Gas Prices!!!!

Why $4-Per-Gallon Gas Is Damn Cheap

Inspired by Cord's thought-provoking post on the per gallon prices of various liquids, and by Sarah Palin's ill-informed Facebook rant on the "$4-Per-Gallon President," I decided to take a closer look at gasoline prices around the world. Mrs. Palin might be interested to learn, that the world already has quite a few $4-Per-Gallon Presidents. In fact, the world already has $6-Per-Gallon Parliaments, $7-Per-Gallon Prime Ministers, and $8-Per-Gallon Presidents!


We've collected a broad sample of gas prices from throughout the industrialized Western world in the chart below. Important to note: this chart includes only official data from throughout the European Union and North America. I've included some self-reported gas prices from a handful of relevant nations below the chart.

Maybe when our rates are up there we will be aware of our driving habits, of the types of car we drive, of our "planning."

Simplify

From James Howard Kunstler:

What we're seeing these days is an epochal unspooling of hypercomplexity. The world just can't take anymore of it. The world is telling us to cut it out or it is going to kick our upright bipedal asses. Of course, America may be absolutely the last society to get this message. We'll receive it in the car-wash, no doubt. On our iPhones.

Direct seed or this?

Sprouting Without Electricity - A Seed Gamble

My electricity billing rate went way up this year; and, it had become tiresome to set up fluorescent lights and heat tape in a hot box to raise my vegetables from seed.


This year I decided to try gardening without any electricity. We'll see how it goes. Seed order came in the mail yesterday. Here's the setup.


Got this $40, 4-shelf hotbox with a clear vinyl cover (better gardening through chemistry). Set it up against a south-facing wall, as shown below.


Put some bricks on the inside base to keep the wind from tipping it over. Weight of water in bases of the sprouting flats - probably a half gallon in total - also helps keep it in place.


Within an hour of placing the seeded flats on the shelves, interior temperature, measured with an old darkroom thermometer, was hanging at about 90F.


Set a kerosene hurricane lantern on the bottom to use when outside temp dipped, especially at night. There's an upside-down aluminum cookie sheet on second shelf to prevent overheating of the tray above the lamp

check out the photos in the article. Might have to try this - wonder where I can find a $40 hotbox for free?
Planting my peas tomorrow. Missed my usual St. Patty's Day planting by just a few.

Coulter's Ride on the Crazy Train

‘Radiation is good for you’

Right-wing blowhard Ann Coulter took her incendiary views to a whole new level Thursday, this time finding the silver lining in Japan’s nuclear disaster.
During a segment on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show, the conservative firebrand tried to calm jittery viewers by telling them “radiation is good for you.”
Coulter went on to say that a growing body of evidence shows exposure to radiation above levels the government deems harmful actually reduces cancer.

Ann, go volunteer to enter the plants in japan if you think it is so good for you.

Wash your forks and spoons Congress

Fight Waged With Forks Is Rejoined in Congress

Within the war between Republicans and Democrats over the federal spending rages an affray over disposable forks.


Under the tutelage of Representative Nancy Pelosi during the years when Democrats ran the House, her party moved to “green” the Capitol with several initiatives, including obligating the 
food vendor for the three main House cafeterias to provide compostable cups and utensils. But the newly empowered House Republicans have ended the program, and plastic forks and foam cups have returned.


The move enraged many Democrats, who argue that the House is now doing something bad for the environment and retrograde.

Ridiculous. At a time when all efforts should be taken to help our environment , Congress does this?
Use your hands then, idiots!

Nuclear wallets

Here we go. More money for Congress.

Nuke Lobbyists

Nuclear power advocates are waging an intense lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill this week in an attempt to limit the political fallout from the reactor crisis in Japan, which threatens to undermine already shaky plans for expanded nuclear capacity in the United States.


Lobbyists with the Nuclear Energy Institute and some of the United States’s largest energy firms, including Exelon of Chicago, are holding meetings with key lawmakers and standing-room-only briefings for staff members in an attempt to tamp down talk of restrictions in response to the Japanese disaster.

Don't look behind the curtain

Agriculture Industry Pushes To Make Undercover Filming Of Farm Animal Abuse Illegal

Angered by repeated releases of secretly filmed videos claiming to show the mistreatment of farm animals, Iowa's agriculture industry is pushing legislation that would make it illegal for animal rights activists to produce and distribute such images.

Agriculture committees in the Iowa House and Senate have approved a bill that would prohibit such recordings and punish people who take agriculture jobs only to gain access to animals to record their treatment. Proposed penalties include fines of up to $7,500 and up to five years in prison. Votes by the full House and Senate have not yet been set.

Legislators and farming groups respond that they're only trying to prevent people from fraudulently seeking jobs in order to shoot videos that may give an unfair perspective on livestock operations. Rather than videotape and publicize abuse, supporters of the Iowa measure said people should report wrongs they see and work through proper channels to prevent them.

