http://www.dailyimpact.net Chronicling the Crash of the Industrial Age Mon, 06 May 2013 15:39:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 From today's headlines, the news that illustrates the slow but certain collapse of industrial exploitation. Tom Lewis no tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) Thomas A. Lewis Chronicling the Crash of the Industrial Age http://www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Podcast-Cover.jpg http://www.dailyimpact.net Thomas A. Lewiscollapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionNews & Politicstomlewis8657@gmail.comTom Lewiscollapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutiondailyimpact/GIfxhttp://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with The Free DictionarySubscribe with Bitty BrowserSubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Excite MIXSubscribe with WebwagSubscribe with Podcast ReadySubscribe with WikioSubscribe with Daily Rotation http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/7bpmebTWstQ/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/06/europe-proves-again-industrial-is-not-renewable/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 15:38:38 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1773 Two of the favorite pipedreams of environmental industrialists and industrialist environmentalists &#8212; known here as oxymorons &#8212; are on display in Europe this week as what they really are: pipe bombs. The European Union’s embrace of the financial shell game called “Cap and Trade” &#8212; promoted as a way to reduce carbon pollution without anyone [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/7bpmebTWstQ" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/06/europe-proves-again-industrial-is-not-renewable/feed/ 0 Two of the favorite pipedreams of environmental industrialists and industrialist environmentalists -- known here as oxymorons -- are on display in Europe this week as what they really are: pipe bombs. The European Union’s embrace of the financial shell... Two of the favorite pipedreams of environmental industrialists and industrialist environmentalists -- known here as oxymorons -- are on display in Europe this week as what they really are: pipe bombs. The European Union’s embrace of the financial shell game called “Cap and Trade” -- promoted as a way to reduce carbon pollution without anyone spending, or doing, anything but make more money -- is being declared a bust. And Spain’s embrace of industrial renewable energy has blown up right in their loving arms. Cap and Trade is a theory that has many of the same attributes of “credit default swaps” (the idea that you can get really cheap insurance from companies that have no assets with which to cover claims) and “collateralized debt obligations” (the proposition that if you put a whole bunch of bad loans together, they fuse into a AAA-rated investment). Cap and Trade holds that if you give companies the right to pollute at little more than their present rates, but no more; then let them trade their rights among themselves to increase their pollution, or get compensation for decreasing their pollution, then Voila! the market will limit pollution and no one loses money. Environmentalists buy into this crock because they think the same way the Obama Administration thinks: if we are nicer to our enemies, and give them some of what they want, they will be nicer to us. Ironically, partly because the environmentalists bought into it, suspicious knuckle draggers saw to it that Cap and Trade was defeated by the US Senate three years ago. It would be funny, except it isn’t. Cap and Trade was bolted on the economy of the European Union in 2005. It didn't work for the reason it always doesn't work; the initial rights to pollute were so generous, no one had reason to spend any money to get around them. Of course, the only reason it gets past the industrial moneychangers is that it’s painless, which is also the reason it doesn’t work.  Now that the price of carbon as set by market forces in Europe is effectively zero, they are interring Cap and Trade in a plot next to Sub Prime Mortgages. One among many eulogies appears currently in Time. Spain embraced industrial renewables with the zeal of the born again ten years ago. Sun farms spread across its land like a rash, dumping their kilowatts into the national grid. This was done not because the financials were attractive by themselves, nor because of a fervor to save the country from climate change, but because the government (worried about importing 90 per cent of its energy) offered a guaranteed rate of return on these solar industries of 20 per cent per annum for 25 annums. They thus created a bubble that a) never provided more than four per cent of the country’s electricity and b) very nearly bankrupted the government. When the government had to renege on the profit guarantees, the bubble burst. The lessons have been taught many times over, but learned by few. There are two ways to stop pollution: make it illegal, and put people in jail who do it anyway; and/or make it more expensive than not polluting, and collect the taxes and the fines. The only way to make renewable energy sustainable is to make your energy where you use it; trying to force it into the industrial template of huge plants and distribution networks does not work. And still we who still have the vote seem to be determined to reward our politicians for seeming to do something, and to punish them if they actually do something. Tom Lewis no 5:30 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/06/europe-proves-again-industrial-is-not-renewable/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Energy-Pipe-Dreams.