Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Mount Longonot National Park Volcano in Kenya May Go Active

Mount Longono
© flickr.comMount Longonot National Park volcano
It is a sight to behold when coming from Nairobi or Limuru and approaching the high cliffs of the Great African Rift Valley - Mount Longonot rising from the floor of the surrounding valley and the neighboring satellite transmission station named after the mountain.

Years ago, a national park was created around the mountain to encourage more tourists to visit while in the area, and it was probably this fact which had more "eyes from the skies" look down at the mountain - long known to be a dormant volcano.

News taken from volcanologists' blogs, however, now seem to tell a different, and altogether more sinister, story than the official one on the park's tourism attractions.

Health

Oil/Water samples from Gulf...Very Toxic

Oil and water samples were taken from both the Shores of Grand Isle and from 20 miles out. The preliminary analysis was done at an academic analytical chemistry laboratory. Looking for the likely pollutants from the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill. It was focused on the detection of benzene and propylene glycol. Benzene and other highly toxic contaminants were very low however the concentration of propylene glycol was between 360 and 440 parts per million. Just 25 parts per million is know to kill most fish and propylene glycol is just one of many ingredients found in Corexit. In short, the Gulf is being poisoned by BP's usage of the dispersants even after the EPA asked them to stop back in May. We are willing to provide ANY respected/known laboratory these samples or provide them with more. This is very serious to all people and marine life in and around the Gulf.


Alarm Clock

27,000 Abandoned Gulf Oil Wells May Be Leaking

oil well being
© APIn this undated photo released by the California State Lands Commission, a diver works in preparation for "re-abandonment" of a subsea wellhead off the coast of California
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one - not industry, not government - is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells - those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s - even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

Magnify

Dead Zone in Gulf Linked to Ethanol Production

Image
Washington - While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every bit as harmful to the gulf.

Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of which is made into ethanol, leaches from Midwest croplands into the Mississippi River and out into the gulf, where the fertilizer feeds giant algae blooms. As the algae dies, it settles to the ocean floor and decays, consuming oxygen and suffocating marine life.

Known as hypoxia, the oxygen depletion kills shrimp, crabs, worms and anything else that cannot escape. The dead zone has doubled since the 1980s and is expected this year to grow as large as 8,500 square miles and hug the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas.

Sheeple

Curry Spices Shown to Reduce Methane Emissions in Sheep by 40 Percent

sheep
© USU
Forget low-energy lightbulbs and solar-powered homes - curry spices could hold the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Research carried out at Newcastle University has found that coriander and turmeric - spices traditionally used to flavour curries - can reduce the amount of methane produced by bacteria in a sheep's stomach by up to 40pc.

Working a bit like an antibiotic, the spices were found to kill the methane-producing 'bad' bacteria in the animal's gut while allowing the 'good' bacteria to flourish.

The findings are part of an on-going study by Newcastle University research student Mohammad Mehedi Hasan and Dr Abdul Shakoor Chaudhry - the most recent part of which is published this week in the Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences 2010.

Bug

New Bacterial Dengue "Vaccine" to be Sprayed on Mosquito Populations

Mosquitos on petri dish
© Jake NowakowskiDr Scott Ritchie has been conducting trials with a new bacteria to kill dengue-carrying mosquitos.
A bacteria that limits the lifespan of mosquitoes could be released in the Far North as early as this wet season. Could Wolbachia be a killer result for dengue fever?

James Cook University and University of Queensland researchers have been working on the bacterium Wolbachia, which has shown to be an effective control against the spread of dengue fever.

Wolbachia, described as a ''dengue vaccine for dengue mosquitoes'' dramatically shortens Aedes aegypti mosquitoes' 30-day lifespan and destroys their ability to transmit the disease.

The bacteria has proven to be so successful, it may also help control other mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and chikungunya.

Comment: It seems the line between "vaccine" and "pesticide" is no longer black and white.


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Gulf Oil Spill Situational Map


Evil Rays

Gulf Oil Spill Myths Debunked

Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig April 20 killed 11 oil rig workers, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to claim the lives of wildlife, like birds and sea turtles, compromise the fishing and tourism industries, and threaten the culture of the Gulf coast. That, and it's spawned an awful lot of misconceptions.

Here's a look at a few Gulf oil spill myths that The Daily Green has been watching:

Obama moratorium oil drilling
© AP
1. Obama Put a Moratorium on Offshore Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

Myth. President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a moratorium on new oil deepwater drilling permits, and shut down 33 exploratory deepwater wells on May 6. (A similar moratorium on new shallow water drilling lifted three weeks later. "Shallow" in this context means up to 499 feet deep.) Both orders, however, were vague and left 3,600 existing offshore oil wells active in Gulf waters. Since the spill, 17 new offshore oil drilling projects have been permitted. Even the six-month deepwater moratorium was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge June 22, leaving it void if not overturned on appeal or reinstated on different legal grounds. (Nevermind that the judge has invested in Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded, Halliburton, which handled the faulty cementing of the well, and about a dozen other companies involved in offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.) And Obama has always been a supporter of offshore oil, though some of his environmentalist supporters seem to have forgotten that; he made good on a campaign promise shortly before the BP oil spill started and proposed opening additional offshore waters to oil and gas exploration - in the Gulf of Mexico, along the Atlantic coast and off Alaska. (Permits to start drilling in those new waters have been suspended temporarily.)

Cow Skull

The Price of Cheap Meat: A Lake Dies in Ohio

View of Grand Lake, Ohio
© anglerweb.comA warning has been issued for people to "minimize contact" and avoid ingestion of the water at this popular lake used by the public for fishing, boating, swimming, and hunting.
Grand Lake St. Marys -- Ohio's largest inland body of water and a treasured recreational area -- is dying. And if you barbecued some supermarket pork over the holiday weekend, you helped contribute to this disaster, however indirectly.

The lake's 13,000 acres of water surrounded by parkland, cabins and campgrounds, is one of the leading summertime attractions in the area, which brings in some $216 million in tourist spending each year, $160 million directly from the lake, (not to mention 2,600 jobs). Now, many visitors are shunning the place like an oil-stained Alabama beach. Swimming and waterskiing is discouraged, and even boating might be a health risk.

The main problem is phosporous and other nutrients, mostly from farms, including the 15 or so animal factory farms in the lake's watershed, and nutrients from the megatons of fertilizer applied on taxpayer-subsidized corn and soybean fields. Those products then become cheap feed that keeps the factory farms humming, Big Box prices low, and summertime barbequers happy.

Footprints

Gulf Dead Zone Grows as No-Fishing Area Expands

gulf dead zone
© NOAFishery Closure Boundary as of June 28, 2010
As oil from the Deepwater Horizon explosion spreads across the Gulf of Mexico, the government has expanded the no-fishing area near Florida's panhandle.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it had decided to expand the fishing closure from its current northern boundary as a precautionary measure to make sure consumers don't eat seafood contaminated by the gulf oil spill. All told, a little more than 80,000 square miles, or 33 percent of Gulf of Mexico's federal waters, are now considered a closed area.

Because this remains an evolving situation, NOAA said that it will retest the area and reopen fisheries when they are deemed safe.