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Hearing the Sea Stars were disappearing in the Pacific, reminded me they were disappearing in the Atlantic as well. This die off reminded me I’d seen zero monarchs this year, and Allan Loudell of WDEL, an expert on winged insects, had seen very few this year as well… As of now, they were not showing up in their wintering grounds…
I wonder, how many other die offs do you think have occurred? I found someone who keeps track across the globe of these die offs primarily for religious purposes. I knew it would take someone with an intense interest to put a list like this together, and this was the most extensive one I found on the web.
Every day he searches the Internet for mass die offs. They could be small; they could be large, but he records them… It is his passion… In just 2013, he has collected 733 so far, and he provides links for each one…. I did a random check of 5 and they were all linked to the actual news story. Some have to go through Google translator.
But the list is here, and be prepared to be deeply affected as the immensity begins to dawn upon you….
Here are ones that jumped at me….
1st November 2013 – 20 MILLION+ bees have died off this year (37 million last year) in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. Link (Watch the Video!)
31st October 2013 – NOTE: 769 Manatees wash up dead this year (most ever recorded), in Florida, America. Link
23rd October 2013 – UPDATE: Over 700 Dolphins washed ashore dead since July along east coast of America. Link
What is troubling is the number of die offs that seem to happen very rapidly. Food is still in the mouths of the dead animals…
Either we are much better at reporting, or something very scary is out there… Just looking at the bee die-offs makes one wonder where in the future, pollination is going to come from…..
I think it can be best explained by this juxtaposition, for this topic will, like climate change, have to undergo considerable debate before we resolve our differences.
A) For practical purposes, Monarch Butterflies in North America are extinct. The reason is their food supply, which used to grow wild beside farmer’s fields, is now absent, because of the weedkillers (Roundup) applied to fields of GMO crops immune to that chemical. There is no milkweed. There are no Monarch Butterflies anymore.
B) Soon to be released will be a yellow rice that provides a single serving with more than a days worth of beta carotene. Likewise fruits and vegetables can now contain good HDL cholesteral instead of bad LDL.
There is great harm being done by Genetic Modified Foods.
There is great good which will come about due to Genetic Modified Foods.
Obviously from a practical level, having no bans or regulations on certain GMFoods is equally as damaging as banning all GMFoods…or making them all illegal. It is not an all of one, none of the other proposition.
The science is pretty safe. What we are doing is short circuiting the process of what man has always done…. selective breeding. We’ve changed the genes of dogs, cats, cows and goats.
But what is not known, is the effect. As with the Monarchs, there are unintended consequences involved with having GMFoods. Who would have thought through far enough, on how this would affect the butterfly we all know and love? What regulator could possibly have such a far reach of a scope to figure out how every ripple caused by such a use would effect everything else across its march of time?
Yet to ban all GMFoods will cause a lot of humans to die of starvation. Yes, it is a third world problem.
Therefore allow me to be the first to throw down some guidelines… Let us call it just for fun, the kavipsian rule of Genetic Modified Food.
Modifying food to benefit those eating it is ok. Modifying food to enable those growing it to make more money, is not.
That would have nipped the Monarch problem in the bud, and allowed Mankind to live long and prosper……
Thanks Nancy. Tom Carper sponsored, and Chris Coons endorsed, a bill that shuffles money around the Agriculture Department to keep our food inspectors fully employed.
Our food will not be uninspected now because of the Republican induced sequester. Politics are one thing. People dying are another. The only protection Americans have between themselves and unscrupulous cut-throat foreign food processors, is the FDA. Eliminating them would the the death of us all. Remember the tainted pet food?
I’m glad our delegation stepped up to protect them… However this gave me pause. Where the money was being shifted from….
The Pryor/Blunt/Coons amendment adds no additional cost to the bill. Instead, it moves one-time funding for school equipment grants and deferred maintenance on buildings and facilities at the U.S. Department of Agriculture…
One time funding for school equipment grants, meaning many schools in Delaware which thought they would soon be on the receiving end of new refrigeration units to safeguard school lunches, must now remain using the old pre- 1930’s models currently in place. It also means when the sequester is done, and funds return, their will be less spent on helping Americans, because it will be shuffled to cover the depreciation currently not charged because of this amendment.
When are we going to stop pussy footing around the real issue, and tax the wealthy at the rate of their hero, Ronald Reagan’s first tax cut level, until we have paid off our deficit? The middle class should not bear the cost of the wealthy’s bad investments. The top 1% should be the first to anti up, and then, only when they have nothing left, should the middle class even be asked to sacrifice…..
