One Photo Shows That We Have Destroyed Nature: Polar Bears Seen Killing & Eating Dolphins That Have Been Forced North By Global Warming

Image shows apparently very hungry bears eating dolphins for the first time, before freezing the leftovers in the snow.

Oldspeak:”The worlds oceans are boiling, acidifying and deoxygenating. As a result dolphins are ending up in the fucking arctic ocean that used to be covered in ice to avoid the conditions in the tropics. Polar bears whose habitats are rapidly shrinking and food sources dying off, likely because the Ocean is turning into a fucking toxic soup, have had to resort to eating those dolphins and saving their carcasses for later in the snow. Yeeaaaaaah. That’s normal.O_o Just another day in paradise kids, nothin to see here! LOOK! There’s a Church Shooting! OOOH! Donald Trump is running for president. OMG that white woman thinks she’s black! Enjoy your regularly scheduled Infotainment.” -OSJ

By Andrew Griffin @ The U.K. Independent:

It marks the first time that bears have been seen killing and eating dolphins. Usually, the dolphins only go up north during the warmer summer — but this year they have arrived in spring.

The bears catch the dolphins in a similar way to the seals that they usually eat. Both animals keep holes in the ice which they use to come up and breathe from — at which point, if the bear is lucky, it will snatch them up and eat them.

The researchers observed the behaviour for the first time last year. At least six different bears have been seen eating the dolphins since then, scientists write in a new report, ‘White-beaked dolphins trapped in the ice and eaten by polar bears’.

After eating the dolphin, the bear seemed to cover it with ice so that it could be kept for later. Such behaviour is rare in polar bears, and could be a result of the animals not having enough to eat.

The authors of the study describe the bear as having “clearly visible ribs” and being “very skinny”.

The habitat of polar bears is shrinking drastically as the Arctic warms. As such, scientists expect to be able to observe them much less in the coming years.

The same global warming appears to be trapping the dolphins, leaving them stuck and so able to be caught by the bears.

“We suggest [the dolphins] were trapped in the ice after strong northerly winds the days before, and possibly killed when forced to surface for air at a small opening in the ice,” the authors of the study write. White-beaked dolphins tend to travel north to Svalbard during the warmer summer, but haven’t been reported so far north in the early Spring.

Usually, the Svalbard fjords and coast is covered by ice. But in the winter of 2013 and 2014, when the dolphins and bears were first seen together, they were ice free.

On The 3rd Anniversary Of The Triple Meltdown At The Fukushima Nuclear Plant A Look Back At The Cover Up

Oldspeak: “I believe that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was one of the—or was definitely the largest, most severe of all nuclear disasters, including going above Chernobyl. The reason for this, as I mentioned before, is the accident itself in Chernobyl was of course immense, but it was one reactor in this case. In the case of Fukushima, we have the meltdown, the melt-through of three reactors, and not only this, but the high number of spent fuel pools also. And even now, radioactive material is continuing to be released in Fukushima. And this is having a very long-lasting effect that will continue from now. So because of this, I believe that the disaster at Fukushima was larger than that of Chernobyl and is still continuing today.” -Naoto Kan, Former Prime Minister of Japan

“When a head of state tells the truth like this, it is wise to pay attention. This is an unprecedented, uncontrolled and ongoing nuclear catastrophe. TEPCO has no idea where the 3 melted down reactor cores are. 300 tons of radioactive water is leaking into the Pacific every day. Meanwhile, there are discussions about dumping all 300,000 tons of radioactive water currently stored in leaking storage tanks at the site into the Pacific! This would be in direct violation of the 1972 London Dumping Convention, prohibiting dumping of radioactive materials into the oceans. And with environmental and nuclear regulatory agencies bought and paid for by the nuclear industry, you can expect this cover up and stream of lies to continue unabated. The pacific ocean as result of unfixable disaster and acidification via global warming is slowing being turned into a deadly soup of radioactive carbonic acid. One giant dead zone. And to think this all could have been avoided if the Fukushima was built 35 meters above sea level as recommended instead of 10 meters above sea level because it was cheaper to do so. Alas, Profit is Paramount, and the ecology as always, gets fucked.” -OSJ

By George Washington @ Zero Hedge:

An ECONOMIC Expert – Rather than a NUCLEAR Expert – Briefed Japanese Prime Minister on Condition of Fukushima Reactors

The Japanese Prime Minister at the time of the Fukushima disaster – Naoto Kan – told Democracy Now:

NAOTO KAN: Even at the night of that first day of March 11, what I was being told, being reported, was that the water levels were safely above the level of where the fuel rods were located within the container. And, however, now we know that actually the measuring equipment to measure the water level was broken at that time. And only four hours after the earthquake occurred, actually, was when it experienced meltdown in the reactor one. And even through the container of thickness 20 centimeters, there was actually a hole being burned through, and melted fuel had been actually leaking through to the outside of the container. And now we know this information, that this was happening at 7:00 p.m. approximately on that day. But at the time, none of this information was accurately conveyed to me.

***

It was a situation very close to what we call perhaps the “China syndrome.”

***

And it was very difficult to obtain accurate information and to know what was really happening. And so, the next morning at around 6:00 a.m., very early, I decided that the best thing to do would be to speak directly with the person responsible at the site. So I departed at 6:00 a.m. by helicopter to go to the Fukushima Daiichi site. And there, I met with Mr. Yoshida, who was the person responsible at the plant, and he explained to me about the situation, from his perspective, which was occurring on the site. And he was a very clearly spoken man, which meant that it was very much a plus in terms of considering how to deal with the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Wasn’t TEPCO management saying the same thing to you as this man you spoke to, the head of the actual plant, when you flew there?

