A documentary abuzz with ecological portent

A creative exploration of the global honeybee crisis replete with remarkable nature cinematography, some eccentric characters and yet another powerful argument for organic, sustainable agriculture in balance with nature, Taggart Siegel's attractive call-to-action documentary "Queen of the Sun" represents a natural follow-up to his prize-winning "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," albeit never matching the latter's depth, poignancy and humor.

In recent years, "colony collapse disorder," a phenomenon in which worker bees abruptly disappear, has affected more than 5 million hives (each with 50,000-60,000 bees) worldwide. Given that bees pollinate 40 percent of the food humans eat, their vanishing signals huge repercussions for the planet.
Traveling throughout the U.S. and to England, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand, Siegel assembles a large cast of biodynamic beekeepers, scientists and authors who explore some of the reasons for colony collapse and suggest ways it might be remedied; cute animated segments in different styles help to illustrate their points. And throughout the picture, close-up footage of busy bees pollinating brightly colored flowers, swarming in trees and hanging from honeycombs (and from the limbs and faces of beekeepers) keeps audience attention on the amazing insect many cultures once considered sacred.

The Many Shapes of Climate Knowledge

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
After I gave a talk at Pennsylvania State University not long ago, a professor there asked if I could share the slide I use to describe one source of confusion and disputes when people are yelling about “global warming” or “climate change.” Here’s an improved version of the slide, which I hope helps reveal that the issue can’t be meaningfully discussed without getting into some more specifics:
Confusion and division over “global warming” often grows out of the meaninglessness of the phrase on its own. The result is that people with very different world views, in essence, create their own definitions of the term. (This is a point long made by Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia, and is a central theme in his book, “Why We Disagree About Climate Change.”)
When you get more specific, you can see that the level of confidence and range of views* on each aspect of greenhouse-driven climate change, from the basic physics onward, has a different “shape,” as I’ve tried to depict above:
- More CO2 = warming world? Clearcut.
- How much warming? Durably uncertain.
- Extent of sea-level rise by 2100? Higher, but the worst case is durably uncertain — with the latest projections about what scientists were foreseeing in 1988.
- Hurricane patterns? Less clear than a decade ago.
In discussing the slide, I note that all ideas established by science have a shape. You can watch one iteration of my talk here (given at the University of Connecticut.) The structure of DNA is a spike. The process of natural selection is the same. Any discussion of global warming, whether in a news story or debate over policy or Gallup poll question, ideally should start with clarity about what’s being discussed. Otherwise murk and unnecessary confusion will follow.
Our deep, and normal, cultural differences pretty much guarantee this result. Combine that mix of shapes with the “Six Americas” bubbles illustrating the wide array of views of climate change among American citizens and you can see the challenge. Read More

Climate change could spawn more tornadoes As with any major weather disaster these days -- from floods and hurricanes to wildfires and this week's tornado outbreak in the South -- people ask questions about its relation to the huge elephant that's lurking in the corner, global climate change...

NOAA Scientist Rejects Global Warming Link to Tornadoes A top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rejected claims by environmental activists that the outbreak of tornadoes ravaging the American South is related to climate change brought on by global warming...

Connecting the Dots: Global Revolution Is Upon Us

[Part Two of this controversial editorial correlates political events and Earth Changes.--Lori.]

Continued from Connecting the Dots: Earth Changes Are Upon Us: by Sott Editors

As above, so below.

The planet is undergoing dramatic changes. Snowstorms and floods, tornadoes and premature heatwaves abound; swarms of powerful earthquakes are collapsing societies; technological achievements are turning against us because of greed and negligence; and the skies are filled with marvels and portents of the kind we have only read about in the accounts of bygone eras.

The human masses are one more element in the picture of the cosmos, and as such, they are playing their part, quite in tune with the 'battle of the gods' above. Is it because they instinctively feel that the planet's history is reaching a climax? Or have they been provoked by their leaders, who think it's time to tighten the screws of control out of fear of losing their resources and privileges during the trying times now on our doorstep? Read More

