Why is this not on the front page every day??

You will not see any political candidates talking about this elephant in the room. As of the first decade of the 21st century 50,000 species go extinct every year due to human activity. Basically our industrial economy is killing the planet. This rate of species extinction has been rising dramatically through the 20th and now the 21st centuries and has approached the level that was last seen 65 Million years ago when a meteor hit the earth and wiped out a good portion of life on this planet. Here are some links:

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/31_olsond_biodiversity/

As of 2003, only 10% of large fish in the ocean remain:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/05/14/coolsc.disappearingfish/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0515_030515_fishdecline.html

90% of all edible species in the oceans will be gone by around 2048: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-11-02-overfishing-threat_x.htm

A very good summary page of the current species extinction: http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html

An example of why not to trust the military, government, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares_hydrogen_bombs_incident

This article explains how some hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped in Spain during the 1960's when a B-52 crashed. The place still has radiation contamination because the explosives detonated. The only reason that there was not a thermonuclear reaction was that the impact took the bomb out of alignment. This is not in the article but common sense for anyone that knows how these bombs work.

Also, you should read this list of military accidents involving nuclear materials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

I don't support these fucking troops!

You should especially read about Rock Flats in Colorado. They have released a shitload of radiation and material and no one knows about it!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Flats

A tree farm is not a Forest

From: Learning to Listen to the Land
By W. B. Willers
"...it is imperative to understand that humanity has not 'reforested' a single acre, because no one has planted and grown a forest on purpose. What we and the rest of the world have done, and are doing under the guise of "forestry," is trade our forests in on simplistic, economic treee farms. And forests and tree farms are not synonymous, no matter how many high-priced public relations firms try to create the impression that they are."

"Before we can discuss a forest versus a tree farm, we must 'define' forest and forestry and a tree farm and tree-farm management. A forest is the most complex, terrestrial biotic portion of the ecosystem, and is characterized by a predominance of trees. Forestry is the profession that embraces the science, art, and business of managing the forested portion of the ecosystem in a manner that assures the maintenance and sustainability of biological diversity and productivity for perpetual production of amenities, services, and goods for human use. A tree farm is an area under cultivation, a group of cultivated trees. And because a plantation is an economic crop, it is grossly simplified and specialized. Tree-farm management is the profession that embraces the science, art, and business of managing a tree farm--an agricultural crop--to reap the greatest economic returns on the least economic investment, in the shortest possible time."
"Today's 'forest practices' are counter to sustainable forestry because, instead of training foresters to manage forests, we train tree-farm managers to manage the short-rotation, 'economic' tree farms with which we are replacing our native forests. Forests have evolved through the cumulative addition of structural diversity that initiates and maintains process diversity, complexity, and stability through time. We are reversing the rich building process of that diversity, complexity, and stability by replacing native forests with tree farms designed only with narrow, short-term economic considerations."

Ok, so that quote sums up abstractly what is happening in the US national forests and elsewhere in the 'developed world'. I personally have witnessed this, walking through a stand of single species pine, next to a clear cut. No one that has actually seen a real forest would mistake this for forest. However, most forestry students get trained in these tree farms and have not even seen old growth forest. The fact that we even have to use the term "old growth" is sickening, forest means old growth, otherwise it's a tree farm! Cutting trees on a thirty or even fifty year rotation does not a forest make!

I am willing to take anyone on a tour of the Ouachita National Forest and show you how they are transforming a mixed deciduous and coniferous forest into a sterile pine tree farm, that is if I can find any of the original forest left! Right now 97% of the US's forests have been cut. YES 97%! And they are still cutting down the last of the old growth redwoods in California. Over 95% of the redwoods have been cut.

Abundant Forests Website

I saw this website pop up in my Google Ads: http://www.abundantforests.org/

It is such a crock of crap.

If you have been told that there is more forest in the USA today than 100 years ago then you have not been told the complete truth. There are more trees yes, if you count a two year old pine seedling as equal with a three hundred year old oak. More tomorrow.

