Several Of Us Told You So

Not that it makes much difference to the environment anymore. This is another example of why we must act to get Wisco to provide real tax benefits for alternative energy. I'm so sick of the platitudes coming from these companies & the state.

The state Department of Natural Resources is alleging that a Canadian company is responsible for more than 100 environmental violations related to the construction of a 321-mile pipeline spanning much of Wisconsin.

Happy Earth Day

If you're in the Minneapolis area watch the 10:00 p.m. local news on WCCO & you'll see the wonderful world of The Twins & their parents. They wrote an essay that made into the finals for a sizable chuck of money to green up their home. I'm real proud of all of them for doing this, plus The Twins were, of course, quite a hit with the reporter.

Also, thanks to a wonderful Wisco native, Gaylord Nelson for starting Earth Day back in 1970, when I was but a young lad looking for some, oh, yeah, trees.

FYI

Burt's Bees is owned by Clorox. Woo-hoo, bleach forever.

Holiday Ice?

Moulin Rouge? Or just really good plumbing? Seriously, when will Bu$hCo understand just how bad this is? But, of course, we don't want to hurt our juggernaut of an economy.

"The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile (800 meters) deep covering Washington DC," said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Wake Up!

In today's The Times-Picayune, there is the first of a three part series on the destruction of the wetlands that nourish & protect, not only New Orleans, but much of what matters to America. Or ought to matter to America.

"People think we still have 20, 30, 40 years left to get this done. They're not even close," said St. Pe, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, which seeks to save one of the coast's most threatened and strategically vital zones.

"Ten years is how much time we have left -- if that."
....
"I think that shocked us as much as any other group," said Robert Twilley, director of Louisiana State University's Gulf restoration initiative who has worked on the issue for years. "I think our concern now is that we may have contributed to false optimism."
(No shit, Dick Tracy. & my emphasis.)
....
Studies show destruction of the wetlands protecting the infrastructure serving those industries would put $103 billion in assets at risk.

Despite such dire threats, the most disturbing concern may be this: Coastal restoration efforts have been under way for two decades, but not a single project capable of reversing the trend currently awaits approval.

The modest restoration efforts already under way have no chance of making a serious impact, experts say.

"It's like putting makeup on a corpse," said Mark Schexnayder, a regional coastal adviser with LSU's Sea Grant College Program who has spent 20 years involved in coastal restoration.
(Very New Orleans, ed. My emphasis.)
....
That has forced researchers at the Louisiana University Marine Consortium in Cocodrie to take boats to work, and the erosion has made life ever more precarious in communities once separated from the Gulf by miles of marsh.
(Emphasis added. Gratuitous mention of The Kid's dog, Cocodrie.)

& this has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not New Orleans ought to be rebuilt. It is not about people living in a flood/hurricane/below-sea-level area. It is about the destruction of a massive wetland. & this destruction lies at the feet of human beings through their neglect, ill-advised levee construction, refusal to recognize global warming, & we don't care about poor people attitude.

Good Thing To Do

Australia bans incandescent light bulbs.

Bye Bye Namakagon River

This is no good.

The spills took place during construction of a 320-mile pipeline by Enbridge Inc. of Calgary, Canada, alongside its existing pipeline from Superior to near Whitewater.

Jeebus

Now this would be true lake effect.

While the northern Plains and Northeast shiver in dangerously cold temperatures, the folks in upstate New York are keeping warm shoveling snow - lots of snow.

Since Sunday, the small towns of Parish and Mexico have recorded more than 6 feet of snow, and forecasters with the National Weather Service say it isn't over yet.

Another 2 feet or more of heavy lake effect snow was expected Thursday for the communities along eastern Lake Ontario, and more squalls are likely through the weekend.

Texas Is For Dumbasses

This figures. After all, this is the state that gave us, not only the hated Cowboys (remember the Ice Bowl, boys?) & the stoooopid Bu$hCo.

More On The Pipeline

Here's more on the pipeline construction first brought to our attention by ShutterWi. The DNR, of all agencies, ought to be thinking & acting on providing a model for alternative energies. It has to start somewhere.

Another Dam Thing

When will we learn that dams are more trouble than they are worth. It's long past time that the world begin to work really hard on alternative energies that don't destroy the very home we inhabit. Not to mention the cold-water fish.

Farmland Conservation

What a concept. Merry Xmas Minnesota trout.

The Wild Man Of Borneo Discovered

Not quite, but Borneo continues to amaze me. I hope the world doesn't destroy the legendary home of one of the great icons of my youth, the aforementioned Wild Man.

Over the last 17 months, scientists have identified 52 new plant and animal species in the rainforests of Borneo, a Southeast Asian island, the World Wildlife Fund announced yesterday. The finds include 30 unique species of fish, two tree-frog species, three new trees, a plant that grows only a single large leaf, 16 types of ginger, and a partridge in a pear tree. The world's second-smallest vertebrate -- a fish 0.35 inches long -- was discovered, as well as a catfish with an adhesive belly and protruding teeth. (Alas, the legendary Wild Man remains elusive.) No wonder Charles Dickens described Borneo as a "great wild untidy luxuriant hothouse made by Nature for herself." As always, the diverse habitat is threatened by human activity; only half of Borneo's original forest cover remains, thanks to deforestation for rubber, palm oil, and paper pulp production. And we had been so optimistic there for a moment.

This Sucks

First major cetacean declared extinct. Where's the Enterprise?

Jesus F. Christ

Looks like it's religion day, or, at least, religion reference day. Now our dumbass of a President wants all of us, especially children, to ingest or inhale more lead. Yes, Virginia, it can get worse.

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The agency says revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Lake Superior drying up? Well, not exactly, but this trend is worrisome.

Lake Superior has dropped nearly a foot this year to its lowest late-autumn water level in eight decades, a startling decline that is raising worries about shipping, shorelines and fish populations.
....
Long-term lower levels on Lake Superior, as on any lake, would be a problem for shorelines, where vegetation might change and then be disrupted by a quick rise, and where people might be tempted to build new structures, Johnson said. She and others said that wetlands, like those along the south shore, would lose water, reducing habitat for wildlife and underwater organisms, and eliminating the water-filtration role that wetlands play.

Mystery Solved

Thanks to RLK, I spent a bit of my precious time, OK, OK, my time this a.m. trying to figure out what the hell fly-tipping was all about. I thought RLK had come to his senses & had taken up fly fishing rather than building renovation, but nooooo, I was wrong. Nothing new about that.

"Fly-tipping" is a British term for illegally dumping trash somewhere other than an authorized trash dump. It is "the illegal deposit of any waste onto land i.e. waste dumped or tipped on a site with no licence to accept waste". Fly-tipped waste generally consists of large items of rubbish that are dumped illegally on land instead of being disposed of properly at a landfill site or tip. Some people refer to this as "dumping".