Sunday, August 11th, 2013
JOHN VIDAL, - The Observer (U.K.)
Stephan: I constantly tell you that water is destiny. This is what I mean. If all the dams proposed are built the countries of Asia will collectively destroy their environment in a major way; a self-inflicted wound that may take generations to repair. And this report is mostly about surface water.
This same madness can be seen in Fracking, which deals with sub-surface water. Pure underground aquifers are the national equivalent of an inheritance received from a relative one never knew. Polluting them so that a small number of people and corporations can get even richer than they already are is neither compassionate nor life-affirming. It is evil.
Click through to see the graphic, which is very helpful.
The future of the world’s most famous mountain range could be endangered by a vast dam-building project, as a risky regional race for water resources takes place in Asia.
New academic research shows that India, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan are engaged in a huge ‘water grab’ in the Himalayas, as they seek new sources of electricity to power their economies. Taken together, the countries have plans for more than 400 hydro dams which, if built, could together provide more than 160,000MW of electricity – three times more than the UK uses.
In addition, China has plans for around 100 dams to generate a similar amount of power from major rivers rising in Tibet. A further 60 or more dams are being planned for the Mekong river which also rises in Tibet and flows south through south-east Asia.
Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world’s deepest valleys. Many of the proposed dams would be among the tallest in the world, able to generate more than 4,000MW, as much as the Hoover dam on the Colorado […]
No Comments
Sunday, August 11th, 2013
MICHAEL T. KLARE, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: This is the best explanation of what carbon energy interests are trying to do that I have read. Because they don't properly acknowledge climate change, they do not see that it is going to soon be obvious to even the meanest intelligence that we cannot go forward with carbon. But the damage... President Obama's failure to effectively act in a compassionate and life-affirming way on this issue is one of the reasons I find him so disappointing.
Don’t for a Second Imagine We’re Heading for an Era of Renewable Energy.
hen it comes to energy and economics in the climate-change era, nothing is what it seems. Most of us believe (or want to believe) that the second carbon era, the Age of Oil, will soon be superseded by the Age of Renewables, just as oil had long since superseded the Age of Coal. President Obama offered exactly this vision in a much-praised June address on climate change. True, fossil fuels will be needed a little bit longer, he indicated, but soon enough they will be overtaken by renewable forms of energy.
Many other experts share this view, assuring us that increased reliance on ‘clean’ natural gas combined with expanded investments in wind and solar power will permit a smooth transition to a green energy future in which humanity will no longer be pouring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All this sounds promising indeed. There is only one fly in the ointment: it is not, in fact, the path we are presently headed down. The energy industry is not investing in any significant way in renewables. Instead, it is pouring its historic […]
No Comments
Sunday, August 11th, 2013
Stephan: If you read a novel that described the current surveillance state in America, and its interaction with increasingly militarized law enforcement agencies, you would see clearly that the U.S. is a soft police state. All reviewers of such a book would exclaim this. Just as happened with Orwell's 1984.
But, because we are living it day-by-day, people seem to hardly notice.
So the paranoid hippie pot dealer you knew in college was right all along: The feds really were after him. In the latest post-Snowden bombshell about the extent and consequences of government spying, we learned from Reuters reporters this week that a secret branch of the DEA called the Special Operations Division – so secret that nearly everything about it is classified, including the size of its budget and the location of its office – has been using the immense pools of data collected by the NSA, CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to go after American citizens for ordinary drug crimes. Law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, have been coached to conceal the existence of the program and the source of the information by creating what’s called a ‘parallel construction,
No Comments
Saturday, August 10th, 2013
MIKE ADAMS, - The Watchers
Stephan: This represents an extraordinarily enlightened action on the part of the government of India. Would that the rest of the world would do likewise. I would much rather see dolphins and whales as recognized sentient beings, as opposed to corporations.
More details at:
http://www.fundageek.com/project/detail/853/The-Science-of-Dolphin-Fr...
You can also adopt a wild dolphin and help raise money for important scientific research! See:
www.AdoptaWildDolphin.com
Dolphins have been granted ‘non-human personhood’ status by the government of India, making India the first nation in the world to recognize the unique intelligence and self-awareness of the cetacean order (a class of aquatic mammals).
The decision was announced by India’s Minister of the Environment and Forests which also outlawed captive dolphin shows. The ministry added that dolphins ‘should have their own specific rights.’ (SOURCE)
Dolphins are extremely intelligent mammals with a highly-developed social structure. Recent research shows that dolphins call each other by name and can remember the unique name whistles from old ‘friends’ heard just one time 20 years ago.
Dolphins choose their own unique name — a series of complex whistles — before they reach one year of age. From that point forward, all the other dolphins in their social group call them by that unique name.
Dolphins use highly-complex grammatical communications
Previous research has shown that dolphins have human-like self awareness and engage in highly complex communications with other dolphins using grammatical sentence structure. Yes, dolphins have their own complete language, much like humans. (See the Dolphin Communication Project.) The main difference between dolphin language and human language is that dolphins aren’t vaccinated as young children and injected with […]
No Comments
Saturday, August 10th, 2013
Stephan: Here is some fascinating new neurological research. Click through to see the very helpful pictures and charts.
Source: 'Non-Invasive Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI): Establishing Functional Links between Two Brains' (Yoo et al ; Open-access; doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060410)
Imagine if you will
No Comments
