Lefty Blogs
williampfaff ++ ++
Russian News ++
seaton-newslinks. USA expat in Europe ++
bilegrip Asu spleen ++
us-rockstroh a rant, not a blog ++
aboutmyplanet eco ++
sfgate ++
crookedtimber ++
onthecommons ++
sjlendman ++
....
abutamam freeiraq ++
airamericaradio +
amygdalagf +
angryarab ++
annezook +
antiwar ++
norwegianity
terrorism-news
blogspot
ourtomorrow
politickybitch
welcome-to-pottersville
aviraqi
billmon ++ whiskeyB
consortiumnews ++
dahrjamailiraq
dailywarnews ++
drforbush +
english +
fallujahinpictures
freespeechradio
halcyondays ++
healingiraq
hereticalideas ++
icasualties
maru
om
boxspinning boxes

jamaicaobserver newspaper
jameswolcott +
lefarkins +
liberalgirlnextdoor ++
lonehighlander Libya, not lefty
mahablog +++ solid
maruthecrankpot +
indymedia melbourne
messopotamian +7Apr06
monkey ++
motherjones ++
fisk
nocapital +
norightturn +NZ
peakoil ++
pilger +
politicalhumor +
raedinthemiddle
rafahtoday Feb05?
rense w= wacko conspiracies
rigorousintuition x
hegemon ++
ruckus ++
rudepundit ++
satiricalpolitical +
scaramoucheblog ++
secretsinbaghdad ++15Ap06
Energring
aliveinbaghdad ++
riverbendblog ++
sideshow +++
signs-of-the-times +++
slashdot ++techy
talkleft ++
thinkprogress ++
thismodernworld +++
uncapitalist ++
velorution ++ bicycles
org ++Brazil peasants
warandpiece +
warfare.ru +russia military
greenpeace
allhatnocattle
alternet ++
americanpolitics
antiwar
gbruno ++YT
axisoflogic ++
blackcommentator
bobharris +
bradblog +
buckfush +funnies
buggery +
buzzflash ++
changeforamerica
countercurrents
counterpunch +++
crisispapers
crooksandliars ++?
csmonitor
dahrjamailiraqhref="http://www.dailykos.com/
davidcorn
democracynow
democracyuprising
dissidentvoice
earthfirstjournal
earthstation5
empirenotes
foodfirst
fpif
fromthewilderness
geocities
granta
grist ??
gristmagazine
guerrillanews
gulf
hizbollah
huffingtonpost ++
informationclearinghouse
infoshop +
inthesetimes x
iranmania x
ivaw
jihadunspun
juancole ++
kuro5hin ++ notlefty
kurtnimmo ++
lrb ++ Iraqi?
mahablog
lewrockwell ++
marklynas climate change
mnftiu get your war on comics
motherjones
nilemedia
nybooks
occupationwatch
oriononline
palestine
prisonplanet
rall ++ Ted Rall cartonist
ratical
redpepper
rense
robert
rollingstone
scoop
selvesandothers ++
smirkingchimp
snappingturtle
socialistworker
spiked
tblog
theiraqiroulette
theleftcoaster +
thepoorman +
tnr ++ magazine
tompaine ++ mag
traprockpeace ++
truthout +
boondocks ++
crowning3
. . . helix
Base
rain radar
Weather
worldtribunal +
worldwatch ++ $ required
zaman + Turkish news
youcantmakeitup + ?
youngfox ????????????
bareknucklepolitics videos?
popdrain videos??
discovery videos??
cs videos??
aegisIraq video??
mariyaguchi video??
iwilltryit video..
baghdadtreasure
ahram cairo newspaper
felbers
thepartyline
jfaughnan 28/04/2006 10:25AM
shrillblog +
thinkprogress +
marchforjustice + pictures
messopotamian + Iraqi not so radical, but scared (also see IraqTheModel which was a USA front, but is now also scared)
scaramoucheblog +
counterpunch
.............
blogads liberal blogs by CPM $ per view
malakandsky ++ stolid?
republicoft + black gay parent??
dailykos ++
rawstory ++
democraticunderground ++
atrios ++
workingforchange +
leftinthewest +
dembloggers +
talkingpointsmemo +
firedoglake ++
vastleft ++
pamspaulding +
americablog +
washingtonmonthly ++
mydd +
politics1 +
bartcop ++
politicalwire +
sisterstalk black lesbian?
culturekitchen ++
alternet
wonkette +++
billstclair +
freefreedomtoldhere ++ pipe bomb

