World Catastrophe Map

Unprecedented Die Off of Baby Dolphins Began After Deepwater Horizon And Continues At A Record Pace

End Times Progress Report | Week of May 14, 2012

BP is running happy commercials to persuade us all that everything is fine around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. And we hope things are fine for most of the fine people in that region.  But BP left some stuff out of their happy TV spots: Over 600 dolphins have wasted ashore since the Deepwater Horizon fiasco in spring  of 2010.

There is additional first hand evidence of widespread sickness and birth defects among the dolphin population in the Gulf of Mexico. Records for mortality rates among dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico have been maintained for a couple of decades, so when NOAA issues this sort of report, it’s backed by strong statistical precedent and observation.

Scientists believe the huge oil spill and use of toxic dispersants  are partly or totally to blame for the unprecedented dolphin die-off , but of course it is impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, which would be the standard required in a U.S. court of law if anyone thought it was a good idea to sue to BP on the deceased dolphin’s behalf. BP lawyers would fall over themselves in pointing out that they are not the only source of pollution in the Gulf, and no one could deny this. Humans are killing marine life in a variety of ways.

Corporations are people, but dolphins have not yet achieve that status.

Monsanto-related Developments Under The Radar Should Make You Nervous – Real Nervous

• Monsanto purchases Bee Colony Collapse Research Company
• Monsanto “donates” $250,00o to U of I Ag Research

If the pied piper of Hamlin had first introduced the rats to the town of Hamlin so he could charge the town to get rid of them, you’d have a scenario similar to the corporate hold up currently in progress. Monsanto has caused an agricultural and ecological disaster on a global scale, and now the demon seed and poison company is teaming up with their pals at Dow Chemical to do it to you again. Here’s how it works.

Agricultural authorities are just now beginning to acknowledge what has been called a plague of superweeds threatening North American farmland. It has taken them awhile because Monsanto lawyers have ruined many a scientist’s (and journalist’s) careers. The superweeds have developed a resistance to Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide, which is a key component of the Monsanto school of unsustainable agriculture. These events were all predicted by alarmist scientists over a decade ago.

Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences are petitioning U.S. and Canadian authorities to approve four new varieties of bio-mutated corn and soybean which will be resistant to a couple more toxic herbicides: 2,4D choline and dicamba. Can you guess who manufactures these poisons? The USDA is working hard to greenlight the approval process.

No one pretends to think the cycle won’t escalate into an all out bio-chemical company vs. weed war, but no one has any better ideas at this point.

Yes, it’s really here and it’s really happening. History will show that the vast majority of the U.S.  population had no idea what was going on until the agricultural catastrophe was irreversible.

Because the this genie isn’t going back in the RoundUp bottle.

Did CoalOilGas tell Senators They Weren’t Allowed to Go to the Sea Level Hearing?

Only One Republican Senator attended a Congressional hearing on the effects of sea levels rising, an event that was rares and invisible to the media. She left well before it was over. The sort of funny thing about this problem is that there isn’t a lot of disputed science involved. The rising seas are observable and provable.

There are a lot of things were don’t pretend to understand here at the Editorial Board, but one of hardest to get is why the climate skeptics on the payroll of CoalOilGas are able to keep selling the notion that any effort to limit carbon and methane emissions is too economically expensive.

What is missing from the equation are the enormous costs climate change is already inflicting on civilization*.  The most obvious is documentable  destruction caused by extreme storms, flood and drought and other extreme weather…ask property insurance companies if they “believe” in climate change. Extreme weather in 2011 caused over $35 billion in insurance payouts in the U.S. alone, a record that reflects a small part of the damage.

Directly next in line after  extreme storms, flood and drought is the effect sea level rise is having on the coasts. Among the problems, coastal infrastructure such as roads, harbors, sea walls and power plants are all in imminent danger of being compromised. Water supplies are threatened with salt water inundation as the ocean moves inland. Florida is already dealing with sewage & drainage problems due to the 8 inches of sea level rise we’ve already seen, posing a major health risk.

In case you doubt it, see the latest report on the Greenland glaciers, which are now accelerating their speed as the rate of melt increases. More water, higher sea levels. Or ask the citizens of the Kirubata Islands.

