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Nebraskans say a Canadian oil pipeline poses unacceptable risks
Part of the Keystone pipeline (solid line) is already working. Construction on Keystone XL (red dotted line) is supposed to start soon so oil can flow to the GulfThe 20,000 miles of pipes that carry oil and gas across Nebraska’s open prairies don’t bother Randy Thompson at all. Neither do greenhouse gas emissions or oil geopolitics.
Yet the 63-year-old, Republican-voting rancher and other Nebraska landowners have begun to kick up a lot of dust over the Keystone XL, a 1,711-mile pipeline that, if built, will cut across Nebraska’s heartland as it funnels oil from the Athabasca sands of Alberta, Canada, to Read more…
This Nebraska Village May Be Sitting On The World’s Largest Untapped Deposit Of Rare Earth Minerals
The next commodities boom town.
Image: Google Maps
A tiny town in Nebraska might be where the US wakes up from it’s decade-long hiatus from mining rare earth elements.
The Washington Times reports that Vancouver-based Quantum Rare Earths Developments Corp. announced that they have found significant amounts of rare earth elements and niobium in Elk Creek, a rural town of 112 people. The company and the US Geological Survey estimate that Elk Creek is potentially the “largest global resources of Niobium & Rare-Earth Elements.”
Niobium is an element needed to make strong heat-resistant steel. Deposits of Niobium in Elk Creek surpassed Quantum’s estimates. The company found rich concentrations of “Europium, Gadolinium, Terbium and Dysprosium, associated with the Elk Creek Niobium Deposit” according to their website.
A Boom Town in Nebraska
Residents of the tiny town are Read more…
Experts warn epic weather ravaging US could worsen
CHICAGO — Epic floods, massive wildfires, drought and the deadliest tornado season in 60 years are ravaging the United States, with scientists warning that climate change will bring even more extreme weather.
The human and economic toll over just the past few months has been staggering: hundreds of people have died, and thousands of homes and millions of acres have been lost at a cost estimated at more than $20 billion.
And the United States has not even entered peak hurricane season.
“This spring was one of the most extreme springs that we’ve seen in the last century since we’ve had good records,” said Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While it’s not possible to tie a specific weather event or pattern to climate change, Arndt said this spring’s extreme weather is in line with what is forecast for the future.
“In general, but not everywhere, it is expected that the wetter places will get wetter and the drier places will tend to see more prolonged dry periods,” he told AFP.
“We are seeing an increase in the amount (of rain and snow) that comes at once, and the ramifications are that it’s a lot more water to deal with at a Read more…
FAA declares ‘no-fly’ zone directly over crippled Nebraska nuclear plant, but claims everything is just fine
Last week, NaturalNews reported that rising Missouri River flood waters prompted officials to declare a “Notification of Unusual Event” as the Fort Calhoun Nuclear plant just outside of Omaha, Neb. (http://www.naturalnews.com/032672_n…). Since that time, flood waters have continued to rise, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has declared a mysterious two-mile radius “no-fly” zone around the plant for unknown reasons, and federal officials continue to claim in spite of all this that plant is just fine.
According to reports, the plant has been in shutdown mode since April for refueling, and is allegedly still dry inside, despite being literally surrounding in every direction by massive flood waters. However, after the notification of unusual event was announced, as well as the cryptic FAA declaration that no aircraft is permitted to fly Read more…
Nebraska Nuclear Plant: Emergency Level 4 & About to Get Worse
Record Midwest flooding to create largest ever ‘dead zone’ in Gulf of Mexico, more storms and levee releases on the way
The US Midwest continues to get slammed by heavy rains and winter snow melt that have swelled the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and left countless thousands of acres of the plains under water. Many towns and cities along the Missouri River in Nebraska, Iowa, and even up into the Dakotas and Montana, are now threatened by new flooding caused by levee breaches and more rains expected to hit in the coming days. Worse, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supported scientists say the overall flooding could create the most severe dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that has ever occurred.
Epic flooding, repeated onslaughts of severe storms and extreme tornadoes have created one of the worst disaster situations ever experienced in the Midwest, and things are only expected to worsen. According to recent reports, six major water reservoirs along the Missouri River are severely swollen, and six dams between Fort Peck, Mont., and Gavins Point along the South Dakota and Nebraska border, have either already reached peak releases, or are expected to Read more…
Local levees threatened by record-setting releases into Missouri River
COLUMBIA — Workers at the city’s water treatment plant in the Missouri River bottoms are getting the boats out of storage.
Two levees protect McBaine from river levels up to 32 feet, and a flood wall at the plant itself can withstand up to 40 feet, said Floyd Turner, Columbia’s manager of water operations.
Extremely high amounts of rainfall and melting snow along the northern sections of the Missouri River are expected to raise river levels enough to possibly overwhelm levees throughout the state. One of those at risk, the McBaine Levee District, protects the Columbia Drinking Water Plant.If the Missouri River overflows the levees along the river, though, plant workers will need their two 14-foot boats to navigate between the nearby wells and possibly transport workers to and from the plant.The water plant’s staff was stockpiling sand for spot leaks along with other supplies in case floods limit access to the plant, engineer Michael Anderson said Friday. Workers at the plant were also checking on emergency generators in the event the plant loses electricity.
A forecast from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shows the Missouri River overflowing as many as 58 levees between Kansas City and St. Louis by the end of the month.
After a year’s worth of rain in recent weeks and snowpack 140 percent above average in the Read more…
March 9.0 Japanese quake set off tremors around the world
The earthquake that launched a series of disasters in Japan in March triggered micro-quakes and tremors around the world, scientists find.
The catastrophic magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off the coast of the Tohoku region of Japan March 11 set off tremors mostly in places of past seismic activity, including southwest Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutians and mainland Alaska, Vancouver Island in Canada, Washington state, Oregon, central California and the central United States. It was unlikely that any of these events exceeded magnitude 3.
Researchers noted, however, that temblors also were detected in Cuba. “Seismologists had never seen tremor in Cuba, so this is an exciting new observation,” Justin Rubinstein, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Menlo Park, Calif., told OurAmazingPlanet.
Part of the excitement of the find is the insight it could add into the inner workings of earthquakes.
“Studying long-range triggering may help us to better understand the underlying physics of how earthquakes start,” explained seismologist Zhigang Peng at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Quakes where normally quiet
Most of these micro-earthquakes and tremors occurred in places that already had high background levels of seismic activity, including California’s Geysers Geothermal Field and the San Andreas Fault. Some of the quakes occurred in low-activity areas, such as central Nebraska, central Arkansas and near Beijing.
“Seismologists generally think of the central U.S. as relatively Read more…
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