Groundwater Depletion in Semiarid Regions of Texas and California Threatens US Food Security

The nation's food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints the highest resolution picture yet of how groundwater depletion varies across space and time in California's Central Valley and the High Plains of the central U.S. Researchers hope this information will enable more sustainable use of water in these areas, although they think irrigated agriculture may be unsustainable in some parts.

"We're already seeing changes in both areas," said Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology and lead author of the study. "We're seeing decreases in rural populations in the High Plains. Increasing urbanization is replacing farms in the Central Valley. And during droughts some farmers are forced to fallow their land. These trends will only accelerate as water scarcity issues become more severe."

Three results of the new study are particularly striking: First, during the most recent drought in California's Central Valley, from 2006 to 2009, farmers in the south depleted enough groundwater to fill the nation's largest human-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas -- a level of groundwater depletion that is unsustainable at current recharge rates.

Second, a third of the groundwater depletion in the High Plains occurs in just 4% of the land area. And third, the researchers project that if current trends continue some parts of the southern High Plains that currently support irrigated agriculture, mostly in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to do so within a few decades.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120528154857.htm

Ethan A. Huff - Exposed: Monsanto planted GM alfalfa before USDA approved it, federal agency knew all along

A little more than a year ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made the disastrous decision to deregulate Monsanto's Roundup-Ready alfalfa, even though the agency's sham of an environmental impact report failed to prove that GM alfalfa is at all safe or necessary. It has now come to light that Monsanto released GM alfalfa into the wild years before it was initially deregulated in 2005 -- and the USDA was apparently fully aware of this, but did nothing about it.

Reporting for Activist Post, Cassandra Anderson and Anthony Gucciardi explain that a letter to the USDA dated April 5, 2007, from Cal/West Seeds, a California-based seed company, shows that Monsanto's GM alfalfa had been in cultivation years before the first deregulation of the crop in 2005. That letter reveals that Monsanto's GM traits were already turning up in conventional alfalfa seed in 2005, which means GM traits were in use at least two years before that in 2003.

"We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seed in 2005," says the letter. "It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot prior to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036023_Monsanto_GM_alfalfa_USDA.html

Karl Grossman - Meltdown at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The resignation last week of the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another demonstration of the bankrupt basis of the NRC. Gregory Jaczko repeatedly called for the NRC to apply "lessons learned" from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan. And, for that, the nuclear industry quite successfully went after him fiercely.

The New York Times in an editorial over the weekend said that President Obama’s choice to replace Jaczko, Allison Macfarlane, “will need to be as independent and aggressive as Dr. Jaczko.”

That misses the institutional point.

The NRC was created in 1974 when Congress abolished the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission after deciding that the AEC’s dual missions of promoting and at the same time regulating nuclear power were deemed a conflict of interest. The AEC was replaced by the NRC which was to regulate nuclear power, and a Department of Energy was later formed to advocate for it.

However, the same extreme pro-nuclear culture of the AEC continued on at the NRC. It has partnered with the DOE in promoting nuclear power.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/28-5

Climate change led to collapse of ancient Indus civilization, study finds

A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4000 years ago. The study also resolves a long-standing debate over the source and fate of the Sarasvati, the sacred river of Hindu mythology.

Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization was the largest—but least known—of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia. Like their contemporaries, the Harappans, named for one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers owing their livelihoods to the fertility of annually watered lands.

"We reconstructed the dynamic landscape of the plain where the Indus civilization developed 5200 years ago, built its cities, and slowly disintegrated between 3900 and 3000 years ago," said Liviu Giosan, a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and lead author of the study published the week of May 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers."

Today, numerous remains of the Harappan settlements are located in a vast desert region far from any flowing river. In contrast to Egypt and Mesopotamia, which have long been part of the Western classical canon, this amazingly complex culture in South Asia with a population that at its peak may have reached 10 percent of the world's inhabitants, was completely forgotten until 1920's. Since then, a flurry of archaeological research in Pakistan and India has uncovered a sophisticated urban culture with myriad internal trade routes and well-established sea links with Mesopotamia, standards for building construction, sanitation systems, arts and crafts, and a yet-to-be deciphered writing system.