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/ab83FeL8wp4/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/01/its-official-most-supermarket-meat-a-biohazard/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 13:40:01 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1765 As I have written here a time or two [Meat Industry: Have MRSA on Us; USDA Gets Bad News on Superbugs: Shoots Messenger; and most recently, Microbes Winning War on Terra] the meat industry has for years, as a matter of course, been selling tainted meat. In the face of widespread coverage in the media [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/ab83FeL8wp4" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/01/its-official-most-supermarket-meat-a-biohazard/feed/ 1 As I have written here a time or two [Meat Industry: Have MRSA on Us; USDA Gets Bad News on Superbugs: Shoots Messenger; and most recently, Microbes Winning War on Terra] the meat industry has for years, as a matter of course, been selling tainted meat. As I have written here a time or two [Meat Industry: Have MRSA on Us; USDA Gets Bad News on Superbugs: Shoots Messenger; and most recently, Microbes Winning War on Terra] the meat industry has for years, as a matter of course, been selling tainted meat. In the face of widespread coverage in the media (I’m kidding!) the industry has doubled down, and the situation is now much worse (I’m not kidding!). It may now fairly be said not only that most meat offered for sale in American supermarkets is contaminated with infectious bacteria, but that most is infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. The latest, stunning round of government tests was published and immediately stored on high shelves three months ago. To be fair, the US Food and Drug Administration put the news up on its website for anyone to read, right there under the riveting headline: FDA Announces Availability of the 2011 NARMS Retail Meat Annual Report. I don’t know how I missed that. Not until the Environmental Working Group did the work of finding them, reading the fine print and putting them together did any significant number of people find out that tests of raw meat taken from supermarket shelves in 2011 found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in: 81% of ground turkey; 69% of pork chops; 55% of ground beef; and 39% of chicken.   Just a few minutes spent with the report, or even stories about the report, will soon have you swooning among percentages of percentages of samples of samples. But here’s what you need to take home: the meat you take home is a biohazard that can make you sick if you touch it, let alone eat it, before it is heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s been true for a long time. What is now also true is that if you join the 3.6 million people who will contract a foodborne illness this year, chances are very good that your illness will not respond to antibiotics. The meat industry created this problem. They feed 30 million pounds of antibiotics every year to their animals and poultry in order to prevent their getting too sick to slaughter. Meanwhile, the amount of antibiotics given to people who are actually sick totals about seven million pounds a year. The crowded, hot and humid feedlots provide an ideal spawning ground for the mutant bacteria, always present, that are accidentally immune to antibiotics. Perhaps the most astonishing part of this story is the utter lack of pushback from people who are being sold poison in their foodstores. Talk about the silence of the lambs. [UPDATE 05/02/13 -- The June edition of Consumer Reports magazine reports on an in-house investigation that confirmed that ground turkey is a biohazard: 90 per cent of the samples they tested had at least one of the five infectious bacteria for which they tested, and all of the bacteria were resistant to antibiotics. ]   Tom Lewis no 4:33 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/01/its-official-most-supermarket-meat-a-biohazard/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Silence-of-Lambs.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/KMbgwEOElXo/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/01/brace-for-impact-featured-in-major-e-magazine/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 12:14:04 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1759 [The following article, a condensation and adaptation of the arguments presented in my book Brace for Impact: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age, appears as the lead article in the May issue of the emagazine livebetter , published by the Center for a Better Life. Click on the above link to read their presentation, or [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/KMbgwEOElXo" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/01/brace-for-impact-featured-in-major-e-magazine/feed/ 0 http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/05/01/brace-for-impact-featured-in-major-e-magazine/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/IkAK0g_BZCo/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/24/texas-bomb-ignored-by-media-perp-honored-by-victims/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:23:37 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1750 