Nuclear Boy

 

The entertaining anime cartoon above is apparently being shown to Japanese children. It is supposed to explain what is happening at the Fukushima nuclear plant. I learned a lot. There is definitely more information here than in the official government press releases. My brother lives in Tokyo but like most Japanese has not chosen to leave home over the dangers which the nuclear incident may portend.

Valdosta State University graduate Stephen Dupuis (VSU '08) teamed up with UGA grad Stephen Turner to create Defy Thirst, which strives to empower developing nations through sanitation education and the sharing of efficient, inexpensive water filtration technology. It is good to know that our graduates from this university are not only able to earn a living but contribute to solving the problems of the world.

California Highway Spill (NSFW)

Major Slut Spill on California Highway (NSFW)

R.I.P. Stephen Schneider

Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University and long an active faculty member in the Department of Biology, Schneider apparently suffered a heart attack on an airplane en route to London from Stockholm. Schneider's obituary appeared in today's Washington Post but his death is not yet mentioned on his Stanford University webpage. Schneider was an early member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was actively working on the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) at the time of his death.

Hat tip to Democracy Now! for alerting me to the news. A eulogy written by Ben Santer has been posted at Real Climate.

France to repay Haiti

Yesterday (July 14th) was Bastille Day, marking a popular uprising which gave birth to the modern French state. According to the website for the Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes, France chose Bastille Day to announce an Outline Agreement for the Rebuilding of Haiti (ACRH). The Agreement calls for cancellation of Haiti's international debt, which has retarded the development of Haiti during recent decades and contributed to the impact of the recent earthquake and other natural disasters. France acknowledges with the announcement of ACRH that the disaster which befell the Haitian people is not simply the result of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake but is partly the result of economic and social policies including the legacy of French colonization.

(The above is my own translation of the text posted on the website for the Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes.) Hat-tip to The Independent, Democracy Now!, and The People's Forum for excellent and timely coverage of the story in English.

Kindra Arnesen

A passionate narration of the inept and duplicitous assessment and clean up of BP's Deep Horizon Oil Spill. This woman spits fire!

Kindra's speech at the Gulf Emergency Summit was filmed by FluxRostrum.

Lead Toxicity and Nigerian Gold

Yvonne Ndege reports on severe health effects due to lead exposure among villagers in Zamfara province, northern Nigeria. Six villages have been affected according to Marcel Lagenbach of Medecins Sans Frontieres. The villagers say they will continue to mine for gold despite lead in the dust that is killing their children. Critics accuse the government officials of turning a blind eye and focusing instead on signing lucrative mining deals with China.

Code Pink Protest - BP Station in NYC on May 28, 2010



BP your heart is black! You can have your oil back! - Live video shot by Melissa Ulto intercut with her own creative montage of current news footage.

Cane Toad Daz missing Baz

Deepwater Horizon Spill

John Wathen, who blogs as the Hurricane Creek Riverkeeper (hccreekeeper), has put up a new blog entirely dedicated to the oil spill from the BP Deepwater Horizon. A video filmed during a flyover of the spill on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 can be streamed both on the new blog, Gulf Oil Slick, and on YouTube.

The Ban

Less Ass from Iceland


Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson explains the effects of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption on air traffic in Europe to Neil Cavuto of Fox News. His thick accent leads him to pronounce ash as "ass," leading to some comical remarks about ass falls and ass clouds sent to Europe. Hat tip for the link to Martin Eisenstadt of the Harding Institute.

Eyjafjallajokull

ClimateGate debunked by UK Parliament

Climate scientist Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom has been completely exonerated of any misconduct in the "ClimateGate" scandal based upon emails stolen from the university's email server. According to results of an inquiry released today by the Science and Technology Committee of the UK Parliament, Dr. Jones' research methods were “in line with common practice in the climate science community." Statistical and mathematical analyses performed by his Climate Research Unit have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified by independent scientific experts.

The DeSmog Blog has a thoughtful summary of this final chapter in the long and messy "ClimateGate" scandal. Comments are just starting to show up at the brief entry on RealClimate.

My entries in this blog about ClimateGate began on November 23rd, 2009. Follow up posts were written on November 24th, November 28th, November 30th, December 4th, and December 5th. ClimateGate was clearly well timed to undermine plans for the Copenhagen Climate Summit as well as Climate Change legislation here in the United States.

SNOWMAGEDDON!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Pollluter Harmony


This is a hilarious take on the corrupt relations between politicians and lobbyists for the natural resources industries and other big corporations who pollute our air and water. Polluter Harmony is a "matchmaking" service through which Jeff, a lobbyist, claims to have met Lisa, a powerful senator from the state of Alaska. I laughed and laughed until I realized just how close this gets to the truth.

Prison Time for American Crooks

Two disgraced former executives of the Willbros Group have been convicted in United States court of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Nigerian officials. Jim Bob Brown was sentenced in federal court in Houston to one year and one day in prison and fined $17,500 while Jason Edward Steph was sentenced to 15 months and fined $2,000, Further details of the story can be found at All Africa and in the FCPA Blog.

REPOWER AMERICA



In Wednesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama forcefully called for passing clean energy and climate legislation. Spread the word, share this video with friends and family and join REPOWER AMERICA!

Dirty Gold

Anna Boiko-Weyrauch has created another fabulous radio report on extractive industries and the environment of Africa. This one is about gold mining impacts along the Subri river in Ghana. She posted it on December 18th, and I think that I may have heard it on public radio here in the United States.

Ghana used to be called the Gold Coast and today it's the second largest producer of gold in Africa. Most of the gold comes out of a number of large surface mines. They are all owned by companies from abroad such as Newmont, which stores water and waste from its gold mine behind the Subri River dam. In her report for the Common Language Project, Ms. Boiiko-Weyrauch speaks with Adusah Yakubu from a local advocacy group about health consequences of local environmental deterioration. She also mentions the Responsible Jewellery Council, which certifies gold miners who do a better job than Newmont has done here in Ghana.

Who are the Climate Skeptics?

Back on December 16 of 2009, Jim Lippard posted a lengthy investigation of the denialist infrastructure in terms of citations, credentials, and organizational affiliation. I came across his blog by accident while reading Juan Cole today.