Massive Toxic Spill follow-up

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Thursday September 18, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/18 · 17:00

On August 4, 2014 the wall of a settling pond full of toxic mining waste from the Mount Polley mine broke and allowed a river of toxic sludge into Quesnel Lake in northern British Columbia. On August 6, 2014 I wrote a diary Massive toxic sludge spilled into pristine wilderness. The Mount Polley Mine owned by Imperial Metals Corp. has been closed since the spill and continues to be shut down for maintenance and clean-up. Although many experts say a clean-up is impossible, the heavy metals have settled into the lakes and rivers.

- August 24, 2014, the Health Ministry for the area issued a new ban on drinking water.

- August 26, 2014, David Suzuki weighs in with a Wake-Up Call for Canada's Mining Industry.

- September 1, 2014, Imperial Metals Corp. boosted the original estimate of the spill.

- September 2, 2014 after areal photographs were taken Damien Gillis reported that
Mount Polley spill may be far bigger than initially revealed.

Agathena for Canadian Kossacks

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Monday September 08, 2014 · 10:32 AM PDT

2014/09/08 · 10:32

"I don't care."

Of all the nefarious things that our Conservative government has done to our Country, possibly the worst is its war on Science. We have witnessed it for years. Recently a report (pdf in French) studying 12 countries by the French National trade Union of Scientific Researchers (SNCS-FSU) has zeroed in on Canada for the way it has treated its scientists. i have included a link and review of the book The War on Science and the top-rated CBC documentary The Silence of the Labs (43 min). Surprisingly, it was shown on the public tv station. And the CBC was punished for it with massive budget cuts that forced them to lay off 1,500 employees.

This morning on my Facebook page there was the headline from DeSmog.ca on Canada's war on science and I thought you might want to know a little more about what is happening to that once free and open country to the North of you.

Agathena for UN Climate Summit

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Friday August 22, 2014 · 9:00 AM PDT

2014/08/22 · 09:00

The title is from "What Then Must We Do?" Tolstoy's 1886 book. It was used in Peter Weir's film The Year of Living Dangerously by the character Billy Kwan. It's also the title of the book I am reading "What Then Must We do?: Straight Talk about the next American Revolution" by Gar Alperovitz.

The question really is, now that we know what is wrong, what is killing the planet and putting living creatures on a path towards extinction, what are we going to do about? We need to take action. Historically, marches and demonstrations have worked, even in dictatorships, because they make governments and policy-makers pay attention. The Climate March will inform them that this issue of Climate Change/Global Warming is very important to us.

Agathena for DK GreenRoots

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Tuesday August 12, 2014 · 2:15 PM PDT

2014/08/12 · 14:15

Last week I posted this diary:
Massive Toxic sludge spilled into pristine wilderness
There were questions in the comments like "how could this happen?" and "what are the people of BC saying about this?" I began this diary as a follow-up with some answers to those questions. However, as I started to research the follow-up I hit more and more information on the Pebble Mine, proposed in beautiful Bristol Bay. A mine that will be 10 times the size of the Mount Polley Mine. The mining company for Pebble Mine has hired the same designers that built the toxic pond for the Mount Polley strip mine shown above This diary hopes to answer the questions about how this disaster could happen and what the people are saying about it in British Columbia, Canada. At the same time, I'm hoping to alert people that the same thing could happen to the tailings pond in the proposed Pebble Mine, Alaska. There is still time to stop that mine. Links below.

Agathena for DK GreenRoots

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Wednesday August 06, 2014 · 4:03 PM PDT

2014/08/06 · 16:03

This is basically mountain top removal, a gold/silver/copper strip mine on top of what once was a mountain. It's a guaranteed danger to all the bodies of water below.

33 aerial photographs of the disaster.

Agathena for Team DFH

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Wednesday June 25, 2014 · 12:34 PM PDT

2014/06/25 · 12:34

Goose attack leaves woman
scarred and shaken. CBC

After five days in hospital, Kerry Surman describes the how she was riding her bike along The TransCanada Trail near her home when she saw a Canada Goose family, 2 adults and a gaggle of goslings cross the trail. As the last adult passed the trail, she figured it would be safe to zip by. She was wrong.
Read More

The Obama Administration and Climate Change

Agathena for Climate Change SOS

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Friday June 20, 2014 · 1:39 PM PDT

2014/06/20 · 13:39

This is an overview of the changing, up and down position of the administration on Climate Change ending on a high note, sort of. It's our most pressing issue today everywhere and anywhere.

In 2008 Obama's strong statements at an international conference in Los Angeles on climate change:
"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all," Obama said. "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high; the consequences, too serious."

"Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change," Obama said. "The science is beyond dispute, and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

"When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

These statements were welcomed by environmentalists and climate scientists around the world.

