Wednesday, June 23, 2010

News Roundup: Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Editor's note: It's an especially busy week for me, and so posting will likely be sparse at best. In the meantime, I would direct you to the following sites that are doing an excellent job of compiling some credible news sources:
LATOC Breaking News
Washington's Blog

Gulf Disaster:
Dark Conspiracies of the Gulf (Audio & transcript)
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Saturday, June 19, 2010

News Roundup: Weekend of June 19-20, 2010

News Quote of the Day:
"A movement of Haitian farmers and other small-scale producers, have rejected a donation by US agricultural giant Monsanto. The Peasant Movement of Payaye has said it will burn 60,000 sacks of vegetable and corn seeds totaling 475 tons at a value of $4 million that the company donated, in partnership with USAID, following the deadly January earthquake. Other farmers´ groups have long-protested the use of genetically-modified seeds, arguing they threaten the poor nation´s biodiversity." from here.

Gulf Disaster:
Leaked BP memo gives far worse spill figure
Oil Coating Seafloor and Killing Fish, Crabs ... and the American Dream
Life aboard the drilling rig that's the Gulf's last hope
Vast amounts of methane in Gulf spill pose threat
Gulf residents slam BP CEO for yacht outing
NOAA Conducts Tests to Determine Fate of Whale Found Dead in Gulf of Mexico

Schultz: Dish soap won't clean politicians' oil-smudged fingerprints

Extreme Weather:
132 killed in massive flooding in southern China

Global Economy:

French government announces plan for pension cut

Economy USA:

California on 'verge of system failure’
In budget crisis, states take aim at pensions

Oil:
Anger grows across the world at the real price of 'frontier oil'

Water:


General Energy:

How low can you go: Milwaukeeans plan to "power down"
Stay Cool This Summer With Natural Cooling Methods

Environment:

British Newspaper Apologizes to Climate Scientist
How much further must logistics firms go to protect the environment?

Agriculture/Gardening:

Monsanto's Unwelcome Donation

Commentary:

Richard Heinberg: Deepwater Horizon: The Worst-Case Scenario
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Friday, June 18, 2010

News Roundup: Friday, June 18, 2010

News Quote of the Day:
"Painting themselves as heroic dissenters and promoting long-discredited contrarian themes, professional [climate change] deniers have insisted on equal time -- and they have used that time to slander scientists who are better at resolving complex technical issues than at playing politics with public relations people. Knowing that nothing in science can be proven absolutely, the deniers tell us to do nothing until we have absolute proof -- while they profit from the status quo -- and the problem continues to get worse." from here.

Gulf Disaster:
Oil Spill May Cause Methane Poisoning, Completely Wiping Out Life In Parts Of Gulf
Relief well progressing quicker than expected
Oil spill: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fears BP's 'annihilation'

Global Economy:

Solar:
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

News Roundup: Wednesday, June 16, 2010

News Quote(s) of the Day:
"For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we've talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires."
- President Barack Obama, 06-05-10

"The reality is that nothing significant has been done to deal with our energy crisis because tackling it will require fundamental changes to our economy—to our transport and food systems, even to our financial institutions. Until we are willing to honestly face the fact that an "American dream" based on ever increasing rates of consumption of non-renewable resources is a dead end, and that we will have to dramatically cut back on energy usage in order to make a transition away from fossil fuel dependency, all discussion about renewable energy, efficiency standards, and energy research is fairly pointless."
- Richard Heinberg

Gulf Disaster:

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News Roundup: Tuesday, June 15, 2010

(Editor's note: The breaking news page is back up and running over at LATOC after a week's hiatus. As a rule I try to augment and not duplicate the stories they link to (despite a few instances of doing so below), but I will remind you that it's definitely worth your time to read them, and especially today's.)

News Quote of the Day:
"June so far is a strange ebb tide of of events relating to the world's money, but when the water goes out like that, you know it's sure to return before long, and the peaceful mud-flats of June may vanish under a summer tsunami. I know I'm not alone in the creepy feeling that really nothing has been sorted out and the world is waiting to get hammered six days to Sunday by the consequences of living too large for too long. The markets have been stranded, too, gyrating on the peculiar life-support of robot-traders -- since all the humans have packed up and left the scene for higher ground. The corporate creaming-off of anything not nailed down in America continues apace, with the cream ending up as icing on the petit fours passed around the twilight lawns of East Hampton."
James Howard Junstler, from here.

Gulf Disaster:

Global Economy:

Economy USA:
Oil/Resources:
Why we may never be able to say goodbye to oil (Editor's Note: This is the BBC reporting on Peak Oil, which is now hitting the mainstream media in a big way).
General Energy:
Environment:
Agriculture/Gardening:
Industrial Farming Slows Climate Change?
(Editor's Note: Perhaps attempting to assess the entire environmental impact of an exceedingly complex system of farming involving a vast and ever evolving number of potentially toxic compounds by a single metric (CO2 emissions) is a bit myopic?)