There is one twistedly beautiful irony entwined in this mess: obvious being the threat of Louisiana’s Route 1, which begins at the permanent boomtown of Port Porchon. Rising seas and subsiding land** is threatening the viability of this key petroleum industry artery, with studies predicting the cost of compromising Rt. 1 in the billions.

In a bonus irony Louisiana wants Federal funds to pay for the raising of the highway. But what about your bigmouth governor and other tea party officials who eschew gument money. We are self-reliant folks who don’t want no handout from the Feds.

Eventually, billions of dollar will be spent saving the highway that carries the addictive substance called oil to civilization, where we will use it to continue to destroy the equilibrium of our home planet.

Purdue Study Shows Strong Indication That Honey Bee Colony Collapse Is Caused By Pesticides.

The presence of clothianidin and thiamethoxam in the bodies of dead honey bees confirms the growing body of research indicating these toxins are at least partially responsible for the global die off of honey bee populations. In a phenomenon know as Honey Bee Colony Collapse, bees leave the hive and are unable to find their way back. The prevailing theory is that the toxins don’t kill the bees outright, but destroy their famous built-in homing GPS. Other research points to GMO crops.

This is more than just a damn shame: it can mean an impending economic and ecological disaster. Bees are responsible for pollinating commercial crops and wild flowers, so crops can’t grown and the countryside will look quite different.

Bayer, the German chemical giant, says it ain’t true. In fact, there statements indicate they are OUTRAGED! at the study. This could really screw up profits.

We can only hope that perhaps Monsanto will be able to genetically engineer bees to make them immune to pesticides. Maybe a little bigger and more productive, too.

Scrubbing the poisons from burning coal keeps it out of the air temporarily, but it doesn’t go away. It comes to people’s neighborhoods. Then they have to leave.

Georgia Power – primary owner of the largest coal–fired plant in the country – is buying up houses in the community around their massive toxic coal sludge impoundment near Lake Julliette, GA. The colassal Plant Scherer coal plant dunps about 1,000 pounds of toxic waste from captured from coal combustion into the unlined pond every day. There is no Sabbath for coal waste. The plant also ranks 20 in the world for total carbon emissions, but that is a different subject.

Georgia Power demolishes and bulldozes the houses, seals up water wells and sometimes fences off the vacated property with barbed wire. No playgrounds here. The people in the houses move somewhere else, except for the ones who have died of cancer. The have already been silenced. The residents who sell their homes sign a non-disclosure document before they get their check and leave town.

The company has spent millions of dollar depopulating the area, but the exact amount is hard to come by. According to Georgia Power’s spokesmodels, the purchases have nothing to do with no cancer. Rather they are proactively responding to neighbors’ wishing to sell out, maybe by a condo on Marco Island. Just folks helping folks.

A lot of people in the neighborhood have cancer, asthma, nosebleeds, kidney disease and chronic sinus ailments they didn’t use to have before the huge waste pond was built, but the people who speak for the power plant don’t know anything about that. The one thing they know for sure is it isn’t their fault. So we assume they are just doing community service where they buy up the houses. And seal the wells. Meanwhile, the brown ash from the pond continues to rain down on the remaining residents.

The old “you knew there was a toxic coal waste sludge impoundment there before you moved in” argument doesn’t work here because the community was here long before the plant. But the plant will undoubtedly outlive the community – some of which dates back to before the civil war – as the power company agents move the residents out one by one. Just another nameless victim of the powers that be.

A coal sludge impoundment, usually called a fly ash pond or some other happier name, is a witch’s brew of toxic materials scrubbed from coal during combustion. This is the stuff that used to spew into the air. Now it goes into the air and water. Georgia Power is quick to tell you they have spent billions installing pollution control systems at Plant Scherer. These systems remove the tons of poisons from the coal exhaust and concentrate them into a waste slurry containing arsenic, mercury, lead, vanadium and chromium and over a dozen other heavy metals. But that doesn’t mean they go away. They just get dumped into larger and larger and more and more toxic ponds. About 1300 of them around the country, containing over 130 million tons of toxic waste. Now we know where it is. Maybe they have a wand that will make it disappear.