Big Leaf Maple, Mystic Vale, Saanich BC Read More

Breaking: Harper approves Northern Gateway Pipeline - UPDATED

Agathena for Canadian Kossacks

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Tuesday June 17, 2014 · 4:39 PM PDT

2014/06/17 · 16:39

#NorthernGateway Pipeline will originate in Alberta and cross the entire province of British Columbia from east to west.

It will carry bitumen from the tar sands across Alberta and British Columbia, across First Nations territory, under pristine rivers, through woodlands and wilderness to Kitimat to be then shipped overseas in super tankers. As you can see Kitimat is an inland port and the super tankers will have to negotiate a narrow channel filled with islands to get to the open ocean. Read More

The 6th Great Extinction (you don't want to read this)

Agathena for DK GreenRoots

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Friday May 30, 2014 · 12:59 PM PDT

2014/05/30 · 12:59

but I have to write it, to get it off my mind. I don't blame people for not wanting to take part in this conversation. But it really demands our attention. This is a hopeful diary because I believe that if we change, we might survive. I highlight three other writers who are also hopeful.

Staff writer for The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert is hopeful if we preserve what's left of our wilderness;

Duke University scientist Stuart Pimm encourages us to work to save the most endangered animals;

British writer George Monbiot in the Guardian wants us to change our economic system.

Agathena for Climate Change SOS

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Wednesday May 07, 2014 · 6:17 AM PDT

2014/05/07 · 06:17

CONSUME, SCREW, KILL
The origins of today’s mass extinction
That’s us in the title of Daniel Smith’s essay in Harper's on the book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Kolbert begins coyly, with a kind of a fairy tale. “Maybe two hundred thousand years ago," a new species emerges on Earth. Compared with other species around at the time—mammoths, mastodons, armadillos the size of Smart cars, […]—the members of this new species aren’t very fast or very strong. But they’re shrewd, or reckless, or oth. “None of the usual constraints of habitat or geography seem to check them,: she writes. They start out in a small section of eastern African. There’s water there, and plenty to eat. But are they satisfied?

China's last wild IndoChinese tiger shot, killed and eaten, 2009.

Agathena for DK GreenRoots

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Thursday April 24, 2014 · 12:05 PM PDT

2014/04/24 · 12:05

Biologist Tyrone Hayes battles one of the biggest agribusinesses in the world
I urge you to listen to this excellent interview podcast (24 minutes) included in the above link and you can judge Tyrone Hayes for yourself.

A powerful herbicide is a friend to farmers, but may not be a friend to frogs.
More than half the corn crops in the United States are treated with a herbicide called Atrazine. Golf courses and Christmas tree farms also get the Atrazine treatment to keep weeds under control. The chemical is used in Canada as well, though it is no longer used in the European Union.

In 1997, biologist Tyrone Hayes received funding from the maker of the chemical -- a company that would later become Syngenta -- to study its effects on the environment. He found Atrazine caused sexual abnormalities in frogs. He says Syngenta tried to stop him from publishing his findings and that it launched a campaign to discredit his research.

But Tyrone Hayes continued, looking into Atrazine as a professor of Integrative Biology at University of California, Berkeley. Documents released in a class-action law suit in 2005 suggest the company tried to side-line Professor Hayes and his work.

Agathena for DK GreenRoots

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Monday January 13, 2014 · 12:10 PM PST

2014/01/13 · 12:10

The title was my reaction after listening to Young on CBC radio with Jian Gomeshi. Young is beginning a benefit Honour the Treaties Tour with Diana Krall. He wants Canadians to think for themselves, he is only telling them what he has seen and what he knows about the tar sands. He sympathizes with the workers up in Fort Mac but he is doesn't want his grandchildren to find themselves in the hole that they are digging there, a hole so deep they won't be able to see the sky.

Tar Sands and Boreal Forest

At a press conference in Toronto before his benefit concert for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and its fight against the big oil and the Canadian government, Young said

“It’s the greediest, most destructive and disrespectful demonstration of something run amok that you can ever see,”

“Get a grip and understand what is really happening,” he said. “It is hypocritical, some of the things that are being said by the leaders of this country. It’s embarrassing as a Canadian to have to listen to some of this stuff. It’s all marketing, it’s all big money.

“This oil is all going to China. It’s not for Canada. It’s not for the United States. It’s not ours. It belongs to the oils companies and Canada’s government is behind making this happen.”

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Massive Toxic Spill follow-up

The War on Science: A Canadian Horror Story

Climate: "What then must we do?"

Toxic Spill in the Cariboo & The Pebble Mine in Alaska

Massive Toxic sludge spilled into pristine wilderness

Woman Attacked by a Canada Goose Spends 5 Days in Hospital

The Obama Administration and Climate Change

Breaking: Harper approves Northern Gateway Pipeline - UPDATED

The 6th Great Extinction (you don't want to read this)

"CONSUME, SCREW, KILL"

Big Hero takes on Big Agribusiness

Canada's Tar Sands: "We've got Neil Young!"