[Biofuel] The Death of 'Green' Satellites
http://www.alternet.org/environment/62927/ The Death of 'Green' Satellites By Annalee Newitz, AlterNet Posted on September 18, 2007, Printed on September 19, 2007 Government-funded satellite systems and sensor networks are supposed to be spook stuff, technologies for surveillance and social control. They're the electric eyes that follow us and turn our private lives into sitcoms for bored intelligence agents, right? Wrong. They may be spooky, but satellite and sensor networks are some of the most powerful tools for studying the way humans are impacting climate change. They allow scientists to create maps showing how land use affects climate, as well as how chemical emissions are linked to rainfall, water levels, temperature fluctuations and ozone depletion. And now, according to a distressing report last week from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the government is cutting funds to the tools that climate researchers need most. In this report, researchers write that the National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System has been severely downsized, eliminating several key climate instruments, while rollout on four new systems for measuring atmospheric changes has been delayed or cancelled. At the same time, the government has failed to maintain observatories on the ground devoted to climate change and is scaling back on an ocean climate sensor system called the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean buoy array. Parts of the CCSP's report are essentially a plea for more sensor networks. We need good data from these networks to create realistic models of global climate change, the researchers say. But more important, scientists need that data to figure out the best ways for people to intervene and make the future greener. That's why we need sensor networks sampling the air from high above the Arctic and across the ocean, proving that cutting back on carbon emissions can lower temperatures or prevent hurricanes from forming. We need good satellite maps showing exactly how urban developments are destroying local forests. For these reasons, the report emphasizes that the biggest problem faced by the CCSP is an inability to implement policies for change. CCSP researchers are frustrated that the data they've compiled rarely make it into policy recommendations to the government. And only $30 million of the CCSP's $1.7 billion dollar budget is allocated to programs that investigate the impact of environmental changes on human beings. Just as news of this report was breaking, New York environmental group Blacksmith Institute released a list of the 10 most polluted places on Earth. Created by the group's technical advisory board, and based entirely on how much impact the pollution has on local human populations, the list is topped by regions in the industrializing world: Sumjayit, an industrial manufacturing city in Azerbaijan; Linfen and Tianying, coal and lead mining towns in China; and Sukinda and Vapi, chemical mining and manufacturing areas in India. Also included are similar areas in Russia and Peru. People in the regions highlighted by the Blacksmith Institute are getting cancer and lung disease, as well as passing birth defects on to their children. If we want to prevent the entire world from becoming like Sumjayit -- and indeed, to prevent people in Sumjayit from suffering the worst side effects of industrialization -- we need the very kinds of data that CCSP scientists worry we can no longer get. As climate sensor networks decay, and green satellites die, so too does the hope that we can build a better climate model, a sane climate model based on how changing social behaviors. So if you think that having one less satellite in the sky is a good idea, think again. And if you think that the only thing a sensor network can do is invade privacy, think again about that too. As ever, the problem isn't with technology; it's with who controls it. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/62927/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You From Terrorist Livestock
http://www.alternet.org/rights/62858/ U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You From Terrorist Livestock By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown Posted on September 19, 2007, Printed on September 19, 2007 A friend of mine tells a story about the political demise in the 1950s of an entrenched Oklahoma state representative, whom we'll call Elmer Goodenuff. Rep. Goodenuff, who chaired the ag committee, had been in office so long that he'd grown tight with the capitol crowd, but he had lost touch with the folks back in his rural district. Thus, when some supermarket lobbyists asked him to sponsor a bill requiring that all egg producers be regulated by the state and have to pay an egg-grading fee, he saw no problem with the measure. It was for the public's health, the lobbyists told him. His constituents, however, did have a problem with it. In those days, many small farmers made their spending money by selling eggs fresh out of their chicken yards -- yet here was ol' Elmer hitting them with a bureaucratic rigmarole and a fee that would make their little egg stands more trouble than they were worth. It turns out that the supermarket lobbyists' real agenda had been to get rid of all these bothersome mom-and-pop competitors. Suddenly, the chairman found himself facing political opposition -- a young lawyer from the home district had filed to run against him. Shortly afterward, the two candidates came together for a debate at the county fair. The lawyer spoke first, limiting his talk to only three sentences: Hidy folks, I'm so-and-so, and I'll make you a good state representative. If you give me the chance, I'll fight for you ... not for the special interests. Now I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Goodenuff, so he can explain his egg bill to you. Still clueless, Elmer did try to explain it, but his explanation was hardly good enough -- the more he talked, the more votes he lost. His egg bill retired him. Chicken trackers I expect that many of today's state legislators and Congress critters -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- are going to experience their own Goodenuff comeuppance if they continue to go along with special interests pushing a new regulatory program that is presently roiling rural America into a full-tilt revolt. This is yet another of those sneaky programs blindly authorized under the screaming banner of homeland security. It has received practically no mass-media coverage, but I'm sure you'll be excited to learn that the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) sets up a whole new surveillance program to defend you and yours from a rather odd national security threat: terrorist chickens. And terrorist cows, horses, pigs, sheep, llamas ... and so on. Advanced under the benign guise of protecting public health from outbreaks of animal-borne diseases, this program is intended to tag and track every farm animal in America from birth to death. It is, to say the least, intrusive. NAIS would compel all owners of such animals to register their premises and personal information in a federal database, to buy microchip devices and attach them to every single one of their animals (each of which gets its very own 15-digit federal ID number), to log and report each and every event in the life of each animal, to pay fees for the privilege of having their location and animals registered, and to sit still for fines of up to $1,000 a day for any noncompliance. This is Animal Farm meets the Marx Brothers! It would be one thing if this were meant for the massive factory farms run by agribusiness conglomerates, which account for the vast number of disease outbreaks. After all, they have corporate staffs, computer networks, and existing systems of inventory tracking. But no -- rather than focus on the big boys that cause the big harm, NAIS targets hundreds of thousands of small farms, homesteaders, organic producers, hobbyists ... and maybe even you. Me, you shriek?! Yes. If you keep a pony for your kids or board a couple of riding horses, if you've got a few chickens in your backyard, if you've got a potbellied pig or a pet goose, if your youngsters are raising a half-dozen ducks as part of a 4-H club project, if you maintain a buffalo or a goat just for the fun of it -- indeed, if you have any farm animals, NAIS wants you in its computerized grasp. Every farm, home, horse stable, or other domicile of these animals would have to have its address and precise GPS coordinates filed into the system's central computer, along with the name, phone number, and other personal data of the owner/ renter of the premises. Owners of the animals would have to tag every one of them (luckily, fish ponds are not included!) with an approved tracking mechanism -- most likely by implanting radio-frequency ID chips into them. Then comes the burden of logging and reporting the events in each animal's life. These not only include sales and deaths, but also any
[Biofuel] Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62273/ Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81 By Nancy Scola, AlterNet Posted on September 19, 2007, Printed on September 19, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/62273/ Anyone hearing about central India's ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides, http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNewsstoryID =2007-07-06T163214Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-283485-1.xml where growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip, has to be horrified. But among the more disturbed must be the once-grand poobah of post-invasion Iraq, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer. Why Bremer? Because Indian farmers are choosing death after finding themselves caught in a loop of crop failure and debt rooted in genetically modified and patented agriculture -- the same farming model that Bremer introduced to Iraq during his tenure as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American body that ruled the new Iraq in its chaotic early days. In his 400 days of service as CPA administrator, Bremer issued a series of directives known collectively as the 100 Orders. Bremer's orders set up the building blocks of the new Iraq, and among them is Order 81 [PDF], officially titled Amendments to Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, enacted by Bremer on April 26, 2004. Order 81 generated very little press attention when it was issued. And what coverage it did spark tended to get the details wrong. Reports claimed that what the United States' man in Iraq had done was no less than tell each and every Iraqi farmer -- growers who had been tilling the soil of Mesopotamia for thousands of years -- that from here on out they could not reuse seeds from their fields or trade seeds with their neighbors, but instead they would be required to purchase all of their seeds from the likes of U.S. agriculture conglomerates like Monsanto. That's not quite right. Order 81 wasn't that draconian, and it was not so clearly a colonial mandate. In fact, the edict was more or less a legal tweak. What Order 81 did was to establish the strong intellectual property protections on seed and plant products that a company like the St. Louis-based Monsanto -- purveyors of genetically modified (GM) seeds and other patented agricultural goods -- requires before they'll set up shop in a new market like the new Iraq. With these new protections, Iraq was open for business. In short, Order 81 was Bremer's way of telling Monsanto that the same conditions had been created in Iraq that had led to the company's stunning successes in India. In issuing Order 81, Bremer didn't order Iraqi farmers to march over to the closest Monsanto-supplied shop and stock up. But if Monsanto's experience in India is any guide, he didn't need to. Here's the way it works in India. In the central region of Vidarbha, for example, Monsanto salesmen travel from village to village touting the tremendous, game-changing benefits of Bt cotton, Monsanto's genetically modified seed sold in India under the Bollgard® label. The salesmen tell farmers of the amazing yields other Vidarbha growers have enjoyed while using their products, plastering villages with posters detailing True Stories of