I’m behind on blogging but that doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed issues hitting the news lately. The other night I caught just 5 minutes on CNN’s Cafferty File that ticked me off at the stupidity of our media. Cafferty reported that the U.K. did a study and it turns out that raising sheep for food adds to the U.K’s carbon footprint big time. By time Cafferty was finished explaining that eating lamb is adding to global warming he was shaking his head and grinning. So he ended the segment by posting the question: “Are you willing to change your diet to combat global warming?”
I wanted to smack him up the side of the head. Or better yet, take Cafferty and Wolf Blitzer, who joined in the merriment, on an impromptu visit to a large CAFO and have them inhale the fumes from a pink tinged open air lagoon of waste that oozes methane into the atmosphere. Another reporter that did that almost passed out.
The reporters at CNN obviously didn’t take that into consideration. As a major news source one would think they would be up on articles like this: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2367646, or http://www.alternet.org/environment/140059/our_appetite_for_animals_is_taking_us_toward_apolcalypse/?page=2 or http://www.cok.net/lit/veg.php or any of dozens written by our own Dept. of Agriculture or CRS (Congressional Research Service) reports to Congress that show our food animals are detrimental to the environment.
On cok.net it stated that a U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health reported that 5 tons of animal manure is produced annually for every person in the U.S. Considering our population is 300 million and 5 tons equals 10,000 lbs., well I just found my calculator doesn’t have enough decimal points so that’s 1 billion, 500 million tons of manure annually. The water that is polluted as a result is a whole other blog!
So what’s not to understand here? A billion tons of manure is a heck of a lot of methane. Since the U.K. loves its mutton, I can see where their report came from. Sheep top their list of carbon footprint devils.
And where does Cafferty live that he hasn’t noticed we’re a nation of obese people eating far more meat than any other country on earth? We want national health care so we can continue to neglect our own health? We should be willing to change our diet to save ourselves, yet we don’t do it. No one considers that our obesity might end up being a detriment to our ever getting national health care because obesity is a ridiculous and preventable drain on any health system for the disease it produces. By following the guidelines for healthy eating, we will help ourselves, help the environment, and possibly stop the horrible abuse of food animals by eliminating CAFO’s altogether.
Gas prices rise just in time for summer vacation—again. Is this not a testament to the power of the oil industry and other wealthy entities like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup? Big oil has the greatest motive to raise war against environmentalism—mega profits. Yet there are those of us that just can’t see how much more powerful that motive is compared to any plausible objectives pro-environmentalists may have.
Reading article after article about supertankers storing oil, “super contangos,” and “backwardation,” it’s all about power, wealth, and manipulation and to heck with the environment and us. Big oil is going to do their darnedest to stay in business. And with mega billions in their coffers, it will be extremely hard to get untangled from that web of power especially when other big investors are in on the game. Don’t believe me that we’re audaciously manipulated by this mega monopoly? Do a Google search “supertankers at sea storing crude oil” and look at the roster of articles about who has and hasn’t contracted huge supertankers for the express purpose of storing crude oil for big profits. A NY Time’s article stated:
Private trading companies like Vitol and Phibro are storing oil in expectation of higher prices. They are taking their cues from markets where traders buy and sell contracts for future delivery of oil, which are signaling higher prices down the road.
Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, noted that a trading company could buy oil at the spot price of nearly $40 a barrel, store it and sell a contract to deliver it in a year for about $60. ‘You pay between $6 and $10 a barrel to store it, and you can make $10 a barrel,’ he said. ‘That’s why Cushing is filling up rapidly and people are leasing tankers.’
The oil being stored was bought back when oil prices were low, then stored in ships that have been lollygagging at sea, waiting for the right season to sell. What seems to be glanced over in many of the articles is the fact that storing the oil is also “withholding” oil from the marketplace, which in turn forces prices up like it does when anything in demand becomes scarce. This is being done in lieu of cutting back on production.
Taking a risk and investing in stored oil with the “hope” that it will go up in the future is one thing. But storing the invested oil for the express purpose of creating more demand for what appears to be lesser supply is every bit as unethical as what the diamond industry does to drive up prices of diamonds. It’s faking scarcity of a product to drive up cost. And we are forced to eat that cost because we have no alternative.