NAOTO KAN: From what I was hearing from the headquarters of TEPCO, and in particular from Mr. Takeguro, who was the former vice president, was—had almost no accurate information being conveyed about what was actually the situation on site.

And one other important and serious issue at the time also was, in the case of a nuclear disaster, the system which was in place, well, the prime minister and the prime minister’s office would be in the head of, you know, the measures to be taken, the office, of what to be done from there. But the bureaucratic organization which was established to support that function was within the NISA, which is actually located within the Ministry of the Economy. And so, the person who was seconded to explain to me from the NISA about what was happening was actually not an expert on nuclear issues or nuclear power, but an economic expert. And so, through his explanation, it was impossible to know the actual situation of what was happening in the reactor.

This is not the first time Tepco has been less than honest:

• An official Japanese government investigation concluded that the Fukushima accident was a “man-made” disaster, caused by “collusion” between government and Tepco and bad reactor design

• Tepco knew very soon after the 2011 accident that 3 nuclear reactors had lost containment, that the nuclear fuel had “gone missing”, and that there was in fact no real containment at all. Tepco has desperately been trying to cover this up for 2 and a half years … instead pretending that the reactors were in “cold shutdown”

• Tepco admitted that it’s known for 2 years that massive amounts of radioactive water are leaking into the groundwater and Pacific Ocean, but covered it up

• Tepco falsely claimed that all of the radiation was somehow contained in the harbor right outside the nuclear plants

• Tepco has substantially under-reported the amount of radiation released at Fukushima

• Tepco – with no financial incentive to actually fix things – has only been pretending to clean it up. And see this

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Blatantly Covered Up Significance of Fukushima

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is owned, captured and controlled by the nuclear industry.

It uses faulty models which put us all at risk, and pushes propaganda for the nuclear industry.

While the NRC was extremely worried about the U.S. West Coast  getting hit by Fukushima radiation, it publicly said that everything was safe and under control.

NBC News reports (in some excellent investigive journalism):

In the tense days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission made a concerted effort to play down the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to America’s aging nuclear plants ….

The emails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show that the campaign to reassure the public about America’s nuclear industry came as the agency’s own experts were questioning U.S. safety standards and scrambling to determine whether new rules were needed to ensure that the meltdown occurring at the Japanese plant could not occur here.

At the end of that long first weekend of the crisis three years ago, NRC Public Affairs Director Eliot Brenner thanked his staff for sticking to the talking points that the team had been distributing to senior officials and the public.

“While we know more than these say,” Brenner wrote, “we’re sticking to this story for now.”

***

The NRC staff recognized immediately the public-relations nightmare that Fukushima presented for nuclear power in the United States. More than 30 of America’s 100 nuclear power reactors have the same brand of General Electric reactors or containment system used in Fukushima.

In fact, NRC whistleblowers say that the risk of a meltdown in the U.S. is even higher than it was at Fukushima.

Yet the NRC has actually weakened safety standards for U.S. nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster.

NBC continues:

There are numerous examples in the emails of apparent misdirection or concealment in the initial weeks after the Japanese plant was devastated … :

• Trying to distance the U.S. agency from the Japanese crisis, an NRC manager told staff to hide from reporters the presence of Japanese engineers in the NRC’s operations center in Maryland.
• If asked whether the Diablo Canyon Power Plant on the California coast could withstand the same size tsunami that had hit Japan, spokespeople were told not to reveal that NRC scientists were still studying that question. As for whether Diablo could survive an earthquake of the same magnitude, “We’re not so sure about, but again we are not talking about that,” said one email.
• When skeptical news articles appeared, the NRC dissuaded news organizations from using the NRC’s own data on earthquake risks at U.S. nuclear plants, including the Indian Point Energy Center near New York City.
• And when asked to help reporters explain what would happen during the worst-case scenario — a nuclear meltdown — the agency declined to address the questions.

Some of the nuclear industry bias can bee seen in the following quotes from NBC:

When Steven Dolley, former research director of the NCI and a reporter for McGraw Hill Financial’s newsletter Inside NRC, asked McIntyre for a nuclear containment expert to speak to a reporter, the spokesman asked if the reporter had contacted the industry’s lobbying group, the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Dolley asked, “So, should I say NRC is deferring inquiries to NEI?” suggesting that the NRC was deferring to the industry it is supposed to regulate.

McIntyre shared this exchange with his bosses, adding the comment, “F—ing a-hole.”

And some of the rampant hypocrisy is seen in the difference between public and private NRC talking points:

“Q. What happens when/if a plant ‘melts down’?

“Public Answer: In short, nuclear power plants in the United States are designed to be safe. To prevent the release of radioactive material, there are multiple barriers between the radioactive material and the environment, including the fuel cladding, the heavy steel reactor vessel itself and the containment building, usually a heavily reinforced structure of concrete and steel several feet thick.

“Additional, non-technical, non-public information: The melted core may melt through the bottom of the vessel and flow onto the concrete containment floor. The core may melt through the containment liner and release radioactive material to the environment.”

***

When reporters asked if the Japanese emergency could affect licensing of new reactors in the U.S., the public answer was “It is not appropriate to hypothesize on such a future scenario at this point.”

The non-public information was more direct: This event could potentially call into question the NRC’s seismic requirements, which could require the staff to re-evaluate the staff’s approval of the AP1000 and ESBWR (the newest reactor designs from Westinghouse and General Electric) design and certifications.”