2012, Global Warming and Tornadoes

by Hope Bradford
According to Spirit Deity, Kuan Yin (in: The Gods Have Spoken Prophecy 2012 and Beyond, Creating a New Earth ) each of us has “chosen” to live in this specific era, often becoming repeatedly enmeshed in the “not enough, better than and survival of the fittest” beliefs mostly dominating this paradigm. The bliss-fulfillment potential for any personal or mass reality (or even basic progress) will depend upon whether the above limiting beliefs are healed or remain in tact:
“Humans say they’re better than each other. And they say they’re better than nature. It’s ludicrous to compare the intelligence of other living creatures to human intelligence. Plants have enormous intelligences and spirituality. However, the 'better than' mindset greatly contributes to the ongoing environmental destruction.”-Kuan Yin
In trying to determine the validity of this Kuan Yin assertion, you don’t have to look very far. One frequently witnesses the skewed circumstances that can result when the aforementioned limiting beliefs are in play. As the deity further states: “Unfortunately, many individuals really believe there are not enough resources for everyone…Any war or other dilemma(s) focusing on hate, fear and murder is based on the belief of not enough and the illusion of survival of the fittest.”
We often hear of the potentially devastating influence of global warming: how excessive carbon emissions are warming our oceans and creating all forms of extreme weather conditions. The weekend of April 16th produced a record-breaking amount of tornadoes tearing through fifteen states and killing at least 44 people in the United States. At the same time, extreme drought conditions in Texas enabled the spread of wildfires from border to border. Read More

The Resurrection Myth / Jesus Was Divinely Human And A Rebel For Love  Jesus was divinely human ~ a determined revolutionary and an evolutionary forerunner for a state of love and soul consciousness which is also deepest within each one of us. Only the church as an institution stands in the way of this common innate connection and empowering knowledge...

Dr. Helen Caldicott - Japan Can Dwarf Chernobyl Disaster

'One millionth of a gram of plutonium ingested causes cancer.' Fukushima 3 is leaking plutonium

By Jan Lundberg
Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock has just produced a definitive interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, the world's foremost anti-nuclear activist and authority. Listen to it now at Ecoshock.net. Here are some notes I took from the broadcast:
· Smoke has been reported rising from the Fukushima unit number 3. If it's from fuel-cooling pools that contain plutonium, that's a major (to put it mildly) disaster.
· one millionth of a gram of plutonium ingested causes cancer.
· Geiger counter radiation levels have been reassuring for the West Coast of North America. But the real question for public health is "internal emitters" (e.g. Strontium attached to bone) -- that cause cancer and gene mutations -- versus external radiation measurements that cannot discern isotopes.
· Long lived isotopes versus quickly degrading ones: the big question for our gene pool.
· Fuel-cooling pools pose a far worse threat than reactors. In the U.S. the fuel pools are not backed up with cooling systems!
· A large part of Japan is damaged permanently.
· Random genetic engineering is being done for the rest of humanity's future.
· A peaceful Egypt-kind of revolution is needed against the nuclear psychosis. Radio Interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott

Dr. Helen Caldicott: How Nuclear Apologists Mislead The World Over Radiation Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry’s campaign about the “minimal” health effects of so-called low-level radiation. That billions of its dollars are at stake if the Fukushima event causes the “nuclear renaissance” to slow down appears to be evident from the industry’s attacks on its critics, even in the face of an unresolved and escalating disaster at the reactor complex at Fukushima...

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment 

Connecting the Dots: Earth Changes Are Upon Us

[This is an amazing compilation of current events. I look forward to reading Part Two!--Lori]

From the Editors at Sott.net
For those who are paying strict attention left and right, 2010 will be remembered as the year in which a major threshold was crossed and the door closed behind it. It is the humble opinion of the editors that the dice have been thrown and the destiny of the planet sealed.
The signs were there:
•The absolute disregard of governments for the rights of air travelers and citizens and the open arrogance of the imposition of Orwellian measures
•The continuation of ever more absurd fake-terror tricks to scare the people into compliance
•The increasingly violent anger of the masses on the streets as a result of the economic pressure and other forms of abuse from the top
•The great ease with which the global media took over, diluted and distorted the aspirations of political truth seekers via the Wikileaks show, and the obvious omission of Israel from such 'leaks'
•The all too timid opposition of the world to such crimes against humanity as the genocide aboard the Mavi Marmara
•And the ongoing imperial campaigns of western powers in the Middle East and Asia
Particularly disastrous was the chain reaction ignited by BP's ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico - courtesy of corporate psychopathy and the complicity of our governments - this festering wound might yet contribute significantly to tipping the global climate into an Ice Age by disrupting ocean currents and, in turn, wind currents. The Gulf Loop current is reportedly already broken, disrupting the northern Jet Stream and bringing yet another harsh winter to most of the northern hemisphere. Read More