Any entity that sets up to become wealthy like this at a time when so many are already suffering from a poor economy is purely sadistic. The right season to unload this oil is right now when gas prices are high. It’s the summer season when people cannot afford air travel, or distant, expensive vacations, and have opted instead to take the family to local events. All of these events mean car travel of course that is not kind on gas. Attending local events means traffic backups and slow going in urban areas. You know, the kind of driving that just eats through a fresh tank of gas.
So there we have it again. A big kick in the pants from the manipulations of big oil and the wealthy, another summer of putting up with higher gas prices. It’s time to break out the tent and set it up in the backyard and get a projector to show movies on the side of the garage! Add a fire pit, and food and beverage and there is no need to go anywhere. Maybe it’s high time we meet all our neighbors with block parties, or traveling parties where every neighbor involved takes a turn at the barbeque. And in the course of doing these things we may rediscover “family life” the way it used to be, and possibly a way to bring gas prices down to where they used to be too.
This You Tube video is a response to “oil price manipulation on wall street” that’s not too hard to understand:
In our verve to tap more fossil fuel in the form of natural gas we are acting like irresponsible fools. For some reason we think natural gas is OK for use, that somehow it can’t really be included with coal because it burns clean. It’s just doesn’t seem that dirty. And natural gas is in greater supply than oil. There will be no oil spills.
Boy are we stupid, at least those of us that don’t live near any natural gas drilling/fields. For the people that do, it’s a nightmare. Newspapers have reported about natural gas in drinking water from Pennsylvania to Colorado like The Post Gazette, The Denver Post , and The Times Union. The devastation left behind from drilling/blasting for natural gas leaves the landscape looking like a photo of Mars. But even more sacrilegious is the amount of water used. Millions of gallons are needed for each natural gas site and there are thousands of sites around the country. We might think these fields are far removed, but think again. Natural gas drilling affects the health and well-being of Americans, and is devastating to our land, water, and wildlife. And exposing ourselves to more natural gas explosions is outright risky.
Watch the following you tube videos for a sample of what is happening across the country due to the natural gas industry:
Pennsylvania
Arkansas
New Jersey
It’s been years now since I first read an article about poking holes in the earth for natural gas. I remember reading about the waste when a natural water spring would get hit. The water would gush out to the ground and never get tapped. The people searching for natural gas weren’t in charge of water of any kind. So they just let it go.
After watching the Arkansas video, imagine the destruction that would be caused by the proposed natural gas pipeline from Alaska through Canada. And some of the video of the flame from the gas wells makes me wonder about safety in areas that are suffering drought conditions. There is a greener alternative to all fossil fuel, and we need to start moving in that direction.
Repower Michigan will be holding a round table discussion in Monroe at the IHM Motherhouse at 610 W. Elm, on Wednesday, May 20th, at 7:00-8:00 pm. Repower Michigan will talk about how clean energy legislation will help Michigan. There are a lot of misleading ads out there right now about what is and isn’t clean fuel, this might be a good place to find out and ask questions about Michigan’s energy future and how it will help Michigan’s economy as well. Hopefully there will be discussions about job training possibilities too.
It’s only an hour long, a visit to the Motherhouse is interesting, and Repower Michigan encourages your help to make sure your neighbors know the truth about what clean energy can really do for Michigan, and so that Representative John Dingell sees the strong support for clean energy here. It’s also a way to volunteer, which is an ideal of the Obama administration. This might be one way to do that.
Here are the details that were emailed to me:
Repower Michigan Roundtable
IHM Motherhouse
610 W. Elm Ave.
Monroe, MI 48162
I was watching ABC news about the 900 mile swath of 21 tornadoes that were active from western Michigan to Missouri last night and remembered watching a special on TV about one of climatologist’s biggest fears, tornadoes that unite to become multi-vortex mega storms. Is this what we’re beginning to experience? The NOAA website reports: “There is a statistical trend (as documented by NSSL’s Harold Brooks) toward wide tornadoes having higher damage ratings. This could be related to greater tornado strength, more opportunity for targets to damage, or some blend of both. However, the size or shape of any particular tornado does not say anything conclusive about its strength.” So there is a trend but it appears to be downplayed, while tornadoes are becoming rampant across the heartland of our country, destroying more and more properties every year, and occurring out of season.
