Author:
John DeCock

Environmental Activist And Writer

There’s no reason for concern about the mass death of bees through Colony Collapse Disorder. No reason at all unless you happen to be a plant who relies on pollination or a living being who is planning to sustain life by eating food. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, you might want to increase your stock in German agribusiness giant Bayer. They’re making a ton of money selling a pesticide called Clothianidin, marketed under the upbeat friendly name “Pancho.” ¡Olé! ¡Qué veneno excepcional!

If you’re in one of the other categories, and I confess to being in at least one, you have some cause for concern. A document leaked on Wednesday disclosed that the Bush Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency approved use of this pesticide in spite of the fact that there was clear scientific evidence that it represented a serious threat to bees. It has been in use since 2003, used broadly to treat corn. Agribusiness conglomerates have blanketed the midwest with corn monoculture over nearly 100 million acres. That’s a lot of bee poison.

Clothianidin is in a family of pesticides called “neonicotinoids”. This means the pesticide is used to treat seeds. The neonicotinoids are then transferred into the pollen where they kill pests, including the pollenators.

Bayer was granted “conditional registration” by the EPA and given a deadline of December 2004 to complete a study addressing the toxic effects of Clothianidan on bees. This meant they were free to market their product widely and this is exactly what they did. The use of the pesticide became pervasive and began having real world impact in the first growing season of its use.

Bayer applied for and was granted an extended deadline. Sales of Clothianidin continued and increased. When the final study was delivered in 2007, it was a complete joke, a poorly controlled and invalid study by any reasonable standard of scientific method. However, on the basis of this study, the pesticide was given full registration. Pancho continued to poison the bee population at ever-increasing levels.

Enter the Obama administration and a new and better era for the EPA under Lisa Jackson. Two scientists from the EPA Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFED), Michael Barret and Joseph DeCant, issued a memo, leaked to Colorado Beekeeper Tom Theobald, on November 3, which documented the serious dangers of the pesticide to bee populations, stating:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct… risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

In spite of this assessment, Clothianidin has retained its registration and is going to be available for the spring planting season in the United States unless the EPA reverses itself. Several European countries have withdrawn registration in response to the weight of scientific evidence of harm to bee colonies.

You can take action on this issue by signing a petition to demand that the EPA withdraw registration for Clothianidin. Expressing your concerns directly to Administrator Lisa Jackson is also important.

We will live with the effects of the Bush Administration’s deference to corporate profits over the public good for many generations in many ways. Wherever we have the chance to right one of these wrongs, we need to push the big, clumsy mechanisms of government to grind forward and do the right thing.

from our friends at Huffington Post

Follow John DeCock on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jdecock

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
One of the most important political and economic thinkers of our time, this Canadian journalist and author (The Shock Doctrine and No Logo) penetrates the veils of corporate globalization to expose transnational capital’s most ruthless strategies yet to exploit catastrophe from Baghdad to New Orleans. She portrays her vision of how people’s movements can counter the disaster of disaster capitalism.

28mn

from our friends at Bioneers.org

Researchers Confirm Subsea Gulf Oil Plumes Are From BP Well
Friday 23 July 2010
by: Sara Kennedy | McClatchy Newspapers | Report

Sampling operations being conducted on the research vessel Brooks McCall, near the site of the oil breach at the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo: Dr. Oscar Garcia / Florida State University).

~St. Petersburg, Fla. – Through a chemical fingerprinting process, University of South Florida researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP’s runaway Deepwater Horizon well — the first direct scientific link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as “plumes” and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday.

Until now, scientists had circumstantial evidence, but lacked that definitive scientific link.

The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. NOAA said its detection equipment also implicated the BP well in the plumes’ creation.

Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA’s chief — that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.

“What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is,” said chemical oceanographer David Hollander, one of three USF researchers credited with the matching samples of oil taken from the water with samples from the BP well. “It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe.”

The other scientists involved in making the link, USF said, were biological oceanographer Ernst Peebles and geological oceanographer David Naar.

