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.

Fiona Harvey - UN Chief Slams Rich Nations' Plans to Delay Climate Change Treaty

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/23/un-chief-rich-nations-climate-change

Achim Steiner says reaching an agreement in 2020 instead of at next month's Durban conference would be 'very high risk'

by Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

The United Nations' environment chief has slammed plans by the world's richest nations to put off a global treaty on climate change to 2020, saying the proposals were "very high risk".

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN environment program, said postponing an agreement – which was meant to be signed in 2013 – to the end of this decade was a "political choice" rather than one based on science.

The Guardian revealed this week that most of the world's rich economies have quietly decided to shelve plans for a global agreement on climate change to take effect within the next few years, instead pushing for an agreement by the end of 2015 or 2016, and coming into effect until 2020. Scientists and economists have said this plan risks leading to catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

Steiner is the first senior UN official to speak out against the plans, which will be aired next week at the latest round of UN climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

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Fiona Harvey - Shale gas push 'would wreck UK's climate change targets'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/23/shale-gas-climate-change-targets?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Report says that exploiting just one-fifth of Lancashire's shale gas reserves would put carbon emissions targets out of reach

• Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 November 2011

• The UK will fail to meet its climate change targets if industry and politicians back controversial new plans to go ahead with widespread drilling for shale gas, according to a report published on Wednesday.

About 2tr cubic feet of natural gas trapped in dense shale rocks is estimated to lie beneath Lancashire according to Cuadrilla Resources, the main shale gas company operating in the UK. Further exploration in Wales, Scotland and other parts of England could add substantially to this total.

But burning it for fuel results in large-scale carbon dioxide emissions, and scientists from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, in a report commissioned by the Cooperative Group, warned that exploiting even a minor proportion of this gas would generate so much carbon dioxide that the government's greenhouse gas emissions targets would be rendered unreachable.

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Emily Chung - Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking at 'Unprecedented' Levels

Published on Thursday, November 24, 2011 by CBC News

by Emily Chung

The recent loss of sea ice in the Arctic is greater than any natural variation in the past 1½ millennia, a Canadian study shows.

"The recent sea ice decline … appears to be unprecedented," said Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the study and is a co-author of the paper published Wednesday online in Nature.

"We kind of have to conclude that there's a strong chance that there's a human influence embedded in that signal."

In September, Germany's University of Bremen reported that sea ice had hit a record low, based on data from a Japanese sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, using a different satellite data set, reported that the sea ice coverage in 2011 was the second-lowest on record, after the record set in 2007.

What makes recent sea ice declines unique is that they have been driven by multiple factors that never all coincided in historical periods of major sea ice loss, said Christophe Kinnard, lead author of the new report.

"Everything is trending up – surface temperature, the atmosphere is warming, and it seems also that the ocean is warming and there is more warm and saline water that makes it into the Arctic," Kinnard said, "and so the sea ice is eroded from below and melting from the top."

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Science Daily - Evidence Supports Ban On Growth Promotion Use of Antibiotics in Farming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111115103514.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2011) — In a review study, researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine zero in on the controversial, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals and fish farming as a cause of antibiotic resistance. They report that the preponderance of evidence argues for stricter regulation of the practice. Stuart Levy, an expert in antibiotic resistance, notes that a guiding tenet of public health, the precautionary principle, requires that steps be taken to avoid harm.

"The United States lags behind its European counterparts in establishing a ban on the use of antibiotics for growth promotion. For years it was believed that giving low-dose antibiotics via feed to promote growth in cows, swine, chickens and the use of antibiotics in fish farming had no negative consequences. Today, there is overwhelming evidence that non-therapeutic use of antibiotics contributes to antibiotic resistance, even if we do not understand all the mechanisms in the genetic transmission chain," says Levy, MD, professor of molecular biology and microbiology and director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University School of Medicine.

