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Memories of 21, 42, 63 ... the 84th meandering

 
 
sumac
 
  2  
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 08:18 am
Three cheers for Madeleine Pickens.

Clicked.
Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 08:40 am
@sumac,
A million acres!!!!!!!!!!

Talk about stepping up to the plate!

g'd day wildclickers


http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

0 Replies
 
Izzie
 
  2  
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 08:55 am
click x 10! woohoo!
0 Replies
 
sumac
 
  2  
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 12:38 pm
Try to get your brain around this:

March 13, 2009, 1:07 pm
Shipping Carbon Dioxide to Sea for Burial
By James Kanter
A.P. Moller-Maersk A large Danish shipping company says it can carry greenhouse gases to burial under the sea bed, as an alternative to pipelines.

Building new pipelines to transport and ultimately bury greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, captured from industry and power plants, is rather expensive " a potential impediment to the spread of the technology known as carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS.

A.P. Moller-Maersk, a large Danish shipping and oil company, said it might have part of the solution.

On the sidelines of an international climate change conference in Copenhagen, Maersk announced this week that it was exploring ways of delivering the gases directly to burial sites using specially designed sea vessels, initially in the area of the North Sea.

That’s important because the success of C.C.S., which may take years to develop on a commercial scale, partly depends on moving gases efficiently to depleted oil and gas wells or aquifers " the chief proposed burial spots for captured CO2. Many of these potential CO2 tombs can be found below the seabed.

Maersk Tankers, a division of A.P. Moller-Maersk, already operates liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas carrier ships, while Maersk Oil operates wells in the North Sea. Executives said combining expertise in shipping and hydrocarbons could turn the transport and storage of greenhouse gases into a new business area.

A fleet of 15 so-called handy-size gas carriers, each with a capacity of 20,000 cubic meters, would be able to transport about half of annual CO2 emissions from industrial sites in Denmark to the North Sea for storage, said Martin Fruergaard, a senior vice president for Maersk Tankers and the head of the group’s gas carrier business.

Transporting CO2 by ship “is far more flexible and will not require the same large-scale investments as pipelines,” said Mr. Fuergaard, who added that the business case for these activities would be helped if Maersk also could pump the CO2 below the seabed to enhance oil recovery rates in maturing fields.

The company has drawn up blue prints for the new vessels, which could be ready within two years. Emissions of CO2 from vessels on short North Sea voyages were expected to be less than 1 percent of the total quantity of CO2 the ships had stowed on board. The business could eventually expand to the United States if it introduces offshore carbon burial on a significant scale.

Proponents of carbon capture-and-storage technology say it is an effective way of controlling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. But skeptics argue that some applications of the technology " including using captured CO2 to push out the last remaining drops of oil from depleted wells " create additional planet-warming gases by enlarging the volume of fossil fuels available for use.
0 Replies
 
Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Mar, 2009 08:05 am
good earthturn wildclickers

nuther nice weather day

all clicked





http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
0 Replies
 
sumac
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Mar, 2009 08:31 am
Clicked.

March rain brings March buds out.
0 Replies
 
sumac
 
  2  
Reply Sat 14 Mar, 2009 08:51 am
Gray wolves in northern Rockies still endangered.

Salazar's Wolf Decision Upsets Administration Allies

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 14, 2009; A02

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's decision to stick with a controversial Bush administration move that took gray wolves off the endangered species list in most of the northern Rockies reflects the independent streak that has defined his career. But it has alienated key Obama administration allies, including environmentalists and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Salazar's March 6 decision surprised environmental leaders as well as some of the administration's traditional opponents, and it provoked a protest letter from 10 senior House Democrats as well as a literal howl of delight from Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R).

While the White House declined to comment on Salazar's move, it has clearly caused a headache for the administration. Lawmakers have called senior Obama aides to question the decision, environmental groups have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to probe the decision-making process, and experts inside and outside the administration predict that the issue will end up in court.

If the episode highlighted the delicate path that Salazar, a former senator, is navigating in his new job, it also underscored the learning curve that Cabinet members -- especially those who came from politics -- face when joining another politician's administration.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former House member from Illinois, veered off message last month when he suggested that the administration might tax motorists for every mile they drive. The White House made clear that the idea was not under consideration.

And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former senator from New York, clarified the administration's commitment to human rights this week after stating earlier that such concerns "can't interfere" with issues on which the United States needs Chinese cooperation.

