House Votes To Sell Apache Land To Foreign Corporation, The Tribe Is Furious

For over 5 years, a measure to cede 2,400 acres sacred to the Apache tribe for use in copper mining has been pushed in Congress. Backed by various well-paid corporatist congress members such as Senator John McCain, this measure inevitably dies from the outrage of the native tribes who care for this land. So, this year the members backed by legalized bribes by foreign corporations have attached the measure to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act in a lame duck session of congress.

The land in question is part of the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. The areas which would be destroyed by the mining operation include Devil’s Canyon, a popular hiking trail, and Apache’s Leap where 75 Apache men, women and children were massacred by US troops in 1871. The loss of either would be a cultural loss not only for the Apache nation, but for all of us.

The attempt to hide this brazen attempt to sell off cultural heritage for mere coin tells us how these congress members feel about their duty to protect this nation. One must wonder how much of the estimated $61 billion in revenue is to be lining these congress members pockets if the bill passes intact. After all, members of congress regularly reap huge profits from bills they introduce.

What has the tribe most upset is that the measure first requires a review of the deal, then orders that the deal go through anyways. The review is to be effectively ignored. San Carlos Apache Chairman Terry Rambler, has put out the call to stop the deal, putting apetition at Whitehouse.gov as well as lobbying congress directly to stop the measure once it hits the Senate.

Despite changes to require consultation with affected tribes and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance, the provision still mandates the transfer of tribal sacred areas into the private ownership of Resolution Copper regardless of the results of the consultation or information and recommendations resulting from the NEPA process. A mandatory conveyance defeats the purpose of tribal consultations and the NEPA process that are designed to help provide information before decisions are made. In [the land swap bill] the outcome is pre-determined, rendering tribal views and public comments meaningless. Further, [it] would not require Resolution Copper to mitigate impacts on tribal sacred areas after conveyance and contains no repercussions/penalties on Resolution Copper for harm/destruction to tribal sacred areas.

The blatant greed being presented by these members of congress is astounding. The company has spent a fortune buying candidates for office in the same way one would collect baseball cards. And now for their thousands per candidate, they expect to destroy the cultural heritage of a native tribe for billions. How much is our collective cultural heritage worth? To these candidates, not much at all it seems. Legalized bribery has made them no longer stewards of our nation, but instead greedy puppets of corporate masters, willing to dance on their string for the crumbs tossed to them. Disgraceful.

Earthships, New Mexico: The sustainable, cozy homes made with old junk

The ability to live completely off the grid is now a reality courtesy of solar homes, known as Earthships. The U-shaped buildings utilize local resources such as the sun and are made entirely of natural and recycled materials. The future of city living may be to not need the city at all.

"An Earthship is the name we have given a building or vessel that we use to live on this planet that is absolutely independent of all public and municipal utilities," explains Michael Reynolds, founder of Earthship Biotecture, who developed the concept.

At their core are walls made from old tires, bottles, and tin cans mixed with concrete, so your home leftovers are creating new homes. Even sewage isn't spared and is used in indoor and outdoor treatment cells for food production and landscaping. Leftover 'gray' water is also used to flush toilets.In the mountains of New Mexico, USA, Reynolds has built 15 cliff-top homes which, as well as providing a view, were designed to prove that the Earthships could be built anywhere.

"We were accused of running sewage through the living room," says Reynolds. "That was scary to people but when you see the pictures of what it looks like, it's no longer scary if you understand it."

Most modern amenities such as plumbing, heating, power and even internet are provided in a self-sufficient way to change the face of remote living. The use of a design known as the 'stack effect' in their construction uses natural ventilation to regulate internal temperatures for comfort.

"A lot of people think off-the-grid living is like living in some kind of teepee or something," says Reynolds. "This is a pretty damn nice house." The Earthships range in price from $250,000 to $1.5 million.

But remote deserts are not the only modus operandi, as Reynolds' company has also built 75 homes across the city of Taos, New Mexico and his designs have gone global.

Earthships have been built across the USA, entered Europe, and relief projects are being developed in Malawi, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Philippines, and New Zealand. Fundraising is taking place for a self-sustaining music school on Easter Island, one of the most remote locations in the world.

But the spread of these ships has not been plain sailing, as their radical design breaks most architectural rules.

Reynolds has battled with local governments about the Earthships meeting structural codes. However, his fights are being won as hundreds of people now live, or use, these uniquely designed buildings around the world.

The company's next goal is to expand from remote living to more self-sufficient cities which would be more affordable and sustainable to build -- an Earthship city.

