Suburban Guerrilla

If you’re going to rely on nuclear energy, it’s a very, very bad idea to rely on for-profit companies who have every incentive to cut corners and cover up. Can anyone honestly say they still believe anything TEPCO says? Not a great position for Japan to be in:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. injected boric acid into a reactor at its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to prevent an accidental chain reaction known as re- criticality after temperatures rose in the past week.

The temperature of the No. 2 reactor was 70.1 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit) as of 6 a.m. today, according to preliminary data, Akitsuka Kobayashi, a spokesman for the utility, said by phone. The reading fell from 72.2 degrees at 5 a.m. this morning, and is below the 93 degrees that’s used to define a cold shutdown, or safe state, of the reactor.

Since Feb. 1, temperatures at the bottom of the No. 2 reactor vessel have risen by more than 20 degrees Celsius, according to the company’s data. Tepco, as the utility is known, and the government announced that the Fukushima plant reached a cold shutdown on Dec. 16, nine months after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami wrecked the nuclear station, and caused three reactors to meltdown and release radiation.

“It was too early to say the plant is safe in December. They declared cold shutdown even though nobody is sure about the location of melted fuel,” Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University in western Japan. “A similar incident will probably occur again.”

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This is great news!

Just when you thought it was over, the temperature at reactor number 2 atFukushima’s nuclear plant has soared 26.7 degrees Celsius in the last few hours. Worse: they don’t know why the temperature is increasing after being stabilized for so long.

The reactor reached 164 degrees Fahrenheit (73.3 degrees Celsius) after being stabilized at 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) since last December. Here’s the latest official update by Tepco, the owner of the plant:

At this moment, temperature indicates approx. 71.0 °C (as of 11:00 am on February 6). We will monitor it continuously.

The reactors were finally shut down cold after ten months of dramatic struggle by company and emergency workers.

Tepco has admitted that they don’t have a clue about what is going on. They have increased the amount of water pumped into the reactor ten percent, but their technicians don’t know what is going on. The change was detected in one of the three thermometers at the base of the reactor.

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How did the Japanese government immediately respond to the Fukushima crisis?

By cutting off the funding for radiation monitoring, that’s how.

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Why the meat industry is a danger, even to people who don’t eat factory-farmed meat.

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This is a useful step in holding drilling companies accountable. They’ve refused to disclose what they use, claiming it was a “proprietary formula” that could be treated as a trade secret:

(Reuters) – The U.S. government will require natural gas drillers to disclose which chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing on public lands, according to draft rules crafted by the Interior Department.

President Barack Obama pledged in the State of the Union address last week that the government would develop a road map for responsible natural gas production and roll out new rules to ensure drillers protect the environment.

Companies would be required to disclose the “complete chemical makeup of all materials used” in fracking fluids under the Interior Department’s draft rules, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

The industry objected to any rule that would force drillers to reveal the chemicals used in fracking, during which chemical-laced water and sand are blasted deep below ground to release oil and natural gas trapped within rock formations. Fracking has allowed companies to tap a wealth of new natural gas reserves but critics say the procedure has polluted water and air.

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Of course, all those women should just make lemonade out of lemons and give birth – because obviously, God wants them to do it:

Around one million packets of birth control tablets are being recalled in the US, as they might not prevent pregnancy.

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer said a “packaging error” meant the doses were not correct.

It said the tablets did not pose any health dangers, but there was a risk of “unintended pregnancy”.

Pfizer is advising women affected to use non-hormonal forms of contraception immediately.

Fourteen lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol tablets have been recalled. The lot numbers have been published on the company’s website.

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Wouldn’t it be great if we finally had a Democrat in the White House, and could do something RIGHT NOW (All the time in the world! 2020 is plenty soon enough!) about this global warming crisis? Ha ha, just kidding!

MEXICO CITY — A drought that a government official called the most severe Mexico had ever faced has left two million people without access to water and, coupled with a cold snap, has devastated cropland in nearly half of the country.

Reports that the Tarahumara were killing themselves in despair over starvation, later proven false, spurred residents of Mexico City to collect food and clothing donations.

