Global Extinction: Gradual Doom Is Just As Bad As Abrupt

A painstakingly detailed investigation shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events. The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth's marine life, and it killed in stages, according to a newly published report.

Thomas J. Algeo, professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati, worked with 13 co-authors to produce a high-resolution look at the geology of a Permian-Triassic boundary section on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Their analysis, published Feb. 3 in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, provides strong evidence that Earth's biggest mass extinction phased in over hundreds of thousands of years.

About 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, Earth almost became a lifeless planet. Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called "The Great Dying." Algeo and colleagues have spent much of the past decade investigating the chemical evidence buried in rocks formed during this major extinction.

Read More:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Global_Extinction_Gradual_Doom_Is_Just_As_Bad_As_Abrupt_999.html

John LaForge - Fukushima's Owner Adds Insult to Injury - Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn't Theirs

In the amoral milieu of the corporate bottom line, you can't blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. for trying.

Tepco owns the six-reactor Fukushima complex that was wrecked by Japan's March 11 earthquake and smashed by the resulting tsunami. It faces more than $350 billion in compensation and clean-up costs, as well as likely prosecution for withholding crucial information that may have prevented some radiation exposures and for operating the giant station after being warned about the inadequacy of its protections against disasters.

So, when the company was hauled into Tokyo District Court October 31 by the Sunfield Golf Club, which was demanding decontamination of the golf course, Tepco lawyers tried something novel. They claimed the company isn't liable because it no longer "owned" the radioactive poisons that were spewed from its destroyed reactors.

Read More:

http://www.truth-out.org/fukushimas-owner-adds-insult-injury/1325868945

Renee Schoof and Halimah Abdullah - EPA announces historic rule to clean or shut coal-burning power plants

Renee Schoof and Halimah Abdullah | McClatchy Newspapers

December 21, 2011 

WASHINGTON — Unveiling a historic rule, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced the first national requirement for the nation's coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions of mercury, arsenic, cyanide and other toxic pollutants.

The landmark ruling took more than 20 years for EPA to finish. Under the Clean Air Act, many other sources of air pollution have been cleaned up, but power plants were so important to the economy that they long had a pass.

About 60 percent of the nation's plants, however, already comply with the new requirement because of state rules. The remaining 40 percent are a major source of pollution, producing more than half the mercury emissions in the country, the EPA said. The ruling will require coal-fired power plants to add pollution control equipment or close. Many plants already scheduled to close are 50 years or older.

EPA estimated that the new requirement will prevent as many as 11,000 deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 cases of childhood asthma each year.

"This is a great victory for public health, especially for the health of our children," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in an announcement ceremony at Children's National Medical Center.

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enenews.com - “Very, Very Serious”: Unit No. 4 leaning, in danger of falling — Gov’t confirms stabilization efforts underway (PHOTO & VIDEO)

Published: May 10th, 2011 
By ENENEWS ADMIN 

http://enenews.com/very-very-serious-reactor-no-4-leaning-in-danger-of-falling-govt-confirms-stabilization-efforts-underway-video

Nuclear collapse looms? Fukushima No. 4 reactor ‘leaning’, RT, May 10, 2011:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Carbon dioxide emissions rebound quickly after global financial crisis

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, December 5, 2011

http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/get_press_release.cfm?ReleaseNumber=mr20111205-00

OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY, Tenn., Dec. 5, 2011 — The sharp decrease in global carbon dioxide emissions attributed to the worldwide financial crisis in 2009 quickly rebounded in 2010, according to research supported by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

In 2010, emissions reached an all-time high of 9.1 billion tons of carbon, compared with 8.6 billion tons in 2009. The downturn was also followed by milestone carbon dioxide emissions from the developing world's emerging economies. In developing countries, consumption-based emissions, or those emissions associated with the consumption of goods and services, increased 6.1 percent over 2009 and 2010.

As a result, 2009 marked the first time that developing countries had higher consumption-based emissions than developed countries.

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Global Carbon Project - Annual emissions summary

Global carbon dioxide emissions increased by a record 5.9 per cent in 2010 following the dampening effect of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), according to scientists working with the Global Carbon Project.

·         Global Carbon Project, 5 December 2011

·         http://www.csiro.au/en/Portals/Media/Global-Carbon-Project.aspx

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) published its annual analysis today in the journal Nature Climate Change, reporting that the impact of the GFC on emissions has been short-lived owing to strong emissions growth in emerging economies and a return to emissions growth in developed economies.

Contributions to global emissions growth in 2010 were largest from China, USA, India, the Russian Federation, and the European Union, with a continuously growing global share from emerging economies. Coal burning was at the heart of the growth in fossil fuel and cement emissions accounting for 52% of the total growth.

Coal burning was at the heart of the growth in fossil fuel and cement emissions accounting for 52% of the total growth.