America is being spoon fed raw sewage and is then arguing which medicine is better to cover up the symptoms….. Tax the wealthy and all our dreams will come true. America can be healthy again….
We knew this but it is now being published… and so it is in the news.
The world is getting warmer… and we can now predict our climate by looking at map at 300 miles south and guessing what our weather will be from that…
Just as plate tectonics and Darwin’s origin of the species were able to lay the groundwork of reason for explaining puzzling observations, this simplifies what to expect from global warming rather startlingly.
Texas is now what we alway thought of when we considered the weather of Mexico; Oklahoma is now West Texas; Kansas is now Oklahoma; Nebraska is now Kansas; South Dakota is now Nebraska, North Dakota is now South Dakota: Southern Manitoba is now North Dakota…..
If West Texas had 3 days of rain, now Oklahoma is getting 3 days of rain; If it snowed 12 times in South Dakota, it is now doing the same in North Dakota… and so on.
So, to predict our heat, rain, winters, etc, our guide would be North Carolina. Longer growing seasons, some winters with no snow, hot summers…
However due to Global warming, the East Coast has a caveat. An anomaly so to speak and actually some relief from the North Carolina summer heat we would normally expect….
With the unprecedented melting of the Arctic and Greenland icecaps dumping its excess into the Labrador Current, that cold water drops South hugging the East Coast shoreline all the way down to North Carolina’s Outer Banks where it finally becomes neutralized… Therefore even though we have hotter air masses, the colder ocean temperatures creates a buffer against Global warming off the entire northeastern US.
Europe, Japan, and Alaska all experience the same mitigating effect, although with both Greenland and the Arctic Icecaps melting into the Labrador, the US East Coast gets a stronger volume of cold water. Call it our icy shower effect….
Once melting stops and the currents dry up, we return to the North Carolina scenario of the twentieth century….
Chart Courtesy of NOAA
So, we in Delaware really get the best climate on the East Coast. Warm winters, little or no snow, and cool breezy summers….. as well as a longer growing period, and… less dependence on fossil fuels for winter heating.
Gee, global warming isn’t so bad for Delaware after all…. Oh, the rising seas? There you go again… Why did you have to spoil the rosy picture I was painting?
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today designated 597 counties in 14 states as primary natural disaster areas due to drought and heat, making all qualified farm operators in the areas eligible for low-interest emergency loans. These are the first disaster designations made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2013…
The 597 primary counties designated as disaster areas Wednesday by USDA were in these states: Alabama, 14; Arkansas, 47; Arizona, 4; Colorado, 30; Georgia, 92; Hawaii, 2; Kansas, 88; Oklahoma, 76; Missouri, 31; New Mexico, 19; Nevada, 9; South Carolina, 11; Texas, 157; and Utah, 17.
The majority are Republican states. (So.. Let’s hold up their “budget-busting” disaster aid for 3 months on high minded principle and see how they like it.)
Wheat growers in the Southern Plains have known the effects of a drought for about 120 consecutive weeks, and now their neighbors to the north have been added to the drought disaster list….
But wait. The year is only 20 days old! Disaster Areas? As in Hurricane Sandy? Yes. Man-made global warming is here to stay. It is worse than we ever imagined. It’s not just summer anymore.
The 597 counties have shown a drought intensity value of at least D2 (Drought Severe) for eight consecutive weeks based on U.S. Drought Monitor measurements, providing for an automatic designation….
The Drought Monitor measures drought intensity on a scale from D1 to D4, as follows:
D1: Moderate Drought
D2: Severe Drought
D3: Extreme Drought
D4: Exceptional Drought.
In 2012, USDA designated 2,245 counties in 39 states as disaster areas due to drought, or 71 percent of the United States…
Because of catastrophic man-made global warming, we will pay $5 a loaf for bread. Had it not been for false learning centers lying about data and calling global warming a hoax, like Delaware’s Caesar Rodney Insititute, we could have worked to prevent this years ago…..
Delaware is primarily spared… ironically also by Global Warming. It seems the melting ice caps are sending a lot more cold water down along the Eastern coasts and that modifies our local climate enough to cause rain.
January 1-3
January 11-13
I getting a bad feeling about this. Who can tell us? What’s this mean?
Btw. There is a monster hurricane approaching Alaska with a low of 943mb. Category 4 if it were an actual hurricane. It is so huge it would stretch from the East Coast of the US to Denver.
