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

"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

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

'...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.

"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

Reptiles at Yellowstone, headed out.

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

And the infrastructure? Is crumbling.

"Typically built to last 50 years, the average U.S. bridge is 43 years old and approaching the age for replacement, according to the report released Monday.

At least $140 billion is needed to make major repairs or upgrades to one of every four U.S. bridges, transportation officials from states across the country said in a report released Monday.
State officials said bridge repairs are just one element of a pressing need for more federal funding to improve the country's deteriorating transportation infrastructure.
"We need federal intervention, and federal intervention at a big level," Gov. Ed Rendell said after details were released of the report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials." LINK

Ack ack ack.

From the fabulous doom and gloomer, Jim Kunstler. And I have to say, the one thing I've really noticed this year is how often I have NOT been stuck behind someone towing a boat. It's weird.

"Every time I saw a car towing a motorboat this holiday weekend, I wondered what was going through the head of the towee. Did they have a sense that darkness was falling on their careers in motor sports? Did they have an inkling that an oil-and-gas crisis is upon us and just not give a shit? Or were they just going through the motions, following some implacable rote programming induced by, say, forty-odd years of TV addiction and a diet based on corn-syrup byproducts?
The holiday to me was a creepy hiatus from an ever more desperate reality overtaking the nation like a miasma. Meanwhile, the mainstream media's ongoing narrative has gotten stuck in the moronic groove of "drill drill drill." The belief of people like Larry Kudlow of CNBC and uber-mega-idiot John Stossel of ABC-News is that we could go back to $1.50 gasoline if only congress would open the offshore exploration areas and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This view is just plain erroneous. Nothing we get out of these regions will come close to offsetting the ongoing depletion of worldwide oil resources, or even arresting our own losses.
...But to get back to my prior point, things are hitting home anyway, and with force. The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We've spent sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never be cheap again. The strip malls and office "parks" are following the residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying, threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that even people with little money to spend still need, like food.
...These conditions will now get a lot worse, no matter whether the banks continue to conceal their problems. All of it leads to an inflection point that coincides with the November election. By then, I expect that quite a few banks will be toast, job layoffs will rise spectacularly, foreclosures and bankruptcies will be raging across the land, and homeowners north of the magnolia belt will be shattered by the cost of staying warm this winter.
That said, I will feel a little sorry for Mr. Obama if he gets to the White House. He'll have to find a gentle way to tell the truth to the people who elected him, people who will be suffering mightily, and who will be very sore about their losses. He'll have to tell them that the previous "release" of the American Dream software is obsolete, and the new version will require a whole lot more of them in the way of earnest effort, delayed gratification, and revised expectations.
...There's a whole lot we can do to greet the new circumstances awaiting us, but the one thing we can't afford to do is put all our efforts into keeping the current system running as is. Reality simply won't permit it. We would squander our dwindling remaining resources trying to keep it all going. The next president is going to have to lead us through the awful process of cutting our losses. So far, the debate has been about how to avoid that." LINK

Man alive, people are such sad silly animals.

"Steve Burtch bought a Dodge Ram truck last year, when gas cost $3.75, because he thought gas prices had peaked and would start coming down. Instead, he pumped his first $100 tank in June. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep this up,” said Mr. Burtch, 43, who lives in Marion, Ohio." LINK

Happy Fourth of July!

"President heckled during event at Thomas Jefferson's former home

On his final U.S. Independence Day as president, Bush told an audience Friday at the home of the Declaration of Independence's author that he was honored to be present for the naturalization. Shouts from protesters were heard during Bush's remarks, and the president responded by saying he agrees that "we believe in free speech in the United States of America."
The last six Fourth of July holidays have taken place amid continuing violence in Iraq. Bush's addition of 28,000 U.S. troops last year in Iraq helped foster a measure of stability in what is now the sixth summer of the war.
Bush mentioned neither the war in Iraq nor U.S. efforts to fight terrorism in his speech." LINK

California handing out facemasks in burning areas...Fires growing, fast.

