NUCLEAR > Two antinuclear activists become pro-nuclear technology communicators

Posted on July 12, 2011 by rmichal

By Rod Adams

Two British environmental writers who were bitterly opposed to nuclear energy development just a few years ago decided to do some homework. Their questioning attitude and fact seeking minds have led them to the inescapable conclusion that most of the arguments against nuclear energy repeatedly offered by the opposition have been pure fabrications. George Monbiot and Mark Lynas both bring assets to the battle for hearts and minds in the energy source debate that are hard to match – they are recent converts to a pro-nuclear technology position with deep credentials in the environmental community. In addition, they are professional communicators with stories to tell.


Last Friday, Lynas’s publisher launched his new book titled The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. Within hours, customers who tried to access the book via Amazon.co.uk received a message stating that the book was not currently being offered because it was under review/investigation. Since Lynas had taken some aggressively controversial positions in the book, several of his fans offered conspiratorial explanations for Amazon’s decision to pull the book off of the virtual shelves.


After a flurry of Twitter tweets and blog posts, the issue was resolved and access to the book was restored. Apparently someone thought that the book would be a hardcover and complained to Amazon when they received it in a trade paperback format. As someone in the entertainment business once said – no publicity is bad publicity as long as they spell your name right. I bought the book for my Kindle partially based on the attention that the implications of possible censorship generated in the social media world.  For more

TECHNOLOGY > World's first cardboard vacuum cleaner unveiled

A U.K. vacuum cleaner manufacturer will market a high performance vacuum cleaner constructed out of recycled and recyclable materials; the device was designed by an industrial design student; the corrugated cardboard panels that form the body of the machine are easily replaced if damaged and cost just a tenth of the price of an equivalent plastic panel

Vax's ev, world's first cardboard vacuum cleaner // Source: facenews.ua

Vax, a U.K. floor-care products maker, is championing young British design talent by producing the world’s first cardboard vacuum cleaner, designed by Loughborough University student, Jake Tyler.

The company says the Vax ev is a high performance vacuum cleaner constructed out of recycled and recyclable materials that reduce the burden on landfill. The corrugated cardboard panels that form the body of the Vax ev are easily replaced if damaged and cost just a tenth of the price of an equivalent plastic panel. A Vax release reports that these panels are multi-purpose too, beginning their life as part of the retail box the vacuum cleaner is sold in. Once the cardboard parts are separated from the box, they “pop” into place around the motor housing, without any need for glue. They have a flame retardant coating and are fully customizable — with just a few felt tip the vacuum cleaner can be turned into a unique work of art!  Read more

STATE OF THE OCEAN > 'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress

Huffington Post

by Travis Donovan

If the current actions contributing to a multifaceted degradation of the world's oceans aren't curbed, a mass extinction unlike anything human history has ever seen is coming, an expert panel of scientists warns in an alarming new report.

The preliminary report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) is the result of the first-ever interdisciplinary international workshop examining the combined impact of all of the stressors currently affecting the oceans, including pollution, warming, acidification, overfishing and hypoxia.

“The findings are shocking," Dr. Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director, said in a statement released by the group. "This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level. We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children's and generations beyond that."  For more

WIKISTRAT > A Revolution in Geostrategy

[This article describes the Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition (first week out) hosted by WIKISTRAT - where the world's greatest futurists/strategists come together to strategize about the future in 5 very focused and pertinent issues...]

Grand Strategy Competition Update

THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2011 AT 5:45AM

As head judge of Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, I wanted to highlight some of the takeaways that we’ve already gathered in the first week of the contest.  As you may already know, the competition brings together more than 30 teams comprised of PhD and masters students from elite international schools and world-renowned think tanks.  Those teams, evenly distributed over a dozen or so countries (so as to encourage intra-country as well as inter-country competition), are being challenged to come up with long-term grand strategies in relation to five issues:  global energy security, global economic “rebalancing,” Jihadist terrorism, the Sino-American relationship and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.  

U.S. Sends Humanitarian Envoy to North Korea

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The United States on Tuesday dispatched an official envoy to North Korea in a rare trip aimed at assessing food scarcity in the impoverished state against the backdrop of a building push to resume the paralyzed aid-for-denuclearization talks, Reuters reported (see GSN, May 23).

photo courtesy:  dailyworldtrends.com

Special envoy for North Korean human rights Robert King and a small delegation of U.S. officials arrived "to consult humanitarian issues" between Washington and Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch.

The last formal trip by a U.S. official to the Stalinist state took place in December 2009.

"Since North Korea sees U.S. decisions on humanitarian aid through a political lens, the food aid assessment might be treated in Pyongyang as a political signal that the Obama administration might finally be open to a broader political dialogue with North Korea," North Korea specialist Scott Snyder stated on the Council of Foreign Relations website.

King's visit occurs while North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is in China -- his third such trip in little more than a year. Experts and envoys believe Kim will use the trip to seek more financial and food assistance from its longtime ally. In exchange for providing badly needed aid, analysts anticipate Beijing will pressure Pyongyang to agree to South Korea's proposal for bilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear activities.

Washington shut off food aid to Pyongyang in 2008 and is waiting for the OK from Seoul to open up the pipeline, according to Reuters.

Opponents of providing further food to Pyongyang argue the regime has previously used the assistance to feed its large army and not its citizenry. Seoul says the North has the same food supplies as in 2010. South Korean officials are also suspicious that Pyongyang wants to build up its food supplies prior to a third nuclear test that would presumably result in further restrictions on foreign assistance (Jeremy Laurence, Reuters/Yahoo!News, May 24) Full article
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Russia Threatens Nuclear Arms Boost if Antimissile Dispute Persists

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday his nation would enhance its stockpile of nuclear weapons if it reaches no agreement with the United States to collaborate on a European antimissile framework, Reuters reported (see GSN, May 11).