The finding is important because oil that escaped from the mile-deep, blown-out well had been treated with dispersants, which broke the oil in the water column into tiny droplets, and therefore did not form an oil slick at the surface, said Richard H. Pierce, senior scientist and director of the Center for Ecotoxicology at Sarasota’s Mote Marine Laboratory.

“It’s more readily taken up and absorbed and ingested by marine animals,” he explained.

Do you like this? Click here to get Truthout stories sent to your inbox every day – free.

Although dispersed oil degrades more quickly over the long-run, in the short-term, it poses a more toxic threat to marine life, Pierce said.

“So, we’ve been very concerned, and it is critical USF has verified it,” he said.

The full report was not released Friday, but will be available sometime next week, USF spokeswoman Vickie Chachere said.

BP declined to comment on the USF discovery. “We have only seen media reports, and have not yet seen the report and underlying data,” BP spokesman Phil Cochrane said in an e-mail.

USF scientists found microscopic droplets of biodegraded oil at varying depths beneath the Gulf’s surface, the university said in a statement.

One layer was 100 feet thick; it was found 45 nautical miles north-northeast of the well site, officials said.

The researchers found the plumes after models created by a USF expert in ocean currents, Robert Weisberg, predicted subsurface oil from the Deepwater Horizon well would move toward the north-northeast, USF said.

“The clouds were found near the DeSoto Canyon, a critical area that interacts with Florida’s spawning grounds,” USF said.

The NOAA study made similar findings. According to the report, which was reviewed by 19 scientists known as the Joint Analysis Group, data collected by five research ships deployed in the Gulf from May 19 to June 19 showed oil suspended in the water between 1,000 and 1,300 meters — about 3,280 feet to 4,265 feet.

The NOAA scientists detected the oil by measuring its fluorescence — many of the droplets are too small to detect otherwise — and said that that measurement linked it to the BP well.

The report said the oil had been detected in heaviest concentrations near the BP well and that its concentrations dropped as the ships moved away from the well, but that not enough samples had been taken to determine the full “horizontal extent” of the plumes.

The report also said the impact of the oil on sealife had yet to be determined. Even at low concentrations, the report said, the oil “might be biologically meaningful” because of the length of time fish and other organisms would be exposed to it.

The report also said that scientists had detected lower levels of dissolved oxygen in the water at depths below 3,280 feet, but that they couldn’t determine why the levels were low with certainty. They said the levels were not so low as to be fatal to sealife.

Steven Murawski, chief scientist for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said the data confirm that the subsea plumes of oil were the result of the Deepwater Horizon well.

“That’s a real smoking gun, as far as we’re concerned,” he said. “It really is a flow” from the well.

In May, when scientists first reported that they had discovered oil beneath the Gulf’s surface and blamed it on the Deepwater Horizon spill, they were denounced by both BP and NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco.

BP CEO Tony Hayward denied that such plumes existed and Lubchenco called the reports “misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate.”

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Support Truthout’s work with a $10/month tax-deductible donation today!

from our friend’s at www.Truth-Out.org

June 30, 2010

Oil-threatened estuary is key to life in the gulf

Shrimp, crab, oysters, gators, birds, snakes, people – all have ties to Louisiana’s Barataria Bay.

The Bald Cypress Swamp of Barataria Preserve, which is more biologically diverse than the Everglades and serves as a nursery and breeding ground for the gulf’s shrimp, crab, oyster and fish. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / June 11, 2010)

By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times

June 11, 2010
Reporting from Barataria Preserve, La.

The sickening images of pelicans struggling in oil along Louisiana’s barrier islands only hint at what’s at stake if the slick forces its way into the state’s 3 ½ million acres of estuaries and marshes.

These bays and bayous are thrumming with life — they are far more biologically diverse than the Everglades — and serve as nursery and breeding ground for the gulf’s world famous shrimp, crab, oyster and fish. The wetlands system that fringes the coast is often called “Liquid Louisiana.”

