By HARRY YANOSHAK
Bucks County Courier Times
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won't oppose the U.S. Department of Defense and DuPont Co.'s plan to dump a wastewater byproduct of a deadly nerve agent into the Delaware River.
The agency said it's assured of a safe treatment for up to 4 million gallons of caustic wastewater created in the treatment for VX, a chemical weapon with a pinhead-size potency to kill a human. DuPont is treating VX for disposal at its Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana.
The agent, once neutralized, would be shipped to DuPont's Chambers Works plant in Deepwater, N.J., for discharge into the river.
"EPA believes that all of our previously identified ecological concerns have been resolved," said Walter Mugdan, director of the agency's Environmental Planning and Protection division in New York, in a letter released Friday to CNN and obtained by The News Journal in Wilmington, Del.
The agency's position angers opponents of the disposal plan. They're concerned the wastewater would harm the Delaware, which supplies drinking water to millions. Furthermore, opponents say the EPA's opinion is premature and raises more questions about the wastewater's effects on river health.
The EPA forwarded its findings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where analysts are considering health risks posed by the Army and DuPont's plan. A final report from the CDC is expected to go to the region's congressional delegations in April. An earlier study by the agency was inconclusive as to the health effects of the discharge.
Tracy Carluccio, a spokeswoman for the Delaware Riverkeeper based in Washington Crossing, criticized the EPA for its action.
"This report [by the EPA] is not conclusive in any way," she said Saturday.
Full story
BY ROBERT S. BOYD
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The United States and Russia are locked in another cold war, this time over a hole in the ice at the bottom of the world in Antarctica.
The Russians lost the real Cold War, but it looks as if they're going to win this one.
At issue is their plan to continue drilling a hole they began in 1998 until they poke through the ice into a large, long-buried lake known as Vostok. They've already drilled 2.2 miles down, stopping only about 100 yards from the lake, and have declared their intention to go the rest of the way next year.
Scientists in the United States and worldwide are panting to explore Lake Vostok, but they worry that the Russians are plunging ahead without taking adequate precautions to avoid contaminating the hidden waters with their drilling equipment.
Researchers think that the lake, which is about the size of Lake Ontario and more than a half-mile deep, has been sealed off from the rest of the world for more than 10 million years, far longer than humans have been on Earth. They want to find out whether living organisms are growing down there and see how they may have evolved differently from life on the surface. The findings also could tell a lot about the possibility of life on the icy moons of Jupiter or on planets beyond our solar system.
The problem is the Russians are using a drilling fluid - a mixture of kerosene and Freon that's infested with microbes - to bore into the ice. If the fluid gets into the lake, scientists can't be sure that any organisms they find were in the water already or came from the outside, said Scott Borg, the head of the Antarctic Sciences Section at the National Science Foundation. That would destroy their scientific value.
full story
Editorial
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Has anybody noticed that news isn't what it used to be?
What happened to the general up and down, back and forth, flow of events, both good and bad, that used to be our daily fare? It used to be possible to read the news and the good news somehow was able to counterbalance the bad news. Yes, there were evil things afoot, but there were also good things in the works.
And it wasn't just denial of the bad things either. There used to be serious groups working for peace and global understanding and betterment who were actually making progress even if they did have to fight for every step forward against corporations only out for money or against corrupt government power fiends. Nowadays, the news is almost unrelentingly horrible and the only "good news" seems to be from delusional characters who are paid to propagandize, trying to convince all of us that black is white and sour is sweet.
I don't know about you, but as bad as it might have been under the surface or behind the scenes, I want the old days back... the days before George W. Bush was appointed to a presidency he did not win. Since George Bush was hoisted to the highest office in the land, everything has gone downhill like nuclear train.
