agriculture
Climate Change is still very, very real
Despite the leaked information this week by a few scientist stiffling dissent and doctoring data, the information that is now public does NOT prove that skeptics were right.
However, when the mainstream media, with corporate sponsors and ownership by large energy conglomorates or stock in the obsolete technology that is continuing to be used and wreck havoc not just on climate but on agriculture, property, maritime safety and physical well being.
Skeptics assume that because this data is now public, they now have proof that climate change caused by humans is a myth, but they are very, very wrong!
Even though there is scandel brewing over climate change brough on by the University of East Anglia, the fact that the leading scientists tried to slience decent and exagerate the truth, there are many other institutions in the world with their own independent research and data to prove that climate change is still very real and does not only threaten the environment but economic interests.
Many climate change skeptics deny the existance of climate change not because of ignorance but because they fear that if action is taken to curb climate change it will mean that government regulation will be imposed to reduce the amount of manufacturing thus driving down profits.
The fact that economic liberalism (often supported by conservative political parties) has already allowed free trade to move manufacturing to countries with lax environmental regulation or to punch exceptions into laws than make existing pollutors to be exempt from new environmental laws has not only contributed to environmental damage but agricultural disaster, economic recession, unemployment, and poverty.
The status quo believes that it is unsulated from these problems because they have the wealth to afford to establish themselves where it will effect them the least. The problem is that despite isolating themselves from the outside world, the outside will always find a way in.
So if skeptics believe that because they have released the quibble of a few scientists trying to cover up dissent that talks in Copenhagen will fail, the skeptics are wrong!
It should be noted that eariler this year, News International was caught hiring hackers to break into private telephone and compuyter systems to dig up private conversations and personal information then used the stollen data to sensationalize it senationalize news in tabloids owned by News International.
News International is the corporation in the United Kingdom controlled by Rupert Murdoch who also owns News Corp (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, MySpace.com) in the United states as well as News Limited in Australia.
Murdoch’s senationalism and biased news coverage has invoked all sorts of anarchy for all the wrong reasons.
In the United State, Murdoch’s “Fixxed News” has destablized the Republican Party by forcing out moderate, center-right conservative supporters in order to cater to the Republican base and far-right. Because Republicans emphazies the values of ONLY their base while abandoning and expelling everybody else, the Republican party has lost control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the 2008 Presidential Election not to metion many state and general elections through out the country.
As if that weren’t enough, the base and the far-right then developed misguided protest in the form of the what is now the T.E.A. Party Movement which has polarized American politics. One of the many things people notice about the T.E.A. Party is that it is composed mostly by white upper class individuals who for nearly the past 25 years (complements of former president Ronald Regan) have gotten away with alot of deregulation that created a barrier between the upper class and the middle class and has constantly pushed the middle class into becoming part of the working poor or into poverty.
With the rise of the Internet, a growing resistance has developed. So much so that in 2008, America elected President Obama through a grass roots campaign and community organization efford.
While the base and the far-right claims it has developed their own “grass roots efforts”, the discovery of who is really part of their grass roots campaigns denotes that they are not grass roots and only used the name “grass roots” as a buzzword which also has liberal activists on the look out for other things like greenwashing, disinformation, and of course counterhacktivism.
The counterhacktivism this week is a sign that conservative base and far-right are desperate to keep the status quo, even as going as far as to make it appear that the real hactivists are throwing their support behind skepticism. Of course, the mainstream media doesn’t know the difference between counterhacktivism and hacktivism. So who takes the credit for revealing this e-mails at East Anglia? The hacktivists.
Don’t be surprise to see more attacks by counterhactivists on issues such as the National Healthcare, Network Neutrality, Alternative Energy, Unionization, and fighting against Telecom Immunity and Factory Farming.
It is up to the hacktivist to fight back against the corporate and neo-conservative counterhacktivists.
This is our world. We have to defend it!
It’s the Pig Poop, Stupid!
All the hype about swine flu (or as it will be called here “pig flu”) has a simple cause: PIG SH*T.
While the pig flu has killed many people in Mexico, the real reason why it is a pandemic is because despite being a relatively poor nation (no offense to anyone I know who is from Mexico or Latin America) Mexico is a vacation hot spot for many international tourists. In fact, I’d like to go there some day.
The thing is the media has been giving Mexico a bad rap much like North St. Louis. As if illegal immigration and the drug war weren’t bad enough, now there is the pig flu. What’s next? Robots that eat old people’s medication for fuel?
Mexico is going through a bout of bad luck right now. And it doesn’t help that Global Trade egged on the problem.
So what does globalization have to do with the pig flu? More importantly, how did pig poop get involved?
In agriculture, farmers use animal excrement as fertilizer. This is a normal farming practice. Poop from animals such as cows and pigs is nearly 20 times as potent as human poop, which makes it an attractive fertilizer for farmers. The problem is when big corporate owned farms use too much fertilizer.
Large amounts of animal excrement are produced at Intensive pig farms that use Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). CAFOs are good if you are farming chickens or veal. For animals such as pigs or large cows, they are a disaster waiting to happen which has drawn the ire of many environmentalist, food safety advocates, and animal welfare organizations.
Some CAFOs have large anaerobic lagoons that give off large quantities of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, that gets into the air. Hydrogen sulfide can enter into the water cycle through evaporation, condensation, and return to earth as precipitation known as acid rain. Ammonia, by nature, is caustic and flamable. Hazardous to both humans and plants in large concentrations. These chemicals are given off as microrganisms that can enhance the fertilizer reproduce.
Just as dirt is subject to erosion on non-level surfaces, fertilizer (containting the microrganisms, including bacteria that can lead to viral infections) can wash down hill too. The excess poop washes into a small stream, lagoon, or river, contaminating the water supply downstream.
Prior to the pig flu epidemic, there were enviornmental protests against CAFOs with large anaerobic lagoons. One of these CAFOs, Granjas Carroll de México owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods. Granjas Carroll is located in Perote, Veracruz, east of Mexico City and West of the city of Veracruz. Near by residents of La Gloria (to the south) could not stand the smell anymore and they certainly were not going to put up with a large corporation contaminating their water suppy.
With easy access to a large population and a popular vacation destination, made it easy for the virus to transmit globally.
But keep things in perspecitive. Infection and death rates outside of Mexico have been very low. Even with thousands of cases in Mexico and a couple hundred of deaths, all the cases are in small clusters. Groups that went to Mexico on vacation or Spring Break. It doesn’t at all surprise me that the largest group of people outside of Mexico were a group of Catholic school kids. People who went to the missionaries or the beaches.
If you haven’t been to Mexico in the past month, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!
In fact, go out this weekend! Go celebrate at a Cinco de Mayo party. (Even if Cinco de Mayo is next week an not this week end.) Go to a Mexican restaurant. I plan to do that.
Reguardless of what happens, when this is over, there will be an investigation in to agribusiness and global trade. (As if rich people aren’t in trouble enough already. LOL!)
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE!
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