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To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture – each vividly highlighted by events of recent days

On one hand there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by “Climategate 2.0”,

On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.

grow a typical garden without irrigation or fertilization has been demonstrated to work in deserts as well as backyards use up rotting wood, twigs, branches and even whole trees that would otherwise go to the dump or be burned it is pretty much nothing more than buried wood can be flush with the ground, although raised garden beds are typically better can start small, and be added to later can always be small - although bigger is better You can save the world from global warming by doing carbon sequestration in your own back yard! perfect for places that have had trees blown over by storms can help end world hunger give a gift to your future self

It's a german word and some people can say it all german-ish. I'm an american doofus, so I say "hoogle culture". I had to spend some time with google to find the right spelling. Hugal, hoogal, huegal, hugel .... And I really like saying it out loud: "hugelkultur, hoogle culture, hoogal kulture ...." - it could be a chant or something. I learned this high-falootin word at my permaculture training. I also saw it demonstrated on the Sepp Holzer terraces and raised beds video - he didn't call it hugelkultur, but he was doing it. Hugelkultur is nothing more than making raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. This makes for raised garden beds loaded with organic material, nutrients, air pockets for the roots of what you plant, etc. As the years pass, the deep soil of your raised garden bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets - so your hugelkultur becomes sort of self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The woody matter helps to keep nutrient excess from passing into the ground water - and then refeeding that to your garden plants later. Plus, by holding SO much water, hugelkultur could be part of a system for growing garden crops in the desert with no irrigation. I do think there are some considerations to keep in mind. For example, I don't think I would use cedar. Cedar lasts so long because it is loaded with natural pesticides/herbicides/anti-fungal/anti-microbial (remember, good soil has lots of fungal and microbial stuff). Not a good mix for tomatoes or melons, eh? Black locust, black cherry, black walnut? These woods have issues. Black locust won't rot - I think because it is so dense. Black walnut is very toxic to most plants, and cherry is toxic to animals, but it might be okay when it rots - but I wouldn't use it until I had done the research. Known excellent woods are: alders, apple, cottonwood, poplar, willow (dry) and birch. I suspect maples would be really good too, but am not certain. Super rotten wood is better than slightly aged wood. The best woods are even better when they have been cut the same day (this allows you to "seed" the wood with your choice of fungus - shitake mushrooms perhaps?). Another thing to keep in mind is that wood is high in carbon and will consume nitrogen to do the compost thing. This could lock up the nitrogen and take it away from your growies. But well rotted wood doesn't do this so much. If the wood is far enough along, it may have already taken in sooooo much nitrogen, that it is now putting it out! Pine and fir will have some levels of tanins in them, but I'm guessing that most of that will be gone when the wood has been dead for a few years. In the drawings at right, the artist is trying to show that while the wood decomposes and shrinks, the leaves, duff and accumulating organic matter from above will take it's place. The artist is showing the new organic matter as a dark green.

The possibly failed salt cavern may be closer to the outer wall of the Napoleonville Dome than Texas Brine officials believed.• DNR defended the timing of its disclosures about the history surrounding the salt cavern as matching the emerging facts of the incidents in Bayou Corne.• Sonny Cranch, Texas Brine spokesman, said company officials have been as surprised as anyone about a possible collapse of their salt cavern.• DNR officials allowed Texas Brine to deposit naturally-occurring radioactive material arising from drilling into two company salt caverns, including the one that may have breached in the Bayou Corne area. As of Wednesday, state environmental officials had not tested the sinkhole for radioactivity."

Friday evening, the day the sinkhole developed and released a foul diesel odor was the first time DNR officials made public information indicating that the cavern may have failed and caused the sinkhole, a “slurry area.” Tuesday night, DNR and Texas Brine officials explained that the cavern appeared closer to Napoleonville Dome’s edge than thought when the cavern was issued a state permit 1982, and that the cavern wall might have been breached. That failure could allow a connection between the cavern’s brine contents and sediments around the dome.

Ball said DNR officials focused on locating a source of the natural gas large enough to send gas bubbling up in the bayous and they focused on area natural gas pipelines and two salt caverns known to be storing natural gas under pressure.

The discovery of radioactive tissue boxes at Bed, Bath & Beyond Inc. (BBBY) stores in January raised alarms among nuclear security officials and company executives over the growing global threat of contaminated scrap metal.

While the U.S. home-furnishing retailer recalled the boutique boxes from 200 stores nationwide without any reports of injury, the incident highlighted one of the topics drawing world leaders to a nuclear security meeting in Seoul on March 26-27. The bi-annual summit, convened by President Barack Obama for the first time in 2010, seeks to stem the flow of atomic material that has been lost, stolen or discarded as trash.

