Ecology & Biotechnology
Gulf Oil Spill Media Blackout - Gases and Possible Evacuations (June 2010)
BP are employing private security companies such as Wackenhut to keep journalists and the general public away from the horrors of the oil spill. And the dispersants BP are using are worse than the oil itself. This catastrophe is sadly only just beginning.
The Gulf BP oil spill is much more serious than the media is letting on (June 2010)
Lindsey Williams talks about Big Oil and the BP Gull spill, and how the danger is not in the oil spill itself, but other gases and chemicals that are coming up with it. See Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9.
Everything you have to know about Dangerous Genetically Modified Food (2009)
Jeffrey Smith is a leading investigator and writer on the dangers of GMOs. This is an absolute must-see presentation for the protection of you and your family's health.
Alcohol is a much better ecological fuel than bio-diesels (Jan 2010)
Forget bio-diesels that are always hitting the headlines, alcohol is a superior method of powering cars and much cleaner. Click here for Part II.
Dr. John Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has detailed how he personally witnessed UN scientists attempting to distort the science of global warming for political ends. He told CNN in may 2007: "I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol." Christy has since proposed major reforms to the way that the IPCC operate so that they can try to gain back some of the credibility they have inevitably lost with their manipulation of the data. For more info, visit www.prisonplanet.com. Again, this does not mean that human CO2 does not cause global warming, only that the scientists putting forward this claim are being less than honest so that the claim itself has lost credibility.
We may not know for sure whether global warming is caused by human CO2 emissions, but we do know for sure that the science backing this theory has been "cooked" by the scientific organisations responsible for analysing the data and presenting it to governments and the general public. Why this deliberate deception has been perpetrated is anybody's guess, but you can bet that there is a hidden political agenda somewhere, probably involving the concentration of political power (in this case, that of the UN and those who control it). Suppressed evidence indicates that Earth was significantly warmer than it is today only a thousand years ago (before humans were spewing out significant amounts of CO2), making recent warming not so unprecedented or necessarily manmade. Other suppressed evidence shows that the planet is currently cooling, a fact that somehow got erased from the standard hocky-stick graphs used as the definitive icon for those wishing to put serious limits on human CO2 output. This does not mean that human-caused global warming is not a reality, but it should certainly raise serious doubts in the minds of the most ardent global-warming supporters. We need an honest review of the science before allowing it to dictate international law and policy. [For more information, read the article published in the Mail on Sunday.]
Global Warming Climategate Fraud, Criminal Investigations (Nov 09)
Prison Planet interviews Lord Monckton on the way global warming is being politically used to force in a UN global government that will destroy the sovereignty of any nation that signs up to the Copenhagen treaty. Check out Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org and this video.
Earth Pilgrim: A year on Dartmoor (Aug 2008)
Fabulous documentary by conservationist Satish Kumar who spent a year exploring the beauty of England's Dartmoor Natural Park. Stunning!
Save the planet by becoming vegetarian (Nov 09)It is all very well to drive electric cars, use energy-saving light bulbs, bio-fuels and better thermal insulation, but if you want to significantly reduce your carbon footprint, become vegetarian. A UN study in 2006 estimated that 18% of total greenhouse gas emissions came from farmed animals, with methane produced by livestock being the worst culprit. But experts at the Worldwatch Institute have revised this figure to 51% due to flaws in the original calculation that underestimated livestock numbers by 50% and also did not figure in the livestock's respiration. So it is mostly what we put in our mouths that is destroying the planet. Visit www.51percent.org.
The Future of Food - Documentary (2007 / BBC5TV)
The lure of modern mono-agriculture means that 97% of the varieties of vegetables grown at the start of the 20th century are now extinct, as multi-nationals such as Monsanto now control everything from seeds to pesticides. Even if Monsanto crops accidentally blow onto your land, the company will sue you for patent infringement! Watch the horror of the future of food.
The World According to Monsanto - Documentary (Apr 2008)
US multinational Monsanto is the world-leader in biotechnology, developing 90% of GMO grown on the planet today. It has also manufactured many of the worst toxins, like PCBs, that blight the environment and our health. Now its biggest seller, the weed killer Roundup, is linked to abnormal cell division.
The New Obama Administration's Attack on Organic Farming (Mar 2009)
The Obama administration is in the process of pushing through congress, without debate, new farming "safety bills", sponsored by corporations such as Monsanto, that could spell the end for organic farming in the US.
UN Climate Chief urges vegetarian diet (Sept 2008)Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has made a speech in London where he urges people to eat less meat as meat-production is a stronger causative factor (producing 18% of greenhouse gases) in global warming than is transport (producing 13% of greenhouse gases). We are happy to drive around in more eco-friendly transport, but for some reason most of us seem reluctant to give up our personal taste in flesh. If we are to serious combat global warming, some personal preferences such as diet are going to have to be changed if we are all to have a viable future. What is more, as Pachauri states, giving up meat will not only benefit the planet, but it will benefit our health as well. Time to turn vegetarian?
