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22 Jul 2006 @ 16:10, by swanny. Environment, Ecology
July 22, 2006
Canada
Saturday
Sunny
To Hot
The Bird Report (Animal Democracy?)
Ho....
Well every year, about this time, it seems about 100-200 crows get together for a few conventions on one of the taller buildings in downtown and seem to debate or vote a "new" leadership? The racket and commotion is reminisant of the debates and votes in the House of Commons in Ottawa.
Then there are the magpies. They it would seem are the thugs and ruffians of the kingdom. The raven, very few, are here but not to sure how they fit in. They are sort of a lone wolf around here, causing extreme concernations of the crows.
Back to the crows. It seems crow "office fitness" is determined not by words but actions, as a fly around the assembly of these conventions and a vote is had, perhaps in a determinination of health or fitness or such ? Whether this leadership is hereditary or democratic is unclear. It almost seems a combo of both off hand.
The pigeons here seem like your average everyday citizen being harassed at times by both the crows and magpies.
The sparrows are the cute urchens or street children of the senario avoiding both the crows and the magpies but at times annoying the "without a clue" pigeons. Now the robins are a magnificent addition to this kingdom. A noble breed gracing the community affairs with a sense of honor and dignity.
Further out from the downtown, the pelicans, mallards, seagulls and canada geese can be found mostly hanging around the river, although the seagulls tend to frequent the landfills and fast food places. Ocassionally a troop or family of ducks will make an attempt to cross a major street in an effort to get to the river. Successful mostly if drivers give them the right of way.
Other smaller "foreign" birds like, blue birds and blue jays, and wrens and finches tend to frequent the parks and river areas.
Crows and magpies again, have met their demise when getting to friendly with the local cannies. A lesson to late for the learning it seems.
I've seen a few hawks and such around the river or near the large field, hunting for mice no doubt and maybe there's an odd eagle about but they tend to favour the high and wilderness areas.
I haven't as yet had the honor to see a hummingbird although I'm told they are around gracing the various floral arrangements. I have though seen a white parakeet in a tree that most likely must have escapet the bondage of some local home.
Back to reality though, I hear that many of our bird species are or will soon be in danger because of environmental degradation. A disquieting commentary on the human families impact on some of its neighbouring fellows.
I haven't seen any peasants or partriges around, except at Christmas and in a pear tree and in my ten years here I have yet to hear a peep of mention of the dodo bird which causes me to concur with its reputed extinction.
At any rate this has been a update of the bird report from Central Alberta Canada.
Ed Jonas More >
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 6 Jun 2006 @ 13:46, by scotty. Environment, Ecology
I don't play the fear game and usually avoid negativity when ever possible ... however some things need to be looked at square on in order to waken up to what's happening and take some positive action !
"Extreme poverty, intractable wars, virulent disease, hatred of all stripes–these are a few of the scourges we live with today. And yet global climate change trumps them all; for if it's not addressed, all life on the planet will be devastated, regardless of geography, class, race, or creed. The Inconvenient Truth is the gripping story of former Vice President Al Gore, who became interested in this startling issue while at college 30 years ago, and now devotes his life to reversing global warming. Traveling the world, he has built a visually mesmerizing presentation designed to disabuse doubters of the notion that climate change is debatable. The heart of Davis Guggenheim's film is this elegant multimedia lecture itself, where Gore indisputably correlates CO2 emissions with exponentially rising temperatures, already responsible for dramatic climactic shifts like ice-cap melting, drought, and rising sea levels. Interwoven with this riveting public address are intimate moments revealing the poetic, searching side of Gore as he struggles to define his purpose in the aftermath of the 2000 election. This is activist cinema at its very best, for it serves to popularize and demythologize a problem long obscured by those most threatened by the solution. With humor and searing intelligence, Gore outlines crucial steps we must take to avert impending disaster and proves that inaction is no longer an option–in fact, it's immoral."— Caroline Libresco
The film is not a story of despair but rather a rallying cry. ... An Inconvenient Truth[link]
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 24 May 2006 @ 04:16, by koravya. Environment, Ecology
The world is going up in flames. The great fire is beginning. Nuclear weapons are no longer necessary. The planet is cooked. More and more individuals are going to make more and more decisions about what they think they need to do.