Sussex County is bereft of republican leadership. Taken over by the tea party then abandoned, there is no structure that supports or represents Republican values still left standing. The Republican Party in Delaware is in freefall.
There are scattered remnants still trying to get on the ballot, but electing one of these would be like a random hand dunked into a pond trying to catch a frog. One could get lucky.
In the absence of Republican leadership, into which void the blog Delaware Politics dares enter, words like philosophy, and phrases like “think like us” get tossed. Those phrases sometimes sound nice but certainly don’t bring any money to the bank.
What does bring money to the bank is a strong political party that is on your side. What does bring money to the bank is someone in Dover to whom the party in power is beholden to, who says “I need this”.
Jane Hovington is in the unique place to get more done for District 19 than has been done in that District any time since the passing of Thruman Adams. Because she is part of the ruling party, instead of the party of opposition, her vote carries strong weight. She is also because of her conservative district in the very unique position of being one who can build the necessary bridge between Democrats and Republicans. If Ernie Lopez in the neighboring district, needs a favor, Jane Hovington is the one who can get it done.
Her opponent may be a nice man. But he is in no position to accomplish anything for Senate District 19.. As possibly the only Republican in the General Assembly, he is doomed to get ignored. One has only to look to the 41 representative district out of Millsboro, to see a lot more happens there now that their representative who used to be a minority Republican, is now, in the majority as a Democrat. Same man: no clout as a Republican, bringing home the bacon as a Democrat. It is…. all about the party.
“I, Brian Pettyjohn, need this road fixed in my district. It’s potholes are swallowing up chicken trucks, they are so deep.”
“Uhh, who are you again?”
Now from Democrat Senator Jane Hovington: “If you want me onboard i will need these highways fixed by April 22. ”
“I don’t see why that can’t be done.”
District 19 is the heart of Sussex County. Not the play area of the east but the hard working, farming area of the West. Life moves forward on a very thin margin between success or failure. The citizens of District 19, a very beautiful district from Georgetown to the Maryland border, need the best representative they can find.
One hailing from the party of Thuman Adams is far superior than someone who was thrown into the race helter skelter at the last minute by pontificating people, more worried about philosophy, and “their” anti democratic beliefs, than whether you as a citizen can make it or get chewed up. Brian Pettyjohn is “their” candidate.
You deserve better. Jane Hovington, has done very well in answering questions posed by those living in the district. She is in a far better position as a member of the party of Thurman Adams, to make life better for Senate district 19, than a fly-by-night guy thrown into the race at the last minute, whose only support is by the clique of gadflies hovering around the blog, Delaware Politics…
Courtesy of Climate Code Red
If you kinda thought the weather was wild this year, you were right. The most ice lost is taking place right while you read this. A large chunk was broken up by a freak storm. Another similar on is on its way. The question that no one knows the answer to, is… will this affect the circulation pattern.
We all know in our lives that as human beings we can put up with aggravation rather well, unless we are Type A. Whether it is aggravation from our boss, from our spouse, from our in-laws, from our choir director, from that guy selling papers on the corner,… we put up with it, accepting it as the normal course of business. Except once or twice in our lives, we just snap. And the consequences of that, momentary snap, cause big changes… maybe in our employment, maybe in our marriage, maybe in our in-law’s will, maybe from the choir director’s husband, maybe from the police…. things change for us in a big way…..
That is how we have to see this. From a mud core taken from an ancient lake, Lough Monreach, in Ireland in 2009 it was discovered that in a matter of one month 12,900 years ago, we went from normal seasonal temperatures to an ice age. The cause came from a switch in ocean currents. As cold fresh water entered the ocean, warm water stopped flowing north. That Ice Age lasted 1300 years before the thaw returned. It flipped in one month…. 30 days more or less.
So is that happening?
The science is too big. We don’t know. It will be like on the Day after Tomorrow where we first find out from buoys scattered across the Atlantic. It cannot be predicted.
What can be foretold is that the earth has never had this much stress before during civilized mans span on earth. Do you know when you snap, or does it take you off guard as well?
That is where we are…
Of course nothing could come about it… Just like when your boss insults you in front of all your staff, your office competitor’s staff, and ridicules you like you have never been before… You just take it…
The boss tells your competitor… “I knew he was a wus… I wasn’t worried one bit… you have nothing to worry about him…”
Republicans will say in Tampa:… “I knew it was a scam…. I wasn’t worried one bit… we have nothing to worry about burning carbon fuels and putting carbon dioxide into the air.”
