Pine Pollen – How to Pick Your Own Superfood
Food Plants - Perennial, Health & Disease, Medicinal Plants, Nuclear, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Trees, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Sunny Soleil January 4, 2012
Most of us know about pine needle tea as a rich source of Vitamin C, but now white pine pollen is to being promoted as a highly nutritious superfood powder. But who needs to buy it when you can pick your own?
Arthur Haines shows you how and when to harvest pine pollen with strategies for gathering sufficient to make tinctures or use as food. Haines also goes into detail about the nutritional chemistry of pine pollen which is rich in non-enzymatic anti-oxidants like pro vitamin A, B Complex, C, D and E plus a host of minerals and amino acids. Apparently pine pollen is also a great defence against radioactive Cesium that is appearing in dairy and other foods in the US.
Part I
Why Societies Fail and a Lesson from the Game of Monopoly
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Nuclear, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor June 10, 2011
They say if we don’t study history, we’re destined to repeat it. Many of you will be familiar with Jared Diamond and his work. Author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Mr. Diamond has put a lot of energy into studying various cultures that have come, and, significantly, gone again. Amongst these is the example of Easter Island, where it appears that despite the islanders’ major resources being clearly in decline, they continued to use these resources for their own particular, peculiar economy — that being to make their giant Moai idols. Not only that, but, over time, as the resources needed to create them dwindled, the Moai statues only got larger. Their economy not only had to continue, but it had to grow — regardless of their context, and despite what should have been obvious consequences.
Some dispute the exact nature of the collapse of Easter Island, but what we do know is that pollen samples taken from the island show that it was once covered in forest, yet by the time Europeans arrived the island was treeless. There are no pollen traces dated beyond around 1650, around the same time the statues ceased being made. Surviving clans after this time, no longer able to create more competing statues, instead took to pushing over those of rival clans — until by 1868 all the Moai had been toppled, and many beheaded.
Comments (12)Nuclear Bunny
Energy Systems, Health & Disease, Nuclear — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor June 6, 2011
This video spotlights a cute little bunny wabbit — but one with a difference…. Allegedly born just outside the Fukushima Nuclear Plant’s exclusion zone (I can’t confirm that anyone has verified this…), the bunny has no ears. It begs the question — what’s next for Japan’s human residents and their offspring?
For good measure, here’s another video release of the rabbit. It’s definitely Japanese speech in the background, but that’s all we know….
Comments (14)The Nuclear Race to the Bottom
Alternatives to Political Systems, Economics, Nuclear, People Systems, peak oil — by Thomas Fischbacher April 29, 2011
One thing that often is forgotten in discussions about nuclear energy utilization is that it involves quite a lot of very dirty and dangerous work. According to Bill Mollison, Uranium mining companies in Australia often employed Aborigines as miners, knowing that they would not go to court should they develop cancer. The situation in the U.S. was fairly similar, with the Navajo Indians in the role of the miners (1).
Further down the chain, there is chemical processing of Uranium ore to "Yellow Cake" (Uranium oxide), which then undergoes isotope separation and is turned into nuclear fuel. While I would have an interesting personal story to share about Yellow Cake production in Germany, let us skip this step and look a bit further down the chain. The most interesting step in the life of nuclear fuel is perhaps when it is subjected to an environment in which fission occurs in a controlled way inside a nuclear reactor. Here, nuclear fuel becomes seriously radioactive.
Clearly, nuclear reactors are very complicated machines that need a lot of maintenance effort. Who are the people who do the dangerous tasks that involve serious contamination risks inside nuclear power plants? I was quite amazed when I first learned that professional divers can specialize in nuclear diving — which means you will end up diving and doing underwater welding in environments such as spent fuel pools (2). Who is doing such work?
Comments (6)Fukushima Nuclear Crisis – Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold
Consumerism, Energy Systems, Health & Disease, Nuclear, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by I-SIS April 14, 2011
Fukushima is just one among many similar disasters waiting to happen worldwide; governments and regulators have systematically downplayed the risks and hidden the real costs of nuclear power; there is no place for nuclear in a truly green energy portfolio; furthermore, there is a lot we can do to put the nuclear genie back into the bottle.
A fully referenced and illustrated version of this report is posted on ISIS members website and is available for download here.
Nuclear crisis following earthquake & tsunami
On Friday 11 March 2011, Japan was hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a gigantic tsunami. The official toll by 6 April was 12 468 dead, and more than 15 000 missing [1], hundreds of thousands lost their homes, millions are still either without electricity or affected by shortages of electricity [2]; and most worrying of all, a nuclear disaster with no end in sight. The earthquake and tsunami were unstoppable, but was the nuclear disaster waiting to happen, and could it have been avoided?
Comments (6)Earth Policy Institute Video Asks “How Many Failing States Will It Take?”
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Nuclear, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 8, 2011
Watch the full episode.
In this PBS-produced video, with actor and philanthropist Matt Damon narrating, Lester Brown gives a good overview of some of the current issues we face as a race. He connects the dots between the world’s rapidly melting glaciers, extreme weather events, and resource depletion, etc., and what it will mean to world food harvests, and the economic and social implications of wealthier countries outbidding poorer nation states for a share of these diminishing harvests, and water and energy supplies. Two of the key words he uses are ‘failing states’, a relatively new term that is quickly gaining in ‘popularity’ as we watch the present chain reaction of events occurring today.
Lester asks the question "How many failing states will it take before we see civilization itself fail?"