I mean, just take a look at some of the stories headlines here - just a few out of a much larger selection:
Shi'ite militia, insurgents clash in Baghdad
Ten imams murdered in Iraq as sectarian killings intensify :
Dozens of Mosques Attacked, Over 100 Dead, Thousands Protest :
Ted Koppel in 'NYT': Iraq for U.S. Is 'About the Oil' :
Germany admits its spies helped US in Iraq war:
Taleban kill four Afghan soldiers in ambush:
Further Evidence That Senior Officials Approved Abuse of Prisoners at Guantánamo :
Blair condones Amin-style tactics against terrorism, says Archbishop:
Balata Refugee Camp under invasion again :
Car bombers attack Saudi oil plant:
Emergency declared in Philippines:
Venezuela cuts US airline flights :
Venezuelan-Owned Citgo Faces Congressional Inquiry For Offering Discounted Oil to U.S. Poor
A Global Infrastructure for Mass Surveillance :
UAE terminal takeover extends to 21 ports:
Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote :
To combat hunger, more in US turn to soup kitchens:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Venezuela, Philippines, people in the US being spied on and going hungry while their president steals their money to give to his pals to bomb more people and stir up more violence, so he has to take more money to give to his friends to bomb more people and citizens of the US keep sliding further and further into poverty and despair.
What the HELL is going on? Four and a half years ago the world was not like this! I could read the news without feeling like the ground was being snatched from under my feet! I could read the news and not wonder who was going to bomb who first and who was going to nuke who first. Sure, there were problems - mostly caused by subversive Intell agencies trying to manipulate the global players into position so that what is being done today COULD be done, but at least they were being partly contained by actions from those seeking peace and stability. In four and a half years, we've gone from the point where postive changes could have taken the world in an entirely different direction, to a point where it looks like the days of this civilization are, indeed, numbered.
It all started when George Bush stole his first election.
Full article
Carnegie Institution
News Release
Monday February 20, 2006
Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world’s oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology will present this research at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, HI on Monday, Feb 20.
Caldeira’s computer models have predicted that the oceans will become far more acidic within the next century. Now, he has compared this data with ocean chemistry evidence from the fossil record, and has found some startling similarities. The new finding offers a glimpse of what the future might hold for ocean life if society does not drastically curb carbon dioxide emissions.
“The geologic record tells us the chemical effects of ocean acidification would last tens of thousands of years,” Caldeira said. “But biological recovery could take millions of years. Ocean acidification has the potential to cause extinction of many marine species.”
When carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil, and gas dissolves in the ocean, some of it becomes carbonic acid. Over time, accumulation of this carbonic acid makes ocean water more acidic. When carbonic acid input is modest, sediments from the ocean floor can buffer the increases in acidity. But at the current rate of input—nearly 50 times the natural background from volcanoes and other sources—this buffering mechanism is overwhelmed. Previous estimates suggest that in less than 100 years, the pH of the oceans could drop by as much as half a unit from its natural value of 8.2 to about 7.7. (On the pH scale, lower numbers are more acidic and higher numbers are more basic.)
This drop in ocean pH would be especially damaging to marine animals such as corals that use calcium carbonate to make their shells. Under normal conditions the ocean is supersaturated with this mineral, making it easy for such creatures to grow. However, a more acidic ocean would more easily dissolve calcium carbonate, putting these species at particular risk.
full story
Signs of the Times
21/02/2006
Joe Quinn
Yesterday, during his whistlestop tour of Iraq, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw made a couple of very interesting admissions, although undoubtedly he would not see them as such.
First, Straw informed the world that "the US government has no intention of maintaining a permanent Soviet-style "gulag" at Guantanamo Bay", which appears to be a recognition of the fact that Guantanamo Bay is indeed a Soviet Style Gulag. In the Gulags:
brutality, hunger and harsh elements were the major reasons for the Gulag's high fatality rate, which was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps.