Nearly everything that lives in the gulf is in some way connected to Barataria Bay, which is part of a coastal water system that regularly flushes with tides that mix salt water and fresh water. Pirates used the region’s uncounted cul-de-sacs as hideouts and bases from which to launch forays into the gulf and Caribbean. Today, commercial fishermen motor south from their docks in Lafitte and Barataria.

The prospect of oil penetrating that connection threatens a unique system of floating freshwater marsh already brought to its knees by hurricanes, thousands of canals cut for oil industry traffic, and the dikes, levees and channels that have altered the natural flow of the Mississippi River.

Oil first reached islands at the mouth of the bay May 20, and this week streamers of rust-colored mousse pushed past Grand Isle well into the inland waterway.

“It’s all tidal. We are connected to the gulf and therefore affected by storms in the gulf and, potentially, oil,” said David Muth, chief of planning and resource stewardship at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. Barataria Preserve is part of the park.

“This tragedy has already happened,” Muth said. He poured over colorful map containing hundreds of yellow points, each representing nesting colonies in the region, all in the path of the incoming oil. For example, a survey of site No. 83 revealed 400 pairs of brown pelicans, 8,500 pairs of royal terns, 30,000 pairs of sandwich terns and 200 pairs black skimmers.

“This is a soap opera and we’re just in Act 1 right now,” Muth said. “It’s going to go on and on and on.”

Earlier this week Muth toured Barataria Bay, checking on nesting birds and looking for signs of oil. He launched from Twin Canals into a bright green carpet of floating dots known as duckweed.

A solidly built New Orleans native, Muth steered the boat down broad avenues of water the color of weak ice tea, the result of naturally occurring tannins. Trailing his hand, he pointed out an oily residue on the surface. It was not crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon well, but vegetable oil that is the byproduct of the near-constant breakdown of organic compounds in the marsh.

These reedy redoubts are where the gulf’s marine life comes to be born and mature. “Much of the life in the Gulf of Mexico depends directly or indirectly on what comes out of the estuaries,” Muth said.

The value to the nation’s fisheries is well known.

If the region’s “natural capital” were treated as an economic asset, the present value of the Mississippi Delta would be between $330 billion and $1.3 trillion, according to a 2006 report by the Seattle-based group Earth Economics.

Muth, his green and brown National Parks Service cap set low on his forehead against a blistering sun, guided the boat past a small alligator, with part of its eyes and nostrils peeking above the water’s surface. At 4 feet long, the gator was likely 4 years old, Muth said. Three moorhen chicks waddled across the duckweed, effectively walking on water to their waiting mother.

The birds were standing on mats, known locally as “flotant.” All the vegetation in this floating estuarine freshwater marsh rest on top of the water’s surface, moving up and down with tides. The mat is so thick in some places that shrubs and trees grow on them.

The mats float above a bay floor that has beneath it 30,000 feet of deltaic sediment, the result of millions of years of deposits by the Mississippi River.

Muth paused, listening to a mournful lowing he couldn’t quite make out. Eventually he guessed the sound was the muted cry of a pig frog being swallowed slowly by an aquatic snake.

“What I love about this place is that it’s a system that is incredibly alive and diverse,” he said. “When I go to the beautiful places — to Yellowstone or to the Rocky Mountains or to the Everglades — what I’m really struck by is how lifeless it is. There aren’t that many creatures around at any given time. I’m used to being in a place where there are birds and frogs and turtles and snakes. This is an incredible place.”

The boat continued south across the expanse of Lake Salvador and its green spits of land, stranded islands of what was once connected land. The region has been ripped apart by storms and the constant cutting of canals for oil and gas operations; there are some 10,000 miles of canals in south Louisiana. Today there are a few threads of land to hold together. Boaters equipped with GPS programs are surprised by false alarms warning they are about to run into land where there is only open water. The programmers can’t keep up with the land loss.

The shoreline in the Barataria Preserve retreats 30 feet every year.