Farmers Who Have Sown Bt Cotton. Old-fashioned cotton seeds pale in comparison to Monsanto's patented wonder seeds, say the salesmen, as much as an average old steer is humbled by a fine Jersey cow. Part of the trick to Bt cotton's remarkable promise, say the salesmen, is that Bollgard® was genetically engineered in the lab to contain bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that the company claims drastically reduces the need for pesticides. When pesticides are needed, Bt cotton plants are Roundup® Ready -- a Monsanto designation meaning that the plants can be drowned in the company's signature herbicide, none the worse for wear. (Roundup® mercilessly kills nonengineered plants.) Sounds great, right? The catch is that Bollgard® and Roundup® cost real money. And so Vidarbha's farmers, somewhat desperate to grow the anemic profit margin that comes with raising cotton in that dry and dusty region, have rushed to both banks and local moneylenders to secure the cash needed to get on board with Monsanto. Of a $3,000 bank loan a Vidarbha farmer might take out, as much as half might go to purchasing a growing season's worth of Bt seeds. And the same goes the next season, and the next season after that. In traditional agricultural, farmers can recycle seeds from one harvest to plant the next, or swap seeds with their neighbors at little or no cost. But when it comes to engineered seeds like Bt cotton, Monsanto owns the tiny speck of intellectual property inside each hull, and thus controls the patent. And a farmer wishing to reuse seeds from a Monsanto plant must pay to relicense them from the company each and every growing season. But
Re: [Biofuel] U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You From TerroristLivestock
Excellent article. NAIS is much closer to concepts presented in the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn than even those fighting against it seem to realize. One of the stumbling blocks facing the total defeat of this plan is the, still fractured, fight against it. I have been amazed to read some of the individual letters coming from dissenters .. these letters were actually saying .. well, ok, but we want Organic farms exempt, or American horses are not considered food so they shouldn't be considered Buried in the NAIS bill is the prevision of a 10 Kilometer radius KILL ZONE that does NOT specify species to be killed .. as an American (I'm Not A Patriot .. I'm an American), I needed to look up exactly what amount of an area this was this talking about and for those who also do not know, in American talk it's approximately an 8 mile radius .. 8 MILE RADIUS OF DEAD ANIMALS!!! What this would do would give the powers that want to be, the right to come into my home and kill my dogs and cats if there were a dis-ease outbreak in the CHICKEN Factory Farm ISE located about 4 or 5 miles (as the crow flies). There is absolutely no plan to just stop with farm animals .. they want them all .. and the different groups fighting against them need to become ONE Very Loud Voice. Mary Lynn Rev. Mary Lynn Schmidt, Ordained Minister ONE SPIRIT ONE HEART: Facilitator/Consultant for Alternative Healing Modalities and Practitioner utilizing various modalities which can include TTouch . Reiki . Pet Loss Grief Counseling . Animal Behavior Modification . Shamanic Spiritual Travel . Behavior Problems . Psionic Energy Practitioner . Radionics . Herbs . Dowsing . Nutrition . Homeopathy . Polarity . THE ANIMAL CONNECTION HEALING MODALITIES http://members.tripod.com/~MLSchmidt/ From: Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Subject: [Biofuel] U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You From TerroristLivestock Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:44:55 +0900 http://www.alternet.org/rights/62858/ U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You From Terrorist Livestock By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown Posted on September 19, 2007, Printed on September 19, 2007 A friend of mine tells a story about the political demise in the 1950s of an entrenched Oklahoma state representative, whom we'll call Elmer Goodenuff. Rep. Goodenuff, who chaired the ag committee, had been in office so long that he'd grown tight with the capitol crowd, but he had lost touch with the folks back in his rural district. Thus, when some supermarket lobbyists asked him to sponsor a bill requiring that all egg producers be regulated by the state and have to pay an egg-grading fee, he saw no problem with the measure. It was for the public's health, the lobbyists told him. His constituents, however, did have a problem with it. In those days, many small farmers made their spending money by selling eggs fresh out of their chicken yards -- yet here was ol' Elmer hitting them with a bureaucratic rigmarole and a fee that would make their little egg stands more trouble than they were worth. It turns out that the supermarket lobbyists' real agenda had been to get rid of all these bothersome mom-and-pop competitors. Suddenly, the chairman found himself facing political opposition -- a young lawyer from the home district had filed to run against him. Shortly afterward, the two candidates came together for a debate at the county fair. The lawyer spoke first, limiting his talk to only three sentences: Hidy folks, I'm so-and-so, and I'll make you a good state representative. If you give me the chance, I'll fight for you ... not for the special interests. Now I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Goodenuff, so he can explain his egg bill to you. Still clueless, Elmer did try to explain it, but his explanation was hardly good enough -- the more he talked, the more votes he lost. His egg bill retired him. Chicken trackers I expect that many of today's state legislators and Congress critters -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- are going to experience their own Goodenuff comeuppance if they continue to go along with special interests pushing a new regulatory program that is presently roiling rural America into a full-tilt revolt. This is yet another of those sneaky programs blindly authorized under the screaming banner of homeland security. It has received practically no mass-media coverage, but I'm sure you'll be excited to learn that the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) sets up a whole new surveillance program to defend you and yours from a rather odd national security threat: terrorist chickens. And terrorist cows, horses, pigs, sheep, llamas ... and so on. Advanced under the benign guise of protecting public health from outbreaks of animal-borne diseases, this program is intended to tag and track every farm animal in America from birth to death. It is, to say the least,
