environmental concerns


This post was inspired by two articles that I recently posted on Shattered Reality Podcast‘s fan page on Facebook.

The first article comes from the BBC and is entitled: Earth ‘entering new extinction phase’-US study. This article, frankly, makes all other news reports irrelevant and unimportant by comparison. You should click the link and read it for yourself, but briefly it outlines a Stanford, Princeton, and Berkeley study that states that Earth has begun the sixth mass extinction which will put an end to human kind and all large mammals, most birds and amphibians, due to human overpopulation, destruction of ecosystems and global warming. The loss of bees is particularly important. It is a very bleak picture indeed.

It is articles like this and being bombarded with news stories of humans perpetrating unconscionable acts on other humans, companion animals and the ecosystem that makes me frequently disgusted with, disappointed in, and wanting no part of the species to which I apparently belong. This is obviously not a good state of mind to be in, especially since it is most healthy to exist in a mental space of unconditional love. I spend much of my focused meditation time on projecting unconditional love to Our Planet Earth and the Sun and to numerous animal and plant species.

The second article: Evidence Group Consciousness May Have a Physical Effect on the World gives a little hope. Referencing the Roger Nelson’s PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) studies with Random Event Generators, this article points out that individuals can have a physical effect on the generators, couples exert a larger effect and groups of cohesive individuals can have the biggest effect recorded. Please read this excellent article by Daniel Lew to better understand Random Number Generators and Random Event Generators.

Roger Nelson, Ph.D. Head of the Global Consciousness Project (courtesy of noosphere.princeton.edu)

Roger Nelson, Ph.D. Head of the Global Consciousness Project (courtesy of noosphere.princeton.edu)

The idea that we as a group could have a tangible effect on physical reality may be mind boggling to some, but it is also the predictible flowering of the fruit of quantum mechanics. Though the PEAR lab at Princeton closed a few years ago, Roger Nelson has continued with his work now called The Global Consciousness Project. This may be the most important consciousness research going on in the world right now and our last best hope to save ourselves. I personally want to learn more about it and so should you.

Addendum: This article in no way means to imply that every human on Earth should not do her and his best to be as ecologically aware as possible to preserve our environment the Earth.

Update:

Fahrusha and Kate Valentine are proud to present Dr. Roger Nelson, former research director at PEAR Lab and head of the Global Consciousness Project.

Fahrusha is an intuitive reader, teacher of creative visualization, and co-host of the popular Shattered Reality Podcast. She welcomes comments on this blog. She can also be reached at: fahrusha@fahrusha.com

The bear dog Magericyon anceps by Mauricio Anton.

The bear dog Magericyon anceps by Mauricio Anton.

Some years ago in the late ’80s, I predicted that biologists and geneticists would be able to breed mammoths and possibly mastodons by using frozen DNA which would be found in the Arctic regions. I wrote a blog piece which touched on this a while back: https://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/mammoth-prediction/

Recently I found another article confirming my old prediction: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jul/31/woolly-mammoth-dna-cloning 

I was initially planning to add the above link to the Guardian article to my old post “A Mammoth Prediction”. But early Saturday morning August 3, 2013, I had a super-real dream, which was also a lucid dream. A being with a deep male voice spoke to me about extinct mammals of Europe. He spoke to me in English and in German and said he was the (over-soul of the) Bear-Dog and would like to be revived in the same manner as the wooly mammoth might be revived. Now mind you, this was a lucid dream, and my conscious mind was somewhat functional. The only two extinct mammals of Europe that I could think of while dreaming were the saber-tooth tiger and the aurochs, but I could not in this lucid dream state think of the word “aurochs”, though I tried. The being was looking somewhat bearlike and ferocious, but oddly, I had absolutely no fear of it and actually felt something of a bond with it.

When I got up on Saturday morning I decided to search the internet to find a description of the aurochs and did, but that was not the being in my vision. Strangely I did find an extinct mammal of Europe called the bear-dog! I had had no previous idea that such an animal ever existed. The illustration above is an artist’s depiction of what such an animal might look like. My bear-dog was somewhat huskier or fatter and had darker fur, but otherwise was very similar. I’m not entirely sure of what to make of this experience, but it was very exhilarating to find confirmation of my vision on the internet. The fact that he also spoke German to me was interesting and may point to either the animal after which Berlin was named, or indicate that the bear-dog’s range included German-speaking Europe.

So “Word up” paleontological geneticists! How about reviving my friend, the bear-dog?

Fahrusha is an intuitive reader in New York City and an avid lucid dreamer. She can be contacted by email at: fahrusha@fahrusha.com

Grape hyacinth & primrose All rights reserved © R. Shaw

Grape hyacinth & primrose
All rights reserved © R. Shaw

Happy Earth Day, everyone! This year Earth Day has fallen on a Monday so this past weekend there were many events and ecological protests in many places including huge hearts from around the world, aerially photographed and dutifully posted on FaceBook. But how far have we come? Have people changed their habits to benefit our environment?

This morning I took a yoga class at a very nice studio. The place was clean, the staff was friendly and the instructor knew her subject. It seemed like a wonderful way to celebrate Earth Day with a good stretch. The instructor even wished us all a Happy Earth Day! After which several women (the class was composed of 90% women) cracked open their personal-sized water bottles. It simply ruined my class. Here I was, in what should have been a bastion of ecological consciousness. I wanted to shout expletives at them. I did not.

Do I ever drink bottled water you may ask? Yes, I have. Sometimes at event jobs that is all that is provided. I do not choose it. I have even been seen running to the ladies room to refill the bottle rather than take a new one. It seems to me that these yoga students could have planned other options, such as filling a metal water bottle from home with filtered water, or even having a refillable water bottle with a filter. The filters are good for 300 refills and thereby keep 300 plastic bottles out of the environment. Bobble and Brita are inexpensive brands.

Here is a very good article on why disposable water bottles are so bad:

http://flourishonline.org/2010/08/so-whats-the-big-deal-with-plastic-water-bottles/

In short they are bad for your health when the plastic leaches into the water, the bottles are mostly made of petroleum keeping us petroleum addicted, and they are hell on the environment because they do not easily disintegrate. Plus the companies that produce much of the bottled water make chumps out of the people that buy it, because most of it is just tap water anyway.

I do not bring water to exercise classes, I simply use the water fountain before and/or after. That is tap water too.

Simple pencil drawing of a cross-section of the train.

I totally admit that it sounds absolutely vain to have a title of this nature, but many good solutions can come from common folk who think deeply about a problem. I encourage you, dear reader, to make suggestions on how to make this idea work better. My intention is to put America to work and end dependence on fossil fuel and thereby clean up the environment and make the air cleaner to breathe.

America needs better mass transportation. we lag behind much of Europe, Japan and China (and probably other places too) with our train system. Those places have high-speed bullet trains. I think we should go them one better. If America had better and more attractively priced public transportation we would drive less and create less pollution and use less fossil fuel.

My idea is for the government, in conjunction with the train companies, to build a high-speed train to connect America’s hub cities. This would be no ordinary train. It would be solar-powered by panels set on top of the tube through which it would move. This could be a similar application to solar roadways that I cited in an earlier blog post.The train would be set about one-third into the ground with the tube built around it and it would have a modified octagonal shape with rounded corners. It would have only one track and might work by the maglev system. The most famous maglev train is in Shanghai, China.

