Monday Moaning

Here we go again!

Sugar, the big enemy.

Headlines today:

Cut back amount of sugar children consume, parents told

Health officials believe children are consuming more sugar than they should

Parents are being encouraged to cut back on the amount of sugar they feed children in a new health campaign.

The Public Health England (PHE) Change4Life campaign offers “sugar swap” tips, including swapping ice cream for yogurt and sugary drinks for sugar-free alternatives.

Health guidelines advise that 10% of a person’s energy or calorie intake should be made up of sugar.

But officials fear children between four and 10 are consuming far more.

‘Health impact’

Source: BBCNews Read more

Opinion:

While it may be true, sugar is not the BIG enemy. They’re barking up the wrong tree… again. Because the real tree has gremlins.

The real enemies are twofold, sweeteners and HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup); i.e. sugar-free alternatives.

Sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose are far more damaging to the body than sugar.

HFCS, which has replaced natural sugar in nearly all sodas and prepared foods in supermarkets, is a plague.

Natural sugar has 50/50 sucrose/fructose. HFCS has an imbalance, as much as 40/60. The excess fructose cannot be processed by the body and my understanding goes straight to the liver and gets converted to fat.

HFCS is the hidden beast that is responsible for the current explosion of obesity. Check this…

Now look at this…

Check out these figures…

Click the image to enbiggenate if your eyes are like mine

Nearly every drink and preprepared food product in the supermarkets have HFCS…

The governments won’t do anything about HFCS, because they’d be fighting giant corporations who pay millions for the ‘right’ politicians to be elected.

Politicians are basically cowards, they won’t protect your rights over their chances of being reelected.

You and your health simply don’t matter!

Your only guarantee for health is to totally eliminate HFCS from your diet. Forget the sugar problem, compared to HFCS it’s not a problem.

Monday Moaning

What is it with man?

Must we destroy everything?

It seems that we must. Man is hell bent on destroying everything in nature.

We are literally shitting in our own nest!

Here’s just one more pathetic example.

A nightingale sings – but not for much longer if housebuilding drive wipes out its haven

Campaigners fear disaster for the endangered songbirds if a plan to build 5,000 homes on a breeding site in Kent is given green light

The nightingale has suffered a 90% reduction in numbers. Photograph: Alamy

It is revered for the beauty of its song and is a beloved adornment to the British countryside. But the nightingale – hailed by Keats as a “light-winged Dryad of the trees” – is now in trouble, having suffered a catastrophic drop in numbers in recent years.

Even worse, say ornithologists, the best site in Britain for protecting the songbird – at Lodge Hill in Medway, Kent – is under threat of destruction. Its loss, they say, could deal an irreparable blow to the nightingale in this country. It could also open the floodgates to commercial exploitation of hundreds of other protected environmental sites across the country.

“Lodge Hill is the only Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in the UK that is specifically set up to protect nightingales,” said Sarah Lee, of the RSPB. “It is the most important site for the birds in the UK. Yet the local council want to build 5,000 homes there. It would absolutely destroy the site and the birds’ homes – and send a very worrying signal about the prospects of protecting other critically important sites in the UK.”

According to ornithologists, the nightingale has suffered a 90% reduction in numbers over the past 40 years. Factors involved in this population crash include the intensification of UK farming that has destroyed swaths of sandy scrubland on which nightingales like to breed, while the spread of human populations in West Africa, where the nightingale spends the winter, has also affected numbers. In 2012, a survey revealed there were only 3,300 breeding pairs left in the UK. The bird is now on the amber list of species of “conservation concern”.

In an attempt to protect the nightingale, the Lodge Hill site – a piece of land once owned by the Ministry of Defence – was named as an SSSI, a place where local species are given special protection against human interference.

However, three years ago, Medway council prepared plans to build 5,000 homes at Lodge Hill, a proposal that was approved by its planning committee in September.

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Opinion:

We are at fault; yes, you and me because we vote for these stupid people. We often vote without thinking, we don’t know enough about the candidates, we believe all the pre-election bullshit that pours from their filthy mouths.

Voting should be taken more seriously. We should investigate the candidates thoroughly.

Councils and other governemtn bodies are too keen to rubber stamp projects without considering the ramifications.

Monday Moaning

This is a moan, but it’s more of awareness. An awareness that we landlubbers rarely see.

Here’s a glimpse.

