Shale and Our Water
New York State’s environmental regulators have proposed rules to govern drilling in the Marcellus Shale — a subterranean layer of rock curving northward from West Virginia through Ohio and Pennsylvania to New York’s southern tier. The shale contains enormous deposits of natural gas that could add to the region’s energy supplies and lift New York’s upstate economy. If done carefully — and in carefully selected places — drilling should cause minimal environmental harm.
Natural gas is vital to the nation’s energy needs and can be an important bridge between dirty coal and renewable alternatives. The process of extracting it, however, is not risk-free. Known as hydraulic fracturing, it involves shooting a mix of water, sand and chemicals — many of them highly toxic — into the ground at very high pressure to break down the rock formations and free the gas. The technique is used in 90 percent of the oil and gas operations in the United States. And while most drilling occurs without incident, “fracking” has been implicated in hundreds of cases of impaired or polluted drinking water supplies in states from Alabama to Wyoming.
The dangers are particularly acute in the Marcellus Shale, which, unlike the relatively shallow formations found elsewhere, lies miles underground. Getting the gas out will require far more water and heavy doses of chemicals. While the rules would require drillers to take special precautions in the watershed, there are too many points — from the delivery of the fluid to the drilling site to the removal of spent fluid after it surfaces — where poisoned water could escape into the water supplies.
Quarantining the watershed also makes economic sense. The shale contains only one-tenth of the gas in the southern tier. One big accident could undo everything the city and state have done — buying up property, creating buffer zones around the reservoirs — to protect the watershed from development and pollution........A fair review will not be possible unless the state’s absurdly quick Nov. 30 deadline for public comment is extended. The mayor’s study will not even be completed until mid-December. It is dangerously irresponsible to rush this decision.
( Frakking is covered in Water - Wealth and Power : a practice absurdly under-regulated with toxicity obscured - and radioactivity involved! )
Magnetic Leaves Reveal Most Polluted Byways
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091015123604.htm
Tree leaves may be powerful tools for monitoring air quality and planning biking routes and walking paths, suggests a new study by scientists at Western Washington University in Bellingham. The research will be presented at this month's Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.
See also:
Geophysicist Bernie Housen and colleague Luigi Jovane collected several leaves from 15 trees in and around Bellingham. Five of the trees lay next to busy bus routes. Five sat on parallel but much quieter side streets. Five were in a rural area nearby.
Using two measurement techniques, Housen and Jovane found that leaves along bus routes were between two and 8 times more magnetic than leaves from nearby streets and between four and 10 times more magnetic than rural leaves.
Inhaling particulate matter has been linked to a number of negative health consequences, including breathing troubles and even heart problems. Tiny particles bypass the airways and get deep into the lung tissues.
The new study suggests that biking or walking along heavy bus routes might be as bad for your health as you might suspect when choking on exhaust fumes. That’s something cities might want to consider as they plan new routes for cyclists and pedestrians.
“I ride my bike to work every day,” Housen said. “I’ve always wondered what the effects of diesel exhaust are on my health.”
While many details remain to be worked out, the study also suggests that collecting tree leaves can be a simple and effective way to measure the load of particulate matter in the air. European researchers have been exploring the idea for a while, but this is one of the first studies to apply the technique in the United States.
“Using trees is a nice, low-tech way to do these studies and you don’t need to use fancy particle collectors,” Housen said. “If it works, you could easily collect a lot of data from a region. You could even have kids collect leaves. That makes it a powerful tool to see variation of particulate matter on a very detailed level.”
Adapted from materials provided by Geological Society of America.
Russia ready to abandon dollar in oil, gas trade with China
BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis.
"Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans," Putin said.
He stressed that "there should be a balance here."
On Tuesday, Russia and China agreed terms for Russian gas deliveries at a level of up to 70 billion cubic meters a year. China also imports oil from Russia.
The Russian prime minister said the issue would be addressed among others at a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) finance ministers, who are to convene before the end of the year in Kazakhstan.
Britain's Independent newspaper reported last Tuesday that Russian officials had held "secret meetings" with Arab states, China and France on ending the use of the U.S. dollar in international oil trade.
The countries are reportedly seeking to switch from the dollar to a basket of currencies including the euro, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, gold, and a new unified currency of leading Arab oil producing countries.
The Independent said the meetings have been confirmed by Chinese and Arab banking sources.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20091016&articleId=15715
Funding Sweatshops Globally
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEN20091016&articleId=15712
In July 2008, SweatFree Communities (SFC) released a report titled, "Subsidizing Sweatshops: How Our Tax Dollars Fund the Race to the Bottom, and What Cities and States Can Do" in which it studied 12 factories in nine countries that produce employee uniforms for nine major companies.
