+- +-

+-User

Welcome, Guest.
Please login or register.
 
 
 

Login with your social network

Forgot your password?

+-Stats ezBlock

Members
Total Members: 48
Latest: watcher
New This Month: 0
New This Week: 0
New Today: 0
Stats
Total Posts: 16867
Total Topics: 271
Most Online Today: 119
Most Online Ever: 1155
(April 20, 2021, 12:50:06 pm)
Users Online
Members: 0
Guests: 23
Total: 23

Author Topic: Pollution  (Read 58281 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #720 on: July 03, 2018, 06:53:06 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: Isn't it just AMAZING how now it is "mankind" in general, and not the Fossil Fuel 🦕🦖 Crooks and Liars IN PARTICULAR, that created one of the biggest environmental disasters in history?  Sure, Yeah, we are "all guilty".


Read about the horrendous habitat destroying effects that continue to degrade the ocean environment in the Gulf of Mexico PLUS harm the flora and fauna in the USA and Mexican land areas. That oil dispersant Corexit ☠️ POISON that Halliburton was paid for, which FURTHER polluted the Gulf on the U.S. taxpayer dime, added MORE grievous harm to numerous species.

The Hydrocarbon Hustlers are destroying this planet's biosphere for short term profit. We stop burning hydrocarbons or we are all dead, PERIOD.



The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was 8 years ago. The ocean is still struggling to recover

LAST UPDATED ON JULY 3RD, 2018 AT 3:36 PM BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Eight years ago, mankind created one of the biggest environmental disasters in history. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to the discharge of 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3) of oil, and nature still hasn’t recovered, a new study has found.

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill approaching the coast of Mobile, Alabama, on May 6, 2010. (at article link)

The spill area hosts 8,332 species, all of which are threatened by the hydrocarbon leaks. A 2014 study of the effects of the oil spill on bluefin tuna found that toxins from oil spills can cause irregular heartbeats leading to cardiac arrest. A further study also found that the toxins could severely damage the internal organs of predators and even humans in the area — directly contradicting BP, the oil company responsible for the spill.

To make matters even worse, the oil dispersant Corexit, previously only used as a surface application, was released underwater in unprecedented amounts. The goal was to make oil more easily biodegradable, but the plan backfired as the oil and dispersant mixture permeated the food chain through zooplankton — from which it proceeded to spread across the entire ecosystem. Chemicals from the spill were found in migratory birds as far away as Minnesota, with a devastating effect on marine wildlife. A 2016 study reported that 88% of 360 baby or stillborn dolphins within the spill area “had abnormal or underdeveloped lungs”, compared to 15% in other areas.

Birds were also severely affected, both directly and indirectly. Here, an oiled brown pelican near Grand Isle, Louisiana. Image credits: Governor Bobby Jindal. (at article link)

No matter where and how you look, the scale of the disaster is shocking. Alas, it gets even worse: new study found that the basic building blocks of life in the ocean have been altered, indicating that the ocean still hasn’t recovered from the oil spill.

“At the sites closest to the spill, biodiversity was flattened,” study lead author and University of Southern Mississippi microbial ecologist Leila Hamdan told The Guardian. “There were fewer types of microbes. This is a cold, dark environment and anything you put down there will be longer lasting than oil on a beach in Florida. It’s premature to imagine that all the effects of the spill are over and remediated,” she said.

Researchers took sediment samples from shipwrecks scattered up to 150 km (93 miles) from the spill site to study how and if micro-biodiversity has recovered. Shipwrecks are biodiversity hotspots, so it’s a good place to see how life recovered. Researchers wrote:

“More than 2,000 historic shipwrecks spanning 500 years of history, rest on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor. Shipwrecks serve as artificial reefs and hotspots of biodiversity by providing hard substrate, something rare in deep ocean regions. The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) spill discharged crude oil into the deep Gulf. Because of physical, biological, and chemical interactions, DWH oil was deposited on the seafloor, where historic shipwrecks are present. This study examined sediment microbiomes at seven historic shipwrecks.”

Results weren’t encouraging. Microbes are still struggling to recover, and since they are affected, the entire food chain that’s built upon them is also affected. There’s a good chance we have still yet to see all the far-reaching consequences of this event.

“We rely heavily on the ocean and we could be looking at potential effects to the food supply down the road,” she said. “Deep sea microbes regulate carbon in the atmosphere and recycle nutrients. I’m concerned there will be larger consequences from this sort of event.”

The timing of the study is also very fitting — it comes just as a new measure by the Trump 🦀 administration opens up 90% of U.S. coasts to offshore oil drilling, dismantling ocean conservation measures put in place by former president Barack Obama in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon calamity. This means that this type of disaster will become much more likely in the future, much to the chagrin of scientists and conservationists.

Journal Reference: Leila J. Hamdan, Jennifer L. Salerno, Allen Reed, Samantha B. Joye & Melanie Damour. “The impact of the Deepwater Horizon blowout on historic shipwreck-associated sediment microbiomes in the northern Gulf of Mexico,” Scientific Reports.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/deepwater-oil-spill-disaster-01072018/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #721 on: July 09, 2018, 11:52:01 am »
Agelbert NOTE: This old article is more applicable than ever today.

TAE (The Automatic Earth web site is the home of fracked gas cheerleader "energy expert" Nicole Foss 🦖)
 
Waste Based Society: Solutions and Alternatives

Published June 12, 2012

Quote
Are there viable solutions and alternatives to the Energy intensive Waste Based Society we currently live in, which do not entail a return to Paleolithic levels of technology?  Diner and TAE Commentariat member A. G. Gelbert outlines a myriad of technologies which might be employed to maintain a higher technological base for society.

RE

Solutions and Alternatives to the Waste Based Society

by A. G. Gelbert

We are cursed with a rather effective propaganda machine that defends the status quo and works mightily to provide allegedly iron clad arguments exposing our desperate dependence on fossil fuels and the enormous debt we owe to them for our ‘wonderful civilization’. The media has cleverly weaved fact and fiction to present plausible arguments against the practicality of going cold turkey on fossil fuels and 100% on renewables.

Not one word about the fact that fossil fuels are easy to meter and conveniently provide a constant revenue stream for the rich along with governmental control of a populace that simply cannot move or function without daily use of fossil fuels ever seems to be mentioned. Not one word about how renewables cannot be metered or taxed easily and how that feature gives everyone a large degree of independence aand flexibility in disaster situations to help themselves or a less fortunate neighbor is mentioned.

On the other hand, the continuous and vociferous denial of the link between fossil fuels and environmental problems, regardless of scientific concensus on this very real link, never seems to go away either. The actual history of the industrial revolution involving some very brutal measures to coerce humans to abandon horses, as only one of many coercive measures, for tranportation and farming are always ignored and replaced with a stream of pejorative comments about horse dung in big cities. People did not want to get rid of their horses!

