Our World and Everything in It

Good news and just in time I think. The Great Lakes Compact looks to be signed off by the last, (Wisconsin), of 8 states that are involved in the agreement to keep Great Lakes water from being diverted elsewhere. The deadline for Wisconsin coming on board is April 17th.  Wisconsin was holding out for changes to the compact that many claim would unravel the whole thing. So either Wisconsin conceded or something changed.

I say this happened just in time because the March 31st issue of Time magazine featured an article on Lake Mead drying up. It looked like the photographs of Lake Chad in Niger Africa that I blogged about in 2006.  Lake Chad was once 10,000 sq mi but is now a mere 500 sq mi., probably less now in 2008. Lake Chad is comparable to some of our Great Lakes. It’s drying up, as is Lake Mead. The Time article said the marks on the surrounding rock show past water levels of Lake Mead that were100 ft. higher.

After that article, I picked up my latest Reader’s Digest May 2008 issue and the special report was titled as a question: “Are we running out of water?” That article highlighted Atlanta’s latest drought, as well as Lake Mead. The whole time I’m thinking about Wisconsin holding out on signing the compact because they are worried about communities outside of the basin getting water from the Great Lakes.  The wells that one of the communities used to rely on are full of radium, so they need lake water more than ever.

But without the compact and as the law reads now for this Wisconsin out-of-basin community, the governors of the Great Lakes basin states can say no to a diversion from the Great Lakes for no reason at all. At least the new rules in the compact set up standards a community must meet to get the water, and as long as the treated wastewater is returned, that community wouldn’t be denied access.  Did Wisconsin ever stop to think that they shouldn’t tick off the other governors by holding up this valuable compact, that those governors could veto the water to this out-of-basin community in the future? It’s doubtful that would happen, considering the moral and ethical implications, but Geez.

I think that we’re all a little spoiled. That Wisconsin community was used to just getting the water without a big hassle before. All they have to do is comply with standards outlined by the new compact, which they probably have been doing all along. So do the paperwork involved for the compliance and get your water already!

And the rest of us in the Great Lakes area are spoiled as well. I live right on the water. It is higher this year than all but one of the past 20 years I’ve lived here. Yet I read about fellow Americans suffering drought and fires elsewhere in the country. The dumb thing is that if climate gets so bad that drought forces millions of Americans out of their homes and migrating back toward the Great Lakes basin to settle, we will be using the water up anyway now won’t we? Instead of pumping it to them, they come here for it. What’s the difference? We’re simply delaying the process with this compact because if the scenario for water scarcity gets worse, we’ll be packed in like sardines around here, and just counting the days to our demise anyway.

We shouldn’t be fooling around about conservation in this country any longer.  We’re seeing some pretty drastic changes in a very short period of time, a lot shorter than ”oh we-don’t-have-to-worry about global warming for ten years!” Right. 

Read about the Great Lakes Compact: http://www.glc.org/about/glbc.html

About finalizing the compact: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/page/community/post/coryliebmann/C27D

About the holdup in Wisconsin: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=718988
 

Many of us had lovely ash trees in our yard once upon a time, and there are many parks around Michigan that have yet to clear out all of the ash trees that died from the ash borer, a simple bug.
Well, there are a lot more bugs to come and we can thank global warming for it.

Colorado is bearing the brunt of an increase in bark beetle bugs that have killed millions of acres of lodge pole pines. These pines are exactly what their name describes, tall, tall trees pine trees whose needled branches are disproportionately at the top third of the entire trunk, think Q-tip. The bottom portion of the trunk is a straight shot of wood, used to build log lodges.

An article on abcnews.com stated 1.5 million acres are already wiped out and all of the lodge pole pines may be gone in 3 to 5 years. It said the infestation was first noticed in 1996. What the heck takes so long for our agencies to act on anything? I lost my ash tree, and the whole time Bayer brand systemic spray would have worked. By time I applied anything to my tree, it was already too late. I know what I found for news before that. Our state officials said nothing worked against the ash borer…so people failed to act. State officials were wrong!

