A Bright Shiny Tin Foil Hat Just in Time for the Holidays!!

Here's an unfortunate thing, if not a suspicious thing.  Gasland, a movie which should be required viewing by everyone, is not freely available on the web.  Clips posted have been disabled.  In order to see it, it is necessary to either order the dvd, or happen to be near one of the very rare showings in an urban theater, or find it on HBO, assuming you have that service.  WHY?

The  evil described in the film - perpetrated by the energy companies (led by the real-world Darth Vadar, Dick Cheney) is terrifying, complex, and almost unbelievable in its reach.  Why is Gasland not more readily available to watch?  Did the director, who so nobly resisted the temptations to succumb to lucrative gas company leases, only end up capitulating and compromising to the restrictions from HBO and film distributors - for money, or fame, or control?  Doesn't he want EVERYONE to be aware of the perfidy going on in our backyards?  Contrast that with this despicable video, which is freely available on youtube.  This monstrous brainwashing makes me wonder exactly how sinister the dark forces controlling everything from waging war to media discourse really are.

You needn't bother to watch the whole thing to see how diabolical is the manipulation - of children!  This affable demon explains to kids who include some toddlers, using cake and icing, how benign shale fracturing is!  It's so absurd as to defy logic.

I asked a woman I know - let's call her Martina - who is an illegal immigrant from a humble background in South America, WHY she thought Obama had capitulated on every thing he had promised since his election and she said scornfully, "Because - he has no choice!  After he was elected, they took him into a room and they told him, either he does what they say, or they'll shoot him!"  Is this farfetched?

This week I took a very fast walk - because it was frigid with a ferocious gusty wind - around the grounds of the South Branch Watershed Association.  Although it is located in the same county where I live, I had never been there before.  The woods and pastures just outside the door of Wit's End have always been so unspoilt and pristine that I rarely felt the urge to travel any distance to walk somewhere else.  But now it hurts to look at the landscape while I still remember how beautiful it had been for the almost thirty years I have been fortunate to roam hill and dale.  The first tree of note appeared as soon as I entered the parking lot.  I call it the ghost tree.

It's supposed to be a hemlock but hasn't got a single green needle.

Instead, the branches and cones are covered in icy blue lichens.

Everywhere I turned I found dead trees.

Trees whose root systems are so rotted that they are keeling over.

Stumps surrounded by thin pines.

Piles of too many logs to cut up and split and stack.

So - the question remains whether Josh Fox sold out his movie, which I still highly recommend.

An even more interesting question is what happened to Dr. Al Armendariz, who was interviewed in the film.

Dr. Armendariz was very frank in his assessment of the duplicity of the gas companies, and the dereliction of oversight on the part of government regulatory agencies.

He revealed with an infrared camera terrifying images of toxic hydrocarbons, - ozone precursors invisible to the naked eye - billowing in enormous clouds fom the gas holding tanks...incomprehensibly vast plumes being released into the atmosphere, from thousands of locations, on a constant basis.

I found the webpage for Dr. Armendariz at Southern Methodist University, where he was a professor at the time of the interview.

I was perplexed to find that not only had he since taken a leave from his academic position, to assume a role at the EPA...but the only way to contact him now - by email or phone - was via the EPA "Director of External Affairs."  So I wrote to him, via the "Director of External Affairs" anyway, to ask if he thought that the production of natural gas without any regulation or restriction on emissions might be significant enough to impact vegetation on a widespread scale - as well as human health, which had been his focus.

I haven't heard back, yet.  Of course, it's quite possible that Dr. Armendariz went to the EPA, appointed by the Obama Administration, as part of an effort to clean house after the disastrous Bush anti-science campaign, which notoriously included direct interference in research and regulation, in order to suppress information about the adverse effects of pollution.

But forgive me if I think that it's just as possible that Dr. A. was nabbed by the EPA, still in thrall of industry, in order to muzzle him and control his public remarks.

Still linked on his University webpage are papers he authored prior to his defection appropriation appointment to the EPA.  One was of particular interest, which was his comment to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (stop guffawing!).  Excerpts follow, with even more pictures of the trees dying at the South Branch Watershed Association.

"Global climate change is increasing ground level temperatures in many U.S. locations, including DFW {Dallas Fort Worth]. The data from DFW airport suggest that over a ten year period, the length of time from the 1999 base case episode to the 2009 attainment demonstration modeling, there is likely to be a 0.4 increase in annual average temperatures, with a more acute increase of approximately 1 degree in the important month of August."

"In order for the 1999 base case to have applicability in 2009, the temperatures used in the photochemical modeling need to be increased to account for climate change and increasing temperatures. I believe that incorporating a temperature increase into the modeling will significantly increase the predicted 2009 ozone concentrations, indicating the deficiency of the emission reductions proposed in the SIP to get the area into attainment."

