Dec 23, 2012
A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms - YouTube
A RIVER OF WASTE exposes a huge health and environmental scandal in our modern industrial system of meat and poultry production. Some scientists have gone so far as to call the condemned current factory farm practices as "mini Chernobyls." In the U.S. and elsewhere, the meat and poultry industry is dominated by dangerous uses of arsenic, antibiotics, growth hormones and by the dumping of massive amounts of sewage in fragile waterways and environments. The film documents the vast catastrophic impact on the environment and public health as well as focuses on the individual lives damaged and destroyed.
Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then will you find you cannot eat money
-- Cree Indian prophecy
Dec 22, 2012
Climate Change: James Hansen on Tipping Points
Published on Dec 22, 2012
Interview with James Hansen (NASA Goddard Institute) recorded at the UN University G8 symposium on innovation and climate change held 4th July, 2008 Tokyo.
Wikipedia: Carbon Tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax
Frontline: Climate of Doubt
http://youtu.be/A5GVHqlnPAc
Answering Climate Change Skeptics, Naomi Oreskes
http://youtu.be/XXyTpY0NCp0
Test trial convicts fossil fuel bosses of 'ecocide'
Top lawyers put fossil fuel bosses on trial in the UK's supreme court in a mock case to explore if ecocide - environmental destruction - could join genocide as a global crime
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/sep/29/ecoc...
Climate: Arctic Thermostat Blows Up
The Arctic thermostat for the world is broken, with record heat & emissions in 2012. Four speakers from Arctic Methane Emergency group film: Peter Wadhams, James Hansen, Natalia Shakhova, and David Wasdell. Plus interview with AMEG member Paul Beckwith from University of Ottawa. How polar ice-melt derails climate of Northern Hemisphere, heading for uncontrollable heating. Radio Ecoshock 121219.
http://www.ecoshock.info/2012/12/climate-arctic-thermostat-blows-up.html
DIY Target Holder & Spinner Target Base
Larger Photo
Light and Easy Setup Targets
Homemade Slide Down Target Holder and Spinner Target Base
No need to attach target to board
Free Printable Targets
Full article: http://www.tnoutdoorsmen.com/targets.htm
Click a free target to print. Target will open and must be printed in Adobe Acrobat for correct measurements. Targets print on standard 8.5 x 11 paper. If the target doesn't show up in a new window after clicking, you need the free Acrobat Reader.
Dec 21, 2012
Fort Peck Dam Construction on the Missouri River
OmahaUSACE
This video, produced in 1990, captures the construction of Fort Peck Dam, the northernmost of the six main stem dams on the Missouri River. Of particular interest is some of the old reel footage that captured the actual work behind this U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District project. The video is shown regularly at the Fort Peck Interpretive Center.
Interesting! Monte
Dec 20, 2012
Ouch! Metal Target Returns Ricochet Fire
This guy is shooting a .50 cal towards a steel target. He hits it just right and gets hit in the head with the ricochet. Lucky for him it hits the dirt first.
I was thinking of building a "homemade spinning target" like the guys did below, but decided even one of those could could cause ricochet off metal edges and would be too dangerous.
Finally, after further research, bought one of these
Champion DuraSeal Double Spinner Target
Simple, low cost, and safe!
Monte
It is constructed of a non-metal, self sealing material that absorbs hundreds of rounds from even the largest caliber rifles and handguns and still keeps its shape. Weighing 80% less than metal targets, these auto-resetting targets let bullets pass through with minimal damage–prolonging the life of the target.
Ultra-bright orange target
Approximately 7-inches by 2.5-inches
DuraSeal self-sealing material for the ultimate in target longevity
Handles .17 cal. through most large caliber .50 cal handguns / rifles
Target wobbles and spins upon to impact to show positive hits
Rugged metal legs firmly hold target in varying terrain
41900 Duraseal Double Spinner
Promised Land - Matt Damon
PROMISED LAND
FRACKING!
with Gus Van Sant, Matt Damon and John Krasinski
in Movies, TV & Theater --> January 4
Link: http://www.charlierose.com/
We think this will be a good movie to see...
Matt Damon plays a character who grew up around Davenport, Iowa and the closing of the Caterpillar Plant
Monte and Eileen
Dec 19, 2012
Mississippi River Navigation Issues Persist - Farm Futures
Corps releases water from Carlyle Lake to support navigation near Thebes, Ill.; leaders meet to discuss low water operations
Published: Dec 19, 2012
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District Saturday began releasing water from Carlyle Lake in Southwest Illinois to improve navigation on the Mississippi River.
The releases will help provide the depth necessary for river commerce to pass in Thebes, Ill., where rock formations pose a hazard at -5 feet and below, the Corps says. Carlyle Lake is one of few Corps reservoirs able to significantly capture water above its seasonal pool level to support navigation during the current drought.
Lighter loads have taken to the Mississippi River in light of low water levelsReleases gradually increased to 4,000 cubic feet per second between Saturday and late Monday. The full extent of the releases is expected to reach Thebes by Dec. 24. The Corps say this will provide an additional six inches of depth in this critical reach of the river.
Releases will continue if needed until the river level increases through precipitation, or until Carlyle Lake reaches its winter pool elevation. With the additional release schedule, Carlyle Lake is expected to reach its winter pool level in approximately three weeks. The Corps says additional releases from other reservoirs will be considered if the need arises.
Maj. Gen John Peabody, Mississippi Valley Division commander, authorized all the lakes on the Upper Mississippi River system to hold an additional 10% above seasonal pool levels in October in anticipation of historic low levels on the Middle Mississippi.
"With the Mississippi River watershed receiving less rain than forecasted, we are working to provide the water depth needed at a time when inches make a difference," Peabody said. "We'll continue to work closely with the navigation industry and our partners in the U.S. Coast Guard to keep the vital artery for commerce open."
River Meeting
On Tuesday, Corps officials met with state and local representatives to discuss the release and river navigation. The meeting was organized by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and also attended by Capt. Byron Black of the U.S. Coast Guard, Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., and Illinois Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon.
Maj. Gen. Peabody also attended the meeting, noting that removal of limestone began this week, which he expects will ensure that barge restrictions will not be needed at this time.
"We remain cautiously optimistic that if we do have any interruptions, it will be short in duration as we continue to maintain a safe and reliable navigation channel," Peabody said.
Along with work on rock removal, the Corps plans to continue to dredge.
"The Dredge Potter has dredged more than 6 million cubic yards of material on the Upper and Lower Mississippi since it began operations in June," said Army Corps St. Louis District Commander Col. Chris Hall. "We will continue dredging problem areas, conducting channel patrols and surveys to keep commerce safely moving on the Middle Mississippi."
Published: Dec 19, 2012
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District Saturday began releasing water from Carlyle Lake in Southwest Illinois to improve navigation on the Mississippi River.
The releases will help provide the depth necessary for river commerce to pass in Thebes, Ill., where rock formations pose a hazard at -5 feet and below, the Corps says. Carlyle Lake is one of few Corps reservoirs able to significantly capture water above its seasonal pool level to support navigation during the current drought.
Lighter loads have taken to the Mississippi River in light of low water levelsReleases gradually increased to 4,000 cubic feet per second between Saturday and late Monday. The full extent of the releases is expected to reach Thebes by Dec. 24. The Corps say this will provide an additional six inches of depth in this critical reach of the river.
Releases will continue if needed until the river level increases through precipitation, or until Carlyle Lake reaches its winter pool elevation. With the additional release schedule, Carlyle Lake is expected to reach its winter pool level in approximately three weeks. The Corps says additional releases from other reservoirs will be considered if the need arises.
Maj. Gen John Peabody, Mississippi Valley Division commander, authorized all the lakes on the Upper Mississippi River system to hold an additional 10% above seasonal pool levels in October in anticipation of historic low levels on the Middle Mississippi.
"With the Mississippi River watershed receiving less rain than forecasted, we are working to provide the water depth needed at a time when inches make a difference," Peabody said. "We'll continue to work closely with the navigation industry and our partners in the U.S. Coast Guard to keep the vital artery for commerce open."
River Meeting
On Tuesday, Corps officials met with state and local representatives to discuss the release and river navigation. The meeting was organized by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and also attended by Capt. Byron Black of the U.S. Coast Guard, Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., and Illinois Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon.
Maj. Gen. Peabody also attended the meeting, noting that removal of limestone began this week, which he expects will ensure that barge restrictions will not be needed at this time.
"We remain cautiously optimistic that if we do have any interruptions, it will be short in duration as we continue to maintain a safe and reliable navigation channel," Peabody said.
Along with work on rock removal, the Corps plans to continue to dredge.
"The Dredge Potter has dredged more than 6 million cubic yards of material on the Upper and Lower Mississippi since it began operations in June," said Army Corps St. Louis District Commander Col. Chris Hall. "We will continue dredging problem areas, conducting channel patrols and surveys to keep commerce safely moving on the Middle Mississippi."
Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture: Dale Allen Pfeiffer
The miracle of the Green Revolution was made possible by cheap fossil fuels to supply crops with artificial fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation. Estimates of the net energy balance of agriculture in the United States show that ten calories of hydrocarbon energy are required to produce one calorie of food. Such an imbalance cannot continue in a world of diminishing hydrocarbon resources.
Eating Fossil Fuels examines the interlinked crises of energy and agriculture and highlights some startling findings:
• The worldwide expansion of agriculture has appropriated fully 40 percent of the photosynthetic capability of this planet.
• The Green Revolution provided abundant food sources for many, resulting in a population explosion well in excess of the planet’s carrying capacity.
• Studies suggest that without fossil fuel-based agriculture, the United States could only sustain about two-thirds of its present population. For the planet as a whole, the sustainable number is estimated to be about two billion.
Concluding that the effect of energy depletion will be disastrous without a transition to a sustainable, re-localized agriculture, the book draws on the experiences of North Korea and Cuba to demonstrate stories of failure and success in the transition to non-hydrocarbon-based agriculture. It urges strong grassroots activism for sustainable, localized agriculture and a natural shrinking of the world’s population.
Related Links:
Eating Fossil Fuels - From The Wilderness
Midwest Soils Losing Ground 5-100 ton per acre per year!