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Cabinet members often show flashes of independence during the early days of an administration, especially if they have served in the House or the Senate, "where they're used to making their own decisions and going ahead with them."

"It takes a while to get your sea legs on that front, especially if you're a member of Congress," Ornstein said.

The wolf proposal was published just weeks before Bush left office, then suspended under a broad directive by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said Salazar had followed the unanimous recommendation of Fish and Wildlife Service scientists in setting the new policy, rather than letting political factors influence him. "This was a decision based on science," she said.

Some environmentalists and congressional Democrats are unhappy that Salazar cleared the way for hunting of the once-imperiled wolves just days after President Obama declared his support for federally protecting vulnerable species.

"Making the decision to adopt the Bush administration's flawed delisting proposal the same week that the president pledged his commitment to the Endangered Species Act certainly calls into question whether the Interior Department was coordinating as closely as one would expect to have done with the White House," said Bob Irvin, senior vice president for conservation programs at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife. "This was a controversy that did not need to happen."

One House Democrat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, framed it in even more blunt political terms. "I just don't see what this does for us," the lawmaker said. "Here we are alienating people who did the most -- who did a lot to help us in the last election."

The move pleased many elected officials in Idaho and Montana, whose states have the largest numbers of gray wolves and who had pressed the Interior Department to turn management of the animals over to them. Interior kept wolves on the endangered list in Wyoming, saying that state's management plan failed to pass muster, while also taking them off the list in parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah.

"It was a good sign for folks out here who were a little worried about having a Democratic administration hit the restart button on the conservation and environmental wars of the 1990s," said John Foster, spokesman for Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho). "I can't emphasize how important it is to have a Western rancher as secretary of the interior."

Otter, the Idaho governor, had hailed a similar Bush delisting proposal in 2007 by telling a crowd of hunters that, as soon as federal protections were lifted, "I'm prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself." He reiterated this goal to a group of local reporters March 6, after howling like a wolf and smiling.

Gray wolves had almost disappeared from the continental United States when they were listed as endangered in 1974, but they now number 1,650 in the northern Rockies. That population growth has sparked a long-running feud over whether the animals have recovered enough to be subject to hunting again.

President George W. Bush first proposed delisting all gray wolves in the northern Rockies in January 2007, but a federal court in Montana suspended the rule last summer, ruling that the states had failed to demonstrate that they would maintain a sufficient number of wolves once the federal protections were lifted. Bush issued a second delisting rule on Jan. 14, and the Obama administration suspended it upon taking office.

Ed Bangs, the Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf recovery coordinator for the northwestern United States, said gray wolves will be able to withstand regulated hunting in Idaho and Montana because the states have pledged to maintain at least 500 and 400 wolves, respectively, in the short term, and the animals will be able to migrate and interbreed with thousands of gray wolves in Canada.

"Right now the wolf population is highly diverse. We've done as much as we can," Bangs said. "The science is absolutely rock-solid."

However, some experts such as Carlos Carroll, who has advised Bangs's team on wolf recovery in the past, said recent studies indicate that the two wolf groups do not mix enough to sustain a diminished wolf population in the northern Rockies.

"The service needs to take a hard look at the new studies and data, and incorporate that into their recovery standards," said Carroll, who directs the Klamath Center for Conservation Research in Orleans, Calif. The current recovery standard was set in 1987, Carroll noted.

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), who chairs the House Appropriations interior and environment subcommittee, led nine other House members in asking Salazar on Thursday to postpone finalizing the delisting rule for at least 60 days. "I don't think they took enough time to evaluate the science," Dicks said.

But Barkoff indicated that Salazar plans to let Idaho and Montana take control of the wolves' welfare, adding, "Secretary Salazar will carefully monitor the management of gray wolves in those states where they were delisted."
Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Mar, 2009 04:17 pm
@sumac,
Quote:
But Barkoff indicated that Salazar plans to let Idaho and Montana take control of the wolves' welfare, adding, "Secretary Salazar will carefully monitor the management of gray wolves in those states where they were delisted."


Lets hope so...


After decades of work....

In his weekly address, President Barack Obama said this morning that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will close the loophole allowing downers to be used for food. He called food safety "something I take seriously, not just as your President, but as a parent."

The president also formed a new Food Safety Working Group to look into food safety laws and recommend improvements, and ordered the Food and Drug Administration to employ more food inspectors.