"The fires that bedevil California took another ominous turn as a blaze near Goleta more than doubled overnight to 5,400 acres and triggered more evacuations but has not destroyed any homes.

Mushrooming in size, the Goleta fire was declared a local emergency by Santa Barbara County officials. Because of its proximity to populated areas, it was also designated the top firefighting priority in a state currently plagued with a multitude of fires, some of them burning without intervention in remote areas.

Starting at 10 a.m., face masks will be distributed free to residents who are sensitive to the smoke that hangs over Goleta.

At Big Sur, more than 64,000 acres have burned, 20 structures have been destroyed and about 1,300 are threatened.

"The weather forecast this weekend is for warming and drying conditions," said Greg DeNitto, a spokesman for the multi-agency team fighting the Big Sur blaze. "That's not a good prognosis."

In a period of less than two weeks, at least 1,700 lightning-triggered fires in California have charred more than 513,000 acres. About 100 fires continue to burn. Statewide, more than 10,700 homes are threatened and 34 residences have been destroyed. A new fire Thursday burned at least 250 acres in the San Bernardino National Forest near Yucaipa." LINK

After the flood comes the pestilance...

"First came the floods -- now the mosquitoes.
An explosion of pesky insects is pestering clean-up crews and just about anyone venturing outside in the waterlogged Midwest.
In some parts of Iowa there are 20 times the normal number, and in Chicago up to five times more than usual.
The good news is these are mostly floodwater mosquitoes, not the kind that usually carry West Nile virus and other diseases. But they are very hungry, and sometimes attack in swarms with a stinging bite." LINK

Humans caused the Midwest flooding.

"It's humans, not biblical downpours, that have raised the Mississippi River water level 10 to 15 feet higher in the past 100 years. "We've made the river flow through a much narrower channel, and we've put these piles of rocks in the river which slow down the flow," says Kusky. "The only place for the water to go is to rise upward and increase the height of the floods."
...Even before the recent deluge, scientists sounded the alarm. Back in March, weeks before the floods occurred, Criss, Pinter and professor Timothy Kusky of St. Louis University sent a letter to the commander for the St. Louis district of the Army Corps of Engineers, critiquing the new structures that the agency puts into the Mississippi and Missouri to make it easier for large barges to navigate the area. "These structures are loaded cannons pointing at St. Louis and East St. Louis, waiting to go off during the next large flood," wrote the scientists.
Now that the river can't naturally spread out on its flood plain or meander, the extra water under flooding conditions has nowhere to go. "If floodwaters can't spread out as they would in a natural flood plain environment, they can only go up," explains Criss." LINK

Think it's going to be a long, cold winter for a lot of people. Scary.

FIREWOOD
"Mainers who buy firewood are paying more as they stock up this summer and many are finding short supplies, as well.
Pete Lammert of the Maine Forest Service warns that most firewood dealers are hustling just to fill orders from regular customers. He says customers who used to buy one cord are buying two, and those who used to buy two are buying four.
High oil prices are driving the push to heating alternatives including firewood and wood pellets. Prices are topping $200 a cord." LINK

NATURAL GAS
"I'm afraid we're headed for another catastrophic year, in terms of natural gas prices," he said.
Natural gas futures have risen 97 percent in the past year, following crude oil prices. For residential gas customers, "That is going to hit home in December and January," Popowsky said." LINK

HOME HEATING OIL
"New Englanders struggling this summer to pay gas prices topping $4 a gallon should brace for more bad news — home heating oil costs next winter are expected to hit record highs.
One retail heating oil dealer says she expects a typical household delivery that cost $500 last winter will climb to at least $850 this winter.
"It's going to be staggering," said Northboro Oil Co. owner Sandra Farrell in telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's going to be a real problem going into this winter for everyone unless something changes."
Farrell, whose family has owned and operated the Northborough, Mass., business since 1953, said some dealers are talking about prices in the $4.89 per gallon range for the coming winter, about $2 more per gallon than last winter. An average household usually needs four deliveries from December to March, she said." LINK

ELECTRIC HEAT"Residential customers of Public Service of New Hampshire will see electric rates go up 5.7 percent, due to the skyrocketing prices for energy resources." LINK

SHRUB
And how is our President addressing this???