Sitting the train in a ditch and surrounding it with a tube would make it safer and faster as inertia could be modified within the tube through a suction like effect. There would be no collisions possible due to the train being inside the tube. No animals would be killed on the track because the train would be totally enclosed. Because it is only in a ditch and not in a subway tunnel the cost would be lower to build.

Thousands of American workers would be employed improving the grassroots economy of the country. Building the train system would provide construction jobs. There would also be maintenance jobs and service jobs running the complex rail system. There would be hundreds of engineering jobs in creating the plans and execution of this idea as well as thousands of peripheral jobs in train station services. Using the solar-powered train would lower the dependence on fossil fuels. It is a win-win situation for the country. No longer would we lag behind China, Japan and Europe.

This rough idea that has excited my imagination came to me all in one piece in an open meditation.

Update 11/28/12: Thanks to Stephan A. Schwartz via the SchwartzReport: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/9702521/310mph-floating-trains-unveiled-in-Japan.html

The first photo in this article bears a resemblance to my drawing especially in the area of the furrow in which the train runs.

 

File:Radiation warning symbol.svg

I have not wanted to write about Fukushima, because I have nothing good to say. My grandmother used to tell me “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Sadly, I have not entirely lived up to her words, but I have tried. The Japanese people have much to overcome in their current situation and I do not wish to make their lot any worse than it is, and that would be difficult to do in any case.

I have been following closely the situation involving the nuclear reactors which were affected so disastrously by the earthquake off the coast of Japan last spring. The site from which I have gotten most of my information is Arnie Gundersen’s Fairewinds Associates. Mr. Gundersen and his wife have been steadfastly reporting the bad news that is horrible to hear, but it is bad news that we must force ourselves to hear. His is a wake-up call to all Americans that nuclear power is inherently horribly dangerous and that danger once unleashed is complete and lasting annihilation. American nuclear reactors are mostly old and past the date which they were originally intended to be taken off line. This adds to the danger as leaks are more likely from old reactors. The single piece of good news is that solar power has surpassed nuclear power in energy production in the United States.

In a nutshell, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is far from being over. The site is still red hot with nuclear particles. Tokyo itself, 148 miles away from the Fukushima reactors, should probably be evacuated. The level of contamination of random ground samples in Tokyo would be considered hazardous nuclear waste in the US.  The officials of TEPCO (Tokyo Electrical Power Company?) who run the Fukushima facility and the Japanese government have been lying to their citizens and to the world. TEPCO is even burning nuclear waste and putting hot particles in the atmosphere that we all breathe. They have become mass murderers as many innocent people and animals around the world who unwittingly breathe those particles will die horrible deaths from various cancers. This is not supposition, this is fact.

The US is in collusion with the cover-up of the facts. Please read the following articles:

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-radiation-warnings-you-wont-get-from-the-mainstream-propaganda-machine_04022012

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/fukushima-radiation-spreads-worldwide.html

I am extremely disappointed in Hillary Clinton in that she signed an agreement to the effect that the US would continue to import goods from Japan without subjecting them to testing for radiation.

Why has the media chosen to ignore the obvious danger coming from Fukushima and why do the government and various states continue to champion the building of these reactors, these machines of certain doom, although there are other cleaner energy options such as solar, wind, water and geothermal energy available? Many European countries whose populations may be more awake than Americans have begun the phasing out of all nuclear power from their borders. In fact the nuclear industry is greatly tax subsidized by the American taxpayer: See this Alternet story by US Senator Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander.

The Fukushima situation is worse than the disaster of Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Take seven minutes out of your busy life to look at the legacy of Chernobyl here. Notice that Chernobyl is estimated to have caused nearly a million cancer deaths worldwide.  Now realize that the Fukushima disaster will continue to cause cancers for the next 100,00o years. Yet our mass media outlets continue to ply us with vacuous stories and little to no information on this very real menace.

Please keep checking these internet news resources for valuable information, it may be the most important thing you can do for yourself, the environment and generations to come.

Fairewinds Associates

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

The SchwartzReport

The Fukushima Diary

Update 4/24/12:

Mutations in Michigan-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AupyLDGHKk

Hunger strike demonstrations in Tokyo-

http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/feature/4968/Tokyo-hunger-strike

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hunger-Strike-for-the-Future-in-Tokyo/255751377792291?sk=info

Doyle Plillips sends this update: http://soundcloud.com/flashpoints/flashpoints-daily-newsmag-05-6

& http://blog.imva.info/world-affairs/4495

Fire Island Sunset, August 22, 2011

On August 23, 2011 between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. I was travelling on a ferryboat from Fire Island N.Y. to Long Island N.Y. after a too short holiday. There was a small girl about four years old who was also on the boat with a group of relatives. We were both riding on the open top level of the ferry. Towards the end of the ride I was gazing at the shore in anticipation when the level of the Earth seemed to shift. The sea was very calm and this was not a wave in the water. The child noticed it too and pointed and cried out to her fellow travellers who had not seen it. I mentioned it to my companion with a bit of anxiety but he hadn’t noticed it either.

Soon I was in a car driving west toward Manhattan and Massapequa where we would stop for lunch at the All-American on Merrick Road. The event on the ferry probably would have passed totally from memory had it not been for the news I heard on the radio when I returned to the car after lunch: THERE HAD BEEN AN EARTHQUAKE IN NYC!!! Totally surprising, and as it turned out the actual epicenter of the quake was in Virginia, but it was clearly felt in New York City. The visual anomaly seen by myself and the child had been approximately an hour before the earthquake struck. Was there any connection? I do not know.

During two recent but different summers at a location in western Morris County NJ I heard a low mechanical consistent fast rumbling sound that lasted for over an hour both times. It was also heard by another person who was with me. I went outside though it was after midnight in both cases. I could not determine the location of the sound. It seemed to have come slightly southward of my location and I suspected underground tunneling.

On Monday, February 02, 2009 at 10:34:19 PM and Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 03:34:19 two earthquakes were felt just to the south of the location where I had been. I was not present for either of them but was told by several persons who were, that the sound was like that of a large truck that had been dropped from a great height.

Recently I have become aware of the mysterious sounds which a variety of people from many places around the world have heard. There are purported recordings of these sounds on YouTube, some of which are probably hoaxed, but I think not all. Most of the sounds are slightly metallic in nature and people sometimes compare them to “Archangel Gabriel’s Trumpet” which is thought to herald the “endtimes”.

What I think may be happening is related to global warming and some earthquakes. As the Earth’s temperature is rising quickly (in geologic terms) perhaps on average a degree a decade, the polar ice caps and many glaciers are melting causing a displacement of water. Simply put, large amounts of water in the form of ice are melting and the water in liquid form is going elsewhere. In the North Arctic/Atlantic region the melting fresh water being dumped into the sea seems to have affected and diverted the Gulf Stream causing Europe to have a record cold winter. With the Himalaya glaciers melting there is abnormal flooding in Pakistan and Bangladesh in the rainy monsoon season. Small islands are being lost in the Pacific. In other places the lack of snow/ice/glaciers are causing the land to rise very slowly and unevenly causing some of these sounds and earthquakes. Water is extraordinarily heavy even when it is only a few feet thick. Think of massive amounts of rock under considerable pressure shifting against one another for perhaps miles on a seam under the surface of the Earth. Granted, this explanation is somewhat simplistic, but generally speaking this is what I believe to be happening.

It would seem that it is The Mother Gaia speaking to us.

