rojosramblings

I normally just link top articles but this one is too much:

18 Years on, Exxon Valdez Oil Still Pours into Alaskan Waters Study concludes threat to ecology could last decades Tanker's owner dismisses report as insignificant

by Ewen MacAskill

Crude oil is still polluting Alaskan waters almost 18 years after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, according to a study by US government scientists to be published in two weeks. The study, an advance of which was released on Wednesday, found more than 26,600 gallons of oil remaining at Prince William Sound. Researchers say it is declining at a rate of only 4% a year and even slower in the Gulf of Alaska. The disclosure came as Exxon Mobil posted the largest annual profit by a US company, $39.5bn (£20bn) yesterday. Predictions that the pollution would have disappeared by now have proved to be inaccurate, and the damaged ecosystem is struggling to recover. The lingering oil, lying below the surface, affects wildlife and the general environment, and "degrades the wilderness character" of protected lands, the report says. The study, by experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is to be published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal. The scientists conclude: "Such persistence can pose a contact hazard to inter-tidally foraging sea otters, sea ducks, and shore birds, create a chronic source of low-level contamination, discourage subsistence in a region where use is heavy, and degrade the wilderness character of protected lands." The oil spill in 1989, the worst single incident of pollution in US history, covered 1,200 miles of pristine shoreline. The slow rate of dispersal means the oil could persist for decades more below the surface near some beaches. Mark Boudreaux, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil said yesterday the company would review the findings. "Based on our initial review of the report, there is nothing newsworthy or significant in the report that has not already been addressed," he said. "The existence of some small amounts of residual oil in Prince William Sound on about two-tenths of 1% of the shore of the sound is not a surprise, is not disputed and was fully anticipated." Mr Boudreaux said Exxon has supported more than 350 independent studies whose scientists have found no evidence of significant long-term impact.

This is right on the heels of the fact that fat bastard himself -- Lee Raymond -- had apyed scientists X amount of money to dispute global warming.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

This story is also from the Guardian.

So here we have the American Leader in alternative energy development, the Bush appointee paying people off to lie about the reality of global warming. Have I gone nuts, or is this an egregious offense to the American public. This should be a major American WTF moment. Yes, letter writing to our congressmen and Senators would be a great. Maybe Wayne Allard will listen here in Colorado. (Ha!)

So let's see - America for all practical purposes, is paying scientists to lie. The government is forcing climatologists to lie if they work for the government, as has been revealed in the past two weeks. This is in direct contradiction to the release of the U.N. report on global warming where it states that it will take centuries for the climate to normalize.

How long will it take the American public to realize we have been snowed by Business and business interests and puppet governments--and Bush wants to appoint people like Lee Raymond as government officials to keep out ideas pure. (oh, excuse me, it is to cut down administrative overhead.)

What an asshole!

rojomojo

rojosramblings

I normally just link top articles but this one is too much:

18 Years on, Exxon Valdez Oil Still Pours into Alaskan Waters Study concludes threat to ecology could last decades Tanker's owner dismisses report as insignificant

by Ewen MacAskill

Crude oil is still polluting Alaskan waters almost 18 years after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, according to a study by US government scientists to be published in two weeks. The study, an advance of which was released on Wednesday, found more than 26,600 gallons of oil remaining at Prince William Sound. Researchers say it is declining at a rate of only 4% a year and even slower in the Gulf of Alaska. The disclosure came as Exxon Mobil posted the largest annual profit by a US company, $39.5bn (£20bn) yesterday. Predictions that the pollution would have disappeared by now have proved to be inaccurate, and the damaged ecosystem is struggling to recover. The lingering oil, lying below the surface, affects wildlife and the general environment, and "degrades the wilderness character" of protected lands, the report says. The study, by experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is to be published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal. The scientists conclude: "Such persistence can pose a contact hazard to inter-tidally foraging sea otters, sea ducks, and shore birds, create a chronic source of low-level contamination, discourage subsistence in a region where use is heavy, and degrade the wilderness character of protected lands." The oil spill in 1989, the worst single incident of pollution in US history, covered 1,200 miles of pristine shoreline. The slow rate of dispersal means the oil could persist for decades more below the surface near some beaches. Mark Boudreaux, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil said yesterday the company would review the findings. "Based on our initial review of the report, there is nothing newsworthy or significant in the report that has not already been addressed," he said. "The existence of some small amounts of residual oil in Prince William Sound on about two-tenths of 1% of the shore of the sound is not a surprise, is not disputed and was fully anticipated." Mr Boudreaux said Exxon has supported more than 350 independent studies whose scientists have found no evidence of significant long-term impact.

