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According to new government procurement data, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have purchased an undisclosed number of secret surveillance cameras that are being hidden in streetlights across the country.

Quartz first reported this dystopian development of federal authorities stocking up on “covert systems” last week. The report showed how the DEA paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC. approximately $22,000 since June for “video recording and reproducing equipment.” ICE paid out about $28,000 to Cowboy Streetlight Concealments during the same period.

“It’s unclear where the DEA and ICE streetlight cameras have been installed, or where the next deployments will take place. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have provided funding for recent acquisitions from Cowboy Streetlight Concealments; the DEA’s most recent purchases were funded by the agency’s Office of Investigative Technology, which is located in Lorton, Virginia,” said Quartz.

Below is the list Of contract actions for Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC. Vendor_Duns_Number: “085189089” on the Federal Procurement Database:

Christie Crawford, who co-owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, said she was not allowed to talk about the government contracts in detail.

“We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures,” Crawford told Quartz. “Basically, there’s businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that’s what we do. They specify what’s best for them, and we make it. And that’s about all I can probably say.”

However, she added: “I can tell you this—things are always being watched. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement has a reason to set up surveillance, there’s great technology out there to do it.”

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

Images of Children Crying

June 23, 2018

Images of Children Crying

René Magritte Le Mal du Pays (Homesickness) 1940

The two most viral photographs of the ‘Trump Separation Scandal’ have now been debunked, or at the very least been proven to have been used ‘out of context’. This is a dangerous development, as are the reasons to use them the way they have been. Both pictures are of children who had not been separated from their mothers at all. But both were used to depict just that: a child being taken away from its mother.

What’s dangerous about this is, first, that those who spread the narrative regardless of the truth may next permit themselves to use images from entirely different locations or times to make their point. Yes, children have been taken from parents at US borders. And attention for that is warranted, very much so. But playing loose with the facts turns those facts into a mere narrative in which nobody can tell fact from fiction anymore.

First, a week ago already, I saw this on RT:

Debunked: Viral Image Of Crying, Caged Toddler ‘Detained By ICE’ Not What It Seems

A distressing image of a crying toddler locked in a barred cage after purportedly being detained by US immigration officials has gone viral – but despite online claims, it does not actually depict what has been alleged. The image, which shows a little boy crying in a cage as he looks out between its bars, was shared by activist journalist and undocumented migrant Jose Antonio Vargas as a comment on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on families.

In the same thread, Vargas admitted that he came across the photo on a friend’s timeline and was still looking for the original source. Nevertheless, the snap quickly went viral with Vargas’ post garnering more than 23,000 retweets and many others sharing the image across their own social media accounts.

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

Volcanic Activity Melting Ice at the North & South Poles

June 8, 2018

Volcanic Activity Melting Ice at the North & South Poles

Scientists have long suspected that there is a thermal heat source under the ice in Antarctica that may be the real cause of some ice melting in that region rather than climate change theories. NASAhas confirmed that indeed this heat source exists which many have been searching for over a long period of time.

At the North Pole, there is the Gakkel Ridge which runs about 1800 miles from Greenland to Siberia. It is a ridge which is littered with volcanic activity and has countless hydrothermal vents. REALscientists in geology see this ridge as a hotbed of irregular volcanic activity. It appears that the rise in volcanic activity is building in the Arctic Oceanas well. This is of serious concern for if the ice melts, then the water will evaporate and return as snow building up the glaciers in the North and ensuring that we will indeed see crop failures for the next cycle.

Of course, there is no money to be had if the melting ice is not caused by humans but mother nature herself. So we should expect a fierce battle and a denial that volcanic activity has ANYTHING to do with melting ice.

So welcome to living in a complete state of denial as long as there is money on the table to grab. It makes sense that our models are showing a sharp rise in volcanic activity from 2018 onward on a global scale. It looks like just maybe the ice ages are created by the increase in volcanic activity that starts the massive snow that creates the glaciers & ice ages.

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

Toward a More Reflective Planet

June 26, 2016

Toward a More Reflective Planet

CAMBRIDGE – The last time the atmosphere held as much carbon dioxide as it does today was about three million years ago – a time when sea levels were 10-30 meters higher than they are now. Climate models have long struggled to duplicate those large fluctuations in sea levels – until now. Indeed, for the first time, a high-quality model of Antarctic ice and climate has been able to simulate these large swings. That is smart science, but it brings devastating news.

The new model shows that melting in Antarctica alone could increase global sea levels by as much as one meter (3.2 feet) by the end of this century – well above prior estimates. Worse, it suggests that even extraordinary success at cutting emissions would not save the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, locking in eventual sea-level increases of more than five meters. As little as one meter could put at risk entire cities, from Miami to Mumbai, and cause enormous economic disruption.

We need to turn down the heat – and fast. To this end, albedo modification – a kind of geoengineering intended to cool the planet by increasing the reflectivity of the earth’s atmosphere – holds tremendous promise.

