The good, the bad, and the really radioactive

A self-sustaining neighborhood, taking care of  its own power, food, and waste.  Let's do this!

A sustainable cardboard house for the future.

Watching how climate change affects the world, one incident at a time.

A farmer's decades long love affair with soil.

80 percent of the ocean's plastic trash is from land-based sources.

Military veterans are urged not to tell the truth about their experiences to potential recruits.

How ISIS came to be.

Radiation in drinking water acceptable to the EPA.

The EPA proposed Protective Action Guides (PAGs) would allow the general population to drink water hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than is now legal.

Plastic radioactive oceans, no snowpack, and another end of the world is coming

Monsanto and scientists collude to push GMO on the public.

Water from Fukushima dumped into Pacific.  And fracking is poisoning us all.  And (youtube) our oceans are turning into plastic soup.

History of the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Obama makes the case that Republicans are un-American.

Snowpack in California is at a 500 year low.

Being a Neolithic farmer sucked.  Although living right now can suck too.

Yet another end of the world is coming in late September.

George Takei explains why Kim Davis is wrong.  Let this be the final statement of this idiocy.  (Please!)

Response by University of Missouri Student Body President Payton Head to hateful name-calling directed at him.

836,290 deaths since 1989.  If this was a disease, we'd be frantically trying to find a cure.  But this number is deaths by guns.  We have an answer, we just are too afraid to say it.  Gun control, gun safety.

End robocalls!

Asteroids to trash to drought. What's not to love?

Huge asteroid will pass close to Earth Monday... can be seen with 'strong binoculars'.

A Dutch man decides to pick up plastic trash on his way to work.  A 20 year old tells us he can get the plastic out of our oceans.

Racism defined by a self-described redneck.

How we can address gun violence and gun safety.

It's not just California having an epic drought.

Friday froth

6 Baffling Discoveries That Science Can’t Explain

Healthy tips for surviving our chemicalized world

Fixing the climate.

Learning a new language is good for your brain.

Monsanto's unapproved wheat found in Oregon is affecting the export of wheat to those countries who have said no to GMOs.  Too late.... so the farmers are suing Monsanto.

One girl in a village.

Everything you ever wanted to know about ticks.

19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From Oceans

Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions

High Fructose Corn Syrup is addictive....

The perils of plastic pellets

Following the aftermath of Typhoon Vincent this week, the worst typhoon to hit Hong Kong in 15 years, hundreds of 25kg plastic sacks filled with pre-production plastic pellets (aka Nurdles) produced by SINOPEC Petroleum Hainan are now washing up on the beaches of Hong Kong. 

[snip] 

So far we have discovered 250 plus sacks, of which approximately 50% have spilled their deadly contents into the ecosystem. This is the equivalent of a SOLIDIFIED OIL SPILL. Each sack contains approximately 1 million pellets. The 250 sacks were all on our local beach, we have put out a call to action asking ocean lovers all over Hong Kong to visit their local beaches and check them for these "white plastic sacks of death," and if found to report them to Sea Shepherd Hong Kong who are working with local authorities on the cleanup operation. The biggest problem is that this material absorbs toxins and pollutants, turning it a yellowish brown color. The darker the pellet becomes the more toxic it is. Small fish, birds, and even large filter feeding species such as whales, whale sharks, and manta rays eat these pellets, mistaking them for fish eggs. Once eaten, the animals become toxic and often die. Bigger fish eat the small fish and this continues up the food chain, spreading the toxicity into seafood that will end up on our tables for human consumption.

Just finished reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. One of the book's chapters addresses the horror of the many plastic gyres in the oceans... and the small toxic glop that is poisoning the marine life. Can we possibly fix this problem before we kill off everything? We can only wait and see.... Update: It is suggested that plastics could be linked to diabetes and obesity.

Stuff. Because it's still hot at 11 o'clock at night.

The facts about the Great Pacific Plastic Garbage Gyre.

Your chair is trying to kill you.

Florida... *cough*.. *cough*

An evil plot to create more stupid voters who vote against their own interests.

A Lego bridge in Germany.

Star Trek?!  NO.... ALIENS!!

Contraception saves 250,000 lives each year: study

Odds of record U.S. heat being a random event: 1 in 1.6 million and U.S. Sees Hottest 12 Months And Hottest Half Year On Record and so Climate scientists are finally coming forth and making the connection between human activity and the wild weather.


Woman photographs her own abortion to educate women and fight the ugly fear-mongering anti-choice protesters use.

Rush Limbaugh's phony empire.


Bees are smarter than supercomputers.

Monsanto gets an F.

Japanese debris field in the Pacific

Washes back and forth and impacts Hawaii from both sides.

Plastic islands

Are growing apace in all of our oceans!

Maximenko's Plastic Pollution Growth Model from 5 Gyres on Vimeo.

More excellent graphics and links here.

And the articles I've been collecting since I learned about our plastic continents and dead zones.

Update: Sadly, plastic kills.

SEATTLE -- Researchers said a dead gray whale discovered on West Seattle’s Arroyo Beach last Wednesday was filled with a variety of debris, reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.
Cascadia Research Collective, which has performed hundreds of whale necropsies, said it has never seen so much debris in the stomach of a gray whale.