Reading "Collapse" by Jared Diamond - Post 1

I have read the prologue, Part 1: Modern Montana, and the skipped Chapter 2, 3, 4, 5 in Part 2: Past Societies, then I read the chapters in Part 2 having to deal with Greenland (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8) and chapter 9 which goes over a few success stories. I plan on returning to read the first part of Part 2.

Overall, I think Mr. Diamond does a good job of setting up a framework to analyze how and why certain societies have collapsed. It is somewhat simplistic and I think that most of the time the five point framework does not emphasize the heavy influence of environmental destruction in the societies or maybe it's because he seems overly concerned with balancing the different forces in societal collapse so that he doesn't come up with a majic bullet approach. However, this is a minor criticism.

I found what I consider to be a MAJOR issue with certain statements in Chapter 9 regarding success stories. Here is the quote from page 306:

"In thus devoting one chapter to these three success stories of the New Guinea highlands, Tikopia, and Tokugawa Japan, after seven chapters mostly on societies brought down by deforestation and other environmental problems plus a few other success stories (Orkney, Shetland, Faeroes, Iceland), I'm not implying that success stories constitute rare exceptions. Within the last few centuries Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, France, and other western European countries stabilized and then expanded their forested area by top-down measures, as did Japan. Similarly, about 600 years earlier, the largest and most tightly organized Native American society, the Inca Empire of the Central Andes with tens of millions of subjects under an absolute ruler, carried out massive reafforestation and terracing to halt soil erosion, increase crop yields, and secure its wood supplies."

Well, the western European countries that he mentions that have increased their forested area, where does he think that they get their wood from? Does Mr. Diamond think that they are self-sufficient in wood products? Hell no, they all import most of the wood products that they use. To judge a societies ability to sustainably use it's environment you have to expand to everywhere it obtains resources from. As he pointed out in the section on Montana, that Montana receives most of it's income from out of state and is not and would not be sustainable, similarly, the western European states receive most of their wood products from elsewhere including the Nordic states and the tropics.

Also, most Western European nations idea of a forest is really a mono-crop tree farm similar to what the forest service does in the US. They clear cut a stand of trees, then they plant new trees made up of a single species which they then 'harvest' again in thirty years. A thirty year stand of mono-crop trees is not a forest, that is a tree-farm. A forest can take a thousand years to mature.

Have you heard of Tulia, Texas?

In Tulia, Texas a washed up officer from San Antonio joined the Sheriff's department as a narcotics officer and proceded to take the money he was given to make drug buys and used it to pay off his debts, then trumped up charges on 40 mostly black citizens. With incompetent defense attorneys and prejudiced white juries they started handing out lengthy convictions to this group. Finally, some liberal east cost types got wind of this and came in to their rescue ;-). Given my personal experience, I have no doubt that this thing is routine in the war on drugs. Wake up!.

Check it out:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/law/police/tulia/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158648219X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Efficiency Standards and the Current Administration

I was reading that the federal Department of Energy has been required to update efficieny standards for consumer appliances. This began in 1975 by an act of Congress. However, for some reason the DOE stopped doing this in 2001. Evidently it was no longer a priority. Now this makes it much easier on corporations that manufacture devices that use energy. They do not have to redesign their products as much. Of course consumers end up spending more on energy costs. Believe it or not some people have said that this is due to the Bush Administrations cozy relationship with certain lobbys or the corporate world in general. Or some would say it is because they are pro-business.

Anyway, several state's attorney's general have filed lawsuits and won at least one to force the DOE to follow the law. Pretty ridiculous that they would have to do this, eh? Here are some links:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/states_energy.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-11-13-energy-standards_x.htm

Another, related links on lawsuits against the DOE regarding efficiency:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/energy-efficiency-lawsuit-47121210?src=rss
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/department-of-energy-allowing-americas-energy-to-waste-away.html