Simon Filiatrault

La prochaine révolution verte

2012-01-21T07:29:00.001-05:00

Prochaine révolution verte

Il existe déjà des solutions incroyables concernant la sécurité alimentaire avec l'agriculture verticale et l'aquaponie. Cependant, le temps que de telles technologies soient promues, qu'est ce que l'agriculteur moderne peut faire actuellement pour améliorer le rendement de ses terres tout en réduisant son empreinte écologique? Poussons un peu plus loin : comment pourrait-il également restaurer les terres dégradées par une exploitation trop massive de pesticides, des monocultures, et l'érosion prématurée des sols?

À l'heure actuelle, 40 % des sols du monde sont exploités par l'agriculture. La dégradation des sols menace la sécurité alimentaire à un point tel que les États-Unis sont passés de 2 ans de réserves en 1985 à seulement 43 jours en 2010. Le problème est préoccupant, mais effectivement, des solutions et des techniques existent. Si ces solutions étaient mises en application, nous n'aurions pas besoin de défricher davantage de forêts pour fournir une population croissante, mais pourrions produire plus sur beaucoup moins d'espace et restaurer les terres dévastées. Ces moyens ont déjà fait leurs preuves, et peuvent conduire à une plus grande prospérité.

Solution #1 : La permaculture

Le concept, inventé par Bill Mollison dans les années 70, est de recréer un écosystème autosuffisant par une symbiose de plusieurs espèces de plantes, d'insectes et de champignons. Geoff Lawton a prouvé au début des années 2000 qu'il est possible de reverdir le désert en Cisjordanie avec seulement un cinquième de l'eau nécessaire à l'agriculture par irrigation conventionnelle.

La technique consiste à creuser une tranchée qui récolte les retombées des pluies, assurant ainsi une réserve d'eau à longueur d'année. Sur chaque côté de la tranchée, des buttes couvertes de compost et de restes de cultures précédentes — qui auraient été brûlées normalement — sont reconverties en nutriments pour le sol. Des arbres fruitiers et autres types de cultures sont alors plantés en étages le long de la berge et irrigués par un système de compte-gouttes allant directement aux racines. À mesure que le temps passe, le sel emmagasiné dans le sol vient à être éliminé par des champignons et des insectes, rendant à nouveau le sol fertile. La terre, même après avoir été abandonnée pendant 5 ans par manque de fonds, a conservé toute sa vitalité. C'est ce qu'il a pu constater à son retour en 2009. Pour plus de détails, voici la vidéo qui relate l'épopée :

Voici un autre exemple de permaculture à l'œuvre, cette fois-ci par Willie Smits, qui en 4 années et avec la collaboration de plusieurs familles d'agriculteurs, a restauré une plaine quasi désertique en 500 acres de forêt amazonienne :

Sinon, certains préceptes de la permaculture ont été instaurés à l'agriculture de certains pays du tiers-monde. Cette technique, l'agroécologie, combine les propriétés de plusieurs plantes pour augmenter par 5 fois le rendement de l'agriculture de subsistance — si l'on se met dans le contexte que l'agriculture commerciale, augmente cette capacité de 10 fois. Mais c'est entièrement biologique, donc une bonne piste à explorer.

Solution #2 : Progrès technologiques et rendements optimisés

Voici comment une simple roue creusant des sillons semblables à une gaufre parvient à éviter l'érosion prématurée des sols et ceci sans compacter la terre tout en économisant l'eau bien répartie. Cette invention augmente l'efficacité d'un sol de 30 % selon les chiffres.

Sinon, la réorganisation des sols en modèle circulaire et une simple invention permet de pratiquer l'agrocircle, permet de réduire l'effort fourni par un simple agriculteur de 70 % en plus d'éliminer les émissions de gaz à effet de serre.

Irrigation au cœur du Sahara

La vidéo est sous-titrée en anglais (cliquez sur cc).

Il est également prouvé par une étude de McGill que le rendement pourrait être optimisé si les cultures étaient adaptées selon les climats. Certaines cultures de maïs à travers le monde ne fournissent que de 20 à 40 % de rendement, alors qu'elles pourraient en fournir 100 %.

Solution #3 : Champignons et bactéries

L'agriculture industrielle utilise de nombreux fertilisants chimiques à base d'azote pour produire du nitrogène, ce qui a assuré le rendement commercial que l'on voit de nos jours. Même si jusqu'à maintenant nous avons pu nourrir la population mondiale actuelle (même au-delà si l'on comptabilise le gaspillage éhonté), cela n'a pas été sans aléas. Ces fertilisants, en se déversant dans nos cours d'eau, contribuent à la propagation des algues, ce qui cause des zones mortes pour la biodiversité.
Ce qui est important de trouver, ce sont de nouvelles méthodes pour améliorer le rendement des plantes, tout en capturant davantage de Co2 pour que les sols se régénèrent.

Eh bien!, n'ayez crainte, des recherches sont déjà en cours, avec des résultats pour le moins stupéfiants.

Les champignons contribuent largement à la conversion des matières organiques en nutriments pour le sol, et donc par intérim pour les plantes. Voici comment, avec l'aide de certains types de champignons, l'on pourrait revitaliser les sols dégradés, recréer des écosystèmes en laissant la nature se régénérer et créer des pesticides naturels en plus d'antibiotiques. Encore mieux, ces champignons pourraient être utilisés pour nettoyer les sols après un déversement de pétrole. Il faut le voir pour le croire. Ces recherches, effectuées par Paul Stamets, sont très prometteuses.

Mais, pourquoi se limiter seulement à des recherches alors que des résultats démontrent clairement une nette amélioration au rendement des cultures? Voici une vidéo de TED (comme de nombreuses autres précédemment), animée par Guy Webb, montrant des techniques qui favorisent l'extension des racines des plantes et utilisent des bactéries et champignons pour régénérer le sol en capturant le Co2. Ici, ils passent d'une capture de l'agriculture conventionnelle de 1,5 tonne de Co2 par hectare à 281 tonnes de Co2 par hectare... Ça donne à réfléchir.

En conclusion, certes, beaucoup de chemin reste à faire, mais ces découvertes ne sont que la pointe d'un iceberg de possibilités. Imaginez les progrès accomplis en à peine 20 ans. Imaginez une autre période de temps semblable, et la vitesse à laquelle notre technologie évolue. L'avenir ne sera pas aussi noir qu'on veut bien le laisser entendre. Au lieu de regarder un problème et de laisser quelqu'un d'autre s'en charger, au contraire, les mariages d'idées seront la panacée aux enjeux auxquels l'humanité devra faire face dans les années à venir.

Vincent Blanchette

LNT from the point of view of the academy of medicine of France.

2012-01-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

Statement by the Academy of Medicine of France, December 4, 2001 source

4 December 2001

Medical Irradiation, Radioactivity Releases, and Disinformation:
An opinion by the Academy of Medicine

The Academy of Medicine, preoccupied by the problems that arose in the public about medical exposure to X rays and radioactive releases in the environment, and erroneous information that these subjects give rise to, wishes to give an opinion on this subject.
Humanity is exposed to ionizing radiation
Since the beginning, life developed in a bath of ionizing radiation to which it is adapted. These radiations have a cosmic origin or originate in the earthly crust where, since the creation of the earth, the unstable isotopes of the elements of very long physical half-lives remain: thorium, uranium, potassium, and rubidium. Natural exposure results therefore from internal and external sources, both characterized by various physical properties and different effects on human body.
The presence of radionuclides in the environment results in an average radioactivity of 10,000 Bq in the human body, essentially from carbon-14 and from potassium-40 whose concentration is regulated by homeostatic control of intracellular potassium content. Average exposure of humans to natural sources is evaluated to 2.4 mSv per year expressed as effective dose. It exists nevertheless with important variations according to the altitude and nature of the rock and soils in the ground, generally varying from 1 to 10 mSv, and attaining more than 100 mSv in wide regions such as Kerala in India, or the city of Ramsar in Iran (1). These natural variations involve different target tissues for the dose being delivered, such as lung for radon, kidney for uranium, bones for radium, and bones, hepatic and systemic phagocytes for thorium, of which the behavior and the radiological characteristics are similar to those of plutonium.
To natural background irradiation is added, since the end of the 19th century, a diagnostic medical irradiation which delivers an average of about 1 mSv per year, but with variations from less than 1 mSv to more than 20 mSv per year.
And last, since 1950, it is necessary to add irradiations of industrial origin - notably the one from producing electricity by nuclear energy (extraction and treatment of uranium, functioning of reactors, etc.) corresponding to an exposure of the order 0.01 to 0.02 mSv per year - and one of the other natural sources, from coal extraction and burning to 0.01 mSv per year. In addition, radioactivity releases to the atmosphere contribute to an average exposure of 0.005 mSv/yr, and the Tchernobyl accident to about 0.002 mSv/yr (1).
In measuring dose effectiveness, the biological effects of the different types of ionizing radiation are identical whether their origin is natural or artificial.
Exposure of workers to ionizing radiation (200,000 in France, of which more of than half are in the medical sector) results, in France, in an average exposure of 2 mSv per year (OPRI annual report) with less then 1% surpassing the average statutory limit of 20 mSv per year. Except for diagnostic irradiations, these exposures are characterized by low dose rate, chronic irradiation doses. This aspect distinguishes them clearly from accidental and therapeutic irradiations that are performed at high dose-rate, causing instantaneous accumulation of damaged molecules that perturb components of cellular repair mechanisms, with as little as a few absorbed mGy in a few minutes (2).
Dismantling of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage are activities that make small dose increases to the populations at very low dose rates (about 0.005 µSv per year for iodine-129 for example) (1), essentially by transfer in the food chain of various man-made radionuclides of long half-lives leading to either: –homogenous exposure of the whole body (as in the case of natural potassium-40), or to –selective organ exposure, e.g., to the large intestine, bone, liver and kidney, as in the case of the natural isotopes of uranium and thorium. It is therefore legitimate to infer their possible effects on human health from those known to result from natural sources which expose populations of many millions of residents.
The health consequences of the exposure of humans to a few mSv.
There exists data (3) establishing that high natural exposure is associated in adults to an increased rate of chromosome aberrations of the circulating lymphocytes, a biological indicator of exposure. It cannot be concluded, however, that this is an index of harm since there are detected no global increase of cancer risk (4), increase of congenital malformations (5), or abnormalities induced by cytogenetic effects with newborns (6), in the well-studied population of the particular highly-exposed region of Kerala India to external irradiation and to internal contamination. Identical conclusions are obtained in the exposed Chinese populations (7-8). And last, as stated by the NCRP in the United States (9): «It is important to notice that the incidence of cancers in most of the exposed populations to low-dose radiation has not been found to be increased, and that in most of the cases this incidence seems to have been reduced».

The hypothesis of the risks of cancer induced by low doses and dose-rates is founded on the extrapolation of data of highly-exposed human groups, applying the risk as being constantly proportional to the received dose without being limited by a threshold, the linear no-threshold (LNT) assumption. This hypothesis conflicts with itself and has many scientific objections (10); and it is contradicted by experimental data (11) and epidemiology.
In the groups having received more than 200 mSv as adults, and 100 mSv as infants, excesses of cancer have been observed: in e.g., Japanese atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, irradiated medical patients, nuclear workers, and residents of the former-USSR contaminated by nuclear wastes. No excess of cancers has been observed for doses lower than 100 mSv. A doubt remains nevertheless in the case of irradiation for x-ray in utero from 10 mSv because the epidemiological data are contradictory (12).
Having not observed excess cancer does not allow an effect for low doses to be excluded because of statistical limitations. Nevertheless it is necessary to recall that the linear theory with no threshold (LNT): -is contradicted by the observation of thresholds for bone cancers induced by radium-226, and cancers of the liver induced by Thorotrast; -is not compatible with induced leukemias in Hiroshima, nor with the patients treated by radioactive iodine (1,10,13). Besides, the historic epidemiological study of the British radiologists for the period 1897-1997 (14) showed that for the registered radiologists after 1954 these practitioners have no excess of cancers in comparison with their non-radiologist colleagues, with a tendency to a lower cancer rate, as in the case of populations described by the NCRP (9). Similar deficits were observed for many groups of exposed professional workers to ionizing radiation, notably radiologic technicians: while the frequency of cancers increased in their jobs during the period when there was limited radiation protection, the excesses of cancers disappeared when regulatory limits were reduced to 50 mSv/yr, as enforceable up to 1990 (12).
These observations, associated with the recent biological data, showing complexity and the variety of molecular and cellular mechanisms that control cell survival and mutagenesis according to the dose and dose-rate (1,2,11,13), remove all scientific rationale to a linear extrapolation that overestimates very widely the effects of low doses and dose-rates. One cannot add the exposures of a few mSv/yr, and a fortiori lower than 0.02 mSv/yr, delivered to a large number of individuals (as done with the use of collective doses) to estimate the risk of excess cancers (15). The Academy of Medicine, joining the position of the large international institutions, strongly affirms that such calculations have no scientific validity, notably to evaluate the associated risks to radiation, such as the effects claimed outside the former-USSR from the fallout from Tchernobyl.
The UNSCEAR 2000 report and the controversy with the OCHA.
The Tchernobyl catastrophe has caused to this day about 2,000 cancers of the thyroid in children, essentially from exposure to iodine-131 and the short-lived iodine isotopes. The delivered doses to the thyroid were on average of the order of 1 Gy, and of 3 Gy on average in the most exposed regions (16). This carcinogenic effect is therefore in keeping with the sum total of our knowledge of radiation risks.
In 2000, UNSCEAR concluded that there is an absence of excess leukemias and of cancer other than thyroid cancer in the population around Tchernobyl. It also did not find a relationship between the exposures to radiation and congenital malformations in these populations (1). This conclusion was questioned in 2001 by the OCHA, the humanitarian organization of the UN, but the OCHA publication was refuted in a response by the UNSCEAR committee, which alone has the medical and scientific competence to speak with the name the UN and of the WHO on this subject (17). A conference was therefore held in Kiev in June 2001, with the WHO, OCHA, UNSCEAR, ICRP and IAEA, and the conclusions have been published (annex). These conclusions find that the health conditions are alarming because of the general deterioration of the health and social conditions, notably in Belarus, but do not contradict the UNSCEAR conclusions. In fact, this deterioration is probably caused by the living conditions of the relocated populations, associated with psycho-sociological factors. Different questions have been raised that do appear to necessitate epidemiological research of the conditions of the catastrophe consisting of multiple susceptible factors that altered the health of populations: this is the recommendation of the Kiev conference.
It is possible to reduce human exposure to ionizing radiation, in particular of radiation medical origin, with the necessary means.
Radiological examinations represent, by very far, the principal cause of irradiation of human origin (effective average dose of about 1 mSv/yr in France). The recent direction of the European Union introduces two notions to this subject: -cost-optimization (to reduce as much as possible the dose per examination), -and justification (to evaluate the benefit and the risk of each examination, and to not practice it unless it is advantageous). These principles necessitate therefore the evaluation of effective doses received by the examined subject and the relevant risks. Now, according to the examinations and the techniques used, the effective doses vary from a fraction of a mSv to several tens of mSv (examinations by x-ray scanners or radiological interventions) and the risks vary widely according to age. An over-evaluation of risks could deprive a child of a useful examination; inversely, an under-evaluation could favor the multiplication of medical X ray examinations that are not useful. The Academy counsels therefore, in a first step: 1) to focus on the study and evaluation of examinations from which the potential risks are the largest: x-ray scans with young subjects, multiple radiological examinations with premature interventional angiography; 2) to promote the likely techniques to reduce or to eliminate irradiation without harm to the quality of clinical information and to stimulate the technical and basic research in this area; 3) to conduct epidemiological studies on groups of patients, notably infants, which have received the most important doses from radiological examinations; and 4) to favor the initial and continuing training of clinicians in matters of radiation protection.
It is unacceptable, while irradiation of medical origin represents, in France, 95% of the irradiation added to the natural background, that there is little benefit to affect reduction in the industrial environment by applying radiation protection at very high costs.
It is necessary to define health priorities in the matter of releases.
Outside of this context, some recommendations can be undertaken concerning the problem of radiation releases in the matter of health. It appears essential to support epidemiological studies concerning the populations exposed naturally to high-level background radiation, and even concerning the populations of the ex-USSR that were massively exposed to radioactivity releases and to other pollution. In the framework of studies dealing with potential health effects of nuclear waste management, the priority isotopes should not be selected according to the collective dose that some would use, but according to the potential doses to individuals because the calculated collective doses from low individual doses to a few microSieverts cannot have any effect on health. A significant national effort should be undertaken, as the one undertaken in the framework of the programs of the U.S. DOE, on the biological mechanisms in the cellular response to doses below 100 mSv, in particular, health effects from DNA repair, cell signaling, and the hereditary transmission in DNA sequence encoding of parental DNA modified by irradiation.

– Recommendations –
The Academy of Medicine:
1 – recommends increased effort for radiation protection in the area of radiological examinations, on the one hand to reduce received doses from certain types of examinations (x-ray scans with infants, interventional angiography, lung X ray examinations with premature treatments, etc…), and on the other hand, to allow radiology services, notably in radio-pediatrics, to obtain benefits of well-educated physicists for dosimetry and quality control of the devices, in a way similar to that previously undertaken with mammography in breast cancer surveys. It recommends to this end to support clinical and technical research in this area.
2 – recommends an effort of basic research: on the biological mechanisms activated by the repair of DNA damage after low doses up to 100 mSv; and on the effects of these doses on the exchanges of intra- and inter-cellular molecular signals.
3 – denounces utilization of the linear no-threshold (LNT) relation to estimate the effect of low doses to a few mSv (of the order of magnitude of variations of natural radiation in France) and a fortiori of doses hundreds of times lower, such as those caused by radioactive releases, or 20 times lower, such as those resulting in France from the fallout of radioactive materials from the Tchernobyl accident. It associates with many international institutions to denounce improper utilization of the concept of the collective dose to this end. These procedures are without any scientific validity, even if they appear be convenient to administrative ends.
4 – subscribes to the conclusions of the 2000 Report of the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation of the United Nations (UNSCEAR) concerning the analysis of health consequences of the Tchernobyl accident, and denounces the propagation of allegations concerning excesses of other cancers than the thyroid cancer, and excesses of congenital malformations.
5 – recommends introduction of the ADIR (Annual Dose of Incorporated Radioactivity, being equivalent to 0.2 mSv, resulting from homogeneous exposure of the human body to natural potassium-40 and carbon-14) as this dose equivalent is almost constant whatever the size of the individual and the geographic region.
6 – The Academy of Medicine, in accordance with its October 3^rd 2000 statement, continues to recommended maintaining without modification the European directive concerning regulatory limits (to 100 mSv/5yr). To substitute dose limits of 20 mSv/yr would reduce the flexibility of the European norm, all without any health advantage, and would harm the functioning of medical radiology services while making the improvement of applicable techniques more difficult.
Glossary
-Bq or becquerel, the radioactivity characterized by a disintegration per second. In the human body 10,000 Bq of the natural sources represent 1 ADRI that is equivalent by convention to a dose equivalent of 0.2 mSv
-Gy or gray, the absorbed dose corresponding to 1 joule per kg.
-Sv or sievert, the unit of equivalent dose obtained from the product of the dose absorbed by the weighting factor for radiation quality (1 for X, beta and gamma radiations … 20 for alpha radiation). The effective dose, also expressed in Sv, is the product of the dose equivalent by the weighting factor for organs (0.05 for the thyroid… 1 for the entire body).
IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency
ADRI: Annual Dose of Incorporated Radioactivity, recommendation G. Charpak.
DOE: Department of Energy, U.S.
ICRP: International Commission on Radiation Protection
NCRP: National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (USA)
OCHA: Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
WHO: World Health Organization
UNSCEAR: United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
References:

UNSCEAR: Sources and effects of ionizing radiation, Report to the General Assembly, with annexes, United Nations, 2000.
Feinendegen L, Pollycove M, Biologic Responses to Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation: Detriment Versus Hormesis, J Nuclear Medicine, 42, 7, 17N-27N and 26N – 37N, 2001.
BEIR V: Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation. Health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiations. National US Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Washington 1990.
Nair MK, Nambi KS, Amma NS, Gangadharan P, Jayalekshmi P, Jayadevan S, Cherian V, Reghuram KN Population study in the high natural background radiation area of Kerala, India. Radiat Res. 152, 145-148S, 1999
Jaikrishnan J'S and al, Genetic monitoring of the human population from high-level natural radiation areas of Kerala on the southwest coast of India. Prevalence of congenital malformations in newborns. Radiat Res 152, 149-153S, 1999.
Cheryan VD et al. Genetic monitoring of the human population from high level natural radiation areas of Kerala on the southwest coast of India incidence of numerical structural and chromosomal aberrations in the lymphocytes of newborns. Radiat Res. 152, 154-158S, 1999.
Tao Z J Radiat Res (Tokyo) 41 Suppl:31-4, 2000.
Wei LX, Sugahara T. High background radiation area in china. J Rad. Research (Tokyo) 41, Suppl. 1-76, 2000.
National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements – Evaluation of the linear non-threshold model for ionizing radiation – NCRP-136, Bethesda MD, USA, 2001.
Academy of Sciences – secured Problems of the effects of the low doses of ionizing radiations. Report 34, Oct 1995.
Tanooka H. Threshold dose-response in radiation carcinogenesis: an approach from chronic alpha-irradiation experiments and a review of non-tumour doses. Int. J Radiat. Biol., 77, 541-551, 2001
IARC 2000 – Monographs on the evaluation of carcinogenic risks to humans, Vol. 75, Ionizing radiation - IARC, Lyon, France
Academy of Sciences – Symposium on risk due to carcinogens from ionizing radiation – Report, Academy of Sciences, Series III, 322, 81-256, 1999
Berrington HAS. Darby SC, Weiss HA., Doll R. – 100 years of observation on British radiologists mortality from cancer and other causes 1897-1997. British Journal of Radiology, 74, 507-519, 2001
BRPS Symposium, Warrenton: Bridging radiation policy and science (K.L. Mossman et al. Ed.) 2000
IAEA, Final Report, Belarus, Ukrainian and Russian 2001: Health effects of the Tchernobyl accident.
Holm LE (UNSCEAR Chairman) Chernobyl effects. Lancet, 356, 344, 2000
European Directive 97/43 on radiological examinations, 1997

Climate debate at the Canadian Senate - Why Canada is out of Kyoto

2012-01-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

A very important and interesting debate took place mid December 2011 on the climate, CO2, global warming. After listening to those very knowledgeable and serious researchers, it's easy to see why the Canadian government jumped off the Kyoto protocol.