Just one word.... Plastics

Plastic Plastic Everywhere: The 5 Gyres Project posted by Dave Chameides

....you’ve most certainly heard about the plastic mass that is floating out in the North Pacific Gyre. The gyre, one of several in the world, is a vortex of currents swirling inwards that lies between California and Japan. Like a toilet bowl that never flushes, it’s filled with plastic debris from man made items. So much so that from the first time it was studied until now, it has grown from the size of the state of Texas to twice the size of the continental United States!

How do I know this? Simple, my friends, Dr. Marcus Erikson and Anna Cummins, along with a bevy of other scientists, have traversed it, not once, but several times, in order to study what is actually happening out there. And what they found is truly disturbing. While the plastic soup is not concentrated, meaning you wouldn’t be able to see it from the air, once you get in the water, it can’t be missed. Thousands of tiny confetti-like pieces of plastic, filling otherwise pristine waters, waiting to be ingested.

I've been fascinated by the gyres ever since I heard about them a few years ago. That and the growing Dead Zones that occur in the Gulf of Mexico and around major coastal cities.

Is Plastic Making Us Fat?

Hormone-mimicking chemicals that already have a bad rap for their role as endocrine disruptors in the body (including the notorious bisphenol A (BPA)), are now thought to also screw with the body’s metabolism and, depending on the amount and timing of exposure, predispose individuals to obesity.

We’re surrounded by these chemicals: BPA and pthalates are everywhere, from water bottles to dryer sheets to the PVC pipes that deliver your shower water, and they’re taking their toll. Call them obesogens–a term coined by Bruce Blumberg, a leading researcher on the issue. A recent Newsweek story illustrates the increasing body of evidence that links these chemicals to the body’s metabolism.

Just one word... Plastics!

Killing the oceans

Bedraggled dead seabirds tangled in sea wrack on this remote, wild beach are just some of more than 8,000 birds killed since just after Labor Day, scientists estimate. The death toll — which might eventually pass 10,000 — is from a mysterious algae bloom still off the coast that has scientists and researchers worried and mystified.

"I think it's scary. We have no record of anything like this in the past 30 years, and no one knows why it is happening," said Julia Parrish, associate director of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington. "We are not used to big natural disasters, but this is one of them."

Up and down Washington's coast, scientists are reporting the longest lasting and largest harmful algae bloom ever recorded here, and the largest recorded mass mortality of seabirds ever in Washington waters. "It's bigger than an oil spill," Parrish said.

And in the Mediterranean:



And in Australia.

Don't forget Alaska's blob nor the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, the plastic-filled gyres in the Pacific, the deep sea creatures and fish.

Global warming, rapid climate change... call it what you will. Our oceans are slowly boiling to death.

Plastic is forever

Honolulu, HI (AHN) -- Two men have successfully sailed from California to Hawaii in a raft made of plastic bottles and Cessna airplane parts.

Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal built their raft, which they named "Junk," out of 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessna 310 fuselage. The purpose of their journey was to bring attention to the massive amount of plastic floating at sea.

The Northern Pacific Gyre, which has been getting some alternative media attention this year, is an area twice the size of Britain that swirls with tons of plastics used for water bottles, food containers, and various other one-time purposes.

Eriksen and Paschal described to reporters instances during their 2,600 mile journey when they caught a fish to eat, only to find plastic in its stomach when they cut it open.

During the 87 day journey, the two men saw first hand that "plastic is forever, and it's everywhere," as yahctpals.com reported Eriksen wrote in his journal at the end of the trip.

He went on to say that he plans to use the voyage as a starting point to create a dialogue about how to deal with the problem of disposable plastics.

This post deserves repeating:

Making a new continent
One plastic bag at a time:

­ ­In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

It's the world's biggest landfill and it's in the Pacific Ocean

Before you despair too much, another post mentions the teenage boy who discovered how to decompose plastic bags.

What would we do without science?

Stealing this pic from perspicio of Today We Choose Faces:



(click the pic to read it)

To remind us what those who love the scientific process can do:

This month heralds a world-changing scientific breakthrough as a teenage prodigy has developed a new way to decompose plastic bags in just three months! A 16 year old named Daniel Burd conducted his experiment as a science fair project, and ended up with a revolutionary solution to the plastic plague that has laid waste to ecosystems around the world. By isolating the microorganisms that break down plastic, Burd’s research has yielded an industrially scalable way to cinch closed the material’s millennium-spanning life-cycle.

Plastic bags, once icons of customer convenience, cost more than 1.6 billion barrels of oil per year and leave the environment to foot the bill. The statistics are scary - each year the world produces 500 billion bags, and Earth Resource Foundation states that “all the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and smaller pieces.” Meanwhile the UN Environment Program estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter in every square mile of ocean, and a swirling vortex of trash twice the size of Texas has spawned in the North Pacific.

I posted this in November of '07 and deserves a reprint:

Making a new continent: One plastic bag at a time

­ ­In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

It's the world's biggest landfill and it's in the Pacific Ocean.

Making a new continent

One plastic bag at a time:

­ ­In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

It's the world's biggest landfill and it's in the Pacific Ocean.