I am not simply talking about city ordinances and fines targeting horses. Right around 1865 a big push began to sell farm machinery. Amazingly, a huge horse plague hit the U.S. that year that killed a massive amount of horses. No explanation beyond “Civil War stress” blarney was ever given. These horses were not just city horses in population centers but out in the country as well.

The move to horseless carriages began on the farm with steam power and hydrocarbon lubricants. The automobile came later along with the bone cancer. Bone cancer from the original automoblie fuel, benzene, is seldom mentioned by the media and apparently is considered no big deal in comparison to horseshit odor. Moving on to the early 20th century, Rockefeller has a waste product in his refinery cracking towers (after separating all those great heavy and light lubricants) called gasolene and he talks Henry Ford into modifying the carburators to run on it.


Of course the ‘minor’ problem with benzene fuel may have helped make the switch. There were electric cars on the road at the time. Cleveland had wind generators creating electricity at that time! You’ll never guess what happened to them and the electric trolleys all over many towns in the USA. So, enough of that. Everyone here knows how predatory capitalism attempts to game the system to achieve price control and a monopoly. Once much more efficient and sustainable technologies are shoved aside by hook or by crook, the distorted and mendacious meme that our current technology is the result of friendly capitalist competition in the ‘free market’ is pushed.

Predation occurs followed by propaganda versions of history. That is the real history of the industrial revolution in regard to our choices of energy production. Renewables got squeezed out, not because they couldn’t compete favorably, but because the pollution and health costs of fossil fuels got ‘externalized’. Along the way, the independence of the mostly agrarian American in energy production and use was crushed.

A love afffair with the car was fostered to the point that in the late 1920’s more Americans had cars than flush toilets. Of course they were better off, ecologically speaking, without flush toilets, but the point is the job of selling Americans on fossil fuels was a done deal by that time.

So please remember that nobody was doing us any favors, like the media wants to claim; they were selling us something in order to concentrate wealth and power in a few hands. They were using us as a cash cow to the point of introducing planned obsolecence, rampant consumerism to keep the factories going and simultaneously thwarting moves to sustainability like Henry Ford’s plan to make cars out of hemp plastic in the early1940s.

We like new stuff and are always looking for the latest model year of the car or whatever because we have been manipulated by experts to do so. It has absolutely nothing to do with our health, well being or happiness. Bernays really messed us up. Fast forward to the present where the witches brew of ecological harm brought about by industrialization has caught up with us. And NOW, all of a sudden, we just can’t live without all this ‘wonderful’ energy packed fossil fuel economy.

Methinks somebody wants to slap a guilt trip on the chumps so they agree to clean up the mess even though the media keeps claiming there isn’t really that much of a mess. We, the masses, are accused of being wasteful pigs that bred like rats thanks to fossil fuels.

Where to begin? How about the fact that family size has been decreasing, not increasing, througout the industrial revolution? That’s right. The numbers were baked in by 1800 and the wars slowed them down a bit. Louis Pasteur and Lister did a hell of a lot more to create our present population ‘problem’ than fossil fuels. Most of the key scientific advancements in medicine were not exactly high tech and fossil fuel dependent. A human makes it past 5 years of age and he has a huge chance of living out his 3 score and ten. It was the enormous reduction in infant mortality brought about by antiseptic procedures that caused the population explosion, not fossil fuels. It’s a stretch to say that fossil fuels alowed people to obtain clean water to wash their hands before delivering a baby, but I’m sure the media verbal contortionists would toss it out there to further muddy the waters of historical truth.

The much touted plumbing advancements that require machinery and factories powered by fossil fuels, while they did reduce disease in population centers and prolonged life, were setting us up for more fossil fuel use through improper humanure handling. I maintain that the main cause of our population explosion is knowledge of disease microbes, their propagation methods and our changes in hygiene as a result.

Edward Bernays

What about all this waste we now produce that we have been folded, spindled and mentally mutilated through Freud’s nephew Wall Street amygdala reptilian brain control propaganda? They set us up and now WE are the bad guys? They want us to shop till we drop and WE are the problem? And how much ‘waste’ do WE actually produce on a carbon footprint basis compared to the global 1%?

Well, Senator Bernie Sanders stated recently that less than 1% of the U.S. owns about 40% of the assets (I’m not talking about income increases although they have gotten the lion’s share over the last ten years as well). Yes, I know he talks about banks too but he mentions those 400 or so elite families every now and then. Now figure the carbon footprint of those people and compare it with the rest of us. All those endless films about diapers, milk gallons and so on used in our middle class lifetimes with the obligatory landfill mountains thrown in are nothing compared with the horrendous and gigantic amount of crap these families generate. Isn’t it amazing that when it comes to pollution and wasteful habits, we are ‘all in this together’? No attempt is made to segregate out the worst offenders. On the contrary, the poor and middle class are constantly demonized as being irresponsible useless eaters. It’s all quite Orwellian on the part of the media.

But yeah, we do waste, and we have a waste problem that is real, so let’s talk about it.

Waste can certainly destroy a society, species or most of the ecosphere if, as many point out, we continue with the ridiculous paradigm that we can industrially do multi-generational damage to the life support systems humans depend on and not define this as suicide. It’s almost like our nuclear nuts and oil fetish **** have morphed us into a mass version of the heaven’s gate cult. Those people thought they could hitch a ride on a comet by commiting suicide. Every single step in industrializaton has, for anyone willing to do the TOTAL math, NOT been ecospherically cost effective. The fact that a small group of humans has temporarily benefited at the expense of the overwhelming majority of humans and all other earthlings right now, not to mention the obvious acceleration in environmental degradation promising a super bleak future, seems to go right over the heads of way to many otherwise intelligent people.

Heaven's Gate Cult Leader that convinced many to commit suicide

Just like the heaven’s gate cult, people are addicted to a dream that never was, PERIOD. All talk about this and that from our youth and how much fun we all had and how nostalgic we are for those nicer times is the exact same phenomenum of a drug addict longing for his first high. LISTEN UP! We are a function of the ecosphere. We DO NOT, despite all the best propaganda efforts of our scientific community, understand the mechanism of the ecosphere sufficently to tinker with it, let alone wantonly pollute it with “externalisms”. EXTERNALISMS!? That’s just some economist bullshit! There are NO externalisms inside the life bubble called the ecosphere; it just takes a while to catch up with you when you mine, bomb and toxify with chemicals NIMBY areas for a few centuries. We are there and yet our scientific community and our financial community and our political wheeler and dealer con-artists with their new techno death toys and ‘miracle’ GMO crops and drug after drug to replace patent expirations, new ripoff scams, more war profiteering and emotional button pushing divide and conquer racist crap just DO NOT GET IT (or maybe they do get it and are insanely trying to make hay out of it).

