Monday, August 31, 2015

How much faster has Earth warmed since the Arctic Ocean had less and less ice?

Albedo is the fraction of solar energy (shortwave radiation) reflected from the Earth back into space. It is a measure of the reflectivity of the earth's surface. Ice, especially with snow on top of it, has a high albedo: most sunlight hitting the surface bounces back towards space.

How much faster will Earth heat when the Arctic Ocean turns black with oil?

Dutch Royal Shell is not ready for what is coming and neither is the rest of humanity. Paper towels doesn't work on ice. There is no enforcement of 'clean up standards' that will matter. 

There is no cleaning up the Arctic Ocean. It is not the Gulf of Mexico. Dutch Royal Shell probably doesn't even realize it's operations in the Gulf can't be repeated in the Arctic.

The spills will occur during the summer months and then it will be abandoned to cold temperatures. The life within the Arctic Ocean doesn't go on vacation over the winter.

The oil spilled in the Arctic Ocean will ultimately make it's way to the North Atlantic between Greenland and Canada. The fisheries won't exist because of genetic deterioration when exposed to oil. 

There is no denying the tragic events of Alaska that Earth's climate has changed.

28 August 2015
By MarEx

U.S. President Barack Obama (click here) travels to Alaska on Monday for a three-day visit meant to spotlight warming temperatures, melting glaciers, rising seas and the need to support a strong climate deal during the global climate negotiations in Paris. 
Obama will attend the U.S. government hosted GLACIER meeting, and his visit comes at a time when, on both sides of the Bering Strait, summer sea ice has once more dropped to a level that is driving thousands of walruses onto coastal beaches. 
Environmental organizations are voicing their concerns.

5,000 Walruses


In Ryrkaypiy in Chukotka, Russia, an estimated 5,000 walruses are hauled out, while across in Alaska, thousands more are hauled out near the village of Point Lay. WWF highlighted the significance of Obama’s visit to the Arctic in a statement, raising concerns about the animals and their environment.
“This past July was the second warmest on record for Alaska,” says Pete Ewins, WWF Arctic Species specialist. “So it’s not surprising that we’re seeing these animals on the beaches quite early. While haul outs can be potentially dangerous to the animals gathered on shore, we’re concerned about what events such as these mean for the health of the entire Arctic marine system.”...

For native peoples, be they indigenous or settlers, the change is alarming and obvious. Their lives have been disrupted and the lower 48 continually ignored their plight.

The people 'of the north' live with the natural world because of it's harsh reality. They become attached to the quiet, the beauty and the variety of wildlife and the ORDER of nature. So, for the Earth to warm the so called civilized world may have as well closed on their mortgage. The life outside is as much part of home as the coziness of life inside a home.

President Obama has a responsibility to apologize to the people of Alaska in neglecting the state and it's important place on Earth. If the USA had listened to it's own people and the pain they carry in their hearts for the destruction of their homeland we would be farther along in avoiding this very dangerous trend of warming Earth. It is as though everyone turned their backs on this beautiful state, but, the thirst for oil was too great and money dominated reality rather than the people and their attachment to the land. 

To date, citizens and the EPA has been able to ward off more and more demands for land use that is extremely harmful to Alaska, it's waters and it's fisheries. The least we can do is find hope that President Obama will find a way to resolve an importance to the land and respect for it's people. 

The nightmare today is far more than the "North Slope." Allowing offshore drilling has the potential to destroy coastlines including that of Canada and other countries. The Arctic Ocean is far too unpredictable to drill for oil. The nightmare is that the entire habitat of the Walrus and the Polar Bear will be contaminated and destroyed forever. That includes the food chain that begins with underwater creatures. 

It is unfortunate the USA has been so irreverent of Alaska, but, to add insult to injury is rather unthinkable.

FOX News is conducting an intentional campaign to raise racial tensions between police and the African American community.

The deaths of police (click here) are down this year when occurring in line of duty.

There is absolutely no connection between "Black Lives Matter" (click here) and the 82 police deaths this year 

If police want a legitimate complaint then take the facts to the FBI, rather than creating more racial tensions on Fox News. There is no validity to support the complaints from the police in Texas.

FOX News is using the fears of police officers for political propaganda.

I'll tell you want is up though. The arrests and trials of police that kill unarmed Americans. I suppose that might be a real reason to defame a civil rights movement. The civil suits are mounting as well, huh?

These are the facts. There are more and more people around the world seriously worried about minority citizens in the USA. There is a problem when global conclusions lead to the reality that Americans are being killed and not arrested by police. There is a disproportionate numbers of African Americans in the death statistics as well. There is absolutely no basis for any of the inflammatory political propaganda coming out of FOX. 