"The increase in temperature is important because many of the photochemical reactions that produce ozone are temperature dependent and ozone production will occur more rapidly at higher temperatures. In addition, both biogenic VOC emissions and evaporative VOC emissions, from sources like storage tanks and motor vehicles, will increase with higher ambient temperatures."

"Climate change is going to make our ozone problem even harder to solve than it is already.  Another very important factor that the attainment demonstration must take into account in its photochemical modeling is the likely increase in incident UV radiation because of climate change."

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the most definite analysis of climate change to date in 2001. In that assessment, they state

'Climate change will decrease air quality in urban areas with air pollution problems (medium confidence). An increase in temperature (and, in some models, ultraviolet radiation) increases the formation of ground-level ozone, a pollutant with well- established adverse effects on respiratory health.' (IPCC 2001a)"

"The report further states,

'Stratospheric ozone destruction is an essentially separate process from greenhouse gas accumulation in the lower atmosphere. However...tropospheric warming apparently induces stratospheric cooling, which exacerbates [stratospheric] ozone destruction.' (IPCC 2001b)"

"Additional published work that suggests that climate change is likely to result in enhanced stratospheric ozone destruction, and therefore higher ground-level UV radiation (Shindell et al 1998; Kirk-Davidoff et al 1999)."

“'The chemical reactions responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion are extremely sensitive to temperature. Greenhouse gases warm the earth’s surface but cool the stratosphere radiatively and therefore affect ozone depletion....Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases might therefore be at least partly responsible for the very large Artic ozone loses observed in recent winters. Artic ozone loses reach a maximum in the decade 2010 to 2019 in our model.”'(Shindell et al 1998)."

"The Shindell et al study indicates that UV radiation at the surface, an important driver to many of the photochemical reactions that produce ozone, is likely to increase with climate change..."

This concern about rising ozone was, believe it or not, forcefully expressed by Joe Romm of Climate Progress, back in July of 2007, Carbon Sinks Threatened by Increasing Ozone...More Great News from the Climate.

"Rising levels of ozone pollution over the coming century will erode the ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a new climate-modelling study predicts."

"Ozone is already known to be a minor greenhouse gas, but the new calculations highlight another, indirect way in which it is likely to influence global warming by 2100. High levels can poison plants and reduce their ability to photosynthesize, says Stephen Sitch of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter."

"Note this is actually a new amplifying feedback, since the hotter it gets the more ozone pollution is generated."

As devastated as the conifers are around the Watershed, the deciduous trees are just as bad.  Their bark is falling and branches are breaking.  To me, it is like walking through a town full of people with their hair, fingernails, skin, fingers, toes and limbs falling off.

Susan from GWEN did some research and found some articles about foaming disease.

It is one condition which could account for the bark that is splitting and cracking.  This maple caught my eye because the sun was glowing through a spurt of frozen sap, refracting the light like a lantern.  From one of Susan's links:

"The foul-smelling and unsightly seepage of sap from the trunk of shade trees is commonly called slime flux or wet wood.  It commonly occurs in apple, birch, hemlock, maple, mulberry, oak, poplar and willow."

Ozone enters trees through the stomata of leaves and in addition to causing direct, visible foliar damage, it also causes long-term, cellular damage to the entire organism.  I don't think anybody understands, because there is no funding for research, how this leads to violent expulsions of sap like this one - and how that destroys the protective layer of bark.

Here's is an entertaining video, of Ted Turner predicting that climate change, if ignored, will lead to cannibalism!  He talks about excessive consumption in a rather illuminating way:

And that led me to wonder if he maybe had in mind someone akin to this idiot I observed, in his preposterous full-length chinchilla coat, prancing to his Hummer, so delighted with himself, oblivious to how ludicrous he appeared...I'm so sorry, but what a pansy.  What is he trying to compensate for??  One can only wonder....

Now, for real tin foil hattery, I'm including a video about Contrails.  This is a conspiracy I generally dismiss, because first of all, there is so much blatant pollution going on, without any pretense, that we hardly need secretive government geoengineering to explain the environmental destruction and ecosystem collapse that is occurring in front of our eyes.  Also, I've never seen contratils in the impossibly blue skies day after day in New Jersey, and couldn't fathom why anyone would try to geongineer a global issue from one relatively miniscule section, such as the west coast.  On the other hand, I have lately come to wonder that if someone were to want to geoengineer (and there are clearly persons who do) of course, they wouldn't start off globally - they would conduct smaller, local experiments - and then also too, there are my very own, reluctant observations from when I was in California a few months ago, at the very end of this post.  The sky really WAS criss-crossed with trails, intensifying throughout the afternoon, until the sky was all white.  Watch it if only out of curiosity!