Invitee list:

Ross McKitrick, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Guelph
Ian D. Clark, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Jan Veizer, Professor Emeritus, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Timothy Patterson, Professor of Geology, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University

Here's the full presentation on YouTube:

Other video in other languages are available here.

The transcripts will be available here.

Ross McKitric testimony available here.
Copied here for quick reference:

Testimony
For delivery to the Senate Standing
Committee on Energy, the Environment
and Natural Resources,
Parliament of Canada
Ottawa Ontario
December 15, 2011
Ross McKitrick, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
College of Management and Economics
University of Guelph
Guelph Ontario Canada
ross.mckitrick@uoguelph.ca TESTIMONY: Senate of Canada, Ross McKitrick, December 15 2011

1. My name is Ross McKitrick, and I am a Full Professor of Economics at the University of
Guelph where I specialize in environmental economics. I have published on both on the
economics of climate change and statistical analysis in climatology. I was an expert
reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth
Assessment Report, and in 2006 I was one of 12 experts from around the world asked
to brief a panel of the US National Academy of Sciences examining paleoclimate
reconstruction methodology.

2. The global warming issue is often described with emphatic claims that the “science is
settled”, the situation is urgent, and the necessary actions are obvious. The reality is
that there are deep disagreements about underlying scientific issues, there is reason to
believe the problem has been exaggerated, and most policy proposals simply do not
pass objective cost-benefit tests. Amidst the disputes and controversies of the past few
years, I believe two points have emerged with clarity.

3. First, the economics of climate change do not favour Kyoto-type commitments. Under
current and foreseeable technologies, the greenhouse gas policies we can afford to
undertake would have such small climatic impacts as to be pointless. The same kinds of
models that are used to forecast global warming predict that, if all signatories to the
Kyoto Protocol complied with their commitments, the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the
atmosphere that we would have observed by 2100, would instead have been reached by
about 2105, a trivial difference. And Kyoto was too costly for countries to reach. When a
policy is proposed that is too costly to implement and yields benefits that are too small to
measure, you would expect reasonable people to see it as a bad idea. Instead we
observed a dogmatic elite consensus emerge in support of Kyoto. In my mind this never
validated Kyoto, it merely discredited the elite consensus, and suggested to me that the
international political milieu in charge of the climate issue was unduly susceptible to
groupthink.

4. Unlike such air pollutants as sulphur dioxide and particulates, CO2 is not easy to
capture, and once captured, there is no obvious way to dispose of it. There appears to
be no way to cut CO2 emissions on a large scale without cutting energy consumption
and impeding economic activity. Despite their enthusiasm for embracing targets,
policymakers around the world have not been able to cut CO2 emissions while pursuing
economic growth. Simply put, with regard to climate policy, the cure is worse than the
disease.

5. Second, the official process for assessing technical and scientific information on climate
change for the purpose of advising policymakers has become untrustworthy due to bias
and partisanship. As a member of the expert review team for the last IPCC Report, I
saw things take place that violated longstanding principles of peer review. I documented
some of them in various publications since 2007, but the issues never received much
attention until the fall of 2009, when thousands of emails from top IPCC scientists were
leaked onto the internet. The so-called Climategate emails confirmed the reality of bias
and cronyism in the IPCC process. The new leaks last month provided even more
confirmation that climate scientists privately express greater doubts and disagreement
about climate science than is reflected in IPCC reports. TESTIMONY: Senate of Canada, Ross McKitrick, December 15 2011

6. Earlier this year I was asked by the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation
to review IPCC procedures, and to make recommendations for reform. My report was
published last month, and includes a foreword written by John Howard, the former Prime
Minister of Australia. I have included a copy with this submission. I mainly focus on how
the IPCC handled issues with which I have first-hand knowledge as a contributor to the
peer-reviewed literature on the subject, and on which I worked closely on the IPCC text
in my capacity as an expert reviewer.

7. The IPCC is not a neutral observer of the scientific process, instead it has a party line. It
is controlled by a relatively small Bureau in Geneva, consisting of a small core
surrounded by a network of supportive academics and government officials. The
oversight body, called the IPCC plenary panel, is passive, inattentive, and overly
deferential to the Bureau. In effect there is no oversight.
8. The Bureau picks Lead Authors who share their views. They are routinely placed in the
position of reviewing their own work and that of their critics, and are free to rule in their
own favour. Lead Authors are also free to reject reviewer comments, over-ride Review
Editors, and even rewrite text after the close of the peer review process. The
combination of Bureau control over the selection of Lead Authors, and a toothless peerreview review process, means that IPCC Assessments are guaranteed merely to repeat
and reinforce a set of foregone conclusions that make up the party line.

9. In my report I document some disturbing cases where the IPCC violated proper peer
review practises. These include:
• Manipulating prominent graphs so as to conceal known flaws in the statistical basis
of paleoclimate reconstructions and to exaggerate evidence that modern climate
change is historically exceptional. This is the so-called “hide the decline” scandal.
• Fabricating a statistical test result to provide a rationale for dismissing published
evidence of urbanization-related contamination of the surface temperature record on
which key IPCC conclusions were based.
• Waiting until the close of peer review, then removing text that had initially, and
correctly, cautioned readers that the IPCC method of calculate warming trends likely
exaggerated their significance, and replacing it with unsupported text saying the
opposite.

10. My report documents these and other incidents that, in my view, suffice to discredit its
claims to rigour and objectivity, and point to the urgent need for procedural reform.

11. In 2010 The InterAcademy Council reviewed IPCC procedures and drew attention to
many of the same problems as my report does. Unfortunately the IPCC’s internal reform
process has gone nowhere. I discuss this problem in Section 4 of my report.

12. At this point we could simply muddle along for another 20 years enacting more and
more costly and wasteful schemes based on the increasingly biased and unreliable
guidance of the international climate policy milieu. That would be the easiest course of TESTIMONY: Senate of Canada, Ross McKitrick, December 15 2011
action, but would not serve the public interest. The more difficult option would be to
begin the hard work of improving the decision-making process itself, beginning with
reform of the IPCC.

13. My published research has led me to believe that the IPCC has overstated the global
warming issue. I have shown that the spatial pattern of warming trends in the surface
temperature record is strongly correlated with the spatial pattern of industrialization,
even though this pattern is not predicted by climate models as a response to
greenhouse gases. This indicates that the standard climate data sets likely have a warm
bias due to their failure to correct for disturbances of the land surface from urbanization,
agriculture, and so forth.

14. I have also shown that climate models predict significantly more warming over the past
30 years in the tropical troposphere than is observed in satellite or weather balloon
records. This is a key region for measuring the water vapour feedbacks that control the
magnitude of greenhouse warming. Despite this being the region that models say
should be warming fastest in response to greenhouse gases, the 50-year balloon record
actually shows no positive trend once the effect of ocean circulation changes in the late
1970s are removed from the record. One of the most telling emails in the so-called
Climategate 2.0 archive that was just released last month involves one IPCC expert
warning another that their efforts to finesse this issue by deceptive trend analysis is a
“fools paradise.”

15. Today you have a chance to hear from a number of serious Canadian scientists about
work that they and their colleagues have done that also calls into question aspects of
the IPCC party line. The fact that you have learned little of what they are about to tell
you does not indicate any deficiencies in the research they or their colleagues have
done. Instead it points to the deficiencies in the process that was supposed to have
brought this information to your attention long before now.

It's the end of the world... Again... Hum...

2011-12-30T22:34:00.001-05:00

Today, December 30th 2011, we read this propaganda piece in "The Gazette" and distributed, without analysis by Radio-Canada on twitter.

They did not even copied the right information. 2018 or 2020... It's important to get the end date right ;-)

Quebec nears climate tipping point

ABOVE-AVERAGE TEMPERATURES WERE RECORDED DURING EVERY SEASON OF 2011. And while winter-weary Quebecers might welcome the warmer weather, it sends a more sinister message to scientists who see it as evidence that, by 2020, temperatures in Quebec will exceed the 2-degree tipping point they say will lead to catastrophic climate change. William Marsden reports, Page A3. WHAT KIND OF ENERGY IS QUEBEC USING - and what does it need? Our appetite will fuel debate in 2012, Lynn Moore writes. Page B1

Couple of points to note when you read this:

Above average temperatures..

Which data set did they take? There are so many out there, without this vital information, it's hard to know what they are talking about.
Here's a graph of all data set for the last 10 years...

"evidence that, by 2020, temperatures in Quebec will exceed the 2-degree tipping point"

Evidence? By 2020?, what data set extrapolation did they used? What models? Why 2 degrees? All those are assumptions, extrapolations, based on mathematical models often unproven and unable to track real life data set.

lead to catastrophic climate change

Catastrophic climate change!!! Wow, 2 degrees more would be a catastrophe, if this ever happen, what are the proof that this will be a catastrophe, continue reading... we have seen worst in the past.

The rest of the small article, last 2 lines, does not make sense at all... No references provided on the web page of the Gazette.

I classify this small article as pure propaganda... When I read this I think of Mulder in X-files... I WANT TO BELIEVE!

Here's some real information that can help you to judge by yourself, if you are not the type that does believe everything that the mass media throws at you!

In all the data set, I think in my humble opinion that the more precises/accurate is the UAH dataset that started in 1978 and is based on microwave sounding units on polar orbiting satellites. Here's all the data since it started. I plotted a green line for a running average of 13 months. I also plotted two regression lines before and after the mount Pinatubo event. Do you see in there a maximum average temperature higher than other years? You also need to note the range of change since 1978, that is for that last 33 years...

But today's temperature data need to be put in perceptive on a longer time scale... Here's a study of the last 2485 years in the China region, it clearly shows that the temperature in the past was higher then today, if the tipping point theory was right, we should have seen a couple of time a run-away temperature on the planet where the planet would have burn to a crisp! But if you read on this term "tipping point" it's not even clear what it means!.

Tree-ring-based temperature reconstruction for the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau during the past 2485 years (gray line), the 40-year moving average (thick black line) and the 40-year running standard deviation (thin black line); the horizontal line is the mean temperature for the 2485 years.

Here's another study for that last 4000 years in Greenland... As you see, many time, again, the climate was warmer.

Past 4000 years of
Greenland temperature. Thick blue line and band are the same as above. Thick green line represents 100‐year moving
averages. Black and red lines are the Summit [Box et al., 2009] and AWS [Stearns and Weidner, 1991; Shuman et al., 2001;
Steffen and Box, 2001; Vaarby‐Laursen, 2010] decadal average temperature, respectively. Blue and pink rectangles are the
periods of 1000–2010 C.E. (Figure 1, middle) and 1840–2010 C.E. (Figure 1, top), respectively. Present temperature is
calculated from the inversion adjusted AWS decadal average temperature (2001–2010) as −29.9°C

From Wikipedia, I highlighted in red what I think is missing in most climate related journalism reports.

The elements of journalism
According to The Elements of Journalism, a book by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, there are nine elements of journalism.^[2] In order for a journalist to fulfill their duty of providing the people with the information, they need to be free and self-governing. They must follow these guidelines:
Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
Its first loyalty is to the citizens.
Its essence is discipline of verification.
Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
It must strive to make the news significant, interesting, and relevant.
It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
In the April 2007 edition of the book,^[3] they added the last element, the rights and responsibilities of citizens to make it a total of ten elements of journalism.

So when you read stuff in the mass media, ask yourself a couple of question and always be skeptical! Your way of live and of future generations may depend on it.

New research in low dose radiation disprove LNT

2011-12-29T10:32:00.001-05:00

Following on my previous articles on LNT that you should read before this one. Here's some good news on this important research that could change the way we approach low dose radiation.

September 2011 article:

Low level radiation and Linear no threshold (LNT) theory. We should revisit our regulation.

October 2011 article:

Dr. Edward Calabrese: The Fraud of LNT and Future of Radiation

New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation
Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Evidence Suggesting Risk May Not Be Proportional to Dose at Low Dose Levels

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), through a combination of time-lapse live imaging and mathematical modeling of a special line of human breast cells, have found evidence to suggest that for low dose levels of ionizing radiation, cancer risks may not be directly proportional to dose. This contradicts the standard model for predicting biological damage from ionizing radiation – the linear-no-threshold hypothesis or LNT – which holds that risk is directly proportional to dose at all levels of irradiation.

Imaging of a cell’s DNA damage response to radiation shows that 1.5 minutes after irradiation, the sizes and intensities of radiation induced foci (RIF) are small and weak, but 30 minutes later damage sites have clustered into larger and brighter RIF, probably reflecting DNA repair centers.

“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

Bissell was part of a study led by Sylvain Costes, a biophysicist also with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, in which DNA damage response to low dose radiation was characterized simultaneously across both time and dose levels. This was done by measuring the number of RIF, for “radiation induced foci,” which are aggregations of proteins that repair double strand breaks, meaning the DNA double helix is completely severed.

“We hypothesize that contrary to what has long been thought, double strand breaks are not static entities but will rapidly cluster into preferred regions of the nucleus we call DNA repair centers as radiation exposure increases,” says Costes. “As a result of this clustering, a single RIF may reflect a center where multiple double strand breaks are rejoined. Such multiple repair activity increases the risks of broken DNA strands being incorrectly rejoined and that can lead to cancer.”

Berkeley Lab biophysicist Sylvain Costes is generating 3D time lapse of DNA repair centers in human cells to understand better how cancer may arise from DNA damage. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)

Costes and Bissell have published the results of their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper titled “Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells.” Also co-authoring the paper were Teresa Neumaier, Joel Swenson, Christopher Pham, Aris Polyzos, Alvin Lo, PoAn Yang, Jane Dyball, Aroumougame Asaithamby, David Chen and Stefan Thalhammer.

The authors believe their study to be the first to report the clustering of DNA double strand breaks and the formation of DNA repair centers in human cells. The movement of the double strand breaks across relatively large distances of up to two microns led to more intensely active but fewer RIF. For example, 15 RIF per gray (Gy) were observed after exposure to two Gy of radiation, compared to approximately 64 RIF/Gy after exposure to 0.1Gy. One Gy equals one joule of ionizing radiation energy absorbed per kilogram of human tissue. A typical mammogram exposes a patient to about 0.01Gy.

Corresponding author Costes says the DNA repair centers may be a logical product of evolution.

“Humans evolved in an environment with very low levels of ionizing radiation, which makes it unlikely that a cell would suffer more than one double strand break at any given time,” he says. “A DNA repair center would seem to be an optimal way to deal with such sparse damage. It is like taking a broken car to a garage where all the equipment for repairs is available rather than to a random location with limited resources.”

However, when cells are exposed to ionizing radiation doses large enough to cause multiple double strand breaks at once, DNA repair centers become overwhelmed and the number of incorrect rejoinings of double strand breaks increases.

“It is the same as when dozens of broken cars are brought to the same garage at once, the quality of repair is likely to suffer,” Costes says.

The link between exposure to ionizing radiation and DNA damage that can give rise to cancerous cells is well-established. However, the standards for cancer risks have been based on data collected from survivors of the atomic bomb blasts in Japan during World War II. The LNT model was developed to extrapolate low dose cancer risk from high dose exposure because changes in cancer incidence following low dose irradiation are too small to be measurable. Extrapolation was done on a linear scale in accordance with certain assumptions and the laws of physics.

“Assuming that the human genome is a target of constant size, physics predicts DNA damage response will be proportional to dose leading to a linear scale,” Costes explains. “Epidemiological data from the survivors of the atomic bombs was found to be in agreement with this hypothesis and showed that cancer incidence increases with an increase in ionizing radiation dose above 0.1 Gy. Below such dose, the picture is not clear.”

Previous studies failed to detect the clustering of double break strands and the formation of DNA repair centers because they were based on single-time or single-dose measurements of RIF at a discrete time after the initial exposure to ionizing radiation. This yields a net number of RIF that does not account for RIF that have not yet appeared or RIF that have already made repairs and disappeared. The time-lapse imaging used by Costes, Bissell and their co-authors showed that RIF formation continues to occur well beyond the initial radiation exposure and after earlier repair issues have been resolved. Time-lapse imaging also indicates that double strand break clustering takes place before any RIF are formed.

“We hypothesize that double strand break clustering occurs rapidly after exposure to ionizing radiation and that RIF formation reflects the repair machinery put in place around a single cluster of double strand breaks,” Costes says. “Our results provide a more accurate model of RIF dose response, and underscore fundamental concerns about static image data analysis in the dynamic environment of the living cell.”

Previous studies also mostly involved fibroblast cells whereas Costes, Bissell and their colleagues examined epithelial cells, specifically an immortalized human breast cell line known as MCF10A, which has a much higher background of RIF than fibroblasts, even without ionizing irradiation. To compensate for this higher background, Costes developed a mathematical method that enables background to be corrected for on a per- nucleus basis in unirradiated cells. Still the use of a special line of immortalized breast cells is an issue that Costes and his colleagues plan to address.

“We are now looking at primary breast epithelial cells that have been removed from healthy donors to determine if our results are repeated beyond just a single cell line and under more realistic physiological conditions,” Costes says. “We’d also like to know if our findings hold true for fibroblasts as well as epithelial cells. Also, we’d like to know if double strand break clustering is the result of a random coalescence or if there is an active transport mechanism that moves these double strand breaks towards pre-existing DNA repair centers.”

Working in collaboration with Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg of Berkeley Lab’s Engineering Division, Costes and his group are also developing a special microfluidics lab-on-a-chip device that is integrated into an X-ray microbeam. The goal is to provide a means by which cells can be kept in a controlled microenvironment while being irradiated with multiple doses. This microfluidic array will be used to characterize DNA damage response in breast and blood cells collected from human donors.

“By characterizing DNA damage response in cells from many different human donors,” Costes says, “we should be able to determine the variation across humans and gain a better understanding of how sensitivity to DNA damage from ionizing radiation might vary from individual to individual.”

This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Obama: Business as usual with the military industrial complex and removal of constitutional rights.

2011-12-29T09:59:00.001-05:00

Appointing financiers involved with military contractors to the FED

While on vacation in Hawaii, Obama designated Jerome Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Powell served as the undersecretary for finance under the president George H. W. Bush and was a partner of The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a massive private equity firm and one of the largest defense contractors in the world.

