August 3, 2017
By James Doubek
An earthquake (click here) of preliminary magnitude 4.2 hit central Oklahoma on Wednesday night, the U.S. Geological Survey said, the sixth earthquake to affect the area in just over 24 hours.
Four hours later, a less intense earthquake of a preliminary magnitude 3.5 struck the area in the early hours of Thursday.
The quake late Wednesday was the largest magnitude earthquake to strike the area, near the city of Edmond, since Tuesday night. The USGS said the earthquake was "widely felt" in Edmond and northern Oklahoma City, which is located about 15 miles away. It happened a few minutes before 10 p.m. local time at a preliminary depth of 2.3 kilometers (1.43 miles).
The Edmond police department said on Twitter that no significant damage had been reported.
Residents said the "earthquake cracked floors and walls, and knocked household items off shelves and counters," reporter Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma reports for NPR.
Thursday, August 03, 2017
Remember the 84 million acres of ocean President Bill Clinton preserved to protect corals?
This is 2009. There are scientists in American universities fighting to bring back endangered species of corals in this waters.
December 5, 2000
By Robert A. Rosenblatt and Richard Simon
...The new reserve (click here) is "a special place where the sea is a living rainbow," Clinton said at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, where giant pictures of coral were projected on a screen behind him. The order establishes "the strongest level of protection for oceans ever enacted," and sets "a new global standard for reef and marine wildlife protection," he told members of the audience, many of whom were wearing leis made from purple and yellow Hawaiian blossoms....
When politicians say they put people first, make sure it includes the air you breath!
August 24, 2014
NOAA announced today (click here) it will afford Endangered Species Act protections to 20 coral species. All 20 species will be listed as threatened, none as endangered. Fifteen of the newly listed species occur in the Indo-Pacific and five in the Caribbean....
...Today’s announcement is a significant change from the proposed rule in November 2012. Since that time, many new scientific papers on climate change and coral habitat, distribution and abundance were published so that NOAA was able to consider and incorporate new information into the final decision. NOAA also considered extensive public comments as part of the final rule making....
July 23, 2017
- By Beth Buczynski
- Coral reefs (click here) serve as a "canary in the coal mine" for the health of our planet. As land dwellers, we can’t see or feel the effects of climate change and other detrimental forces at work in the ocean, but coral reefs can.
And, unfortunately, the ongoing changes occurring in the world’s most important reef ecosystems suggest that something is terribly wrong.
Most recently under threat are the reefs protected by the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument...
Profiteers have no conscience, only money and misinformation to manipulate the public opinion.
It is like the petroleum industry works in cabal with loggers to find the most dense "core forest" and destroy it.
August 2, 2017
By Duncan Adams
In a July 21 filing, the department alerted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of “many deficiencies in the MVP approach to evaluate forest fragmentation” that would be caused by the pipeline and the 125-foot wide temporary right-of-way the project would clear of trees and vegetation during construction, as well as the permanently treeless right-of-way of 50 feet in most places.
The agencies said fragmentation of an irreplaceable forest core diminishes its significant, wide-ranging ecological benefits. According to the filing, a “forest core” is an ecological unit that represents an intact block of forest of at least 100 acres....
This same level of immorality existed at "Standing Rock." The land involved at "Standing Rock" BELONGS to Native Americans. It was a burial ground. The tribes did not expect to have their land INVADED by petroleum profiteers.
In the case of Standing Rock private interests invaded Native American land. They do not have rights there. The state and local governments don't have rights there, yet the land was OCCUPIED by private petroleum concerns.
Why?
Because the petroleum industry was unsuccessful in bringing the pipeline to Fargo, North Dakota. The White People of Fargo said, "NO WAY." When it was evident the white folks would win the argument, the petroleum industry simply invaded Standing Rock with a private militia and local swat police. One Native American from Standing Rock that was an Iraq War veteran stated, "We didn't even have that type of armaments when I was a soldier in Iraq."
The 550-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (click here) proposed by Dominion Resources in May 2014 is a very real threat to the natural, recreational, and water resources on Shenandoah Mountain. It cuts through the southeastern portion of the Shenandoah Mountain Proposal in the Braley Pond - Hankey Mountain area. If the pipeline is approved, it could make a portion of the Shenandoah Mountain Proposal ineligible for designation as a National Scenic Area. It would also cut through the Ruffed Grouse Habitat Management area on Hankey Mountain that FOSM has pledged to support. Dominion initiated the pre-filing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Oct. 31, 2014. Friends of Shenandoah Mountain submitted the letter below to FERC on Nov. 13....
