Bees “restored to health” in Italy after this spring’s neonicotinoid-free maize sowing

During this year’s neonicotinoid-free maize sowing in Italy hardly a bee colony has been lost, bar a suspicious case where some leftover seed from last year may have been used

It does look like a resounding, spectacular success. During this year’s neonicotinoid-free maize sowing in Italy hardly a bee colony has been lost, bar a suspicious case where some leftover seed from last year may have been used. 

The ban on the insecticide-soaked seed coating enforced by the Italian government last year seems to have worked wonders, judging from the freshest data collected on the ground by researchers, beekeepers and regional authorities alike.

Read More:

http://www.youris.com/Environment/Bees/Bees_restored_to_health_in_Italy_after_this_springs_neonicotinoidfree_maize_sowing.kl

Incredible Photography....Amazing Eye Candy!

Anheuser-Busch 

Paradise Tanager...mostly found in South America

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Gary Null and Jeremy Stillman - How Safe are America’s Nuclear Reactors from Severe Solar Storms? A Real Armageddon Meltdown is Possible

More than ever, we are facing unprecedented environmental disasters ranging from harsh, snowy winters pounding the Northeast, desiccating drought across Texas and New Mexico, powerful tornadoes demolishing towns in the Midwest and record rainfalls and flooding in different states. Over the course of a week this past summer, the East Coast experienced an earthquake and hurricane.

This trend of environmental events has become the new norm and it has coincided with our country coming down with a bad case of” Waiting for Katrina Syndrome” – a condition in which people refuse to examine the power of nature to disrupt their lives. Symptoms include ignorance and apathy over measures that could be taken to prevent calamity and unconditional acceptance of the outright lies and propaganda doled out by government and private industry leaders.

To make matters worse, our decrepit water and gas systems has been around for 60 to 80 years. Our roads, bridges and tunnels and levees are in a state of abject disrepair. We have not taken the crucial step of constructing emergency facilities in our cities and towns. Besides putting many people to work, building these facilities would provide some semblance of civility during a time of crisis. People would be able to take refuge and have access to medical clinics and food banks. The current response network that relies on the Red Cross, FEMA and the National Guard during times of crisis is dangerously inadequate.

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Gary Null, PhD and Jeremy Stillman - Solar Storms: Katrina Times 1,000? A Real Armageddon is Possible but Not Inevitable

In the five days leading up to Hurricane Katrina making its landfall, I issued a warning on my radio show advising the residents of the Gulf coast to evacuate their homes. I encouraged them to pack their valuables, leave their homes behind and head at least 50 to 100 miles North by bus, train, car, bicycle or even walking, as I realized that many people had no means of transportation. I also challenged the Army Corps of Engineers on the safety of the old and deteriorating levees located throughout New Orleans. However, approximately 80% of the people remained as they were told by local authorities that the levees would hold and they would survive.

Katrina struck Louisiana on August 29, 2005 as a Category 3 hurricane, and began its path of utter devastation that left thousands of people dead and tens of thousands homeless. On a trip to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward district shortly after Katrina hit, I witnessed hundreds of homes that were inundated after nearby levees were breached during the storm. I saw holes in roofs that people had created to escape the deluge that caused the water line to reach 9 feet or higher. Five minutes away in an upscale neighborhood, the flooding was equally as overwhelming. New Orleans had become the portrait of a disaster zone.

On a recent return trip to the Ninth Ward neighborhood, I discovered that the area looked nearly the same as it did in 2005. The terrible damage that persists to this day is a testament to the late and inadequate response by local, state and federal authorities to come to the aid of United States citizens.

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Gary Null and Jeremy Stillman – SOLAR FLARES ARE COMING: How Prepared Are YOU to Survive?