Inmates were often forced to work in inhuman conditions. In spite of the brutal climate, they were almost never adequately clothed, fed, or given medical treatment, nor were they given any means to combat the lack of vitamins that led to nutritional diseases such as scurvy. The nutritional value of basic daily food ration varied around 1,200 calories (5,000 kilojoules), mainly from low-quality bread distributed by weight. According to the World Health Organization, the minimum requirement for a heavy labourer is in the range of 3,100–3,900 calories (13,000 to 16,300 kJ) daily.
Straw tells us that the allegedly Democratic US government has no intention of "permanently" maintaining a camp like Guantanamo bay where innocent people are treated as animals. The question then is how long does the US government intend on disgracing itself in this way?
full story
By Hal Dardick
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 15, 2006, 9:42 PM CST
Radioactive tritium leaks have been found at two more nuclear power plant sites, Exelon Nuclear announced Wednesday, only weeks after the company disclosed a series of spills at a Will County plant.
The leaks were discovered in recent weeks at Dresden Generating Station in Grundy County and Byron Nuclear Generating Station, about 25 miles southwest of Rockford.
So far, no tritium has been detected in groundwater off Exelon property near those plants, and the leaks "pose no health or safety threat," Exelon stated in its announcement.
But Rick Cobb, a hydrogeologist who is deputy manager of the Division of Water Supplies for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said it is too early in his agency's investigation to confirm that assessment.
The disclosures come weeks after Exelon publicly revealed water containing tritium spilled four times between 1996 and 2003 from vacuum breakers on an underground pipe at Braidwood Generating Station in far southwest Will County.
Exelon detected groundwater tritium above levels permitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at two spots outside the plant.
Though tritium levels found in drinking wells near the Braidwood plant don't exceed those limits, tritium in one well was well above the normal "background" level. That's a violation of state "non-degradation standards," Cobb said.
Full story
By Shankar Vedantam, Washington
February 18, 2006
Page 1 of 2
Alarming
satellite images show seas rising far faster than expected.GREENLAND'S glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly the Earth's oceans will rise over the next century.
The new information, from satellite imagery, gives fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data is mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that sea-level rise threatens widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.
The scientists warned that they did not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous - and accelerating.
full story
Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag
By Jim Hansen
Published: 17 February 2006
A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.
Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet.
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Accidents will Happen
Monday, February 13, 2006
Jeff Wells
Rigorous Intuition
I've lived in this town for thirty years, and to no one I'm a stranger
And I put new bullets in my gun, chamber upon chamber - Nick Cave
I hate the sense that TranceFormation of America makes. I've referenced the book several times here, notably with respect to Dick Cheney's endowment, Bill Bennett's sado-masochism and the ubiquity of Oz programming, and each time I've apologized for doing so. Cathy O'Brien's account of her decades of torture and mind control is a fittingly dissociative jumble of contaminated memory, fantasy and truth, and if the rationality of these times were any less attenuated I'd be inclined to not bother trying to separate the parts:Full Story
More Questions Raised About Delay in Reporting Misfire
By Greg Mitchell
Editor & Publisher
February 13, 2006
NEW YORK The more than 18-hour delay in news emerging that the vice president of the United States had shot a man, sending him to an intensive care unit with his wounds, grew even more curious Monday with word from the White House that President Bush had been informed of the incident Saturday but not immediately about Dick Cheney's role.Full Story
Cheney might have had better aim if he'd served in Vietnam
Rachel Neumann
AlterNet
February 13, 2006.
The White House didn't even report the shooting for 24 hours (and forbid Texas officials from talking about it) and then Scott McClellan told reporters, "These kind of...accidents happen from time to time." McClellan might as well have been talking about the administration's casual attitude about the death toll in Iraq. Yes, 16,600 Americans and upward of 200,000 Iraqis have been wounded, but hey, "accidents happen from time to time." We're still winning the war, right?Full Story
Kurt Nimmo February 09th 2006
Naturally, this whole sketchy and uncorroborated affair is simply a transparent effort to deflect attention away from congressional intelligence committee hearings supposedly empanelled to uncover details about Straussian neocon criminal behavior vis-à-vis snooping on millions of Americans. It is also intended to offer up an excuse for continued snooping and the deliberate trashing for the Bill of Rights as the Straussian neocons behind the Bush administration make steady progress in reducing America to a nightmarish Panopticon.
full article
Mothers had given birth on island instead of ice floes due to warm weather
Updated: 12:34 p.m. ET Feb. 3, 2006
OTTAWA - Around 1,500 seal pups were swept out to sea and drowned by a tidal surge off Canada’s east coast this week after a lack of ice cover meant their mothers were forced to give birth on a small island, environment officials said Friday.
