4275-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

Fish and other marine life have been washing up on the country's west coast for the past three days, leaving marine biologists baffled.

ReefWatch Marine Conservation, a nature conservancy group, said they have reports of fish, crabs and shrimp getting stranded on the coast near Alibaug in Maharashtra, Karwar in Karnataka and Varkala in Kerala between Saturday and Tuesday. The group said it received images and videos from volunteers that indicate the cause of the marine deaths could be similar. "There are two possible reasons we are looking at — low oxygen zones at sea pushing these organisms close to the shore or severe toxicity in the water. However, only a detailed study can reveal the exact cause," said Nayantara Jain, executive director, ReefWatch Marine Conservation.

The Maharashtra Maritime Board said the deaths were a matter of concern. "We have never seen lakhs of fish species washing ashore at different beaches along the entire west coast," said Atul Patne, chief executive officer, MMB

After collecting samples from the dead marine organisms that have washed up along India's west coast, marine biologists have ruled out pollution as the cause of the deaths.

"The changing weather patterns, changes in temperature and several other hydrological factors leads to such incidents. However, we are certain that there is nothing to worry about and no alerts have been issued by us," said an official from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). "A report will be published by us by the end of this week, and it will be submitted to the district collector and the state government."

Officials from the state mangrove cell that has setup marine rescue centres along the Maharashtra coast said that pollution can be ruled out, since incidents have been reported all along the western coast and it is not confined to an algal bloom, which is a localised pollution problem. Nutrients in pollutants can trigger algal blooms which can lead to depletion of oxygen in water, leading to death of marine organisms.

N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell, said that the incidents could have been caused due to combination of factors like rains and changes in water temperature. "Once the monsoon starts retreating, the lower most layer of the water comes up carrying nutrients. The process is also associated with shifts in temperatures between surface and deep waters," he said. "Upwelling also leads to the formation of low oxygen zones, and this forces fish and other marine life to move closer to shallow waters. Wave action close to the shoreline further pushes these species to the beach where they get stranded."

Some experts, however, did not rule out pollution. "Previous evidence of so many species washing ashore has been because of low oxygen in the water due to algal blooms caused by severe water pollution. This can be the probable cause for this as well. It has to be observed whether there is a change in the colour of the water to establish this," said E Vivekanandan, consultant and senior scientist, CMFRI.

"Pollution cannot be ruled out and it could be a major factor as these areas (Alibaug, Karwar and Varkala) are all located close to offshore oilfields, and also are a major route for movement of ships," said Dr Baban Ingole, chief scientist, National Institute of Oceanography.

Vasudevan added that CMFRI has been instructed to study the gills of the marine mammals to check for pollution and the cell will take further action based on their report.

(sott.net)

Study: Dangerous Pesticide Found In 75 Percent Of Global Honey

OCTOBER 6, 2017

By Derrick Broze

A new study has found traces of a controversial pesticide in 75 percent of the world’s honey.

A new study published in the journal Science detected at least one variety of a harmful pesticide in 75 percent of honey around the world. The study, “A worldwide survey of neonicotinoids in honey,”examined 198 types of honey from around the world looking for traces of neonicotinoids, a pesticide suspected of harming the honey bee population. Of the 75 percent containing neonicotinoids, 30 percent contained one neonic, 45 percent contained two or more, and 10 percent had four or five.

The neonicotinoids are a class of pesticide that has been linked to declines in bee populations. Neonics were developed in 1991 and commercial use began in the mid-1990s. Around 2006, commercial beekeepers began reporting what is now known as colony collapse disorder — where entire colonies of bees die off with no obvious cause. The disorder has been reported in commercial colonies all over the world. Several studies have implicated neonics, which are used to kill insects harmful to crops.

“The fact that 45% of our samples showed multiple contaminations is worrying and indicates that bee populations throughout the world are exposed to a cocktail of neonicotinoids,” the researchers wrote. “The effects of exposure to multiple pesticides, which have only recently started to be explored, are suspected to be stronger than the sum of individual effects. This worldwide description of the situation should be useful for decision-makers to reconsider the risks and benefits of using neonicotinoids and provides scientists an inventory of the most frequent combinations of neonicotinoids found in honey.”

The study also found that 34 percent of the honey samples contained “concentrations of neonicotinoids that are known to be detrimental” to bees and pose a threat to their survival.

Chris Connolly, a neurobiology expert at the University of Dundee, told Phys.org that the findings were “alarming” and that the amount of neonicotinoids detected “are sufficient to affect bee brain function and may hinder their ability to forage on, and pollinate, our crops and our native plants.”

