Tag: environment

Geoengineers Want Boeing 777s To Dump Sulfur Into The Sky, Risking Acid Rain Catastrophe: Study

Scientists are proposing to modify Boeing 777 aircraft to spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere in an attempt to cool the Earth in the name of debunked, so-called “climate change”—despite fully acknowledging the serious risk of acid rain and other environmental disasters.

A new study published today in Earth’s Future openly admits that this method, called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), would sharply increase dangerous side effects like acid rain because it requires “three times more” aerosol to achieve the same cooling effect compared to previous high-altitude schemes.

“However, this low‐altitude strategy requires three times more injection than high‐altitude SAI, and so would strongly increase side‐effects such as acid rain,” the study’s authors warn​.

Rather than developing new, specially-designed aircraft to reach the ideal 65,000 feet altitude, researchers from University College London and Yale now propose dumping sulfur at just 42,000 feet—within the existing capabilities of modified 777s​.

The ironic catch?

At lower altitudes, sulfur particles would rain out of the sky much faster—meaning a massive increase in the amount of pollutant dumped into the atmosphere.

Instead of solving anything, their plan could flood the atmosphere with even more toxic material, accelerating the very environmental destruction they claim to be fighting.

The study projects injecting 12 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide per year​—comparable to the volume released by the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which famously cooled the planet temporarily but also triggered severe acid rain​.

In fact, the researchers admit outright that this new strategy would mean “a proportionate increase in the side-effects of SAI per unit cooling, such as human exposure to descending particulate matter.”

The new proposal to retrofit Boeing 777s to spray sulfur mirrors the large-scale atmospheric modification that anti-geoengineering expert Jim Lee shows is already being carried out daily through commercial aviation’s sulfur-doped emissions.​

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Left Behind, Afghanistan Is Now An Environmental Hellhole

For over four decades, Afghanistan has been trapped in a relentless cycle of war and destruction.

While much of the world’s attention has focused on the political and security dimensions of this conflict, another crisis has unfolded — one that will haunt the country for generations. Afghanistan’s environment has suffered profound devastation, and the consequences for its people are dire.

From poisoned water sources to barren lands, the natural world has become another casualty of war, with the most vulnerable communities bearing the brunt of this catastrophe.

Every war in Afghanistan’s modern history has left an ecological footprint that will endure long after the last bullets have been fired. The use of depleted uranium munitions has left behind radioactive waste. The destruction of irrigation networks has crippled agriculture. Rising respiratory diseases and cancer rates, linked to exposure to hazardous materials, are only beginning to be understood.

Even back in 2017, reports indicated that many Afghans increasingly viewed toxic pollution as a graver threatthan the Taliban. And, all warring parties bear responsibility for this destruction.

According to Richard Bennett, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, environmental degradation caused by war is a human rights issue that has been largely ignored. He argues that it must take center stage, as its implications are vast. Bennett is advocating for mechanisms to explore transitional justice, including possible reparations for the environmental impact on affected communities.

“The water, soil and air of Afghanistan are polluted due to decades of explosive substances that have not been cleaned up, affecting public health, particularly child health. All parties to the conflict are responsible,” he said. “While we have only scratched the surface, scientific research on the impact is starting to emerge.”

Leading these research efforts at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, Afghan scholar Dr. Haroun Rahimi is working alongside Bennett and U.N. Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights, Dr. Marcos Orellana, who is compiling a report for the U.N. General Assembly on the impact on populations of toxics after military interventions. In February, they co-hosted a webinar with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington D.C., aiming to push the crisis to the forefront of global discourse on Afghanistan.

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War Dust and Collateral Inhalation: Israel Breathes in Gaza’s Dust

Over 100,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on Gaza, an area slightly smaller than the City of Detroit, Michigan, resulting in the recorded deaths of at least 60,000 Gazans and injuries to hundreds of thousands.

It is impossible to overstate the effects of the abominable bombing war on Gazans, their lives, their families, their health, and their communities.

What has escaped attention up until now is the undeniable environmental and health effects of the bombing of Gazans on Israelis, as well as on citizens of neighboring states, and the potential harm to U.S. military personnel in the region.