Colorado officials said, “the infestation was concentrated in five northern Colorado counties straddling the Continental Divide and has reached southern Wyoming.” The amount of trees taken by the beetles increased 1500 percent last year and “forest officials attributed the spread of the beetle to warm winters and drought. Susan Gray, group leader for forest health management with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, said only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles.” Keep an eye on your spruce trees! Spruce and aspen pines are susceptible to the beetle also.

To add insult to injury relative to our trees and forests, the Bush administration looks to weaken the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This rule protects millions of acres of trees in Idaho against the oil, natural gas, timer, and mining industries. According to Earthjustice, Idaho contains more unspoiled wild forest than any state outside Alaska, providing the last intact forest habitat for countless fish, wildlife, and plant species. These areas are enjoyed by hunters, anglers, hikers, and all who treasure the backcountry. Earthjustice disclosed why Bush is pushing the Roadless Rule aside:

The administration’s proposal will open the door to logging millions of pristine acres, risk dangerous toxic contamination from mining, degrade clean fish-bearing streams and important wildlife habitat, and fail to live up to the public’s overwhelming desire to protect all of these areas for future generations.

This forest giveaway could lead to 545 million tons of phosphate being mined on nearly 8,000 unspoiled acres near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Any increase in phosphate mining would worsen the already serious problem of selenium poisoning in local streams and aquifers. Selenium is an extremely dangerous contaminant known to cause birth defects, which bio-accumulates in the food web — persisting for centuries after entering the environment.

Read more about this and sign a petition to stop President Bush before he weakens the Roadless Rule even more. We’re already losing trees and a lot of our landscape from extreme weather, i.e., floods, fires, tornadoes, and now bugs. Does the Bush administration have a clue about conservation? Do they even care? Trees protect us from the sun, and take CO2 out of the air for Pete’s sake, and the powers that be want to give them away to big money.

About the pine beetle infestation:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4133205

More about Bush sidestepping the Roadless Rule: http://www.earthjustice.org/our_work/campaigns/roadless_rule.html
Sign the petition to save our national forests: http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/roadless_ID_0308
 

St. Patrick’s Day is a good, green holiday that didn’t turn out well for many when festivities began on Friday for this holiday. Savannah, Georgia had terrible thunderstorms that knocked out power to at least 150,000 customers and blackened the streets in Savannah, home to the second largest St. Patty’s Day celebration in the country. At least it was that large back in the 80’s. I was there.

Apparently that storm was the result of conditions that also produced a tornado that hit downtown Atlanta in a 200 yd. wide swath, 6 miles long at 130 mph!!! It never happened before. All I could think of: What if something like this hit downtown New York or Chicago? I think of a domino effect on the buildings. And I’m back to the analogy between terrorism and Mother Nature. Both are extremely destructive, but one always trumps the other, trumps everything, and it’s the weather. Extreme weather kills randomly and is getting worse, and more erratic. It’s caused enough destruction in Florida that insurance premiums are outrageous. Even though the debate continues about our responsibility in global warming, it’s not illogical to think we’re polluting way beyond bounds. Our demands for oil and food increase yearly as our populations grow. It is plausible that it is affecting climate conditions that many scientists admit have happened before to our world, BUT NEVER AT THE RATE IT IS PROGRESSING NOW.

This is the point I tried to make to someone I got into an argument with at a bar (Clamdiggers) during Friday night happy hour. The Irish were already getting tuned up and will appreciate this. It was a beautiful afternoon on Friday. I stopped with friends to a really crowded and loud bar. Good thing it was loud in there, because before I finished one drink, my friend announced to 2 guys next to us that we were environmentalists. All I could think was: “Oh no!” I don’t want to argue with anyone about that.