After years of back-and-forth speculation and conflicting studies from countries around the world, it seems fair to say neonicotinoids insecticides are causing dramatic weakening of honeybee hives. In June, two new studies confirmed the danger of the class of pesticide.

The first study involved researchers in Hungary, Britain, and Germany planting fields of rapeseed, which is commonly used as a cooking oil. Some of the fields were sown with seeds treated with neonicotinoids while others were planted with untreated seeds. The teams studied the bees from spring 2015 until the following spring. The study, “Country-specific effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on honey bees and wild bees,” was published in the journal Science. “These findings point to neonicotinoids causing a reduced capacity of bee species to establish new populations in the year following exposure,” the researchers write.

A second study published in Science looked at Canadian corn farms and also reached this conclusion. Researchers at York University in Canada found that wild bees are not only exposed to neonics via spraying, but also through wildflowers. “This indicates that neonicotinoids, which are water soluble, spill over from fields into the surrounding environment, where they are taken up by other plants that are very attractive to bees,” said Nadia Tsvetkov, lead researcher with York University.

Unfortunately, the dangers of neonicotinoids have been known for some time. A July 2016 study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that neonicotinoids do not kill drone honey bees, but instead drastically reduce the amount of live sperm produced by the male population. Researchers at Switzerland’s University of Bern found that the bees who ate pollen treated with neonicotinoids produced 39 percent less live sperm than the bees who did not eat the treated pollen.

In September 2015 a federal appeals court dealt a huge blow to the pesticide industry by issuing a ruling that blocks the use of neonics. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. EPA insufficiently tested the pesticide sulfoxaflor before approving its use in 2013. Sulfoxaflor is a type of neonicotinoid. Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder stated the EPA should have done further research once initial studies showed sulfoxaflor was highly toxic to honeybees.

SOS Pocket Survival Kit (Ad)What will it take for the chemical companies to end the use of their dangerous product? Should the people stand by and rely on the government to protect them, the environment, and the bees?

This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

Image Credit: Pixabay

(activistpost.com)

NEW ORLEANS — Nate was upgraded to a hurricane late Friday as the central Gulf Coast braced for its landfall as early as Saturday evening, with lashing winds and storm surges forecast to hit a part of the coast that had largely been spared in this extraordinarily busy hurricane season.

On Saturday, the National Hurricane Center reported Nate had maximum sustained winds at 80 mph, and could gain force as it hurtled toward the Gulf Coast.

“An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft just penetrated the center of Nate and reported hurricane-force winds,” the center said.

“Reports from Air Force aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds have increased to near 80 mph with higher gusts. Additional strengthening is expected through Saturday up until the time Nate makes landfall along the northern Gulf Coast.”

The storm, already blamed for at least 22 deaths in Nicaragua and Costa Rica this week, swelled as it crossed unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans officials ordered mandatory evacuations of three low-lying areas of the city.

Sand bags are place atop a levee near the pumping station in New Orleans on Friday. (Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

The center put coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama up to the Florida border under a hurricane warning, with a storm surge warning in effect from Morgan City, La. — west of New Orleans — to Walton County, Fla. Rain bands are likely to strike the coast as early as Saturday afternoon.

If the storm surge occurs at the time of high tide, water levels could rise as much as 9 feet above ground level in the area stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi River across to the Alabama-Florida border, the center said. It added that the deepest water would be along the coast, east of the landfall location, where the surge would be accompanied by “large and destructive waves.”

It forecast up to 10 inches of rain east of the Mississippi River from the central Gulf Coast into the Deep South, eastern Tennessee Valley, and southern Appalachians.

Here in the Crescent City, where memories of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe remain vivid, officials have acknowledged that their hobbled network of pumping stations could be overmatched by Nate’s downpours.

But Mayor Mitch Landrieu sounded upbeat and resolute in a news conference Friday afternoon, even as he announced a curfew starting at 7 p.m. Saturday and lasting until Sunday morning.

“We are ready for whatever Nate brings our way,” he said. “If we all stay informed, if we all stay alert, if we all stayed prepared, ultimately we will all be safe.”

The city’s drainage system has been challenged even by typical summer storms. Parts of New Orleans have flooded several times this year, including as recently as last week. The worst flooding occurred after torrential rains Aug. 5, when up to nine inches fell in just a few hours.

The city’s drainage system is “terribly underfunded,” Landrieu said.

“It’s old. It’s tired. It’s like your grandmother’s car that’s got 400,000 miles on it,” he said. “The pumping system in the city of New Orleans is as old as Calvin Coolidge.”