In the autumn of 2006, (click here) Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah, were struggling to come to terms with the news that one of their children was seriously ill. 

July 11, 2015 
By James Kirkup

Fraser Brown, born four months previously, had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
That was not all the couple — whose firstborn child died in infancy in 2002 — had to contend with. They were also dealing with the knowledge that The Sun knew of the boy’s condition, and planned to publish.
The woman who broke that news to Mr Brown, who was chancellor at the time, was Rebekah Brooks, who was the newspaper’s editor and is now the News International chief executive at the eye of a growing storm that threatens the media company....

Murdoch's media empire is a problem. It is a problem globally and not isolated in the USA. I remind the hacking of cell phones that came to reveal how FOX News was hacking into government officials. A former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had information regarding his son exposed and it was private information about a child that any family should have control. News Corp is an issue.

1 July 2015
By Oliver Laughland, Jon Swaine and James Lartey

Police in the United States (click here) are killing people at a rate that would result in 1,100 fatalities by the end of this year, according to a Guardian investigation, which recorded an average of three people killed per day during the first half of 2015.
The Counted, a project working to report and crowdsource names and a series of other data on every death caused by law enforcement in the US this year, found that 547 people had been killed by the end of June.
In total, 478 of those people were shot and killed, while 31 died after being shocked by a Taser, 16 died after being struck by police vehicles, and 19 – including 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – have died after altercations in police custody.
When adjusted to accurately reflect the US population, the totals indicate that black people are being killed by police at more than twice the rate of white and Hispanic or Latino people. Black people killed by police were also significantly more likely to have been unarmed....

The officers cooperating with FOX News to cause greater tensions between police and USA minorities should be fired from their jobs for promoting hate. That is also something the US Justice Department would be interested in knowing.

EPA is targeting the regulatory burden to small businesses.

August 31, 2015

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (click here) is proposing two new hazardous waste rules to strengthen environmental protection while reducing regulatory burden on businesses. One of the proposed rules will protect waterways, including drinking and surface water, by preventing the flushing of hazardous waste pharmaceuticals and simplify the requirements for healthcare workers. The other rule will provide greater flexibility to industry while requiring new safeguards to protect the public from mismanagement of hazardous waste.

“These rules provide businesses with certainty and the flexibility they need to successfully operate in today’s marketplace,” said Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. “The proposals will improve the safety and health of our communities by providing clear, flexible, and protective hazardous waste management standards.”...


August 31, 2015

The pace of technology and change (click here) in the modern world can be dizzying. As new medicines and treatments are developed, new types of waste emerge. However, our hazardous waste generator regulations were written in the 1980s and haven’t changed much over the years.

Well, today we’re taking steps toward changing that. I’m excited to announce that we are proposing two rules to provide businesses with the certainty and flexibility they need to successfully operate in today’s marketplace.


Over the last 35 years, we’ve heard from states and the regulated community that our hazardous waste generator regulations, which were designed for manufacturing, don’t fit all sectors and especially not the healthcare sector. We’ve listened and these two proposals make a number of updates and improvements to the existing regulations. We have proposed over 60 changes to the regulations to improve the effectiveness of and compliance with the hazardous waste generator program. This includes rearranging some of the generator regulations that had outgrown their original numbering system so it will be easier for facilities of all sizes that generate hazardous waste to find everything they need to know in one place....

"Hazardous Waste Generators" (click here)

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (click here) is one of 11 federal agencies that participates in the SBIR Program established by the Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982. The purpose of this Act was to strengthen the role of small businesses in federally funded R&D and help develop a stronger national base for technical innovation. An SBIR small business is defined as a for-profit organization with no more than 500 employees....

There are specific dangers known to occur to the climate crisis.

August 30, 2015
By KHOU Staff

HOUSTON - A 14-year-old Houston teen (click here) who has been battling a rare brain-eating disease for more than a week has passed away.
Michael Riley got sick after swimming in a lake at Sam Houston State Park. Doctors say the amoeba is typically found in warm freshwater and that it entered through Riley's nose and swam to his brain.
Only 35 Americans have suffered from the disease in the past ten years.

Cooling the body below normal temperatures creates a hostile environment for the parasite. Texas has standards for public lakes, were the inspections daily to these sources of infection. Are the Texas standards adequate to provide early detection of parasites in the public waters?

After 35 years (click here) without a Naegleria survivor in the United States, during the summer of 2013, 2 children with Naegleria fowleri infection survived. The first, a 12-year-old girl, was diagnosed with PAM approximately 30 hours after becoming ill and was started on the recommended treatment within 36 hours. She also received the investigational drug miltefosine 7-9 and her brain swelling was aggressively managed with treatments that included cooling the body below normal body temperature (therapeutic hypothermia). This patient made a full neurologic recovery and returned to school. Her recovery has been attributed to early diagnosis and treatment and novel therapeutics including miltefosine and hypothermia 5.

