Welcome to Ogden Marsh, Iowa, just a ways down the road from Cedar Rapids. Fine community with just one problem: A mysterious toxin in the water supply turns everyone exposed to it into mindless killers. The authorities don't care because the community is cordoned off. The plan - let "the crazies" take care of themselves. An adaptation of George Romero's original by the same title: The Crazies

Chris Wood | Vancouver | January 28

Straight - You may be able to see it, but you can’t measure it. No public agency requires the truckers or their employers to keep a tally of the water they extract from the Peace and other streams for delivery to the scores of gas wells being drilled at any one time in the area. Estimates based on Peace drilling activity, however, suggest that the giant sucking sound could reach as high as 135 billion litres a year. That’s enough water to fill a line of tanker trucks parked bumper to bumper around the equator—five abreast.

You’re also not allowed to know what gets mixed in with the river water before it’s injected into the ground under staggering pressure in order to fracture solid rock and release the hydrocarbons trapped there. Drilling contractors insist the mixes they use are trade secrets. The Oil and Gas Commission, British Columbia’s decade-old one-stop shop for gas and oil oversight, isn’t curious. “The question I ask in reverse,” said the OGC’s leader for corporate affairs, Steve Simons, in his Victoria digs—the temple to sustainable building, Dockside Green—“is why? Why is it important to know?”

You can't turn around lately without seeing something about vampires. They're on regular and cable television. They're in the theaters. And bookstores are overflowing with vampire love stories. We've even had to endure that dreadful HBO series, True Blood, about a mixed vampire – Louisiana bayou community where the vampires were the “good guys.”

Vampire lovers: What is your major malfunction?

I'll get right to the most disturbing part of the vampire infatuation. It is focused on sex as an acceptable fantasy or engagement with vampires.

Sex with vampires, or fantasizing about the same, is simply wrong. Every time you vampire lovers buy a movie ticket, watch a cable or television show, or other wise indulge this sex tinged vampire nonsense, you're behaving in the most scandalous way. Why do we need to lionize these sleepless, slime balls when we've got plenty of great horror available?

Suzanne Goldenberg | January 21

Guardian Online - Barack Obama faced a direct challenge to his government's powers to curb global warming pollution today.

In a speech to Congress, a Republican senator from Alaska announced she would use an obscure and rarely used measure to try to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a dangerous pollutant.

"We cannot turn a blind eye to the EPA's efforts to impose back-door climate regulations," Lisa Murkowski told the Senate in prepared remarks. Murkowski's motion of disapproval, though unlikely to become law, is widely seen as a barometer for the chances of getting a climate change bill through the Senate this year.

Murkowski's move, brought under the Congressional Review Act, would remove the Obama administration's "Plan B" for dealing with climate change, resorting to the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions if Congress fails to act. The motion of disapproval, called the "nuclear option" by environmentalists, would also ban the administration from drafting any new regulation that would be substantially the same. That would make it even more difficult for any US government to regulate power plants and other big emitters.

Luke Harding | Moscow | Jan 21

The Guardian - Environmentalists today rounded on Vladimir Putin after he amended legislation to allow the pollution of Russia's Lake Baikal, home to one-fifth of the world's supply of fresh water and unique plants and animals.

Putin ruled that a pulp and paper mill on the shores of the Siberian lake could resume production 15 months after being closed down on ecological grounds.

His decree appeared to be a favour to Oleg Deripaska, the plant's billionaire owner and the Russian prime minister's favourite oligarch.

For decades, environmental groups have attacked the Baikalsk pulp and paper mill, which bleaches paper with chlorine and discharges its waste water into the lake.

Putin allowed the factory to reopen after a visit to Baikal last summer, when he went to the bottom of the lake in a submersible mini-submarine.

Kathy Marks | Sydney | Jan 21

The Independent -

Forget sharks and crocodiles: the real menace at this time of year, at least for surburban Sydneysiders, is a backyard spider whose bite can kill you in the space of two hours.