Widespread human and labor rights violations were revealed, including child labor; illegal below-poverty wages; few or no benefits; forced or unpaid overtime; hazardous working conditions; verbal, physical, and sexual abuses; forced pregnancy testing to be hired and while employed; excessive long working hours causing physical ailments, stress, and harm; denial of free expression, association, and collective bargaining rights; and elaborate schemes to commit fraud and deceive corporate auditors.
In April 2009, Subsidizing Sweatshops II followed to provide more evidence of a global problem. It tracked developments in four factories from the first report and four new ones in five countries on three continents producing uniforms for nine major firms in China, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and America.
Two cases relied on investigations by independent factory monitors. Three others used personal worker interviews conducted by "credible local unions and non-governmental organizations with expertise in labor rights." Three more are based on SFC-conducted interviews.
In all cases, the global economic crisis materially increased worker hardships leaving them more vulnerable, in jeopardy, and unable to secure their rights. Most often, the following violations were found:
-- children as young as 14 forced to work the same long hours as adults and under the same onerous conditions;
-- wages so low, they only cover one-fourth to one-half of essential needs;
-- workers in at least two factories not paid overtime;
-- because of excessive production quotas, workers forced to skip breaks, not go to the bathroom, and work sick through grueling 12-hour or longer days;
-- unhealthy work environments in stifling heat and thick fabric dust detrimental to health;
-- numerous sewing machine accidents causing wounds and loss of fingers; and
-- instances of severe repression against union supporters and organizers, including harassment, intimidation, firing, and blacklisting from further employment elsewhere.
The report's findings "are corroborated by scores of academic research and industry investigations." Human and labor rights violations are the norm, not the exception. Monitoring alone won't change them, but perhaps public disclosure can help.
Health and Safety aspects of Thorium production
Some people have asked about the issues and potential dangers of thorium, especially relative to uranium. I have extracted this section from an AEC book published on thorium in the late 1950s. To sum it up, thorium, like other heavy metals, is toxic in the body. It is radioactive but with an exceptionally long half-life of 14 billion years, which means individual thorium-232 nuclei decay at an incredibly slow rate. Nevertheless, once a Th-232 nuclei decays, it proceeds through its decay chain relatively quickly, arriving at its final stable form of lead-208 with a minimum of long-lived intermediate nuclei.
So don't eat thorium, don't breathe thorium, just put it in the reactor and make energy.
Of more importance to the management and workers in thorium plants than thorium's chemical toxicity is its radiological hazard. To recognize exposure problems that may be encountered and to install the controls necessary to protect personnel, a thorough understanding of the radioactive decay of thorium is necessary.
The thorium decay series begins with Th-232, which has a radioactive half-life of 13.9 billion years, and ends with the formation of Pb-208, a stable isotope. In the transmutation of the parent thorium to the stable lead, a total of 10 other radioisotopes are formed. Four of these intermediate isotopes decay through beta emission and five through alpha emission. One isotope, Bi-222 (thorium C), may decay by either alpha or beta emission. Figure 9-1 shows the decay series of thorium. Also shown are the half-lives for the radioisotopes in the series as well as the energies of the alpha, beta and gamma radiations.
It can be seen from this figure that the thorium decay series differs considerably from the uranium decay series in that the half-lives are all relatively short, the longest being the 6.7-yr radium-228. Thorium-228, which exists in equilibrium with Th-232 in thorium which is either unseparated or freshly separated from other materials in the series, has a half-life of 1.9 years. The half-lives of other isotopes in the series range from 0.3 microsecond to 3.64 days.
In the processing of thorium, its ores, and its salts, it must be recognized that these decay products fall into several columns of the periodic table and therefore behave chemically in different ways. Because of the short half-lives of many of the decay products, the chemical problem is essentially one of handling two elements, thorium and radium. However, the short half-lives mean also that after any separation into thorium and non-thorium fractions, the composition of the fractions changes rapidly. The non-thorium fraction contains Ra-228, which has as one of its decay products the strongly active Th-228. Because the non-thorium fraction may have considerably less physical bulk than the thorium fraction, the percentage of Th-228 in it may become relatively high, even higher than it is in the thorium fraction. The content of Th-228 can be controlled by separating thorium from the non-thorium fraction at proper intervals. Additional Th-228 is thus not introduced by the decomposition of Ra-228 while the Th-228 level gradually decreases as a result of decay into non-thorium decay products. The Ra-224 in the non-thorium fraction decays to Rn-220, a short-lived radioactive gas that may build up high levels of radioactivity in working areas........
