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Pallet shrinking hot air blower | polyethylene film heat shrink gun | Film Shrink Gun - 0 views
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shared by Skeptical Debunker on 03 Mar 10
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Rough Water - 0 views
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Klamath River dams agreement negotiation controversy protest violence
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For most of the last 1,500 years, the river supported a sustainable salmon economy. Salmon were at the heart of all the Klamath’s tribal cultures, and Indians were careful not to over-harvest them. Each summer, the lower Klamath’s Yurok and Hoopa tribes blocked the upstream paths of spawning salmon with barriers; then, after ten days of fishing, they removed the barriers, allowing upstream tribes to take their share. As the salmon completed their lifecycle, dying in the waters where they’d been spawned, they enriched the watershed with nutrients ingested during years in the ocean. Among the beneficiaries were at least 22 species of mammals and birds that eat salmon. Even the salmon carcasses that bears left behind on the riverbanks fertilized trees that provided shade along the river’s banks, cooling its waters so that the next generation of vulnerable juvenile salmon could survive. “We tried to go to court, to go through the political process, but it didn’t work. …The big issues were still out there, and we still had to resolve them.” Salmon’s biological family may have started in the age of dinosaurs a hundred million years ago. They’ve survived through heat waves and droughts, in rivers of varying flow, temperature, and nutrient load – but they were as ill-prepared for Europeans’ arrival as the Indians themselves. Gold miners who showed up in the mid-nineteenth century washed entire hillsides into the river with high-pressure hoses and scoured the river’s bed with dredges. Loggers dragged trees down streambeds, causing massive erosion, and dumped sawdust into the river, smothering incubating salmon eggs. Cattle grazed at the river’s edge, causing soil erosion and destroying shade-giving vegetation. Farmers diverted water to feed their crops. The dams were the crowning blows. Between 1908 and 1962, six dams were built on the Klamath. The tallest, the 173-foot-high Iron Gate, is the farthest downstream, and definitively blocked salmon from the river’s upper quarter – after it was built, the river’s salmon population plummeted. In addition, the dams devastated water quality by promoting thick growths of toxic algae in the reservoirs. For Klamath basin farmers, however, the dams were deemed indispensable, as they generated hydropower that made pumping of their irrigation water possible.To the farmers, the potential loss of the dams’ hydropower was considered no less crippling than an end to Klamath-supplied irrigation.
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For most of the last century, the farmers were oblivious to the damage that dams and water diversions caused downstream, while the tribes and commercial fishermen quietly seethed. The annual salmon run, once so abundant that people caught fish with their hands, was roughly pegged at more than a million fish at its peak; in recent years it has dropped to perhaps 200,000 in good years, and as low as 12,000 – below the minimum believed necessary to sustain the runs – in bad years. Spring Chinook, which once comprised the river’s dominant salmon run, entirely disappeared. Two fish species – the Lost River sucker and the shortnose sucker – that once supported a commercial fishery, were listed as endangered in 1988. Coho salmon were listed as threatened nine years later. All this has had a devastating impact on the tribes. Traditionally able to sustain themselves throughout the year on seasonal migrations of the river’s salmon, trout, and candlefish, tribal members suffered greatly as the runs declined or went extinct. For four decades beginning in 1933, the tribes were barred from fishing the river even as commercial fishermen went unrestricted. Members of the Karuk tribe once consumed an estimated average of 450 pounds of salmon a year; a 2004 survey found that the average had dropped to five pounds a year. The survey linked salmon’s absence to epidemics of diabetes and heart disease that now plague the Karuk. The 2001 cutoff left farmers without irrigated water for the first time in the Klamath Project’s history. Over the next four months, many farmers performed repeated acts of civil disobedience, most notably when a bucket brigade passed pails of banned water from its lake storage to an irrigation canal while thousands of onlookers cheered. The protests attracted Christian-fundamentalist, anti-government, and property rights advocates from throughout the West; former Idaho Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage likened the farmers’ struggle to the American Revolution.
