Fukushima Daiichi hot particles

SUBHEAD: Evidence of the continuing health risks of Fukushima Daiichi radiation to Japan's children.

By Oyama Koichi on 24 May 2014 at Minamisoma City Council -
(http://enenews.com/official-in-fukushima-please-please-help-us-hot-particles-of-melted-fuel-are-inhaled-by-children-everyday-we-are-forced-to-have-it-in-our-bodies-please-let-all-people-in-the-world-kno)


Image above: With their faces covered by masks, these children are restricted to indoor activities at Fukushima city's youth center gymnasium. From (http://www.smh.com.au/world/invisible-threat-hangs-over-people-of-fukushima-20120310-1ur56.html).


Publisher's note: Original text from Original text from Blog of Koichi Oyama in Minamisoma City : http://linkis.com/mak55.exblog.jp/t7Uv6

The cause substance have been found.

This is an aggregate of radionuclides which starts with Uranium.

It was made in the blast furnace of a nuclear reactor at more than 5000°C.

This mixed metal contains four different substances, α・β・γ and also have the possibility to radiate neutron ray.

No creature on earth never knew this substance.

We are forced to have those strong substances inside our body without knowing where it exactly stays.

To say that "Cesium has got the same system as potassium and it will be discharged from the body" is just a lie!

The body can't recognize 5% of cesium and other complex substances (mixed metal) so i doubt that our body could badly react.

And this fact can open the closed door of global fallout of nuclear experiences in the 60's and also the hidden history of hot particles contamination of the world.

It also shows the wrong way used by leaders and their methods about the fact of death ash after Hisroshima and Nagasaki.

The conclusion is that anyone who doesn't show the facts about the substance of cause is our enemy.

We are all manipulated by the words "radiation" and "radiation doze" without knowing the real identity of radiation source.

We are not told the real facts of being irradiated and they force us to believe that it's just pure metal and they let us believe in "behavior and extracorporeal elimination" and force us to believe in the myth of security.

On top of all that, they only compare radiation doze and natural potassium contained in bananas and manipulated people as if it was a scientific study.

I really want the scholars patronized by the government to be punished by the rancorous of all children on this earth.

The usual practice of misleading people is to create setters and contractors in many layers.
They let people believe that they are normal person and people who listen to them start to believe them. They are making fans and they lead people distinctly as a result.
They are always avoiding the issue.

The issue is hold in the hands of enemies and when people know the issue, the energy makes a conciliatory move and took them to neutralize the attack of public opinions.

The guilt of global fallout is the corruption of concession groups of the nuclear industry and medical and insurance companies.

They made cancer to increase in a dramatic way and Japan as a nation that was victim of atomic bombs in the world which have medical history of contamination but they don't let us know the substances of death ash in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And there's more. They were manipulating us from the beginning of the accident by telling us that "95% of the contamination comes from food, 4% from water, only 1 % from aspiration".

An adult person aspirates 20m3 of air per day and in weight it's 20kg.
We take food and water much less than that.
The lung takes varied chemical substances as it takes oxygen from air.

The hot particle size is all １μm.
It's really small so it goes into the blood and into the body. Then the organs take them .
The size of mesh hole of the filter to incinerate debris is also １μm.
The informations say that hot particles were diffused and flied in all directions in Japan.

The particles from hell is flying in the air and people don't protect themselves anymore three years after the nuclear accident and children are aspirating those horrible particles everyday!!!


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP US!
Please let all people in the world to know the life we are living since the accident, everyday and today.

Spreading the radioactive debris and decontamination that doesn't work is only increasing the number of HIBAKUSHAS without good reason.

REFERENCES:

Emission of spherical cesium-bearing particles from an early stage of the Fukushima nuclear accident
Kouji Adachi,Mizuo Kajino,Yuji Zaizen& Yasuhito Igarashi http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130830/srep02554/full/srep02554.html

Important References from Nuclear power is a child of atomic bombs's Blog http://besobernow-yuima.blogspot.jp/2014/05/nature.html 

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3. Masson, O. et al. Tracking of airborne radionuclides from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactors by European networks. Environ Sci. Technol. 45, 7670–7677 (2011).

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4. Takemura, T. et al. A numerical simulation of global transport of atmospheric particles emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Sola 7, 101–104 (2011).

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12. Morino, Y., Ohara, T. & Nishizawa, M. Atmospheric behavior, deposition, and budget of radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011.Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, GL048689 (2011).

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Ugly path for Oahu Rail

SUBHEAD: Plans for past and future railroads on Oahu cuts out community in favor of DOT and HECO.

By John Bond on 30 May 2014 for Kanehili Cultural Hui -
(http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/9801/New-AIS-Testimony-Rail-Route-Illegally-Damages-Hawaiian-Cultural-Properties.aspx)


Image above: Rendering of the projected Honolulu Rail station at King and University by an unnamed architect. From (http://www.honolulutraffic.com/enviro1.htm).

Numerous groups and organizations submitted comments and testimony on the 22 mile Honolulu Rail Archaeological Impact Statement (AIS) to the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) to meet the May 30th Deadline. The new AIS comment period had been extended because of last year's Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that the rail AIS cannot be done in phases or segments.

The previous 2009 AIS omitted a great deal of valid cultural information, many groups were not consulted, and data was skewed to fit a 'rush-to-begin-building-the-rail' agenda, rather than any attempt at honest historic and cultural preservation. The law finally caught up with them.

In his ruling, Federal Judge Wallace Tashima made a special point of noting his concern about the identification of Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) along the HART rail route. It was later made clear in recent HART meetings that TCP's include all cultures, not just native Hawaiian, as per federal law.

HART is required to also adhere to Department of Transportation Act of 1966 special provision - Section 4(f) - which stipulates that US DOT agencies-including the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), cannot approve the use of land from wildlife and waterfowl refuges or public or private historical sites unless both of the following conditions apply:

• There is no feasible and prudent alternative.
• The action includes all possible planning to minimize harm to the property resulting from use.

Hawaiian Cultural Practitioner Mike Lee, along with Hawaii Thousand Friends, submitted approximately 800 pages of detailed comment and testimony on the the HART Rail AIS covering the entire 22 mile route. This package included maps, photographs, emails with many agencies (HART, SHPD, DLNR, BLNR, Oahu Burial Council, HCDA, etc.) that go back nearly a decade, as well as news articles, historic research and citations, legal documents and filings, native Hawaiian rights, the Clean Water Act, and much more.

A key issue for Lee is the identification of the ancient coral reef limestone along the Oahu shoreline known as Karst, which connects volcanic mountain lava tube water to the shoreline Karst reef water systems. These water springs feed a shoreline ecosystem and was how ancient Hawaiians managed their fish ponds. The Karst was also of very high spiritual importance to ancient Hawaiians and used for sacred burials, such as downtown Honolulu on the grounds of I'olani Palace where there is an ancient Karst burial cave.

"I wanted them to know that I wasn't just making this up ten minutes ago" said Lee. "I am a Konohikist- I believe in the ecological management and protection of our very important natural island water systems. Protecting our Wahi Kapu sites is also very important to me."

