Category Archives: Environment

Crimes against Humanity

04 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Environment

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I wouldn’t say I am a tree hugger, but I do support several of the leading environmental groups. Maybe I am not a literal tree hugger, but I know we must all try to save the planet from ourselves. Perhaps it is just in our DNA to destroy where we live.

Often we try to make rules and laws to force us to do what is right even if we might not like it or it will cost some corporation money. The best local example is the Chicago River. People used to hold their noses while walking near the River. Today people paddle their canoes on the River.

These are a few of the rules this administration has decided to eliminate in order to gain favor with corporations and a few voting blocks. The new rules change the National Environmental policy act to reduce or eliminate environmental reviews on infrastructure projects. It eliminates climate change and sea level rise from FEMA’s annual review to satisfy real estate developers. Trump’s nominee to head FEMA says he doesn’t know how the climate is changing.

The new interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act means killing off birds by oil spills, chemical and construction activities will not be fined. BP’s Horizon spill or Duke Power’s coal ash spill would not be punished by fines.

The lessening or elimination of construction and infrastructure review is important to the President since 72% of the $900 million in infrastructure grants goes to states voting for him.

Savaging our environment for profit, ideology, or profit is more that immoral – it’s a crime against humanity.

Buy the White House

11 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in Environment, Politics

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The President just made it harder for any government agency to interfere in building pipelines. Only the most egregious plans have a chance of being blocked now. One of Trump’s first executive orders was to allow the Dakota access pipeline to be built under Lake Oahu. The lake is the only water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Thousand had protested getting worldwide media and support. Many environmental groups had filed suit. His order to the Army Corp effectively eliminated the legal hold-ups.

Why did he allow it? The Energy Transfer Limited Partners was the builder and he was a stockholder and a close friend of CEO Kelcy Warren. One reason he doesn’t want his tax returns made public is the K-1 from ETP would show a conflict of interest and breaking the constitutions emolument clause.

ETP had invested hundreds of millions in a pipeline that Warren wouldn’t reroute a few miles. He thought every place had the Texas “Don’t Care” philosophy. Failure to complete on time was costing ETP millions. This ruling opens up the way for ETP’s Pennsylvania pipeline from the Marcellus gas fields and saving millions.

Packing the district courts with regulation adverse judges makes law suits harder to win. People are now being forced to have pipelines in their backyards without recourse in courts. American is criss-crossed by pipelines older than me. They are leaking.

Oh, Warren donated $100,000 to the Trump campaign and $250,000 to the inaugural. Who says you can’t buy the White House?

In full disclosure, I own some shares in ETP because it bought a company that bought the company I originally bought shares in long ago. Although the company’s morals concern me, a 16% tax qualified distribution is hard to sell.

Dark Future for Humanity

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Environment, Uncategorized

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As I write this the temperature is minus 23 degrees. It seems an odd time to bring up global warming but this vortex is the result of warmer arctic sea water not yet iced over. The warmer air rose and split the normal vortex into two parts. Sound familiar? Remember why the polar bears are dying? Their food source for winter hibernation has lots of open water to get a breath and not the air holes in the ice cap.

A complete collapse of the polar vortex was the scenario of the movie “Day After Tomorrow.” Since the President believes what he sees on late night movie channels, maybe he will learn about global warming’s possible effects. Watching “Sicario” is where he got his stories of abuse on the Southern border.

While we are freezing with near record lows, Australians are having record highs of over 120 degrees. The oceans of the world have been warming at a greater rate than predicted. Not only does this alter the global climate it causes the oceans to expand more than what was caused by glacial melting.

If the reader doesn’t see what the rising oceans have caused then you should go to Miami during a king tide or Norfolk during a high tide. Cities around the world are planning on how to exist for another couple of hundred years. New Orleans (mostly under sea level) will become the norm.

What else will happen with the rising seas? About 30% of the world’s population depends on rice as their main source of nourishment. Rising seas will flood those paddies and most cannot be replaced. For instance, Bangladesh’s 170 million people will need to move to higher ground and its domestic and export rice will be lost. Southeast Asia’s low lands are the world’s rice bowl. When it is lost the millions of displaced will need to move somewhere else.

By 2100 much of American coastal cities, towns, and foolish coastal developments will be flooded at times. More will be flooded during hurricanes. The population movements inside the United States will be disruptive. Croplands not lost to the seas will be changed by the effects of global warming. What will happen to those evicted? Remember we could have over six hundred million Americans.