(May. 18) - A Russian Topol-M ICBM, shown on display during a parade last week in Moscow's Red Square. Russia could bolster its nuclear arsenal if its reaches no deal with the United States on European missile defense cooperation, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday (Dmitry Kostyukov/Getty Images).

Moscow and NATO agreed last November in Lisbon, Portugal, to jointly explore areas for possible antimissile collaboration (see GSN, Nov. 22, 2010). A Kremlin proposal that Europe be divided into two sectors of missile defense responsibility, with NATO managing one and Russia the other, has not generated much interest among alliance members. The United States has said it would never place any NATO state's missile protection in Moscow's hands (see GSN, May 16).

"I hope the questions that I put to my colleague and friend President Obama will be answered and we can work out a model for cooperation in antimissile defense," Medvedev said.

"If we don't work this out, then we will have take steps to counter it, which we would not like. Then we are talking about forcing the development of our nuclear strike potential," the Russian president said. "This would be a very bad scenario, a scenario that would throw us back to the Cold War era" (Alexei Anishchuk, Reuters, May 18).

Failure to reach an agreement might prompt Moscow to cut short its compliance with the U.S.-Russian New START strategic arms control treaty, the Xinhua News Agency quoted him as saying. The pact requires both nations to cut their deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,550 warheads and 700 delivery systems, and allows for verification inspections in the two countries (Xinhua News Agency, May 18).

Meanwhile, Russia's RS-24 ICBM will be suited within two decades to penetrate any antimissile system operated by another government, Russian strategic rocket forces head Lt. Gen. Sergei Karakayev said (seeGSN, March 4).

"It is necessary to note the new missiles' ability to be invulnerable before launch thanks to their mobility, as well as their ability to tackle the task of defeating any possible missile defense system within the next 15-20 years, should such a need arise," Russia Today on Tuesday quoted Karakayev as saying.

"The first missile regiment, comprised of two batteries armed with Yars advanced land-based mobile missile systems, equipped with RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads, entered duty
at the Teikovo missile division, based in Ivanov region, on March 4," he noted. “This is a weapon that has accumulated the best qualities of the Topol-M missile and has acquired new combat possibilities.”

The official did not directly address Washington's missile shield plans for Europe (Russia Today, May 17).

Russia intends to begin a new series of test launches next month of its experimental Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile, RIA Novosti reported last week (see GSN, May 11).

"The launch will take place between June 15 and 17 from the Dmitry Donskoy nuclear submarine (in the White Sea)," a Defense Ministry insider said.

The Bulava is designed to carry 10 nuclear warheads as far as 5,000 miles. Seven of the missile's 14 trial launches to date have been successes, including two tests conducted in October (RIA Novosti, May 13)
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Preparedness Exercises 2.0: Alternative Approaches to Exercise Design That Could Make Them More Useful for Evaluating — and Strengthening — Preparedness

Another great article written for NPS.  This document is 19 pages long and took about 40 mins to read.  Great charts/graphs and statistics.  If you are a planner of exercises...read this article.  It discusses what type of exercises produces what types of results...for inquiring minds..

As one component of a preparedness program, exercises of these varied types are seen as a versatile tool that can help contribute to achieving a variety of different goals. Though taxonomies of exercise objectives vary in the literature, most include the following:³

• Planning — Exercises provide a structure to advance planning for a particular incident scenario, identifying problems and explore their solutions in focused way.
• Interagency Coordination — Exercises can act as a venue for members of different agencies to meet and interact, to build relationships that are important to effective coordination in a real event, to identify issues potentially falling in gaps of authority, jurisdiction, etc., to test mechanisms and technologies for interagency information sharing that might seldom be used in routine events, and to identify if there are agencies “missing” from plans that would be needed at a large scale disaster, accident, or terrorist attack.
• Public Education — Exercises can act as an “event” that, by being covered by the media and discussed publically, makes it possible to teach the public about the capabilities of response systems, creates the opportunity to educate them about preparedness actions they could take, and informs them about preparedness efforts of their local, state, or the federal government.
• Training — Exercises can make it possible to expose response staff to rare incidents and their unique demands — rather than their encountering them for the first time at a real emergency. Such simulations make it possible to teach responders or volunteers specific tasks, practice equipment use, and to learn or refresh other knowledge specific to an unusual incident.
• Evaluation — Exercises have been used to evaluate emergency preparedness activities in a variety of ways. Such evaluations range from very broad, qualitative assessments (e.g., ensuring all significant issues were considered in planning) to very detailed, quantitative studies (e.g., directly measuring the patient throughput of a medical facility). More elab

Tornadoes > South's 'super tornado' outbreak may be worst ever in US history

Makes one curious as to Gaia's intentions...
"Storm forensics experts have begun to put into historical perspective the massive twister outbreak that hit Alabama and six other Southern states. The Tuscaloosa twister alone may register as the most powerful long-track tornado in US history."-csmonitor.com

Brooke Carbo helps a friend pack up what's left of her Alberta City, Alabama, apartment which stood right in the path of the deadly storm which hit the southern region of the United States. A string of powerful tornadoes caused massive devastation, killing at least 350 people.

Newscom

Game-Changing Trends Beg Evolution of Emergency Management Planning

EXCELLENT article on future of emergency management planning - 5 mins read-SDF Blogger
"Changing demographics, an aging population, an aging infrastructure and other facters are driving changes in emergency management planning."- read more

photo courtesy of Emergency Management Magazine:
www.emergencymgmt.com