The poisons from these impoundments blow, spill, leach and leak into the environment. One of them “leaked” a billion gallons of the stuff into the watershed of Knoxville, TN in late 2008. In fact, there have been dozens of similar incidents over the past decade that we know about. Didn’t hear about that?

These toxins are proven to cause cancer and neurological effects as well as many other negative health impacts:  heart damage, lung disease, kidney disease, reproductive problems, gastrointestinal illness, birth defects, and impaired bone growth in children.

And what is never never mentioned in the fake grass roots Clean Coal commercials you see between contestants on “The Voice” is this: coal combustion waste is also radioactive, more radioactive than the waste from nuclear plants. That’s because the burning process concentrates all of the evil stuff in coal into one big pond of slurry. It’s not the darkest secret of coal as an energy source, but it’s in the top five.

What do the federal state and local governments do about it? Nothing, because somehow this stuff has escaped regulation. Of course we know how that works, because coal is clean, safe, inexpensive and patriotic. That’s how situations like the one around Plant Scherer arise and why their spokesmodels can look right into the camera and say “We are in compliance with all laws.” Monitoring the groundwater around the unlined pond at Plant Scherer is not required by any law.

That big spill in eastern Tennessee 5 years ago caused what is described as “new scrutiny” of these impoundments. Tests were done and contaminates were discovered near plants in 16 states. And intense scrutiny has been continuing ever since, as coal interests line the pockets of the people who were elected to protect citizens.

Just Because It Seems Like A Bad Science Fiction Movie Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t True

We hate to say it* but we’ve been talking about this for years while the corporate press tiptoed around it. Now the problem seems to be breaking through to the DWTS-obsessed public: the superweed infestation scientists warned about is here, there and everywhere.  The predicted superweeds are breaking out all over, including super pigweed and super ragweed.

The latest report to come to our attention is from Australia, where the first reports of glyphosate resistance began in 2007.  Five years later, the problem is an epidemic, especially in New South Wales.

As quote in Australia’s “The Age”, a spokes man for the Department of Agriculture said, “the number of resistant plants will continue to multiply.”

This was verified by a spokemodel for Monsanto Australia, who confimred that weed killer resistance is one of the greatest modern challenges facing farmers and that the threat of resistance to glyphosate-based herbicides is real. It takes a particular kind of brain to generate that statement. What she neglected to mention was that Monsanto had caused the problem

If you don’t what we’re talking about, visit this page on CatastropheMap. If you don’t have time, here a summary: Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world and all of it’s seeds are genetically modified. Monsanto is also the manufacturer of RoundUp, the world’s most “popular’** herbicide. According to the Monsanto theory of agriculture, you sell a package of your seeds and RoundUp to the farmer. They in turn treat the fields with RoundUp and only one thing will grow there: Monsanto brand mutated crop seeds. Not a joke, not even satire. So no weeds and no tilling. Yahoo!

Except that biologists warned that the weeds would mutate and become resistant to RoundUp. It’s the new natural cycle.

After Monsanto ruined the careers off the rogue liberal scientists and browbeat farmers into planting their seeds***, superweeds began to pop up after the first three to five years…as expected. And they are spreading around the world.

So you know what Monsanto is fixing to do? Seriously? They are going to make billions more selling millions of gallons of new, more bad ass pesticides to fight the monster organisms they created. Monsanto officially recommends using multiple week killers to “manage” the problem.

Brilliant!

As professional alarmists, our job is to sort out the situations that only threaten our survival a little from those that threaten our survival a lot. This one is in between – it only concerns the viability of agriculture as we know it, otherwise known as the food supply. And the food supply is in the hands of people that make the oil companies look Captain Kangaroo.

Heartland Institute Runs Billboard Ads Featuring Ted Kaczynski and Other Unsavory Global Warming Types, Such as for instance YOU!

[We know you think this is a CatMap parody, so here's a link to the story in Chicago Tribune]

It’s not that we expect rigorous reasoning or even sane behavior from the dogma for pay rogues at Heartland Institute, but this latest caper is stunning. A billboards posted on the Eisenhower Expressway in west suburban Chicago features a picture of Unibomber Ted Kaczynski. The headline reads “I Still Believe In Global Warning, Do You?” The poster was the first of a planned series that would feature Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, Osama Bin Laden* and other creeps who have also made statements supported climate change.