In the five days leading up to Hurricane Katrina making its landfall, I issued a warning on my radio show advising the residents of the Gulf coast to evacuate their homes. I encouraged them to pack their valuables, leave their homes behind and head at least 50 to 100 miles North by bus, train, car, bicycle or even walking, as I realized that many people had no means of transportation. I also challenged the Army Corps of Engineers on the safety of the old and deteriorating levees located throughout New Orleans. However, approximately 80% of the people remained as they were told by local authorities that the levees would hold and they would survive. Katrina struck Louisiana on August 29, 2005 as a Category 3 hurricane, and began its path of utter devastation that left thousands of people dead and tens of thousands homeless. On a trip to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward district shortly after Katrina hit, I witnessed hundreds of homes that were inundated after nearby levees were breached during the storm. I saw holes in roofs that people had created to escape the deluge that caused the water line to reach 9 feet or higher. Five minutes away in an upscale neighborhood, the flooding was equally as overwhelming. New Orleans had become the portrait of a disaster zone.

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A 4°C World Will Be Devastating But Can Be Avoided

Washington, DC  – Without further action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions the world could be as much as 4°C warmer by 2060, threatening the world with devastating food shortages, extreme weather and sea-level rise, according to the World Bank in a new report published today on climate change titled Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided.  This is the first climate report published under the new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, signaling a new more aggressive focus on climate change.

The report, which focuses on the impacts of a world 4°C hotter by the end of the century, predicts that sea-levels could rise by more than a meter by 2100, flooding cities in Mozambique, Bangladesh and Venezuela and devastating small island states and river delta regions when combined with projected increased intensity of tropical storms. Changes in water systems such as predicted increasing droughts and extreme rainfall are predicted to double in magnitude in a 4°C world, damaging ecosystems, increasing species extinction, and impacting food security.

“This report should be a wakeup call to the world that we must work harder and faster to combat climate change,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “Rapid cuts in CO2 emissions are necessary to stabilize long-term temperatures, but in the near-term, aggressively addressing short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) such as black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone, and HFCs can provide rapid climate, health, and food security benefits, particularly in the critical vulnerable regions that are already suffering some of the worst impacts of climate change.”

Cutting SLCPs can reduce the rate of global warming in half for the next several decades, cut the rate of warming over the elevated regions of the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau by at least half, and the rate of warming in the Arctic by two-thirds over the next 30 years, while saving millions of lives per year and preventing billions of dollars in crop losses.  Fast-action strategies to reduce SLCPs combined with necessary reductions in carbon dioxide are essential for slowing already accelerating extreme weather events in the near-term, while maintaining global temperature at or below 2°C above preindustrial levels through the end of the century.

“Reducing emissions of these short-lived climate forcers is critical for protecting the world’s vulnerable peoples and vulnerable ecosystems,” said Zaelke.  “When we talk about sustainable development,” Zaelke added, “this is precisely what we mean. These measures reduce climate change, save lives, provide access to clean energy, and improve food security all at once.”

http://www.enn.com/press_releases/4098

Africa: Calling for a GMO-Free Continent

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. “I eat genetically modified maize, which I have been growing on my farm for more than seven years, and I am still alive,” he declared.

Musi, 57, a maize farmer in the Fun Valley area of Olifantsvlei, outside Johannesburg, and a beneficiary of South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development program, has embraced the science of biotechnology with gusto.

“What have changed are my yields and my income.” He said that he earned about 225 dollars more per hectare for his GM maize crop than he did when farming ordinary maize.

He said that he was helping reduce food insecurity in South Africa by growing and selling GM maize.

“Biotechnology has a very big role in food security,” Musi told IPS. “The climate has changed and I know that with drought-tolerant seed I have a tool to fight climate change. I cannot guarantee that the rain will come and I if plant crops which are not drought tolerant, I could get into debt and lose my farm.”

A report in April 2012 by the Climate Emergency Institute titled “The Impact of Climate Change on South Africa” said the country is experiencing a gradual, yet steady, change in climate with temperatures showing a significant increase over the last 60 years. Temperatures in South Africa are predicted to rise in costal regions by one to two degrees Celsius by 2050.