Don't want the carnivores to really know the truth. So punish the whistleblower.

Be prepared

Image via WikipediaCover Up Of Fukushima Chain Reaction Underway

All the nuclear reactors at the earthquake stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are under threat of melting down and exploding in a chain reaction that will signify the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster and send clouds of radioactive particles hurtling towards the United States – that’s the scale of the crisis facing Japan as officials admit for the first time that three nuclear reactors are already in a meltdown.
While the mainstream media continues to argue over the definition of a “meltdown” while unquestionably regurgitating the dubious claim of Japanese officials that the two massive explosions witnessed at the plant were caused by pressurized hydrogen, radioactive isotopes cesium-137 and iodine-121 have been detected by helicopters flying 160km (100 miles) away from the nuclear plant, which can only mean one thing, according to the Seattle Times: “One or more of the reactor cores is badly damaged and at least partially melted down.”
After claiming for three days that the explosions did not damage reactor cores and downplaying the severity of the situation, Japanese officials have now been forced to admit the obvious, that nuclear fuel rods in three reactors are melting. Given the sequence of events, it is entirely probable that all six reactor sites will now go into total meltdown and start spewing radioactive particles into the atmosphere that threaten not only Japanese citizens but also those living on the west coast of the United States....


Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima’s reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis and the plant’s builders, Toshiba, knew this.
Mr Goto says his greatest fear is that blasts at number 3 and number 1 reactors may have damaged the steel casing of the containment vessel designed to stop radioactive material escaping into the atmosphere.
He says that as the reactor uses mox (mixed oxide) fuel, the melting point is lower than that of conventional fuel. Should a meltdown and an explosion occur, he says, p lutonium could be spread over an area up to twice as far as estimated for a conventional nuclear fuel explosion. The next 24 hours are critical, he says.
Goto warns that Japanese authorities have suppressed the true severity of the crisis and that there is “a severe risk of an explosion, with radioactive material being strewn over a very wide area – beyond the 20km evacuation zone set up by the authorities,” adding that the worst case scenario would manifest itself as “many Chernobyls,” and that the effect would be, “Like a volcano spreading radioactive material.”
Nuclear expert Joe Cirincione warns that radiation from Japan’s multiple potential nuclear meltdowns could spread to the US west coast and that the threat represents an “unprecedented crisis.”
Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times, states that after a high-level government meeting, “Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top,” and that censorship of what is really occurring at the plant is being overseen under the Article 15 Emergency Law.

Be prepared. One step is Potassium Iodide (SSKI):

SSKI may be used in radioiodine-contamination emergencies (i.e., nuclear accidents) to "block" the thyroid's uptake of radioiodine (this is not the same as blocking the thyroid's release of thyroid hormone).
Potassium iodide was approved in 1982 by the US FDA to protect the thyroid glands from radioactive iodine from accidents or fission emergencies. In the event of an accident or attack at a nuclear power plant, or fallout from a nuclear bomb, volatile fission product radionuclides may be released, of which 131I is one of the most common by-products and a particularly dangerous one due to thyroid gland concentration of it, which may lead to thyroid cancer. By saturating the body with a source of stable iodide prior to exposure, inhaled or ingested 131I tends to be excreted.

Beck on the Crazy Train - again

Japan Earthquake Might Be A 'Message' From God

On his first day back from vacation, Glenn Beck addressed the earthquake in Japan, and said he thinks that it could be a "message [is] being sent" by God.


Speaking on his radio show Monday, Beck said, "I'm not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes," before quickly adding, "I'm not not saying that either."


He then said that whatever one called God, "there's a message being sent. And that is, 'Hey, you know that stuff we're doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.' I'm just saying."

I'm just saying that Beck is crazy!

What if...?

Our Air Would Never be this Clean Without the Government

Imagine an alternate American history, one in which the Clean Air & Water Acts were never passed -- despite industry pumping such massive amounts of pollution into our skies, lakes, and rivers that one of those rivers eventually caught on fire. What happens next, after 1970? According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and prominent idea-generator for the GOP, those polluting industries begin cleaning up their acts on their own accord, because it's the right thing to do. The nation gets cleaner and cleaner, thanks to technological improvements and good ol' American innovation. There's really no need for the Clean Air Act, Heritage argues in a recent paper, and there never was -- polluting emissions were already declining before it was passed, driven by improving technology, which would have continued to this very day. That's a nice, patriotic vision of a world driven by free enterprise, right?


It sure is -- and if it weren't for lousy government regulations getting in the way, we'd have probably invented coal plants that only emit rainbows by now, too. Except that the vision put forward by the Heritage Foundation is very, very wrong -- both conceptually and factually.