A resident on the island described how the mother seals had frantically tried to push their tiny pups back on to land as they floundered in the storm-tossed water.
Gray seals in the Northumberland Strait — which lies between the provinces of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island — usually give birth on the pack ice which forms in winter.
But abnormally warm conditions this year mean there is no ice in the strait, so some seals had to give birth on the beaches of Pictou Island. Unusually high tides hit the island this week after a major storm.“The majority of those seals born above the high water mark have been lost. We’re estimating ... that of about 2,000 pups that were born prior to the storm, we lost about 1,500,” said Jerry Conway, a marine mammal adviser for the federal Fisheries and Oceans Department.
Television pictures showed dead seal pups littered on one of Pictou Island’s beaches.
Resident describes frantic mothers
Jane MacDonald, one of the island’s few permanent residents, said the mother seals had tried hard to save their offspring. “The mothers just push them and push them with their nose, and they dive back under and push them back up, and they get back into the tide wash, and then a big wave will hit and just sweep them back out to sea,” she told CBC television.
Conway said it was not uncommon for seals in the Northumberland Strait to give birth on land.
“I’ve been with the department 27 years and I can remember at least half a dozen instances when there hasn’t been ice of sufficient strength (for seals to give birth there),” he told Reuters from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
When seal pups are born they weigh only about 20 pounds and have no blubber, which means they find it hard to float.
Conway blamed the unusually high tide for the deaths, adding: “Normally, these pups would have survived.”
The gray seal population in the Northumberland Strait and the Gulf of St Lawrence is around 400,000 animals.
Conway said the lack of ice cover off Eastern Canada could also cause problems for the large harp seal population, which usually gives birth in late March near the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
“I’m suggesting that unless we have a tremendous decrease in temperature and the forming of ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, we may have a repeat of this with harp seals,” he said. This could mean seals being forced to give birth on beaches on the Magdalen Islands and Prince Edward Island.
Mothers usually birth on ice floes
The mother seals, which can grow as heavy as 800 pounds, normally have their pups on the ice floes that clog the gulf.
Fisheries officials say they haven't seen so many seals onshore since the early 1980s, when mild weather also hindered the formation of the floes.
Female seals normally abandon their pups about three weeks after birth, but the young remain out of the water for some time while they shed their downy white coats.
Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada, said there have been weather anomalies across the country, with ice roads not forming in northern Saskatchewan, Winnipeg getting unseasonable rain in January and barren ski slopes in Vancouver.
Phillips said that while winters have been getting warmer over the last several years, it isn't clear if this points to global warming.
And while most Canadians are enjoying the mild winter, there could be a steep price to be paid in the months ahead, he said. Crops, for example, could be hurt by a shock of warm and then cold weather. Businesses that rely on winter activity are hurting, and several remote northern communities have been cut off by a lack of ice.
Updated Sat. Feb. 4 2006 11:27 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Fierce winds gusting up to 90 kilometres per hour in British Columbia left thousands of people without power as they blew through the southwest part of the province Saturday.
Officials believe as many as 40,000 hydro customers are without power, with most of the outages in the Lower Mainland.
"We had as many as 100,000 customers without power across British Columbia at the height of the storm, probably between 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. ," said Elishah Moreno, spokesperson for BC Hydro.
"It's the usual suspects that are causing us grief, things like branches and trees on (power) lines."