For an interesting compilation of these trumpet-like mechanical sounds heard worldwide and some back stories from experiencers go to http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1940&category=Environment which is Linda Moulton Howe’s Earthfiles website.

Friday August 24, 2012 Update

I am vindicated on my theory of how global warming is causing more earthquakes!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Link-Between-Global-Wa-by-Paul-from-Potomac-120823-777.html

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel courtesy Wikipedia

 

OK, so I’m a bit late with this, but I am a firm believer in thinking before speaking or writing. That doesn’t mean I am always able to reflect before speaking, but it is a goal.

On the world stage, Angela Merkel is one of my People of the Year 2011. She is one strong woman and a role model for young women around the world. She was successful in holding the European Union and the Euro together against dreadful odds. Granted, it is possible that things could still crumble.  She is arguably the most powerful person in the world. She presided over the government that made the very intelligent decision to eliminate nuclear power from Germany. Truth be told, I may not agree with all her politics (slowed phase out of nuclear power, for instance) but her success is undeniable.

Related to Chancellor Merkel are the small scale ecological pioneers of Germany, another of my People of the Year 2011. Germany has become a leader in implementation of solar power despite being in a higher latitude (less sunshine) than more likely candidates.

http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/germany-cuts-solar-energy-feed-in-tariff-by-50-in-8-years/

The word ‘ecology‘ was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckl. Germany is investing heavily in alternative energy sources and they are being embraced by many small entrepreneurs and private citizens. Twenty percent of Germany’s energy came from renewable sources in 2011 and that amount is scheduled to increase. Compare that to only 14.3% renewable in the US.

Freiberg Green City

Biodigester at german pig farm courtesy Reuters

My couple of the year 2011 are also my Americans of the year: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Astronaut Mark Kelly. They represent what is best in America, both incredibly brave in their personal and public lives. Gabrielle Giffords was attacked by a crazed gunman in Tucson Arizon last January. Six other citizens were murdered at the same time. She has made a remarkable recovery from a gunshot to the brain.

Astronauts represent the most publicly brave persons imaginable. Since visiting Kennedy Space Center in Florida, more than ever before I am impressed by the enormous courage it takes to blast into the vast expanses of space in a relatively small metal vehicle.

As I write this I heard on the news that Arizona Congresswoman Giffords is resigning to work on her further recovery. Best wishes and a big thank you to her.

Congrsswoman Giffords and Astronaut Kelly courtesy Village Voice

Sadly now I must name my worst persons of the year. They are the officials at Tepco who presided over the Fukishima nuclear meltdown, the world’s single worst ecological disaster ever. Just thinking about this makes me sick. While these Tepco bigwigs did not cause the earthquake or the tsunami which followed, they were the folks that managed the nuclear plants, who decided to build nuclear power plants in an earthquake and tsunami zone and not maintain them properly, who obfuscated and lied about the severity of the problem. So now we have a radiation polluted Pacific Ocean, millions of sea creatures have died. More people will die as a result of this “accident” than were killed by the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined. What ever happened to falling on the sword?

CREDIT: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, V.M.J. Henriques (sunspot), NASA Apollo 17 (Earth)

On this blog I have posted two articles concerning how the last solar minimum was longer than usual:

https://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/spiritual-musings-on-the-current-solar-minimum/

https://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/still-not-many-sunspots/

Now we are in the midst of a solar awakening waxing toward a solar maximum in around the year 2013.

However, today the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society announced that the  solar maximum following the one in 2013 is probably not going to be very active if it happens at all. It seems the Sun is going through a period of dormancy. If this turns out to be true, there is likely to be colder weather on Earth. This may act to combat the man-made global warming we have caused with our petrochemical excesses.

I am not a particularly religious person but I consider myself to be very spiritual. In the words of Robert Monroe, I certainly have experienced that “I am more than my physical body.” I can’t help thinking that it is possible that a power greater than me has had a hand in this and is saving humanity and the other life on this planet from the excesses of mankind. I do not know the identity of this power, if it is a deity or an advanced alien civilization one hundred thousand years ahead of our own that somehow has a vested interest in our survival. Maybe I am simply a romantic to consider such a notion but I have experienced first hand that there are other beings in our midst that are intangible to most of us in our 4D world.

Even if that turns out to be the case, long solar minimums are not without their downsides. Consider if you will the Maunder Minimum spanning from 1645 to 1715 which ushered in a mini-ice age. If the weather becomes sufficiently colder it will impact agricultural output and we all know what substantially less food would mean in a world already struggling with famine and overpopulation.

http://www.space.com/11960-fading-sunspots-slower-solar-activity-solar-cycle.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/solar-minima.html

Remnants of Ancient Troy

It has been a while since I have written a post. I’ve been very busy with my life in general, but also very intensely concerned with the Earth and the ecological devastation that has taken place increasingly over the past year. I don’t like to write a post that is infused with hopeless negativity even if what I am writing about is true.

Last year we had the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a totally preventable man-made disaster, that was so destructive to other species and human livelihoods. It really made me furious and I could not write about it constructively, so I did not write about it at all. Instead I wrote some posts about energy solutions. I hope to continue to do this, but of course this is primarily a blog about the anomalous and the paranormal.

The Earth has also experienced a number of violent earthquakes around the world in many places such as Haiti, Chile and of course, Japan. I fear that the western coast of North America will not be spared. My heart goes out to all people and other creatures affected by these calamities. I am aware that earthquakes are a continuous phenomena across geologic time. It does seem to me that the severity and number of these quakes are increasing in recent years. A higher population density worldwide intensifies the destruction to humans. A theory concerning greater earthquake frequency to which I currently ascribe is that as glaciers and polar ice caps continue to melt due to (mostly man-made) global warming, the placement of water changes around the globe. There is, for instance, less water ice resting on the Himalayas and therefore a whole lot less weight holding them down, while there is perhaps more water, therefore more weight, in the South Pacific, especially around the equator. When this weight is redistributed in this manner, especially in a very geologically active area, such as the Ring of Fire, it may boost the number and severity of quakes on fault lines. The extent of the weight of water in this equation should not be underestimated. Think about how attentive one must be to water pressure when scuba diving only a relatively few feet down.

Now in addition to the devastation caused by the earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, another man-made catastrophe has occurred. The nuclear reactors at Fukishima have been severely damaged by the quake and tsunami and are now in various states of partial meltdown. Unfortunately the reactors were unsafe from their inception. Nuclear energy is inherently unsafe due to human fallibility which is always present along with human greed which causes planners to cut corners, and because the spent fuel remains highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and there is no where to put spent fuel that is safe.

Sadly, the situation is far from under control, though brave workers at the plant have repeatedly attempted to shut down the reactors at the cost of their own (workers) health. It is not the object of this blog to go into detail about the various radioactive substances still being manufactured and spewed forth from Fukishima and which are a hazard to all biological life on this planet. A smart consumer of information will be well advised to look into this on his or her own. An excellent starting place is Arnie Gunderson’s site Fairewinds Associates. I personally would like to see all nuclear facilities fazed out starting with reactors in large population areas, on or near geological faults or subject to violent weather extremes.

Of course we should all do what we can to help the victims of these multiple tragedies. One action we can take to prevent this tragedy being repeated, is to lobby our elected officials to shutdown nuclear power plants and withdraw tax subsidies to build new ones. Go ahead…write those letters…get off yer duffs and go out and demonstrate! Do something proactive instead of stewing in existential depression which is pointless.

