenting evidence for – is that although we’ve been worrying this whole time about peak oil supply, the operative force will actually be peak oil demand. Due to a variety of factors – the article focuses mainly on advances in automotive fuel efficiency – global demand for oil is only going to keep increasing for a few more years, after which it will begin to decline and will continue on a downward path.

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I just printed the premise. Go there and read the rest. More Next week.

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The Big Fix Gets It Right – Thus gets no attention

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The American sheeple have grown tired of Reality TV that is not manufactured. If you show the American people the truth they stampede in the opposite direction because they have been taught that the truth entertains not that the truth shall set you free. First I give you the movie site and then the best review I could find. I know this has been out for awhile and I apologize for my tardiness. Part of the problem is I have spent a fair amount of time on the Gulf Coast, living in Tampa and New Orleans. As a result I have been frequent visitor to St. George Island. So I many times do not trust my emotional response to events there. Still this is important.

http://www.thebigfixmovie.com/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/big-fix-cannes-2011-review-189062

The Big Fix: Cannes 2011 Review

8:39 AM PDT 5/17/2011 by Kirk Honeycutt

The Bottom Line

A gloomy but perhaps realistic depiction of the forces of corruption and deceit that produce environmental catastrophes.

CANNES — The Big Fix from Josh Tickell (Fuel) and his wife and co-director Rebecca Tickell is the latest doom-and-gloom environmental documentary although this one takes alarming leaps from a single environmental catastrophe into fantastic realms of worldwide conspiracies, corporate malfeasance and political corruption. Which is not to say the filmmakers got anything wrong. Anyone with an open mind and some attention paid to events of the past few years will have little trouble seeing that the fix was in when the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico last year — and this fix will still be in when the next catastrophe happens.

The problems with The Big Fix though are threefold: One, judging by the poor attendance of journalists and film critics at the film’s Palais press screening, few people other than fellow activists are seeing to these doom-and-gloom movies anymore. Two, little here is really new as much of the Tickells’ findings have been reported elsewhere, even by some of those they interview, especially Jeff Goodell, who spent months in the Gulf for his well-researched Rolling Stone article.

Finally, the Tickells describe a “fix” is so vast and powerful, the film can only throws its hands up over any realistic solution other than to install solar panels to heat up your toxic household water.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Fine Kettle Of Fish They Have Got Us IN – or actually out of I guess

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Whatever. It is real rare that I do a Purely environmental post. Yes it is true if there is no food to eat, then there is no private housing market, thus no residential energy market. But man that is a stretch. Still fishing vessels use huge amounts of energy, at least the large commercial ones do, so they pollute the water as well as strip it bare.

The end of fish, in one chart

Posted by at 08:00 AM ET, 05/20/2012

Want to see how severely we humans are scouring the oceans for fish? Check out this striking map from the World Wildlife Fund’s 2012 “Living Planet Report.” The red areas are the most intensively fished (and, in many cases, overfished) parts of the ocean — and they’ve expanded dramatically since 1950:

Between 1950 and 2006, the WWF report notes, the world’s annual fishing haul more than quadrupled, from 19 million tons to 87 million tons. New technology — from deep-sea trawling to long-lining — has helped the fishing industry harvest areas that were once inaccessible. But the growth of intensive fishing also means that larger and larger swaths of the ocean are in danger of being depleted.

Daniel Pauly, a professor of fisheries at the University of British Columbia, has dubbed this situation “The End of Fish.” He points out that in the past 50 years, the populations of many large commercial fish such as bluefin tuna and cod have utterly collapsed, in some cases shrinking more than 90 percent (see the chart to the right).

Indeed, there’s some evidence that we’ve already hit “peak fish.” World fish production seems to have reached its zenith back in the 1980s, when the global catch was higher than it is today. And, according to one recent study in the journal Science, commercial fish stocks are on pace for total “collapse” by 2048 — meaning that they’ll produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch. On the other hand, many of those fish-depleted areas will be overrun by jellyfish, which is good news for anyone who enjoys a good blob sandwich.

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Go there to see the graphs and maps and read. More tomorrow.