Lee's testimony concerns identification and protection of important Hawaiian cultural sites along the rail route, including wahi pana (sacred sites) and wahi kapu (sacred burial areas) and their inclusion into a TCP (Traditional Cultural Properties) that would make sure these special sites, caves, caverns, springs, ponds and water systems are preserved and not contaminated during rail construction.

Also included were photographs of Kawaiaha'o Church which is a graphic example of early Karst limestone block construction. The church and surrounding walls are made of rough ancient reef from the shoreline and ancient sea shells and marine organisms can be clearly seen. The church is also located on the site of an important ancient Karst spring. Nearby I'olani Palace and the royal guard barracks are also constructed from Karst limestone blocks from the shoreline.

In addition, Kanehili Cultural Hui also submitted another approximately 250 pages of detailed comment and testimony on the the HART Rail AIS- primarily concerned with the Honouliuli-Ewa area and the documentation of previously unidentified Traditional Cultural Properties (TCP), Ewa Historic Districts, Ewa Dec 7, 1941 Battlefield Area and an outline for a Honouliuli-Ewa Cultural Landscape Report.

Many current or former Ewa Village residents helped by supplying historic documents, maps, photos and oral histories. The Kanehili Hui name comes from the original Hawaiian name for the Honouliuli-Ewa area and is mentioned by Hawaiian goddess Hi'iaka in her famous and often quoted chants when she traveled through the Ewa Plains area aprroximately 1000 years ago.

The Kanehili Cultural Hui 501-c-3 non-profit community organization is concerned with the entire cultural history of the area- from ancient times to modern times.

A key focus of the Kanehili Cultural Hui report and testimony was on the 1825 Malden Trails (ancient Hawaiian Trails- believed to have possibly been originally constructed by very early Tahitian arrivals to Kanehili) which played a major role in the Hawaiian cultural history of the Honouliuli-Ewa area, and which was entirely left out of the HART Rail AIS.

The fixed guideway and stations directly overlay the 1825 trails as well as the Kalo'i Karst waterway that flows to the Ewa shoreline.

Also of major importance is the identification and location of the Leina a ka Uhane, a sacred spiritual leaping off place for souls returning to the ancient homeland of Tahiti. This is a National Register eligible TCP, yet HART and the SHPD administrator has continuously tried to minimize the importance and geographic area of this TCP as well as apparently intentionally misidentify its location, despite the error being brought to their attention several times since last year.

The previous Rail AIS also failed in many ways to adequately document important Honouliuli-Ewa cultural sites such as the greater Ewa Plantation and railway network that was the largest private railway in Hawaii. The Oahu Railway that served Honouliuli-Ewa plantation railway was chartered under King David Kalakaua.

A Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) is the primary report that documents the history, significance and treatment of a cultural landscape. A CLR evaluates the history and integrity of the landscape including any changes to its geographical context, features, materials,and use.

---

HCDA ignores Community
SUBHEAD: Kalaeloa HCDA project in Ewa is 100% Developer Driven and 0% Community Oriented.

By John Bond on 30 May 2014 for Kanehili Cultural Hui - 
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2014/05/ugly-path-for-oahu-rail.html) 


Image above: The Hawaiian Rail Society operates the only railroad museum on Oahu in  Ewa. From (http://www.honolulutraffic.com/enviro1.htm).

So the Hawaii Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA) runs away from promised local community briefing. Too much explaining to do having missed so MANY neighborhood boards meetings!

National Register Hawaiian sites and Ewa Battlefield IMPACTED by HCDA-HECO industrial power line without any community involvement or Environmental Assessment comments (by design of course).

Prison is against HCDA Master Plan. Power line is against Kalaleoa Master Plan, City Design rules, historic Hawaiian Railway faces decimation.

HCDA almost never tell the boards ANYTHING until the community hears about it as a done deal in the news. Local political reps have no idea what is really going on but love touting big local CIP projects in news letters...

State Highway will destroy historic Hawaiian Railway operations. Feds say it cannot be built as planned, but HCDA, State Reps, DOT and City Reps remain intentionally clueless and DEAF. None of them want to know what the local community thinks- just hand out newsletters and leave.

Usual HCDA tactics to not tell the community what is going on and avoiding the community neighborhood board process to break Federal NRHP and NEPA law for insider HCDA developers. Only option are LAWSUITS? Who cares, tax-payers pay for them ANYWAY!

$15 Million North South Road being rammed through by HCDA and State DOT despite opposition by Hawaiian Railway Society. Local reps remain completely confused and clueless about the important issues involved.(Their only role are photo ops and handing out community certificates?)

Local reps are completely confused about what Environmental Assessment and Power Line HCDA is actually paying HECO to put in (and WHY). They keep referring to 2011 project because HCDA has never told anyone about the 2014 project that has been kept SECRET (unless you know where to look) to prevent community comments. (HCDA only wants DEVELOPER comments...)

Important Hawaiian sites being bulldozed for HCDA PV farm but all is hushed up...This is the Wild West Oahu where historic, cultural and environmental laws don't apply...


.

Global Warming vs Natural Future

SUBHEAD:  Is it a time of action, resignation, or celebration? Is nature something desirable over the allure of shopping?

By Jan Lundgren on 8 May 2014 for Culture Change -
(http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/910/1/)


Image above: Redwood National Park, northern California. From original article.

Are we the last generation of humans, as claimed by speaker and writer Guy McPherson?

So-called balance is exercised by the some corporate news media, catering mainly to science skeptics, to allow denial of human-generated global-warming. But there is a true balance to be met: while the progressive, science-minded alternative press does not reflect total gloom and doom, critics see this as denial of our near-term extinction.

Balance in coverage must be between predicting near-term extinction from multiple climate forcings versus science-based consideration of separate, known factors in global warming that even together do not indicate runaway greenhouse effects beyond the IPCC's worst case.

This reporter does not subscribe to either view with confidence, due to uncertainties laymen should have, and due to a glimmer of hope that the Earth's complexity may leave more wiggle room than we perhaps deserve. It turns out that a hopeful stance may deserve more weight, according to a solution offered in this report. It is based on application of biology, soil science and collective potential for society.

 In contrast, the rapidly spreading doom & gloom position appears to be devoid of these considerations, and may be less scientific than many assume. However, this does not detract from the fact that there is no time to lose.

How bad is it?
The White House released on May 6 the National Climate Assessment. The scientist team advised,

- If greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to escalate at a rapid pace, the warming could conceivably exceed 10 degrees by the end of this century. [This spells no human life - ed.]
- “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.”

Despite the increasingly obvious climate reality, the White House supports continued fossil fuels dependency for economic growth-at-any-cost.

With much more global-warming climate forcing "in the pipeline," double meaning intended, hopes for a long-term future for humanity have been fading noticeably in the last couple of years. The almost 1c-degree increase since the Industrial Revolution has been measured based on emissions up to 40 years ago only.

No greenhouse gas emissions have yet kicked in temperature-wise from post-1974 emissions. Few people are aware of, or they forget about, climate-change lag.[1]

A safety valve has served to postpone terrestrial temperatures, largely accounting for the above-mentioned decades' delay: ocean sequestration, whose limit has perhaps been now maximized.