They're made up of some of the most influential policymakers over the last five administrations including both Bush presidents, former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Clinton Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to name a few.

Other notable investors in The Carlyle Group include the bin Laden family and the Saudi Royal Family. Coincidentally, George H. W. Bush was meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington on the morning of September 11th with one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers.

Watch the documentary below for some more background on the Carlyle Group:

Eisenhower warns us of the military industrial complex.

Obama Signing Statement Says He isn’t Bound by 20 Provisions of General Spending Bill

Some examples, the president objected to:

A ban on spending money to move terrorist detainees from Guantánamo to prisons in the U.S.
Restrictions on placing American troops involved in United Nations peacekeeping missions under foreign command
Thirty days advance notice to Congress for any use of the military that would involve more than $100,000 in construction costs
“Disclosure to the Congress of information regarding ongoing diplomatic negotiations”
Language that blocks health, climate, auto policy and urban affairs “czars” from being employed by the White House
A provision that bars health officials from advocating for gun control
Congressional approval of funds transferred from the Library of Congress to the Copyright Office.

National Defense Authorization Act - Tyranny Vs. Liberty

Subtitle D of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), headed to the president’s desk. These under-the-radar provisions, co-sponsored by Senators John McCain and Carl Levin, would allow for the indefinite military detention of any person alleged to be a member of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces.” The provisions also apply to any person who supports or aids “belligerent” acts against the United States, whether the person is apprehended here or abroad.

President Obama and the Spread of Security Theater

The TSA was created in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Its first administrator, John Magaw, was nominated by President Bush on December 10, 2001, and confirmed by the Senate the following January. The agency's proponents, including Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, argued that an only single federal agency would better protect air travel than the private companies who operated under contract to single airlines or groups of airlines that used a given terminal facility.

Now the TSA would be expanded to all mode of travel.

The Globalization of War

The world's attention is increasingly focused on Syria and Iran as the region continues to move toward military confrontation. Less noticed, however, is that the pieces are being put into place for a truly global conflict, with military buildup taking place in every region and threatening to draw in all of the world's major powers.

The Pentagon and its Sock Puppets

The net result is that American viewers were sold on independent analysis and instead got individuals, often with ongoing contractor relationships with the Pentagon, who read from pre-prepared Pentagon talking points.

An internal Department of Defense review has concluded that a Rumsfeld-era program under which retired military officers who appeared on American broadcast media were given special briefings and access was consistent with Pentagon rules. The New York Times reports:

The inquiry found that from 2002 to 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon organized 147 events for 74 military analysts. These included 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior Pentagon officials and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Twenty of the events, according to a 35-page report of the inquiry’s findings, involved Mr. Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both. One retired officer, the report said, recalled Mr. Rumsfeld telling him: “You guys influence a wide range of people. We’d like to be sure you have the facts.”

The inspector general’s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation. The inquiry confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s staff frequently provided military analysts with talking points before their network appearances. In some cases, the report said, military analysts “requested talking points on specific topics or issues.” One military analyst described the talking points as “bullet points given for a political purpose.” Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program’s intent “was to move everyone’s mouth on TV as a sock puppet.”

The internal review also apparently found no fault with the exclusion of four individuals precisely because they refused to be sock puppets, speaking critically of some Pentagon decisions. One of them, General Wesley Clark, apparently lost his position as an analyst for CNN because of Pentagon and White House displeasure with what he had to say.

The investigation was prompted by David Barstow’s Pulitzer Prize–winning exposé of the Pentagon program. Barstow wrote:

Records and interviews show how the Bush Administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse—an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

The Barstow exposé revealed two of the most important media scandals to emerge from the Iraq War period. The first went to the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s deft use of its enormous public-affairs resources to influence the American media, often for blatantly political purposes. These operations were plainly illegal. Since World War II, Congress has imposed clear limits, written into defense-appropriations measures, on the Pentagon’s ability to engage in domestic public-relations operations. The Department of Defense is permitted to run recruitment campaigns and give press briefings to keep Americans informed about its operations, but it is not permitted to engage in “publicity or propaganda” at home. The internal DoD review exonerating the practice of mobilizing and directing theoretically independent analysts apparently focuses on the fact that the program conforms with existing department rules, but it overlooks the high-level prohibition on “publicity or propaganda,” which was plainly violated.

The second scandal goes to the broadcasters themselves. They apparently recruited these analysts anticipating access to the Pentagon and a steady conduit of information. Their compromise highlights the Achilles heel of the Beltway media: access, not critical or objective coverage, is everything. There is little evidence to suggest that the broadcasters took any meaningful steps to assert their independence or objectivity—indeed, the dismissal of Wesley Clark by CNN shows precisely the opposite. The net result is that American viewers were sold on independent analysis and instead got individuals, often with ongoing contractor relationships with the Pentagon, who read from pre-prepared Pentagon talking points.

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Although he was persuaded that this new relationship between the Pentagon and its contractors was “a vital element in keeping the peace,” he was deeply troubled by the relationship’s potential to disrupt the delicate balance of interests that is fundamental to a modern democracy. David Barstow’s investigation provided some of the most subtle and compelling evidence of this process to appear in recent years. The Pentagon’s self-exonerating report, by contrast, suggests that media sock puppets may become a modus operandi.

L'agriculture verticale et autre technologie au service de l'humanité.

2011-12-28T11:15:00.002-05:00

L'agriculture verticale

Vous avez sans doute lu les nouvelles récentes : nous avons franchi le cap des 7 milliards d'êtres humains sur la Terre le 31 octobre. Bon, tandis que les petits prophètes de malheur continuent leurs diatribes sur l'impact environnemental de ce qu'ils appellent l'explosion démographique et de l'avènement imminent d'ères de famines, il n'en reste pas moins qu’à l'heure actuelle, 925 millions d’êtres humains manque de nourriture.

Quand l’on regarde les faits, le système économique actuel place plutôt ses priorités dans une consommation éhontée pour un faible pourcentage de la population mondiale et une production de biocarburants utilisant des terres arables pour de l'éthanol. Cela est sans compter le rappel incessant de l'érosion des sols et bientôt le manque de terres arables pour l'agriculture. L'impact de ces pratiques pourrait augmenter alors que la population passera, selon les prédictions de l'O.N.U., à 9 milliards d'habitants en 2050. Une surface équivalente à celle du Brésil serait alors nécessaire pour nourrir tout ce beau monde.

Une économie de 30 à 60 % de nourriture serait possible en améliorant les systèmes de distribution de nourriture et en privilégiant la consommation directe aux humains. C’est le ratio qui se gaspille chaque année, selon l’organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture – F.A.O..

L'impact néfaste de l'agriculture commerciale actuelle :

L'utilisation massive de pesticides et d'insecticides doit également être abordée, car ils tuent peu à peu les insectes pollinisateurs — voir les débats sur les abeilles des cinq dernières années — et sont potentiellement cancérigènes. L’exploitation massive des terres cause un appauvrissement et une érosion prématurée des sols et un accroissement de la désertification.

Mis à part ces « bonnes » nouvelles, comment peut-on régler d'un seul coup tous ces problèmes tout en embellissant notre environnement? Puisqu'on en parle, aussi bien démontrer que l'innovation humaine ne connaît que les limites imposées par sa propre créativité.

L'idée provient d'un géologue, Gilbert Ellis Bailey, qui a publié en 1915 un livre sur « vertical farming ». Mais c'est Dickson Despommiers, professeur de microbiologie et de sciences environnementales à la New York Colombia University, qui a été incontestablement le fondateur de ce récent mouvement. Parti d'une idée folle, comme il l'a décrit lui-même en 1999. Dans une de ses classes, il parlait de faire de l’agriculture urbaine sur les toits des immeubles.

Le mouvement a pris tel un feu de poudre et s'est répandu très rapidement dans le monde entier en moins d'une décennie. Il lance alors l'idée d'implanter le procédé entièrement à un immeuble de 30 étages. Des architectes se sont alors lancés dans la conception d'éco-environnements, ou un cycle fermé de processus assure une utilisation intelligente des ressources. Dans un tel circuit fermé, rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée. Bien que l'idée ne soit encore qu'au stade expérimental, il existe actuellement six projets du genre :

The Plant à Chicago
Alpha farm à Manchester, qui sera la pièce de résistance pour l'exposition internationale de l'Angleterre en 2013
Un laboratoire de recherche à Suwon, en Corée du Sud, disposé sur trois étages sinon, il reste plusieurs usines à légumes au Japon, ou des compagnies telles que
Terrasphere,
Aerofarms
Valcent Verticrop.

D’une idée toute simple à l'origine a émergé ce que plusieurs appellent la prochaine grande révolution verte.
Ces essais n'en sont qu'à leurs balbutiements. Bien entendu, il demeure quelques obstacles sur la faisabilité d'un tel projet à grande échelle. Comme je le dis toujours, il suffit de combiner les savoirs actuels pour trouver les solutions aux problèmes.

Un des grands défis est l'alimentation électrique de telles structures. Selon certains calculs, cela prendrait huit fois la capacité des centrales électriques actuelles des États-Unis pour fournir la production lumineuse nécessaire à leurs besoins. Cependant, compte tenu des développements récents et progrès en matière de production d'énergie, il serait possible de fournir les besoins énergétiques d'un seul bâtiment grâce à des systèmes de pyrolyse ou gazéification au plasma des déchets, tels ceux fournis par la compagnie Terragon ou Plasco Energy Group. Sinon, à moins qu'il n'y ait une révolution de l'énergie et qu'elle coûte moins chère et soit moins dangereuse à produire (voir centrales nucléaires au thorium ou les réactions nucléaires à basse énergie — LENR), cela risque de poser encore quelques défis.

De nouvelles avancées à l'Université McGill concernant les lumières DEL permettent d'utiliser des spectres de différentes couleurs, pour stimuler la productivité des cultures tout en consommant 10 % de l'énergie des lumières actuelles.

De plus, les immeubles pourraient être construits avec le génie de la nature, tel qu'exposé par Michael Pawlyn. Les fenêtres pourraient être très solides et économiques à construire par un nouveau matériau économique et écologique nommé l’ETFE(2). Il s'agit d'une plaque de polymère pouvant être étiré sur une structure d'acier en trois couches et gonflée à l'air. Son coût est de 24 à 70 % moins à installer comparé au verre, supporte 400 fois son poids, est autonettoyant et recyclable. La lumière naturelle pourrait être ainsi maximisée, et ainsi limiterait l'utilisation de lumière artificielle.

Le volume de fruit et légume produit pourrait également être stimulé par une plus grande concentration de CO2 de l’ordre de 1200 ppm, augmentant potentiellement la croissance de 44 %.

Parlons maintenant des avantages, car ils sont légion :

Nous parlons d'une production entièrement biologique et parfaite, 365 jours par année, sans pesticides et insecticides et ceci indépendamment des saisons.
Nous parlons d'une commercialisation pouvant donner des milliers d'emplois dans les villes et une distribution locale et rapide de produits frais tout en limitant les dépenses de carburants fossiles.
Nous parlons d'un rendement de 5 à 10 fois supérieur à celui de l'agriculture conventionnelle sur 10 fois moins de terrain.
Nous parlons d'un procédé pouvant être implanté dans n'importe quel climat, peu importe le pays.
Nous parlons d'une économie d'eau de l'ordre de 5 fois comparativement à l'agriculture normale.
Bref, nous parlons d'un moyen de nourrir une population croissante, en bonne santé, tout en limitant l'impact environnemental de ce dernier.

Comme mentionné plus haut, tout serait pensé pour fermer le cycle de la consommation : de l'hydroponie combinée à de l'aquaculture, faisant l'élevage de plusieurs espèces de poissons tout en cultivant des laitues. Les déjections des poissons nourrissent les plantes en nutriments, l'eau étant également traitée, filtrée et recyclée. Les poissons seraient nourris grâce aux restes des cultures et des déchets des préparations dans les usines situées en dessous.

Un système de pyrolyse et/ou gazéification utiliserait les déchets non recyclables pour alimenter une partie du bâtiment en électricité, tout en récupérant de l’eau et autre matière. Un biodigesteur de biométhanisation pourrait aussi être utilisé pour prendre le relais avec les restes des usines de transformation des produits.

Des installations aéroponiques pourraient maximiser l'utilisation de l'eau – utilisant seulement 10 % d'eau comparée à l'agriculture intensive — des cultures maraîchères, de tomates, de concombres, de tous les types de salades, d'épinards et de laitues ainsi que des herbes et des épices. Ils peuvent également faire le même traitement grâce à un système de compte-gouttes et de cultures verticales, distribuant l'eau directement aux racines, et s'égouttant à d'autres plateaux superposés.

Une utopie que tout cela? Les projets en vigueur ne sont que les premiers pas vers un avenir meilleur si l'idée continue de faire son chemin tel qu'elle l'a fait déjà. Il est possible de rendre de telles infrastructures viables économiquement tout en augmentant le niveau de la dignité humaine. Le potentiel de ces technologies n'est plus un rêve, mais bien une réalité. Penseurs du monde, vous pouvez encore trouver d'autres manières d'améliorer la vie pour tous, autant pour le genre humain que pour la biodiversité de la planète.

Vidéo résumant bien les possibilités:

Vincent Blanchette

Remember cold fusion... Now LENR, Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

2011-12-11T10:43:00.000-05:00

There have been lots of new development following Pons & Fleischmann Cold Fusion.

Now we are talking about LENR or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.

Here's 3 presentations that occured at NASA on sept 22nd and some interesting slides extracted. More information and discussion here.

Zawodny Slides

Nelson Slides

Bushnell Slides

In Short, LENR , depending upon the TBD performance, appears to be capable of Revolutionizing Aerospace across the board. No other single technology even comes close to the potential impacts of LENR upon Agency Missions.

Some good video on the technology:

Low Energy Nuclear Revolution (English Version)

Cold Fusion More than Junk Science 60minutes 9-4-19 2 of 2

Dr. Robert Duncan on Cold Fusion at the Missouri Energy Summit 2009 Part 1-3 playlist

Interview: Clinton Bastin - Iran Has a Nuclear Power Program, Not a Weapons Program

2011-11-27T22:14:00.000-05:00

Full text of the interview

Interview #1/2

Interview: Clinton Bastin #1/2
by: Astr0o0o0o

Iran Has a Nuclear Power Program, Not a Weapons Program

Interview #2/2
Interview: Clinton Bastin #2/2
by: Astr0o0o0o

Iran Has a Nuclear Power Program, Not a Weapons Program

How much bailout money was spent and what is the impact on workers

2011-11-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

When Obama allowed to bail-out banks at a excess of 3 trillions dollar for institution that gambled, instead of let them fail and reform a system doom to fail, he has put more than 22 thousand dollars more debt on all 140 thousands workers.

We would have to extract 5% of the average salary of all US workers for almost 10 years just to pay for this one pass bailout.

What a mess!

The more energy you have, the longer you live and the richer you are

2011-11-06T08:21:00.001-05:00

Energy and economy Source

Energy is the most fundamental requirement of every society or nation as it progresses through the ladder of development. Of course, once it reaches a relative degree of development, the energy demand becomes more stable. There is a distinct and categorical correlation between the energy consumption and income of a nation — each reinforcing the other. Look around you: every step into progress comes with an addition of demand for energy — cars, ships and aircraft to move, hospitals to give quality healthcare, education, as it follows the model of e-connectivity, production of more and better goods, irrigation for better farming. In fact, every element of our lives is increasingly going to become energy-intensive — that is a necessary prerequisite for development. This is clearly reflected in the average energy consumption per person across nations

Click on play!

Nuclear power is EXTREMELY dangerous, but compare to others, EXTREMELY safe!

2011-11-06T07:18:00.000-05:00

Source: http://www.learningaboutenergy.com/2011/11/the-nuclear-power-safety-record.html

As of March 2011, Naval Reactors have run 6300 reactor-years, driving 528 reactor cores on 220 ships over 145,000,000 miles without a single radiological incident or injurious radiation exposure to crew or public. Because of the shielding from the hull and the seawater, crews at sea generally get less radiation, living within 100 meters of an operating nuclear reactor, than their families at home. All of the radiological information about the ships and associated shore facilities is released to the public in documents in which the detailed data are accumulated without a break since 1954.

With respect to the international nuclear power industry at large, John Ritch, the Director-General of the World Nuclear Association, made the following statement to the science editor of station NDTV on 24 October 2011: “Perhaps I would think this problem is more serious if we had been besieged by many large fatality accidents in nuclear power. But I think I am correct in saying that in fourteen thousand five hundred reactor-years of civil nuclear power production we have not seen a fatality apart from the limited number of deaths that occurred as a result of the Chernobyl accident...Very few industries have produced such beneficial results with such an extremely low toll of damage to the environment or the public. This industry has an amazing record of safe performance and beneficial contribution. That basic fact is much too little appreciated by the public.”

During the same period, the following non-nuclear accidents occurred:

Banqiao Dam Failure: One of 62 hydroelectric dams in Zhumadian Prefecture in China that failed catastrophically or were intentionally destroyed in 1975 during Typhoon Nina. An estimated 172,000 people were killed, 11 million people lost their homes, and about one-third of the electric power capacity of the national grid was destroyed. The resulting damage to the farmland is not reported.

Bhopal Pesticide Factory Release: A leak of methyl isocyonate gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India in 1984 led to 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary and partial, and 3900 severely and permanently injured. An estimated 3000 died within weeks and another 8000 have since died from the incident. Some believe these official estimates grossly understate the situation.

Deaths from Coal: From coal’s air pollution alone, there have been 30,000 deaths per year in the US, 500,000 per year in China. These figures do not include deaths of coals miners, the destruction of stream beds destroyed by pushing mountain-tops into stream beds, the effect of mercury and other toxins on fish, etc.

BP Oil Spill: The environmental and health impact of this event has not been estimated. And there are many other spills that have received little attention. The fact is that it is simply not true that nuclear radiation is uniquely hazardous, even when totally uncontrolled releases occasionally occur.

Another fact is that unwarranted fear of harmless levels of radiation has caused unprecedented damage. People are afraid to return to their homes and businesses. They’ve terrified themselves, their friends and their children. The health effect of such widely enforced terrorism is itself devastating. The effect on the economy is paralyzing.

In Fukushima, amid thousands of non-nuclear deaths, international investigation under IAEA concluded: "To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident" But the Government is concerned about letting people return to their homes.

There is no defensible scientific basis for discouraging people from living where radiation levels are “high,” when they are still lower than the highest natural radiation levels in Iran, Brazil, Norway, India, China and other regions where people have dwelt healthfully for countless generations with backgrounds hundreds of times higher than deemed “permissible.”

More fundamentally, why should radiation level be the prime consideration as to where and how one chooses to live? Many people make decisions that increase their radiation dose many-fold by moving to mountainous regions, or by cladding their houses in brick or stone, or by visiting radioactive health spas. By what authority do the radiation protection police have their particular concern outrank all others? Are we going to let them strip the natural soil off the ground in Japan, to lower the radiation background to some arbitrary number?

Why should we fear “nuclear waste”? The only way it can harm anyone is if it is eaten. It is not in soluble form, so we store it in shielded cans until it is needed to be recycled as fuel in a reactor designed for that purpose. This is not difficult; the process has been demonstrated, but it Is currently cheaper to just store the used fuel until needed. Non-nuclear industry produces millions of times more lethal doses of other poisons. The main difference is that the nuclear material gets less toxic every day, and after a few hundred years, becomes no more toxic than some natural ores. But the non-nuclear wastes maintain full toxicity forever. Fukushima and 9/11 have shown that we should design the plants to perform under even more extremes of conditions, and these improvements have been underway in America since immediately after 9/11.

Putting radiation numbers in perspective:

Marshall Brucer, “the father of nuclear medicine,” in his canonical Chronology of Nuclear Medicine,shows how widely radiation backgrounds vary. On page 323, he lists various radiation background levels (with cosmic ray contribution removed) from New York City at 0.62 mSv/year to SW France up to 876; to the potash fertilizer area in Florida up to 1750. He notes, “If you live in one place on earth, your background may vary from day to day by a factor of ten, or even 100…The inside exposure rate can change by a factor of 10 within hours, just by opening windows.” He notes that building with brick, rather than wood, can nearly double your daily radiation dose, but that the radioactivity of bricks and concrete is also highly variable: from 0.05 to 4.93 mSv/yr for bricks, and from 0.29 to 25.4 for concretes. “A factor of 10 daily variation [in radiation dose] marks the diets of most people.” [mR in original, converted here to mSv]

People have lived healthily for millennia with natural radiation up to following mSv/yr:

Ramsar, Iran (260), Kerala, India (35), Guaripari, Brazil (35), Yangiang, China (5.4)

Other article on nuclear power and radiation:

Comments?

