Saturday, October 12, 2013

Cyclone Phailin To Hit India

UPDATE 10/13/13 Cyclone Phailin

The last report I read noted 13 people dead from the cyclone. The Indian Army and Govt should be commended for a good job in evacuating coastal areas before this huge storm hit the coast. Heavy rains are still continuing in some places as Phailin winds down. It is sad to see any casualties in storms like this but again good news that thousands were evacuated thus sparing much more loss of life. More will be added about residual effects of Phailin as I find it. Let us hope to see such a mobilization by all governments to prepare for the global effects of climate change we are already experiencing and those to come.



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UPDATE: Phailin On Course To Devastate

What is of main concern now are floods and government response.

UPDATE on Cyclone Phailin

Time of issue: 2130 hours IST . Dated: 12-10-2013

(Red Message)

Bulletin No.: BOB 04/2013/34

Sub: Very Severe Cyclonic Storm ‘PHAILIN’ over northwest adjoining westcentral Bay of Bengal is crossing coast close to Gopalpur (Odisha)

The very severe cyclonic storm, PHAILIN over westcentral & adjoining northwest Bay of Bengal moved north-northwestwards during past 3 hours with a speed of 15 kmph and lay centred at 2030 hrs IST of today, the 12 th October 2013 over northwest adjoining westcentral Bay of Bengal near latitude 19.1 0 N and longitude 85.0 0 E, close to Gopalpur. Latest observations indicate that landfall process has started and it will be completed within next one hour. At the time of landfall, maximum sustained wind speed would be 200-210 kmph.

snip

Warning for Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal

(i) Rainfall at most places with heavy to very heavy falls at a few places and isolated extremely heavy falls (≥ 25 cm) would occur over Odisha and north coastal Andhra Pradesh during next 48 hrs. Isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur over coastal areas of West Bengal during next 48 hrs..

End of excerpt

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From 2 hrs ago. People here as well are also refusing to leave.

PLEASE if asked to leave do so. Your home can be replaced, you or your children cannot.





My prayers to the people of India. More coming on this huge cyclone.

With Mass Evacuations, India Braces as Powerful Cyclone Heads for Coast

NEW DELHI — A cyclone that may be among the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal bore down on the eastern coast of India on Saturday with heavy rains and high winds.

Biswaranjan Rout/Associated Press

Indian authorities described the storm, named Phailin, as “very severe” with sustained winds of 136 miles per hour and gusts reaching nearly 150 m.p.h.

Some 440,000 people have already been evacuated from the path of the storm, M. Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, said at a news conference in New Delhi on Saturday afternoon.

The Indian predictions before the storm made landfall were less alarming than those from meteorological authorities in the United States. Late Friday, the United States Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said that the storm had sustained winds of 161 m.p.h., with gusts reaching 196 m.p.h. — making it similar to a Category 5 hurricane, the most severe. American meteorological authorities have appeared on Indian TV channels and have almost universally sounded more concerned about the coming storm than their Indian counterparts.

“If it’s not a record, it’s really, really close,” a University of Miami hurricane researcher, Brian McNoldy, told The Associated Press. “You really don’t get storms stronger than this anywhere in the world ever. This is the top of the barrel.”

End of excerpt.

Category 5 Phailin hits India, Category 3 Nari Hits Philippines

Hurricane season in the Atlantic may not have been as predicted ( and not over yet) but that doesn't mean we aren't seeing stronger storms globally, which is a fingerprint of global warming. The key word here for those resigned to denying reality is "global." Also note this area has already been victim to rising sea surface temperature, sea level rise, erratic monsoons and severe drought.

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Fracking In US Produced 280 Billion Gallons Of Toxic Wastewater

A

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Fracking In 2012 Produced 280 Billion Gallons Of Wastewater In US



Unfortunately, all of this toxic water didn't somehow find a way to actually funnel itself to Washington DC.

As we saw recently with 20,000 frack wells putting our water, environment and health at risk during the recent floods in Colorado: FRACKING IS INSANITY.

In a world where we now see global water scarcity and lack of access to over a billion people, will we still stand for these people being allowed to POISON OUR WATER?

Here is a quote from the report linked above:

"Fracking produces enormous volume of toxic wastewater - often containing cancer causing and even radioactive material. Once brought to the surface, this toxic waste poses hazards for drinking water, air quality and public safety."

