Germany Rejects Fracking
The German newspaper, Spiegel, reports that Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler were “very skeptical” about the process.
Environmental groups in Germany had already begun mobilizing and organizing protests to stop ExxonMobil’s fracking plans.
Spiegel: German Government to Oppose Fracking
Germany has put the brakes on plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to extract natural gas in places where it is difficult to access, such as shale or coal beds. Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler have agreed to oppose the controversial process for the time being, SPIEGEL has learned.
Sources in the German government said that the ministers were “very skeptical” about fracking, which injects chemicals as well as sand and water into the ground to release natural gas. “There are many open questions which we will first have to carefully examine,” Rösler told close associates.
With their stance, the two ministers are opposing plans by energy companies to use the fracking process to tap into deposits of natural gas in shale, especially in northern and eastern Germany.
Americans Endorse Various Energy, Environment Proposals
Americans as a whole favor a wide-ranging set of proposals for dealing with the nation’s energy and environment situations, but support varies markedly across party lines. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor opening up federal lands for drilling, and expanding the use of nuclear energy. Democrats are more likely to favor each of six different proposals, including emissions-control measures, spending government money on alternative sources of energy, and increasing enforcement of environmental regulations.
Also: Republicans are asshats.
Two Years Later, BP’s Oil Still Wreaks Havoc Along the Gulf Coast
Two years ago today (friday), a Deepwater Horizon oil rig run by BP exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and released 200 million gallons of oil into the surrounding waters. The oil spill was detrimental to the surrounding ecosystem, economy and communities. The Institute for Southern Studies recently released Troubled Waters, a report on the aftermath of the oil spill and its consequences in the Gulf Coast.
Death Valley’s 113°: Hottest April Temperature On Record In U.S.
Nearly every weather station in the Inter-mountain West has broken, tied, or come within 1- 2 °F of their all-time record April heat record since Sunday. Most notably, the 113°F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California on Sunday, April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S.
According to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the hottest reliable April temperature ever measured in the U.S. was 113°F in Parker, Arizona in 1898. A 113°F reading was also taken at Catarina, Texas in April 1984. A hotter 118°F reading measured at Volcano Springs, CA in April 1898 is considered unreliable, since we don’t know much about the exposure conditions or if the thermometers were even in shelters at remote California desert stations back in the 1880s and 1890s. The previous hottest April day in Death Valley was 111°F. Yesterday, the high temperature in Death Valley “cooled off” to 110°F, merely the third highest April temperature ever measured there. The heat wave peaked Sunday and Monday, and temperatures will be closer to normal for the remainder of the week.
As is often the case when a major Nor’easter is affecting the Eastern U.S., the record-breaking heat is due to a contortion of the jet stream that has created a strong ridge of high pressure over the Western U.S. Wunderground’s extremes page lists 56 stations in the West in the past four days that have tied or broken all-time heat records for the month of April, including:
Phoenix, Arizona: 105°F (previous 105° April temperatures occurred on 4/20/1989 and 4/29/1992)
Las Vegas, Nevada: 99°F (tying old record set 4/30/1981)
Reno, NV: 90° (old record 89° 4/30/1981)
Elko, NV: 87° (old record 86° 4/30/1981). This also beat the previous so-warm-so-early-in-the-season record by 4°
Ely, NV: 84° (old record 82° 4/28/1992)
Winnemucca, NV: 90° (tying old record set 4/30/1981)
Grand Junction, CO: 89° (tying all-time April record also set on 4/29 and 4/30, 1992)Boise, ID (91°) and Salt Lake City (88°) both came within 1°F of their record April max.
Each Major News Network Covered Donald Trump More Than Climate Change In 2011.
Every program included in our analysis devoted more airtime to Donald Trump’s flirtation with a presidential run and birther antics than to climate change in 2011, with the exception of ABC World News, which gave equal time to the two topics. Together, the broadcast networks spent more than twice as much time covering Donald Trump. The discrepancy was most glaring on NBC’s Meet the Press, which devoted 23 minutes to Trump but did not cover climate change at all in 2011.
When our own (in)actions threaten the planet, we question science, bicker about responsibility, and generally ignore it.
We are, truly, our own worst enemies.”
_
That aliens premise is based on history, psychology, and Will Smith movies.
(via realcleverscience)
Rhinos are being poached "at record rates" for their horns, which could lead to the species' extinction in less than fifteen years.
The number of illegally hunted rhinos this year may reach over 600, surpassing last year’s record high of 448. Conservationists estimate that the world rhino population has plummeted 90% since 1970.
“We’ve certainly reached a tipping point in rhino populations. There is no way that our national populations can sustain the level of poaching,” Pelham Jones, chairman of the South Africa Private Rhino Owners Association, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conservation summit in Nairobi.
Selling the horns is a lucrative business; one horn can be worth $60,000 per kilogram, which is more than the price of gold. The horns are sold on the Asian market as a cure for various ailments including cancer, a claim scientists have dismissed.
In the video here, NBC correspondent Rohit Kachroo describes the killing and decimating of the rhino population as “mass murder.”
Reuters: Surveillance, penalties needed to halt rhino poaching-conservationists
NAIROBI - Better surveillance and stiffer penalties must be imposed to combat rhino poaching in Africa, which if left unchecked could see the species become extinct in the wild by 2025, regional conservation officials said on Tuesday.
The world’s rhino population has declined 90 percent since 1970, conservationists estimate. On the African continent, there are some 20,150 white rhinos that are near threatened and 4,840 black rhinos that are critically endangered.
The Global Post: Rhino poaching: More rhinos are dying than are being born
South Africa’s rhinos are being poached at record rates, their horns trafficked to Asia to be ground up and used in an attempt to treat cancer and other maladies. Western experts say rhino horns — made of keratin, like fingernails — have absolutely no medicinal value.