I ended up in a face-to-face argument with a guy who was proud to be a polluter, who had already got into it with another friend of mine who owns a Prius. He didn’t know what he was talking about relative to electric cars, and then announced to me that the oil industry contributes the most money to alternative energy research. I know BP has invested, and Conoco Philips, but do all of them invest—not Exxon Mobil? I caught parts of his argument while he was in my face asking if I was naive. It ended when his buddy started laughing as he realized the steady degradation of events that took place in a matter of 20 minutes from smiling to yelling, and said he was dragging his workmate out. Well the argumentative one put on a Lion’s jacket, which just invited my sport’s minded friends to jeer: “That explains it all,” where they proceeded to do the loser “L” at him. I had one more cocktail and left. The best made intentions can just go awry, can’t they? My friends and I started with lively conversation about classic poets and novelists. I was heading toward limericks in honor of St. Patrick’s day and all just ran amuck and got rude.

That’s why there was no blog Friday night, but I did decide to investigate the polluter’s argument. How much do our oil companies invest in alternative energy? It’s a good question. I caught the BP commercial about investing in alternative energy. I’m finishing a post for tomorrow that shows how much American oil companies contribute to alternative energies, and also each company’s current net earnings. I know BP stands for British Petroleum, but they bought our Amoco in 98, I think.

It’s one thing to hear statements that the oil industry is investing millions in alternative energy, and like polluter guy, assume it’s a lot, probably more than anyone else. But since I did accounting, I want to know what percentage is invested as compared to net earnings in the billions and climbing? I’ve already seen some of the numbers. It’s a pretty paltry picture compared to the wealth streaming in from oil. So, Stay tuned.  
 

In 1880, Leadville, CO was a silver mining town with a population of about 40,000 people. By 2005, Leadville had less than 2700 citizens but as a part of Lake County with close to 8000 residents, the area and its citizens are in serious danger from those old mining camps. I wanted to find out more about Leadville so I looked at Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia Leadville was full of lead about 1 million short tons but also produced over 2.9 million ounces of gold, 240 million ounces of silver, 785 thousand short tons of zinc and 53 thousand short tons of copper.

Many years of mining left behind substantial contamination of the soil and water, so that the EPA designated some former mining sites in Leadville as Superfund sites designated for clean up. Wikipedia stated that according to authorities, the town is now 98% cleaned up and the Superfund designation is about to expire. Well guess again.

The Lake County Commissioners declared a state of emergency in Colorado today. As I understand it, because mines are hollow, the water that seeps down the walls and across the floor may carry with it toxic contaminants like lead. If allowed to run free as surface water runoff, it poses a hazardous waste problem to the area. During WWII the Bureau of Mines dug drainage tunnels to direct and contain the runoff.  The Leadville mines tunnel was later sold to the Bureau of Reclamation as many of them were. According to an article in the Vail Daily News, “in 1992, a lawsuit by the Sierra Club prompted the construction of the tunnel treatment plant.” And everyone was supposed to live happily ever after.

However, there is a cave in somewhere in that mine now blocking the tunnel, and water is building up on the one side of the cave-in due to heavy snowfall and ice melt. It’s building up to a tune of “over a billion gallons of toxic acid and metal-laden water to form a pool at the headwaters of the Arkansas River, according to Commissioner Hickman. He explained that the water is now nearly 200 feet high and continues to apply pressure against the cave-in.” The same Vail Daily article said that the Denver Post stated “snow pack levels in the Upper Arkansas Valley are 163 percent of normal,” so more water than ever is going to continue to apply pressure. Commissioner Hickman said that he is afraid that the environmental degradation of the Arkansas River will be beyond anyone’s comprehension if the whole thing explodes. Lately, there appears to be a back-up situation from Leadville’s mine tunnel to the California Gulch tunnel treatment plant also.

The Bureau of Reclamation knows about the problem, has taken some steps but is moving too slowly for the commissioners. The commissioners should be on edge. This administration is not known for its quick action during human disasters, or for their prevention. The Bureau of Reclamation has been accused of failing to warn citizens when the Teton Dam in Idaho gave way in 1976. Fourteen people died and 300,000 acre-feet of water surged through the area causing one billion dollars in damages. A couple of Senators, Salazar and Wiens, have voiced their concern over the Leadville tunnel. Salazar accused the Bureau of not cooperating with the EPA or Colorado’s Dept. of Health. Other than that nothing much has been done as the water continues to build. There is a trailer park situated right where the water will rush through if the dam gives way.