Injecting synthetic aerosols that reflect sunlight into the stratosphere, for example, could help counter the warming caused by greenhouse gases. The mechanism is similar to wearing a white shirt in the summer: white reflects sunlight and cools what is underneath, whereas darker colors absorb sunlight and heat.

To be sure, even in the best-case scenario, solar geoengineering alone could not stabilize the world’s climate. For that, we must both stop pumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere and learn how to remove what is already there. That is why emissions cuts should receive the lion’s share of resources devoted to combating climate change.

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

Scientific concern begins over lack of Great Lakes’ ice

February 4, 2016

Scientific concern begins over lack of Great Lakes’ ice

Thursday, February 4, 2016, 2:56 PM – Ice coverage on the Great Lakes is near record-low levels for this time of year, and scientists are concerned about the effect this will have on wildlife species in the months to come.

Southern Ontario set some record high temperatures on Wednesday, February 3, 2016. For example, the afternoon high of 16oC at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport managed to beat out all other records for the day in the city going back to 1842. It was also the highest daily temperature ever recorded for Toronto in the month of February going back 174 years.

While typical February chills were interrupted by this unusually balmy day, the Great Lakes were still feeling the effects of an already unusually warm winter, with some of the lowest ice coverage numbers on record.

Back on January 11, coverage was logged at just 3.8 per cent – remarkably low, given what the previous two years were like by that time of the year, and largely a consequence of a warm December thanks to the strong El Niño pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

Since then, although there were a few days in the latter half of January where coverage actually got up into the double-digits, as of February 3, only 5.7 per cent of the lakes were covered with ice.

Credit: NOAA GLERL

By comparison, in 2015, ice coverage was at 50.5 per cent, while in 2014 – the year with the second highest coverage on record since 1973 – it was 71.6 per cent.

The unusually large expanse of open lake water so far this winter has been providing fuel for some pretty intense snow squalls. Looking at the current forecast for the rest of February, with a cold snap is expected going into Week 2, and then a return to mild weather later in the month, it’s likely that will continue, even with a slight rebound in ice coverage that should come during that cold snap.

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

On Thin Ice: Big Northern Lakes Are Being Rapidly Transformed

November 20, 2015

On Thin Ice: Big Northern Lakes Are Being Rapidly Transformed

As temperatures rise, the world’s iconic northern lakes are undergoing major changes that include swiftly warming waters, diminished ice cover, and outbreaks of harmful algae. Now, a global consortium of scientists is trying to assess the toll.

For more than 25 million years, Lake Baikal has cut an immense arc from southern Siberia to the Mongolian border. The length of Florida and nearly the depth of the Grand Canyon, Baikal is the deepest, largest in volume, and most ancient freshwater lake in the world, holding one-fifth of the planet’s above-ground drinking supply. It’s a Noah’s Ark of biodiversity, home to myriad species found nowhere else on earth. It’s also changing fast, due to heat-trapping greenhouse gases that are increasingly disrupting the climate.

Pavelblazek/Wikimedia Commons

Lake Baikal in March. Records show that Baikal’s ice season is growing shorter and its ice thinning.

Baikal’s surface waters are warming at an accelerating pace, rising at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over the past quarter century — twice as fast as global air temperatures, new research shows. The ice season, which typically covered the lake from January through May, has been shortened by nearly three weeks since the mid-1800s, and the ice has thinned nearly 5 inches since 1949. By the end of the century, scientists say that Baikal could be ice-free a month or more longer than today.

This rapidly changing climate threatens the lake’s unique, cold-adapted creatures, including the iconic nerpa — the world’s only true freshwater seal — whose fertility drops in warmer winters. Fishermen complain that the omul — a once-bountiful species of whitefish — has already grown scarce. Rising temperatures may also factor into some mysterious new problems plaguing the lake in the past few years. The brilliant green underwater forests of endemic Baikal sponges are dying, victims of an unknown pathogen. And dense algal mats choke wide swaths of bottom near shore.

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

Satellite Provides Sharper Picture of Shrinking Ice Sheet – Truthdig

December 28, 2014

Satellite Provides Sharper Picture of Shrinking Ice Sheet – Truthdig.

LONDON—Greenland’s ice sheet shrank by an average of 243 billion tonnes a year between 2003 and 2009—a rate of melting that is enough to raise the world’s sea levels by 0.68 mm per year.

In what is claimed as the first detailed study, geologist Beata Csatho, of the University of Buffalo in the US, and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they used satellite and aerial data to reconstruct changes in the ice sheet at 100,000 places, and to confirm that the process of losing 277 cubic kilometres of ice a year is more complex than anyone had predicted.

The Greenland ice sheet is the second biggest body of ice on Earth—second only to Antarctica—and its role in the machinery of the northern hemisphere climate is profound.

Careful measurements

It has been closely studied for decades, but such are the conditions in the high Arctic that researchers have tended to make careful measurements of ice melt and glacier calving in fixed locations—in particular, at four glaciers—and then try to estimate what that might mean for the island as a whole.

“The great importance of our data is that, for the first time, we have acomprehensive picture of how all of Greenland’s glaciers have changed over the past decade,” Dr Csatho said.

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

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