The aqueous raffinate solution from the tributyl phosphate purification process also has relatively high concentrations of the radium isotopes. In precipitating thorium oxalate from a thorium nitrate solution on a production scale, approximately 70 percent of the Ra-228 usually remains in the filtrate. In the vacuum casting of thorium metal, a good share of the residual radium isotopes escape from the metal and deposit on the interior of the furnace.
If radioactive material enters the body, the thorium-type substances tend to settle in the liver, kidneys, spleen, lymph nodes and bone marrow, whereas the radium-type substances are more likely to be in the bone. Hence, the body receives radiation in both bone and tissue.
Student punished for spaghetti beliefs
http://www.newsique.com/us/student_punished_for_spaghetti_b
In Comments
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is A BOOK. I actually have the book and it's AWESOME- it's a farcical "religious" text underlining the way people blindly place their faith in religious leaders, historians and scientists to interpret the world around them. This kid was making an incredibly intelligent and bold comment on the issue. It's a shame that this boy is being punished for an intellectual act in a supposedly educational setting.
( Disruptive to Conditioning. )
Puerto Rico braces for 'people's strike'
http://www.newsique.com/us/puerto_rico_braces_for_peoples_s
Newsique Tutorial
Peterborough health warns about contaminated cocaine causing deadly infections
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091010/national/contaminated_cocaine
New DOD photo rules prompt outcry
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28348.html
September inflation rate matches 53-year low of minus-0.9 per cent
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091016/business/inflation
The O’Garbage Factor
http://www.newsweek.com/id/218192?from=rss
Fox News isn't just bad. It's un-American.
Last week, when White House Communications Director Anita Dunn charged the Fox News Channel with right-wing bias, Fox responded the way it always does. It denied the accusation with a straight face while proceeding to confirm it with its coverage.
Consider Fox's Web story on the episode. It quotes five people. Two of them work for Fox. All of them assert that administration officials are either wrong in substance or politically foolish to criticize the network. No one is cited supporting Dunn's criticisms or saying that it could make sense for Obama to challenge the network's power. It's a textbook example of a biased journalism. (Click here to follow Jacob Weisberg.)
If you were watching Fox News Channel, you saw the familiar roster of platinum pundettes and anchor androids reciting the same soundbites: this was Obama's version of Nixon's enemies list, the rest of the news media is in Obama's corner, Obama should get back to governing, and so on. On The O'Reilly Factor, Alan Colmes, the network's weak, battered house liberal, mumbled semi-agreement while "Doctor" Monica Crowley and Bill O'Reilly lit up the scoreboard with these talking points.
Any news organization that took its responsibilities seriously would take pains to cover presidential criticism fairly. It would regard doing so as itself a test of integrity. At Fox, by contrast, complaints of unfairness prompt only hoots of derision and demands for "evidence" that, when presented, is brushed off and ignored.
There is no need to get bogged down in this phony debate, which itself constitutes an abuse of the fair-mindedness of the rest of the media. One glance at Fox's Web site or five minutes' random viewing of the channel at any hour of the day demonstrates its all-pervasive slant. The lefty documentary Outfoxed spent a lot of time mustering evidence that Fox managers order reporters to take the Republican side. But after 13 years under Roger Ailes, Fox employees skew news right as instinctively as fish swim.
Rather than in any way maturing, Fox has in recent months become more boisterous and demagogic. Fox sponsored as much as it covered the anti-Obama "tea parties" this summer. Its "fact checking" about the president's health-care proposal is provided by Karl Rove. And weepy Glenn Beck has begun to exhibit a Strangelovean concern about government invading our bloodstream by vaccinating people for swine flu. With this misinformation campaign, Fox stands to become the first network to actively try to kill its viewers.
That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.
What's most distinctive about the American press is not its freedom but its century-old tradition of independence—that it serves the public interest rather than those of parties, persuasions, or pressure groups. Media independence is a 20th-century innovation that has never fully taken root in many other countries that do have a free press. The Australian-British-continental model of politicized media that Murdoch has applied at Fox is un-American, so much so that he has little choice but go on denying what he's doing as he does it. For Murdoch, Ailes, and company, "fair and balanced" is a necessary lie. To admit that their coverage is slanted by design would violate the American understanding of the media's role in democracy and our idea of what constitutes fair play. But it's a demonstrable deceit that no longer deserves equal time.
Whether the White House engages with Fox is a tactical political question. Whether we journalists continue to do so is an ethical one. By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations. Respectable journalists—I'm talking to you, Mara Liasson—should stop appearing on its programs. A boycott would make Ailes too happy, so let's try just ignoring Fox, shall we? And no, I don't want to come on The O'Reilly Factor to discuss it.
Jacob Weisberg is also the author of The Bush Tragedy and In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington.