......
almuajaha defunct
whynot defunct
winstonsmith defunct
samadams dormant
mquinn02 defunct
iraqblogcount ++14Apr06 suspended
iraqicomments most recent: jan2005
iraqidoctor most recent: Aug2005
georgemustgo + moved?
vialls ++Dormant (joe is dead)
warblogging Defunct
hammeroftruth quiescant?
mediastorm quiescant? +
bushwhackedusa defunct
hamasonline defunct
4Jul06

01 June 2006

Dili, Baghdad, Kabul, Ramadi, Warm North Pole

DiliAus soldier protects frightened Timorese.
.............
Looters in Dili: Initially I believed they were merely students of Baghdad:
In the first 3-4 days of an occupation, opportunities for loot & burn abound as the new occupiers are confused and loth to massacre the locals.
Then I heard that the prosecutors office had lost 15% of its files, the ones describing TNI involvement in 1999 massacres.
Now I believe that Jakarta Government is behind some of the riots.
So I say drop a few of the buggers with head shots.
However that tactic hasnt worked for USaniuans in Ramadi. Another few thousand culled from Kuwait to be casualties of chaos.

al-Maliki said on Tuesday that "every militia which is loyal to a party is a militia".
..he specifically named the Kurdish peshmerga, the al-Mahdi Army of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Shia Badr movement as being among those that would have to be disbanded.
All that can be said to that is: - well Nuri, You and whose army?

Kabul
angryarab
Kabul going smoothly?
__________________________________________________________________
healingiraq
Baghdadis are reporting that radical Islamists have taken control over the Dora, Amiriya and Ghazaliya districts of Baghdad, where they operate in broad daylight. They have near full control of Saidiya, Jihad, Jami’a, Khadhraa’ and Adil. And their area of influence has spread over the last few weeks to Mansour, Yarmouk, Harthiya, and very recently, to Adhamiya.

All of these districts, with the exception of Adhamiya, are more or less mixed or Sunni majority areas. They make up the western part of the capital, or what is known as the Karkh sector
...
the Oil ministry fire that broke out about a week ago. Funny that the event did not even register in the news. The fire actually engulfed two floors, the accounts and records floors to be exact. Rumour among Oil ministry employees is that the fire - which went on for over 2 hours - was intentional, apparently to cover up some major corruption scandal

boston
n its quarterly update to Congress, the Pentagon reported that from Feb. 11 to May 12, as the new Iraqi unity government was being established, insurgents staged an average of more than 600 attacks per week nationwide. From August 2005 to early February, when Iraqis elected a parliament, insurgent attacks averaged about 550 per week; at its lowest point, before the United States handed over sovereignty in the spring of 2004, the attacks averaged about 400 per week.
The vast majority of the attacks -- from crude bombing attempts and shootings to more sophisticated, military-style assaults and suicide attacks -- were targeted at US-led coalition military forces,

aliveinbaghdad
When you enter Ramadi, just inside the city there is a stoplight. You can go straight or right or left. If you go straight you will be killed by snipers. We know this because sometimes friendds came to visit, and they didn’t know which way to go, so they went straight, and one time a whole car full of our friends were killed. There are no signs to indicate the danger, you just have to know from the people who live in Ramadi.”