Insect experts have warned that the city is being invaded by funnel-webs, considered one of the world's most aggressive and poisonous spiders. A reptile park north of Sydney where people can drop off captured specimens, and where they are milked of their venom to make antidote, has received more than 40 males in recent weeks. Males are deadlier than females.

A lengthy dry period, followed by unseasonable downpours and high humidity over the Christmas break, is blamed for the plague. "We've had a long spell of very warm weather combined with rain," said Mary Rayner, general manager of the Australian Reptile Park. "They are starting to come in thick and fast."

The Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, has also reported unusually large numbers of the feared arachnids this summer. Rex Gilroy, who runs a dangerous spiders hotline in the area, told the Sydney Morning Herald: "I think climate change might have something to do with it. This season there's more moisture and coolness, and the spiders have been able to breed up... [The numbers] are definitely up from the previous year, and I think it's not going to get any better."

Unlike most spiders, which scuttle away when disturbed, funnel-webs – which can grow to up to two inches long – may rear up and bare their fangs. They make burrows in moist, dark places, such as garden sheds, outdoor laundries and shrubberies.

Howard Pankratz | Jan 19

Denver Post - Yellowstone National Park has been rattled by more than 250 earthquakes in the past two days following a period of 11 months of quiet seismic activity in the park.

The quakes have been gaining strength, with a 3.1 tremor recorded at 11:03 a.m. today. A 2.9 quake was recorded at 12:38 p.m.

Prof. Robert B. Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Utah and one of the leading experts on earthquake and volcanic activity at Yellowstone, said that the activity is a "notable swarm."

"The swarm is located about 10 miles northwest of Old Faithful, Wyo., and nine miles southeast of West Yellowstone, Montana," said Smith.

Jamie Farrell, a doctoral student in geophysics who works with Smith at the University of Utah, said that as of 3 p.m. today, 270 quakes have been recorded in the past two days.

Farrell said the quakes are occurring in an area about 5 miles from where the largest swarm of quakes was ever recorded in October 1985.

Quakes in the current swarm have ranged in magnitude of 0.5 to 3.1.

Farrell said there have been reports of at least one of the tremors being felt in the park, but he is expecting more reports as the earthquakes continue.

Smith said such swarms are "relatively common." Today's tremors seem to be normal tectonic activity, and is "not an indication" that some sort of volcanic activity will occur.

Since 1995 there have been 80 swarms, including the one that started Sunday, Farrell said.

Elizabeth Bluemink | Jan 19

adn.com - For nearly a decade, scientists have puzzled over the persistence of oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

A pair of Lower 48 researchers on Sunday published results from the first study to attempt an explanation for why that oil isn't degrading as much as expected.

Their findings have implications for any future attempt to remove residual oil from the beaches -- a proposal launched by state and federal prosecutors in 2006 that is still being negotiated with Exxon Mobil Corp.

An estimated 21,000 gallons of the 11 million gallons of crude the Exxon tanker spilled in Prince William Sound in 1989 remain on Alaska beaches.

For years, federal and state officials expressed optimism that the oil from the massive spill would dissipate completely. In fact, in the first five years after the spill, scientific testing did show oil was degrading at a fast clip. Prince William Sound's beaches started to look idyllic again, even though people -- and animals -- digging below the surface still could find oil.

Since then, federal scientists have gathered evidence that disputes spill cleanup officials' prediction that all of the toxic oil would disappear in a few years. Further, the scientists say, the rate at which the oil is disappearing from the beaches has slowed down.

Don't look now but I think he's calling her corrupt

(ps - I happily consult with the Alliance for Climate Protection)

Kim Murphy | Jan 12

LA Times - Vancouver engineers its own urban dream - The city imposes notions of sustainability in its decisions on what, where and how to build. Still, it's not quite the utopia.

The result has come to be known as "Vancouverism," an urban motif of public transit instead of freeways, a low-carbon energy infrastructure and gleaming high-rise condominium towers in sunlit, walkable neighborhoods laced with urban parks.