For the past 70 years, humans have relied on antibiotics to combat bacterial infections such as streptococcus, meningitis, tuberculosis and urinary tract infections. The misuse and overuse of antibiotics, however, has contributed to antibiotic resistance, making antibiotics less effective at saving lives. Levy and co-author Bonnie Marshall summarize and synthesize the findings of a large number of studies assessing the link between antibiotic resistance and the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in livestock and fish farming. Highlights include the following.

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Terra Daily - Rethinking the ocean's role in Pacific climate

by Staff Writers, Terra Daily
Miami FL (SPX) Nov 22, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Rethinking_the_ocean_role_in_Pacific_climate_999.html 

University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researchers have climate scientists rethinking a commonly held theory about the ocean's role in theglobal climate system.

The new findings can aid scientists in better understanding and predicting changes in the Pacific climate and its impacts around the globe.

According to the study's lead author, UM Rosenstiel School Professor Amy Clement, the tropical atmospheric pressure system know as the Southern Oscillation (a periodic fluctuation of atmospheric pressure commonly observed as the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which brings unusually warm water across the Pacific Ocean basin) plays a bigger, more fundamental role in the climate system than just being El Nino's atmospheric counterpart.

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Terra Daily - China to call for extension of Kyoto at climate talks

by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Nov 22, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_to_call_for_extension_of_Kyoto_at_climate_talks_999.html

China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, said Tuesday it will push at next week's climate talks for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires rich nations to reduce their emissions.

Beijing's top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua also called on wealthy nations to hammer out a funding mechanism to help developing countries implement efforts to address global warming at the Durban meeting.

But he said China would only take on commitments "appropriate to our stage of development", reiterating Beijing's long-held view that poorer countries should not be required to make binding commitments on emissions.

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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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Brad Johnson - GOP Deniers Block Creation Of Climate Service

Published on Monday, November 21, 2011 by ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/21/373634/gop-deniers-block-creation-of-climate-service/

by Brad Johnson

Science-averse Republicans have once again blocked the establishment of a National Climate Service by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, moving from denial of man-made climate change to the denial of climate itself. “I’m very concerned that NOAA has taken steps to form what amounts to a shadow climate service operation,” House science committee chair Ralph Hall (R-TX) cried in September. At a hearing in June, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) blasted the budget-neutral plan to consolidate NOAA’s existing, widely dispersed, climate capabilities under a single management structure as “propaganda services.” In the committee report submitted by appropriations chair Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) for the 2012 budget, the National Climate Service is expressly forbidden:

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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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The Nepal Times - Going to seed

Hybrid and genetically-modified seeds may create more problems than they solve 

The Nepal Times 10 NOV 2011

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/2011/11/8/Nation/18676 

A US-government supported pilot project to introduce into Nepal hybrid maize seeds produced by the multinational, Monsanto, has set off alarm bells over its potential harm.

USAID's Nepal Economic, Agriculture, and Trade Activity (NEAT) has got the Department of Agriculture and Monsanto to set up test plots to promote the new seeds in Chitwan, Nawalparasi and Kavre districts. This pilot plan will train 20,000 farmers in hybrid maize production methods and help in marketing the seeds.

Last month, Monsanto India's Amitabh Jaipuria was in Kathmandu for a promotional launch in which he said the project would improve Nepal's food security and enhance income of Nepali farmers. USAID Mission Director in Nepal, David C Atteberry also said: "Most maize farmers are unaware of the health and financial benefits that high-yielding hybrid seeds can provide. Improved seeds and targeted capacity building on crop management will allow maize producers in Nepal to reap the full benefit of their labour."

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ScienceDaily - Great Plains River Basins Threatened by Pumping of Aquifers

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111118151416.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2011) — Suitable habitat for native fishes in many Great Plains streams has been significantly reduced by the pumping of groundwater from the High Plains aquifer -- and scientists analyzing the water loss say ecological futures for these fishes are "bleak."

Results of their study have been published in the journal Ecohydrology.

Unlike alluvial aquifers, which can be replenished seasonally with rain and snow, these regional aquifers were filled by melting glaciers during the last Ice Age, the researchers say. When that water is gone, it won't come back -- at least, until another Ice Age comes along.