theiraqiroulette
If they weren’t here gangs would be roaming our streets kidnapping our children, women and men without anyone daring to stop them, but that did not happen cause thank god they are here

If they weren’t here bodies would’ve been found not in mass graves like in Saddam’s time, but scattered on sidewalks for everyone to see, but that did not happen cause thank god they are here
etc...


blah3
Lawns...
You can plant thyme around some perennial boxes, that will spread to create groundcover, fragrant paths, and herbaliscious seasoning when you want it-- and you've created another place that you don't need to mow.
Lawns and more especially Golf Courses, represent "Toxic Biophilia" - where we believe we are engaged in "Nature" but are actually in a monotonous, chemical drenched space.
Smart wives refuse to touch husbands returning from golf.

SUVs are also "Toxic biophilia" - sold via TV adverts showing single vehicles in pristine natural surroundings , used in 20mph bumper-to-bumper traffic.
I guess its great that people have biophilia, shame that its manipulated towards false, toxic, regions.

book:Ted Steinberg..this pseudo-nature that covers 40 million acres of the USA "American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn"

bentzblog list of lies

scientificamerican
mouse inherits via RNA

scientificamerican
May 24, 2006 ..even those who smoked more than 20,000 joints ..did not have an increased risk of lung cancer.
..burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50% more of..chemicals linked to lung cancer... ..also deposits four times as much ..
.surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers.

hubblesite new spot on Jupiter

smithsonianmag
dinosaur soft tissue, blood cells?

evolgen
chimp HLA - your antibodies more like a chimp than some human?

alternet .. buffalobeast
police state

CBS
CBS hummer, well & truly embedded
_________________________________
Miraculous Intervention:
The ID supposedly made cilia suddenly, so if you had been there with a microscope, you would see (eukaryotes?) lacking cilia suddenly produce progeny with cilia. Its not clear how mitosis would have been proceeding prior to the 'Centriole-Miracle'.. Its also not clear if the new DNA for all those proteins was inserted from nothing (conservation of mass-energy broken) or if the ID somehow prodded existing bases to insert themselves. (2nd law of TD break)
I am rather rusty on cilia. A few years ago, after reading Behe, I thought "if there are any known variations of cilia, then they cant be IRedComplex, because IRedComplex says NO changes are possible. A quick lit. search showed several cilia variants, so I decided "Case against Behe, Proven"
Oddly enough, reading Lyn Margulis, it wasnt clear if centriole proteins have ever been found in prokaryotes. So they did appear rather suddenly. Maybe they have been seen since in some precursor form?

nytimes Warm North
..seabed near the North Pole shows that 55 million ybp the Arctic was .. year-round average of 74 degrees Fahrenheit.
..Computer simulations.. do not reproduce an ancient Arctic nearly that warm,..
2004 ..samples from the seabed 150 miles from the North Pole: 1,400 feet .. a climate history that dates back 56 million years.
..the warming was driven at least in part by ..greenhouse gases — one far greater than the current human-caused rise.
The samples also chronicle the subsequent cooling, with many ups and downs, ..began about 45 million ybp..
..evidence that greenhouse-gas changes controlled much of climate history..
..Arctic Coring Expedition..
Estimates of temperatures .. dinoflagellates.. ..changes in the composition of ..Crenarchaeota.
..49 million ybp,..summertime growth of vast mats of an ancient cousin of the Azolla ..
..earth's long slide to colder conditions and the recent cycle of ice ages and brief thaws began quite soon after the hothouse days 50 million ybp.
..a single pebble,..the size of a chickpea, found in a layer created 45 million ybp. ."dropstones"
..The amount of ice-carried debris.. started increasing about 14 million ybp

imageshack
Mars skull

31 May 2006

Fission-Steam in Australia, NWShelf give-away, green industry, Dorothy Napangardi, Green Duck Shooters, Bolivian fields