The explosion that leveled much of the little Texas town of West occurred one day after the Boston Marathon bombing. It killed 15 people, five times the number of dead in Boston. It left a crater 90 feet across and ten feet deep, while the Boston bombs left some black marks on the sidewalk (along [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/IkAK0g_BZCo" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/24/texas-bomb-ignored-by-media-perp-honored-by-victims/feed/ 0 The explosion that leveled much of the little Texas town of West occurred one day after the Boston Marathon bombing. It killed 15 people, five times the number of dead in Boston. It left a crater 90 feet across and ten feet deep, The explosion that leveled much of the little Texas town of West occurred one day after the Boston Marathon bombing. It killed 15 people, five times the number of dead in Boston. It left a crater 90 feet across and ten feet deep, while the Boston bombs left some black marks on the sidewalk (along with a lot of blood -- this is not to minimize Boston, but to put Texas in perspective). It destroyed an apartment building, a school and dozens of homes, while in Boston no buildings were damaged. And surely, in a system that recognizes negligent homicide and reckless disregard as crimes, the Texas bombing was just as criminal an act as the Boston one.  Yet it has vanished from the media and the perpetrator is being called a nice guy -- by the victims. Can there be any doubt that the Texas blast was the result of a crime? Federal law says that any fertilizer plant (that is what blew up, the West Fertilizer Company plant, owned by Adair Grain, owned by Donald Adair) that stores more than 800 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the primary ingredient of fertilizer, must notify the Department of Homeland Security. The reasons for that is, ammonium nitrate is also the primary ingredient of a potent high explosive.  One ton of it -- enough to fertilize four acres of cropland -- provided the kick for the Oklahoma City bomb that killed 168 people and did over half a trillion dollars’ worth of damage. The West Fertilizer Plant had 270 tons of ammonium nitrate on hand. Nor was that its only apparent transgression. According to Reuters and Washington Post reports, the plant had no sprinkler system, no fire alarms, no emergency shut-off valves and no blast walls, all of which are required by law. Such things are under the purview of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which carefully inspected the plant for safety violations in 1985, and not since. If the averages hold, OSHA inspectors will come by to peer into the crater that was West Fertilizer in 2114: on average, OSHA is funded to inspect every such facility once every 129 years. It is dismaying enough that the ADHD media cannot focus on this mass murder in Texas because it is intent on imputing vast, shadowy terrorist intent to the murderous vandalism of a couple of whacked out, would-be thugs. It would not be good television, one can hear the producers agree, to investigate the evils of an industrial system that wipes out human lives by the dozen as a matter of convenience and profit-maximization. But what is truly head-exploding is that the very victims of that evil in West, Texas, are going out of their way to praise the man responsible. According to Reuters, his surviving friends and neighbors are grateful to Donald Adair for buying the fertilizer plant so that they would not have to travel extra miles for the product if it shut down. “He’s a good guy,” said one, “it happened, and to blame him don’t make good sense.” Adair -- who is elderly and in poor health -- along with his son received about two million dollars in federal farm welfare for operating 5,000 acres of crop- and grassland between 1995 and 2011. With his land and businesses, his net worth is many millions. Is that why “it don’t make good sense” to blame him? The Boston miscreants have funny names, are the sons of immigrants, and are not wealthy. Is that why it makes good sense to devote all the media resources of this media-addled country to reviling them? Is that what we have become? [UPDATE: Speaking of what we have become, notice that every member of the Texas Congressional delegation has demanded quick and plentiful federal disaster aid for West. And every one of them voted against federal disaster aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy.] Tom Lewis no 5:57 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/24/texas-bomb-ignored-by-media-perp-honored-by-victims/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/West-Texas-Terror.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/9bVOvYCRxzE/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/19/terrorized-us-government-locked-down/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:57:55 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1742 Cowed by the deployment of IEDs (Improvised Electoral Destabilizers) in several cities, the US Congress shouted “No!” from under its desks this week to a modest adjustment of firearms regulation that 90% of American voters wanted. It was the most brazen demonstration yet of the members’ subservience to cash and contempt for individual voters. It [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/9bVOvYCRxzE" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/19/terrorized-us-government-locked-down/feed/ 2 assault weapons,gun control,NRA,Sandy Hook,school shootings