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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

15 JUune - News Notes

The Frozen Thames, 1677.Image via Wikipedia

 KPFK

"Rare" Lunar Eclipse Wednesday—Longest in a Decade

 

Study finds golden algae responsible for killing millions of fish less toxic in sunlight

Experts believe that several environmental factors influence toxin production, but new research from Baylor scientists shows that sunlight is a key component in the magnitude and duration of the toxicity of the algae to fish. Specifically, the study found that the longer golden algae toxins are exposed to natural sunlight, the less toxic the algal toxin becomes to fish and other aquatic organisms. 

The Triumph of New-Age Medicine

 

Study suggests drug significantly improves glycemic control in type 1 diabetics on insulin

 

NASA satellite gallery shows Chilean volcano plume moving around the world

Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict 

Three independent studies of the sun's insides, surface, and upper atmosphere all predict that the next solar cycle will be significantly delayed—if it happens at all. Normally, the next cycle would be expected to start roughly around 2020.
The combined data indicate that we may soon be headed into what's known as a grand minimum, a period of unusually low solar activity.
The predicted solar "sleep" is being compared to the last grand minimum on record, which occurred between 1645 and 1715.
Known as the Maunder Minimum, the roughly 70-year period coincided with the coldest spell of the Little Ice Age, when European canals regularly froze solid and Alpine glaciers encroached on mountain villages.
(See "Sun Oddly Quiet—Hints at Next 'Little Ice Age?'")

morelectricheat

11:39 AM on June 15, 2011
The announcement yesterday stunned many people because the AAS confidently placed the Sun in the Maunder type minimum category, which caused a vastly colder climate than Dalton. The reality of a Dalton type minimum occurring right now has long been obvious.

This cold climate producing sun (less solar irradiation/infrared hitting Earth and increased cosmic rays hitting Earth causing more clouds) is already starting to impact Earth (even the troposphere) with cooling. Also, the entire ocean is cooling (and ocean currents are going back to colder patterns), arctic ice is back to normal, volcano activity is very high, and the past 3 winters have been among the snowiest and coldest on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

It is time to title another Grand Solar Minimum and the next Little Ice Age.

Former Rep. Inglis to Launch Conservative Coalition to Address Climate Change

( Tie up energy supply just when most needed. Good capitalist strategy.  )

 

European Natural Gas Pipelines Plagued by Uncertainties

South Stream, backed by Gazprom, the monopoly exporter of Russia’s natural gas, would run underneath the Black Sea and deliver large amounts of fuel to the European Union, sometime in the second half of this decade. 

 South Stream looks like an implausibly huge and risky investment,” said Christian Egenhofer, an energy expert at the Center for European Policy Studies, a research group in Brussels. “But the more that South Stream appears real, the more that Russia can beguile Europe into thinking that alternatives to Russian gas are unnecessary.”

 

Google Earth Reveals How Predator-Prey Behavior In Coral Reefs Can Be Seen From Space

 

Everyone Deserves the Freedom to Make Their Own End-Of-Life Decisions

The nation's most powerful religious body is launching an attack on the right to dictate our end-of-life decisions.

During its high-profile June 15-17 meeting in Seattle, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will formally oppose the choice of aid in dying at life's end.

The Bishops Conference will vote this week in support of a document aiming to restrict patient access to end-of-life choice. Their document, To Live Each Day with Dignity, will be the first statement on aid in dying by the full body of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

They also seek to shame people who support aid in dying, and the terminally ill patients who seek it, through the unique power of their pulpit.  

Disabled Gay Couple Kicked Out of Kentucky Public Pool, Because "It's In The Bible"

Iran intensifies dress crackdown

Deputy Secretary of State Says New Iran Sanctions Are Unnecessary

Administration's Position on WPR is Absurd 

I think the Obama administration's arguments for why the War Powers Resolution does not apply to our actions in Libya are straight-up bullshit.

opit

The Administration's position is absurd...as is any Foreign Policy which is implicitly - but deniably - ongoing war on a global scale...a war of terrorism by state agents, exempted by the idea that if you put a uniform on a participant in a foreign adventure, he magically becomes a 'hero.'

Ten Members Of Congress File Lawsuit Claiming Military Involvement In Libya Is Unconstitutional

Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants in Bin Laden Raid

The Anger Remains

Thousands went on strike. Thousands came to protest. This was the Greek people telling their government: enough!

 Re: Can't We Try Non-Interventionism?  http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/history/

Vietnam's delegates to the Geneva Conference agreed to the temporary partition of their nation at the seventeenth parallel. Vietnam would hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country. The division at the seventeenth parallel, a temporary separation without cultural precedent, would vanish with the elections. The United States, however, had other ideas.

Libyan conflict splits apart families 


What intervention in Libya tells us about the neocon-liberal alliance

...narrowness of foreign policy debate in Washington and the close political kinship between the liberal interventionists of the Democratic Party and the neoconservatives that dominate the GOP. At one point, I said that "liberal interventionists are just ‘kinder, gentler' neocons, and neocons are just liberal interventionists on steroids." 

The Cynical Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the New Middle East

 

ATF Agents Ordered To Watch Guns Being Shipped Over U.S.-Mexico Border

 

The New Geopolitics of Food

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars

For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we've seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet's poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute -- and it has -- to revolutions and upheaval.

 

Israel's Chronic Water Problem

by the next summer it may be difficult to adequately supply municipal and household water requirements. The current cumulative deficit in Israel's renewable water resources amounts to approximately 2 billion cubic meters, an amount equal to the annual consumption of the State. The deficit has also lead to the qualitative deterioration of potable aquifer water resources that have, in part, become either of brackish quality or otherwise become polluted. 

 

Israel National Water Supply System - National Water Carrier

The shortage of water in the southern, semi-arid region of Israel required the construction of an extensive water-delivery system that supplies water to this region from resources in the north. Thus, most of the country's fresh water resources were inter-connected into the National Water Carrier, commissioned in 1964. The National Water Carrier supplies a blend of surface and groundwater. Water not required by consumers is recharged into the aquifer through spreading basins and dual-purpose wells. Recharging of aquifers helps to prevent evaporation losses and, in the coastal area, intrusion of seawater. The National Water Carrier supplies a total of 1,000 major consumers, including 18 municipalities and 80 local authorities.

 

The top 5 actions parents can take to reduce child exposure to toxic chemicals at home

Controlling house dust; switching to less-toxic, fragrance-free cleaners; taking extreme care with renovation projects; avoiding certain types and uses of plastics; and choosing fish that are low in mercury 

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