Wooly Mammoth

When I was younger and more foolish I made a list of predictions for the coming year. It was in the late ’80s and my late great friend, Captain Haggerty was organizing a new year’s publicity event around his dog training business and asked me if I wanted to take part. He was making predictions about what would be happening in the dog fancier’s world and displaying some of his dogs. I was to bellydance for the cameras and make some predictions about what would happen in the world at large.

Most of my predictions did not transpire in that year, but in some permutation many of them became pivotal in future years.  Last week I noticed in the news that Japanese scientists were actively working on recreating a mammoth from genetic material retrieved from the Siberian permafrost. I had predicted just that in the late ’80s. It is claimed that the mammoth will be born of an elephant surrogate mom by the end of the decade. The elephant is the closest surviving relative of the mammoth.

Since the time I made that prediction, I have thought long and hard about the business of making predictions. I have noticed that predictions I’ve made often occur but seldom in the time frame I expected. Often people are looking for predictions about the personal lives of the rich and famous. I have no interest in that whatsoever.

I am concerned that in making a specific public prediction one can change the course of events. Simply put, if I write that Mr. X will be killed and a sizable group of individuals read that and think about it, does that make it more likely that Mr. X will perish? I suspect it will. It will affect the collective mind of humanity.

There is another reason I am not making a lot of predictions: my world view has become increasingly dark and I do not wish to infect others with my state of mind. I am not depressed, really, I’m actually fairly happy. It’s just that my “Weltanshauung” (world view) is very negative.

What I have to say next is going to sound very politically partisan but in actuality it is not. I was very hopeful about the world until the day after the 2000 US Presidential election. I was never very politically active previous to this time. I was and am an active environmentalist. Yes, I admit it I am a treehugger. After “W” was elected it seemed as though the whole world went to hell in so many ways, both related to the election and not related to it at all, and it has not recovered.

I will make only one prediction now, and it will be very general. The more you do to improve or save the environment, the happier your future will be; and conversely if you degrade the environment you can be sure the future will be awful for your old age and those that follow you.

Sometimes I wonder how people (are they really humans?) can be anti-environmental. I do understand a certain shortsightedness on the part of those who might lose their incomes as sanctions are put into place which would cause them to lose their jobs. There is a fairly simple answer for this. They should be retrained for green jobs. There is lots of money to be made in renewable energy, for example, and this is just the beginning.

It is a fantasy of mine that those who are politically active against the environment are reptilian alien shapeshifters who want the Earth to be turned into a hot awful wasteland so that they can immigrate their population from their wasted reptilian planet light years away and enslave the few remaining humans. In reality those belonging to the anti-environment group are probably simply greedy and rapacious sociopaths who don’t care a whit for anybody or anything beyond dying with the most toys.

Here in the USA we could easily use the flatulance coming out of the mouths of politicians to power massive electrical plants. But seriously, we need more forward thinking ideas like those outlined in the following article. The answers are out there to save warm-blooded species on our planet (That includes us.) If we don’t we’ll all perish and take all the large mammals and many birds with us. Make no mistake the Earth will go on, without us. Witness the dinosaurs! 

Congratulations to California and Wisconsin for leading the way in the USA to break our dependency on foreign oil and the noxious byproducts of fossil fuel.

Thanks to NY Times and Frank DeMarco (see links in my blogroll).

Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL – The New York Times
Here is a positive story of what can be done when the will to overcome entrenched special interests is strong enough.
Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels. 

But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines.

A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars.

Once the city fathers got into the habit of harnessing power locally, they saw fuel everywhere: Kristianstad also burns gas emanating from an old landfill and sewage ponds, as well as wood waste from flooring factories and tree prunings.

Over the last five years, many European countries have increased their reliance on renewable energy, from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, because fossil fuels are expensive on the Continent and their overuse is, effectively, taxed by the European Union’s emissions trading system.

But for many agricultural regions, a crucial component of the renewable energy mix has become gas extracted from biomass like farm and food waste. In Germany alone, about 5,000 biogas systems generate power, in many cases on individual farms.

Kristianstad has gone further, harnessing biogas for an across-the-board regional energy makeover that has halved its fossil fuel use and reduced the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by one-quarter in the last decade.

‘It’s a much more secure energy supply – we didn’t want to buy oil anymore from the Middle East or Norway,” said Lennart Erfors, the engineer who is overseeing the transition in this colorful city of 18th-century row houses. ‘And it has created jobs in the energy sector.”

In the United States, biogas systems are rare. There are now 151 biomass digesters in the country, most of them small and using only manure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. estimated that installing such plants would be feasible at about 8,000 farms.

So far in the United States, such projects have been limited by high initial costs, scant government financing and the lack of a business model. There is no supply network for moving manure to a centralized plant and no outlet to sell the biogas generated.

Still, a number of states and companies are considering new investment.

Last month, two California utilities, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, filed for permission with the state’s Public Utilities Commission to build plants in California to turn organic waste from farms and gas from water treatment plants into biogas that would feed into the state’s natural-gas pipelines after purification.

Using biogas would help the utilities meet requirements in California and many other states to generate a portion of their power using renewable energy within the coming decade.

Both natural gas and biogas create emissions when burned, but far less than coal and oil do. And unlike natural gas, which is pumped from deep underground, biogas counts as a renewable energy source: it is made from biological waste that in many cases would otherwise decompose in farm fields or landfills and yield no benefit at all, releasing heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

This fall, emissaries from Wisconsin’s Bioenergy Initiative toured German biogas programs to help formulate a plan to develop the industry. ‘Biogas is Wisconsin’s opportunity fuel,” said Gary Radloff, the initiative’s Midwest policy director.

Like Kristianstad, California and Wisconsin produce a bounty of waste from food processing and dairy farms but an inadequate supply of fossil fuel to meet their needs. Another plus is that biogas plants can devour vast quantities of manure that would otherwise pollute the air and could affect water supplies.

In Kristianstad, old fossil fuel technologies coexist awkwardly alongside their biomass replacements. The type of tanker truck that used to deliver heating oil now delivers wood pellets, the major heating fuel in the city’s more remote areas. Across from a bustling Statoil gas station is a modest new commercial biogas pumping station owned by the renewables company Eon Energy.

The start-up costs, covered by the city and through Swedish government grants, have been considerable: the centralized biomass heating system cost $144 million, including constructing a new incineration plant, laying networks of pipes, replacing furnaces and installing generators.

But officials say the payback has already been significant: Kristianstad now spends about $3.2 million each year to heat its municipal buildings rather than the $7 million it would spend if it still relied on oil and electricity. It fuels its municipal cars, buses and trucks with biogas fuel, avoiding the need to purchase nearly half a million gallons of diesel or gas each year.

The operations at the biogas and heating plants bring in cash, because farms and factories pay fees to dispose of their waste and the plants sell the heat, electricity and car fuel they generate.

Converting to Renewables

Articles in this series examine innovative attempts to reduce the world’s dependence on coal, oil and other carbon-intensive fuels, and the challenges faced.

A blog about energy and the environment.

Kristianstad’s energy makeover is rooted in oil price shocks of the 1980s, when the city could barely afford to heat its schools and hospitals. To save on fuel consumption, the city began laying heating pipes to form an underground heating grid – so-called district heating.

Such systems use one or more central furnaces to heat water or produce steam that is fed into the network. It is far more efficient to pump heat into a system that can warm an entire city than to heat buildings individually with boilers.