The people in charge of our dysfunctional clusterfuck are akin to that psycho Whiteapple that led the heaven’s gate cult. They will not change to a sustainable paradigm because THAT requires subordination to the reality that we are a product of the ecosphere and the humble acceptance that we do not understand it yet so, until we do, we must henceforth emulate natural processes of cradle to grave recycling in all industrial technology and outlaw destructive activities like war or perish. No, they prefer to insanely reduce the world population by environmental collapse in the ridiculous la-la land elite hope that then the ecosphere will cure itself and they can continue their merry resource extraction paradigm as if nothing happened. It won’t work because these reductionist morons in power with their scientific priesthood of techno nut balls are so full of pride from all their tremendous ‘contributions’ over the last two centuries that they cannot see the monstrous downside of the technology explosion and that, yes, technology can be developed and used in an environmentally friendly manner. They don’t want to do the work. They are supremely irresponsible and supremely greedy and incredibly stupid.

Instead of doing a rethink, they are just flooring the accelerator and increasing their propaganda blitz.

I am not against technology. Since about 1970 we have had the knowledge to use technology to produce an environmentally friendly and sustainable society free of poisons in food and industry in the scientific literature. It has been deliberately supressed time and time again. Imagine what it cost to cover the country with roads and power lines. Well, decentralized power, food and transportation would cost a hell of a lot less. It’s total bullshit that we can’t do this or that we are ‘hooked’ on oil or nuclear or natural gas. We could have switched away decades ago. In the 70s NASA used solar panels to bring electricity to a Navajo community which was not served by the local electric utilities in a southwestern state. It worked great and the utilities went ballistic. They wrote to NASA requesting the solar panel project be stopped because, even though those areas targeted by NASA were not adequately served by the utilities, the fossil fuel free energy would ‘force’ the utilities to lower their rates. NASA stopped the project.

The planet earth DOES NOT have an energy crisis. For you engineering types out there, just do the math on the energy required daily to lift trillions of tons of water vapor out of the rivers, lakes and oceans and deposit this at higher elevations in the form of rain and then try to tell me about how much it COSTS (ZERO!) and how we are running out of energy. What the planet earth has, is a HUMAN GREED AND STUPIDITY crisis among the 1%. But suppose we could dispense with all the agenda laced perjorative propaganda about renewables, agree to clean up the planet and eliminate fossil fuel, nuclear and any other kind of poisonous technology because we have no other choice?

Can it be done? Yes. Will it be done? Probably not. I just heard today (June 11, 2012) on the Thom Hartmann show that phytoplankton replacement in a bay in Maine has dropped 500% over a period of a decade or so. The phenomenum has now been confirmed as occurring globally. Phytoplankton produce approximately 50% of the oxygen on this planet through photosynthesis. They are not regenerating adequately because increased ppm of CO2 (now 400 ppm) is acidifying the oceans and killing them. Can the elite be so insane that they plan to meter our oxygen? I hope not. At any rate, we must accept that the fossil fuel economy is not an exercise in fun conveniences or a requirement to maintain ‘civilization’; it’s killing our oxygen supply now as well. We must switch to renewables.

In regard to available energy to maintain some level of ‘civilization’ with renewables, when I mentioned the world evaporation energy example,  I wasn’t alluding to energy collection through hydroelectric power (although dams certainly help as long as salmon runs aren’t thwarted), but using this vast amount of energy available free to shed light on the scientifically bankrupt view of quantifying energy by using bomb calorimeters like we did in college and energy mass per mole in rapid oxidation. Nature has never done it that way. Everything in our culture always wants to scale up a process or else judge it as wanting. That is assbackwards from a sustainable biological process point of view. In our bodies, the reason we have enzymes lowering the energy of activation in myriad chemical reactions occurring per second is to keep us from overheating and/or rapid ph changes that would kill us but the fact is that the enzymes accomplish a task with less energy than a straight forward math computation of the chemical reaction energy requires.

Capillary processes in us are unconcerned with “stream head'” like scientists or engineers are when they want to build a dam yet they work just fine manipulating Bernoulli forces to use the absolute minimum energy needed to move that blood so the heart pump doesn’t have to work as hard against vessel friction and pressure changes. In our techno-love affair, everything we do is geared to centralized and maximum power. For example we really do not need a lot of stream head to power a house because we can gradually pump water up to a reservoir in our house to give us electricity on demand. But the techno math says you need X amount of head for Y amount of kilowatts. That’s only true if you need all of that all the time. Sure, not everyone lives by a river or a stream but that is simply a small example. A giant Sequoia pumps over one hundred gallons of water hundreds of feet up every day through transpiration. The tracheal elements can stretch water molecules 27 atmospheres as long as the vacuum holds. The technology to make artificial tree water pumps has been around for decades but our society is STUCK on the energy density per mole fixation like a teenager that wants a hot car to ride to school instead of a small electric rechargable scooter.

Have you heard about the roaring forties?


That’s an area of latitude in the oceans of the southern hemisphere that is always turbulent. They alone could power the world’s energy demands after a ten year installation of wave and undersea current power collection systems that are already being deployed off of England and Scotland. In regard to corrosion issues with sea water and maintenance of deep water (massive pressures to deal with), I only ask that you consider technology equivalence hurdles that have long since been surmounted in nuclear power plants (the ultimate in corrosion challenges including hydrogen embrittlement that is not present with sea water) and oil undersea pipelines (pump sea water to a land reservoir and start the power cables from there as a cost effective low maintenance option).

At present, ocean oil rigs (which are mostly metal) have sacrificial anodes placed on them so electrolysis in most areas is thwarted. The anodes are replaced as they are used up.  And remember all we have learned through space exploration about metallurgy, high temperature insulation during re-entry and don’t forget microwave power transmission technology. We can do all this stuff. It’s really not as hard as putting a robot vehicle on Mars or building a space station in orbit.

It’s telling that Einstein described the photoelectric effect at the very beginning of the 20th century but the US government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to develop solar panels (we only did it when we needed them in space) but it spent a fortune on the development of the bomb in the 30s while a large part of our populace was going hungry.

Have you ever wondered why the oil lobby never attacks nuclear power but spares no expense to demonize renewables with disingenuous propaganda and mendacity? Think about that a while. If you come to the conclusion that the nuclear power plants were put out there to make bomb material and get you to pay for it and were never, ever considered a viable alternative to fossil fuels for the production of electricity or a serious source of oil lobby competition, you win the prize.

There is also no excuse whatsoever for not using solar and electric power to run every single ship in the ocean. It would be child’s play to switch all automobiles and trucks to full electric as long we had geothermal, wind, tide and ocean current derived power 24/7, not to mention solar panels.