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From page 4 of file linked:

Fracking wells since 2005: 82,000

Water used since 2005: 200 billion gallons

Chemicals used since 2005: 2 billion gallons


(And remember, fracking operations are exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, meaning the poisons they inject into our water and land are industry "secrets.")

Acres of land directly damaged since 2005: 360,000

(This would also then affect livestock, crops, other species, etc.)

Air pollution in one year: 450,000 tons

Global warming pollution since 2005: 100 million metric tons


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And yet, fracking is considered part of the Obama administration's CLEAN ENERGY POLICY TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE? Again, INSANITY.

This is no bridge. This is a galley on which we are HANGING OURSELVES.

Do the math. An ever increasing population in a world with decreasing arable land and clean water. Do I really have to explain further?

We have a moral imperative to BAN FRACKING NOW.

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Get Down With Global Frackdown 2013



Fracking/Radiation Risk

Dangerous Levels Of Radioactivity Found At Fracking Waste Site in Pennsylvania

The Duke University study, published on Wednesday, examined the water discharged from Josephine Brine Treatment Facility into Blacklick Creek, which feeds into a water source for western Pennsylvania cities, including Pittsburgh. Scientists took samples upstream and downstream from the treatment facility over a two-year period, with the last sample taken in June this year.

Elevated levels of chloride and bromide, combined with strontium, radium, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopic compositions, are present in the Marcellus shale wastewaters, the study found.

Radioactive brine is naturally occurring in shale rock and contaminates wastewater during hydraulic fracturing – known as fracking. Sometimes that "flowback" water is re-injected into rock deep underground, a practice that can cause seismic disturbances, but often it is treated before being discharged into watercourses.

Radium levels in samples collected at the facility were 200 times greater than samples taken upstream. Such elevated levels of radioactivity are above regulated levels and would normally be seen at licensed radioactive disposal facilities, according to the scientists at Duke University's Nicholas school of the environment in North Carolina.

Hundreds of disposal sites for wastewater could be similarly affected, said Professor Avner Vengosh, one of the authors of the study published in Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal.

"If people don't live in those places, it's not an immediate threat in terms of radioactivity," said Vengosh. "However, there's the danger of slow bio-accumulation of the radium. It will eventually end up in fish and that is a biological danger."

Shale gas production is exempt from the Clean Water Act and the industry has pledged to self-monitor its waste production to avoid regulatory oversight.

However, the study clearly showed the need for independent monitoring and regulation, said Vengosh.

"What is happening is the direct result of a lack of any regulation. If the Clean Water Act was applied in 2005 when the shale gas boom started this would have been prevented.

End of excerpt.

Not the end of this fight to protect our water.

Scientists: US Climate Credibility Getting Fracked

Monday, October 07, 2013

Mine May Open Next Year As Last-Chance Appeal Languishes

Additon 10/10/13:

Look at what is also happening in Wisconsin:

Scott Walker's Open Pit Mine

One of Wisconsin’s most beautiful and environmentally sensitive forest wildernesses is to be pierced with a four-mile-long, 1,000-foot-deep gash in the Earth for an open-pit mine to produce deadly taconite. Out of state Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) is nearing approval – through a rigged kangaroo court environmental review process – to begin industrially destroying a 21,000-acre chunk of land in the remote forest highlands of northern Wisconsin called the Penokee Hills. The area is home to hardwood forests, rivers and streams, lakes, and wetlands. The land provides crucial habitat to wolves, bald eagles, songbirds, bears, and trout along with many rare plants such as the ram’s head lady slipper orchid. The Penokee Hills are also critical for clean water resources, characterized by a complex hydrology of surface and groundwater that flows into nearby Lake Superior (less than 20 miles away) and then through the Great Lakes.

In 2011, GTAC purchased the mineral rights for a vast area in the Penokee Hills; proposing to build the largest open-pit iron-ore mine in the world to extract taconite, a low-grade ore. Existing taconite mines are chronic polluters, routinely fined for serious air and water violations. Wisconsin’s water is under increasing threat with dead zones in the Green Bay, a recent and lingering drought in the project area, warming and much reduced water-levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, and a sand fracking boom ravaging the southwest’s land and water.