District heating systems can generate heat from any fuel source, and like New York City’s, Kristianstad’s initially relied on fossil fuel. But after Sweden became the first country to impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, in 1991, Kristianstad started looking for substitutes.

By 1993, it was taking in and burning local wood wastes, and in 1999, it began relying on heat generated from the new biogas plant. Some buildings that are too remote to be connected to the district heating system have been fitted with individual furnaces that use tiny pellets that are also made from wood waste.

Burning wood in this form is more efficient and produces less carbon dioxide than burning logs does; such heating has given birth to a booming pellet industry in northern Europe. Government subsidies underwrite purchases of pellet furnaces by homeowners and businesses; pellet-fueled heat costs half as much as oil, said Mr. Erfors, the engineer.

Having dispensed with fossil fuels for heating, Kristianstad is moving on to other challenges. City planners hope that by 2020 total local emissions will be 40 percent lower than they were in 1990, and that running the city will require no fossil fuel and produce no emissions at all.

Transportation now accounts for 60 percent of fossil fuel use, so city planners want drivers to use cars that run on local biogas, which municipal vehicles already do. That will require increasing production of the fuel.

Kristianstad is looking into building satellite biogas plants for outlying areas and expanding its network of underground biogas pipes to allow the construction of more filling stations. At the moment, this is something of a chicken-and-egg problem: even though biogas fuel costs about 20 percent less than gasoline, consumers are reluctant to spend $32,000 (about $4,000 more than for a conventional car) on a biogas or dual-fuel car until they are certain that the network will keep growing.

‘A tank is enough to get you around the region for the day, but do you have to plan ahead,” Martin Risberg, a county engineer, said as he filled a biogas Volvo.

Here is a great idea from the USA thanks to Scott and Julie Brusaw:

http://solarroadways.com/main.html

Check out their incredible and marvelous website! Lots of great ideas here on good uses for solar energy on the USA’s massive road system. Thanks to NHNE for bringing the solar roadways to my attention (and yours).

 

 

One of the reflecting telescopes at Jenny Jump State Forest. Photo by Gordon Bond

 

There is a wonderful dark sky location convenient to Metro NYC and Philadelphia, as well as Northern NJ, Eastern PA and Southern NY State. Within the Jenny Jump State Forest in Hope, NJ, the site is run by UACNJ, the United Astronomy Clubs of New Jersey. Every Saturday night they have a featured speaker with audio-visual extras inside a small museum/clubhouse and the fee is a donation. After the speaker is finished one can go outside and look at the skies. There are people on hand with telescopes and if the night is clear amazing things can be seen.

The evening I attended, the lecture was by an astronomy professor Lonny Bunis from Raritan Valley Community College, another time I spoke with an astronomy professor from NJIT, Dr. Dale Gary, who had discovered an exoplanet. I was very impressed! I also saw Jupiter and her four Galilean moons including a shadow cast on the surface of Jupiter by one of them. So for a portion of Jupiter there was an eclipse at that time. Jupiter has 63 known moons so these little lunar eclipses must be a common occurence. The comet Hartley 2, a nebula, Uranus, and the Andromeda Galaxy were other things I saw through the 16″ reflecting telescope. A club member ably manned and focused those sights in the telescope for visitors to see. Light from the Andromeda Galaxy takes two and a half billion light years to reach the Earth. Light from our Sun takes approximately 20 minutes to reach us. So everything that you see in the sky exists in the past. For all we know the Andromeda Galaxy is no longer there! I also saw three meteors careening through the night sky.

The environmental issue here is that we are losing the ability to see the stars because artificial lighting is polluting the night sky so it never really gets dark enough in most places to see these celestial marvels. Artificial lighting can be made less strong and so that its light reflects downward toward the Earth causing less light to escape upwards towards the sky.

The International Dark Sky Association works to combat light pollution.

Are you a woman? Are you the parent of a daughter? Are you married to a woman? Do you have a mother? In any of these cases you should read the autobiography I Am Nujood, aged 10, Divorced

This is a difficult book to read, not due to the complexity of the verbiage, but because of the poverty and abuse this child had to endure at the hands of her family. It brings up the abhorrent practice of child marriage. Many little girls as young as eight years old are married without their consent to men often decades older than themselves. They are often imprisoned inside the men’s homes as little more than slaves both sexual and domestic. The reasons for this practice are complex and rooted in the culture in which they occur. Poverty can cause a father to give his child away, but that same father may have multiple wives and his children may number in double digits. He often cannot support them all but gives no thought to birth control. This puts into place a cycle of oppression against women and girls because they are not considered equal to men and in Islamic countries the females must uphold the concept of family honor. A rumor against the honor of a girl or woman may be the motive for an honor killing, even in the United States.

Nujood Ali

In this book the eponymous young writer exhibits a bravery which is remarkable and praiseworthy. Credit must also be given to the people who helped her because Yemen’s culture can punish the defenseless and those who seek to defend them. I sincerely hope that Nujood chooses to continue her education and become a lawyer like her champion, Shada Nasr, who represented her in her divorce hearing. But Nujood is not alone. Lots of other children are forced into marriage. One quarter of Yemeni brides are aged 15 or less. It seems to me that supporting the education of women and female children in places where they are abused because they are female, is one of the most important things that can be done to bring about world peace and and end over-population. 


http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/08/26/yemen.divorce/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/nujood-ali-12-year-old-di_n_485952.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126110751

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Polygamy%2Bharmful%2Bsociety%2Bscholar%2Bfinds/3290757/story.html

the largest Moon of Saturn

Titan, the largest Moon of Saturn

While here on Earth we are allowing rapacious corporate interests (BP, Halliburton, et.al.) to kill off millions of years of evolution, in another part of our solar system, life may be evolving:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Have_We_Discovered_Evidence_For_Life_On_Titan_999.html

Earlier this year on this blog, (https://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/no-ufo-disclosure-in-sight-in-2010-but-possibly-an-earth-shaking-revelation/) I predicted that while it was unlikely that there would be any government disclosure on U.F.O.s, it was probable that it would be announced in the not so distant future that rudimentary life had been found elsewhere in the universe. I believe that the above referenced report on Titan, the largest moon Saturn, is a vanguard in this important development. The type of life postulated on Titan would be methane based. If that is the case, it would change the way many researchers think about life as strictly a carbon based system.

The Huygens probe, part of the Cassini-Hugyens space mission, was the first Earth based probe to land on Titan. The mission was launched from Earth in 1997 and the Huygens probe landed on January 14, 2005 and continued to send data for about 90 minutes after reaching the surface of Titan. Its discovery of surface liquid revolutionized scientific thought about Titan.

Here is a link to an awesome N.A.S.A. page about Cassini: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Here is an informative talk about Titan, Enceladus and Saturn by planetary scientist Carolyn Porco.

In this article it is necessary to follow the links to understand the comments. I don’t care to reprint all the articles. Sorry.

Violent earthquakes shorten the day by milliseconds and can cause subsequent volcanic activity:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527502.600-volcanic-explosions-expected-in-chile-quakes-wake.html

There are likely to be more big earthquakes coming within a year. One reason is polar ice and glaciers melting, causing a shift in water weight and placement.

A guy at the auto channel makes a good but odd case for the verity of UFO sightings: http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2010/03/07/468254.html

The only thing is: we have lots of Toyotas in our possession (the smoking gun) but not one physical UFO in the public domain.