[Biofuel] new topic
Hello all, my time here in Ageratec has provided me with some observations which I would like the list members to share with me: We are in the business of producing energy from sources which originally are meant for food purposes or food waste. It is obvious that this new energy sector has very few of the traditional energy suppliers, rather new actors in this field of green energy. Here in Sweden the farmers are buying wind mills, selling the power to the power distributors, the paper and pulp industry is burning the black liqueur residue and producing power from it, both for own consumption and for sales. Some farmers are growing canola, producing biodiesel from it for own consumption and for sales. The ethanol industry has begun to shift from approaching ethanol as a solvent to treating it as fuel. There is a new combinative proposing that wood should be used for producing methanol for energy purposes. None of these areas have mineral oil companies, nuclear, coal or hydro power companies or any other traditional suppliers of energy involved in their business. This teaches us that the new energy will be dominated by new actors, which means that there is a great need for knowledge and know-how both for the energy products as such, and also for the energy business itself. This demand exsists not only within the actors, but also within the authorities, the traditional actors and the industry used to produce food etc. The same development will no doubt strike the lubricant industry. The new green lubricants will no doubt be forced out into the market by new actors. So we are actually into a process which will change the power balance, intensely stalled by the traditional actors and anybody who gains from their power. This may be a long hard struggle, be the outcome is given on forehand: If we want to consume energy it has to be renewable. We may have to decrease our consumption, but that does not mean that our welfare or independence will suffer. On the contrary, this is a major stimulation for new technology, new solutions and - for new actors. So - hang in there, even to your nails. Jan Warnqvist -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070919/625bf774/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] new topic
On 9/19/07, Jan Warnqvist [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello all, my time here in Ageratec has provided me with some observations which I would like the list members to share with me: We are in the business of producing energy from sources which originally are meant for food purposes or food waste. It is obvious that this new energy sector has very few of the traditional energy suppliers, rather new actors in this field of green energy. I don't think the renewable energy industry is nearly as profitable as the existing oil industry. The investments in renewables by big oil is only to comply with mandatory state and federal requirements. If renewables ever take off and actually threaten their profits the oil giants will have tens of billions of dollars available to buyout everyone, and in the end they own it all again. It is happening with ethanol production. What started as cooperatively owned ethanol plants financed by groups of local farmers has grown into highly capitalized publicly owned corporations not owned by farmers at all. Non-farm investors are buy up ethanol production plants and farmers are back to growing a commodity crop and suffering the whims of the market and speculators. Here in Sweden the farmers are buying wind mills, selling the power to the power distributors, the paper and pulp industry is burning the black liqueur residue and producing power from it, both for own consumption and for sales. Some farmers are growing canola, producing biodiesel from it for own consumption and for sales. The ethanol industry has begun to shift from approaching ethanol as a solvent to treating it as fuel. There is a new combinative proposing that wood should be used for producing methanol for energy purposes. None of these areas have mineral oil companies, nuclear, coal or hydro power companies or any other traditional suppliers of energy involved in their business. This teaches us that the new energy will be dominated by new actors, which means that there is a great need for knowledge and know-how both for the energy products as such, and also for the energy business itself. This demand exsists not only within the actors, but also within the authorities, the traditional actors and the industry used to produce food etc. The same development will no doubt strike the lubricant industry. The new green lubricants will no doubt be forced out into the market by new actors. So we are actually into a process which will change the power balance, intensely stalled by the traditional actors and anybody who gains from their power. This may be a long hard struggle, be the outcome is given on forehand: If we want to consume energy it has to be renewable. We may have to decrease our consumption, but that does not mean that our welfare or independence will suffer. On the contrary, this is a major stimulation for new technology, new solutions and - for new actors. So - hang in there, even to your nails. Jan Warnqvist -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070919/625bf774/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070919/0261f1f1/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] [Fwd: Re: FW: Live from congress]
Original Message did you notice the Onion logo in the lower right? Not until you mentioned it. Cleverly hidden in the C of C-SPAN. Doug ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