This is right on the heels of the fact that fat bastard himself -- Lee Raymond -- had apyed scientists X amount of money to dispute global warming.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

This story is also from the Guardian.

So here we have the American Leader in alternative energy development, the Bush appointee paying people off to lie about the reality of global warming. Have I gone nuts, or is this an egregious offense to the American public. This should be a major American WTF moment. Yes, letter writing to our congressmen and Senators would be a great. Maybe Wayne Allard will listen here in Colorado. (Ha!)

So let's see - America for all practical purposes, is paying scientists to lie. The government is forcing climatologists to lie if they work for the government, as has been revealed in the past two weeks. This is in direct contradiction to the release of the U.N. report on global warming where it states that it will take centuries for the climate to normalize.

How long will it take the American public to realize we have been snowed by Business and business interests and puppet governments--and Bush wants to appoint people like Lee Raymond as government officials to keep out ideas pure. (oh, excuse me, it is to cut down administrative overhead.)

What an asshole!

rojomojo

rojosramblings

really additions to my previous post.

This is quite an interesting turn of events. Isn't Australia one of the few countries not working with the Kyoto protocol? The Great Barrier Reef will be dead in approximately 25 years if global warming continues. Do you think this may cause a slight local and probably larger problem in the Pacific food-chain. No, I have no evidence and link for that, but having an area the size of Germany die off may be a problem. We know that there will still be aquatic life around the projected-to-be-dead coral. There will be lots of places to hide. But as acidification continues (the process is not explained in the posted link, but here is a Wikipedia version) You will have a die off of autorophs, heterotrophs and zooplanktons which form the bottom end of the aquatic food chain. This will naturally effect the upper end of the already stressed marine food chain which many humans rely on for food. Sounds like a global catastrophe in the making. Many people (think Japan) rely on the marine food chain.

What strikes me is that the thrust of the article is the financial ruin that the tourism industry will face as people don't come to see the Great Barrier reef. Let me get this straight--people fly to Australia to see the reef. Flying causes a boat load (no pun intended) of CO2 emissions per person, Australia refuses to participate in Kyoto treaty, and we worry about the financial implications.

Am I being callous, or maybe we should be concerned about the hit to the global food chain, or maybe be compassionate about the hundreds of species dead (if you were a polytheistic animist you might be concerned about the spiritual impact of hundreds of dead species on the totality of the world spirit) , or if you were practical you might wonder about human consciousness and why it seems acceptable to kill the world so we can have "more stuff" (please don't get me started--the Denver Rocky Mountain News featured trailer park chic in Aspen where mobile homes are being designed with marble, etc and are going for more than $1,000,000.--more money than brains. this from an economy where the Home Depot ex-CEO gets a $140,000,000 "golden parachute" for failure. Please, please, please let me ruin a company. I'll do it for only $2,000,000. I come cheap.)

Another concern might be the rising sea levels. They are already going up 1" per decade and in a few decades will displace 40% of the population of Bengladesh. But, no, we'll talk about the economic impact, or discuss whether global warming is real or not. That debate is over and should have been for years. The U.S. government has already been implicated in making scientists shut up about the problem. And without making all the necessary connections, oil companies are making record profits (by the way, oil prices are being lowered so alternative and renewable energy prices are not furiously being researched and world residents aren't pissed at Arabs and energy conglomerates. They don't want us to be motivated to change or revolt, just keep consuming), instead of a real world leadership looking at renewable energy we just open more oil and gas leases. Wasn't it St. Reagan (he of trickle down economy fame) who symbolically removed the solar panels from the White House? And yet we trust free marketers and Repubilcans? Doh!