Biofuel Production Causes Food Shortages - News Report (May 08)
Biofuels are not all that they are cracked up to be. In fact, some estimate that more energy goes into their production than is released when they are burned. But there is another more troubling aspect: biofuels use up valuable land that could otherwise be used for growing food. In fact, in many places in the world, growing biofuel crops is becoming more lucrative than growing food crops, with the result of food shortages and therefore rising food prices around the world. Already, we have seen riots taking place in developing countries at the rising cost of basic foods. This situation will continue to deteriorate so long as we, our media and our governments see biofuels as the answer to oil-dependance.
Professor Tim Flannery, a leading climate expert, has examined data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and concluded that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has already passed the critical benchmark of 450ppm, a level that it had not been expected to hit for a decade. This means that we may have already passed the point of no return to climate catastrophe. In the words of James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies who has been examining the accelerating rate of Arctic ice melt which covers only 50% of what it did in 2001: "The reason so much of it went suddenly is that it is hitting a tipping point." This is it guys… this is the beginning of the end. If you are going to act on global warming, do it right now. Tomorrow will be too late. [Ecologist]
The catering firm Granada Food Services than runs the cafe at the British headquarters of Monsanto have taken all GM foods off the menu due to "customer concerns"!
New Scientist reports this week that a single kilogram of beef (2.2 lbs) is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home! This was the conclusion of a study done by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, by Akifumi Ogino and published in Animal Science Journal 1740-0929.2007. This study examined many aspects of meat production including animal management, calf production and transporting feed. So one of the best things you can do to help global warming is to go vegetarian. And if you must eat meat, be aware that a Swedish study in 2003 showed that organic beef emits 40% less greenhouse gases and consumes 85% less energy, so it is equivalent to a 1h 50m car journey… which although less is still extremely wasteful.
Many of us are aware of the scarcity of oil, but what about other resources that we take from the Earth? What about minerals? New Scientist has published an article on this topic. Taking into account increasing consumption, it appears we have 20-30 more years of zinc, 30-40 more years of uranium (there goes the so-called future fuel), 15 years of platinum, 5-10 years of indium, 15-20 years of silver, about 10 years of hafnium, 15-20 years of antimony and 20-30 years of tantalum, to name just a few of the rare Earth metals that our modern society and technologies depend upon. What is going to happen as these minerals run out? Even gold is expected to run short in about 30-40 years, copper in about 40 years and tin in about 20 years. [Source: New Scientist May26]
We will lose 116 square miles of rainforest, or about an acre a second. We will lose another 72 square miles to encroaching deserts, as a result of human mismanagement and overpopulation. We will lose 40 to 100 species, and no one knows whether the number is 40 or 100. Today the human population will increase by 250,000. And today we will add 2,700 tons of chlorofluorocarbons to the atmosphere and 15 million tons of carbon. Tonight the Earth will be a little hotter, it's waters more acidic, and the fabric of life more threadbare.
The Fourth Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just been published and removes most of the question marks regarding human involvement in global warming. It is now "very likely" that the rise in temperature that we are seeing globally is a direct result of human activity, but in its efforts to get the report past politicians, much of the leading-edge scientific research and anything remotely controversial was frozen out. For example, the report ignores the fact that the glaciers are melting far faster than theory predicts, the Gulf Stream is slowing down and could soon stop altogether, and large ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could collapse any moment, raising sea-levels far higher than the report's ultra-conservative prediction of 3.1cm per decade. But still, the report served its purpose to help silence the Global Warming skeptics (most of whom seem to have some connection with the petroleum industries). Key to the report's success was the recent Democratic victory in the congressional elections which has softened the US' skeptical stance which has led to its vetoes of past climate proposals. With players like Bush marginalized, the question now is how we can practically minimize human involvement in this warming. [New Scientist]
The UK government has again started looking seriously at nuclear power to meet the UK energy needs, stating that any energy source that produces zero greenhouse gases needs to be taken seriously. This perspective, however, is seriously flawed, as a report in The Ecologist magazine pointed out this month. A standard 100mw/eh nuclear reactor requires around 160 tonnes of uranium fuel each year. As concentration of uranium in the ore deposits is only 0.02 - 0.01%, to supply just one standard reactor requires 16 million tonnes of rock to be mined, crushed and chemically treated. This hugely inefficient process leaves mountains of radioactive chemical sludge, uses up far more energy in manufacture of nuclear fuels than will be released by them, and produces vast quantities of greenhouse gases in the process (some of the chemicals used are 10,000 times more potent greenhouse gases than CO2). So it is a lie when politicians present the nuclear alternative as zero-emission and efficient — they have conveniently left out all consideration of manufacture. The Ecologist also pointed out that uranium is a finite fuel, and if nuclear capacity doubles in size, the ore will run out within twenty years, whilst radioactive contamination from it will last many thousands.