Landrieu said 109 of the city’s 120 drainage pumps were operational, with contractors working round-the-clock to repair the remainder. Inland flooding from rain is not the primary threat from Nate, he noted, but rather the storm surge along the coast, and most of all the wind, which he warned could turn objects left outdoors into dangerous projectiles.

He reminded residents that they should not drive through underpasses that flood readily. He said they can park their vehicles where they find higher ground without fear of parking tickets — enforcement of violations will be suspended starting at 8 a.m. Saturday.

By Saturday, the Port of New Orleans will be closed, and most of the 200 floodgates in the city and surrounding parishes will be closed. More than 350 members of the National Guard will be on the ground.

Friday morning, the city began providing 17,000 sandbags to residents at five locations across town. Police set up 146 barricades in flood-prone areas, and boats and high-water vehicles were lined up at fire and police stations.

Melonie Stewart, customer service director at Entergy, New Orleans’s sole energy provider, warned residents to be prepared for up to seven days without power from the grid.

Nate appears most likely to hit the Gulf Coast to the east of New Orleans. It could deliver a storm surge of four to seven feet above normally dry land, forecasters said. Wherever the storm makes landfall, areas east of the eye will experience stronger winds than those to the west.

Nate is then expected to weaken and travel northeast into the southern Appalachians, where flash floods Sunday and Monday are a serious risk. The storm’s remnants are then likely to head toward the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.

The last hurricane to strike this part of the Gulf Coast directly was Isaac, also a Category 1, in August 2012. It left hundreds of thousands of utility customers without power.

Under sunny skies Friday, New Orleans did not appear to be in a state of alarm. Stores were cleaned out of bottled water, and residents filled sandbags provided by municipal authorities, but this was clearly not a city trembling in advance of Nate.

On Desire Street on Friday afternoon, François Robichaux, 45, lay on his belly on the sidewalk, his left arm elbow-deep in a hole. He was not clearing out a catch basin, but rather fidgeting with a broken water meter on the property of a house he is renovating.

Robichaux wasn’t doing much to prepare for the storm. “We usually evacuate, but this one came so fast,” he said. He was confident that he would be safe in his three-story home. “It’s a Category 1, so I’m not worried,” he said.

The forecast includes a significant chance of the storm’s growing into a significant hurricane — even a Category 3, one with sustained winds of up to 129 mph.

The storm Friday was moving north over very warm water, which drives intensification. But that trajectory also meant interaction with Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, with pockets of dry air and shearing winds that could enfeeble the storm.

The fast movement of the storm means it is unlikely to drop massive amounts of rain as Hurricane Harvey did while loitering in the Houston area of the Texas coast in August.

The National Weather Service’s hurricane warning, issued Friday, extends from Grand Isle, La. — which is due south of New Orleans — to the Alabama-Florida border.