"It is a finite resource that is not being recharged," said Jeffrey Falke, a post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. "That water has been there for thousands of years, and it is rapidly being depleted. Already, streams that used to run year-round are becoming seasonal, and refuge habitats for native fishes are drying up and becoming increasingly fragmented."

Falke and his colleagues, all scientists from Colorado State University where he earned his Ph.D., spent three years studying the Arikaree River in eastern Colorado. They conducted monthly low-altitude flights over the river to map refuge pool habitats and connectivity, and compared it to historical data.

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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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Gareth Porter - Ex-Inspector Rejects IAEA Iran Bomb Test Chamber Claim

By Gareth Porter

Global Research, November 20, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27770

A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion. The IAEA claim that a foreign scientist - identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko - had been involved in building the alleged containment chamber has now been denied firmly by Danilenko himself in an interview with Radio Free Europe published Friday.  The latest report by the IAEA cited "information provided by Member States" that Iran had constructed "a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments" - meaning simulated explosions of nuclear weapons - in its Parchin military complex in 2000.  The report said it had "confirmed" that a "large cylindrical object" housed at the same complex had been "designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives". That amount of explosives, it said, would be "appropriate" for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon.  But former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley has denounced the agency's claims about such a containment chamber as "highly misleading".  Kelley, a nuclear engineer who was the IAEA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq and is now a senior research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, pointed out in an interview with the Real News Network that a cylindrical chamber designed to contain 70 kg of explosives, as claimed by the IAEA, could not possibly have been used for hydrodynamic testing of a nuclear weapon design, contrary to the IAEA claim.

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Camila Ruz - Amphibians facing 'terrifying' rate of extinction

Researchers say tropical regions of richest diversity are most at risk of losing frogs, toads, newts and salamanders

Camila Ruz

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/16/amphibians-terrifying-extinction-threat

If the current rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species really is the "sixth mass extinction", then it is the amphibian branch of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning.

In research described as "terrifying" by an independent expert, scientists predict the future for frogs, toads, newts and salamanders is even more bleak than conservationists had realised.

Around half of amphibian species are in decline, while a third are already threatened with extinction. But scientists now predict that areas with the highest diversity of amphibian species will be under the most intense threat in the future.

And they warn that a three-pronged threat could also cause populations to decline faster than previously thought.

Like many creatures, amphibians have been hit hard by climate change and habitat loss. But they have also been decimated by the spread of the deadly fungal disease chytridiomycosis.

One in three of the world's amphibians are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of endangered species. These include the Malagasy rainbow frog that lives in the rocky forests of Madagascar. It has the ability to inflate itself when under attack and can climb vertical rock faces. Found in an area smaller than 100 square kilometres, it is a prime target for the pet trade.

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Elias Biryabarema - IPCC: Extreme Weather Set to Worsen With Climate Change

Published on Friday, November 18, 2011 by Reuters

http://af.reuters.com/article/ugandaNews/idAFL5E7MI2F820111118

by Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA - An increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms, U.N. scientists said on Friday.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urged countries to come up with disaster management plans to adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather events linked to human-induced climate change, in a report released in Uganda on Friday.

The report gives differing probabilities for extreme weather events based on future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, but the thrust is that extreme weather is likely to increase.

"It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes ... will occur in the 21st century on the global scale," the IPCC report said.

"It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase," it added.

"A 1-in-20 year hottest day is likely to become a 1-in-2 year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions," under one emissions scenario.

An exception is in very high latitudes, it said. Heat waves would likely get hotter by "1 degrees C to 3 degrees C by mid-21st century and by about 2 degrees C to 5 degrees C by late-21st century, depending on region and emissions scenario."

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Fran Korten - Young Farmers -- A Growing Movement

In spite of the daily discouraging environmental, political, and economic news, coaxing living things to grow somehow seems to make folks optimistic.

by Fran Korten

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/new-livelihoods/a-growing-movement

Recently during lunch at the YES! offices, online editor Brooke Jarvis made a casual comment I found quite stunning. Brooke, a sharp, talented 20-something, said “I don’t know a single person under 30 who doesn’t want to own a farm.”

