Category: earth

Children who were exposed to certain types of pesticides before birth could have lower levels of intelligence… story here

Studies link pesticides, lower intelligence …
Prenatal Exposure To Pesticides Linked To Lower IQ …
Exposure to Pesticides in Pregnancy Can Lower C …
Pesticide Exposure in Pregnancy Linked to Lower …
Pesticides, lower IQ in kids linked …
A Reason to Go Organic: Women Exposed to Pesticides …
Fetal Exposure To Organophosphate Pesticides …

“These associations are substantial, especially when viewing this at a population-wide level.”

“It is very unusual to see this much consistency across populations in studies, so that speaks to the significance of the findings.”

“It’s not just in agricultural areas, but they find the same things in cities too.”

“More kids being shifted into the lower end of the spectrum of learning, and more kids needing special services in school.”

Big Ag is throwing away our topsoil at 5 tons per acre.

 

Pages containing exquisitely ruminative [google search]

… to secure mankind and all species on planet Earth now and in the near and very distant future.

Umm, these are particulates in a face mask’s filters after a bike ride through various cities.

I was reading min- ami- soma while hoping max- ami- soma:

Kyohei Takahashi, the 72-year-old head doctor at a hospital in Minamisoma, a mostly abandoned city some 25 kilometers north of the plant is still at his post though fewer than 10 of his 25 staff remain, and many of his patients were evacuated to reduce their potential exposure to radiation.

The hospital now relies on donations of instant noodles and curry from volunteers and Japanese soldiers to serve those who come looking for care.

Some of them feel panicked; others have stopped talking, he says, with all of them worrying about friends and family, including some who were likely swept away by Japan’s March 11 tsunami.

“What kind of doctor would I be if I fled over something like this?”

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan

The US has ‘utterly failed’ to address risk of spent fuel.

A relatively small amount of used-up fuel was sitting in Fukushima’s seven spent-fuel pools when disaster occurred. By contrast, nuclear utilities in the US have over decades accumulated some 71,862 tons of spent fuel in more than 30 states – the vast majority of it sitting today in pools that are mostly full… It’s a huge quantity of highly radioactive material equal to a great many Chernobyls.

Reactor updates here. I think this wide-eyed little fella asks the right questions.

The Tokyo Tower broadcasts radio and television. [wiki]

250 miles from the epicenter, the extreme sway bent its tip !

Or consider Steve From Virginia at his blog Economic Undertow:

Be ready for the long haul. Times will be tough… then they will get worse.

Ours is a generational challenge, then a human existential challenge.

Nothing is amenable to five-year plans. Start thinking 500 year plans. We won’t escape our tragic limitations until we start making realistic 5,000 year plans.

Oh this Earth do loop:

“A mother’s body is the first environment,” Steingraber said.

As she was leaving her obstetrician’s office after examining a vial of her amniotic fluid, Steingraber recalled being told to “Drink plenty of water.”

“Drink plenty of water. Before it is baby pee, amniotic fluid is water. I drink water, and it becomes blood plasma, which suffuses through the amniotic sac and surrounds the baby – who also drinks it. And what is it before that? Before it is drinking water, amniotic fluid is the creeks and rivers that fill reservoirs. It is the underground water that fills wells. And before it is creeks and rivers and groundwater, amniotic fluid is rain. When I hold in my hands a tube of my own amniotic fluid, I am holding a tube full of raindrops.

“Amniotic fluid is also the juice of oranges that I had for breakfast, and the milk that I poured over my cereal, and the honey I stirred into my tea. It is inside the green cells of spinach leaves and the damp flesh of apples. It is the yolk of an egg. When I look at amniotic fluid, I am looking at rain falling on orange groves. I am looking at melon fields, potatoes in wet earth, frost on pasture grasses. The blood of cows and chickens is in this tube. The nectar gathered by bees and hummingbirds is in this tube. Whatever is inside hummingbird eggs is also inside my womb.

“Whatever is in the world’s water is here in my hands,” Steingraber said.

Pause to flip out. This Aussie Yasi cyclone is huge! What if it hit the USA ?
Here’s overlay comparison you’ve never seen before!

One of the largest winter storms since the 1950s is affecting 30 U.S. states today with snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. NASA satellites are gathering data on the storm that stretches from Texas and the Rockies to the New England states.

We’ve used our very best minds in politics, economics, business and science to create a self made disaster that threatens to destroy much of human life on earth. —John Veitch

The world that is.

“The planet Earth has it’s own system.

“People have never understood it. Once upon a time it was so mysterious that people used all sorts of superstitions and ritual….”

The world as we see it.

“Your world view dictates what you think is important, what questions you can ask, and what you imagine is reliable evidence.”

To quote the Club of Rome:

“The classical models and strategies of development are destroying the environment, overusing resources, generation widening disparities and leaving billions excluded from the benefits of progress. … We are facing a social transformation and level of upheaval that is historic in it’s proportions and uncertain in it’s outcomes.”

A wrap-up by Joseph Romm:

We’re now over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year (more than 8 billion tons of carbon) — and notwithstanding the global economic slowdown, probably poised to rise 2% per year.