Besides temperature readings, evidence is manifested in rapid, recent CO2-caused acidification of the oceans that prevents organisms' calcium growth at the base of the food chain. Yet, "Ocean acidification leads to release of less dimethyl sulphide (DMS) by plankton. DMS shields Earth from radiation."[2] That the living world is more complex than anyone can grasp should be consensus. Yet much is known that indicates the need for urgent action.

An ice-free Arctic Ocean can be a major tipping point for the global climate, and is expected to hit in perhaps a few short years. Methane spewing out of Arctic regions is just beginning, but the process and meaning are not entirely clear for climate model certainty. Other climate forcings include feedback loops such as sea-level rise on land vegetation and loss of the abledo effect[3] from reflective ice.

All considering, we would appear to have more than a bleak outlook for a benign natural world for humans. If we also consider also the effect from eventual collapse of the fossil-fueled corporate economy now providing ongoing global dimming[4] which when it ceases will up global temperature average suddenly by another 1c, the result would be -- considering the other forcings -- an unimaginable and much less inhabitable Earth. It already is so, for innumerable species, as this period of the planet's history is seeing the sixth major mass extinction.

Humans have never lived during an ice-free Arctic, let alone a 3.5c-degree increase on the way before the end of the century if a turnaround is not somehow brought about. With climate and weather disruption interfering much more in crop production, unprecedented famine is the outlook among those who accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet, many believe the IPCC puts forth misleading optimism for very limited global temperature rise in a longer-than-reasonable time frame.

A two-degree centigrade average increase in several decades as a top-out goal is believed by more and more students of climate change to be too optimistic, derided as part of conservative climate modeling. For it excludes some climate wild-cards disturbing to many scientists.

If climate forcings are in play as much as many fear, it may be eventually be widely acknowledged that our failure to end most industrial emissions in the late 1960s, with its back-to-the-land & consciousness revolution, was our undoing -- when we consider the subsequent added emissions that dwarfed all the previous industrial emissions and deforestation. The Population Bomb went off unheeded and is still exploding -- seldom mentioned in any press.

Albert Bates and Biochar
However -- yes, there's a "however" of quantifiable optimism -- one man's proposal based on calculations offers hope. Albert Bates is an author, Permaculture teacher and veteran of the 1970s appropriate technology movement.

In his 2010 book The Biochar Solution he calculated that if everyone in the world planted one tree per day, in a matter of months the excess CO2 from the atmosphere would be removed and put back into the ground.[5] Bates told Culture Change on May 1, 2014, "If there is a glimmer of hope, it lies in soil and what we can do to assist accelerated photosynthesis."

Before delving further into hopeful and positive solutions for putting the brakes on global warming, featuring alternatives to lethal industrialism, let us consider that reports of our demise by mid century may be subject to bias or confusion. Examples from the climate science community include

"The latest IPCC and NAS (National Academies of Science) assessment reports, in fact, deemed such a [methane bubble] release 'very unlikely' this century. One reason for that is that the Arctic has been this warm or warmer a couple times in the last 200,000 years, yet that methane stayed in the ground."

[6] And, according to Michael Tobis, who holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and whose blog makes clear he is no friend of runaway industrialism nor an apologist of deforestation, "the biosphere as a whole is still a carbon sink, not a source." [6 again]

Worse or Worser
Climate scientists are collectively accused of both alarming the public and holding back on the nitty gritty of near-term gloom. The prospects of predictable, slower warming with devastating consequences, without human extinction, versus out-of-control warming, mass starvation and complete collapse along with our extinction within a few decades, are worth exploring for oneself.

One can seize upon one sudden extreme aberration in weather patterns, confirmed by old timers' memories, as enough evidence to push one over to resignation and the most dire expectations. But however valid any piece of input or collection of news headlines is for our emotions and fearful imagination, personal confirmation about climate change should not blind us to remaining open to a systems approach to anticipating the actual potential global warming in store.

Nor should gut assessments or a series of scary climate-related headlines set in stone an idea of a terminal predicament that would preclude consideration of ameliorating successfully the known climate trends.

Some dedicated, dug-in environmentalists specializing in peak oil and "Transition" don't buy into extinction of the human species. In the Postcarbon Institute's latest newsletter, Senior Fellow and Board officer Richard Heinberg writes in his column The Anthropocene: It’s Not All About Us,

"[F]uture geologists will be able to spot a fundamental discontinuity in the rock strata that document our little slice of time in Earth’s multi-billion year pageant. This discontinuity will be traceable to the results of human presence. Think climate change, ocean acidification, and mass extinction... the deepest insight of the Anthropocene will probably be a very simple one: we live in a world of millions of interdependent species with which we have co-evolved. We sunder this web of life at our peril."[7]

It's as if we have a future of thousands more years!  

The only denialism
The essential denial today is not about anthropogenic climate change, but rather that life is sacred. For the fossil-fueled death sentence to be carried out requires denial that the Earth is sacred. No amount of information or logic can sway a person or a society in such denial. Addressing mass psychosis driving Western Civilization appears to be the impossible challenge, so that sad events and changes to the Earth, along with a positive alternative vision, will have to be what brings about a culture change.

Then we will no longer be fighting ourselves nor fighting nature, and restoration will prevail at least in terms of effort. To help get there, many believe, we make changes because we see something potentially better for ourselves, not because we are driven from fear.

The hope for geo-engineering our way out of becoming toast is related to the industrial mindset of accepting more global warming without altering course, because adaptation is attractive. The hope there is for continued material wealth generation and the joys of consuming. This is not to say adaptation is wrong; it will be essential, for example as sea levels rise and species try to migrate to the poles.

Letting geo-engineering and adaptation be subjects for future columns and debates is this reporter's policy, because immediate approaches to minimize future warming give more bang for the buck and are the more ethical course.

Past years' Culture Change columns have highlighted tools for sustainability and models of sustainability. Even though we 1990s road-fighters and depavers didn't see our campaigns catch on like wildfire, nor saw our wider network's efforts make great strides with their urban gardening and eco-villages, we were happy to embrace these and other approaches. Why? Doing them made us feel good, but mainly they were essential to establish blueprints or historical examples for post-collapse society.

We could not quite generate society-wide discussion, planning or support for sensible survival strategies that, if applied en masse, would save people money, improve local economic self-reliance, provide solidarity and conviviality, and spread practical skills for living closer to nature, without car-dependence, plastics profusion in the home or reliance on long-distance, corporate food.

Yet, some features of a sustainable society still rose to the surface and are spreading today, such as farmers markets. And there is palpable excitement for sail transport to expand almost infinitely.

Dead end of both technology and cheap petroleum
The Age of Information has astounded and overwhelmed almost everyone who saw the rapid transition to digital technology and telecom networks. The less attractive byproducts -- that may principally stem from competing for diminishing job security -- have hit almost everyone pretty hard: stress, loss of leisure time and electronic screen-addiction.

 A related consequence of unquestioned technology proliferation has been more social control: people with cell phones are in a fashion in a cell, paralleling the rising imprisonment trend in the U.S. Mass surveillance is another consequence.