All I can think of is the recent push to mine all over the country again eventually leaving more void pockets like the existing abandoned mines in Leadville. Mountain top strip mining, coal mining, and even in Michigan, mining for copper is on the agenda once again. Look at the age of the mines in Leadville that are still causing a problem and costing millions from the Superfund to clean up or contain. The U.S. hasn’t fully remedied the problems from mines that over 100 years old, but is willing to invest in new mining all over the country again? Add to that the Bureau of Reclamation’s failure to act on the behalf of citizen’s safety as it has in the past, and even though the EPA has pressured them with concern about this particular tunnel for years. Since, I don’t have much faith in the Bush EPA, this must be really bad for them to pay attention. It’s bad enough for us to pay attention and keep a watchful thumb on excessive mining in the future, especially for filthy fossil fuel like coal.

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20080214/NEWS/972891293.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadville,_Colorado.

(more…)

The tornadoes disaster that struck the south Tuesday was different. We’ve seen interviews of people after a tornado struck their home, or threw them around. They’ve always been curiously stoic, that they are alive and that’s all that matter. The reporter ends by saying something like “looking at the debris and destruction, it’s amazing no one was killed.” Not so this time.

People were visibly shaken, edgy, overwhelmed. There didn’t seem to be any warning.  An aerial view of a touchdown on Union University campus shows signs of the whirring motion that hit like a blender. The middle of the campus is gone, while the outward spirals of wind blew apart the dorms that were clustered around it. One student got sucked out of a hallway while holding onto a heavy gumball machine. He didn’t have enough time to run inside far enough. Part of the building collapsed on him but he made it. Up to 60 other people didn’t.

The death toll keeps climbing as people look through the debris. I’m tornado phobic. Not so much of the actual funnel but because caught off guard, these storms are deadly. And the chances of being caught off-guard are greater than you think. I found a good website, WeatherEye, that based its info on results of Project Vortex, the world’s largest storm-chasing project. What better info than people that sit in those weird mobile units gathering data at the edge of a huge twister.

It’s always been believed that a tornado takes 20-30 minutes to form, and we have detectors everywhere. Try 5 to 10 minutes, and tornadoes many times come from small weather patterns that develop between weather stations. So what happened Tuesday is something like this. You’re sitting there in Tennessee in February. There are storm predictions. The storm starts.  And out of nowhere drops a funnel cloud. You’re not prepared at all, just hanging onto your breeches. It lasts a few minutes, but your life is changed forever—no mementos, no trophies, no pictures, nothing to wear, no paperwork, no purse, no pets…absolutely stripped.  The teeth of some of the people interviewed were still chattering. I don’t ever want to be surprised like that, not living in a frame house with a 4 ft. crawlspace, along with 2 cats and a parrot. All I visualize is the entire contents of our pole barn whisking around and mowing my house to shreds, while I’m trapped below listening to it.

I’ve got good reason to be afraid. Our weather is getting more and more erratic, and it’s those warm days that don’t want to budge when the cold moves in that cause the problems.  After this week’s tornado fest, everyone should be a little more respectful. You would think by now we would have better predictions.

According to WeatherEye, NASA launched an OTD or Optical Transient Detector satellite in 1995 that was able to view lightening strikes even in the daylight. That satellite passed over a storm and picked up 200 lightening flashes while our sensors on the ground picked up only 9. It also detected plenty of cloud-to-cloud strikes. While they seemed to reach their peak, a tornado touched down. There seems to be a correlation between cloud to cloud lightening activity and the materialization of a tornado. This satellite picked up as much as 20 times more cloud-to-cloud activity than detected on the ground.

That was back in 95, why are we still being surprised by tornadoes like those on Tuesday? It’s 2008. We have a state of the art satellite that can help predict bad weather patterns before they strike, far better than any other before. It’s sitting in a warehouse somewhere. President Bush didn’t allow money for it. He wants to pursue the space station project. The shelved satellite was to replace one that is soon to be obsolete and out of service. In view of the bad weather that we are experiencing, and it’s only going to get worse, I think it would be prudent to urge whoever is the next president to get it launched, and quickly.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=186

http://weathereye.kgan.com/expert/tornadoes/predict.html.

http://weathereye.kgan.com/expert/tornadoes/predict2.html.