This thin tissue of remnant land eventually gave in to Barataria Bay, where a dozen shrimp boats were laying down booms, which trailed like a tangerine-colored tail.

The crews were busy trying to protect an island where marshy edges already had a black coating of oil. In the open water, strands of rusty orange mousse floated: oil that has been treated with dispersants. Muth observed a colony of nesting Forster’s terns.

“The sickening, helpless feeling around all this is the birds have to go on making a living with patches of oil moving through the system,” he said. “We just don’t know how many times can these birds take even a light oiling.”

Like most wetlands scientists, Muth cannot say for sure what the impact of oil will bring to this delta.

“Oil is a wild card,” he said. “This is an extremely adaptive place. When you throw in a completely unnatural event, like this mass of oil, we just don’t know.”

julie.cart@latimes.com

from our friends at the latimes.com

The Visionary Activist – Dark of Moon, Dark of Oil Regime, Lifeboat Movement Goes Live

Caroline Casey_Michael Ruppert 061010

Caroline welcomes appropriately dire long-time prognosticator of peak oil industrial collapse, fellow presenter at Harmony Festival, Mike Ruppert. Critique and encouragement to build life-boats. “Localize or Die.”
http://www.collapsenet.com/

…the most rousing romp through dire information I have heard in quite some time !  Inspiring !!

TTMG

Mike Ruppert – Bio:

A leading Peak Oil theorist, author, and “a one man crusade trying to expose America’s bogus war on drugs.” He is also the publisher/editor of From the Wilderness, a newsletter read in more than 50 countries including more than sixty members of the U.S. Congress, professors at more than 40 universities around the world, and major business and economic leaders. Since 9/11 Mike has been in demand as a university lecturer and has spoken on Peak Oil and 9/11 in nine countries. Having concluded that the US government and markets will be useless in preparing American citizens for the coming crisis, Mike’s current focus is on individual and community preparedness for the coming challenges and the development of a reliable news service to quickly identify and track breaking developments around the world.

Mike is a former LAPD narcotics investigator and whistleblower. He received his degree in Political Science (with honors) from UCLA. In 1996, after 18 years of struggle, he finally achieved one of his deepest wishes: a face to face public encounter with then CIA Director John Deutch on national television. Washington sources later told Mike that Deutch’s mishandling of the encounter cost him a guaranteed appointment as Secretary of Defense.

From the Wilderness’ video, The Truth and Lies About 9-11, has sold more than 15,000 copies and includes special exclusive interviews with Representatives Ron Paul (R-TX), Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Professor Peter Dale Scott, (UC Berkeley), Professor John Metzger (Michigan State) and Catherine Austin Fitts (former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Managing Director, Dillon Read).

Mike’s book, Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, is one of the three best-selling books globally and in the U.S. about the attacks of 9/11. Rubicon is the only book to show that Vice President Richard Cheney, the U.S. government and Wall Street had a well-developed awareness of Peak Oil before the 9/11 attacks and that U.S. policy since then has been consistent with Peak Oil imperatives. In May, 2006, Crossing the Rubicon was added to the Harvard School of Business library.

from our friends at www.coyotenetworknews.com

less then 60 minutes.

BP Oilpocalypse Creates Underwater Nightmare

from our friends at Good Morning America

Amateur Video Of Gulf Oil Slick – Worse Than BP Admits

Video is from Alabama resident John Wathen as a volunteer pilot flew him over the area where the oil rig sank. Officials have stopped guessing at the amount of oil leaking although some speculate it may be closer to 1 million gallons per day.

Don’t let BP spin this into something trivial.

