Slashdot Mirror

Viral, huh? Exaggerate, huh? So you say you want something dramatic, eh?

Well, here you go.. and, BTW, this isn't a debate on whether global warming is man-made or real or not --this is actual animal death caused by actual human activity. There is no debate that human's trash, crop runoff, and effluent is killing the ocean.

http://chrisjordan.com/gallery...

It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean."

'BIZARRE' isn't the word I'd use. More like DISGUSTING and SAD.

How a DVD Case Killed a Whale

http://news.nationalgeographic...

One fact that left me horrified and speechless... nearly 1/4 of the Great Barrier Reef underwent severe bleaching (coral death) this year.

Not to mention the ~ 200 underwater dead zones. After the Deepwater Horizon, almost all of the gulf is now a dead zone.

http://www.pasadenastarnews.co...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07...

Do you know why they're 'toxic' algae blooms? Algae makes a biotoxin called domoic acid that causes:

vomiting, nausea, diarrhea and abdominal cramps within 24 hours of ingestion, headache, dizziness, confusion, disorientation, loss of short-term memory, motor weakness, seizures, profuse respiratory secretions, cardiac arrhythmias, coma, and possible death

The earth's oceans account for nearly 80 percent of breathable-oxygen. Kill the ocean and we ALL die.

How about them apples??

Pasadena Star News has a far better write-up on this. One, is was the California Highway Patrol. Two, the building they trespassed on is owned by the California Public Utilities Commission, which is a .gov so it's probably property belonging to the State of California ("after scaling state building" in the headline). Three, the protesters are quoted "we are occupying the PUC".

I live in Altadena and have a good view of Mt Wilson. Most of the flames are on the North side of the ridge today, and are therefore beyond line of sight. Smoke completely obscures the mountains in the morning hours as well. The press has been reporting for two days now that the fire was "hours away" from the observatory, but the ground crews and helicopters have been successful in protecting it and the antenna farm.

This afternoon, however, we were treated to the impressive sight of a Martin JRM Mars aerial water tanker dropping 7,000 gallons of water at a pop on the Mt. Wilson blazes, and seeing the black smoke turn to white steam. Better images here (scroll down 1/3rd of the page).

I'm confident that the firefighters will be able to prevent any serious damage to the assets on Mt. Wilson, both scientific and commercial. The worst appears to be over.

Where else but China can we get lead toys for our kids? How else can we outsource pollution to a nation which believes it's its right to release carbon to make stuff for us? And what better than having all that junk shipped to us by fume-belching ships?

Seriously, ending trade with China would most likely do more to cut particulate pollution (25% of LA's comes from China), and cut global warming from coal burning. Sure, there'd be short-term disruption of American corporate manufacturing patterns. But what we've learned in the process of outsourcing industries to China is how to build new factories quickly. We could use that knowledge again here.

The Bakersfield, Ca courtroom is making the state a ton of money. The day I was in court, there were about 45 people in there, all charged with exceeding 100mph. I would imagine that they are one of the largest contributors to Bakersfield's economy.

Those cuts are directly associated with the Moon/Mars "initiative". Also note the cancellation of MTO. Notice that a Mars program got cut, and that's a bad sign -- Mars programs get everything they need. It hasn't happened since the back to back failures in 99.

Development and environmentally-sensitive areas are by far the minority of the reasons why the money isn't being spent, and have nothing to do with why a freeway with a rapidly decaying surface isn't being repaved. It has to do more with things like this, when $3.3 billion in gasoline tax revenue was used for general fund projects this year alone. Davis did the same thing on a fairly regular basis, as did Wilson. Even when Prop 42 was passed by California voters, mandating gasoline taxes be used solely for road projects, Sacramento got around that by "borrowing" the funds for purposes of balancing the budget, rather than cutting their projects.

I know that freeway construction is not cheap, nor is it always easy, but the simple fact that California is still growing rapidly cannot be ignored. We either accept the fact that California has a strong car culture and spend the money on new freeways or surface rail projects (I'm still ticked that the light rail project to link several cities in Orange County was hacked almost to death), or we deal with the gridlock.

Riverside County is a perfect example of this, where the 91 freeway is the primary artery into Orange County and significant parts of Los Angeles County. They've recently completed the process of adding a lane in each direction (for a total, IIRC, of four lanes, plus the carpool/toll lanes) through a combination of adding a few feet to each side and adjusting lane widths, but that's being done by a cooperation of the Orange County Transit Agency and Riverside County and cost several million dollars. However, even then the road is still locked up every morning, and plans exist for FIFTY THOUSAND additional homes to be built there in the next few years, with permits for nearly 20,000 already in hand. That's going to put tens of thousands more cars on those freeways, many of them on the 91, and the jobs are still mostly not in Riverside. They're off in Orange and LA Counties, meaning the still-crunched 91 and the often-jammed 15 freeways, not to mention the 215, 60, 10, and 71 (which is itself in bad shape from routing three lanes of traffic into one because of a widening project that never seems to end), will continue to be overfilled.

The most reasonable solution I've seen so far is double-decking the freeway, but a lot of people don't like it because of what they saw after the Loma Prieta earthquake when sections of the upper Nimitz Freeway collapsed onto the lower level. Others don't like it because of cost concerns. But it's the least expensive way to handle things without taking surrounding land through eminent domain for ever-widening freeways, some of which would have to reach eight or ten lanes in each direction for a permanently smooth traffic flow.

At the very least, let's see some of the interchanges redesigned. The 101/405 and 5/10/60 interchanges are badly in need of a complete rebuild. They did this at the 5/22/57 interchange in Orange County (not-so-affectionately known as the Orange Crush Interchange) and it really improved things by smoothing the flow, making the interchange more intuitive, and adding capacity to the individual interchanges that comprise the Crush. It took time and money to do, but when it opened, drivers were saving 10-15 minutes each way through a mere 2-3 miles of traffic.

However, without the money from the gasoline taxes, there's really not much that can be done. The 91 project I mentioned cost a few million dollars and was spent by local governments with the permission of CalTrans. Local governments cannot, by and large, afford the scale of costs necessary for the overhaul needed of the public highway system. That money should be coming from the coffers of the state containing the gasoline taxes that we pay that are supposed to be used for this kind of thing in the first place.

I won't be surprised if this kind of thing leads to a ballot initiat

Not true. Galileo flew through Jupiter's ring and Voyager 2 and Pioneer 11 flew through a gap in Saturn's ring. (Which is what Cassini just did, albeit a different gap and with full knowledge of what they were doing this time.)

Please write your comments to the Editor of the Pasadena Star-News newspaper in the core of Schiff's District:

Pasadena Star-News
911 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, Calif. 91109
(626) 578-6300

Let's put so much pressure on the guy that no other Congressman will dare to favor SSSCA/CBDTA. Please write now by pen or by email.

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/