globalwarmingwatch
As if on cue the government is just about to receive a report it commissioned that was conducted by Professor John Gittus, and independent (sic) consultant to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Funnily enough it will say that the latest type of nuclear power station is economically competitive with new coal fired power stations
platts
16May2006 Australia's North West Shelf joint venture Tuesday began loading .. in Karratha, Western Australia, for delivery to China's first LNG receiving terminal in .. Guangdong.
The 125,000 cubic meter cargo is the first shipment under a 25-year contract signed in October 2002 between the North West Shelf venture and China National Offshore Oil Corp.'s Guangdong Dapeng LNG Co. The contract covers the delivery of 3.3 million mt/year of LNG to Guangdong.

- Howards infamous deal where he sold 1/2 of NWShelf gas at non-indexed 2002 prices!
No thought given to using that gas here to make Urea?
2/3 of the Nitrogen in a young Chinese persons body has been through the industrial Haber process.

zoomchina
Friday, 31 March 2006 SYDNEY (Dow Jones)--A landmark gas contract with China stands to cost Australia's biggest natural resources project up to A$20 billion in lost sales due to contractual terms that fail to account for the increase in oil prices to record levels, the Australian Financial Review reports Friday.

another ref to Howards Bad deal on NWShelf gas sales.
rigzone & Fin Review seem to have dropped references to this debacle

gbruno on low grade U

abc
Funding blocked to Kyoto alternative 29 May 2006
ELEANOR HALL: The international climate change partnership championed by the Australian Government as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol appears to be in jeopardy, thanks to one of its other key proponents, the United States.
The US House of Representatives has blocked funding for the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate Change, which was launched last year by Prime Minister, John Howard.
..
DAVID MARK: The Asia Pacific Partnership, or AP6, was announced with great fanfare last year as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.
..The AP6 partners - Australia, the United States, India, China, Japan and South Korea - would develop new technology to combat climate change..
.. Australia has committed $100 million to the partnership over five years.
.. United States, promised around $AU 60 million, but that money has now been blocked by the US House of Representatives


Green or just a FAD?
19May06 AUSTRALIA will steer a new round of global talks between 189 nations to build a post-Kyoto plan for climate change.
.. ..Australia's growing influence after its success in bringing the US.. new talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
..also instrumental in establishing the Asia-Pacific Climate Partnership
Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell said the Future Action Dialogue [FAD!]would reunite diverging parties within the climate debate, including all members of the AP6, developing nations and Kyoto countries.
..Australia's Greenhouse Office chief, Howard Bamsey, and his South African co-chair must draw up an agenda and framework for the next round of discussions, which will occur in Kenya this year.


nytimes on greener industry:
.. At DuPont, the savings from energy projects has totaled $2 billion over the last decade and a half. I.B.M. saved $115 million since 1998 by avoiding 1.3 million tons of carbon emissions, or the equivalent of taking 51,600 cars off the road, according to WWF ..
.. Johnson & Johnson decided in the late 1990's to meet the Kyoto requirements globally. From 1990 to 2005, the company reduced carbon emissions by 11.5 percent. Meanwhile, sales grew by 350 percent.
.. "The automobile industry always feels it is difficult .. "They always had to be forced to make progress."
Bill McKibben.."Anybody whose solution includes the phrase 'in 20 years,' hasn't quite caught on to where we are."

Its not clear why Beijing kow-towed to µsoft, Linux may thrive:
On March 31, Beijing announced that local computer makers must ship all their products with licensed operating systems pre-installed. The government has also started a drive to ensure that all computers in the country's sprawling bureaucracy are loaded with legitimate software.
After Beijing's decision to compel computer makers to install licensed operating system software, Microsoft signed licensing deals with the leading Chinese computer manufacturers Lenovo, the TCL Group, Tsinghua Tongfang and the Founder Technology Group.
.. Lenovo, the maker of personal computers, agreed to spend $1.2 billion on Windows software over the next 12 months.
..license fees would pay for software loaded in computers the Chinese company shipped to 65 countries and territories.
.. There will still be piracy for a considerable period of time," said Michael Chen, the Beijing-based general manager for Red Hat,
.. Some analysts suggest that the new rules will simply swell the number of computers loaded with Linux. The Chinese government has strongly encouraged the use of this..