Say, "No" to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. There is no reason for more pipelines in the USA. Fix the ones that already exist!
This same level of immorality existed at "Standing Rock." The land involved at "Standing Rock" BELONGS to Native Americans. It was a burial ground. The tribes did not expect to have their land INVADED by petroleum profiteers.
In the case of Standing Rock private interests invaded Native American land. They do not have rights there. The state and local governments don't have rights there, yet the land was OCCUPIED by private petroleum concerns.
Why?
Because the petroleum industry was unsuccessful in bringing the pipeline to Fargo, North Dakota. The White People of Fargo said, "NO WAY." When it was evident the white folks would win the argument, the petroleum industry simply invaded Standing Rock with a private militia and local swat police. One Native American from Standing Rock that was an Iraq War veteran stated, "We didn't even have that type of armaments when I was a soldier in Iraq."
The 550-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (click here) proposed by Dominion Resources in May 2014 is a very real threat to the natural, recreational, and water resources on Shenandoah Mountain. It cuts through the southeastern portion of the Shenandoah Mountain Proposal in the Braley Pond - Hankey Mountain area. If the pipeline is approved, it could make a portion of the Shenandoah Mountain Proposal ineligible for designation as a National Scenic Area. It would also cut through the Ruffed Grouse Habitat Management area on Hankey Mountain that FOSM has pledged to support. Dominion initiated the pre-filing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Oct. 31, 2014. Friends of Shenandoah Mountain submitted the letter below to FERC on Nov. 13....
Say, "No" to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. There is no reason for more pipelines in the USA. Fix the ones that already exist!
February 23, 2017
By Steph Yin
...In a paper published in PLoS One on Wednesday, (click here) Dr. Mountrakis and Sheng Yang, a graduate student, tried slicing deforestation a different way. Using satellite maps, they calculated the average distance to the nearest forest from any point in the continental United States in 1992 versus 2001. Between these years, they found, distance to the nearest forest increased by one-third of a mile.
This new metric, which the researchers named “forest attrition distance,” reflects a particular type of forest loss: the removal of isolated forest patches. When these patches are lost (a process the authors refer to as attrition), adjacent forests become farther apart, potentially affecting biodiversity, soil erosion, local climate and other conditions.
The authors calculated the change in total forest cover from 1992 to 2001, and found a loss of 3 percent or 35,000 square miles, approximately the size of Maine. Over the same time period, Dr. Mountrakis said, forest attrition distance increased by 14 percent, a contrast he called striking....
It isn't as though American scientists that work within the USA government have been sitting on their hands regarding the concern of the loss of photosynthesis within the borders of the USA.
A 25-Year History of Forest Disturbance and Cause in the United States (click here)
Mountain pine beetle damage.
Currently in its third phase, the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project is completing nationwide processing of historic Landsat data to provide a comprehensive annual, wall-to-wall analysis of U.S. disturbance history over the last 25 years. Because understanding the cause of disturbance is important to many forest-related applications, Forest Service scientists and collaborators have developed methods to map forest disturbance agents through time. Starting with 10 pilot scenes across the U.S. representing diverse disturbance regimes, scientists developed annual maps at 30 meters (98.42 feet) resolution of fire, harvest, conversion, stress and other agents. It was no surprise that high magnitude disturbances such as clear cuts, land use change, and severe fire could be mapped quite accurately, but the group also experienced success in mapping more subtle and slow disturbances such as insect and disease outbreaks in the Interior West. Research partners plan to distribute annual nationwide maps depicting when and where a forest disturbance occurred over the last 25 years in the near future. Forest Service scientists also are processing national causal agent maps and intermediate spatial data layers. These causal disturbance maps will enable extensive analyses of temporal and spatial patterns in disturbance agents across the U.S.
Picture to right is clear cutting in Oregon, USA.
It is not necessary, even in western Oregon to clear cut for sunlight. Does anyone actually believe a Douglasfir Tree (America's popular Christmas Tree) needs bare land to grow? If that was the case, there wouldn't be Douglasfir in the first place.
Full sun (click here) and partial shade are best for this tree, meaning it prefers a minimum of four hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight each day.
