Posts with the tag arctic

SOS - Save the Arctic

"Voice for Humanity" — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:42:38 EDT

By Padmini Arhant

Mother Nature has never been more vulnerable than now with the human power in industries and government targeting every available land on planet earth for profits. With the active space exploration for possible inhabitation on Mars and the Moon, earth’s natural resources depleted to the ultimate under the guise of ‘Clean Energy Act,’ by the yet another indomitable force in the corporate world, the ‘Energy Cartel.’

Should they trail behind in the Herculean contest of crushing democracy and the people it represents?

‘Profit’ revered more than the “Prophet” spares none in its sinister cannibalism revealed in the legislative matters concerning health, housing, finance, wars and even the planet they exist. It is no longer the Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ with a subtle hope for efforts to survive if not thrive in the sharks-infested waters.

Please follow the rest @http://www.padminiarhant.com

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

WEBMASTER — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:26:14 EST

The Pickens Plan: For those who would like to become an active participant in a solution for our nations energy needs I urge you to join with T.Boone Pickens in his quest for a cleaner planet through alternative energy.

Also see Green Wave Energy: Green Wave was founded by Mark Holmes and was formulated for viable alternative energy solutions. Green Wave Energy is promoting state-of-the-art energy-saving products and services throughout the country.

Green Wave Energy understands alternative energy technology will become “main stream” when

individuals and organizations understand that alternative energy technology exists and
when people see the economic benefits of using alternative energy technologies

Call 949.645.1701 for information on how Green Wave Energy can help you save the planet.

Alternative Energy
Source: David Apperson

url: http://veterans.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/alternative-energy

Russian Claim to Arctic Seafloor Becomes Palin Issue

rz — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:42:38 EDT

Oh please......make her go far far away:

Russian Claim to Arctic Seafloor Becomes Palin Issue

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Russian attempts to claim part of the Arctic Ocean seabed have given Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin unique foreign policy experience, the McCain-Palin campaign says, but there is no evidence she has ever been involved with or spoken publicly about them.

Asked to explain Palin's statements that Alaska's proximity to Russia bolsters her foreign policy credentials, campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said Wednesday that Alaska is involved in "north corridor issues with Russia, Canada, Iceland and the United States of America."

The campaign cited Russia's attempts to claim part of a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range that crosses the polar region as its territory. Last August, a Russian submarine dropped a titanium capsule containing the nation's flag on the sea floor, sparking a multinational race to secure rights to the Arctic seabed.

Campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said Russia's Arctic moves "give you some interesting international experience that you might not otherwise encounter if, say, you were the governor of Delaware."

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden is a senator from Delaware and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Griffin said Palin has talked about the Russian Arctic claims with her staff, but he was unable to detail what she said or any position or action she's taken.

Mead Treadwell, chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, said he briefed Palin once in the spring on matters that included the need for icebreakers, energy issues and the treaty under which nations are pursuing Arctic seabed claims. The commission develops national Arctic research policy and works with the administration, Congress, the National Science Foundation and other institutions.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the State Department say Alaska state officials are not involved in their work, which includes three State Department continental shelf mapping expeditions off Alaska over the past two summers. They took place far beyond any territory over which the state has jurisdiction, department spokeswoman Barbara Moore said Wednesday.

The data gathered could bolster any underwater territorial claims the U.S. might make, though any formal claim is at least a couple years off, Moore said. The Russian claim under "Law of the Sea" has not yet been decided.

While Alaska would be affected by any eventual resource development, like oil discoveries, the state is not participating in their work, she said.

"Folks have been working not with the state as much as the Native communities because of the work going on in the Arctic," Moore said.

Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) On Sarah Palin

Charley James — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:38:34 EDT

The unfortunate thing about Eve Ensler is that she wrote a famous play about vaginas. That's enough for any Fundamentalist to write her off, but they are not her target. She is trying to reach other, ordinary hockey moms who think Sarah Palin is just like them – not.

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for The Vagina Monologues, wrote this about Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the Arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which, for me, is part of one story connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming is melting of Arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and thus is a good example of how many babies abstinence makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library and has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well end up President of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands.

This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent.

I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

How Green Is Sarah Palin?