A review of explosion physics based on declassified Department of Defense data, as well as blast temperature data and consequent emissions; a review of wind patterns, together with publicly available data of health effects from 9/11, as well as data gathered from U.S. veterans of the Persian Gulf War, yield a shocking conclusion.

Israel, in executing the unprecedented bombing attack on Gaza, is, in effect, bombing itself, with grave consequences for the public health of its people. What is being visited upon Gaza does not stay in Gaza.

The sustained bombing of Gaza pulverizes stone, heavy metals, and the human body. The vaporizing of human beings under extreme heat and pressure combines with dust, water vapor, and metallic particles the size of microns, all blasted upwards, aerosolized, wind-driven across borders, into Israel and surrounding countries.

The unlimited bombing of Gaza has created an unparalleled ecological and biomedical feedback loop. Israel exhales death in Gaza and inhales the Gaza it has vaporized.

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EPA Chief Visits San Diego, Calls for Urgent Action on Border Sewage Crisis

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin visited San Diego April 22, aiming for collaborative solutions and actions to end the Tijuana River sewage crisis.

The visit “is very important for us to make sure that we aren’t just seeing and hearing firsthand on the ground in Southern California,” Zelding said at the press conference, “but ensuring that the path forward is one of max collaboration and extreme urgency to end a crisis that should have ended a long time ago.”

Zeldin said his counterpart, the Mexican environmental secretary Alicia Bárcena, had conveyed in their meeting the evening of April 21, the willingness of the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to “have a strong collaborative relationship” with the United States, “to finally solve the issue.”

The Tijuana River pollution has been ongoing for decades, but the crisis has worsened in recent years due to Tijuana’s rapidly growing population and the deterioration of its water treatment infrastructure.

Officials said that over the past five years, more than 100 billion gallons of sewage water have been discharged into the Tijuana River, which flows to the U.S. side and enters the Pacific Ocean, causing air odors, health concerns, and beach closures.

Amidst this, the Department of Defense inspector general found that some Navy SEAL candidates became ill while training in sewage-contaminated ocean water in San Diego’s South Bay.

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Montana Senate Approves Bill To Shift Marijuana Revenue From Conservation Programs To Police And Addiction Treatment

The Montana Senate on Thursday advanced a measure to change what programs receive more than $60 million in funding from recreational marijuana tax revenue.

Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, is carrying Senate Bill 307 to shift marijuana tax revenue away from Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks programs, and bolster marijuana prevention and enforcement operations.

McGillvray framed the bill as a “simple” policy choice, and asked legislators whether they care more about children and those impacted by marijuana, or wildlife habitat.

“I would submit to you that the deer, the elk, the ducks, the geese are all doing pretty good in Montana,” McGillvray said, adding that FWP has “buckets” of money they could spend.

“I’m asking [us] to prioritize the babies, the moms, the teenagers, the children, the adults that are addicted to this and need a way out,” he said.

But opponents said that the funding was allocated for FWP programs for a reason, and that if the Legislature wants to address prevention efforts, they should tackle that separately.

Sen. Sara Novak, D-Anaconda, served on the Business and Labor Committee during the 2021 session, when recreational marijuana was legalized with support from conservation groups counting on some of the revenue.

“We worked very hard on a big piece of legislation that put all the guiderails around the legalization of marijuana, and it included the allocation of revenue sources,” Novak said. “I do wholeheartedly think we need to take a hard look at prevention, education, treatment, the crime that goes along with all of that and the whole trickle effect, I just don’t think that this bill is the way to go about doing that.”

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The Tesla attacks are proof that the left is turning on itself in orgy of liberal cannibalism

Climate crusaders, those sanctimonious shepherds of the earth, are trading their pious protests for outright carnage as attacks against Tesla vehicles ripple across the country — an orgy of liberal cannibalism that’s as predictable as a vegan toting along his own tofu to a barbecue. 

But setting EVs on fire isn’t the only banner of hypocrisy unfurled lately by eco-warriors — whose extremist ideologies increasingly collide with the real world to reveal their ironic outcomes.