The more technological manipulation there is, especially when centralized and combined with billions of dollars of capital, undomesticated human freedom is endangered. We have run from Mother Nature, so, as Neil Young sang four and a half decades ago, we have "Mother Nature on the run." The biggest issue with the Age of Information is that no Age of Wisdom can get onto the horizon. We are distracted by clutter, speed and glitz made desirable by advertising for the herd.

The pervasive, complex systems happen to rely on petroleum today, just as the steel and brick industrial monolith of decades ago was built thanks to cheap oil. The growing subsidy to petroleum and unaccounted "externalities" from energy extraction cannot continue for long. Complex systems and corporate hierarchies are not only vulnerable to disruption and chaos from financial meltdown, social unrest or oil-supply crisis; they are inherently suspect and unnatural.

 If you don't believe it, why are they enforced, often brutally, and claimed to be the only way to live and work?

 It is established that mutual cooperation is more efficient than competition, and rested, healthy people work better than sick, stressed people. But the industrial system of technological control over humans and nature, for short-term gain, is sacred to the status quo's business-as-usual "ethic."

There cannot be very rich people without very poor masses of people. Relatedly, there can be no isolated manipulation-of-nature adaptation to global warming and climate change for the long haul, without giving up on nature and human potential. We have to all work together, with nature.

This is why a natural future is inevitable, assuming a few key changes that are as simple as they are challenging. Our preferences for, or alternatively fears of, overdue changes may be consistent with a natural future featuring humanity.

Simplicity and decentralization are countertrends strengthening today, and can appear most attractive and easiest to succeed with. At the rate U.S. society and others failing to thrive are struggling, the anti-nature control-mentality is letting everyone down and appears to be spinning society out of control.

An article in Culture Change in 2011 offered a list of strategies and skills for proactively changing lifestyle and politics at the grassroots: Getting There (Part 2): Bringing to Life a Transformative Culture. Seventeen points are described that are consistent with the 10 steps in our Pledge for Climate Protection circa 2000 [see Further Reading].

Unsurprisingly, these points and steps don't help the GDP. For people to live well without being consumers and contributing to their own demise, instead being in touch with nature through lasting community, is not the corporate agenda.

And precious little is offered by central governments. We can, however, reorganize ourselves if we make the effort to get together and let go of isolation. Walls do not exist in nature, or they did not prior to civilization. We need to tear down the walls before they crumble down on top of us when we are ill prepared.

The only denialism all along, since Western Civilization achieved the ability to annihilate everything, has been the refusal or inability to see life as sacred. To see the sacredness of nature is our only way forward.

Global warming culture versus nature's benign potential
Until I can no longer find the strength to lift my hand, I'll fight global warming culture. I'll do it by presenting alternatives and living them as much as possible. Hardly any people caught in the modern artificial environment call it global warming culture, but by now everyone knows they're surrounded by it to some degree. Global warming culture can only be destroyed by its own operation.

The trouble is how much it is taking down with it. As people face it, whether they be urbanites unaware of nature's totality, or people enjoying pristine nature, they cannot countenance destruction of the whole world. So they are primed for rejecting the increasingly discredited, vile global warming culture. Is it a time of action, resignation, or celebration? Is nature's benign potential something desirable over the allure of going shopping? It's up to us.

Notes
1. Climate lag: skepticalscience.com
2. Nature Climate Change, 25 August 2013: nature.com
3. "The albedo effect": skepticalscience.com "Papers on the albedo of the Earth": agwobserver.wordpress.com
4. Global dimming: realclimate.org
5. From The Biochar Solution, Chapter 27:

"If everyone in the world planted one tree each day, by the end of the 2nd year, the sequestered CO2 would exceed the global emissions. Meanwhile, the trees you first planted are now older and bigger. So by year 3, the sequestered CO2 is more than three times emissions. By year 4, it is five times emissions. By year 5, we sequester seven times the emissions. By the end of year 6, we are annually sequestering more than ten times the 2009 CO2 world emissions...  

"The principal obstacle is not lack of manpower, however; it’s the availability of land. Twenty-three million planters could plant enough trees to offset global CO2 emissions in two months, but they would use up all the fallow arable land in the world. Where do we send the tree planters after all the unused arable land is planted? Deserts cover a third of the Earth’s surface. Climate change is causing deserts to expand at an accelerating pace. Expanding deserts disrupt evaporation and rainfall patterns, desiccate forests, and grow steadily larger, changing regional climate. And yet, what is true about desertification affecting climate is also true about de-desertification. By greening barren lands, the hydrological cycle is restored, ecosystems are re-invigorated, and carbon is steadily removed from the atmosphere..."

6. "How Guy McPherson gets it wrong": Fractal Planet and "McPherson’s Evidence That Doom Doom Doom": Planet3.org "McPherson totally ignores any ameliorating feedbacks... (Mcpherson) demoralizes people who might otherwise have been active, so he’s not doing us any favors. He may have more cultural affinity with environmentalists than with oil oligarchs, but he’s doing them a lot more good than he’s doing us."

7. The Anthropocene: It’s Not All About Us Museletter 264, May 2014

Further reading
Take the Pledge for Climate Protection

National Climate Assessment coverage: The New York Times felt compelled to put it in its ENVIRONMENT category: U.S. Climate Has Already Changed, Study Finds, Citing Heat and Floods, by Justin Gillis, May 6, 2014

West Antarctic Ice Sheet's Collapse Triggers Sea Level Warning
 
"Devastating" Impacts of Climate Change Increasing, a comprehensive report by Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org

Guy McPherson's April 30, 2014 radio interview on projected human extinction,:, Santa Cruz, California "Tangerine Dream" show

Living free and off the grid: What Choosing Poverty Looks Like - NBC News
Peak Moment Television is a long-running video documentary series on sustainable living: peakmoment.tv
 
The Sail Transport Network offers hope for post-oil, post-global-warming-culture connectivity between bioregional economies.

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Movement for Happiness

SUBHEAD: Vermont joins Bhutan in seeking sustainable happiness over gross national productivity.

By John de Graaf on 15 May 2014 for ThruthOut -
(http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23710-building-a-movement-for-happiness)


Image above: Waites River, Vermont. A small village in early autumn along Route 25 is hard to find unless you know exactly where to turn off. From (http://www.picturesocial.com/photo/waits-river-vermont).

Vermont and Bhutan have embraced happiness rather than GDP as a measure of social success. The world's happiest countries share surprising characteristics - a small gap between rich and poor; work-life balance; urban design favoring community over cars; high degrees of interpersonal trust; a strong social safety net, and the highest tax rates in the world.

You probably missed it, but April 13, 2014, marked the third annual Pursuit of Happiness Day. April 13 just happens to be the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote those famous words "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" into our Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson and other American revolutionary leaders including Washington, Adams and Franklin all believed that the main purpose of government was increasing the happiness of its citizens. They said so on many occasions. But the idea of government promoting happiness or its corollary, "wellbeing," is more often derided in contemporary politics - "social engineering," some call it.

One significant exception is the state of Vermont. In addition to electing the most progressive and independent of US senators, Bernie Sanders, Vermont has become a laboratory for promoting new ways of understanding and promoting happiness and wellbeing.

