Friday, June 24, 2011

Authoritarian Green Glow In The Dark - 3

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant
The Ecocosmology Blog had a post "Mafia Contract Out - On Mother Earth", some time back, concerning one treacherous policy of the Sicilian Mob.

A cynic might say that mob was acting like a "legitimate" government by dumping nuclear waste into the ocean.

We note that many would naturally think that no legitimate government would allow poisonous nuclear material to get into the water tables or waterways, at least not deliberately or on purpose.

The photo above is of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant near Omaha, Nebraska, where the FAA is not allowing any aircraft to fly over, even though the plant is in a "cold" shutdown (right mouse-click for a larger version of the photo).

The red rectangle outlines the main nuclear power plant complex along the banks of the flooding Missouri River.

You can see that the place is flooded, with flood waters rising.

The previous post in this series has another photo and some more information, including a link to a story which says:
Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard - sometimes at hundreds of times the limit. While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated offsite.
(Daily News). A Wikipedia article says "Tritium is potentially dangerous if inhaled or ingested. It can combine with oxygen to form tritiated water molecules, and those can be absorbed through pores in the skin. The low energy of tritium's radiation makes it difficult to detect".

We don't need a nuclear expert to tell us that the flood waters around and/or in a nuclear power plant complex, like Fort Calhoun, is going to seep down and become contaminated.

That water is then going downstream to contaminate places on the way to the Gulf of Mexico, which hardly needs any more pollution done to it for a thousand years.

The berm around the plant burst to let more water in closer to where they did not want it to go. More contaminated water will now go downstream.

Los Alamos National Lab, in New Mexico is in danger by another climate change related phenomenon: fire storms. An evacuation is in process.

Scientists are convinced that human civilization is causing global warming induced global climate change, which in turn is causing these weather problems.

Not only that, their climate models show it will get a lot worse.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

When Indoctrination Is Enlightenment - 3

The following lyrics are from the song in the video below:

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
You Belong to Me I Believe
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on pennywhistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row”

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke
?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row



The previous post in this series is here.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Authoritarian Green Glow In The Dark - 2

In the first post of this series we pointed out the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused by earthquake and tsunami.

But we also dabbled into another hypothesis by some other scientists.

They hypothesize that anthropogenic global warming induced global climate change is a source of some earthquake and volcanic triggering caused by pressure placed on hair-trigger Earthquake zones around the globe.

In the post today we will discuss the same climate change that is causing the melting of glaciers worldwide, as well as melting the vast ice sheets at the Earth's north and south poles.

This accelerated melting of the ice is putting more and more moisture into the Earth's atmosphere, and as a consequence is eventually causing the rise of ocean levels as that melted ice turns into water vapor, then rain, then ultimately flows through the river systems to reach the sea.

The increased moisture in the atmosphere in turn leads to increases in rain in some areas, then flooding as the water finds its way to the oceans.

Because the ice caps kept river banks to a narrower path (not as much water flowing) before the advent of industrial age, we built structures closer to the center of waterways, rivers, and we even regularly built structures well within those flood plains.

We built those structures, including some nuclear plants, during a time when water was captured in polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers, resulting in less moisture in the atmosphere, so the water flow was concentrated in a narrower area of the vast drainage systems within the nation.

River banks were further from the structures we built then, including some nuclear power plants.

Now the global warming induced climate change is endangering those structures, including nuclear power plants in the USA.

The photo at the top of this post is of the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska, which is in danger due to the flooding of the Missouri River:
A fire in Nebraska's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports.

The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.

On June 6th, the Federal Administration Aviation (FAA) issued a directive banning aircraft from entering the airspace within a two-mile radius of the plant.

"No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM," referring to the "notice to airmen," effective immediately.

Since last week, the plant has been under a "notification of unusual event" classification, [because] of the rising Missouri River. That is the lowest level of emergency alert.
(Business Insider). To add to the danger, for the past few days tornadoes, strong winds, and even more rain have been blasting the area where the nuclear power plant sits alongside the swelling waters of the Missouri River.

