Our first dispatch on methyl hydrate:What drives the bloodshed

Italy

http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2007.hydrate_rev.pdf

Focused ongoing fluid effluent from the sediment into

the ocean generates a structure known as a mud volcano.

Approximately 1800 mud volcanoes have been discovered

around the world, above and below sea level, mostly in a belt

beginning in the Mediterranean Sea and winding across Asia

to Indonesia (Dimitrov, 2002). Submarine mud volcanoes

are often associated with methane hydrates...

...The tendency for slope failure can be amplified if the sediment

accumulates so quickly that the excess high porosity

of surface sediments cannot be squeezed out. This can

lead to instability of the sediment column, causing periodic

Storegga-type landslides off the coast of Norway (see below),

in the Mediterranean Sea (Rothwell et al., 2000) and

potentially off the East coast of the United States (Dugan and

Flemings, 2000).

Climate Treaty
http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-change/methane-seepage-heightens-pressure-climate-treaty/article-184892

"Scientists have predicted that as ocean temperatures rise as a result of climate change, methane hydrates would begin to break down at greater depths. But the fact that the process has begun already surprised the team."

(they are not surprised they have known this since the 90's see the "Bush Hill" and "Caspian Sea" documents below)

K-T Event
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/26624
Recently BP-Amoco discovered how to bring these frozen fireballs to the surface intact...

...Ever since the discovery of these hydrates one of the big questions has been "can we mine them without triggering a disaster that makes the K-T event look mild by comparison"?
(21 Feb 2007)

(The K-T event was the Cretacious Tertiary extinction event in the geological record.)


Bush Hill document

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cover.jsp?purl=/898807-j56c5r/

Methane fluxes from the surface ocean (mixed layer) to the atmosphere at the three seep sites in the Gulf of Mexico have been computed using air-sea gas exchange models presented in Wannikof (1992) and Wannikof and McGillis (1999)...

...The areas affected by seepage where gas hydrate is found are often on the order of a square kilometer or more......Side scan sonar, and satellite remote sensing (Figure 12) were used to detect thelocations where escaping gas reaches the sea surface to carefully determine the number of

gas vents at a “typical” seep (De Beukelaer et al., 2003). 

The main objective of our attempts to quantify CH4 flux into the atmosphere at Bush Hilland vicinity and extrapolate it over the entire Gulf of Mexico basin was to asses the contribution of this oceanic basin methane source to the atmosphere.

If significant, it would be important to conduct similar studies at other regions with active methane seeps and natural oil, such as the Sea of Okhotsk, Black Sea, and Caspian Sea, in order to better constrain/quantify the flux of oceanic methane to the atmosphere.

Caspian Sea (Iran)

The original link I found to this info has been blocked but I found an html version saved by google. Can you see why Saudi Arabia urged the US to start a war with Iran which borders the Caspian?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iWm4cq06Sh0J:rainier.seis.sc.edu/camelia/Pubs/Diaconescu-OTC2002.pdf+/rainier.seis.sc.edu/camelia/Pubs/Diaconescu-OTC2002.pdf&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The presence of both thermogenic and biogenic gas, identified from coring at the seafloor, suggests that gas hydrates in the South Caspian Sea may be stable in water depths as shallow as~150 m, much shallower than other areas reported worldwide.

The maximum predicted thickness is 1300 m, considerably

thicker than other known hydrate occurrences. Accumulation of these hydrates near the base of the continental rise appears to control a large region (>200 sq. km) of shallow deformation, including shallow faulting evident on the detailed bathymetry of the seafloor. The gas hydrates of the South Caspian region prove to be widespread features of the deepwater of the South Caspian Sea, buried deposits well beneath the seafloor, and accordingly, they may represent significant and previously underestimated geo-hazards.

Primary among these hazards are (1) uncontrolled release of free gas trapped beneath the hydrate seal, (2) disruption of the gass hydrate stability field leading to either explosive dissociation of the gas hydrate, or reduction in sediment strength, and (3) slope instability, and mass sediment transport. The association of gas hydrates with active mud volcanoes in the South Caspian Sea increases the potential for offshore flaming eruptions.

