DOT 111’s ; Delaware’s Potential Atomic Bomb

Courtesy of AP/Nati Harnik

This is the DOT 111…. It is called the traveling nuclear bomb.  This rail car was deemed unsafe in 1990… it still carries 65% of the crude across North America….  It is these cars that blew up La Magnetic in Quebec.  It is these cars that blew up Casselton, North Dakota.  It is the cars that blew up in Lynchburg, VA just last week…

Here is the explanation via video.

The National Transportation Safety Board has been urging replacing or retrofitting the tank cars since 1991 (George H.W. Bush was president), but the most recent federal effort to write tougher regulations for new cars didn’t get underway until 2011…. You can rightly blame the oil presidency for that delay. New rules are to be out by this upcoming December….

Though these cars look nice, they are easily ruptured in an accident, spilling out their contents.  With US oil production being up 70% over 2009 levels, increasing per day production from 5 million barrels to 8.5 million barrels per day, these cars are getting a heavier workout than at any time in their history.  Increased exposure means increased potential for a harmful accident….

U.S. freight railroads transported about 415,000 carloads of crude in 2013, up from just 9,500 in 2008, according to government and industry figures. That is an increase of 4200%….  So yes, that translates to having 4200 times more of a chance at a spill, 4200 more of a chance at an explosion, or 4200 more chance of a death or maiming….

The rail and chemical industries have committed to a safer design for new tankers but are pressing regulators not to require modifications to tens of thousands of existing cars, despite a spike in the number of accidents…  It is modifications to these cars that will save lives..

Essentially we and regulators are being asked to trade in our lives for their money….  In other words they can fix the problem, but it will cost them money to do so, and they don’t want that.  Since if a train explodes not that many people will die, that is an acceptable loss society should bear they say, so as not to invest any money into a tank car that will soon be scrap metal once newer safer cars are available…..

After last years explosions Canada has moved forward on making their railroads safer… The US has gotten as far as a Congressional Hearing.

Then 2 months ago, the NSTB issued an emergency order.  The order requires all crude oil be properly tested before being transported. And all crude that travels by rail must be carried in these DOT-111 tank cars. The older DOT-111 tank cars were deemed inadequate by the National Transportation Board more than 20 years ago.

Some crude from the Bakken region, including the oil in the tragic Lac Megantic derailment, was misclassified.  What that means is that potentially explosive crude oil was being shipped in rail cars even less safe than the DOT-111’s.  The so-called misclassification has resulted in $93,000 in fines.

 

So if you are driving through Bear, and a train is crossing your path, look up and see if the rail cars look like the one above,  If so, make  U turn and get out of there… quick!   The extra few minutes your drive may cost you, could mean a lifetime of thank-yous….

Koch Brothers Kill Off The American Bald Eagle

If current trends continue, estimates are the Bald Eagle will be extinct by 2020.

It appears that the American Bald Eagle is picking up some type of neurotic toxin in the Athabasca Tar Fields of Canada.  Athabasca Tar Oil is obtained by pumping toxic chemicals into the bedrock to flush out thick oil.  Those toxins can then contaminate wildlife when they leak.  Mercury content in water samples has increased  by 40% from 1979 to 2009.  These  oil fields and methods are  developed by the Koch Brothers, the same organization which funds the our local  Caesar Rodney Institute.  This is the same entity that is currently pushing for the Keystone Pipeline to cross the aquifers of the Midwest thereby enabling the Koch Brothers to sell oil to America’s future enemies, most notably called out by Allan Loudell on his blog  today, as China…..

The bird’s symptoms just showed up.  Utah is the wintering location of Bald Eagles.  Earlier this month, hunters and farmers across five counties in northern and central Utah began finding the normally skittish raptors lying, listless, on the ground. Many suffered from seizures, head tremors and paralysis in the legs, feet and wings…

The Ogden rehab center said all the sick eagles  seen suffered from encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, and many had heart damage.

Currently there are only 9,789 Bald Eagles breeding in the US.

Coupled with the mysterious die off of the Monarch Butterfly, the American Moose, and now the Bald Eagle, this makes 2013 a very cataclysmic year for traditional North American icons.

The  canary has stopped singing in the coal mine….

Oklahoma And It’s New Muslim Philosophy

As one progresses through life one becomes more humble.  When young, one believes it is his own actions that create his or her success.  Old age tells us it was just luck.  We see others come later, more talented, smarter, better looking, not achieving what we once did.  We have to accept we were just simply in the right place at the right time to grasp an opportunity.

Being thoughtful people, as one sees more, one ponders more.  Similarities do take place on opposite sides of the globe.  Similarities that perhaps could be random, but for them to occur in non random frequencies, belies something else might be in play.

It is with that in mind, I notice that across the red states of the United States, primarily a bastion of fundamentalist conservative theocracy, the weather is changing. Basically, there is no rain…. Secondly I have noticed that the weather in Oklahoma is every year, corresponding more and more like those dry, hot , sandy climes on the other side of our planet, which coincidentally, are also occupied by a bastion of fundamentalist conservative theocracies, practicing something very similar to Oklahoma policy but over there it is called Shara Law…

The unproven theory, one derived deeply out of the forges of possibility from quantum mechanics, is that as we evolve to think like Muslims, our weather evolves to behave like we are Muslims.

Currently there is no difference between those thought processes and actions of  legislatures of Oklahoma, and those existing in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen…

The climate is racing to catch up to the Middle East with this three year drought in Oklahoma…. 

As any follower of monotheism well knows, when a people sin and go the wrong way, the weather catches up to punish them.   I simply am offering that is what is happening in Oklahoma….