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/7/2017 5:46:33 PM
	We have a pretty good idea of when humans will go extinct By Christopher Ingraham October 6 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization/Flickr “The probability of global catastrophe is very high,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned in setting the Doomsday Clock 2.5 minutes before midnight earlier this year. On nuclear weapons and climate change, “humanity’s most pressing existential threats,” the Bulletin's scientists found that“inaction and brinkmanship have continued, endangering every person, everywhere on Earth.” Every day, it seems, brings with it fresh new horrors. Mass murder. Catastrophic climate change.Nuclear annihilation. It's all enough to make a reasonable person ask: How much longer can things go on this way? A Princeton University astrophysicist named J. Richard Gott has a surprisingly precise answer to that question, which I'll get to in a second. But to understand how he arrived at it and what it means for our survival, we first need to take a brief but fascinating detour through the science of probability and astronomy, one that begins 500 years ago with the Polish mathematician Nicholas Copernicus. You may remember Copernicus as the guy who formulated the heliocentric model of the solar system, which has the sun at the center and the Earth and the other planets orbiting around it. This was a slap in the face to the prevailing view during his time, which was that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and the other planets revolved around us. That radical notion — that we are not, in fact, at the center of the universe — gives rise to what modern scientists call the Copernican Principle: We are not privileged observers of the world around us. We don't occupy a unique place in the universe. We are profoundly ordinary. We are not special. Over the centuries, as our understanding of the cosmos has grown, the Copernican Principle has proven to be correct time and time again. Copernicus discovered that the Earth wasn't at the center of the solar system. Later astronomers discovered that the solar system is located far from the centerof the Milky Way galaxy. Edwin Hubble then discovered that the universe extends well beyond the reaches of the Milky Way. These examples show the application of the Copernican Principle with respect to our position in space. Several decades ago, Princeton's J. Richard Gott got the idea of applying the principle to our position in time. The notion came to him in 1969, during a visit to the Berlin Wall in Germany. Back then people had no idea how long the Wall would stay standing. Some thought it would be gone quickly, a casualty of say, rapid political change or a city-destroying war. Others thought it would be around more or less forever — the Great Wall of China had stood for thousands of years, after all. Gott decided to apply the Copernican Principle: “I'm not special,” he reasons in the book “Welcome to the Universe,” co-written with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michael Strauss. He shouldn't assume his visit was special either — there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the time he decided to visit the Wall, he just happened to go check it out while on a post-collegiate trip to Europe. “My visit should be located at some random point between the Wall's beginning and its end,” he wrote. If you drew a very simple timeline from the Wall's (known) beginning to its (unknown, as of 1969) end, for instance, it would look like this. We can divide that timeline up into quarters, like so. Gott reasoned that his visit, because it was not special in any way, could be located anywhere on that timeline. From the standpoint of probability, that meant there was a 50 percent chance that it was somewhere in the middle portion of the wall's timeline — the middle two quarters, or 50 percent, of its existence. When Gott visited in 1969, the Wall had been standing for eight years. If his visit took place at the very beginning of that middle portion of the Wall's existence, Gott reasoned, that eight years would represent exactly one quarter of the way into its history. That would mean the Wall would exist for another 24 years, coming down in 1993. If, on the other hand, his visit happened at the very end of the middle portion, then the eight years would represent exactly three quarters of the way into the Wall's history. Each quarter would represent just 2.66 years, meaning that the wall could fall as early as 1971. So by that logic, there was a 50 percent chance that the Wall would come down between 1971 (2.66, or 8/3 years into the future) and 1993 (24, or 8 x 3 years into the future). In reality, the Wall fell in 1989, well within his predicted range. The great thing about Gott's prediction is that it relied solely on statistics. He didn't have to try to make assumptions about human behavior, which is wildly unpredictable. No need to take the pulse of East German politics, or calculate the odds of war between West Germany and the Soviet Union. He just ran the numbers. Of course, there was an element of sheer luck that his prediction turned out to be correct — he was only aiming for an accuracy of 50 percent, after all. In scientific research the usual standard for accuracy is 95 percent or greater. After the Wall fell in 1989, Gott wrote a paper for the journal Nature modifying his formula to achieve that level of precision. As it turns out, all that requires is a broadening of the initial assumption: Instead of a 50 percent chance that you are observing something in the middle 50 percent of its lifetime, you could say you have a 95 percent chance of observing that thing in the middle 95 percent of its lifetime. According to the Copernican Principle, this is a very safe