James Wilt at Vice writes—There Is a New Climate Change Disaster Looming in Northern Canada:
Of all the climate change issues that have been melodramatically dubbed a "carbon bomb" in recent years—tar sands projects in Alberta, catastrophic wildfires in Indonesia, holes in Australia's seagrass meadows—it seems the thawing of permafrost in the Arctic is most likely to live up to the hype. There's a staggering amount of methane and carbon dioxide, like hundreds of gigatons worth, trapped under the permanently frozen layer of soil and rock in the form of ice crystals and biomass.
If released due to the ongoing crescendo of warming in the Arctic, it could trigger a global feedback loop and burn us all to a fucking crisp. Yet there's another very real issue associated with thawing permafrost that's received far less attention outside of industry circles, perhaps because of the lack of a catchy apocalyptic phrase to accompany it.
For decades, mine operators in Northern Canada have stored waste rock and tailings waste—the "pulverized rock slurry" byproduct of mineral processing that's filled with skeevy chemicals like arsenic, lead, and mercury—in frozen dams reinforced with permafrost, an option far cheaper than constructing artificial structures to house the goop. But if such walls thaw, allowing air and water to interact with the highly reactive tailings, widespread "acid mine drainage" (AMD) could occur. Such a process can generate sulphuric acid and result in the leaching of heavy metals into nearby soil and water sources.
"Permafrost degradation is going to affect everything," says Magdalena Muir, research associate at the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America. "When you have frozen infrastructure, you don't have to build an artificial structure and probably get used to not having to worry too much about breaches. But as soon as you have soil that behaves just like any other soil, you have all the issues you'd have in southern Canada."
The Canadian mining sector produces around one million tons of waste rock and 950,000 tons of tailings per day. As a result, the prospect of widespread AMD could be disastrous for the Canadian North: such scenarios would obviously be nightmares to contain, with the remoteness and cold climate seriously impeding cleanup. Think the Deepwater Horizon of the Arctic, except not nearly as visible and minus the dead dolphins to draw attention to the disaster. And like methane bubbling out of the permafrost, the situation only gets worse as it unfolds. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—FBI Still Stuck in the Tron Age:
Three years after the attacks of September 11th, I was pretty disturbed to read this story in today's NYT:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is on the verge of scrapping a $170 million computer overhaul that is considered critical to the campaign against terrorism but has been riddled with technical and planning problems, F.B.I. officials said on Thursday. [...] The development is a major setback for the F.B.I. in a decade-long struggle to escape a paper-driven culture and replace antiquated computer systems that have hobbled counterterrorism and criminal investigations. Robert S. Mueller III, the bureau's director, along with members of the Sept. 11 commission and other national security experts, have said the success of that effort is critical to domestic security. (Emphasis added.)
Are they KIDDING me? Why can't they get this right, especially since these are long-standing problems, problems which the FBI was made aware of well before 9/11, hell, a really, really long time before 9/11
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin puts early state polling & predictions under the microscope. Monte Frank discusses 10 reasons why 2015 was a year of progress for gun violence prevention. Sailorghazi Freakout. Bundypalooza militia nuts stalk locals, kill one another.
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