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A year later, it was the tribes’ and fishermen’s turn to experience calamity. According to a Washington Post report, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered Interior Department officials to deliver Klamath water to Project farmers in 2002, even though federal law seemed to favor the fish. Interior Secretary Gale Norton herself opened the head gates launching the 2002 release of water to the Project, while approving farmers chanted, “Let the water flow!” Six months later, the carcasses of tens of thousands of Chinook and Coho salmon washed up on the riverbanks near the Klamath’s mouth, in what is considered the largest adult salmon die-off in the history of the American West. The immediate cause was a parasitic disease called ich, or “white spot disease,” commonly triggered when fish are overcrowded. Given the presence of an unusually large fall Chinook run in 2002 and a paucity of Klamath flow, the 2002 water diversion probably caused the die-off. Yurok representatives said that months earlier they begged government officials to release more water into the lower river to support the salmon, but were ignored. photo courtesy Earthjustice In 2002, low water levels on the Klamath led to the largest adult salmon die-off in the history of the American West. The die-off deprived many tribes-people of salmon and abruptly ended the river’s sport-fishing season, but its impact didn’t fully register until four years later, when the offspring of the prematurely deceased 2002 salmon would have made their spawning run. By then the Klamath stock was so depleted that the federal government placed 700 miles of Pacific Ocean coastline, from San Francisco to central Oregon, off limits to commercial salmon fishing for most of the 2006 fishing season. As a result, commercial ocean fishermen lost about $100 million in income, forcing many into bankruptcy. Even more devastating, a precipitous decline in Sacramento River salmon led to the cancellation of the entire Pacific salmon fishing season in both 2008 and 2009. The Klamath basin was in a permanent crisis. It turned out that desperation and frustration were perfect preconditions for negotiations. “Every one of us would have rolled the others if we could have,” Fletcher, the Yurok leader, says. “We all tried to go to court, to go through the political process, but it didn’t work – we might win one battle today and lose one tomorrow, so nothing was resolved. We spent millions of dollars on attorneys, plane tickets to Washington, political donations, but it didn’t make any of us sleep any better, because the big issues were still out there, and we still had to resolve them.”
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In January 2008, the negotiators announced the first of two breakthrough Klamath pacts: the 255-page Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. In it, most of the parties – farmers, three of the four tribes, a commercial fishermen’s group, seven federal and state agencies, and nine environmental groups – agreed to a basic plan. It includes measures to take down the four dams, divert some water from Project farmers to the river in return for guaranteeing the farmers’ right to a smaller amount, restore fisheries habitat, reintroduce salmon to the upper basin, develop renewable energy to make up for the loss of the dams, and support the Klamath Tribes of Oregon’s effort to regain some land lost when Congress “terminated” its reservation in 1962. This was a seminal moment, a genuine reconciliation among tribal and agricultural leaders who discovered that the hatred they’d nursed was unfounded. “Trust is the key,” says Kandra, the Project farmer who went from litigant to negotiator. “We took little baby steps, giving each other opportunities to build trust, and then we got to a place where we could have some really candid discussions, without screaming and yelling – it was like, ‘Here’s how I see the world.’ Pretty valuable stuff. The folks that developed those kinds of relationships got along pretty good.” Still, one crucial ingredient was missing: Unless PacifiCorp agreed to dismantle the dams, river restoration was impossible, and the pact was a well-intentioned, empty exercise. But PacifiCorp now had compelling reasons to consider dam removal. Not only was relicensing going to be expensive, but Klamath tribespeople were becoming an embarrassing irritant, in two consecutive years interrupting Berkshire Hathaway’s annual-meeting/Buffett-lovefests in Omaha with nonviolent protests that won media attention. Also, the Bush administration, customarily no friend of dam removal, signaled its support for a basin-wide agreement. Negotiations between PacifiCorp and mid-level government officials began in January 2008, but made little progress until a meeting in Shepherdstown, West Virginia four months later, when for the first time Senior Interior Department Counselor Michael Bogert presided. As Bogert recently explained, President Bush himself took an interest in the Klamath “because it was early on in his watch that the Klamath became almost a symbol” of river basin dysfunction. To Bush, the decision to support dam removal was a business decision, not an environmental one: The “game-changer,” Bogert said, was the realization that because of the high cost of relicensing, dam removal made good fiscal sense for PacifiCorp. That fact distinguished the Klamath from other dam removal controversies such as the battle over four dams on Idaho’s Snake River, whose removal the Bush administration continued to oppose.
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In November 2008, when then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced a detailed agreement in principle with PacifiCorp to take down the dams, he acknowledged that he customarily opposed dam removal, but that the Klamath had taught him “to evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis.” In September 2009, Kempthorne’s successor, Ken Salazar, announced that PacifiCorp and government officials had reached a final agreement. PacifiCorp and the many signers of the earlier Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement then ironed out inconsistencies between the two pacts in a final negotiation that ended with a final deal in January 2010.