Population to reach 7 billions this year

2011-10-28T06:33:00.000-04:00

Population growth going down everywhere.

Also fertility rate.

Good article:
The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic

De bonne idée pour le transport en commun au Québec.

2011-10-14T21:58:00.000-04:00

Le Monorail TrensQuebec comme entreprise nationale de transport.
http://www.trensquebec.qc.ca/

Building a modular nuclear power plant in a 11 weeks!

2011-10-14T20:33:00.011-04:00

Looking at what we accomplish in the 1960's, we wonder why today it takes 10 years and billions to build a nuclear power plant?

In seventy-seven days, the Army team assembled the prefabricated reactor. Just nine hours after fuel elements containing forty-three pounds of enriched Uranium-235 were inserted into the reactor, electricity was produced.

WARNING: STRONG POLITICAL VIEW IN THIS VIDEO.

More info:
The US Army Nuclear Power Program was created to develop small nuclear power reactors for use at remote sites. Most were based on existing US Naval reactor designs. Eight reactors were built in all, and six of the eight produced useful power. The nuclear reactor at Camp Century was the first of the US Army's portable reactors to actually produce power.

The portable nuclear power plant at Camp Century was designated PM-2A. Its designation indicates: “P” for Portable; “M” for Medium Power; “2” for the sequence number; and the letter “A” indicates field installation. The PM-2A was rated two megawatts for electrical power and also supplied steam to operate the water well. The PM-2A was built by Alco Products, Inc. of Schenectady, New York. The USNS Marine Fiddler transported the reactor from Buffalo, New York to Thule Air Base in Greenland, arriving on July 10, 1960. Up to this time, it was the most valuable cargo ever shipped out of the port of Buffalo. In addition, the Army flew one of the three blast coolers to Thule on a C-124 Globemaster to demonstrate the practicality of air transport. Four hundred tons of pipes, machinery, and components were then carefully transported over the ice in twenty-seven packages. Special care was taken not to damage the parts, since intensely cold metal can become dangerously brittle. As a credit to superb packaging, a ceramic top to a lab cabinet was the only item damaged during transport.

In seventy-seven days, the Army team assembled the prefabricated reactor. Just nine hours after fuel elements containing forty-three pounds of enriched Uranium-235 were inserted into the reactor, electricity was produced. It was soon discovered that additional shielding would be necessary. This shielding was accomplished by adding a layer of two inch thick lead bricks to the primary shield tank. Except for downtime for routine maintenance and repairs, the reactor operated for thirty-three months, until July 9, 1963, when it was deactivated pending a decision to remove it. This decision stemmed from plans to discontinue year-round operations at Camp Century to reduce costs. In addition, the tunnel support structure sheltering the reactor was suffering from reoccurring damage due to compacting snow. A conventional diesel powered plant would have consumed over one million gallons of fuel over the same period. While the power plant was designed to provide 1560 kilowatts of power, Camp Century's power needs peaked at 500 kilowatts, and gradually declined from there. During the reactors operational life, a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap. The PM-2A was removed in the summer of 1964 by the 46th Engineers based at Fort Polk, Louisiana. No military service was willing to accept the plant at another location so the PM-2A's components were put into storage. The reactor vessel was subjected to destructive testing in order to study neutron embrittlement of carbon steel. Phillips Petroleum Company conducted the testing for the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1966. After extreme testing, it was found to be much more durable than expected. Failure of the vessel finally occurred at minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit and 4,475 pounds per square inch pressure after hydrochloric acid was added to a machined defect.

Dr. Edward Calabrese: The Fraud of LNT and Future of Radiation

2011-10-14T20:21:00.000-04:00

Like I explained before, the LNT or Linear No Threshold seems to be based on fraudulent science. Dr. Calabrese explain the history of the LNT and the future of radiation if our policies would be based on science.

If Vermont Yankee had an Incident like Fukushima

2011-10-11T21:31:00.002-04:00

Good presentation on nuclear radiation and related topic.

Jones Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society.

"If Vermont Yankee had an Incident like Fukushima, What Would be the Responsibilities and Public Expectations of the Scientific Community?"

Presented by Harold Swartz, Dartmouth Medical School.

source

The purpose of this presentation is:

To understand the medical implications of a total body exposure of an individual to high levels of ionizing radiation (greater than 1 Gray), and also, potential long-term effects.
To understand how to interpret the information and counsel colleagues and the public about radiation exposures in the environment.
To understand public health implications and actions that should be taken when there are potential exposures of large numbers of individuals to ionizing radiation as might occur with a major accident from a nuclear power plant or an attack by terrorists that involves ionizing radiation.
Delineate and differentiate between medical needs and risks between a nuclear device and an incident at a nuclear power plant.
Provide guidance for your responses to a radiation event (because people will believe you!).
Explain context and needs for dosimetry in large scale event.
Describe our current research and activities in responses to major radiation events.

About the Speaker

Harold Swartz, MD, MSPH, PhD is a Professor of Radiology, Medicine (Radiation Oncology), Physiology, Community and Family Medicine, Chemistry, and Engineering and the director of the Dartmouth EPR Center and the Dart-Dose CMCR. He is an internationally recognized biophysicist and radiation biologist who has especially been involved in the development of magnetic resonance for preclinical and clinical applications. He has done research and teaching on the biological effects of ionizing radiation since 1962 at Walter Reed, Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Dartmouth. The EPR Center at Dartmouth is especially focused on developing and applying in vivo EPR for measurements of physiologically and pathophysiological parameters in vivo. He has developed, at Dartmouth, the first clinical program in EPR, which has a special emphasis on using the technique to measure radiation dose after the fact for purposes of triage and to advance cancer treatment by using repetitive measurements of oxygen to optimize delivery of cancer therapy. He has founded and directed national EPR Centers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and at Dartmouth. He is the PI of one of the CMCR Centers, DART-DOSE CMCR, focusing on Physical Biodosimetry. He is the author/coauthor of approximately 450 papers and four books. He has received several international awards including the Zavoisky prize.

GreenPeace: Anti Science, Fear, Anti Nuclear, Climate Alarmists

2011-10-07T22:18:00.000-04:00

Following some story about greenpeace... Click on the links for the full stories.

Patrick Moore: From Greenpeace Dove to Nuclear Power Phoenix
Summary

If energy, food and education are the building blocks of civilization, Greenpeace Cofounder Patrick Moore is using his role of "sensible environmentalist" to build support for the concept of sustainable power generation. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Patrick proposes that industry and government work together to advance nuclear power in the United States as the most effective way to supply continuous energy to homes, businesses and institutions.

Excerpt

They [GreenPeace] are more aptly described as political or social activists, which is fine in its own right, but when you are starting to deal with complex issues of chemistry and biology, you do need a little grounding in science in order to make good decisions.

Greenpeace tended to take a more black-and-white approach to many of these issues, and today they are opposed to all nuclear energy, even though it's a safe and clean alternative to fossil fuels. They are opposed to genetic engineering even though this could help eliminate micronutrient deficiency or malnutrition around the world. They are opposed to sustainable forestry, even though it's the most renewable resource in the world. They are opposed to farming fish in the ocean, which is a way of taking pressure off of wild stocks, which are overfished.

I think we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons. Our original campaign was against nuclear war, and we painted everything nuclear as evil. Today that makes no sense at all to me. Nuclear medicine is obviously not evil. Those nuclear isotopes used in nuclear medicine are created in nuclear reactors. That's one of the things we can do with nuclear technology. Another one is to make energy that's clean and safe.

Why is the New York Academy of Sciences allowing its name to be used in an anti-science FUD campaign?
Summary:

Greenpeace wrongly used a published volume from the NYAS (New York Academy of Sciences) to support unproven claims that close to 1 million people died from the Chernobyl disaster. The real number of deaths directly attributable to the materials released by the accident will end up to be very close to 50.

Excerpt

Greenpeace claims that “based on now available medical data, 985,000 people died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.” The authority for this statement is “the book recently published by the New York Academy of Sciences.” That death-toll is not supportable by scientific evidence.

A 2005 review of the data by an informal group call the Chernobyl Forum, included a suggestion that, based on the LNT premise (that even a single gamma ray could cause a cancer), 4000 additional deaths might ultimately occur. Since there is no indication that these deaths are likely, and since “prediction” of deaths by adding up of thousands of small individual radiation doses has been repeatedly forbidden as scientifically unsound, the suggested 4000 deaths has not been widely accepted.

Greenpeace’s Fear Machine

Summary:

Art Horn, writing at the Energy Tribune, calls our attention to a Greenpeace document titled The Climate Time Bomb. It was written 17 years ago – in 1994 – but it may as well have been yesterday.
The dramatic language, the glass-is-always-half-empty perspective on the world, the blind faith in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – it’s all there.

Excerpt:

One of the more distressing parts of that 1994 Greenpeace report is the section on human health. It’s important to remember that the IPCC’s first health chapter didn’t appear until 1995. It was so badly botched that Paul Reiter, who has devoted his entire professional life to the study of diseases spread by mosquitoes – including malaria – later described it as “amateurish.”Nevertheless, in 1994 Greenpeace just knew that climate change would lead to more disease. Its report includes a closeup photo of a person with a large open sore on their face, and declares that:

Our health is threatened by climate change. Malaria, asthma, encephalitis, tuberculosis, leprosy, dengue fever and measles are all expected to become more common.

How does Greepeace know this?

because Australian officials “believe hotter summer temperatures may be contributing” to an increase in malaria
because US researchers think the discovery of a new strain of mosquito suggests that these mosquitoes “may spread rapidly in a global warming world”
because a UK government report “suggests that malaria and other tropical diseases, and even bubonic plague, could be reintroduced to the UK as a result of global warming.

This is all that Greenpeace requires. Beliefs and suggestions – nothing more. Greenpeace is happy to take mere possibilities and translate them into the confident statement that Our health is threatened by climate change. It feels no shame in adding a lurid photograph which, one supposes, is intended to imply that we’re all fated to become disfigured if we don’t get with the Greenpeace program.

Nuclear risk management - Testimony by John D. Boice

2011-10-04T07:43:00.000-04:00

Source

Testimony on Nuclear Energy Risk Management after Fukushima, May 13, 2011

John D. Boice, Jr., Sc.D.
Professor of Radiation Epidemiology
Department of Medicine
Vanderbilt University

United State House of Representatives
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
Subcommittees on Energy & Environment and Investigations and Oversight

Washington, DC
May 13, 2011

Testimony for the Record

Good morning, Mr. Chairmen, ranking Members, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to discuss the possible health implications of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan. Just a few days before the natural disasters struck on March 11, 2011, I was in Hiroshima, Japan as a member of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation's Science Council, reviewing the study of atomic bomb survivors. I would like to begin by expressing my heartfelt sympathy for the families of the tens of thousands who lost their lives as a result of the tsunami and earthquake and for the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced from their homes and livelihoods. The health consequences associated with the radiation exposures emanating from the Fukushima Daiichi plant pale in comparison.

As background, I am a radiation epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University and Scientific Director of the International Epidemiology Institute. I have spent my career studying human populations exposed to radiation, including Chernobyl clean-up workers, patients receiving diagnostic and therapeutic radiation, underground miners exposed to radon, nuclear energy workers, atomic veterans, persons living in areas of high background radiation and U.S. populations living near nuclear power plants and other facilities. I am also a commissioner of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, an emeritus member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and a member of the Congressionally-mandated Veterans Advisory Board on Dose Reconstruction.

My remarks will cover five areas:

Fukushima is not Chernobyl.
The health consequences for Japanese workers and public appear to be minor.
The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent.
We live in a radioactive world.
There is a pressing need to learn more about the health consequences of radiation in humans when exposures are spread over time at low levels and not received briefly at high doses such as in atomic bomb survivors.

Fukushima is not Chernobyl
The Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, resulted in massive radiation exposures, both to the emergency workers putting out the ensuing fire and to the environment. There was no containment vessel and after the explosion a fire burned for ten days and spewed radioactive particles continuously into the environment. The emergency workers, the first responders and fire fighters, received so much radiation that 28 of them died of acute radiation sickness within a few months of exposure. Those who survived developed cataracts at a high rate and several subsequently died of myelodysplastic disorders. Radioactive iodines were deposited on large areas throughout the Ukraine, Belarus and Russian Federation and were ingested by cows who gave milk that was drunk by children, and an epidemic of thyroid cancer ensued beginning about five years after the accident. Over 520,000 recovery workers were sent to clean up the environment and build the so-called sarcophagus to contain the damaged nuclear reactor. To date there is little conclusive evidence for adverse health effects associated with radiation received during these clean-up operations. There have, however, been indications of severe psychological stress and increased rates of suicide.

In contrast, while the radiation releases from Fukushima are estimated to be up to 10% of that from Chernobyl, there appears to be substantially less worker and public exposure. The Japanese authorities relaxed the allowable annual limit of worker exposure from 2 to 25 rem for this emergency situation, but only about 21 workers received more than 10 rem and only two workers received between 20 and 25 rem. These levels are far below the hundreds of rem needed to cause acute radiation sickness. Those workers who experienced levels over 10 rem to their entire body, however, have an increased lifetime risk of developing cancer of about 1-2% over the expected normal lifetime rate of about 42%. There were reports of high radiation fields in the vicinity of the damaged reactors and spent fuel storage ponds and with the contaminated water, but apparently the Japanese authorities rotated workers in such a way that cumulative exposures to individuals were minimized. Three workers received beta particle exposures to their legs from an estimated 200-300 rem to the skin, but the health consequences of these localized exposures were minimal and resulted in only a reddening of the skin.

Exposure to the public was minimal in large part because of the prevailing winds and the quick action taken by the Japanese authorities. The prevailing winds were generally to the east and over the ocean and thus did not result in meaningful radiation exposures to the Japanese public. In contrast to the circumstances around Chernobyl where the authorities failed to alert or evacuate the surrounding populations until several days had passed, the Japanese government quickly evacuated persons living within 20 km of the Fukushima Daiichi plant and recommended that those living within 30 km stay indoors to minimize any possible exposure to radioactive releases. In addition, they immediately monitored the food and water supplies and banned the shipment of foodstuffs and milk where the radiation levels exceeded allowable standards.

These protective action measures, including the distribution of stable iodine pills (or syrup for children), minimized public doses and suggest that there will be minimal health consequences associated with any radiation exposures to the Japanese public. This is borne out in one survey of over 1,000 children who had their thyroids measured for possible uptakes of radioactive iodine. Not one child had a measurement above detectable limits. This is in contrast to children living near Chernobyl for whom large numbers had extremely high levels of radioactive iodine detected in their thyroids from drinking contaminated milk shortly after the accident.

Nonetheless, some of the prevailing winds did blow toward populated areas shortly after the accident and during the hydrogen explosions, and to the north-west in particular. Rain, snow and hail deposited radioactive particles in certain regions, including some beyond 20 km, and these areas will be a concern for remediation before allowing public access or return. The Japanese authorities are considering regular medical examinations for workers and inhabitants who received more than 10 rem. To reduce anxiety, they are considering medical check-ups for those who may have received between 2 to 10 rem. They are also grappling with important issues as to when and how to allow evacuated inhabitants to return to their homes. Childhood exposures are of particular concern and topsoil is already being removed from some school playgrounds.

Thus, while Fukushima is clearly a major reactor accident, the potential health consequences associated with radiation exposures in terms of loss of life and future cancer risk are small, particularly in contrast with those resulting from the Chernobyl accident some 25 years ago.

For completeness, the 1979 reactor accident at Three Mile Island did not release appreciable amounts of radioactive substances into the environment, and public and even worker exposures were minimal. The average dose to people in the area was only about 1 millirem, or about what would be received in three days from sources of natural background radiation to the surrounding population.

The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent
Fukushima is 5,000 miles away from the United States and the radiation that has been detected was substantially diluted after traveling such a long distance. The detection of trace amounts of radiation speaks more about the extreme sensitivity of our radiation detectors than about the potential health consequences from the radiation itself. In addition to EPA’s RadNet system that monitors water, milk and the atmosphere, the Department of Energy has radiation monitoring equipment that can detect minute quantities of radioactive particles from the other side of the world as part of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The tiny amounts of detected radioactive materials from Fukushima pose no threat to human health. They represent, at most, only a tiny fraction of what we receive each day from natural sources, such as the sun, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the houses we live in.

It is impressive that radiation monitors can detect levels of radioactive iodine-131 as low as 0.03 Bq/L (0.8 pCi/L) in milk in Washington State; this is the decay of one radioactive atom per second in about 33 gallons of milk. Such a level is 5,000 of times below the Derived Intervention Level set by the Food and Drug Administration to trigger concern over radionuclides in food. An infant would have to drink hundreds of gallons of milk to receive a radiation dose equivalent to a day’s worth of natural background radiation exposure. Such tiny levels of radiation are inconsequential compared with the levels we experience in daily life.

Interestingly, the radiation monitoring stations in Washington State had to detect radionuclides other than iodine-131 in order to distinguish radiation from Fukushima from that at any local hospital in the area. Most nuclear medicine departments use radioactive iodine for imaging the thyroid and to treat thyroid diseases, and patients are discharged shortly after intake and remain radioactive for several months, releasing small but detectable levels of radioactive iodine into the environment.

The trivial levels of radiation from Japan, while detectable, should not be of a concern and Americans should not take stable iodine (potassium iodide pills, KI) as a preventive measure to block the thyroid’s uptake of radioactive iodine. There are potential adverse health effects from taking KI pills and these risks have to be balanced against a nonexistent benefit.

We live in a radioactive world
To place the radiation levels from Fukushima in brief perspective, it is important to recognize that we live in a radioactive world. A banana, for example, has 10 Bq of activity, that is, 10 radioactive potassium atoms decay every second. All the foodstuffs we eat that contain potassium also contain a small amount of radioactive potassium, a primordial element with a billion year half-life. There are no concerns and no health consequences from such exposures.

We breathe radioactive radon which contributes over the year to about 210 millirem of natural background radiation. Bricks and granite contain radioactive materials that result in radiation exposures to the public (20 millirem). The Capitol Building was constructed with granite and is frequently cited as having some of the highest radiation levels in all of the United States, about 85 millirem per year. Water contains small amounts of radioactive radium, thorium and uranium, all within allowable limits.

Not only do we live in a radioactive world, our bodies are radioactive (30 millirem per year). Each second over 7,000 radioactive atoms in our bodies decay and can irradiate those sitting next to us. The atoms are largely radioactive potassium in our muscles and carbon-14 in our tissues. The amount of radiation we receive each year from medical sources (300 millirem), such as CT and medical imaging, equals the amount received from natural sources (300 millirem). International travel increases our exposure to cosmic rays and space radiation. A roundtrip from Dulles to Tokyo would result in 20 millirem. Living in Denver for a year results in 450 millirem of radiation dose, or 35% more than the U.S. average of 310 millirem from natural sources. About 2.5 million Americans (0.8% of the population) receive more than 2,000 millirem per year from natural sources.

These examples are not to minimize the health consequences of high-level exposures which are clearly demonstrable in human populations and include acute radiation sickness at very high doses in excess of 200 rem and an increase in cancer at moderate doses above about 10 rem (10,000 millirem). The examples do indicate, however, that we live in a world of low-level radiation for which the possible health consequences are of little concern. The exposures to the U.S. population from Fukushima are tiny and thousands of times below U.S. standards or guidelines where remedial action would be triggered.

What research is needed?
Although we know much about the health effects of high levels of radiation when received briefly, as was the case for atomic bomb survivors, the risk following exposures experienced gradually over time is uncertain and remains the major unanswered question in radiation epidemiology.

One untapped opportunity is to study our own U.S. radiation workers and veterans. The Low Dose Radiation Program within the Department of Energy had the foresight to initiate pilot investigations of over one million such workers and this comprehensive work should continue. Cooperating agencies include the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others. The study populations include early DOE and Manhattan Project workers, atomic veterans who participated in nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear utility workers, medical workers and others involved in the development of radiation technologies, as well as nuclear navy personnel.