++++++++**********___----
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows
[link]
Ice-Capped Roof of World Turns to Desert
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent UK
[link] More >
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8 May 2006 @ 12:39, by swanny. Environment, Ecology
May 8, 2006
Canada
Morning
Sunny
The Cause (of Global Warming)
The cause of global warming is perhaps that humanity is "taxing" too many of Gaia's (The Earth, A sentinent super organism or being) "fixed" resources and thereby hampering or complicating Gaia's "ability" to function normally in this dynamic Galaxy. We in a sense thus are "bankrupting" ourselves and the Earth through our overindulgence and living beyond ours and the planets means to function normally and "sustainabily." The planet is afterall on a fixed income and fixed capital base.
ed More >
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 13 Apr 2006 @ 22:24, by freo7. Environment, Ecology
AND... What the paid USA media ISN'T TELLING YOU !
Is "all this Ascension stuff" for real, or is it just the imbecile fantasy of people deeply divorced from reality? Here is what the media never tells you, at least not all at once.
We all know that the Earth is experiencing global warming and other changes, whether the petroleum giants like it or not. Just read the headlines.
What we may NOT know is the following: More >
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 28 Mar 2006 @ 10:06, by jazzolog. Environment, Ecology
I have deceived the Buddha
For seventy-three years;
at the end there remains only this---
What is it? What is it?
---Suio's Death Poem
Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.
---Mark Twain
The snow whisk,
sweeping sweeping,
forgets the snow.
---Basho
Beth Skabar/Athens News Photographer
Elisa Young, a resident of Racine, Ohio, stands in front of American Electric Power's Gavin power plant, a coal fired facility in Gallia County. Young, a member of the SierraClub's executive committee, is concerned about the impact of the coal industry along the Ohio River on the health of her neighbors and the area environment.
As if divinely ordained, on each side of the United States run mountain ranges known as the Appalachians and the Rockies. The symmetry of the arrangement is satisfying to an element of the American character. So far as I know there is no section of the Rocky Mountains known as Rockalalia or Rockyland or some such. But over here there's Appalachia. The exact boundaries of the region are vague and open to dispute. The mountains themselves run from Maine to Georgia, but "outsiders" tend to think of Appalachia as the place where Lil Abner and Snuffy Smith live...and the people must be poor, lazy hillbillies like them. Popular songs of the '40s gave them attributes of a-feudin', a-fussin' and a-fightin', and doin' what comes natur'ly.
It's true the people are independent, strong of opinion (and prejudice---often proud of it: witness the hilarity of redneck humor), and wary of the government and regulation. They're quick to judge whether or not someone is an "outsider" and often put up little tests to check you out---like for instance even how you pronounce the word "Appalachia." You may come from an area of Appalachia yourself, as I do, but still be considered an outsider if your family hasn't been in the region you're in now for a couple hundred years. Where I grew up we didn't think of ourselves as Appalachia because there was no mining there, and for better or worse it's the poverty left by mining that constitutes in the American mind what Appalachia is. At first, coal and timber promised a lasting livelihood, but exhaustion of reserves and technological progress quickly changed the prospects of entire communities. There are towns around where I live now that haven't had real job opportunities in 3 generations...mostly since the mines pulled out and moved on.
Now our locally owned newspaper, The Athens News, has begun a 3 part series entitled "Cradle to grave: Tracking coal's journey through Appalachia." Its author is Katie S. Brandt, an Ohio University graduate student, who comes from Vernon Hills, Illinois, north of Chicago. Even though she's probably been a student here for half a dozen years, she still might be considered an outsider. But the fact is she's been shown around by someone whose credentials are impeccable...and that's Elisa Young. Elisa lives at Racine, by the Ohio River, trying to work a farm organically that's been in the family for generations. She's surrounded by electric companies, powered by coal, that supply an astonishing array of American towns and cities. Her dilemma has become typical of people whose families have owned land in Appalachia---and increasingly everywhere in the US---which is somehow in the path of commercial development. Do you sell out or stay and fight? More >
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 9 Mar 2006 @ 23:12, by jmarc. Environment, Ecology
A new species of lobster (or lobstah, as we say up heah in New Hampshah)
has been found more than a mile down in the South Pacific.
Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in
California organised the expedition that found them. This particular lobster
is so distinct from other species that scientists have created a new
taxonomic family for it. The lobster's pincers are covered with
hair-like strands. More >
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16 Jan 2006 @ 22:46, by ming. Environment, Ecology
In The Independent, an article by James Lovelock, whom you'll know best as the father of the Gaia Theory. A serious wake-up call there. More than that, really. He says essentially it is too late to back out of what we're doing, and that we're going down, and we've better prepare for being partially wiped out, and Mad Max survival scenarios for those who're left.The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.