One congress member has stated that the propaganda media has ordered a news blackout concerning the near meltdown triggering events that have already happened at Fort Calhoun.

If so, my guess is that the blackout was ordered because Fort Calhoun is only a few miles from downtown Omaha, Nebraska (million people in that area).

That floods are a danger to nuclear power plants is officially indicated because the plant was in "cold mode", that is, it had been shut down some time ago before the flood, for scheduled maintenance.

When the time came to restart the reactors the decision was made not to restart them because they anticipated these floods, which meant danger.

Thus, floods are a danger to nuclear power plants, just as tsunamis are.

For visual proof of that, the Toxins of Power blog has a video of Fort Calhoun (bottom of post) together with some expert discussion of the flood danger.

The AP is reporting that 2/3 - 3/4 of the nuclear plants have chronic leaks which contaminate the water table, soil, and potentially the air around them.

See here, here, here, and here.

Floods could carry that contamination far away from those plants.

The rise in sea level can only happen, as a function of melting polar ice fields, when the water that was once ice is no longer in the atmosphere, but has finally reached the ocean.

As long as evaporation keeps the water in the atmospheric cycle, out of the ocean waters, that climate change factor will still be isolated to floods, excess rain, and other moisture related disturbances on land.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Absolutism: Pabulum For The Insecure? - 2

One thing that shows up when empires are in final decay is a manic need for absolutism, evidently brought on by insecurities being promulgated throughout the populace.

As insecurity widens the gap between the governors and the governed distrust grows to the point where each can begin to demonize the other.

The government then begins to see the little, disturbed people as the problem, because the wealthy have the "what economic problems" mantra as their mainstay.

The reason for the escalation and institutionalization of this phenomenon is that, as the people are being plundered by the wealthy who control the money, the police, the military, and the media, insecurity goes through the roof.

That leads to massive propaganda campaigns.

How many times a day do we hear the word "security" and in how many contexts?

Financial instruments representing money in some way are called "securities", Homeland Security, Social Security, Security National this and that, and on and on.

The use of the word "stability" goes hand in glove with "security", as the controlling forces of MOMCOM often increase instability on purpose.

Let me offer a recent example.

One of the time-worn beliefs is that our science is stable, which means secure, in the language we call doublespeak.

I say that because in recent days one indication of the instability of scientific rhetoric has been leaking into the mass media.

Over at Ecocosmology Blog, the post Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline? - 2 goes into some detail about how the talk about the Sun going into an active phase suddenly changed into a discussion about how the Sun is going into an inactive phase.

This emphasizes an apparent instability in science, following in the recent but ongoing footsteps of our national financial instability, the uncertainty and therefore lack of stability in our understanding about what our government is doing by maintaining four wars, the instability of our power systems, and in general therefore a growing sense of insecurity.

Note also the relatively recent massive failure of the power grid in the northeast, the massive inefficiency of the power grid, hope for the power grid, the odd, gangly shape of the power grid, the government's mild mannered approach, and the mystery involved in some aspects of upgrading it:
"There is no theory to explain why these materials are superconducting," Selvamanickam said. "Another thing that gives me goose bumps is there are materials out there that could be superconducting at room temperature, and we don't know it yet."
(Science Daily). Now, lets get back to the issue of the Sun flip flopping and doing the opposite of what has been expected by scientists who where basing their statements on what science "knows".

They were saying the Sun was a danger to the power grid and global warming because it was going into an active phase as part of an 11 year cycle.

All of a sudden scientists are saying that the Sun may instead go into an inactive phase, which would mean the safety of the power grid will continue, plus a mini ice age instead of global warming may be coming up next.

Stability? Security?

Voila, change the propaganda message and "presto chango", problem gone?

Now what about jobs?

Guess we will have to wait and see ...