Such a large study in the United States is critically important to understand scientifically the health consequences of low-dose radiation experienced over time and is directly relevant to the setting of protection standards for workers and the public; the assessment of possible risks from enhanced medical technologies such as CT and nuclear medicine imaging; the expansion of nuclear power; the handling of nuclear waste; the compensation of workers with prior exposures to radiation; and even the possible consequences of the radiation released from reactor accidents such as at Fukushima. To date, no direct study of these issues has been large enough to provide convincing answers and extrapolations from the atomic bomb exposures in 1945 have to be relied upon.

Summary
Fortunately, the health consequences from the radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant appear to be minimal and are of little importance with regard to the U.S. public. The Japanese authorities acted quickly to evacuate over 200,000 inhabitants living near the damaged reactors; they monitored food and water and took rapid action to ban foodstuffs with increased radiation levels; they distributed stable iodine pills and syrup; and they made measurements on over 175,000 persons. The lasting effects upon the Japanese population will most likely be psychological with increased occurrence of stress-related mental disorders and depression associated not necessarily with the concern about reactor radiation, but with the horrific loss of life and disruption caused by the tsunami and earthquake. There is a need for better public understanding and better communications on the health effects of radiation exposures. Finally, there is now the opportunity in the United States to learn directly about low-dose, long-term radiation health effects by studying our workers and veterans.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I welcome any questions that you may have.

Relevant References
Boice JD Jr. Lauriston S. Taylor lecture: radiation epidemiology--the golden age and future challenges. Health Physics 100(1):59-76, 2011.

Christodouleas JP, Forrest RD, Ainsley CG, Tochner Z, Hahn SM, Glatstein E. Short-Term and Long-Term Health Risks of Nuclear-Power-Plant Accidents. New England Journal of Medicine, April 20, 2011.

Idaho National Laboratory. Oversight Program: Guide to Radiation Doses and Limits. [http://www.deq.idaho.gov/inl_oversight/radiation/radiation_guide.cfm]

International Atomic Energy Agency. Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log
[http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html]

National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, NCRP Report No. 160, Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population of the United States, March 2009.

Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Washington, D.C. (The Kemeny Commission Report), October 1979.

Smith J. A long shadow over Fukushima. Nature, April 5, 2011.

UNSCEAR. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes, Volume II, Annex D, health Effects due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident (United Nations Publications, New York), 2011.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. [http://www.lrb.usace.army.mil/fusrap/docs/fusrap-fs-uranium-2008-09.pdf]

Wakeford R. And now, Fukushima (editorial). Journal of Radiological Protection (in press).

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, opening statment of the Atucha II Nuclear Power Plant.

2011-10-02T10:48:00.002-04:00

It's quite rare these days to witness those speeches by a leader.

Listen to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president of Argentina, on the opening of a nuclear power station.

Topics in one speech on:

Nuclear power
Sovereignty rights of a nation
Putting an end to debt with the IMF preventing the development of a nation
Restructuring the debt of a sovereign nation
Workers being the custodians of nation sovereignty
Nuclear power being the most important bastions of technological development
Foreign interference preventing preventing a nation from having nuclear power
A nation govern by itself

More info:

Attucha nuclear power:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atucha_II_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner

How the IMF Sank Argentina
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0127-03.htm

Terranova, can we do better?

2011-10-02T09:41:00.000-04:00

There's a new show on TV.

Terranova: another doom and gloom, end of the world scenario where the show start with a view on a polluted city, people with mask to breathe and a population control coops kidnapping the third kid of a family, because it's outlawed to have more than 2. The kids never saw an orange or clouds.. give me a break!

In the year 2149, the planet Earth is a disaster, and most of the plant and animal life has become extinct. Scientists can't reverse the
damage, but have found a way to travel back to prehistoric times to save the human race.

I am so tired of those shows where humans can only do bad things and the only solution is to go back and live like crazy, unlawful armed farmers.

For starter overpopulation is a myth.. see:

http://simonfiliatrault.blogspot.com/2009/07/overpopulation-myth-or-reality.html

Secondly, we know that by bringing wealth and education to population, their growth rate stabilize.

http://drtimball.com/2011/climate-change-threat-is-continuation-of-malthusian-population-claims/

Third, we know that better technology, cleaner power sources, gives us a cleaner air. The only task left for humanity is to move from coal power to nuclear power. From what I know, people downtown England breath better today then when they where burning coal in houses.

So I don't believe in those dooms day scenarios, humans are better than that, period.

Low level radiation and Linear no threshold (LNT) theory. We should revisit our regulation.

2011-09-25T10:08:00.004-04:00

We should revisit our exposure regulations because our regulatory history is founded on a deception.

Some background first.
What is radiation? According to wikipedia:

In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energy or waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing. The word radiation is commonly used in reference to ionizing radiation only (i.e., having sufficient energy to ionize an atom), but it may also refer to non-ionizing radiation (e.g., radio waves, heat or visible light).

So what concerns this article will be about ionizing radiation. Again from wikipedia:

Ionizing (or ionising) radiation is radiation with sufficient energy to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. This ionization produces free radicals, atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons, which tend to be especially chemically reactive.

Low level radiation.
We know for sure that high level radiation will kill and we know fore sure that low level radiation does not. High level radiation from a nuclear bomb or exposure to high level of radioactivity from a close source of radiation will kill you from anywhere from an instant to a few days, depending on the amount you receive.

The not so clear debate is with low level radiation. Some argue that there is no safe limit where radiation is safe. Those are the advocate of the Linear no threshold theory or LNT.

There is another school of thought that understand that low level radiation under a certain level is safe and even goes further to say that it can also be beneficial. This is called Hormesis. The theory say:

Low levels radiation, activate the body's DNA repair mechanisms, causing higher levels of cellular DNA-repair proteins to be present in the body, improving the body's ability to repair DNA damage.

Sources of radiation in our day to day life
Radiation is everywhere. From the beginning of the earth to now, we are surrounded in radiation 24 hours per day. Here's the distribution of radiation we absorb every day for different sources.

Source of the information, copy here.

We even have natural radioactivity inside our body in the form of Pottassium-40, from wikipedia:

Potassium-40 is the largest source of natural radioactivity in animals and humans. An adult human body contains about 160 grams of potassium, hence about 0.000117 x 160 = 0.0187 grams of 40K; whose decay produces about 5,000 disintegrations per second (becquerels) continuously throughout the life of the body.

Basic conclusion:
So we are ourselves radioactive and we live in a natural environment immersed in radio-activity. looking only at those obvious natural sources, we could conclude that humans and animals evolved with radioactivity and "learned" to adapt to it. We could say that radioactivity is helping our immune system to better cope with external influence and keep our body functioning. We could also conclude that without a minimum level of radioactivity, we would be missing the benefits of keeping the immune system "in shape" and have negative consequences from it. The same way that to be healthy we need to exercise, our immune system need the exercise provided by this low level radiation.

What level of radiation is OK?
I documented in August 2011 that within a certain range, there is a bio positive impact from radiation and outside that range, the impact is negative, since the immune system is either "sleeping" or overwhelmed.

From the conclusion we saw in the previous sections, this graph seems logical. We live in a radioactive environment, therefore we are between point 2 and 5 of this graph, but according to my investigation, we are closer to point 2 than point 4 (optimum), thus we do not have enough radiation to have the full "benefit" of it. There are events that happened in the past, where we saw that higher than the "normal - closer to point2" level of radiation, where beneficial.

1984 - Taiwan cobalt-contaminated steel

An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 (half-life: 5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv—a “collective dose” of 4,000 person-Sv

Studies 20 years later showed that the cancer rates of this population was lower than the unexposed population in the same region.

This shows that this population, exposed to higher level of radiation, but within a limit that the immune system could cope with, got a long term benefit of having an immune system more in "shape" and able to kill off cancer cells as they grew old.

Today's regulation on low level nuclear radiation.
We now have evidence that the "linear no threshold" (LNT) of low level radiation as no scientific proof and all regulation that we have now are not based on sound science.

Here's a copy of an article published in Science News on Sept 20, 2011. Highlights added

No Safe Level of Radiation Exposure? Researcher Points to Suppression of Evidence On Radiation Effects by Nobel Laureate:

University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental toxicologist Edward Calabrese, whose career research shows that low doses of some chemicals and radiation are benign or even helpful, says he has uncovered evidence that one of the fathers of radiation genetics, Nobel Prize winner Hermann Muller, knowingly lied when he claimed in 1946 that there is no safe level of radiation exposure.

Calabrese's interpretation of this history is supported by letters and other materials he has retrieved, many from formerly classified files. He published key excerpts this month in Archives of Toxicology and Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.

Muller was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that X-rays induce genetic mutations. This helped him call attention to his long-time concern over the dangers of atomic testing. Muller's intentions were good, Calabrese points out, but his decision not to mention key scientific evidence against his position has had a far-reaching impact on our approach to regulating radiation and chemical exposure.

Calabrese uncovered correspondence from November 1946 between Muller and Curt Stern at the University of Rochester about a major experiment that had recently evaluated fruit fly germ cell mutations in Stern's laboratory. It failed to support the linear dose-response model at low exposure levels, but in Muller's speech in Oslo a few weeks later he insisted there was "no escape from the conclusion that there is no threshold." To Calabrese, this amounts to deliberate concealment and he says Stern raised no objection.

Calabrese adds, "This isn't an academic debate, it's really practical, because all of our rules about chemical and low-level radiation are based on the premises that Muller and the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) committee adopted at that time. Now, after all these years, it's very hard when people have been frightened to death by this dogma to persuade them that we don't need to be scared by certain low-dose exposures."

Within a year after Muller and his group persuaded the NAS to accept the linear model for gonadal mutations, the practice was extrapolated to somatic cells and cancer. Twenty years later, NAS adopted the linear approach for chemicals. Soon thereafter, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would use the linear model for risk assessment, Calabrese points out.

Some can accept that even the most distinguished scientists have human failings, he acknowledges. But his view is that "the regulatory research community needs to hear about this. The implications of my findings are that we should revisit our exposure regulations because our regulatory history is founded on a deception. We have seen literally hundreds of thousands of cleanup decisions based on a model that was fraudulently derived. I think we should probably have drastically different exposure standards today, and far less fear."
Calabrese believes, "The die was cast by Muller and regulations adopted since then have gone unchallenged. I think he got his beliefs and his science confused, and he couldn't admit that the science was unresolved. So he went ahead and expressed an opinion about how to handle the public health situation."

Geneticists in the 1950s came to embrace the "linear dose-response model" of risk because at the high exposures they tested, there was no level below which DNA damage did not occur. They felt medical doctors didn't grasp how significant were the dangers. As the smartest and brightest, Muller anticipated the risk of atmospheric atomic testing and became passionately committed to protecting society, Calabrese explains.

Muller and Curt Stern had done many of the key experiments. Muller himself served on the NAS's Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation (BEAR) committee, through which the linear dose-response approach to risk assessment became firmly entrenched. The two successfully suppressed last-minute evidence from the fruit fly experiment conducted in Stern's lab by postdoctoral researcher Ernst Caspari, and the rest is history, Calabrese says. It marked the "transformation of a threshold-guided risk assessment to one now centered on a linear dose-response."

"To me this all raises the question, what happens when a scientific field lies to the public, to federal agencies and the president? It's a very scary situation that the radiation genetics community in the 1950s assumed that something was correct without requiring the necessary documentation to support it," the UMass Amherst toxicologist says.
Stern's group published a paper in 1947 not long after Muller's Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which they tried to discredit their own study, further evidence of a deliberate cover-up, Calabrese says. "It's been hidden in the bowels of the Atomic Energy Commission for decades until I found it. They revised it to remove the one sentence suggesting this experiment might provide evidence for the threshold model."

"One could argue that Muller single-handedly undermined above-ground atomic testing, which is a good thing," Calabrese says. "But after uncovering this lie, I'm starting to contemplate what society would have looked like if the regulatory community had felt free to use a threshold model. Members of that 1956 NAS BEAR committee didn't see the domino effect of their actions on our society. Muller's impact on the world of today is almost incalculable. He couldn't have imagined it. But we shouldn't have to live with it."

What are the impact of this regulation, not based on real impact of low does radiation?
The impacts are too numerous to count, but some come to mind.

Fukushima nuclear plant fear and exclusion zone

Many thousands have been forced out of their homes in the exclusion zones. This could probably be avoided. Here's a report on this situation.

Nuclear power plants regulations that cost billions and slow down projects

Today, we impose so many regulations on nuclear power that in the end, projects are abandoned or take 15 years to complete and cost billions more.
Today's coal plants release more radio activity than nuclear power!
Going to the doctor for an x-ray, will expose you to higher doses of radiation than working in a nuclear power plant for a year.

Countries that shutdown nuclear power plants or stop new projects based on fear alone

We see that now with Germany, Japan and other countries.
The impact is that they will burn more fossil fuels and have a greater impact on the environment.

Possible benefits of low radiation preventive therapy that could save millions from cancers.

We now see some cancer researchers using low does, whole body exposure to boast the immune system before a radio therapy treatments. This help the body recover faster and give better chances to the patients.

The list goes on, like Calabrese said:

Muller's impact on the world of today is almost incalculable

9/11 Anniversary: Ten Years of Lies?

2011-09-12T18:42:00.004-04:00

There are so many unanswered questions to 9/11, but things that were not ask often are.

Follow the money?
Who wanted to erase what information?

This video and many others ask this questions and many answers remind a mystery.

I like the sarcasm of this one also:

Do you have your favorites? Link them in comments.

Update: This one seems interesting also...

Empire - 9/12 and the 'war on terror'

Want to see the point of view of the Larouche people, quite interesting

My first IronMan - Ottawa September 3rd 2011

2011-09-05T17:16:00.004-04:00

It's done, I am now an IronMan!

Thanks to David Vincent for the picture ;-)

History:

It all started in May 2004 by a small Duathlon in my home town of St-Jérôme. Then jumping to sprint triathlon, Olympic distance and half-marathon. Then did 4 half ironman distance and one full marathon in Niagara falls. You can find some details of those last 7 years on sportstats.ca and in my blog.

Preparation for this IronMan.

It take a lot of involvement, time and training to prepare yourself to swim, bike and run for a total of 226 km and be able to do that non-stop for more than 13 hours in my case.

This year, I prepared myself with those competitions:

2 half-ironman distance, the mooseman and tri-memphre, magog
2 half-marathon, one in Ottawa and one in lake placid

On the training side, here's how my months and weeks looked like: January to July: I was using Endomondo to track my training.

From mid July I bought a Garmin 310XT and started tracking my trainings and competition on Garmin connect. Click to enlarge the graphics.

Last two weeks of July:

First 2 weeks of August:

Last weeks of August and first days of September including the IronMan:

Day of the event.

You always want to be rested and prepared, but going for that type of event for the first time, it's hard to get a good night sleep. So at 2 am on D-day, I could not sleep anymore. I stayed in bed up to 4, then got a small breakfast, oatmeal and a banana. I arrived on site at 4:45 and started my fist visit or many to Porta-John. It's funny how laxative a triathlon can be ;-)

Swim - 2 loops of 1.9km

At 6:00, my transition was ready, my special need bag, with extra shoe, sole, lunch and sugary water was on site. At 6:30, I was on the beach and jumped into the water of Mooney's bay for the first part of the Ironman, a 3864M swim. We had two loops around the bay to do, getting out on the beach between the

two.

Here's the playback from Garmin. Not very precise, because I was wearing my watch on my wrist and not on my head under the cap, so GPS signal was flaky. You can click on "View Details" and playback the swim.

According to my Garmin, I did 1h23m for a pace of 2:09/100M. Not bad for me, I was a bit tired in the last 10-15 minutes.Someone was drafting me in the water for the last loop, always touching my toes... Very bugging. Looking at Sportstats.ca, you see longer time, that's because the mat, recording you chip time is located after the transition zone before you get on the bike, so the swim time, include the transition time.

Transition #1, SWIM to BIKE

The first transition is the longest one, because you need to run from the beach to the transition zone, around 810M away. I took the time there, to stretch a bit, put a bike shirt with pockets for my food, drink a bit of "ensure".

Bike - 12 loops of 15km

Just before I started my bike, I stop for a quick pee. You don't want to be stopping to much while doing the bike, so better to get this one done ASAP. The bike course was almost flat, but there was a couple of challenges. There was two little "bumps" where you needed to push a bit more, I used those sometimes to get standing to give a break to be bottom. There was also the north turn around, which was slow, with many people and not much width to turn. The south turn around, near the bay, was a bit faster and the timing
mat was there. Every turn for iron distance was announced by a support person, so you knew how many loop you had left to do.

At mid point, around 90km, I stopped for a porta-john and the special need bag to refill my food bag and my main bottle of water + Gatorade + CarboPro. starting from around that time, my left pad on my tribar, started to move down and I started to get sore on both big toes. This is around the same time, that my wife Marie and daughter, Ariane, where on the course near the south turn around. So I decided to do a quick stop to fix my bike and while they where working in this, I stretched and massage my feet.

During those loop, we had some strong wind that picked up a bit more at the end. So in total, I stopped 4 times. Garmin got me at a total of 6:08:04 and moving time of 6:00:33, so around 8min total stop time. This give a average moving speed of 30.3 km/h.

Transition #2, Bike to Run

This transition was a bit shorter than the first one, around 340M. I took the time again to stretch, change the shirt and drink a bit.

Run - 6 loops of 7km for 42KM

Now the fun begins, at that point of the IronMan, you begin to feel tired, but you still have hours to go. It was quite hot when I started around 2:30 pm. My wife said she saw 32 Celsius in the car thermometer. Other said more than 40c with humidity. For sure, it fell HOT! During past experience, I had some heat strokes and I knew the precursor signals, like headaches. I started feeling that in the first loop, but I was prepared... in my
special need bag, near the south transition point, I had a towel, soaked and cold. So I took it and put it on my head and put my cap on top of it. At every aid station, I was pouring fresh water on my head to keep the towel soaked. This helped me control my temperature.

Even with this, every time my heart rate was going near or over 140, I started feeling the pain on the right side of my head, so at that point I decided to walk to get my HR below 140. So I was watching my HR closely and keeping it under 140 by doing run-walk while keeping it between 120 and 140. The other problem I needed to watch closely was an irritation under the left foot, or more specifically Metatarsalgia. This problem started in the peak of my training.

While trying to do a 27km run a few weeks back, I started having intense pain and I had to walk from 14km and stopped at 21 limping. This started some 3-4 weeks before my IronMan. So there was no way I would force that feet to perform, I needed to be smart around it.

So my plan was to walk when I started feeling the pain, go slow, at around 6min/km pace. I also had in my special need bag another pair of orthopedic sole and another pair of shoes. So I started my race with my newer shoes, DS racers, with normal sole. At around 30km, the pain started to be too intense, so I switch to the orthopedic sole and did one loop, then back to the old shoes for another loop and then orthopedic sole in my old shoes. Switching shoes/sole, got me going up to the end, but I still needed to run/walk to manage the pain.

In the end, I completed the 42km in 5:30, with a moving average pace of 7:11/km.

Overall, the experience was good. I need to work on some physical problem that prevents me from being 100%.

List of things to resolve and get better:

1. The feet problem
2. The lower back stiffness, check bike position
3. Heat stroke... Not sure how to tackle this one?
4. Better overall speed and time... More training!

Photos of the event

Video

You can see me crossing the finish line on youtube.

Normal Radiation exposure... Are we ok?

2011-08-18T07:53:00.000-04:00

According to this study, we need to be in a range of radiation exposure daily to have the "BioPositive" effect of radiation. Read the article to understand why.

Since one uGy (migro Gray unit) is equivalent to 1 uSv (on micro Sievert). We can say that we need to be in the range of roughly 10 to 5000 uGy/year radiation level or 0.02 to 13.6 uSv/day to get the optimal effect.

According to health Canada data, the major Canadian cities are in average, in that range for uSv/day dose.

Montreal : 0.44
Ottawa: 0.40
Toronto: 0.28
St. John's : 0.68

Actually, we are a little bit on the low end of the graph. So we would need a bit more radiation to have an optimal effect.

What is the optimal effect ? LESS CANCER...

Comments?

Green groups want to protect the public or something else?

2011-08-13T09:07:00.000-04:00

According to this article, greens groups want to delay, block, foreclose nuclear power stations.