News Flash: The earth is not a wus……..
2012, day 230, 2.87743 million square kilometers
2011, day 253, 2.90474 million square kilometers (previous record low)
If an EMP went off right now, what would happen? Let’s say it was caused naturally, and not from an earthly application… Just stop for a second and imagine if in one split second, all electronics got fried…
What could you do? You would initially do just what you do when the power goes out. You would get up, open the door, look at all your neighbors opening the door looking back at you, say a few words, and go back into wait for the power to come on…
You might get suspicious when your cell phone wouldn’t turn on, or not being primed to consider what the possibilities were, you might just think your battery picked that interlude to die…. You might likewise get suspicious when your car wouldn’t show life. You might curse your luck that the power went off, your cellphone battery died, and your car now needs a new battery, all in the same afternoon… You couldn’t get a hold of anyone to help, and so you walk over to your neighbor. He’s out back trying to get his generator started. It won’t work either. He’s mad as hell and is taking it back to Lowes where he bought it.. and he finds his Ford Pickup battery has died too… Oh the terrible luck …
So you walk to the store and see no one is open, everything is temporarily closed until the power kicks back on….
Only it won’t come on… ever.. I mean ever… Well at least in your life time…
Why? simply put, every electrical component, every magnet, every fuse, every connector, will have to be replaced from your house to the nearest power plant. .. Even if somewhere a power plant opened, and produced, that would leak all over the country unless someone actually got up and cut the wires to keep that power from dissipating and becoming too weak to do any good…
So new power plants would have to be built. New wires strung, new transformers built, forget about the ones on the shelf for emergencies, they’re shot too. Everything would need to be rebuilt from scratch…
And we would have no access to the information that told us how to rebuild….
This is how civilizations disappear rather quickly.. They become so specialized, that no one can put everything back together. It mimics the Tower of Babel accounting.. “There once was a great civilization, that evaporated instantly” is how most scholars view the accounting of that story today…
To survive, you would have no heat.. unless you had either a fireplace of wood stove. Everything else is electrical unless your unit dates back before 1990…. You would have no transportation. You couldn’t buy a working car. The first cars to be made would have to be created from scratch, at a factory, that unfortunately had no power.
Your world would shrink to where you could walk. There would be no news, unless someone walked to tell you what they saw in Wilmington. And what someone from Philadelphia had told them when they had walked from there, and rumors that had been told from those who had walked from New York, and from New Jersey, and up south from Washington and Baltimore…
Was any of America working? NO one knew… Once a military fighter roared overhead, and it was the first sound heard since the event, and all raced outside to cheer… But that was it.. Hope was that someone, somewhere out there, was in charge, and was working to make our lives return to normal…
But years went by…. Most people moved from the cities. Many died of disease, and starvation, and life became involved of defending oneself and ones property from those that wanted to take it… To live, you really had to sell yourself to an Overlord, who was intimidating enough that no one moved into your neighborhood because of him.. Most of what you made, he took as payment for protecting you. It included your children.
The once great civilization, was erased. No one knew about Rome. No one knew about Babylon. No one knew about Greece… unless it was from the old Bibles kept in decorative cabinets. Some books existed, but most had been burned to keep warm that first winter…
Just like that… Our huge skyscrapers, began to fall, one by one, each time covering the streets with an overbearing dust cloud.
Nature began to reclaim her own. The ice caps grew back. The seas lowered. The flora and fauna multiplied as people perished. The children heard stories, about the world being round, and names like China and Japan that could be found on old artifacts. But, without any reinforcement, they gradually faded from all knowledge…
The question I want to raise is this. Is our education system as it stands now, capable of continuing civilization as we know it, in and if, such a natural event were to occur? Or non natural event?
Do we currently teach enough basics so anyone can build a computer, build a electronics kit, and repair cars, generators, home electrical appliances, were such an event to occur?
It is not hard; the hard part is that no one knows how to do it.
If everyone knew simple basic electricity, and how things worked, we’d have power in some places within a week, and withing three months, we’d be 50% back to normal. We would be back to normal within three years.
Our current educational system is teaching us the wrong things…. We are focused on the wrong items. We test for the wrong items. We do not teach the basic knowledge our life needs right now…
It should be: A: fixing your phone/ and or computer.
B: fixing your generator.
C: fixing your vehicle.
This knowledge is vital for national security. It needs to be taught to every man, woman, and child… 3 x 6 equaling 18 doesn’t do much.. Nor does Black History Month, or proper English Grammer, or American History, or Economics, or ………….