"If some government or corporation was getting ready to do a city for ten thousand people, they'd spend ten years putting in infrastructure to support that city's power and sewage," concludes Reynolds. "We don't need that: if I had a thousand acres somewhere, and funding, I could start building a city tomorrow."

Scientists Find ‘Direct Link’ Between Earthquakes And Process Used For Oil And Gas Drilling

This picture from Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011 shows the aftermath of what was at the time the strongest earthquake to strike Colorado in more than 40 years. In research published Tuesday, USGS scientists cite “clear evidence that the earthquake sequence was induced by fluid injection.”

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/ED ANDRIESKI

A team of scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have found evidence “directly linking” the uptick in Colorado and New Mexico earthquakes since 2001 to wastewater injection, a process widely used in the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and conventional drilling.

In a study to be published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America on Tuesday, the scientists presented “several lines of evidence [that] suggest the earthquakes in the area are directly related to the disposal of wastewater” deep underground, according to a BSSA press release. Fracking and conventional natural gas companies routinely dispose of large amounts of wastewater underground after drilling. During fracking, the water is mixed with chemicals and sand, to “fracture” underground shale rock formations and make gas easier to extract.

The USGS research is just the latest in a string of studies that have suggested the disposed water is migrating along dormant fault lines, changing their state of stress, and causing them to fail.

For their research, the four California-based USGS scientists monitored the 2,200 square mile Raton Basin, which goes from southern Colorado into New Mexico. They pointed out that the Basin had been “seismically quiet” until 1999, when companies began “major fluid injection” deep into the ground. Earthquakes began in 2001 when Colorado wastewater injection rates were under 600,000 barrels per month, and and since then there have been 16 earthquakes that could be considered large (above a magnitude of 3.8, including two over a 5.0 magnitude), compared with only one — a 4.0 magnitude quake — in the 30 years prior.

CREDIT: RUBENSTEIN ET. AL.

“These earthquakes are limited to the area of fluid injection, they occur shortly after major fluid injection activities began, and the earthquake rates track the fluid injection rates in the

Raton Basin,” the paper said, noting the scientists’ comparisons of the timing and location of earthquakes with the timing and location of injected wastewater. By the mid-2000s, Colorado’s wastewater injection rates were up to 1.9 million barrels per month.

Taking that and the unexpected frequency of the earthquakes into consideration, the paper noted that it was “highly unlikely” that the quakes could have been due to any random fluctuations underground.

“Detailed investigations of two seismic sequences places them in proximity to high-volume, high-injection-rate wells, and both sequences occurred after a nearby increase in the rate of injection,” the study’s accompanying press release said. “A comparison between seismicity and wastewater injection in Colorado and New Mexico reveals similar patterns, suggesting seismicity is initiated shortly after an increase in injection rates.”

The study does note that despite the strong and direct link, the findings are not definitive, echoing language often used by climate scientists to describe why it’s nearly impossible to say that individual weather events are caused by climate change. “Although there are many lines of evidence showing that the seismicity in the Raton Basin has been induced by wastewater injection activities in the area, it is very difficult to say whether an individual earthquake was caused by injection because natural seismicity has also been recorded there,” the study says. “For future research, a longer-term study with dense network coverage on both sides of the border would be especially useful in understanding the inducing relationship between the earthquakes and fluid injection in the Raton Basin.”

The U.S. government announced back in May that it would begin to track the risks that so-called “frackquakes” pose, and start including them on official maps that help influence building codes. Before then, the USGS had never taken man-made earthquakes into account during its regular quake mapping activity. It made the decision to do so afterfinding that two strong earthquakes in heavily-drilled areas of Colorado and Oklahoma in 2011 might have been the result of wastewater injection. “For future research, a longer-term study with dense network coverage on both sides of the border would be especially useful in understanding the inducing relationship between the earthquakes and fluid injection in the Raton Basin.”

Since then, drilling for natural gas and fracking has proliferated across the country, as have earthquakes in the places where those booms are occurring. Oklahoma, a hotbed for fracking, is currently experiencing anywhere from 5 to 20 small earthquakes every day, according to the state’s Geology Survey. What’s more, Cornell University scientists havelinked more than 2,500 small earthquakes that have hit Oklahoma in the past five years to the wastewater disposal process.

These quakes are usually too small to be felt, but scientists have warned that they stand to get stronger as more wastewater injection happens — a likelihood considering the growing expansion of fracking.

A 19-Year-Old Knows How To Remove 154 Million Pounds Of Garbage From The Ocean In Just 10 Years

The idea alone is incredible. The fact that he's innovative at such a young age is inspiring. I learned the shortcomings of the current ways of removing garbage and the way this idea improves upon it. Pretty neat stuff.