About two dozen environmental groups launched a volley of legal challenges at nuclear regulators on Thursday in an attempt to stall action to extend the operation of aging reactors and to delay construction of more advanced nuclear designs.

Every nuclear power station we shutdown, do not renew, delay, will create more coal and/or natural gas power stations, not more "renewable".

The numbers speak for themselves... more coal, gas, equal more deaths and more pollution.

Source
So don't be fooled by the greens groups, they are not there to save lives or protect you. Their agenda is more dark than green!

On top of all this, nuclear power stations is one of the only possibility we have now to power the world 7+ billions at a fixed monthly fee, regardless of the consumption.

The green agenda... Politics and power or saving the environment?

2011-05-29T21:06:00.000-04:00

According to many, the green agenda may not be what it seems... In a couple of words... Follow the money...

Fist this video:

More info on the book.

Second this "old" news:
Bio-fuel overall CO2 footprint = 4x of standard diesel!
Reuters reports that it used freedom of information laws to obtain a copy of text that was stripped from a December 2009 European Union study on biofuels. The hidden portion of the study found that biodiesel fuel made from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9 kilograms of CO2 per gigajoule — about four times larger than standard diesel from petroleum.

Another myth... Wind power does not reduce CO2 consumptions.

There are hundreds of example like this video talk about and the one above.

Want to know more, check this site and this one.

Comments?

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors - Mount Royal University presentation

2011-05-28T08:16:00.003-04:00

First 8 minutes is a preview of the whole presentation...

Interesting things said:

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, should have been kept running, thus providing power, colling and not getting in any of those problems...
I learned also about NORM... Unregulated Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, not regulated because it's natural!!! So a volcano could spew out more than Chernobyl, but that OK!... Nobody talks about it...
Enough Thorium in one mine of rare earth to power the world... without even mining for it.

Some of the names discussed:

More info on this blog and on this Facebook page.

Energy from Thorium - Flibe Energy

2011-05-14T07:39:00.001-04:00

A new startup company Flibe Energy took the challenge of building a new type of nuclear power station using Thorium which is Safer, Abundant, Cleaner (less waste). What was said on facebook by Kirk Sorenson, the new owner of the company, is that they want to reach criticality around 2015. This means, they will have a testing reactor inside 4 years.

But they are not alone... China, India and other nations are going ahead with their thorium energy plans, I wish them luck.

Here some clip and talks on the subject.... Enjoy

You may need to click for the second clip, problem with the play list.

Some more links to follow:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlibeEnergy
Information on Thorium : http://energyfromthorium.com/
Flibe Energy: http://www.flibe-energy.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/FlibeEnergy

Reproducing a post from Energy from Thorium here for reference:

Thorium and the Liquid-Fluoride Reactor: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

One of the basic principles of the modern environmental movement is the simple mantra to “reduce, reuse, and recycle”. It is my intention to show in this essay that the technology of the liquid-fluoride reactor, coupled with the energy source thorium, make it possible to achieve these goals to a far greater degree than other nuclear energy technologies.

Introduction

Liquid-fluoride reactors are based upon the use of dissolved actinide fluoride salts in a carrier medium of low-absorption fluoride salt solvents. The most common formulations that have been considered and demonstrated for this mission are solvents based around low-melting point mixtures of beryllium fluoride (BeF2) and lithium fluoride (LiF) isotopically enhanced in the more-abundant component lithium-7. The actinide fluorides most commonly employed are thorium tetrafluoride (ThF4) and uranium tetrafluoride (UF4). LiF-BeF2 salt mixtures have very low neutron absorption properties, excellent heat capacity, stability under intense radiation, and the ability to dissolve appreciable amounts of thorium or uranium tetrafluoride.

Liquid and Solid Fluoride Salt Mixtures

Despite providing some degree of neutron moderation, LiF-BeF2 mixtures are not terribly good neutron moderators, thus liquid-fluoride reactors generally employ solid moderating materials in order to moderate neutrons to thermal energies. Graphite is most commonly employed, being abundant, relatively inexpensive, and chemically compatible with the salt. Graphite is not “wetted” by the fluoride salt and can be sealed in ways that limit the intrusion of fission product gases (especially xenon) into the structure of the graphite.
Thorium as a nuclear fuel is not as well-known as uranium, but has properties that have special merit for nuclear use. Thorium also has a number of drawbacks for its use as a common nuclear fuel, but fortunately, by using thorium in fluoride form, nearly all of these drawbacks can be eliminated or strongly mitigated.

Thorium is common in the Earth’s crust, consisting of about 10 parts per million of common continental crust, approximately three to four times more common than uranium. Thorium is not fissile and consists of a single natural isotope (232) but thorium can be converted to a fissile fuel by the absorption of a neutron followed by a short period of beta decay. After absorbing a neutron, thorium-232 is transmuted into thorium-233, which then beta-decays with a half-life of 22 minutes into protactinium-233, which is chemically distinct from the parent thorium. Protactinium-233 has a half-life of about 27 days, after which is beta-decays to uranium-233, which is fissile and has impressive properties. Uranium-233 produces enough neutrons from fission by a thermal neutron to sustain the continued conversion of thorium to energy, even accounting for normal losses, provided that the reactor is neutronically efficient.

Reducing the Production of Transuranic Nuclear Waste

One of the biggest concerns about today’s approach to nuclear power generation concerns our use of low-enrichment uranium (LEU) in solid-uranium-oxide-fueled light-water reactors. In these reactors, LEU fuel is irradiated by thermal neutrons and a significant amount of plutonium is produced from the uranium-238 that makes up 95-97% of the original fuel. Some of this plutonium is consumed as the solid-oxide fuel rod is further irradiated, but from the plutonium other isotopes of plutonium are formed by neutron capture, and then higher actinides like americium and curium are produced. From the small fraction of U-235 present in the fuel even some long-lived neptunium-237 is produced. After an irradiation period of 3-4 years, the fuel rod can no longer sustain addition irradiation and is removed and placed in a spent fuel pool for cooling as high-heating decay products move inevitably towards stability.

In our current approach to civilian nuclear power, these irradiated uranium oxide fuel rods are not reprocessed to separate and partition their different chemical components, but are instead bound for disposal in a deep geological repository in Nevada. There after several hundred years the transuranic actinides still present in the spent nuclear fuel will generate the bulk of the heating that dictates their spacing in the repository and its ultimate capacity. Furthermore, the transuranic actinides carry the vast majority of the radiotoxicity that repository licensers must deal with as they plan for the performance of the repository over the next ten thousand years.
Reducing the amount of transuranic waste that will be sent to any future repository would therefore be an important goal of a future approach to civilian nuclear power generation, and this is eminently doable by using thorium in a liquid-fluoride reactor. Transuranic waste production can be drastically reduced by a clever combination of the inherent properties of the thorium fuel approach and by the flexibility of the liquid-fluoride fuel form.
Thorium, with an atomic mass of 232, begins the nuclear energy generation process at least five neutron absorptions removed from the first transuranic isotope that could be generated. As previously mentioned, thorium-232 absorbs a neutron, transmuting to protactinium-233 and then uranium-233, which is fissile. In a thermal neutron spectrum, uranium-233 tends to fission 90% of the time it absorbs a thermal neutron. The other 10% of the time is converts to uranium-234. Another neutron absorption in uranium-234 leads to conversion to uranium-235, which is also fissile and represents another opportunity for destruction through fission. Uranium-235 fissions in a thermal neutron spectrum approximately 85% of the time, and the other 15% of the time is converted to uranium-236. Uranium-236 has a rather low neutron absorption cross-section, and only after absorbing a neutron is the first transuranic isotope of this approach produced: neptunium-237. Neptunium can be removed from the fluoride salt mixture readily by fluorination from NpF4, which is in solution to NpF6 which is gaseous. Thus, unlike our current approach to nuclear power where the majority of the fuel (97% U-238) is a single neutron absorption away from the production of the first transuranic isotope (Pu-239), in the thorium-based approach, the fuel is five neutron absorptions away from the production of a transuranic isotope, and in the course of those absorptions roughly 98.5% of the original fuel is removed by fission.
Thus, by using thorium in the fluoride reactor rather than uranium in the solid-oxide reactor, it is possible to REDUCE the amount of transuranic material generated by a very large factor.

Reusing Nuclear Fuel

As previously mentioned, today’s approach to nuclear fuel employs low-enrichment uranium is solid-oxide form in zirconium cladding, cooling and moderated by ordinary water. As an oxide, uranium is quite chemically stable and able to achieve high temperatures without melting down. Unfortunately, as an oxide, uranium is also subject to the low thermal conductivities common to most all oxides, and therefore high temperatures at the centerline of the solid fuel element become an inevitable consequence of heat transfer out the surface of the fuel element. In fact, the centerline fuel temperature of a uranium oxide fuel element, relative to the melting temperature of uranium oxide, is one of the key geometrical constraints.

As uranium oxide fuel is irradiated, fission products and transuranics accumulate in the ceramic oxide matrix. Intense radiation from the fission process and the decay of fission products also damages the fuel structure, causing dislocations and swelling in the crystalline matrix. Especially damaging to the fuel element are in the in-growth of gaseous fission products such as xenon and krypton, which further distend and crack the fuel structure. One of the isotopes of xenon (135) has a huge appetite for thermal neutrons and causes control transients during the changing of power settings within the reactor.
After a period of time the uranium oxide fuel element has been depleted of fuel, swollen, cracked, distended, inflated, and compromised by the fission process and must be removed before cladding failure leads to the loss of fission products and other radioactive isotopes to the water loop of the reactor system. Spent solid-oxide fuel rods must be replaced by new fuel rods and are sent to a cooling pond where decay heat can be removed. Although the spent fuel still contains large amounts of unused fuel in the form of both uranium and other actinides, that fuel cannot be accessed until a reprocessing program takes place that involves chemically changing the solid uranium oxide into a liquid uranium nitrate fuel form through the application of strong nitric acid. Then a combination of chemical processes in aqueous and hydrocarbon solvents takes place to separate gaseous fission products, other fission products, transuranics, and uranium from one another. The resulting waste streams from these processes can be utilized productively, but the cost is significant due to the aggressive chemical steps involved and the chemical intensiveness of the new forms.
Many, many recycles of the fuel would be needed to “burn-down” the uranium-238 present in the original spent fuel to energy (through fission) and the costs involved in reprocessing dictate that spent nuclear fuel is rarely subjected to more than one or two recycles before it is disposed.
Thorium and the fluoride reactor present an entirely different approach to fuel management that makes repeated recycling not only easy but economically advantageous. That is because nuclear fuel in the liquid fluoride form rather than in the solid oxide form has distinct advantages. It is already in a chemically stable form as a fluoride. There is no reagent to treat the fuel that will be favored over its current state. Thus it is protected from chemical attack, combustion, burning, or corrosion. But more importantly, as a fluid is it in a form where chemical processes can be employed directly to remove fission products or to add new fuel to compensate for burnup. Additionally, the ionic nature of liquid-fluoride salt renders the fuel essentially impervious to radiation damage. Despite the passage of large amounts of gamma radiation, neutron radiation, alpha radiation, etc. the fuel remains chemically unaltered and with a complete retention of its physical properties.
Gaseous fission products, including the important fission product poison xenon-135, are effortlessly easy to remove from liquid-fluoride salt. They simply come out of solution in the pump bowl during the pumping of the fluid through the loop. This has the additional benefit of keeping pressures low and allowing the reactor to change power states rapidly without concern for the effect of xenon on power changes.

In a modern incarnation of the liquid-fluoride reactor, there are two separate fluoride salts in action in the reactor core: the “fuel salt” and the “blanket salt”. The fuel salt is a mixture of uranium tetrafluoride in the lithium-beryllium fluoride carrier solvent. The uranium consists predominantly of uranium-233 but also contains U-234 and U-236 at equilibrium levels of concentration. Depending on the reprocessing approach it also contains fission products in the form of fluorides. The blanket salt is a mixture of thorium tetrafluoride in the lithium-beryllium fluoride carrier solvent. The blanket salt geometrically surrounds the fuel salt with a graphite barrier between them. Fission in the fuel salt produces neutrons, roughly half of which end up in the blanket salt, transmuting thorium to uranium by neutron absorption followed by beta decay. The uranium formed in the blanket is removed by the simple process of fluorination, whereby uranium as a tetrafluoride in solution is converted to a hexafluoride that is gaseous. Since thorium has no gaseous hexafluoride, it is left behind while uranium is removed in this simple, one-step process. Then the fuel salt is “refueled” by this same stream of fresh uranium hexafluoride by converting it from hexafluoride back into tetrafluoride through contact with hydrogen gas. Thus freshly generated uranium is continuously removed from the blanket salt and added to the core salt, where it subsequently undergoes fission that continues the process all over again.
By keeping fissile materials out of the blanket by continuous reprocessing, the blanket fluid can be kept relatively free of fission products. The fuel salt, on the other hand, will accumulate fission products as uranium fission continues. The most troublesome fission product, xenon, is effortlessly removed by pumping action, but other fission products will become of increasing concern. Samarium, neodymium, and other lanthanides are fission products whose neutron absorption cross-sections are significant enough to merit attention. In order to purify the fuel salt, the first step is to remove the uranium fuel by fluorination. Then the carrier salt (LiF-BeF2) can be distilled from fission product fluorides in a high-temperature still. The remaining fission product fluorides constitute the equivalent of “high-level waste” from fluoride reactor reprocessing. The extracted LiF-BeF2 is recombined with the uranium and reinserted into the reactor core for another cycle of power generation.

The fluid nature of the reactor fluids allow them to be used over and over again, removing only the products that have been generated during operation (uranium in the blanket, fission products in the fuel salt). This ability to continually REUSE the reactor nuclear fuels represents a profound advantage over the solid-fueled uranium approach.

Recycling the “Wastes” of Fission

Fission processes inevitably generate a variety of fission product elements and a large number of isotopes, most of which are neutron-rich and radioactive. The familiar double-humped distribution of fission products reflects the physical reality that each fission event results in two fission products, a “heavy” one and a “light” one. As each of these fission products tends to have many more neutrons than is needed for nuclear stability at its new “station” in life, rapid beta decay generally follows fission and most fission products assume a stable form quite quickly.
When all of the isotopes of an element reach stability it can logically be asked whether or not they are worth chemical extraction and recycling to other, non-nuclear uses.
Consider the case of xenon. Xenon is a noble gas and fission product that accounts for a fair fraction of the mass of fission products from uranium fission. Xenon has a variety of isotopes but the longest lived one (133) has only a half-life of 5.2 days. Therefore, proceeding on the rule-of-thumb that “ten half-lives and you’re gone” after 50 days of storage the xenon remaining from fission would be essentially non-radioactive. In a conventional solid-core reactor the xenon is bound up in the solid-oxide fuel rod and can only be extracted by chopping up and dissolving the fuel element, but in a fluoride reactor it is very easy to extract xenon. In fact, it will come out of solution with essentially no effort at all. Since xenon is a valuable gas, rather than vent the xenon to the atmosphere it can be separated from the krypton by cryogenic distillation and sold. NASA and commercial satellite operators, for instance, use xenon for ion engines for spacecraft. Future NASA missions to Mars that have considered using xenon have had to seriously consider whether the world supply of xenon was sufficient to make such missions possible. Xenon recovered from fission might increase xenon supply.
Another valuable material from fission is neodymium. Within the last 20 years, the discovery of a neodymium-iron-boron alloy that can be used to make super-strong, super-light magnets has caused neodymium demand to increase tremendously. Ironically, one of the markets that is in greatest demand for neodymium is the wind turbine market. They need large electrical generators due to the diffuse nature of the wind energy source, and they need these electrical generators to be as lightweight as possible so that they can be mounted on top of large towers. Neodymium magnets are particularly suited to this demanding application.
Neodymium is the third-most-common element generated from fission (by mass) and also achieves nuclear stability relatively quickly; its longest-lived isotope (147) has a half-life of 10.9 days. By aging the high-level waste from the distillation process in fluoride reactors appropriately, one could extract the neodymium trifluoride from the other fluorides and convert it to a metallic form through electrolysis or metallic reduction. The neodymium would then be available to sell to the burgeoning market.
Xenon and neodymium represent two recycling opportunities where a period of “aging” is needed before the isotopes stabilize and partitioning and marketing is possible. But there are other isotopes in the “waste” stream of a fluoride reactor where the radioactive form of the isotope is the desirable and economic product. An example of this case is the life-saving medical isotope molybdenum-99. Currently, molybdenum-99 is generated in specially-designed medical isotope production reactors in Canada and rushed to medical facilities across North America. Mo-99 decays to technetium-99m, which is then extracted and introduced into human patients in order to facilitate diagnostic procedures. The market for Mo-99 is quite large, but in solid-fueled reactors, the Mo-99 produced by fission is not accessible until the fuel is reprocessed. Since that is an infrequent event in solid-fueled reactors, the overwhelming majority of the Mo-99 produced in such reactors is never productively utilized; rather it simply follows its decay chain to Tc-99. In a fluoride reactor, on the other hand, the fluid nature of the reactor makes it possible to continuously extract Mo-99 along with the other isotopes of molybdenum. Molybdenum forms a volatile hexafluoride much like uranium does, and when the fuel salt is fluorinated, U, Mo, and several other elements come out of solution as gaseous hexafluorides. These can then be separated on from another by distillation at different temperatures, much like crude oil is refined. The molybdenum could then be shipped to medical facilities, where the Mo-99 would decay to Tc-99m that could be chemically extracted and given to patients who need it.
Xenon, molybdenum, and neodymium are three of the most common fission products but many others have value too. The fluid nature of the fluoride reactor makes RECYCLING of the so-called waste quite likely to be economically attractive in many circumstances.

Summary: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The environmental dictum of “reduce, reuse, recycle” has been considered in terms of the thorium-fueled, liquid-fluoride reactor and found to be a simple and unifying theme for the options that this technology makes available. Relative to a conventional, solid-fueled uranium reactor, one can drastically REDUCE the generation of transuranic actinides, REUSE the thorium and uranium fuel is a way that allows for complete consumption of the energy resources, and RECYCLE three of the most common fission products into economically useful and even life-saving applications. The thorium-fueled liquid fluoride reactor is worthy of significant further attention, investigation, and funding based on these and many other merits.

Are our fears about nuclear power irrational?

2011-04-03T11:48:00.000-04:00

I reproduce here, part of this article and highlight the parts I find the most compelling.

THE CONSULTANT BEN HEARD

Until recently I was a vocal opponent of nuclear power. Understanding the scale of the climate crisis led me - reluctantly, I'll admit - to investigate nuclear power as a solution. To my surprise, I found my fears of nuclear power were overwhelmingly irrational.

I had three main concerns. First, that nuclear power is not safe. The Energy Related Severe Accident Database set that straight. In the past 40 years, the energy chain for coal killed more than 32,000 people worldwide in severe accidents, more than 2000 of them in OECD nations. The comparative figures for nuclear? Zero in the OECD, and 43 worldwide. This includes cancer deaths from Chernobyl, a reactor with no containment building, a horrible and unique design flaw.

Meanwhile, 440 reactors provide 15 per cent of global electricity, including to the world's 16 largest economies (leaving out Australia at number 13). A tsunami hitting 40-year-old reactors has caused injuries and major issues, but not one fatality.

Nuclear power is more than safe enough, and getting safer all the time.

Second, I feared high-level nuclear waste was impossible to manage safely. Cutting a long story short, it isn't. It's predictable to the point of being boring: cool, encase, contain, contain again, and monitor. And the coming generation of nuclear technology will consume it as fuel. Cross that from my list.

Third, I feared proliferation. While nuclear power and weapons programs were once joined at the hip, this is no longer true. Twenty-one nations deploy nuclear power with no weapons capability. If it's a weapon you want, there is no slower, more expensive way of creating substandard material than by using a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power is not a threat to peace.

So my concerns were not rational. But they were understandable, given we are fed a diet of fear by opponents of nuclear power, mainly comprising selective facts that have been stripped of meaningful context. This finds fertile ground among well-meaning people who trust the sources.

Rationally, we should all fear climate change. It threatens our occupation of this planet within a century. This, rather than nuclear power, is what keeps me awake at night.

The biggest contributor to climate change is coal. Renewables alone cannot displace coal quickly enough. But nuclear power plus renewables can, with minuscule risk. The only rational response is to be open to the further deployment of nuclear power, in partnership with growth in renewables.