Next time you buy a bottle of water, remember the baby albatross

Like finding rubbish on Everest, when I crossed the Atlantic I was dismayed to see so much plastic – and that kills seabirds

‘The particles of plastic, many of them ­minute, enter the food chain and do terrible damage to all forms of life.’ Photograph: Lucy Pemoni/AP

The picture of the baby albatross that starved to death after being fed nutritionally useless bits of plastic by its parents shows just what happens when we treat the world’s oceans as a handy system of waste disposal. A few years ago, I got a do-this-before-you-die chance to sail across the Atlantic, among the best things I’ve ever done.

One startling discovery was that the sea is actually a kind of desert. For most of the trip, we rarely saw a bird, we caught no fish, and the only living things apart from us were the Portuguese man-of-wars, evil-looking jelly fish that drifted by in ominous numbers on calm days. But, like discovering rubbish on Everest, there was always plastic. Big bits – weather buoys that had come adrift, fuel containers and suchlike – and small bits, and even smaller bits. There are 269,000 tonnes of these fragments, according to the newest estimate. They come mainly from single-use plastic containers like water bottles, but even so-called biodegradable plastic only degrades quickly in commercial composting systems.

The particles, many of them minute, enter the food chain and do terrible damage to all forms of life. And because they are not only on the surface but also suspended deep beneath, trying to remove them risks doing more environmental harm. So next time you buy bottled water, remember the baby albatross.

Source: TheGuardian

Monday Moaning

Is this just more talk?

‘Future Earth’ platform outlines global change strategy

A global initiative bringing together scientists across different disciplines has launched its strategy to identify key priorities for sustainability.

The document outlines what Future Earth, launched at the 2012 Rio +20 Summit, hopes to contribute towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Future Earth plans to focus on what are considered to be the most pressing issues facing the planet

It has identified eight global challenges, including “water, energy and food for all” and decarbonisation.

The strategy also focuses on the roles of policymakers and funding bodies.

“Future Earth is a global research platform aimed at connecting the world’s scientists across the regions and across disciplines to work on the problems of sustainable development and the solutions to move us towards sustainable development,” explained Future Earth science committee vice-chairwoman Belinda Reyers.

“It really is an unprecedented attempt to consult with scientists across the world as well as with important stakeholders and policymakers,” she told BBC News.

“It will consider what kind of science is needed in the medium-term to really move us towards more desirable futures.”

Dr Reyers – chief scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Stellenbosch, South Africa – said the strategy had been distilled down to eight “sustainability challenges”:

• Deliver water, energy and food for all
• Decarbonise socio-economic systems
• Safeguard the terrestrial, freshwater and marine natural assets
• Building healthy, resilient and productive cities
• Promote sustainable rural futures
• Improve human health
• Encourage sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Increase social resilience to future threats

Source: BBCNews Read more

Opinion:

I am highly sceptical of any more of these reports, conferences and meetings. So far, have there been any real changes? Or are they just paying lip service to the problem to keep the people happy?

My view is that the capitalists just DON’T want to know!

Monday Moaning

This is a stinker!

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Geo-engineering: Climate fixes ‘could harm billions’

Using aerosols to block solar radiation represents one approach to geo-engineering

Schemes to tackle climate change could prove disastrous for billions of people, but might be required for the good of the planet, scientists say.

That is the conclusion of a new set of studies into what’s become known as geo-engineering.

This is the so far unproven science of intervening in the climate to bring down temperatures.

These projects work by, for example, shading the Earth from the Sun or soaking up carbon dioxide.

Ideas include aircraft spraying out sulphur particles at high altitude to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or using artificial “trees” to absorb CO2.

Long regarded as the most bizarre of all solutions for global warming, ideas for geo-engineering have come in for more scrutiny in recent years as international efforts to limit carbon emissions have failed.

Now three combined research projects, led by teams from the universities of Leeds, Bristol and Oxford, have explored the implications in more detail.

The central conclusion, according to Dr Matt Watson of Bristol University, is that the issues surrounding geo-engineering – how it might work, the effects it might have and the potential downsides – are “really really complicated”.

Sun block

Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere mimics the cooling effects of volcanoes

“We don’t like the idea but we’re more convinced than ever that we have to research it,” he said.

“Personally I find this stuff terrifying but we have to compare it to doing nothing, to business-as-usual leading us to a world with a 4C rise.”

The studies used computer models to simulate the possible implications of different technologies – with a major focus on ideas for making the deserts, seas and clouds more reflective so that incoming solar radiation does not reach the surface.