The Case for Humility in Afghanistan
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/16/the_case_for_humility_in_afghanistan
A Taliban victory would have devastating consequences for U.S. interests. But to avoid disaster, America must beware the Soviet Union’s mistakes -- and learn from its own three decades of failure in South Asia.
President Obama has publicly ruled out withdrawal from Afghanistan as an option. Instead, within the administration and prospectively in Congress, the question seems to be whether to pursue U.S. goals with the resources already invested, or to invest more in tandem with the adoption of a new strategy. It is important, then, to think through what U.S. interests in Afghanistan actually are and what means may be required to achieve them.
Rory Stewart, in recent testimony before a Senate committee, "The fundamental problem with the [Obama administration's] strategy is that it is trying to do the impossible. It is highly unlikely that the U.S. will be able either to build an effective, legitimate state or to defeat a Taliban insurgency ... Even an aim as modest as ‘stability' is highly ambitious." Stewart has extensive direct experience of Afghanistan and his view is shared by some other credible regional specialists.
It is right to be skeptical of the abstract slogans of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and the enthusiasms of those in the West who define success in Afghanistan through their own political-science terminology of legitimacy, rights, and development. The Soviet Union defeated itself in Afghanistan by demanding, absurdly, that the country conform to its preconceived theories of revolution and state development. As the editors of a review of the Soviet war composed by the Russian general staff put it, "Despite the Soviet Union's penetration and lengthy experience in Afghanistan, their intelligence was poor and hampered by the need to explain events within the Marxist-Leninist framework. Consequently, the Soviets never fully understood the mujahideen opposition nor why many of their policies failed to work in Afghanistan."
Similarly, the United States should be cognizant of its own potential blinders of ideology and preconceived interpretation. For example, while the development of counterinsurgency capacity and principles by the U.S. Army, as outlined in the recently ascendant field manual FM-34, is a generally positive development in U.S. Army doctrine, and those capacities clearly have a role to play in U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, it would be self-deceiving to believe that the Afghan war can now be "won" simply by "applying the manual," as the most ardent counterinsurgency advocates sometimes seem to argue.
To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, as General McChrystal pointed out in his assessment, since 2001, international forces operating in Afghanistan have "not sufficiently studied Afghanistan's peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley."
The international effort to stabilize Afghanistan and protect it from coercive revolution by the Taliban still enjoys broad support from a pragmatic and resilient Afghan population. ( What is the basis for that statement ? )Despite the manifold errors of U.S. and international policy since the Taliban's overthrow in 2001, a strong plurality of Afghans still want to pursue that work. And they want the international community to stay and to correct its errors.( Or that? )The presence of international forces in Afghanistan today is recognized as legitimate and even righteous, whereas the Soviets never enjoyed such support and were unable to draw funds and credibility from international institutions. ( That must include their willingness to indulge the bombing of wedding parties, etc.
How does all this reconcile with the next story ? )
U.S. must live within its means: Geithner
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre59g24a-us-washington-summit-economy-geithner/
The United States must live within its means once its economy recovers if it is to preserve global confidence in the U.S. dollar's status, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday.The comments came as the Obama administration reported a record U.S. budget deficit for the fiscal year ended September of $1.4 trillion. At 10 percent of gross domestic product, it was the biggest U.S. fiscal shortfall since World War Two.
Rescuing the economy and some of the country's biggest banks from the worst recession since the Great Depression took a toll on U.S. finances, and the White House has forecast deficits of more than $1 trillion through fiscal 2011.
"Future deficits are too high, and the president is committed to working with Congress to bring them down to a sustainable level as the economy recovers," Geithner said in a statement accompanying the fiscal data.
Separately, White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said financial firms that helped precipitate two years of economic crisis are going to have to bow to stiffer oversight of their activities to prevent it happening again.
Geithner and other policymakers will discuss the U.S. economic and budget outlook, and prospects for financial regulatory reform, at the Reuters Washington Summit on October 19-21.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
( Bomb,Bomb,Bomb Afghanistan )
'ECG For The Mind' Could Diagnose Depression In An Hour
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091015091611.htm
- Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map (technologyreview.com)
- Analyst: Gas shale may be next bubble to burst (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Calling Erin Brockovich: Clean Water Act Isn't Cleaning [Environment] (consumerist.com)
- Water Contamination In Wyoming Could Be From Natural Gas Drilling (huffingtonpost.com)
- EPA: Chemicals Found in Wyoming Drinking Water Might Be From Natural Gas Drilling (scientificamerican.com)
- Drilling Fluid Contaminates Pennsylvania River, Kills Fish And Endangers Humans (takepart.com)
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