Comments (4)Nuclear Power – Not Now, Not Ever
Nuclear — by Ernest Partridge March 29, 2011
Any citizen with even a casual awareness of the public debate over nuclear power is familiar with the usual talking points, pro and con, regarding this issue: safety, costs, environmental impacts, etc. I will not burden the reader with a rehash of these familiar issues.
Instead, I propose to enrich the debate with some issues with which the general public might be less familiar, all of which issues lead strongly to the conclusion that electric power generation from nuclear reactors should be phased out with deliberate speed and the technology abandoned — permanently.
Comments (7)Nuclear Energy: A Resource for an Insane Society
Consumerism, Nuclear, peak oil — by Anton Lo March 28, 2011
Bill Mollison groups the earth’s resources into five categories. These resources are:
- Those which increase by modest use. For example, green browse that is uneaten by deer may become hard and unpalatable.
- Those unaffected by use. Some examples are a view or a good climate, hydroelectric power.
- Those which disappear or degrade if not used. An example is an unharvested crop of an annual.
- Those reduced by use. Some examples are a fish or game stock unwisely used, clay deposits, coal and oil.
- Those which pollute or destroy other resources if used. Examples include radioactives, super highways, large buildings.
Click for more…
What To Do With Nuclear Boy?
Consumerism, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Nuclear, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 24, 2011
Given recent events in Japan, I wanted to broach the somewhat controversial topic of nuclear fission power plants, and the following video (thanks Thomas) — making the Fukushima nuclear situation a little easier for even little Japanese children to comprehend — makes a good lead-in to the topic.
At time of writing, water and food options are shrinking for residents of Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, whilst the short, medium and long term consequences of this nuclear incident are a topic of much speculation. My heart goes out to the people of Japan, and particularly those in the Fukushima Prefecture.
There are several schools of thought on nuclear. Here’s a sampling. You may wish to add others:
Comments (38)Power Trip
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, Nuclear, Society — by Marc Roberts August 16, 2010
Click for full view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
The UK Gov’t backtracks on cast iron commitments to environmental performance standards to make space for more dirty coal.
I can’t help thinking it’s a sweetener to bring the big energy companies on board for the stalled nuclear programme. Investors won’t commit unless the taxpayer guarantees their profits and underwrites the decommissioning costs.
Public debt for private profit, without so much as a mention of consumer restraint – all sounds depressingly familiar.
Comments (0)War With The Ghosts
Nuclear, Society — by George Monbiot March 25, 2010
What are our nuclear weapons for, and who controls them?
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
Sharing our nuclear deterrence with France is out of the question. Last week the government slapped down a French offer to reduce the costs of our submarine patrols, by taking turns to prowl the same seas rather than duplicating the effort and occasionally crashing into each other. This proposal, it said, would cause “outrage”, on the grounds that it’s an unacceptable erosion of sovereignty(1). Using a system leased from the United States, on the other hand, presents no such difficulty. When the government says our sovereignty is threatened, it means that another nation might disrupt the orders it receives from Washington.
So we must maintain the pretence that this is ours alone, and sustain our extravagant doctrine of “continuous at-sea deterrence”. Deterrence against what? Nazis? Aliens? Killer jellyfish? Our Trident missiles, due to be replaced and deployed at a cost of several tens of billions(2), have no visible strategic purpose. They are the reification of a fantasy: a fantasy that the United Kingdom is still a defining world power and that our enemies present an existential threat. As usual, the government is preparing for the last war, building a fantastical Maginot Line against the enemies of a previous century, the ghost armies that haunt the official imagination.
Comments (0)Nuclear Fusion – a Long Shot?
Global Warming/Climate Change, Nuclear, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor May 4, 2009
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If you could compare all the different applications of clean technology (solar, wind, etc.) to horses in a race, I guess you could say that Nuclear Fusion is the ‘long shot’. It’s the old nag that everyone expects to come in last, if it comes in at all. But, as long shots do, if it does come in the pay-off would be huge.
Often slated to be a fifty year project, the time-frame has recently been chiselled down to a ‘modest’ thirty years – maybe.
Comments (3)The Crash Course
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Financial Management, Nuclear, Population, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor January 14, 2009
I’ve referenced Chris Martenson’s excellent ‘Crash Course’ a couple of times, but now I’ve discovered Chris has also uploaded it to YouTube, so can embed here for your convenience and viewing pleasure.
For those not familiar, this twenty chapter presentation is arguably the best effort I’ve seen to help people understand our current world predicament, with an emphasis on economics. It’s a must watch (in addition to ‘Money as Debt‘). Do share the link with your contacts.
Chapter 1 – Three Beliefs & Chapter 2 – The Three E’s
Comments (5)The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power
Nuclear — by Earth Policy Institute November 1, 2008
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, Washington D.C., U.S.A.
 Click for full view Courtesy: Throbgoblins |
Over the last few years the nuclear industry has used concerns about climate change to argue for a nuclear revival. Although industry representatives may have convinced some political leaders that this is a good idea, there is little evidence of private capital investing in nuclear plants in competitive electricity markets. The reason is simple: nuclear power is uneconomical.
In an excellent recent analysis, “The Nuclear Illusion,” Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh put the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant at 14¢ per kilowatt hour and that from a wind farm at 7¢ per kilowatt hour. This comparison includes the costs of fuel, capital, operations and maintenance, and transmission and distribution. It does not include the additional costs for nuclear of disposing of waste, insuring plants against an accident, and decommissioning the plants when they wear out. Given this huge gap, the so-called nuclear revival can succeed only by unloading these costs onto taxpayers. If all the costs of generating nuclear electricity are included in the price to consumers, nuclear power is dead in the water.
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