Bare Bones Biology 217 – Bureau of Land Management

Today I want to share with you the protest letter I wrote to the New Mexico State Office of the United States Bureau of Land Management.

FAX to BLM 140812 (FAX receipt filed)
Jesse Juen Deadline is 140815 (August 15, Friday)
U.S. Bureau of Land Management
New Mexico State Office
PO Box 27115
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502

Fax: 505-954-2010

• I am protesting parcels NM-2014-001, 004 through 015, which are in the Rio Chama Watershed and East of the Continental Divide.

I am an 80-year-old retired career basic scientist who planned to spend the rest of my life in the Brazos Valley of Texas and was forced to move because of the destruction of the quality of the air that was threatening my health. I am not alone. Large segments of the American people are becoming homeless or mobile. It is excellent business for the travel trailer parks, but not for building healthy productive communities.

I lived in this location in Texas for 35 years, and invested much of my life savings in four pieces of property in Texas. When I arrived in Texas the air was always as crystalline as that in northern New Mexico on a good day like today. When I left, the air was consistently, daily, gray with a dank smog that damaged my lungs and other organs.

This fug is still there on most days, over the entire region of the hill country and eastward, and up to about 200 feet elevation, and of course it continues to get worse as all those wells leak, many spill (I was threatened when I photographed effluent being poured into the local creek). This change took (for the worst of it) about 5 years and was very clearly, the most of it, the result of intensive fracking north of us.

In addition, of course, I know many other people who owned land and homes in the Brazos Valley of Texas who have had personal health problems, have been forced out of their rural homes, have lost their jobs to people brought in from outside to work the oil and gas jobs, and even have observed flights of birds drop from the air, killed or disabled by the fumes from those local processing stations the gas companies try to hide back in the boonies. I can document these things.

Some of the negative effects of fracking are very well known and well documented.. This destruction does not sit there on top of the BLM lands. Among these problems documented in regions of fracking, worldwide. Destruction of air, water and the almost completely unstudied underground biosystem are among them. Earthquakes that indicate unknown kinds of damage to underground bio- and geo- systems.

Our air water and soil are the commons. They belong to the people – not to the gas or oil companies, and not to the BLM. Money is not more important than the common welfare, and a little more money now will not solve the human problem of depleting resources. In fact, it will make the problem worse for children who are born today, because we did not try to solve the real human problem, but only tried to do more of what caused the problem in the first place.

I am a basic career biologist – not a technician or a technologist. Regardless of the opinions of technicians and technologists, I and other basic scientists know that what we do to the earth today we can never undo. Before we do anything we should deeply consider what will be the effect on the future of humans in New Mexico and beyond, because the effects of this toxic technology are not only local, but expand far across the land air and water, and into the future.

I sincerely hope I will not need to sell out and move away from New Mexico as fracking continues, but I hesitate to invest further – to buy a property where I can live in winter – until I find out to what extent New Mexico is willing to protect her citizens and the natural wealth of her Biosystems from fly-by-night developers who bring temporary jobs, use up the infrastructure of the communities, and then sell off a portion of gas and oil overseas and go away to feed off of the next community. It is the function of government to protect its citizens from these snake-oil salesmen who promise temporary riches rather than help to grow sustainable communities for the welfare of all the people.

I have purchased land here. Again, I hope this is a place where I can live healthy to the end of my days.

Dr. M. Lynn Lamoreux Copy to: Rio Arriba Concerned Citizens
350, CR 352 Post Office Bos 934
Lumberton, NM 87528 Abiquiu, NM 87510

Copy of the radio spot available here:http://traffic.libsyn.com/fff/Bare_Bones_Biology_217-BLM.mp3

What can we do? I recommend contacting the
Rio Arriba Concerned Citizens, and
http://www.celdf.org/, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and ask them to provide legal and educational support for you community rights.