Residents in the Missouri area said they witnessed 4 distinct heads of the multi vortex tornado that covered a 5-mile swath of land. This tornado was also described by the newscaster as a bouncer, touching down, going up, and then touching down again. The same NOAA website states that tornadoes don’t literally skip. It says: “By definition [] a tornado must be in contact with the ground. There is disagreement in meteorology over whether or not multiple touchdowns of the same vortex or funnel cloud mean different tornadoes (a strict interpretation). In either event, stories of skipping tornadoes usually mean
1. There was continuous contact between vortex and ground in the path, but it was too weak to do damage;
2. Multiple tornadoes happened; but there was no survey done to precisely separate their paths (very common before the 1970s); or
3. There were multiple tornadoes with only short separation, but the survey erroneously classified them as one tornado.
So was this multi-vortex, bouncing tornado possibly a new phenomena? Is there anything that can be done to limit the increasing velocity and strength of tornadoes? Well, “Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland concocted an experiment. They took the pattern of expanding turbine fields to an extreme, and used a computer model to calculate what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains were covered in one massive wind farm,” according to an article on Discovery Channel website. It said, “[They] acknowledged the hypothetical wind farm was far larger than anything humans are likely to build. But meeting the Department of Energy’s goal of wind power generation by 2030 would require that scores of huge wind farms be built throughout the Midwestern United States. The total disturbance caused by turbines could be enough to steer storms.”
Interesting!
Although the NOAA website states that it is unlikely we could ever come up with anything that could stop a tornado that wouldn’t be worse than the tornado itself, it does talk about dissipating one, which means to slow down or cause it to break up. The website’s FAQ’s page said that tornadoes do need a source of instability and a “larger-scale property of rotation (vorticity) to keep going.” It went on to say that a lot of processes surrounding a storm could rob the area around a tornado of either instability or vorticity. Cold outflow is one. This is the flow of wind out of the precipitation area of a shower or thunderstorm. It’s been observed that cold outflow causes a tornado to go away. It also says: “For decades, storm observers have documented the death of numerous tornadoes when their parent circulations (mesocyclones) weaken after they become wrapped in outflow air — either from the same thunderstorm or a different one.”
Could that different outflow of air possibly be produced by large wind farms in the near future? Could they produce enough wind to replicate the outflow air of a thunderstorm? If so, it’s incentive enough to develop wind power. There are far too many homes and properties destroyed every year from increasingly bad weather. If we thought the stock market dive was bad, imagine insurance companies going bust?
Before yesterday I never heard of a “derecho,” but after Good Morning America explained this phenomena briefly I’ve been looking up derechos on the Internet ever since. I wanted to know if this little known weather event is occurring more frequently because of global warming? What I found is that a derecho is a bow echo is a MCV pretty much and that they are straight line wind storms that have devastating effects every bit as much as a tornado because they can be relentless, not breaking up until they travel most of the way across the U.S. They can be 250 miles wide, 800 miles long, and pack winds beyond 100 mph. The weird thing about derechos is that they occur mostly over N. America.
Well lucky us. This is another phenomena to be afraid of, very, very afraid especially if it increases in intensity.
View the latest derecho in the U.S:
Now check out this one that went half way around the globe:
According to the meteorologyclimatology.suite101 website, “[Derechos] often first form over the Midwest and charge eastward before weakening over the cooler waters of the Atlantic Ocean. [And] July is the most dangerous month for a derecho. Warm, muggy afternoons and evenings can give rise to these violent thunderstorms. High temperatures and high dew points can turn what was otherwise a regular thunderstorm into a huge raging wall of wind.”
High temps and high dew point huh? Well global warming is bringing higher temps during the summer and as for dew points rising, the 2007 IPCC report stated: “The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas,” according to Wunderground.com which added, “Indeed, global warming theory has long predicted an increase in heavy precipitation events. As the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air.”
More heat, more moisture more derechos or bow echoes for us. Oh and BTW even though some websites reported that derechos or bow echoes are rare, there have been 273 bow echoes in the U.S. from 1996 to 2002. For a phenomena that only got its name “bow echo” in 1978 from Dr. Ted Fujita, it certainly seems to be making it’s presence known more and more.
To many of us Africa is still the land of Tarzan and the Lion King. But Africa has changed greatly and no differently than other continents in that the human population is growing, spreading, and creating greater conflict with wildlife. This situation is similar to the U.S. west with ranchers moving into predator territory where wolves, large cats, and grizzly roam. The difference between our situation in the west and those of African ranchers is the type of predator, the size of the ranch, basic human needs, and the way in which the situation is resolved.