This month, officials in the Brazilian city of Belém paved over tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest and wetland to build a four-lane, eight-mile-long highway necessary to accommodate the roughly 50,000 climate activists who will descend on the city in November for the UN’s COP30 climate summit. 

That’s not all the jet-setting eco zealots will require: The local airport is doubling its capacity, to 14 million passengers; the seaport is being redeveloped to accommodate cruise ships; a 5.3 million square foot sports and entertainment complex is under construction; and a row of hotels is going up along the new “sustainable highway,” as local authorities dub the project.

Across the world, the UK government is moving ahead on plans to bulldoze 4,000 acres of pristine countryside in Dereham and Swaffham to install a solar panel farm, one of several new solar farms under consideration in the gray, rainy little island nation.

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Sen Sheldon Whitehouse accused of conflict of interest after he funnels taxpayer funds to his wife’s environmental group

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) has urged the Senate Select Subcommittee on Ethics to investigate Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) over the granting of millions of dollars in government grants to an advocacy group that Sandra Whitehouse, the senator’s wife, works at. 

FACT Executive Director Kendra Arnold wrote in a letter to select committee Chair James Lankford and Vice Chair Christopher Coons that Sandra Whitehouse has worked for Ocean Conservancy since 2008, with the group paying her through her consulting firm Ocean Wonks LLC since 2017, and paying her directly before that. Since Whitehouse began with the group in 2008, Ocean Conservancy has been awarded 19 government grants worth around $14.2 million, with around half of this reportedly being given to the group in the fall of 2024 alone, “all of which Senator Whitehouse directly voted for.”

“In September 2024, Ocean Conservancy received a $5.2 million federal grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for marine debris cleanup. This grant was funded by the Biden Administration’s ‘Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,’ a bill Sheldon Whitehouse supported and voted for,” Arnold wrote. “In December 2024, Ocean Conservancy also received $1.7 million in federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assist with marine debris cleanup. The grant was funded as part of the EPA’s annual appropriations bill, which Sen. Whitehouse also voted for.”

The group said that “While these two grants alone appear to be a conflict of interest, it is even more egregious in the context of Senator Whitehouse’s long history of working on legislation being lobbied for by organizations tied to his wife.”

Ocean Conservancy, Arnold wrote, has spent “millions on federal lobbying expenses over the years on issues relating to oceans, climate change, and environmental cleanup—issues directly championed by Senator Whitehouse, a longtime member (and current Ranking Member) of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and the co-founder of the Senate’s so-called ‘Oceans Caucus.'”

“For instance, Ocean Conservancy urged Congress to pass the International Maritime Pollution Accountability Act—legislation first introduced by Senator Whitehouse in 2023. Ocean Conservancy also advocated and secured billions in funding for coastal restoration projects in the Inflation Reduction Act. Senator Whitehouse not only voted for that legislation, but touted $3 billion in grant funding for ports and coastal restoration among the ‘Whitehouse-backed measures in the bill.’ In addition to Ocean Conservancy, Sandra Whitehouse has been paid by other organizations that have lobbied the Senate on legislation connected to her husband and received government contracts or federal funds,” the letter stated.

The group stated that “Senator Whitehouse directly voted for legislation that recently led to $6.9 million of taxpayer funds being paid to an organization for which his wife works and receives an income from. This circular relationship appears to be directly contrary to the Senate rules that broadly prohibit Senators from using the power of their office to benefit or appear to benefit themselves or their spouses.”

“As the Ethics Committee has stated: ‘Senators must closely guard against even the appearance that their families or friends are entitled to use [the Senator’s] resources and power for their own personal gain.’ Additionally, even if Senator Whitehouse believes the federal funds are going to a worthy cause, ‘the fact that a cause is worthy does not negate the duty to ensure compliance with ethical standards.’ This is exactly the type of case that citizens view as a conflict of interest and leads to the public’s mistrust in Congress. We request the Senate Ethics Committee conduct a full investigation into Senator Whitehouse’s actions that, at a minimum, have created an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

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‘Recycling’ Makes Plastic Pollution Worse

If you’re like many people, you’ve always thought a numbered-triangle symbol on the bottom of a plastic container tells you it’s recyclable—giving you peace of mind that when you toss it into a blue bin, it will be turned into something else.