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/whoi-ccl052312.php

Sayer Ji - Eating Aluminum: Is It As Safe As Our Regulators Say?

Aluminum toxicity, a characteristically manmade problem, is now impossible to avoid, and has become a postmodern rite of passage. Our environment has become so polluted with the stuff, that even our crop plants are being threatened, with biotechnology firms now scrambling to genetically engineer aluminum-tolerance into them as a possible, though still desperate solution.

Not only are we being exposed, daily, through increasingly polluted water, soil and air, but many of our regulatory agencies consider it perfectly safe to intentionally consume or inject the stuff directly into our bodies.

While there is no known physiologic need or positive biological role for aluminum in the human body, the FDA is perfectly content with the population it is charged with protecting eating it as a "food grade" additive. This same "regulatory agency" promotes the mythical concept of a "safe" food grade petroleum, allowing food manufacturers to surreptitiously feed us over half a pound a year, which is likely why human autopsies have revealed that almost half of us have pathological deposits of the stuff in our livers and spleen.*

Technically, there are 8 forms of aluminum the government considers benign enough to receive GRAS, or Generally Recognized As Safe, status - a designation which basically exempts the substance from adequate safety testing. Those 8 forms are:

Read More:

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/eating-aluminum-it-safe-our-regulators-say

Yale study concludes public apathy over climate change unrelated to science literacy

Are members of the public divided about climate change because they don't understand the science behind it? If Americans knew more basic science and were more proficient in technical reasoning, would public consensus match scientific consensus?

A study published today online in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that the answer to both questions is no. Indeed, as members of the public become more science literate and numerate, the study found, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate change poses.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was conducted by researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and involved a nationally representative sample of 1500 U.S. adults.

"The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses," said Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team. "The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public's limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first," he said.

"Cultural cognition" is the term used to describe the process by which individuals' group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong. The results of the study were consistent with previous studies that show that individuals with more egalitarian values disagree sharply with individuals who have more individualistic ones on the risks associated with nuclear power, gun possession, and the HPV vaccine for school girls.

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/yu-ysc052512.php

Susanne Posel - UN Says Radiation Levels are Safe, Despite Empirical Data on Fukushima

First the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claimed that their research confirms Japanese milk and vegetables are safe for human consumption. They reported that radiation levels are below cancer-causing levels.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also assessed the problem of radioactive levels at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.

This concept, known as the Linear No-Threshold Dose hypothesis (LNT), was accepted in 1959 as the global regulating philosophy and remains entrenched despite all scientific evidence to the contrary.

With regard to radiation this belief has been unsuccessful.

The LNT theory has been long since disproven. We are encompassed in natural radiation every day and we know that low levels of radiation or even ten times background levels have never hurt anyone.

It doesn’t cause cancer.

Yet nuclear power, with its real threat of unleashing massive amounts of unnatural radiation onto our biosphere has been proven true, not once (with Chernobyl) but twice. The Fukushima influence is still with us and will continue to be for quite some time.

Read More:

http://occupycorporatism.com/un-says-radiation-levels-are-safe-despite-empirical-data-on-fukushima/

Rosalind Peterson - U.S. NAVY’S TWELVE 5-YEAR WARFARE TESTING PROGRAMS & THE INCREASING & ONGOING THREAT TO THE GULF OF MEXICO, ATLANTIC & PACIFIC OCEANS

Revealed today that a “New Navy study says use of sonar, explosives may hurt more marine mammals than once thought”[25]. “…HONOLULU-The U.S. Navy may hurt more dolphins and whales by using sonar and explosives in Hawaii and California under a more thorough analysis that reflects new research and covers naval activities in a wider area than previous studies…”  (The Public Comment period for the new U.S. Navy Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico 5-Year Warfare Testing Range that will use bomb blasts and Sonar is from May 11, 2012 through July 10, 2012 [8C]).     U.S. Navy Website: http://aftteis.com/Home.aspx

