A Russian expedition expected to send divers into the Arctic waters around the pole yesterday or today.
This development ups the ante for the Canadian Arctic Rangers who protect Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic.
Is the Lomonosov Ridge an extension of the Siberian continental shelf? If so the ridge that runs under the Arctic Ocean would belong to Russia. Russia is wanting to prove that the Arctic is Russian. In fact they are intent on proving the North Pole is an extension of the Russian Coastal shelf.
Malery Kuznetsov, is head of a Russian expedition team who thinks they may even discover as yet…”unknown Organisms”…
If the Arctic is found to be Russian the Geopolitical ramifications would be huge. Some geologists believe as much as 18% of the world’s oil reserve may be underneath the Arctic. 18% of the world’s oil reserve would put the Arctic in the same league as Saudi Arabia.
As it stands now, any country that borders the Arctic Ocean can “exploit” resources within a 200-nautical mile economic zone of its territory. Russia needs to prove with scientific evidence that the Region does belong to them.
Canada and Denmark also have a dog in this fight, both claiming the Lomonosov Ridge is connected to their territories.
The Canadian Government recently placed a $7 Billion C order for new naval patrol vessels. Prime Minister Harper said they would be designed to ‘defend its sovereignty over the Arctic’.
The North West Passage is opening up due to melting ice from ‘Global Warming’. As temperatures heat up the North West Passage could possibly remain open all year. This little development could shave 2,000 nautical miles off the trip from Europe to Asia.
The ramifications of that would be rather astounding. Holy Cod Fish Batman, Oil isn’t the only precious item that could be ‘exploited’ in the Arctic. There are large mineral deposits, coal beds, and perhaps large fish reserves.
As the planet heats up, the cold war may also be heating up.
Photo thanks goes to “Bob Shavelson/Marine Photobank”.
In 1978 The Galapagos Islands were given World Heritage Site status by UNESCO. In 1985 the islands were made a ‘Biosphere Reserve’ in December of 2001 the marine reserve was expanded to 43,500 miles of ocean surrounding the islands.
UNESCO is looking at an application from Ecuador, the territory’s ruler, requesting further protection for the Galapagos.
Tourism is said to be threatening the environment of the islands. Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, has named the islands management as one of his nation’s top priorities.
Correa thinks there needs to be further restrictions placed on tourism and residency permits.
This leaves room for the notion that someone will be keeping an eye on Russ George’s plan to dump 80 tons of iron particles just 350 miles west of The Galapagos, into the ocean. It would seem the more eyes on this plan the better, but Correa seems to be someone that can stare down many giants at one time.
Ecuador appears to be crawling out from under a large and very thick blanket of corruption that has been covering it for a very long time.
Correa ran his Presidential bid seeking a clear mandate for ‘deep political reform’. He seems to be committed to cleaning up the government and stoking social reform. He’s been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and said he would reject the US backed hemispheric free-trade agreement.
It bodes well for the environment of The Galapagos if Correa takes up his mission to protect it, when the administration in the US is still in a state of denial where the environment is concerned.
If compassion for people can be extrapolated to compassion for the beasts of the field and of the oceans then the fragile residents of The Galapagos can hope for some permanent protection. Correa seems to be a man that isn’t afraid to stand up for his idealism.
The people of California have been voting in national elections since 1850 one would think that in 157 years they might be expecting the 2008 Presidential primary.
After all they have had more than a century and a half to find a safe and secure way to cast a vote. They should have seen this election coming.
But, the Secretary of State will now have 5 days to make a decision regarding the unassailability of California Votes in the February Presidential Primary.
Voters in California are finding security for there votes is merely an ‘add-on”. In the same way side impact airbags might be optional on some models, voter security may be optional.
I like to think of options as…you know…things that are optional, not imperative.
Security for my vote, I consider to be imperative like…oh say the stirring wheel on my car.
Secretary of State, Debra Bowen was given a security report on nearly all of California voting machine models on Friday. In order for Bowen to ‘decertify and of the electronic voting machines she has to do so by this coming Friday.
California laws state these matters must be complete 6 months before the, Feb.5 2008, Presidential Primary.
Scant time indeed to make a final decision which many people consider to be life and death, while others judge their right to a free and honest vote the bedrock of democracy.
Following the money, as is always the ’smart’ thing to do, we can’t be surprised to learn that the least egar, least supportive of a free and honest vote are the very elections officials though-out California. Most are unwilling to toss millions of dollars spent on unsecured electronic voting systems down the toilet in favor of an honest and accurate, secure vote for the people of California.