It makes me happy to drive through Iowa and see small towns such as Stuart having their own wind turbines. Or Colorado (yes, the same Colorado with $1,000,000 + mobile homes) passing bills requiring renewable energy of X percent within 10 years.

rojoThis is quite an interesting turn of events. Isn't Australia one of the few countries not working with the Kyoto protocol? The Great Barrier Reef will be dead in approximately 25 years if global warming continues. Do you think this may cause a slight local and probably larger problem in the Pacific food-chain. No, I have no evidence and link for that, but having an area the size of Germany die off may be a problem. We know that there will still be aquatic life around the projected-to-be-dead coral. There will be lots of places to hide. But as acidification continues (the process is not explained in the posted link, but here is a Wikipedia version) You will have a die off of autorophs, heterotrophs and zooplanktons which form the bottom end of the aquatic food chain. This will naturally effect the upper end of the already stressed marine food chain which many humans rely on for food. Sounds like a global catastrophe in the making. Many people (think Japan) rely on the marine food chain.

What strikes me is that the thrust of the article is the financial ruin that the tourism industry will face as people don't come to see the Great Barrier reef. Let me get this straight--people fly to Australia to see the reef. Flying causes a boat load (no pun intended) of CO2 emissions per person, Australia refuses to participate in Kyoto treaty, and we worry about the financial implications.

Am I being callous, or maybe we should be concerned about the hit to the global food chain, or maybe be compassionate about the hundreds of species dead (if you were a polytheistic animist you might be concerned about the spiritual impact of hundreds of dead species on the totality of the world spirit) , or if you were practical you might wonder about human consciousness and why it seems acceptable to kill the world so we can have "more stuff" (please don't get me started--the Denver Rocky Mountain News featured trailer park chic in Aspen where mobile homes are being designed with marble, etc and are going for more than $1,000,000.--more money than brains. this from an economy where the Home Depot ex-CEO gets a $140,000,000 "golden parachute" for failure. Please, please, please let me ruin a company. I'll do it for only $2,000,000. I come cheap.)

Another concern might be the rising sea levels. They are already going up 1" per decade and in a few decades will displace 40% of the population of Bengladesh. But, no, we'll talk about the economic impact, or discuss whether global warming is real or not. That debate is over and should have been for years. The U.S. government has already been implicated in making scientists shut up about the problem. And without making all the necessary connections, oil companies are making record profits (by the way, oil prices are being lowered so alternative and renewable energy prices are not furiously being researched and world residents aren't pissed at Arabs and energy conglomerates. They don't want us to be motivated to change or revolt, just keep consuming), instead of a real world leadership looking at renewable energy we just open more oil and gas leases. Wasn't it St. Reagan (he of trickle down economy fame) who symbolically removed the solar panels from the White House? And yet we trust free marketers and Repubilcans? Doh!

It makes me happy to drive through Iowa and see small towns such as Stuart having their own wind turbines. Or Colorado (yes, the same Colorado with $1,000,000 + mobile homes) passing bills requiring renewable energy of X percent within 10 years.

rojo

rojosramblings

This is quite an interesting turn of events. Isn't Australia one of the few countries not working with the Kyoto protocol? The Great Barrier Reef will be dead in approximately 25 years if global warming continues. Do you think this may cause a slight local and probably larger problem in the Pacific food-chain. No, I have no evidence and link for that, but having an area the size of Germany die off may be a problem. We know that there will still be aquatic life around the projected-to-be-dead coral. There will be lots of places to hide. But as acidification continues (the process is not explained in the posted link, but here is a Wikipedia version) You will have a die off of autorophs, heterotrophs and zooplanktons which form the bottom end of the aquatic food chain. This will naturally effect the upper end of the already stressed marine food chain which many humans rely on for food. Sounds like a global catastrophe in the making. Many people (think Japan) rely on the marine food chain.