“It’s not a leak, it’s a volcano spewing oil”

The Visionary Activist -
All Oil is Spilled – Gulf Coast Cataclysm:
Convening the Council of Reverent Ingenuity

to animate our cultural leadership response to the Gulf Coast obscene oil cataclysm
Caroline Casey welcomes Dune Lankard, Atabaskan Eyak from Copper River Delta in Alaska, conservation economies derived from long-term unresolved impacts of Exxon Valdez disaster.
Followed by Darryl Hannah, actress-environmental advocate, voice for the earth, Ambassadress from the Sea, and David Blume, sane, reverent fuel advocate author of “Alcohol Can Be a Gas” to infuse sense into our collective that we may compost insidious fossil fueled economy.VisionaryActivist_050610
59 great minutes

From our friends at www.coyotenetworknews.com and KPFA.org

William McDonough and Co. are THE leaders in a much better design for long term health of our Planet. Through working in corporate world they have had a major impact on creating recyclable technology and eco-friendly work places that use bio-and techno feedback loops were waste is either eliminated or significantly reduced, increasing profits and productivity as well.

The Hannover Principles

1.    Insist on rights of humanity and nature to co-exist in a healthy, supportive, diverse and sustainable condition.
2.    Recognize interdependence. The elements of human design interact with and depend upon the natural world, with broad and diverse implications at every scale. Expand design considerations to recognizing even distant effects.
3.    Respect relationships between spirit and matter. Consider all aspects of human settlement including community, dwelling, industry and trade in terms of existing and evolving connections between spiritual and material consciousness.
4.    Accept responsibility for the consequences of design decisions upon human well-being, the viability of natural systems and their right to co-exist.
5.    Create safe objects of long-term value. Do not burden future generations with requirements for maintenance or vigilant administration of potential danger due to the careless creation of products, processes or standards.
6.    Eliminate the concept of waste. Evaluate and optimize the full life-cycle of products and processes, to approach the state of natural systems, in which there is no waste.
7.    Rely on natural energy flows. Human designs should, like the living world, derive their creative forces from perpetual solar income. Incorporate this energy efficiently and safely for responsible use.
8.    Understand the limitations of design. No human creation lasts forever and design does not solve all problems. Those who create and plan should practice humility in the face of nature. Treat nature as a model and mentor, not as an inconvenience to be evaded or controlled.
9.    Seek constant improvement by the sharing of knowledge. Encourage direct and open communication between colleagues, patrons, manufacturers and users to link long term sustainable considerations with ethical responsibility, and re-establish the integral relationship between natural processes and human activity.
10.  The Hannover Principles should be seen as a living document committed to the transformation and growth in the understanding of our interdependence with nature, so that they may adapt as our knowledge of the world evolves.

the video brought to us by our friends at Standford University

Ron Cobb’s 1969 Ecology Flag

Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in held on April 22, 1970.

Many communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues. The first Earth Week originated in Philadelphia in 1970 (starting April 16 and culminating on Earth Day, April 22.)
Earth Day Network, a group that wishes to become the coordinator of Earth Day globally, asserts that Earth Day is now observed on April 22 on virtually every country on Earth.

This is the only planet we have… !

Don Blankenship’s – Massey Coal, subject of the book “Coal River”, is the operator of a “cut and fill” mining operation in West Virginia, where the Clean Water Act’s protections for “blue line” seasonal streams are ignored by mountaintop removal — with the debris and toxic waste dumped into valleys, blue line streams, and toxic overflow pouring onto neighboring properties and into common streams and rivers.

It’s bad, bad, bad. Moreover, it’s dangerous. And, it’s unneeded.

Even worse, the miners are going back down into mines despite the lamentable and preventable deaths.

BUT EVEN WORSE THAN THAT, THE ENERGY GENERATED BY THESE COAL MINES COULD, WITH NO MORE SPACE THAN THE COAL MINES THEMSELVES, BE GENERATED BY SOLAR POWER. LEAVING THE COAL IN THE GROUND, FOR THE NEXT GENERATIONS.

Here are the 100 largest coal mines in the USA. The very largest is:

“1 North Antelope Rochelle Mine/Powder River Coal Wyoming 97,578,499 tons high-quality coal per year.”