Moreover, the U.S. has long controlled Japanese nuclear policy.  And yet, NBC reports that the U.S. covered up U.S. involvement in the Fukushima crisis:

Brenner, the public affairs director, sent a “great work so far” memo to his staff at HQ and around the U.S. His third bullet point highlighted he NRC’s role in helping Japanese engineers deal with the problems at Fukushima — a fact not mentioned in the NRC’s press releases that day. The emails indicate that the Obama administration and the NRC were keen to keep up the appearance that they were merely observing the Japanese nuclear crisis and had no responsibility for helping resolve it.

Global Warming Rapidly Melting Glaciers = Water Scarcity For 700 Million More People

A glacier in the Himalayas. (Photo: Karunakar Rayker / Flickr)

Oldspeak: “”The glaciers of the Himalayas are melting so fast they will affect the water supplies of a population twice that of the US within 22 years, the head of the world’s leading authority on climate change has warned.”-Pilita Clark

“Contrary to what the front groups funded by the fossil fuel industry would have you believe, climate change doesn’t just mean the winters are milder. Or the plants have more carbon dioxide.

It means that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, will starve, and will die. It means wars. It means famines. It means raging forest fires and the death of grasslands. It means the acidification of our oceans and the destruction of our ocean ecosystems. It means that we stand on the edge of tipping points that hurtle humanity toward extinction.

Yes, extinction.” -Thom Hartmann

“When you understand that:

“85% of the world population lives in the driest half of the planet.”

“783 million people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation.”

“6 to 8 million people die annually from the consequences of disasters and water-related diseases.”

“Various estimates indicate that, based on business as usual, ~3.5 planets Earth would be needed to sustain a global population achieving the current lifestyle of the average European or North American.” –U.N.

And 200 countries agree on the findings of this massive report; this can’t be good. Our civilization is unsustainable. We have to stop and try something else. Before we get stopped for good. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick….” –OSJ

By Thom Hartmann @ Truthout:

Three quarters of a billion people is a lot of people.

And that’s how many people, within the next 22 years, will almost certainly run low on water – a necessity of life – in just the regions whose rivers are supplied with water from the glaciers in the Himalayas.

To put that in perspective, 750 million people is more than twice the current population of United States. It’s about the population of all of Europe. In the year 1900 there were only 500 million people on the entire planet. Seven hundred fifty million people is a lot of people.

The IPCC – the international body of scientists analyzing global climate change – is releasing its new report in stages over the next week and this early piece was reported on by the Financial Times on Monday. Under the headline “IPCC head warns on Himalayan melting glaciers,” the opening sentence of the article by Pilita Clark summarizes a very tightly:

“The glaciers of the Himalayas are melting so fast they will affect the water supplies of a population twice that of the US within 22 years, the head of the world’s leading authority on climate change has warned.”

And that’s just the Himalayas and the rivers flow out of their glaciers toward South Asian regions including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. There are similar glaciers along the mountain ranges of western South America that supply water to other hundreds of millions of people – they are all at risk, too. We’re even seen it here in the United States, with last year’s drought in the West. Glaciers are changing in Europe, and the regions of Tanzania supplied by the famous “Snows Of Kilimanjaro,” are drying up in ways that are creating serious drought problems for the people in those parts of Africa.

Contrary to what the front groups funded by the fossil fuel industry would have you believe, climate change doesn’t just mean the winters are milder. Or the plants have more carbon dioxide.

It means that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, will starve, and will die. It means wars. It means famines. It means raging forest fires and the death of grasslands. It means the acidification of our oceans and the destruction of our ocean ecosystems. It means that we stand on the edge of tipping points that hurtle humanity toward extinction.

Yes, extinction.

There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, times when more than half of all life died and all the top predators – animals like us – vanished or nearly finished. All of these mass extinctions were provoked by geologically-sudden global warming.

And now we are driving a similar process by burning fossil fuels.

People around the world are already dying from global climate change. Wars are already being fought because of climate change. The Earth is changing before our very eyes.

There are solutions, ranging from a carbon tax to rapid transitions into alternative energy. We need to be pursuing them now.

The debate is long over. The world is waking up.

And the fossil fuel Industry is being shown for what it is – fossils promoting fossils, intellectual frauds and greedheads.

It’s time to move from the energy forms of the 19th century into the modern, clean, nonpolluting energies currently available in the 21st-century. Now.

Radiation Levels At Crippled Fukushima Nuclear Plant Soar Over 20% To Record High; Hits 2,200 mSv And Rising

Tepco faces a major challenge to safely store contaminated water at Fukushima

Oldspeak: “Meanwhile, news from the Department Of Existential Threats…  Years later, the ongoing global ecological disaster that keeps on giving is giving ALOT MORE lately. And still no one knows how to stop it. Now there’s talk of freezing the earth around the plant creating an “ice wall” to prevent further groundwater contamination. Riiiiight… Given the fact that radioactive water has been continuously leaking from the reactors, spent fuel pools & multiple storage tanks for years into the surrounding ground, air, and ocean, while defects in the storage tanks make it probable that they’ll ALL leak at some point, this seems like  too little too late, and a colossal waste of time and energy. The overarching fact of the matter is there is no safe way to store nuclear waste products. This catastrophe will only get worse as time passes, and there’s not much anyone can do about it. Thankfully, the silence on this crisis is being broken ” –OSJ

Related Stories:

Record Radiation Readings Near Fukishima Contaminated Water Tanks

By BBC News Asia:

Radiation levels around tanks storing contaminated water at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have risen by a fifth to a new high, officials say.

