Environment

California Gas Leak – State of Emergency

Posted on by Helena

The gas leak in southern California has emit the equivalent of 700 million gallons of gasoline/carbon/methane into the atmosphere since October – nearly 3 months ago. The average car uses about 580 gallons of gas per year. In a 3 month period that would equate to about 165 gallons. The 700 million would thus equate to an additional 4,242,400 cars worth of carbon emissions. That would be the equivalent of 112% of the entire population (including children) of LA which stands at roughly 3.8 million!

And Governor Jerry Brown, a climate activist, is just now declaring a state of emergency and wants it fixed? What about 3 months ago! What about last month when the EDF showed aerial photos of the damage? What amount over the last six to eight weeks since residents began reporting illnesses governor? How much pollution has occurred as a direct result? I’ll bet it’s a lot more than those VW’s that are subject to enormous fines and lawsuits.

The proposal to fix the leak is complicated. It involves an attempt to mask the odors that have been released by attempting to vaporize them in a contained flammable operation, and to disperse the methane that hovers in the atmosphere, and ultimately to clamp the leak by drilling down over 8000 feet.

The utility company, SoCal Gas, claims that the odor in the methane is a result of an additive. That additive is used purposefully to help detect gas leaks. It is called Mercaptan. According to OSHA, at very high concentrations it is extremely toxic and affects the central nervous system. In November 2014, at a DuPont facility in Texas, the accidental death of 4 people and the hospitalization of a fifth was a direct result of exposure to Mercaptan.

According to the Utility company, exposure to this additive is harmless. But that would not be exactly truthful:

Ocular exposures:

Methyl mercaptan is an eye and mucous membrane irritant.  It may cause moderate conjunctivitis and diplopia.

Dermal exposures:

Exposure may result in redness, irritation and swelling.  Frostbite injury can occur from dermal exposure to liquid methyl mercaptan. 

Inhalation exposures:

Symptoms may include fever, cough, dyspnea, tightness and burning in the chest, dizziness, headache, loss of sense of smell, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Inhalation may cause CNS depression, respiratory irritation, respiratory paralysis, pulmonary edema, tremors and seizures. It may also cause liver and kidney damage, tachycardia and hypertension Methemoglobinemia and severe hemolytic anemia with hematuria and protenuria have been reported in a patient with G-6-PD deficiency.

Studies on exposure to Mercaptan have all been limited to a very small time frame – 4 minutes to one hour. Prolonged exposure, as in 3 months and counting, has not been assessed. The symptoms presented above were all attributable to this much smaller exposure period.

When all the facts are not offered in an attempt to dispel fear, there is a chance that people will not seek the help they need which could lead to even greater physical distress. Of the 6500 residents that have asked for assistance in relocating until this toxic plume is contained, only 2200 have been afforded that protection. The mere fact that this event is now described as a state of emergency indicates the severity and the longer the residents are subjected to the toxicity, the more harm that can occur.

COP21, Paris Summit -a Biosphere failure

Posted on by Helena

Biosphere. Remember the 1980’s and 1990’s attempt to create a mini earth environment? Their motives and aspirations were truly grounded and worthy! But the results were not exactly what they hoped and anticipated. The $200 million experiment was a success in that it was a failure.

The purpose was to create a mini-me earth. To replicate the environment in a way that could teach us how to be more sustaining – with less. But the earth is much more complex in its design and balance structure. Imagine in the human body there are 25,000 genes. Damaging a part of one can result in down syndrome, alzheimers, cancer, MS, etc… Now imagine earth and the billions of ‘genes’ that make up the body… damaging a part of one might cause our axis – to move.

Housing a rainforest, an ocean, a swamp, a tropic, and a savannah grassland, the idea of the Biosphere was to see if life could be sustained in space or on another planet. This controlled environment captured dew and condensation recycling it back. A wave machine created ocean currents and giant turbines serve to blow wind. They trucked in tons of soil, water from the Sea of Cortez, created contained hydroponic gardens and aquaponic rice paddies. They had a team of scientists confine themselves within the biosphere for two years – and the result? Abject failure.

They couldn’t create enough calories fast enough, malnutrition and weight loss contributed to illness, tension and disputes and even accusations of cheating arose. But the greatest problem they encountered was “wildly fluctuating CO2 emissions”.   The same CO2 that we combat in our present day climate change agenda that the White House and some governments attribute to man.   But the biosphere didn’t have pollution, or industrial activity, or oil wells, or cars – it had only plants, a few animals and some insects.  So what made the CO2 go crazy?

Most of the vertebrae and pollinating insects died. Fish died. But ants and cockroaches thrived and took over.

Panicking, to try and regulate the volatility of the CO2, oxygen was injected at higher levels and deactivation of the savannah and desert were routinely done to attempt to increase photosynthesis.  Didn’t work.  They decided that microbes in the soil were actively increasing the carbon CO2.  Naw.   Ultimately, they found that the carbon dioxide was reacting with the ‘exposed concrete’ forming high volumes of calcium carbonate.

Calcium carbonate is found in rocks, stone and concrete products and when it decomposes it becomes carbon dioxide. How does it decompose?  By contact with heat and water.  Simplistically, this would mean that a planet that is paved in concrete and stone, will decompose its calcium carbonate (concrete) into Carbon dioxide emissions …and Houston, we have a problem.  

Concrete jungles. Turning and churning all that CO2 mixed with exhaust into the atmosphere and choking oxygen from our environment. Hence we have oxygen facials, oxygen saunas, oxygen cafes, oxygen spas… because oxygen levels in major cities are close to levels at 13,000 feet. And while flowerbeds on highrise rooftops might lower excessiv heat, no amount of flower beds on rooftops will be enough to photosynthesize all that – concrete/calcium carbonate dissolving to carbon dioxide.

The Biosphere failed to understand that all things contribute to an ecological balance, including; animals, birds, beetles, bees, wasps, butterflies, etc…all plants, all species, including man. Years ago, this balance phenomena was exemplified in a study of the Amazon rainforest. Each animal, insect, creature big and small had an impact on the environment, down to the ‘dung beetle’ whose job it was to cleanup – the dung.  Omit one, and you change everything.

In our attempt to ‘control’ the weather, as in Weather Modification, we may have disrupted its natural course forever. Shooting holes into our atmosphere, shifting wind currents, seeding clouds, fog dispersion, hail suppression, all coincidentally began the same year that Obama’s scientists claim CO2 emissions increased and global warming began – 1965.

Our world is an amazing place to be sure. To the best of our knowledge no other planet exists like it. Beauty is abundant!   I see nothing wrong with adopting as much solar power as we possibly can. But the Paris Summit, or COP21, is a farce by anyone’s standards. All 195 nations in the world reached an agreement… but only 125 were present… but each nation must get approval of their home governments before that agreement is legally binding…, at any time a country can simply ‘opt out’, and every country must put forth a plan that may vary widely from others, that has no mandate CO2 reduction, and that can be instituted over the next 10-20 years when most of those leaders will be long gone, but it doesn’t really matter because its all voluntary with no penalties for failure…   And even if all nations comply, it is accepted that it will amount to half the necessary reductions to achieve the desired result!   That’s a success???  Help me here!

So what is Obama’s plan?  According to the White House, Obama is personally responsible for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17%. Coincidentally, the US Solar Industry issued a report that found that US solar power had increased by 17% – in 2007. Hmmm, fishing for sand?

It is estimated that solar at its peak can sustain about 8% of our needs in the US. As of 2014, there were 515 MW of solar powered plants under construction and another 3,684 MW under development. Germany has 10x that MW capacity and solar accounts for roughly 6.9% of electricity. A long way to go…

Oh, and by the way, the Biosphere shows that global temperatures have risen 1’ since the year 900.  Not to panic.

 

Paris Summit -Climate Change

Posted on by Helena

World leaders have gathered together to discuss how much money they are going to put behind climate change. These world leaders would seem to include the likes of Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and George Soros. Funny, I don’t remember electing them??? In fact, I don’t think anyone ‘elected them’. So when did they become the world leaders?  And why are they making decisions for us?

I find it a bit odd that a country whose entire GDP is gained through dirty oil would be present at a climate change conference in which oil and gas are the bad guys. Of course, the fact that Soros is heavily invested in coal should raise an eyebrow or two as well. So how do they intend to reduce CO2 emissions?

According to a glob of theorists, the root cause of ISIS and other terrorists is – climate change. You see, the consensus is that these poor fella’s don’t have a country rich in rain forests and agriculture land and clean rivers and such, and as a result they are angry and lop off peoples heads. Therefore, if we can change the climate, if we can manipulate what is natural to create an altered world, then we will eradicate terrorism. POOF…

Recently I was reading about ice ages and the fact that we are actually at the tail end of an ice age that has lasted millions of years. As such, we are warmer than say 2 million years ago… but cooler than earth was – originally. Yawn. The scientific community has released their definition of an ice age as being a time when ‘the earth experiences notably cooler conditions’. We needed a scientist to tell us that?

In fact, during the present day ‘ice age’ glaciers have advanced and retracted over 20 times, and the height of this ice age was just 20,000 years ago when ice covered most of North America. It is accepted that shifting tectonic plates cause major climate changes, and the natural cyclical shifting of the earth’s orbit and rotation create changes in sunlight patterns. The CO2 emissions that the Summit talks intend to address are actually released by the change in ocean temperatures which occur  when freshwater ice melts into saltwater oceans and changes currents.

That being said, CO2 emissions have a natural cyclical pattern and while each ice age had a beginning and an end, there is no evidence the earth burned up in between. But humans want to control – and in order to control the weather we would need to control tectonics, the earth’s orbit and it’s rotation – I don’t think Soros or Gates have that ability. But I suppose they can pretend.

In the meantime, to add fodder to ozone, these ‘world leaders’ claim that the reason we haven’t really been targeting the oil reserves and supplies that fund ISIS is because we’re afraid that the blast might ‘harm the environment’. Oh dear, oh my, oh my, said Eyore…to Pooh.

Even more hypocritical is that while the Climate Summit is taking place, the Paris police are dumping tear gas on protesters. Tear Gas is actually a chemical weapon banned from use in warfare by the Geneva Convention. It is considered toxic and harmful to the environment!  Eyore?

And according to one French journalist, the Bangladesh refugees are a result of climate change.  But wait, the refugees are from Rohingya and are fleeing persecution and poverty. They number 220,000, and approximately 28,000 have fled to neighboring countries.  Another organization, AOSIS, which represents a number of small islands scattered throughout the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, claims that typhoons continue to disrupt island life – a direct result of global warming.  But large devastating typhoons have been recorded for thousands of years.  The impertinence would seem to be the idea that despite these occurring regularly, the people want to change the weather – instead of changing where they build…

Obama has stated that, “recent economic growth in the United States has come despite a lack of growth in carbon emissions.” So if carbon emission is not growing why is the climate continuing to warm? Oops. Maybe its because the relationship is negligible.

CO2 emissions are both naturally occurring and man-made. The natural impact accounts for about 96% and the man-made for about 4%. Of the man-made, about 85% is derived from fossil fuel burning. But there is another culprit rarely mentioned – nuclear warhead testing. The US is the largest ‘tester’ with upwards of 1132, followed by Russia with 981 and France with 217. Nine have been conducted in the oceans. The tests peaked between 1950 and 1963 when carbon-14 emissions peaked as well.

Lastly, when presenting a graph, just as I exposed in my blog about vaccines, the starting point can be very misleading. According to a graph issued by the University of Wyoming with references to Oxford, the current trend of CO2 emissions began their incline sometime around the mid 1600’s well before fossil fuels. In addition, according to scientists, each ending ice age was met with peaking warm temperatures before the next ice age struck. Another graph shows that we were actually coming out of a mini ice-age that occurred after a significant warming that occurred between 1000 and 1200 A.D..

Are we in a warming trend? Yes. Are CO2 emissions high? Yes. Will changing our 4% of the total CO2 alter the course of nature? Make your own conclusion.

But according to scientific data, ancient historical trends show we are about to fall into a trough of a new ice age…Bill?  George?  Mark?  As world leaders, you seem a bit out of touch.