Here’s the blurb about this coal mine, “NARM”:

“105 km southeast of Gillette, Wyoming, U.S.A…the world’s largest surface-strip operation. The owner of the mine is Peabody…the largest private-sector coal company in the world. Its operations provide coal that is used to generate 10% of the electricity generated in the U.S. and approximately 3% of the electricity generated throughout the world. It exports coal to 15 countries and over 350 power and industrial plants.
“The Powder River Coal Field area has experienced natural coal fires throughout the recent geological history and because of that the lands have been held as sacred by early Native Americans. Coal was re-discovered in Wyoming by the Fremont Expedition of 1843. Commercial mining began with the arrival of the railroad. Since 1988 Wyoming tops the list of the largest coal-producing states in the U.S.
“The North Antelope Rochelle Mine began operation in 1983 and produces the lowest sulfur coal in the United States – 0.2% sulfur at a heat value ranging from 8,600 to 8,800 Btu per pound. The operation employs three draglines along with five overburden truck-and-shovel fleets. During 2007 the company erected a new dragline and completed an in-pit crusher/conveyor at North Antelope Rochelle. The coal is hauled by truck to one of three hoppers at the complex, where it is crushed and ultimately conveyed to 15,000-ton silos for loadout on unit trains.
“The operation employs 1,080 people and annually provides the local economy with $63 million in wages and benefits.
“North Antelope Rochelle’s industry-leading safety and reclamation practices have been recognized with numerous awards over the past four years. ”

“The North Antelope Rochelle Mine is one of America’s largest coal mines, … Remaining coal reserves dedicated to the mine cover nearly 28000 acres…”
www.peabodyenergy.com/Media/factsheets/NARoch.asp

REPLACING COAL BY SOLAR TAKES LESS SPACE AND LESS ENERGY

The Peabody Coal North Antelope Rochelle Mine (“NARM”) is the largest coal producer in the USA.

It produces about 100,000,000 tons of coal per year; each ton of coal has about the same energy as between three and six barrels of oil. Each barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of about 1700 kWh.

Each ton of NARM coal contains no more than 10,000 kWh of equivalent energy, perhaps half that, but let’s use the top number.

Hence, the entire NARM operation produces coal with an energy content of
10,000*100,000,000 kWh per year, or 1,000,000,000,000 kWh per year (10 to the 12th, or 10**12).

HOW MUCH SOLAR POWER TO GENERATE THE SAME AMOUNT OF ENERGY AS NARM

Each acre is about 4000 square meters. Sunlight falling on one acre is 4000 kW. Solar panels would retrieve 800 kW per acre at 20% efficiency. Per day, that’s 4,000 kWh; per year, that acre of solar would produce 4*365 thousand kWh or 1,400,000 kWh.

1,000,000,000,000 kWh total energy (10**12) in the coal divided by 1,400,000 (1.4*10**6) kWh of solar energy per acre yields . . . about 70,000 acres, an area about 100 square miles, or 10 miles by 10 miles (640 acres per square mile).

Sounds like a lot, right? But:

The current NARM mine works is at least 2000 acres; there are roads, rail lines, loading docks, draglines, and about 28,000 acres of mineable open-face coal in seams 100 ft. deep up to 400 ft. beneath the surface, extending for many miles in each direction from the current works, and reserved for future despoilation.

Considering the hundreds of miles of rail lines and roads, giant earthmoving and coal-hauling equipment, the staging area and the land required for the 1080 people who work the mine, the total area used by the NARM is at worst comparable, and perhaps larger, than the equivalent area needed to generate the same amount of energy using solar panels.

Perhaps as much as 80,000 acres!

Take about the same land alloted to mining coal at the biggest coal mine in the USA, and you would produce the same amount of electric — without the trains, dragline, coal ash, coal pollution, coal dust, and coal burning!! And without the needless yearly death and injury toll on miners.

Now if this can be done for the LARGEST and most productive of all coal mines, the one that touts “clean coal”, the rest are probably even worse. SOLAR WOULD REPLACE THIS MINE WITHOUT DESTROYING THE LANDSCAPE, WITHOUT NEED FOR REMEDIATION, AND USING PERHAPS HALF THE SPACE ULTIMATELY REQUIRED TO MINE AND REMEDIATE the seam of coal, which extends for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of miles.