What strikes me is that the thrust of the article is the financial ruin that the tourism industry will face as people don't come to see the Great Barrier reef. Let me get this straight--people fly to Australia to see the reef. Flying causes a boat load (no pun intended) of CO2 emissions per person, Australia refuses to participate in Kyoto treaty, and we worry about the financial implications.

Am I being callous, or maybe we should be concerned about the hit to the global food chain, or maybe be compassionate about the hundreds of species dead (if you were a polytheistic animist you might be concerned about the spiritual impact of hundreds of dead species on the totality of the world spirit) , or if you were practical you might wonder about human consciousness and why it seems acceptable to kill the world so we can have "more stuff" (please don't get me started--the Denver Rocky Mountain News featured trailer park chic in Aspen where mobile homes are being designed with marble, etc and are going for more than $1,000,000.--more money than brains. this from an economy where the Home Depot ex-CEO gets a $140,000,000 "golden parachute" for failure. Please let me ruin a company. I'll do it for only $2,000,000. I come cheap.)

Another concern might be the rising sea levels. They are already going up 1" per decade and in a few decades will displace 40% of the population of Bengladesh. But, no, we'll talk about the economic impact, or discuss whether global warming is real or not. That debate is over and should have been for years. The U.S. government has already been implicated in making scientists shut up about the problem. And without making all the necessary connections, oil companies are making record profits (by the way, oil prices are being lowered so alternative and renewable energy prices are not furiously being researched and world residents aren't pissed at Arabs. They don't want us to be motivated to change.), instead of a real world leadership looking at renewable energy we just open more oil and gas leases. It makes me happy to drive through Iowa and see small towns such as Stuart having their own wind turbines. Or Colorado (yes, the same Colorado with $1,000,000 + mobile homes) passing bills requiring renewable energy of X percent within 10 years.

rojo

rojosramblings

Talk is cheap. I have been meaning to lose weight and become a better person for years. and then the White House says this--

"Certainly the president has been, and is still, committed to ocean conservation," said Kristen Hellmer, spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality. "He's got new funding for ocean initiatives."

in response to the C- grade (up from a sterling D+ the last grading period) about taking care of the ocean. Given that many large cities as little as ten years ago put primary treated sewage into the ocean and some (like Anchorage) still do, we probably deserve. For those interested, primary treated sewage basically is a big screen (a bar screen) that takes out some tampon applicators, rags, toilet paper, used birth control devices (use your imagination), feminine hygiene products. Then there is a big still chamber called a clarifier that settles maybe 50-60% of the dookie and other solids. The rest is chlorinated and flows out to sea. Yum!

rojo

rojosramblings

Into the mouths of babes and their inevitable messes. A necessity for every thinking family.

rojo

rojosramblings

An excerpt from the NY Times--

"In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities."

I shudder to think how ideologically pure the political appointees must be. Imagine the EPA being run by an ideologically pure developer whose whole economic theories devolve down to "the earth is here for our use and profit." Or an oil man in charge of alternative energy. Or a Dobson clone in charge of the subdepartment of mental health (wherein we can define any sexual preference we don't like as lascivious and a mental ill.) Or creationists in charge of geology spouting the Grand Canyon is only 6,000 years old (ooops, that's been already done.) I seem to remember that one of the account managers for the Iraq war was a 20-something politically pure appointee with no accounting experience. Billions lost later, we ask--hey, where's our money and it is so lost that we cannot even find a paper trail, but here stories of people playing football with wads of $100 bills.

These people will make sure we are ideologically pure in all our thoughts. The book 1984 had a large part of that in it. But what worries me as a country and a culture is not only the greed that would be unleashed leading to a great economy where the wealth is really only in the hands of a few (workers bees can suck hind tit), but that our country would be in the ideological hands of religious bigots. These bigots, in contrast to the rest of the world, would ensure superstition (yes, I consider evangelical Christianity as superstition, a sickness of a mind that wants everything simple and does not need to take responsibility for their actions. I mean, someone else died so I could sin and then be repentant. Just depends on how big of a sin you want to commit and then say you are sorry for. Before I go off on a rant, I will simply say, to emphasize this point, gay marriage is not so much a threat to the institution of marriage as say divorce and adultery.) would be the thought patterns, the zeitgeist, the true belief.