Heritage Foundation a think-tank? With reports like this? Creating new technologies to clean the air would cost money. Do we really believe that industry would do that because it was the "right thing" even though it would cost them bucks?  Crazy Train - all aboard!!!

Rocking our world

Japan Earthquake Shifted Coastline Maximum Of 8 Feet

The massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that shook Japan and triggered a powerful tsunami on Friday has had a profound effect on both the surrounding terrain and the planet as a whole.


Dr. Daniel McNamara, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Huffington Post that the disaster left a gigantic rupture in the sea floor, 217-miles long and 50 miles wide. It also shifted Japan's coast by eight feet in some parts, though McNamara was quick to explain much of the coast likely didn't move as far.


The enormous tremor also shifted the Earth's axis. According to CNN, the earthquake moved the planet's axis approximately 4 inches.


Conflicting figures aside, a shift in the Earth's axis wouldn't be noticeable. Last year's 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile, which also reportedly moved the planet's axis slightly, only resulted in shortening the day by 1.26 microseconds. (A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.)


As for any claims that the earthquake somehow relates to climate change, McNamara didn't hesitate to dismiss that connection. He explained that while evidence shows melting glaciers can cause small tremors directly underneath as their weight on the Earth's crust reduces, what happened in Japan "is not connected in any way to that process."

Okay, so the earthquake cannot be tied to climate change directly.  Or is it just Mother Earth trying to cure itself?
The axis tilt is the amazing thing.  I really don't care about the lengthening days.  Any shift, as well as previous shifts affecting airport runways, is significant and may be a sign of things to come.
Is this the shift of 2012?

Nukes in Japan

Image via WikipediaDanger Posed by Radioactivity in Japan Hard to Assess

The different radioactive materials being reported at the nuclear accidents in Japan range from relatively benign to extremely worrisome.


The central problem in assessing the degree of danger is that the amounts of various radioactive releases into the environment are now unknown, as are the winds and other atmospheric factors that determine how radioactivity will disperse around the stricken plants.


Still, the properties of the materials and their typical interactions with the human body give some indication of the threat.


“The situation is pretty bad,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised the Clinton White House and now teaches international affairs at Princeton. “But it could get a lot worse.”


In Vienna on Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Japanese authorities had informed it that iodine pills would be distributed to residents around the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants in northeast Japan. Both have experienced multiple failures in the wake of the huge earthquake and tsunami that struck Friday.

Very mixed news reports about the situation at the plants.  More and more reports are coming out that a meltdown is occurring or will be soon. Of course our thoughts are with the people.  Our hopes also are that we all realize that nuclear power - no matter the style of reactor - can never be 100% safe.

Wisconsin matters to all

Why Wisconsin Matters for Environmentalists

For one thing, the attack on worker's rights in Wisconsin matters for environmentalists because it matters for everyone. A war on workers is a war on all of us.


On another level, if you're concerned about the environment you should care about what's happening in Wisconsin because the same people, the same corporate interests that have orchestrated this attack on workers are also lobbying to slash funding for the EPA, working to destroy any notion of climate legislation and securing massive handouts for big polluters.


Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Ag have bought and paid for our democracy, and it is their agenda that our elected representatives are serving. Billionaire polluters like the Koch brothers who funded the crippling of last year's climate bill and are now going after the EPA, are also funding this attack on our state's teachers and other public workers. The same big corporations that have a vested interest in minimizing environmental regulations are pushing to cut the power of workers.


What's happening in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey and elsewhere is the result of turning our democracy into a dirty poker game. A game where only the very rich and powerful have a hand, the antes are the in the billions and the stakes are our country.

It is all about the almighty dollar. It is not about an individual's life, it is not about an animal's health, it is not about the air we breathe, it is not about the emissions pumped into the air...

Hoping for Japan

Yes, Climate Change May Cause More Tsunamis. No, That's Not Alarmism

I know headlines like that might just make most folks roll their eyes at this point -- I mean, what doesn't climate change cause these days, am I right? And I realize that people are skeptical of news-cycle tie-ins, like this very story appears to be. But just because it's sort of depressing to keep tabs on all of the myriad impacts of ol' climate change occurring the world over, doesn't mean we should be glossing over facts like this: Geologists believe that global warming may already be causing more earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. After all, screwing with the world's ornery climate system to the extent which we have is bound to have far-reaching effects -- effects like huge amounts of melting ice causing the earth's crust to "bounce" up, potentially triggering earthquakes.


Which makes sense. And if you ask me, now is a perfectly apt time to be analyzing such possible causal relationships, like the one between climate change and earthquakes (which set off tsunamis).

Devastation. Will Congress ever understand the future issues they may cause with their actions? Will they ever be motivated to do what is right for the earth and its future rather than their own wallet?