Nuclear High Noon in the Atlantic Ocean

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This Dying Ocean Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of US

Or, how we learned to play blind nuclear chicken with the taxpayers unwanted submarines in the middle of the ocean!

Nuclear subs ‘collide in ocean’

BBC UK;  Monday, 16 February 2009

A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic, it has been reported.

It is understood HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash earlier this month.

Despite being equipped with sonar, it seems neither vessel spotted the other, the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt said.

HMS Vanguard, a Royal Navy Vanguard-class submarine photographed in Florida in 1994.

The UK’s Ministry of Defense understandably too embarrassed to  comment on the reports, but insisted nuclear security had not been breached.

BBC defense correspondent said HMS Vanguard, with “very visible dents and scrapes”, had to be towed back into its home base at Faslane on the Firth of Clyde. The submarines were both “seriously-armed”, she also said.

HMS VANGUARD was Launched in 1992 and it is one of four British submarines carrying Trident nuclear missiles. It weighs 16,000 tonnes and is 150m (492ft) long.
It can carry 48 nuclear warheads on a maximum of 16 missiles. A two-year refit was completed in 2007 as part of a £5bn ($7.5billion) contract. Vanguard is due to be replaced in 2024, unless retired earlier by the French Navy.

The alleged incident is being investigated on both sides of the Channel, she said.

The Triomphant class of strategic missile submarines of the French Navy . This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

The two submarines are key parts of each nation’s nuclear deterrent, and would have been carrying missiles, though both the UK and France have insisted there was no danger of a nuclear incident.

The two 150m-long (492ft) submarines were carrying around 240 sailors between them. A French naval spokesman said the collision did not result in any injuries to the crew.

HMS Vanguard is now back at Faslane, Clyde, one of three UK operating bases for the Royal Navy, about 40 km from Glasgow, Scotland.

Is Emperor Sarkozy gauging its traditional arch rival’s nuclear preparedness? Would France fire first?

Which side would Rahm Emanuel’s White House be on?

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Volcano Watch Special: Volcán Guallatiri

Volcán Guallatiri could explode after 50 years of virtual dormancy

Based on its recent analysis, FEWW team believes that there’s an 80 percent probability Volcán Guallatiri (northern Chile) could erupt explosively after nearly five decades of dormancy.

Partial map of Chile showing approximate position of Volcán Guallatiri west of the border with Bolivia. Original map: USGS

Volcán Guallatiri is a 6071-meter high symmetrical stratovolcano located at the southwestern end of the Nevados de Quimsachata volcano group.  The snow-clad Guallatiri sits west of the border with Bolivia.

One of northern Chile’s most active volcanoes, Volcán Guallatiri rises to the SSE beyond Laguna Chungará, and steam rises from a prominent fumarole near its summit. The 6071-m-high Guallatiri, a symmetrical ice-clad stratovolcano, lies at the SW end of the Nevados de Quimsachata volcano group just west of the border with Bolivia and is capped by a central dacitic dome or lava complex, with the active vent situated at its southern side.  Thick lava flows are prominent on the lower northern and western flanks of the andesitic-to-rhyolitic volcano. Minor explosive eruptions have been reported from Guallatiri since the beginning of the 19th century. Intense fumarolic activity with “jet-like” noises continues, and numerous solfataras extend more than 300 m down the west flank. Photo by Lee Siebert, 2004 (Smithsonian Institution). Caption: GVP.

Volcano Name:  Guallatiri
Country:  Chile
Subregion:  Northern Chile

Volcano Type:  Stratovolcano
Last Known Eruption:  1960
Summit Elevation:  6,071 m (19,918 feet)
Latitude: 18.42°S (18°25’0″S)
Longitude: 69.092°W (69°5’30″W)

Related Links:

• FEWW Volcano Index
• Earthquakes

Coal Is Deadly

**PLEASE FORWARD THIS INVITATION OUT ON ALL LISTSERVS, MYSPACES … —EVERYWHERE!!**

THE APPALACHIAN BIOREGION NEEDS YOU!

MOUNTAIN JUSTICE SUMMER 2009 CAMP OUT MAY 16 – 22

HEARWOOD REGIONAL CAMP 2009 MAY 22 – 25

COAL IS DIRTY, DANGEROUS AND DEPLETING!