Aquifers everywhere are emptying out as more and more water is used by the world's farming. In fact, it is estimated that a tenth of the world's food is grown using underground water that is not being replaced by rainwater. What is remarkable is the staggering volume of water needed to produce basic crops
1 kg coffee takes 20,000 litres of water to produce
1 quarter-pounder hamburger uses up 11,000 litres
1 cotton t-shirt takes 7,000 litres of water to produce
1 kg of cheese takes 5,000 litres of water to produce
1 kg of rice takes 5,000 litres of water to produce
1 kg of sugar takes 3,000 litres of water to produce
1 litre of milk takes 2,000 litres of water to produce
1 kg of wheat takes 1,000 litres of water to produce
So the next time you have a cup of coffee or slip on a t-shirt, spare some thought about the environmental consequences of even our most basic choices. And remember that a meat-based diet needs vastly more water to produce than a vegetarian diet.
[Source: New Scientist - 25 Feb 06 edition]
Ecologist Gregory Asner and his colleagues, who have been analysing satellite images to assess the rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest, have concluded that it is actually disappearing twice as first as scientists had previously estimated. The team, which included scientists from Brazil, used new supercomputer software and image processing to garner as much information as they could out of the satellite photos. The results, in Asner's words, were "sobering". What many illegal loggers are now doing is removing selected trees in a forest so as to hide evidence of their illegal logging, but the new software is able to take into account this prevalent but hidden type of destruction. The full results, which showed that the Amazon is being destroyed at twice the rate previously estimated, were shocking to the team who did not expect such a big discrepancy between real destruction and the previously estimated rate.
The first superweeds — weeds resistant to herbicides — have been discovered in the UK just two years after the end of a three year field trial for GM oilseed rape. The discovery, made by scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) — a government research agency — came as they were monitoring gene flow from Bayer's herbicide-resistant GM rape seed to wild plants. The weed in question is charlock, and it is found alongside rape seed throughout Europe. What is most disturbing about this new discovery is that industry scientists and the UK government have always insisted that "horizontal" gene flow in this manner is impossible. And this environmental bombshell comes at a time when the UK is trying to overturn the EU's ban on GM products. The Ecologist reports that "the first international register of GM contamination showed Britain is one of the countries most affected. There have been eight incidents of normal crops, food or animal feed being tainted with GM… since the crops were introduced into the global environment in 1996; only the US, with 11 such incidents, has a worse record."
GLOBAL WARMING is becoming an increasing problem to the Earth's ecosystem, with the single biggest contributor fiddling whilst the ecosystem burns. This week's issue of New Scientist Magazine (10 Sept 05) lists ten steps necessary to take to avert the calamity that mankind is currently facing:
- Wear Clothes Indoors: One of the easiest ways to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce the indoor heating in your home and wear more clothes instead. (Also, turn down any air-con — do you really need it so cold?)
- Minimise Car Journeys: Cars represent one of the worst contributors to global warming. By taking the bus or train, you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by 60%.
- Start Composting: The organic rubbish that we throw out is compacted down into landfill sites where it becomes a breeding ground for greenhouse gas producing bacteria called methanogens. This does not happen with composting.
- Cut Down on Plane Flights: Emissions from flights now account for 6% of personal greenhouse gas emission. This could be dramatically cut down by reducing flights, especially short-haul were train alternatives exist.
- Choose A Greener Car: If you drive a gas-guzzling SUV then you are just asking for environmental damage. Today there are plenty of relatively green and economical cars to choose from, including new electrics and hybrids.
- Get Low-Energy Household Appliances: Household appliances use up loads of energy, so when you replace them choose low-energy options. Also, if not necessary, don't leave appliances on stand-by.
- Eat Less Meat and Dairy: Huge amounts of greenhouse gases are produced by the meat and dairy industries. So cutting down on them is good for global warming. Also, try to choose home-grown food to reduce transport emissions.
- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle: We are all encouraged in this society to be rampant consumers which produces huge amounts of CO2 in manufacturing. Reducing consumption, and reusing/recycling we help support the environment.
- Be Greener in the Office : Turning off lights, switching off computers at night, using both sides of paper, using energy-saving appliances and recycling makes a huge difference.
- Choose a Green Burial: Opting for a simple natural burial and save the enormous amount of resources currently used in modern burials (vaults, bronze caskets etc.



