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Newest Blog Entries:
AlterNet: Debating the Future of Our World’s Water
Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, April 15, 2012AlterNet: Some Red States Are Already Running Out Of Water
Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, April 15, 2012Stop the Nuclear Industry Welfare Program – Sen. Bernie Sanders
Posted by Michael Butler, Saturday, April 14, 2012The Fuel Pools of Fukushima: THE GREATEST SHORT-TERM THREAT TO HUMANITY
Posted by Michael Butler, Thursday, April 12, 2012Why Trees Matter – NYTimes.com
Posted by Michael Butler, Thursday, April 12, 2012Scientists Link Bee Deaths to Pesticide in Corn Syrup
"Researchers led by biologist Chensheng Lu of Harvard University report a direct link between hive health and dietary exposure to imidacloprid, a so-called neonicotinoid pesticide linked to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious and massive die-off of bees across North America and Europe."Posted by Michael Butler, Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Keystone XL’s Dirty Little Secret
Posted by Michael Butler, Tuesday, April 10, 2012Swiss villages, sitting on a gold mine, refuse to budge
Posted by Harry Sifton, Monday, April 9, 2012Scientists: Increase in US Earthquakes Almost Certainly Manmade
Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, April 8, 2012David Sirota: Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need New Roads
Sirota ..Instead of beefing up public transit, cities build neighborhood-destroying highways, cars fill up those highways, cities then build more highways to alleviate traffic, and then yet more cars flood the roads, creating even more traffic .. But what happens when America suddenly tones down its love affair with the automobile? At that point, could we still justify destroying neighborhoods to make room for bigger roads? Could we still pretend that more roads are truly necessary? Could we still overlook the fact that road construction creates fewer jobs than public transit projects?.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, April 8, 2012
Smithsonian: Looking Back on the Limits of Growth
Smithsonian magazine ..Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s,The Limits to Growth. Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030 .. However, the study also noted that unlimited economic growth was possible, if governments forged policies and invested in technologies to regulate the expansion of humanity’s ecological footprintthere's a graph that show Turner's predictions from 1970 to 2000 were correct, then shit hits fan in 18 years unless we change course - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, April 8, 2012
Peru Passes Monumental Ten Year Ban on Genetically Engineered Foods
Posted by Harry Sifton, Saturday, April 7, 2012Poland Announces Complete Ban on Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Maize
Posted by Harry Sifton, Saturday, April 7, 2012USGS: Recent Earthquakes ‘Almost Certainly Manmade’ | Common Dreams
Posted by Michael Butler, Friday, April 6, 2012Brian Moench: Autism and Disappearing Bees, A Common Denominator?
Moench in Common Dreams ..studies [show] autistic children and their mothers have a high rate of a genetic deficiency in the production of glutathione, an anti-oxidant and the body’s primary means of detoxifying heavy metals. High levels of toxic metals in children are strongly correlated with the severity of autism. Low levels of glutathione, coupled with high production of another chemical, homocysteine, increase the chance of a mother having an autistic child to one in three. That autism is four times more common among boys than girls is likely related to a defect in the single male X chromosome contributing to anti-oxidant deficiency. There is no such thing as a genetic disease epidemic because genes don't change that quickly. So the alarming rise in autism must be the result of increased environmental exposures that exploit these genetic defects .. as participants in modern society we are all now exposed to over 83,000 chemicals from the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the consumer products we use. Pregnant women and their children have 100 times more chemical exposures today than 50 years ago. The average newborn has over 200 different chemicals and heavy metals contaminating its blood when it takes its first breath. 158 of them are toxic to the brainMoench is President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment - Utah has the highest rates of autism in the country - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, April 6, 2012
Time Running Out to Ensure Sustainable Prosperity for All
Posted by Michael Butler, Thursday, April 5, 2012TomDispatch: Tomgram: Michael Klare, Welcome to the New Third World of Energy, the U.S.