Jacqueline from Crawfordsville, IN — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:09:04 EDT

According to info reported on greenopolis, Sarah Palin is about as green as Dick Cheney in furs. And as for the other sense of "green," we'll keep an eye on the outcome of her trooper-gate scandal. Judging from local Alaska TV-news coverage of the ongoing inquiry into charges that Sarah Palin abused her power as governor, she may have already lied on tape at least once. Doesn't John McCain read the papers or ask his flaks to Google his shortlists? Just last month Wall St Journal reported:

Alaska's Palin Faces Probe
Star GOP Governor
To Be Investigated
For Abuse of Office By JIM CARLTON
July 31, 2008; Page A4

Back to Palin's positions on the environment -- Sarah is not "no change" from John McCain, she is much, much worse, a hail mary pass to the Republican Party's extreme right Pat Buchan and Kar Rovian base:

* A considerable amount of her family's income comes from the gas company BP as her husband is an oil production operator for BP..
* Palin said that she would sue the Interior Department over its decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species. Her litigation came from fear because Alaska produces fossil fuels, although the wording of the Interior Department decision went to great lengths to ward off any new restrictions on oil and gas drilling.
* Palin supports the aerial hunting of wolves and bears
* Palin spent $400,000 of state money to fund a media campaign to try and convince Alaskans to support aerial shooting
* Sarah Palin opposed a statewide ballot initiative to prohibit or restrict new mining operations that could affect salmon in the state's streams and rivers
* She pushed to build a natural-gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope
* She is pushing to open Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling
* She has created a committee to forge Alaska's climate-change strategy, and has made Alaska an observer of the Western Climate Initiative
* She opposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies
http://greenopolis.com/myopolis/blogs/david-d/how-green-sarah-palin

Ice with That?

Henry M — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:09:50 EDT

~~Good thing there's no global warming.~~

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=polar-ice-shelf-break&sc=rss

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6448424689829247689&ei=YYtqSI6yKJDuqwLkyez1DA&hl=en

And from those Middle-of-the-Road-Traitors, ABC News: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6448424689829247689&ei=YYtqSI6yKJDuqwLkyez1DA&hl=en Hmm, energy-savings by shipping through the new Northwest Passage?

Umm.... Good thing that McSame/Foc "News" suggestions that drilling for oil in protected areas would be good for the psychology of the country's psychology, it can be stopped if we elect Obama!

Henry M

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4gddt

Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years

Niki in Bristol, PA — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:11:14 EDT

This article in The Guardian from the UK struck me as extremely important news that the US will probably not report! Passing along - What can we do locally to let people know of the closing-in-fast future of our Earth??

Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years

David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian
Wednesday September 5 2007

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver which released the figures, said: "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice." The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

Dr Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice, then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children's lifetimes."

The new figures show that sea ice extent is currently down to 4.4m square kilometres (1.7m square miles) and still falling. The previous record low was 5.3m square kilometres in September 2005. From 1979 to 2000 the average sea ice extent was 7.7m square kilometres. The minimum extent of sea ice usually occurs late in September each year, as the freezing Arctic winter begins to bite.

The sea ice usually then begins to freeze again over the winter. But Dr Serreze said that would be difficult this year. "This summer we've got all this open water and added heat going into the ocean. That is going to make it much harder for the ice to grow back. What we've seen this year sets us up for an even worse year next year." The winter ice has already failed to make up for increased losses in the summer in each of the last two years.

Changes in wind and ocean circulation patterns can help reduce sea ice extent, but Dr Serreze said the main culprit was man-made global warming. "The rules are starting to change and what's changing the rules is the input of greenhouse gases. This year puts the exclamation mark on a series of record lows that tell us something is happening."

The dramatic loss is further bad news for the region's wildlife which relies on the sea ice, such as polar bears. The animals use its coastal fringes to find food, and as the summer ice retreats to the north, they must swim further to hunt for seals. Some colonies of bears have already showed signs of malnutrition and biologists say there could be a severe drop in their population within a few decades, though they may not go extinct.

Yesterday's announcement will also increase political interest in the Arctic, with a number of countries currently jostling to exploit the oil and gas reserves believed to lie under the ocean, which could become more accessible as the icy cover retreats. Last month Russia claimed a huge area around the north pole, and Denmark and Canada are preparing similar claims, which rely on showing that a chain of underwater mountains that runs across the region are connected to their respective continental shelves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/05/climatechange.sciencenews?gusrc=rss