Not a surprise but we are not storing fuel.  We figure the roads will be toast also so who needs it?  Might want to top off our propane tanks for the cookstove, though.

“Is there any worse soil in Portland that we could have built on?” she asked.

Wang, an engineer with Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, known as DOGAMI, wrote a report in 2013 that said an earthquake could cause this ground to liquefy, as she had just now demonstrated.

“The risk here is extreme,” she said. After an earthquake, “within 10, 20 seconds, the sand will turn into a thick, sandy soup.”

And that would be bad.

Soil liquefaction, as it’s known to geologists, can exacerbate shaking and destroy roads, buildings and underground pipes. If that happens in Portland, it could devastate supply lines for fuel, electricity and natural gas. It also could mean a major chemical spill into the Willamette River.

What exactly is the problem?

Oregon’s petroleum reserves, along with substations, key pipelines and natural gas storage, are highly concentrated in one stretch along the Willamette River. Scientists now know that stretch of land poses a higher seismic risk than other parts of the city.

DOGAMI modeling for a magnitude-9 earthquake shows most of the petroleum tanks in that area sit on soils the agency considers to have a medium to high probability of liquefaction. The area also is predicted to have very strong shaking.

Read all about it here:
http://pamplinmedia.com/pt/276643

If the truth brings them down, then by all mean let them go down. This story reinforces for me the fact that businesses are never as ethical as people. It's no surprise that a wind power company would want to bury bird death data, but it reminds me of pharmaceuticals that try to hide negative findings about their drugs. You might think wind power is green and renewable and good, but perhaps it is not. You might think that nuclear power is suicidally dangerous and evil, but perhaps it is not.

http://www.capitalpress.com/Energy/20141117/wind-firm-sues-to-block-release-of-bird-death-data#
( textCollapse )

That's a lot of people who can't shower in or cook with the water coming from the faucet. The solution to this pollution is said to be dilution, same as ever, which means people have to wait until enough good water has run through the system to wash out the chemical. The wildlife get no such warning. The symptoms are nausea and vomiting. I haven't found anything about longterm toxicity yet.

Events like this are manageable for populations wealthy enough to purchase bottled water or travel to cleaner digs. For impoverished folks and for the creatures and plants of the land, this is a true crisis.

The leak was a foaming agent used to wash coal, and it went from a 48,000 gallon storage tank straight into the Elk River. The primary component in the foaming agent that leaked is the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (CH3C6H10CH2OH). It has been patented as an air freshener and has a slightly minty odor (another good reason not to use air fresheners). It is used in ~20-25% of coal plans, mainly for "coking coal" which is used for metallurgical purposes, but not for making coal burned to make electricity ("steam coal") which is the lion's share of total coal produced.

The biz owning the leaky tank is called Freedom Industries, and it distributes mining reagents for WV, VA, PA, OH, MD, MN, KY, and MI. In 2008, Freedom Industries was specially selected by Georgia-Pacific Chemicals as a distributor of G-P's Talon brand mining reagents for the states already mentioned. Georgia-Pacific Chemicals is, of course, a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. Koch is big biz, and should be penalized to assure that they will take better precautions in all their plants in the future.



SOURCES
Fresh Brains sent me this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/11/west-virginia-chemical-sp_n_4582100.html
National Geographic on the same leak:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140110-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol-chemical-spill-west-virginia-science/
Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/11/1268990/-Freedom-Industries-Has-Ties-to-Koch-Brothers
Koch Industries
http://www.kochind.com/

I'm not big on woo woo. When practitioners choose modalities simply because they "resonate" with them, I am skeptical. But when science backs up the use of something that has long been thought of as energy medicine, I am happy to recommend it. Of course people will tell you something is backed by science when it isn't, so you have to go look at the science for yourself, or find sources like me that you know are science-minded and skeptical to help filter the claims for you.

Here's a case of energy medicine turning out to be something real. Scientists have found that acupuncture points are detectable by CT (computed tomography, fancy medical imaging). All those points have a certain size of larger blood vessels, and also thick mats of fine blood vessels that have lots of forks (birfucations) in them. Piercing the tissues at these points is probably affecting the nervous system associated with those blood vessels. This supports my belief that energy medicine (that actually works) has a anatomical and physiological basis. Acupuncture is well proven to be effective for pain, short term at least. To treat pain longterm one must take the naturopathic approach and find the reason for the pain, and change that.

ENERGY LITERACY
CONSERVATION
RESILIENCE
RELOCALIZATION
FAMILY PLANNING
BEAUTY
BIODIVERSITY
( the Post Carbon Institute, that isCollapse )

HOMEWORK ATSDR CSEM
Taking an Environmental Health History
atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=17&po=o (or pdf on moodle
complete post-test questions 1-8 by next class

class on week 11 is when we get the take-home final
due friday week 12
homeworks will be reviewed over Thanksgiving
and notice given to students who haven't complete them
no homeworks will be graded late

ACAM & AAEM conference in PDX this week
Marianne Marchese is speaking, 2002 NCNM grad
her book: 8 Wks to Wmns Wellness
( notes (melanoma notes integrated from this date back, radiation notes integrated from this entry to radiation protocol)Collapse )

http://offgridsurvival.com/livingoffthegridcrime/

There are lots of stories here of self sufficient people getting run off their land for weak reasons. All over the US you can get in trouble for having a homestead that looks junky. It has happened to friends of mine. Bill had to get rid of his volkswagon collection because the neighbors supposedly thought it was an eyesore. He could have supplied his community with running vehicles for generations to come from that collection, but it is gone. It seems to me that we can allow self sufficient and creative people to collect materials for their projects on their land. If there really is a visual issue some kind of fencing or green living screen could be required. And whatever laws about decency we agree to, multinational corporations must also obey. Perhaps it would be useful to define quality of life--not for the individual, but for all humans, so that we could begin with a reasonable basis for such decisions. We don't just want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we want clean air, fresh water, whole food, quiet and space to pursue our missions in life... The link is a pretty impassioned statement from a few outliers who get hassled by authorities.

This site gives the history and will be providing a blow by blow as this dam on the White Salmon River in Washington is removed. The boaters are excited because dams are always built where there is substantial gradient and sufficient constriction to make construction easy. Which means there's whitewater under there. Good whitewater.

It's a great idea: base our hopes and dreams on a Happiness Index instead of the GDP...