Ground readings near one set of tanks stood at 2,200 millisieverts (mSv) on Tuesday, the plant operator and Japan’s nuclear authority said.

Saturday’s reading was 1,800 mSv.

Last month, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it had found highly contaminated water leaking from a storage tank.

Other leaks have also been reported, prompting the government on Tuesday to pledge 47bn yen ($473m, £304m) in funding to tackle the problem.

The spike in radiation levels found on Tuesday was in the same area where the 1,800 mSv level was detected on Saturday, a spokeswoman from Tepco told Bloomberg.

The readings are thought to be high enough to provide a lethal radiation dose to someone standing near contaminated areas without protective gear within hours.

But Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) also said the areas were easily contained.

‘Drastic measures’

The earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 knocked out cooling systems to reactors at the Fukushima plant, three of which melted down.

Water is now being pumped in to cool the reactors, but storing the resultant large quantities of radioactive water has proved a challenge for Tepco.

The process creates an extra 400 tonnes of contaminated water every day, which must be stored in temporary tanks.

But leaks of contaminated water, both from the tanks, pipes and through damaged structures, have been a persistent problem. Groundwater from the hills surrounding the plant also flows down and into the radioactive areas.

Under the government plan announced on Tuesday, a wall of frozen earth will be created around the reactors using pipes filled with coolant. This aims to prevent groundwater coming into contact with contaminated water being used to cool fuel rods.

Water treatment systems would also be upgraded to tackle the build-up of contaminated water, officials said.

On Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told journalists in Tokyo that the government was willing “to take drastic measures of a maximum scale” to resolve the issue ahead of the 2020 summer Olympic Games.

“We are aware of concerns over the issue of contaminated water leakages at Fukushima, the government will take charge and will definitely resolve this problem,” he said.

Tokyo is a candidate as a host nation for the Olympics, and the decision is expected in days.

If The Oceans Die – We Die

Oldspeak: “As the world’s oceans absorb more and more CO2, they become more and more acidic, and, according to a new study released yesterday by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research at the International Conference on Arctic Ocean Acidification, the rapid acidification of the Arctic Ocean has pushed us beyond “critical thresholds.” It’s likely, they say, that widespread impacts will be felt across the world’s oceans for “tens of thousands of years” – even if we stopped all carbon emissions today.” –Thom Hartmann.” It’s really that simple. There is no more wiggle room. We are all Nero’s Guests. Laughing, smiling, partying, consuming, instagraming, facebooking, tweeting, while our planet burns and dies around us. Global CO2 levels are approaching 400 parts per million, way beyond the 350 recommended by climate scientists to ensure our continued existence. We have to stop polishing the brass on The titanic and look for ways, fundamentally changed ways to avoid the giant iceberg we’re hurtling toward. “

By Thom Hartmann @ Truthout:

As lawmakers in Washington continue to ignore the most pressing issue facing our planet today – climate change – we are about to pass a very disturbing environmental milestone.

The CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii will reach 400 ppm any day now, which could spell further disaster for our planet.

Since measurements started at Mauna Loa in 1958, there has been a steady increase in CO2 concentration, known as the “Keeling Curve.”

Named after Charles Keeling, who started measuring CO2 air concentrations in 1858, the Keeling Curve measures the concentration of CO2 in the air in parts per million.

Since 1960, the CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa has increased by almost 28%.

Thanks to our society’s toxic addiction to fossil fuels, unprecedented levels of CO2 are being pumped into our environment each and every day.

But why have CO2 concentrations increased so much over the past few decades?

Part of it has to do with increased industrialization and reliance on dirty fossil fuels, but part of it also has to do with the world’s oceans.

According to Richard Bellerby, Research Scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, the oceans have “been performing a huge climate service over the last 200 years.”

That’s because oceans have the ability to absorb CO2, which prevents it from escaping into the atmosphere. By holding the CO2 in the oceans, they’ve been slowing, or at least postponing, the speed of global climate change.

In fact, the world’s oceans, especially the coldest waters, have absorbed about 50 percent of the CO2 that we’ve emitted, and continue to take up about a quarter of the CO2 that we produce every day now.

But the oceans and the ecosystems within them are now paying a steep price for taking in all that CO2.

As the world’s oceans absorb more and more CO2, they become more and more acidic, and, according to a new study released yesterday by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research at the International Conference on Arctic Ocean Acidification, the rapid acidification of the Arctic Ocean has pushed us beyond “critical thresholds.”

It’s likely, they say, that widespread impacts will be felt across the world’s oceans for “tens of thousands of years” – even if we stopped all carbon emissions today.

Dubbed “climate change’s evil twin,” acidification of ocean surface waters has increased by around 30 percent over the last 200 years, with the highest levels of acidification occurring in the Arctic and the rest of the world’s coldest waters.

Richard Bellerby, the chief scientist on the report, said that, “Arctic ocean acidification is happening at a faster rate than found in other global regions. This is because climate change such as warming and freshening of the oceans is acting in tandem with the enormous oceanic uptake of C02.”

And Bellerby told BBC News that “continued rapid change is a certainty.”

Another researcher on the study, Sam Dupont of the University of Gothenburg, told the conference that, “something really unique is happening. This is the first time that we as humans are changing the whole planet; we are actually acidifying the whole ocean today.”