Dorothy Napangardi
Dorothy Napangardi SandHills of MinaMina 2002
from norwoodmatt
More Dorothy at crownpoint
_______________________________________________________________
Green Duck Shooters
climatecrisis
“A majority of Arkansas hunters and fishermen believe that global warming is an urgent problem in need of immediate action to stop, an environmental group’s survey release Monday showed. Arkansas sportsmen also said they have seen evidence of global warming in the state, including warmer and shorter winters, hotter summers, prolonged droughts and a decline of wetlands and migratory birds in the winter, including ducks.”


google videos of 11/9

gregpalast
Give it back, george: the Lay Loot that bought the white house
bush and republicans should give up ill-gotten gains
by Greg Palast
bbc .. .. more Palast
..Privatisation blocked by industry
..Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.
Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."
amazongregpala03-20 Armed Madhouse, the book

Bolivia
nasa
Land use Patterns
Near Santa Cruz, Bolivia (fourth), the pie-shape or radial-pattern fields are part of a planned settlement scheme in a rainforest area. At the center of each unit is a small community, which is surrounded by fields. A small buffer of forest separates the settlements from one another
___________________________________________________________
octopus picture

30 May 2006

wind change, fat gas pipes, Basra, "Oh My God, they've convicted Kenny".

"Oh My God, they've convicted Kenny".
Blair & Bush doing the schoolboyish homoerotic apologies was a weird sight.
The local teev breakfast show mentioning Haditha, Kabul riots..
Basra brit bashing.
Atrocities hang about for 6 months or more until some wind-shift brings them into the msm show.
The NeoZion thing must come unglued one day, I dont believe in a new 30 years war.
Australia oddly defies this zeitgeist. Fiercely cruel treatment of refugees. The Prime mini saying that nuclear power is inevitable.
Surreal absence of community. Each migrant group huddled in its own suburb, determinedly ignoring the polis.
The AWC Saddam bribes investigation may shake the tree,but maybe not. Australia as the last refuge of NeoZion, just like Joe V. predicted?

heat
George Monbiot
A Fondness for Fossil Fuels
..natural gas .. wholesale cost of gas had trebled in just three years(1).
..February 16th – the UK’s main gas storage facility (on the Rough Field in the North Sea) blew up....
..homes, whose consumption has grown by 19% since 1990, now account for almost one-third of the energy the United Kingdom uses(8). Of this, only 18% is used for lights and fridges and TVs and the other electronic gadgets with which we now fill them. All the rest is used for space and water heating(9). In the domestic sector, the big issue is not electricity but heat.
..there is only one low-carbon source of heat which could .. be supplied to most of the homes in the United Kingdom between now and 2030. It is hydrogen.
.. to power a fuel cell .. could provide both the heat and electricity our homes require. The natural gas pipes to which most of our houses are now attached would be replaced by hydrogen pipes. These are about 50% wider..
..price of hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture will, in “the future”, be $1.72 per kilogramme; from coal, $1.45; and from electrolysis $3.93(11). ..
.. I defy anyone who knows what opencast mining looks like to say the words “clean coal” without blushing. ..
..other European countries hoard an average of 52 days’ worth of gas, the UK stores only 14..
GM is essential reading,but...
Storage increased from 2 weeks to 6 weeks supply - now that aint no energy answer.
Home fuel cells: hard to see the fat pipes and as-yet-non-existent H-fuel-cells getting built. Heat in a cold climate is going to be even more emotional than petrol for the steel-chariot.
[GM's book "Heat" out in September (In time for Kenny's sentencing on 11Sep?]
There seems to be a perfect storm approaching. The USA army will cook coal for oil, and everyone else will get in line. So the planet is cooked. Issuing a Projection, not a Prediction, it seems likely that the critical system failure will be agriculture. Its not clear just how, but I project a global crop failure. Aus & USA out of the grain export business as climate bands move polewards. Canada may gather some slack. Dont know what warm China can grow. If they need imports, which wont be there, then its world conflagration time. Armies use a lot of oil as they clash by night.
priceofoil G8 have given up on climate, and now propose more fossils & fission-steam.
youtube . watch a USA nukular power station blowup [hint: turn the sound way up!]
campaign against Climate Change - a solid site