Two of my previous blogs regarding fracking:
https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/
(fracking-the-reservation/)
https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/ bare-bones-biology-061-%E2%80%93-fracking-ii/
https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/bare-bones-bio…and-management/

Two Mysteries

First – what happened to all that gas in the Monterey Shale? Most of my readers are pleased that the hype bubble was burst by the media. But let’s look a bit deeper into the question via a group that has been publishing straight and knowledgeable information for over a decade:

http://www.postcarbon.org/newsletter/2248408-post-carbon-newsletter-may-2014

This is one of the very few organizations that I would suggest you support, becaquse it is reality based rather than relying on emotion and hype to feather its nest, and therefore is likely to do more good than harm for our future on this earth.

And the second mystery — I noticed as I was organizing one of my autographed mystery books — is:

The mystery of what happened to the Mystery Store in Chama?

And then there is the important question — what lies Outside the Circle?

Introducing Faher John Dear

This is a short clip.
Download the entire interview with Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow.org, April 20, 2009
Demnow-DemocracyNowMondayApril202009682
http://barebonesbiology.com/introducing-father-john-dear

Beautiful Bali

My friend Sang-tu has written a very nice blog that I re-post here. Why am I doing this? Is it because Sang-tu is a special person, or is it because Bali is a special place (stay home, there are already too many tourists there) or is it because I want to tell everyone I DROVE A TEAM OF BUFFALO FOR RICE PLANTING. 🙂 I am proud of this, and the person who took pictures for me never sent them to me 😦 so I can’t show you ME doing it but this is nearly as good.

Bali as a child farmer by Sangtu
I remember Bali as a child farmer and I smile.

Bali as a child farmer by Sangtu

I saw this farmer last week. It pulled my memory back to the Bali of my youth, 30 yrs ago in the 70’s & 80’s where we would all see farmers everywhere in the countryside tilling the land after harvest with their helper, the precious cow or buffalo. I remember following my dad and our cow as a boy, collecting abundant eels and snails.

Leading and riding the cow when ‘Melasah’ (cultivation) was lots of fun even though my butt would be sore at the end of the day. We would buy a baby cow and when it was one +a half years old, my uncle or father would teach the cow how to help cultivate the soil. In that time the cost was almost free because farmers and families would partner and share and every one would help feed the cows, who helped cultivate. We would bring ‘nasi bunkus’ (rice meal ‘take-away’) to the farmer with cooked eels and snails we caught while he tilled the soil. Each farmer in that time was very important.

The name of the tool on the cow in Balinese, is Metekap. I wonder if this tool and other tools may sound strange to the ear of the young generation now. Our farmers in Bali use the cow and buffalo less and less now; they use a Japanese cow called a ‘Tractor’. I remember in elementary school, we learned and used these words because our teachers included them in our lessons of Balinese history. I see our world is in an interesting change of extremes (maybe positive or negative), even with the cow. As a Balinese I want to retain and protect our heritage, so at Bali Silent Retreat we use the old fashion Buffalo to cultivate the soil. We think it’s beautiful to watch and beautiful to respect the old ways. There’s no pollution; no noise. We add the cow poop to our compost for organic vegetables.

The words about Metakap and Melasah have almost disappeared. These words of farming, I want to be remembered. So I have written about them here: “Metekap” is cultivating the soil using a cow or buffalo and being lead by a human. For turning and tilling the soil the farmer only uses uga, kalung , keranjang, singkal, and pecut.

• ”Uga” is the wooden harness on the cow. It is handed down within a family from generation to generation.
• Under the uga is a “ Kalung, “ rubber necklace with a rope.
• “Keranjang” is the basket on the mouth, so the cow can focus and not stop all the time to eat grass.
• “Singkal” is the tool used for turning the soil.
• “ Pecut “ is the small whip to remind the cow to keep moving if it gets stuck and doesn’t move.

Melasah is when the farmer makes the soil flat and smooth, which makes it easier to replant the rice paddies. The tools the farmer uses are almost the same, but add the tengala and lampit.