EnvironmentalWG
Larger Image:
Bad federal policy and intensifying storms are washing away the rich dark soils in the Midwest that made this country an agricultural powerhouse and that remain the essential foundation of a healthy and sustainable food system in the future. The Environmental Working Group produced this short film with Atlas Films that provides stark images illustrating how federal farm subsidies and ethanol mandates, piled on top of skyrocketing crop prices are supporting an intensive monoculture that kneecaps any hope for a more resilient and diverse food and farm system. Go to www.ewg.org/losingground/ for more information.
Larger Image
Above: Grass waterways, filter strips, and vegetative
buffers help hold soil in place and protect
northwest Iowa’s Ocheyedan River.
Above: Iowa State University soil scientist Rick
Cruse says current levels of soil erosion are unsustainable.
“We are losing ground,” he says.
A closer look. “We are losing
ground,” says Iowa State soil scientist
Rick Cruse. “Soil is eroding faster
than new soil is forming. We have
data to show that we are continuing
to degrade the soil resource. The only
way that we can maintain high productivity
is to keep soil in place.”
Cruse teamed up with John Laflen,
a retired USDA Agricultural Research
Service agricultural engineer, to create
IDEP, hoping to bring increased
attention to the problem of excessive
soil erosion. This daily simulation of
the erosion process on nearly 20,000
hillslopes across the state was implemented
with the help of a long list of
partner organizations.
“It’s not average rainfall that drives
soil erosion rates,” Cruse explains. “It
is the intense storms. We combine a
number of technologies to allow us
to project erosion based on local data
and soil conditions, not averages.”
He also has concerns about whether
T levels, defined as the maximum rate
of annual soil loss that will permit
crop productivity to be sustained economically
and indefinitely on a given
soil, truly are sustainable.
T time. On Clarion-Nicollet-Webster
soils that are typical for much of
the state, the T rate is considered to be
around 5 tons per acre per year. But
Cruse says recent studies show “solid
evidence” that soil formation is considerably
less, perhaps only about 0.25
tons annually. “There is an increasing
amount of evidence that even the ‘acceptable’
rate is higher than the rate
that soil is forming,” he says. “And
ground,” says Iowa State soil scientist
Rick Cruse. “Soil is eroding faster
than new soil is forming. We have
data to show that we are continuing
to degrade the soil resource. The only
way that we can maintain high productivity
is to keep soil in place.”
Cruse teamed up with John Laflen,
a retired USDA Agricultural Research
Service agricultural engineer, to create
IDEP, hoping to bring increased
attention to the problem of excessive
soil erosion. This daily simulation of
the erosion process on nearly 20,000
hillslopes across the state was implemented
with the help of a long list of
partner organizations.
“It’s not average rainfall that drives
soil erosion rates,” Cruse explains. “It
is the intense storms. We combine a
number of technologies to allow us
to project erosion based on local data
and soil conditions, not averages.”
He also has concerns about whether
T levels, defined as the maximum rate
of annual soil loss that will permit
crop productivity to be sustained economically
and indefinitely on a given
soil, truly are sustainable.
T time. On Clarion-Nicollet-Webster
soils that are typical for much of
the state, the T rate is considered to be
around 5 tons per acre per year. But
Cruse says recent studies show “solid
evidence” that soil formation is considerably
less, perhaps only about 0.25
tons annually. “There is an increasing
amount of evidence that even the ‘acceptable’
rate is higher than the rate
that soil is forming,” he says. “And
with the trend toward more frequent
Related Links:
Deere Furrow Magazine_Feb 2012 - "Losing Ground" Article - page 22-24
Losing ground-executive-summary
Excellent Articles! Monte
Other related Links:
heavy rainfall events, along with
more fragile land being brought into
production, we’re likely to see accelerated
levels of soil erosion.”
Related Links:
Deere Furrow Magazine_Feb 2012 - "Losing Ground" Article - page 22-24
Losing ground-executive-summary
Excellent Articles! Monte
Other related Links:
- Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
- Mission 2012 : Clean Water
- Prairie: A Natural History: Candace Savage
- Immortal River: The Upper Mississippi in Ancient and Modern Times
- The 50-Year Farm Bill - Wendell Berry
- Intro to Permaculture - The Case for Permaculture
- Cultivating an Ecological Conscience
- Consulting the Genius of the Place
- Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture
- permies.com
Dec 17, 2012
The NFL Responds to the Sandy Hook Massacre. Should We Listen? | The Nation
Dave Zirin on December 17, 2012
Giants Wide Receiver Victor Cruz paid tribute to Jack Pinto, a fan and victim of the Sandy Hook massacre.(Credit: @teamvic)
After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the NFL and its players made an effort on Sunday to recognize the collective grief shaking the country. There was a moment of silence at all 14 NFL games in remembrance of the 26 people, including 20 children, mercilessly gunned down. Players on the New York Giants wore decals with the school's initials on their helmets. Their star wide receiver Victor Cruz paid tribute to one of fallen children, writing "R.I.P. Jack Pinto," and "Jack Pinto, my hero" on his shoes and "This one is 4 u!" on the backs of his gloves. Cruz was Pinto's favorite player and six-year-old Jack will be buried in his Victor Cruz jersey. The New England Patriots also made a statement, wearing a helmet sticker with the Newtown city seal and a black ribbon. They in addition pledged to donate $25,000 to help the each family affected by the tragedy. But it's what the Patriots didn't do that speaks volumes and perhaps says more than they intended. Normally after the team scores at home, their "end zone militia", dressed as revolutionary war soldiers, shoots 20 muskets in the air. There were no guns fired, thankfully, on Sunday night.
The NFL's intervention into this national tragedy as a voice against gun violence comes at an awkward time for the league. Just two weeks ago, Kansas City Chief's player Jovan Belcher shot and killed the mother of his two-month-old child, Kasandra Perkins before taking his own life. Belcher had an arsenal of weapons in his house, all of them - like the guns used in Newtown - legally purchased. When NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, the day after the Belcher murder/suicide, said that easy access to military-proficient guns combined with our glorified "gun culture" played a central role in this tragedy, he was derided by the Fox News crowd as a fool. Now he looks horribly prescient.
But, as we try to understand the numbing regularity of these mass shootings, there is also a question that goes beyond just gun control and mental health. Should our culture, and in particular the violence of the sports we consume, shoulder some of the blame? It’s an increasingly recognized fact that our most popular sport, football, is also our most violent. Every new study reveals that on Sundays we are watching people become mentally and physically crippled for our entertainment. In addition to the violence between the lines, this is a league that drapes itself in the trappings of war, from military flyovers before games to the constant slickly produced recruitment ads for the US armed forces.
Given all of this, can the NFL as an institution be a credible voice of peace? The answer is simply no: not even when they silence their muskets. The NFL cannot be a force for non-violence because its popularity is the perfect reflection of what we've become as a country. We are a nation that has outsourced war overseas to remote control killer drones we overwhelmingly support, private security forces we don't control, and an armed forces we barely acknowledge. Meanwhile, a host of basic freedoms have been eroded over the last decade except the freedom to arm ourselves to the teeth. We can't assemble with our neighbors in protest but we can assemble military style weapons alone in our apartments.
As we become further atomized and further desensitized to the daily violence that surrounds us, we also further worship a sports league that acts as the perfect metaphor for this state of affairs. Safely hidden under helmets for our consumption, we don't have see the glassy eyes or faces contorted with pain on the field. We also don't have to see the broken bodies and lives off the field. We just get three and a half hours of incredibly entertaining, highly commodified violence in a safely consumable package. The true costs are hidden from us until they erupt into view, as in the case of Jovan Belcher or the suicide of the great Junior Seau. Similarly, the true costs of worshiping the way of the gun are only dragged into open view when it comes home to places like Newtown, Connecticut. We don't have to see the faces or learn the names of the children killed in the drone strikes in Pakistan. We aren't asked to care about the young black teenagers who die on the corners of Chicago. No NFL player writes their names on their shoes. But now we have to look in the mirror and either reckon with what we see or recoil and turn away.
If we want to follow the example of the NFL, the answer doesn't lie on the field. Follow the example of the seven NFL players who turned in their guns to team officials the week after the Belcher shootings out of fear of what might happen if they were in the wrong state of mind or if a family member somehow grabbed a hold of their weapons. But even that is not enough. We need to throw ourselves on the machines of violence in Washington DC otherwise we are just dooming ourselves to more of the same. And the same is simply intolerable.
Giants Wide Receiver Victor Cruz paid tribute to Jack Pinto, a fan and victim of the Sandy Hook massacre.(Credit: @teamvic)
After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the NFL and its players made an effort on Sunday to recognize the collective grief shaking the country. There was a moment of silence at all 14 NFL games in remembrance of the 26 people, including 20 children, mercilessly gunned down. Players on the New York Giants wore decals with the school's initials on their helmets. Their star wide receiver Victor Cruz paid tribute to one of fallen children, writing "R.I.P. Jack Pinto," and "Jack Pinto, my hero" on his shoes and "This one is 4 u!" on the backs of his gloves. Cruz was Pinto's favorite player and six-year-old Jack will be buried in his Victor Cruz jersey. The New England Patriots also made a statement, wearing a helmet sticker with the Newtown city seal and a black ribbon. They in addition pledged to donate $25,000 to help the each family affected by the tragedy. But it's what the Patriots didn't do that speaks volumes and perhaps says more than they intended. Normally after the team scores at home, their "end zone militia", dressed as revolutionary war soldiers, shoots 20 muskets in the air. There were no guns fired, thankfully, on Sunday night.
The NFL's intervention into this national tragedy as a voice against gun violence comes at an awkward time for the league. Just two weeks ago, Kansas City Chief's player Jovan Belcher shot and killed the mother of his two-month-old child, Kasandra Perkins before taking his own life. Belcher had an arsenal of weapons in his house, all of them - like the guns used in Newtown - legally purchased. When NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, the day after the Belcher murder/suicide, said that easy access to military-proficient guns combined with our glorified "gun culture" played a central role in this tragedy, he was derided by the Fox News crowd as a fool. Now he looks horribly prescient.
But, as we try to understand the numbing regularity of these mass shootings, there is also a question that goes beyond just gun control and mental health. Should our culture, and in particular the violence of the sports we consume, shoulder some of the blame? It’s an increasingly recognized fact that our most popular sport, football, is also our most violent. Every new study reveals that on Sundays we are watching people become mentally and physically crippled for our entertainment. In addition to the violence between the lines, this is a league that drapes itself in the trappings of war, from military flyovers before games to the constant slickly produced recruitment ads for the US armed forces.
Given all of this, can the NFL as an institution be a credible voice of peace? The answer is simply no: not even when they silence their muskets. The NFL cannot be a force for non-violence because its popularity is the perfect reflection of what we've become as a country. We are a nation that has outsourced war overseas to remote control killer drones we overwhelmingly support, private security forces we don't control, and an armed forces we barely acknowledge. Meanwhile, a host of basic freedoms have been eroded over the last decade except the freedom to arm ourselves to the teeth. We can't assemble with our neighbors in protest but we can assemble military style weapons alone in our apartments.
As we become further atomized and further desensitized to the daily violence that surrounds us, we also further worship a sports league that acts as the perfect metaphor for this state of affairs. Safely hidden under helmets for our consumption, we don't have see the glassy eyes or faces contorted with pain on the field. We also don't have to see the broken bodies and lives off the field. We just get three and a half hours of incredibly entertaining, highly commodified violence in a safely consumable package. The true costs are hidden from us until they erupt into view, as in the case of Jovan Belcher or the suicide of the great Junior Seau. Similarly, the true costs of worshiping the way of the gun are only dragged into open view when it comes home to places like Newtown, Connecticut. We don't have to see the faces or learn the names of the children killed in the drone strikes in Pakistan. We aren't asked to care about the young black teenagers who die on the corners of Chicago. No NFL player writes their names on their shoes. But now we have to look in the mirror and either reckon with what we see or recoil and turn away.
If we want to follow the example of the NFL, the answer doesn't lie on the field. Follow the example of the seven NFL players who turned in their guns to team officials the week after the Belcher shootings out of fear of what might happen if they were in the wrong state of mind or if a family member somehow grabbed a hold of their weapons. But even that is not enough. We need to throw ourselves on the machines of violence in Washington DC otherwise we are just dooming ourselves to more of the same. And the same is simply intolerable.
Dec 14, 2012
Mississippi River faces shipping closure as water levels drop | Grist
ClimateDesk
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The Mississippi as seen from Ed Drager’s tug boat is a river in retreat: A giant beached barge is stranded where the water dropped, with sand bars springing into view. The floating barge office where the tug boat captain reports for duty is tilted like a funhouse. One side now rests on the exposed shore. “I’ve never seen the river this low,” Drager said. “It’s weird.”
The worst drought in half a century has brought water levels in the Mississippi close to historic lows and could shut down all shipping in a matter of weeks — unless Barack Obama takes extraordinary measures.
It’s the second extreme event on the river in 18 months, after flooding in the spring of 2011 forced thousands to flee their homes.
Without rain, water levels on the Mississippi are projected to reach historic lows this month, the National Weather Service said in its latest four-week forecast.
“All the ingredients for us getting to an all-time record low are certainly in place,” said Mark Fuchs, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in St. Louis. “I would be very surprised if we didn’t set a record this winter.”
The drought has already created a low-water choke point south of St. Louis, near the town of Thebes, where pinnacles of rock extend upwards from the river bottom, making passage treacherous.
Tim McDonnell/Climate DeskClick to embiggen.Shipping companies are hauling 15 barges at a time instead of a typical string of 25, because the bigger runs are too big for current operating conditions.
Barges are being sent off with lighter loads, making for more traffic, with more delays and back-ups. Stretches of the river are now reduced to one-way traffic. A long cold spell could make navigation even trickier: Shallow, slow-moving water is more likely to get clogged up with ice.
Current projections suggest water levels could drop too low to send barges through Thebes before the new year — unless there is heavy rainfall.
Local television in St. Louis is already dispensing doom-laden warnings about rusting metal and hazardous materials exposed by the receding waters.
Shipping companies say the economic consequences of a shut-down on the Mississippi would be devastating. About $7 billion in vital commodities typically moves on the river at this time of year — including grain, coal, heating oil, and cement.
Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk
Cutting off the transport route would be a disaster that would resonate across the Midwest and beyond.
“There are so many issues at stake here,” said George Foster, owner ofJB Marine Services. “There is so much that moves on the river, not just coal and grain products, but you’ve got cement, steel for construction, chemicals for manufacturing plants, petroleum plants, heating oil. All those things move on the waterways, so if it shuts down you’ve got a huge stop of commerce.”
Local companies which depend on the river to ship their goods are already talking about layoffs if the Mississippi closes to navigation. Those were just the first casualties, Foster said. “It is going to affect the people at the grocery store, at the gas pump, with home construction and so forth.”
And it’s going to fall especially hard on farmers, who took a heavy hit during the drought and who rely on the Mississippi to ship their grain to export markets.
Farmers in the area typically lost up to three-quarters of their corn and soy bean crops to this year’s drought. Old-timers say it was the worst year they can remember.
“We have been through some dry times. In 1954 when my dad and grandfather farmed here they pretty much had nothing because it was so dry,” said Paul McCormick, who farms with his son, Jack, in Ellis Grove, Ill., south of St. Louis. “But I think this was a topper for me this year.”
Now, however, farmers are facing the prospect of not being able to sell their grain at all because they can’t get it to market. The farmers may also struggle to find other bulk items, such as fertilizer, that are typically shipped by barge.
“Most of the grain produced on our farm ends up bound for export,” said Jack McCormick, who raises beef cattle and grain with his father. “It ends up going down the river. That is a very good market for us, and if you can’t move it that means a lower price, or you have to figure out a different way to move it. It all ends up as a lower price for the farmers.”
The shipping industry in St. Louis wants the White House to order the release of more water from the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi, to keep waters high enough for the long barges that float down the river to New Orleans.
Foster said the extra water would be for 60 days or so — time for the Army Corps of Engineers to blast and clear the series of rock pinnacles down river, near the town of Thebes, that threaten barges during this time of low water.
But sending out more water from the Missouri would doom states upstream, such as Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, which depend on water from the Missouri and are also caught in the drought.
“There are farmers and ranchers up there with livestock that don’t have water to stay alive. They don’t have enough fodder. They don’t have enough irrigation water,” said Robert Criss, a hydrologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has spent his career studying the Mississippi. “What a dumb way to use water during a drought.”
Elected officials from South Dakota and elsewhere have pushed back strenuously at the idea of sending their water downstream. Foster reckons there is at best a 50-50 chance Obama will agree to open the gates.
But such short-term measures ignore an even bigger problem. Climate scientists believe the Mississippi and other rivers are headed for an era of extremes, because of climate change.
This time last year, the Mississippi around St. Louis was 20 feet deeper because of heavy rain. In the spring of 2011, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up two miles of levees to save the town of Cairo, Ill., and Missouri farmland, and deliberately flooded parts of rural Louisiana to make sure Baton Rouge and New Orleans stayed dry.
“It has kind of switched on us, and it switched pretty quick,” said Coast Guard Chief Ryan Christiansen. “It wasn’t that long ago that you had pretty high flooding, and now we are heading towards record lows.”
Others argue that the Mississippi is already over-engineered, after a century and a half of tampering with the river’s natural flow.
Over the decades, Congress funded a number of projects to deepen the shipping channel, doubling it in depth to nine feet, and building an elaborate system of locks and dams to keep the river in a confined space.
The Army Corps of Engineers is constantly dredging the river’s sandy bottom or building new levees to keep barges moving.
Those efforts to confine the river to a deep and narrow channel are believed to have made surrounding areas more vulnerable to extreme floods — like in 2011, when thousands were forced to flee their homes.
They may also not make sense in the long-term use of the river.
Criss argues the long barge trains floating on the Mississippi are just too big for the upper reaches of the river anyway, and that the industry is unfairly subsidized compared with other transport providers such as rail.
“The whole system around here has been entirely reconfigured to accommodate these monstrous barges,” he said.
“This is the whole problem. We want to run boats on the river with nine-foot drafts that are almost a quarter of a mile long. They are too big for the size of the river up here.”
The Mississippi, Criss said, needs smaller boats.
This story first appeared on the Guardian website as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Suzanne Goldenberg is the U.S. environment correspondent of theGuardian and is based in Washington D.C. She has won several awards for her work in the Middle East, and in 2003 covered the U.S. invasion of Iraq from Baghdad. She is author of Madam President, about Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House.
Dec 12, 2012
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations: David R. Montgomery
Dirt, soil, call it what you want--it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are--and have long been--using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil--as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Great book worth reading... Short term economic gain, industrial agriculture, will eventually lead to erosion and destruction of our soil fertilty and our civilization, unless we learn the falacy of our ways and change... Monte
Great book worth reading... Short term economic gain, industrial agriculture, will eventually lead to erosion and destruction of our soil fertilty and our civilization, unless we learn the falacy of our ways and change... Monte
Dec 9, 2012
Mission 2012 : Clean Water
Larger Image
Above is a map of all groundwater supplies in the United States. The light blue section in the center of the map spanning the majority of the United States from South Dakota to Texas is the Ogallala Aquifer.
Map Maker. (n.d.). Retrieved November 15, 2008, from National Atlas: US Geological Survey: www-atlas.usgs.gov
- Main Problems
- Background on the Ogallala Aquifer
- Recharge
- Depletion
- Contamination
- Environmental Effects of Groundwater Depletion
- Current Public Policy Regarding Groundwater
Main Link:
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2012/finalwebsite/problem/groundwater.shtml
Prairie: A Natural History: Candace Savage
Over 2 million square miles of the United States is covered in prairie and is the largest ecosystem on the continent; the prairies are the heartland of the continent, a vast, windswept plain that flows from Alberta south to Texas and from the Rockies east to the Mississippi River. This is big sky country, and until recently, one of the richest and most magnificent natural grasslands in the world. Today, however, the North American prairies are among the most altered environments on Earth. Thorough, detailed, and scientifically up-to-date, Prairie: A Natural History provides a comprehensive nontechnical guide to the biology and ecology of this fabled environment, offering a view of the past, a vision for the future, and a clear focus on the present. Sidebars throughout highlight various grasslands species, tell fascinating natural history and conservation stories, and present the traditional Native view of the prairie and its inhabitants.
Editorial Reviews
"There are people who think of the prairie as boring, and it is hard not to pity them." Bergen’s forthright and fetching celebration of America’s grasslands sometimes feels almost as personal as it is informative, as the author, who’s written numerous books (including Wild Cats and Born to Be a Cowgirl), traces the prairie from prehistory to the present. She shares her enthusiasm for her subject as easily as she shares facts about prairie ecosystems—their geography and climate, their flora and fauna, their taming by agriculture and their uncertain future. Photographs by James R. Page reveal the prairie in its vast, rolling spaces as well as in its intimate corners, where pincushion cacti bloom and red-winged blackbirds perch on cattails. Sidebars offer all sorts of additional information (on ants, droughts and skunks, just to name a few things) and maps and b&w illustrations further enliven the pages. Savage’s instructive main text is lucid and thorough, making this a fantastic guide to North America’s largest ecosystem. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Immortal River: The Upper Mississippi in Ancient and Modern Times: Calvin R. Fremling
This engaging and well-illustrated primer to the Upper Mississippi River presents the basic natural and human history of this magnificent waterway. Immortal River is written for the educated lay-person who would like to know more about the river's history and the forces that shape as well as threaten it today. It melds complex information from the fields of geology, ecology, geography, anthropology, and history into a readable, chronological story that spans some 500 million years of the earth's history.
Like the Mississippi itself, Immortal River often leaves the main channel to explore the river's backwaters, floodplain, and drainage basin. The book's focus is the Upper Mississippi, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois. But it also includes information about the river's headwaters in northern Minnesota and about the Lower Mississippi from Cairo south to the river's mouth ninety miles below New Orleans. It offers an understanding of the basic geology underlying the river's landscapes, ecology, environmental problems, and grandeur.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"More complete and comprehensive than any book I know on the Upper Mississippi River."—James W. Eckblad, Department of Biology, Luther College.
"Calvin Fremling has successfully described and explained a very complex river system and series of events to a general audience. To my knowledge, there has not been any attempt to address the spatial and temporal scope that is contained in Immortal River. In fact, I dare say, there is nothing even close."—Thomas O. Claflin, professor emeritus of biology, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
About the Author
Calvin Fremling is professor emeritus of biology at Winona State University and former aquatic ecologist at the Resources Studies Center, St. Mary's University of Minnesota. He has written numerous articles on the environment and the Mississippi River.
Great book on Mississippi River, the best I have ever read... chronological story that spans some 500 million years of the earth's history! ...the Mississippi river is three million years old. Man has been active around it for a few thousand years. Modern economies have influenced it for a mere 180 years or so. Calvin Fremling (Mississippi, hunter, fisherman, environmental contractor and scholor [PHD]) did an outstanding, comprehensive, factual job of telling the whole detailed story. All aspects of the Great River: geology, prehistory, history, ecology, flora, fauna and environmental management issues are all discussed in an organized scholorly, yet conversational manner. The complete history of all Corps of Engineer improvements from the early 1800s to modern day are detailed. Even funny dicussions: about Hawkeye Hotel brothel near Lock 19... Mayflies causing motorcyle accidents.. A must read for anyone interested in the Mississippi River! Especialy if you worked for Corps of Engineers or other agencies associated with the Great River... Monte Hines
Like the Mississippi itself, Immortal River often leaves the main channel to explore the river's backwaters, floodplain, and drainage basin. The book's focus is the Upper Mississippi, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois. But it also includes information about the river's headwaters in northern Minnesota and about the Lower Mississippi from Cairo south to the river's mouth ninety miles below New Orleans. It offers an understanding of the basic geology underlying the river's landscapes, ecology, environmental problems, and grandeur.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"More complete and comprehensive than any book I know on the Upper Mississippi River."—James W. Eckblad, Department of Biology, Luther College.
"Calvin Fremling has successfully described and explained a very complex river system and series of events to a general audience. To my knowledge, there has not been any attempt to address the spatial and temporal scope that is contained in Immortal River. In fact, I dare say, there is nothing even close."—Thomas O. Claflin, professor emeritus of biology, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
About the Author
Calvin Fremling is professor emeritus of biology at Winona State University and former aquatic ecologist at the Resources Studies Center, St. Mary's University of Minnesota. He has written numerous articles on the environment and the Mississippi River.
Visit Sepp Holzer's Permaculture Farm
mrintegralpermanence
Visit Sepp Holzer's amazing, biodiverse farm 1500 metres (almost 5000 feet) on an Austrian mountain. Most neighbouring farmers mainly 'farm' monocultural spruce plantations, Sepp is able to produce an incredible range of crops through the creation of microclimates and his unique water management systems. Sepp builds water retaining ponds and lake systems high up on the mountain which have become thriving aquacultures producing fish for the table as well as wildlife habitats teeming with biodiversity. The water creates microclimates around the banks where Sepp is able to grow an abundant edible landscape of fruit and nut orchards plus heritage vegetable and grain crops planted along the banks. In a cold Alpine climate you can find oranges, lemons and kiwis growing, as well as numerous other fruits and vegetables.
Sepp works with nature and also creates habitats where his heritage breed farm animals thrive as well. He uses pigs as tractors to clear land for crops, farms cattle and keeps many breeds of chickens and ducks and makes sure his animals are kept in as natural a way as possible. Seeing this place is believing.
Take a tour with Josef, Sepp's son, and see for yourself what applied permaculture design can do in a farmed landscape. Human beings can live in harmony with the land, creating wildlife habitats and producing an incredible variety of foods. Sepp and his family have proved it.
Full Article Link:
Dec 3, 2012
The mighty Mississippi ain’t so mighty anymore: Thanks, climate change
Jennifer Granholm takes us on a trip down the mighty Mississip’ to illustrate the effects of climate change.
Related Link:
Senators urge Obama to release more water into Mississippi River
Nov 29, 2012
The 50-Year Farm Bill - Wendell Berry - The Atlantic
NOV 13, 2012
The author of a landmark 1991 Atlantic piece on sustainability looks at American agriculture's current land "emergency" and how to solve it.
(John Sommers II/Reuters)
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants. Their best agricultural use is for the production of grazing animals, with most of the land in pastures and hayfields, and perhaps 5 to 10 percent plowed and row-cropped in any year. This was the practice of the best farmers of that country 50 or 60 years ago.
The land husbandry there, as elsewhere, has been in decline since the end of World War II, as agriculture has become more and more industrial, and more and more of the farming people have taken urban jobs or moved away.
But recently and almost suddenly, as ethanol production has driven up the price of grain, our fragile uplands have been invaded by corn and soybeans. Whole farms, with sloping fields that have been in grass as long as I can remember, have been herbicided and planted to annual crops that, because of the drastic reduction of the number of farmers, will not be protected in winter by full-sown cover crops.
This is agriculture determined entirely by the market, and limited only by the capacities of machines and chemicals. The entirely predictable ruination of land and people is the result of degenerate science and the collapse of local farming cultures.
Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest. Though the ground is sloping, kill the standing vegetation and use a no-till planter. For weed control, plant an herbicide-resistant crop variety and use more herbicide.
But even officially approved industrial technologies do not alter reality. The supposed soil saving of no-till farming applies to annual crops during the growing season, but the weather continues through the fall and winter and early spring. Rain continues. Snow falls. The ground freezes and thaws. A dead sod or dead weeds or the dead residue of annual crops is not an adequate ground cover. If this usage continues year after year on sloping land, and especially following soybeans, the soil will erode; it will do so increasingly. And this will be erosion of ground already poisoned with herbicides and other chemicals. Moreover, even with the use of no-till and minimum-till technologies, an estimated half of the applied nitrogen fertilizer runs off into the Mississippi River and finally the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico. Thus an enormous economic loss to farmers becomes an enormous ecological loss as well.
The industrial providers of single solutions assume that the agricultural structure of a country, a region, or a farm can be built piecemeal of disparate single parts -- parts that do not necessarily, or even probably, fit the other parts of the farm or local ecosystem, and yet will ultimately resolve into a coherent, sensible, even sustainable pattern determined by the disposition of the market. This obviously is nonsense.
A good or a sustainable farm cannot be made in this way. Its parts, even its industrial parts, can be made coherent and lasting only in obedience to the natural laws that order and sustain the local forest or prairie ecosystem. This obedience is not just an option. It is a necessity. By ignoring it, we have condemned our land to continuous waste and pollution, and our cultures of husbandry to extinction.
You can't run a landscape, any more than you can run your life, indefinitely in a state of emergency.
If we hope to correct the consequent disorder, which is both human and natural, we have to begin by recognizing the fundamental incompatibility between industrial systems and natural systems, machines and creatures.
This recognition is not new. The problem was closely studied and made clear by such reputable people as J. Russell Smith, Albert Howard, and Also Leopold, whose publications were available, and were ignored, in the mid-20th century, when the all-out industrialization of farming got underway.
I have described the need for a farm bill that makes sense of and for agriculture -- not the fiscal and political sense of agriculture, as in the customary five-year farm bills, but the ecological sense without which agricultural sense cannot be made, and without which agriculture cannot be made sustainable.
"A 50-Year Farm Bill," which has been in circulation now for more than three years, is a proposal by The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas, with the concurrence of numerous allied groups and individuals. This bill addresses the most urgent problems of our dominant way of agriculture: soil erosion, toxic pollution of soil and water, loss of biodiversity, the destruction of farming communities and cultures. It addresses these problems by invoking nature's primary law, in default of which her other laws are of no avail: Keep the ground covered, and keep it covered whenever possible with perennial plants.
At present, 80 percent of our farmable acreage is planted in annual crops, only 20 percent having the beneficent coverage of perennials. This, by the standard of any healthy ecosystem, is absurdly disproportionate. Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established. By this rule, our present agriculture, which gives 80 percent of our farmland to annuals, is in a state of emergency.