A second child, an 8-year-old male, is also considered a PAM survivor, although he has suffered what is likely to be permanent brain damage. He was also treated with miltefosine but was diagnosed and treated several days after his symptoms began. Cooling of the body below normal body temperature was not used....

August 30, 2013

Infections caused by free-living amebae (FLA) (click here) are severe and life-threatening. These infections include primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) caused by Naegleria fowleri* and granulomatous amebic encephalitis caused by Balamuthia mandrillaris and Acanthamoeba species.§ Although several drugs have in vitro activity against FLA, mortality from these infections remains >90% despite treatment with combinations of drugs.

Miltefosine is a drug used to treat leishmaniasis and also has shown in vitro activity against FLA (1), but as an investigational drug, it has not been readily available in the United States. With CDC assistance, however, miltefosine has been administered since 2009 for FLA infections as single-patient emergency use with permission from the Food and Drug Administration. Although the number of B. mandrillaris and Acanthamoeba species infections treated with a miltefosine-containing regimen is small, it appears that a miltefosine-containing treatment regimen does offer a survival advantage for patients with these often fatal infections (2). Miltefosine has not been used successfully to treat a Naegleria infection, but the length of time it has taken to import miltefosine from abroad has made timely treatment of fulminant Naegleria infections difficult...

Hot air leads to hot water which leads to the growth of pathogens. There should be regular testing of any public waters. States should consider the danger of the climate crisis in relation to public health and public waters. This problem will not go away. Not now it won't. 

An increase in pathogens has always been part of the expectations of the climate crisis. Pathogens are opportunistic. There is no other way of dealing with this than regularly testing waters known to have temperatures of that of bathwater or higher.

This pathogen and others needs to be clearly understood. Research of these pathogens is very dangerous to the people conducting the studies. These require all kinds of precautions including anti-rooms to don and doff personal protective equipment. The public exposure is important to prevent. 

These organisms need to be understood to the environmental conditions that spawn their growth to help decide some states when to begin testing and when to end. Other states will just consider this a routine no matter the environmental conditions.

The methodology of testing on a continual basis will add another layer of safety to the public in that mutant strains can occur. There is nothing more effective than placing drops of water under a microscope and looking for parasites and their numbers. 

For all fifty states that seek to conduct daily accounting of public waters, the CDC would have guidelines and recommendations. With this death of a very precious child the CDC might consider a bulletin to conducting testing to prevent exposure to the public.

...The states are required (click here) under the Clean Water Act to review their water quality standards at least once every three years and revise them, if appropriate. States review standards because new scientific and technical data may be available that have a bearing on the review. Further, environmental changes over time may also warrant the need for a review.... 

This single event can trigger an evaluation of Texas water quality standards. I strongly suggest Texas do exactly that.

I found this article helpful from the New York Times.

August 28, 2015

...The consequence (click here) is that some perfectly healthy high-B.M.I. people might be unnecessarily worried about their weight or penalized by higher insurance premiums. And some normal-B.M.I. people may be fatter than they realize and facing the same health risks as the obese. – ALBERT SUN

The BMI needs to be revisited. It is actually hurting some people with unnecessarily high insurance rates.

The good news is human beings are still unique in every way. It would be most disheartening if the BMI was perfect. When people are evaluated for insurance they should be talking to their doctors and that is possible now with Obamacare/ACA. People should have the right to grieve their results by insurance company doctors. The process is not equitable to the uniqueness of 25 percent of adults.  

If people are hardwired to the BMI they will become obsessed with the idea it might even effect their credit rating. It is important we remain human and confirm the fact life is about living and generalizations make for a very boring country.

Stop worrying, pursue a better world.

"Morning Papers"

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

"Good Night, Moon"

A new image of Earth. It has more clouds. It is a different climate.

The image (click here) was taken July 6, 2015, showing North and Central America. The central turquoise areas are shallow seas around the Caribbean islands. This Earth image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the image a characteristic bluish tint. The EPIC team is working to remove this atmospheric effect from subsequent images. Once the instrument begins regular data acquisition, EPIC will provide a daily series of Earth images allowing for the first time study of daily variations over the entire globe. These images, available 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired, will be posted to a dedicated web page by September 2015.

The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.

This is the original "Blue Marble" photo. It was taken on February 8, 2002. It is also a view of North America and Central America.

This spectacular “blue marble” (click here) image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date.