To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys. Well, I'm an optimist, and I'm hoping for a miracle. But I can't logically think of which corner it would come from. Humanity hasn't really changed its ways, and we're still using nature as something to steal from, and something to dump the waste back into, with little understanding of how things actually work. What arrogance. Hopefully Gaia is more resilient than we fear, and hopefully he's wrong. But what does it take for us to actually change how we interact with the global eco-system? One really big catastrophe, and then we get it? But then it might already be way too late. More >
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  14 Jan 2006 @ 03:38, by magical_melody. Environment, Ecology
Four Days of Pongal
During this period pilgrims from all over the country, in numbers exceeding 500,000 gather on Sagar Dweep, a small island some 156 kilometers (93 miles) south of Kolkata, for the three day Ganga Sagar Mela. The northern extremity of the island, which is about 25 miles long, is called Mud point.
During the Kurukshetra war, it is said, the wounded Bhisma Pitamaha, who had the power to choose the time of his death, lay on his bed of arrows for 26 days so that he could die on Makar Sankranti day. Why Makar Sankranti? “On this sacred day, when the sun begins its northward journey (the uttarayan) by entering the ‘Makar Rashi’ (the Capricorn), the doors of heaven are kept open. All ‘divya-atmas’ (sacred souls) will go to heaven and will be spared a rebirth”, explained Bhisma to Yudhishthira.
Maharashtra - when two persons greet each other on this festive day, they exchange a few grains of multi-coloured sugar and fried til mixed with molasses and say "til gud ghya, god god bola" (henceforth, let there be only friendship and good thoughts between us).
How to Celebrate in the Spirit of Makar Sankranti More >
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2 Jan 2006 @ 02:30, by Unknown. Environment, Ecology
Well apparently my predictions were "somewhat"
correct.
Heres a article I published on the web back in
Jan of 2005.
It seems my predictions were an under estimation of
the effects of the Tsunami but were some what "perceptive".
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
January 5, 2005
9:00 PM MST
Red Deer, AB.
Canada
HEADS UP: The Dec.26, 2004 Quake/Tsunami's Aftermath
WELL...... we seem to have come through the "worst" of the "shift" more or less alright, well perhaps not alright per sae but still basically "intact."
WHAT'S NEXT...... well unfortunately we are at that "time" of "realignment" on
a global basis. What has just occurred is the "shift" or adjustment at the base or root or global geosphere and cycle. This is basically a natural process or condition of
global geospheric "housekeeping" that occurs over the millenniums.
Now the geosphere is basically the base sphere for all intensive purposes of the planet. Resting on the geosphere is the hydrosphere.
When the base or geosphere adjusts the logical consequence is for the hydrosphere to follow and adjust to adapt or evolve to the new parameters.
The hydrosphere or water sphere thus will now become a sphere of concern
for the planet as a whole. This in turn will affect the hydrological cycle itself.
What this means now is that over the next many decades and perhaps centuries
or sooner or later, there will be major changes in water, ice and cloud dynamics.
Page 1 Tsunami Effects
These may result in massive flooding in new areas, severe river channel erosions,
ocean current changes, river flow flooding, tide alterations, new rain and snow patterns etc. etc.
These will more than likely occur on a global scale hence the need to monitor,
model and manage via computer modeling and simulations and satellite methods.
If we are aware that these change may indeed occur then we are in a better position to mitigate or avoid their global effects and effected areas. All areas though will be effected to some degree or other. What will be required is a hydrological engineering project, assessment and system analysis on a global scale, to try to help minimize the effect and damage of changes that may occur.
What can though be done to shape the currents of the worlds natural water processes. Well perhaps not to much. The forces involved are very strong and powerful ones. More powerful than we, I fear. But perhaps not as unexpected as
a global plate shift. The silver lining is that they will probably be occurring somewhat more gradually and with less force hopefully than the earthquake and tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004. We may even be able to predict where and when the changes and stresses will be in the waters ways, currents and cycles if we are wary.
Some of these changes are already apparent as reports indicate that some of the coastlines of the ground zero impact zone are no longer the same.
ALFRED G. JONAS
Page 2 Tsunami Effects More >
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