But the ACB does not believe that GMOs can deliver food security on the continent, specifically in South Africa, a leading African producer of GMOs.

The organization is behind an African Civil Society statement calling for a ban on GM maize in South Africa and on the continent, which it hopes to submit to African governments. To date 656 signatures have been collected on the online statement, including those of 160 African organizations.

“We have sent an open letter to our minister of agriculture in October to ban GM maize in South Africa,” Haidee Swanby, an officer with ACB, told IPS.

“We (South Africa) have been cultivating, importing and exporting GM crops for 14 years with absolutely no impact on food security whatsoever. In fact, a bag of mealie meal is 84 percent more expensive than it was four or five years ago due to international prices and the extensive use of maize for biofuel production.”

Swanby said there was a need to improve access to food, by addressing poverty, unemployment and issues around land tenure, service delivery, infrastructure, access to markets, and unfair global trade practices.

“Genetically modified food has never been labelled in South Africa so there is no way to know if it is causing health problems,” Swanby said, calling for a rigorous scientific study into the health implications of GM food.

“If someone is getting sick, how are they going to trace it back to GMOs when they don’t know they’re eating them? We want more science, not less!”

The ACB has a supporter in Friends of the Earth International, which is also lobbying for aGMO-free Africa.

The organization’s coordinator Nnimmo Bassey told IPS that GMOs do not deliver on the promises made by the biotechnology industry. He argued that hunger in Africa is used as an excuse to contaminate and erode genetic diversity on the continent.

Bassey said that GM crops are neither more nutritious nor better yielding nor use fewer pesticides and herbicides. And he said they are unsafe for humans and for the environment.

“It is all about market colonization,” Bassey told IPS. “GM crops would neither produce food security nor meet nutrition deficits. The way forward is food sovereignty – Africans must determine what crops are suitable culturally and environmentally. Up to 80 percent of our food needs are met by smallholder farmers. These people need support and inputs for integrated agro-ecological crop management. Africa should ideally be a GMO-free continent.

Friends of the Earth International cites failed GMO experiments in Africa with Bt cotton (a strain of cotton that had the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium inserted into its genetic code) in Burkina Faso and South Africa where they had been touted as the crops to pull smallholder farmers out of poverty.

Global developer and supplier of plant genetics, including hybrid seed, DuPont Pioneer, said that the effect of switching from saved seed to hybrid seed is dramatic.

The company’s vice president responsible for Asia, Africa and China, Daniel Jacobi, told IPS that of the 24 million hectares of maize planted annually in sub-Saharan Africa, about a third was hybrid seed.

Furthermore, farmers get a fuller yield from hybrid seeds by using fertilizer and agronomic practices, reducing post-harvest losses and getting the crop to market, he maintained.

“We can spend a long time and gain a lot of productivity in sub-Saharan Africa by doing all those things without ever getting to the introduction of GMOs,” Jacobi said following a tour of the DuPont Pioneer facility in the Midwestern U.S. state of Iowa.

“I think we tend to get wrapped up in the debate about GMOs and how multinational companies are forcing GMOs down the throats of local farmers. I think we ought to be focused on helping farmers do the best job they can do today by using hybrid seed and let us not let those priorities get lost in the big philosophical debate about GMOs.”

AfricaBio, a biotechnology stakeholder association formed in 1999, says a vast majority of the South African population are struggling to meet their daily needs and GM products offer a proven solution.

“For 14 consecutive seasons, South Africans have planted and consumed foods and food products derived from approved GM crops as part of their diet and no confirmed cases of harm to consumers of GM foods have been reported,” AfricaBio chief executive officer Nompumelelo Obokoh told IPS.

Meanwhile, Musi remained unhappy about the call to ban GM maize. “Africans should come to a realization that all this is happening in the name of contraceptive imperialism. Africa missed out during the Green Revolution – we must not miss the Gene Revolution. Let Africans decide for Africa,” he said.

 http://www.nationofchange.org/africa-calling-gmo-free-continent-1353768992

Salmon on the Brink

On one historic day in 1992, I marched through the State Capitol Building and adjoining Senate Offices with hundreds of recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen and environmentalists working for the passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). Arrayed in yellow and green commercial fishing slickers and colorful recreational fishing group shirts and jackets, we carried big banners and signs calling for the passage of the CVPIA and restoration of salmon populations.

We marched by the offices of Senator John Seymour, one of the key opponents of the CVPIA, and the crowd spontaneously erupted in raucus shouts of “No More Seymour, “No More Seymour!”

This protest was held long before the draconian restrictions on freedom of speech descended on the Capitol and other state and federal government facilities like a dark, toxic cloud. If we tried to do this today, we would probably be arrested en masse by state and federal police authorities.

The momentum and enthusiasm for salmon restoration in the Central Valley kept building to a point where Congress really had no choice but to pass the bill.

The Central Valley Project Improvement Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush in the fall of 1992, set a goal of doubling the Bay-Delta watershed’s Chinook salmon runs from 495,000 to 990,000 wild adult fish by 2002. The legislation also mandated the doubling of other anadromous fish species, including Central Valley steelhead, white sturgeon, green sturgeon, striped bass and American shad, by 2002.

The landmark legislation also made fish and wildlife a purpose of the Central Valley Project for the first time. The CVPIA’s Anadromous Fish Restoration Program was supposed to dedicate 800,000 acre-feet of CVP water every year to environmental protection.

The Act included reforms intended to encourage efficient water use, including authorizing transfers of agricultural water and creating a land retirement program to reduce water use on tainted land. It shortened the term of Central Valley Project (CVP) contracts from 40 to 25 years and required a reduction in agricultural water subsidies.

Unfortunately, a decade after the law’s deadline, the salmon fishery continues to struggle to rebound due, in part, to ineffective enforcement by federal and state agencies and continued excessive pumping of fresh water from the Bay-Delta, primarily for corporate agribusiness interests in the San Joaquin Valley.

According to a new salmon index released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA), the Central Valley Chinook salmon fishery has suffered a dramatic collapse over the past decade, now standing at only 13 percent of the population goal required by federal law.

The index was released following the closure of California’s ocean salmon fishing season on Sunday, November 11, and the 20th anniversary of the CVPIA.

The NRDC and GGSA analysis, published in the Salmon Doubling Index, reveals a steady decline in Bay-Delta Chinook salmon from 2003 through 2010, at which point it reached a record low of 7 percent.

While the state and federal governments claimed that ocean conditions prompted the decline, fishing and environmental groups pointed to increased water diversions as a significant cause of this decline. Between 2000 and 2006, freshwater pumping from the Bay-Delta increased 20 percent in comparison to 1975-2000. The record water export year was 2005 until a new record was set in 2011 under the Brown and Obama administrations.

The annual export total via the state and federal Delta pumps was 6,520,000 acre-feet in 2011 – 217,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,303,000 acre-feet set in 2005.

Congressman George Miller: It’s long past time to restore salmon 

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the House author of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, strongly urged the federal government to comply with the law by restoring California salmon.

“Despite indefensible foot-dragging and countless lawsuits, salmon restoration has remained the lynchpin of federal water policy in California for twenty years,” said Rep.Miller. “California salmon support businesses and communities up and down the West coast, and it’s long past time for the federal agencies to take their responsibility to our state’s wild fisheries seriously. The federal government must restore California’s iconic salmon runs to health: that’s the law.”

“Salmon are the canary in the coal mine for the Bay-Delta economy and ecosystem,” said Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst with NRDC’s Water Program. “California salmon, the fishing industry and the Bay-Delta ecosystem all need adequate water flows to maintain their health over the long-term. The Department of the Interior and the State of California need to dramatically step-up efforts to protect the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem and restore salmon populations.”