You can't run a landscape, any more than you can run your life, indefinitely in a state of emergency. To live your life, to live in your place, you have got to bring about a settlement that does not involve you continuously in worry, loss, and grief. And so "A 50-Year Farm Bill" proposes a 50-year schedule by which the present ratio of 80 percent annual to 20 percent perennial would be exactly reversed. The ratio then would be 20 percent annual to 80 percent perennial. And perhaps I need to say plainly here that the perennial crops would be forages and grains. Nobody at present is talking about the possibility of breeding and raising perennial table vegetables, though they should.
By reversing this ratio, reducing annual plowing by four-fifths, and making it possible to plow in any year only the least vulnerable land, soil erosion would be radically reduced. So would chemical pollution, because perennials grown in mixtures such as grasses with legumes, as they are in most pastures and many hayfields, are more self-sustaining and less chemical-dependent than annual monocultures.
This proposed great change would involve many smaller changes, not all of which can be foreseen. I would like to enlarge upon just one of these implications.
The perennial plant cover we are talking about would be of several kinds: permanent pastures, pastures in rotation with row crops, perennial crops grown for hay or silage -- and, starting perhaps within 10 years, perennial grain crops grown with grasses, mixtures that at times can, and probably should, be used for grazing.
And so one of the most important results of the perennialization of agriculture would be the movement of farm animals out of their wretched confinement factories where they don't, and can never, belong, and back into the pastures and into the open air where they do belong.
Besides an immense kindness, this movement would be a return to ecological health. It would transfer vast tonnages of so-called "animal waste" from the water courses, where it is a pollutant, to our actual food-producing acreage, where it is an indispensable fertilizer. This, I hope, will also start us thinking again about the disposal of so-called "human waste."
One of our great needs now is for human eaters to understand their eating as just one event within the fertility cycle, the "Wheel of Life," by which, in the fullest state of health, food is carried from the soil to the stomach, and then, as so-called "waste," is carried back again to fertilize the soil. If we keep faith with this cycle, we humans can continue to eat indefinitely. Otherwise, we cannot.
If the "waste" of farm animals, as of farm-dependent humans, actually is wasted, then we are eating finite quantities that we will finally eat up entirely, at which point we will cease to eat.
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. Industrial technologies may shortcut the cycle for a while. But such shortcuts also interrupt it, bringing it, and us, into danger.
The author of a landmark 1991 Atlantic piece on sustainability looks at American agriculture's current land "emergency" and how to solve it.
(John Sommers II/Reuters)
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants. Their best agricultural use is for the production of grazing animals, with most of the land in pastures and hayfields, and perhaps 5 to 10 percent plowed and row-cropped in any year. This was the practice of the best farmers of that country 50 or 60 years ago.
The land husbandry there, as elsewhere, has been in decline since the end of World War II, as agriculture has become more and more industrial, and more and more of the farming people have taken urban jobs or moved away.
But recently and almost suddenly, as ethanol production has driven up the price of grain, our fragile uplands have been invaded by corn and soybeans. Whole farms, with sloping fields that have been in grass as long as I can remember, have been herbicided and planted to annual crops that, because of the drastic reduction of the number of farmers, will not be protected in winter by full-sown cover crops.
This is agriculture determined entirely by the market, and limited only by the capacities of machines and chemicals. The entirely predictable ruination of land and people is the result of degenerate science and the collapse of local farming cultures.
Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest. Though the ground is sloping, kill the standing vegetation and use a no-till planter. For weed control, plant an herbicide-resistant crop variety and use more herbicide.
But even officially approved industrial technologies do not alter reality. The supposed soil saving of no-till farming applies to annual crops during the growing season, but the weather continues through the fall and winter and early spring. Rain continues. Snow falls. The ground freezes and thaws. A dead sod or dead weeds or the dead residue of annual crops is not an adequate ground cover. If this usage continues year after year on sloping land, and especially following soybeans, the soil will erode; it will do so increasingly. And this will be erosion of ground already poisoned with herbicides and other chemicals. Moreover, even with the use of no-till and minimum-till technologies, an estimated half of the applied nitrogen fertilizer runs off into the Mississippi River and finally the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico. Thus an enormous economic loss to farmers becomes an enormous ecological loss as well.
The industrial providers of single solutions assume that the agricultural structure of a country, a region, or a farm can be built piecemeal of disparate single parts -- parts that do not necessarily, or even probably, fit the other parts of the farm or local ecosystem, and yet will ultimately resolve into a coherent, sensible, even sustainable pattern determined by the disposition of the market. This obviously is nonsense.
A good or a sustainable farm cannot be made in this way. Its parts, even its industrial parts, can be made coherent and lasting only in obedience to the natural laws that order and sustain the local forest or prairie ecosystem. This obedience is not just an option. It is a necessity. By ignoring it, we have condemned our land to continuous waste and pollution, and our cultures of husbandry to extinction.
You can't run a landscape, any more than you can run your life, indefinitely in a state of emergency.
If we hope to correct the consequent disorder, which is both human and natural, we have to begin by recognizing the fundamental incompatibility between industrial systems and natural systems, machines and creatures.
This recognition is not new. The problem was closely studied and made clear by such reputable people as J. Russell Smith, Albert Howard, and Also Leopold, whose publications were available, and were ignored, in the mid-20th century, when the all-out industrialization of farming got underway.
I have described the need for a farm bill that makes sense of and for agriculture -- not the fiscal and political sense of agriculture, as in the customary five-year farm bills, but the ecological sense without which agricultural sense cannot be made, and without which agriculture cannot be made sustainable.
"A 50-Year Farm Bill," which has been in circulation now for more than three years, is a proposal by The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas, with the concurrence of numerous allied groups and individuals. This bill addresses the most urgent problems of our dominant way of agriculture: soil erosion, toxic pollution of soil and water, loss of biodiversity, the destruction of farming communities and cultures. It addresses these problems by invoking nature's primary law, in default of which her other laws are of no avail: Keep the ground covered, and keep it covered whenever possible with perennial plants.
At present, 80 percent of our farmable acreage is planted in annual crops, only 20 percent having the beneficent coverage of perennials. This, by the standard of any healthy ecosystem, is absurdly disproportionate. Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established. By this rule, our present agriculture, which gives 80 percent of our farmland to annuals, is in a state of emergency.
You can't run a landscape, any more than you can run your life, indefinitely in a state of emergency. To live your life, to live in your place, you have got to bring about a settlement that does not involve you continuously in worry, loss, and grief. And so "A 50-Year Farm Bill" proposes a 50-year schedule by which the present ratio of 80 percent annual to 20 percent perennial would be exactly reversed. The ratio then would be 20 percent annual to 80 percent perennial. And perhaps I need to say plainly here that the perennial crops would be forages and grains. Nobody at present is talking about the possibility of breeding and raising perennial table vegetables, though they should.
By reversing this ratio, reducing annual plowing by four-fifths, and making it possible to plow in any year only the least vulnerable land, soil erosion would be radically reduced. So would chemical pollution, because perennials grown in mixtures such as grasses with legumes, as they are in most pastures and many hayfields, are more self-sustaining and less chemical-dependent than annual monocultures.
This proposed great change would involve many smaller changes, not all of which can be foreseen. I would like to enlarge upon just one of these implications.
The perennial plant cover we are talking about would be of several kinds: permanent pastures, pastures in rotation with row crops, perennial crops grown for hay or silage -- and, starting perhaps within 10 years, perennial grain crops grown with grasses, mixtures that at times can, and probably should, be used for grazing.
And so one of the most important results of the perennialization of agriculture would be the movement of farm animals out of their wretched confinement factories where they don't, and can never, belong, and back into the pastures and into the open air where they do belong.
Besides an immense kindness, this movement would be a return to ecological health. It would transfer vast tonnages of so-called "animal waste" from the water courses, where it is a pollutant, to our actual food-producing acreage, where it is an indispensable fertilizer. This, I hope, will also start us thinking again about the disposal of so-called "human waste."
One of our great needs now is for human eaters to understand their eating as just one event within the fertility cycle, the "Wheel of Life," by which, in the fullest state of health, food is carried from the soil to the stomach, and then, as so-called "waste," is carried back again to fertilize the soil. If we keep faith with this cycle, we humans can continue to eat indefinitely. Otherwise, we cannot.
If the "waste" of farm animals, as of farm-dependent humans, actually is wasted, then we are eating finite quantities that we will finally eat up entirely, at which point we will cease to eat.
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. Industrial technologies may shortcut the cycle for a while. But such shortcuts also interrupt it, bringing it, and us, into danger.
Well said... Monte
Full article:
Nov 28, 2012
Authors@Google: Nate Silver
Published on Nov 28, 2012 by AtGoogleTalks
In the 2012 presidential election, Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Between his electoral and popular vote predictions, he was by some measures the most successful major forecaster of the presidential election. Silver's predictions of U.S. Senate races were correct in 31 of 33 states; he predicted Republican victory in North Dakota and Montana, where Democrats won. --Wikipedia
Nate Silver joins Hal Varian (Google's Chief Economist) to talk about his book "The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't" and answer Googler questions.
Nate - Interesting... Funny... A Very Smart Nerd... !!! Monte
Hines Farm - Construction of 4 Portable Rolling Table Carts
Larger Image
Makita 2012NB 12" Planer Table Cart
Larger Image
Craftsman 10 in. Band Saw Table Cart
Larger Image
Skil 3320-02 10-in Drill Press Table Cart
Constructed 3 of the 4 Rolling Table Carts on 11-28-2012... Monte
Nov 27, 2012
How Petraeus Created the Myth of His Success
Link: http://truth-out.org/news/item/12997-how-petraeus-created-the-myth-of-his-success
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
By Gareth Porter, Truthout | Report
Part One: How the Myth Began - Petraeus in Mosul
By Gareth Porter, Truthout | Report
Part One: How the Myth Began - Petraeus in Mosul
Great 4 part article... Monte
Intro to Permaculture - The Case for Permaculture - Midwest Permaculture 2012 Webinar Series - YouTube
Published on Nov 27, 2012 by MidwestPermaculture
This video is Midwest Permaculture's Intro to Permaculture Internet Webinar, The Case for Permaculture. Originally available free online in eighteen segments it is now available here as one single video. It is the first video in our Foundations of Permaculture Webinar Series and is how we begin our Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) Courses.
http://www.midwestpermaculture.com/
http://midwestpermaculture.ning.com/
Nov 26, 2012
Tour Nick Offerman's California Workshop
Uploaded by FineWoodworking on Sep 28, 2011
Parks & Recreation co-star Nick Offerman is more than just a gifted actor. He's a bonified, true-blue woodworker. Take a tour of his workshop and find out why Nick is more at home in the shop then on the set.