That’s not true. Those symbols are Resin Identification Codes (RICs). Numbered 1 through 7, they only identify the kind of plastic an item is made of. Far from giving a sweeping assurance that RIC-stamped items are recyclable, the symbol frequently indicates a particular item absolutely cannot be recycled.

Reluctant to burden citizens with figuring out which plastics are recyclable—a chore that could dampen participation and cause confusion as recyclability of various plastics changes over time—many municipal recycling programs simply encourage people to toss all their RIC-stamped plastics in the bin and let the recyclers sort it out.

Which ones do recyclers actually want? The most-recycled plastic in America is stamped with a “1,” identifying the item as polyethylene terephthalate (PET). You’ll find it on beverage bottles, cooking oil containers, and many other liquid-containing bottles. A “2” tells you it’s high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Another generally recycling-suitable plastic, it’s used for milk jugs and laundry detergent jugs, and spray-cleaner bottles.

It’s all downhill from there. Chances are your bin has plenty of #5—polypropylene (PP)—which is frequently used for single-serve coffee-maker pods; yogurt, butter, prescription pill and soft tofu containers; and the lids on paperboard raisin cartons. Unfortunately, while there’s been a modest recent uptick in recyclers’ interest, polypropylene generally isn’t being recycled in the United States.

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Treasure Hunt Fail: Judge Ends Man’s Decade-Long Quest for $750 Million Bitcoin Fortune

A decade-long legal battle over a lost Bitcoin fortune has ended in disappointment for James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales, after a court dismissed his lawsuit against the Newport City Council. The man hoped to search a landfill for a hard drive he accidentally threw away more than a decade ago holding Bitcoin now worth $750 million.

Crypto News reports that James Howells, an early Bitcoin adopter from Newport, Wales, in the UK has faced a major setback in his quest to retrieve a discarded hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins, now valued at about $750 million. The IT engineer accidentally threw away the hard drive in 2013 when Bitcoin had negligible value. However, as the cryptocurrency rapidly increased in value, Howells sought the right to excavate the landfill to recover the hard drive, offering to share the treasure with the local community. Now that Bitcoin has achieved the astronomical value of $94,000, Howells demanded £495 million in compensation from the Newport City Council if it continued to block his search.

Despite Howells’ offer to share a portion of the recovered Bitcoin with the council and the local community, Judge Keyser KC ruled that there were no “reasonable grounds” for the claim. The decision was based on environmental concerns and the council’s ownership of the landfill contents. The landfill reportedly holds 1.4 million tons of waste, although Howells claims to have pinpointed the hard drive’s location to a 100,000-ton section.

Reacting to the ruling, Howells expressed his frustration, calling it a “kick in the teeth.” He had assembled a team of experts for the recovery effort and engaged in repeated negotiations with the council, but the local authority maintained that excavation was impossible due to environmental regulations.

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Officials Issue Warning After Oddly Colored Snow Falls on Town: ‘Avoid Ingesting or Direct Skin Contact’

The picturesque sight of snow blanketing a Maine town became something far less attractive.

On Tuesday, residents of Rumford found that instead of fluffy white stuff covering yards and fields, they looked upon brown snow, according to WJW-TV

The town posted an explanation on Facebook, saying the local paper mill was to blame.

“The Town has confirmed that due to a malfunction at the Mill there was a release of spent black liquor which resulted in precipitation of brown or tan colored snow. This is mostly in the areas of Town nearest to the Mill,” it posted.

The post said the snow should be left alone.

“The pH of this substance is 10 which is alkali and therefore a skin irritant. Although it is non-toxic it should not be touched or otherwise put in contact with skin,” the post said.

“We have been in contact with the Mill and they have already rectified the issue and have informed their regulators. In the meantime we are also notifying the school district to let kids know not to play with ‘brown snow,’” the post said.

“It is likely advisable to keep your pets away from this snow. We are hopeful the rain tomorrow will wash most of the substance away and flush it off the ground and people’s homes or property,” the post said.

The post said that Maine Department of Environmental Protection tests showed the pH of the snow was around 8, compared to water, which has a pH of 7.

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