Large areas of Vancouver Island were without power as were Pender and Cortez islands, said Moreno.
BC Hydro hopes to restore power to most people by Saturday night, but are asking their customers to be patient.
The municipality of Delta, B.C. declared a state of emergency and asked as many as 200 people to evacuate.
The town's mayor, Lois Jackson, called it the worst storm to hit the area in 30 years.
About 150 homes were battered by the winds. Residents affected by the flooding have been asked to stay in emergency shelters.
"We haven't ordered (people to stay in shelters)," said Jackson.
" We've suggested it because we don't know when power will be back on. We'll have another high tide tonight and if wind stays we'll be facing another big problem tonight."
A section of a dyke, built as a precaution against flooding, got swept away in the wind storm. George Harvie, the chief administrative officer for Delta, said the size of the dyke was insufficient.
"We're quite concerned about the fact that in previous years we've been able to build that sand berm higher and wider," said Harvie.
"But the Department of Fisheries this year decided to restrict that on size so we'll have to go back to fisheries and do what we think is necessary."
A crew of over 80 people scrambled to pump out standing water as high as 1.2 metres in the Tsawwassen area of Delta before the evening's high tide hit.
The storm disrupted ferry service to Vancouver Island, causing cancellations and delays, and resulted in major power outages.
Service between the mainland and Vancouver Island was expected to be back in full service by late evening, said B.C. Ferries spokeswoman Betsy Terpsma to Canadian Press.
''It looks like things are returning to normal for us,'' she said.
In Vancouver, the high winds also forced the Lion's Gate Bridge to close.
Windsurfers loved Saturday's weather though. They were out early around the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal and Deltaport to take advantage of the rare high winds.
"It's phenomenal," said Charles Whittaker, a windsurfer. "It's not too often you get winds like this around here."
The windsurfers reached speeds as fast as 30 kilometres per hour even with the smallest sails.
Meteorologists are still forecasting high winds for Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, the central coast and Fraser Valley. They expect the winds to diminish Saturday night.
"An intense low pressure system is currently moving onto the South Coast," Environment Canada said in a weather warning posted on its website. "Southeast winds will shift to northwest as the low moves inland."
Variable weather in rest of Canada
In Ottawa, people were wishing for cold winter weather at the opening weekend of the Winterlude festival.
Ice sculptors were nervous about their creations melting, especially since they only have one more day in the ice sculpture competition.
"None of the sculptures are very happy. It's really the worst weather for us," said Dan Rebholz, one of the sculptors.
The warmth also forced the National Capital Commission to close part of the Rideau Canal for skating.
In the meantime, it rained heavily in Toronto with forecasts that the rain will turn into snow by Sunday. The city expects to receive 10 centimetres of snow by Monday.
A winter storm warning has been issued from northern Ontario to Southern Quebec. Heavy rain or snow is expected to hit this region.
High winds of up to 60 kilometres per hour are being forecast for Southern Ontario on Sunday, accompanied by five to 10 centimetres of snow.
Heavy rain, of 25 to 40 millimetres, is also being forecast for Atlantic Canada on Sunday.
BEIJING, Feb 5 (Reuters) -
Global warming could threaten the new Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest, within a decade, a Chinese researcher said in remarks published on Sunday.
Wu Ziwang, a frozen soil specialist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the official Xinhua news agency his research over three decades revealed large areas of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau showed signs of shrinking, as they were frozen less of the time.
This could threaten the new railway, which is to start operations this year, Wu said.
"Fast thawing of frozen soil in the plateau might greatly increase the instability of the ground, causing more grave geological problems in the frozen soil areas where major projects such as highways or railways run through," Wu added.
A separate report by the academy's desert institute showed that temperatures on the plateau have been rising markedly since 1984 and that winter temperatures could rise by another 1-2 degrees Celsius by 2050.
China completed construction of the controversial pan-Himalayan railway in October. It is to go into trial operation on July 1, Xinhua said.