The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworkers Reflections : George Nakashima
Just finished reading this wonderful book. Anyone who enjoys nature, trees, woods, and working with wood will enjoy this book immensely! ... Monte
Related Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Tree-Master-Woodworkers-Reflections
Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher : Fred Kirschenmann
Read this book this weekend. I highly recommend.... Monte
Related link:
Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture : Wes Jackson
I just read this great book by Wes Jackson. I highly recommend.... Monte
"A primary purpose of this book has been to argue for the necessity and now the possibility of making the perennial grains available for agronomists and ecologist to bring the process of the wild to the farm. By starting where our split with nature began, we can build an agriculture more like the ecosystems that shaped us, thereby preserving ecological capital, the stuff of which we are made, and guaranteeing ourselves food for the journey ahead.
Related Links:
http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-wisdom-of-wes-jackson-ecological.html
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA3AC9E3263F92D74&feature=view_all
amazon.com/Consulting-Genius-Place-Ecological
Nov 23, 2012
Woody Guthrie at 100: Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, Will Kaufman Honor the "Dust Bowl Troubadour"
Commemorations are being held across the country this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the country’s greatest songwriters, Woody Guthrie. Born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma, Guthrie wrote hundreds of folk songs, including, "This Land Is Your Land," "Pastures of Plenty," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Do Re Mi" and "The Ranger’s Command." While Guthrie is best remembered as a musician, he also had a deeply political side. At the height of McCarthyism, Guthrie spoke out for labor and civil rights and against fascism. In this one-hour special, you will hear interviews and music from folk singer Pete Seeger, the British musician Billy Bragg, and the historian Will Kaufman, author of the new book, "Woody Guthrie, American Radical."
"Woody’s original songs, the songs that he wrote back in the 1930s ... with these images of people losing their houses to the banks, of gamblers on the stock markets making millions, when ordinary working people can’t afford to make ends meet, and of people dying for want of proper free healthcare, you know, this song could have been written anytime in the last five years, really, in the United States of America," says Bragg, who has long been inspired by Guthrie.
Guthrie’s most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land,” was written in 1940 in response to Kate Smith’s "God Bless America.” "Woody saw ['God Bless America'] as a strident, jingoistic, complacent, tub-thumping anthem to American greatness,” Kaufman says. “And now, he had just come from the Dust Bowl. He’d just come from the barbed-wire gates of California’s Eden there. He’d seen the Hoovervilles. He’d seen the bread lines. He’d seen labor activists getting their heads busted. And so, he’s thinking, what — God bless — what America, you know, is Kate Smith singing of?” In 2009, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen performed “This Land Is Your Land” for the inauguration of President Obama. [includes rush transcript]
Nov 17, 2012
Dust Bowl Revisited | Grist
By Earth Policy Institute
Grist guest contributor
By Janet Larsen
On October 18, 2012, the Associated Press reported that “a massive dust storm swirling reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate…forcing police to shut down the heavily traveled roadway amid near blackout conditions.” Farmers in the region had recently plowed fields to plant winter wheat. The bare soil—desiccated by the relentless drought that smothered nearly two-thirds of the continental United States during the summer and still persists over the Great Plains—was easily lifted by the passing strong winds, darkening skies from southern Nebraska, through Kansas, and into Oklahoma.
Observers could not help but harken back to the 1930s Dust Bowl that ultimately covered 100 million acres in western Kansas, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado. Yet when asked if that was the direction the region was headed, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Agriculture Jim Reese was unequivocal: “That will never happen again.”
In the early decades of the twentieth century, earnest settlers of the semi-arid Plains, along with opportunistic “suitcase farmers” out to make a quick dollar, plowed under millions of acres of native prairie grass. Assured that “rain follows the plow,” and lured by government incentives, railroad promises, and hopes of carving out a place for their families, these farmers embraced the newly available tractors, powerful plows, and mechanized harvesters to turn over the sod that had long sustained Native American tribes and millions of bison.
The plowing began during years of rain, and early harvests were good. High wheat prices, buoyed by demand and government guarantees during the First World War, encouraged ever more land to be turned over. But then the Great Depression hit. The price of wheat collapsed and fields were abandoned. When the drought arrived in the early 1930s, the soils blew, their fertility stolen by the relentless wind. Stripped of its living carpet, freed from the intricate matrix of perennial prairie grass roots, the earth took flight.
Clouds as tall as mountains and black as night rolled over the land. Regular dust storms pummeled the homesteaders; the big ones drew notice when they clouded the sun in New York City and Washington, DC, even sullying ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. Dunes formed and spread, burying railroad tracks, fences, and cars. “Dust pneumonia” claimed lives, often those of children. People fled the land in droves.
In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan describes the topsoil loss, how a “rich cover that had taken several thousand years to develop was disappearing day by day.” The sodbusters had quickly illuminated the dangerous hubris in the 1909 Bureau of Soils proclamation: “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up.” The rechristened Great Plains looked like it would revert back to its original name: the Great American Desert.
When a series of dust storms reached far-flung Washington, DC, in the spring of 1935, a reluctant Congress was finally convinced to allocate resources to help stabilize the soil. With government subsidies and direction from the newly created Soil Conservation Service, practices were introduced to help hold down the earth. Grasses were replanted; shelter belts of trees were planted to slow the persistent winds; contour farming or terracing was used to farm in line with the natural shape of the land; strip cropping was used to leave some protective cover on the soil; and crop rotations and fallow periods allowed the land to rest.
While some of the Dust Bowl land never recovered, the settled communities becoming ghost towns, many of the once-affected areas have become major food producers. By 1933 wheat production in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado was slashed by nearly three-quarters from its 1931 high of 411 million bushels, taking until 1947 to reach that level again. In 2012, the wheat output of these four states exceeds 700 million bushels, a third of the U.S. wheat harvest.
After World War II, well-drilling and pumping technologies allowed farmers to tap into the Ogallala aquifer, a vast reservoir of water beneath the Plains, stretching from southern South Dakota through the Texas Panhandle. Irrigation expanded, with center-pivot sprinklers creating the green circles overlain on brown squares that are familiar to anyone who has flown over the central United States.
In recent decades irrigation has allowed the traditional Corn Belt to move westward onto drier lands. Kansas, for instance, sometimes called “the Wheat State,” harvesting one-sixth of the U.S. crop, now produces as much corn as it does wheat. The wheat is primarily rainfed, but more than half the corn is irrigated.
As extraction of the underground water has increased, however, water tables have fallen. The depletion is particularly concerning in the Central and Southern Plains where there is virtually no replenishment of the aquifer from rainfall, foreshadowing an end to the use of this finite resource. In the former Dust Bowl states, irrigation had its boom, but in many areas it is beyond its peak. With wells going dry, some farmers have returned to the more-common rainfed wheat farming, which typically yields far less than with irrigation; others have gotten out of wheat all together.
In Kansas the average drop in the water table is 23 feet (7 meters), but some farmers have seen drops of 150 feet or more have been reported. The fall in water tables is even greater in the Texas Panhandle. Statewide, Texas’ irrigated area is down more than 20 percent from its high nearly 40 years ago. Only recently, after the water table fell fast during the back-to-back droughts, have limits been placed on withdrawals from individual wells there to slow the depletion.According to scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. Geological Survey, if current rates of extraction continue, irrigation over a third of the southern High Plains will be untenable within 30 years.
Beyond the farm, climatologists are making it clear that the recent droughts are exactly the sort of event predicted to come more frequently as the planet heats up. So rainfed crops are in trouble, too. Models agree that with the global warming in store absent dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, much of the western United States—from Kansas to California—could enter into a long-term state of dryness, what physicist Joseph Romm has termed “dust-bowlification.”
With soil conservation measures in place, when drought revisited the Plains in the 1950s, the mid-1970s, the early 2000s, and again in 2011-2012—when Texas and Oklahoma baked in their hottest summers on record—a full-blown Dust Bowl did not develop. But will the ground hold forever? The United States is by far the world’s leading grain exporter; thus the fate of the nation’s “breadbasket” matters for food prices, and food security, around the globe.
While our understanding of and respect for the soil is greater now than it was at the turn of the last century, erosion still exceeds new soil formation on most acres. The combination of higher temperatures, prolonged drought, and irrigation limitations turns the prospects for continued large-scale crop production on the Plains grim. In case going through the worst recession since the Great Depression was not enough to remind Americans of hard times in the country’s past, climate change and the pressures of population and consumption growth pushing farmers to produce ever more food on limited land will make it harder to avoid a repeat of history.
Grist guest contributor
By Janet Larsen
On October 18, 2012, the Associated Press reported that “a massive dust storm swirling reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate…forcing police to shut down the heavily traveled roadway amid near blackout conditions.” Farmers in the region had recently plowed fields to plant winter wheat. The bare soil—desiccated by the relentless drought that smothered nearly two-thirds of the continental United States during the summer and still persists over the Great Plains—was easily lifted by the passing strong winds, darkening skies from southern Nebraska, through Kansas, and into Oklahoma.
Observers could not help but harken back to the 1930s Dust Bowl that ultimately covered 100 million acres in western Kansas, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado. Yet when asked if that was the direction the region was headed, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Agriculture Jim Reese was unequivocal: “That will never happen again.”
In the early decades of the twentieth century, earnest settlers of the semi-arid Plains, along with opportunistic “suitcase farmers” out to make a quick dollar, plowed under millions of acres of native prairie grass. Assured that “rain follows the plow,” and lured by government incentives, railroad promises, and hopes of carving out a place for their families, these farmers embraced the newly available tractors, powerful plows, and mechanized harvesters to turn over the sod that had long sustained Native American tribes and millions of bison.
