Stephan: Many of you wrote to tell me you would commit to the Power of Ten Pledge, asking me to put something up that had the pledge, to which you could direct people. A place where people could leave comments, make connections, and see how many were interested. So today, thanks to the work of Beth Alexander who, along with Jeff Vander Clute takes care of my sites, including SR, we have just such a place on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joinpoweroften
I'll look for you there.
-- Stephan
No Comments
JEFF BARNARD, - Denver Post/The Associated Press
Stephan: Frogs, and toads, like bees, are metaphorically canaries in the mine. We also live in this mine, earth's biosphere. The bees are in desperate shape. Now it has become clear that the same is happening to the Amphibians. By their disappearance in the environment we are being told that the ecosystems of the earth are moving into crisis. We live in the earth, not on it, embedded in the biosphere, and part of the great interdependent, interconnected network of life. The impact on each of us of the change that is taking place is not going to be good.
The full published study discussed in this report is to be found on: PLOS One: http://bit.ly/12Nxina
Why are we doing this? Because the structure of our society has as its first priority -- profit. It is a measure of how enthrall to profit we are that we will not acknowledge what is happening. This story is an update of a trend I first published on Tuesday 20 September 2005: 'The Frogs are Trying to Tell Us Something.'
In the eight years since that first report, things have only gotten worse. And this alarming and important trend has gotten almost no attention.
GRANTS PASS, OREGON — A new study has determined for the first time just how quickly frogs and other amphibians are disappearing around the United States, and the news is not good.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday that populations of frogs, salamanders and toads have been vanishing from places where they live at a rate of 3.7 percent a year.
That puts them on a path to disappearing from half their inhabited sites nationwide in 20 years.
USGS ecologist Michael J. Adams said the alarming news is that even species thought to be doing OK are declining, though at a slower rate, 2.7 percent a year.
‘These are really ancient species that have been surviving a long time on earth through all kinds of changes,’ Adams said. ‘It’s just a concern to see.’
The data showed that species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of declining species were disappearing from sites at an even higher rate, 11.6 percent a year. That would result in half the sites being unoccupied in six years. A third of amphibian species are on the red list.
‘They just disappear,’ Admas said. ‘Populations are going away.’
It has been known for a long time that amphibians are […]
No Comments
LAYNE CAMERON , PEGGY OSTROM , and ANNE WILEY, - Michigan State University
Stephan: More warnings from the ecosystem.
Remains of endangered Hawaiian petrels – both ancient and modern – show how drastically today’s open seas fish menu has changed.
A research team, led by Michigan State University and Smithsonian Institution scientists, analyzed the bones of Hawaiian petrels – birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the open waters of the Pacific. They found that the substantial change in petrels’ eating habits, eating prey that are lower rather than higher in the food chain, coincides with the growth of industrialized fishing.
The birds’ dramatic shift in diet, shown in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leaves scientists pondering the fate of petrels as well as wondering how many other species face similar challenges.
‘Our bone record is alarming because it suggests that open-ocean food webs are changing on a large scale due to human influence,
No Comments
CLAIRE ROBINSON and JONATHAN LATHAM, - Independent Science News/Truth-out
Stephan: Objective, unbiased science is under attack. In food, as this report shows, it is Nongeographical Corporate States such as Monsanto. This fully sourced and documented report spells it out. It picks up the story I covered a few months ago in my essay, The Great Experiment: Genetically Modified Organisms, Scientific Integrity, and National Wellness. See: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2812%2900222-4/fulltext .)
The same things are happening in the research literature of the pharmaceutical, energy, and extraction industries. Greed has become the dominant emotion of our culture. We have an addiction, and are junkies.
Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, Smith was challenged to publish an issue of the BMJ exclusively comprising papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. He replied, ‘How do you know I haven’t already done it?
No Comments
, - Environmental Working Group
Stephan: Here is the latest on the collapse of safety in the American food system. I urge you to download the entire report, SUPERBUGS
INVADE AMERICAN SUPERMARKETS by the Environmental Working Group. I am using a shorter story here because the April 2013 report is simply too long for SR, but I think everyone would be well advised to read the full report. It is to be found at:
http://static.ewg.org/reports/2013/meateaters/ewg_meat_and_antibiotics_report2013.pdf
The report by the Environmental Working Group reveals, yet again, how our society has degenerated to the point that profit is the only priority, and the health of the American people, and the animals they eat is secondary, if considered at all.
If you don't download the report, at least click through to see the charts and tables that accompany this short form. They will bring home the reality of this disaster in the making.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are now common in the meat aisles of American supermarkets. These so-called superbugs can trigger foodborne illness and infections that are hard to treat.
An analysis by the Environmental Working Group has determined that government tests of raw supermarket meat published last February 5 detected antibiotic-resistant bacteria in:
Detected Percents
These little-noticed tests, the most recent in a series conducted by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, a joint project of the federal Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that supermarket meat samples collected in 2011 harbored significant amounts of the superbug versions of salmonella and Campylobacter, which together cause 3.6 million cases of food poisoning a year.
Moreover, the researchers found that some 53 percent of raw chicken samples collected in 2011 were tainted with an antibiotic-resistant form of Escherichia coli, or E. coli, a microbe that normally inhabits feces. Certain strains of E. coli can cause diarrhea, urinary tract infections and pneumonia. The extent of antibiotic-resistant E. coli on chicken is alarming because bacteria readily share antibiotic-resistance genes.
Not surprisingly, superbugs spawned by antibiotic misuse — and now pervasive in the meat Americans buy — have become a direct source of […]
No Comments
