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Government Responds to Nuclear Accident by Trying to Raise Acceptable Radiation Levels and Pretending that Radiation is Good For Us
When the economy imploded in 2008, how did the government respond?
Did
it crack down on fraud? Force bankrupt companies to admit that their
speculative gambling with our money had failed? Rein in the funny
business?
Of course not!
The government just helped cover
up how bad things were, used claims of national security to keep
everything in the dark, and changed basic rules and definitions to allow
the game to continue. See this, this, this and this.
When BP - through criminal negligence - blew out the Deepwater Horizon oil well, the government helped cover it up (the cover up is ongoing).
The government also changed the testing standards for seafood to pretend that higher levels of toxic PAHs in our food was business-as-usual.
So
now that Japan is suffering the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl -
if not of all time - is the government riding to the rescue to help fix
the problem, or at least to provide accurate information to its
citizens so they can make informed decisions?
Of course not!
The EPA is closing ranks with the nuclear power industry:
EPA officials, however, refused Critics said the public needs more information. "It's disappointing," said Bill Magavern, director of Sierra Club California. "I
to answer questions or make staff members available to explain the
exact location and number of monitors, or the levels of radiation,
if any, being recorded at existing monitors in California.
Margot Perez-Sullivan, a spokeswoman at the EPA's regional
headquarters in San Francisco, said the agency's written statement
would stand on its own.
have a strong suspicion that EPA is being silenced by those in the
federal government who don't want anything to stand in the way of a
nuclear power expansion in this country, heavily subsidized by
taxpayer money."
The EPA has pulled 8 of its 18 radiation monitors in California, Oregon and Washington because (by implication) they are giving readings which seem too high.
Remember, for the sake of context, that the government has covered up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear power industry.
And now, the EPA is considering drastically raising the amount of allowable radiation in food, water and the environment.
As Michael Kane writes:
In
the wake of the continuing nuclear tragedy in Japan, the United States
government is still moving quickly to increase the amounts of
radiation the population can “safely” absorb by raising the safe zone
for exposure to levels designed to protect the government and nuclear
industry more than human life. It’s all about cutting costs now as the
infinite-growth paradigm sputters and moves towards extinction. As has
been demonstrated by government conduct in the Gulf of Mexico in the
wake of Deepwater Horizon and in Japan, life has taken a back seat to
cost-cutting and public relations posturing.
The game plan now appears to be to protect government and the nuclear industry from “excessive costs”… at any cost.
***
In
1992, the EPA produced a PAGs manual that answers many of these
questions. But now an update to the 1992 manual is being planned, and
if the “Dr. Strangelove” wing of the EPA has its way, here is what it
means (brace yourself for these ludicrous increases):
- A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90;
- A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and
- An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.
The
new radiation guidelines would also allow long-term cleanup thresholds
thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever judged safe in
the past.
And see this.
Indeed,
some government scientists and media shills are now "reexamining" old
studies that show that radioactive substances like plutonium cause
cancer to argue that prevent cancer.
It is not just bubbleheads like Ann Coulter saying this. Government scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories and pro-nuclear hacks like Lawrence Solomon are saying this.
In
other words, this is a concerted propaganda campaign to cover up the
severity of a major nuclear accident by raising acceptable levels of
radiation and saying that a little radiation is good for us.
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Fiction doesn't mean completely made-up or frivolous. The dystopia of 1984 was just an extrapolation of trends that Orwell observed at the time. He said something along the lines of "the future is a boot stepping on a human face forever"... and our current fake democracy is certainly headed in that direction.
Just for the sake of accuracy, Orwell didn't say it. One his characters, a representative of Big Brother, made the statement to Winston, the protagonist. Here's the actual context and quote:
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face ... forever.”
Jut goes to show that those eminent novelists were better visionaries than Reagan/GB/C/GWB/Gr span/Benocide/Tepco & Co.
Makes one wonder to which other works of alleged fiction we should be paying more attention. Does it not?
When Terminator 2 comes true, I am OUTTA HERE.
Thank you very much GW for this article....must be repeated again and again until governements finally release the true figures to populations. All the stations monitoring by the minute airbone contamination are public funded.
One question; when does Godzilla appear?
...oh no, there goes Tokoyo....oh no Godzilla (was 70's rock predictive?)
Solomon quotes HPS in his article (Solomon is also a global warming denier)
http://www.hps.org/
Yes. We only have two choices climate change fascism or plutonium fascism.
How about nihilist/anarchist/individualistic/narcissistic fascism?
Eliminate it? Or embrace it? lol... Is there a theory that actually describes something like that?
Sounds like you're describing the internet from a particular point of view..
What would that look like?
a bicycle without wheels, with plenty of spokes sticking out in all directions...like cleopatra's needles or the red rods of inquisition...up the butt of every statesman... as if he were Edward II...poor king who loved men as queens.