 My mind works in strange ways and so all the things I’m blogging about here go together in my mind. I was watching the Super Bowl and I caught the beginning where everyone was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I thought I just wrote something with the Declaration of Independence in it, and sure enough I did a blog on the 4th of July. I was urging people to be patriotic and contact their reps to support a moratorium on CAFO’s in Michigan. That didn’t happen. As a matter of fact thanks to the MI Farm Bureau and Republican Senate, it’s easier than ever to come to Michigan with a CAFO. Go to the link about CAFO’s below and check out the aerial pictures. Tell me during downpours of rain that those lagoons don’t breach. Groundwater runoff in Michigan ultimately ends up in a lake somewhere. So the opening of the Super Bowl brought up a sore subject for me.

Today, I’m reading an article in the Detroit Free Press about botulism killing Great Lakes birds. It said: “The deaths of hundreds of loons, cormorants, gulls, long-tailed ducks and grebes were scattered across the sand washed up and rotting.” There were 2900 dead birds along a 14-mile stretch of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. That’s ugly. The botulism is being blamed on two foreign, Black Sea area, mussels and round gobies that look like minnows but fatter. Biologists think they are the cause, and it looks like warmer weather, and lower water levels contribute to the problem. The botulism is native to the Great Lakes but hasn’t been around for more than 20 years. The cycle of botulism works like this:

The lakes are warmer and more shallow. The mussels are so numerous they filter the water, which becomes clearer. The sun penetrates to the bottom farther in clear shallow water, and a type of cladophora algae over grows from the sunlight. When the algae dies, it rots and the botulism comes to life. The mussels absorb the botulism, the gobie fish eat the mussels, the birds eat the gobie fish—and ultimately die from botulism.

The article in the Free Press said that the cladophora algae flourished in the 60’s and 70’s because it was nourished by the phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and poor sewage treatment. Bans in Michigan on phosphorus and improved sewage treatment reduced that algae in the 80’s and 90’s. Well, it’s back. 50,000 birds have died from E botulism since 1999.

I remember yesterday’s game, the Declaration of Independence, the CAFOs, and now sewage. I started thinking about a proposal I did for septic systems in Michigan as an assignment for class. Boy was that an eye opener. I found a fairly current article in the Sanitation Journal that said there are over 1.2 million septic systems in Michigan, and up until a few years ago Michigan didn’t have a state sanitary code. Over 40 percent of the new homes in Michigan are in rural areas where septic systems are necessary, and new homes near the water must have above-the-ground engineered septic fields now. But what about older homes like mine?

My husband is a stickler about our septic system, but there are homes along my road that are 40 years old with the original owner in them. Many of Michigan’s septic fields are only inspected when a home sells. Get the picture? The Sanitation Journal said one of the biggest contaminants of our lakes and streams, rivers, springs and such, is failed septic systems, so that’s something the state is really watching.” I don’t know about that, not all of it anyway. I thought we were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on the ballast water of freighters too, and look at all the mussels.  

The Detroit Free Press story link is below. It was an exceptionally poignant story because one of the biologists rounding up the dead birds found one with a band on its leg. It was an old loon he tracked for 14 years or more. A loon that kept a mate for one of the longest pairings ever recorded, and most amount of chicks raised. That would have really got to me.

 http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=87.

If you want to see what I mean about CAFO’s: http://www.mythinglinks.org/FactoryFarms_WalmartManureDoc.html

More about CAFO’s: http://www.ccofdc.org/documents/CAFO.pdf

http://www.sanitationjournal.com/mstadavesnyder.html.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008802040334

I got my heating bill the other day, was going to blog about it, and have lost it. Does that mean I don’t have to pay it? I know. It was higher and I figure everyone else is suffering much, much worse. My bill combined with $78.00 for electric was $303.00, I think. That’s what they’re getting this month anyway, since I’ve lost the bill. I looked at my bill enough and compared it to last month’s bill that it’s pretty much memorized. There was a funny charge on there, one from 2005, and another just like it for 2006. They were small, like $1.46 or something but the 2006 charge wasn’t on last month’s bill. Are we going to find one for 2007 on the next? I don’t like when things just appear on my bill that weren’t there before.  It looks like something was passed back in 2004 or sooner that is just now showing up. Sneaky.