Ben Heard is the director of ThinkClimate Consulting.

Latest news on Japanese nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi

2011-04-02T09:58:00.000-04:00

Latest information on the Japanese nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi.

This is the presentation made by Areva on the chronological event leading to the crisis under control today.
fukushima-areva

Other source of information:
Up to date information from GRS (Society for Plant and Reactor Safety) in Germany.

http://jaif.or.jp/english/
Report No. 40: 18:00, April 2

Latest press releases from TepCO, the operator of the nuclear power stations.

Good News on Sea-Level Rise

2011-04-02T08:25:00.000-04:00

This study concludes:

Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records. The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the +0.07 to +0.28 mm/y2 accelerations that are required to reach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010). Bindoff et al. (2007) note an increase in worldwide temperature from 1906 to 2005 of 0.74uC. It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.

Maybe the climates models are wrong, maybe we don't fully understand how the relation between CO2, temperature and the climate works?

Some comments from "Global Warming.org" and "CO2 science.org"

The scariest part of the global warming scare is the prediction of rapidly accelerating sea-level rise. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warns that if half the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and half the Greenland Ice Sheet melted or broke off and slid into the sea, sea levels could rise as much as 20 feet. Gore implies this could happen within our lifetimes or those of our children, stating, in the book version of AIT (pp. 204-206), that some 100 million people living in Beijing, Shanghai, Calcutta, and Bangladesh would “be displaced,” “forced to move,” or “have to be evacuated.”

I debunk Gore’s sci-fi doomsday scenario in earlier posts. Suffice it to say here that the UN IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report projects 18-59 centimeters (7-23 inches) of sea-level rise by 2100. To be sure, some scientists, such as Scripps Institute of Oceanography researcher Dr. Richard Somerville, who testified recently before the House Energy and Power Subcommittee, claim the IPCC estimate is too low and that sea levels will rise by 1-2 meters.

Drs. Shirwood, Craig, and Keith Idso, our colleagues at the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, have posted an editorial on sea-level rise that reviews a new study based on global tide gauge data.

The study, Houston and Dean (2011), finds that the rate of sea-level rise over the past 80 years has not accelerated and, in fact, has slightly decelerated. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on sea level rise ending up near the low-end of the IPCC projection — about 7 inches, roughly the same amount as occurred in the 20th century. Clearly, now is not the time to sell the beach house!

The Idsos’s editorial follows in full:

How High Will the Sea Level Rise by the End of the 21st Century?
Volume 14, Number 13: 30 March 2011
In the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bindoff et al. (2007) projected a mean global sea level rise somewhere in the range of 18-59 cm relative to mean global sea level in 1990. Subsequently, however, based on statistical models that employ semi-empirical relationships between past and predicted future increases in global temperature, Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva et al. (2010) and Grinsted et al. (2010) derived much greater increases on the order of 60 to 190 cm over the same time interval. And now — based on sea level behavior between 1930 and 2010, as derived from United States tide gauge data, plus extensions of previous global-gauge analyses — a new empirical study, which does not rely on a relationship between sea level and temperature, casts doubt upon both sets of projections.
Houston and Dean (2011) began their analysis of the subject by noting that global sea level increases of 60-190 cm between 1990 and 2100 would require mean global sea level rate-of-rise accelerations of 0.07-0.28 mm/year/year above the mean global rate-of-rise of the past several decades, which latter rate has typically been calculated to fall somewhere between 1.7 and 1.8 mm/year. Working with the complete monthly-averaged records of 57 U.S. tide gauges archived in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level data base that had lengths of 60-156 years (with a mean time span of 82 years), however, they determined that there had not been any acceleration in the rate-of-rise of the sea level along the shorelines of the United States over that period of time, during which interval the world’s climate alarmists claim the planet had warmed at a rate and to a level that were unprecedented over the past one to two millennia. Quite to the contrary, in fact, they detected a slight deceleration of -0.0014 mm/year/year. And working with 25 of the tide gauge records that contained data for the period 1930-2010, they calculated an even larger deceleration of -0.0130 mm/year/year.
The two researchers also report that they “obtained similar decelerations using worldwide-gauge records in the original data set of Church and White (2006) and a 2009 revision (for the periods of 1930-2001 and 1930-2007) and by extending Douglas’s (1992) analyses of worldwide gauges by 25 years.” Consequently, they rhetorically ask why the concomitant worldwide-temperature increase “has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years,” and, indeed, “why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.”
Clearly, the reality of the world is vastly different from what is portrayed by the IPCC and the world’s climate alarmists, based on simulations produced by state-of-the-art climate models. And the empirical facts of this particular “detective case” suggest something much less ominous than what they are predicting for earth’s future with regard to the magnitude of sea level change over the remainder of the 21st century.
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
References
Bindoff, N.L., Willebrand, J., Artale, V., Cazenave, A., Gregory, J., Gulev, S., Hanawa, K., Le Quere, C., Levitus, S., Noijiri, Y., Shum, C.K., Talley, L.D. and Unnikrishnan, A. 2007. Observations: oceanic climate change and sea level. In: Solomon, S. et al. (Eds.), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, New York, New York, USA.
Church, J.A. and White, N.J. 2006. 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise. Geophysical Research Letters 33: 10.1029/2005GL024826.
Douglas, B.C. 1992. Global sea level acceleration. Journal of Geophysical Research 97: 12,699-12,706.
Grinsted, A., Moore, J.C. and Jevrejeva, S. 2010. Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100 AD. Climate Dynamics 34: 461-472.
Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G. 2011. Sea-level acceleration based on U.S. tide gauges and extensions of previous global-gauge analyses. Journal of Coastal Research (in press).
Jevrejeva, S., Moore, J.C. and Grinsted, A. 2010. How will sea level respond to changes in natural and anthropogenic forcings by 2100? Geophysical Research Letters 37: 10.1029/2010GL042947.
Vermeer, M. and Rahmsdorf, S. 2009. Global sea level linked to global temperature. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106: 21,527-21,532.

Richard Muller global warming point of view.

2011-03-30T22:06:00.001-04:00

Here is an excellent 5 minute explanation of Climategate by Richard Muller, a UC Berkley physicist who is leading a larger project attempting to reconstruct temperature records. Muller believes that global warming is a potentially big problem. So this is someone who mostly supports the IPCC, yet refuses to compromise his ethics on what appeared in those e-mails.

Muller holds no punches for those involved in the Climategate e-mails. The whole presentation is worth watching, he takes a number of swipes at Al Gore and the IPCC, but if you’re in a hurry the explanation of Climategate only lasts 5 minutes (begins at 29m50s). A takeaway quote, “Quite frankly, as a scientist, I know have a list of people whose papers I won’t read anymore. You’re not allowed to do this in science.”

Nuclear notes related to Japan earthquake, tsunami accident

2011-03-26T21:12:00.030-04:00

Here's some QA, documents and articles related to the Japan nuclear accident. Talking to friends, I see that there is a lot of information to digest and article to read to get a good understanding of this event.

This graph from the globe and mail show how the radiation spiked in Japan. Note the level compared to a full body CT scan. Those level where recorded very close to the plant, where not one lives and where only worker where exposed to high level radiation.

First a look at some articles I found interesting:

Putting some perspective on the nuclear question

Japanese Earthquake Implications Quick Q and A

Good starting point on how a nuclear power plant operates, radiation level and type and much more.

Banana equivalent dose: A banana equivalent dose (BED) is a measure of the radiation exposure caused by eating one banana. It is a concept that was intended to explain the relative danger of radiation by comparison with everyday life activities. BED is a radiation dose equivalent unit; the corresponding SI unit is the sievert (and rem is also commonly used).

The dose equivalent of eating a banana is about 0.01 mrem (or 0.1 µSv).

Less cancer or congenital heart malformations after being exposed to low dose radiation a must read, real life data: http://bit.ly/gbUu2I

An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan.Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 (half-life:5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv-a collective dose of 4,000 person-Sv.

Low-dose radiation is documented to be beneficial for human health but, for political reasons, radiation is assumed to be harmful at any dose. Detail of the study
Journalist Wall of Shame covering the #Japan #nuclear and #earthquake crisis http://bit.ly/fbyxvg sensationalist, speculation, bad reporting
Best read so far; William Tucker: Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl - http://t.co/S2mzc2D a must read
Used #nuclear fuel is an energy opportunity, not a threat or a burden to future generations.

http://bit.ly/dLa7c9

#Nuclear engineer explains why milk poses a greater radioactive threat than groundwater tritium from Vermont Yankee http://bit.ly/hZWHQe

Nuclear Overreactors: Let's cool the political meltdown over Japan's damaged nuclear power plants.
http://www.slate.com/id/2288212/
Viewpoint: We should stop running away from radiation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12860842

You need to drink 5000 liters of contaminated milk before you reach recommended limit set by the EPA: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576233221749626458.html
Talk About a Meltdown: The hysteria over Japan’s nuclear reactors is ridiculous.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262182/talk-about-meltdown-jonah-goldberg

Now for some good interviews on the subject of nuclear in general and Japan in particular.

Let start with an interview on Blogginheads.tv between John Horgan Stevens Center for Science Writings, Cross-check and Rod Adams Atomic Insights Blog, The Atomic Show

This one is a bit older and is more a debate on nuclear power in Alberta, but the discussion is interesting. This is from http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episodes/11-nuclear-power-round-2

Fascinating discussion on nuclear power with Dr. Jeremy Whitlock, reactor physicist and author of the website The Canadian Nuclear FAQ, and Elena Schacherl, founder and Co-chair of Citizens Advocating the Use of Sustainable Energy (CAUSE), which is a member of the Coalition for a Nuclear Free Alberta.

There is not perfect solution like any human endeavors, so having the perfect energy solution does not exist yet. When you compare different energy source and related deaths, nuclear is one of the best in that regards.
This web site as a good compilation of information on that subject.

Energy Source              Death Rate (deaths per TWh)

Coal – world average               161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China                       278
Coal – USA                         15
Oil                                36  (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas                         4  (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass                    12
Peat                               12
Solar (rooftop)                     0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind                                0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro                               0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao)    1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear                             0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

To be continued...

IBM Watson against Jeopardy - the future of expert systems

2011-03-05T07:02:00.000-05:00

IBM has developed a computer system called Watson to play the game Jeopardy. The real importance of this feat by the IBM researcher is how this technology and knowledge could be applied to other needs of our society.

This could be the turning point for expert system where learning machine and huge databases could help find solutions to any number of problems in a fraction of a second and help human experts make better decisions.

For example, I see such system play a role some day in those area (examples)

You are a customer at Bell, you call for a problem with you cell phone. The system ask you to describe in details to the computer, the nature of your call while you wait for a person. The system listen all the clues and words of your problem and inside a couple of milliseconds, search through millions of previous documented cases, Q&A and Facts and present the most likely scenario to resolve the issue to the customer representative taking the call. This could help expedite the time to resolution and the overall satisfaction of both the client and customer representative.
You go to the hospital for some symptoms, the nurse ask you for the your basic information and symptoms and take different measurements. All those informations are "automatically" entered in the expert system and again, searching all medical databases, could come up inside milliseconds with a resolutions, analysis and case urgency that would be added automatically to the patient case file. The nurse would be then able to better dispatch the patient to a doctor according to those results. Thus saving life and reducing the wait time by providing better diagnostic. In this case, the system could be called House, not Watson
The are other example of this, Google could have such a system where any questions could be ask online and a complete answer with references and notes would be provided in this format:

View Watson (artificial intelligence software) and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

Here's a playlist of the NOVA intro and show, followed by the Jeopardy challenge.

Want to know more, the New-York times as a good piece on the subject.

Déchet nucléaire sur le fleuve

2011-02-09T19:43:00.001-05:00

La panique s'installe dans les médias et le public en général sur le fait que des générateurs de vapeur, faiblement radioactif seraient transportés à travers les grands lacs et le fleuve St-Laurent.

Un simple calcul démontre que vous devriez passer 30 heures à 1 mètre de ces générateurs pour équivaloir la radio-activité naturelle que nous tous absorbons à chaque années de notre vie.

Un générateur de vapeur transporté près de la centrale dans le cadre de la réfection

Fait le calcul vous même...

Source ce l'information pour la radio activité des générateurs: Section 85
http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/fr/commission/pdf/2010-09-28-29-Decision-Bruce-SG-f-final-Edocs3673555.pdf

Bruce Power a aussi indiqué que la dose maximale à un
mètre des générateurs de vapeur était de 0,080 mSv/h.

Source d'information sur la radiation absorbéee: Page 5
http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/gareport.pdf

The annual global per caput effective dose
due to natural radiation sources is 2.4 mSv

Par comparaison, une simple mammographie vous expose à 3mSv. Donc 3/0.8 = 3.7 heures qui vous devriez passer à un mètre de ces objets pour équivaloir à une dose équivalente...

Avons-nous vraiment raison de paniquer?
Manquons nous d'informations et de références?

La CCSN annonce sa décision de délivrer un permis et un certificat de transport à Bruce Power Inc. en vue du transport de 16 générateurs de vapeur déclassés à destination de la Suède

Pourquoi Hydro Québec, payera pratiquement 6x plus pour son électricité?

2011-01-29T21:21:00.000-05:00

Selon ce document, Hydro-Québec payera un coût moyen de 13.3 cents/kWh pour l’électricité produite par 12 projets d'éoliennes.

Montréal, le lundi 20 décembre 2010

Appel d’offres visant l’achat de 500 MW d’énergie éolienne : Hydro-Québec Distribution retient 12 soumissions totalisant 291,4 MW

Hydro-Québec Distribution annonce qu'elle retient 12 soumissions pour un total de 291,4 MW dans le cadre de l’appel d’offres lancé le 30 avril 2009 et visant l’achat de deux blocs distincts de 250 MW d’électricité produite au Québec au moyen d’éoliennes, l’un issu de projets autochtones et l’autre, de projets communautaires. Les soumissions retenues sont réparties comme suit pour chacun des blocs :
1 soumission pour 24,0 MW pour le bloc autochtone ;

11 soumissions pour 267,4 MW pour le bloc communautaire.

Les livraisons d'électricité doivent commencer entre le 1^er décembre 2013 et le 1^er décembre 2015. Le prix moyen de l'énergie des soumissions retenues est de 13,3 ¢/kWh, ce qui inclut un le coût du transport de 2,0 ¢/kWh pour acheminer l'électricité produite. Ces projets représentent des investissements de l'ordre de 730 millions de dollars pour les parcs éoliens et de 260 millions de dollars pour le transport de l’électricité. Hydro-Québec Distribution complètera les contrats avec les promoteurs au cours des prochains mois. Ces contrats seront par la suite soumis à la Régie de l'énergie pour approbation. Les promoteurs retenus auront la responsabilité d'obtenir toutes les autorisations et tous les permis requis pour la construction des parcs éoliens avant de procéder au début des travaux de construction. Depuis le lancement de l'appel d'offres, Hydro-Québec Distribution a travaillé avec la société Deloitte inc. aux fins de l'application de la procédure d'appel d'offres et d'octroi pour les achats d'électricité et dans le processus d'évaluation des soumissions.
Liste des soumissions retenues Carte des soumissions retenues Des renseignements additionnels sont accessibles sur le site Web d'Hydro-Québec Distribution, au www.hydroquebec.com/distribution/fr/marchequebecois/index.html.

Et selon ce document, le prix moyen de production d'Hydro-Québec est d'environ 2.3 cents/kWh.

Donc nous allons payer pour l’électricité produite par ces éoliennes, pratiquement plus de 6x le prix du coût moyen de l'électricité produite aujourd'hui par notre société d'État.

Est-ce que ceci prend en compte les variabilités d'un tel réseau d'éoliennes et les infrastructures qui seront nécessaires pour compenser quand le vent ne souffle pas ou trop? Comme nous voyons ici, les variations de l'énergie produite par les parcs éoliens ne sont pas très stables. Comment seront compensées ces variations?

Source

Comment ferons pour être compétitif sur le marché mondial avec une énergie à 13 cents/kWh pensant que la chine produit des réacteurs nucléaire qui produirons à prêt de 100% du temps de l'énergie à 3 cents/kWh?

Les éoliennes appartiennent au passé et non au futur.

Commentaires ?

Statut sur l'Egypte

2011-01-28T21:12:00.001-05:00

Je ne pensais pas voir ca de mon vivant... Courage à vous tous.

En date du 28 Janvier 2011

L'Egypte coupée d'Internet

Source

Après deux jours de blocages ponctuels des services de télécommunications et de services Web comme Twitter et Facebook, les autorités sont passées à une méthode plus radicale pour tenter d'empêcher les manifestations prévues ce vendredi : elles ont tout simplement coupé l'accès à Internet dans l'ensemble du pays.

Peu après minuit, de nombreux témoignages ont signalé que l'accès à Internet était bloqué. D'après les données assemblées par l'entreprise de sécurité informatique Arbor Networks, l'ensemble des fournisseurs d'accès à Internet égyptiens ont coupé leurs services ce vendredi matin. Un seul fournisseur d'accès, Noor, était encore connecté au réseau ce vendredi matin. Seule exception à la coupure, les services boursiers : l'EGX 30, l'indice égyptien, dispose toujours d'un accès à la dorsale Internet, le coeur du réseau.

Il s'agit d'une première historique : jusqu'à présent, aucun régime n'avait eu recours à un blocage total d'Internet en réaction à des manifestations. Lors des manifestations qui avaient suivi la réélection contestée de Mahmoud Ahmadinejaden Iran, les autorités avaient procédé à des blocages massifs de services et ordonné des interruptions de services ciblées géographiquement, mais n'avaient pas ordonné une coupure du service dans l'ensemble du pays.

PAS DE "BOUTON ROUGE"

Considérée comme "ennemi d'Internet" par l'organisation Reporters sans frontières, l'Egypte procédait depuis des années à un harcèlement juridique et policier des blogueurs et internautes dénonçant la corruption ou la politique du régime de Moubarak. Mais contrairement à la Tunisie, l'Egypte n'avait pas mis en place de systèmes de filtrage de sites ou services Web. Une politique qui a changé avec le début des grandes manifestations de janvier : les autorités ont tour à tour bloqué temporairement des services comme Twitter ou Facebook. Jeudi, la ville de Suez, théâtre de violentes manifestations la veille, était presque entièrement coupée du monde, avec de très fortes perturbations dans l'accès à Internet, mais aussi aux réseaux mobiles et fixes.

D'après de nombreux témoins dans le pays, les SMS sont également bloqués ce vendredi. Selon une source proche de Vodafone, qui gère le principal réseau de téléphonie mobile du pays, les autorités ont tout simplement coupé les antennes-relais dans et à proximité des grandes villes.

"Bloquer le Web dans des pays qui exercent un contrôle important sur les fournisseurs d'accès n'est pas difficile, parce que ces entreprises qui exploitent les réseaux de câbles dépendent le plus souvent de licences du gouvernement", explique Craig Labovitz, responsable scientifique pour Arbor Networks. "Il n'y a pas de gros bouton rouge, simplement un coup de téléphone passé à une douzaine de personnes-clés." L'Egypte compte quatre principaux fournisseurs d'accès à Internet : Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, et Etisalat Misr. Tous dépendent de la licence qui leur est fournie par l'autorité de régulation des télécommunications égyptienne.

Le Monde.fr, avec APSource

As more people take to the streets to protest in Egypt and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei heads back to the country, an activist tells Channel 4 News "huge" demos are planned for Friday.

Police fought protestors in two cities in Eastern Egypt as the unrest continued for the third day.

The demonstrators, who are protesting against the 30-year rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, could soon have a figurehead in the form of prominent reform campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei, who is flying from Vienna to Egypt to join the protests.

He told reporters that is was time for the President to step aside.

"People in the streets are speaking about the demonstrations - normal, regular people." Activist Ramy Raoof

"He has served the country for 30 years and it is about time for him to retire," the former head of the UN Nuclear Agency said.

Friday protests

Mr ElBaradei, who launched a campaign for change in Egypt last year, added: "Tomorrow is going to be, I think, a major demonstration all over Egypt and I will be there with them."

Blogger and human rights activist Ramy Raoof told Channel 4 News that he expected and hoped the demonstrations on Friday would be "huge".

He said: "People in the streets are speaking about the demonstrations - normal, regular people and not only civil society activists. Many, many people have joined the demos in different cities in Egypt.