Its governor, Peter Shumlin, has proclaimed Pursuit of Happiness Day in Vermont for the past three years. Its legislature, with support from Democrats, Republicans and Progressive Party members, has established a state GPI or Genuine Progress Indicator, that uses some two dozen measures of health, wealth, education, leisure and sustainability to measure progress (Maryland has the same index and other states may follow soon).

So it's probably not surprising that Vermont has been the site of three of four national Happiness conferences in the US (Seattle hosted the other) and will be sponsoring the 5th Gross National Happiness Conference  - Happiness and Wellbeing: Building a National Movement - in Burlington at the end of this month (May 29th - June 1st) .

Organizers hope the conference will help create a strategy for building public policies and personal change based on the goal of Sustainable and Equitable Wellbeing and Happiness.

Bhutan's Challenge
The conference was inspired by a United Nations meeting, Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, held in April 2012. At that meeting, then-Prime Minister of Bhutan, Jigmi Thinley, declared that;

The time has come for global action to build a new world economic system that is no longer based on the illusion that limitless growth is possible on our precious and finite planet or that endless material gain promotes wellbeing. Instead, it will be a system that promotes harmony and respect for nature and each other; that respects our ancient wisdom traditions and protects our most vulnerable people as our own family, and that gives us time to live and enjoy our lives and to appreciate rather than destroy our world. It will be an economic system, in short, that is fully sustainable and that is rooted in true abiding wellbeing and happiness.

The tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan, population 750,000 (about the same as Vermont), has been trying to measure and promote happiness as the goal of its government since its then-16-year old King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, proclaimed that "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product" four decades ago.

Its challenge to Gross National Product (now Gross Domestic Product), the standard by which other nations measure success, followed an earlier observation by US Senator Bobby Kennedy that GNP "measures, in short, everything except that which makes life worthwhile."

As is now well-understood, GNP (or GDP) is a poor indicator of wellbeing - it measures the churn of money in a society. It creates an upside-down world in which many bad things - oil spills, traffic accidents, cancer, etc. - are measured positively because money must be spent to alleviate them, while many things essential to wellbeing - housework, volunteering, natural beauty, good health, etc. - are not counted at all (prompting Kennedy's comments). The Genuine Progress Indicators used in Vermont and Maryland are attempts to correct these clear design flaws in GDP.

Bhutan has brought leading experts in many disciplines from around the world to guide its progress toward its goal of Gross National Happiness. The country currently conducts bi-annual surveys to measure the wellbeing and happiness of its people, measuring progress in nine areas or "domains" of life considered especially important for happiness, including: physical health; mental health; education; quality of governance; social support and community vitality; environmental quality; time balance; access to arts, culture and recreation, and material wellbeing.

In this model, material wellbeing - the primary goal of GDP - matters, but as only one of several important factors.

Bhutan has also created a "happiness policy tool" that allow lawmakers to understand the longer-term implications of proposed legislation on each domain of happiness. Its 24-member Gross National Happiness Commission evaluates major policy proposals using this tool and advises Bhutan's parliament regarding their likely impact.

For example, using the tool, Bhutan turned down an offer to join the World Trade Organization. The proposal scored only 42 of 92 possible points in the GNH Commission analysis; 69 points are required for a positive recommendation.

The New Science of Happiness
In the days of Jefferson, it wasn't really possible to measure and assess national happiness and its causes. But in the past couple of decades, a new science of happiness, driven by advances in positive psychology and extensive studies of the brain, has allowed researchers to more thoroughly understand happiness and its roots in both public policy and human behavior. Gallup polls 1,000 Americans daily regarding their life satisfaction using a popular tool called the Cantril ladder: Perhaps not surprisingly, Americans are 20 percent happier on weekends than on workdays.

Gallup also uses the ladder and other measures to assess the happiness of 150 countries in the world each year. Consistently, northern European nations rank on top, with Denmark in the number one spot (at 7.7 out of 10) year after year. The United States, which ranked 11th in 2007, has dropped to 17th place (7.0 out of 10) since the great economic meltdown. Several factors in particular characterize the world's happiest countries - a relatively small gap between rich and poor; excellent work-life balance; urban design favoring community over cars; high degrees of interpersonal trust; a strong social safety net, and, contrary to popularly-held US ideas, the highest tax rates in the world.

Putting Happiness First
Organizers of the Vermont conference hope to launch a movement that puts happiness and wellbeing at the forefront of policy ideas and educational goals. The event features more than 50 prominent speakers, including Vermont state Senator Anthony Pollina, author of the Vermont GPI legislation, Linda Wheatley and Tom Barefoot, lead organizers of GNHUSA, the Vermont organization that has been the primary conference organizer, Laura Musikanski of the Happiness Alliance based in Seattle, John Havens of Hacking H(app)iness and a writer for the British newspaper The Guardian. (Full disclosure: This author is also a speaker.)

"Bhutan may have first suggested that happiness and wellbeing be the primary focus of policymaking," says Linda Wheatley, conference organizer and co-founder of Vermont-based GNHUSA, "but now, as we face indicators of economic, social and environmental distress, the whole world is seeing the value of that shift in orientation. It's time for an informed and inspired grassroots movement. We're thrilled to be part of that effort and invite everyone else to join us."

Participants will gather to share the tools, skills and resources for building happiness initiatives in other towns and cities across the country. The formal conference, on Thursday and Friday, will explore four content areas: Policy and Community Engagement; the Power of Data; Developing Happiness Skills, and Movement Building. Each segment will include a keynote and plenary presentations by well-known academics and activists in a variety of related fields, followed by workshops for further skill development. The very practical efforts currently underway in Vermont will be an important focus of the conversation.

The formal conference, on Thursday, May 29 and Friday, May 30, will be followed on the weekend by a series of add-on trainings including a focus on spiritual traditions and on conducting happiness surveys and using happiness policy tools in local communities.

Until now, what has been happening in Bhutan, and more recently, in the state of Vermont, has been under the radar of most Americans. Conference organizers hope this gathering will help change that.

"We'll be looking at best practices to improve wellbeing and happiness from throughout the world," says Tom Barefoot of GNHUSA. "At a time when so much of our news is a litany of inequality and environmental destruction, making happiness our goal instead of more money, stuff and consumerism is common sense. The scientific evidence shows that social connection, participation, good health and access to nature matter far more for wellbeing than an ever-growing GDP. It's time for that evidence to get out there more widely."



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WarkaWater in Ethiopia

SUBHEAD: This elegant invention draws water from air without muscular or electrical effort.

By Laura Secorun Palet on 26 May 2014 for NPR News -
(http://www.npr.org/2014/05/26/316124174/a-simple-elegant-invention-that-draws-water-from-air)


Image above: Three bamboo framed WarkaWater atmospheric condensers stand in Ethiopian village providing drinking water. From original article.

When Italian designer Arturo Vittori and Swiss architect Andreas Vogler first visited Ethiopia in 2012, they were shocked to see women and children forced to walk miles for water.

Only 34 percent of Ethiopians have access to a reliable water supply. Some travel up to six hours a day to fetch some or, worse, resorts to using stagnant ponds contaminated by human waste, resulting in the spread of disease.

