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Global Warming and the Planetary Boundary

Global Warming and the Planetary Boundary

Climate change is on a fast track, a surprisingly fast, very fast track. As such, it’s entirely possible that humanity may be facing the shock of a lifetime, caught off-guard, blindsided by a crumbling ecosystem, spawning tens of thousands of ISIS-like fighters formed into competing gangs struggling for survival.

Furthermore, what if the biosphere is already under stress by “planetary boundary” or the capacity of the planet to support life? Then what?

As for global warming, a non-consensus school of scientific thought, consisting of a small minority of scientists, believes the ecosystem is at risk of collapse within current lifetime. These scientists do not pull punches. Rather, they tell it like it is, as they see it.

Whereas, most leading climate scientists are not willing to honestly expose their greatest fears, as discovered by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! while at COP21 in Paris this past December, interviewing one of the world’s leading climate scientists, Kevin Anderson of Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, who said: “So far we simply have not been prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly… many are ultimately choosing to censor their own research.”

Straightaway, we know from one of the world’s leading authorities that climate scientists are censoring their own research. They are low-balling. Consider this; imagine trying to get a “research grant or private funding” for work that exposes the dastardly truth. That’s the quickest way forward to an unemployment line of sour-faced scientists.

At Paris COP21 just a few months ago, it was agreed by almost every nation on the planet to take defensive action, on a voluntary basis, to limit global warming to under 2C post industrialization, preferably under 1.5C.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Panama Papers: Oozing Slime

The Panama Papers: Oozing Slime

The Panama Papers, a one-year investigation by over 100 reporters worldwide (The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism) of offshore money hiding/laundering/taxation avoidance, is a cause célèbre of underhandedness seldom, if ever, revealed to the world’s public. It is comparable to lifting a rotting log in the woods and finding an active nest of millipedes, red worms, and cockroaches scampering about to escape the bright sunlight. They can’t stand the sunlight because darkness is their life.

“It’s the biggest leak in history, dwarfing the data released by the Wikileaks organization in 2010. For context, if the amount of data released by Wikileaks was equivalent to the population of San Francisco, the amount of data released in the Panama Papers is the equivalent to that of India,” (BBC News, April 5th).

Remarkably, it may only be the tip of an iceberg, a big one, as the incident references the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. There are likely many more in the world of behind the scenes finance.

The Panama Papers, containing info on thousands of shell companies set up to avoid taxes and hide assets for over four decades from 1977 to 2015, are all about millionaires and billionaires and the politically connected “sticking it to” average citizens of the world by hiding money from fellow countrymen’s taxation policies and/or theft of state funds and laundering money. It is outrageously heinous and deserving of criminal incrimination and/or tarring and feathering whilst run out of town on a rail. It also begs the question of how many more rich pillagers are out there.

Already, major worldwide figureheads, like the PM of Iceland, have fallen. “As much as $21 trillion in global wealth is hidden behind largely-untraceable shell companies such as those exposed in the Panama Papers, according to watchdog group Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition,” (NBC News, April 6, 2016.).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Does Methane Threaten Life?

Does Methane Threaten Life?

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The question of whether methane (CH4) in the atmosphere is a threat to life is extraordinarily complex and generally not well understood. But, yes it is a serious threat, very serious and horribly real.

Okay, but don’t scientists understand this, and why aren’t they speaking out?

They are speaking out but only a very few.

Here’s the “speaking out” problem: Leading climate scientists are not willing to honestly expose their greatest fears, as discovered by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! whilst at COP21 in Paris this past December, interviewing one of the world’s leading climate scientists, Kevin Anderson (University of Manchester) of Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research who said: “So far we simply have not been prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly… many are ultimately choosing to censor their own research.”

Straightaway, we know from one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change that climate scientists are censoring their own research. But why?

“What we are afraid of doing is putting forward analysis that questions the paradigm, the economic way that we run society today… We fine-tune our analysis so that it fits into the economic reality of our society, the current economic framing. Actually our science now asks fundamental questions about this idea of economic growth in the short term, but we’re very reluctant to say that. In fact, the funding bodies are reluctant to fund research that raises those questions,” Democracy Now! Top Climate Expert: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk, Dec. 8, 2015.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Indian Point: Fukushima’s Mini-Me

Indian Point: Fukushima’s Mini-Me

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Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant New York continually leaks radioactivity into the Hudson River. This has been going on for years. Seriously!

Meanwhile, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo agrees with advocacy groups such as Riverkeeper, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and The Sierra Club to close Indian Point. Why? Environmentalists claim the radioactive leaks are “just the tip of the iceberg,” Amy Kraft, Indian Point Nuclear Plant Called ‘Disaster Waiting to Happen, CBS News, Feb. 26, 2016.