The total bill was $60.00 higher than last month, granted it has been cold, but we just had January thaw 3 weeks early. It lasted long enough for my Jack in the Pulpit plants to grow large and green in my flowerbeds. We found fruit trees budding. I think we just stopped paying attention to our habits relative to our bigger bill. Slip up a little and it shows big. We have a small gas wall unit in the back of the house. The main furnace and the wall unit should never be turned up at the same time. Since this last bill, if I’m home and it’s sunny, the main furnace gets shut off for at least 2 hours in the afternoon. The reason? I have twelve ft. of windows across my living room facing south, and the tree out front is a Maple, no leaves. If I open the blinds, I can feel the heat. I say utilize that sunshine, solar panels or not. I also turn the heat down when I use the oven. Don’t waste that toasty warmth when dinner is done; open the oven door until it cools down. Make sure and block drafts under doors. Clothes drapes and blinds at night or windy days. Reverse the blades on your overhead fans to keep heat from lingering around the ceiling.

Pay attention. I didn’t, and it showed up on my bill, and quickly. Take advantage of everything you can to lower your bill. Some energy companies are offering a choice to consumers to lock in a low rate over a few years. I just received an offer from IGS Energy to lock in a rate of 0.849 per CCF. CCF is the per unit cost of your gas bill.  Look at your bill. It should be way beyond point anything right now, more like 2.80. Ouch! I would say any other source that can guarantee a year round price of anything 0.9 or lower is a really good deal. I presently have MxEnergy and have one more year at 0.851 CCF. MichCon charges me a fee of course, something like 37.00 of my $225.00 gas bill went for carrier costs, but hey my bill is still lower than most. IGS is presently offering the lowest rate. If you sign up with MxEnergy now the cost per unit will be 1.069. Realize that the locked in price is year round. It will be above the going per unit rate for gas in the summer. That is why it’s important to keep that per unit cost under 0.9. If you pay too much for gas in the summer it offsets your savings for gas in the winter, the same for carrier charges. But, I think it’s a safe bet to say that over the duration of the next 3 years that 0.849 CCF will beat anything out there for wintertime rates.

I’ll  blog next month when I find out if paying attention pays off. Considering how cold this past week has been, I’d be happy to get another $300.00 bill. If I can actually lower it by paying better attention to our habits, and without suffering, it will be worth the effort.

I blogged about the Farm Bill and the changes that are needed if we are ever going to get healthy and get the nation turned around so that the small farmer thrives once again. Not going to happen. The November 12th, 2007 issue of Time Magazine had a scathing article by Michael Grunwald called “Down on the Farm” about the farm lobby and the lopsided business of farm subsidies. The article is too long to outline here. But our future for free range chicken, pork, or beef, more fruits and vegetables, and less tainted meat and food supplies in general instead of the top five commodities—corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice is mighty bleak.

The article warns if you “eat, drink, or pay taxes—or care about the economy, the environment, or our global reputation” the Farm Bill is a big deal. We still subsidize farmers billions of tax dollars every year. The trouble is that it is redistributed to millionaire farmers mostly when 60% of small farmers get no subsidies at all. Some of the subsidies even go to farms that are no longer in business!

Besides wasting billions of our money by staying status quo and helping the rich, the way our Farm Bill is laid out:

It contributes to our obesity, and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, elimiate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the non-agricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy.

And this description is in the first column of a long article on just how construed our Farm Bill really is. Small farmers get next to nothing in help, and are forced out. This says much about our free market system that conservatives like to tout causes competition and keeps everyone in check. Baloney. I’ve been screaming that there is no such thing as a free market system in America any longer as long as we have lobbies and big interest groups throwing millions at Congress. Again, the wealthy rule and find all sorts of loopholes to get rid of the little guy. Some free market system!