Clear cutting is not required for any species of tree. Honestly, if greed is the issue than foresters should state it as same.
Rules for clearcuts. (click here) Oregon law requires that trees be left as buffers along streams to protect water and fish habitat. And in the clearcut area, a few trees are retained for wildlife habitat. Seedlings must be planted within two years after harvest. Oregon rules limit clearcuts to 120 acres, and adjacent areas in the same ownership cannot be clearcut until the new trees on the original harvest site are at least 4 feet tall.
It isn't as though American scientists that work within the USA government have been sitting on their hands regarding the concern of the loss of photosynthesis within the borders of the USA.
Mountain pine beetle damage.
Currently in its third phase, the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project is completing nationwide processing of historic Landsat data to provide a comprehensive annual, wall-to-wall analysis of U.S. disturbance history over the last 25 years. Because understanding the cause of disturbance is important to many forest-related applications, Forest Service scientists and collaborators have developed methods to map forest disturbance agents through time. Starting with 10 pilot scenes across the U.S. representing diverse disturbance regimes, scientists developed annual maps at 30 meters (98.42 feet) resolution of fire, harvest, conversion, stress and other agents. It was no surprise that high magnitude disturbances such as clear cuts, land use change, and severe fire could be mapped quite accurately, but the group also experienced success in mapping more subtle and slow disturbances such as insect and disease outbreaks in the Interior West. Research partners plan to distribute annual nationwide maps depicting when and where a forest disturbance occurred over the last 25 years in the near future. Forest Service scientists also are processing national causal agent maps and intermediate spatial data layers. These causal disturbance maps will enable extensive analyses of temporal and spatial patterns in disturbance agents across the U.S.
Picture to right is clear cutting in Oregon, USA.
It is not necessary, even in western Oregon to clear cut for sunlight. Does anyone actually believe a Douglasfir Tree (America's popular Christmas Tree) needs bare land to grow? If that was the case, there wouldn't be Douglasfir in the first place.
Full sun (click here) and partial shade are best for this tree, meaning it prefers a minimum of four hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight each day.
Clear cutting is not required for any species of tree. Honestly, if greed is the issue than foresters should state it as same.
Rules for clearcuts. (click here) Oregon law requires that trees be left as buffers along streams to protect water and fish habitat. And in the clearcut area, a few trees are retained for wildlife habitat. Seedlings must be planted within two years after harvest. Oregon rules limit clearcuts to 120 acres, and adjacent areas in the same ownership cannot be clearcut until the new trees on the original harvest site are at least 4 feet tall.
The ACA also provided for the common good.
One of the aspects of the ACA that is grossly neglected is it's investment into the future of health care in the USA.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provided grants and other funding to encourage the numbers of General Practitioners and Nurse Practitioners in the USA. Currently, there is a shortage of Family Physicians. I could never understand the eagerness of the Republicans to destroy a healthcare law that provided for the growth of much needed doctors.
Additionally, the ACA also provided funding to bring into employment new certified home care aides as well as those that staff the hospital as nursing assistants. The ACA takes a look at the total of health care and brings it up to speed for a growing population of Americans. It also seeks to empower the rural hospitals and health care clinics.
In destroying the best health care law in the USA for the fact insurance premiums are going up because of greed and not need is to once again put Americans at risk.
I have a question for the Democrats. How many jobs were created because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? And what is the increased revenue into the US treasury because of the ACA?
Those increased revenues in the way of income tax paid by new employees is what the Republicans want to cut and give to the wealthy in tax breaks. They give tax breaks rather than paying off the national debt.
Does the new employees are also paying state income tax and in some cases local income tax. The dynamics of the ACA go beyond saving lives and for finding health insurance. The ACA's new employees are helping to pay the National debt.
When realizing there is additional state revenue due to the ACA'd new employees, there is no reason for governors to seek reducing the benefits of the Medicaid expansion. They cannot justify it.
Those increased revenues in the way of income tax paid by new employees is what the Republicans want to cut and give to the wealthy in tax breaks. They give tax breaks rather than paying off the national debt.
Does the new employees are also paying state income tax and in some cases local income tax. The dynamics of the ACA go beyond saving lives and for finding health insurance. The ACA's new employees are helping to pay the National debt.
When realizing there is additional state revenue due to the ACA'd new employees, there is no reason for governors to seek reducing the benefits of the Medicaid expansion. They cannot justify it.
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