Our first grade needs to begin…. “Ok, kids…. this is a 1… this is a 0…… All of life revolves around those two numbers…”
I attack the bastion that Iowa should be the first primary… For one, it is not a primary. For two, it is not indicative of the whole United States, and three, it has been hyperbolated far beyond it’s own net worth.. In essence, both Iowa and New Hampshire, are harmful to the American voting process…. very harmful.
Essentially we allow less than 100,000 campaign volunteers, to determine the front runner. Not even close to the population of one entire state… The Iowa Caucus is not a contest that determines who is the best candidate for our nation. It is a contest of whom can organize the most of their supporters… buy them outright, if need be…..Hitler would win Iowa. Obviously the candidate who states, I will protect the wealthy’s money, has quite an edge….
How many is 100,000……?
And how does that compare to the entire USA?
(right click on picture to display full image)
The stats are as follows…
100,000 / 307,000,000 = 0.00033 or 0.033%….
African Americans make up just 2.8% of Iowa’s population. Worse, when Reagan won, in 1980 they were below 1.4%…
Iowa was ranked number two, behind Wisconsin as the worst place for blacks to live…
Latinos make up 5% of the Iowa’s population.
On a better note, 11.4% of Iowa’s are represented by unions… compared to the national average of 11.4%…
Iowa was estimated to be 56% metropolitan in 2007. Meaning 44% of it’s population is non metropolitan… The national rural/urban split is 21/79%.
In 2008, estimated $51,593,849 was spent by candidates on the 2008 Iowa Caucus. The 16 candidates for the 2008 presidential election raised and spent a grand total of $457,802,866 by the end of 2007, with the winners continuing on to spend in future races.
If there ever was an situation set up perfectly where an election could be bought, Iowa would become the perfect model.
Which could explain the extreme and excessive variables that Iowa has shown this cycle… First it was Michelle Bachmann who was hot… Then she disappeared as Rick Perry waltzed across the stage… Even his jobs record became outshown by the devil’s plan turned upside down, .. 999.… Until a too cocky Cain, resigned.. Gingrich lurched into favoritism… until he too discorporated … Suddenly a surge swept up number 2, Ron Paul.. but now, with the endorsement of a two single preachers, Rick Santorium, who I believe was originally under the 1% threshold at the beginning, is now rumored by ABC News to be able to win it all!!..
This is madness. This is Iowa. This is why we do not get qualified people into office… (from either party.) Are Iowa people dumb? Can Iowa people not make up their mind? Are Iowa people that uninformed? Are Iowa people that crazy? ….
Or,
…. are Iowa people being played by the press, and hoopla, and rest of the nations is stuck with their decisions…..
It is time another state issues a challenge to the prognosis that New Hampshire and Iowa need to be first.
ideally it would be state that was the first to ratify the Constitution. Ideally it would be a state that mirrors the national statistics a little better than some of the others. ideally it would be a state that has no television station. Ideally it would be a state where no one listens to the radio. Ideally it would be a state where one-on-one contact was possible with a large proportion of that state’s population. Ideally it would be a state with 11.9% of its workers represented by unions, equivalent to the national average of 11.9% of its workers represented by unions. Ideally its rural/urban split at 22/78% would mirror the nations rural/urban split at 21/79%… Ideally its African American mix (21.4%) would mirror that of America, 12.4%… Ideally its Hispanic population would do the same…. (8.2%/16.3%) and most particularly, in order to be representative of America as a whole, the non Hispancic white race should mirror that of the nation as a whole… 65.3% to 63.5%
There is a state that is far more similar to any pre campaign state out there.. it is the first state to ratify the Constitution….
It is time for courage to take over the wheel.. Those timid party reps who cow at the the National Political Machines, when it is nothing more than a self bloated paper tiger, need replaced by human beings who deeply care about the country.
Delaware losing representation at a convention, will make little difference in that convention’s outcome.. But sticking to our small state’s guns, and making Delaware the first state to hold a primary, would put a voice of reason, a system of control, and even sanity, back into our electoral process. It would also inspired a national media Maddow conversion, named after her experience in the Deer Park Tavern last cycle, where she was blown away that there existed a state, who’s citizens actually were well informed by sources other than commercials and the main stream media, and actually knew what was happening…. For it was a revelation: like “duh, common people aren’t stupid after all.” Perhaps the sanity that is Delaware, needs to become more mainstream… after all…
Looking at Iowa this year, it sure as hell couldn’t hurt….
kavips 