Do you know what oil tankers do after they offload the oil? They fill huge portions of the holds with sea water (for ballast) and then dump it when they get back to reload with oil. This massive pollution goes on day in and day out. We have a guaranteed continuous oil spill as long as we have a fossil fuel ocean tanker economy.

As for fertilizers and food production machinery requiring a massive amount of fossil fuels to feed 7 billlion humans, the fact is that using decentralized permaculture with humanure (after appropriate and low tech local processing to avoid disease pathogens) along with greenhouse technology for nordic climates can replace the fossil fuel required to run tractors, make fertilizer and insecticides and herbicides.


I mention farm machinery because there is increasing evidence that plowing needs to be replaced by non-plowing with perennial crops in order to stop the massive top soil loss and lowered nutrition of crop yield (they look the same but don’t have the same nutritional content). Other posters here are up on humanure and they are right. I recommend anyone repulsed by this to think again. Feces are an inseparable part of being human and it’s high time we stopped with this Victorian idiocy of seeing it as bad stuff; it’s part of our salvation as a species. An added plus with humanure through the avoidance of chemical fertilizers is no more ocean dead zones and massive top soil degradation. Also the energy and water savings in not pumping human waste to be treated with chemicals (made with fossil fuels) in a sewage treatment plant would save billons of dollars.

Examples of how renewables can switch us off of fossil fuels  quickly: www.euronews.com/2012/05/27/germany-breaks-solar-energy-record
www.euronews.com/2012/06/06/solar-plane-completes-maiden-intercontinental-flight www.euronews.com/2012/03/05/sea-solution-to-future-energy-needs www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html

Pelamis wave power device that looks like a giant snake: www.weirdlyodd.com/10-renewable-energy-sources/

Zero energy balance hotel: www.euronews.com/2012/05/16/go-green-get-growing

I think this can be done in TEN years, not forty: www.euronews.com/2012/05/18/in-40-years-every-home-every-building-will-be-a-power-plant-says-jeremy-rifki

Growing food and the fossil fuel ‘requirement’ is a dependency created by the fossil fuel industry but we CAN shake that dependency without mass starvation and depopulation: www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/85/1/Fuel-and-food.html

“The strategic goal of biofuel is to supplement or even replace fossil fuels, the amount of which is constantly and rapidly diminishing.” haitireconstruction.ning.com/page/biofuel-1

I’ve already mentioned my views on the population explosion and its causes but I wish to point out how the oil lobby has tried to make fossil fuel brownie points out of it.

Remember the green revolution of the 60s, 70s and 80s that supposedly caused the population explosion? The numbers are in. The yields are not statistically different with all the fossil fuel fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides than without them. The green revolution is a lie fostered by, you guessed it, the fossil fuel lobby.

Their only valid claim is the fuel for machinery which now turns out to lower crop nutrition from top soil plowing degradation. This degradation is caused by a combination of chemical fertilizers and plowing (bare soil tends to blow away when dry or erode when wet) which leaches the soil of trace minerals needed to produce nutritious and tasty as opposed to bland crops. The way things stand right now, agricultural guidelines in the U.S. state that it’s okay to lose 4 tons of top soil per acre per year from ‘modern’ farming techniques. The government claims it is the price we pay for high ‘yields’. Are you comfortable with that? I’m not. Considering top soil regeneration takes over 100 years, I cannot believe we are doing anything but losing massive amounts every year.

And last but not least, the militaries of the world are the most voracious users of fossil fuel. We sure as hell do not need them to keep 7 billion fed and clothed. The U.S. Navy, in particular, has the top spot as fossil fuel user AND polluter.


We need gradual, decentralized trickle charge or slow pumping energy storage systems for sustainable humanity. Anything else is not viable for the planet. If we want to zip around at high speed and be able to have instant this and that, yes we have an energy crisis. If we want to emulate biological processes and eschew the love affair with higher energy density per mole of fossil and or nuclear poisons killing the planet, we don’t have an energy crisis.

Nature paces everything; so should we.

All that said, there is the 1% with their hubris and arrogance and there is the rest of humanity. The agenda of the 1% is a tad different from the rest of us. I agree the knockdown is coming. The people controlling the levers of innovation and adaptation in our governments and the elite parasites that own them want this knockdown so it will come. I maintain that the false notion of a causal relationship between a large population and a polluted, unsustainable, fossil fuel dependent human society is the driving force behind this elite desire for a knockdown. The elites are the only truly unsustainable population on this earth because of their mega-carbon footprints.

So, in true Wall Street Orwellian fashion, they blame the bulk of the 7 billion humans for THEIR piggery and slavish dependency on fossil fuels. The 1% that owns our governments loves the predatory resource extraction paradigm despite the fact that some of them probably suspect that it will cause a population knockdown, not from lack of fossil fuels, but from environmental collapse. Billions of humans dying is considered a good thing by the 1%. They think it will solve the world’s environmental problems and provide a more manageable population of slaves. The 1% probably grumble about minimum gene pool diversity species population required in order to perpetuate homo sapiens. The 1% think robots will take care of all the ‘important’ work while medical technology available to the 1% will provide them with 150 year plus lifetimes. They are wrong and they are the cancer that is destroying humanity.

There’s a way to clean up this world and live sustainably. Killing off several billion is a straw man. It’s typical elite bullshit adding two an two and getting whatever answer keeps them in the catbird seat. The media will continue to block the truth from the people 24/7.

I apologize if I tried to cover too much ground here but this situation we are in has matured for well over a century and we need to see how we got here to understand, if we survive, how to prevent a new set of snakes from selling us snake oil in the future.

Feel free to pass all or any part of this rant with or without attribution.

Everything I wrote can be researched free on the internet if you want to post links about horse plagues, NASA correspondence with utilities, Henry Ford and hemp plastic, Rockefeller chicanery, U.S. solar panel development reasons, Americans starving while the bomb was being developed, Bernays propaganda tools, etc.

A.G. Gelbert

Posted in Energy, Home | Tagged Automobiles, Energy, Fetilizer, Horses, Oil, Permaculture, Propaganda, Sustainability, Waste


« Last Edit: July 09, 2018, 01:19:05 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #722 on: July 12, 2018, 11:53:10 am »
CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica’s work via donations on Patreon or PayPal!

Or just go buy a cool t-shirt, cup, baby outfit, bag, or hoodie.

5 Ways China’s Now A Global Climate Leader

July 11th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on Climate Reality Project.

The world’s biggest emitter decided to take some serious climate action – and in the process renewed our hope that we will beat the climate crisis.


Ten years ago, the idea that China – the planet’s single biggest carbon polluter – would be a global leader on climate in 2018 would have sounded, well, a stretch.