As U.S. and European leaders tackle the proliferation of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium in countries like Iran and North Korea, industries are confronting the impact of loose nuclear material in an international scrap-metal market worth at least $140 billion, according to the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling. Radioactive items used to power medical, military and industrial hardware are melted down and used in goods, driving up company costs as they withdraw tainted products and threatening the public’s health. ‘Major Risk’ “The major risk we face in our industry is radiation,” said Paul de Bruin, radiation-safety chief for Jewometaal Stainless Processing BV, one of the world’s biggest stainless- steel scrap yards. “You can talk about security all you want, but I’ve found weapons-grade uranium in scrap. Where was the security?”

UK scientists have detected a huge dome of freshwater that is developing in the western Arctic Ocean. The bulge is some 8,000 cubic km in size and has risen by about 15cm since 2002. The team thinks it may be the result of strong winds whipping up a great clockwise current in the northern polar region called the Beaufort Gyre. This would force the water together, raising sea surface height, the group tells the journal Nature Geoscience.

The data (1995-2010) indicates a significant swelling of water in the Beaufort Gyre, particularly since the early part of the 2000s. The rising trend has been running at 2cm per year.

A lot of research from buoys and other in-situ sampling had already indicated that water in this region of the Arctic had been freshening. This freshwater is coming in large part from the rivers running off the Eurasian (Russian) side of the Arctic basin. Winds and currents have transported this freshwater around the ocean until it has been pulled into the gyre. The volume currently held in the circulation probably represents about 10% of all the freshwater in the Arctic.

SAN CARLOS, Calif. – Retail giant Best Buy announced last week that it’s making a modest bet on selling home energy gear to consumers via a new web portal and new Home Energy sections at just three stores nationwide.

Home Energy control panels are connected to refrigerators, lamps, lights, heating and cooling systems, showing shoppers how the digital energy home could be connected.

An interactive booth where customers can turn lights on and off and an employee can talk to potential customers enabled shoppers to learn about the benefits and price points of LEDs vs CFLs.

The United States experienced some of the most extreme weather events in its history this spring, including deadly outbreaks of tornadoes, near-record flooding, drought and wildfires

Damages from these disasters have already passed $32 billion, and the hurricane season, which is just beginning, is projected to be above average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Government scientists said Wednesday that the frequency of extreme weather has increased over the past two decades, in part as a result of global warming caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

Continued flooding does threaten the plants, however. As nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen explains in the above video, cooling pumps must operate continuously, even years after a plant is shut down. One group, the Foundation for Resilient Societies, has proposed solar panels and other high-reliability power sources to supply backup cooling for the fuel pools at nuclear plants.

While hindsight might be 20/20, the lack of foresight can be blindingly deadly when it comes to radioactive waste that lasts tens of thousands of years for the measly prize of 40 years of electricity.

“Ft. Calhoun is the designated spent fuel storage facility for the entire state of Nebraska…and maybe for more than one state. Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway – but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it’s going to make Fukushima look like an x-ray.

A giant wall of dust rolled through the Phoenix area on Thursday for the third time since early July — turning the sky brown, creating dangerous driving conditions and delaying some airline flights. The dust storm, also known as a haboob in Arabic and around Arizona, swept through Pinal County and headed northeast, reaching Phoenix at about 6 p.m. Some incoming and departing flights at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport were temporarily delayed because of the storm, according to airport officials who couldn’t immediately provide exact numbers. Take-offs and landing began again at about 6:50 p.m. National Weather Service meteorologists said a powerful thunderstorm packing winds of up to 60 mph hit Pinal County and pushed the dust storm toward Arizona’s most populous county. There were several reports of downed poles and Salt River Project officials said 3,500 of its customers were without electricity, mostly in the Queen Creek area southeast of Phoenix. There were no immediate reports of any weather-related auto accidents. It was the third major dust storm to hit the Phoenix metro area since last month. A haboob on July 5 brought a mile-high wall of dust that halted airline flights, knocked out power for 10,000 people and covered everything in its path with a thick sheet of dust. Another dust storm hit July 18 reaching heights of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, delaying flights and cutting off power for more than 2,000 people in the Phoenix metro area. Weather officials say haboobs only happen in Arizona, the Sahara desert and parts of the Middle East because of dry conditions and large amounts of sand. –The Chron

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century,

"a new first for mankind – the 'extinction' of an entire ecosystem"

The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that "we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years"