Just two weeks ago, Ken Buesseler at WHOI launched a brilliant crowdfunded campaign ‘Our Radioactive Ocean” to measure radiation off the West Coast of the US. And not surprisingly, it was a huge success. In just two weeks, they have funded, sampled and tested sites in California and Washington. And the results from the first four sites are now posted on their website.

Young scientists from California sampling seawater for the people [screenshot from ourradioactiveoceans.org]

Young scientists from California sampling seawater for the people [screenshot from ourradioactiveoceans.org]
And the results are that radioactive seawater from Fukushima has not been detected at any of the 4 sites that were sampled. Seawater was measured for both Cesium-137 and Cesium-134. By comparing the relative concentrations of both isotopes they could figure out the source of the radioisotopes. They found very low-levels of Cesium-137, but Cesium-134 was below detectable levels, indicating the Cesium is originally from atomic bomb-testing in the 1960s rather than Fukushima.

What does this mean for the west coast right now? In the immortal words of Ken Buesseler himself…

‘The reason why we see such low levels of radiation in these samples is because the plume is not here […]

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The economic picture is looking brighter these days. The federal government announced Thursday that economic growth had picked up to its fastest pace in two years, while employment growth over the past five months has averaged a healthy 185,000 new jobs. But as evidenced by a report out Thursday from the Corporation for Enterprise Development, nearly half of Americans are living in a state of ‘persistent economic security,” that makes it ‘difficult to look beyond immediate needs and plan for a more secure future.”

In other words, too many of us are living paycheck to paycheck. The CFED calls these folks ‘liquid asset poor,” and its report finds that 44% of Americans are living with less than $5,887 in savings for a family of four. The plight of these folks is compounded by the fact that the recession ravaged many Americans’ credit scores to the point that now 56% percent of us have subprime credit. That means that if emergencies arise, many Americans are forced to resort to high-interest debt from credit cards or payday loans.

And this financial insecurity isn’t just affected the lower classes. According to the CFED, one-quarter of middle-class households also fall into the category of ‘liquid asset […]

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The frozen opalescent lake and thin, gray sky fade together into white light where the horizon should be. Tall, skeletal grasses shiver on the beach in a wind that makes any sliver of exposed skin burn. The Arni J. Richter, an icebreaking ferry, is about to pull away from Northport Pier for its second and final trip of the day to Washington Island. It’s loaded with food and fuel for the more than 700 hardy residents who call the remote island, just north of Door County peninsula in Wisconsin, home.

People have lived on Washington Island for over 160 years. They’re proud of their tight-knit community and their Icelandic heritage. But life on the island is threatened. For the past 15 years, islanders have watched Lake Michigan slowly disappear. Last January, the lake hit a record low, 29 inches below the long-term average as measured since 1918. The Richter Ferry was just inches away from grounding in some spots along its increasingly treacherous six-mile route to the island.

The Great Lakes, which contain one-fifth of the world’s above-ground fresh water supply, are sometimes referred to as America’s ‘northern coast.” As communities along the rest of the nation’s shorelines brace for rising waters […]

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WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency monitored the communications of other governments ahead of and during the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to the latest document from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The document, with portions marked “top secret,” indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that “analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries’ preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies.”

“Second Party partners” refers to the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with which the U.S. has an intelligence-sharing relationship. “While the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference remains uncertain, signals intelligence will undoubtedly play a significant role in keeping our negotiators as well informed as possible throughout the 2-week event,” the document says.

The Huffington Post published the documents Wednesday night in coordination with the Danish […]

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Dump your vitamin and mineral supplements? We say no. We’re still taking ours, despite some new studies bashing multivitamin benefits. We’re also ignoring headlines like “Multivitamins a Waste of Money” and “Your Multivitamins aren’t Doing a D**n Thing” — and we think you should, too.

We’re convinced that some vitamin supplements have plenty of health-protecting benefits — especially if you’re over 50, eat a less-than-perfect diet, are a woman of reproductive age or are among the tens of millions of Americans who take nutrient-zapping drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes or to tame stomach acid. That’s a lot of folks. So why the opposition to multivitamins?

One metastudy conducted for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force looked at 27 supplement studies involving more than 400,000 people. It found no benefit for longevity, cancer prevention or heart health in people without nutrient deficiencies.

The second followed 5,947 guys for 12 years and found that multivitamins didn’t sharpen thinking or memory in men who ate healthy diets.

The third tracked more than 1,700 heart-attack survivors and, again, found no heart-health benefits for those who took a multivitamin, but plenty of people dropped out of that study. All three studies appeared in the same issue of the […]

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