The government in the past week has authorized $2.63 billion in aid, including potable water, food and temporary jobs for the most affected areas, rural communities in 19 of Mexico’s 31 states. But officials warned that no serious relief was expected for at least another five months, when the rainy season typically begins in earnest.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Little Ice Age of the 1300s wasn’t caused by plain old “climate variations,” but by a series of volcanic eruptions.

Also, your insurance is going up whether you believe in climate change or not:

NPR reported Monday that home insurance premiums are going up across the board in response to the record number of tornadoes, floods, fires, blizzards and other heavy weather that hit the country in 2011.

The piece features insurance executives at major firms such as Allstate and State Farm saying they are raising rates as much as 10%.

The president of the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based industry association, says the weather caused about $35 billion of insured damages last year in the U.S. in events that caused a total of $70 billion in economic losses.

In the meantime, it’s expected to go up to 65 this week in Philadelphia. In February. And the plants are starting to bud…

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Jan. 10th:

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Why we should still be worried.

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It’s more important to look on the sunny side of life!

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Yes, I did watch the movie this weekend and as my friend pointed out, it was strangely gratifying to watch Gwyneth Paltrow die. But it did make me think about the avian flu, which just two years ago, completed most of the necessary mutation stages just short of a full-blown pandemic. Looks like we might have crossed into the final stage, if these two Chinese victims really had nothing to do with birds:

BEIJING — A man died in southern China on Sunday from the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Health Ministry reported. It was China’s second such death in less than a month.

The latest victim, an unidentified 39-year-old, fell ill on Jan. 6 and was admitted to a hospital in Guizhou Province the same day, the Health Ministry said in a statement reported by Xinhua, the official news agency.

A 39-year-old bus driver in Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong Province near Hong Kong, died of the disease on Dec. 31.

Both deaths were notable because neither victim reported any contact with birds in the month preceding his illness. The virus is known to spread through contact with infected birds, eggs or bird feces, but experts said a pandemic could occur were it to mutate into a form that was more easily spread.

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Tornado outbreak in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi or Alabama. Right now!

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In keeping with his blatant goal of doing whatever he can to allow unimpeded gas drilling, PA Gov. Tom Corbett ignores any regulatory requirements that might get in the way:

HARRISBURG — The administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has cut funding for a wildlife research program by nearly 70 percent, eliminating state money for projects meant to examine the impact of natural gas drilling and climate change, according to a report.

Richard Allan, the secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, eliminated 13 of the 21 projects that staff in the agency’s Wildlife Resource Conservation Program had recommended for funding, StateImpact Pennsylvania reported Wednesday.

Allan failed to consult with program staff about which programs to keep and which ones to cut, and only one drilling-related project — evaluating plant growth along natural gas pipeline routes — remained after last month’s cuts, reported StateImpact, a collaboration of NPR and public radio stations in Harrisburg and Philadelphia.

The program’s budget was cut from $780,000 to $251,683.

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources attributed the funding cuts to declining revenue, and said some of the proposed research was duplicative. The Sierra Club’s Pennsylvania chapter on Tuesday criticized the funding reductions as an “attempt to conceal the true environmental impacts of gas drilling.”

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Bullshit.

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A massive cruise ship hit rocks off the coast of Italy and ran aground:

Emergency teams in Italy are racing to rescue those missing after a cruise ship ran aground off the country’s west coast with about 4,000 people on board.

Coast guard vessels are combing the waters around the Costa Concordia, which is lying on its side. Divers are searching its submerged decks.

There were scenes of panic as it began listing on Friday. Most people reached land by lifeboats but some swam ashore.

Three people are confirmed dead. About 70 are said to be unaccounted for.

However, local official Giuseppe Linardi told reporters that some of those listed as missing may still be housed in private homes on the small island of Giglio – where those rescued reached land.

A large gash can be seen in the hull of the luxury liner as it lies on its side, about 200m from Giglio.

Italian, German, French and British nationals were among the 3,200 passengers on board. There were also 1,000 crew.

Some passengers were rescued by lifeboat, helicopters plucked to safety some who were trapped on the ship, and others jumped from the ship into the cold sea.

Some of the survivors are suffering from shock. About 40 people are being treated in hospital.

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