Patty Lovera, Food & Water Watch & Paul Shapiro, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) & Colin O’Neil, Center for Food Safety join Thom to talk about the safety of our food. Approximately 48 million Americans get sick every year from food borne illnesses. How is this possible given all the technology and regulatory power at our disposal? The answer – in tonight’s Bigger Picture panel discussion about food safety.
Patty Lovera, Food & Water Watch & Paul Shapiro, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) & Colin O’Neil, Center for Food Safety join Thom to talk about the safety of our food. Approximately 48 million Americans get sick every year from food borne illnesses. How is this possible given all the technology and regulatory power at our disposal? The answer – in tonight’s Bigger Picture panel discussion about food safety.
Many students have vowed to ramp up their divestment campaigns at universities across America this spring. One group who has garnered much media attention is Divest Harvard, which is wrapping up a week-long campaign known as “Harvard Heat Week.” Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in the world at $36.4 billion, and hundreds of alumni including Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, and former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth are participating in the group’s efforts this week.
Images show no fuel inside No.1 reactor core
Nuclear & Energy Mar. 19, 2015 – Updated 06:47 UTC-4
Researchers say X-ray-like photos of a crippled reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have confirmed that no nuclear fuel remains in the reactor core.
The finding supports the result of a simulation suggesting most of the molten fuel penetrated the core’s base.
Nuclear fuel in 3 of the plant’s 6 reactors melted down in the March 2011 nuclear accident at the plant. But extremely high radiation levels have prevented experts from locating and determining the state of the molten fuel.
Experts from the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and other institutions have succeeded in taking X-ray-like photos of the plant’s No.1 reactor.
Since February, they have been using a type of elementary particle called the muon to get a peek inside the reactor, instead of using X-ray technology. The particles are created when cosmic rays collide with the Earth’s atmosphere.
The experts found nuclear fuel inside a storage pool located beside the No.1 reactor. But they did not find fuel inside the core of the reactor where the meltdown took place.
The finding confirms the result from an earlier computer simulation that suggested most of the fuel in the reactor core likely melted and fell through the bottom into the containment vessel housing the core.
Experts say the finding that most of the fuel had leaked out of the reactor core underlines the difficulties faced in scrapping the reactor.
Thom airs “Restoration,” the last in a series of four climate change documentaries narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and presented by Thom Hartmann. Tonight’s Big Picture Rumble talks Hillary’s words on campaign finance reform, how much of our tax dollars are going to subsidize workers at companies like Walmart and McDonalds, and whether Republicans in Congress will repeal the estate tax.
West Along the River: Stories from the Connecticut River Valley and Elsewhere
West Along the River is a compilation of lyrical essays and stories on nature and life in several villages in the Connecticut River Valley and beyond, to include travel adventures in Ireland, Brittany and France. The author connects the oral history of events and village characters, comical encounters and tender remembrances, in linking the past and present to create a unique sense of place.
West Along the River 2
The is the second book in a series about nature, village life, sense of place in the Connecticut River Valley, and beyond. Seasons in western New England, family, Red Sox lore and local heroes in Fenway Park, encounters with bears and other memorable wild creatures, Native American presence, and adventures in Ireland, Brittany and France complete this collection. Lyrical nature writing and tender remembrance connect the past and present, helping record oral history of a corner of New England rural culture.
Ocean acidification triggered by Siberian Trap volcanism was a possible kill mechanism for the Permo-Triassic Boundary mass extinction, but direct evidence for an acidification event is lacking. We present a high-resolution seawater pH record across this interval, using boron isotope data combined with a quantitative modeling approach. In the latest Permian, increased ocean alkalinity primed the Earth system with a low level of atmospheric CO2 and a high ocean buffering capacity. The first phase of extinction was coincident with a slow injection of carbon into the atmosphere, and ocean pH remained stable. During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota
In which we learn that there are some parts of the game hard to un-rig and the price of free trade.
Senator Bernie Sanders,who may or may not be running for president, was on with Thom Hartmann for their usual Friday chat. Right at the moment, Sanders is standing atop the battlements against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the secretive intercontinental job-suck for which the skids are being greased in the Congress even as we speak. The most remarkable thing to me about this oncoming car-bomb to the economy is the fact that the Congress is being asked to give the president fast-track authority on a massive agreement that only members of Congress can read, but that none of them can discuss. Sanders told Hartmann that he could read the proposed agreement, but he had to go into a secret room to do so. This, he rightly argues, is a completely crazy way to make public policy.
The reason they put a gag rule on the delegates of the Constitutional Convention was because they didn’t want the country to fall apart, and because they didn’t want the convention to last 300 years and come to no real conclusion even by then. And even then, there was a strong strain of opposition to secret agreements deep in the American political soul. To name only one person who had no use for what came out of secret conventions, Mercy Otis Warren, one of my favorite American polemicists, went fairly well up the wall.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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