The Washington Post also stated:  “…The Navy estimates its use of explosives and sonar may unintentionally cause more than 1,600 instances of hearing loss or other injury to marine mammals each year, according to a draft environmental impact statement that covers training and testing planned from 2014 to 2019. The Navy calculates the explosives could potentially kill more than 200 marine mammals a year…”  (The Public Comment period for the new U.S. Navy Pacific 5-Year Warfare Testing Range that will use bomb blasts and Sonar is from May 11, 2012 through July 10, 2012 [8B]).    U.S. Navy Website:  http://hstteis.com/Home.aspx

On May 17, 2012, news reports that “Mass dolphin deaths in Peru caused by acoustic trauma” were announced by “…Dr. Carlos Yaipen Llanos of ORCA in Peru informed Hardy Jones of Blue Voice that acoustical trauma is the cause of the Mass Mortality Event (MME) that killed an estimated one thousand dolphins along the coast of northern Peru in March 2012…” [28].  This is another reason to begin to limit sonar, laser, radar, and electromagnetic weapons testing in the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Read More:

http://theintelhub.com/2012/05/02/the-u-s-navys-twelve-5-year-warefare-testing-programs-and-the-increasing-and-ongoing-threat-to-the-gulf-of-mexico-atlantic-and-pacific-oceans/

Chris Hedges - The War on Gays

No one understands this better than the gay activist and pastor Mel White. White, along with his husband and partner of 30 years, Gary Nixon, founded Soulforce, an organization committed to using nonviolent resistance to end religion-based oppression. White and hundreds of Soulforce volunteers protest outside megachurches that preach hatred and bigotry in the name of religion. White travels to communities where young gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgender people have committed suicide. He holds memorial services for them in front of the church doors. He accuses the pastors of these churches of murder. His books “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America” and “Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tell Us to Deny Gay Equality,” are two of the most important works that examine the innate cruelty and proto-fascism of the Christian right. White, more than perhaps any other preacher in the country, has pulled young men and women back from the brink of despair, from succumbing to the tragic fate of Tyler Clementi. And White is scared.

“What kind of environment creates a Dharun Raviwho would carry out that kind of bullying, as well as a kid like Tyler who would become a victim of that kind of bullying?” White asked when I reached him by phone at his home in Long Beach, Calif. “It is society. At its heart it is the church. The churches should be convicted, not just Ravi. He’s just an extension of the hatred that people feel about this threat, this gay threat. Pope Benedict XVI should be on trial. Richard Landfrom the Southern Baptists should be on trial. Religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic, should be on trial. They made this happen, but too few Americans make the connection.”

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_war_on_gays_20120528/

Global carbon-dioxide emissions increase by 1.0 Gt in 2011 to record high

Global carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO₂ emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).

The 450 Scenario of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011, which sets out an energy pathway consistent with a 50% chance of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to 2°C, requires CO₂ emissions to peak at 32.6 Gt no later than 2017, i.e. just 1.0 Gt above 2011 levels. The 450 Scenario sees a decoupling of CO₂emissions from global GDP, but much still needs to be done to reach that goal as the rate of growth in CO₂ emissions in 2011 exceeded that of global GDP. “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close,” said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol.

In 2011, a 6.1% increase in CO₂ emissions in countries outside the OECD was only partly offset by a 0.6% reduction in emissions inside the OECD. China made the largest contribution to the global increase, with its emissions rising by 720 million tonnes (Mt), or 9.3%, primarily due to higher coal consumption. “What China has done over such a short period of time to improve energy efficiency and deploy clean energy is already paying major dividends to the global environment”, said Dr. Birol. China’s carbon intensity — the amount of CO₂ emitted per unit of GDP — fell by 15% between 2005 and 2011. Had these gains not been made, China’s CO₂ emissions in 2011 would have been higher by 1.5 Gt.

Read More:

http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html