• ”Tengala” is one long wooden or bamboo piece attached to the Uga, separating two cows pulling at the same time.
• “ Lampit “ is a piece of board connected to the tengala to make the soil smooth and level.

When it’s time for melasah, the farmer tries to avoid full moon or dark moon or Kajeng Kliwon or any ceremonies near by the area, because during those times, the energy is really strong and the cows just don’t want to work or move, or sometimes they work for while and then suddenly just start running. I remember this happened one time when I was a boy and what a wild experience it was!

After melasah is finished, it’s time to replant the rice paddies. Sometimes at Bali Silent Retreat our volunteers get to experience planting rice babies, just like a Balinese farmer – ha!

Volunteers plant organic heritage rice for SRI farming, a dry rice farming method. (This crop yielded 15% more rice, than the conventional chemically fertilized and weeded system.)

• Special Balinese words for talking to the cow and telling it what to do and where to go:
• “Kenebot “ is left position.
• “Kenawan “ is right position.
• “Hagel” is shouted when the farmer turns either right or left, along with using the nose string, in case sometimes the cow gets tired doesn’t listen so good.
• “ Sissss” says the farmer when he wants to go straight.

These are the memories of my childhood brought to life again at Bali Silent Retreat, when the farmer brings out the handsome buffalo and tills the soil.

I watch the guests smile too.

And (says LL) these beautiful Balinese water buffalo are a unique sub-species. They caught my biologist’s eye the first time I saw them, and so I looked them up. I understand they are in some danger of extinction, which would be a terrible shame. Especially as the day will probably come when the Japanese version will run out of fuel and that will be the end of that. Water Buffalo are forever, so long as there is grass to eat.

We Don’t Know What to Do?

We often complain that we do not hear from scientists, yet I am one and I am often treated as though I am more ignorant than the most under-educated person on line. No wonder most scientists ignore the people who do not care enough to even study the problems — but only are willing to listen to more and more gossip about their own special interests. Scientists have better things to do. Most of them are trying to save humanity.

And about at this point of my thinking came into my hands one of the best summaries I have seen of our current position on the earth. So I try to share it with you and what do I get?

It’s for sale. Isn’t that a commentary on our culture! And it would probably be illegal to post it on my web site. Oh well, you can find it the old-fashioned way – in a library.

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/SUS.2013.9847

State of the Living Planet
Thomas E. Lovejoy
Sustainability: The Journal of Record. August 2013, Vol. 6, No. 4: 183-185

It’s not impossible to learn about real facts. That’s what libraries are for:

Or you can do what I am planning to do tomorrow – go to a seminar at your nearest university, where you can talk to real people who are studying real issues. I don’t know of any PUBLIC university that will actually kick you out the door if you have a genuine interest in learning something and you try to not behave like most people do on Facebook. That’s what public institutions are for. To benefit the people.

That’s why the corposystem is trying to privatize them.

Also Facebook apparently won’t post an unlinked pdf, so I haven’t yet found a way to share it with you, but I can quote what I consider to be the most important sentence in this excellent paper:

“All of that is divorced from the reality of how the planet works.”

OK, that’s my expertise. That’s what I have been trying to share for over a decade! FIRST LEARN how the system functions; if you poke at it here, what will happen over there? “First do no harm.”

If nobody cares about factual reality, but only about human snake oil and pipe dreams, then of course I am wasting my time. And so are you. It’s worse than doing nothing.

Pity the grandchildren, their legacy.

Barsamian

I just sent the below out as a flyer, and a friend in the Northeast answered instantly:

“Ooh, envy. To the people who actually get to hear him.
I note with interest that he too has gray hair. Our generation is stepping up.”

(What she means is her generation is stepping up. My generation is dying off, some of the greats, too bad we are needed, but we all want to come to meet David Barsamian.)

Unfortunately I will be in New Mexico while he is here.

I met and interviewed David Barsamian in Santa Fe, a couple of years ago, https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/, and listened to his presentation. Now he is coming to the Brazos Valley to benefit KEOS, and I encourage y’all to attend. It should be an energetic event.

