Leonard Nimoy's last tweet (@TheRealNimoy) | Twitter

Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) | Twitter:

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

Leonard Simon Nimoy

March 26, 1931  February 27, 2015

RIP

photos via wikipedia

President Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill

February 24, 2015: President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline bill after it was sent to his desk today. It is the third time President Obama has used his veto power. But, the fight over the pipeline isn’t over yet, as the U.S. State Department’s long approval process for the Keystone XL continues.


more: President Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill | EcoWatch

‪#‎LiuQuan‬ :: CT scan reveals 1,000 year old mummy inside statue of Buddha!

RT – Dutch scientists have scanned a statue of Buddha, dating back to the 11th or 12th century, to reveal a mummy inside. They’ve also taken samples of the mummy’s insides and discovered scraps of paper with ancient Chinese characters on them.

A human skeleton glows through the statue’s silhouette on the computed tomography scan, done in the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort, the Netherlands...

... The mummy is identified as the mummified body of the Buddhist master Liuquan ...

MORE: CT scan reveals 1,000 yo mummy inside statue of Buddha — RT News

Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Offshore Fracking in California

For Immediate Release, February 19, 2015

Contact: Patrick Sullivan, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org   

Legal Action Could Also Affect Federally Permitted Fracking in Gulf of Mexico

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Interior Department today for violating three federal laws by rubberstamping offshore fracking off California’s coast without analyzing fracking pollution’s threats to ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and marine wildlife, including sea otters, fish, sea turtles and whales.

Oil companies have fracked more than 200 wells in state and federal waters off California’s coast; today’s suit challenges the federal government for its permitting role. Offshore fracking blasts huge amounts of water mixed with dangerous chemicals into the earth, under extremely high pressure, to crack rock formations beneath the ocean floor.

The oil industry has federal permission to dump more than 9 billion gallons of wastewater, including chemical-laden fracking fluid, into the ocean off California’s coast every year.

“Every offshore frack increases the threat to our fragile ocean ecosystems,” said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney and director of the Center’s oceans program. “The Interior Department is turning a blind eye while oil companies frack wells and dump chemicals into our oceans. If the federal government doesn’t halt this inherently dangerous practice, fracking chemicals or a disastrous oil spill could wreak havoc on marine wildlife and coastal communities.”

The Center’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in California, seeks to prohibit the federal government from issuing permits allowing fracking until it complies with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act.

The Center’s legal complaint points out that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement have developed “a pattern and practice of rubberstamping permits to frack with no analysis of the environmental impacts, no determination of whether such activities are consistent with the plans governing oil development and production in the Pacific Region or California’s Coastal Management Program, and no public involvement.”

The federal government has also given oil companies permission to frack at least 100 wells in the Gulf of Mexico, including in the vicinity of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon spill. They’re also dumping vast quantities of wastewater into the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, fracking in the Gulf of Mexico has never had meaningful environmental review. The lawsuit in California could affect oversight of all federally permitted offshore fracking.

Fracking chemicals threaten water quality along both coasts. Dangerously high levels of cancer-causing benzene and chromium-6 are common in fracking flowback fluid from onshore wells in California, according to a recent Center analysis of tests conducted by oil companies. At least 10 fracking chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking in California could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including sea otters and fish, Center scientists have found.

“Fracking has caused terrible damage on land, and it clearly has no place in our oceans,” Sakashita said. “If federal officials follow the law and take a hard look at the risks, they’ll have to conclude that offshore fracking is far too big of a gamble with our oceans’ life-support systems.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 825,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/fracking-02-19-2015.html

The Pentagon and Climate Change: Is National Security at Risk? | Rolling Stone

The leaders of our armed forces know what's coming next – but deniers in Congress are ignoring the warnings

Naval station Norfolk is the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's Atlantic fleet, an awesome collection of military power that is in a terrible way the crowning glory of American civilization. Seventy-five thousand sailors and civilians work here, their job the daily business of keeping an armada spit-shined and ready for deployment at any moment. When I visited in December, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was in port, a 1,000-foot-long floating war machine that was central to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cranes loaded equipment onto the deck; sailors rushed up and down the gangplanks. Navy helicopters hovered overhead. Security was tight everywhere. While I was checking out one of the base's massive new double-decker concrete piers that's nearly as big as a shopping-mall parking lot, I wandered over to have a closer look at the USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer that has spent a lot of hours on watch in the Mediterranean. Armed men on the deck watched me warily — even my official escort seemed jittery ("I think we should step back a bit," he said, grabbing my arm)...

more: The Pentagon and Climate Change: Is National Security at Risk? | Rolling Stone

Why the calls of the wild may be more complex than zoologists first thought | Science | The Guardian

Why the calls of the wild may be more complex than zoologists first thought | Science | The Guardian

Save the Arctic | Tell President Obama to stop Arctic oil exploration.

Save the Arctic | Obama Tell President Obama to stop Arctic oil exploration.

Clean energy vs nuclear: the battle intensifies | GreenWorld

Clean energy vs nuclear: the battle intensifies | GreenWorld

Big, Expensive Power Plants Undermine a Clean Energy Future | CleanTechnica

Big, Expensive Power Plants Undermine a Clean Energy Future | CleanTechnica