commondreams

..Smuggling of oil on a large scale coupled with increasing violence and the lack of basic services like water and electricity has caused increasing tensions ....
..when thousands of residents took to the streets earlier this month to protest high unemployment and corruption in the governor's office, the British attacked the demonstrators with helicopters. Fighters responded.
"They shot down a helicopter," As'aad Kareem, president of the Iraqi oil workers union in Basra told IPS. "It was real resistance. They shot it down because the British were supporting the governor and shooting at the people in the demonstration.
..mountains -- of garbage.. .."The sewage system is destroyed.... Even clean water is not there. Electricity .. Now you're getting 30 minutes or one hour a day..
..the governor (Mohammed al-Waili) was misusing it..
So far, at least seven British soldiers and 100 Iraqi civilians have killed ..
Fadil el-Sharaa, spokesman for Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, says British forces and the governor (Scrci)..want to blame the killings on sectarian conflict.

But that is not the case, he said. "What happened in Basra is that Ayatollah al-Sistani's representative talked about the corruption created by the governor and his administration, which caused the governor to say that the religious offices were responsible for all the violence in Basra and that we are dividing people against themselves."

..The Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, complained this week that 1,200 Sunni Arab families from the oil city have been forced out.

"They are getting abducted and killed on a daily basis," Jawahary said of Basra's Sunni population. "Just recently, 18 people were abducted, and they found them dead ..



29 May 2006

Forest regrowth, Deep Grass, aragonite gone, microbiological salinity

rock rat
Barry Brooks on the abc
Science Show says that Remnant rainforest patches in Carpentaria are undergoing "Massive expansion of Woody Vegetation" - he says this is also true of Kakadu, South America...
This is great news for rainforests .. high CO2 will speed their recovery.
the Carpentaria Rock-rat, [on the ICU red list] , seems to have recovered with the increase of rainforest in its area. Ironically, the expansion of its habitat appears to have been assisted by the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by industrial pollution.


More from Science Magazine:
Grass berms save Railway, which saves the Forest nationalgeographic
.. when hurricanes whiplashed Madagascar in 2000, Karen Freudenberger thought the Fianarantsoa Côte Est (FCE) railroad may have reached the end of its line.
.. The 163-kilometer railway slashes a precipitous path through the dense forest .. Fianarantsoa from the east-coast port of Manakara. ..
The rural communities grow tree crops, such as bananas and coffee, which they transport to market via the train... the farmers purchase rice and bring it back to their villages.
.. After the storms .. Most donors were skeptical about investing significant funds into the remote and rickety line.
.. The cost-benefit analysis showed that without the train, the environmentally friendly agricultural system would be in jeopardy,.. Within 20 years at least 100,000 ha of pristine forest would be cut and burned to make room for rice plantations.
.. The FCE railroad plies a corridor of intact forest that allows animals to migrate between the Ranomafana National Park to the north and the Andringitra National Park to the south.
Grass Grows 4-metre Roots of "Steel"
Freudenberger developed a program to enlist farmers who live and work along the track to grow vetiver hedges to stabilize surrounding slopes.
.. 600 farmers have planted an 3 million vetiver plants in hedges along the tracks of the FCE railroad. Between rows of vetiver, farmers are growing crops ranging from rice and cereals to fruit trees.
..Because vetiver seeds are sterile and the plant's roots grow straight down, the grass stays wherever planted..(The plant can be raised from cuttings.) [other poor farmer steep land berm schemes, in CentralAmerica, have demonstrated superior hurricane resistance to rich-farmer valley bottom fields]
vetiver seems like a wonder plant, anti-erosion, insecticide, and Guerlain makes it a perfume!