For you and me, that means we will continue to be force-fed high fructose corn syrup in everything we eat. Type II Diabetes will continue to rise. The organic industry will continue to struggle. If you’ve ever complained about the high prices of organic, now you know why. The big guys producing the top 5 crops don’t want you buying that stuff. And you won’t at $1.00 per apple. I’ve walked into the organic section of my store more than once with determination to buy what I know is better for me. The prices drive me out. I look for sales instead and go home with half of what I planned on. Example: If you want to buy cranberry juice, and I mean real cranberry juice, no other fruit juices in it, no corn syrup, no additives, full strength, not from concentrate it’s over $7.00 for 32 oz. Thank the big megafarms and our Farm Bill for that. Or then again thank Nancy Pelosi. As a matter of fact, read the article, then contact Pelosi and tell her what you think of her accommodating the same ole farm lobby once again.

Thank goodness I have fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and know how to do good old-fashioned canning. But if our weird weather keeps up, I won’t be able to do that. If we have a water shortage and hot searing sun, I won’t be able to water like it’s needed. I lost most of my fruits this past season when the trees were in bloom and we had a freeze. By fall, the very few small apples I had also had a black, oily residue all over the skins. We’ve yet to determine what it is and where it came from. I’m leaning toward jet fuel and just peeling the skins before I eat the stuff. This is going to get about survival. People who only buy from major stores, who don’t eat healthy anyway aren’t going to notice until it gets really bad. But for people who are health conscious, and raise the things they plan to eat, much like the small, unsubsidized farmer, we know what can happen, and happen fast in a bad way.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1680139,00.html.

http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html.
 

I’m addicted to the Science Channel. The topic of interest tonight was tsunamis. After the one in Indonesia that killed a quarter million people it should be of interest to everyone who lives on a coast somewhere. There are many shifting plates around the world known for their activity that can cause earthquakes. I had no idea how many there really are. There is a Eurasian-African plate, Indian Australian plate, the Alpine plate, Caribbean plate, a lot of plates for a lot of earthquakes.

Australia is particularly concerned. It seems the most likely place a tsunami will hit as it has before is the East Coast of Australia where sits Sydney. There is a huge public beach there with thousands of beachgoers in the summer season. A simulated video showed how a Tsunami like that in Indonesia would travel up an inlet there and really cause trouble because the coastline is lined with boulders. Imagine a wall of water coming at you full of boulders. If the water doesn’t kill you the debris does.

Australia has suffered two large tsunamis near Sydney and a bunch of small ones in the past. Earthquakes along the Alpine Fault next to New Zealand are to blame. Earthquakes there happen every 500 years and guess what’s overdue? It was stated that just because it hasn’t happened does not mean it’s not going to. It means it will really be big when it does. Sounds like giving birth doesn’t it?

Hawaii has been hit by tsunamis in the past also. But now Hawaii has the NOAA Tsunami Warning Center to give notice as soon as possible. But will it be soon enough? Right now Dr. Stephen Hickman, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Society is involved with drilling down and across the San Andreas Fault off of San Francisco in order to secure seismic meters there in an attempt to have the earliest warning possible of any and all earthquakes. I was reading more about this project on the Southern California Earthquake Center website and the author, part of a film crew, says he was standing on the drilling platform of the SAFOD or San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth project when an earthquake hit. Now that’s reporting firsthand. It was a 6.0 and the comment was that this was probably ‘the most well-recorded earthquake in history.’

It’s an interesting and humorous story, and quite a fluke that the author was actually there on top of the quake shaking violently on the drilling platform. This is quite a new and innovative project, but in the end may save millions of people if it can forecast big and small, upcoming quakes, and broadcast threats of any resulting tsunamis. I wonder how or who is placing those seismic meters in the tunnels? Considering what happened, not a good job to have. Kind of like putting the first construction cone out on the highway.

http://www.scec.org/education/041007parkfield.html