Worldwide, a whopping 768 million people — two and a half times the U.S. population — don't have access to safe drinking water. So just imagine if we could just pull water out of thin air?

That's what Vittori and Vogler asked once they saw the magnitude of problem and vowed to take action. Their firm, Architecture and Vision, has since come up with WarkaWater, a majestic palm-like structure that may look like something you'd see in a modern art museum but it's been designed to harvest water from the air.

WarkaWater, which is named after an Ethiopian fig tree, is composed of a 30-foot bamboo frame containing a fog-harvesting nylon net that can be easily lowered for repairs and to allow communities to measure the water level.

Collecting water through condensation is hardly a new technique, but the creators of WarkaWater say their tree-inspired design is more effective, maximizing surface and optimizing every angle to produce up to 26 gallons of drinkable water a day — enough for a family of seven.

Many Failed Attempts By Aid Groups

Western organizations have been working to provide clean water access in Africa for decades, so WarkaWater joins a very long list of earlier attempts. So far, high-tech solutions, like the once-promising Playpump (a hybrid merry-go-round water pump), have failed, mostly due to high costs and maintenance issues.

This is where WarkaWater could stand apart — as a lower-tech solution that is easy to repair and far more affordable than digging wells in the rocky Ethiopian plateau.

Each water tower costs $550 — a Playpump is $14,000 — and its creators say the price will drop significantly if they start mass-producing it. The structure takes three days and six people to install and doesn't call for any special machinery or scaffolding.

"Once locals have the necessary know-how, they will be able to teach other villages and communities to build the WarkaWater towers," says Vittori, who is already working on WarkaWater 2.0, an upgraded version that may include solar panels and LED bulbs to provide light after dark.

The firm is in the process of raising funds to begin installing towers in Ethiopia next year. And WarkaWater could also prove useful in other areas, like deserts, which have the critical feature for collecting condensation: a dramatic change in temperature between nightfall and daybreak.

This elegant invention may not solve all of the world's water woes, but it could improve accessibility one drop at a time.

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Homeless

SUBHEAD: The USA is going nowhere because it doesn’t like the new place where history wants to take it.

By James Kunstler on 26 May 2014 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/homeless-2/)


Image above: We left Carthage on a nice run of route 66 rolling though the Missouri countryside.  The endpoint this time is was Carterville and very little of the area is active. Most buildings are boarded up or derelict. From (http://66in25.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html).

H History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the USA. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory. The USA is going nowhere because it doesn’t like the new place where history wants to take it.

That is, first of all, a place of far less influence on everybody else, in a new era of desperate struggle to remain modern. That fading modern world is the house that America built, the great post World War Two McMansion stuffed with dubious luxuries in a Las Vegas of the collective mind. History’s bank has foreclosed on it and all the nations and people of the world have been told to make new arrangements for daily life. 

The USA wants everybody to stay put and act as if nothing has changed.

Therefore, change will be forced on the USA. It will take the form of things breaking and not getting fixed. Unfortunately, America furnished its part of the house with stapled-together crap designed to look better than it really was. 

We like to keep the blinds drawn now so as not to see it all coming apart. Barack Obama comes and goes like a pliable butler, doing little more than carrying trays of policy that will be consumed like stale tea cakes — while the wallpaper curls, and the boilers fail down in the basement, and veneers delaminate, and little animals scuttle ominously around in the attic.

Everybody I know is distressed by this toxic languor, this sense of being stuck waiting in a place they want desperately to move on from — like the prison of elder-care where so many find themselves hostage to the futility of staving off a certain ending, while all the family resources drain into various bureaucratic black holes. Do we care that the generations to come will have nothing left, nothing at all?

This Memorial Day the usual pieties are noticeably muted. Few politicians dare to utter sanctimonies about our brave soldiers maimed on far-flung battlefields, when so many of them are stuck waiting alone in dark rooms with only their wounds and phantom limbs for company. If regular civilian medicine is a cruel, hopeless, quasi-criminal racket, imagine what medicine for army veterans must be like — all that plus an overlay of profound government ineptitude and institutionalized ass-covering.

Even the idle chatter about American Dreaming has faded out lately, because too much has happened to families and individuals to demonstrate that people need more than dreams and wishes to make things happen. It’s kind of a relief to not have to listen to those inane exhortations anymore, especially the idiotic shrieking that “We’re number one!”

Others have got our number now. They are going their own way whether we like it or not. The Russians and the Chinese. The voters in Europe. The moiling masses of Arabia and its outlands. The generals in Thailand. Too bad the people of Main Street USA don’t want to do anything but sit on their hands waiting for the rafters to tumble down. My guess is that nothing will bestir us until we wake up one morning surrounded by rubble and dust. By then, America will be a salvage operation.

There’s a long and comprehensive To-Do list that has been waiting for us since at least 2008, when the nation received one forceful blow upside its thick head. We refuse to pay attention. First item on the list: restructure the banks. 

Other items: reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act; disassemble the ridiculous “security” edifice under the NSA; upgrade the US electric grid; close down most of our military bases overseas (and some of our bases in the USA); draw up a constitutional amendment re-defining the alleged “personhood” of corporations; fix the passenger railroad system to prepare for the end of Happy Motoring; rebuild Main Street commerce to prepare for the death of WalMart and things like it; outlaw GMO foods and promote local food production; shut down casino gambling.

That’s just my list. What’s yours? And when will you step out of this rotting house into the sunshine?

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Tales of a dark Kauai

SUBHEAD: It seams like our "leaders" want to fit us all in a suburban mold of "home and a car" protected the US military.

By Juan Wilson on 23 May 2014 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2014/05/tales-of-dark-kauai.html)


Image above: Lines were long all day on 10/16/06  at the grand opening of the Lihue Costco. Costco acquired the 15 acre parcel from Grove Farms. It used to be a public park and music venue. From (http://archives.starbulletin.com/2006/10/18/business/story04.html).

Three articles in the Garden Island News today tell a lot about our leaders and where they want to take Kauai... and it is not a very nice place.

The first article is about the rousting of homeless people in Anahola. As in other places, authorities play a game of pretending there are no problems in order to avoid facing the necessity of a solution. Every once in a while they get their undcerwear in a bunch and take it out on people with nowhere to go:

Some people who left the site are actually just hiding nearby because they still need to be near the bus and restroom facilities. She said the only real answer would be for the state or the county to designate an area for the homeless to park and live with a bathroom and shower facility.

The second article describes a $120 million dollar highway boondoggle bypass road mauka of the current highway between Puhi and Hanamaulu. I won't happen for a very long time but it will be the backbone for more development, more traffic and a loss of important agland.

Kanani Durant, whose family has lived in the Hanamaulu area for generations and relies on subsistence farming, said she is concerned that the road would traverse across five ahupuaas, wedged-shaped land sections that run from the mountain to the ocean, and is worried about what impacts it will have on her family. “It directly relates to my ability to put food on my table — it’s my freedom and my liberty to be able to do that,” Durant said.