The ill-conceived Gogebic mining project poses an extreme risk of an industrial accident which could foul the Great Lakes, threatening 20% of Earth’s freshwater. The mine threatens the Bad River and Lake Superior watersheds, supported by over 200 inches of snow each year. The watershed is crisscrossed by complex flows from surface waters in lakes and rivers – including an unknown number of unmapped creeks – into groundwater, and then draining under pressure into the Great Lakes. The Kakagon and Bad River coastal wetland complex on Lake Superior are known as “Wisconsin’s Everglades.”

The proposed mine would extract taconite by removing about 650 feet of overburden on top of the ore. These “wastes” would be dumped in massive tailings piles at the headwaters of the Bad River watershed. With contaminants such as mercury, arsenic, and other heavy metals, sulfates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides being released from mining tailings dust, waste rock, ore transportation, and ore processing, the air and water quality in northern Wisconsin will become seriously degraded. Large tailings piles have the potential to generate acid rock drainage if sulfide minerals are present in the waste rock and are particularly prone to industrial accidents that could release massive discharges of toxic wastes into the Great Lakes.

Please sign this. THIS MUST STOP.

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Mine May Open Next Year As Last-Chance Appeal Languishes

As a tribe awaits resolution of a last-chance appeal to stop mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, an international company is moving closer to production. The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community has challenged a state permit that allows sulfide mining to extract copper and nickel on public lands in the Upper Peninsula. The Michigan Court of Appeals agreed to hear the case 13 months ago but has not yet heard oral arguments. In the meantime, the mine is moving ahead, with production scheduled to begin in about one year. In the lawsuit, the tribe and three environmental groups raise concerns that the mine will contaminate water, including groundwater and the Salmon Trout River, which the tribe relies on for food and spiritual ceremonies. The company, however, says it is using state-of-the-art technology, at a cost of $10 million, to treat the wastewater and prevent contamination.

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My previous entry on this last year:

Sacred water, new mine; A Michigan tribe battles a global corporation to protect their water and sacred land

From entry:

This is a sulfide mine, as in sulfuric acid.

Some facts:

"There has never been a metallic sulfide mine that has failed to pollute its watershed. Once such a reaction starts it is difficult to keep this acid drainage out of the water. When water becomes acidic it leaches out and disperses heavy metals into lakes and streams. Heavy metals are dangerous to health, wildlife, and the environment.

There is more to be worried about here than “just” the coaster brook trout: when the insects and microscopic life in streams are affected it starts a chain of events that leads in unexpected and unpredictable directions affecting the fish, the birds, the predators and us.

This is NOT about people, and not about a company. It’s about a PROCESS.

Clean waters and wild lands define the Michigan lifestyle. It’s Great Lakes and the U.P. wilds that make Michigan the state we love. You can live in the city and in a few hours be on blue lakes or in forests of fragrant pine.

The legacy of sulfide mining is acid mine drainage. It poisons water forever. (2,500 – 10,000+ years.) The industrial development required to mine it on State land, in Michigan’s wildest area, will destroy that wildness forever."

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This is an egregious action of disrespect to water and the spiritual rights of those who call this area their home. These are the stories showcasing the huge fight taking place between those seeking to preserve our environment and the corporate/government alliances looking to destroy it for profit that are not seen, but should be. And as always the company says there will be no environmental damage. How naive do they think people are? We hear the same thing from oil companies, "frackers" and all companies looking to desecrate sacred ground all for their precious corporate balance sheets as we see our water made toxic and our land stripped bare.



The Salmon Trout River is a sacred site and source of food for the Keweenaw tribe

"The company, however, says it is using state-of-the-art technology, at a cost of $10 million, to treat the wastewater and prevent contamination."

WHERE HAVE WE HEARD THIS BEFORE? IT IS NOT YOUR LAND. IT IS NOT YOUR WATER. IT IS A SPIRITUAL SANCTUARY.

This is the inherent disconnection. Those who can only think and live by the $$$$$$$$$ will never know the true value of what they destroy for all time.

Facts About Sulfide Mining-It Is A Water Killer

Another World Water Day Gone

We see another World Water Day pass us by. The theme, Water For All, signifies that though some progress has been made we are woefully behin...