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games next month provide a showcase for how Vancouver is trying to evolve. A $1-billion development that houses the athletes' village generates up to 70% of its power from converted sewage, and the vaulted ceiling of the Richmond speed-skating venue emphasizes that most renewable of resources, wood.

Over the last 20 years, Vancouver has managed to more than double the number of people living downtown while also reducing its carbon emissions per capita to the lowest levels of any big city in North America. The central city has refused to allow a single freeway and recently began to further tighten the noose around automobiles, closing lanes on crowded streets in favor of buses, bikes and sidewalks.

The city has hit up developers to build parks, recreation centers, libraries, day-care centers, and open, public waterfronts to a degree almost unknown anywhere else.

Esme McAvoy | Jan 10

The Independent - A film released this week in Britain recounts the 16-year battle by Ecuadorians for damages against Chevron for oil pollution

It's barely eight in the morning and already the dusty oil town of Lago Agrio, on the fringes of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is sweltering. Its name means "sour lake" in Spanish, after the hometown of Texan oil company Texaco – a fitting name for an area of once-pristine rainforest that has been decimated in the pursuit of oil. So severe is the environmental damage here that experts have called it an "Amazon Chernobyl".

But the people of Lago Agrio and its surrounding area have been fighting back. Sixteen years ago, 30,000 Ecuadorians began legal action against the US oil company – now owned by Chevron – they hold responsible. Early this year, from the town's tiny courtroom, a lone judge will deliver a verdict on their class-action case. If the judge rules in favour of the Ecuadorians, Chevron could face damages of $27.3bn (£17bn), making it the biggest environmental lawsuit in history.

This week, while both sides await the verdict, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the case goes on release in Britain. Called Crude, it is directed by Joe Berlinger, whose movie Metallica: Some Kind of Monster charted the band's travails.

In the words of the film's producers, the claim was "that from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s, Texaco (now Chevron) dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic waste and formation water directly into streams, rivers, and the jungle floor; that nearly 18 millions of crude oil was spilled and leaked from pipelines, that more than 235 billion cubic feet of natural gas was burned into the atmosphere, and that nearly 1,000 unlined toxic waste pits were built throughout the region."

Ido Liven | Tel Aviv | Jan 8

IPS - Ornithologists say that climate change is having a profound effect on bird behaviour and suggest that this phenomenon can act as an early warning system to the dangers posed to Earth.

‘’The fact that birds are changing their behaviour means that climate is changing already," says Marco Lambertini, chief executive of Birdlife International (BI), a conservation federation working to protect birds and their habitats. ‘’Birds are an excellent early warning system to what is happening to climate.’’

Numerous studies have been tracking the effects of climate change on the survival, migration and reproduction of different bird species. As spring temperatures rise, the breeding of Ficedula flycatcher has been delayed across Europe. The same reason was attributed to earlier breeding by Tree swallows in North America and an opposite tendency in Antarctic sea birds.

"Some are winners, some are losers. Some species will expand, some species will run out of habitat," said Lambertini, speaking with IPS on the on the sidelines of the annual Bird Watching Conference in Tel Aviv, last month. "But it's estimated that for each species that benefits, three species will be in trouble,’’ he said.

While climate change related threats to human livelihood might seem clear, the other consequences for man are not too obvious. "We still need to consider the intrinsic value of nature, its spiritual, aesthetic, emotional and recreational values which are as important as its economic value," said Lambertini.

Basildon Peta | Jan 8

The Independent - Computers and broadband have enabled Zambian weather forecasting to transform farmers' prospects, writes Basildon Peta

On a continent plagued by droughts and floods, an unremarked revolution is under way in the arid Southern Province of Zambia where 58-year-old Munalula Mate has harnessed the internet to help forecast and prevent natural disasters. Once the bread-basket province of the nation, the region around the city of Livingstone has in recent years experienced a slump in its agricultural fortunes because of the floods and droughts that ravage the area at regular intervals. But thanks to Mr Mate's work, that trend is being swiftly reversed.