The third article describes the upcoming RIMPAC war games beginning in June that will be played out across the Pacific Ocean led by the US Navy and 22 other country's navies in an seeming effort to practice destroying all life on Earth. Here's a quote from the bozo in charge of the PMRF:

“In between all the other cool stuff, like rockets and balloons and all the other stuff, you’re going to see a steady drum beat of our brothers and sisters in arms coming here to Kauai,” he said. “It’s a good thing for Kauai and it’s a good thing for PMRF, or IPRF (Inouye Pacific Range Facility).”

Forget America for a minute. By that I mean what comes with the mass media and Asian imports. Forget about the NFL on satellite TV and black-jacked Toyota Tundra 4x4 and think about this island and how we will live here when all that stuff is moldering into the ground and the signals are fading on their way out of the solar system. How will we live here then - and what are you going to do about it.

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Homeless Campers Evicted

By Tom LaVenture on 23 May for the Garden Island -
(http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/homeless-campers-evicted/article_b59d7fc4-e255-11e3-a5ae-0019bb2963f4.html) 


Image above: Claire Coller (L) of Voices of Kauai talks with a Department of Hawaiian Homelands officer (R) issued evictions citations to campers. From original article.

Campers at Anahola Beach Park were told to vacate or face arrest on Thursday.

Anahola Beach Park is divided by county park land to the north, and the state and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to the south and west. Whenever there is enforcement on one property, or to clear out for Thursday maintenance, the homeless groups simply dragged their tents to the section not being enforced that day.

That worked until the bulk of the long-term squatters were cleared out in a sweep late last year. Since then, around 25 people remain, according to Napuanani McKeague, founder of the Voices of Kauai network. The group includes two families with several children between them, and the rest are couples and individuals who say they are treated the same as the partiers and delinquents that frequent the area and cause trouble day and night stealing gas and leaving rubbish all over the site.

“We live a guilt by association life because we have to camp by a lot of these people,” she said.

McKeague said some people who left the site are actually just hiding nearby because they still need to be near the bus and restroom facilities. She said the only real answer would be for the state or the county to designate an area for the homeless to park and live with a bathroom and shower facility.

McKeague said Voices of Kauai has been working since 2006 to observe and report harassment and non-response to homeless complaints on Kauai. She was in Anahola on Thursday when four campsites were ordered to move.

“No one was arrested,” said Claire Collar, a Voices of Kauai member and one-time camp resident. “The land agents were very formal and polite and it was all handled very professionally and nice.”

The DHHL Kauai Land Agent Kaipo Duncan was present with four land management enforcement officers. A DHHL spokesperson said the campers were first-time offenders and told they were trespassing and given a verbal warning to break the tents down and clear the site by 4:30 p.m.

DHHL officers do not have arresting powers. They call police when they encounter repeat violators or when they have a confrontation with an individual.

The DHHL Congressional mandate since 1920 is to process lease applications for a 99-year homestead to people with 50 percent or more Native Hawaiian ethnicity. DHHL improves the infrastructure and maintains the roads, but does not build the homes.

There are three types of DHHL homesteads for 203,000 acres of managed land around the state. The residential leases and the Native Hawaiian pastoral lease land for livestock and agriculture are the first two, and the commercial leases to non-Hawaiians for projects like the Anahola Solar provide revenue to develop the homestead sites and roads.

The DHHL does not provide park lands, the spokesperson said. Camping on the land is not an option.

The problem is the homeless campers have nowhere to go, McKeague said. Some of them even have a HUD Section 8 certificates but can’t find a private owner who will take it.

“There is not enough public housing,” she said.

Voices of Kauai works to bring credibility to the working homeless and the families that have nowhere to go. Volunteer members listen to the stories of people who talk about being harassed by fellow campers or when the authorities don’t listen to their side of the story, she said.

The goal is to provide a unified voice on the condition of the homeless and present ideas on alternative camping sites or hushing if possible, she added.

Deborah Ward, information specialist for Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, said the DLNR had no involvement in the camping enforcement activities in Anahola on Thursday. She also said there is no work underway to identify a state-run homeless camping area on Kauai.

The nonprofit Kauai Economic Opportunity provides traditional housing programs including the Mana Olana overnight shelter. It also provides a care program with support services for the chronically homeless and those recovering from substance abuse issues.

McKeague complained that too many people are turned away from the shelters for lack of space.

Stephanie Fernandes, director for Homeless and Housing Programs at Kauai Economic Opportunity, said the Mana Olana overnight shelter was approved by the county to support 19 homeless people each night. There is a bay for single men and another for single women, and three rooms for families.

It is a first come, first serve opportunity at 5 p.m. with a meal and check out at 7 a.m., Fernandes said. Some nights they may only have 10 people and on other nights, they fill to capacity and must turn away people.

Not everyone uses the shelter. There are background checks, and persons with convictions of distributing or manufacturing dangerous drugs, or sex offenders are not allowed because of the nearby transitional family housing.

There could be room for more but the limits are based on expected water usage and the size of the septic system, Fernandes said. Others choose the services of the KEO Care-A-Van, which provides food, water and supply services with scheduled stops are spots around the island.

KEO transitional housing includes eight one-bedroom units, and eight two-bedroom units in two separate buildings. There is also a five-bedroom home for individual homeless in Puhi.

KEO owns a five-bedroom home in Kapaa for permanent housing. By the end of the year, Fernandes said KEO plans to complete renovations to two homes with three bedrooms each as transitional housing for large families.

The nonprofit KEO is certified to work with private landlords to administer HUD Section 8 rent subsidy for elderly and the disabled. It also manages a Shelter Plus program for severe mental illness and chronically homeless due to past substance abuse.

KEO is a member of the Kauai Community Alliance and the Continuum of Care Committee to address gaps in the care of the homeless. KEO is also a member of the rural island organization Bridging the Gap with a goal to end homelessness.

“We partner with a lot of volunteers in the community and value our volunteers,” Fernandes said.

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Beating the traffic rush

By Darin Marakawi on 23 May for the Garden Island -
(http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/beating-the-traffic-rush/article_0a5f1474-e255-11e3-98fd-0019bb2963f4.html)  


Image above: Mike Packard, a traffic engineer with SSFM International fields questions as Kauai Mayor Carvalho looks on.  From original article.

For nearly four decades, a long-term plan for a bypass road located mauka of Lihue and Hanamaulu was spelled out on the county’s books.

But for most of that time, plans for the 5.5-mile roadway, which would traverse across old cane haul roads from Hanamaulu to Lihue, remained buried in a handful of county plans dating back to at least 1976.

That all changed on Thursday, when county officials unveiled their initial plans for the road, which they say would alleviate traffic congestion through one of the island’s most condensed population centers.

“We have talked to the state DOT (Department of Transportation) and we feel that, if the road is built into one, it would probably become one of the most important regional connections and would fit into their description of a regional route,” County of Kauai Engineering Chief Michael Moule said.

The county’s current plans for the road, outlined in a feasibility study conducted by Honolulu-based engineering firm SSFM International, call for the construction of a bypass road that would run from Hanamaulu, across Kuhio Highway from Kauai Beach Resort, to Lihue, along Kaumualii Highway between Nuhou and Kalepa Streets.

Three connection points in between the two points, according to county plans, are also being considered at Nawiliwili Road; Ehiku Street and Ahukini Road; and Maalo Road.

State and county officials, Moule said, are also considering whether there should be either one or two lanes in each direction to address future traffic needs.