You speak of statesmen. Did you have anyone in mind?
Ha! Solomon is Neocon tard.
However I am also pleased to be described as a CATastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming 'denier'.
Beats being a dishonest and manipulative MannGasser if you ask me...
(Not that you are of course! :)
Regarding AGW - It should be noted that it is falacious to use examples of improper data manipulation to impute the subject hypothesis.
Put another way - just because there are one or more examples of fraud at an institution skewing the data to show a higher correlation between some phenomena such as alcohol consumption and scirosis of the liver, it doesn't follow that drinking alcohol and scirosis are not correlated - it only means that the unreliable data must be quarentined.
A suspicious individual might suspect that an interested party could influance a lab through grants or outright payoffs to fudge data so that the entire premise could be discredited when the "whistle is blown."
I'll give them a max .5 degree celcius increase in global temps due to a doubling of preindustrial level of 280PMM to 560PMM in the distant future.
It's probably less due to CO2 saturation effects and possible negative (not only positive) feedback mechanisms as I am certain you must be aware.
Let's see the current increase in global temperatures from the late 70's onward to TODAY via satellite measurements are shall we?
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-conten...
Right! Back at levels we had in the 1970's.
Far cry from THIS isn't it? (NASA GISS... Hansens bastard child!)
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://geology.com/nasa/images/global...
Uncanny resemblance between these two isn't it?
Hansen
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/Z_ltgztP91v/Protests+Held+Climate+Change+...
And Hansen
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.zmescience.com/wp-content/...
Absolutely astounding isn't it?
Don't believe the $30 billion dollar Goldman Sachs sponsored CAGW machine!
Of course, dynamic chaotic systems with ill-defined feedback loops that may involve interactions between positive and negative loops, makes prediction, or even the identification of a general trends difficult.
However, even if we discount surface station reporting and instead concentrate on sea-temperature data, a disturbing warming trend can be identified.
Personally, I think that the implications of our rate of emissions alone should give us pause, and warrants a conservative approach regarding our continued and increasing pollution of the biosphere.
As an example, while we can argue about the net effect that human action had in creating the dust bowl, most can agree that our farming practices exacerbated and reinforced the environmental conditions necessary for it.
IMHO, we are in the same boat right now, we just don't know if/when we will reach a point of radical divergence which could be catastrophic.
Those who wish to err on the side of facilitating Big$Inc making a few more bucks while we wait for an unequivocal conclusion are on the wrong side of the risk/reward ratio IMHO. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Problem is the governments solution as always is simply to TAX. Over hhere in Oz we are getting a carbon tax rammed through by a coalition government with no mandate that specifically promised during campaigning that it would NOT introduce a carbon tax.
Even if CAGW is a valid hypothethis none of the solutions being offered (carbon tax, emission trading) will solve the probem.
Everyone who has looked into it is aware that there are many inventions / technologies that could potentially provide unlimited clean energy ..... every one of them has been classified top secret by US gov for national security reasons. Military and space programs use some of them.
The PTB know full well that once individual energy independence via distributed local generation becomes a reality their control is gone.
Ergo can't support it when every offered solution exclusively involves taxation and more centralisation.
Yup... big money maker.
That unfortunately gets lost in those who truly care about the planets sights. I like environmentalists... I am one actually.
But when the person who puts together the temperature graphs (Hansen at NASA) is also a global warming activist who frequently gets arrested... well to me that's like having a referee at a soccer match be a member of one of the teams.
Bad science is bound to happen... especially with billions of 'research dollars' at stake.
Pay me a million bucks and even I will agree with the Catastrophic Global Warming alarmists...
I have a weakness for Ferraris you know! ;)
Surface station readings measure UHI. Dropping most of the rural ones in 96 just made the warming trend steeper.
We concur on sea temps as the deciding criterion.
Thats why the ARGO project was so important... looks like temperatures stopped climbing stopped as soon as they starting monitoring it properly in 2003!
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.climate-skeptic.com/wp-con...
And let's not forget those famous words from Dr. Trenberth in the ClimateGate releases... remember these priceless beautieas from a high prince of global warming?
CBS evening news finally, after over two weeks, gets around to covering Climategate. Most interestingly, they have a short clip of an interview with Kevin Trenberth. Dr. Trenberth, as many recall said this in one of the CRU emails:
Believe at your own peril!
I did't know a dumb cat knew what a course was, let alone how to trace it all the way to finishing line!
you should be happy that they used Beagles and not Oriental Bi-colors
Carcinogenesis from inhaled 239PuO2 in beagles: Evidence for radiation homeostasis at low doses?
Beagles don't vote.
AGW musings are just tired and irrelavent.
The earth will continue, with or without us.
We are all going to die; get over it.