Dupont also said that, “Within a few decades, by the end of this century, the ocean will be two times more acidic. And we also know that it might be even faster in the Arctic.”

As the oceans become more acidic, they’re less able to absorb CO2, which means more of what we’re blowing out our tailpipes and smokestacks will stay in our atmosphere and speed up global warming and climate change.

But more importantly, ocean acidification leads to mass ocean species extinction.

One example of a possible species extinction that the scientists at the conference gave was of the brittle star.

When exposed to the ocean acidification conditions that can be expected in the decades to come, the eggs of the brittle star die within days.

If the brittle star dies off, than the species that feed on it could die off as well and there would be a massive chain reaction of oceanic species extinctions.

And if the oceans die, we die.

It’s that simple.

The bottom-line here is that our addiction to fossil fuels, throwing into the atmosphere carbon that’s been stored deep in the earth for millions of years, is not only polluting our skies and wreaking havoc on our climate, it’s also destroying our oceans and the species in them.

It’s time to ditch fossil fuels, make the switch to cleaner and greener forms of energy, and save the world’s oceans, before they die and we go with them.

Fukushima Uncontained: Nuclear Plant Continuosly Releasing 93 Billion Becquerels Of Radiation A DAY Into Pacific Ocean For Years

Oldspeak: “The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment. There are not “some leaks” at Fukushima. “Leaks” imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists don’t even know where the cores of the reactors are. That’s not leaking. That’s even worse than a total meltdown.” This is a daily, ongoing ecological catastrophe. Being ignored and denied  by American and by proxy Japanese goverments to preserve and proliferate pro-nuclear energy policy. Why is this profoundly dangerous, toxic and perpetually contaminating energy source being propped up as viable? Our ecosystem is continuously being contaminated by deadly radiation. It’s being transported around the planet via water and air. How is this part of American environmental policy? It is destroying the environment!? Tell your elected officials you want to your food, air and environment tested for radiation.  You want to know what’s being done to protect the public and environment from this ongoing catastrophe.  I, for the first time in two years, heard a 1 minute mention of the conditions at the plant just now on Free Speech TV on the Thom Hartman Show. Zero coverage in corporate controlled media. ”

 By Washington’s Blog:

You may have heard that Tepco – the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plants – announced a large leak of radioactive water.

You may have heard that the cooling system in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima has failed for a second time in a month.

This is newsworthy stuff … but completely misses the big picture.

Associated Press notes:

Experts suspect a continuous leak into the ocean through an underground water system, citing high levels of contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.

(Tepco graphics of the Fukushima plants even appear to show water directly flowing from the plant to the ocean. And see this.)

In fact, Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day.

How much radiation is that?

A quick calculation shows that Chernobyl released around ten thousand times more radioactive cesium each day during the reactor fire. But the Chernobyl fire only lasted 10 days … and the Fukushima release has been ongoing for more than 2 years so far.

Indeed, Fukushima has already spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine 131 than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted.

Fukushima also pumped out huge amounts of radioactive iodine 129 – which has a half-life of 15.7 million years. Fukushima has also dumped up to 900 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium-90 – which is a powerful internal emitter which mimics calcium and collects in our bones – into the ocean.

And the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl … and so could keep leaking for decades, centuries or millenia.

The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment. There are not “some leaks” at Fukushima. “Leaks” imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists don’t even know where the cores of the reactors are. That’s not leaking. That’s even worse than a total meltdown.

So what are the consequences for people living outside of Fukushima itself?

They could be quite severe, indeed.

Fukushima Reactor Meltdowns Driving Increased Abnormalities Among U.S. Infants; Mass Die Offs & Sickness In Sea Life

Oldspeak: “Congenital hypothyroidism results from a build up of radioactive iodine in our thyroids and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—though can be treated if detected early. Because their small bodies are more vulnerable and their cells grow faster than adults’, infants serve as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’ for injurious environmental effects. According to researchers from the Radiation and Public Health Project who performed the study, “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation.” This is an ongoing environmental disaster. There has been no effective containment of the radiation constantly spewing from this reactor. The Pacific ocean is contaminated with radiation, as the Japanese had the brilliant idea of dumping untold millions of gallons of highly radioactive water into it . Fallout has affected all areas of the U.S. There have been repeated mass die offs, sickness and  irradiation among plant and animal life. Now the devastating effects are showing up in children on the west coast.  Expect these effects to keep showing up. Nonetheless, there is no coverage, testing or analysis of this ongoing ecological calamity. There is no effort to inform or protect the population. It will be really interesting to see what effects manifest in 8 years when Fukushima radiation levels on the west coast are expected to reach their peak. WOW.

By Lauren McCauley @ Common Dreams:

Infants on the West Coast of the United States are showing increased incidents of thyroid abnormalities, which researchers are attributing to radiation released following the March 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

According to a new study (.pdf) published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics, children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdown began are 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism (CH) than were kids born in those states during the same period one year earlier.

CH results from a build up of radioactive iodine in our thyroids and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—though can be treated if detected early.

Because their small bodies are more vulnerable and their cells grow faster than adults’, infants serve as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’ for injurious environmental effects.

“With the embryo and fetus, there can never be a ‘safe’ dose of radiation,” writes nukefree.org founder Harvey Wasserman. “NO dose of radiation is too small to have a human impact.”

According to researchers from the Radiation and Public Health Project who performed the study, “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation.” They add that CH can provide an early measure to “assess any potential changes in US fetal and infant health status after Fukushima because official data was available relatively promptly.”