bet: You'd have to be incredibly fortunate to be observing something either at its inception (the first 2.5 percent of its timespan) or at its end (the last 2.5 percent). The 95 percent assumption broadens the predicted timespan considerably. In the case of Gott's visit to the Berlin Wall, to achieve 95 percent confidence on his prediction he'd have to say the Wall's future life span was somewhere between 0.2 and 320 years, instead of the 2.66 to 24 years predicted at the 50 percent accuracy threshold. To improve your confidence in a measure like this, in other words, you have to sacrifice some of its precision. You might argue that such a range is far too broad to be of any practical use. But on questions where we have very little hard data to guide us, a range like this becomes incredibly useful. To return to the question posed at the beginning of the piece: How much longer can humanity last? We don't have much to go on here — it's not like we have reams of data on the life spans of other civilization-building species (we don't have any, in fact). We do, however, know how long humans have been around so far. Gott uses the widely accepted figure of 200,000 years (recent discoveries may eventually push that date back quite a bit, althoughpaleontologists are still debating that question). Assuming that you and I are not so special as to be born at either the dawn of a very long-lasting human civilization or the twilight years of a short-lived one, we can apply Gott's 95 percent confidence formula to arrive at an estimate of when the human race will go extinct: between 5,100 and 7.8 million years from now. This might strike you as overly optimistic or pessimistic, depending on your worldview. Certain apocalyptic scenarios envision a perfect storm of inequality, resource scarcity and political instability wiping out civilization as we know it in the next 100 years. On the other hand, the more utopian-minded among us believe that our progeny may one day colonize the entire universe, ensuring our survival for billions of years. But for either of those scenarios to be true we must be observing humanity's existence from a highly privileged point in time: either at the dawn of a technologically advanced, galaxy-hopping supercivilization, or at the end of days for an Earthbound civilization on the brink of extinguishing itself. According to the Copernican Principle, neither one of those scenarios is likely. Interestingly, Gott's Copernican estimate for human life is in line with what we know of species' life spans from the fossil record. Mammalian species typically last around 1 million years before going extinct. You could argue that our species' intelligence gives us a survival edge over say, a mastodon or a rabbit, which could make us more likely to beat those odds. But as Gott points out, our Neanderthal ancestors were around for only 300,000 years, while Homo erectus survived for about 1.6 million. They were smarter than the animals around them, but from a longevity standpoint they were completely unremarkable. Why should we be any different? Why should we be special? Gott has put his Copernican formula to the test in a number of different ways over the years, with some surprising results. For starters, on the day Gott published his Nature paper in 1993 there were 44 plays currently running on and off Broadway in New York. He applied the Copernican formula to each of those plays to derive an estimate of how much longer they'd run. As of 2016, 42 of those plays had closed within the time frames he predicted. Two more remain open. “I could even be wrong about those two and still get at least 95 percent right,” Gott notes in “Welcome to the Universe.” He did a similar exercise with the 313 world leaders in power the day of his article's publication. As of 2016, the formula had successfully predicted the time frame in which 94 percent of them left office. By this point you've probably thought of circumstances where the predictive power of the formula breaks down. If you try to apply it at a wedding exactly 60 minutes after the bride and groom have said their vows, for instance, you end up with a deeply pessimistic prediction that the marriage will dissolve after, at most, 39 hours. The formula fails in this case because, for once, you truly are observing something from a privileged position — the dawn of a new union. Gott believes that because our species' time on Earth is very likely to be finite, we should be doing everything we can to colonize nearby worlds — particularly Mars — to increase our odds of survival. Putting a permanent colony of humans on Mars would be an insurance policy against a civilization-ending catastrophe here at home, like an errant comet or an accidental outbreak of thermonuclear war. The time to do this, he says, is now: We've been a spacefaring civilization for only 56 years. There's not much reason to suspect that we'll remain one forever: Using the Copernican formula several years ago, Gott estimated that “if our location within the history of human space travel is not special, there is a 50 percent chance that we are in the last half now and that its future duration is less than 48 years.” Indeed, the past several decades have seen a dramatic scaling back of our astronautical ambitions. We haven't put anyone on the moon since 1972, for instance. As a percent of gross domestic product, NASA's budget has been slowly petering out since the late 1960s. It's quite possible that “there will only be a brief window of opportunity for space travel during which we will have the capability to establish colonies,” Gott wrote in 1993. “If we let that opportunity pass without taking advantage of it we will be doomed to remain on Earth where we will eventually go extinct.” (The Washington Post)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+2