Commentary:
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Saturday, June 12, 2010

Weekend News Roundup: June 12-13, 2010

News Quote of the Day:
"With crude still hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico, deep-water drilling might seem taboo just now. In fact, extreme oil will likely be the new normal. Despite the gulf tragedy, the quest for oil and gas in the most difficult places on the planet is just getting underway. Prospecting proceeds apace in the ultra-deepwater reserves off the coasts of Ghana and Nigeria, the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, and the tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin."
from here.

Gulf Disaster:
Mini-Deepwater in upscale Salt Lake City neighborhood finally allows rich white folks to vent rage at Big Oil
How Oil Spills Affect the Food Chain

Economy USA:
The financial raid against the middle class (Thanks Pamela from LATOC)

Oil:

$550 Billion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Off the Deep End in Brazil

Water:

No water for Pakistan from glaciers after 2060: UNDP
Pakistan a water-scarce country

General Energy:

No, We’re Not There Yet! The Trouble With Hydrogen Cars

Environment:

Outgoing UN climate change official says some progress made in latest talks
Environmentalists Use Oil Spill as a Rallying Cry
One step forward, two steps back

Agriculture/Gardening:

Why A Starving Country Rejects US Aid
Urban Farming: The Answer Lies In Kent

Commentary:
David King: We Must Abandon Oil Before It's Too Late

Misc:
Who's Activist Now? The Roberts Court Bends Over Backwards For Its Corporate Friends
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Friday, June 11, 2010

News Roundup, Friday, June 11, 2010

News Quote of the Day:
"BP has gone to all this trouble for a well that taps into what they now think may be 100 million barrels of oil. And that's... five days supply for the U.S? Does that give you any sense of the precariousness of the arrangements under-girding our economy right at the moment?"
- Bill McKibben, from here.

Misc Headlines
"To prepare for the [solar storm] activity, scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation and other agencies met earlier this week for discussions at a forum in Washington, D.C."

Gulf Disaster
"I can't quit you, Big Oil"
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Spilling Fields - BP Ad Campaign
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorTea Party

Years of Internal BP Probes Warned That Neglect Could Lead to Accidents
What has Gulf tragedy taught us? Sadly, very very little

Global Economy

Economy USA


Environment
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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

News Roundup: Wed, June 9, 2010

Gulf Disaster
U.S. Lawmakers Say BP Should Suspend Dividends, Ads
Democrats renew push for removal of oil liability cap
BP given 72 hours to provide backup plans for oil recovery
Oil flow could be curtailed soon
BP plays down government claim on oil plumes
"We haven’t found any large concentrations of oil under the sea. To my knowledge, no one has," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said on NBC's TODAY show
Global Economy
How much will Europe debt crisis affect Americans?
Athens rejects default, euro rumours as 'comical'
Asian Stocks Decline for Third Time in Four Days on Europe, Yen

Economy, USA
David Frum: U.S. the next Greece? We'd be so lucky.
$85 billion not enough to bail out AIG
Sheldon Filger: Double Dip Recession Is on the Global Economic Menu

Oil
BP report shows global oil consumption falls but demand in China and India grows
Oil Sands 'Like the Gulf Disaster in Slow Motion'
Peak Oil and Apocalypse Then
The Economist: Energy in, energy out
Will disaster in Gulf change our attitudes about fossil fuels?
Jeff Rubin: The Real Disaster Comes When We Quit Deepwater And Tap The Alberta Tar Sands
The end of cheap oil approaches
The oil spill and credit crunch were bad. An oil crunch would be worse

Water
Dry Run: Bostonians Learn to Appreciate Clean Water

General Energy
Energy Accounting: Can we use “embodied energy” to evaluate solar, wind and other alternative resources?

Agriculture/Gardening
Food in Dry Times
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Return to posting, restructuring...

After a hiatus of a little over a year, I'm planning to resume posting here on a regular basis.

I stopped initially because: a) I became quite busy searching for a new home and with the move that ensued, and b) I found several sites that did a very good job of indexing the day's relevant (to this blog) news in a way that made my efforts here feel redundant.

But now that one of those, From The Wilderness, has now switched over to a pay-subscription model, I feel that there is once again a gap in my topical news sources. And if I'm already going to the trouble to find these news articles, I might as well post them up for the benefit and convenience of others.

So, what I will be posting from here on will mostly be a simple list of categorized links. While I may not have time to offer extensive commentary on the articles I link to, I am confident that the articles' content will speak for itself.

I would very much like to bring one or two other bloggers on board, to ensure breadth of content and consistency in posting... please leave a comment with your contact information if you would like to offer a bit of your time.
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