In 2008, in response to a lawsuit brought by NRDC, Earthjustice and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, stronger federal court-ordered protections went into effect for salmon and other native fish, reducing water pumping from the Bay-Delta.

“In 2011, there was a modest rebound of wild adult Chinook salmon, directly correlating to this reduction in pumping,” according to GGSA and NRDC. “Chinook salmon have a three-year life cycle.”

As a result, the benefits of stronger protections in 2008 are reflected in the numbers of adult fish that returned to spawn in 2011, the groups said. Early federal agency projections predict stronger numbers for this year’s salmon run, which is currently underway. Nevertheless, the salmon index for 2012 will likely remain dramatically short of meeting state and federal goals.

Victor Gonella, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, emphasized, “Our salmon runs are essential to California’s natural heritage, to fishing families and to an industry that reaches from the fishing dock to your dinner table. Restoring healthy salmon runs means healthy local food, healthy communities and a healthy economy.”

Gonella said if current laws were enforced and the mandated restoration goal was achieved, the salmon fishing industry would provide a large contribution to the California economy. Consisting of commercial fishing men and women, fresh and salt water recreational anglers, coastal communities, tribes, fish processors, equipment manufacturers, marinas, and food and hospitality, a fully restored California salmon industry would provide $5.6 billion in economic activity annually and tens of thousands of jobs from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon.

“After two closed salmon fishing seasons in 2008 and 2009, and a token season in 2010, fishermen had a chance to fish this year, but we remain far below the healthy runs required by law,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association and GGSA board member. “The stronger runs in 2011 and this year show that, with stronger protections and more effective restoration programs, these magnificent fish will come roaring back.”

Groups Recommend Five Actions for Salmon Recovery 

The groups said state and federal agencies can step-up their efforts to restore salmon by acting on the following recommendations:

*  The Department of the Interior should reform CVPIA water contracts and revamp its salmon doubling efforts in response to a scathing independent review. Specifically, Interior should better manage water and restoration funds dedicated to salmon recovery, incorporate the latest scientific information and appoint a manager to be accountable for the progress of the restoration program.

* The State Water Resources Control Board should set stronger standards to protect salmon in the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta ecosystem, in proceedings to revise these standards that are currently underway.

* The state’s Department of Water Resources should incorporate salmon doubling into the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process.

* The Department of Fish and Game should launch an ambitious state salmon restoration effort.

* The Department of the Interior should aggressively implement NRDC’s agreement to restore the salmon run on the San Joaquin River.

The Salmon Doubling Index graphic and a table listing the index by year can be found here.

Restore the Delta: How many fish will be driven to extinction? 

Restore the Delta (RTD) commented on the release of the index in their “Delta Flows” newsletter, asking how many salmon and other fish species must be sacrificed to provide subsidized water to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

“As Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council, runs have improved on a few small streams such as Clear, Butte, and Battle creeks as a result of this restoration fund. But on nearly all of the major rivers of the Central Valley – the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, the Stanislaus, the Tuolumne, the Merced and the Cosumnes – salmon numbers have declined, not doubled, over the past two decades,” RTD noted.

“In our last newsletter, we reported on a newly-released study by the U.S. Geological Survey, which found that water exports have degraded conditions for fish in both the Delta and San Francisco Bay. Nelson cites a 2008 independent review of the CVPIA’s restoration program that includes the same findings. (That review is titled Listen to the River.)

According to Nelson, “In remarkably direct language for a review of this type, scientists concluded that meeting CVPIA and ESA obligations will require ‘a significant reduction in the amount of water pumped out of the system.’” But Nelson notes that federal agencies have mostly ignored the recommendations in the review.

“The closest we ever got to meeting the salmon doubling goal was in 2002, when the index peaked at 64.33% of doubling,” RTD said. “It’s been mostly downhill from there. Last year, we were at about 13% of the salmon doubling goal.”