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Maybe the Klamath River basin would have turned itself around without Jeff Mitchell. Back in 2001, at the pinnacle of the conflict over the river's fate, when the Klamath earned its reputation as the most contentious river basin in the country, Mitchell planted a seed. Thanks to a drought and a resulting Interior Department decision to protect the river's endangered fish stocks, delivery of Klamath water to California and Oregon farmers was cut off mid-season, and they were livid. They blamed the Endangered Species Act, the federal government that enforced it, and the basin's salmon-centric Indians who considered irrigation a death sentence for their cultures. The basin divided up, farmers and ranchers on one side, Indians and commercial fishermen on the other. They sued one another, denounced one another in the press, and hired lobbyists to pass legislation undermining one another. Drunken goose-hunters discharged shotguns over the heads of Indians and shot up storefronts in the largely tribal town of Chiloquin, Oregon. An alcohol-fueled argument over water there prompted a white boy to kick in the head of a young Indian, killing him.
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shared by window-tinting on 17 Jan 13
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Window Tinting Chicago - Rejects Maximum Heat Inside House - 0 views
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window tint chicago window tint illinois window tinting illinois window tinting chicago residential window films 3m residential window films illinois window tint illinois window tinting chicago window tint chicago window tinting window tinting types 3m re
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BEarthright - Spiritual Economics - 0 views
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"If you own no land to support yourself, you must rent, hire or buy it from those that do, so that you may both live and make a living If you cannot use the planet to feed, clothe and provide for yourself then to stay alive, you must choose to either work for those who own your planet, to become a thief or a beggar, or to die. This servitude has taken on many forms throughout history: slavery, serfdom, day-labour, employment. The only variation being the share of the wealth produced left to the planet borrowers by the planet owners This simple reality underlies much of today's poverty, inequality, lack of freedom, unemployment and powerlessness, experienced as the sheer struggle to get by that looms so large in so many peoples' lives These latter day pharaohs, the planet owners, the richest 5% - allow the rest of us to pay day after day for the right to live on their planet. And as we make them richer, they buy yet more of the planet for themselves, and use their wealth and power to fight amongst themselves over what each posesses ~ though of course it's actually us who have to fight and die in their wars"
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Mealtime - Nutrition & Energy Continent - 0 views
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Hydrogen Stocks HYDB Hydrogen Hybrid Fuel Cell - View Message - 0 views
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Hydrogen Hybrid Fuel Cell Corp. has created the Diesel Hydrogen Hybrid Fuel Cell specializing in improving fuel economy for large diesel tractor trailers, SUV's, domestic and import vehicles through on demand hydrogen/oxygen injection, fuel vaporization, ionization, and fuel delivery control via onboard computer system. Its strength being specialized in cutting edge technology that is universal in application, installation, and efficiency of increased fuel mileage for most internal combustion engines, hybrids, and diesel engines.
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Why Small Organic Farming Is Indeed Radical (and Beautiful) | Food | AlterNet - 0 views
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I often think of how much further all that effort could have gone had I grown up on a "real" farm but then I realize that if I had, it would have required an equal effort to change from the "quantity first" focus that has so characterized American agriculture to the new "quality first" focus established by the organic pioneers.
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There is no reason that large farms, whatever path they may have been on, cannot learn to meet those standards if they understand that it is not the scale of the farm but the attitude of the farmer that the public is interested in.
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The small organic farm greatly discomforts the corporate/industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power. Thomas Jefferson said he didn't think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it. It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can't be bullied because they can feed their own faces.
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Massive industrial conglomerates that look upon people as anonymous passive serfs, obedient cogs in a mechanistic world, now control far too many aspects of human existence.
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shared by Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10
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Bloom Energy Promises Cheap, Emissions-Free Power From a Small Box | Popular Science - 0 views
www.popsci.com/...promises-free-homes-power-grid
Google FedEx eBay Walmart Bloom Box energy usage 60 minutes
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The Bloom Box idea came from K.R. Sridhar, a former NASA rocket scientist who once built a similar box device to generate oxygen on Mars for future colonists. Sridhar simply turned the concept on its head by pumping oxygen into the box, along with fuel. The oxygen and fuel combine within a new type of fuel cell to create the chemical reaction that makes electricity. There's also no need for power lines coming in from an outside source, and Sridhar envisions the box eventually providing energy wirelessly to homes and businesses. That could do away with traditional power plants and the power grid. Such transformative power may only come about if the Bloom Box fuel cells can work reliably and efficiently -- other fuel cell technologies have proven notoriously finicky. Sridhar makes his fuel cells based on cheap sand-based ceramics, coated with special green and black "inks" that allow for the chemical reaction which makes electricity. One of the simple disks can power a light bulb, and a stack of 64 disks with cheap metal plates in between them can supposedly power a Starbucks. And unlike fuel cells that require pure hydrogen, the Bloom Box can use fuels ranging from natural gas to bio-gas.