Mr Mate is a weather forecaster with a classical training from the UK's Met Office. For years he has compiled short- and long-term forecasts in the Livingstone area. But their usefulness has been constrained by two factors. First, the local data he has been able to gather has been severely limited. Second, even when he compiled the best predictions he could, they were out of date by the time they could be effectively distributed throughout the remote rural province.

But those obstacles were all put behind him once he had landed his first computer and internet connection. Disasters are now being avoided and farming output has risen in his area by an average of 10 per cent every year for the past five years.

Michael Fitzpatrick | Jan 7

BBC - Scientists have uncovered what appears to be a further dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas that is seeping from the Arctic seabed.

Methane is about 20 times more potent than CO2 in trapping solar heat.

The findings come from measurements of carbon fluxes around the north of Russia, led by Igor Semiletov from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

"Methane release from the East Siberian Shelf is underway and it looks stronger than it was supposed [to be]," he said

Richard Black | January 5

BBC - It's cold in Kirkcaldy, freezing in Frankfurt and brass monkeys in Bryn Mawr... a winter spell with weather that's unusually - well - wintry.

But not everywhere; in fact, other places in the Northern Hemisphere are seeing weather that's unseasonably warm.

In Goose Bay in Newfoundland, it's barely getting below 0C - bikini weather, relatively speaking, given that the average minimum for January is -23C.

The cause of what one weather service refers to as these "upside down" conditions is an extreme of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). more

Annie Kelly | Pichccahuasi | Jan 3

The Guardian - Climate change is bringing freezing temperatures to poor villages where families have long existed on the margins of survival. Now some must choose whether to save the animals that give them a living, or their children.

heartbreaking decisions :(

Link fixed, thanks Raja! :)

Cahal Milmo | Jan 2

The Independent - Neodymium is one of 17 metals crucial to green technology. There’s only one snag – China produces 97% of the world’s supply. And they’re not selling

Britain and other Western countries risk running out of supplies of certain highly sought-after rare metals that are vital to a host of green technologies, amid growing evidence that China, which has a monopoly on global production, is set to choke off exports of valuable compounds.

Failure to secure alternative long-term sources of rare earth elements (REEs) would affect the manufacturing and development of low-carbon technology, which relies on the unique properties of the 17 metals to mass-produce eco-friendly innovations such as wind turbines and low-energy lightbulbs.

China, whose mines account for 97 per cent of global supplies, is trying to ensure that all raw REE materials are processed within its borders. During the past seven years it has reduced by 40 per cent the amount of rare earths available for export.

Industry sources have told The Independent that China could halt shipments of at least two metals as early as next year, and that by 2012 it is likely to be producing only enough REE ore to satisfy its own booming domestic demand, creating a potential crisis as Western countries rush to find alternative supplies, and companies open new mines in locations from South Africa to Greenland to satisfy international demand.

Dec 23

BBC -

St Mark's Square, Some 56% of the city of Venice is under the flood waters

More than half of the Italian city of Venice is flooded, after water levels rose to their highest point this year.

Strong winds and heavy rains, as well as the lagoon city's changing tide levels, have contributed to the high water levels, officials said.

The waters in some parts of the Renaissance city reached 143cm (56in) above sea level.

This is the 11th highest level since records began and experts fear it may rise even further early next year.

"As well as the rain, which played a big part, strong sirocco winds swelled the flood tide, combining to bring one of the biggest recent events," an expert quoted by Italian news agency Ansa said.

Levels in January may reach as high as 150cm above sea level, according to some estimates.

For some time now we in St. Maarten have been following the efforts of Sean Paton, former BBC reporter and environmental friend, in Bonaire to stop the Scientology 'training ship' Freewinds from dumping its raw waste water into the ditches and bush lands of Bonaire. For several years now he has been campaigning and posting videos on Youtube on the issue, one of the most recent reports confirmed his predictions and warnings that the practice would contaminate the island's ground water. The fear now is that in the long term, these contaminants will leach through the largely limestone and porous rocks of the island into the sea, last year studies were launched into the possible connections with a die off of spotted moray eels in the coastal waters.