Y’all are formally invited to the 5th annual Mountain Justice Summer camp where activist and organizers come from all over to learn, educate, refresh and party to celebrate a summer of resistance to the pernicious process know as strip mining.

Join us! at this years camp in beautiful Harlan County Kentucky at Camp Blanton. You will be surrounded by old growth forest—and the heart of the resistance movement against the destruction of the magnificent ancient majestic mountains which surround you.

The end of the Mountain Justice camp kicks off the start of the Annual Heartwood Forest Council Camp May 22-25th. After a week of learning how to defend the most ancient mountains in the world stay and at the same place learn about defense of its forest!

Join us! as this camp kicks off the now annual summer campaign of resistance in the Appalachia bioregion to protect some of the oldest watersheds on earth. Come join us as we celebrate 5 years of continuous non stop resistance to the forces that would lay waste to our land and the people which belong to it.

Join us as we seek to take advantage of the changing political climate to create the pressure and visible resistance that will make it possible to capitalize on that climate.

After 5 years of resistance Mountain Justice now is at the cusp of making gains dreamed of during the darkest days of the Bush presidency. Now the agency heads are no longer from the industry they are supposed to regulate. Now agencies are being captured back from the industries that owned them up to now. Now is the time for us to take back the losses of the Bush years.

We are going to stop strip mining for coal with YOUR HELP. Come and help us forge a new energy future. Coal is a 19th century technology that hired a 20th century PR firm but this year we will rock the national with the truth that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL!

Our planet is tied to the same crossroads as our species. As climate change becomes more damaging, as we gasp in cities dying deaths of slow asphyxiation from coal pollution as and entire community is wiped out by the toxic ash byproduct of this 19th century technology now is when we weigh in and make our choice.

Help us forge a new energy policy for our mountains, the planet the people which inhabit it. Now is the time, distance, speed and place where if we push back hard enough we can not only take back what was done during the Bush years—we can push forward into a new cleaner future.

Coal is dirty, dangerous and depleting is our message. Come join us to play, sing, learn and prepare to make a new path for our species. We need you now more than ever before because now is the time. We need writers, filmers, teachers, lawyers, artist, fishermen, 4 wheeler enthusiasts. If you have any skill—and are willing to work hard for the mountains of Appalachia we need you!

Help us preserve the most valuable resource of all—our highland watersheds. If you think the wars for oil are bloody—wait till you see the wars for water. Appalachia is the Saudi Arabia of WATER and it is that resource which the future is going to be most grateful when we end strip mining and the resulting annihilation of highland watersheds.

Please come prepared to camp—more importantly come with respect and a willingness to learn and work. We have fun—but this camp is a huge tool in the resistance and it’s a tool we need to do what its designed for—making strip mine corporations a living hell. We need people that are autonomous and can take care of themselves. You are coming into the Appalachian Mountains with a distinct culture which you will do fine with if you just come with respect.

If your even curious goto our website at mountainjustice.org and see what we are about. At the very least at the end of the week you will leave with new friendships, new knowledge and perhaps some new skills to help in the fight.

So join us! Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Aunts and Uncles students and teachers. We need an entire broad range of experience and have everything ranging from tent space to comfortable indoor lodge space and a massive kitchen. You will be comfortable, well fed, entertained and will walk away with an entire skill set.

Y’all come!

Mountain Justice

Information Services

(MJIS)

mountainjusticesummer.org

Garbage Dump Space!

You’d be wrong, of course, if you thought Earth was the only place transformed to a garbage dump by the planet’s most intelligent species!

This computer-generated image released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on April 15, 2008 shows trackable objects in Low Earth Orbit (LOE) around Earth. There are now more than 12,000 objects that are monitored in orbit, 11,500 pieces of which are in low Earth orbit, which is at an altitude of between 800 and 1,500 kilometres (500 and 950 miles), where there are many commercial, military, scientific and navigational satellites. In low orbit, debris can stay adrift for decades before they eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Another 1,147 pieces are in geostationary orbit, about satellite orbits in the direction of the Earth’s rotation, at an altitude of approximately 35,786 km (22,240 miles), where telecommunications satellites are typically deployed. Image: Getty Images by AFP/Getty Images. Caption: DayLife. Image may be subject to copyright.