African ranchers like those in the Massai in Tanzania have trouble with lion predators attacking their very small livestock herds that are used basically for their own sustenance. Yet even though the Massai ranchers have killed too many lions whose populations are suffering to begin with, the Massai are interested and willing to avert the lion attacks rather than kill the lions whenever possible. They are willing to pay half of the expense for chain link fencing around their stockyard pens called “bomas” to keep attacks down instead. Bomas are traditionally thorny brush piled high for a tall perimeter of organic fence around livestock. This type of thorny enclosure works to keep the livestock in but unfortunately does not always keep the lions out. The lions come out of their reserve due to hunger for lack of prey. The Massai ranchers have learned through organizations like the African Wildlife Foundation that a little preventative care will thwart a majority of attempts at their livestock from lions. The African Wildlife Foundation donates the other half of the expense for the chain link fence the Massai ranchers are willing to use to save the lions, as well as, their livestock.
This is the type of cooperation with wildlife that would be expected of educated ranchers interested in preserving indigenous wild predators while saving their livestock especially where the ranch is huge and the rancher is certainly wealthier than those of the Massai, and the livestock is not intended for sustenance by the rancher as much as profit. But U.S. ranchers just don’t see it that way relative to predators like the Yellowstone wolves.
What’s wrong with this picture? Like the lions of the Massai, there are alternatives to killing the Yellowstone wolves. But U.S. ranchers simply state that it takes a lot of time and effort to maintain the safety of their herds in the open areas near Yellowstone. It’s just easier to turn the wolves over to the hunting industry with little thought or intervention even though U.S. ranchers have the ability to end the endless cycle of slaughter perpetrated on wolves and other predators forever by adopting methods to avert attacks. After all, wolves were here long before ranchers decided to keep their herds in predator territory while expecting everything else to just get out of the way or else.
I thought this was an ironic scenario I read about where African natives that stand to lose the food on their table, and the little bit of income they get for their livestock to invest in alternatives to killing the predators, while the majority of U.S. ranchers refuse to change their habits and invest the time and money it takes to live and work around the wildlife that surrounds them.
African lions used to number nearly 200,000 on the African continent and are now reduced to number from 25,000 to 40,000 total. This decline is horrible with man being the lion’s biggest threat. Bernard Kissui of African Wildlife Foundation’s Lion Conservation Science Project has been saddened by what he has seen lately. Thirty-eight lions have been lost to retaliatory killing since 2007, nearly 20% of the area’s total population. By raising money for fencing for cooperative African ranchers, he proposes to lessen the kill rate of lions. So far he’s been successful introducing the chain link fences. Many African ranchers are interested in the additional sturdy fencing. The African Wildlife Foundation is asking for any donations to raise $75,000 quickly for the cost of fencing to avert more attacks on lions in the Massai Steppe region in Tanzania, home to half of Africa’s lions.
Imagine Kissui’s sadness when he visited a small ranch recently and found the male and female lion he studied for quite some time covered with blood from being speared to death. This reminds me of the rangers of Yellowstone that produced a documentary on behalf of the wolves they’ve studied to show how well the wolves helped the ecosystems of Yellowstone. And of course, the sadness of the many who over a course of years viewed Limpy, the famous wolf that was shot to death in the last hunt of the Yellowstone’s wolves.
If you’ve enjoyed the “Lion King,” admired big cats in Tarzan movies, or want to keep the “King of the Jungle” from being threatened further, goto AWF’s website and donate if you can to raise what is a rather small amount of money to conserve and protect the African lions.
View the good impact AWF has made on behalf of Africa’s wildlife.
This looks to be a good, informative, and fun documentary to wathc tonight, Sunday, May 3, at 9:00 p.m. on National Geographic Channel. Brutus is an 800 lb. grizzly bear that was raised from a cub by naturalist Casey Anderson.
Anderson knows much about grizzlies. Before the grizzly goes the way of the wolf in this country, being shot down and aerial hunted, and literally under the gun by big ranchers and the hunting industry, Anderson made this documentary to inform people about them.
Please watch this. The more we learn about the animals we live with, the more easily we will all live together peacefully. Enjoy!