The plowing began during years of rain, and early harvests were good. High wheat prices, buoyed by demand and government guarantees during the First World War, encouraged ever more land to be turned over. But then the Great Depression hit. The price of wheat collapsed and fields were abandoned. When the drought arrived in the early 1930s, the soils blew, their fertility stolen by the relentless wind. Stripped of its living carpet, freed from the intricate matrix of perennial prairie grass roots, the earth took flight.
Clouds as tall as mountains and black as night rolled over the land. Regular dust storms pummeled the homesteaders; the big ones drew notice when they clouded the sun in New York City and Washington, DC, even sullying ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. Dunes formed and spread, burying railroad tracks, fences, and cars. “Dust pneumonia” claimed lives, often those of children. People fled the land in droves.
In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan describes the topsoil loss, how a “rich cover that had taken several thousand years to develop was disappearing day by day.” The sodbusters had quickly illuminated the dangerous hubris in the 1909 Bureau of Soils proclamation: “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up.” The rechristened Great Plains looked like it would revert back to its original name: the Great American Desert.
When a series of dust storms reached far-flung Washington, DC, in the spring of 1935, a reluctant Congress was finally convinced to allocate resources to help stabilize the soil. With government subsidies and direction from the newly created Soil Conservation Service, practices were introduced to help hold down the earth. Grasses were replanted; shelter belts of trees were planted to slow the persistent winds; contour farming or terracing was used to farm in line with the natural shape of the land; strip cropping was used to leave some protective cover on the soil; and crop rotations and fallow periods allowed the land to rest.
While some of the Dust Bowl land never recovered, the settled communities becoming ghost towns, many of the once-affected areas have become major food producers. By 1933 wheat production in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado was slashed by nearly three-quarters from its 1931 high of 411 million bushels, taking until 1947 to reach that level again. In 2012, the wheat output of these four states exceeds 700 million bushels, a third of the U.S. wheat harvest.
After World War II, well-drilling and pumping technologies allowed farmers to tap into the Ogallala aquifer, a vast reservoir of water beneath the Plains, stretching from southern South Dakota through the Texas Panhandle. Irrigation expanded, with center-pivot sprinklers creating the green circles overlain on brown squares that are familiar to anyone who has flown over the central United States.
In recent decades irrigation has allowed the traditional Corn Belt to move westward onto drier lands. Kansas, for instance, sometimes called “the Wheat State,” harvesting one-sixth of the U.S. crop, now produces as much corn as it does wheat. The wheat is primarily rainfed, but more than half the corn is irrigated.
As extraction of the underground water has increased, however, water tables have fallen. The depletion is particularly concerning in the Central and Southern Plains where there is virtually no replenishment of the aquifer from rainfall, foreshadowing an end to the use of this finite resource. In the former Dust Bowl states, irrigation had its boom, but in many areas it is beyond its peak. With wells going dry, some farmers have returned to the more-common rainfed wheat farming, which typically yields far less than with irrigation; others have gotten out of wheat all together.
In Kansas the average drop in the water table is 23 feet (7 meters), but some farmers have seen drops of 150 feet or more have been reported. The fall in water tables is even greater in the Texas Panhandle. Statewide, Texas’ irrigated area is down more than 20 percent from its high nearly 40 years ago. Only recently, after the water table fell fast during the back-to-back droughts, have limits been placed on withdrawals from individual wells there to slow the depletion.According to scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. Geological Survey, if current rates of extraction continue, irrigation over a third of the southern High Plains will be untenable within 30 years.
Beyond the farm, climatologists are making it clear that the recent droughts are exactly the sort of event predicted to come more frequently as the planet heats up. So rainfed crops are in trouble, too. Models agree that with the global warming in store absent dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, much of the western United States—from Kansas to California—could enter into a long-term state of dryness, what physicist Joseph Romm has termed “dust-bowlification.”
With soil conservation measures in place, when drought revisited the Plains in the 1950s, the mid-1970s, the early 2000s, and again in 2011-2012—when Texas and Oklahoma baked in their hottest summers on record—a full-blown Dust Bowl did not develop. But will the ground hold forever? The United States is by far the world’s leading grain exporter; thus the fate of the nation’s “breadbasket” matters for food prices, and food security, around the globe.
While our understanding of and respect for the soil is greater now than it was at the turn of the last century, erosion still exceeds new soil formation on most acres. The combination of higher temperatures, prolonged drought, and irrigation limitations turns the prospects for continued large-scale crop production on the Plains grim. In case going through the worst recession since the Great Depression was not enough to remind Americans of hard times in the country’s past, climate change and the pressures of population and consumption growth pushing farmers to produce ever more food on limited land will make it harder to avoid a repeat of history.
Nov 15, 2012
Ken Burns: Before Sandy, There Was the Dust Bowl | Mother Jones
By James West
Thu Nov. 15, 2012
The filmmaker talks about the worst man-made ecological disaster in US history, and what it teaches us about future climate catastrophes.
As the East Coast licks its wounds from superstorm Sandy, many in New York and New Jersey are still without power, wondering how on Earth it got this bad. Ken Burns, the great innovator of the American documentary, thinks this the perfect time to seek some wisdom from generations past.
His new film, The Dust Bowl, tells the story of the the worst man-made ecological disaster in US history. For it, Burns and and his team tracked down the last remaining survivors of the catastrophic dust storms of the 1930s and matched their intimate stories (most were children at the time) with lush archival footage.
When I caught up with Burns in New York City, he drew comparisons between what happened then and what is happening now—and how we can prevent future Dust Bowls and Sandys.
The Dust Bowl airs November 18th and 19 on PBS.
Thu Nov. 15, 2012
The filmmaker talks about the worst man-made ecological disaster in US history, and what it teaches us about future climate catastrophes.
As the East Coast licks its wounds from superstorm Sandy, many in New York and New Jersey are still without power, wondering how on Earth it got this bad. Ken Burns, the great innovator of the American documentary, thinks this the perfect time to seek some wisdom from generations past.
His new film, The Dust Bowl, tells the story of the the worst man-made ecological disaster in US history. For it, Burns and and his team tracked down the last remaining survivors of the catastrophic dust storms of the 1930s and matched their intimate stories (most were children at the time) with lush archival footage.
When I caught up with Burns in New York City, he drew comparisons between what happened then and what is happening now—and how we can prevent future Dust Bowls and Sandys.
The Dust Bowl airs November 18th and 19 on PBS.
Nov 14, 2012
Glenn Greenwald: While Petraeus Had Affair With Biographer, Corporate Media Had Affair With Petraeus
Guardian columnist and blogger Glenn Greenwald
Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/14/glenn_greenwald_while_petraeus_had_affair
Petraeus Affair Lesson: The Army Is Better at Planning Soirees Than Wars | Mother Jones
By Adam Weinstein
Tue Nov. 13, 2012
Tue Nov. 13, 2012
Flickr/hectorir
Among the many strange details emerging from the story of retired Gen. David Petraeus' affair with his biographer, there's this: US Central Command seems to have prepared more thoroughly for its military parties than for the war in Iraq.
News of Petraeus' marital peccadilloes came to light after Jill Kelley, a Tampa socialite and friend of Petraeus, complained to her FBI friend about receiving harassing emails... which turned out to originate from Petraeus' paramour, Paula Broadwell. Kelley, too, is alleged to have sent "hundreds" of flirtatious emails to another general, Marine Gen. John Allen, who's currently overseeing the war in Afghanistan.
Kelley's involvement in the affair has shed light on the military's robust social calendaring at MacDill Air Force Base, Central Command's Tampa headquarters. Tampa has long been known for its gritty night scene—its main drag of strip clubs is literally up the street from MacDill's gates, a straight shot north on Dale Mabry Highway—and Kelley was noted for hosting military VIPs during the city's pirate-themed springtime Gasparilla Festival. She also was a VIP invitee to the service's biggest party of the year, the annual Army Ball, in 2011. It was a party with an exacting military plan that might raise a few eyebrows.
Every Army officer is well-acquainted with the five-paragraph "operations order," the basic memorandum format in which military maneuvers are written up—from major war campaigns to small intelligence-gathering trips. But it might shock some war veterans to learn that CENTCOM's Army Ball that year was organized to the smallest detail in a whopping 17-page official op order with 13 appendices. Marked "UNCLASSIFIED," the memo details how CENTCOM worked with the Pentagon's Special Operations Command "to allow area Army personnel and friends to celebrate the 236th birthday of the United States Army and to promote beneficial public relations in the greater Tampa Community."
Under Section III, "Execution," the Army Ball's executive committee chairman—Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel—noted that "[t]here will be five phases of the operation." These included Phase IV, "Execution," and Phase V, "Recovery," in which the party's organizing team "salvages what resources are practical and usable for future balls, performs an After Action Review, and transitions the resources available to the 2012 Army Ball Committee."
Here's the thing: That's more planning and direction than CENTCOM put into postconflict reconstruction in Iraq. When planning for the war against Saddam Hussein in 2003, then-CENTCOM commander (and recent Romney adviser) Gen. Tommy Franks put together a slideshow presentation for President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, that summarized their Iraq strategy. On every slide detailing every option for how to start the war, info on how the war would end—called "Phase IV, Post-Hostilities" in military parlance—was marked by a single word: "UNKNOWN."
Here's what that looks like:
Is it really possible that one of the Army's major combatant commands put more thought into its annual soiree than how to manage post-war Iraq? Of course, there were plenty of military personnel working on the Iraq question, even if their work never filtered up to the operation's slide-writing deciders. But as l'affaire Petraeus demonstrates, every good party needs a planner.
Among the many strange details emerging from the story of retired Gen. David Petraeus' affair with his biographer, there's this: US Central Command seems to have prepared more thoroughly for its military parties than for the war in Iraq.
News of Petraeus' marital peccadilloes came to light after Jill Kelley, a Tampa socialite and friend of Petraeus, complained to her FBI friend about receiving harassing emails... which turned out to originate from Petraeus' paramour, Paula Broadwell. Kelley, too, is alleged to have sent "hundreds" of flirtatious emails to another general, Marine Gen. John Allen, who's currently overseeing the war in Afghanistan.