“Meanwhile, export contractors try to scare us all with the specter of higher food costs when they get less than their expected amount of water from the Delta,” the group said. “They don’t mention that contracts for water delivery are meaningless when those contracts promise water that our over-subscribed system doesn’t reliably produce, and promise it to users with last-in-line water rights.”

“How many fish species – species we don’t eat and species we do – are they willing to drive to extinction in order to keep food costs artificially low or almond exports high?” RTD concluded.

While the federal government fails to comply with the provisions of the CVPIA, the Brown and Obama administrations are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels. This plan will hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other species, according to agency and independent scientists.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/23/salmon-on-the-brink/

Rising Seas, Vanishing Coastlines

THE oceans have risen and fallen throughout Earth’s history, following the planet’s natural temperature cycles. Twenty thousand years ago, what is now New York City was at the edge of a giant ice sheet, and the sea was roughly 400 feet lower. But as the last ice age thawed, the sea rose to where it is today.

Now we are in a new warming phase, and the oceans are rising again after thousands of years of stability. As scientists who study sea level change and storm surge, we fear that Hurricane Sandy gave only a modest preview of the dangers to come, as we continue to power our global economy by burning fuels that pollute the air with heat-trapping gases.

This past summer, a disconcerting new scientific study by the climate scientist Michiel Schaeffer and colleagues — published in the journal Nature Climate Change — suggested that no matter how quickly we cut this pollution, we are unlikely to keep the seas from climbing less than five feet.

More than six million Americans live on land less than five feet above the local high tide. (Searchable maps and analyses are available at SurgingSeas.org for every low-lying coastal community in the contiguous United States.) Worse, rising seas raise the launching pad for storm surge, the thick wall of water that the wind can drive ahead of a storm. In a world with oceans that are five feet higher, our calculations show that New York City would average one flood as high as Hurricane Sandy’s about every 15 years, even without accounting for the stronger storms and bigger surges that are likely to result from warming.

Floods reaching five feet above the current high tide line will become increasingly common along the nation’s coastlines well before the seas climb by five feet. Over the last century, the nearly eight-inch rise of the world’s seas has already doubled the chance of “once in a century” floods for many seaside communities.

We hope that with enough time, most of our great coastal cities and regions will be able to prepare for a five-foot increase. Some will not. Barriers that might work in Manhattan would be futile in South Florida, where water would pass underneath them by pushing through porous bedrock.

According to Dr. Schaeffer’s study, immediate and extreme pollution cuts — measures well beyond any discussion now under way — could limit sea level rise to five feet over 300 years. If we stay on our current path, the oceans could rise five feet by the first half of next century, then continue rising even faster. If instead we make moderate shifts in energy and industry — using the kinds of targets that nations have contemplated in international talks but have failed to pursue — sea level could still climb past 12 feet just after 2300. It is hard to imagine what measures might allow many of our great coastal cities to survive a 12-foot increase.

WE might find comfort in the fact that this is just one set of projections, and projections are notoriously tough to get right. But a second study that also came out this past summer erases any such comfort.

Led by the geochemist Andrea Dutton and published in the journal Science, the second paper uses deep history, not model projections, for clues to the future. About 125,000 years ago, before the last ice age, there was a warm period that lasted 10,000 to 15,000 years. It was perhaps a little warmer than today, but cooler than the temperatures that climate scientists expect later in this century without sharp pollution cuts. Dr. Dutton’s research strongly reinforces a prior study led by one of us, which found that the warm-period sea levels rose roughly 20 to 30 feet higher than those of today. We just don’t have a clear picture of how fast that could happen again.

Any sea level forecast must be interpreted carefully: things could be better, or worse.

The Schaeffer study uses the relationship between global temperature and sea level over the past 1,000 years — when it was cool, and the great ice sheets were generally stable — to extrapolate over the next 300 years — when it will be hot, and the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica may behave differently. Other scientific teams have tried the notoriously difficult task of forecasting ice sheet decay in physical detail, and this has tended to produce slower estimates of sea level rise than the Schaeffer team’s method. But any projection is compromised by the fact that we are sending heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere far faster than anything the planet has seen for at least 55 million years.