pteropod
ipsl .. agu
within this century, CO2 at 660ppm may bring the Southern Oceans to undersaturation wrt aragonite (orthorhombic CaCo3). Shells dissolve.
Most threatened are cold-water calcifying organisms, including sea urchins, cold-water corals, coralline algae, and plankton known as pteropods--winged snails that swim through surface waters.


teev:Ch9: Another Myth Busted: Salinity Cause:
Brian Tunstall & John Passioura deny that dryland Salinity is caused by rising-water table. [see 26/05/06 below]
They claim a microbiological explanation. Lack of Organic carbon in the soil.
Ch9 showed drill & no-turn ploughing, which leave soil in better health.
They interviewed an irrigation farmer, who said he watched carefully and never let water soak below crop-roots. He avoids salinity, but his method seems to confirm rather than refute the "rising water table" theory.
Another example of "projections" leading to effective action, which then results in critics claiming -'There is no problem, so the prediction was faulty'


Fission-Steam, Carbon, SDEcabs, Whalebone, Sunni resistance

Fission-Steam
If Carbon justifies Fission-Steam
the external costs of Fission are born in the name of Carbon
['Carbon' here means anthropogenic emissions of CO2 to Atmosphere]
The used fuel, the radioactive wastes, must be guarded by well armed Militia for 10,000 years.
This will cost, and will distort societies for that long, because of the rights we must give up to these Militia.
Privacy, Free Assembly, freedom from Arbitrary arrest.. all these will be lost forever to the Militia.

The protectors, who must be armed for 10,000 years plus, should be given their correct name. not Plutonium Militia, but Carbon Militia
We have to sustain this Militia only because we had a Carbon plan which led us to Fission, so Carbon takes the blame, not Fission.
So we might ask, given Carbon Militia Eternal, what other tasks might they better do?
- confiscating engines of excessive capacity?
- enforcing efficient glazing,insulation, heat pumps, shading, heat exchanges?
What is the salary of the Carbon Militia for 10,000 years?
How might that appear in a discounted cash flow?
______
The only reason for Fission-Steam is Carbon.
Meaning reduced CO2 emissions
because Carbon represents an emergency
the immanent disaster projection.

[Note "projection" not_ prediction.
Club of Rome etc & Carbon models dont produce "predictions" in the sense that X will happen.
They produce "projections" which state that if nothing intervenes, current trends indicate a tendency to X.
But something nearly always happens. The models are valuable in examining alternatives, they are not strictly "predictions"]

We do not_ choose Fission-Steam
for cost, health & safety, or other eco-issues, we choose Fission-Steam for Carbon

Cost is to some extent irrelevant, within a factor of 3-5 , we are acting on the Carbon emergency, which may well have a cost.
We are not choosing Fission for safety, even though fewer mine deaths & lung disease deaths might result. We have lived with these, and Fission has its own dangers.

Since we choose Fission-Steam for Carbon, we must be sure that it does have a Carbon advantage.
It seems that the fuel cycle reduces Carbon only if we use high-grade ores. So all that low-grade ore & Uranium from seawater etc are worse than coal.
Building the power stations takes years, and concrete construction makes Carbon . If the Carbon emergency is acute, the delay may render Fission worthless from a Carbon perspective.

Daughter nucleotides dangerous for 10,000 years may be the price we must pay for Carbon. But lets be sure we get a real net reduction in CO2.