Imagine that, instead of giant scoops digging 400′ down into the ground, tearing up land by the hundreds of acres, creating huge toxic sumps, instead…silent construction of pole-mounted solar panels, under which grass and prairie dogs could flourish…coyotes, wolves, antelopes, deer could roam without fear of bulldozers and toxic coal ash.

Solar panels should rather be installed on rooftops, which are already developed, and don’t entail destroying the wilderness; but surely, even a forest of solar panels would be preferrable to the mess created by Peabody Coal.

Why mine the coal? Use the sunlight on the land, if you must, until all our rooftops are solar.

Similar to the argument that, if we had plug-in cars, the energy used to extract and refine oil would, if used to power EVs, carry the EV as far as the REST of the barrel carries a fossil car. Might as well leave the oil in the ground, for all the good of the farce about spending so much energy mining it just to burn it.

Here’s a picture of the “enlightened” open pit, with some idea of a tin part of the square miles despoiled by this mine:

THE 99 NEXT LARGEST COAL MINES

2 Black Thunder/Thunder Basin Coal Company LLC Surface Wyoming 88,584,704
3 Jacobs Ranch Mine/Jacobs Ranch Coal Company Surface Wyoming 42,145,705
4 Cordero Mine/Cordero Mining Company Surface Wyoming 40,033,283
5 Antelope Coal Mine/Antelope Coal Company Surface Wyoming 35,777,489
6 Caballo Mine/Caballo Coal Company Surface Wyoming 31,205,381
7 Belle Ayr Mine/Foundation Coal West Incorporated Surface Wyoming 28,707,982
8 Buckskin Mine/Triton Coal Company Surface Wyoming 26,076,355
9 Eagle Butte Mine/Foundation Coal West Incorporated Surface Wyoming 20,442,963
10 Rawhide Mine/Caballo Coal Company Surface Wyoming 18,418,546
11 Spring Creek Coal Company/Spring Creek Coal Company Surface Montana 17,947,506
12 Freedom Mine/The Coteau Properties Company Surface North Dakota 14,565,631
13 Rosebud Mine&Crusher/Conveyor/Western Energy Company Surface Montana 13,052,713
14 Coal Creek Mine/Thunder Basin Coal Company LLC Surface Wyoming 11,453,546
15 Enlow Fork Mine/Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company Underground Pennsylvania 11,089,475
16 Bailey Mine/Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company Underground Pennsylvania 9,996,038
17 McElroy Mine/McElroy Coal Company Underground West Virginia 9,636,827
18 Navajo Mine/BHP Navajo Coal Company Surface New Mexico 8,905,813
19 Kayenta Mine/Peabody Western Coal Company Surface Arizona 8,024,973
20 Foidel Creek Mine/Twentymile Coal Company Underground Colorado 8,004,176
21 Falkirk Mine/Falkirk Mining Company Surface North Dakota 7,532,993
22 Cumberland Mine/Cumberland Coal Resources LP Underground Pennsylvania 7,321,030
23 San Juan Mine 1/San Juan Coal Company Underground New Mexico 7,046,199
24 Sufco/Canyon Fuel Company LLC Underground Utah 6,946,075
25 Decker Mine/Decker Coal Company Surface Montana 6,871,671
26 Century Mine/American Energy Corporation Underground Ohio 6,843,898
27 Jewett Mine/Texas Westmoreland Coal Co. Surface Texas 6,453,799
28 Absaloka Mine/Westmoreland Resources Inc. Surface Montana 6,390,699
29 Emerald Mine No 1/Emerald Coal Resources LP Underground Pennsylvania 6,343,350
30 Wyodak Mine/Wyodak Resources Development Co. Surface Wyoming 6,015,890
31 West Elk Mine/Mountain Coal Company, L.L.C. Underground Colorado 5,858,789
32 Powhatan No. 6 Mine/The Ohio Valley Coal Company Underground Ohio 5,797,596
33 Robinson Run No 95/Consolidation Coal Company Underground West Virginia 5,627,306
34 Blacksville No 2/Consolidation Coal Company Underground Pennsylvania 5,584,153
35 Mach #1 Mine/Mach Mining LLC Underground Illinois 5,503,665
36 Galatia Mine/The American Coal Company Underground Illinois 5,263,019
37 Dry Fork Mine/Western Fuels-Wyoming Inc Surface Wyoming 5,261,242
38 Loveridge No 22/Consolidation Coal Company Underground West Virginia 5,192,742
39 Twilight MTR Surface Mine/Progress Coal Surface West Virginia 5,167,254
40 Cardinal/Warrior Coal LLC Underground Kentucky 5,108,496
41 Beckville Strip/Luminant Mining Co. LLC Surface Texas 5,093,709
42 Kemmerer Mine/Chevron Mining Inc Surface Wyoming 4,988,841
43 Colowyo Mine/Colowyo Coal Company L P Surface Colorado 4,914,363
44 Elk Creek Mine/Oxbow Mining, LLC Underground Colorado 4,902,633
45 Dotiki Mine/Webster County Coal LLC Underground Kentucky 4,662,442
46 Oak Hill Strip/Luminant Mining Company LLC Surface Texas 4,655,079
47 Center Mine/BNI Coal Ltd Surface North Dakota 4,505,263
48 Mountaineer II Mine/Mingo Logan Coal Company Underground West Virginia 4,187,338
49 Dugout Canyon Mine/Canyon Fuel Company LLC Underground Utah 4,145,406
50 South Hallsville No 1 Mine/Sabine Mining Company Surface Texas 4,054,916
51 Elk Creek Mine/Hopkins County Coal LLC Underground Kentucky 4,033,847
Subtotal 713,921,308
All Other Mines 457,887,361
U.S. Total 1,171,808,669
- = No data are reported.
Note: · Major mines are mines that produced more than 4 million short tons in 2008. The company is the firm operating the mine.
Source: · Energy Information Administration Form EIA-7A, “Coal Production Report,” and/or U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Form 7000-2, “Quarterly Mine Employment and Coal Production Report.”