Cowed by the deployment of IEDs (Improvised Electoral Destabilizers) in several cities, the US Congress shouted “No!” from under its desks this week to a modest adjustment of firearms regulation that 90% of American voters wanted. Cowed by the deployment of IEDs (Improvised Electoral Destabilizers) in several cities, the US Congress shouted “No!” from under its desks this week to a modest adjustment of firearms regulation that 90% of American voters wanted. It was the most brazen demonstration yet of the members’ subservience to cash and contempt for individual voters. It was also the best evidence so far that the government is so thoroughly in thrall to corporate interests that there is no hope that it will act to restrain them merely to prevent the crash of civilization. The entire population of talking heads who have been discussing the issue of gun regulation since the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School has pretended, or has been deluded to think, that: the issue of gun regulation pits the National Rifle Association against liberal politicians, and the NRA usually wins because it is politically powerful; the only thing we have to do to prevent mass shootings is to pass the right law; all sides in the debate, from gun confiscators to gun wavers, are reasonable and deserve a hearing; the Second Amendment conveys an absolute right to gun owners; mass shootings are the problem that must be fixed. None of these things is true. The NRA’s Wacky Pierre doesn’t even represent the majority of NRA members, let alone of gun owners, when he advocates more guns in more places -- schools, football games, bars, and every street corner, for example -- and resists the slightest limitation on their possession and use. And the notion that the raving lunatics who speak for the NRA somehow turn into master manipulators of the political system is just as wacky as Wacky Pierre: most of the candidates they backed in 2012 lost, most of those they sought to destroy, won. So what power is it that just brought the Congress of the United States to heel -- again? Why, it’s money. Money deployed by the arms manufacturers, the ammunition sellers, and their corporate pals who cannot bear the thought of yielding a penny of profit to save lives. Corporate America sees gun regulation as the threshold of a slippery slope that could lead to nightmare scenarios, such as the mandatory reduction of pollution. Corporate America has learned to govern the country by mastering three methods: applying (and withholding) large amounts of cash, which go not to the politicians, that would be illegal, but to their political action committees, whose wealth assures their reelection; creating astroturf (fake grass roots) organizations to hold rallies, send emails and tweets, and otherwise an aroused citizenry loudly supporting wealthy corporations who prey on citizens (See, for example, the history of the Tea Party); controlling the selection of legislators and governors at the primary level, where spending a few million dollars and whipping the crazed “base” of the party into a frenzy over some social or religious issue almost always works, whereas general elections or more expensive and unpredictable; And one more thing, which is not a method but an attribute: When challenged or defeated, Corporate America waits. When, for example, the few politicians who broke ranks with their corporate masters over gun regulation face the howling wolves in the primary contests in 2014, the general public will not remember what happened at Sandy Hook; no gun-regulation PAC will be there to shower money on the courageous public servants.   But Corporate America will be there. Then there are the other “public servants,” who have learned how to dance all night long with their corporate masters without making their actual constituents feel jilted. The technique, now a high form of political arts and science. is to appear to be doing something about the problem du jour without, in fact, doing anything, because anything done would harm Corporate America. The “gun control” frenzy after Sandy Hook provides a perfect example. Tom Lewis no 8:24 http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/19/terrorized-us-government-locked-down/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Gun-Bill-Gunned-Down.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/k5WoWshbLbM/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/11/the-latest-1988-news-on-global-warming/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:46:56 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1737 Twenty-five years ago this spring, the following words appeared in National Wildlife Magazine (I know because I wrote them): “&#8230;scientists now generally agree that the average temperature of the global atmosphere has been increasing for a century, and will likely continue to do so throughout the next&#8230;the apparent cause of this temperature increase is human [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/k5WoWshbLbM" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/11/the-latest-1988-news-on-global-warming/feed/ 0 http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/11/the-latest-1988-news-on-global-warming/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/c5b8OlhnVqg/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/09/when-highways-not-vehicles-crash-and-burn/#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:12:46 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1731 