Korea

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

(same day as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico same day S. Korea claimed the island of Dokdo in 1953 Dokdo is the island Japan and China both want which is surrounded by methane hydrate. You can bet the US wants it too and is behind this conflict between N and S Korea. The US left ownership of the island in question at the end of the Korean conflict as a loophole to start another war.)

 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20100420mr.html

Methane has scent of potential

 By MICHAEL RICHARDSON

SINGAPORE — Starting this month and extending through May, South Korea will resume exploratory drilling in waters off its east coast to find out whether a long-hidden energy resource can be turned into a new wellspring of natural gas. Other major energy users and importers, including the United States, China, Japan and India, are in the midst of similar research and development programs to unlock what they hope will be a treasure trove of methane hydrates on land and at sea. All of them aim to be in commercial production by 2020 at the latest.

 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20100420mr.html

 A team of Russian, American and Swedish scientists last month reported that a relatively shallow section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of gas hydrate is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of methane into the atmosphere. However, it is not clear whether these emissions are new and are being triggered by the increasing temperature of bottom waters, or whether they have been there unnoticed for decades or longer.

And Finally here is the sickening truth of why America really attacked Afghanistan. Do people in Italy think 911 was a professional demolition designed by our own leaders to justify economic acquisition in Afghanistan and Iraq? I do, especially after I watched a documentary that showed the Pentagon before the roof collapsed and the news started filming it. The hole they claim a jetliner went through was only 15 feet wide before the roof collapsed and the cameras pointed at it.

This survey of Afghan mineral wealth was conducted in the 80's and 90's. Many  people in the US are stupid, but some of us know what kind of evil we are ruled by. That is why I was not offended at all when you suggested American wars are rich bastards getting richer while Americans like me get poorer. I know it is true. Thank you for your time in reading all this please pass it on. People need to know what is really driving all the bloodshed.

http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov/oil.php

Depleted Uranium, all hush hush

Posted by morris108 on May 19, 2008

I wonder if Israel has made any official inquiry into the effects of depleted uranium?

How much of the depleted uranium particles float over and into Israel?

If your govt scientist told you , your offspring were likely to suffer genetic defects from the use of depleted uranium in Iraq etc. Would you protest?

So far, it is all a big hush up, doesn’t suit the profiteers.

Like the Gulf War syndrome, all hushed up.

At least you could ask for an official enquiry or a savvy journalist to look into it.

Canada's depleted Uranium weapons

Canada's role in depleted uranium weapons

Monday, 3 December 2007, 10:34 am
Column: Alfred Lambremont Webre

Canada's role in depleted uranium weapons worldwide

by Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, Med
http://commonground.ca/iss/0707192/cg192_du.shtml

The Government of Canada is in non-compliance with the statutes and regulations of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), prohibiting the use of Canadian uranium in depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Moreover, Canada has a bilateral nuclear co-operation agreement with the US, under which uranium exports to the US may only be used for peaceful purposes, and not in weapons. This includes 'control over the high enrichment of Canadian uranium and subsequent storage and use of the highly enriched uranium,' a Foreign Affairs document states. The same rules that apply to uranium apply to depleted uranium, according to the CNSC.

DU weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction under international law. Thus Canada may be complicit in the US use of weapons of mass destruction in the 1991 Iraq war I, the 1998 Balkans war, the 2001 war in Afghanistan, and the 2003 Iraq war II, where the British medical journal Lancet estimates that one million civilians have died. In each of these wars, it is likely that depleted uranium in the DU weapons used by the U.S. and the UK comes from Canadian uranium exported to the US and processed in US enrichment plants into depleted uranium and subsequently manufactured into DU weapons.