The real mystery comes from why the non-secure systems were purchased in the first place. The word Diebold may be explanation enough.
On Monday in the state capital UC Davis investigators will present their finding on the security of the voting systems UC Davis’ computer science hacking team tested.
Representatives from the electronic voting machine corporations will be allowed to refute the UC Davis findings. Undoubtedly these companies will want to rebuff …as in re-polishing a turd type buffing…
Although Matt Bishop, US Davis computer science professor who led the hacking team, said he found no malicious source code he was ’surprised by the weakness of the security measures, both physical and electronic protecting the voting systems.
How long it would take to write and install ‘malicious source code’ in unsecured voting machines. The elections still 6 months away.
Bishops team of hackers found not only high-tech ways to breach the systems security, but low tech put your hand in situations at the polling places.
Bishop added they been given more time they would have found even more security flaws.
Bishop is a recognized expert in computer security and says “…the security seems like it was added on.”
The hearing on Monday will be open to the pubic. I hope the people of California can muster a vocal contingent…I think the security of my vote is as basic as brakes on my car…neither of which should be add-ons.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that in Japan Sushi Chefs have been driven to experimenting with meats other than tuna to make their delectable. Horse meat anyone?
Tadashi Ymagata, vice chairman of Japan’s national union of sushi chefs puts it this way: “It’s like America running out of steak.”
Blue fin tuna are slow-maturing fish. They simply cannot keep up with demand. Fewer Bluefins are driving the prices out of reach for the average sushi eater.
One wholesaler in a Tokyo fish market said 3 years ago he sold 2 or 3 bluefins everyday, this year he can only find 2 or 3 everyday, this year he can only find 2 or 3 per month to sell.
The fact that NOAA is celebrating its 200th year of service in and of itself is mind boggling. Their website boasts 200 years of science, service and stewardship. Regardless of NOAA’s recommendations, warnings and reports somewhere stewardship of the oceans has fallen through the cracks.
More than 60 countries and the European Commission are engaged in ‘global monitoring network’ Great idea. While chicken little runs around screaming at the top of his lungs ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling.’ who will participate in devising a method to hold up the sky?
We know the ocean is dying. Who will hold up the ocean?
In Australia a company called Clean Seas Tuna Limited is attempting to breed the highly sought-after Bluefin Tuna in captivity.
For the Tuna this may be a little like trying to get drunk on Sherry. It can be done, but it’s a lot of work, and probably not very satisfying. But, for the sushi and sashimi eater it could be very satisfying.
In 2003 researchers near Osaka Japan became the first in the world to successfully spawn southern Bluefin tuna in captivity. They were able to grow that generation of fish to the point where some actually produced their own eggs.
Remember how excited the world was when the first Panda Bears actually bred in captivity? This, for a lot of people is something like that.
In 2004 Marcus Stehr, Clean Seas Tuna Limited, was able to successfully move 6 Bluefin tuna from offshore nets into an onshore dam. At the time Clean Seas Tuna may have been the only company to even attempt such a thing, let alone succeed.
In April 2007 Clean Seas Tuna’s Bluefins started pairing up. Marcus Stehr be lived this to be one more milestone moving toward his quest. The Bluefins were very healthy and they were showing spawning tendencies. The captive tuna’s were also very healthy eaters.
Showing signs of wanting to breed, and having a healthy appetite sounds like the tuna aren’t too depressed with their situation. Maybe fish Viagra keeps their spirits high.
In the Clean Seas’ Arno Bay Breeding facility male Bluefins were given hormone therapy to stimulate their ‘need to breed’. Again, maybe like trying to get drunk on Sherry, as I recall the Panda’s were shown some X rated Panda films. What ever does the trick I suppose. Though the release of sperm by the Southern Bluefin Tuna was captured on film by an underwater video camera.
How are the females responding to all this courtship behaviour? Hagen Stehr Clean Seas Chairman says the broodstock will continue to be monitored and the therapy potentially repeated, with the expectation of completing their reproductive maturation and producing viable (fertilised) eggs.
If all of this turns out to be really successful the Bluefin in the wild may be given a chance to get a little R&R. While they rest up maybe their Bluefin Brethern in captivity can help shoulder the burden of supplying at least some of the world the protein it so desperately craves.
Oh please, someone pass me the Sherry!
Photo thanks (c) Wolcott Henry 2005/Marine Photobank
Kinder Morgan has a facinating past, but not such a facinating present. The pipe that was broken in Burnaby Tuesday is exposing the corrosive underbelly that lies 3 feet below Kinder Morgans tender underbelly.