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War Over Oil – Heh it even sounds sexy

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Right now we are involved in the largest war games ever held in the middle east in Jordan with 20 or so other nations participating. Isn’t that grand? And to top it off the President of Israel thinks the plan is worked out. This is so wrong in so many ways I lost count at 100. What a pitiful waste for so much promise in Obama.

http://www.infowars.com/u-s-ambassador-to-israel-plan-to-attack-iran-ready/

U.S. Ambassador to Israel: Plan to Attack Iran “Ready”

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 16, 2012

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shaprio, told a closed conference in Tel Aviv that the United States has completed preparations for a military strike on Iran. His comments were recorded by a reporter and aired on Israel’s Channel 2 TV on Wednesday night.

It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically, and through the use of pressure, than to use military force,” Shapiro said. “But that does not mean that option isn’t available. Not just available, it’s ready. The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready.”

Shaprio’s comments were not intended for public consumption, the Times of Israel reports.

The finalized attack plan arrives as Israel and the United States prepare for joint military exercises in the United States. “The exercises, to be held in the coming months, will strengthen the relationship between the IAF and the US Air Force as they practice carrying out joint operations,” the Jerusalem-based online newspaper reported. “Israeli and US air defense forces are also to take part in a major joint drill later this summer in Israel to simulate a massive attack. Thousands of US soldiers are expected to arrive in Israel for the drills.”

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Culture Wars – The geezers and the cranks against the future

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It is clear that we have to prepare for a future with only clean energy sources in it. Well we used to think everyone agreed with that. But now comes the rich billionaires who have taken over the Republican Party and sucked in all the people who can’t or won’t tolerate change. They want their incandescent lights back.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/16/is-clean-energy-yet-another-culture-war/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

Is Clean Energy Yet Another Culture War?

May 16, 2012 By

Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1c0hi)

David Roberts of Grist had a great post the other day portraying clean energy as a culture war. I think it’s highly worth a read, so I’m reposting it in full from Grist to make it easy as pie to not pass up (note: there’s also a Part II linked at the bottom of the post that is worth a read):

by David Roberts

Not that long ago, some folks were arguing that clean energy — unlike climate change, which had been irredeemably stained by partisanship (eww!) — would bring people together across ideological lines. Persuaded by the irrefutable wisdom of wonks, we would join hands across the aisle to promote common-sense solutions. It wouldn’t be partisan, it would be … post-partisan.

Some day, I will stop mocking the people who said that. But not today. The error is an important one and it is still made regularly, especially by hyper-educated U.S. elites. They think clean energy is different from climate change, that it won’t get sucked into the same culture war. They are wrong.

On clean energy, the material/financial aspects of the conflict are the easiest to understand. Wind, solar, and the rest threaten the financial dominance and political influence of dirty energy. Last week, the Guardian broke the story of a confidential memo laying out a plan to demonize and discredit clean energy, meant to coordinate the plans/messages of several big right-wing super PACs funded by dirty-energy money.

At the bottom of that same piece, though, is one of the best expressions I’ve ever seen of the cultural and psychological aspects of the conflict

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Off The Grid – We move into survivalist land

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Like I said in the beginning there are many types of people that want to be off the grid. The rich do it because they can. Many people do it to save money. Some people, like Thoreau, like the solitude or are paranoid. Then there are the survivalists. I do not agree with their theories or their ideology, but they are a part of the mix and this site is pretty explicit.

http://offgridsurvival.com/preppingfriendsandfamil/

Talking to Friends and Family about Prepping

A number of readers have emailed me lately asking how they can convince their friends and family to start prepping.

To be honest this is a touchy subject, one that can often make even hardcore preppers feel a bit uncomfortable.

For some, the thought of talking to anyone about prepping fills them with feelings of anxiety. Just the thought of others knowing what preps you have is enough to fill anyone with a sense of paranoia . And who can blame them, lately it seems like every time we turn on the news another government agency is warning people about those dangerous preppers.

For those that do try to talk about the subject, trying to get their family and friends on board can be a headache to say the least.

From friends and family members that truly believe the government will save them in a time of crisis, to those that have been brainwashed by the media to believe that preppers are all  tinfoil hat wearing nutjobs, prepping can often be a touchy or even taboo subject to talk about. While we have touched on the subject in the past, I thought it was important to take another look at how we can help those we care about prepare for an uncertain future.

Dealing with those who believe the Government will help them in a time of crisis.