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Justin McCurry - Fukushima Fuel Rods May Have Completely Melted

Published on Friday, December 2, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/02/fukushima-fuel-rods-completely-melted

One of the plant's nuclear reactors was close to being breached as fuel rods bore through its concrete floor, says Tepco

by Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Fuel rods inside one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have completely melted and bored most of the way through a concrete floor, the reactor's last line of defence before its steel outer casing, the plant's operator said.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said in a report that fuel inside reactor No 1 appeared to have dropped through its inner pressure vessel and into the outer containment vessel, indicating that the accident was more severe than first thought.

The revelation that the plant may have narrowly averted a disastrous "China syndrome" scenario comes days after reports that the company had dismissed a 2008 warning that the plant was inadequately prepared to resist a tsunami.

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Fukushima Daily - Namie machi, Fukushima is 33 times worse than Chernobyl

Fukushima Daily, on November 22nd, 2011 · 

http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/11/namie-machi-fukushima-is-33-times-worse-than-chernobyl/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FukushimaDiary+%28Fukushima+Diary%29

大きな地図で見る

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology published the soil contamination data of 60 km area from Fukushima plants.

The data was taken from 6/1/2011 ~ 11/22/2011.

Though it’s only about I-131, Cs-134, Cs-137 mainly,the result shows the worst contaminated area in Fukushima is 33 times worse than Chernobyl. It proves Fukushima is something nobody has ever gone through.

In Chernobyl, area contaminated worse than 1,480,000 bq/m2 was defined as the worst red zone, “immediate mandatory evacuating area.”

In Fukushima, Namiemachi, 22km north west to Fukushima plants is contaminated, which they measured 760,000 bq/kg (Cs-134 + Cs-137). It equals to 49,400,000 bq/m2.

Fukushima is “the next level” of Chernobyl apparently.

Washington's Blog - Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”

“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur

By Washington's Blog 

Global Research, November 22, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27804

Fukushima May Blow

I’ve repeatedly noted that we may experience a “China syndrome” type of accident at Fukushima.

For example, I pointed out in September:

Mainichi Dailly News notes:

As a radiation meteorology and nuclear safety expert at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, Hiroaki Koide [says]:

The nuclear disaster is ongoing.

***

At present, I believe that there is a possibility that massive amounts of radioactive materials will be released into the environment again.

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Jack Shenker and Luke Harding - US Firm's Teargas Used Against Tahrir Square Protesters

Published on Monday, November 21, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/tahrir-square-us-teargas-used-egypt

Egypt's military junta fired CS gas cartridges made by Combined Systems Inc of Pennsylvania, say demonstrators

by Jack Shenker in Cairo and Luke Harding

The teargas used by interior ministry troops in Cairo's Tahrir Square is supplied by a US company. Demonstrators say cartridges retrieved from the scene are branded with the name and address of Combined Systems Inc (CSI).

The firm is located in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. It specializes in supplying what it calls "crowd control devices" to armies and "homeland security agencies" around the world. It also manufactures lethal military equipment.

Protesters say the CS gas seems more powerful than that used by Egyptian police during the country's last popular uprising in February. "It's stronger, it burns your face, it makes you feel like your whole body is seizing up," one witness said. He added: "It doesn't seem to be combated by Coke or vinegar."

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Malcolm Ritter and Mari Yamaguchi - Future Cancers from Fukushima Plant May Be Hidden

Published on Sunday, November 20, 2011 by the Associated Press

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/20-1

Japanese people don't trust reassurances from government scientists

by Malcolm Ritter and Mari Yamaguchi

FUKUSHIMA, Japan  — Even if the worst nuclear accident in 25 years leads to many people developing cancer, we may never find out.

Looking back on those early days of radiation horror, that may sound implausible.

But the ordinary rate of cancer is so high, and our understanding of the effects of radiation exposure so limited, that any increase in cases from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster may be undetectable.

Several experts inside and outside Japan told The Associated Press that cancers caused by the radiation may be too few to show up in large population studies, like the long-term survey just getting under way in Fukushima.

That could mean thousands of cancers under the radar in a study of millions of people, or it could be virtually none. Some of the dozen experts the AP interviewed said they believe radiation doses most Japanese people have gotten fall in a "low-dose" range, where the effect on cancer remains unclear.

The cancer risk may be absent, or just too small to detect, said Dr. Fred Mettler, a radiologist who led an international study of health effects from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

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Terra Daily - Methane may be answer to 56-million-year question

Staff Writers, TerraDaily.com
Hoston TX (SPX) Nov 15, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Methane_may_be_answer_to_56_million_year_question_999.html

The release of massive amounts of carbon from methane hydrate frozen under the seafloor 56 million years ago has been linked to the greatest change in global climate since a dinosaur-killing asteroid presumably hit Earth 9 million years earlier. New calculations by researchers at Rice University show that this long-controversial scenario is quite possible.

Nobody knows for sure what started the incident, but there's no doubt Earth's temperature rose by as much as 6 degrees Celsius. That affected the planet for up to 150,000 years, until excess carbon in the oceans and atmosphere was reabsorbed into sediment.

Earth's ecosystem changed and many species went extinct during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56 million years ago, when at least 2,500 gigatonnes of carbon, eventually in the form of carbon dioxide, were released into the ocean and atmosphere. (The era is described in great detail in a recent National Geographic feature.)

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