Reported in The Tyee.ca back in September 2005, Kinder Morgan had been hit with a corrective action order from the US Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA.
What was being reported as ‘A widespread failure’ to address adequately, outside force damage could lead us to the conclusion that when Kinder Morgan blames Burnaby road crews for rupturing its pipe they may be right.
On the flip side of this greasy coin the road crew believes the pipeline was improperly marked. Finding the truth may be more difficult than catching a greased pig at the county fair.
In an explosion November 9, 2004 that killed 5 people and seriously injured 4 others Kinder Morgan was found to have not marked the pipeline properly and was fined $140,000 for their part in the accident. Cal/OSHA found the accident to have been completely preventable.
Indeed if history is repeating itself the pipe broken in Burnaby may not have been properly marked. Interestingly enough one of the arguments for Kinder Morgan to be approved to take over Terasen Inc. inspite of a less than stellar safety record was that the same people maintaining the pipes would still be maintaining them after the sale.
Terasen pipes were transporting natural gas, and propane to about 900,000 customers in British Columbia when in February the company announced it would sell Terasen Inc. to Fortis Inc. for 3.2 billion US, and assumed debt taking Kinder Morgan out of the retail business.
If all of this is putting you to sleep here is where you’ll want to get an extra cup of coffee.
In an interview by Martin Rosenberg, EnergyBizOnline, Scott Parker of Kinder Morgan “Kinder Morgans Pipe” Scott Parker gets it done we learn that 1 week after Enron’s Key Ley was convicted of fraud and conspiracy Richard Kinder announced that he would take Kinder Morgan private in a 13.5 billion dollar deal.
Richard Kinder formed Kinder Morgan in 1997 with $40 million worth of pipeline assets that Ken Lay had unloaded. Kinder jumped the Enron ship’s CEO position in 1996.
Parker says in the interview “Rich Kinder is a very smart individual…our company was in a position to be on very sound footing when Enron’s problems surfaced and the trouble occurred in the industry.”
Very smart indeed. However the pipe that was ruptured by a work crew in Burnaby on tuesday has been in operation since 1953, long before it was a Kinder Morgan pipe.
It’s current capacity prior to the break was 225,000 barrels of crude oil per day and is Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. That’s some pretty old pipe. The records as to where that pipe was buried may certainly have been lost or corrupted over that many years. It would have seemed prudent for Kinder Morgan to aquire accurate maps and records at the time of purchasing the pipe though.
Mother Jones reports Richard Kinder and his wife Nancy served as regional co-chairs for George Bush’s Presidential Exploratory Committee and that Kinder pledged to give the Bush campaign at least $100,000.00. WHOOwah!
Scott Parker says in the EnergyBizOnline interview “Everything we do is buried. It, (The Rockies Express) will have a minimum of a 3-foot cover, so agriculture can occur over the pipe.
As far as I know most places require that a dead human body must be buried at a 6 foot depth. The big question today may be:
Who decided a dead body was 2 times more dangerous to the environment than a pipe traveling thousands of miles across a nation, carrying thousands of barrels of crude oil per day to the environment?
When celebrities and government officials are caught breaking the law in China’s Hunan province it’s handled quite differently than when they are caught breaking the laws in the US, or maybe not…
Officials belonging to the Communist Party of China won’t be getting that promotion they’ve had their eye on if it turns out they have broken the national family planning law which allows a family to only have 1 child.
In the US it feels like every Official belonging to the ‘Party in Power, or just the Party in Crowd’ receives some sort of pardon, commute or reduced sentance.
In the Hunan province the current regulation calls for a fine of double their last years income for having a second baby. Triple that for every extra baby after that. It feels like fines that large would put the brakes on having more than 1 child, but if your income is high enough to raise multiple children, then a 1 time fine may not seem like much. After all would Britney Spears care what a 2nd baby might cost? Especially based on her last years income, did she work last year?
I’m not sure how the ’cause celeb’ works in China, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess that the human experience in many ways is going to be the same regardless of geography. After reading in addition to the nearly 2,000 celebs and officials in Hunan, it was also discovered at least 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisers, 112 business owners and 6 senior intellectuals had broken the law.
Quelle suprise, eh? I’m shocked that the very people that make the laws would break the laws. 1 lawmaker at the national level was found to have 4 mistresses, and 4 children.
Now here’s the rub. A survey conducted by China’s ‘national family planning commission’ showed that the majority of celebrities and rich people have 2 children, 10% of them in fact have 3 children. So what’s a government to do?