Lynn Lamoreux
_________________

Fundraiser for KEOS Radio 89.1

David Barsamian, award-winning creator and director of “Alternative Radio,”will speak at a KEOS fundraiser on February 28. His talk, “Capitalism & the Environment,” will address the question of whether the deep transformation needed to save our world can take place under our economic system.

The event will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Courtyard Marriott, in College Station.

A $10 donation is suggested, but no one will be turned away.

Barsamian, a highly acclaimed journalist and author, will also be interviewed live on KEOS at 2 p.m. that day, Friday, February 28. The station airs “Alternative Radio” from 6 to 7 p.m. each Thursday.

KEOS would like to thank the College Station Courtyard Marriott for providing the room for Barsamian’s talk. The hotel is located at 3939 Highway 6 South in College Station, on the east side of the Bypass at Rock Prairie Road. The phone number is 979-695-8111.

For additional information on the talk, contact: Janis Atkins, 255-1048

Post Carbon Institute – Fracking

Here is a video of interest to us because, while it is about the economics of shale fracking, it contains a very timely and important reference to the pipelines. The purpose of this video is to provide valid information for the many activist groups who are working against fracking all over the country.

Particularly interesting are the presentation and comments of economist Deborah Rogers (from Fort Worth) that begin at 29:44 minutes.

A – The data are very good now (she talks about them in detail), we need to distribute this information into the common discussions. You can get summaries from Postcarbon Institute and the publications of Deborah Rogers and Richard Heinberg and they name two others, I missed.

B – The industry is losing money, and that is why they are so dedicated to these pipelines. Their goal now (interesting parallel to what they have been doing in underdeveloped countries) is to take out our oil and gas in the US and sell it somewhere else that will pay approx twice as much. In other words, the destruction of our world, our air, water, climate and soils is paying for the big oil companies to make profits off-shore in a time when we will run out of fossil fuels fairly soon anyhow and should be working to grow a sustainable culture that does not destroy the Life of Earth as we know it.

So get out there and carry on the pipeline fights.

Figures are also given relative to job creation (no more than is being created by the alternative energy projects) and, for example in Arkansas, the money paid for roads by the oil companies is much less than the cost of the damage they actually do. Local administrators often “don’t care about health effects” because they aren’t part of their responsibility, but the data relative to health effects are also good.

Postcarboninstitute.org

Hungering for justice at Guantanamo John Dear S.J. | Apr. 16, 2013

http://ncronline.org/node/49786/

Reposting this week’s comments by Father John Dear

Who Cares?

This action occurred right here in River City (Texas) about 90 miles from my homeland. Did you see it in the news? I think Texans did not, so why not just pass this on to as many people as you know.

http://tarsandsblockade.org/2nd-action/tarsandsblockade.org

The Los Alamos action was I think disappointing to the people who worked so hard on it but I was greatly impressed. Obviously the goal of the corposystem media is to prevent these people from trying again by making them believe their efforts are to no avail, and as Americans we tend to believe that if we don’t win (or if we can’t be a hero) we didn’t make a difference. I think we should try to do something (like maybe a half-hour national program, like maybe discussing these issues with people at the morning dominoes table in the spirit of “what can we do,” and not in the spirit of “aint it awful.”) that points out these scattered events are happening all over the united states, brings them together, and makes some common points.

We are being separated from them by a wall of propaganda that tries to make us believe that our shopping malls are an ongoing way of life, and that we can’t talk about the issues of real importance — even for the children!!! In fact the world of our modern American media is a fake fairytale that will crash down on our children’s children (crash slowly or fast, who knows, but we could be trying to prevent it with greater awareness). Even if we don’t believe we can win and even if we can’t be a hero.

Who says winning is the point. I run across so many people who won’t try unless they are sure they can win, and of course — they don’t. The real heroes are those who are trying in spite of the fact that the media prevent them from either winning or being heroes. The worse it gets, the more we will need these people. The future grows out of every behavior we do – every day – win or lose or invisible. Or as one Buddhist said: “It’s not about me, but what I do or don’t do does make a difference.”