Yet the endangered animals are being killed in record numbers. More rhinos are dying than are being born.
A record 448 rhinos were killed in 2011, despite a barrage of efforts to stop the poaching. The number has increased steadily since 2008, when 83 of the animals were killed.
We need to deal with this as soon as possible
"There's just no reason to hand the richest industry on Earth a bonus to help them wreck the planet."
[…]
We should be outraged, but there’s a problem: The very word “subsidies” makes American eyes glaze over. It sounds so boring, like something that has everything to do with finance and taxes and accounting, and nothing to do with us. But bring yourself to focus on fossil-fuel subsidies for just a minute, and you will realize just how loony our policy is.
Start this way: You subsidize something you want to encourage, something that might not happen if you didn’t support it financially. Take education. We build schools, pay teachers and give government loans and grants to college kids. Families too have embraced education subsidies, with tuition often being the last big subsidy we give the children we’ve raised. The theory is: Young people don’t know enough yet. We need to give them a hand and a chance when it comes to further learning, so they’ll be a help to society in the future. From that analogy, here are five rules that should be applied to the fossil-fuel industry.
1. Don’t subsidize those who already have plenty of cash on hand.
No one would propose a government program of low-interest loans to send the richest kids in the country to college. We assume that the wealthy will pay full freight. Similarly, we should assume that the fossil-fuel business, the most profitable industry on Earth, should pay its way. What possible reason is there for giving, say, Exxon a tax break? Year after year the company sets records for money-making. Last year it managed to rake in a mere $41 billion in profit, just failing to break its own 2008 all-time mark of $45 billion.
2. Don’t subsidize people forever.
If students need government loans to help them get bachelor’s degrees, that’s sound policy. But if they want loans to get their 11th bachelor of arts, they should pay themselves. We learned how to burn coal 300 years ago. A subsidized fossil-fuel industry is the equivalent of a 19-year-old repeating third grade yet again.
3. Don’t abandon important subsidies just because in one instance they didn’t work out.
The government gave money to a solar power company called Solyndra. The company went belly-up. That stung. But since we’re in the process of figuring out how to perfect solar power and drive down its cost, it still makes sense to subsidize it. Think of it as the equivalent of giving a high-school senior a scholarship to go to college. Most of the time that works out. But a few kids are going to spend four years drinking; consider them human Solyndras. The subsidy wasn’t well spent on those kids, but we don’t shut down the entire college loan program as a result.
4. Don’t subsidize something you want less of.
At this point, the greatest human challenge is to get off fossil fuels. If we don’t do it soon, the climatologists tell us, our prospects as a civilization are grim. So why are we lending a significant helping hand to companies intent on driving us toward disaster? It’s like giving a fellowship to a graduate student who wants to pursue a thesis on “Strategies for Stimulating Doughnut Consumption Among Diabetics.”
5. Don’t give subsidies to people who have given you cash.
Most of the men and women in Congress who vote each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies. In essence, they’ve been given small gifts by outfits to whom they then return large presents, using public money, not their own. Oil Change International estimates that fossil-fuel companies get $59 back for every dollar they spend on donations and lobbying. It’s no different from sending a college financial aid officer a $100 bill in the expectation that he’ll give your daughter a scholarship. That’s bribery. And there’s no chance it will yield the best energy policy or the best student body.
These five rules don’t get at the biggest subsidy we give the fossil-fuel business: the right to pour their waste into the atmosphere for free. But they would be a start, a statement that we no longer will be played for suckers and saps. There’s just no reason to hand the richest industry on Earth a bonus to help them wreck the planet.
FedEx CEO Hits the Nail on the Head....."The human cost of this reliance on petroleum from unstable and unfriendly parts of the world has cost this country dearly, and we need to work as hard as we can to solve this problem."
(via reddit)
Monsanto, a half-century of health scandals
Read the linked article to see all the fucked up shit Monsanto has done.
Hi Kids! Biotechnology Is Helping Improve the Health of the Earth By Injecting Poisons Into Our Food!
Monsanto, Dow, Dupont and friends may have reached a new low by bringing their genetically engineered lies into the classroom via their new Look Closer at Biotechnology, an activity book/fairy tale that tells kids about “all the wonderful ways” that biotechnology grows more food, helps the environment and improves our health, none of which is true, but anyway….Brought to you by the Council for Biotechnology Information (sic), a corporate mouthpiece whose sole aim is to make more money for these guys.
“Hi Kids! This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology - a really neat topic. Why is it such a neat topic? Because biotechnology is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the people who call it home.”
Big Oil, Big Government, and Big Hypocrisy
Putting this under a read more because it’s long as hell.
US Oil Boom “Increases Energy Vulnerability”
As the International Energy Agency warns that world oil markets face a “bumpy ride” in the months ahead, Barack Obama has being trying to defend his energy policies.
But Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College takes issue with Obama’s stance in a great article in the Nation. Rather than being a leader in the clean energy revolution, America risks falling far behind.
So how did this happen?
Kare argues that “It was not very long ago that America seemed headed on a path of reduced dependence on fossil fuels—oil, coal and natural gas—and greater reliance on renewable forms of energy, such as wind and solar … But Obama’s commitment to renewables has wavered in the face of relentless attacks from Republicans in Congress and the economic realities of energy production. “
Klare goes on to argue that “Obama and his Republican opponents want us to believe that the accelerated exploitation of domestic fossil fuels will enhance American national security.”
But this is a false promise. “Not only will increased reliance on domestic fossil fuels perpetuate our vulnerability to disorder in the Middle East (given the global nature of the oil market and resulting oil-price dynamics); it will also expose us to a host of other perils, ranging from drinking-water contamination to accelerated climate change”