One simulation imagined sea-going vessels spraying dense plumes of particles into the air to try to alter the clouds. But the model found that this would be far less effective than once thought.

Another explored the option of injecting sulphate aerosols into the air above the Arctic in an effort to reverse the decline of sea-ice.

A key finding was that none of the simulations managed to keep the world’s temperature at the level experienced between 1986-2005 – suggesting that any effort would have to be maintained for years.

More alarming for the researchers were the potential implications for rainfall patterns.

Although all the simulations showed that blocking the Sun’s rays – or solar radiation management, as it is called – did reduce the global temperature, the models revealed profound changes to precipitation including disrupting the Indian Monsoon.

But blocking the Sun’s rays could have undesirable effects, such as disrupting the Indian Monsoon

Prof Piers Forster of Leeds University said: “We have found that between 1.2 and 4.1 billion people could be adversely affected by changes in rainfall patterns.

Source: BBCNews Read more

Opinion:

And… they don’t even know if it will work.

And… what do they mean by ‘harm billions’? Just what does ‘harm’ or ‘adversely affect’ mean? Are they euphemisms for ‘kill off’?

I know the world has about 14x more people than the planet can support, but are there plans afoot to reduce the world’s population by between 1.2 and 4.1 billion people?

This could be a real horror story!

Monday Moaning

We are hearing all the time about meetings, conferences and the like about global warming.

There are billions pledged; the latest $9.3bn, to fight the problem.

Australia is thumbing its nose at carbon footprints, China is racing away with fossil fuels to stoke their furnaces and economy. And, they’re not the only ones.

But is anything actually being done?

Polar caps are melting, Greenland is too. The seas are getting warmer and sea levels rising. Islands like the Maldives and some Pacific nations are on the verge of disappearing.

Everybody is on the bandwagon.

Then there are the climate deniers, claiming it’s all a hoax.

Where is all this money and rhetoric taking us? It seems to me as though we’re no further ahead than we were at the beginning.

Talk, talk, talk, blah, blah!

How about someone actually doing something!

Monday Moaning

Two moans this morning…

Tanzania accused of backtracking over sale of Masai’s ancestral land

Masai told to leave historic homeland by end of the year so it can become a hunting reserve for the Dubai royal family

Tanzania has been accused of reneging on its promise to 40,000 Masai pastoralists by going ahead with plans to evict them and turn their ancestral land into a reserve for the royal family of Dubai to hunt big game.

Activists celebrated last year when the government said it had backed down over a proposed 1,500 sq km “wildlife corridor” bordering the Serengeti national park that would serve a commercial hunting and safari company based in the United Arab Emirates.

The Tanzanian government has been accused of going back on a deal not to sell Maasai land bordering the Serengeti national park. Photograph: Alamy

Now the deal appears to be back on and the Masai have been ordered to quit their traditional lands by the end of the year. Masai representatives will meet the prime minister, Mizengo Pinda, in Dodoma on Tuesday to express their anger. They insist the sale of the land would rob them of their heritage and directly or indirectly affect the livelihoods of 80,000 people. The area is crucial for grazing livestock on which the nomadic Masai depend.

Unlike last year, the government is offering compensation of 1 billion shillings (£369,350), not to be paid directly but to be channelled into socio-economic development projects. The Masai have dismissed the offer.

“I feel betrayed,” said Samwel Nangiria, co-ordinator of the local Ngonett civil society group. “One billion is very little and you cannot compare that with land. It’s inherited. Their mothers and grandmothers are buried in that land. There’s nothing you can compare with it.”

Nangiria said he believes the government never truly intended to abandon the scheme in the Loliondo district but was wary of global attention. “They had to pretend they were dropping the agenda to fool the international press.”

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Opinion:

Do I really need to say it? This smacks of pure greed and corruption.

The last thing the world needs is to pander to the likes of the Dubai royal family. They’re nothing but a bunch of spoiled brats.

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Mediterranean diet is best way to tackle obesity, say doctors

Mediterranean diets may help reduce the risk of heart attacks, researchers say

A Mediterranean diet may be a better way of tackling obesity than calorie counting, leading doctors have said.

Writing in the Postgraduate Medical Journal (PMJ), the doctors said a Mediterranean diet quickly reduced the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

And they said it may be better than low-fat diets for sustained weight loss.

Source: BBCNews Read more

Opinion:

In my opinion, this is bullshit. Not totally, but once again the ‘experts’ are ignoring the real issue. Ban HFCS from all foods and sodas, and the problem disappears, almost.