As a reader who recently wrote to me pointed out, 50 years of being programmed to believe that the government can help is hard to undo. We live in a society that is becoming increasingly reliant on the government to help them in every aspect of their lives. In fact over 67 million Americans now rely on government aid to pay for either housing, food, health care or education. That’s 1 in 5 Americans!

Most people simply don’t realize or believe that they are in any kind of danger. Most Americans live under the belief that the government will be there to help them in a time of crisis. So what can you do to change this mindset and protect those that you care about?

Use the Governments own advice.

Even the government advises people to be prepared. They will be the first to admit that during a time of crisis it’s highly unlikely that they’ll be able to respond in under 72 hours.

At the very least your friends and family should be prepared to survive at home without power, water and utilities for a minimum of 72 hours. While most of the governments advice is rather simplistic,  it may help you introduce the subject to those who depend on the government for everything.

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It is a huge site. Go there and read. More Tomorrow.

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BP Never Got The Issue – They believe they did nothing wrong in the first place

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That’s right the OIL SPILL in the Gulf of Mexico was not their fault.  You know what? Between the remediation they have done and a court of law they maybe right. Which is maybe more disgusting. The well was theirs, there is no doubt about that but with the blowpout preventer being bad, the cementing company’s cement job being bad, and the drilling platform operator being bad to dangerous, by the time they get to court (think 20 years if the Exxon Valdez is any gauge) and all three companies may actually end up owing BP money. They sure are trying to put a shiny happy face on it though.

 

Locals call BP’s feel-good Gulf ads ‘propaganda’

Advertising blitz touts recovery of tourism, fishing industries after massive spill

By CAIN BURDEAU
updated 1/8/2012 2:24:03 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly 20 months after its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill — and just as Americans focus on New Orleans, host of the college football championship game — BP is pushing a slick nationwide public relations campaign to persuade Americans that the Gulf region has recovered.

BP PLC’s rosy picture of the Gulf, complete with sparkling beaches, booming businesses, smiling fishermen and waters bursting with seafood, seems a bit too rosy to many people who live there. Even if the British oil giant’s campaign helps promote the Gulf as a place where Americans should have no fear to visit and spend their money, some dismiss it as “BP propaganda.”

The PR blitz is part of the company’s multibillion dollar response to the Gulf oil spill that started after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and leading to the release of more than 200 million gallons (760 million liters) of oil. As engineers struggled to cap the out-of-control well, it turned into the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Now, BP is touting evidence that the Gulf’s ecology has not been severely damaged by the spill and highlighting improving economic signs.

“I’m glad to report that all beaches and waters are open for everyone to enjoy!” BP representative Iris Cross says in one TV spot to an upbeat soundtrack. “And the economy is showing progress, with many areas on the Gulf Coast having their best tourism season in years.”

The campaign, launched just before Christmas, has ramped up for the two-week period around the Sugar Bowl and Bowl Championship Series title game to be played on Monday between Louisiana State University and Alabama.

The company is paying chefs Emeril Lagasse and John Besh to promote Gulf seafood, it’s hired two seafood trucks to hand out fish tacos and seafood-filled jambalaya to the hundreds of thousands of tourists and fans pouring into the city for the football games and it’s spreading its messages at galas, pre-game parties and vacation giveaways.

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More tomorrow.

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Aral Sea Shrinks To A River – More damage from the Soviet Union

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You can read either article below. The facts stay pretty much the same but  each has one of my favorite pictures of the horrible damage. The overhead shot is the most compelling:

http://www.global-adventures.us/2010/04/05/aral-sea-shocking-disaster/

Then there is the “boats and camels” shot:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/16/the_world_s_worst_ongoing_disasters?page=0,3

The World’s Ongoing Ecological Disasters

While it’s probably still too soon to celebrate, BP appears to finally be getting the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico under control. But many of the world’s greatest environmental catastrophes continue, with no end in sight.

BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | JULY 16, 2010

UZBEKISTAN/KAZAKHSTAN

Disaster: The shrinking of the Aral Sea

Going since: The 1960s

Damage done: Straddling the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth-largest inland water body and home to at least 20 species of fish and a thriving coastal economy in the surrounding towns. In the early 1960s, the Soviet government built more than 45 dams and 20,000 miles of canals in an effort to create a cotton industry on the desert plains of Uzbekistan, depriving the sea of its main sources.