Health researcher Joe Mangano similarly cautioned, “Reports of rising numbers of West Coast infants with under-active thyroid glands after Fukushima suggest that Americans may have been harmed by Fukushima fallout. Studies, especially of the youngest, must proceed immediately.”

Earlier this year, the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey found that more than 40 percent of the Japanese children studied showed evidence of thyroid abnormalities, which Wasserman says signifies a “horrifying plague.” He continues:

The ultimate death toll among Fukushima’s victims may be inescapable. But the industry that’s harming them is not. Those thyroid-damaged children bring us yet another tragic warning: There’s just one atomic reactor from which our energy can safely come. Two years after Fukushima, it is still 93 million miles away—but more ready than ever to safely, cleanly and cheaply power our planet.

Is Fukushima Radiation Causing the Epidemic of Dead and Starving Sea Lions In California?

By Washington’s Blog:

What’s Causing the Mass Die-Off and Starvation of California Sea Lions?

Associated Press reports:

At island rookeries off the Southern California coast, 45 percent of the pups born in June have died, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service based in Seattle. Normally, less than one-third of the pups would die.

It’s gotten so bad in the past two weeks that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an “unusual mortality event.” That will allow more scientists to join the search for the cause, Melin said.

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Even the pups that are making it are markedly underweight ….

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Rescuers have had to leave the worst of them in an effort to save the strongest ones, she said.

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Routine testing of seafood is being done by state and federal agencies  and consumer safety experts are working with NOAA to find the problem.”No link has been established at this time between these sea lion strandings and any potential seafood safety issues,” NOAA said in a statement.

Given that the FDA has refused to test seafood for radiation, we’re not that confident that the government is looking that hard to see if Fukushima fallout is the cause.

Reuters notes:

From the beginning of this year through last Sunday, 948 sea lion pups came ashore in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, according to figures from NOAA.

“There really isn’t an oceanographic explanation for what we’re seeing,” Melin said. “We’re looking at disease as a possibility and also at the food supply, and it could be some combination.”

CNN reports:

This is an unprecedented crisis for the species in this state says the Pacific Marine Mammal Center.

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“So we are seeing exponentially higher numbers” [Keith Matassa, who runs the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach said].

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When you say off the charts, this is what you’re talking about.

CBS News reported last week:

”They’re very sick,” said Keith Matassa, who runs the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. His team is nursing 115 sea lions back to health. “A normal sea lion at this age — 8 to 9 months old — should be around 60, 70 pounds,” said Matassa. “We’re seeing them come into our center at 20 to 25 pounds, and really they look like walking skeletons.”

AP notes:

Biologists knew last spring that this year’s supply of anchovies and sardines could be limited, Boehm said.

“These two species of fish are an extremely important part of California sea lions’ diets, and females simply may not have been able to nurse their young sufficiently, resulting in abandonment, premature weaning and subsequent strandings,” he said.

Besides anchovies and sardines, sea lions also eat squid and other ocean creatures.

Time reported in April 2011:

Few people want to see the ocean’s anchovy stocks wiped out by radiation either. That’s just the scenario that seemed to be developing, however, when reports coming out of Japan revealed that elevated levels of cesium-137 had been found in anchovies in the waters off Chiba, near Toky0—a direct result of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

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In the big-fish-eats-little-fish way of the ocean, the radioactive contamination eventually gets passed up the food chain, concentrating in fats which get consumed and stored, until the isotopes finally come to rest in the very largest creature at the top of the food chain ….

Huge die-offs of sardines were also reported in the Chiba area of Japan after Fukushima.

Moreover, the Vancouver Sun reported in January 2012 that 94 per cent of the anchovies and 92 per cent of the sardines sold by the Japanese to Canada contained radioactive cesium. Some of the fish were caught in Japanese coastal waters; but others were made many hundreds of miles away in the open ocean.

(Note: there may be additional reasons for fluctuations in the numbers of anchovies and sardines other than radiation.)

Moreover, radiation from Fukushima was directly deposited into the kelp off the Western coast of North America … especially in Southern California.

Fish that eat the kelp have also gotten exposed to the radiation … as have the animals that eat those fish.

NOAA reports:

Sea lions … feed on the fish that live in kelp forests.

(Images here.)

There are numerous other routes in which the Fukushima radiation could be getting to the sea lion pups.  We noted last year:

A 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents.

MIT says that seawater which is itself radioactive may begin hitting the West Coast within 5 years.

In 10 years, peak radioactive cesium levels off of the West Coast of North America could be 10 times higher than at the coast of Japan.

As we’ve previously noted, Reuters reports that Alaskan seals are suffering mysterious lesions and hair loss:

Scientists in Alaska are investigating whether local seals are being sickened by radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska’s Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated skin around the nose and eyes and patchy hair loss on the animals’ fur coats.

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“We recently received samples of seal tissue from diseased animals captured near St. Lawrence Island with a request to examine the material for radioactivity,” said John Kelley, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“There is concern expressed by some members of the local communities that there may be some relationship to the Fukushima nuclear reactor’s damage,” he said.

Here’s a picture of one of the injured seals:

We reported yesterday that a new scientific paper shows that the Fukushima radioactive plume contaminated the entire Northern hemisphere during a relatively short period of time ….

Radioactive fish are also being found off the West Coast.

A California-sized island of debris from Japan is also hitting the West Coast.

And West Coast residents have also been exposed to Fukushima radiation from the air.  See this, this and this.