Very unlike the USA, to avoid the appearance of impropriety, or looking like one group may be favored over another: EXPOSE THE CULPRITS and raise the fines. Thus giving the appearance of social justice.
In a very ‘like’ the USA CHINAdaily’s report states, “…the official declined to reveal details on enforcing the fines.”
The Hunan province wants to keep its population within 70.1 million by 2010. With Hunan being only the 7th most populated province in China, officials there think the current policy has prevented 30 million births. Wow.
A company in California plans to plow a field under the sea with iron dust.
The company, Planktos says it is “possible to boost the ocean’s absorption of carbon dixoide by increasing the production of phytoplankton”.
How much iron do they want to ‘dump’ into the sea? how about a whopping 80 tons?
Where do they want to ‘dump’ their 80 tons of iron particles? 350 miles west of the Galapagos islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Johannah Barry, Galapagos Conservancey says, “it’s still this extraordinary place that contains 95% of its prehuman diversity.”
Planktos intends to drop iron dust into the ocean, feeding plankton and encouraging growth. The ‘restored’ plankton blooms would generate food for sea life. Some plankton would sink and store carbon deep beneath the surface of the sea.
As I’ve said before, I’m not a rocket scientist, but Russ George says I don’t have to be. According to George, “This isn’t rocket science, it’s ocean farming.”
In what sounds like a story that rivals ‘Citizen Kane’ the protagonist in this novel is Russ George. Planktos plans to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide captured by the plankton and sell it on the nascent carbon-trading markets.
Where Kane inserts the words ‘you provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war” in place of W.R. Hearst’s “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war” one could be tempted to imagine George saying, you provide the market, I’ll provide the credits!
Color me dubios yet again. When I wrap my mind around carbon-trading, it falls back on the dot.com boom and bust.
Worse yet carbon-trading leaves me with the bitter taste of the rich man’s war, and the poor man’s fight. pay either $300 or supply a substitute as happened during the US Civil War. Will people like George ultimately turn our oceans into ‘the 300 credit seas’…amassing carbon-credits with which to buy influence.
From the Galapagos to the Vatican, Russ George is a man that seems to be all over the map. Both literally and figuratviely. Billed as CEO of Planktos, and managing director of its ‘forest subsidiary’, KlimaFa, George recently presented Cardinal Paul Poupard a bushel basket of carbon credits. George hopes to make the Vatican the first carbon-neutral sovereign state.
Whoowah!
This carbon-credit donation is coming from not the iron dumpped off the back of a boat near the Galapagos, but from a new “Vatican Climate Forest” planted in Hungary’s Bukk National Park. The dimensions of said ‘Vatican Climate Forest’ will be determined by the Vatican’s 2007 energy usage. Fair enough.
Frankenplankton and carbon-credits as always, follow the money. This idea isn’t passing my Acid Test, if I have to drink the kool aid, I’m going to chase it with a large dose of skepticism.
From the studio to the beach this scuplture arrives at it’s destination the way most of us do. Via Fossil Fueled machines. Still, watching thses beasts, one has to believe there is a lesson to be learned…
In this video we may gain a small amount of insight into the lesson…
Hang on to your wallet, you maybe about to be mugged.
Any time I go to a government website and see pages that defend, counter, and protest being picked-on…color me dubious. That’s the situation we have going on at the USA’s Security and Prosperity Partnership website.
There you’ll find a prominent Myth vs. Fact page where the U.S. is taking the very mature and ever popular ’school yard approach’to their critics. “oh yeah?” “Well, NAH AH!”
Canada on the other hand is taking an entirely different approach to Canadian critics on their official SPP website. Instead they have compiled letters from the ‘important’ and ‘in the know’ that are singing the praises of the SPP. After all, after you read what Jim Flaherty, had to say about the SPP you would surely have to agree that this plan is a good one. Dig deep and read long to come across what he has to say about the SPP on the official website.
According to the USA’s myth busting page,”The SPP in no way, shape or form considers the creation of a European Union-like structure or a common currency. The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers.”
So is the Amero ‘much ado about nothing?’ If so, why are a growing number of Canadians and Americans not laughing?
A collapse of the American greenback dollar could pave the way for the debut of the ‘Amero’. China would be the key to a collapse. Maurice Strong is still singing the praises of the Chinese economy’s potential and believes “China will soon replace America as economic king,” I’m not sure how much credibility that garners but…
On a side note, my ex-husband has been saying the same thing for years. If it gives anyone any comfort, he is wrong about nearly everything!