"State Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Democrat of Taunton, says "it's really impacting working families dramatically. We're facing a crisis situation."
Pacheco criticizes the Bush administration for proposing a 22% cut in federal home heating assistance this winter.
"We shouldn't be cutting energy assistance for the needy and for the working poor at a time when home heating oil costs are skyrocketing like they've never done before," says Pacheco." LINK

Fires in California could last for months.

"Lower-than-average rainfall and record levels of parched vegetation likely mean a long, fiery summer throughout Northern California, according to the Forest Service's state fire outlook released last week.
The fires burning now could take weeks or months to bring under full control, the report said.
Those blazes were mostly sparked by lightning storms that were unusually intense for so early in the season. But summer storms would probably be even fiercer, according to the Forest Service." LINK

Exurbia, over?

"Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the outer edges of metropolitan areas.

As the realization takes hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a restructuring with lasting consequences, the high cost of fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to analysis by Moody's Economy.com.

Some now proclaim the unfolding demise of suburbia..." LINK

This is slaughter. Christ what a country. I feel sick.

"Pvt. David Dietrich had a history of cognitive problems. He struggled in boot camp at Fort Knox, Ky., striking at least one of his superiors as unfit for the military. Dietrich was so slow at processing new things, some fellow soldiers called him Forrest Gump.
...He was sent for psychological evaluations at least twice, yet somehow Dietrich advanced—from Fort Knox to Germany and on to Iraq in November 2006. Eight weeks later, at 21, Dietrich was killed by a sniper while conducting reconnaissance from an abandoned building in Ramadi.
...his superiors had serious misgivings about the troubled soldier. One of them says he worried that Dietrich would pose a danger to himself and others if he was sent to Iraq and pushed to have him processed out of the military—only to be rebuffed by higher-ups.
...Dietrich pined to be a Marine—his grandfather had been one—but failed the aptitude test. He then contacted an Army recruiter and said he wanted to serve as a base fireman, having been a volunteer in Marysville's fire department. Somehow, at the Army's enlistment office, Dietrich managed to pass the same standardized military-recruitment test he'd failed in the Marine office. When he showed up alone to sign his contract, he was offered a $19,000 bonus to be a scout and to ship out within weeks, according to Army records." LINK

Extreme weather unfolding exactly as predicted. No one can really claim to be surprised, here.

Good article- one poor guy was on his way to visit family in Cedar Rapids, and had to turn around to go back because his home was wiped out in a tornado. Damn, dude.

"Snowfall and ice storms have turned into rainfall, tornados and flooding, leading many in East Iowa to wonder what is next? Could the weather get worse?Extreme weather has become so common that if people haven’t been affected themselves, almost everyone knows someone who has.

Snowfall and ice storms have turned into rainfall, tornados and flooding, leading many in East Iowa to wonder what is next? Could the weather get worse?Extreme weather has become so common that if people haven’t been affected themselves, almost everyone knows someone who has.

...According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there was only a 0.2 percent probability of flooding of the magnitude seen in Cedar Rapids. The National Weather Service described it as an historic event with water levels never before seen.

“There is no question now that the climate is changing on a global scale,” said Gene Takle, an Iowa State University professor of geological and atmospheric sciences. “The evidence is so overwhelming.”

“If the climate is changing, you can’t stop it over the next 50 years,” Takle said. “What’s coming is coming and we better be prepared to adjust to it.” LINK

Midwest flooding still going strong, worse than predicted, California baking in the heat.