Unfortunately, the nuclear accident is nowhere near contained.  Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day, the reactors have lost containment, and groundwater is flooding into the stricken reactors (delaying clean-up).

And things may get worse for California, instead of better .

 

How Global Warming Has Prevented Spring’s Arrival

Oldspeak: “ It turns out that spring’s slow arrival in the US is likely being driven by changes half a world way, in the Arctic. Some of the nation’s most prominent climate researchers announced at a news conference on Tuesday that melting Arctic sea ice may actually be the culprit behind winter’s refusal to pack its bags and leave. Scientists from NOAA and various university climatology departments said that melting Arctic sea ice may be weakening the planet’s jet stream currents, and causing extreme weather systems to linger in the United States… If we continue on the path that we’re on, and continue to do nothing to stop the devastating effects of climate change, we won’t just be talking about freezing temperatures during the first week of spring. We’ll be talking about the beginning of an out-of-control spiral of weather effects that could range from a new ice age to the death of our oceans. ” –Thom Hartmann. This is the all important overarching problem of our times. More important than gun control. More important that immigration reform. More important than bank collapses. More important than austerity.  The changes that are coming in our climate will be irreversible. They’re already beginning. Desertification of arable land is increasing.  Lakes and streams  are drying up, sources of fresh water are evaporating. The ecosystem is in considerable distress.  Yet there is near universal silence in media and political classes about these all important and dangerous changes in the system that sustains us.  We do get plenty of sunny propaganda films from BP and Exxon and Cheveron et al. about all the good things they’re doing to provide energy in safe and environmentally friendly way. I fear universal attention will be paid to this only when it’s too late to stop it.

By Thom Hartmann @ Truthout:

Last week, Butler County, Ohio prosecutor Mike Gmoser “indicted” famed weather-predicting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, after the groundhog inaccurately predicted an early spring.

Gmoser filed the tongue-in-cheek indictment after snow was forecast to fall in Butler County after the official start of spring.

The halfhearted indictment was dropped Tuesday however, when Gmoser realized that good old Phil had a “defense with teeth in it.”

And, while this whole ordeal may seem quite silly, it did help to raise a very good point: How could Phil be so wrong about the arrival of spring, when he’s usually pretty accurate?

Typically around this time of year, we expect to see spring flowers beginning to bloom in gardens after sun-spotted rain showers because, after all, spring showers are supposed to bring May flowers.

Instead, east coast Americans are still dealing with the effects of an already nasty winter season that has brought unprecedented amounts of snow to just about every region of the United States.

As a result, people are scratching their heads, wondering when spring will really get here.

Well now, it turns out that spring’s slow arrival in the US is likely being driven by changes half a world way, in the Arctic.

Some of the nation’s most prominent climate researchers announced at a news conference on Tuesday that melting Arctic sea ice may actually be the culprit behind winter’s refusal to pack its bags and leave.

Scientists from NOAA and various university climatology departments said that melting Arctic sea ice may be weakening the planet’s jet stream currents, and causing extreme weather systems to linger in the United States.

But how can melting ice cause colder temperatures? After all, that seems somewhat contradictory.

First, it’s important to understand exactly what the jet stream is.

The jet stream is a huge air current that blows from west to east across the planet, miles above the Earth’s surface.

The jet stream is responsible for moving along storm systems, and brings with it, depending on the season, both colder or warmer temperatures.

Normally, the jet stream moves at a relatively quick pace. That’s why weather conditions and temperatures normally change fairly quickly, and don’t stick around in any one place for too long.

For example, while a jet stream may cause cold temperatures and snow to hit Washington, D.C for a couple days, it can also replace those conditions with warmer temperatures and sunny skies in a matter of hours.

But, thanks to global warming and climate change, there is nothing normal about the way the jet stream is acting right now.

As the Earth continues to warm, Arctic sea ice continues to melt. And as that Arctic sea ice melts, it replaces white ice with blue water, which absorbs even more energy and heat from the sun.

As a result, all of that absorbed energy and heat in the arctic is affecting atmospheric pressures, and throwing the northern hemisphere’s jet stream completely out of whack.

The change in atmospheric pressures is slowing the down the flow of the jet stream, which is causing seasons to change more slowly than usual.

This is why the blizzards along the East Coast this winter seemed to linger around, and relentlessly hammered the coast with foot after foot of snow.

Since the jet stream was moving so slowly, the freezing temperatures and snow had nowhere to go.

And it’s only going to get worse.

Recent studies suggest that the entire Arctic may be ice-free by 2020, just seven years from now.

Already, over the course of the last 30 years, the Arctic has lost nearly 80 percent of its ice cover.

The bottom line here is that, if we do nothing to curb the current rate of climate change, the Arctic will continue to lose ice, the Arctic waters will continue to warm, and the jet stream will continue to slow.

And while we may think that freezing temperatures and snow storms during the first week of spring are bad now, just wait.

If we continue on the path that we’re on, and continue to do nothing to stop the devastating effects of climate change, we won’t just be talking about freezing temperatures during the first week of spring.

We’ll be talking about the beginning of an out-of-control spiral of weather effects that could range from a new ice age to the death of our oceans.

When the story first broke about Mike Gmoser indicting Punxsutawney Phil, the media was all over it.

After all, who could resist a story about someone suing a groundhog over bad weather?

What the media wasn’t all over however was climate change, the real reason why Phil’s prediction missed the mark.

The only way we as a nation, and as a global community, can hope to make a meaningful change in the fight to save our planet is to get the media on board with the fight.