Imagine Playing for Change

Preparedness recommendations for your family, business - just start

DOUG DAHL / FOR THE BELLINGHAM HERALD If you spend some time looking around the library or the Internet you can find hundreds of recommendations on how to get ready for disasters. With so many suggestions, it's easy to become immobilized by the scope of the task. You don't have to do it all. Instead, pick the most important thing for you and do that.
Rather than provide a list of all the things you could do to get prepared for emergencies, I've provided some categories to think about. You might be well-equipped in some areas, woefully inadequate in others, and some may not apply to you at all. Pick at least one area and do one thing today to get ready.
Personal: Start with a 72-hour kit. It derives its name from the concept that everyone should be prepared to survive on their own for three days (72 hours) during a disaster. Include the basics like food, water and first aid supplies. Then add what you can't live without.
Family: If you live with anyone besides yourself, the family plan is a critical part of emergency preparedness. The goal of the family plan is to make sure everyone in your home knows how to contact each other if you're not together when a disaster strikes, how to reunite, and some strategies for likely situations.
Pets: Don't forget about the critters. If you're packing a 72-hour kit for yourself, add some supplies for your pets too.
Home: Walk through your home paying attention to anything that could fall over in an earthquake - furniture, shelves, decorations, water heater, toxic cleaning supplies. Find ways to make them secure. Read More

Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

Scientists To Extract Rocks From Record Depths To Better Understand Climate Change

(REUTERS)-Scientists set off from Costa Rica on Sunday to drill a hole deep under the sea and directly extract rocks from record depths that could add to the understanding of climate change.

The rocks dug up from the lower part of Earth's crust in the coming weeks will be the closest anyone has come to the vast, churning part of the planet called the mantle, which lies between the crust and the core. On a 140-meter (460-foot) ship that resembles an oil platform, the 30-member scientific team will bring back rocks from 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the sea off Costa Rica's Pacific coast. "This will be a big step forward but we're still not getting to the mantle -- the mantle is still 3 kilometers (2 miles) away," said the expedition's co-chief, Damon Teagle, of Britain's University of Southampton. An examination of rocks from the crust and mantle could shed light on how tectonic plates -- vast pieces of the Earth's crust -- formed and how they move. When the plates move against one another they can cause earthquakes. Read More

Hopi Elder Calls for Prayer for Japan and our World: Historic Official letter

Hopi Waterline Earth Changes Map

This map was created in 2007 by Stan Deyo to correlate Hopi Prophecies with the coastlines of the United States. Unfortunately, no cities or towns are located on the map for orientation, so I placed Payson, Arizona (home of the I AM America office) and Springerville, Arizona (location of our Golden City Planned community, Wenima). In these areas the prophecies make sense and match the geologic formations. Out of curiosity I placed Grangeville, Idaho (my birthplace). Over the years I have had many dreams about this area, and I always get the sensation I’m in the future. Surprisingly my dreams match this map. I do, however, think this map has been stretched or the perspective is a little off, as the Bitterroot Range of Mountains (Idaho-Montana) does not match properly. Overall, an interesting interpretation.--Lori

Mega Tsunami - Discovery Channel

Deepak Chopra and Astronaut Edgar Mitchell Call on Consciousness Superheroes and Explorers to Heed Global Distress Signals

Conflict among people and nations, including current hostilities in the Mideast, can find resolution from insights in consciousness science and education initiatives, according to research by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). To address new scientifically-based perspectives on the promise of peace at its San Francisco conference this summer, IONS announced keynote speakers Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell and Deepak Chopra will call on participants to be spiritual superheroes and consciousness explorers to help influence the way nations shape the future.
IONS also announced more than 30 high-impact talks by 40 global visionaries at the international Noetic 2.0: Tools and Technologies for a World Transforming, July 20 - 24, 2011, at the Westin Market Street Hotel. The five-day conference offers professionals, community leaders, social advocates, educators, and lifelong learners new knowledge, experience, and hope from the latest consciousness science discoveries for individual and collective transformation. Registration and information is available on the conference website. Read More

After the Great Quake, Living with Earth's Uncertainty

The Japanese earthquake and tsunami remind us that we exist in geologic time and in a world where catastrophic events beyond our predicting may occur. These events — and the growing specter of climate change — show how precariously we exist on the surface of a volatile planet.

by Verlyn Klinkenborg

In my layman’s cosmology, the anthropic principle says this: our existence implies that the universe must take the shape it does or we wouldn’t be here to perceive it. A universe with even minutely different physical laws wouldn’t include us (which isn’t to say that such universes don’t exist).

An anthropic principle of sorts is also at work in geologic time — the 4.5 billion or so years this planet has existed. For the vast majority of Earth’s history, conditions were unsuitable for the evolution of mammals. (Nor were humans even remotely certain to evolve from those earliest mammals.) We’ve come to exist in the window of time in which we could have come to exist. Or rather, we’ve survived in the window of time in which we can survive. We call a portion of that window “historic time” — not the entire history of our species, but the history that’s part of our cultural record in one form or another, reaching back only several thousand years.
Historic time overlaps with geologic time the way a whale louse overlaps with the blue whale it infests, though the scale of that comparison is too small by several orders of magnitude. And yet it’s all too easy to believe, with the self-importance of a whale louse, that we exist apart from or outside of geologic time. That’s what our experience tells us. The last 10,000 years or so have been relatively uneventful, geologically speaking. Given the overall length of geologic time, it’s likely that any span of 10,000 years or so would be relatively uneventful.