US mine production 2008:
1,171,808,669 short tons (1.17 Billion tons)
Source: · Energy Information Administration Form EIA-7A, “Coal Production Report,” and/or U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Form 7000-2, “Quarterly Mine Employment and Coal Production Report.”

Major U.S. Coal Mines

.

Blume writes in the Introduction to Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: “Various prospective publishers argued that putting all of this material into one large volume might scare off readers who just want a recipe book of how to make alcohol. They said, ‘All this history and politics is fascinating, but aren’t you afraid that including it in your how-to book would scare away some buyers?’ ‘Put it in a separate publication,’ their marketing experts said. But in the final analysis, I decided that this book should be a complete tool kit to revolutionize our transportation energy system, combining a broad, sweeping vision with intricate detail.

Alcohol Can Be a Gas! is the only comprehensive book ever written on alcohol fuel production and use for home and farm. Until now, it has been very difficult for farmers, contractors, alternative energy aficionados, those concerned about Peak Oil, and small-scale entrepreneurs to obtain good, accurate information on producing alcohol, or on converting vehicles to run on alcohol fuel. And with all the conflicting news stories about ethanol, the public finds it difficult to sort fact from fiction. This text, which has been reviewed by scientists around the world, is the definitive reference work on alcohol fuel.

from our friends at: www.coyotenetworknews.com

"the earth is a source of life that is to be protected…"

Orville Looking Horse

The New Green Economy

Caroline welcomes Bob Gough, secretary for Inter-Tribal Coup, and lawyer for the Lakota Sioux, indefatigable agent of Red Green Power, the development of Wind Power, allying ancient infinite Power with reverently collaborative new technology on Native American reservations.

Price VS Cost !

from our friends at www.coyotenetworknews.com

brought to us by our friends at KCSM.org