0 Replies
 
Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Mar, 2009 04:53 pm
THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:00 AM ET SATURDAY, March 14, 2009

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Barack Obama Announces Key FDA Appointments and Tougher Food Safety Measures

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Barack-Obama-Announces-Key-FDA-Appointments-and-Tougher-Food-Safety-Measures/



The HSUS's Wayne Pacelle


March 14, 2009
Case Finally Closed on "Downers" Loophole
It’s been a long fight, and today, we closed another chapter on it. Since the mid-1990s, The HSUS has been working hard to stop as a matter of public policy the abuse of downer cattle"animals too sick or injured to walk. And today, President Obama himself announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was officially putting a stop to non-ambulatory cattle being mishandled in order to get them into slaughter plants. He made the announcement along with two top selections for the Food and Drug Administration and a series of other statements about food safety.

We’ve had two major crises that validated The HSUS’s long-standing admonition that the federal government and the cattle industry were reckless and inhumane in allowing sick and crippled cows into the food supply. In December 2003, a downer cow tested positive for mad cow disease in Washington state, and a national and international furor ensued. More than 50 nations in short order closed their markets to U.S. beef, and the federal government tried in vain to recall meat that was linked to the animal with the fatal neurological disease, which is transmissible to people. A recent government report said the economic fall-out of that single finding of a BSE-positive downer cow was $11 billion. So it was not a trifling matter by any means, as a food safety or economic issue.

In the wake of that incident, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman"President’s Bush first Agriculture Secretary"announced an immediate ban on the slaughter of downer cattle, in order to quell the concern of consumers and trading partners. But USDA, under her successor Mike Johanns, quietly weakened the rule very soon after it was promulgated, allowing some downer cattle to be slaughtered, if they were ambulatory on first inspection and then went down later. That weakened downer policy was made final in mid-2007, though it had been in effect for several years since Veneman announced the no-downer policy. In short, if cattle went down after passing first inspection by USDA personnel, then they could be approved for slaughter on down the line.


Our investigation thrust a global spotlight on abuse of downed cows.

This tremendously damaging loophole provided cover to unscrupulous slaughter plants to keep downer cattle moving into the food system and giving them an incentive to accept downers at slaughter plants in the first place.

And that’s the precise attitude that triggered the second crisis. The HSUS sent one of its investigators into a medium-sized slaughter plant in Chino, Calif., which specialized in the killing of spent dairy cows. At this cull plant, as it was known, our investigator found downer cows"at all stages of the handling and pre-slaughter process"being tormented to get them to stand and then walk toward the kill box. Plant workers"two of them later convicted of animal cruelty charges"were seen on video ramming downer cows with forklifts, applying electric “hot shots” in sensitive body parts like the eyes or genitals, and even using high-pressure water hoses in their mouths, all in order to cause the animals so much distress that they would try to stand and get away from their tormentors. They would torture the cows before the USDA inspectors arrived, in order to show them that the cows were standing.

Like the 2003 BSE case, these findings whipped up a storm of protest and angst. The $110 million-a-year plant voluntarily shut down operations, and then USDA officially closed the plant's doors. School lunch programs, which got tens of millions of pounds of meat from this cull slaughter plant (it was the second largest supplier to the National School Lunch Program), then started pulling the meat from their shelves in 47 states, and parents across the nation panicked. USDA then initiated the largest meat recall in American history"143 million pounds"and retailers starting pulling meat from the shelves, too. The first of eight Congressional hearings were launched. And there were international effects. There were riots in the streets of South Korea"which is, with Japan, among the two largest American beef importers"with tens of thousands of people protesting the resumption of imports of American beef. They took to the streets after seeing the Chino footage, and riot police were unable to quell the dissent.

Former Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who succeeded Johanns and took office the day before we released the Chino footage, initially handled the situation in a decisive way by launching an investigation and urging the recall. But he hedged on making a decision to ban all downer cattle in the food supply. Then, more than three months after the Chino facts came to light"and after several meat industry groups announced they’d support a no-downer policy"he announced USDA would take action. But we waited and waited for final action, with the rule being held up in the bureaucracy of the USDA and perhaps also at the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The Bush team left Washington eight months after Schafer announced a change in policy would be forthcoming, and the rule was still not instituted.