Then America would further fall behind the world in science and be a rich (for a while), stupid, bigoted country. The world would pass us by as we watch American Idol.

But we would be ideologically pure as stew in our own feces.

That is truly visionary leadership. Christ, how fast can 2008 get here.

rojo

rojosramblings

An excerpt from the NY Times--

"In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities."

I shudder to think how ideologically pure the political appointees must be. Imagine the EPA being run by an ideologically pure developer whose whole economic theories devolve down to "the earth is here for our use and profit." Or an oil man in charge of alternative energy. Or a Dobson clone in charge of the subdepartment of mental health (wherein we can define any sexual preference we don't like as lascivious and a mental ill.) Or creationists in charge of geology spouting the Grand Canyon is only 6,000 years old (ooops, that's been already done.) I seem to remember that one of the account managers for the Iraq war was a 20-something politically pure appointee with no accounting experience. Billions lost later, we ask--hey, where's our money and it is so lost that we cannot even find a paper trail, but here stories of people playing football with wads of $100 bills.

These people will make sure we are ideologically pure in all our thoughts. The book 1984 had a large part of that in it. But what worries me as a country and a culture is not only the greed that would be unleashed leading to a great economy where the wealth is really only in the hands of a few (workers bees can suck hind tit), but that our country would be in the ideological hands of religious bigots. These bigots, in contrast to the rest of the world, would ensure superstition (yes, I consider evangelical Christianity as superstition, a sickness of a mind that wants everything simple and does not need to take responsibility for their actions. I mean, someone else died so I could sin and then be repentant. Just depends on how big of a sin you want to commit and then say you are sorry for. Before I go off on a rant, I will simply say, to emphasize this point, gay marriage is not so much a threat to the institution of marriage as say divorce and adultery.) would be the thought patterns, the zeitgeist, the true belief.

Then America would further fall behind the world in science and be a rich (for a while), stupid, bigoted country. The world would pass us by as we watch American Idol.

But we would be ideologically pure as stew in our own feces.

That is truly visionary leadership. Christ, how fast can 2008 get here.

rojo

rojosramblings

It is sooo nice to be old enuff to not worree about decreese in my bran function caused by eating polluted fud.

rojo

rojosramblings

The deficit will be able to be paid down by 2017--I think that is what was said.

Okay, here is where we were in 2000 before things changed.

Today, President Clinton will announce that The United States is on course to eliminate its public debt (my note--debt, not just the annual budgetary deficit) within the next decade. The Administration also announced that we are projected to pay down $237 billion in debt in 2001. Due in part to a strong economy and the President’s commitment to fiscal discipline, the federal fiscal condition has improved for an unprecedented nine consecutive years. Based upon today’s new economic and budget projections for the coming 10 years from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB):

• The United States can be debt-free this decade. By dedicating the entire budget surplus to debt reduction, The United States can eliminate its publicly held debt by FY 2009. The next Administration and Congress will need to decide what priorities to address: eliminate the public debt by FY 2010 and still use part of the surplus for responsible tax cuts, prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients, and investments in key priorities like education and health care.
• The national debt is projected to be paid down by $237 billion this year. Under the budget President Clinton and Congress completed two weeks ago, the U.S. is projected to pay down $237 billion of the national debt in FY 2001.

So we can begin to pay off the deficit that was almost all gone before Boy Wonder took over.

CAFE Limits--since the Carter administration we changed light truck limits. Big fuckin' whoop. If Americans bought smaller cars maybe we could afford less foreign dependence. I live in truck country where the size of a man's penis is judged by the size of his truck. I had a VW in 1969 that got 38 mpg, currently a Prism that gets 37 mpg. If we had progressively raised these limits since Carter...

Let's see photovoltaics on the White House and Solar Panels and restore a sense of symbolic commitment.

Well, at least he congratulated Nancy Pelosi.

and now 9/11-- No comment.

