Children of the Sun: Star Nation

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http://starnationpeople.blogspot.com/2008/10/there-is-prophecy.html

Goldman Prize Winners put it all on the line...

Have you ever heard about this Prize? Neither had I...

Read on...

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The digital age might allow us to transcend geography, but real places -- places far and near, exotic and humble -- still matter. Just ask the six winners of the 2007 Goldman Prize, who risk their reputations, their livelihoods, and their lives to protect very particular pieces of turf. Whether they're fighting for a stand of big-leaf mahogany in the remote Peruvian Amazon, a family farm in Ireland, a stretch of boreal forest in Canada, or an incomparable fishing stream in Iceland, they're committed to the dirt beneath their feet, and their dedication has deep roots.

"We knew we were going to lose everything we had," says Irish farmer Willie Corduff, who was jailed for opposing a gas pipeline on his land. "It wasn't a lot, but it was what was handed down to us, so it was an old tradition. And we loved where we lived. So I said, 'Look, I have to stand up for this.'"

Each year, the Goldman Environmental Prize honors such extraordinary dedication. The prize was established in 1990 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman (Richard Goldman founded Goldman Insurance Services in San Francisco, and Rhoda Goldman was a descendant of jeans-maker Levi Strauss). Winners represent every major region of the world -- Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South and Central America, and island nations -- and are nominated each year by environmental organizations.

New Levels of Censorship on Gov't Scientists? and Their Peer Reviewers?

What sort of danger is there for the public when politics interferes with the dissemination of scientific data and information? What if it is in regards to Public Health, Public Safety? What if politics gets in the way of the actual scientific findings even coming out?

Or worse yet, what happens when the studies done by scientists are falsified?

That might be the case, for instance, in the study of the water that seeps through Yucca Mountain where the federal government will place tons of radioactive waste material.

Can you imagine the impact of the true data on that being tampered with? It is a harrowing, but all too believable, scenario to think that Inconvenient Truths are swept aside for political reasons. But what are the costs to you and I in the end? What happens, say, if the great aquifer of North America becomes contaminated with radioactive material? What happens to you and I, or our children, or the plants and the animals?

There are news stories almost every day about something unexplained plaguing populations of birds and animals. And when scientists find the culprits, or go looking for them, they often begin and end their search with contaminates that have entered land and waterways by human hands.

If we are at the top of the food chain, we are dumping our most toxic waste into the very chain we will eat from. That isn't 'shitting where you sleep' that is 'shitting where you eat', a foul image but one that is disgustingly true.

Today's Article on the Government regulating the information that comes from our own Publicly funded Scientists...and the information that is coming from their Peer Reviewers, which means every other Scientist in the Country.

Today's Article on 1000 dead Mallard Ducks found alongside ONE stream. They don't know what is causing it, but they suffered and died from lesions on the lung walls and hemorrhaging of the heart.

Today's Article about a Wisconsin hunter that found a deer with 7 legs and both female and male sex organs.

Today's Article about sloppy use of scientific data in regards to opening up areas of Grizzly habitat in Idaho and WA. Now a federal judge has slapped down the government agencies in question and sent them back to the drawing board on their assessment of impact.

Yesterday's Article about the extinction of an entire species of fresh water Dolphin in China. A species that was with us not so long ago. Many more marine and fresh water animals are where the Yangtze White Dolphin was just a few years ago, which is now so much more clearly meaning on the verge of extinction.

Gaia Scientist Predicts...

...that we are just holding off the inevitable at this point. Global temperatures, he says, could raise as much as 8 degrees Celsius and that the best we can do is buy ourselves time...because the damage has been done, the gears of the giant mechanism are already in motion in make it happen.

The Gaia theory, from what little I have heard about it, looks at the entire earth as one living organism which can and does regulate itself.

This would be the counterpoint on the other end of the spectrum from the Global Warming Science skepticism that I posted several weeks ago.

The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it's 6 billion people.

"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out," he told a news conference. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

"Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback ... and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world," he added.

Scientists say that global warming due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport could boost average temperatures by up to 6C by the end of the century causing floods, famines and violent storms.

But they also say that tough action now to cut carbon emissions could stop atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hitting 450 parts per million -- equivalent to a temperature rise of 2C from pre-industrial levels -- and save the planet.

Lovelock said temperature rises of up to 8C were already built in and while efforts to curb it were morally commendable, they were wasted.

"It is a bit like if your kidneys fail you can go on dialysis -- and who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative. We should think of it in that context," he said.

"But remember that all they are doing is buying us time, no more. The problems go on," he added.

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