"Amid the battle to hold back the swollen Mississippi River, some towns in northeastern Missouri and Illinois got an unwelcome surprise Saturday as river levels rose higher than projected.
National Weather Service meteorologist Ben Miller speculated that forecast models simply had been unable to account for the amount of water flowing into the Mississippi from the three rivers that saw major flooding in Iowa - the Cedar, Iowa and Des Moines rivers.
"Honestly, the models didn't do well with it because it was so far out of the range of normal," Miller said." LINK

And out on the West coast,

"On the second official day of summer and the fourth consecutive day of the heat wave, hundreds of thousands of Angelenos flocked to city pools and beaches as temperatures rose to triple digits in many areas.
...The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had 50 crews working to restore power to about 4,000 customers in North Hollywood, Canoga Park, Reseda, Northridge and other areas.
..."This is a combination of extreme heat and, consequently, extraordinary demands for energy and a strain on our system," Ramallo said. Officials urged people to avoid running major appliances in the afternoon, when energy demand is highest, and to keep thermostats at 78 degrees." LINK

And more wildfires, too!
"Wildfires were scattered around Northern California on Sunday, many of them started by lightning, as crews farther south were close to containing a blaze that had forced thousands to evacuate." LINK

Iowa- how much is nature and how much is man?

""I sense that the flooding is not the result of a 500-year event," said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We're farming closer to creeks, farming closer to rivers. Without adequate buffer strips, the water moves rapidly from the field directly to the surface water."
Corn alone will cover more than a third of the state's land surface this year. The ethanol boom that began two years ago encouraged still more cultivation.
Between 2007 and 2008, farmers took 106,000 acres of Iowa land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep farmland uncultivated, according to Lyle Asell, a special assistant for agriculture and environment with the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR). That land, if left untouched, probably would have been covered with perennial grasses with deep roots that help absorb water.
The basic hydrology of Iowa has been changed since the coming of the plow. By the early 20th century, farmers had installed drainage pipes under the surface to lower the water table and keep water from pooling in what otherwise could be valuable farmland. More of this drainage "tiling" has been added in recent years. The direct effect is that water moves quickly from the farmland to the streams and rivers.
"We've lost 90 percent of our wetlands," said Mary Skopec, who monitors water quality for the Iowa DNR. " LINK

Hm... West Nile mosquito spray killing lobsters?

Oh, man. This end of the world stuff can be really depressing sometimes.
Climate change is bringing tropical diseases (such as West Nile Disease) to non-tropical places (like Rhode Island) where these diseases kill people. So local governments have been laying down mosquito killing poisons to try to save people's lives, but...
"lobstermen believe the methoprene is stunting the growth of young lobsters, much as it does to mosquito larva.
Emotions are rising on both sides. Lobstermen have seen their catches fall by more than half in the last several years, causing nearly every one of them to lose money and some to quit and sell their boats. On the state’s side, no one wants to have to say they didn’t do everything they could to protect Rhode Islanders from disease.
“We figure there won’t be a lobster industry in a short time if this keeps up,” said Dellinger. “All the state wants to do is control us, but you can’t keep polluting the environment and still get fish.”
Local lobster catches topped off in 1999 with about 3,500 tons. Each of the following years got progressively worse. In 2005, the last year with complete figures, the take was less than 1,500 tons.
In response, the lobstermen have greatly reduced the number of traps they set and accepted one new size restriction after another designed to leave lobsters in the water longer so they can successfully reproduce.
Still, the catch remains low. And many lobsters, particularly those caught close to shore, are coming up with a disfiguring, and still unexplained, shell disease.
What they are not seeing is even more disturbing — young lobsters. " LINK

Flooding in New Orleans, too- 3-5 inches of rain fell in just an hour and a half.

"Storms that have dumped heavy rain and caused widespread street flooding across the metro area this morning are starting to move out of the worst-affected areas, the National Weather Service reports.
Radar indicated that 3 to 5 inches of rain fell this morning in an hour and a half over much of New Orleans. As much as 1 to 3 inches more is possible. About 3 to 6 inches of rain has fallen in Jefferson Parish, including Metairie, Harahan, Old Jefferson, Bridge City and Avondale.
Several feet of water filled streets in parts of Uptown and Central City, stalling smaller cars and covering sidewalks. Louisiana State Police are en route to close Airline Drive and Clearview Parkway, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office." LINK