Its merits as a highway aside, the Capital Beltway (the 64-mile-long ring road around Washington, DC) has served this nation well, for more than half a century, as a metaphor. There simply is no better, quicker or less obscene way to describe a political hack than to invoke “inside-the-beltway thinking.” Or to plead for common [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/c5b8OlhnVqg" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/09/when-highways-not-vehicles-crash-and-burn/feed/ 1 Its merits as a highway aside, the Capital Beltway (the 64-mile-long ring road around Washington, DC) has served this nation well, for more than half a century, as a metaphor. There simply is no better, quicker or less obscene way to describe a politic... Its merits as a highway aside, the Capital Beltway (the 64-mile-long ring road around Washington, DC) has served this nation well, for more than half a century, as a metaphor. There simply is no better, quicker or less obscene way to describe a political hack than to invoke “inside-the-beltway thinking.” Or to plead for common sense than to suggest someone take a look at things “outside the Beltway.”  Now the Beltway is dying, and in doing so is providing an even better metaphor, for the entire crash of the industrial age. It’s almost as good as the Titanic. The interstate highway system of which the Capital Beltway is a part was begun in the 1950s and substantially finished in the 1980s. Nearly 50,000 miles in length,  it cost the country $425 billion and is referred to by admirers as the largest public works project since the pyramids.  (Really? Building tombs for emperors was a public works program?) The Beltway, completed in 1964, shared with its fellow highways a life expectancy of 50 years. Do the math. Last weekend the Washington Post wrote the Beltway’s obituary. Like a very elderly person, the Beltway’s ills have proceeded from the superficial (potholes, easily fixed with a dab of cosmetic) to failure of the vital organs (the base that supports the asphalt is turning, in the apt phrasing of the Post article, “to mush”). This is because the potholes don’t get fixed in a timely manner, they admit water to the roadbed below, in winter it freezes and widens the cracks, and pretty soon the potholes become craters and the roadbed becomes, well, mush. Actually, the 50-year actuarial lifespan is best-case, because designers never foresaw the beating these roads are taking. One intersection on the Beltway (with Interstate 270 in Maryland) sees a quarter of a million cars per day.  Since 1990, car traffic on the Interstate system has jumped more than a third, and 18-wheeler truck traffic by more than half. People who drive the Beltway say the good news is that there’s no more rush hour; the bad news is that it’s because the road is at or near gridlock 24/7. How much would it cost to fix? Call it a gazillion dollars, a number so far in the stratosphere of this no-new-taxes country that there is no point in affixing a real number. The American Society of Civil Engineers says that to avoid catastrophe, the country as whole needs to spend $79 billion on its highways. A year. For the foreseeable future. If you had the money, you would have to close big chunks of the Beltway for months at a time to get the work done. Even if you did it one lane at a time, an approach that would more than double the cost, traffic engineers say the result would be, well, carmageddon -- area wide, intractable gridlock. This, of course, may not be true. Carmageddon is a word coined to describe something predicted, twice, in California when major Interstates were shut down for repairs. Both times, nothing happened. Turns out people have choices, and when the highway is closed they take the train. Who would have thought? Still, the prospect of gridlock prevents action that might be proposed if there were any prospect of money. The Post article makes much of a few incremental increases in the transportation budgets of Virginia and Maryland. The reality, though, is that officials responsible for the public welfare continue to work furiously to stay in office, to placate their wealthy donors, to get face time on TV, and to hope they will get their pension before the Interstates die, the bridges fall, the climate changes, the oil peaks, the wells go dry, the food runs out and the lights go out. If there ever was a time for Beltway tightening -- it was about ten years ago.     Tom Lewis no 5:54 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/09/when-highways-not-vehicles-crash-and-burn/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Beltway-Tightening.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/qxlALI0X9Xg/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/07/faa-protects-exxon-oil-spill-with-no-fly-zone/#comments Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:12:49 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1726 Hours after pictures like the one at right began appearing on the Internet, showing the scope of the Exxon pipeline oil spill in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, the Federal Aviation Administration clamped a no-fly zone over the town. The FAA order is to be in effect “until further notice,” and exempts only aircraft under [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/qxlALI0X9Xg" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/07/faa-protects-exxon-oil-spill-with-no-fly-zone/feed/ 1 Hours after pictures like