Global warming and climate change are the biggest threats that mankind has ever faced, and they get nowhere near the time they should in our media.

It’s time to wake up the media, and inform the few climate change skeptics who are left.

Climate change is very real and it’s here to stay.

And unless we do something about it, a late spring will be the smallest of our worries.

The 1% Doctrine: Will Capitalism Destroy Civilization?

Oldspeak:” The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar “market inefficiencies,” among them the failure to take into account the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of these “externalities” can be substantial. The current financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable to the major banks and investment firms’ ignoring “systemic risk” – the possibility that the whole system would collapse – when they undertook risky transactions.

Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.

In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions – actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival. ” –Noam Chomsky
When this man speaks, we should all listen. While the real economy, crumbles and disintegrates, 1 in 6 people go hungry. 1 in 2 people live at or near the poverty line. High unemployment persists and the number homeless people is at the last depression era levels. The Dow Jones is as it was before the last global economic crash – at a record high. Corporate profits are through the roof, while most people’s wages have been cut. Most profits are being funneled to the controllers of our political systems who’ve demonstrated contempt for the planet and every living thing on it who wont rest until every resource is exploited and maximum profit is derived from them. This powerful vampire capitalist system is, unsustainable; accelerating our progression toward environmental catastrophe. It constitutes an existential threat to the planet and by extension, all life on it. On can only wonder what madness will be wrought after the next global economic crash, but our civilizations first global ecological crash will render economics, politics and power as we know it irrelevant. Our corporate controllers do not want us to recognize this essential reality, even though most of us do. It is the reason “the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy”. None of the manufactured crises we’re encouraged to focus on matter when there’s no clean water, air or soil. Greed has infected our controllers so thoroughly that this horrifying fact is lost on them. “Profit Is Paramount”

By Noam Chomsky @ Truthout:

There is “capitalism” and then there is “really existing capitalism.”

The term “capitalism” is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks.

The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book “Digital Disconnect.”

“Capitalism” is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support – both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.

Some might even use the term “capitalism” to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America’s leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate” and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”

The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.

There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy – RECD for short – the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.

It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?

Let’s keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that “One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy.”

It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government’s policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus – and one that’s not too far off; affecting the lives of our grandchildren, very likely.

As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: “Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight. These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.

The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy.

One current illustration of their concern is the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” proposed to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth.

The ALEC Act mandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K-12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to “balance” mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the “balanced teaching” advocated by creationists to enable the teaching of “creation science” in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been introduced in several states.

Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking – a fine idea, no doubt, but it’s easy to think up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival and has been selected because of its importance in terms of corporate profits.

Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides on climate change.

One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, the world’s major national academies of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues.

The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is unknown – which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.

Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC’s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.

The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S. public opinion, which is more skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That is presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system, in an effort to counter the public’s dangerous tendency to pay attention to the conclusions of scientific research.

At the Republican National Committee’s Winter Meeting a few weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the leadership that “We must stop being the stupid party. We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.”

Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled by science and rationality, in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and political system, and damn the consequences.

These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are preached within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that serves wealth and power.

The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar “market inefficiencies,” among them the failure to take into account the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of these “externalities” can be substantial. The current financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable to the major banks and investment firms’ ignoring “systemic risk” – the possibility that the whole system would collapse – when they undertook risky transactions.

Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.

In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions – actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.

Those historians will observe that the richest and most powerful country in history, which enjoys incomparable advantages, is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading the effort to preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life are the so-called “primitive” societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal.

The countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.

Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be.

Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction.

This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.

This is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would predict – unless it is the skewed form of reason that passes through the filter of RECD.

© 2012 Noam Chomsky

(Noam Chomsky’s new book is “Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire. Conversations with David Barsamian.” Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)

High Radiation Levels Detected In Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Pacific Seawater/Seafood Radioactive; Media & Government Turn Blind Eye

Oldspeak:“Southern California is still getting hit by Fukushima radiation at alarmingly high levels that will inevitably increase as the main bulk of radioactive  Pacific Ocean water reaches North America over the next two years. High radiation readings in Santa Monica and Los Angeles air during a 42-day period from late December to late January strongly suggest that radiation is increasing in the region including along the coast in Ventura County. Even with government, University of California and this reporter’s tests showing high radiation in the air, water, food and dairy products in this state, the state and federal governments cut off special testing for Fukushima radionuclides more than half a year ago.” –Michael Collins This ongoing disaster is an existential threat. Untold millions of tons of radioactive water has been continuously dumped into the Pacific Ocean, radiation has been detected in rain, snow, air, water &  food in a number of places far away from the west coast. Why has the level of concern of state and federal governments been so low? Why has radioactivity testing been stopped? Why is the Ventura County Reporter the only news outlet reporting on this acute threat to the lives of millions of Americans? It’s become clear that this ongoing catastrophe will be ignored until it is no longer possible to do so. By then it will be too late to do anything about it. WHY?! In the mean time people living in pacific coast bordering regions should take steps to protect themselves. Avoid seafood. Stay inside during rainstorms. Avoid the beach. Limit your time outdoors. ”

Related Stories:

“Absolutely Every One” – 15 Out of 15 – Bluefin Tuna Tested In California Waters Contaminated with Fukushima Radiation

California Slammed With Radiation: Fukushima Radiation Plume Hit Southern & Central California

“Planetary Genocide”: Fukushima One Year Later : The Poisoning Of Planet Earth Continues

Read more By Michael Collins @ The Ventura County Reporter: