Lexacat's Guide to the Doom.

So bad, I can't keep track of it anymore without losing it.

2010-06-09T11:39:00.001-04:00

Sorry, I can't do it right now. Maybe soon. Thank you.

Earthquakes, storms, doom.

2010-02-28T19:24:00.002-05:00

Obviously, the doomiest thing going is the horrible earthquake in Chile, but the storms that hit Europe are pretty unbelievable too.

"More than 40 people have been killed in France after it was battered by heavy rain and hurricane-force winds in the country's worst storm for more than a decade.
Many victims drowned in floods, while others died when they were hit by falling trees and branches or when parts of buildings broke off.

At least a dozen people were missing and around 60 others were injured in the storm, named Xynthia.

Strong gusts reached speeds of about 130mph on the summits of the Pyrenees and almost 100mph along the Atlantic Coast.

More than one million residents suffered power cuts. Worst affected was central France and Brittany, where rivers overflowed."
Link to Sky News

Despite horrific earthquake in Haiti, Doomsday clock moving backwards.

2010-01-14T10:17:00.003-05:00

Despite the heartbreaking scenes of devastation in Haiti, the Doomsday Clock's hands are being moved one minute backwards.

"Thursday it was moved from 5 minutes to midnight to 6 minutes to midnight."

Link to ABC news story

The weather gets worse. Doom!

2010-01-06T11:36:00.001-05:00

"Temperatures as low as -22C (-8F) have left 122 dead in Poland this winter and the main river, the Vistula, has frozen over, causing fears of flooding.

In the UK, thousands of schools are closed and travellers have been hit by major delays after heavy snowfall affected large parts of the country.

In the Swiss Alps avalanches have killed at least seven people.

Western France has issued a weather alert for 14 regions hit by heavy snow.

Extreme or severe weather warnings are still in place across the UK, which is in the grip of its longest cold snap for almost 30 years.

UK travel chaos

Its hospitals have implemented major incident plans to deal with the extreme weather.

On Tuesday up to 20cm (8in) of snow fell in parts of Scotland and northern England, causing travel chaos for millions of people.

Another 40cm (16in) has been forecast in some areas as the snowfalls spread from north to south.

Gatwick airport was closed on Wednesday morning, while Heathrow, Birmingham, Luton and Southampton were open but suffering delays and cancellations.

Forecasters at the UK's Met Office said the bitterly cold weather was forecast to continue for the next couple of weeks, with further snowfall expected at times."
LINK to BBC

Arctic chill covers most of the northern hemisphere. Doomed? Yes.

2010-01-04T20:05:00.001-05:00

"
Arctic air and record snow falls gripped the northern hemisphere yesterday, inflicting hardship and havoc from China, across Russia to Western Europe and over the US plains.

There were few precedents for the global sweep of extreme cold and ice that killed dozens in India, paralysed life in Beijing and threatened the Florida orange crop. Chicagoans sheltered from a potentially killer freeze, Paris endured sunny Siberian cold, Italy dug itself out of snowdrifts and Poland counted at least 13 deaths in record low temperatures of about minus 25C (-13F).

The heaviest snow yesterday hit northeastern Asia, which is suffering its worst winter weather for 60 years. More than 25 centimetres (10in) of snow covered Seoul, the South Korean capital — the heaviest fall since records began in 1937.

In China, Beijing and the nearby port city of Tianjin had the deepest snow since 1951, with falls of up to 8in and temperatures of minus 10C. In the far north of China, the temperature fell to minus 32C. More than two million Beijing and Tianjin pupils were sent home and 1,200 flights were delayed or cancelled at Beijing’s international airport."
LINK to Times Online

Oil spill in China. 2010, still DOOMED.

2010-01-03T11:30:00.001-05:00

"A large oil spill in northwest China has heavily polluted a tributary of the Yellow River, and threatens to reach one of the country’s longest and most important sources of water.

China’s state-run news media said late Saturday that a “large amount” of diesel oil had leaked out of a pipeline last Thursday in Shaanxi Province.

The government has not explained why the report of the spill was not released until late Saturday. But Xinhua, the official state news agency, said the leak was caused by construction work and that a crew of 700 people was struggling to contain the damage from what Shaanxi officials said was about 150,000 liters, or about 40,000 gallons, of diesel oil."

Link to NYT

DOOMED! Well, Brazil and power, anyway.

2009-11-10T22:42:00.001-05:00

It has been a two month hiatus, during which I have gone absolutely bananas and have had more things going on in my own life than I could keep up with, but hey, I am not about to ignore our impending DOOM.

"A massive power failure blacked out Brazil's two largest cities and other parts of Latin America's biggest nation for more than two hours late Tuesday, leaving millions of people in the dark after a huge hydroelectric dam suddenly went offline.
Paraguay was also affected when the Itaipu dam straddling the two nations' border stopped producing 17,000 megawatts of power, resulting in outages in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and at least several other big Brazilian cities, Brazilian Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said.
The cause of the failure had not been determined, but Lobao said strong storms uprooted trees near the Itaipu dam just before it went offline and could be to blame. Rio was the hardest hit city, he said."
Link to Yahoo News

How doomed are we? Very doomed, thank you.

2009-09-01T10:18:00.002-04:00

Excellent and disturbing interactive map from teh Nature Conservancy - shows you climate change temperature scenarios based on 3 possible levels of emissions, based on the IPCC reports.

Link to Climate Wizard map

California burning

2009-09-01T10:08:00.001-04:00

"A voracious 6-day-old wildfire that has destroyed more than 50 buildings and churned through more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush showed only small signs of slowing Monday, and fire officials offered little hope of containment as long as hot, dry conditions continued.

The Station fire, the largest of several burning in the state, was plowing through dense hillside vegetation along the San Gabriel Mountains, cutting a remarkable swath that extended from Altadena into the high desert. On Monday, the fire advanced to the west, bringing new evacuations to Sunland-Tujunga and coming within a few miles of Santa Clarita."

Oh Danny Boy? Looking like an interesting weekend for Rhody.

2009-08-26T13:28:00.003-04:00

Link to Accuweather

Up to 90,000 expected to die from H1N1 this fall. Yeah, we're doomed.

2009-08-25T15:55:00.003-04:00

"The H1N1 flu virus could cause up to 90,000 U.S. deaths, mainly among children and young adults, if it resurges this fall as expected, according to a report released Monday by a presidential advisory panel.
The H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu virus, could infect between 30 percent and 50 percent of the American population during the fall and winter and lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported.
The report says 30,000 to 90,000 deaths are projected as part of a "plausible scenario" involving large outbreaks at schools, inadequate antiviral supplies and the virus peaking before vaccinations have time to be effective."
LINK to CNN

Go go Rhode Island, Island.

2009-08-25T15:49:00.003-04:00

In further fabulous economic news out of Rhode Island, the state government is broke, and will close for 12 days.

" Rhode Island will shut down its state government for 12 days and hopes to trim millions of dollars in funding for local governments under a plan Gov. Don Carcieri outlined Monday to balance a budget hammered by surging unemployment and plummeting tax revenue.
The shutdown will force 81 percent of the roughly 13,550-member state work force, excluding its college system, to stay home a dozen days without pay before the start of the new fiscal year in July.
The closures come as the worst recession in decades has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in tax collections and pushed unemployment to 12.7 percent, the second-highest jobless rate in the nation behind Michigan.
Carcieri predicted the state's fiscal future could grow even bleaker."

Link to AP story

Rivers drying, wildebeests dying.

2009-08-10T12:02:00.002-04:00

"The drying-up of the river, which should be at its highest point at the end East Africa's long rainy season, is one of a series of ominous signs that conservationists believe could add up to an ecological disaster.
The sun-scorched boulders that ring the shore of Kenya's Lake Baringo are cut by a sharp brown line, running horizontally, that shows the watermark of the past. Beneath the dark divide is an expanse of white stone freshly bared to the elements as the lake has receded dramatically.
A report released last week by Kenya's Water Resource Management Authority has dismissed any hopes that these phenomena could be unrelated.
In the report, Simon Mwangi, the authority's Rift Valley regional technical manager, said that the River Perkerra, which feeds Lake Baringo, and the Malewa which drains into Lake Naivasha, were at their lowest levels on record.
The picture was similarly bleak, he reported, with the Ewaso Nyiro and Mara rivers. The country's great lakes from Turkana in the north to Nakuru, and the economically vital Naivasha, home to Kenya's flower industry, were also alarmingly low.
The answer to the riddle of the Mara's dwindling waters, and the general drought conditions, lies upstream, in the Mau forest.
The Mara river originates on the Mau escarpment, eventually draining into Lake Victoria. The largest remaining forest in Kenya, Mau functions as a water tower for the East African country, feeding rivers and helping to regulate rainfall.
However shocking reports this year have a revealed that the eco-system is under siege from illegal loggers and land-grabbing farmers, as well as large and small recipients of political patronage. Many of those are smallholders receiving parcels of the forest as "land for votes", while Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper named two of the children of former president Daniel arap Moi as among the bigger owners.
There effect is a devastating fragmentation of what environmentalists call an ecological utility whose services stretch from watering Kenya's tea estates to feeding the rivers powering its hydroelectric plants, and regulating temperature and rainfall throughout an often arid land. Despite being home to the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme, Kenya has systematically ignored warnings over the importance of conserving the Mau forest. While the troubled coalition government in Nairobi has belatedly begun to recognise the problem, it has so far done next to nothing about it."

LINK

Severe storms devastate Asia, 600 missing in Taiwan

2009-08-10T11:57:00.002-04:00

"Two typhoons in Asia have killed dozens of people, left hundreds missing and forced nearly 1 million people to flee to safety, officials and reports said Monday.
A typhoon-spawned mudslide engulfed a mountain village in southern Taiwan, burying up to 600 people, a police official and a rescued villager said Monday.
Typhoon Morakot dumped up to 80 inches of rain on some communities over the weekend before moving on to China, where it forced the evacuation of nearly 1 million people along the east coast and left at least six dead. Earlier it had struck the Philippines, leaving at least 22 dead."
LINK

Climate change leading to political instability? No kidding.

2009-08-10T11:54:00.002-04:00

"The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.

Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.

Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition."

LINK to NYT article

Doomed

2009-07-28T10:26:00.002-04:00

Droughts in the Pacific Northwest leading to increased fire danger -
"It will be hot, dry and a bad fire year for much of the West, Forest Service researchers are predicting."
LINK

Rain in the Northeast messing with summer businesses -
"Relentless rain and cool weather since early June have sent visitors scrambling home and washed away millions of tourism dollars across the Northeast....June was the wettest on record in Atlantic City, N.J., and the second-wettest in New York City. In Portland, rain fell on 21 of the final 24 days of the month. And July hasn't been much better. Rain continued and it was chilly, failing to hit 60 three times in Portland....Businesses that cater to tourists already anticipated a slow season because of the recession. Then they got a double whammy with the raw weather."
LINK

Rhode Island keeps up it's winning streak

2009-07-21T01:18:00.003-04:00

"Rhode Island's soaring unemployment rate is the second worst in the country, behind only Michigan, and by far the highest among the six New England states. Rhode Island's unemployment rate for June was 12.4 percent, second to Michigan's 15.2 percent."
LINK

Tomato blight spreading

2009-07-05T21:32:00.000-04:00

"The earliest and most widespread case of a serious plant disease ever in the East is forcing the removal of tomato plants from stores in New York and New England. This infectious disease is called late blight, the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. It does occur occasionally in the Northeast, but this year's rainy weather has accelerated the spores' airborne spread. On top of that, infected plants have been widely distributed by big-box retail stores.
According to the Associated Press, the disease is not harmful to humans, but it is quite contagious. It is most likely spread on garden center shelves to plants that were not involved in the initial infection. Once plants reach gardens, both home and commercial ones, the disease can also spread."
LINK

And now there are locusts. What's next, the blood rain?

2009-06-23T21:09:00.003-04:00

"Crops in large swathes of Ethiopia risk being destroyed by swarms of locusts coming from northern Somalia, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Tuesday.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) "reports that locust swarms have been confirmed in seven regions in the country, including in areas where there is no previous record of infestation," a statement said.
...The vast majority of Ethiopia's 77 million inhabitants depend on subsistence agriculture and have been badly hit by successive infestations of voracious locusts that destroy every plant in their path. ."
LINK

The weather is ridiculous!

2009-06-23T00:05:00.000-04:00

"•April and May had only 3 clear days each, and there has been none so far in June.

•The average temperature in June has been 62.6, or 3.5 degrees cooler than normal.

•In the first 18 days of June, 12 were cooler than average and 6 were warmer than average.

•Precipitation for the year was 1.32 inches less than normal as of 6 p.m. Friday.

•In the 90 days since March 20, 55 have brought measurable rain or at least a trace of precipitation. "

Link to Projo

Level 6

2009-06-11T11:42:00.002-04:00

"The World Health Organization raised the swine flu alert Thursday to its highest level, saying H1N1 has spread to enough countries to be considered a global pandemic.
Increasing the alert to Level 6 does not mean that the disease is deadlier or more dangerous than before, just that it has spread to more countries, the WHO said.
As of Wednesday evening, the virus had spread to 72 countries, the health agency said. There were 25,288 confirmed cases and 139 deaths. The United States had 13,217 cases and 27 deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday."
LINK

Here in Rhody -

"The state Department of Health has confirmed 39 cases of H1N1 swine flu in Rhode Island as of 11 a.m. Tuesday, twice as many as a week ago.
Health officials report that the illness continues to spread around the state, with increases in isolated cases as well as clusters of flu-like illnesses. Growing numbers of children and people with chronic health problems are getting sick, and more are being hospitalized.
Most illnesses in Rhode Island have been milder than seasonal influenza, but 10 people with swine flu have required hospitalization.
Late Monday, the North Providence School Department announced that the Greystone Elementary School would close for the rest of the week because three children tested positive for swine flu.
"We are seeing more cases in schools, more hospitalizations and more individuals who have underlying medical conditions being affected," said Health Director David R. Gifford, in a statement. "Everyone needs to continue to be vigilant about handwashing, coughing and sneezing into elbows, and staying home if they are sick. We expect that this will likely continue throughout the summer and into the fall.""
LINK

Ok, here it comes.

2009-06-10T23:51:00.001-04:00

I have a $50 bet riding on this (oil reaching $200 by 2010) (yeah, big money- and anyway, if I'm paying more at the gas station, will it really matter?) but anyway...

"The price of oil burst through the $71 a barrel mark today amid revelations that proven reserves had fallen for the first time in 10 years and predictions that the price could eventually hit $250.
The latest high – from lows of $30 only four months ago – came on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where the cost of July deliveries rose by $1.35 to $71.36.
This comes on top of a $2 rise the day before as investors rushed into the market on the back of lower stockpile figures, higher demand estimates and speculation against further falls in the dollar.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we're testing $80 in a week or two," said one analyst, while BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, questioned whether $90 could be the "right" value."

link

Now, what fresh hell is this?

2009-06-03T11:11:00.001-04:00

I have been looking at this for 2 days in wonderment. That is no place for tropical storm formation.

Why people read Dan Brown - and yes, it is doom-y.

2009-05-20T10:56:00.003-04:00

Excellent op-ed in the NYT, and I think it does explain a couple of mystifying and doom-trending aspects of American life- the absolute abandonment of any kind of moral standards, and the dreadful popularity of such a bad writer. Italics are mine.

"Brown is explicit about this mission. He isn’t a serious novelist, but he’s a deadly serious writer: His thrilling plots, he’s said, are there to make the books’ didacticism go down easy, so that readers don’t realize till the end “how much they are learning along the way.” He’s working in the same genre as Harlan Coben and James Patterson, but his real competitors are ideologues like Ayn Rand, and spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. He’s writing thrillers, but he’s selling a theology.

...The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married."

Link

Crazy Raspberry ants on the march. Flamethrowers, anyone?

2009-05-20T10:52:00.001-04:00

"A destructive menace is heading west on Interstate 10 toward San Antonio.
It's the crazy Raspberry ant that was first spotted in Houston in 2002. No one knows where it came from or how to control it, but it reproduces faster than any insect experts have ever seen.
"This is an alien species," says Sam Houston State University Entomologist Dr. Jerry Cook. "This is in higher densities than any other insects I've ever seen. They number in the billions and cover everything around them."
"Where you'll have 200,000 ants in a big fire ant mound, you'll have billions of crazy ants in one area, in that one group. They form a carpet of ants over acres that is several inches thick."
"It's a potential ecological disaster, displacing everything in front of it, other insects. Some people think getting rid of insects is good but it's not good for the environment. Insects play a vital role. When you destroy insects, you destroy the food for birds and other animals that depend on these insect populations. It could affect our food supply, reducing the crop yield by 30 to 40 percent." "

LINK

Department of Homeland Security still out of its mind, wants to mess with hurricanes.

2009-05-20T10:48:00.001-04:00

"More than 25 years later, despite the dubious results of past research and other concerns raised by critics, the Department of Homeland Security is attempting to establish a hurricane modification program of its own, but NOAA appears unwilling to provide the critical support the DHS program requires.
...The goals of the workshop were to understand and evaluate new approaches for modifying hurricanes, which DHS regards as a threat to national security following the death and destruction wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, and to decide how best to move forward.
Despite NOAA's hosting of the workshop, NOAA has rebuffed subsequent efforts by DHS to involve NOAA in its hurricane modification research, according to high-level sources within NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
...So far, the lack of interest from NOAA, the government agency responsible for issuing official forecasts of hurricanes through its National Hurricane Center, has not stopped DHS from developing a plan for hurricane modification research and testing. William Laska, program manager for DHS's Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), which is spearheading the department's hurricane modification efforts, outlined a suggested road ahead at an April American Meteorological Society meeting on weather modification.
The plan envisions three research tasks beginning toward the end of 2010 and ending in early 2016: Evaluation of storm modification approaches via computer model simulations, development of concepts for potential field experiments, and full-scale testing of one or two of the most viable concepts. Total cost to carry out the plan was estimated at $64.1 million."
LINK

Hello, hurricane season of 2009.

2009-05-18T22:57:00.003-04:00

Invest 90, lurking off the coast of Florida today, two weeks before the season 'officially' opens.

Link

Aha! Swine flu freaking man-made evil blah blah!

2009-05-14T02:03:00.002-04:00

Hmmmm....
"May 13 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization is investigating a claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.
...“One of the simplest explanations is that it’s a laboratory escape,” Gibbs said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today."
LINK

Rapid icemelt practically destroys small Alaskan town.

2009-05-11T08:03:00.002-04:00

"Temperatures in some parts of Alaska soared into the 70s this week, causing a rapid "melt-out" of ice and snow along the Yukon River and unprecedented flooding that nearly wiped out the small community of Eagle.

...Borg says the Yukon rose 30 feet over its normal level when 4- to 7-foot-thick ice pans surged downstream, choking the river and bulldozing islands and shorelines. The devastation stretches for miles up and down the river, where trees have been sheared off and muddy banks scooped away like chocolate ice cream."

LINK

jfc dude

2009-05-05T02:41:00.002-04:00

too depressed to update. read the freaking news yourself.

You say tomato, I say tomahto... Let's call the whole thing off.

2009-05-04T00:23:00.003-04:00

A "nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington" has renamed our problems.

"Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

...Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. "

Link

Swine flu- this is horrendous.

2009-04-24T17:54:00.001-04:00

Jesus.

"Fears of getting a killer bug are sweeping across the Mexican capital as reports erupted about an epidemic of swine influenza that is said to have killed dozens in recent weeks. The government ordered all schools and universities in Mexico City shut and advised people to pull their children out of nurseries and avoid busy places such as restaurants, bars and cinemas. Pharmacies rapidly sold out of hygienic masks and vitamin supplements. Many clinics stuck signs on their doors advising they had run out of influenza vaccines.
...News of the flu had been lingering for several days but surged to national attention late Thursday after a televised announcement from Federal Health Minister José Angel Córdova. "With the information obtained this afternoon, we have before us the threat of a new type of influenza," Cordova said, announcing the first total school closures over the urban area of 20 million since the 1985 earthquake. Mexican authorities said there had been 20 deaths confirmed from the virus in recent weeks, mostly healthy adult men and women, who were in groups not normally considered vulnerable. Then panic increased to fever pitch on Friday when the World Health Organization upstaged the Mexican government by saying that 60 deaths may have been caused by the virus."
LINK

Really interesting!

2009-04-21T23:48:00.002-04:00

Great article about planned urban shrinkage and creation of city land banks in Flint, MI.

"Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods.

The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.

“Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” said Dan Kildee, the Genesee County treasurer and chief spokesman for the movement to shrink Flint. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”"

LINK

Hell is other people.

2009-04-07T02:48:00.002-04:00

I know there are a million and fifty other terrible things that happened today, but, and I know it's my own damn sin for it, but this is the one that made me cry.

"First it was Quack, then Mack, followed by brother Jack. Now add Pack to the list of mallard ducklings purloined from the Robert McCloskey.
Boston Park rangers discovered the foul act yesterday at 10 a.m. They noticed the bronze sculpture was missing and had been sawed from its mount, said parks spokeswoman Mary Hines.
The duckling, number seven of eight, is part of a beloved tribute to Robert McCloskey’s prize-winning 1941 children’s book “Make Way for Ducklings.”

Link

Detroit...

2009-04-05T02:14:00.002-04:00

Unreal.

"People are leaving Michigan at a staggering rate. About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.

...Since 2001, migration has cost Michigan 465,000 people, the equivalent of the combined populations of Grand Rapids, Warren and Sterling Heights -- the state's second-, third- and fourth-largest cities.
Population loss of that magnitude is so rare that its impact has never been studied.

..."These numbers -- my God," said Kurt Metzger, a demographer who heads a local nonprofit. "It's like a perfect storm -- the education, the income, the young people, everything is going in the wrong direction." "

LINK

But, if you stay, there's meat to be had:

"When I arrived in the office one morning, I eagerly told my co-workers about my run-in (almost, but not literally) with a pheasant that crossed my path as I cut through a Highland Park neighborhood. Turns out, such sightings are not all that uncommon.
One guy I work with says locals hunt pheasants and other small game at an east side neighborhood park and they've seen coyotes at the nearby cemetery.
Today, Detroit News writer Charlie LeDuff writes about the Coon Man, a 69-year-old licensed hunter and furrier and retired truck driver who supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.
Charlie writes that a beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River, fox skulk at the Palmer Park golf course, wild turkey roam vacant fields and bald eagle, hawk and falcon dot the city skies.
Mind you, hunting is prohibited within Detroit city limits. But with things being what they are, "Starvation is cheap," Glemie Dean Beasley says."

LINK

And now someone has died at the protests, I'm going to take a minute to think about someone who TRIED to do something.

2009-04-01T23:36:00.003-04:00

Fuck. It's all too awful for words. What the hell.

"A man died last night during theG20 protests in central London as a day that began peacefully ended with police saying bottles were thrown at police medics trying to help him.
The man had collapsed within a police cordon set up to contain the crowds who had assembled in central London and the City to protest over the G20 summit. There were 63 arrests on the day."
LINK
Really, I don't know. I only know that this is the kind of story that breaks my fucking heart .

Even the banks can't afford the houses anymore...

2009-03-31T00:48:00.003-04:00

This bodes ill and is infuriating. There should be pitchforks and marchings and I'm not ruling out the guillotine.

"City officials and housing advocates here (South Bend, Ind.) and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.

The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a property thought to be in foreclosure.

In Ms. James’s case, the company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it.

“It is what some of us think is the next wave of the crisis,” said Kermit Lind, a clinical professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and an expert on foreclosure law.

...“Nobody has any idea who owns what or who’s responsible,” said Judy Fox, Ms. James’s lawyer at the Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic. “It’s a very common story.”"

LINK

Cali quake storm - hmmm.

2009-03-27T00:14:00.000-04:00

"A "swarm", or series, of earthquakes, most of them small, has taken place this late March in Southern California along the infamous San Andreas Fault Zone. While none has been severe, the earthquake swarm raises interesting questions in a region that is always bracing for the "big one"; that is, a catastrophic shake effecting lives and property of millions.
A swarm of earthquakes has been defined as "a series of minor earthquakes, none of which may be identified as the mainshock, occurring in a limited area and time. ". This swarm began on March 21st, 2009, beneath the floor of the Salton Sea off Bombay Beach, California. The swarm continued through at least March 24. Strongest of the tremors was a Magnitude 4.8 shake that happened on the 23d with an epicenter about two and one-half miles south of Bombay Beach. While the M4.8 quake was widely felt, by far most of the quakes had magnitudes below M2.0 meaning that they were unlikely to be felt by most (if not all) people. Focal depth, which represents the starting point within the earth of the rupture triggering the shaking, was mostly between 2 and 5 miles underground. "
LINK

And another sign of hideous economic depression. Damn, this makes stewing up a possum sound likely, soon.

2009-03-25T02:30:00.004-04:00

"Many bargain hunters these days are trading supermarket aisles for the auction circuit in search of deep discounts on everything from cereal to spare ribs. Past the sell-by date? Bidders are happy to ignore that detail if they're getting a good deal.
...The economic downturn, paired with the worst food inflation in nearly 20 years (grocery prices spiked in 2008 before easing in January and February), has caused a "seismic shift" in consumer behavior, said Brian Todd, president of The Food Institute, an industry information service.
...Marvin Mason, who runs grocery auctions in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, said the percentage of shoppers who use credit cards and food stamps instead of cash has increased, indicating more people are showing up out of necessity."
LINK

Frak. We're so effing stupid.

2009-03-25T01:57:00.004-04:00

Unbelievable. WTF, mate? From Discover-

"In preparation for future oil shale mining projects near the Rocky Mountains, six oil companies have gained rights to billions of gallons of water in the American West, potentially jeopardizing water supplies throughout the region, according to a new report by Western Resource Advocates [pdf], an environmental group. It is still preliminary to speculate on the implications of the findings, but many are concerned that if the companies put their rights to use, water will be shifted away from agriculture and community use.
Using public records, the report examines more than 200 water rights held by six energy companies, including Shell and ExxonMobil, which, it is estimated, are collectively entitled to divert at least 6.5 billion gallons of water from rivers in western Colorado, as well as almost 2 million acre-feet of water from the state’s reservoirs, which is enough to supply the Denver metro area for six years. Shale oil production is a water-intensive process: up to five barrels of water are consumed for every barrel of oil produced. This means that projects producing 1.55 million barrels of oil per day would require 378,000 acre-feet of water each year, compared to the Denver metro area’s consumption, which is less than 300,000 acre feet. Should oil shale production hit full stride in the next 15 to 20 years — something the White House under President George W. Bush tried to accelerate by opening up 2 million acres controlled by the Bureau of Land Management to leasing and approving royalty rates and leasing rules — there will be a major political battle over water rights."

LINK to Discover blog, which has further links in it. Amazingly good coverage of this shit.

Good luck, Fargo. You betcha.

2009-03-25T01:14:00.002-04:00

"More rainfall combined with melting snow has increased the risk of severe flooding in North Dakota, with the city of Fargo bracing for what could be a local disaster of historic proportions.
The fear is that the river could overtake all previous records. As of Tuesday evening, the Red River ran at about 32 feet -- 14 feet above flood stage. A record level of 41.1 feet was set back 1897. One hundred years later a flood sent the river to 39.57 feet, in 1997.
The record level of the river set in the April 1897 flood could be surpassed Friday, said Cecily Fong of the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services.
City officials said the difference between this year and 1997 is the amount of time given to prepare. In 1997, the city had about three weeks to get ready for the coming flood. This year, because of unforeseen warmer, wetter weather that moved things up dramatically, and residents have had half that time.
"We're concerned about the rise of the river and how fast it's coming up, so our concern is that we're going to hit 41 feet," Mahoney said, adding that the way the levees are currently set up, they would protect against overflow only up to 38 feet."
LINK

Doomed.

2009-03-22T23:09:00.001-04:00

"Growing world population will cause a "perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned.
By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences, Prof John Beddington said.
Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told a conference in London."
Link

Water scarcity = DOOM

2009-03-15T11:56:00.001-04:00

"Humanity is facing "water bankruptcy" as a result of a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilising the global economy, two authoritative new reports show. They add that it is already beginning to take effect, and there will be no way of bailing the earth out of water scarcity.
The two reports – one by the world's foremost international economic forum and the other by 24 United Nations agencies – presage the opening tomorrow of the most important conference on the looming crisis for three years. The World Water Forum, which will be attended by 20,000 people in Istanbul, will hear stark warnings of how half the world's population will be affected by water shortages in just 20 years' time, with millions dying and increasing conflicts over dwindling resources. "
LINK to article

Sea level rise to be much worse than predicted. Everybody go surfing now?

2009-03-10T11:14:00.001-04:00

"The global sea level looks set to rise far higher than forecast because of changes in the polar ice-sheets, a team of researchers has suggested.
Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.
The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added.
The implications for millions of people would be "severe", they warned.
Ten per cent of the world's population - about 600 million people - live in low-lying areas. "
LINK

250,000,000 environmental refugees by 2050 looking likely.

2009-03-09T14:44:00.003-04:00

"A growing body of evidence, including analyses from military experts in the United States and Europe, supports the estimate that by midcentury, climate change will make vast parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Analysts say it could trigger a migration the size of which the world has never before seen.

Some of the big questions remain unanswered: How many people will really move? Where will they go? How will they go? Will they return?

But experts estimate that as many as 250 million people -- a population almost that of the entire United States -- could be on the move by 2050. They will go because temperatures are rising and desertification has set in where rainfall is needed most. They will go because more potent monsoons are making flood-prone areas worse. They will go because of other water events caused by melting glaciers, rising seas and the slow and deadly seepage of saline water into their wells and fields.

The worst migration cases will be nations like the Maldives and small islands in the Pacific. Their inhabitants will go because their homelands will likely sink beneath the rising sea.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a minimum of 207 million people in Latin America, Asia and Africa will not have enough water inside a decade. In Asia, an extra 130 million people will be at risk of hunger by the middle of the century. By 2100, crop revenues in Africa will drop 90 percent. And scientists see Bangladesh as ground zero."

LINK

"Economy has fallen off a cliff", says Buffet.

2009-03-09T14:13:00.003-04:00

" March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. posted its worst results ever in 2008, said the economy “has fallen off a cliff” and that efforts to stimulate recovery may lead to inflation higher than the 1970s. "
LINK

Wildly depressing economic news.

2009-03-09T13:23:00.002-04:00

"In one of the bleakest assessments yet, economists at the World Bank predicted on Sunday that the global economy and the volume of global trade would both shrink this year for the first time since World War II.

The World Bank said in a new report that the crisis that began with junk mortgages in the United States was causing havoc for poorer countries that had nothing to do with the original problem.

...Even extremely pessimistic forecasters have predicted that the global economy would eke out a tiny expansion, on continuing if slowed growth outside the United States and Europe. In late January, the International Monetary Fund reduced its estimate for global growth this year to just 0.5 percent, the lowest level in more than 60 years."
LINK

So the Joads headed to Cali why?

2009-02-23T23:53:00.001-05:00

"The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California's sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms and towns.
Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence."
LINK

GAH! We're are so, so DOOMED.

2009-02-15T13:09:00.001-05:00

"The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.
"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "
LINK

Everything old is new again! New Depression, meet New Dustbowl! You're going to really go well together.

2009-02-12T00:19:00.002-05:00

"“You can see how the sand is just drifting,” said Mr. Brown, 65, digging his toe into the dust piled up at his feet. “This normally would be grass.”
The worst drought in nearly 100 years is racking three-quarters of Texas. Much of the state has not had a significant rainfall since August. Winter wheat crops have failed. Ponds have dried up. Ranchers are spending heavily on hay and feed pellets to get their cattle through the winter. Some wonder if they will have to slaughter their herds come summer. Farmers say the soil is too dry for seeds to germinate and are considering not planting.
“The last time we had a drought this bad was in January 1918,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist. " LINK

Well, this is interesting.

2009-02-09T17:50:00.001-05:00

The thing is, though, isn't it natural to feel anxious and depressed about the state of things?

"Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of "climate change delusion."
Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters.
There is evidence that extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, cyclones, and hurricanes, can lead to emotional distress, which can trigger such things as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, in which the body's fear and arousal system kicks into overdrive.
After Hurricane Katrina, rates of severe mental illness - including depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and a variety of phobias - doubled, from 6.1 percent to 11.3 percent, among those who lived in affected regions, a 2006 study by the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group said.
Rates of mild-to-moderate mental illness also doubled, from 9.7 percent to 19.9 percent.
"After a disaster, people can feel inadequate, like outside forces are taking control of their lives," said Joshua Miller, a professor at the Smith College School for Social Work who responds to disasters worldwide. "They can't see a positive future. They tend to lose hope or become depressed."
Severe disasters also destroy the infrastructure needed to provide mental health care, and forcibly displace people, severing social connections when people need them most, Miller said.
Climate change is expected to create about 200 million environmental refugees by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body established within the United Nations to evaluate causes and consequences of global warming." LINK

Drought sweeping China

2009-02-05T10:32:00.001-05:00

"China declared an emergency Thursday in eight provinces suffering a serious drought that has left nearly 4 million people without proper drinking water and is threatening millions of acres of crops.
The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief posted a notice on its Web site declaring the situation a level-two emergency on the country's four-level scale. It called it a drought "rarely seen in history." "

LINK

Crumbling infrastructure, no jobs, no money... looking good, USA.

2009-01-28T13:49:00.002-05:00

"The American Society of Civil Engineers issued an infrastructure report card Wednesday giving a bleak cumulative ranking of D.

"We've been talking about this for many many years," Patrick Natale, the group's executive director, told CNN.

...Roads got a D-, with Americans spending more than $4.2 billion a year stuck in traffic. "Poor conditions cost motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs. One-third of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 45 percent of major urban highways are congested," the engineers' report said.

Drinking water, D-. "America's drinking water systems face an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities," the report said. "Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day."

Inland waterways, D-. "The average age of all federally owned or operated locks is nearly 60 years, well past their planned design life of 50 years. The cost to replace the present system of locks is estimated at more than $125 billion."

Wastewater systems, D-. "Aging systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into U.S. surface waters each year."

Levees, D-. Many levees are locally owned and maintained, but they are aging and their "reliability" is not known. "With an increase in development behind these levees, the risk to public health and safety from failure has increased."

Solid waste got the highest grade at C+ because of success in recycling. "More than a third was recycled or recovered, presenting a 7 percent increase since 2000."

Bridges get a C. One in four of the country's bridges "are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete." The report cites progress in reducing such structures in rural areas but the problem is increasing in urban areas.

Rail gets a C-, with the report noting that a "freight train is three times as fuel efficient as a truck, and traveling by passenger rail uses 20 percent less energy per mile than traveling by car."

A C-minus was also given to public parks and recreation, with parks, beaches and other facilities generating jobs, income, and cleaner air and water.

The national power grid received a D+. "Progress has been made in grid reinforcement since 2005 and substantial investment in generation, transmission and distribution is expected over the next two decades."

The other categories -- aviation, dams, hazardous waste, schools and transit -- each received a D."
LINK

Aha! Yup.

2009-01-17T11:29:00.002-05:00

"Lake forms in downtown Montreal after 118-year-old pipe bursts.

The water main, which dates back to 1891, broke early Friday morning, sending a fountain of water shooting into the air.

...City trucks moved snow into the area to build a dam to prevent the water from spreading farther, including into the nearby Ville-Marie Tunnel.
"What we are looking at is a dam made of snow," said Jacques-Alain Lavallée, who speaks for the borough of Ville-Marie.

...Forcillo said the recent rash of water main breaks in Montreal should be a reminder to the federal government of the pressing need to help municipalities repair aging infrastructure." LINK

The road to hell is paved with.... unrecycled garbage, gathered out of good intentions?

2009-01-08T22:03:00.002-05:00

'...Then came the slump, decimating the Chinese recycling industry and leaving Britain, the US and others grappling with growing volumes of recycled waste and nowhere to send it.
..."Until about eight weeks ago, for example, the entire [US] west coast paper market was sent to China and most of it was sent south. It was processed and made into packaging for products that then shipped back to the US ... But when US consumer demand dropped off, that broke the cycle."
Across the scrap trade, prices have halved or worse in a matter of months.
...There is no longer demand for plastic granules from nearby companies such as Hongkai Plastic Products, which made items such as bicycle handlebars. Its owner, Mr Zheng, has sent 20 workers home. "My factory was hit by the economic crisis - it's been closed for two months already," he said. "We usually sell our products to a dealer and most of his business is exports. He didn't give us any more orders."
At a factory down the road, the response to queries was more brusque. "We've already gone bust," said a man, and hung up." link

Last post of the year? Maybe. Best? Maybe.

2008-12-31T00:53:00.002-05:00

"As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America 'Disintegrates' in 2010

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

...A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.
"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

...Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

...The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union -- 15 years beforehand. "When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him," says Prof. Panarin." LINK

Boom?

2008-12-31T00:44:00.000-05:00

"Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come.

Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone, but it's very unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days, said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

"They're certainly not normal," Smith said. "We haven't had earthquakes in this energy or extent in many years." LINK

Doomed. Sooner!

2008-12-26T19:55:00.001-05:00

"The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The survey -- which was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and issued this month -- expands on the 2007 findings of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the Southwest, the new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.
...In one of the report's most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as four feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world's major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. " LINK

the horror.... lol

2008-12-13T17:36:00.002-05:00

Ok, so every third article everywhere right now is about the recession/depression whatever, and how to be thrifty, crafty and wise, so there's a LOT of terrible ideas floating around, but this might be the worst.
From the crackpots at CNN, offering suggestions for budget holiday decorating comes this shocker:
"Tree topper
Crown your tree with this fun topper: Just ball up aluminum foil and weave silver ribbon in and out of the foil."

Sadly, there was no accompanying picture. One can only dream of it.

Acorns?

2008-12-13T17:20:00.002-05:00

This is bizarre and horrible and fills one with foreboding.

" Up and down the East Coast, residents and naturalists alike have been scratching their heads this autumn over a simple question: Where are all the acorns?

In far-flung pockets of northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states, scientists have found no acorns whatsoever.
"I can't think of any other year like this," said Alonso Abugattas, director of the Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington, Virginia.

..."WHAT IS GOING ON?" posted a resident of Maplewood, New Jersey. "Now we are finding dead squirrels! SHOULD WE ALL BE CONCERNED?"
Not necessarily, naturalists say. Last year Garris reported a bumper crop of acorns, which scientists say may be one clue to this year's scarcity. Virginia extension agent Adam Downing said acorn production runs in cycles, so a lean year is normal after a year with a big crop.
"It fits with the physiology of seed reproduction. The trees are exhausted, energy wise, from last year," Downing said.
But even he is surprised at the complete absence of nuts in parts of Virginia.
"There are plenty of acorns in most of the state, but zero acorns in some pockets," he said." LINK

Hell in a handbasket. Ayup.

2008-12-02T15:16:00.004-05:00

Well, just because I haven't had time to breathe doesn't mean that the Doom has slowed down. Au contraire- the world is getting weirder, scarier, and darker faster than anyone could keep up, let alone me in my own weird mental state (kind of like Nebraska but a little more desolate and with more vicious wolverines chasing me).

So. To sum up:

Cocaine-fueled terrorists took Mumbai for a few days, Americans ignored it and ate turkey and trampled a part-time Wal-mart employe to death in their frenzy to buy more crap made in China, and now residents of Kashmir are worried about potential retaliation. "I have asked my children to pay attention and be vigilant if shelling starts," said one woman.

Riots in Nigeria killed at least 400, and Thailand is "Feeling like a country on brink of civil war".

In economic news, Ford would like 9 billion dollars please, to stay in business, and we are officially in a recession. Bush is "sorry" that the financial crisis is hurting Americans.

As we turn to the environment, Venice is so flooded that fools are surfing in Saint Mark's Square, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is breaking off of Antarctica,
and the UN Comittee on Climate Change just warned ""Further expansion in the same style will generate global threats of really great intensity - huge droughts and floods, cyclones with increasingly more destructive power, pandemics of tropical disease, dramatic decline of biodiversity, increasing ocean levels," said Mr Nowicki.
"All these can cause social and even armed conflict and migration of people at an unprecedented scale."

So.

Happy Tuesday!

Under 8000.

2008-11-20T09:24:00.001-05:00

hot diggity damn.
And this makes me shudder-
"Pros Say: Get Used to Idea of Dow at 6,000

Stocks were down heavily Thursday, following Wall Street's overnight selloff. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a 5-1/2-year low, below 8,000, as a U.S. bailout of the auto industry appeared unlikely, spurring further economy fears. CNBC's experts believe the blue-chip index will fall a lot further before year end." LINK

or if that's too cheery for you, how about this one;
"Stocks fell in Europe and Asia on Thursday, a day after a withering sell-off on Wall Street sent shares to their lowest close since 2003.
“The problem is there is absolutely no silver lining visible,” said Arjuna Mahendran, head of Asian investment strategy Asia at HSBC Private Bank in Singapore. “The financial crisis may now be at its tail end and we are now in a second phase where corporate distress is the key issue. A third phase may come early next year, when emerging markets will really struggle as the crisis widens and exports continue to shrink.” LINK

I am so so sorry.

2008-11-17T22:03:00.003-05:00

" Polar bears are starving, drowning, resorting to cannibalism " LINK

Christ.
I don't even want to breathe.

Right now- earthquake off Indonesia. Tsunami warning.

2008-11-16T13:15:00.002-05:00

7.7.

LINK

California burning. Again.

2008-11-16T12:46:00.001-05:00

" Firefighters on Sunday picked through the devastation wrought by wildfires in two counties on Sunday while struggling to contain another monstrous fire that erupted suddenly in Orange County Saturday. The flames destroyed hundreds of homes and forced more than 10,000 people along the southern coast to evacuate.
...Firefighters were still trying to beat back ferocious wildfires in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara but were beginning to contain them. In the San Fernando Valley, there was fear that as workers sifted through the rubble of a trailer park that was quickly destroyed, an untold number of bodies might turn up. " link

That freaking mud volcano still going, 2 years later. Gov't gives up.

2008-11-13T23:15:00.002-05:00

I can't believe this is still going on! In 2006, I posted about this bad boy a lot. Dang. They tried to "choke it" by dropping in a lot of concrete- one idea, that has, unsurprisingly, failed.

Well, it looks like the Indonesian government is giving up on it.

"Indonesia's vice president said on Friday the government had given up all hope of halting a mud volcano in East Java which has displaced thousands of people, hurt businesses, and destroyed the local environment.
The disastrous mud volcano, which started erupting in May 2006 near Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya, has proved a huge problem for the government.
The hot, noxious mud has displaced more than 50,000 people, submerged homes, factories and schools and is now flowing at a rate of more than 100,000 cubic meters a day. Various attempts to halt the flow have all failed." LINK

We're all going to die. Sooner."Brown clouds dim Asia, threaten world's food"

2008-11-13T23:11:00.003-05:00

"Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threaten health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat to the global environment.
The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.
The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia — including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply "dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places." LINK

Reptiles at Yellowstone, headed out.

2008-10-28T11:21:00.001-04:00

Yeah, we're still so freaking doomed. Don't take my relative silence lately for an surge of optomism!

"Amphibian populations at Yellowstone - the world's oldest national park - are in steep decline, a major study shows.
The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change.
The results, reported in the journal PNAS, suggest that climate warming has already disrupted one of the best-protected ecosystems on Earth.
..."Snow pack during the winter is decreasing - which other studies have documented - and the regional aquifer is drying up as a result of these large-scale climate changes.
"These ponds are changing, the environment is changing, the landscape is drying up and the amphibians no longer have a place to breed. It's disturbing."
Amphibian populations are in crisis worldwide: pollution, diseases such as chytrid fungus and rana virus, invasive species, UV radiation and habitat destruction all contribute to the problem. " LINK

Oh Christ oh christ oh christ.

2008-10-09T22:48:00.003-04:00

This is like the fucking end of days.

Asia is TANKING right now.

This is beyond that 'interesting times' curse bullshit.

This is unreal.

LINK to NYT

This says so much.

2008-10-08T01:17:00.002-04:00

"People filing new claims for unemployment benefits by phone face longer wait times due to a spike in call volume.
The average wait to speak with a customer service representative at the state unemployment division on Monday, the center’s busiest day of the week, was 28 minutes, compared with 15 minutes last year, Raymond A. Filippone, assistant director, income support, for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training said yesterday.
The state’s caseload of unemployment claims, including new and continuing claims, has nearly doubled in the last year, to 21,000 cases, up from about 11,500 during the same time last year, Filippone said. The volume of new unemployment claims, he said, is up 12.2 percent from a year ago.
Rhode Island’s unemployment rate in August jumped to 8.5 percent, the second-highest in the country after Michigan, where the jobless rate was 8.9 percent. Rhode Island’s unemployment rolls in August swelled to 48,800, the highest level on record." LINK

And on and on and on and on......

2008-10-08T01:15:00.000-04:00

"Asian stocks remained in a sea of red on Wednesday as the sell-off in equities continued unabated for the fifth straight session.
Markets in Tokyo and Hong Kong dipped more than 5 percent, and Jakarta tumbled 9 percent, after another gloomy session on Wall Street that saw the Dow Jones industrial average notch its biggest five-day points fall ever.
The Nikkei 225 average lost 5 percent and the broader Topix tumbled 4.9 percent by mid-day as investors could not shake off fears that the global economy would slide into recession." LINK

Amid the horror, more horror.

2008-10-07T02:03:00.004-04:00

This has been the kind of day to really depress a girl.

This story is everywhere today, but was mostly buried by the global economic collapse-frenzy.

This is the kind of shit that makes you lose your mind. And meanwhile that block, that stone, that less than senseless thing Palin has been shooting wolves from helicopters. Seriously, can anyone not be freaking out?

Article chosen from the Washington Post, because they are the least dramatic version of this I can find, so no one can say I've posted this for drama- if you want more sources for this, hit here.

"25% of Wild Mammal Species Face Extinction
Global Assessment Paints 'Bleak Picture,' Scientists Say, and Figure of Those at Risk Could Be Higher

At least a quarter of the world's wild mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to a comprehensive global survey released here Monday.

The new assessment -- which took 1,700 experts in 130 countries five years to complete -- paints "a bleak picture," leaders of the project wrote in a paper being published in the journal Science. The overview, made public at the quadrennial World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), covers all 5,487 wild species identified since 1500. It is the most thorough tally of land and marine mammals since 1996.

"Mammals are definitely declining, and the driving factors are habitat destruction and over-harvesting," said Jan Schipper, the paper's lead writer and the IUCN's global mammals assessment coordinator. The researchers concluded that 25 percent of the mammal species for which they had sufficient data are threatened with extinction, but Schipper added that the figure could be as high as 36 percent because information on some species is so scarce.

Land and marine mammals face different threats, the scientists said, and large mammals are more vulnerable than small ones. For land species, habitat loss and hunting represent the greatest danger, while marine mammals are more threatened by unintentional killing by pollution, ship strikes and being caught in fishing nets." LINK

Wow, so freaking screwed, we are.

2008-10-06T21:01:00.003-04:00

This from the normally calm Telegraph.

"We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.
...During the past week, we have tipped over the edge, into the middle of the abyss. Systemic collapse is in full train. The Netherlands has just rushed through a second, more sweeping nationalisation of Fortis. Ireland and Greece have had to rescue all their banks. Iceland is facing an Argentine denouement.
The US commercial paper market is closed. It shrank $95bn last week, and has lost $208bn in three weeks. The interbank lending market has seized up. There are almost no bids. It is a ghost market. Healthy companies cannot roll over debt. Some will have to sack staff today to stave off default.
...We are fast approaching the point of no return. The only way out of this calamitous descent is “shock and awe” on a global scale, and even that may not be enough.
Drastic rate cuts would be a good start. Central bankers still paralysed by a misplaced fear of inflation – whether in Europe, Britain, or the US – have become a public menace and should be held to severe account by our democracies. The imminent and massive danger is now self-feeding debt deflation.
The lesson of the 1930s is that any country trying to reflate in isolation will be punished. The crisis will ricochet from one economy to another until every one is crippled. We are seeing it play again in this drama as our leaders fail to rise above their narrow, parochial agendas." LINK

Even more dramatic than Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 's semi-hysterical editorial are the comments left by readers, which are entertaininly insane and also kind of worrisome at the same time.

"Barack Obama brings to the Youth of America Hope and for America and the World, Peace and economic Prosperity. Just believe in Him and follow His teachings. A warning to those who go against Him, you will be cast away. "

"there will be martial law in the usa soon. the illuminati has planned it for years, but the yanks i have been talking to willfight to the death you evil bastards.the nwo will fail bush, cheney etc you have been warned"

"This is the beginning of the End Times. Just wait and see. The "solution" to this problem will be global governance and an end to money as we know it. If you don't take the mark, you will not be able to buy or sell."

Damn, I'm glad my fellow world citizens are so level-headed and reasonable. This should all work out fine.

Um, yeah, we're screwed.

WTF. Members of Congress told to vote for the bailout or there would be martial law.

2008-10-06T19:52:00.002-04:00

The party at the end of the world.

2008-10-05T16:25:00.004-04:00

"This time we will drink extra hard to make sure we forget the economic crisis too,' says Gunnghilder"

I totally want to hang out with Gunnghilder. If Iceland is crashing as hard as this article makes it sound, I might even be able to visit someday- I've wanted to go there for as long as I can remember, but ouch, so expensive. Although at this rate, no one's money will be worth anything soon. Seriously scary stuff.

"'What can we do? Its difficult times but we've spent all day talking about it, watching the news getting worse and worse. We had to go out and be with friends. Maybe it's like the party at the end of the world,' says Egill Tomasson, 32, sitting in the Kaffeebarinn bar.
Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out.

On Friday the queues at the banks were huge, as people moved savings into the most secure accounts. Yesterday people were buying up supplies of olive oil and pasta after a supermarket spokesman announced on Friday night that they had no means of paying the foreign currency advances needed to import more foodstuffs." LINK

Interview with the Somali pirates. They didn't say "Yarrgghh, matey" and they like spaghetti.

2008-09-30T12:13:00.004-04:00

“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, told The New York Times. “So we stopped it.”

...In a 45-minute-long interview, Mr. Sugule expounded on everything from what the pirates want — “just money” — to why they were doing this — “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters” — to what they eat — rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, “you know, normal human-being food.”
He said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.” LINK

Well, then. That certainly clears it up.

Now, that's a headline. "Panic grips world markets". Everybody panic?

2008-09-30T00:27:00.002-04:00

"Panic grips world's markets
Shock as American rescue plan rejected on a day of nationalisations and bail-outs
The US government's $700bn bail-out of the banking industry collapsed yesterday as Congress defied the White House by voting down the plan, sending Wall Street stocks plummeting and spreading shockwaves through the global economy.
As alarm mounted on Wall Street about the stability of the financial system, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by 777 points to 10,365 - its biggest percentage fall for seven years and its worst drop ever in terms of points.
Peter Morici, professor of business at the University of Maryland, said: "Things are going to get so bad something will have to be done in the next few weeks. Banks will sink, credit markets will seize, the economy will go into something much worse than a recession."" LINK

Such cheeky pirates!

2008-09-27T13:56:00.004-04:00

Because looking at the collapse of the bailout talks and the subsequent economic meltdown is a wee bit too stressful, I'm watching the pirates-with-battle-tanks. Their demands seem pretty reasonable, actually- $35 million doesn't seem like a lot for what they have.

"Somali pirates in a hijacked ship carrying more than 30 battle tanks were steaming toward a notorious pirate den on Saturday, and they vowed not to release the ship until a $35 million ransom was paid, Somali and Kenyan officials said.
Mr. Mohamed said that while the cargo in this case was extremely unusual — 33 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks and a large supply of ammunition and grenade launchers, all intended for the Kenyan military — the tactics were pretty typical.
“These guys just want the money,” he said.
He predicted that the pirates would reduce their ransom demand to $1 million to $2 million, though Ukrainian officials have not said whether they will pay any ransom at all. " LINK

Great, now the pirates have tanks. What a fantastic day.

2008-09-25T23:47:00.001-04:00

"KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- The Foreign Ministry says pirates have seized a Ukrainian-operated ship off Somalia.

...The ministry had no information on the ship's cargo. But the Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source as saying the ship was loaded with about 30 T-72 tanks and spare parts for them." LINK

A beautiful, beautiful post from a great blog.

2008-09-25T23:43:00.001-04:00

A Dismal Science is pretty great.

"It's a beautiful, black mountain of waste, greed, and debt. We haven't even begun feeling what liquefying that is going to feel like, and already the masses are restless. This is more than unwinding Bush's bubble. This is setting the national financial clock back to the 80's, when the credit boom began. Maybe all the way back to 1934, when the modern financial system last began anew.

Hell of a time to be alive." LINK to A Dismal Science

Well holy mackerel. WaMu is out, and McCain fucked the bailout.

2008-09-25T23:23:00.005-04:00

"A rescue for the U.S. financial system unraveled late Thursday amid accusations Republican presidential candidate John McCain scuppered the deal,
and Washington Mutual was closed by U.S. authorities and its assets sold in America's biggest ever bank failure.

As negotiations over an
unprecedented $700 billion bailout to restore credit markets degenerated into chaos, the largest U.S. savings and loan bank was taken over by authorities and its deposits auctioned off. U.S. stock futures fell by more than 1 percent." LINK

Keeping an eye on this.

2008-09-23T23:25:00.001-04:00

"The Northeast has been put on alert for potential tropical trouble this weekend. The low churning over the Dominican Republic has the potential to trek northward, then curve into the Northeast early Saturday as a powerful hurricane.

It must be stressed that this scenario is anything but certain. The path of the low will become clearer once it develops tropically and the low off the Carolina coastline takes shape. The latter low could keep the low now in the Dominican Republic over the open waters of the western Atlantic." LINK

Hot damn.

2008-09-23T23:16:00.001-04:00

"The FBI is investigating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG - and their executives - as part of a broad look into possible mortgage fraud, sources with knowledge of the investigation told CNN Tuesday.

The sources would not speak on the record because the investigation is ongoing.

FBI spokesman Special Agent Richard Kelko had no comment on that information, but said that 26 firms were currently under investigation as part of the bureau's mortgage fraud inquiry.

Earlier this month, FBI director Robert Mueller told Congress that 1,400 individual real estate lenders, brokers and appraisers were now under investigation in addition to two dozen corporations." LINK

Tent cities during an economic disaster? You don't say.

2008-09-19T02:11:00.005-04:00

"In hard times, tent cities rise across the country
Since foreclosure mess, homeless advocates report rise in encampments

Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" — an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.

From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.
Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening." LINK

So put on a happy face!

No you can't have a house. Not yours!

2008-09-18T22:52:00.002-04:00

This is one I'm just not sure what I think about.

"Some Ike victims may not be allowed to rebuild
Little-known state law could put Texas beach home owners in a bind

By MICHAEL GRACZYK and CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writers Thu Sep 18, 6:46 PM ET

GALVESTON, Texas - Hundreds of people whose beachfront homes were wrecked by Hurricane Ike may be barred from rebuilding under a little-noticed Texas law. And even those whose houses were spared could end up seeing them condemned by the state.
Now here's the saltwater in the wound: It could be a year before the state tells these homeowners what they may or may not do.

The reason: A 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.
Over the years, the state has repeatedly invoked the law to seize houses in cases where a storm eroded a beach so badly that a home was suddenly sitting on public property. The aftermath of Ike could see the biggest such use of the law in Texas history."LINK

WOW. Wow. This is an intersting story. I mean, this is really interesting.

I wonder how this law will be applied. So, if people are living, say, across the road from a beach, and a big storm wipes out the road (I'm thinking Matunuck, here, for Rhody-minded people, the new beachfront people suddenly on public property, and their home is condemned? Yikes!

But I VERY strongly support high/low tide line public access- in fact, it is one of my all time favorite things about Rhode Island- that that was written into the Rhode Island Constitution- "The Rhode Island Constitution specifically protects citizens' rights to fish from the shore, to gather seaweed, to leave the shore to swim in the sea, and to walk along the shore. In Rhode Island, state waters of public domain extend from mean high water three miles out to sea. Above mean high water, land and resources can be, and often are, privately owned."LINK

And hey, I want my right to fish from shore and gather seaweed, and if that's suddenly your front doorstep, I like my coffee cream, no sugar, thanks. I

ll be there.

So, all in all, a VERY interesting story, especially in light of all the the land loss we're looking at as the global warming/global storming plays out.

Lehman Brothers? More like Bush brothers. Cousins. Whatever.

2008-09-17T00:36:00.003-04:00

Startling, isn't it, what comes up when you Google bush + lehman.
Heckuva job, kids. Seems like everything these fuckers touch turns to gold for them and to shit for everyone else.

In August 2007, Lehman hired Jeb Bush as an advisor.
"Jeb Bush: Lehman’s Secret Weapon
In the arms race by private-equity firms to line up ever-higher profile “advisers,” Lehman Brothers may have just taken the lead.According to a small handful of reports Friday, including this one in Investment Dealers’ Digest and another in Private Equity Hub, the investment bank has hired former Florida Governor and presidential son and brother Jeb Bush for its in-house investing arm. " LINK

In May 2006, "Bush Cousin Heads to Lehman
Lehman Brothers(LEH Quote - Cramer on LEH - Stock Picks) has nabbed George H. Walker, the CEO of Goldman Sachs(GS Quote - Cramer on GS - Stock Picks) Hedge Fund Strategies, to be the global head of its $188 billion Investment Management Division, Lehman Brothers announced today.
Walker has already resigned from Goldman Sachs and could not be reached for comment. A spokesman at Goldman Sachs did not return a call.
Walker, who is President George W. Bush's second cousin, had joined the merger and acquisition group of Goldman Sachs in 1991 and became a partner in 1998. He soon grew to be one of the principal architects of Goldman Sachs' investment management strategy and was overseeing a $70 billion group of alternative investments, including hedge funds of funds and private equity investments.
At Lehman, Walker will oversee two and a half times the amount of assets under his belt at Goldman, as he will run a global group that includes not just alternative investments but also traditional assets, including mutual funds. He succeeds Theodore Janulis, who recently became global head of the firm's mortgage capital business. " LINK

OK, it's all going to hell in a handbasket, and I'm falling behind.

2008-09-14T23:16:00.002-04:00

Texas got hammered by Ike, Lehman Brothers is going down, and Chicago is underwater.
Ok, we're up to date now!

So effing doomed.

2008-09-05T03:29:00.001-04:00

"A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.
They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.
"The changes ... were massive and disturbing," said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec." LINK

Haitians 'screaming for help' after storms

2008-09-03T10:59:00.001-04:00

"SAINT-MARC, Haiti (AP) -- Haitian families scrambled onto rooftops and screamed for help Tuesday in a city flooded by Tropical Storm Hanna, as U.N. peacekeepers and rescue convoys tried in vain to reach them.
Iris Norsil, 20, managed to flee the western coastal city of Gonaives and told The Associated Press that people there were isolated by muddy waters as evening fell, many seeking refuge on rooftops as wind gusts drove horizontal sheets of rain that flooded roads and buildings.
"They are screaming for help," Norsil said, as a U.N. aid convoy tried unsuccessfully to drive into Gonaives, now surrounded by a virtual lake of floodwaters. A team of AP journalists accompanied the convoy." LINK

Best site to folllow Gustav

2008-09-01T03:00:00.000-04:00

http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/gustav.html

Fuckers! The dying bees? It's been Bayer. And they knew it.

2008-08-28T23:14:00.002-04:00

This is horrendous and makes me want to be violent.

" Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees.

A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning , Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer , the head of Bayer CropScience , after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.
The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.
The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.
Bayer CropScience , which has its U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park , said field studies have shown that bees' exposure to the pesticide is minimal or nonexistent if the chemical is used properly.
Clothianidin and related pesticides generated about $1 billion of Bayer CropScience's $8.6 billion in global sales last year. The coalition is demanding that the company withdraw all of the pesticides.
"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze , the coalition's attorney.
"Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years."
Under German law, a criminal investigation could lead to a search of Bayer offices, Mimkes said.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington , accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data." LINK

Fay screwing with Florida, alligators swimming the streets.

2008-08-21T23:12:00.003-04:00

"Homeowners in a Tropical Storm Fay-flooded community were being warned of an alligator swimming in their streets and near homes as record-breaking rain continued to fall Thursday.
The National Hurricane Center's projected path of movement for Tropical Storm Fay now includes a fourth Florida landfall as it continues to dump "historic" amounts of rain on parts of Central Florida." LINK

Horrible storms drench Ireland, new highway under 20 feet of water.

2008-08-18T15:44:00.002-04:00

"Ireland must accept that extreme torrential rain and flash flooding is going to be part of the climate over the coming days and from now on and must prepare accordingly.

That was the warning from climatologist John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth speaking after a weekend that saw yet more parts of the country submerged in several feet of water.

Some of the worst-hit parts of the country were in the North, including Belfast, where the city’s new multi-million euro Broadway Underpass was submerged under 20 feet of water." LINK to story

Link to photo gallery

Bush want to kill the Endangered Species...Act.

2008-08-12T01:12:00.003-04:00

Christ almighty.

"Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

"This is the fox guarding the hen house. The interests of agencies will outweigh species protection interests," said Eric Glitzenstein, the attorney representing environmental groups in the lawsuit over the wildfire prevention regulations. "What they are talking about doing is eviscerating the Endangered Species Act." LINK

Melty!

2008-08-10T16:06:00.003-04:00

"Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013.
Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska's Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic.
As a result, scientists say that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year's record loss. More than a million square kilometres melted over the summer of 2007 as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic. But such destruction could now be matched, or even topped, this year.

What really unsettles scientists, however, is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. 'When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic's summer ice cover would last until around 2070,' said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. 'It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic's summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.'" LINK

WTF, huge sudden war? 1,400 civilians dead? And Putin's at the Olympics?

2008-08-08T15:29:00.003-04:00

"Russian forces are locked in fierce clashes with Georgia inside its breakaway South Ossetia region, reports say, amid fears of all-out war.
Moscow sent armoured units across the border after Georgia moved against Russian-backed separatists.
Russia says 12 of its soldiers are dead, and separatists estimate that 1,400 civilians have died.
Georgia accuses Russia of waging war, and says it has suffered heavy losses in bombing raids which Russia denies. " LINK

Well, an entirely glorious thing.

2008-08-06T23:26:00.002-04:00

"The discovery of a population of some 125,000 lowland gorillas has been hailed by conservationists as "absolutely fantastic news". LINK

WTF, mate? Tornado kills three in Northern France.

2008-08-04T23:50:00.002-04:00

"Three people were killed overnight when a small tornado charged through towns in northern France, destroying houses and spewing debris over the area, the local government said.
Roughly 40 houses were hit by the freak meteorological event in the town of Hautmont, near the Belgian border. Three bodies were pulled from wreckage and six people were slightly injured. " LINK

See, this is the kind of thing that makes California seem... worrisome, to me.

2008-08-04T23:22:00.002-04:00

"A two-acre patch of land north of Fillmore heated up to 800 degrees Friday, and firefighters and geologists are unsure why.
By Joanna Lin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 5, 2008
A patch of land in Ventura County's Los Padres Forest where the ground heated up to 812 degrees Friday continues to puzzle firefighters and geologists after a month and a half of monitoring."It's a thermal anomaly," said Ron Oatman, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

...Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres FireWatch, said he had not heard of hot spots in the Sespe Oil Field, but was concerned about their potential effect on the nearby Sespe Condor Sanctuary and the forest's fire-prone nature."It's just a disaster waiting to happen . . . regardless of what the cause is," he said." LINK

Yeah, it is depressing. Primates, headed out?

2008-08-04T23:01:00.003-04:00

"A global review of the world's primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as "depressing" by conservationists.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says the main threat is habitat loss, primarily through the burning and clearing of tropical forests.
More than 70% of primates in Asia are now listed as Endangered, it adds. " LINK