What? Own a farm? I turned to several 20-somethings at the table and asked if they agreed. They did. They waxed eloquent about their love for lambs, ducks, chickens, bees. (No one mentioned weeding.) They confessed they weren’t sure they would ever actually own a farm, but their yearning was definitely real.

What the people at the fair shared in common was not their politics, but their optimism.

I think that just five years ago the 20-somethings in our office were not longing to own a farm. Something in our culture is changing. A growing segment of people don’t want to just buy organic, healthy food. They want to grow it. This new lust to farm seems to cross class, race, and politics.

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Cornucopia Institute - Future of Organic Food and Agriculture at Risk

November 17, 2011

http://www.cornucopia.org/2011/11/future-of-organic-food-and-agriculture-at-risk/

Cornucopia Institute

Use of Synthetic Preservatives, Genetically Mutated Ingredients and Weak Animal Welfare Standards Headed for Vote by USDA Panel

CORNUCOPIA, Wis. - November 17 - The Cornucopia Institute, one of the nation’s leading organic industry watchdogs, is urging members of the USDA's National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), in formal testimony, to vote to preserve the integrity of organic food and farming at its upcoming meeting in Savannah, Georgia.  

Some of the hot button issues on the agenda, including using artificial preservatives and genetically modified ingredients, would seem Orwellian to many longtime organic farmers and consumers.  The forecasted dustup will be debated by a USDA panel, deeply divided between corporate agribusiness representatives and organic advocates. 

Under the Bush and Obama administrations, the USDA Secretaries have been criticized for appointing a significant number of corporate representatives, whose primary interest appears to be loosening the federal organic standards, allegedly in pursuit of enhanced profits. 

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Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility - Fracking Fluids - The Deeper, the Dirtier

CONTACT: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1534

November 17, 2011

New Study Finds Bottom-of-Barrel Flowback Fluids Much More Contaminated

WASHINGTON - November 17 - A new federal study finds wastewater from natural gas hydrofracturing has higher levels of contaminants the deeper in the storage tank the samples are taken.  These findings may be a key to preventing environmental damage from disposal of huge volumes of post-fracking water produced in the boom to exploit shale gas, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Released November 16, 2011, the study by the U.S. Forest Service researchers is entitled “Chloride Concentration Gradients in Tank-Stored Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids Following Flowback.”  It analyzes 11,000 gallons of fracking fluids that flowed back to the surface and were stored in two 18-foot tall tanks after drilling in the Fernow Experimental Forest within West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest.  

The key finding is that samples taken near the surface below the top scum are far less contaminated than samples taken deeper in the tank.  Increasingly higher levels of the tracked chemical, chloride (Cl), are found the deeper samples are drawn.  These differences are also visible to the naked eye:

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TERRA DAILY.COM - Evidence supports ban on growth promotion use of antibiotics in farming

by Staff Writers, TERRA DAILY.COM
Boston MA (SPX) Nov 18, 2011

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Evidence_supports_ban_on_growth_promotion_use_of_antibiotics_in_farming_999.html

In a review study, researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine zero in on the controversial, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals and fish farming as a cause of antibiotic resistance.

They report that the preponderance of evidence argues for stricter regulation of the practice. Stuart Levy, a world-renowned expert in antibiotic resistance, notes that a guiding tenet of public health, the precautionary principle, requires that steps be taken to avoid harm.

"The United States lags behind its European counterparts in establishing a ban on the use of antibiotics for growth promotion. For years it was believed that giving low-dose antibiotics via feed to promote growth in cows, swine, chickens and the use of antibiotics in fish farming had no negative consequences.

"Today, there is overwhelming evidence that non-therapeutic use of antibiotics contributes to antibiotic resistance, even if we do not understand all the mechanisms in the genetic transmission chain," says Levy, MD, professor of molecular biology and microbiology and director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University School of Medicine.

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