We speculate that implication of the text is that if you the billboard viewer “believe” in Global Warming you are either 1) a murderer / psychopath / communist or 2) a sympathizer with murderer / psychopath / communist  or 3) your reasoning is as faulty as that of a murderer / psychopath / communist.**

This actually pissed a lot of people off in a town like Chicago (home of Catastrophe Map’s secure editorial bunker and think tank) and the losers at Heartland took the billboard down in one day. The complaints came from Heartland supporters as well as global warming believers and a few mass murderers who are considering a class action suit.***

What we want to know in passing is: when Joseph Bast (who refers to climate change as a ‘fringe” theory) decided to go ahead with this brain fart, did he think people were going to react by saying “hmmm, interesting.”? Was he surprised that he got some pushback?  Or did he intend to take them down as soon as he made a fool of himself.

If you believe it, then leave it up. The only thing worse than a right wing operative is a right wing operative with no balls.

100 Year Deluge Doesn’t Put a Dent in England’s Epic Drought

Groundwater levels as at historic lows and residential hoses are banned as a downpours and flood warnings mark England’s wettest April in a century. But the nature of the flood drought flood cycle means all that water will have little effect on aquifers across southern England.  The island nation remains in the grips of its worst drought since the Druids left town.

While droughts, floods and other extreme weather is nothing new in England or anywhere else on the planet, the severity of the new climate patterns is unprecedented. This means “never happened before” for all you FUX* News viewers.

The professional alarmists here in the climate controlled CatMap Editorial Board bunker are not going to report on every rainstorm and dry spell. However, the global weather patterns of the past decade (along with a few other problems) are astoundingly like the computer models generated by liberal climate scientists (no, we don’t mean Steve Goddard). We are observing cataclysmic record-breaking weather events across the globe every year.  Where would you like to go for a drought right now? Ethiopia? Amazon? Texas? Florida? West Africa? Southern Europe? Somalia? China? Chile? And (believe it or else) Greenland.

Some characterize this situation as the new “normal.” We call it the new “FUBAR.”

The Question Is: Does the Universal Jellyfish Mind like Nuclear Plants Or Hate Them

A huge swarm of salps – a type of jellyfish – has shut down the Unit 2 Reactor at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant by clogging its intake pipes with billions of kamikaze tunicates.  Diablo Canyon is the fifth nuclear plant to be closed by jellyfish onslaughts in the course of a year. The others were located in Israel, Florida and Scotland, so it’s hardly a localized issue.

We don’t know what this all means, but in the previous several decades of nuclear power generation, no plants were closed by jellyfish. So something is going on, but what?

One possibility is that the Jellyfish are trying to tell us something, like slimy, tentacled versions of RinTinTin. Do they disapprove of nuclear energy? Do they know that the Diablo Canyon nuke is situated 20 miles from the Rinconada Fault, 45 miles from the San Andreas fault and the Hosgri fault a couple miles away. It was built to withstand a 7.5 quake. The Fukiuhima quake was 7.9.

And if they do know it, how do they know it?

As your official Jellyfish Global Headquarters, CatMap will let you know the instance we hear more.

The Effects of The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill May Just Be Beginning

In a fashion similar to George Bush’s premature Mission Accomplished Banner, BP has declared the Deepwater Horizon oil spill all cleaned and the Gulf of Mexico back to normal. But a lot of people, including and especially scientists, aren’t buying it. As a BP engineer is arrested in what is expected to be a long process leading ever higher in the food chain, fishermen and marine scientists are reporting unexplained lesions, open sores and parasitic infections never seen before in such numbers. They are cautious about blaming the oil spill at this stage, but the fishermen say these have never seen this types of affliction. So hmmm. Might be a possibility.