What is truly amazing and astounding is that after Sean reported that wells are now contaminated, the island government of Bonaire have decided to let Freewinds continue the practice for at least another 6 months until a treatment facility can be built. Knowing how slow things move in these Caribbean islands, we have our doubts that this will happen in this time frame. Knowing too how corrupt and self interested most of these island politicians are, I, and many others down this way have some very strong suspicions that Scientology has most likely used its influence and money to obtain this permission, in fact we believe it has been going on for years. Freewinds, for those who are unfamiliar with the ship, is based in the Caribbean because if it entered US waters it would most likely be seized and condemned because of asbestos.

Scientology as we all know, does not like bad press, so it is our hope that by exposing this story here to all you Agonists, that maybe you can help us give them some. I will be sending this story to Huff, C&L and OGM, but we would really appreciate any help from you all to give it more exposure wherever you can.

Note:   It seems that Sean (Paton) removed the two videos, he did inform us that he has been under a great deal of pressure from authorities and that vague threats have been made against him and others. I have reposted them both myself with the expectation they will come after me next to remove them, or request Youtube to, so watch them while you can.

Bonaire-State of emergency Part 1
Bonaire-State of emergency Part 2

Dec 20

BBC - The high price of gold has drawn thousands of miners to a region of south-east Peru, but deforestation and the high levels of mercury used in mining has led to fears of an imminent ecological disaster, as Dan Collyns reports.

It is only from the air that you can see the full extent of the destruction.

The forests seems almost endless until it is abruptly interrupted by the raw colours of sand and earth; rivers torn open and thousands of hectares denuded and pocked with dead, stagnant pools of water.

Alluvial gold mining in Peru's southern Amazon rainforest has spread, driven by the high price of gold, now more than $1,100 (£680) per ounce, or $36 a gram.

Close to 200 sq kms (77 sq miles) of jungle have been lost in the evocatively named Madre de Dios (Mother of God) region.

Joss Garman | Denmark | Dec 20

The Independent - The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speaker-phone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can't summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion.

Then a Chinese premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Barack Obama's speech that he refuses to meet – sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager's house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.

Late in the evening, the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs that they call a "deal", although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them signing it with great solemnity.

Obama's team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global-climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball. Before we know it, The New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a "meaningful" accord.

Meanwhile, a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 bloc of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal.

It's the first they've heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises. more

Jonathan Brown | Dec 18

The Independent -

For those few hundred visitors who make the long journey by ship each year to see the hut for themselves, it looks eerily as if the adventurers had just stepped outside. Yet it is nearly a century since Robert Falcon Scott and his men embarked on their doomed march to the South Pole, an episode that was to go down as one of the most vainglorious in the heroic age of exploration.

Today their huts at Cape Evans on Ross Island, complete with preserved jars of Heinz Indian Relish, tins of boiled cabbage and still-edible pats of butter, are undergoing a vital restoration. Here, where Scott's party endured a gruelling Antarctic winter as they planned their assault on the South Pole, conservationists hope to restore for future generations a permanent monument to the bravery of the men who gave up comfortable middle class lives to risk all in the blizzards and sub-zero temperatures.

Nearly £3.5m has been raised to safeguard the quarters which became a microcosm of Edwardian society during the opening stages of the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910-13, Scott's second and final foray on to the frozen continent.

The most urgent work has already begun as experts announced this week that they had uncovered 300 new artefacts belonging to the expedition. But time and the elements are stacked against the future survival of Scott's hut and its 8,000 items of equipment and expedition memorabilia, and it has been declared one of the most endangered sites in the world by the World Monument Fund.

** You wouldn't want this on your toast: 100-year-old pat of butter found at Scott's Antarctic base(pic)

Al Gore, in a speech yesterday in Copenhagen, called for an aggressive timetable to pass a climate change bill by April 2010 (or the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day). Good idea or too ambitious?

Video after jump