Massive Pipeline Rupture Coats Streets Of Los Angeles In ‘Knee-High’ Crude Oil

Residents in Atwater Village in northeast Los Angeles woke up Thursday morning to find crude oil flowing down their streets. A 20 inch wide, above-ground oil line ruptured around 1 a.m., sending a geyser of oil 20 feet into the air according to local reports. The oil has coated a half-square-mile area of the mostly industrial neighborhood.

Oil in some areas was reported to be knee-high. According to current estimates, 10,000 gallons of crude oil poured onto the streets before the line could be remotely turned off. Two people were sent to the hospital after they reported feeling nauseous. People at the scene said that the smell of oil was very strong.

The Fire Department and a hazardous materials team remain on the scene. Several businesses — including a nearby strip club, which was evacuated during the spill — have reported damages. The exterior of the strip club was coated in oil from the spewing pipe. Cars parked near the site of the spill have also been affected. Although the pipeline was shut off within 10 minutes of emergency crews reaching the scene, oil continued to flow for 45 minutes.

The AP reported that Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott says there is no “visible evidence” that the oil has made its way down storm drains, but that it was possible that oil had gotten under manhole covers. If oil does end up in the storm water system, the oil will soon appear in the Los Angeles River, and soon after that in the Pacific Ocean. According to the L.A. Times, emergency teams are using sand to try and keep the oil from spreading.

The pipeline was operate by West Coast-Plains American Pipeline. It was carrying oil from Bakersfield to Texas.

California’s most devastating oil spill was back in 1969, when 100,000 barrels of crude spilled into the Santa Barbara Channel — an event that helped spark the modern environmental movement.

Never Before Have I Laughed So Hard At One Guy's Non-Attempt To Save The Planet

19-year-old inventor finds way to clean up the world’s oceans in under 5 years time

Previously the idea of cleaning up the world’s oceans with their vast accumulations of disposed plastic material was considered an impossibility. Now a 19-year-old inventor says he and his foundation has a way to clean up the world’s oceans, and not only does he say we can do it, but that we can do it in five years time and produce a profit from it.

It is called the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ or sometimes the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, and it is a massive collection of plastic particles accumulating in the Pacific.  Other oceans have their own collections of plastic wastes as well; furthermore, most of the debris in our oceans are plastic materials that accounts for approximately 90% of all the waste debris.

Scientists have considered all manner of ways how the debris could be retrieved but there was no clear answer for it. 

Now a 19-year-old inventor by the name of Boyan Slat says we can remove nearly 20 billion tons of plastic waste with his concept he calls an ocean cleanup array.  It is made from a massive series of floating booms and processing platforms that gradually suck in the floating plastic like a giant funnel.

The angle with how the array is set up allows all of the plastic to go to where the platforms processing centers are floating. At the platform processing area it would separate the naturally occurring life such as plankton an only keep the plastic materials to be recycled.

What is most impressive about the array is that once it goes operational it would clean up the oceans in only 5 years time!  He also makes a point in saying that due to the vastness of our oceans most do not know how badly polluted the oceans really are.

“One of the problems with preventive work is that there isn’t any imagery of these ‘garbage patches’, because the debris is dispersed over millions of square kilometers,” Slat says on his website. “By placing our arrays however, it will accumulate along the booms, making it suddenly possible to actually visualize the oceanic garbage patches. We need to stress the importance of recycling, and reducing our consumption of plastic packaging.”

Slat was able to come up with the idea while in school, and so he wrote a paper on his concept. Once Slat's paper was published it immediately caught the attention of many marine experts.  His paper won all manner of prizes, which included the Best Technical Design 2012 from the Delft University of Technology.

When he and others realized that the concept would work he took a leap of faith and created a non-profit organization he calls The Ocean Cleanup Foundation.  This group will focus on the goal of developing his invention, raise funds for it and make it operational as soon as possible. His concept would save numerous aquatic species of fish and help reduce PCB and DDT containments affecting all of us.  Best of all it operates on the power of the sun and by the oceans themselves.

Not only is Slat's concept self-powered, it would also be very profitable from the all the recycling, which is estimated in the amount of 500 million dollars (U.S.) per year.  According to Slat's website it "would make in fact more money than the plan would cost to execute. In other words; it's profitable."

Christians Don’t Need to Care About the Environment because Jesus is Coming Back for Us

At Catalyst (a major Christian conference) yesterday, Pastor and Alpha-Manly-Man Mark Driscoll made a comment that may have been intended as a joke but he wasn’t kidding about the core of the message:

“I know who made the environment and he’s coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.”

In other words, screw the environment; Jesus is coming back to save us all in this lifetime so why worry about recycling and climate change and wasting gas…?

The line was confirmed by several attendees: