German govt under pressure to legalize fracking, critics call on people to protest

Reuters/Axel Schmidt

RT | Feb 15, 2015

Germany has proposed a draft law to allow commercial shale gas fracking, overturning a moratorium that has been in place for the last two years.

The proposal has drawn fire from environmentalists who have urged people to protest before the exploration begins.

The government has been under pressure from the energy industry lobby to allow fracking (drilling for gas using water, sand and chemicals under high pressure through drill holes to prop open shale rock) citing rising energy costs in Germany and cheaper gas in the US, due to fracking's popularity in North America.

Commercial fracking for shale gas and coal bed methane would be banned at levels below 3,000 meters, but allowed for exploration at shallower levels, subject to the assessment of the expert panel, according to the Guardian. The draft law would reportedly affect only hydraulic fracturing for shale oil and tight gas in water protection and spring healing zones.
 
“It is important to have a legal framework for hydraulic fracturing as until now there has been no legislation on the subject,” the president of Germany’s federal environment agency (UBA), Maria Krautzberger, told the Guardian.
 
“We have had a voluntary agreement with the big companies that there would be no fracking but if a company like Exxon wanted, they might do it anyway as there is no way to forbid it,” she said, adding that this is “a progressive step forward.”

Anti-fracking groups and environmentalists claim that the panel is not going to be independent, however, with a number of the government experts belonging to institutions that signed the Hanover Declaration promoting exploration of shale gas.
 
"You don’t need a panel to tell you that shale gas is dangerous. We can see the problems with water pollution, earthquakes and methane emissions. We need people to protest about it before the exploration begins,” José Bové, the French Green MEP, said.

Germany is estimated to have up to 2.3 trillion cubic meters of shale gas reserves. Under the current fracking ban, there has been a decline in domestic production. If fracking is allowed, domestic natural gas production could go up, with fuel and electricity prices going down in Germany, which has some of the highest electricity prices in the EU.

A vote on the proposed draft in the Bundestag will take place in May. If passed into law, fracking could resume in Germany in the near future.

Reversing Course, UK Opens National Parks to Fracking

A view of the South Downs National Park
from Devil's Dyke in southern England.
(Photo: Escowles/Wikimedia/cc)

Common Dreams | Feb 12, 2015 | Sarah Lazare

Environmental groups say lawmakers' backpedaling could pave way for fracking near drinking water sources

Fracking will now be permitted in national parks, "areas of outstanding natural beauty," and potentially near drinking water sources, members of the UK Parliament said Wednesday,  marking a reversal of course from the commitment it made just three weeks ago to pass a prohibition, and infuriating opponents of toxic drilling.

On January 26, the House of Commons agreed to an amendment banning toxic drilling in the aforementioned special areas. The prohibition—if implemented—would have halted drilling in 40 percent of England's shale areas, according to a study by the Guardian.  But the new change allows for drilling in these areas as long as the drilling rigs themselves sit just outside of the areas. 

The ban had already been criticized as falling short of an all-out halt to fracking from grassroots organizations, as well as parliament's own Environmental Audit Committee, which released a report in late January that warned the toxic drilling is not compatible with the country's "efforts to keep global temperature rise below two degrees."

But since committing to the prohibition, the government has backpedaled on this and other protections, prompting the accusation by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas that ministers are "doing the dirty work of fracking companies for them."

As the Campaign to Protect Rural England notes, "It was hoped that the Government, at the insistence of MPs from across the House, would reinstate strong protections."

However, statements made by energy and climate change minister Amber Rudd on Wednesday show that the Conservative government is not taking such a stand.

"In the case of areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, given their size and dispersion, it might not be practical to guarantee that fracking will not take place under them in all cases without unduly constraining the industry," Rudd told Parliament.

Moreover, Rudd indicated that the definition of "protected areas" will be reexamined down the line, raising the possibility that water sources will not be shielded from fracking.

According to Richard Casson of Greenpeace UK, "What this means is that national parks and water sources won’t be fully protected from fracking. So while Scotland and Wales have raised clear concerns about the health and environmental impact of fracking, in England it’s full steam ahead with the dash to drill for shale gas and oil."

However, Casson says there is still hope. "We know that David Cameron wants to go all out for shale gas, but the Labour Party is far from decided," he writes, urging opponents of fracking to escalate pressure on lawmakers.

Friends of the Earth agrees. "All eyes will now be on the Labour Party," the organization declared in a statement released Thursday. "It committed to oppose fracking altogether if the Government didn’t meet its conditions—including protecting all national parks and ground water source protection zones from fracking. 'All or nothing' were the words which Labour shadow minister Tom Greatrex used."

Methane deceptions

Ice Age Now | Jan 31, 2015 | Paul Driessen

Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?

---

No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change, President Obama insisted in his 2015 State of the Union address. So now he wants his Environmental Protection Agency to compel drilling companies to slash methane emissions, which he says contribute to “dangerous manmade climate change.”

His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.

However, companies already control their methane emissions, and the supposed warming effect of this gas is wildly inflated, by as much as 100 times. Moreover, there is no evidence that we face dangerous manmade warming or climate change, now or in the near future. What we are really dealing with is a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by an alarmist scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance – and EPA’s determination to use methane’s alleged impacts on Earth’s climate to control a highly successful fracking industry that has thus far been largely free of federal interference, because it operates mostly on state and private lands that are governed effectively by state and local regulators.

---

Methane deceptions

Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?

Paul Driessen

---

First they came for the coal mining and power plant industry, and most people did not speak out because they didn’t rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection Agency justifications at face value, or thought EPA’s war on coal would benefit them.

In fact, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon gave the Sierra Club $26 million, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the Club $50 million, to help it wage a Beyond Coal campaign. The Sierra Club later claimed its efforts forced 142 U.S. coal-fired power plants to close, raising electricity rates, threatening grid reliability, and costing thousands of jobs in dozens of states.

Mr. McClendon apparently figured eliminating coal from America’s energy mix would improve his natural gas business. The mayor likes renewable energy and detests fossil fuels, which he blames for climate change that he tried to finger for the damages ‘Superstorm’ Sandy inflicted on his city.

Now the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs and damage the health and welfare of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of President Obama’s determination to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

Proposed EPA regulations would compel drilling and fracking companies to reduce methane (natural gas or CH₄) emissions by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012. Companies would have to install technologies that monitor operations and prevent inadvertent leaks. The rules would apply only to new or modified sites, not existing operations. However, Big Green activist groups are already campaigning to have EPA expand the rule to cover existing gas wells, fracking operations, gas processing facilities and pipelines.

But companies already control their emissions, to avoid polluting the air, and because natural gas is a valuable resource that they would much rather sell than waste. That’s why EPA data show methane emissions falling 17% even as gas production increased by 37% between 1990 and 2014, and why natural gas operations employing hydraulic fracturing reduced their methane emissions by 73% from 2011 to 2013. The rules are costly and unnecessary, and would bring few benefits.

The Obama Administration thus justifies them by claiming they will help prevent “dangerous manmade climate change.” Methane, EPA says, has a warming effect 50 times greater than carbon dioxide. This assertion is wildly inflated, by as much as a factor of 100, Dr. Fred Singer says. Atmospheric water vapor already absorbs nearly all the infrared radiation (heat) that methane could, and the same radiation cannot be absorbed twice. The physics of Earth’s surface infrared emission spectrum are also important.

More importantly, to borrow a favorite Obama phrase, let me make one thing perfectly clear. There is no dangerous manmade climate change, now or on the horizon. There is no evidence that methane or carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the complex, powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven warming, cooling, climate and weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history. There is no evidence that recent extreme weather events are more frequent or severe than over the previous 100 years.

Indeed, planetary temperatures have not budged for more than 18 years, and we are amid the longest stretch since at least 1900 (more than nine years) without a Category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United States. If CO₂ and CH₄ are to be blamed for every temperature change or extreme weather event, then shouldn’t they also be credited for this lack of warming and deadly storms? But climate hype continues.

We are repeatedly told, “Climate change is real, and humans are partly to blame.” The statement is utterly meaningless. Earth’s climate fluctuates frequently, and human activities undoubtedly have some influences, at least on local (especially urban) temperatures. The question is, How much of an effect?  Are the temperature and other effects harmful or beneficial, especially when carbon dioxide’s enormous role in improved plant growth is factored in? Would slashing U.S. CO₂ and CH₄ emissions mean one iota of difference, when China, India and other countries are doing nothing to reduce their emissions?

Nevertheless, the latest NASA press release asserts that 2014 was “the hottest since the modern instrumental record began,” and again blames mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. This deliberately deceptive, fear-inducing claim was quickly retracted, but not before it got extensive front-page coverage.

Let me make another fact perfectly clear. The alleged global temperature increase was 0.02 degrees C (0.04 degrees F). It is not even measurable by our most sensitive instruments. It is one-fifth the margin of error in these measurements. It ignores satellite data and is based on ground-level instruments that are contaminated by urban heat and cover less than 15% of Earth’s surface. Even NASA admitted it was only 38% confident of being correct – and 62% certain that it was wrong. Analyses by Dr. Tim Ball, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and other experts provide more details eviscerating this bogus claim.

In the end, though, all these real-world facts are irrelevant. We are dealing with a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by a scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance that has built a financial, political and regulatory empire. They are not about to renounce any claims of climate catastrophe, no matter how much actual evidence debunks their far-fetched computer model scenarios.

Their EPA-IPCC “science” is actively supported by most of the “mainstream media” and by the World Bank, universities, renewable energy companies and even some churches. They will never willingly surrender the political influence and billions of dollars that CAGW claims bring them. They won’t even admit that wind and solar facilities butcher birds and bats by the millions, scar landscapes, impair human health, cannot exist without coal and natural gas, and are probably our least sustainable energy option. They want gas prices to rise again, so that heavily subsidized renewable energy is competitive once more.

Meanwhile, polls reveal that regular, hard-working, middle-income Americans care most about terrorism, the economy, jobs, healthcare costs, education and job opportunities after graduation; climate change is always dead last on any list. Regular Europeans want to end the “energy poverty” that has killed countless jobs, and each winter kills thousands of elderly people who can no longer afford to heat their homes properly. The world’s poorest citizens want affordable electricity, higher living standards, and an end to the lung infections, severe diarrhea, malaria and other diseases of poverty that kill millions of children and parents year after year – largely because alarmists oppose nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants.

But federal regulators, climate chaos “ethicists” and “progressives” who loudly profess they care deeply about the poor and middle classes – all ignore these realities. They focus on methane, because they view it as a clever way to inject federal oversight and control into an energy sector that had been largely free of such interference, because the fracking revolution has thus far taken place mostly on state and private lands governed effectively by state and local regulators. (Federal lands are mostly off limits.)

The proposed methane rules would generate more delays, paperwork, costs and job losses, to comply with more federal regulations that will bring no detectable benefits – and much harm, at a time when plunging oil and gas prices are forcing drillers to reduce operations and lay people off.

President Obama devoted 15 lines of his 2015 State of the Union speech to climate fables and propaganda. His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.

It won’t be long before EPA and Big Green come for farmers and ranchers – to curtail “climate-wrecking” methane emissions from cattle, pig and sheep flatulence and dung, and exert greater control over agricultural water, dust and carbon dioxide. By then, there may be no one left to speak out.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

New Mexico Nuclear Waste Dump Shows Extended Stuctural Failure

Daboo777 | Jan 23, 2015

Dept. of Energy, Jan 21, 2015 (emphasis added): Roof Separation Highlights Bolting Priority — January 15 [we] discovered that a portion of the ceiling in the Panel 3 access drift had fallen… The roof fall… was estimated to be approximately 8’ long by 8’wide and 24” thick… no WIPP personnel were present at the time of the fall. The area where the fall occurred is also known to contain low levels of radioactive contamination… WIPP geotechnical inspections conducted in November 2014 identified seven areas… where access was restricted due to significant bolt loss… The area where the roof fall occurred was one of the seven locations…

http://enenews.com/ap-ceiling-collaps...

http://wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/r...

Fracking's future is in doubt as oil price plummets, bonds crash

Burning money? North Dakota flaring of gas
out of the Bakken Formation. Photo:
Joshua Doubek via Wikimedia
Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Ecologist | Jan 7, 2015 | Kieran Cooke

There's no doubt that US-based fracking - the process through which oil and gas deposits are blasted from shale deposits deep underground - has caused a revolution in worldwide energy supplies.

Yet now the alarm bells are ringing about the financial health of the fracking industry, with talk of a mighty monetary bubble bursting - leading to turmoil on the international markets similar to that in 2008.

In many ways, it's a straightforward case of supply and demand. Due to the US fracking boom, world oil supply has increased.

But with global economic growth now slowing - the drop in growth in China is particularly significant - there's a lack of demand and a glut in supplies, leading to a fall in price of nearly 50% over the last six months.

US oil is flooding the market

Fracking has become a victim of its own success. The industry in the US has grown very fast. In 2008, US oil production was running at five million barrels a day.

Thanks to fracking, that figure has nearly doubled, with talk of US energy self-sufficiency and the country becoming the world's biggest oil producer - 'the new Saudi Arabia' - in the near future.

The giant Bakken oil and gas field in North Dakota - a landscape punctured by thousands of fracking sites, with gas flares visible from space - was producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day in 2007. Production is now running at more than one million barrels a day.

Fuelled by talk of the financial rewards to be gained from fracking, investors have piled into the business. The US fracking industry now accounts for about 20% of the world's total crude oil investment.

But analysts say this whole investment edifice could come crashing down.

Extreme oil is expensive oil

Fracking is an expensive business. Depending on site structure, companies need prices of between $60 and $100 per barrel of oil to break even. As prices drop to around $55 per barrel, investments in the sector look ever more vulnerable.

Analysts say that while bigger fracking companies might be able to sustain losses in the short term, the outlook appears bleak for the thousands of smaller, less well-financed companies who rushed into the industry, tempted by big returns.

The fracking industry's troubles have been added to by the actions of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which, despite the oversupply on the world market, has refused to lower production.

The theory is that OPEC, led by powerful oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, is playing the long game - seeking to drive the fracking industry from boom to bust, stabilise prices well above their present level, and regain its place as the world's pre-eminent source of oil.

There are now fears that many fracking operations may default on an estimated $200 billion of borrowings, raised mainly through bonds issued on Wall Street and in the City of London.

In turn, this could lead to a collapse in global financial markets similar to the 2008 crash.

Is fracking a busted flush?

There are also questions about just how big existing shale oil and gas reserves are, and how long they will last. A recent report by the Post Carbon Institute, a not-for-profit think tank based in the US, says reserves are likely to peak and fall off rapidly, far sooner than the industry's backers predict.

The cost of drilling is also going up as deposits become more inaccessible.

Besides ongoing questions about the impact of fracking on the environment - in terms of carbon emissions and pollution of water sources - another challenge facing the industry is the growth and rapidly falling costs of renewable energy.

Fracking operations could also be curtailed by more stringent regulations designed to counter fossil fuel emissions and combat climate change.

Its backers have hyped fracking as the future of energy - not just in the US, but around the world. Now the outlook for the industry is far from certain.

---

Kieran Cooke writes for Climate News Network, where this article was first published.

NASA detects enormous 'coronal hole' on Sun’s South Pole (PHOTO)

Image from nasa.gov

RT | Jan 4, 2015

A giant dark hole has appeared on the sun’s flaming surface, a recently-taken NASA picture has revealed. So far, scientists are stumped by why this spectacular phenomenon, known as a “coronal hole,” occurs.

“The Sun starts 2015 with an enormous coronal hole near the South Pole,” scientists of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory wrote in their blog, having posted a picture of the flaming sun with a gaping dark space in its lower part.

READ MORE: Spectacular space: The most stunning, mind-boggling photos & videos of 2014!

What modern science knows is that “coronal holes” are places where particles leave the sun’s surface at huge speeds - of up to 500 miles per hour (800 kilometers per hour). What’s still unclear is why this is happening.

The sun’s glowing comes from the “trapped” particles. The coronal holes “contain little solar material, have lower temperatures, and therefore, appear much darker.”

The first pictures of the phenomenon were taken by NASA astronauts in the early 1970s.

Read more..

Sleepy Hollow: Unsolved mystery of slumbering village (RT Documentary)

RT | Dec 28, 2014

They call it Sleepy Hollow. A small village in Kazakhstan (see map here) which has succumbed to a mysterious ailment – its dwellers keep falling asleep for no apparent reason. The indiscriminate illness has no cure. Episodes begin without warning, and those affected never know if they will wake up again. Some blame ghosts, others the closed uranium mines located nearby. But despite multiple attempts by medics and scientists to solve the riddle, the causes and consequences of the disease remain unknown. Now the RTD team goes to Kalachi village to undertake its own investigation.

Russia battles to contain Black Sea oil spill

Phys | Dec 25, 2014

Russian Emergency Ministry personnel
clean a section of the Black Sea
shore in Tuzla Spit November 13, 2007

A Russian Black Sea city declared a state of emergency Thursday after a burst pipeline spewed oil into the landlocked water body, with stormy weather hampering cleanup efforts.

The pipeline near the city of Tuapse burst late Tuesday, according to ChernomorTransneft, a subsidiary of Russia's main oil transport company Transneft.

"The wall of the pipeline broke due to... a landslide," the company said in a statement, adding that the rupture caused 8.4 cubic metres to leak out into the Tuapse river, which empties into the Black Sea.

Environmentalists warned however that the volume of the spill could be nearly 100 times greater than claimed by Transneft.

The oil transport company said the damaged section of the pipeline—about nine kilometres (five miles) from the Black Sea coast—was under construction by a subsidiary of oil giant Rosneft and was not yet in use by Transneft.

Rosneft also operates a major oil refinery in Tuapse.

Russia's sea and river transport agency said a cleanup mission was launched on Wednesday afternoon, though stormy weather precluded the use of boats.

By Thursday, the local authorities declared a state of emergency in Tuapse and more than 300 workers were at the scene, according to the Krasnodar regional government website.

"There is a state of emergency for Tuapse city," a statement on the Krasnodar regional government website said. "Work is complicated by a storm, with waves two to three metres (up to 10 feet) high," it said.

World Wildlife Fund said Thursday that the spill already polluted 15 kilometres of the Black Sea shore, and accused Rosneft and Transneft of failing to act quickly and understating the real extent of the damage.

"According to WWF's information regarding the surface area and characteristics of the spill, the volume of the spill could be 500 to 700 tonnes (nearly 800 cubic metres)," WWF said Thursday.

The organisation said the consequences could have been avoided if the energy company alerted local authorities about the accident immediately instead of delaying its response for many hours.

Tuapse borders the resort city of Sochi, where Russia hosted the Winter Olympic Games in February.

Fukushima and the institutional invisibility of nuclear disaster

Black smoke at Fukushima
Daichi, 24th March 2011.
Photo: deedavee easyflow via Flickr.

The Ecologist | Dec 20, 2014 | John Downer

Speaking at press conference soon after the accident began, the UK government's former chief science advisor, Sir David King, reassured journalists that the natural disaster that precipitated the failure had been "an extremely unlikely event".

In doing so, he exemplified the many early accounts of Fukushima that emphasised the improbable nature of the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated it.

A range of professional bodies made analogous claims around this time, with journalists following their lead. This lamentation, by a consultant writing in the New American, is illustrative of the general tone:

" ... the Fukushima 'disaster' will become the rallying cry against nuclear power. Few will remember that the plant stayed generally intact despite being hit by an earthquake with more than six times the energy the plant was designed to withstand, plus a tsunami estimated at 49 feet that swept away backup generators 33 feet above sea level."

The explicit or implicit argument in all such accounts is that the Fukushima's proximate causes are so rare as to be almost irrelevant to nuclear plants in the future. Nuclear power is safe, they suggest, except against the specific kind of natural disaster that struck Japan, which is both a specifically Japanese problem, and one that is unlikely to re-occur, anywhere, in any realistic timeframe.

An appealing but tenuous logic

The logic of this is tenuous on various levels. The 'improbability' of the natural disaster is disputable, for one, as there were good reasons to believe that neither the earthquake nor the tsunami should have been surprising. The area was well known to be seismically active after all, and the quake, when it came, was only the fourth largest of the last century.

Read more..

Mounting Evidence Exposes Dangers of Energy Drinks

© Prevent Disease

Prevent Disease | Dec 22, 2014 | Natasha Longo

Two research papers, each published separately, suggest that concerns over levels of caffeine and sugar in energy drinks, and their effects on young people who drink them, are mounting.

Energy drinks are beverages that claim to "make you more alert and give you energy." Most have ingredients like caffeine, sugar, taurine, vitamins and herbs. They can be found anywhere you buy beverages beside the pop, juices and sports drinks.

The amount of caffeine in energy drinks is more than what is recommended for children. Most government public health agencies say that children under 12 years of age should have less than 85 mg of caffeine per day depending on their age. This means that one energy drink can easily put children over their caffeine limits.

Energy Drinks have previously been found to cause irreversible damage to tooth enamel and detrimentally affect the contraction of the heart. A study published in the issue of General Dentistry, the peer-reviewed clinical journal of the Academy of General Dentistry, found that an alarming increase in the consumption of sports and energy drinks, especially among adolescents, is causing irreversible damage to teeth--specifically, the high acidity levels in the drinks erode tooth enamel, the glossy outer layer of the tooth.

The FDA says they are powerless to change formulation of energy drinks. "We have no guidance or regulations that govern the formulation of energy drinks," said FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan. The agency does not have the authority to do that.Cruzan said. "Under current law, the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that its products are safe and such products do not require FDA premarket review or approval."

"There's a tremendous amount of caffeine in these drinks," Jeanna Marraffa, a clinical toxicologist at the Upstate New York Poison Center told USA TODAY. "I would say: know what's in these products, have a sense of how much you're consuming and realize they are not safe. Certainly you can have toxic effects from them."

Patrice Radden, a spokeswoman for Red Bull, said the company is confident in the safety of its products and does not see the need for warning labels.

All energy drinks including Nos, Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster, Full Throttle and several others all contain many toxic sweeteners such as sucralose, aspartame and high-fructose corn syrup.

3 Times Higher Caffeine

Noting that caffeine levels in energy drinks are up to three times higher than in other caffeinated drinks including coffee or cola, Dorner said known side-effects included a rapid heart rate, palpitations, a rise in blood pressure "and in the most severe cases, seizures or sudden death".

Manufactured by the chemical industry, synthetic caffeine is big business in many drinks that contain the drug.

NATURAL CAFFEINE: Natural, real caffeine comes from various plant species. Caffeine content within these plants will vary throughout the year depending on weather, soil conditions, time of year harvested, etc. So caffeine content is impossible and impractical to determine for labeling on products like coffee or tea. They have constantly changing amounts. Naturally caffeinated products will not have caffeine as an ingredient or measurement on the label.

SYNTHETIC CAFFEINE: The first sign the caffeine in your drink is synthetic is it is listed on the label & has an exact measurement. This is the cheapest & most common added caffeine source. The processes & compounds may vary between chemical companies, but they are all disturbing.

FORTIFIED CAFFEINE: Still usually synthetic, caffeine can be obtained from the coffee decaffeination industry, although it is substantially pricier & rarely used. This will also note caffeine on the label with a measurement. Caffeine supplies from this industry use methylene chloride, formaldehyde or ethyl acetone for it's removal. There is no such thing as removing the caffeine with just water.

Two Studies Expose Dangers

The first study - a study of 10-35 year olds Danes' intake of energy drinks conducted by the National Food Institute of Denmark - shows that when children aged 10-14 consume energy drinks, one in five consumes too much caffeine.

Indeed, when their caffeine intake from other sources such as cola and chocolate is included, every second child, and more than one in three adolescents aged 15-17 consume too much caffeine, said the report.
The Danish report also found that 42% of energy drink consumers have experienced adverse effects such as insomnia, restlessness and heart palpitations.

"It is worrying that so many have experienced adverse effects from drinking energy drinks," said Jeppe Matthiessen, senior adviser from the National Food Institute.

The report also suggests that 10-14 year olds have 'limited knowledge' of the ingredients in energy drinks, the side effects of drinking them and the recommendation that children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers should not consume energy drinks.

"It seems as if there has been a change in the perception of the types of drinks that people consider normal to drink," said Matthiessen. "Among younger consumers energy drinks now have the same status as soft drinks had previously."

"Both the use of and attitudes towards energy drinks give us reason to be concerned that the intake will increase in the coming years and we therefore suggest that more information will be made available about energy drinks aimed at children and adolescents as well as their parents."

Sugar and caffeine?

A second study, published in the Journal of Caffeine Research, adds to the debate on caffeine and energy drinks by evaluating whether the effects of caffeine differ with or without sugar.

The results the research show that the physiological responses to caffeine with and without sugar 'varied widely' between individuals.

Elaine Rush and her colleagues from Aukland University measured the heart rate and carbon dioxide production (as a measure of respiration) of individuals for 30 minutes before and after they consumed a defined quantity of sugar, caffeine, or sugar and caffeine.

The team said that the wide range of responses may be due to the effects of caffeine phenotype, physical activity level, habitual intake and metabolic responses, including markers of de novo lipogenesis -- adding that further research is needed.

Natasha Longo has a master's degree in nutrition and is a certified fitness and nutritional counselor. She has consulted on public health policy and procurement in Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland, England and Germany.

Movement against Fracking Wins as New York Bans Hydraulic Fracturing

Global Research | Dec 19, 2014 | Kevin Zeese

In a major victory for people who have been working to stop hydraulic fracturing for gas, known as fracking, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a ban on fracking in New York State.

This would not have occurred had it not been for the consistent and ongoing educating, organizing and mobilizing by groups like New Yorkers Against Fracking and We Are Seneca Lake, among others. This has been a six year campaign of creative protests, civil resistance, direct action and local communities voting to ban fracking, a power upheld by New York’s highest court.  One opponent of fracking, Walter Hang, an environmental mapping consultant wrote:

This stupendous victory was won by an unrelenting grassroots citizen campaign powered by amazing press coverage that systematically highlighted the public health and environmental concerns of shale fracking. That effort has won a victory unparalleled in the annals of the American environmental movement.

Tom Wilber who writes Shale Gas Review which covers gas development in Marcellus and Utica shales, noted the power of the anti-fracking movement and how it related to the science on fracking:

Science is part of the calculus. But despite what Cuomo would like us to believe, scientists don’t make these kinds of decisions. The full equation is Science + politics = policy. Cuomo finally got tired of being hounded on the issue by his political base. The movement in New York against shale gas was relentless and it was focused on him.

People rising up and saying ‘no’ to fracking made it impossible for the government to ignore the health, safety and environmental problems caused by fracking. See this December 2014 compendium of the research. This victory is one that will spur the anti-fracking movement throughout the country and puts in question the fracking infrastructure being built, e.g. pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals, currently being pushed throughout the country by Big Energy.

Inside Climate News reports that Sandra Steingraber, an environmental health expert and fracking activist in New York, told them from the parking lot of a sheriff’s office where she was bailing out 28 musicians arrested in an ongoing protest against a fracked gas storage facility in the Seneca Lakes region of New York that when she told the activists the news, they picked up their instruments and there was “singing and dancing in the streets.” She added “Fracking is able to roll over so many communities because people are told it is inevitable. This decision emboldens us all. It shows this fight is winnable.”

At a meeting in Calvert County last night where Dominion Resources is building a fracked gas export terminal, Tracey Eno of Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community, a member ofWe Are Cove Point, mentioned the Cuomo decision to inspire people to realize that we can defeat big energy.

Yesterday morning we received an email message urging people in New York to prepare to protest as Governor Cuomo was expected to announce three pilot fracking projects in New York, instead the governor decided to continue the moratorium on fracking. This reminds us that we often do not realize how close we are to victory, indeed people often feel like they are failing or cannot win, when in fact victory is within reach and much closer than they realize.

Cuomo spoke briefly at a press conference after his cabinet meeting announcing the fracking ban and saying he was following the advice of experts. He then turned the press conference over to them to explain the decision.

The New York Times reports that the state health commissioner expressed concerns about the health impacts of fracking:

In a presentation at the cabinet meeting, the acting state health commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, said the examination had found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking.

Holding up copies of scientific studies to animate his arguments, Dr. Zucker listed concerns about water contamination and air pollution, and said there was insufficient scientific evidence to affirm the safety of fracking.

Dr. Zucker said his review boiled down to a simple question: Would he want his family to live in a community where fracking was taking place?

Zucker said that in other states where fracking is already happening, he found that state health commissioners “weren’t even at the table.”

At the same time, Joe Martens, the environmental commissioner described the economic stimulus from fracking was not as great telling a press conference that the prospects for fracking in New York are “uncertain at best” and describing economic benefits as “far lower than originally forecasted.”  As The Times reported:

Martens noted the low price of natural gas, the high local cost of industry oversight and the large areas that would be off-limits to shale gas development because of setback requirements, water supply protections, and local prohibitions. He said those factors combine to make fracking less economically beneficial than had been anticipated.

Chip Northrup, a former oil and gas investor who writes the No Fracking Way blog that opposes drilling in New York, wrote about the views of commissioners Zucker and Martens:

Both of them cited the greatly reduced area where fracking would actually take place in New York – since most upstate towns ban it.

And the only towns that might allow it are in an small area by the Pennsylvania border that is not currently economic.  So, frankly, simply not worth fracking fooling with.

Which makes perfect sense from all standpoints: environmentally, economically and politically.

At the press conference Cuomo said  “I think it’s our responsibility to develop an alternative … for safe, clean economic development.”

We urge advocates and the governor to now put in place a strategy to make New York the first state to put in place a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy economy by 2025. This is not an impossible fantasy but an achievable goal. Here is one example of how New York could achieve a clean energy economy.  Putting in place a clean energy policy is the kind of leadership that could revive Cuomo, who had a very difficult re-election, as a viable presidential candidate in 2020.

Kevin Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance which is a member of We Are Cove Point which seeks to stop the development of a fracked gas expert terminal at Cove Point in Maryland.

Source: Popular Resistance

Out of Control Fracking Well Forces Evacuations

Efforts Tuesday to regain control of a fracking
well Tuesday failed.  (Photo: bill baker/flickr/cc)

Common Dreams | Dec 17, 2014 | Andrea Germanos

Official said Tuesday blowout at Monroe County, Ohio well remained a threat

An out-of-control natural gas fracking well in Monroe County, Ohio forced more than two dozen families from their homes and may pose the threat of an explosion.

The blowout at the Triad Hunter-operated well on the Utica Shale happened at approximately 2:00 p.m. EST on December 13, 2014, according to a statement released Sunday by the operator's parent company, Magnum Hunter Resources Corporation.

According to reporting by the Columbus Dispatch, the well had been temporarily plugged a year ago.
The company states that "despite numerous precautionary measures taken in connection with the temporary plugging and abandonment operation, the well began to flow uncontrollably while recommencing production operations. Triad Hunter personnel were removing the well's night cap flange when a pressure disruption occurred. They attempted to bolt back down this equipment but were not able to safely do so prior to natural gas flowback."

Bethany McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the agency which regulates the gas and oil industry, told the Dispatch Tuesday: "There’s still a steady stream of natural gas coming from the wellhead," and though there is no fire, the gas being emitted could be explosive.

No injuries have been reported in the incident so far.  Over twenty-five families in the area were evacuated, though they now have daytime access to their homes.

According to reporting by Wheeling, West Virginia's WTRF, the first attempt to regain control of the well failed on Tuesday.

Canada pressures US to pass Keystone XL as falling oil prices threaten project

Joe Raedle / Getty Images / AFP

RT | Dec 15, 2014

The Keystone XL pipeline may no longer make economic sense to build, thanks to falling global oil prices. However, Canada's natural resources minister is in Washington to push hard for the project’s construction.

On Friday, the price of crude oil dropped below $60 a barrel, down from a high of $116 in June. Oil demand growth for 2015 was slashed by 230,000 barrels per day, and is set to only increase by one percent, or by 900,000 barrels to 93.3 million barrels per day. In 2014, that number was 92.4 million barrels per day.

The plummeting oil prices are a good thing for environmentalists opposed to the Keystone pipeline extension.
“Oil prices going low gives the president a landing place to reject the pipeline because Canada needs cheap and big infrastructure,” Jane Kleeb, founder of the anti-Keystone group Bold Nebraska, told Politico. “When oil prices are high, producing the expensive and high-carbon tar sands makes sense. But now that oil is low, the only way tar sands will continue to expand is if Canada gets big pipelines.”

The proposed extension would have allowed the transport of crude oil from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, traveling from Hardisty, Alberta in Canada to Steele City, Nebraska in the US. There, it would join the already-built Keystone pipeline, traveling to Patoka, Illinois or Nederland, Texas via Cushing, Oklahoma, through a newly completed extension.

By some estimates, the price of oil has already dropped below what investors in Keystone would need to break even, and some analysts believe further drops are in store, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"The recent decline in [oil] prices has to give the sponsors some pause," Chris Lafakis, a senior economist at Moody's Analytics, told the paper.

A recent State Department study found that when oil is selling for $65-$75 per barrel, it is a "potential danger zone" for oil production in western Canada – the point where transportation costs driven higher by failing to build the pipeline could "have a substantial impact" on the industry's growth, according to Politico.

The price of oil has lost 20 percent since the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) last meeting on November 27, when the consortium ‒ heavily influenced by Saudi Arabia ‒ decided not keep the market over-supplied in an attempt to drive out more high-cost producing nations, such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, the US, and Canada.

United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei says OPEC will maintain output at 30 million barrels of oil a day, and wants to monitor the price for three months before even considering a meeting about possible changes.

“We are not going to change our minds because the prices went to $60 or to $40,” Mazrouei told Bloomberg on Sunday at a conference in Dubai.

Within the US, the project faces an uphill battle for approval. In mid-November, the lame-duck US Senate failed to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline project, falling one vote short of breaking a filibuster against the bill. The Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to rule as early as Friday on ongoing litigation in that could ultimately affect the pipeline route in that state.


It is amid this global setting that Canadian Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford is in Washington, DC to meet with his American and Mexican counterparts, US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Mexican Secretary of Energy Pedro Joaquin Coldwell. Much of the agenda will focus on energy data and Mexico’s regulatory reforms for its oil and energy sector, but the three “will surely discuss energy infrastructure” as it pertains to the Keystone project, Global News reported.

Rickford told reporters at a Monday press conference that the project to carry oil sands from Alberta to Gulf of Mexico refineries would help the US end its dependence on unreliable sources of oil in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The US Congress is expected to take up the proposed legislation in the new year, once all the newly elected members are in office..

Useful idiots for the Empire: How Greenpeace wrecked one of the most sacred places in the Americas

SOTT | Dec 10, 2014 | Adam Clark Estes

Greenpeace can get a little aggressive with its tactics. That doesn't mean that it's not fighting for a good cause! But after the organization marched through the sacred Nazca Lines etched into the Peruvian desert for a climate protest, capturing it all on camera with a drone, you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking. Greenpeace isn't the best at thinking things through, though.

In fact, this is far from the first time Greenpeace has screwed up, though this latest episode of Greenpeace Being Reckless is particularly atrocious. The environmental group has a long, long history of insensitive or poorly-staged actions, ranging from big - like helping to destroy a GMO crop designed to prevent blindness - to small - like papering a small town with posters the day after a community cleanup.

In case you missed io9's post about the outrage, here's a recap: The environmental activists wanted to send a message to government officials from around with world who are attending a climate change conference in Lima this week. So they headed to the Nazca Desert, one of the most famous and archaeologically significant sites in Peru, to lay down a bunch of yellow banners that spelled out: "TIME FOR CHANGE! THE FUTURE IS RENEWABLE! GREENPEACE."

The message is practically on top of the hummingbird geoglyph, which is now surrounded by their footprints. And the irony is thick. The future may be renewable, but these fragile, ancient drawings are not.

Read more..

Supreme Court rejects BP appeal over oil spill payments

In this handout image provided be the U.S. Coast Guard, fire
boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off
shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on
April 21, 2010 near New Orleans, Louisiana.
(U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images/AFP)

RT | Dec 9, 2014

The US Supreme Court has rejected hearing a BP appeal challenging its own multi-billion dollar settlement over a Gulf of Mexico oil spill four years ago. BP claims there has been fraud in some settlements, plaintiffs praised the court’s decision.

Without comment and with no Justices dissenting, the Supreme Court turned down a plea by BP to reopen its 2012 deal aimed at settling hundreds of millions in claims over the April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This decision leaves intact a lower court opinion approving the settlement that BP negotiated, signed and asked the Court to approve in 2012. It will allow the businesses and families of the Gulf Coast to continue to make claims for another six months.

BP has argued the agreement has been interpreted improperly by the settlement fund’s court-appointed administrator, forcing it to pay businesses that could not show damages – so-called business economic loss claims. BP has paid out $2.3 billion in such claims out of $4.25 billion in total compensation it owes, but it argues that fraud may exist in some of them.

Of those claims BP wanted to contest was one which awarded a Mississippi hotel more than $450,000 despite being closed for several months due to an unrelated fire. It also pointed to a Louisiana nursing home that was awarded $662,000 despite having closed down before the spill, reported Reuters.

A boat works to collect oil that has leaked from the
Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico
on April 28, 2010 near New Orleans, Louisiana.
(Chris Graythen/Getty Images/AFP)

BP has said it would continue to press for official investigations of “suspicious or implausible claims.”

Lawyers for companies and professional individuals said that the Court’s action would free the claims manager to continue to go forward making specific payments under the terms of the settlement package.


The oil spill happened after an explosion and fire aboard BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform. The incident killed eleven people and injured seventeen others. The spill, the largest in US history, spread 200 million gallons of oil across the Gulf and its shores for 87 days before a fractured exploratory well could be capped.

The settlement process is separate from other spill-related proceedings. BP is preparing for a January trial over whether it should pay up to $18 billion in Clean Water Act penalties, which a Louisiana court ruled on in September. BP has put aside $43 billion to resolve all claims.

SOTT Earth Changes Video Summary - November 2014

© SOTT Earth Changes Screenshot

SOTT | Dec 7, 2014 | Sott Editors

It's one thing to have record early cold temperatures and record early snowfalls in both Eurasia and North America. To have the greatest ever snow coverage for the Northern Hemisphere by mid-November is something else. November 2014 was alternately mild and super-freezing as the Polar Jet Stream whip-lashed the North American continent, bringing monster snowstorms that dumped entire annual snowfall averages in many parts of the U.S., not least the city of Buffalo, New York, which was buried under 7 feet (2.25 meters) of snow.
Numerous bright meteor fireballs were caught on camera, including several big ones - probably comet/asteroid fragments - that were seen from huge swathes of the US, Russia, China, Japan and Europe. Buenos Aires was flooded for the second time this year, while record-breaking (in many cases, breaking records set last month) rainfall levels were seen across much of the western Mediterranean, killing many people in Morocco, southeastern France and northwestern Italy.

© SOTT Earth Changes Screenshot

Sinkholes from China to Florida opened up to swallow people and cars. Brisbane, Australia was literally smashed by baseball-sized hail in a surprise 'super-storm'. The Great Lakes began to refreeze by mid-November, not 4 months after finally thawing from last winter. Japan's largest active volcano erupted, as did Colima Volcano in Mexico, and Pavlof in Alaska, each sending ash plumes several kilometers high, while lava flows from Hawaii's Kilauea and Cape Verde's Fire Island destroyed homes.

Then there were UFOs over Paris and Iran, pods of deepwater whales seeking shallow waters, and tornado outreaks in the Mediterranean... has the world gone mad? These were the 'Signs of the Times' in November 2014:



Read more..

Scientists Discover An Invisible Shield Surrounding Earth, Baffled At How It Formed

Inquisitr | Nov 26, 2014

Scientists have discovered something truly remarkable in the Earth’s atmosphere. An invisible shield is located approximately 7,200 miles above Earth that scientists are likening to “force fields on Star Trek.”

According to Front Line Desk, the shield was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnut-shaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons and protons. Held in place by Earth’s magnetic field, the Van Allen radiation belts swell and shrink in response to incoming energy disturbances from the sun. The Van Allen radiation belts were first discovered back in 1958. However, scientists only discovered two belts, an inner and outer belt extending up to 25,000 miles above Earth’s surface.

However, last year, Professor Daniel Baker from the University of Colorado Boulder and his team used the twin Van Allen Probes launched in 2012 to discover a third, transient ‘storage ring.’ According to their research, the third belt is located between the previously known inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts. This belt is different in that it seems to come and go as space weather changes.

The purpose of the ring was quite clear to the researchers — the ring is used to block killer electrons from entering deeper into the Earth’s atmosphere. These electrons can be extremely devastating at their near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and damage space systems.

Beta Wired notes that Baker likened the invisible shield to Star Trek force fields. The Earth’s magnetic field holds the belts in place, but the scientist says that the electrons in these belts — which travel at nearly the speed of light — are being blocked by some invisible force that reminded him of the kind of shields used in television series like Star Trek to stop alien energy weapons from vaporizing starships. However, in the case of Earth, the invisible shield is being used to stop killer electrons from entering the atmosphere.

Prior to the invisible shield discovery, scientists assumed that electrons making it into the upper atmosphere of the planet would be dispersed by air molecules, but it looks like these particles don’t even get that far thanks to Earth’s invisible electron shield.

Now that the scientists know the invisible shield exists, they are trying to determine how it was formed and exactly how it works.

“It’s almost like these electrons are running into a glass wall in space. It’s an extremely puzzling phenomenon.”

[Image Credit: NASA]

Finding Nemo monster is real: Rare black seadevil caught on video

RT | Nov 24, 2014

Still from YouTube video/MBARI

A nightmare-inducing sea creature made famous in ‘Finding Nemo’ was caught on video in the depths of the ocean for the first time. Scientists believe global warming is affecting its environment, bringing the rare anglerfish species to shallower waters.

As shown in Pixar’s famous fish film, anglers get their name from the built-in fishing rod attached to their foreheads. The black seadevil (scientific name Melanocetus) lives in the pitch-black depths of Monterey Canyon off California’s coast, and uses its luminescent orb to attract prey.

“In the darkness of deep water, they flash the light to attract prey and draw them near the angler's mouth. When a fish or a squid swims up, it is quickly inhaled by the angler's huge mouth and trapped by its long, sharp teeth,” senior scientist Bruce Robison said in a video of the seadevil released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

MBARI scientists spotted the secretive species 2,000 feet (600m) below Monterey Bay’s surface, but it also lives in the “freezing, crushing water four times deeper,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.


The footage captured at this depth by MBARI’s remotely operated vehicle, ROV Doc Ricketts, is believed to be the first video ever made of this species alive and at such a depth, the institute said in the video description. Fewer than half a dozen encounters with any type of deep-sea anglerfish have ever been recorded by deep-diving research vehicles, MBARI noted in a statement.

The ROV located the fish during a “midwater transect” last Monday, institute spokeswoman Kim Fulton-Bennett told CNN. "This means we 'fly' the robot through the water at a series of different depths (10 minutes at each depth), and count all the different types of animals we see."

The female seadevil is recognizable from ‘Finding Nemo,’ where it snuck up on fish Dory and Marlin as they search for Nemo. As scary as the anglerfish might be, it is only 9 cm (3.5 in) long. The male is even smaller, “like a tiny little baby,” a video called ‘True Facts about the Angler Fish’ says.

“He attaches himself to the female by biting her, and then digesting part of his face so he fuses with her flesh,” the description continues. “He then atrophies, losing his digestive organs, brain, heart and eyes, and winds up nothing more than a pair of gonads, which release sperm when needed.”


Finding a female ‒ no matter how ugly she may appear‒ is imperative for the male.

"If they don't find a female, they drown," Ted Pietsch, professor at the University of Washington and expert on the deep-sea anglerfish, told the Mercury News. "They're not even properly equipped to eat."

Females also collect males throughout their lifetimes. Robison told KSBW that he has seen up to 11 males attached to a single female.

Not much else is known about the elusive seadevil, however. "A video would tell us a lot about how it moves, swims, orients to gravity," Pietsch noted.

Robison and his international team of researchers didn’t just capture video of the angler; it captured the black seadevil to study. Unfortunately, they do not know how long it will survive.



The team is studying the possible impacts of rising water temperatures on deep-sea animals. Robison told KSBW the fish discovery was thanks to the mid-water rest barometer, the only one of its kind.

"What we're trying to do experimentally with instruments that we take down into the ocean is to learn what the range of capabilities of these animals are," he said. "Now that the temperature is rising, many species may not have the ability to adjust to the rising temperatures."

The temperature increase, he told the Mercury News, is "probably because of global warming. If the temperature continues to rise and the amount of oxygen continues to decrease, things are going to change."

The problem the black seadevil and other deep-sea creatures face from global warming is that oxygen ‒ which is already scarce at those depths ‒ will decrease even more.

"Animals that live in the oxygen minim zones are adapted to low oxygen, but they might be close to their limit," Brad Seibel, an assistant professor of marine biology at the University of Rhode Island, told the Mercury News. That could lead to stunted development, and possibly force the animals to head to shallower waters.

And animals near the surface would have to swim to colder waters. These mass migrations would alter ecosystems as food and predators might not shift in the same way, Seibel said.