According to CBS News, water at one of the monitoring wells for Indian Point showed a 65,000% increase in tritium, which, according to nuclear industry specialists, is the kind of radiation that passes through the body very quickly via urination. That’s a relief!

On the other hand, “… little research has been done on the health effects of exposure to increased levels of tritium. But the NRC states: ‘Exposure to very small amounts of ionizing radiation is thought to minimally increase the risk of developing cancer, and the risk increases as exposure increases,” Ibid.

On second thought, “the risk increases as exposure increases,” doesn’t sound too good. After all, +65,000% likely hits the marker within the category of “risk increases as exposure increases.” When is too much, too much?

“However, Jerry Nappi, a representative for Entergy Corporation, said that the most recent issue at Indian Point would not have any impact on human health or life in the river. ‘Concentrations would be undetectable in the river,’ Nappi told CBS News. ‘We know from more than 10 years of hydrological studies on the site that it [radioactive contaminants] can’t reach drinking water sources in nearby communities,” Ibid.

So, where do the radioactive contaminants go?

But wait, there’s more, according to Riverkeeper, since at least August 2005, radioactive toxins such as tritium and strontium-90 have been leaking from at least two spent fuel pools at Indian Point into the groundwater and the Hudson River.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima’s 5th Year of Full-Blown Crisis

Fukushima’s 5th Year of Full-Blown Crisis

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March 11th is the 5th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japan’s NHK broadcaster recently conducted a poll of how citizens feel about nuclear power. According to NHK’s poll results, over 70% are in favor of completely or partially abandoning nuclear power plants. Nothing too surprising about that, but on the other side of the spectrum, the Abe administration is pushing real hard to re-open closed nuclear power plants, in fact some are already splitting atoms like crazy.

Here’s what the March 1st 2016 issue of Scientific American says about the prospects for Fukushima/TEPCO on its 5th anniversary: “Today the disaster site remains in crisis mode… Even more troublesome, the plant has yet to stop producing dangerous nuclear waste,” Madhusree Mukerjee, 5 Years Later, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Site Continues to Spill Waste, Scientific American, March 1, 2016.

According to Naohiro Masuda, Chief Decommissioning Officer for Tokyo Electric Power Company (“TEPCO”), the technology required to remove nuclear fuel from the reactors does not exist yet: “Engineers are studying the problem, but we don’t think that there’s no way to remove the fuel. There’s huge risk involved. If you make one small mistake, it might cause a huge problem for the local people, or even worldwide. We have to be aware of that possibility,” Steve Featherstone, Fukushima: Five Years Later, Popular Science, March/April 2016.

“There’s huge risk involved. If you make one small mistake, it might cause a huge problem for the local people or even worldwide.” Those are the words of the Chief Decommissioning Officer for TEPCO. Here’s the problem: TEPCO doesn’t even qualify for “small mistakes,” all of their mistakes, and there have been many, mucho mistakes, have been huge, big, gigantic, elephantine mistakes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima – Deep Trouble

Fukushima – Deep Trouble

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history’s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation’s soul.

Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the way around the planet. That’s a lot of book boxes. Now, fill the boxes with radioactive waste. Forthwith, that’s the amount of radioactive waste stored unsheltered in one-tonne black bags throughout Fukushima Prefecture, amounting to 9,000,000 cubic metres

But wait, there’s more to come, another 13,000,000 cubic metres of radioactive soil is yet to be collected. (Source: Voice of America News, Problems Keep Piling Up in Fukushima, Feb. 17, 2016).

And, there’s still more, the cleanup operations only go 50-100 feet beyond roadways. Plus, a 100-mile mountain range along the coast and hillsides around Fukushima are contaminated but not cleansed at all. As a consequence, the decontaminated land will likely be re-contaminated by radioactive runoff from the hills and mountains.

Indubitably, how and where to store millions of cubic metres of one-tonne black bags filled with radioactive waste is no small problem. It is a super-colossal problem. What if bags deteriorate? What if a tsunami hits? The “what-ifs” are endless, endless, and beyond.

“The black bags of radioactive soil, now scattered at 115,000 locations in Fukushima, are eventually to be moved to yet-to-be built interim facilities, encompassing 16 square kilometers, in two towns close to the crippled nuclear power plant,” Ibid.

By itself, 115,000 locations each containing many, many, mucho one-tonne bags of radioactive waste is a logistical nightmare, just the trucking alone is forever a humongous task, decades to come.

According to Japanese government and industry sources, cleaning up everything and decommissioning the broken down reactors will take at least 40 years at a cost of $250 billion, assuming nothing goes wrong.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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