He may have immigration right.

Enough for now.

rojomojo

rojosramblings

The deficit will be able to be paid down by 2017--I think that is what was said.

Okay, here is where we were in 2000 before things changed.

Today, President Clinton will announce that The United States is on course to eliminate its public debt (my note--debt, not just the annual budgetary deficit) within the next decade. The Administration also announced that we are projected to pay down $237 billion in debt in 2001. Due in part to a strong economy and the President’s commitment to fiscal discipline, the federal fiscal condition has improved for an unprecedented nine consecutive years. Based upon today’s new economic and budget projections for the coming 10 years from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB):

• The United States can be debt-free this decade. By dedicating the entire budget surplus to debt reduction, The United States can eliminate its publicly held debt by FY 2009. The next Administration and Congress will need to decide what priorities to address: eliminate the public debt by FY 2010 and still use part of the surplus for responsible tax cuts, prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients, and investments in key priorities like education and health care.
• The national debt is projected to be paid down by $237 billion this year. Under the budget President Clinton and Congress completed two weeks ago, the U.S. is projected to pay down $237 billion of the national debt in FY 2001.

So we can begin to pay off the deficit that was almost all gone before Boy Wonder took over.

CAFE Limits--since the Carter administration we changed light truck limits. Big fuckin' whoop. If Americans bought smaller cars maybe we could afford less foreign dependence. I live in truck country where the size of a man's penis is judged by the size of his truck. I had a VW in 1969 that got 38 mpg, currently a Prism that gets 37 mpg. If we had progressively raised these limits since Carter...

Let's see photovoltaics on the White House and Solar Panels and restore a sense of symbolic commitment.

Well, at least he congratulated Nancy Pelosi.

and now 9/11-- No comment.

He may have immigration right.

Enough for now.

rojomojo

rojosramblings

We have all these esteemed frontrunners declaring they will run for President in 2008. I just happened to see what happened in Congress this week. Has anyone ever mentioned Pelosi as a candidate? If not, why? Is it women prejudice? Italian prejudice? She just gets things done.

rojomojo

rojosramblings

"Love is a beautiful thing.
Who knows what the new day will bring?
It makes you want to dance.
It makes you want to holler."

the subdudes

rojosramblings

From yesterday's press conference--

"MR. SNOW: I think millions of Americans believe that this war is winnable, and I think, furthermore, that it's important to rebuild the sense of political unity. One of the things the President has often said is, the only way we lose if we lose our will. And it is clear that there have been political debates in this country...."

uh huh. Yes, millions believe the war is winnable. Out of roughly 298, 500,000, there are a few millions who still think the war is winnable. Even if some of the pollsters are correct and there is 25% who think so (being very generous here) that is at most 75,000,000. This is a definite minority. This is like saying 5% of the citizens of the US believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, so it must be considered a valid theory of the creation of all.

The worst part about this is that Galileo was considered a heretic. Valikovsky was considered a nut-case, yet now his theories of the possible cause of an Ice Age and the end of dinosaurs may be correct. You cannot condemn minority opinion and feel grand about yourself. Why the next thing you know minorities like women will want equal rights and pay. Single people and divorced people being in the minority will want equal rights with traditional Christian families in terms of child-rearing.

What's that? women outnumber men in America and there are more divorced Christians than traditional families. Don't bother me with facts, I am on a roll. I mean how could a majority work for less pay and not have equal rights. Or how could a majority of non-traditional Christians actually listen to traditional ministers as if there word were law? Someone in the media really must not be doing their job. There might be stories there.

Sarcastic digression ended. I know there have been times when less than 20% of popular opinion has been correct. But, look at the track record of this administration. Energy policy--promises of alternative energy funding and cleaner air. Ooops, that didn't work and when records are requested as to how energy policy was formed, they become records sealed in Dick Cheney's personal security library. Start a war because of weapons of mass destruction somewhere north, south, east or west of Tikrit. see also, somewhere over the rainbow. Al Qeda links to Hussein, who hated them. Didn't even know Sunnis and Shia were in opposition to each other, worse than Klan Christians and Catholics in the 30s. The list of blunders is endless and the public patience and acceptance have grown very thin. It is one thing to bluster about earmarks and pet projects placed into bills, but not very different from funding a war outside the general budget. I wish my charge card creditors would allow me to fund things outside my general budget. Again, I digress.