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/7/2017 6:22:43 PM
	Dead fish, marine animals wash up along the west coast of India Badri Chatterjee Hindustan Times Wed, 04 Oct 2017 15:35 UTC © Hindustan Times Stingrays washed up at Alibaug beach Fish and other marine life have been washing up on the country's west coast for the past three days, leaving marine biologists baffled. ReefWatch Marine Conservation, a nature conservancy group, said they have reports of fish, crabs and shrimp getting stranded on the coast near Alibaug in Maharashtra, Karwar in Karnataka and Varkala in Kerala between Saturday and Tuesday. The group said it received images and videos from volunteers that indicate the cause of the marine deaths could be similar. "There are two possible reasons we are looking at — low oxygen zones at sea pushing these organisms close to the shore or severe toxicity in the water. However, only a detailed study can reveal the exact cause," said Nayantara Jain, executive director, ReefWatch Marine Conservation. The Maharashtra Maritime Board said the deaths were a matter of concern. "We have never seen lakhs of fish species washing ashore at different beaches along the entire west coast," said Atul Patne, chief executive officer, MMB After collecting samples from the dead marine organisms that have washed up along India's west coast, marine biologists have ruled out pollution as the cause of the deaths. "The changing weather patterns, changes in temperature and several other hydrological factors leads to such incidents. However, we are certain that there is nothing to worry about and no alerts have been issued by us," said an official from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). "A report will be published by us by the end of this week, and it will be submitted to the district collector and the state government." Officials from the state mangrove cell that has setup marine rescue centres along the Maharashtra coast said that pollution can be ruled out, since incidents have been reported all along the western coast and it is not confined to an algal bloom, which is a localised pollution problem. Nutrients in pollutants can trigger algal blooms which can lead to depletion of oxygen in water, leading to death of marine organisms. N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell, said that the incidents could have been caused due to combination of factors like rains and changes in water temperature. "Once the monsoon starts retreating, the lower most layer of the water comes up carrying nutrients. The process is also associated with shifts in temperatures between surface and deep waters," he said. "Upwelling also leads to the formation of low oxygen zones, and this forces fish and other marine life to move closer to shallow waters. Wave action close to the shoreline further pushes these species to the beach where they get stranded." Some experts, however, did not rule out pollution. "Previous evidence of so many species washing ashore has been because of low oxygen in the water due to algal blooms caused by severe water pollution. This can be the probable cause for this as well. It has to be observed whether there is a change in the colour of the water to establish this," said E Vivekanandan, consultant and senior scientist, CMFRI. "Pollution cannot be ruled out and it could be a major factor as these areas (Alibaug, Karwar and Varkala) are all located close to offshore oilfields, and also are a major route for movement of ships," said Dr Baban Ingole, chief scientist, National Institute of Oceanography. Vasudevan added that CMFRI has been instructed to study the gills of the marine mammals to check for pollution and the cell will take further action based on their report. (sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+2

