Clipmarks | papananook's clips

Artificial Foods and Corporate Crops: Can We Escape the 'Frankenstate'?

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:43:16 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: read on at link

Taking a technological approach to agriculture has put the future of the world's food supply in jeopardy.

On a frozen island near the North Pole, a huge hole has been blasted out of the side of an Arctic mountain, and a tunnel has been drilled deep into the rock. When the facility under construction here is completed, it will be lined with one-meter-thick concrete, fitted with two high-security blast-proof airlock doors, and built to withstand nuclear war, global warming, terrorism, and the collapse of the earth's energy supplies.

be used to reconstruct the planet's agricultural systems. Exactly who might remain to begin replanting the earth after such a catastrophe is only one of the questions this astounding project raises. The more immediate question is, are seeds in peril?

Hey Coffee Drinker, replace That Paper Cup

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:38:48 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: And of course, trees are elegant and amazing organisms that deserve better than to be pulped into coffee cups -- think Stradivarius. Forests generate value with an ease industry will never replicate. The unmeasured economic value provided by Canada's boreal forest for things like water filtration and air purification has been has been estimated at $93 billion. That is two and a half times as much as the combined economic value of the forestry, mining, oil and gas and hydroelectric industries in the boreal forest. This would represent eight per cent of Canada's entire GDP, and trees don't need a pension or health care. And yet we keep grinding them up -- North America uses 60 per cent of the world's paper cups, 130 billion of them per year. Those cups require about 50 million trees and 33 billion gallons of water, which could sequester 9.3 million tonnes of CO2 and quench 550,000 drought-stricken citizens of the state of Georgia, without even asking them to lower their ridiculous consum

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

North America consumes 50 million trees a year for paper cups. Buy a travel mug already!

We have some amazing technology developing here in Canada. Homegrown high-tech whiz-bang -- Nobel Prize material, really.

This system is too good to be true: it can provide fuel, or be easily processed into one of our most versatile building materials; it can sequester CO2 to slow global warming; be harvested for food; increase ecosystem health and biodiversity by providing habitat for animals, birds, plants and insects; slow damaging storm-water runoff; purify water; and help remediate contaminated soils. The feedstock is free and abundant, and maintenance on the system is negligible.

Or, we can destroy trees for pulp to make paper coffee cups, which, after 15 minutes of use, we throw in the garbage can. Then, we pick the cups up with pollution-belching trucks and throw them in a dump, where they rot and create more greenhouse gases.

EPA Might Not Act To Limit Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:13:24 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: WTF?

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

WASHINGTON - An EPA official said Tuesday there’s a “distinct possibility” the agency won’t take action to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has contaminated public water supplies around the country.

Democratic senators called that unacceptable. They argued that states and local communities shouldn’t have to bear the expense of cleansing their drinking water of perchlorate, which has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states — or the risk of not doing so.

The toxin interferes with thyroid function and poses developmental health risks, particularly to fetuses.

Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency, told a Senate hearing that EPA is aware that perchlorate is widespread and poses health risks.

But he said that after years of study, EPA has yet to determine whether regulating perchlorate in drinking water would do much good.

“EPA is trying to shunt the scientists to the back, put the DOD contractors to the front,”

Environmental warning sins of doom

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:11:05 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: community.livejournal.com

Dead ducks put Canada oil sands impact into focus. “Canada and the energy-rich province of Alberta are finding that nothing stains an oil supplier's environmental image, or emboldens its critics, like several hundred dead ducks. With 500 waterfowl killed in oily wastewater at the country's largest oil sands plant this week, government and industry now face a new struggle to convince the world they are not just paying lip service to cleaning up operations."

Low autumn flows sink Murray hopes. “South Australian Minister for the River Murray and Water Security Karlene Maywald said Lake Albert, at the bottom of the Murray, was in a critical state due to acid sulphate soils. 'We are going to see complete and utter ecological collapse unless we can raise the water level,' she said."

Tropics insects ‘face extinction’. “Many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted, US scientists have said.”

Oxygen-starved ocean 'deserts' emerging

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:06:20 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: suggest youread the whole article at site.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Underwater "deserts" are emerging in tropical oceans as the oxygen vanishes from seawater, warns a new study.

Wetter Arctic may lead to colder winters

Reservoirs keep sea levels down

Global warming impact may be overstated

One of the consequences of a changing climate, the warmer oceans, is causing a decrease in the oxygen concentration and creating oxygen-starved, or "hypoxic" conditions underwater.

The low-oxygen zones at depths of around 500 metres near India and in the equatorial Pacific waters off the Americas have grown thicker during the past 50 years, says a report in the journal Science.

This will likely have far-reaching impacts on ecosystems because key organisms cannot survive in these zones, warn Dr Lothar Stramma of Kiel University in Germany

using historical data combined with recent measurements to find that these oxygen starved zones are expanding significantly, especially in tropical regions of the Atlantic Ocean.

Seal Pu Hunt researche/observer speakds out

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:09:30 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Interesting perspective...

Clip Source: www.ifaw.org

A Decade of Devotion:
Meet Sheryl Fink, Senior Research & Projects Specialist

Sheryl is a Senior Research and Projects Specialist working out of IFAW’s Guelph (Canada) office. She has always loved animals, and studied Wildlife Biology at the University of Guelph in Canada. Sheryl began working for the International Marine Mammal Association in 1998 and has worked for IFAW since 2000.

What is the worst part of your job?
The worst part is when March rolls around and the seal hunt is announced. I’ve been working on this campaign for quite a few years, and when the hunt keeps happening every year sometimes you can feel like you aren’t really getting anywhere. We have to keep reminding ourselves that even if the hunt hasn’t stopped altogether, we are still having an impact and that some progress has been made. I do know that if IFAW were not speaking out against this hunt, there would be many more seals killed, and far fewer regulations on sealing.