While the researchers aren’t ready to blame to blame the massive oil spill without more evidence, there are some facts that would make inquisitive sorts such as those that make up the staff of the Editorial Board wonder. For example, recent tests results show the presence of oil in bile taken from fish caught last autumn in the Gulf. About the time the happy commercials begn to run. Red snapper and yellow edge grouper carried naphthalene in 125 parts per million. Fish caught in the open ocean have no naphthalene in their systems…at least for now.

Earthquakes Near Maine Border Could Mean the Beginning of the End Times. Or It Could be Something Else

McAdam is a small town in southwest New Brunswick, not far from the U.S. border. Apparently not a lot happens there normally, so the sudden arrival of earthquake swarms has got people talking. The swarm began with a 2.4 tremblor on March 10 and has kept up steadily with 35 total quakes in the five weeks since.

Scientists explain gravely that it’s an “earthquake swarm”, which regular visitors to CatMap already know. We have seen them in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, Youngstown, Wisconsin and England. In many instances, the authorities strongly suspect fracking injection wells and have even shut down sites in some states. But they have no explanation for the swarm in McAdam where nothing like this has ever happened before. Stay tuned.

It’s Mojo Nature’s Way of Telling You Something’s Wrong:

Visit Catmap : 25 Postcards From a Pissed Off Planet

Unlike the Book of Revelation, the Real End Times Are Going to Be Mundane. Right now, it’s all about rice.

Vietnamese Officials report that 38% of the Mekong Delta could be inundated** for more than half of each year as climate change continues apace.  According to deputy Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Dao Xuan Hoc, his department has concluded that the rising seas could cover 90% of the delta by 2020, adversely affecting the lives of the roughly 8.5 million people who will no longer live there.

The minister said that high tides threatening Ho Chi Min City and sea level encroachment in southern provinces could result in loss of 70% of the delta and the rice production form 2 million fertile hectares lost to the sea. As it stands, many long time rice farmers are changing over to shrimp farming, another environmentally catastrophic practice. Considering that Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter, American’s may be switching to Shrimp Krispies and Shrimp A Roni in the not too distant future.

Even though those picturesque rice paddies are full of water, there are two things that rice plants can’t tolerate. One is being completely submerged and the other is salt water. Gene researcher in the Philippines are hoping to create a new strain of rice that can tolerate weeks under water as well as salt water.  That’s a reasonable response to empirically observable data and we applaud the doomed effort. While at the same time asking: why can’t Republicans see these things?

Vague Reports About a Technical Incident

Total E&P Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of French oil major Total SA, is sort of reporting another gas leak incident in Nigeria. The Obite gas plant has been shut down as the company investigates a oil and gas “resurgence” and attempts to limit environmental damage.  The plant and area around it has been evacuated.

According to Total, the leak was first noticed on April 3 and was undoubtedly caused by a technical incident of March 20. “All necessary means to ensure the protection of nearby communities and personnel and to limit the impact on the environment have been immediately mobilized,” a Total spokesmodel said in a written statement. Good enough for us.

Total is one of a handful of oil companies  that have joined Royal Dutch Shell in destroying the Niger delta.

The French company has flown in Texans to stop a massive gas emissions event at one of its North Sea rigs. That one has been leaking since March 25. The company has issued daily reports about the North Sea disaster. The company has been reticent about the Nigerian disaster. When the technical incidents are fixed, you will be expected to forget they happened.

You forgot about the big Shell North Sea oil spill in August didn’t you? You didn’t even notice the new Gulf of Mexico oil slick between to Shell platforms (fairness note: Shell says it isn’t their spill). You probably still don’t know about the damaged Taylor Energy oil platform, which has been leaking crude into the Gulf since 2004.

Hey, how about that spectacular pipeline explosion in Azerbaijan two days ago.

By now, you should have already forgotten the six 2011 pipeline explosions in Pennsylvania and Ohio.  And you probably never hear about KinderMorgan’s endless succession of spills, such as this 100,000 gallon diesel spill in a California marshland.

** The land is subsiding because it has been screwed up by a hundred years of screwing with the Delta, and by sixty years of dredging and otherwise mucking up the wetlands by the highly subsidized oil industry.

**There must be a different word for a poison than popular.

***The farmers don’t own the seeds and they are not allowed to save seeds for next years planting. Just try it and see.