And as if you needed more bad news, dark dangerous asteroids have been found to be crossing Earth’s orbit. Good news is that due to Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) we can now see these objects (burnt out comets?) before they hit us.

Asteroid 2001PT9 missed us on March 3 by 11 lunar distances which is a bit close for comfort.

As of today, March 8, 2010 we again have no sunspots on the sun after a flurry of several months of mild sunspot activity.

Mars Meteorite NASA image

After careful analysis of the subject I have come to the conclusion that the government is not planning to disclose anything much about what it might know about UFOs (or more accurately, other intelligent life in the cosmos) this year or any year in the near future. I will opine on why I don’t think they will further on in this post.

What I do think will come to light in the near future is corroborating evidence for extraterrestrial microorganisms such as have theoretically been found on meteorites and space rocks. The existence of these microorganisms may explain methane readings on Mars and some outer planets and their moons. This might be a reason that Mars purportedly gets greener at certain times of the year. I have to do a little more personal research on this subject, but I think this is all we are going to get in terms of “disclosure” from officialdom. This in itself is very big news. It would end the argument that our Earth is the only body in space capable of harboring life. It could be argued that if the space microorganisms are irrefutably proven to exist that that would be the biggest science revelation of the modern age.

It may be this forthcoming revelation that the Vatican is getting out in front of with their statements about extraterrestrials being God’s creatures and their seemingly sudden interest in the subject.

It is also a very psychologically gentle entre into possible future disclosures. Almost nobody, upon hearing that single- celled organisms are floating in space on meteors, is going to commit suicide or join a mob outside of Cape Kennedy to storm the gates. People will digest this information largely without incident or trauma. And it follows nicely upon the discovery of exo-planets orbiting distant stars.

Another question about possible UFO (intelligently maneuvered spacecraft)  disclosure is who would do the disclosing? To discern this answer we’d have to ask who is most likely to be in possession of the “secret files” if they do exist. The simple answer is those who have a verifiable “need to know”. This short list may not even include our President! My carefully assessed guess would be that any real information, if it exists at all, is buried layers deep in a Defense Intelligence Agency black-ops program. If my guess is correct, the next question is: Who with a ‘need to know’ clearance on this information would benefit from the disclosure of that information to the public? To this I must answer: no one; and therefore logically: no disclosure from government sources.

On March 17, 2010 I have read:

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/north/163021-is-there-life-on-mars/

This corroborates my thesis that we are being led slowly to the disclosure of rudimentary life on other celestial bodies in space.

Thanks to George Filer’s Filer’s Files.

UPDATE!!! Wednesday, April 28, 2010

NASA Announces Wednesday Media Teleconference About Search For Extraterrestrial Life

NASA Logo

By NASA MEDIA ADVISORY : M10-064
4-27-10

WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news media teleconference at 1:30 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, April 28, to discuss the status of agency-sponsored astrobiology research, including the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life and the study of how life began on Earth. Topics also will include the quest for evidence of life on Mars, the habitability of other celestial bodies, and future technology research.

This week, NASA and scientists from around the world are gathering at a biennial meeting near Houston to celebrate 50 years of astrobiology research. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. Scientists gathered to share new data and insights, initiate and advance collaborations, plan new projects, and educate the next generation of astrobiologists.

The teleconference participants are:
Mary Voytek, astrobiology senior scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington
Steve Squyres, researcher, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Bill Schopf, researcher, University of California, Los Angeles
Jack Farmer, researcher, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.
John Peters, researcher, Montana State University, Bozeman
To obtain call-in information, journalists should e-mail their name, media affiliation and telephone number to:

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA’s website at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

For more information about NASA astrobiology activities, visit:

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov

Update!:

On September 29, 2010 it was announced that a new exoplanet named Gliese 581g was discovered orbiting a red giant star, Gliese 581, in the constellation Libra. There have been 6 planets discovered so far orbiting Gliese 581. What makes this one so special is that it has conditions that are ideal for liquid water as it lies in the so-called habitable zone where temperatures would allow for life as we know it. It is also a rocky planet which would have sufficient mass and gravity to hold liquid water to its surface. As it is neither too hot nor too cold, too big nor too small, too far from its sun nor too close, it has been dubbed “the Goldilocks planet”.

Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the planet’s discoverers, said “Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it.” Those are fairly definitive words. Thank you Professor Vogt and colleagues!

12/1/10 Update

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/nasa-creates-buzz-extraterrestrial-announcement/

12/2/10 Update

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/arsenic-bacteria-alien-life-101202.html

12/09/10 Update

http://www.northjersey.com/news/national/111580304_Evidence_of_alien_life_gets_stronger.html

12/20/10 Update

It’s getting to be the end of the year and so this will be my final update:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827923.600

New Scientist Magazine predicts that the discovery of an Earthlike double is imminent. So I think my prediction back in February has proven true.

Couldn’t resist an additional update. 🙂

Update 09/29/12: Water ran on Mars- 1C696953DV583143J

 

from  Dallas Animal Advocates Blog

Bob Barker from the Dallas Animal Advocates Blog

I have been a member of Sea Shepherd, the conservation organization that protects whales from senseless murder, for a couple of years now, and when I heard that their whale protection vessel was horribly damaged by a Japanese whaling boat I was horrified and sent in a donation. It was smaller than I would have liked it to be. I’d like to be able to end whaling forever. Quite clearly that is Bob Barker’s vision as well.

Previously, I had occasionally seen “The Price is Right”, a TV game show that Bob Barker hosted for an astounding 35 years, from 1972 until 2005. He was a genial host and a very professional gentleman. I must confess I never knew that he has been a such a staunch animal advocate. He has gifted Sea Shepherd with $5 million dollars and has had a whale protection vehicle named after him.

Some demented individuals say that the heroes at Sea Shepherd are “terrorists” and I guess that that is the word of the decade for those who wish to tarnish reputations by throwing it around so much as to make it meaningless. The real criminals are those who  brutally murder the Earth’s grandest creatures, the gentle whales. For the record, the Dalai Lama supports Sea Shepherd. Need I say more?

Only “Bravo, Bob Barker!”

I have been reading a number of accounts recently about a new crop of cattle mutilations taking place in the Southwest. There have also been reports of mutilations in Great Britain of cattle and perhaps water buffalo. The first thing that must be ascertained is whether there is a pedestrian explanation for any an individual case. Such prosaic explanations would include predatory animals killing livestock or ritual animal murder by a cult. To me ritual murder of animals is repulsive but it is not paranormal. In examining the possibilities concerning those reports that are truly anomalous I have come to the following conclusions: It appears that the killers come by air, because in the truly anomalous cases there are no tracks to be seen. There are also no teeth marks and often the victims have had organs and tissues removed with beyond normal surgical precision. There are often reports of both UFOs and helicopters being seen in the area. Helicopters may indicate that humans are involved and it has been speculated that government agencies are involved. Some people think that the government or some parallel agency is testing for Mad Cow Disease. There is some plausibility to this concept, but why as in the recent case below test four calves from one farm? And why the weird coring procedures? It seems more likely to me that someone in a helicopter, likely from the government, has observed or heard that a mutilation has taken place and is investigating it themselves, but as with many questionable government investigations, will not admit to doing so.

This is reminiscent of reports of UFOs from Stephenville, Texas, wherein certain reliable citizens who made radar verifiable reports were hounded by helicopters and told by phone calls purportedly from Air Force personnel to keep quiet.