Posted by Michael Butler, Monday, April 2, 2012Mark Blaxill: Lies, Damned Lies and CDC Autism Statistics
The CDC just announced that 1 in 88 kids are now born with autism (1 in 54 boys; 1 in 256 girls) -- this is an article my brother Mark wrote at Age of Autism when in December of 2009 the CDC announced 1 in 100 kids were born with autism ..We’re facing a national public health emergency of historic proportions. Bigger than swine flu. Bigger than polio. Bigger than almost anything one can imagine except AIDS .. Following last week’s release of the latest CDC autism surveillance report, no amount of methodological obfuscation (“autism prevalence has clearly gone up but there are no real incidence studies”), epidemiological nihilism (“we simply can’t know without large scale, well-controlled, prospective studies”) or social deconstructionist nonsense (“autism is an intolerant invention of modern society”) should escape scorn. Anyone with a brain, a conscience and an ounce of integrity must acknowledge that we face a crisis. Meanwhile, those who would accuse the autism parent community of “denialism”, unscientific reasoning and irresponsible irrationality need to explain how their own theories, so dependent on the evidence-free suggestion that rates are rising because of “better diagnosing”, deserve to be considered respectable scientific speech. There is no more unscientific position in public health today than the fiction that rising autism rates come from better diagnosing. Let’s be clear, the only evidence for better diagnosing is wishful thinking. Our public health institutions deserve no credit for a job done better; quite the contrary, they deserve an investigation into their negligencei'll post his response to the latest news as soon as its online - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, March 31, 2012
Earth Sends Climate Warning by Busting World Heat Records
Posted by Michael Butler, Monday, March 26, 2012Companies Pick Up Used Packaging, and Recycling’s Cost
Stephanie Strom reporting in the NYT ..“Local governments are literally going broke and so are looking for ways to shift the costs of recycling off onto someone, and companies that make the packaging are logical candidates,” said Jim Hanna, director of environmental impact at the Starbucks Corporation. “More environmentally conscious consumers are demanding that companies share their values, too.” Perhaps most important, he said, “companies are becoming more aware that resources are limited and what they’ve traditionally thrown away — wow, it has value.” It is now cheaper to recycle an aluminum can into a new can than it is to make one from virgin material, and the same is becoming true for plastic bottles. “Shredding, melting, recasting and rerolling used aluminum beverage cans into new aluminum can sheet saves 95 percent of the energy that it takes to make can sheet from raw ore,” said Beth Schmitt, director of recycling at Alcoasomething tells me that this article is corp media PR for Starbucks and Alcoa (plus Nestle, Coco Cola, Walmart also among corps mentioned in the article), but if its true that its now cheaper to recycle aluminum and plastic bottles than to mine/manufacture them, well .. then that's good news - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, March 25, 2012
Unprecedented, “Eye-Popping” Temperatures Soar, Highs Continue
Common Dreams has a news summary of the various stories about the freaky weather, including this by Bill McKibben in The Guardian ..For 25 years climatologists have been telling us to expect exactly this kind of weather — such extremes become ever more likely as we warm the planet. It's not just heat; it's also drought and flood. Last year the US suffered through more multi-billion-dollar weather disasters than any other year in history. And it's not just the US — in 2010, the world's largest insurance company said there was no way to explain the rapid planetary spike in extreme weather except for global warming- mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Smirking Chimp (6)
Why labor won't vote for Obama; Goldman Sachs resignation barely scratches the surface; The Occupy movement's "growing pains"; Women as the new "illegals"; As health and environmental damages of fracking mount, PA puts gag order on MDs.Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, March 20, 2012
NYT (8): National News
U.S. may restrict fracking mortgages; Not surprisingly, fact check shows Romney lying about Obama energy policy; GOP plans two-week PR assault prior to SCOTUS debate on health care bill; Bloomberg takes harsher tack toward OWS; Both Justice Dept. and grand jury step in in FL shooting of black youth; Study finds children eating too much sugar; Computers may win in chess and Jeopardy, but, so far, not re crossword puzzles.Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, March 20, 2012
NYT (7): Foreign Affairs
As hawks lead debate on Iran, Pentagon is unhappy with results of Israeli attack simulation; Drones are sticking point in U.S.-Pakistani relations; Brazil puts oil rig team under house arrest over spill; Syrian peace march is cut short by authorities; Activist Lutheran pastor overwhelmingly wins German presidency; In wake of Kony2012 video, Uganda seeks to clean up its image.Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, March 20, 2012
NYT (5): National News
GOP expects convention contention; Cataloguing nature's natural noise before it all disappears; A book on "why American's are losing their inalienable right to self-governance"; A book on "America's pursuit of absolute security at all costs"; Philosopher Alain de Botton's new book, "Religion for Atheists."Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, March 18, 2012