But the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami remind us there’s no guarantee that historic time must be geologically uneventful. They remind us — forcibly, tragically — that, despite vast differences in extent, historic time and geologic time always converge in the present. Read More

Radioactivity in the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless With contaminated water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex continuing to pour into the Pacific, scientists are concerned about how that radioactivity might affect marine life. Although the ocean’s capacity to dilute radiation is huge, signs are that nuclear isotopes are already moving up the local food chain...

This is your Earth on gravity

This lumpy blob is a gravity map of our planet, showing an exaggerated view of where sea level would be if it weren't for waves, tides, currents, or weather. The European Space Agency's GOCE satellite has created the most detailed planetary gravity map ever, and it could help us understand everything from climate change to earthquakes.

To get all technical on you, this image is showing what's called the geoid. If you imagine the Earth's surface totally smoothed out, you'd get a nice round reference ellipsoid of our planet. And if you then take that reference ellipsoid and squish it around to account for differences in gravity caused by land masses and mountains and denser regions of rock and such, you get the geoid. Read More

Freight And Container Handling Halted By Extreme Weather  SOUTH AFRICA – 2011 may well be the year the world remembers as the one when everything stopped due to natural disasters as so far we have seen a catalogue of unforeseen catastrophe’s affect the freight industry and so much more besides. Some things however never change and windy conditions have resulted in cargo operations being halted at container depots in Cape Town as shipping companies struggled to maintain ocean freight schedules...

How Green Is My Valley?

By Richard Bangs
Palm Springs sprawls like a petrified fossil on a culture dish in the middle of the hottest, driest desert in North America. Who would want to live there? Yet, in the early half of the 20th century it became an oasis for hay fever sufferers, and valetudinarians with tuberculosis, bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. That is until its first Green Movement, one that saw a spate of golf courses rolled out like carpets throughout the Coachella Valley. That precipitated another demographic shift, to retirees. Now, the eight cities that make up the Desert Empire, stretching southeast from the San Bernardino Mountains to the saltwater Salton Sea, are sometimes collectively called God's Waiting Room. Everyone knows the little blue-haired ladies that populate Florida. Well, their parents live in Palm Springs. Deserts are not naturally green, of course, but with enough siphoned, sucked-up or stolen water, they can be transmogrified into emerald cities. Palm Springs is a curious button, as it was involved in environmental progressiveness long before fashion, with its vast wind farms and other ingenuities, and then it enjoyed a lost weekend during the Hope/Sinatra/Skelton period, where it smacked of overindulgence and development at the expense of eco-conscientiousness; and now it is back, retrofitting, retooling, and fashioning a green future, or at least one that strives for balance. Read More

Building Green Vehicles: Ford to Use Fungus Move over fuel-efficient engines: It's time to welcome fungus to the green vehicle movement. Ford Motor Company and Evocative Design of Green Island, N.Y. are developing mushroom-based auto parts to build environmentally friendly vehicles...

Solar energy a much better option than nuclear power I used to feel very safe living in Wilmington, until I watched Japan suffer through an earthquake and everything that went with it, including having their nuclear power plants totter on disaster...

Renewable Energy is a Reality and not a Vision

Germany gains more energy from solar technology than Japan gains from all its nuclear reactors. Development in this area occurred much faster in the last years than many expected. Ten years ago no one would have believed we could gain 17 percent of our electricity supply from renewable energy. In the US the gigantic oil and nuclear industries dominate research and funding.

by Klaus Toepfer and Elmar Altvater

The catastrophe in Japan calls us to reflect about the energy concept of our government, ex-environmental minister Klaus Topfer says. Renewable energy is already a “reality.”

Taz: Mr. Topfer, as director of the Ethics commission, what advice can you give the political decision-makers on the nuclear exodus?

Klaus Topfer: In many areas acceptance of technology is derived from technical criteria. The effects of technology on readiness to take risks in society play a great role. The question is: do we want our prosperity based on technologies that when they fail have tremendous negative effects that can hardly be controlled?

Wasn’t this ethical question answered long ago in relation to nuclear energy?

These controversial questions have been discussed again and again. The catastrophe in Japan demands peremptorily that we reflect how nuclear energy in the past ended up putting in question other important goals of society. The exodus- and bridging process may not lead to additional emissions of CO2. This also may not put in question the economic competitiveness that is crucial for jobs and has been very successful in export. This must be seriously discussed in a broad social dialogue: how the bridging can be organized so an environmentally-friendly and competitive energy supply can be achieved with renewable energy. Setting up our commission could be a good signal for that bridging. Read More