"People are calling for different things, economic issues, unemployment, against torture and violence, and of course against the current regime and Mubarak."

The protests have seen police fire rubber bullets and tear gas at protestors throwing rocks and petrol bombs in several cities around Egypt. As well as Cairo, there has been unrest in Suez, where demonstrators set buildings on fire, and Ismailia, where hundreds of demonstrators were met with tear gas.

Witnesses say demonstrators have been dragged away, beaten and shoved into police vans.

An eyewitness in Suez told Channel 4 News: "It is very, very hot. Total chaos and things are out of control. There's an exchange of gunfire between forces and citizens."

The situation in Ismailia is understood to be similar.

Unprecedented

The protests are unprecedented during President Mubarak's rule, and follow similar unrest in fellow north African country, Tunisia, which saw the incumbent President flee.

Thousands of people have also taken to the streets in Yemen, demanding a change of Government. Protestors in all three countries say they are complaining about surging prices, a lack of jobs, and authoritarian rule that has relied on heavy-handed security to keep dissenting voices quiet.

Elections are due in Egypt in September, but the expectation is that the 82-year-old President will either stay in power or pass it to his son Gamal, 47.

Three protestors have been killed in the Egypt unrest, and one policeman. Al-Arabiya television said that 40 protestors had been charged with "trying to overthrow the regime", and the Interior Ministry said 500 people had been arrested in the country of 80 million people. An independent coalition of lawyers said 1,200 had been detained.

"The millions will decide the future of this nation, not demonstrations even if numbered in the thousands." Egypt Interior Minister

But the country's Interior Minister, Habib al-Adli, has dismissed the demonstrations.

"Egypt's system is not marginal or frail. We are a big state, with an administration with popular support. The millions will decide the future of this nation, not demonstrations even if numbered in the thousands. Our country is not shaken by such actions," he told Kuwait's al-Rai newspaper, according to the newspaper's website.

Egypt's stock exchange stopped trading on Thursday after it fell for more than six per cent for a second day. The Egyptian pound is at its lowest level in six years against the US dollar.

Source

Sensor Measurement Uncertainty and A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action

2011-01-21T01:51:00.000-05:00

At last we have some graphics to show that the temperature increase over the last 130 is not statistically significant. When you can draw a straight line through your data and be inside the error bars, there is no way to safely confirm any temperature increase. Source

What is a temperature anomaly?
The term “temperature anomaly” means a departure from a reference value or long-term average. A positive anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was warmer than the reference value, while a negative anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was cooler than the reference value.

Grapgic: The global surface air temperature anomaly series through 2009, as updated on 18 February 2010, (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). The grey error bars show the annual anomaly lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C.

More technical on this study here.

Here's a good read from doctor Richard Lindzen : A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
Source

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.

For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.

For warming since 1979, there is a further problem. The dominant role of cumulus convection in the tropics requires that temperature approximately follow what is called a moist adiabatic profile. This requires that warming in the tropical upper troposphere be 2-3 times greater than at the surface. Indeed, all models do show this, but the data doesn’t and this means that something is wrong with the data. It is well known that above about 2 km altitude, the tropical temperatures are pretty homogeneous in the horizontal so that sampling is not a problem. Below two km (roughly the height of what is referred to as the trade wind inversion), there is much more horizontal variability, and, therefore, there is a profound sampling problem. Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem resides in the surface data, and that the actual trend at the surface is about 60% too large. Even the claimed trend is larger than what models would have projected but for the inclusion of an arbitrary fudge factor due to aerosol cooling. The discrepancy was reported by Lindzen (2007) and by Douglass et al (2007). Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.

It turns out that there is a much more fundamental and unambiguous check of the role of feedbacks in enhancing greenhouse warming that also shows that all models are greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity. Here, it must be noted that the greenhouse effect operates by inhibiting the cooling of the climate by reducing net outgoing radiation. However, the contribution of increasing CO2 alone does not, in fact, lead to much warming (approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2).

The larger predictions from climate models are due to the fact that, within these models, the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever CO2 does. This is referred to as a positive feedback. It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming. All climate models show such changes when forced by observed surface temperatures. Satellite observations of the earth’s radiation budget allow us to determine whether such a reduction does, in fact, accompany increases in surface temperature in nature. As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative — strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion.

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man. This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no statistically significant net global warming for the last fourteen years. Modelers defend this situation, as we have already noted, by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming (viz Schwartz et al, 2010), and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC’s iconic attribution (Smith et al, 2007). Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past fourteen years is acknowledged. It should be noted that, more recently, German modelers have moved the date for ‘resumption’ up to 2015 (Keenlyside et al, 2008).

Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980′s, global cooling in the 1970′s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance). And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.

References:

Barkstrom, B.R., 1984: The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 65, 1170–1185.

Douglass,D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearsona and S. F. Singer, 2007: A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions, Int. J. Climatol., DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651

Keenlyside, N.S., M. Lateef, et al, 2008: Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector, Nature, 453, 84-88.

Lindzen, R.S. and Y.-S. Choi, 2009: On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, accepted Geophys. Res. Ltrs.

Lindzen, R.S., 2007: Taking greenhouse warming seriously. Energy & Environment, 18, 937-950.

Ramanathan, V., M.V. Ramana, et al, 2007: Warming trends in Asia amplified by brown cloud solar absorption, Nature, 448, 575-578.

Santer, B. D., P. W. Thorne, L. Haimberger, K. E. Taylor, T. M. L. Wigley, J. R. Lanzante, S. Solomon, M. Free, P. J. Gleckler, P. D. Jones, T. R. Karl, S. A. Klein, C. Mears, D. Nychka, G. A. Schmidt, S. C. Sherwood, and F. J. Wentz, 2008: Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere, Intl. J. of Climatology, 28, 1703-1722.

Schwartz, S.E., R.J. Charlson, R.A. Kahn, J.A. Ogren, and H. Rodhe, 2010: Why hasn’t the Earth warmed as much as expected?, J. Climate, 23, 2453-2464.

Smith, D.M., S. Cusack, A.W. Colman, C.K. Folland, G.R. Harris, J.M. Murphy, 2007: Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model, Science, 317, 796-799.

Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov, 2007: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288

Wong, T., B. A. Wielicki, et al., 2006: Reexamination of the observed decadal variability of the earth radiation budget using altitude-corrected ERBE/ERBS nonscanner WFOV Data, J. Climate, 19, 4028–4040.

Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advidory Council

Lutte au prix de l'essence.

2011-01-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

Nous recevons régulièrement ce type de message qui nous demande de s'impliquer pour que le prix de l'essence diminue. Pensez-vous vraiment que nous pouvons y faire quelque chose? Des commentaires?

Ahhhh... those fun predictions and why we want to believe in them

2010-12-28T07:41:00.000-05:00

How do we like to be comforted and feel secure about the future, or how fear and predictions are used to control us.

Take for example this prediction in 2000 that snowfalls in Britain would be a thing of the past. Click images for full resolution.

The column quotes Dr. David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia — yes, the epicenter of what would become the Climategate scandal

And now 10 years later...

In this case, it seems that the "models" predicting a warm future free of snow, where not that precise.

There is two lesson to be learn from this.

1. Our pre disposition to want to believe the "experts"
2. The use of "fear" to manipulate you into adopting some kind of doctrine.

Point1:
A good book as been written on this subject:
Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
I think that we are prone to believe anything to comfort our fear of the future and the unknown. We lack the basic sceptical view of the world, that protect us from those prophets.

Point 2:
Fear has been used throughout the ages to control the population. Politician do it, Corporations do it, Oligarchs group do it.

Another good book on the subject:
The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain

So next time who hear someone babble about the future, ask yourself what is the intention, the goal of the person or group? What is their agenda?

Be sceptical about everything you read, always seek the opinions of others, learn the basic facts and science.

As for the explanation of why we believe in all those things... Here's another good book:

Why Do We Believe Impossible Things?

Here's a copy of an article about the book and the author:

Our Belief System Is Powered by Our Tool-Making History, Scientist Says

OPINION By LEE DYE
Sept. 17, 2008—

Why do so many people hold beliefs that are clearly false? A recent story on ABCNews.com said 80 million Americans believe we have been visited by aliens from another planet, and numerous studies show that millions of people believe in ghosts, extrasensory perception and, of course, alien abductions.

According to biologist Lewis Wolpert of University College, London, all those beliefs are clearly false, and they all share a common beginning. It may well have started when the first human realized he, or she, could make a fire by rubbing two sticks together.

Wolpert is the author of a new provocative book exploring the evolutionary origins of belief, called "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast." The title comes from Lewis Carroll's classic "Through the Looking Glass," when Alice tells the White Queen that she cannot believe in impossible things.

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," the Queen replied. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Wolpert argues that our wide range of beliefs, some of which are clearly false, grew out of a uniquely human trait. Alone in the animal world, humans understand cause and effect, and that, he says, led ultimately to the invention of tools, the rapid rise of sophisticated technology, and of course, beliefs. Even the earliest humans understood that many events that shaped their lives resulted from specific causes. Therefore, there must be a cause behind every event.

Searching for that cause, Wolpert says, led to the rise of religion because surely there must be some purpose behind all this, some ultimate cause at work in the universe.

Wolpert is an atheist, but he says he isn't trying to convert anyone to atheism. If so, he may be the only person on the planet who is willing to share his deeply held beliefs without caring whether he can convince anyone to believe the same way. But his basic premise is sound. We all know other people, not ourselves of course, who hold some beliefs that are absurd, or at least grossly lacking in evidence. Why?

It all goes back to that first character who rubbed two sticks together.

No other animal has the mental framework for understanding cause and effect, Wolpert says. Chimps, apes and those famously clever New Caledonia crows come close, but they aren't there yet. Once humans reached that point, they turned a corner that ultimately shaped what we are today.

Some animals have used various things as tools, but only humans have put at least two different materials together to fabricate a tool for a specific purpose, and then go on to discover other uses for that same tool. Those first discoveries gave humans an edge on the competition, allowing the species to thrive.

But along the way things happened, some good and some bad. The effort to understand why bad things happen to good people, and so on, gave rise to what Wolpert and others call the "belief engine" in the brain. We want to believe there is a reason for it all, and that leaves us predisposed to believe in some things for which there is little or no evidence. If a certain belief makes sense out of an otherwise senseless event, then it must be true, right?

Wolpert argues that even false beliefs can serve a useful purpose. He concedes that religion, which he regards as false, has a purpose and has played a role in the evolutionary processes. People tend to look out for people of like faith, as in churches, and that support can make them stronger, thus improving the chances that they will live long enough to see their genes passed along.

If Wolpert's compelling argument is right, does that mean we have no control over what we believe? He says he was a very religious child, but became an atheist at the age of 16 because he no longer believed in religion. But could it be that his own "belief engine" made the decision for him?

Ever since Sigmund Freud dug into the secrets of the subconscious, many psychologists have argued that many of our beliefs are beyond our control because they are shaped by unknown secrets buried inside the brain. But if that's true, how do psychologists escape their own scenario? Wouldn't they be just as likely to be deluded as the rest of us?

Similarly, many biologists think the complex organism between our ears is driven entirely by biology. But if we all have a biologically based "belief system," aren't we all -- even biologists -- victims of false beliefs? As Wolpert concedes, maybe people just believe what they want to believe.

None of us approach complex issues, like whether or not to believe in a specific religion, or even a political candidate, with a clean slate.

How else can you explain 80 million Americans who believe we've been visited by aliens? Surely, if aliens invested the enormous costs of interstellar travel and came our way, they must have had a reason. Wouldn't they drop by the White House instead of a desert in New Mexico or Texas? Would there really be any confusion if they had, indeed, visited Earth?

The late astronomer Carl Sagan had a wonderful formula for measuring the truthfulness of any belief. Extraordinary claims, he said, demand extraordinary evidence.

The fact that so many are willing to believe so many impossible things with so little evidence is not comforting.

Obama health care law unconstitutional?

2010-12-19T06:59:00.000-05:00

Forces everyone to purchase insurance so companies have enough money to cover everyone

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Virginia last Monday struck down the health insurance requirement as unconstitutional, disagreeing with the government that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution allows for the regulation of a person’s decision not to buy a product. The Commerce Clause grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among states. Source

Source

More detailed analysis on PJTV

Congrès de circonscription et Assemblée générale annuelle de Prévost

2010-11-28T06:21:00.000-05:00

Bonjour,

Aujourd’hui se tient l'assemblée générale annuelle de Prévost.

Suivre ce lien pour l'ordre du jour

Nous allons proposer les propositions d’amendements suivant au programme du parti québécois:

Pyrolyse des déchets

Recyclage à 100 % de tous les déchets. Plus d'information ici.

Transport en commun rapide avec savoir-faire québécois

Plus d'information ici

Banque du Québec pour financer ces projets d'infrastructures.

Plus d'information ici

Vous êtes les bienvenus pour appuyer ces projets et participer à notre réussite collective.

Merci,

Simon Filiatrault

Richard Lindzen presentation on climate change

2010-11-20T09:18:00.003-05:00

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment heard from a dozen witnesses about how the public and private sectors are approaching climate change. Washington, DC : 3 hr. 46 min.

Very interesting debate on the two side of the issue.

Click here to open the player.

Full presentation in PDF of Doctor Richard Lindzen

Nouveau concept de monorail pour un transport rapide

2010-11-18T17:53:00.002-05:00

Source:

Le petit bout de film que montre Pierre Langlois fait rêver. On y aperçoit une structure discrète de monorail longeant l'autoroute 40, entre Québec et Montréal. Des cabines de 60 passagers y glissent à la vitesse vertigineuse de 250 kilomètres à l'heure.

Chaque cabine est alimentée par 16 moteurs-roues, une invention de Pierre Couture que l'on connaît mieux pour sa création du moteur-roue d'Hydro-Québec.

Ce moyen de transport n'est pas sujet aux aléas du climat. Pas besoin de le déneiger puisque les moteurs-roues sont complètement recouverts. Le ventre des cabines flotte à 10 mètres du sol, au-dessus de tout obstacle.

Le physicien et conférencier Pierre Langlois a déjà pris le TGV en France, où il a habité pendant quelques années. Il reconnaît qu'il a adoré son expérience. Lorsqu'il est question d'importer cette technologie au Québec, toutefois, le scientifique en lui fait un très, très long pas en arrière.

«Il y a eu deux ou trois centimètres de neige en France, cet hiver et c'était la panique pour le TGV. Imaginez une bordée de 50 centimètres», plaide-t-il.

C'est que le train à grande vitesse, comme son nom l'indique, roule rapidement, soit 360 kilomètres à l'heure. Mieux vaut n'avoir aucun obstacle sur les rails.

Mais c'est loin d'être là le seul argument qui fait pencher Pierre Langlois en faveur du monorail de Pierre Couture.

De passage au Collège Laflèche, hier, dans le cadre des Grandes rencontres, où il est venu expliquer l'importance de libérer la civilisation de sa dépendance au pétrole, le physicien et auteur y est allé de comparaisons étonnantes entre les deux technologies.

Un monorail roule certes moins vite qu'un TGV, soit 250 km/h au lieu de 360. Toutefois, explique-t-il, le monorail, grâce à ses 16 moteurs-roues, prend à peine 20 secondes pour atteindre sa vitesse de croisière et guère plus pour se mettre en arrêt à destination. Le TGV, lui, pendra 8 minutes pour atteindre ses 360 km/h et tout autant pour s'arrêter.

Au bout du compte, ces 16 minutes d'accélération et de décélération font en sorte que seulement 4 petites minutes séparent le monorail du TGV pour parcourir la distance Québec-Montréal. «Et si l'on arrête à Trois-Rivières, le monorail arrivera bien avant le TGV», renchérit M. Langlois.

Avec un monorail, ajoute-t-il, pas besoin de couper le paysage en deux. Grâce à des pylônes à tous les 60 mètres, le monorail peut franchir tous les obstacles: routes, rivières, viaducs.

La superficie des terrains à exproprier pour installer les pylônes ne représente qu'une fraction des expropriations qu'il faudrait imposer avec le TGV, fait-il remarquer.

Contrairement au TGV dont le trajet se limite à une ligne droite entre les deux villes, le monorail possède une souplesse extraordinaire. Il pourrait facilement s'amarrer sur les côtés d'un pont pour aller desservir l'autre rive.

La cerise sur la gâteau, c'est le coût de construction. Au Québec, l'implantation d'un TGV se chiffre à 28 millions $ du kilomètre, rapporte le conférencier. Pour le monorail, il en coûterait à peine 8 millions $ du kilomètre. «C'est donc 2 milliards $ de dollars pour le monorail contre 7 milliards pour le TGV», fait valoir M. Langlois. Presque 4 fois moins cher.

E-voting without fraud

2010-11-14T17:24:00.000-05:00

David Bismark demos a new system for voting that contains a simple, verifiable way to prevent fraud and miscounting -- while keeping each person's vote secret. Can this be a good solution?

Le jour du souvenir, se souvenir de quoi

2010-11-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

Une interview avec Pascal Lacoste, un vétéran de l'armée canadienne, la facon dont l'armé l'a abandonné et son combat contre les effets post traumatique de la guerre.

Quelque discussion sur le sujet sur le blogue de Jean-François Lisée:
http://www2.lactualite.com/jean-francois-lisee/jour-du-souvenir-le-calvaire-du-jeune-veteran-lacoste/6010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_poppy_(symbol)

Plus d'information sur l'utilisation de l'uranium appauvrie source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_appauvri

Actions des munitions à l'uranium appauvri [modifier]

Obus-flèche perforant américain M829 ; la flèche(en blanc) est composée d’un alliage d’uranium.

Action mécanique [modifier]

La densité élevée de l'uranium en fait un matériau de fabrication d’obus antichar, et notamment dans les « obus-flèches » utilisés lors de la première guerre du Golfe, la guerre du Kosovo ainsi que durant les premières phases de la guerre en Irak (2003-2005).

Dans le cas d'un obus d’artillerie le « pénétrateur » est une barre filetée longue d'environ 25 cm, composée d'uranium appauvri, sans explosif et à la vitesse initiale élevée (de l'ordre de1 500 mètres par seconde). Lors de l'impact son énergie cinétique est dissipée sur une surface d'environ 40 mm², ce qui crée une pression énorme, ce qui participe à la pulvérisation du blindage en ménageant un trou.

Certaines bombes anti-bunker sont soupçonnées d'utiliser des pénétrateurs à uranium appauvri².

Action eutectique et explosive [modifier]

Pendant l'impact, l'uranium s'échauffe et atteint sa température de fusion, qui est inférieure à celle de l'acier ; il crée avec le fer du blindage un eutectique, ce qui provoque la fusion du blindage et participe à la perforation, en projetant le métal liquide dans l'habitacle. Cela se propage dans la cible et tout ce qui est inflammable va s'enflammer voire exploser ; par ailleurs, l'uranium pulvérisé qui pénètre dans l'habitacle s'enflamme également, d'où l'explosion des chars de combat environ 5 secondes après l'impact.

Dispersion d'uranium [modifier]

Si l'uranium appauvri provenant de l'impact d'un pénétrateur de 4.85 kg (dont on suppose qu'il est volatilisé à 50%) est dispersé uniformément dans un rayon de 10 m du point d'impact, et pénètre le sol sur une profondeur de 10cm, il conduira au départ à une concentration d'approximativement 96 mg/kg. Cette teneur est supérieure à celle que l'on trouve en moyenne dans les sols naturels (de l'ordre de 2 mg/kg), mais peut se rencontrer dans certains sols, par exemple dans les poussières de la région d'Amman, en Jordanie.³

Les anomalies de concentration en uranium ne sont perceptibles que lorsque le métal est faiblement dispersé. Un volume de sol naturel dans un rayon de 20m et sur une profondeur de 80 cm (toujours à raison d'une moyenne de l'ordre de 2g/t) contient en moyenne une masse de 4 kg d'uranium, ce qui est l'ordre de grandeur typique d'une munition militaire : à ces niveaux de dilution, il ne peut plus y avoir de pollution au sens technique du terme, du fait que l'écosystème reste dans les limites de variation d'un mode de fonctionnement normal.

Les études disponibles suggèrent qu'il faut une durée de l'ordre de 100 à 1000 ans pour que les munitions ou les blindages en uranium appauvri se dégradent et soient dispersés chimiquement.³