The Obama team, led by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, did not dither. With Obama’s radio address today, they’ve announced the implementation of a no-downer policy within the first 50 days of taking office. I say it’s about darn time that the federal government took action. No sensible policy like this should have ever taken this long to enact"more than 15 years. And there is a long line of lawmakers and other federal officials and industry actors who share the blame in allowing this economically disastrous policy to have persisted. It was bad for animals, but it was also terrible for industry. It was a penny-wise and pound-foolish policy, and the Hallmark investigation probably cost the industry billions of dollars as well.

But today, we celebrate the news. And we hope it is a harbinger of a far more serious attitude toward food safety and animal welfare from the new Administration. I am personally looking forward to working with Secretary Vilsack"a man of great integrity"on a wide range of issues. And I express my gratitude to him and his team today for his decisive action.






[img][/img]
Izzie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 03:02 am
@Stradee,
Sat - 10click
Sun -10click
ehBeth
 
  2  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 07:38 am
@Izzie,
clicked Friday
clicked Saturday
started Sunday's clicks

0 Replies
 
sumac
 
  2  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 07:50 am
March 14, 2009
Editorial

Promised Land

People who care about conserving open space are allowing themselves a bit of hope that the federal government finally will deliver on promises it made to the American people more than four decades ago.

In 1965, Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund to provide a steady source of money for the acquisition of threatened lands, the protection of significant landmarks and the expansion of outdoor recreational opportunities. The money would come from offshore oil and gas leases, giving the program an interesting symmetry: dollars raised from depleting one natural resource would be used to protect others.

The program has rescued millions of acres from development. But it has never been allowed to live up to its potential. Since 1980, spending has been authorized at $900 million annually " split evenly between federal and state projects " but actual appropriations have been much smaller. The last decade has been especially rough, despite former President George W. Bush’s campaign promise to “fully fund” the program. For the present fiscal year, Congress appropriated only $155 million, and none of it for the states.

Offshore royalties spin off billions every year. But Congress routinely diverts the money to the general treasury for deficit reduction, and the White House, no matter who occupies it, rarely pushes back.

President Obama’s budget offers a better deal: $420 million for the next fiscal year and the full funding of $900 million by 2014. These numbers are heartening. Federal dollars are needed to complete long-pending acquisitions across the country, from Hawaii to Yellowstone National Park to Virginia.

States are particularly hard pressed; Gov. David Paterson of New York plans to raid the state’s only land conservation program in order to reduce the deficit.

Promises, however, are only as good as the president wants them to be. We hope that President Obama remembers his.
0 Replies
 
Stradee
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 10:00 am
good earthturn wildclickers


http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
ehBeth
 
  2  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 05:54 pm
@Stradee,
Hey WildClickers!

Hope you all had a great green day Very Happy

I transitted to the St. Patrick's Day Parade - had a great afternoon walking around downtown with brendalee.

I'm just finishing off my clicks, danon's clicks and merry andrew's clicks.
ehBeth
 
  2  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 07:04 pm
@ehBeth,
The WildClickers have supported 2,930,489.4 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 221,933.3 square feet.

American Prairie habitat supported: 68,861.5 square feet.

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,639,694.6 square feet.
0 Replies
 
ehBeth
 
  2  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 07:16 pm
http://www.sainturho.com/images/urhobbl1u.jpg

Quote:
St. Urho is said to have chased the grasshoppers out of Finland, thus saving the grape crop.


Quote:
St. Urho's Day is celebrated on March 16th, the day prior to the better known feast of some minor saint from Ireland, who was alleged to have driven the snakes from that island.


http://www.sainturho.com/

ohhh to be in Madison, Wisconsin to celebrate St. Urho

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3381/3335698889_25241b97d4_b.jpg
0 Replies
 
Stradee
 
  2  
Reply Sun 15 Mar, 2009 09:04 pm
@ehBeth,
A day for plantings, trimmings, and feeding lawns. Very Happy

Today mother nature topped my efforts with rain! a very good day

A busy lady are you Beth Smile

Have a good evening all

0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  3  
Reply Mon 16 Mar, 2009 06:19 am
clicked this morning.
Yesterday was a good very early spring type gardening day. A misty rain and I planted some peas.

Izzie
 
  3  
Reply Mon 16 Mar, 2009 06:59 am
@farmerman,
click10
0 Replies
 
Stradee
 
  2  
Reply Mon 16 Mar, 2009 09:47 am
http://www.nps.gov/ozar/planyourvisit/upload/Big-Spring-Fall-nice-1.jpg






http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
 

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