No, the history of mistakes is unbelievable. and now, we are asked to think 20,000 more unfunded troops will clear things up in a little while. NO!!! Maybe politics and talking instead of bluster and brute force are an option. If these guys really need to see how big there dicks are (oh, excuse me--I mean how grandiose their legacy is by bringing democracy to the oppressed), maybe they should find Virginia Pipeline (as in 4,000 men lay Virginia Pipeline.) and since when is 20,000 more troops a surge, not an escalation?

Reality check, please.

rojo

rojosramblings

After a day of more shoveling, doing mountain rounds and getting my truck stuck in snow halfway up more door and having to dig out it is best to remember that not all days are like this.

One of my favorite bands playing at the Denver Botanical Gardens--okay the trip in and set up, but it is where I love to go in the spring and see what I need to add to my front yard, which is rapidly disappearing in a stream of perennials. Soon, no more grass. Yahoo!

rojo

rojosramblings

Why net neutrality is a necessity.

Without that, can you even begin to imagine why and how corporate America will try to control the bandwidth, if the above story is any indication of corporate reaction. Now, they just have the money to hire lawyers. If they could control how much bandwidth people get--oh my goodness.

rojo

rojosramblings

"President Bush said Wednesday he’ll submit a five-year budget proposal that will balance the federal budget by 2012 and called on Congress to sharply cut back on costly pet projects hidden in spending bills."

Okay, when the hell will this pet project of aggressive invasion of a sovereign country become one for the budget instead of asking for under the table (or off the record) appropriations?

Just a question.

rojo

rojosramblings

Three things I heard today that made me smile--

John Edwards calling escalation the McCain plan. Brilliant!!!!!

The local Air America affiliate advertising Ed Schultz as "mainstream" radio instead of progressive radio. It is about time we started defining the debate.

The office manager at my dentist, "I love inventions, Technology is cool!" I am reminded of Doonesbury as he was having Zonker describe California-speak. William Blake's poetry "The moon in heaven's bower, Sits and smiles on the night." was shortened to "Wow, man, look at the moon!"

rojo

rojosramblings

In one of my last posts I mentioned an article that showed that the levels of vanilla and cinnamon increased in Puget Sound over the holidays. Well, we can guess where that came from, can’t we? Some things may not be fully digestible and end up “out there.” Also, kitchen wastes and so on make it into the municipal wastewater plants across the country. And out.

Remember, we rely on microbes to process all our liquid and semi-liquid wastes. These wastes make it to wastewater treatment plants that grow a variety of “bugs” (trade nickname) and these microbes take whatever nutrients are left and use them for their growth. These bugs are then wasted, thickened and composted and/or land applied. Really good fertilizer, as a general rule. And clarified, partially disinfected liquid (one hopes) makes it back into the streams.

Here in Colorado, the stream standards are starting to be more stringent so that basically trout can live in wastewater treatment plant effluent. Also, nutrients like phosphates and nitrates are being controlled so algae can be controlled. Nitrates are also being controlled at levels below what could cause “blue baby syndrome” in newborns or nursing moms. This is a good thing, even though it requires more control and cost. In the plains of Colorado, nitrate levels in drinking water found in alluvial wells can be very high because of excess nitrogen released by wastewater treatment plants and from overapplication of ammonia fertilizer. The former can be controlled, so it is a critical component of discharge limits now.