the one at right began appearing on the Internet, showing the scope of the Exxon pipeline oil spill in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, the Federal Aviation Administration clamped a no-fly zone over the town. Hours after pictures like the one at right began appearing on the Internet, showing the scope of the Exxon pipeline oil spill in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, the Federal Aviation Administration clamped a no-fly zone over the town. The FAA order is to be in effect “until further notice,” and exempts only aircraft under the supervision of an Exxon  employee. Any questions about who owns America? The 65-year-old pipeline running through Mayflower, on the shores of Lake Conway and three miles from the Arkansas River, ruptured on March 29, sending rivers of oily sludge through the yards and streets of people who had no idea they lived anywhere near a pipeline. Two dozen homes had to be evacuated, and many families will be out of their homes for weeks to come. Exxon workers have so far collected nearly a million gallons of mixed oil and water, and say their cleanup is about half complete. (See the video shot just before the clampdown here.) The media persist in mis-identifying the spilled material as “crude oil,” or “heavy crude.” In fact it is dilbit, or diluted bitumen, the product wrested from the tar sands of Alberta. This is a critical distinction for a number of reasons: dilbit is far more acidic than crude oil, which means that it corrodes metal faster, which raises questions about transporting it in a 65-year-old pipeline (that was repurposed after decades of carrying oil north from Texas); dilbit is much thicker than crude, and in addition to being diluted must be heated to make it flow through a pipeline. Heat also accelerates corrosion by acid; as the dilbit damages the pipeline much more than crude, so it does the environment through which it flows on release from the pipeline; dilbit is the product to be transported by the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to be built across the American heartland to supply Texas refineries making products for export. The project is under review by the federal government, and Big Oil wants it approved. The last thing Big Oil wants right now is pictures of acidic oil running through American streets to appear on American screens. Thanks to its wholly-owned and -operated federal government, it need not fear. Tom Lewis no 3:46 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/07/faa-protects-exxon-oil-spill-with-no-fly-zone/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Dilbit-Arkansas.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/mcZjYCNmrsQ/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/05/dry-and-drier-meets-dumb-and-dumber/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:57:13 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1721 The consensus of climatologists (be warned, these are scientists, not real Americans) is that the drought now affecting almost all of the US west of the Mississippi River &#8212; more than half of the 48 contiguous states &#8212; will be at least as bad this year as it was last (when it was in many [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/mcZjYCNmrsQ" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/05/dry-and-drier-meets-dumb-and-dumber/feed/ 5 The consensus of climatologists (be warned, these are scientists, not real Americans) is that the drought now affecting almost all of the US west of the Mississippi River -- more than half of the 48 contiguous states -- will be at least as bad this yea... The consensus of climatologists (be warned, these are scientists, not real Americans) is that the drought now affecting almost all of the US west of the Mississippi River -- more than half of the 48 contiguous states -- will be at least as bad this year as it was last (when it was in many places the worst in a generation), and may well be worse. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, most agricultural operators in the worst-hit regions probably won’t pay any attention to the forecast. This is the equivalent of the captain of the Titanic, on being told there are icebergs ahead, saying “So what?” The oracles at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with other practitioners of the dark sciences across the kingdom, have been assessing the signs and portents for the growing season about to begin, and have found: That in February, 54 per cent of the country was already experiencing drought conditions, while last year only 39 per cent was; That given such a start, this year will be drier than last even if rainfall and temperatures for the rest of the year are normal; That there is virtually zero chance that rainfall and temperatures for the rest of the year will be normal -- forecasters expect hotter for the whole country, and drier in big chunks of the drought-stricken area. That the snowpack in California is about half of normal, while reservoirs lakes, rivers and aquifers throughout the stricken area are seriously depleted. As the severity of the current drought approaches parity with that of the 1930s “Dustbowl” years, it is often said that, well, it won’t be that bad because “modern agricultural practices” have reduced the dust (those the words of NOAA climatologist Tom Karl, speaking with Inside Climate News.) Nothing could be further from the truth. While the use of no-till planting and cover crops have made spot