There is an even stranger explanation of the helicopters as screen memories. It is speculated that the occupants of UFOs are able to replace memories of accidental observers with more prosaic images, or perhaps the human brains of some observers are not able to process seeing a UFO.

Two of the most interesting accounts are here:
CATTLE MUTILATIONS BAFFLE COLORADO RANCHERS
By DeeDee Correll
Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-dead-calves14-2009dec14,0
,3007910,full.

story

DENVER – Manuel A. Sanchez has ruled out every logical explanation for the
fate that has befallen the calves on his ranch in southern Colorado.

Over the past month, he’s found four calves dead in a way that he cannot
reconcile with anything in his 50 years of raising cattle: eyes and ears
missing, tongues and genitals excised in what appeared to be a series of
fine cuts.

Mountain lions, bears or coyotes would leave messier marks, he said. And
Sanchez found no tire tracks or footprints that would suggest a human
invader — nor even bloodstains he’d expect to find around the carcasses if
someone had butchered them.

“There’s nothing to go by,” said Sanchez, who estimated his financial loss
at $10,000. “I can’t figure it out.”

Costilla County Sheriff’s Sgt. James Chavez agreed: “There’s nothing to
follow up on.”

Besides Sanchez’s calves in San Luis, several cases have been reported near
Trinidad.

It’s not the first time.

In the 1970s, ranchers in eastern and southern Colorado filed more than 200
mutilation reports, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation reports.
The agency investigated, even conducting an undercover operation, but to no
avail.

“It was such a bewilderment,” recalled Tillie Bishop, a state senator at the
time.

Some people suspected satanic cults. Others grew convinced of an
otherworldly explanation — space aliens.

But rancher Bill Bledsoe of Hugo, in eastern Colorado, said the deaths
weren’t suspicious at all.

“People find a dead animal and think it died strange, but usually it turned
out something had been eating on it,” he said. “I think they were just
jumping to conclusions.”

Some veterinarians also attributed the mutilations to predators.

Northern New Mexico suffered scores of cases too. A 1980 report by a state
task force blamed predators. Ranchers widely panned it.

Then the mutilations appeared to stop.

But in the mid-1990s, 27 cattle in northern New Mexico were mutilated in 16
months, the Associated Press reported. Again, ranchers found cattle with
genitals removed, tongues cut off at the roots, and eyes and ears missing.
The incisions appeared to have been cauterized, they said.

Again, the reports stopped.

This year, reports began trickling in from southern Colorado.

In March, Mike Duran discovered a cow dead on his ranch near Trinidad, the
udder and vagina missing. “It was like a laser cut,” not a rip, said Duran.
He’d seen such carnage before: In the ’90s, he found a dead cow missing the
same parts.

Sheriff’s investigators were mystified. “I don’t know how to explain it.
They’re just missing. There’s no evidence of blood, of anything being cut,”
said Las Animas County Undersheriff Derek Navarette.

In northeastern Colorado, some Weld County ranchers joke about “coyotes with
scalpels,” the Greeley Tribune reported. Some don’t bother reporting
mutilations anymore because of skeptics, the paper said.

The Las Animas County sheriff’s office investigated another case in March in
which a cow was missing the udder. There was no sign of human or animal
presence. “Unexplainable once again,” Navarette said.

He said his office didn’t order necropsies because of the prohibitive cost.

About 100 miles away, Sanchez found two dead calves in late October. A week
later, a third carcass was found, and the fourth in mid-November.

Frustrated by the lack of leads, Sanchez consulted Chuck Zukowski, a
Colorado Springs paranormal investigator who runs UFOnut.com.

Zukowski also investigated the cases in Trinidad, taking tissue samples from
two of those animals to Colorado State University.

Veterinary experts determined that the cuts were made before death and
didn’t involve cauterization.

Zukowski says he’s as baffled as everyone else.

Sanchez said that with the mystery unsolved, he didn’t want to risk losing
any of his 32 remaining calves the same way. So he sold them at auction this
month.

“I didn’t know when this was going to end,” said Sanchez, who has 40 cows
left. “There’s no way to catch these people. I don’t even know if it’s
people.”

Colorado cow mutilations baffle ranchers, cops, UFO believer

Posted: 12/09/2009 01:00:00 AM MST

Updated: 12/09/2009 04:57:46 PM MST
//

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Rancher Manuel Sanchez has lost four calves in as many weeks, all mysteriously mutilated. Authorities are baffled. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

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// ]]>SAN LUIS — Manuel Sanchez tucks his leathery hands into well-worn pockets and nods toward a cedar tree where, last month, he found his fourth mysteriously slaughtered calf in as many weeks.

“I have no idea what could do this. I wish I did,” he says.

Four calves, all killed overnight. Their innards gone. Tongues sliced out. Udders carefully removed. Facial skin sliced and gone. Eyes cored away. Not a single track surrounding the carcasses, which were found in pastures locked behind two gates and a mile from any road. Not a drop of blood on the ground or even on the remaining skin.

In his life in the piñon-patched pastures where his father and grandfather raised cattle, the 72-year-old Sanchez has seen

mountain lions and coyotes kill cattle, elk and deer. He’s seen birds scavenge carcasses. He’s heard of thieves slaughtering livestock in the field for their meat. He can’t explain what he saw last month.”A lion will drag its kill. Coyotes rip and tear flesh. These were perfect cuts — like with a laser or like a scalpel. And what would take the waste — all the guts — and leave the nice, tender meat?” Sanchez says, as he nudges his old Ford through rutted trails, rosary beads swinging from his rearview mirror. “No tracks. No blood. No nothing. I got nothing to go by. They don’t leave no trace.”

Every rancher who has reported similar cattle deaths — and there have been at least eight such deaths in southern Colorado this year — uses the same description.

“They just stripped this one,” says Tom Miller, who in March was one of three ranchers near Trinidad who discovered mutilated cattle.

Cow raises the alarm

One morning, he went out to his concrete troughs to feed his herd of about 80 red and black Angus cows and calves. The herd was racing about. A cow that a week before had birthed a calf was bellowing, “raising all kind of devil,” Miller says.

The remains of a calf killed on Manuel Sanchez’s ranch show the killer’s odd predilection for entrails. (Photo courtesy of Chuck Zukowski)

There by the trough — past the locked gate a quarter-mile from U.S. 350 east of Hoehne — was the calf. Its front legs and torso were gone. Its back legs were hanging by hide to a shattered pelvis and a meatless backbone. Miller thought a pack of coyotes had torn into the calf the night before.

Then he saw the ears: sliced off the head in circular, surgical-like cuts. He noticed that there were no tracks. And no blood anywhere.

“If anyone can show me how this happened, I will believe them. I know it’s not coyotes, especially in one night. Only a human or something like that can cut the ears like that,” says Miller, a 72-year-old rancher who was raised on the prairie bordering the Purgatoire River.

“If it was done by people, they sure went out of their way to bother and confuse me. And really, why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mysteriously mangled

Colorado Brand Inspector Dennis Williams came out and looked at Miller’s calf. He lives next door; the calf would be the last of three strangely mutilated cattle that he would investigate in March of this year.

“I’ve heard about it. It was weird, to say the least. Totally unexplainable. To me, it looked like that calf had been dropped from a high distance, the way its hips were dislocated and all its broken bones,” Williams says.

That same month, ranchers had called Williams to grisly scenes northeast of Aguilar and west of Weston to investigate mysteriously mangled cattle that had been seen healthy the day before.

To add to the weirdness, Sanchez, Miller and Mike Duran, who found a sliced Red Angus cow near Weston in March, have all experienced similar mutilations before. Sanchez lost cows in 2006 and 1993, Miller in 1997 and 1980, and Duran in 2000 and 1995.

“It’s weird and unexplainable,” says Duran, who lost a healthy 27-year-old Red Angus cow on March 8, her udder and rear end removed with what he describes as “laser cuts, like when somebody cuts metal with a torch.”

Cops, like Williams and the ranchers, are stumped.

“We can’t come up with anything,” says Las Animas County sheriff’s Deputy Derek Navarette, who investigated the Miller and Duran calves.

“We’ve seen these before and they are all kind of the same. No one has ever explained it. Northern New Mexico has had some of these same cases, and in those cases they never got any further than we did.”

Predators ruled out

Chuck Zukowski of Colorado Springs investigated three of the eight mutilated cows in southern Colorado this year. The amateur UFO investigator and reserve deputy in El Paso County documents each scene, testing for radiation and scanning carcasses with ultraviolet light.

Despite his extraterrestrial inclinations, Zukowski’s studies — found on his ufonut.com website — fall short of concluding anything paranormal. He seems certain all the animals he studied were killed and drained before they were sliced, which explains the lack of blood found near the animals.

The way the tongues were sliced off in straight lines back behind the teeth indicates it is not a predator kill, he says.

“I’m looking for obvious things,” Zukowski says. “I don’t like to say aliens did it. There are just too many unknowns. I like to lean on human intervention until I actually see a UFO come down and take a cow.”

Sanchez is a salt-of-the-earth-type fellow who put three kids through college running cattle. Yet, he says he and his wife marveled at incandescent blue lights hovering over a ridge near his pastures in July and August. He declined to speculate about the lights.

“I just say the truth and that’s what I saw,” he says.

Duran, on the other hand, is willing to take the next step. He’s looked at it from every angle, he says. If it wasn’t human and wasn’t a predator, he says, there’s only one other option.

“I do believe it was UFOs. This universe is so big, a lot of people think we are the only ones here,” he says, declining to guess why aliens harbor such bloody disdain for bovines.

“I bet there is something out there.”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13956752#ixzz0ZyF0JgPq

This last one is really worth the time to go to the site and check out the video, comments, map and additional photos.
I’d also advise interested readers to look at Linda Moulton Howe’s website
because she is the person who won an Emmy award for her investigative film on the subject in the past and there are many informative articles there on the subject if you scroll down the page.
Another person who has made interesting speculation into possible reasons for an interdimensional or extra-terrestrial visitor too is Carol Rainey in the book Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings of which there is a short review on this weblog. If you think I’m being partial in this article to female investigators perhaps you are right. 🙂

Horrible animal slaughter in the name of religion!  This is a brutal and inhumane custom that brings shame on all those that participate. To kill harmless animals in the name of God is an abomination. This mass slaughter runs counter to Hindu principles of reverence for life. I try to be very open minded about the beliefs of others but this just makes me sick. I can’t see any bright side to this whatsoever.

I commend the actress and animal activist Brigitte Bardot for standing up for animals.

‘WORLD’S BIGGEST ANIMAL SACRIFICE’ BEGINS
By Deepesh Shrestha
AFP
November 24, 2009

Up to a million Hindu devotees have gathered in a village in Nepal to
witness the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals in a mass
sacrifice that has drawn widespread criticism.

Worshippers travelled long distances, many coming from India, to attend the
two-day Gadhimai festival, which honours the Hindu goddess of power and
takes place once every five years in southern Nepal.

A huge cry of “Long Live Gadhimai!” went up after the village temple’s head
priest launched the event with the ritual sacrifice of two wild rats, two
pigeons, a rooster, a lamb and a pig.

The crowd then rushed to a nearby field where 250 sword-wielding butchers
were waiting to begin the mass slaughter of about 20,000 buffalo, brought by
devotees to be sacrificed near the holy temple.

“This is a very special day for Hindu devotees,” head priest Mangal
Chaudhary Tharu told AFP as the Gadhimai festival began.

“All the people who came here to worship Gadhimai have been waiting a long
time for this day. I am very proud to be part of this event,” added Tharu,
the fourth generation of his family to serve as a priest at the temple.

An AFP reporter at the scene said up to a million devotees were crammed into
the area for the festival. Many were from India, where some states have
banned animal slaughter for religious purposes.

Mahesh Yadav, a Nepalese farmer who arrived at the site with a black goat
tethered to the back of his bicycle, said he wanted to thank the goddess for
giving him a son.

“I had seven daughters in a row so I promised the goddess I would sacrifice
a goat if she gave me a son,” he told AFP.

“Eight years ago the goddess listened and my son was born.”

Nepal’s government has refused to put a stop to what it says is a
centuries-old religious tradition, despite a vocal opposition campaign from
local animal rights activists who say the slaughter is needless cruelty.

Their cause is supported by the well-known Indian animal rights activist
Maneka Gandhi and by the French film star turned campaigner Brigitte Bardot,
who this month wrote to Nepal’s president urging him to put a stop to the
festival.

Armed police have been deployed around the temple grounds and there were
fears of clashes between animal rights activists and festival-goers.

But the campaigners appeared to have stayed away after making a last-ditch
appeal to the government to stop the event over the weekend.

The buffalo slaughter took place in a huge field surrounded by three-metre
wall, and will be followed on Tuesday by the ritual sacrifice of around
300,000 goats, sheep and birds.

Many festival-goers scaled the wall to get a better view of the killings,
carried out by volunteers using specially-built bamboo cages to prevent the
animals from escaping.

Jaya Lal Thakur, a 34-year-old local barber, said he paid 210 rupees ($4.90)
for a licence to work at the festival and had already slaughtered dozens of
buffalo.

“This is the second time I’ve slaughtered buffalo at the Gadhimai festival.
I don’t get paid to do it but I believe it will bring me salvation,” he told
AFP.

“This is a rare opportunity and I’m very happy to be a part of it.”

At one point police used batons to disperse the crowds and prevent a
stampede, an AFP reporter witnessed, but there were no casualties and the
event appeared mainly peaceful.

Nepal’s government has provided 4.5 million rupees ($105,510) in funding for
the festival, a lucrative event for organisers, who sell the hides to
contractors after the slaughter.

The meat is distributed among local people, some of whom set up stalls
selling sweets and drinks.

Authorities have banned the sale and consumption of alcohol in the area, but
reports said five people including one Indian national died at the weekend
after drinking home-brewed alcohol.

————

My recommendation is to go to the Nepalese Embassy website and complain vociferously: http://www.nepalembassyusa.org/contact.php

Anil Bhanot speaks out in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/25/gadhimai-animal-sacrifice-nepal

Another article from the Guardian:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/24/hindu-sacrifice-gadhimai-festival-nepal

P1010036

Shortly before the New York Marathon, I was visited by two very friendly and interesting Maasai warriors from Kenya who were getting acclimated to our town before they participated as runners. I’d visited Kenya and Tanzania about twenty years ago and met a few Maasai people on that trip, so I knew a tiny bit about their rich culture. I am impressed by their care for the environment and their cattle. This visit had nothing to do with my long ago trip, but I am glad to see that these proud people are preserving their culture.

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