North Carolina debates on solution for Hog Waste
It has been 10 years since any new lagoons for Hog Waste were allowed to be constructed due to environmental and health concerns. This ban is set to expire in September of this year (2007).
Fact: North Carolina is the nations second largest Swine producer, generating $6.7 billion in sales every year, 46,000 jobs, and 10 million pigs that produce 13 million pounds of urine and manure everyday!!!
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The waste usually gets flushed to open lagoons which farmers use as fertilizer. The problem comes when these lagoons accidentally leak into rivers during floods. It causes health and environmental risks and public nuisance.
New technologies are being discussed to create methods of handling all this waste. One proposal utilizes lagoons to capture methane gas to generate electricity. This kind of technology would in essence create a form of sustainability that benefits our need to transition from coal burning energy to renewable energy. This is an issue people should be made more aware of in order to promote environmentally friendly solutions. My two cents for the day...
Monsanto: a bio-tech giant that only cares about profits with a complete disregard for public health and concern. Monsanto is known for persecuting small family farmers, poisoning the third world, water privatization, genetically engineered crops, and the bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Surrounding all these issues, one could literally write a book on the atrocities that this corporation has imposed itself upon the American public as well as the rest of the globe. If Monsanto had its way, they would have patented rights to every crop there is. They would force every farmer around the world to use its product instead of farmers re-using their own seeds as they have been doing for centuries. My two cents on Monsanto...
Amidst concerns from environmentalists, farmers, and consumer advocates a federal court has overturned a USDA approved GMO alfalfa crop. The court ruled to halt sales of the new crop for two years and gave a timetable to farmers who already purchased the seeds to plant before March 30th. The court ordered the USDA to perform a 2 year environmental impact study for the GMO crop. However, Monsanto stands to lose $250 million while this study takes place which is why Monsanto is pleading the federal court to allow its sale of GMO alfalfa during the study.
Alfalfa is among one of the widely grown crops in the United States among soybean, corn, and wheat. It is a feeder crop for various livestock which receives pollination from bees and the wind. Organic farmers are concerned that there farms could get contaminated with the genetically modified version. This could lead to law suits by Monsanto against the organic farmer for patent infringement, even though the farmer did not want the cross pollination. Sadly, Monsanto is known for this...basically forcing other small farmers to buy its seed instead of re-using its own. Its as if they have a monopoly on seeds.
A highly prized toyger is a cat that has been bred since 1993 by 25 breeders worldwide in attempt to give the domesticated feline the exotic features of a tiger.
Here is a 
In news that just came out of Bangkok...over a million farmed fish have died due to a sudden drop in oxygen levels in the waters of one of Thailand's key rivers, the Chao Phraya river. Entire sections of the river and neighboring areas were declared disaster zones after the fish started dying on Sunday night. Officials don't know what exactly caused the oxygen levels to drop to levels between zero and 0.5%, when fish need at least 3% to survive. The fisheries department of Thailand has suspected that either a sugar boat that capsized earlier this month released harmful toxins and chemicals into the river or that harmful pollutants from industries upstream are to blame for this mass death of tubtim fish, a type of tilapia.
I must admit that I have been reluctant to accept a new theory or reason behind global warming that wasn't contributed to by greenhouse gases. The reason for not "converting" was due to lack of any information...perhaps this information was suppressed, but now is out. This article and the embedded video below have convinced me otherwise a global scam and questions the Global Warming mantra being corn fed into the public's mindset. This story has CONSPIRACY written all over it, and it brings up a lot of questions. I, for one, feel that I should re-design this blog to a more broader sense of concern for the environment...instead of perpetuating the global warming agenda...being that mankind is at fault for global warming. Saying this, I DO still believe that big industry should be held accountable for their carbon dioxide emissions due to their harmful effect on the environment...but I strongly disagree with a government aimed at controlling people with an excuse of saving the
planet. I DO support alternative energy and reducing our foreign dependence on oil...and yes I even drive a hybrid. By no means am I saying that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are not factors in our warming, but merely that they may not be the only reason. For reasons of not wanting to side with one agenda or another, I will change my stance to that of a neutral one, and merely use my blog to report the environmental changes of our current warming, regardless of how that is actually happening, while at the same time promoting Alternative Energy and conservation.
So this strikes me as off the wall, yet a necessary step to bring awareness of the consumer Nazi ways of the American public. The plastic we so frivolously use is created from oil...therefore all the plastic products you buy, is really contributing to global warming and contributing to foreign dependence on oil at the same time...a two-fer! . Many of the products that we use today and take for granted are made through processes that utilize petrochemicals, and a main in ingredient in these chemicals is oil, hence the prefix petro. So San Francisco is trying to force grocery stores to completely eliminate the use of plastic bags and force people to use either paper bags made from recycled material or cloth hand bags.
According to the local news outlets in Denver, state and federal biologists have ruled out several causes of more than 850 ducks last winter. Avian flu, heavy metal toxicity, and bacterial infections have been ruled out. This die out of ducks is the first of its kind in the nation, and it has certain biologists eager to find the root cause. Biologists believe that the ducks died from hypothermia after losing their water-proofing and getting wet, but the actual cause for the ducks losing their water-proofing is still unknown.
The natives of the northern hemisphere called the Inuit or more commonly known as the 
Science Fact: 1/3 of the nations food supply depends on honeybee pollination including apples, almonds, blueberries, melons, and citrus fruits.
The FDA is on the fast track to approving a new drug for cows to prevent diseases like pneumonia in cattle and to treat mastitis among other things, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisor's that the decision would be dangerous for the people.
According to a new study published in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology, large concentrations of pesticides have been found in higher elevations of mountain ranges. The discovery of these contaminations in areas thought they could never be reached might explain why there have been an unusually high number of frog species becoming endangered and extinct in Costa Rica's protected forests. The researching team took samples from 23 different areas around the country and found unusually high concentrations of the more than 9000 tons of pesticides that are imported into Costa Rica every year.
Google, Gap Inc, PG&E and other local San Francisco businesses have pledged to fight global warming. They said they want to make the Bay Area a leader in fighting Global Warming. Google has already contributed by installing 9200 solar panels at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, accounting for 30% of its energy uses. (
This equates to approximately 3 million fish that didn't have enough oxygen to breath due to a drought that has caused the water levels in the reservoir to shrink drastically. The levels of water have decreased by 86 feet in recent months. The local fish industry has lost an estimated $2 million worth of exports to the US and Europe. This is just another classic example of how climate change is affecting people in different parts of the world. Just as predicted the "side effects" of climate change can be seen through examples like this. Al Gore and the rest of the scientific community are right on when they say to expect tragedies such as wide spread drought, and more severe storms.
However, these high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are dissolving into the water forming a carbonic acid. Ocean waters are a natural alkaline, and can absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide without much change in acidic levels. However, now with pollution greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide emissions at an all time high, the oceans are finally becoming acidic. The full effects are not known, but scientists are determining that gilled marine life such as fish, squid, and others, may find it harder to "breathe" due to ocean acidification.