The absence of coal mines, coal trains, coal smoke stacks, and coal subsidies may be great benefits, but the argument is about Carbon, so these benefits, and the dangers of critical piles, are minor considerations.

Lets be certain that subsidies to Fission, or Coal are well known, and well-compared to the benefits of subsidies to decentralised, people-friendly technologies, such as PV,Wind turbines, efficiency...

afterdowningstreet
New book from Helen Caldicott :Nuclear Power's Not the Answer,

Coal CO2 sequestration:
Futuregen's 10 members .. largest coal mining companies, among them BHP Billiton of Australia....the China Huaneng Group, is also a member .. India's government signed on in March.. .. already behind schedule .. starting operation by 2012...

"Futuregen is a smokescreen, since it's not intended to bring technology to the market at the pace required to deal with the problem," said Daniel Lashoff, (dir NRDC).."We don't have that kind of time."
NYT 29/05/2006
¶One acre of soybeans = 50 gallons of biodiesel fuel.
¶ 427 E6 arable acres in USA
¶USA driver = 464 gallons of gasoline a year..198 million drivers in USA
¶"Arable acres needed to make enough biodiesel: 1.8 billion."
..500-megawatt coal-fired = emissions = 750,000 cars (Shell).
SDEcabs
Total-Timetable.
Plan for a transport system:
Within the city electric taxi-cabs will be on call.
Low -powered, low acceleration, they will have the advantage of position-transparency.
Cheap transponders on-board will give their location and velocity to within 1m & 1m/sec
So cell-phone/pager gizmos will have an accurate ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival].

Urban travelers hate to wait. So this accurate ETA will cut waiting time to the uncertainty.
Current city traffic flow will be continually modeled, so the uncertainty will be low.

Electric cars are clean, they can drive into comfortable bright clean foyers.
So any waiting is done in shelter & comfort.

E-Negotiations for multiple-customer hire can determine taxi-routes for pickup & put-down.
If the customer requires priority, she can get a single-hire taxi.
Prices can be negotiated.

Similar position-transponders on rail-carriages mean that pagers/cell phones can accurately report train ETAs.
Transponders can be around $100 per carriage gps + local calibration. Backed up by bar-code, RFID tags, multiple-redundancy systems.
For a railway, these position systems enable trains to be run much closer together, with greater safety, than current systems which locate trains at isolated points only. We must know where every carriage is, and what velocity, at all times. These systems are cheap.

Self-drive ecabs (SDEcabs) with location systems could operate safely within pre-scribed areas. So SDEcabs could be hired without risk of loss.
Two-man pickup teams might drive to find SDEcabs wherever they had been left within the Allowed-Drive-Zone.

One thing this system does not address is long commutes. The 120kph commute to the semi-rural house 100km out of town may only work with rail, not road. So the commuter may drive a small SDEcab, or shared cab to the rail station, then pickup another SDEcab at the destination station.

A city full of light, 30kph, clean quiet Ecabs will be a far far better place.
Hybrid petrol-Ecabs may serve some role, but they must switch off the petrol motors before entering the indoor pickup foyers.


re Whalebone:
Whales washed up in New Zealand become the property of the Department of Conservation and are then buried and then given over to the local iwi (Maori tribe) for distribution if and when this is deemed appropriate.

It seems that there are few Whalebone carvers in NZ. Although NZ whalebone comes from stranded dead whales, carvers are reluctant to feed the market. Similar to the attitude to elephant ivory, for fear of encouraging killers. So kiwis must carry cowbone.
re "Sabrina's fallen overboard":
nylon
afterdowningstreet
What Is Going On With the Iraqi Resistance?
"G and H appear to have mistakenly absorbed the portrait of the Iraq war that the U.S. military is currently pushing: that the main thrust of the fighting has become (or always has been) the ethno-religious battle between Shia and Sunni. This is horribly inaccurate: the overwhelming preponderance of violence now and in the past is the battle between the U.S. forces and the (mainly Sunni) resistance."