The exact future growth rate is quite hard to project because it depends so much on what China does, how quickly peak oil kicks in, and the extent to which other countries around the world keep their substantial Copenhagen/Cancun commitments in the absence of a global agreement.

We have to average below 18 billion tons of CO2 a year for the entire century if we’re going to stabilize at 450 ppm…

And how to fix it, by Umair Haque:

I’d argue that capitalism’s got to do better — and to get there, capitalists have to aspire to matter. For too long, capitalists have taken people, communities, society, nature, and the future for granted — but today, they damn well shouldn’t.

Industrial-age capitalism is, we’re discovering the hard way, predicated on extracting wealth from people, communities, society, nature, and the future. That might just demand abandoning some — or even most — of yesterday’s tired, toxic assumptions about what prosperity is, where it comes from, how it’s ignited, and why it matters.

~ Mustafa Demiri ~

Tears might have filled the vast Amazon from what fell from everyone’s eye when they heard with great trepidation the rainforest rivers were dry.

In the land of the great pyramids, there shall arise such a cry when the Nile will have reversed its course and no one on Earth will know why. The Great Wall of Qin could not contain the numbers that will suffer and die while the Yangtze and all of her sisters have been poisoned with sulphur and lye.

The once beautiful blue Danube, the sacred Ganges of golden hue, the broad and verdant Mississip’ —their loss the world will rue unless we, the stewards of this world, decide on what to do.

It’s been a little more than a century since the dawn of industry. Still some of us refuse to see our destiny. Perhaps we’ll not escape every cataclysm or event —there are, of course, the natural furies— but there are things we can prevent.

Ellen Wohl:

Far from being the serene, natural streams of yore, modern rivers have been diverted, dammed, dumped in, and dried up…

…nutrient runoff,
…industrial pollution,
…beaver and fauna removal,
…convenience channelization,
…levees, dams, poor engineering,
…drugs, pesticides, garbage, sewage…

We’ve lost our view of what a river must be.

He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. ~Psalm 104:1

7 billion people !

“Already? Didn’t we just hit 6 billion?”

We’re adding the equivalent of a new San Francisco every 3 days.

29% of San Francisco’s particulate pollution comes across the Pacific.

China generates about 70% of its electricity with coal-fired power plants, creating large amounts of particulate pollution. Dust storms crossing China pick up these particles and carry them across the Pacific to the U.S.

via Carbon Tracker

Time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 800,000 years to January 2009.

It’s time for us to wake up to thermodynamics and economics.

A human being at rest runs on 90 watts.
A hunter-gatherer would use about 250 watts.
Life in America requires around 11,000 watts per capita.

That’s like covering the Earth with seven billion blue whales !

Are we headed for success? Or a lasting economic depression on an overheated planet?

“…the wealth of civilization has a direct link to how much energy we can consume.”

University of Utah’s Dr. Tim Garrett has found that about 10 miliwatts is required for every inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar.

Tim Garrett’s latest paper is a significant shock:

“There are no plausible, thermodynamically supported solutions that avoid inflation rates less than 100% and lead to stabilized atmospheric CO2 concentrations within this century.

“It is only with very rapid decarbonization that current economic growth conditions can be sustained while keeping CO2 levels below 1000 ppmv by century’s end.”

There’s a basic law of the physical universe. It is through energy transformations that anything happens. [pdf, http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0428]

12 Plankton of Christmas
Dr. Richard Kirby at Plymouth University

“The importance of plankton on a global scale is obvious when you realize that 50% of the world’s photosynthesis takes place in the surface of the sea, drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the oceans and releasing oxygen.”

“We assume other galaxies look like our own. But…

New discovery triples number of stars.

The new number of stars in the universe is:

300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

It’s a good time to ‘calibrate’ your brain.

4 minute BBC video must-see
Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes
Every town should do its own local version of what it knows!

The world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.

Makes my stomach sick.

Wild tigers could become extinct in 12 years.

Three links:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-tigers-extinct-years-unprotected.html
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-world-leaders-tiger-extinction.html http://www.google.com/search?q=Tigers+soon+extinct

Thinking about nature as capital should not be considered heresy.

Nov. 19:
Making a Difference: Using his high-profile role to help save the planet, Prince Charles discusses his new documentary ‘Harmony’.

Note: NBC’s hyperlink is a dinky winky trailer.

Manufacturers are not required to disclose any ingredients in cleaning supplies, air fresheners or laundry products.

1) “The products emitted more than 420 chemicals, collectively, but virtually none of them were disclosed to consumers, anywhere.”

2) “We analyzed best-selling products, and about half of them made some claim about being green, organic or natural. Surprisingly, the green products’ emissions of hazardous chemicals were not significantly different from the other products.”

3) “More than a third of the products emitted at least one chemical classified as a probable carcinogen.”

4) “The 25 commonly used scented products emit an average of 17 chemicals each. Of the 133 different chemicals detected, nearly a quarter are classified as toxic or hazardous under at least one federal law.”