A multi-use path for bicyclists and pedestrians and wide shoulders, according to current county plans, are also being proposed to line most, if not all, segments of the road, which is estimated to cost about $90 to $120 million to construct.

Because of the project’s high cost, Moule said, the road would likely be built in phases. Using existing cane haul roads, however, would reduce the potential impacts and costs, he added.

But the chance of it being built any time soon, Moule said, is not very likely since any new road would be subject to “many years of review” by federal, state and county governments, which would be charged with compiling more detailed studies, such as environmental reviews.

Some county officials, however, say the plan is an important step in addressing one of the main symptoms of population growth on Kauai: traffic congestion.

And there may be more coming, some officials hinted, if something is not done soon.

County projections suggest that the population on Kauai is expected to experience a noticeable jump over the next two decades from 69,512 people, according to 2013 U.S. Census Bureau data, to 85,170 people in 2035.

The population in the Lihue area alone is expected to jump from 14,100 people, according to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data, to 20,700 by 2035, a 47 percent increase.

What’s more, the South Shore area of the island, including Koloa, Poipu and Kalaheo, will also experience a 47 percent jump in population from 11,830 people in 2010 to 17,410 people by 2035.

According to traffic studies conducted in 2007, areas in Lihue with the highest congestion levels, where recorded speed limits were 15 miles per hour or below, included the short stretch of Kuhio Highway between Rice and Hardy Street; the stretch of Kaumualii Highway in front of Kukui Grove Shopping Center and along Nawiliwili Road; and the stretch of Kaumualii Highway between Nuhou Street and Puhi Road.

Constructing the road, some county officials say, would increase safety by avoiding the numerous driveways and local cross-roads encountered along Kuhio Highway; provide an additional route for emergency responders; and improve local evacuation measures in the event of an emergency or disaster.

“If there is an increase in traffic in the area, and currently Kuhio, Kaumualii and Kapule Highways are over capacity areas, people using the bus and their bikes won’t be able get to where they need to go in a sufficient amount of time by using our existing infrastructure system because it’s either not safe ... or it takes too long,” SSFM International Traffic Engineer Mike Packard said.

Some residents, however, are not so sure.

Kanani Durant, whose family has lived in the Hanamaulu area for generations and relies on subsistence farming, said she is concerned that the road would traverse across five ahupuaas, wedged-shaped land sections that run from the mountain to the ocean, and is worried about what impacts it will have on her family.

“It directly relates to my ability to put food on my table — it’s my freedom and my liberty to be able to do that,” Durant said.

Hanamaulu resident Tim Easley questioned whether either the federal government or county would be able to come up with sufficient funds for the project and said many of the people who live in Lihue or Hanamaulu would only experience certain benefits from the road, which is set back from the two towns.

“This whole thing doesn’t deal with anyone who lives in Lihue,” Easley said. “Anyone who lives in Lihue or Hanamaulu is never going to go on this road. The only people that benefit from here are those who are south of Lihue or north of it.”

For more information, contact Department of Public Works Project Manager James “Kimo” Aiu at jaiu@kauai.gov.

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Navy leaders talk RIMPAC

By Chris D'Angelo on 23 May for the Garden Island -
(http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/military/navy-leaders-talk-rimpac/article_f1b05df4-e252-11e3-b47c-0019bb2963f4.html) 


Image above: Capt. Bruce Hay passes through the side boys during the arrival of the official party at the PMRF’s change of command ceremony 7/11/13. From (http://thegardenisland.com/pmrf-passing-through-jpg/image_9fc84e30-eac2-11e2-ae38-0019bb2963f4.html).

Capt. Bruce Hay, commander of the Pacific Missile Range Facility, said Rim of the Pacific — the biennial international military war exercise — demonstrates that the United States and other countries involved are not separated by the ocean, but connected by it.

And when the 24th maritime exercise gets underway in late June, the action will happen in Kauai’s backyard.

“Starting at the end of next month, a lot of people from all over the globe are going to come into Oahu, and they’re going to have parties and do sporting events and everything — blow a lot of money on Oahu. But the cool stuff is going to happen out here,” Hay told a crowd at the Military Appreciation Luncheon Wednesday at PMRF.

Hay was referring specifically to the open water and airspace northwest of the base on Kauai’s Westside. The drills will last from June 26 to Aug. 1 and take place in the Hawaii Operating Area and several off-shore ranges, including PMRF’s.

Rear Adm. Richard Williams Jr., commander of Navy Region Hawaii, said there is no better place in the world to “put the band together” — the way the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet will do during RIMPAC — than in PMRF’s range.

“We’re going to have 43 ships from 23 different countries participating in this, with a lot of their aircraft, a lot of their staff, a lot of submarines,” he said. “They’re all coming to Pearl Harbor and to Hawaii. And as Flounder (Capt. Hay) said, right here at Barking Sands. This is where a lot of the exciting stuff is going to take place.”

As it has in the past, PMRF will provide subsurface, surface and air training range capabilities for RIMPAC. Ships, submarines and aircraft will train on an instrumented range free of encroachment limitations offshore of Kauai, according to Stefan Alford, the base’s public affairs officer.

Williams said what makes PMRF’s range special is its size. There are over 1,100 square miles of instrumented underwater range and over 42,000 square miles of controlled airspace.

“It’s bigger than any other range in the world,” he said.

About 500 PMRF employees are expected to be engaged in supporting this year’s exercise, and the base has three C-26 aircraft and two Croman-contracted Sikorsky S-61N helicopters available to support as necessary. There will be an increase in aviation activity with helicopters and aircraft from Oahu transiting over PMRF, and Navy vessels may be observed at the horizon approximately 20-25 miles off shore, according to Alford.

In addition to dozens of ships, there will be six submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel participating.

Williams talked about the importance of RIMPAC as a show of force, strength and strategic partnership.

“To let our friends know that we got their backs, we’re there, we’re here to support them,” he said.

As technology continues to advance and the range of weapons grows, Hay said more space is needed for testing. While the Hawaii Operating Area consists of 235,000 square miles (nearly the size of Texas), the extended Temporary Operating Area includes 2.1 million square miles and extends all the way to Wake Island.

“That’s pretty impressive. Our ability to train like we would fight exists here,” Hay said. “Space matters. We can build buildings like Aegis Ashore, or runways or some other things, but we’re never going to be able to replicate what we have out here. And that makes this place special.”

For the last 20 years or so, the Navy has resorted to the desert for a lot of its training and testing, according to Hay.

“Well, we’re coming back,” he said. “The band’s coming back to the Pacific and our Marines and our Air Force and our Army need places to train.”

In addition to RIMPAC, Hay said there will be a lot of activity out at PMRF this summer — from rocket launches and Boeing V-22 Ospreys flying around to NASA’s test flight in early June of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, a saucer-shaped rocket designed for future missions to Mars.

“In between all the other cool stuff, like rockets and balloons and all the other stuff, you’re going to see a steady drum beat of our brothers and sisters in arms coming here to Kauai,” he said. “It’s a good thing for Kauai and it’s a good thing for PMRF, or IPRF (Inouye Pacific Range Facility).”

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