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/7/2017 6:39:28 PM
	Study: Dangerous Pesticide Found In 75 Percent Of Global Honey OCTOBER 6, 2017 By Derrick Broze A new study has found traces of a controversial pesticide in 75 percent of the world’s honey. A new study published in the journal Science detected at least one variety of a harmful pesticide in 75 percent of honey around the world. The study, “A worldwide survey of neonicotinoids in honey,”examined 198 types of honey from around the world looking for traces of neonicotinoids, a pesticide suspected of harming the honey bee population. Of the 75 percent containing neonicotinoids, 30 percent contained one neonic, 45 percent contained two or more, and 10 percent had four or five. The neonicotinoids are a class of pesticide that has been linked to declines in bee populations. Neonics were developed in 1991 and commercial use began in the mid-1990s. Around 2006, commercial beekeepers began reporting what is now known as colony collapse disorder — where entire colonies of bees die off with no obvious cause. The disorder has been reported in commercial colonies all over the world. Several studies have implicated neonics, which are used to kill insects harmful to crops. “The fact that 45% of our samples showed multiple contaminations is worrying and indicates that bee populations throughout the world are exposed to a cocktail of neonicotinoids,” the researchers wrote. “The effects of exposure to multiple pesticides, which have only recently started to be explored, are suspected to be stronger than the sum of individual effects. This worldwide description of the situation should be useful for decision-makers to reconsider the risks and benefits of using neonicotinoids and provides scientists an inventory of the most frequent combinations of neonicotinoids found in honey.” The study also found that 34 percent of the honey samples contained “concentrations of neonicotinoids that are known to be detrimental” to bees and pose a threat to their survival. Chris Connolly, a neurobiology expert at the University of Dundee, told Phys.org that the findings were “alarming” and that the amount of neonicotinoids detected “are sufficient to affect bee brain function and may hinder their ability to forage on, and pollinate, our crops and our native plants.” After years of back-and-forth speculation and conflicting studies from countries around the world, it seems fair to say neonicotinoids insecticides are causing dramatic weakening of honeybee hives. In June, two new studies confirmed the danger of the class of pesticide. The first study involved researchers in Hungary, Britain, and Germany planting fields of rapeseed, which is commonly used as a cooking oil. Some of the fields were sown with seeds treated with neonicotinoids while others were planted with untreated seeds. The teams studied the bees from spring 2015 until the following spring. The study, “Country-specific effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on honey bees and wild bees,” was published in the journal Science. “These findings point to neonicotinoids causing a reduced capacity of bee species to establish new populations in the year following exposure,” the researchers write. A second study published in Science looked at Canadian corn farms and also reached this conclusion. Researchers at York University in Canada found that wild bees are not only exposed to neonics via spraying, but also through wildflowers. “This indicates that neonicotinoids, which are water soluble, spill over from fields into the surrounding environment, where they are taken up by other plants that are very attractive to bees,” said Nadia Tsvetkov, lead researcher with York University. Unfortunately, the dangers of neonicotinoids have been known for some time. A July 2016 study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that neonicotinoids do not kill drone honey bees, but instead drastically reduce the amount of live sperm produced by the male population. Researchers at Switzerland’s University of Bern found that the bees who ate pollen treated with neonicotinoids produced 39 percent less live sperm than the bees who did not eat the treated pollen. In September 2015 a federal appeals court dealt a huge blow to the pesticide industry by issuing a ruling that blocks the use of neonics. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. EPA insufficiently tested the pesticide sulfoxaflor before approving its use in 2013. Sulfoxaflor is a type of neonicotinoid. Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder stated the EPA should have done further research once initial studies showed sulfoxaflor was highly toxic to honeybees. SOS Pocket Survival Kit (Ad)What will it take for the chemical companies to end the use of their dangerous product? Should the people stand by and rely on the government to protect them, the environment, and the bees? This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link. Image Credit: Pixabay (activistpost.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+2