improvements here and there, agriculture as a whole continues to over-cultivate, over-fertilize and over-crop, destroying several tons of topsoil each season for every ton of harvest. Meanwhile, crazed by high corn prices, industry is plowing up marginal prairie grassland at rates not seen since the years just before the Dust Bowl. A study out of South Dakota University reported by IPS calculates that 1.3 million acres of grazing land in the semiarid plains have been ripped up in the last five years. Government subsidies, price supports, crop insurance and requirements for ethanol content in gasoline are accelerating the reenactment of the runup to the Dust Bowl. How close are we getting? Last year, the hottest ever recorded in the US, 80 per cent of America’s farmland experienced drought, 2,000 counties were designated disaster areas, and 50% of the crops harvested were rated by the Agriculture Department as being in poor, or very poor, condition. Yet nothing stays the industrial operator from his appointed rounds. The chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, Bob Young, told Inside Climate News that his members, who are real Americans, probably will pay no attention to the dire forecasts of the scientists, for two reasons. One, “they” said March was going to be warm and it wasn’t; and two, the operators, most of which receive their government checks in city high-rise office buildings, “know what is going on in their own dirt.” Seriously. He said that.       Tom Lewis no 5:27 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/04/05/dry-and-drier-meets-dumb-and-dumber/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Drought-Forecast-2013.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~3/LZJSl6P1zE0/ http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/03/27/energy-independence-for-sale/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:10:56 +0000 tomlewis8657@gmail.com (Tom Lewis) http://www.dailyimpact.net/?p=1716 The natural gas (from fracking) “boom” that has been touted as the key to America’s energy independence is being sold abroad as fast as deals can be cut. The British gas company Centrica announced this week it has contracted for nearly 90 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year for 20 years [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailyimpact/GIfx/~4/LZJSl6P1zE0" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/03/27/energy-independence-for-sale/feed/ 2 The natural gas (from fracking) “boom” that has been touted as the key to America’s energy independence is being sold abroad as fast as deals can be cut. The British gas company Centrica announced this week it has contracted for nearly 90 billion cubic... The natural gas (from fracking) “boom” that has been touted as the key to America’s energy independence is being sold abroad as fast as deals can be cut. The British gas company Centrica announced this week it has contracted for nearly 90 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year for 20 years from Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass, Louisiana, terminal, at which a gas liquefaction plant is now under construction. That’s enough gas to supply 1.8 million  UK homes, and according to Centrica’s CEO Sam Laidlaw will help “to secure the UK’s future energy security.” Other countries whose security is being enhanced by planned exports from Sabine Pass are Korea, Spain, India and France, each of whom plans to buy more gas than Centrica. Moreover, Sabine Pass is just the first of 21 proposed gas-liquefaction plants proposed to be built ASAP in the United States. If permitted, they would export 28 billion cubic feet of gas per day -- 41 per cent of US gas production last year. The US industries that use natural gas, and are benefiting from the current, glut-induced low prices in the US, are of course crying foul about the planned exports (which must, of course, first be approved by the federal government). They worry, apparently, that having only 60 per cent of American natural gas left for Americans might cause an increase in prices. To which the typical economist’s technical response is -- d’oh! Set aside for a moment the fact that the US gas “boom” is not a boom at all [see: Math Unmasks Oil and Gas Boom as Bubble, and Expert: Shale Gas Boom a Bubble About to Pop], and ask only this question: if the argument for permitting unrestrained fracking for natural gas, despite its dangers, is that it will drive down energy prices and enhance energy security, what is the argument after you have sold half the fracked gas overseas? The facts are stark, ominous, and without advocates in the public square: the boom is not a boom at all, but a balloon that will likely pop before the UK contract even takes effect in 2018; energy independence for the United States, and for that matter energy security for the UK, is not possible without massive changes in both consumption and production that no one wants to discuss, let alone begin; and in the meantime business as usual is going to kill us all.   [See also: Energy Industries Rush to Sell Out Their Country] Tom Lewis no 4:12 collapse,peak,oil,water,shortage,food,prices,famine,climate,change,energy,crisis,industrial,agriculture,pollutionhttp://www.dailyimpact.net/2013/03/27/energy-independence-for-sale/http://media.blubrry.com/dailyimpact/www.dailyimpact.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Selling-Independence.mp3 Tom LewisnonadultChronicling the Crash of the Industrial Age