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A boxy power plant that could one day produce efficient, inexpensive, clean energy in every home might sound like a pipe dream, but it's the very real product of a Silicon Valley startup called Bloom Energy. Twenty large corporations that include Google, FedEx, Walmart and eBay have already purchased and begun testing the Bloom Boxes. 60 Minutes recently got a sneak peek at this possibly game-changing energy device.
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Here's SOME of the "rubs". How long will the device's last and what are the maintenance costs (if any)? What will the cost of the fuel be and how much is used? Will the manufacturing process "scale up nicely" (and easily) so that "economies of scale" will actually bring the price of a home-system down to around $3-5K? Will the price of the system, its maintenance, and fuel actually come out to be significantly less than the price of "grid delivered" electricity? Without "good enough" answers to such questions, this system may be more of a good remote generation facility than a grid replacement.
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These Indian Restaurants are Rocking the Culinary World of Italy - Gossip Ki Galliyan - 0 views
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Indian food consists of a large variety of traditional and regional cuisines native to the Indian sub-regions. Given the range of broad diversity in climate, soil type, culture, occupations, and ethnic groups, these cuisines vary substantially from each other and what adds to their uniqueness are the locally available spices and herbs. It comes as a no brainer that Indian cuisine is one of the most popular cuisines across the world. , but people in North America, Europe, Australia, and Africa can not have enough of it.
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Disposable bowls - 0 views
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Disposable bowls have been the standard for convenience and ease of use for a long time. However, the impact of this convenience on the environment has become increasingly apparent in recent years. The use of disposable bowls contributes to a large amount of waste, and the disposal of these products can take hundreds of years to decompose. Biodegradable salad bowls are a more sustainable alternative to disposable bowls, offering a range of benefits for both consumers and the environment.
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Disposable bowls have been the standard for convenience and ease of use for a long time. However, the impact of this convenience on the environment has become increasingly apparent in recent years. The use of disposable bowls contributes to a large amount of waste, and the disposal of these products can take hundreds of years to decompose. Biodegradable salad bowls are a more sustainable alternative to disposable bowls, offering a range of benefits for both consumers and the environment.
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Big business goes to Rio -- New Internationalist - 0 views
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Harmless-sounding phrases like ‘green economy’ and ‘sustainable development’ have become grounds for bitter dispute, as different governments and business interests attempt to redefine these terms to meet their own agenda.
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This row of well-meaning policy sandcastles have spent the past 20 years being eaten away by a rising tide of fundamentalist free-market economics, unfettered financial speculation, and consolidated corporate power.
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any environmental and social gains from the first Rio summit look small next to the destruction wrought by a voracious corporate sector and by governments obsessed with growth in GDP before all else.
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A shift to a genuinely sustainable society will require us to challenge these negative forces, rein in the excesses of corporations and markets, and build an entirely different economy based on wellbeing for the many rather than profits for the few.
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Silvia Ribeiro from the campaign group ETC Mexico points out: ‘Collapsing financial markets in Northern countries mean that banks and other investors are now looking desperately for new areas of expansion and speculation. We can see these desires leaving their mark on the Rio+20 process. The “Green Economy” now under discussion would unleash a wave of risky but lucrative new technologies such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology and climate technofixes. This isn’t about finding the best environmental solutions: it’s about creating profitable new investments.’
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we cannot afford to live in a world where ecosystems are protected if, and only if, there is more profit to be made by protecting them than by trashing them.
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Large polluting industries, business lobby groups and financial institutions are welcomed in as well-meaning ‘stakeholders’ – like mafia bosses invited to a meeting on reducing gang violence.
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The businesses with the most wealth and power are those that have flourished in an economy based on the unrestricted use of natural resources and the exploitation of many of the world’s people. Those with the most to lose from a shift to true sustainability are therefore those with the most power to block that change.
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the Stockholm Environment Institute calculated that the economic value of the oceans could be reduced by up to $2 trillion per year if climate change is left unchecked
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Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of IEN, said: ‘Systems such as “payment for ecological services” and using forests in carbon offset markets do nothing but make Mother Earth into the World Trade Organization of nature.’