After I blogged about Smithfield Foods and factory farming again, a person named Gig from causecast.org, another community of people trying to make a difference, commented about the label “free range” relative to the eggs she bought. Thank you Gig!
Natural, free range, and cage free poultry is practically a myth in America unless you’re buying from a small farmer and can see how your chicken was raised. Otherwise, what you’re eating is sometimes sick, and/or barely alive no different than the condition of factory farmed animals. And, Green Choices states: ” The Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and the National Organic Program explicitly require that organic meat and meat products must come from animals that have been raised outdoors. However, the USDA has drawn a distinction between chickens and other animals. While ruminant animals are guaranteed continuous access to the outdoors without confinement, chickens are not guaranteed continuous outdoor access and can be confined.” As for egg laying hens, they fair even worse. We need to pressure the USDA to change this, considering many of us have sworn off red meat, and so poultry consumption is at an all time high.
Luckily, I get my eggs and milk from Calder’s Dairy right here in Monroe, but Gig led me to look for a You Tube video about the misnomer of what we believe to be “free range” regarding egg laying hens. At first, I found videos from small legitimate free-range poultry farms, but then I found the one she referred to and others like it. In short we’re being duped by labeling. Like so much of our legislation, it’s full of loopholes for large corporations/lobbies to get away with chicken torture.
The videos are horrible exposes about what we do to the poultry we eat. I knew the horrors of factory farmed chickens and avoid buying any old chicken, but the idea of free range or natural isn’t much better. If you think you’re eating a wholesome product, humanely treated, it must be labeled as such.
Watch the following video thanks to You Tube and Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary:
My mother and father were both from farm families and my mom refers to chickens as “sweet, little hens.” When I saw this video, I wanted to cry. I immediately looked for websites where I could get reputable reports about labeling practices regarding poultry products. I read blogs where bloggers truly believe the law is the law and companies would be sued if they didn’t do what their label said. Suuuuuuuuure. Then I read about a local company, a big farm somewhere, that actually advertised on TV that their chickens loved living there, that is, until someone got in there with a camera and taped the awful conditions.
There were websites that led the reader to believe ALL chicken farms are horrible, and labels are close to useless. But then I found a website that led me to some good sources of info. The first two links I’ve listed below were especially useful and middle of the road to help the busy consumer understand the labels when looking for humanely raised, as well as, additive free poultry.
Bottom line the label should read “Humanely raised and handled.” The next best choice is a “Food Alliance” certification. After that pick “organic” simply because the gov’t. enforces stricter rules on the organic label than “free range” or “cage free,” but it still doesn’t mean the chickens were treated humanely.
Labels that say “free range or free roaming” are misleading because the USDA requires that the animals have access to the outdoors, but it doesn’t say for how long and there’s no verification. What’s more, the rules don’t apply to eggs,” according to a newsletter on shopsmart.typepad.com. No verification—does that mean self-regulating?
The “cage-free” label isn’t much better according to the same article: “It may sound like the chickens were free to peck around in the fresh air, but unless the eggs are labeled Certified Humane, there might be no independent group verifying how the animals are treated. Also, this label doesn’t necessarily mean that the chickens went outdoors. They may have been cooped up inside a screened in porch or a dirty barn.”
And finally, the “natural” label, well it just means no artificial ingredients were used during processing. It doesn’t mean the poultry wasn’t given antibiotics along the way, which leads me to ask: “Why do you think antibiotic use was so widespread in the meatpacking industry to begin with?” The animals were sick. How many years did we eat that? Nothing seems to have changed. We’re still eating sick animals only now they don’t get antibiotics—and are probably in worse condition.
This blog repeatedly says poultry but it’s about chicken. Turkey is another story I found. Most turkey has been genetically altered so badly they have to be artificially inseminated. What? That’s right. Look it up on the Internet. That info is everywhere. Some turkeys are so heavy that they are literally crippled by the weight and can’t walk.
I went shopping at a regular grocery store today. I found “organic” along with the “free range” logo and immediately didn’t trust it. The “free range” threw me. I did buy some Miller Amish Country brand. I looked up the Miller website last night, and read their testimonial, then tried to find a You Tube expose on Miller. So far there are none. The only problem is that Miller relies on smaller Amish farms collectively. Who is checking those farms? I read one blogger who lives near some Amish poultry farms and says they are not organic or humane.