Over the next three decades, the sea shrank to two-fifths its original size, turning fishing villages into barren desert outposts. Thanks to the high salt content in the remaining water, all 20 fish species are now extinct. Drinking water supplies in the area are dangerously low and the ground contains dangerous pesticides from the cotton farms. When the wind sweeps across the now-dry sea bed, it spreads up to 75 million tons of toxic dust and salt across Central Asia every year.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Nigeria – Oil spills and bombs

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OK, yesterday was a feel good day. Maybe a feel good weekend, but now back to the environmental disasters. This latest oil spill in Nigeria is not like the one in the Gulf of Mexico or the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Still it was from a fixed well to a fixed vessel. This is ineptitude of huge proportions. It is in a country that has a history of destroying the environment and its own people. On the day when the Pope preaches against violence, they blow up a Catholic Church. Nice.

http://www.advisorone.com/2011/12/26/bombs-oil-spill-shake-nigeria

Bombs, Oil Spill Shake Nigeria

Offshore leak stems from flexible export line to tanker

By

December 26, 2011

Nigeria was hit with a double whammy over the past few days: first an oil spill that could develop into its worst since January of 1998, and then a series of Christmas Day bombings that escalated the strife in the oil-rich country.

Production on the deepwater oil project was shut down as Royal Dutch Shell worked to contain the spill, which it said resulted from a leak in the flexible line between a tanker and the production facility.

Thus far neither disaster has had much effect on the price of oil, but with many markets closed, in the U.S. and U.K. for the Christmas and Boxing Day holidays, that could change on Tuesday. Prices were up a bit in Asian markets over supply concerns.

Bloomberg reported that the spill, which began last week, originated at the Bonga deepwater project, which produces 200,000 barrels a day. Production was shut down before the leak reached 40,000 barrels, Shell said in the report. Mutiu Sunmonu, Shell’s chairman for Nigeria, said in a statement last week, “The sheen has thinned considerably due to a combination of natural factors and dispersant application, and in places is breaking up, all of which should aid further dissipation.”

Bonga is the first deepwater discovery of oil for Nigeria, and it produces nearly 10% of the nation’s crude oil. It is located approximately 75 miles off the Nigerian coast. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the U.S., having provided 826,000 barrels from the beginning of this year through September, the latest month for which figures are available from the U.S. Energy Administration.

Five ships were deployed by Shell to spray dispersants; the company also brought in experts to combat the spill, which could be the worst since an Exxon Mobil Corp. spill in January of 1998 lost approximately 40,000 barrels from the Idoho platform on the southeastern coast of the country. At that time, oil slicks were reported as far west as Lagos.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Was 2011 An Environmental Disaster Or What – Brazil tosses oil in the ocean

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This all began as a lark. I was bored and could come up with anything interesting that I wanted people to see and think about so I typed in environmental disaster in the google field and picked the one that looked interesting. But it has turned out to be quite fun in a macabre sort of way. Look it is bad enough that Brazil is dozing the rain forest or planting crops in the pantanal; bad enough that they have dammed the Amazon and are running their surface fleet on ethanol. Now they are tossing oil in the ocean.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/314763

Oil spill disaster in Brazil: This time Chevron is to blame

Andre

By Andre C James

Nov 20, 2011 in World
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In yet another environmental disaster, off shore oil drilling has caused 416,400 litres of oil to flood into the sea 370km (230 miles) off the Brazilian coast.
Chevron claims full responsibility for the disaster that occurred almost 2 weeks ago and has made assurances that the underwater rupture had been sealed although there continued to be residual oil leaking from undersea rock at the Frade Oil Project. The international environmental group Skytruth suggested the spill was 10 times larger than the official estimate and backed up its claim with satellite images.

The cause of the spill was put down to

underestimated pressure of underwater oil deposits while drilling, causing oil to rush up the bore hole and seep into the surrounding seabed.

Meanwhile, Head of the Federal Police Environmental Division Fabio Scliar voiced concern about the methods Chevron was using to clean up the spill. He said, Chevron was “pushing” the oil to the bottom of the sea, thereby putting corals in the area at risk of destruction.

Currently the oil slick originating from the drilling location has extended over 2,379 square kilometers but is dispersing in a clockwise eddy by the ocean currents as it drifts further out to sea.
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Go there and see the pretty pictures, play the video and read. More tomorrow.

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