But with terrifying levels of air pollution threatening to spark social unrests in earlier years and the US stepping back from the global stage under President Trump, that’s exactly what’s happened.

The story begins with a massive public health crisis, but how China responded – and five steps in particular – lays out a practical path to a low-carbon future for countries around the world.

Airpocalypse Now ☠️

How did the world’s biggest polluter become the world’s leader on climate?

It all goes back to the “Airpocalypse.”

Not too long ago, many in some of the Chinese cities were going about their business engulfed in a cloud of pollution. The gray haze could be so dense, that buildings and trees would quite literally disappear in front of your eyes. And stepping outside, even for just a minute, required wearing a facial mask to avoid directly breathing the toxic air.

How to Keep Climate Action on Track After the Paris Agreement

The source of much of that pollution wasn’t hard to find either: coal-fired power plants and vehicles on the road. Since the early 2000s, China’s economy had been growing rapidly, powered largely by coal.

The unchecked use of coal on such a huge scale didn’t take long to generate real problems. In 2005, China surpassed the United States to become the world’s biggest CO2 emitter (a title that the country has held since the 20th century). And in 2008, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the entire world were in China, according to the World Bank.

Enough Is Enough

In 2013, the Chinese government finally decided that enough was enough, introducing a national action plan to curb air pollution, including a set of coal consumption limits for key regions including Beijing and the Pearl River Delta.

In 2016, China released its national plan for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and committed to lowering the country’s carbon intensity of GDP by 60–65 percent (below 2005 levels) by 2030 in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to Paris Agreement. As the world’s second-largest economy – and home to nearly 1.4 billion people – that’s a big deal to the world.

Growing Pains and Growing Progress

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Emissions are still rising as the country continues to grow. And although China has halt many coal projects over the past years, environmentalists have called it out for investing coal energy in other countries such as Turkey and Pakistan to satisfy its immense need for energy.

On the other hand, China has made real progress. Between 2013 and 2017, Chinese cities cut the amount of fine pollution particulates(PM2.5) in the air by an average of 32 percent. And the capital Beijing has seen a lot more sunny days as PM 2.5 concentration dropped 54 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, in comparison to the same period of 2016.

On a global level, there’s also good news. China has been instrumental in keeping the Paris Agreement process going, continuing to curb emissions and expand renewables even as the US (another huge polluter) has dramatically backed down at the federal level.

So how’s China done it? There’ve been many steps, but five have been especially key.
1. Bye-Bye, Coal

China has been slowly (but surely) moving away from coal energy. Last year, the government announced plans to cancel 103 new plants and closed the very last coal plant located in the capital, Beijing.

From 2014 to 2015, coal consumption reduced after a decade of steady increase.

2. Putting a Price on Carbon


One of China’s most impressive moves was to launch the world’s largest national carbon trading market in 2017. The goal is to encourage companies to become greener by allowing them sell or buy excessive carbon emissions. The first phase of the project only covers the power generation sector, but the initiative is expected to expand across many other areas of the economy.

3. Clean Bus Rides

China is showing the world how to move many people around quickly and cleanly.   Around 17 percent of the country’s municipal buses are electric, and the city Shenzhen holds the record for the globe’s largest electric bus fleet, with all of its 16,359 buses had gone electric last year. The achievement was only possible due to government subsidies. But in the long run, operation and maintenance costs of electric buses are significantly lower than those fueled by diesel.

4. Making the Investment in Renewables

Moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy is not just an effective way to clean up the planet. It’s also a good investment.

In 2017, China invested a staggering US$ 126.6 billion in renewable energy – 45 percent of the total worldwide investment. The country has been using a whole lot of green technology internally  – nearly doubled its solar generation from 2016 to 2017. But it also has its eyes on a much larger international market.

5. New Forests

China is so keen on green that it’s deploying soldiers to plant trees across the country. The goal is to replant many of the forests that were cut down for industrialization and farmland, all with an eye to removing carbon from the atmosphere on a massive scale and doing it naturally.

Sowing seeds is actually one of the country’s Paris Agreement goals – China wants to increase forest stock volume by 4.5 billion cubic meters by 2030, from its 2005 level. China is also planting a different kind of forest on its buildings to help sequester carbon.


The Takeaway


The catalyst was the sight of millions choking on industrial and power sector pollution, but the result has been one of the most influential for emissions reduction and energy transformation the world’s ever seen.

Five steps in the process have been critical:

Cutting coal

Putting a price on carbon

Cleaning up public transit

Investing in renewables

Conserve and rebuild the forest


The good news is that it doesn’t take a public health crisis for countries to embrace these and other practical solutions. The world’s second-largest economy has already shown they work, and now it’s time for other nations to follow its lead.

Want to stay updated on climate action across the globe? Join our email activist list. We’ll deliver the latest on climate science and innovative ways you can get involved in the climate movement right to your inbox.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/11/5-ways-chinas-now-a-global-climate-leader/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #723 on: July 13, 2018, 12:33:06 pm »


Why Florida's Largest Lake Is Filled With Toxic Algae, Again

By Maddie Stone

July 12, 2018 Filed to: FLORIDA



https://earther.com/why-floridas-largest-lake-is-filled-with-toxic-algae-a-1827524577
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #724 on: July 18, 2018, 01:44:52 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: This is a great article packed with cartoons revealing the battle going in in Germany between Renewable Energy advocates and hydrocarbon addicts refusing to recognize the dangers in Greenhouse Gas fueled Catastrophic Climate Change:



July 18, 2018


Germany's coal mines seen from space, the talk on electric cars and Chinese-German battery production cooperation - CLEW's visiting cartoonist Mwelwa Musonko presents his view of the Energiewende and its many big and small peculiarities.




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #725 on: July 22, 2018, 12:10:49 pm »

Poisoning Our Children: The Parent's Guide to the Myths of Safe Pesticides

July 22, 2018 • 71,521 views 👀




SNIPPET 1:

Story at-a-glance

• In the U.S., there are about 80,000 registered chemicals. Of these, only a few hundred have been tested for safety, and even that testing is considered inadequate by most toxicologists

• Chemicals are tested in isolation. In real world application however, chemicals are used in combination, and the few studies done on synergetic effects reveal even nontoxic chemicals can become toxic when mixed together

• The agricultural and global chemical industries have manipulated the system to control and suppress safety concerns. Through regulatory capture, regulators end up working for the industry’s rather than the public’s interest

• Regulators make decisions on the safety of poisons in our food and environment based on data provided by the company selling the toxin, and outsiders cannot review that evidence

There’s no specific safety testing done for children, but studies show there is no lower level of pesticides that is safe for children

Agelbert NOTE: The second half of the second video deals with some facts about healthy soils everytone should know. In the earlier part of that video I learned that children DO NOT have certain enzymes in the liver, that human adults DO have, that are extremely important.

SNIPPET 2:

Quote
"There’s no specific testing done for children,” he says. “There’s absolutely no published scientific evidence to show any level of safety. On the other hand, studies show there is no lower level that is safe for children.

Children, when we talk about the unborn, the newborn and grown children up to puberty, they do not have the detoxification enzymes in their livers that we have as adults. Particularly for young children, that means they have no way of detoxifying even the smallest amount of a pesticide or a chemical.

The evidence shows that even small amounts, when children are exposed in the womb, through breastfeeding or at a young age, it severely affects the way they develop. It affects the nervous system, the hormone system and the reproductive system.

When you look at the science, there are so many areas that can be negatively affected by these small amounts. Unfortunately, a lot of these effects last a lifetime. And also, we know some are intergenerational. Those children's grandchildren will be affected."

Read more:

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/07/22/no-safe-limit-for-pesticides-for-children.aspx
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #726 on: July 27, 2018, 07:56:52 pm »
EcoWatch

Lorraine Chow

Jul. 26, 2018 02:34PM EST

Only 13% of World's Oceans Remain Wild

A new study has unveiled humanity's sweeping impact on the world's oceans. Commercial fishing, climate change, agricultural runoff and other human-caused stressors have wiped out nearly 90 percent of Earth's marine wilderness, researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Queensland, Australia revealed.

Just 13 percent of the world's seas can be classified as truly wild, with most being located in the high seas, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

"Those marine areas that can be considered 'pristine' are becoming increasingly rare, as fishing and shipping fleets expand their reach across almost all of the world's oceans, and sediment runoff smothers many coastal areas," said Kendall Jones, researcher at the University of Queensland and lead author of the paper, in a press release.


What's more, less than 5 percent of the world's remaining marine wildness is protected.

"Improvements in shipping technology mean that even the most remote wilderness areas may come under threat in the future, including once ice-covered places that are now accessible because of climate change," Jones said.

To map out these areas, the research team used fine scale global data to analyze 19 human stressors on the seas, including industrial shipping, sediment runoff and several types of fishing.

The areas that were least affected by these stressors were classified as wilderness, amounting to 21 million square miles or 13.2 percent of the marine environment.

The study shows that most marine wilderness is located in the Arctic, Antarctic and in remote Pacific island nations with low human populations. Conversely, in coastal regions with intense human activities, very little marine wilderness remains. These coastal habitats are home to coral reefs, salt marshes and kelp forests.

The researchers said that preserving the ocean's remaining wilderness is more urgent than ever.

"We know these marine wilderness areas are declining catastrophically, and protecting them must become a focus of multilateral environmental agreements," James Watson, professor at the University of Queensland, director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society and senior author of the paper, said in the press release. "If not, they will likely disappear within 50 years."

https://www.ecowatch.com/oceans-wilderness-destruction-13-percent-2590138332.html


Zero Hour Just 🦅 Transition
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #727 on: August 13, 2018, 01:49:53 pm »
Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)

Understanding FSMA Video Series 1 of 4 – FSMA Overview & Finalized Rules

The objective of this first video is to explain what this new Food Safety Modernization act means to YOU. While there was a lot of information provided, in just a few short minutes, we’ve provided a summary and key take-aways after the video.


SUMMARY:


The FDA has created new legislation to ensure that consumers and animals are protected from the unnecessary risks they’ve become exposed to over the last decade. Every part of the supply chain is now accountable for ensuring that the food arrives, from farm to table, in a manner that is fit for consumption.

Transportation companies will now be required to have documented plans and objectives that demonstrate they have a plan in place that is being followed, to comply with the new guidelines.

The next video will explain how the 7th rule mentioned earlier, the Sanitary transportation of human and animal food (STHAF) directly impacts fleets and outline what you need to know.

Learn more:

https://ironapple.net/1-understanding-fsma-overview-and-finalized-rules/




August 13, 2018

Romaine Lettuce E. Coli Outbreak by State

210 cases total reported through June 27, 2018 from 36 states

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #728 on: August 13, 2018, 06:35:53 pm »
 

Jury Finds Monsanto liable in the first Roundup cancer trial – here’s what could happen next

LAST UPDATED ON AUGUST 13TH, 2018 AT 6:35 PM BY CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

SNIPPET:

Much of the plaintiff’s case was based on a widely criticized 2015 statement by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate was a “probable human carcinogen” (Group 2A on its scale). A classification of “human carcinogen” (Group 1) means that a panel of scientists convened by the IARC believes the agent is a cancer hazard to humans, like smoking and ionizing radiation. The 2A classification is not as strong. It means that there is credible evidence, but it does not reach the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The IARC’s process for determining carcinogenicity has come under heavy criticism before. In particular, in the early 2000s some observers worried that industry was actually influencing the agency to downgrade its classification of chemical agents. In the Roundup cases, the accusation against the IARC cuts the other way. According to some accounts, it was biased against industry and sought a harsh classification for glyphosate.

The IARC has provided a detailed defense of its process in the glyphosate evaluation. It has also published a monograph on glyphosate with all the gory details of the science behind its evaluation.

I served on a monograph working group in 2007 for an IARC assessment of whether shift work was a potential cancer hazard. I have also participated in three other meetings sponsored by IARC over the years, so I have seen the agency’s process up close. In my view, IARC personnel go to great lengths to ensure objectivity and scientific rigor.

This does not mean that their classifications are the last word. In fact, the agency has often changed its classification of an agent based on new evidence after initial evaluation. Sometimes it has become more certain that the agent poses a hazard, but in other cases it has downgraded the hazard.


Full article:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/monsanto-cancer-trial-042343/

Agelbert NOTE: I'll save you some time. Monsanto 👹 is lying about not having tested glyphosate to detertmine whether or not it is a Carcinogen. They 🔬 have AND they know the EXACT concentrations that produce the Carcinogenic results in test animals, but they 👹 have made very sure that it cannot be proven in court.

But, that's not where THAT skullduggery ends, not by a long shot. Monsanto 👹 uses the old reliable Tobacco Propaganda Mense Rea Modus Operandi (SEE BELOW) to obfuscate/prevent any attempt at attempt to present evidence of glyphosate carcinogenicity by honest third parties 👨‍🔬🔬 that tested glyphosate.


Monsanto will do everything possible to avoid paying the amount determined by the court BECAUSE, if they pay (as they would if they had any ethics whatsoever!), the floodgates will be open to destroying their "doubt is our product" multi-decade stall/scam which has poisoned millions of people and animals surreptitiously.


So, in order to continue profiting from the crime and NOT paying the fine or doing the time, Monsanto 😈 will take this all the way to the Supreme Fascists Court , where the "award" will be reduced to a pittance or overturned.


How Safe is Roundup?

Controversy Plagues Roundup, a Popular Weed Killer Made by Monsanto

BY MARC LALLANILLA Updated 10/03/17

Great video in the article: 👍

https://www.thespruce.com/how-safe-is-roundup-1709066
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #729 on: August 14, 2018, 04:52:40 pm »
CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica’s work via donations on Patreon or PayPal!

Or just go buy a cool t-shirt, cup, baby outfit, bag, or hoodie.


Solar Farms Can Become Pollinator Habitats & Help Save the Bees!

August 14th, 2018 by Carolyn Fortuna

They buzz and swarm, hover and dart. In the process of gathering pollen and nectar for their hives, bees and other insects pollinate flowers, ensuring that plants reproduce and yield fruit and other products. They contribute to pollinating nearly 75% of all human food crops worldwide, and yet humans have put tremendous stress on insect pollinator habitats with pesticides, land development, altered hydrologic patterns, and other actions. As a result, insect species have declined significantly. Ultimate loss of these insect species could have global scale impacts — wiping out crops, elevating food production costs, and compromising human nutrition.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, however, are investigating ways to use pollinator-friendly solar power as a way to reinvigorate pollinator habitats. By studying solar energy facilities with pollinator habitats on site, researchers hope to rehabilitate pollinator populations that play a crucial role in national and global agricultural industries, plant species, and thriving pollinator numbers.

pollinator habitat

Concerns regarding the conservation of pollinators have risen to the global scale as countries have seen severe pollinator declines and have begun developing strategies to sustain pollinator species in the face of an ever-expanding human population. Although the total land area projected to be required for solar development through 2030 is less than 0.1% of the contiguous US surface area, a need exists to improve the landscape sustainability of large-scale solar developments to avoid or minimize potential impacts to local agriculture and cultural, ecological, and other natural resources.

With goals to conserve habitat, maintain ecosystem function, and support multiple ongoing human land uses in the landscape, researchers in Argonne’s Environmental Science (EVS) division have found that the area around solar panels could provide an ideal location for the plants that attract pollinators. This study outlines opportunities for investigating the environmental benefits of pollinator habitats, such as water conservation, land management, and carbon dioxide reduction.

pollinator habitat


Background about Rural Energy Development and Agricultural Intensification

Utility-scale solar energy (USSE) developments (≥1 megawatt [MW]) are increasing in agricultural landscapes, specifically on former agricultural fields. Driven variously by economics, rejection of fossil fuels, global climate change actions, air and water pollution, and energy security, USSE grew at an average rate of 72% per year between 2010 and 2016. By the end of 2016, USSE facilities accounted for approximately 22 GW of installed US electricity generation capacity, with an additional 13 GW of planned USSE construction. Interest in on-site vegetation management approaches to USSE farms is increasing, as it could restore ecosystem balance such as crop pollination that also maintains or even enhances agricultural production on nearby lands.

Recent emphasis has been placed on the creation and maintenance of pollinator habitats at USSE facilities. “Pollinator habitats” describes the practice of planting seed mixes of regional native plants such as milkweed and other wildflowers, within the solar infrastructure footprint after construction. Sowing could occur among solar panels or other reflective surfaces, or in off-site areas adjacent to the solar facility. Sowing has the intent to attract and support native insect pollinators by providing food sources, refuge, and nesting habitat.

Despite their ecological differences, all types of solar-pollinator habitats have the potential to improve biodiversity and ecosystem function as compared to conventional USSE vegetation management practices.


Conventional USSE management practices are intended to minimize or prohibit the growth of vegetation within the facility footprint:

• placement of gravel

• establishment and maintenance of turf grass

• mowing

• herbicide application

Such practices provide little or no habitat suitable for pollinator species, especially if these vegetation management practices occur frequently during operation of the solar facility.

Solar-pollinator habitat and related activities provide ecological benefits for pollinators and non-pollinators alike:

֍ limited mowing

֍ no herbicide or pesticide applications

֍ planned seed sowing to attract pollinators


pollinator habitats

Reclaiming Pollinator Habitats through Cultivated Solar Farms

In response to the population decline of pollinating insects, such as wild bees and monarch butterflies, the Argonne researchers have examined the potential benefits of establishing pollinator habitats at USSE facilities to conserve pollinators and restore the ecosystem they provide. Examining over 2,800 existing and planned USSE facilities in the contiguous US, the researchers determined whether solar-sited pollinator habitat could benefit agriculture. They found over 3,500 square kilometers of agricultural land near existing and planned USSE facilities that could benefit from rehabilitation and which could help reinstate the declining pollinator population with few subsequent side effects.

For example, one team looked at 3 example crop types to measure the agricultural benefits of increased pollinator habitats. These crops – soybeans, almonds, and cranberries – depend on insect pollinators for their annual crop yields. If all existing and planned solar facilities near these crop types included pollinator habitat and increased yield by just 1%, crop values could rise $1.75 million, $4 million, and $233,000 for soybeans, almonds and cranberries, respectively.

Solar-sited pollinator habitats can help optimize the land-use efficiency of solar energy developments while not compromising solar panel efficiency. Often filled with gravel or turf grass, much of the land in a solar farm is untended. Research has shown that in many locations these grounds offer an ideal place to establish native plant species, such as prairie grass or wildflowers, which are prevalent pollinator habitats and can encourage steady insect population growth. There are economic benefits to pollinators, too — honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the US.

By increasing the ability of pollinators to pollinate adjacent agricultural fields, solar-sited pollinator habitat may boost farmers’ crop yields and create companion income revenues to neighboring agricultural farms. Rejuvenating local pollinator habitat is one way that local farmers can augment trends to lease land for solar arrays, as the practice has proven more lucrative to them at times than cash crops.

pollinator habitats

Final Thoughts

Studies in the UK support findings that solar panels enhance biodiversity and wildlife abundance — botanical diversity within solar farm landscaping is responding to favorable management practices.

Most UK sites studied point out that herbicide application to date at USSEs has been limited to spot treatment of weeds. They conclude that a reduction in the use of broad-spectrum herbicides will lead to greater diversity of broadleaved plants. High soil fertility of arable farmland favors a few dominant species of plants, but, as soil fertility reduces in the absence of fertilizer, diversity of both grasses and broad leaved plants is able to and is anticipated to increase. Where suitable USSE management exists, botanical diversity increases over time, with plants emerging from seed banks as well as airborne or animal-carried seed.

The symbiosis of solar farms and pollinator habitats may widen appreciation among community members and local governments for the pollinators’ role in agricultural production. It may persuade solar developers to rethink the landscape design around their installations.

Many US states are catching up to their European counterparts and acknowledging the need to address pollinator population declines through legislation. Solar facilities are beginning to respond by sowing in pollinator-friendly areas. Illinois recently passed a “Pollinator-Friendly Solar Energy Bill” in May, 2018. Other states like Maryland and Minnesota have made part of their legislative agendas to transition to USSEs that incorporate landscape compatible environs.

Photos on Foter.com and  solartradeassociation on Trend Hype / CC BY-SA and USDAgov on TrendHype / CC BY-ND and by oatsy40 on Trend hype / CC BY

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/14/solar-farms-can-become-pollinator-habitats-help-save-the-bees/

Agelbert COMMENT: There is a destructive mentallity in much of the USA in regard to vegetation in general and lawns in particular. This attitude has influenced most of the non-indigenous population for centuries.

What am I talking about❓ I'm talking about the destructive practice of maintaining manicured lawns. The Zoning Nazis in most towns in the USA prohibit home owners form growing food in their front yards or even allowing the yard to be "wild" with wild flowers or other local vegetation.  👎

All this adds pollution from gasoline powered lawn mowers (which pollute massively because those small engines have no pollution controls whatsoever!)  AND poisons the soil with (hydrocarbon feed stock) chemical pesticides and herbicides. 👎👎👎

Where did this unhealthy practice come from⁉️

 It came from the Midieval Castle use of "Killing fields".

Look at this picture:


We are all very familiar with the concept of a moat. BUT, most castles did not have one.

The castles were subject to attack, so the grounds around the walls were cleared so attacking troops could not use tall foliage as cover to get near the walls. These areas were called "killling fileds" because the archers on the walls  would kill anyone attacking the castle in the cleared areas.

When peace was more routine, castle grounds went from large manicured (i.e. short) lawns to manicured bushes and fastidiously ordered flower gardens with mazes and walks for the "nobles" to stroll along in a 100% "tamed" nature area.



This Victorian idea of ordering natue obsessively was, unfortunately, transferred to the "new" world along with the genocide of the native population. 🤬

It's time to stop being stupid with lawns, people. We do not need a killing field (for people AND bees, butterflies, ladybugs, worms, beetles, trillions of soil health providing microbes, etc.) in our front yard.

📢 Vote the Zoning Nazis OUT in your town!

We DO need to take seriously our RESPONSIBILITY as stewards of the biosphere to work to promote and preserve biodiversity, as Carolyn Fortuna 👍🌞 advocates here.

Thank you, Carolyn Fortuna 🍃, for being part of the solution. 💐 God bless you.


 
What it Means to be Responsible - Reflections on Our Responsibility for the Future  by Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #730 on: August 14, 2018, 10:37:03 pm »
Truthout

August 14, 2018

Chevron Must Pay for Environmental Damage in Ecuador, Court Rules 

Staff, Mongabay: The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has found that Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in the Amazon rainforest on Indigenous lands.

Chevron will now have to pay $9.5 billion for the repair and remediation of social and environmental damage caused as a result of the oil company's operations in the Amazon.

Read more:

https://truthout.org/articles/chevron-must-pay-for-environmental-damage-in-ecuador-court-rules/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #731 on: August 19, 2018, 07:33:00 pm »
Over 2,000 Cities with Higher Lead Levels than Flint  >:(

August 19, 2018

Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland all have been victim to high lead and other toxins in the water. Eddie Conway and Eugene Puryear discuss the frustrations of citizens and the struggles to get clean water in communities of color


https://therealnews.com/stories/over-2000-cities-with-higher-lead-levels-than-flint
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #732 on: August 21, 2018, 03:14:29 pm »
The New Republic


The Modern Automobile Must Die    

If we want to solve climate change, there's no other option.

By EMILY ATKIN

August 20, 2018

SNIPPET:

Germany was supposed to be a model for solving global warming. In 2007, the country’s government announced that it would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020. This was the kind of bold, aggressive climate goal scientists said was needed in all developed countries. If Germany could do it, it would prove the target possible.

So far, Germany has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 27.7 percent—an astonishing achievement for a developed country with a highly developed manufacturing sector. But with a little over a year left to go, despite dedicating $580 billion toward a low-carbon energy system, the country “is likely to fall short of its goals for reducing harmful carbon-dioxide emissions,” Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. And the reason for that may come down not to any elaborate solar industry plans, but something much simpler: cars.

“At the time they set their goals, they were very ambitious,” Patricia Espinosa, the United Nations’ top climate change official, told Bloomberg. “What happened was that the industry🦕🦖—particularly the car industry 😈🐉🦕🦖didn’t come along.” 

Changing the way we power our homes and businesses is certainly important. But as Germany’s shortfall shows, the only way to achieve these necessary, aggressive emissions reductions to combat global warming is to overhaul the gas-powered automobile and the culture that surrounds it. The only question left is how to do it.

In 2010, a NASA study declared that automobiles were officially the largest net contributor of climate change pollution in the world.

Full article:

https://newrepublic.com/article/150689/modern-automobile-must-die
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #733 on: September 03, 2018, 06:48:01 pm »
Environmental medicine explained

William Rea of the Environmental Health Center


Roughly 80% of illnesses are created by the environment and diet.

And what do average doctors know about these things?

NOTHING.

Here's an interview with one of the pioneers of this most important and still neglected area of medicine.

Electrical sensitivity is often paired (80%) with chemical sensitivity and illnesses created by mold.

The science is in and has been for many years.

Doctors are, predictably, completely ignorant. 😠

The news media which makes billions every year selling ads for the makers say nothing. 👎

http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/environment/environmental-medicine-explained.html

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Pollution
« Reply #734 on: September 15, 2018, 03:14:49 pm »
Dave Murphy: Will Monsanto's 😈 Loss Result In Less Poison ☠️ In Our Food?

09/15/2018

Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com


Read more:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-13/dave-murphy-will-monsantos-loss-result-less-poison-our-food

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

+-Recent Topics

Future Earth by AGelbert
March 30, 2022, 12:39:42 pm

Key Historical Events ...THAT YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF by AGelbert
March 29, 2022, 08:20:56 pm

The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth by AGelbert
March 28, 2022, 01:12:42 pm

Electric Vehicles by AGelbert
March 27, 2022, 02:27:28 pm

Heat Pumps by AGelbert
March 26, 2022, 03:54:43 pm

Defending Wildlife by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 02:04:23 pm

The Koch Brothers Exposed! by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 01:26:11 pm

Corruption in Government by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 12:46:08 pm

Books and Audio Books that may interest you 🧐 by AGelbert
March 24, 2022, 04:28:56 pm

COVID-19 🏴☠️ Pandemic by AGelbert
March 23, 2022, 12:14:36 pm