On Death. There is a Better Way

Klare is not crazy. He is middle of the road realistic. I have been as a biologist fully aware of this pending disaster for at least 50 years, so it is very hard for me to believe that people are clinging so very tightly to their insane schemes of denial. It would have been cheap, easy and sane, 50 years ago, when we developed the technology to deal with population – to deal with it. It is still cheaper, easier and saner than gobbling up all the resources of our planet earth. When any species overpopulates it’s resources, the result normally is they eat up all the food and then they die. We are different. We have a brain that can understand these things.

And of course, as citizens, we are not permitted to discuss these issues. It wouldn’t be polite, in case we might make someone “uncomfortable.” Talk about insane. But that too is a characteristic of late stages of overpopulation in the species that have been studied.

See: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wwiii-great-commodities-war-to-end-all-wars-2012-08-07

WWIII: Great commodities war to end all wars
Commentary: A new era of depletion, collapse and austerity

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – Yes, WWIII: The Great Commodities War to End All Wars. We’ve heard that before. Remember WWI, known as The War to End All Wars, 37 million casualties. WWII was bigger, 60 million. Will WWIII finally end all wars? Or end the world, civilization, planet?

And it’s already started folks, ending the Great American Dream.

Fasten your seat belts, soon we’ll all be shocked out of denial. Some unpredictable black swan. A global wake-up call will trigger the Pentagon’s prediction in Fortune a decade ago at the launch of the Iraq War: “By 2020 … an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies is emerging … warfare defining human life.”

And that’s also the clear message in “The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources,” the latest book by noted international security expert Michael Klare.

Earlier, about the same time as the Pentagon’s prediction, Klare published his classic, “Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict,” a look ahead to a world that he now hopes will not “end in war, widespread starvation, or a massive environmental catastrophe.” Although they are “the probable results of persisting in the race for what’s left.” Unfortunately, hope can’t trump reality in today’s race for what little is left.

We need men who pull no punches in describing what’s dead ahead, whether labeling it “Resource Wars” or “WWIII, The Great Commodities War That Can End Everything.” Klare does just that with this warning:

“It is true that eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels and other finite materials cannot be accomplished overnight – our current reliance on them is just too great,” warns Klare, well aware that the forces of capitalism are trapped in denial, cannot see the dangers dead ahead, focusing only on getting richer no matter the consequences to the planet.

“But no matter how much corporate or government officials wish to deny it, there is not nearly enough non-renewable resources on this planet to perpetually satisfy the growing needs of a ballooning world population.”

All major nations are quietly preparing for Resource Wars
Even worse, in today’s world run by climate-denying billionaires, Klare warns “existing modes of production are causing unacceptable damage to the global environment. Eventually continuing with current industrial practices will simply prove impossible. And precisely because implementing a whole new industrial order will be a lengthy task, any delay in beginning that work will prove costly, as resources keep dwindling and their prices continue to rise.”

If there is a race, it’s a downhill race to WWIII: The Great Commodity Wars. The world’s great powers are accelerating war preparations – yes, they are in the early logistical build-up stage, amassing the resources and arms to send troops into battle.

And they’re doing it in a world lost in denial, sinking deeper into a collective conscience that pretends our problems will be solved by the magic of free-market capitalism, unwilling to admit it not only no longer exists, it has morphed into an anarchy controlled by a bizarre conspiracy of Super Rich narcissists.

Welcome to the New Era of Resource Depletion and Austerity
Yes, the planet is at a historic turning point. You must plan for black swans, earth-shaking wake-up calls – a perfect storm of global wars, mass starvation, pandemics, environmental catastrophes.