Monday Moaning

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday… deal with it! I am. I’ve got coffee.

Nature Ramble on Sunday warned of illegal pets, or transporting species from one part of the planet to another.

Here’s another issue that runs parallel to keeping turles and other unusal pets.

Hewlett-Packard ad featuring runaway iguana ‘poses threat to native wildlife’

Invasive Species Council asks company to pull ad, saying ‘Ralph the iguana’ could encourage Australians to buy the illegal pet

Hewlett-Packard’s Australian advertisement features a boy whose pet iguana is on the loose.

Hewlett-Packard has been criticised for featuring a runaway iguana in its Australian advertising, as the animal is considered an environmental threat and is illegal to own as a pet.

The Invasive Species Council has said the use of “Ralph the iguana” in HP’s marketing campaign would encourage Australians to obtain iguanas as pets, only for them to be released into the wild, where they could cause significant damage to native flora and fauna.

The HP campaign is an online effort involving the tagline #HelpFindRalph. People can look at pictures of Ralph to guess his location in order to win various HP products.

So far, Ralph has been photographed alongside camels on the beach in Broome, looking sanguine in a South Australian vineyard and looming in front of Sydney town hall. The green iguana has also been shown at the Twelve Apostles in Victoria and the Whitsunday islands in Queensland.

“We don’t want to create a new demand for this species and for people to buy them on the black market,” Andrew Cox, chief executive of the Invasive Species Council, told Guardian Australia. “These things can grow up to two metres long and then people will dump them, which causes a major threat to northern Australia.

“Hewlett-Packard should have known better. They should have done their homework. They now need to make people aware that it’s illegal to have iguanas in Australia and that they are a threat to the environment here.”

Green iguanas, which can weigh up to 9kg, are considered a pest because of their broad diet, which may include native plants, animals and bird eggs. Their burrows can also disturb the environment.

A Queensland government analysis has warned the animals are considered “high-risk” to the natural environment and are prone to spread in that state because the climate is comparable to that of their native central America.

Although they are often kept as pets, the Queensland government warns: “Adult iguanas are large, powerful animals. When threatened they can bite, cause severe scratch wounds and deliver a painful slap with their tail.”

It is illegal to import iguanas or keep them as pets but 17 animals have been seized by authorities since 1999.

“We can only guess how many are in Australia, probably hundreds,” Cox said. “We don’t want that number to increase because once they are established, it’s a hard creature to dislodge. They can camouflage themselves in the wild, after all.”

The Invasive Species Council, which recently warned of an influx of pest species into Australia, has written to HP asking the company to scrap the advertising campaign and apologise.

But an HP spokeswoman told Guardian Australia it had no plans to alter the ads and that Ralph would continue appearing next to Australian landmarks.

Source: TheGuardian

Opinion:

I realise that Ralph is an invasive species and therefore a concern, but I wonder is this making a mountain out of a molehill?

Ralph makes an endearing ambassador for HP and understandably so.

Perhaps HP should have been a little more astute in their campaign and added an educational factor into the ad, therefore actually helping the powers that be.

But there is also the responsibility of parents in educating their kids about such issues and the matter should also be dealt with in schools.

Monday Moaning

This wasn’t going to be my MM post this morning. My post this morning was going to be about the quarry plans for Hopwas Forest, an ancient woodland mentioned in the Domesday Book in1086. But, you can read it on BBCNews and imagine what I have to say about the potential destruction.

On with the moan…

I have been sitting on a quote for some time. Yesterday Lois, over at Eco-Grandma wrote a wonderful post, using that same quote.

In effect, she unwittingly stole my thunder., but I bear no umbrage because it gave me the impetus to do what I had been procrastinating for the past few months. Yes, sometimes I have ideas and it takes a while before those ideas get to paper, or in this case… screen.

Hop on over to Eco-Grandma and read Lois’ post first, then continue on here… I’ll wait until you come back.

Poignant, yes?

My view is that our social paradigm must change. Not just change a little, but drastic changes must be made if humanity is going to stand a chance for survival.

I will not beat about the bush.

The western world hs become a fat, lazy, egocentric, greedy, want, want, want, waste, waste, waste society.

I don’t care if you are a trim 75kg muscle-rippling male, or a lithe 50kg female with big knockers; I am pointing the finger at you too! We are all tarred with the same brush.

Our downfall is technology.

Technology has ruined the human race beyond recognition. It has turned a hard working person into a slob in so many ways.