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According to Lucia Ortiz of Friends of the Earth Brazil: ‘Trades Unions are getting very concerned about the “green economy” agenda, because it represents a deepening of neoliberal policies, and threatens to undermine the social rights already secured by past struggles. They are working in solidarity with environmentalists, indigenous peoples, farmers and women’s rights activists, calling instead for a transition to a sustainable and just society free from the exploitation of workers and of nature.’
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Tidal giants - the world's five biggest tidal power plants - 1 views
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Environmental progress looks south | Blog | Ode Magazine - 0 views
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the overdeveloped nations of the world need to follow the example of their poor neighbors to the south, which dump far fewer pollutants into the global commons
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these are the places where precious biodiversity, rainforests and other ecological treasures still exist - the natural ecosystems of Europe and North American were largely ravaged a century ago
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In 2008, Ecuador became the first nation in the world to enshrine the rights of nature in its constitution. The document now asserts that nature "has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution"
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Kenya adopted a new constitution that declares in Article 42, "Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment, which includes the right - a) to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations through legislative and other measures."
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Article 69 of the new constitution also holds the state responsible for maintaining tree cover over at least ten percent of the nation’s land; for encouraging public participation in protecting and managing the environment; protecting indigenous knowledge of biodiversity; and establishing systems of environmental impact assessment.
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Climate Change Could Be Impetus For Wars, Other Conflicts, Expert Says - 0 views
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discussion has ensued among international-security experts who believe climate-change-related damage to global ecosystems and the resulting competition for natural resources may increasingly serve as triggers for wars and other conflicts in the future.
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most possibly destabilizing populations and governments: degradation of freshwater resources, food insecurity, natural disasters and environmental migration.
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“Most critical for human survival are water and food, which are sensitive to changing climatic conditions,”
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“The associated socio-economic and political stress can undermine the functioning of communities, the effectiveness of institutions, and the stability of societal structures. These degraded conditions could contribute to civil strife, and, worse, armed conflict.”
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“Large areas of Africa are suffering from scarcity of food and fresh water resources, making them more vulnerable to conflict.
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“Although climate change bears a significant conflict potential, it can also transform the international system toward more cooperation if it is seen as a common threat that requires joint action,”
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the seeming conflict between environment and the economy will be best overcome with the recognition that protecting the climate in the best interest of the economy.”
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“History has shown how dependent our culture is on a narrow window of climatic conditions for average temperature and precipitation,”
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Plant life saved Earth from an icy fate - environment - 02 July 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views
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About 50 million years ago, Earth was a hothouse – the poles were ice free, and crocodiles lived in the Arctic. Then, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere started dropping from around 1000-1500 parts per million (ppm), and the Earth began to cool.
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By about 24 million years ago, the uplift of the Himalayan and Andes mountain ranges led to large-scale weathering of rocks, a process that removes massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. This reduced the greenhouse effect and cooled the planet.
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Trees play an important role in the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in magnesium and calcium carbonate rocks.
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Industrialized Farming Endangers World Food Supply - 0 views
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Multi-national food corporations are increasingly using global food insecurity as a tool for political control.
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rich countries are buying poor countries’ fertile soil, water and sun to ship food and fuel back home.
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“USAID is actually an arm of the US-Department of Defense; it serves US foreign policy interest and has little to do with humanism.”
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South Africa repeats the pattern of Iraq and of Afghanistan, where new laws prohibit farmers to save or trade their own seeds.
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The Oil-for-Food program in Iraq forced the large-scale importation of food after the first Gulf War. Devastated Iraqi farmers then became the victims of USAID.
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Under US occupation, Iraqi farmers must pay a “technology fee” plus an annual license fee to agribusinesses supplying the seeds and equipment. Similar policies exist in Afghanistan
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“The war provides these corporations with both a lucrative short-term market in the blossoming “reconstruction” industry and an opportunity to integrate Afghanistan into their global production networks and markets in the long term.”
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'No regrets': The World Bank and climate change (Bretton Woods Project) - 0 views
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Developing and middle income countries were angry that while the draft framework contains a range of prescriptions for developing countries, it fails to recognise that developed countries should uphold their responsibilities to take the lead in combating climate change by reducing their emissions.
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The draft framework has little to say about existing operations, but the Bank claims to be "leading by example" by making all its offices "carbon neutral", though this will largely be achieved by the controversial practice of purchasing offsets rather than reducing emissions.
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EU: rainforests can be converted to palm oil plantations for biofuel production - 0 views
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policymakers are considering language that would specifically allow use of biofuels produced via conversion of rainforests to oil palm plantations
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oil palm production has driven large-scale destruction of rainforests across southeast Asia over the past two decades, triggering the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions and imperiling rare species