I just picked Tim Binnall’s podcast, Binnall of America, for the Best Paranormal Podcast of 2009.
Loren Coleman gets my vote for top paranormal researcher.
Both are on my list of Ten New England Esotericists to Watch in 2010.
From The Other Side of Truth, which hosts the Zorgy Awards (only a few days to go):
“Voting begins… now!
The polls will close on March 7, 2010, at 11 pm AST.
via The Other Side of Truth: The 2009 Zorgy Awards – Voting Begins.
Loren Coleman does an excellent today detailing the remaining available habitats for cryptids in Haiti (much has been lost to deforestation and desertification), and the the creatures themselves.
Chief among them is the Caribbean Crowing Snake:
Said to be four feet long, with a thick body, having a dull ochre color with dark spots, a pale red pyramidal crest like a rooster and scarlet wattles, one of its most unique features is that it crows like a rooster. Naturally, it eats chickens. The Caribbean Crowing Snake is reported from the eastern portion of Jamaica and Haiti.
Coleman also encourages donations to the earthquake-ravaged country.
via Cryptomundo » Cryptids of Haiti.
And for decades to come. (Yeah, it’s in the Daily Mail, but the scientists’ names in this piece do not appear to be made-up.)
Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago.
Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.
Don't worry. Be happy. Photo: Ville Miettinen/Flickr CC
Good news for 2010! We’re not all gonna die, just yet:
CO2 levels in the atmosphere, it turns out, have not changed since 1850, according to a recent report:
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
via Controversial new climate change data: Is Earth’s capacity to absorb CO2 much greater than expected.
All this, on top of the 2008 finding that global warming, well, ain’t happening.
This should ease Al Gore’s guilt, the next time he boards a private jet.
Stay tuned for the next decade’s bogeyman, as additional findings emerge in 2010 that further contradict the global warming panic of 2006-9.
Carbon footprint. Photo: Samantha Jade Royds/Flickr CC
In Copenhagen, where world leaders are slapping the “pollutant” label on any carbon-based life-form with a nervous system, the US signals its cooperation:
“Carbon pollution is putting our world—and our way of life—in peril,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in a keynote speech at the global conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark. “By restoring ecosystems and protecting certain areas from development, the U.S. can store more carbon in ways that enhance our stewardship of land and natural resources while reducing our contribution to global warming.”
via New science estimates carbon storage potential of US lands.
Truth is, the federal government is no good steward of the environment. (In fact, it is the nation’s #1 polluter.)
And the mineral exploitation of federally-managed lands, particularly split estates, threaten to spoil water supplies for cattle ranchers, farmers and homeowners who depend on well water for their very survival.
Think clean thoughts. Photo: Chad Miller/Flickr CC
I still drink more bottled water then makes sense anymore.
But this new report (link, excerpt, below) is not at all heartening, as it comes in the wake of many embarrassing stories about Massachusetts’ crappy municipal supplies.
See, the trouble is that even if MWRA is doing a good job providing clean water, Massachusetts’ towns have a knack for fouling-up the end product.
NOTE: MWRA reservoirs are well-protected and very few contaminants are ever found. During 2004 and early 2005, there were short-term high TTHM levels during a changeover in treatment. Since the change to ozone in July 2005, TTHM levels are now at all-time lows with averages of about 5-15 ppb.
Too much confusion. Waste at the Boston Farmer's Market. Photo: Morris K. Udall Foundation. Flickr/CC
Never mind that there is absolutely no shortage of landfill space, and recycling programs waste energy. Hingham residents who toss a beer can, here-and-there, into the wrong barrel, risk sanctions:
To minimize problems, the town has adopted a “three strikes and you are out’’ program. Residents who put recyclables in the trash get a “friendly letter’’ about the rules, said Sylvester. More problems result in a suspension of trash privileges until the resident speaks with a member of the staff and signs a statement saying he or she understands the rules. A third infraction means suspension for a year.
Here in Milton, we’ve been unable at times to get legitimate trash (with a $3 sticker affixed to it), picked-up. (Try calling the DPW in the a.m., and see who they’re really working for.)
Really, we should burn our trash. (Link via Alan Watt.)
The great author and New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean shows readers her own chickens, which she keeps on her property in the Hudson Valley.
The video (an accompaniment to her magazine piece this week), features Orlean’s Eglu chicken house, and a cool scale, which she uses to weigh-out her girls’ products–small, medium and large. (I’d always wondered how those got measured.)
Our buddy, the young cryptozoologist, B.T. Makishima, offers this Labor Day shot of Mr. and Mrs. Squatch cruising the interstate in upstate New York. (Credit for the photos goes to B.T.’s big sis.)
Now THIS is a Bigfoot sighting.
Mr. and Mrs. Sasquatch were just like the real thing, now you see them, now you don’t.
via Crypto-blog.
I don’t think so. But this blogger does:
Do something about the weather. Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.
via Uncensored Magazine | NY TIMES PROPAGANDISES CHEMTRAILS AS ‘CLIMATE ENGINEERING’.