Kelley's involvement in the affair has shed light on the military's robust social calendaring at MacDill Air Force Base, Central Command's Tampa headquarters. Tampa has long been known for its gritty night scene—its main drag of strip clubs is literally up the street from MacDill's gates, a straight shot north on Dale Mabry Highway—and Kelley was noted for hosting military VIPs during the city's pirate-themed springtime Gasparilla Festival. She also was a VIP invitee to the service's biggest party of the year, the annual Army Ball, in 2011. It was a party with an exacting military plan that might raise a few eyebrows.
Every Army officer is well-acquainted with the five-paragraph "operations order," the basic memorandum format in which military maneuvers are written up—from major war campaigns to small intelligence-gathering trips. But it might shock some war veterans to learn that CENTCOM's Army Ball that year was organized to the smallest detail in a whopping 17-page official op order with 13 appendices. Marked "UNCLASSIFIED," the memo details how CENTCOM worked with the Pentagon's Special Operations Command "to allow area Army personnel and friends to celebrate the 236th birthday of the United States Army and to promote beneficial public relations in the greater Tampa Community."
Under Section III, "Execution," the Army Ball's executive committee chairman—Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel—noted that "[t]here will be five phases of the operation." These included Phase IV, "Execution," and Phase V, "Recovery," in which the party's organizing team "salvages what resources are practical and usable for future balls, performs an After Action Review, and transitions the resources available to the 2012 Army Ball Committee."
Here's the thing: That's more planning and direction than CENTCOM put into postconflict reconstruction in Iraq. When planning for the war against Saddam Hussein in 2003, then-CENTCOM commander (and recent Romney adviser) Gen. Tommy Franks put together a slideshow presentation for President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, that summarized their Iraq strategy. On every slide detailing every option for how to start the war, info on how the war would end—called "Phase IV, Post-Hostilities" in military parlance—was marked by a single word: "UNKNOWN."
Here's what that looks like:
Is it really possible that one of the Army's major combatant commands put more thought into its annual soiree than how to manage post-war Iraq? Of course, there were plenty of military personnel working on the Iraq question, even if their work never filtered up to the operation's slide-writing deciders. But as l'affaire Petraeus demonstrates, every good party needs a planner.
Nov 13, 2012
David Petraeus: A US war hero?
A scandalous affair has brought down a man referred to by many as one of the greatest generals in US history. But how successful have David Petraeus' strategies really been in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Until a few years ago, few people had heard of Petraeus. But in Washington DC, he has been long revered.
"If you ask the families of the 2,000 US service people who were killed in Afghanistan, it was bound to be a fool's errand. Or if you ask the people who were killed in Iraq unnecessarily, if you talk to the people who were tortured in Iraqi prisons with Petraeus looking the other way, you would get quite a different answer."
- Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA officer
He has been compared to the likes of Dwight Eisenhower, the man who led the allied forces to victory in World War II.
His counter-inserguency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hailed as great sucesses.
And as he accepted his assignment as head of US central command in 2008, his boss at the time, Defence Secretary Robert Gates referred to him as "the pre-eminent soldier-scholar-statesman of his generation".
But his critics say, the legacy of his career is not that stellar and deserves far more scrutiny than the US media and politicians are willing to give it.
Earlier this year, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis released a whistleblower report on conditions in Afghanistan.
He said that Petraeus consistently gave glowing and inaccurate accounts of US military progress and that Petraeus built a so-called "cult of personality" around himself.
"A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our country, by the vast majority of our uniformed service members, and the population at large [that] David Petraeus is a real war hero - maybe even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower .... But the most important lesson everyone learned [was to] never, ever question General Petraeus or you'll be made to look a fool!"
"There is a great irony in Petraeus' role in Iraq because the fact is that he never believed in that war in the first place. He told a friend of mine in 2005 that it was too late to try counter-insurgency in Iraq, that the damage had already been done ..."
- Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist
In his report, Davis was scathing in his assessment of US military commanders:
"Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognisable.
"This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan."
So, is David Petraeus really the American war hero he has been portrayed as?
To discuss this, Inside Story Americas, with host Kimberly Halkett is joined by guests: Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist and historian; Larry Korb, the former assistant Secretary of Defence; and Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer.
Related links:
Petraeus out of step with US top brass - Asia Times Online 2007 article - General Fallon derided Petraeus as a "sycophant" and told him to his face that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit.”
Until a few years ago, few people had heard of Petraeus. But in Washington DC, he has been long revered.
"If you ask the families of the 2,000 US service people who were killed in Afghanistan, it was bound to be a fool's errand. Or if you ask the people who were killed in Iraq unnecessarily, if you talk to the people who were tortured in Iraqi prisons with Petraeus looking the other way, you would get quite a different answer."
- Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA officer
He has been compared to the likes of Dwight Eisenhower, the man who led the allied forces to victory in World War II.
His counter-inserguency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hailed as great sucesses.
And as he accepted his assignment as head of US central command in 2008, his boss at the time, Defence Secretary Robert Gates referred to him as "the pre-eminent soldier-scholar-statesman of his generation".
But his critics say, the legacy of his career is not that stellar and deserves far more scrutiny than the US media and politicians are willing to give it.
Earlier this year, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis released a whistleblower report on conditions in Afghanistan.
He said that Petraeus consistently gave glowing and inaccurate accounts of US military progress and that Petraeus built a so-called "cult of personality" around himself.
"A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our country, by the vast majority of our uniformed service members, and the population at large [that] David Petraeus is a real war hero - maybe even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower .... But the most important lesson everyone learned [was to] never, ever question General Petraeus or you'll be made to look a fool!"
"There is a great irony in Petraeus' role in Iraq because the fact is that he never believed in that war in the first place. He told a friend of mine in 2005 that it was too late to try counter-insurgency in Iraq, that the damage had already been done ..."
- Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist
In his report, Davis was scathing in his assessment of US military commanders:
"Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognisable.
"This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan."
So, is David Petraeus really the American war hero he has been portrayed as?
To discuss this, Inside Story Americas, with host Kimberly Halkett is joined by guests: Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist and historian; Larry Korb, the former assistant Secretary of Defence; and Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer.
Related links:
Petraeus out of step with US top brass - Asia Times Online 2007 article - General Fallon derided Petraeus as a "sycophant" and told him to his face that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit.”
Never did like this guy... Monte & Eileen
Nov 9, 2012
Climate science is Nate Silver and U.S. politics is Karl Rove | Grist
Throughout this long, crazy campaign, there’s been a tension simmering between empiricists like Nate Silver andSam Wang, who cited poll data showing Obama with a small but durable lead, and pundits who trusted their “guts” and the “narrative,” both of which indicated that Romney had all the momentum after the first debate.
In the face of model projections like Silver’s, Jonah Goldberg said that “the soul … is not so easily number-crunched.” David Brooks warnedthat “experts with fancy computer models are terrible at predicting human behavior.” Joe Scarborough said “anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue.” Peggy Noonan said that “the vibrations are right” for a Romney win. All sorts of conservative pundits were convinced the Romney campaign just feltlike a winner.
You know how that turned out. Jon Stewart put it way better than I could:
Empiricism won. It didn’t win because it’s a truer faith or a superior ideology. It won because it works. It is the best way humans have figured out to set aside their prejudices, their perceptual limitations, their cognitive shortcomings, and get a clear view of what’s to come.
As it happens, there’s another issue in American politics where empiricists are forecasting the future and being ignored. Here’s what the Nate Silvers of climate science are up to:
Looking back at 10 years of atmospheric humidity data from NASA satellites, [John Fasullo and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research] examined two dozen of the world’s most sophisticated climate simulations. They found the simulations that most closely matched actual humidity measurements were also the ones that predicted the most extreme global warming.
In other words, by using real data, the scientists picked simulation winners and losers.
“The models at the higher end of temperature predictions uniformly did a better job,” Fasullo said. The simulations that fared worse — the ones predicting smaller temperature rises — “should be outright discounted,” he added.
The Washington Post spells out what that means:
That means the world could be in for a devastating increase of about eight degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, resulting in drastically higher seas, disappearing coastlines and more severe droughts, floods and other destructive weather.
Such an increase would substantially overshoot what the world’s leaders have identified as the threshold for triggering catastrophic consequences. In 2009, heads of state agreed to try to limit warming to 3.6 degrees, and many countries want a tighter limit.
This is in keeping with a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers [PDF], which showed that, to hold warming to that 3.6 degree target (2 degree Celsius), global average carbon intensity would have to decline by 5.1 percent a year, on average, between now and 2050. That rate of decarbonization has never been achieved, ever, for as long as we have records. It is, the report notes dryly, “highly unrealistic.” Even to limit warming to 7.2 degrees (4 degrees Celsius) would require nearly quadrupling the current rate of decarbonization. And at our current rate rate of decarbonization (1.6 percent) we are on track for a temperature rise of 10.8 degrees (6 degrees Celsius) by 2100.
Let’s be clear about this. Scientists consider 3.6 degrees catastrophic. There are serious scientists who doubt that human civilization can endure at all in the face of 7.2 degrees. And we are headed for 10.8.
In short, the Nate Silvers of climate science are forecasting a landslide — that is, humanity under a landslide of drought, floods, disease, and dislocation. They’re telling us that unless we change our campaign strategy, i.e., undertake rapid, large-scale efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, our chances of surviving and prospering are dim and getting dimmer.
We simply haven’t come to terms with what empirical science is telling us. The mainstream media hasn’t come to terms with it. Most public intellectuals have not come to terms with it. And almost no politicians have come to terms with it. (Republicans deny it, most centrists ignore it, and Dems mouth platitudes about it.)
We all sound like pundits, going with our “guts.” The science feels too scary, too abrasive, too implausible. The hippies out there protesting over climate change feel “unserious.” The notion that energy prices might have to rise or lifestyles change feels “alarmist.” We talk about climate, if we talk about it at all, in terms of these time-worn prejudices and outdated folk theories. We all sound like Peggy Noonan with her vibrations.
It’s our own version of “math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better.” Call it math you do as an American to make yourself feel better.
This election is being hailed in many quarters as a triumph for Nate Silver and forces of empiricism. But on the biggest, most pressing risk facing the country, those involved in U.S. politics might as well be witch doctors. Or worse, Karl Rove.
It’s not a wise approach, because in the climate race, losses are permanent and irreversible. There will be no recount.
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