Technology is responsible for over population. Technology is responsible for obesity. Technology is responsible for pollution. Technology is responsible for… Oh, heck, that list can go on and on.

In short, technology is our enemy, not our friend.

We have become so greedy because technology has made us make money faster. Our capitalist world wants more money even faster still.

If we, as a species, are to survive, we need to shun techology before it strangles us.

Even the internet.

The internet is in decline, it is being taken over by corporate interests. Just the same happened to radio, television and the telephone; all were great inventions until they became the tools of corporations. The first radio and TV didn’t have advertising and crap, now they are the means of brainwashing society, the telephone too with its infernal telemarketing. The internet is going the same way. It has already become a vast network for brainwashing.

This brainwashing has made us a consumer society. We see, we want!

When in reality, we don’t need.

Society has to retake control of itself.

We have to recognise the brainwashing by governments, corporations and the mainstram media and refuse to let it control us. In effect, we have to stop being sheep and following the flock to our doom.

I have said many times that the old ways were better, the way things were done in granny’s day. I’m talking about my granny, not yours from the 1950s, mine from 1894.

Yes, my granny was born in 1894. In those days cooking was done at home, our food was grown in the backyard, clothes were mended and handed down, pollution was minimal, plastic bags didn’t exist, we hadn’t begun to deplete the planet’s resources and we lived in near rural tranquility with less crime and violence.

In those days, they didn’t have TV which I blame for the beginning of our ills, they didn’t have psychologists, they didn’t have the likes of Prozac to make life rosy and create psychopathic shooters, they didn’t mollycoddle their kids so they grew up knowing nothing about the real world; and the latest… they didn’t have smartphones where they walked along with their noses buried in small screens, they saw the world and what was happening.

Technology has complicated our lives, we need to return to the simplicity of yesteryear.

Recently, I posted The Kill Shot on Tomus Arcanum. It was about the dangers we face with solar flares. What happens if a Kill Shot strikes Earth? Don’t laugh, don’t shrug this off as a flight of fancy.  Last week there was a solar flare that disrupted northern hemisphere communications for 48 hours.

People had to live for two days wihout Twitter and FaceBook.

Imagine a reall Kill Shot that knocked the net out for weeks… you have a lot of blathering idiots walking in the streets drooling.

A real Kill Shot is just hypothetical, it could never happen.

No? Just 18 months ago a Kill Shot so big that it is called a Carrington Event, just missed the Earth because the sun was facing slightly off. And, if you think this isn’t serious, such a Kill Shot could take the earth back to the Stone Age. Our technology would be down forever.

Just think, no cars, no TV, no supermarkets, no internet,,, and no FaceBook.

Society would have to re-invent itself, if it hadn’t already been roasted.

Apart from the possibility of a huge solar flre, which may/may not happen, if we don’t simplify our world, we are still doomed.

We need to change the paradigm; and that starts with you!

“No, don’t look around, I am pointing the finger at you!”

Monday Moaning

Why?

Why?

Why?

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Why do we have to be such bastards?

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Development could lead to extinction of rare Australian bird

The critically endangered Regent Honeyeater could be at risk of extinction if plans to develop an industrial estate in New South Wales in Australia goes ahead, experts have found.

The bird is endemic to South Eastern Australia and this site contains one of the most important breeding habitats for this extremely rare bird, whose population has declined by more than 80 percent over the last 24 years.

“We are now certain that Regent Honeyeaters rely on this site for food and to breed,” said Samantha Vine, Head of Conservation at BirdLife Australia. “Development of this site will be catastrophic for this imperilled species.”

“In 2007–8 observers recorded 20 nests and around 100 individual birds,” said lead author, Mick Roderick. “With fewer than 400 adult Regent Honeyeaters remaining in the wild, this represents around 25 per cent of this species’ current global population.”

On light of these findings BirdLife Australia has asked the Federal Government  to revoke approval of the site and find an alternative site for the industrial estate.

“The birds’ breeding habitat in the Tomalpin woodlands must be protected to ensure the ongoing survival of the Regent Honeyeater,” Samantha said. “They face increasing pressures from mining developments, climate change and pests, and depend on this area as a refuge”.

Opinion:

When are we going to open our eyes?

Why do the capitalist pigs have to have the final say?

Go and build your indutrial site somewhere else! Just because you own the land financially, doesn’t mean you have to destroy habitats like this.

You don’t have the right!

Source: WildlifeExtra