The critical mass is building. We’re just not listening, especially conservative politicians, Wall Street CEOs and the Super Rich, who dismiss the warnings of men like environmentalist Bill McKibben, money manager Jeremy Grantham, anthropologist Jared Diamond and global security expert Michael Klare all warning us to wake up, before it’s too late to react, let alone plan.

Listen to the warnings: “The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of resource depletion – a crisis that goes beyond ‘peak oil’ to encompass shortages of coal and uranium, copper and lithium, water and arable land. With all of the planet’s easily accessible resource deposits rapidly approaching exhaustion, the desperate hunt for supplies has become a frenzy of extreme exploration, as governments and corporations rush to stake their claims in areas previously considered too dangerous or remote.”

Wars to grab what’s left … until nothing’s left … for anybody
Klare opens on a fascinating replay of Russia’s 2007 risky deployment of a mini-submarine using a robotic arm to plant a titanium flag deep under the polar ice cap, two and a half miles below the surface of the North Pole. Why?

Forget national pride. In recent years as climate change warms this “frozen wasteland,” Russia, as well as Canada, the U.S. and other nations are laying a claim to long-ignored “vast deposits of oil, natural gas and valuable minerals.”

Faced with an impossible equation – out-of-control global population growth plus rapid depletion of nonrenewable resources equals mega-catastrophes – the big players are all selfishly grabbing and hoarding scarce commodities … like desperate banana republic dictators as the entire world sinks into pure anarchy, scrambling for a share of what little’s left, until nothing is left for anyone.

13 reasons why this time is so very, very different
This time the challenges the world is facing really are very different from any prior time in history, warns Klare: “While the current assault on remote resource frontiers bears some similarities to the historical exploration of undeveloped territories,” such as the Roman Empire’s expansion, today’s global threats are “in many important ways different from anything that has come before.”

Why? Because “never before have we seen the same combination of factors that confronts us today.”

Here are the five biggest reasons the next few decades are so crucial to the survival of the planet and our civilization:
• Scarce nonrenewable commodities are rapidly and permanently disappearing.
• There are no “new frontiers” to open up as existing reserves disappear forever.
• Population growth is creating a “sudden emergence of rapacious new consumers.”
• Economic, technical and environmental add increasing limitations on exploration.
• Climate change is having “devastating” unintended consequences on energy.
Klare adds that in “many cases, the commodities procured will represent the final supplies of their type.” Get it? “The race we are on today is the last of its kind that we are likely to undertake.”
Seven other factors are reviewed or come to mind that definitely are risk factors that increase the probability of massive global catastrophes:
• Rapid rise of powerful new resources competitors, China, Africa, Saudis
• New warrior mind-set willing to grab or fight for new territories and borders …
• Conservative strategy preferring existing industrial methods rather than develop new more costly technologies and innovative alternatives …
• Lack of a political will to invest government funds that would incur more debt to prime the innovation …
• The time needed to prepare for known threats is rapidly vanishing …
• America is rapidly morphing from a democracy into a Super Rich anarchy …
• Failure to grasp that this new era of “peak everything” means that the lack of resources will increase scarcity and austerity across all nations …
And finally, the total failure to accept and encourage any kind of population controls, even denying birth control, without which all other strategies will be futile.

13 triggers that will ignite WWIII: the Great Commodity Wars
Soon, even the myopic dinosaurs in the oil, coal and fossil-fuels industries, the guys who have been bragging about having 200 or more years of reserves, will be hit with a catastrophic wake-up call, as these risk factors balloon to critical mass and a flash point – fueled by commodity wars, pandemics, global starvation, environmental crises, skyrocketing commodity prices and accelerating population growth.

But by then, as Klare and others like him warn, it will be too late for the fossil-fuel dinosaurs.
Whether you’re a hard-line climate-denying billionaire capitalist or a liberal-leaning environmentalist, you need to read Michael Klare’s new “Race For What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources.” Or as I prefer to call it, either, “The New Era of Depletion, Austerity and Collapse,” or “WWIII: The Great Commodity Wars to End All Wars.” It’s a must-read.

From Joe Bish