The Dutton study comes with caveats, too. Earth’s orbit was different during the last warm period, bringing more sunshine to the Arctic and complicating the analogy with today. But today we are on a path to a planet that will be much hotter than it was in the period Dr. Dutton studied.

There are two basic ways to protect ourselves from sea level rise: reduce it by cutting pollution, or prepare for it by defense and retreat. To do the job, we must do both. We have lost our chance for complete prevention; and preparation alone, without slowing emissions, would — sooner or later — turn our coastal cities into so many Atlantises.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/rising-seas-vanishing-coastlines.html

Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst

Food and Water Watch recently demonstrated that the dominant narrative, "100 years" of unconventional oil and gas [1] in the United States, is false. At most, some 50 years of this dirty energy resource may exist beneath our feet.

Bill Powers [2], editor of Powers Energy Investor [3], has a new book set for publication in May 2013 titled, "Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth [4]."

Powers' book will reveal that production rates in all of the shale basins are far lower than the oil and gas industry is claiming and are actually in alarmingly steep decline. In short, the "shale gas bubble [5]" is about to burst.

 

In a recent interview [6], Powers said the "bubble" will end up looking a lot like the housing bubble that burst in 2008-2009 [7], and that U.S. shale gas will last no longer than ten years [6]. He told The Energy Report [6]:

 

My thesis is that the importance of shale gas has been grossly overstated; the U.S. has nowhere close to a 100-year supply. This myth has been perpetuated by self-interested industry, media and politicians...In the book, I take a very hard look at the facts. And I conclude that the U.S. has between a five- to seven-year supply of shale gas, and not 100 years.

 

The hotly-anticipated book may explain why shale gas industry giants like Chesapeake Energy have behaved more like real estate companies, making more money flipping over land leases [8] than they do producing actual gas. 

 

Powers told The Energy Report [6]:

 

Put simply: There is production decline in the Haynesville and Barnett shales. Output is declining in the Woodford Shale in Oklahoma. Some of the older shale plays, such as the Fayetteville Shale, are starting to roll over. As these shale plays reverse direction and the Marcellus Shale slows down its production growth, overall U.S. production will fall.

 

Powers believes we are quickly approaching a gas crisis akin to what occured in the 1970's [6] and because of that, prices will soon skyrocket.

 

Art Berman Also Sounds the "Shale Gas Bubble" Alarm 

Arthur Berman, another investment insider, echoed Powers in a recent interview with Oil Price [9], remarking that the decline rates in production in shale basins nationwide are "incredibly high."

 

Berman is a petroleum geologist, Associate Editor of the American Association of Petroleum Geolgists Bulletin and Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He maintains the blog Petroleum Truth Report [10].

 

"In the Eagleford shale, which is supposed to be the mother of all shale oil plays, the annual decline rate is higher than 42%," he stated [9]. "They're going to have to drill hundreds, almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year, to keep production flat. Just for one play, we're talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply."

 

Berman believes there's a possibility that this could lead to an economic crisis akin to which happened during the Big Bank bailouts of 2008 [11].

 

"I add all these things up and it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money going to come from?," he asked the interviewee [9].

 

Who Will Be Left "Cold, Dark and Hungry" and Living in the "Dark Ages"?

It's a deep dive into shale gas production numbers that have led insiders like Powers, Berman and others to conclude that the behavior of the industry is akin to Enron's behavior in the 1990s [12], described by some as a "Ponzi Scheme [13]" in a June 2011 investigation by The New York Times. 

 

"What a glorious vision of the future: It's cold, it's dark and we're all hungry," Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon said of anti-fracking activists in Sept. 2011 [14]. "I have no interest in turning the clock back to the dark ages like our opponents do."

 

The reality, though, is far murkier. It appears the real culprit "turning the clock back to the dark ages" may actually be the unconventional oil and gas industry after all.