As the world’s population increases to about twelve billion and cropland decreases, yields won’t be able to keep feeding us and our domestic food animals. Meat, an inefficient use of crops, will have to be replaced by faux meats made from vegetable proteins.

These are factual projections and are already occurring. Those who don’t find themselves seeing the obvious effects and cannot see the dark future should have it put on their tombstones.

No Planetary Manual

02 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Climate Change, Environment, Uncategorized

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The King James Version of the Bible says we are supposed to take care of the Earth. Man wasn’t given a user manual on how to take care of our only home. The problem didn’t exist a few thousand years ago because a few million primitives lived a simple life within their ecosystems. They ate what was available, wore skins of what they killed, and moved when nearby food become scarce.

The problems began small when civilization started. When people started to congregate into villages and cities, wild lands was turned to cropland and pasture. Forests were cut for buildings and agriculture. Technology began to allow for mining of metals and minerals for bu8ilding. As humanity spread out and the population grew so did the destruction of the Earth. As we learned the oceans were full of food we started to harvest an “infinite” source.

Today the Earth’s 7.5 + billion people have destroyed the Earth’s delicate ecosystem by trying to feed, house, and satisfy unnecessary consumerism. Look around. We have dug massive holes for minerals, dumped the acidic wastes on the surface and burned the coal to change the climate. The need to move faster than walking and animals has given rise to oil production, which has magnified Earth’s destruction. (It did save whales from extinction.) The seas have given their all on feeding us. Stories of the amount of fish and shellfish in Chesapeake Bay indicate we have less than one five-hundredth left. Cod in the Newfoundland area was in the billions and now vast areas have few cod left.

Wasteful consumerism, especially for plastics, have made floating plastic islands, some the size of Texas¸ in our oceans.

What will the world be like when 2050 has over nine billion people and 2100 with twelve billion? Will we have figured a peaceful way to limit population, recycle over and over, reduce pollution, and survive the results of climate change we caused?

The Bad Ole Days

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Climate Change, Coal Mining, Environment

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I remember driving I-80 across the southern end of Lake Michigan’s industrial corridor without car air conditioning. We rolled up the windows, closed the vents, and took as few breaths as possible. The 1970s air was so bad we couldn’t believe people lived in the area. Coal plants and steel plants darkened the sky and fouled the air with particles that coated everything.

The EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt used to be Oklahoma’s Attorney General and sued the EPA several times for the fossil fuel companies that put lots of money into his campaign chest and speeches. Now he is running his most hated agency and has the power to cut the regulations for his fossil fuel friends want. Under the guise of creating jobs, Pruitt is, has and will cut regulations on coal fired plants, steel mills, and oil refineries. The cuts will maybe save a few jobs in those industries while polluting the air and water the regulations had cleaned.

Coal fired plants scheduled to close because of the cost of emission controls may now stay open. The Navajo five-unit generation plant will now stay open making the air over the Grand Canyon Park stay hazy.

A few years ago we talked with the Rangers of the Cumberland Gap National History Park about the wooded “mountains” in and around the park. They said the tops would be cut off, dumped into the valleys, damming them up until they break, and flood the downstream homes with mud and acid…all of this for a few feet of coal about 50 feet below the top. Pruitt is turning the clock back on mountain topping, too.

Politics Trumps Environment

29 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Environment, Global Warming

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I just watched a NOVA documentary on Climate Change. It went from 1824’s experiment to reasoning that something in the atmosphere caused the Earth to be warm to John Tindal’s 1864 proof that carbon dioxide was the reason. Methane is 30 times more powerful and with warming climate, the oceans are warming and put out more water vapor, hence more powerful hurricanes and typhoons. It was an in-depth proof that it is happening and how are causing it. Antarctic deposits of 800,000 year old gas in ice tell us we have more CO2 in the air today than anytime during that period. The documentary leaves no room for dispute.

What is astounding is who sponsored this documentary. The first NOVA documentary on climate change caused David H. Koch (yes, one of the brothers) to threaten to pull support from Public Television if they supported Climate Change programs. He sponsored this absolute confirmation study. David and Charles Koch and their billionaire anarchist cohorts directly and through their many “charitable” organizations fund Climate Change Deniers. They use the denying as a wedge issue between the two parties and inside the Republican Party. They have turned it into a litmus test for their support.

Since David Koch knows we are causing it, his reason for support for the denying groups is solely political. Instead of working to mitigate the coming disaster, they want to create an anarchist group to blame the American government for not handling the disasters. Their father taught them to hate a strong national government or any organized labor group. Just as the NRA has some gullible people’s life force, the Koch Brothers use climate denying as their hook!