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/8/2017 12:24:29 AM
	Nate upgraded to a hurricane as it barrels toward flood-prone New Orleans New Orleans residents fill sand bags on Friday, in preparation for Hurricane Nate. (Sean Gardner/Getty Images) By Ashley Cusick, Jason Samenow and Joel Achenbach October 7 at 1:33 AM NEW ORLEANS — Nate was upgraded to a hurricane late Friday as the central Gulf Coast braced for its landfall as early as Saturday evening, with lashing winds and storm surges forecast to hit a part of the coast that had largely been spared in this extraordinarily busy hurricane season. On Saturday, the National Hurricane Center reported Nate had maximum sustained winds at 80 mph, and could gain force as it hurtled toward the Gulf Coast. “An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft just penetrated the center of Nate and reported hurricane-force winds,” the center said. “Reports from Air Force aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds have increased to near 80 mph with higher gusts. Additional strengthening is expected through Saturday up until the time Nate makes landfall along the northern Gulf Coast.” The storm, already blamed for at least 22 deaths in Nicaragua and Costa Rica this week, swelled as it crossed unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans officials ordered mandatory evacuations of three low-lying areas of the city. Sand bags are place atop a levee near the pumping station in New Orleans on Friday. (Sean Gardner/Getty Images) The center put coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama up to the Florida border under a hurricane warning, with a storm surge warning in effect from Morgan City, La. — west of New Orleans — to Walton County, Fla. Rain bands are likely to strike the coast as early as Saturday afternoon. If the storm surge occurs at the time of high tide, water levels could rise as much as 9 feet above ground level in the area stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi River across to the Alabama-Florida border, the center said. It added that the deepest water would be along the coast, east of the landfall location, where the surge would be accompanied by “large and destructive waves.” It forecast up to 10 inches of rain east of the Mississippi River from the central Gulf Coast into the Deep South, eastern Tennessee Valley, and southern Appalachians. Here in the Crescent City, where memories of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe remain vivid, officials have acknowledged that their hobbled network of pumping stations could be overmatched by Nate’s downpours. But Mayor Mitch Landrieu sounded upbeat and resolute in a news conference Friday afternoon, even as he announced a curfew starting at 7 p.m. Saturday and lasting until Sunday morning. “We are ready for whatever Nate brings our way,” he said. “If we all stay informed, if we all stay alert, if we all stayed prepared, ultimately we will all be safe.” The city’s drainage system has been challenged even by typical summer storms. Parts of New Orleans have flooded several times this year, including as recently as last week. The worst flooding occurred after torrential rains Aug. 5, when up to nine inches fell in just a few hours. The city’s drainage system is “terribly underfunded,” Landrieu said. “It’s old. It’s tired. It’s like your grandmother’s car that’s got 400,000 miles on it,” he said. “The pumping system in the city of New Orleans is as old as Calvin Coolidge.” Landrieu said 109 of the city’s 120 drainage pumps were operational, with contractors working round-the-clock to repair the remainder. Inland flooding from rain is not the primary threat from Nate, he noted, but rather the storm surge along the coast, and most of all the wind, which he warned could turn objects left outdoors into dangerous projectiles. He reminded residents that they should not drive through underpasses that flood readily. He said they can park their vehicles where they find higher ground without fear of parking tickets — enforcement of violations will be suspended starting at 8 a.m. Saturday. By Saturday, the Port of New Orleans will be closed, and most of the 200 floodgates in the city and surrounding parishes will be closed. More than 350 members of the National Guard will be on the ground. Friday morning, the city began providing 17,000 sandbags to residents at five locations across town. Police set up 146 barricades in flood-prone areas, and boats and high-water vehicles were lined up at fire and police stations. Melonie Stewart, customer service director at Entergy, New Orleans’s sole energy provider, warned residents to be prepared for up to seven days without power from the grid. Nate appears most likely to hit the Gulf Coast to the east of New Orleans. It could deliver a storm surge of four to seven feet above normally dry land, forecasters said. Wherever the storm makes landfall, areas east of the eye will experience stronger winds than those to the west. Nate is then expected to weaken and travel northeast into the southern Appalachians, where flash floods Sunday and Monday are a serious risk. The storm’s remnants are then likely to head toward the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. The last hurricane to strike this part of the Gulf Coast directly was Isaac, also a Category 1, in August 2012. It left hundreds of thousands of utility customers without power. Under sunny skies Friday, New Orleans did not appear to be in a state of alarm. Stores were cleaned out of bottled water, and residents filled sandbags provided by municipal authorities, but this was clearly not a city trembling in advance of Nate. On Desire Street on Friday afternoon, François Robichaux, 45, lay on his belly on the sidewalk, his left arm elbow-deep in a hole. He was not clearing out a catch basin, but rather fidgeting with a broken water meter on the property of a house he is renovating. Robichaux wasn’t doing much to prepare for the storm. “We usually evacuate, but this one came so fast,” he said. He was confident that he would be safe in his three-story home. “It’s a Category 1, so I’m not worried,” he said. The forecast includes a significant chance of the storm’s growing into a significant hurricane — even a Category 3, one with sustained winds of up to 129 mph. The storm Friday was moving north over very warm water, which drives intensification. But that trajectory also meant interaction with Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, with pockets of dry air and shearing winds that could enfeeble the storm. The fast movement of the storm means it is unlikely to drop massive amounts of rain as Hurricane Harvey did while loitering in the Houston area of the Texas coast in August. The National Weather Service’s hurricane warning, issued Friday, extends from Grand Isle, La. — which is due south of New Orleans — to the Alabama-Florida border. Samenow and Achenbach reported from Washington. Patricia Sullivan in Washington and Capital Weather Gang meteorologist Brian McNoldy contributed to this report. (The Washington Post)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/8/2017 12:52:22 AM
	Antifa Group Plans Nationwide 'Deface Columbus Day' Actions for Monday BY DEBRA HEINE OCTOBER 6, 2017 R.A.M. anarchist Against Columbus Day via YouTube. Violent left-wing anarchists have announced a nationwide campaign to deface Christopher Columbus statues this coming Monday. Five Christopher Columbus statues have already been vandalized in New York City in recent weeks, according to Far Left Watch. In one case last month, vandals defaced a "larger-than-life" statue of Columbus in Central Park, leaving blood-red paint on his hands, and scrawled, "Hate will not be tolerated" and “#SomethingsComing” on its pedestal. What is coming appears to be a coordinated campaign to destroy monuments all across the country on Columbus Day. The NYC-based antifa group Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) made the announcement on Thursday, September 21, calling on antifa groups nationwide to “decorate” their neighborhoods. According to Far Left Watch, RAM is "an extremely militant group that advocates for the violent redistribution of property" and for "the abolition of gender." The militant group recently hosted an "Our Enemies in Blue" anti-police workshop at its branch in Brooklyn, NY. RAM posted a video called "Against Columbus Day" on the antifa website It’s Going Down, showcasing destroyed monuments across the country and black-clad thugs strutting around menacingly to psycho synth music. Follow RevAbolitionMov @RevAbolitionist Call to Action! Deface Columbus Day Hashtags: #***ColumbusDay #DestryColonialism 10/9/17https://www.facebook.com/revolutionaryabolitionistmovement/videos/1432376976831779/ … 9:23 AM - Sep 21, 2017 81 Replies 167 Retweets 208 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy "The battles lines have been drawn and white supremacists are on notice," the anarchists wrote in a statement on the website. "White nationalist statues are crumbling all over the US as our collective revolutionary power is growing." A recent poll showed that the vast majority of Americans support a holiday honoring Christopher Columbus, but RAM called Columbus Day, October 9, "one of the most vile ‘holidays’ of the year." The group called on supporters "to take action against this day and in support of indigenous people in the US and abroad who have been victims of colonialism and genocide." We are calling for groups to “decorate” their neighborhoods as they see fit: put up murals, wheatpaste posters, drop a banner, etc. On October 9th put a picture of your action on social media and use the hashtags below. With these actions multiplied around the country, we will make it unequivocally clear that revolutionaries will always stand with the indigenous! The anarchists encouraged fellow law-breakers to record and broadcast their crimes by using the hashtags #FckColumbusDay and #DestroyColonialism. As antifa has already announced its illegal intentions well ahead of time, elected officials and police departments across the country should not be blindsided by the rash of vandalism that is sure to come in the next few days. (pjmedia.com) More here Thank you Jan!
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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