Clarified liquor or effluent (what comes out of the plant) can be chemically safe from drinking water standards, but lately new problems have cropped up. Americans are over-consumers. That is a fact. One thing we overconsume is medicines. People take antibiotics for everything. And if you take too much it enters the waste stream. This is not regulated as a discharge. Hell, this has only been recognized in the past few years. Tuberculosis and other bacterial infections are getting resistant to antibiotics. People change to other antibiotics, stronger ones, or take much more of the primary ones. These antibiotics exit your body and go into the waste stream. The waste stream is treated by “bugs” and the antibiotics are bug-killers. They pass through the wastewater plants untreated and out into the effluent and out into the world making antibiotic- resistant bacteria in the environment the survivors. So we have some antibiotic-resistant bacteria making it into the food chain. This is exacerbated by wastewater facilities trying to find chemical-free means of disinfecting wastewater effluent.

Shellfish are filter feeders. They eat zooplankton and phytoplankton. Well, if their food chain is bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics, what are the chances, through natural selection, that some really bad food poisoning will be a possibility. This is not to scare everyone, but it will happen, and probably only in small numbers. Kind of like getting E. Coli from spinach. Only it becomes more common at some time.

Another problem from wastewater plants is other drugs and substances getting through. A current worry is endocrine disruptors.

An endocrine disruptor is a synthetic chemical that when absorbed into the body either mimics or blocks hormones and disrupts the body's normal functions. This disruption can happen through altering normal hormone levels, halting or stimulating the production of hormones, or changing the way hormones travel through the body, thus affecting the functions that these hormones control. Chemicals that are known human endocrine disruptors include diethylstilbesterol (the drug DES), dioxin, PCBs, DDT, and some other pesticides. Many chemicals, particularly pesticides and plasticizers, are suspected endocrine disruptors based on limited animal studies.

Pesticides, plasticizers (solvents and plastics and hydrocarbons) and excess hormones that people take; these are the things we unthinkingly take in and waste that affect the environment. While I am a proponent of birth control, if you take too much or women take too much hormone replacement therapy dosages, then the hormones make the waste stream and out into the hydrological cycle. Yes, even soy products can do this. This has a very strange effect on aquatic life. There have been too may instances of fish and frogs downstream from a freshwater wastewater treatment plant outfall having an abnormally high percentage of females. In the South Platte River outside the outfall of the Denver Metro Wastewater Treatment Facility, over 99% of the fish were female or dual-sexed. Yes, I would say their hormonal balance was a little disturbed. And having one guy fish per hundred is not the same to fish as it is to humans, so don’t think they are having a good time.

• What evidence is there that environmental contaminants are causing endocrine disruption in humans or wildlife?

Recent studies of wildlife, including alligators, birds, and fish, have investigated the relationship between chemical exposure and reproductive problems. Many of these studies have shown that exposure to high doses can result in malformed reproductive organs, consistent with sex hormone imbalance at a critical stage of fetal development. Studies where very high doses of dioxin were fed directly to pregnant rats show effects on sexual development, sperm production, and sexual behavior in male pups. Directly feeding very high doses of DDT to rats has also shown adverse effects on sexual development. The dramatic results of these high-dose studies have led to speculation by toxicologists that the risk to reproductive success, associated with exposure to much lower levels of some chemicals in the environment, may be unacceptable.

In humans, a recent epidemiology study suggesting that sperm counts have declined by almost 50% over the past 50 years, and that this decline is associated with increased exposure to synthetic chemicals, has made the headlines. Other epidemiologists who have examined the same data do not reach this conclusion. Direct evidence of chemical effects on male fertility has been demonstrated in the study of workers involved in the manufacture of the older pesticides dibromochloropropane and leptophos (neither currently registered in the US). Again, such direct evidence is the result of exposure to very high doses. (I apologize, but I have lost the web reference for this article.)

On this New Year’s Day, please remember, do not take more than you need. Also, remember you affect your environment. And if you are looking at regulations for wastewater treatment facilities to further protect the environment—they are about 15-20 years out.

rojomojo

rojosramblings

To all--

Have a great New Year and in celebration, a clip of one of the most talented rock bands ever, playing in 10/8 time.

Okay, so you can't dance to it, maybe. But as California Guitar Trio said as they played it one night, "Clap along."

For something with a steadier beat, try this one.

When Jaco Pastorius added his considerable talents to Weather Report. Happy Musical New Year's!

rojomojo