Depleted uranium is the uranium by-product that remains after the removal of the isotope U-235 during the enrichment process. For every ton of enriched U-235 uranium for the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries, seven tons of depleted uranium containing the U-238 isotope are made for the munitions, DU weapons, and military armor industries. 'Depleted uranium' is a marketing term of the nuclear industry. U-238 depleted uranium was originally discovered as a poison gas weapon of mass destruction during World War II by the Manhattan Project, at the same time as the atomic bomb and Agent Orange. Because DU is pyrophoric, it bursts into high-temperature decomposition upon impact with military armour, releasing nanoparticles of ionizing radiation that contaminate all living things and the environment with deadly radiation with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The public military excuse for the use of DU munitions, bombs and kinetic penetrators is that DU is heavy and easily penetrates military armour and other targets. The covert strategic military use of DU munitions, smart bombs, and cruise missiles is radiation contamination of terrain, and low level nuclear war against enemy troops, civilian populations, and all unprotected military troops, for purposes of depopulation.

DU weapons & war crimes

After 3 years of investigation by 60 expert witnesses and jurists at a cost of $1 million raised by Japanese citizens, the International Criminal Tribunal For Afghanistan at Tokyo on March 10, 2004 found President George W. Bush guilty of the war crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons by US forces in the 2001 war against Afghanistan.

Experts agree that a substantial portion of the depleted uranium in the DU weapons used by the US in Afghanistan came from Canadian uranium. Had the Tokyo Tribunal been diligent, it could have found Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who resigned as Prime Minister on December 12, 2003, guilty as an accessory to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, for failing to enforce Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regulations, and the Canada-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, both of which prohibit Canadian uranium from being used in DU weapons.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Montreal-based Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) says, "Canada may have the policy, but it¹s not enforced. The Canadian government is taking directions and orders from the nuclear industry" . The uranium industry has a vested interest in ensuring its depleted uranium waste makes a profit and is not just left in storage. That¹s why some of Canada¹s depleted uranium is ending up in weapons, Edwards says.

"The Canadian government can¹t even think for themselves."

Depleted uranium in Hawaii

The depleted uranium that has contaminated the Hawaiian Islands with deadly radiation most probably has a Canadian uranium source. It is highly probably that the depleted uranium in DU munitions fired at bases on the Big Island and at military bases on Oahu, and in the nuclear weapons stored at Pearl Harbour is derived from Canadian uranium, exported to the US and processed into enriched uranium and DU.

Public health effects of DU weapons

The public health and environmental effects of the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons can be considered per se violations of the war crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The demonstrated public health effects of depleted uranium (DU) weapons include: diabetes, cancer, birth defects, chronic diseases caused by neurological and neuromuscular radiation damage, mitochondrial diseases (chronic fatigue syndrome, Lou Gehrig¹s, Parkinson¹s and Alzheimer¹s disease, heart and brain disorders), global DNA damage in men¹s sperm, infertility in women, learning disabilities (such as autism and dyslexia), mental illness, infant mortality and low birth weights, increase in death rates and decrease in birth rates.

The Prime Minister stonewalls

So far, the Conservative government and the Liberal opposition have failed to take a public position on Canada¹s failure to stop the illegal use of its uranium in DU weapons. Stephen Harper refused to allow any Conservative MPs to appear on a June 13, 2007 North American radio special programme on the Canadian DU issue. Despite repeated conversations with Stephane Dion's personal press attaché and attempts to reach Liberal MP and Foreign Affairs critic Ujjal Dosanjh, the Liberal Party chose not to send a representative to the Canadian DU radio programme. Liberal MP Dr. Keith Martin, MD, a physician and former Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Defence in the Paul Martin Government, appeared on a radio programme on the Canadian DU issue and stated that in his opinion, there were no adverse public health consequences to the use of DU weapons.

By contrast, at a May 12, 2007 Uranium-free BC Forum at the Brilliant Centre in Castlegar, BC, NDP MP Alex Atamanenko (Southern Interior) publicly stated he was opposed to the use of Canadian uranium in DU weapons. Atamanenko seeks Canadian legislation banning DU weapons, as Belgium has passed. On the June 13, 2007 Canadian DU radio programme, Atamanenko publicly committed to question the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on why Canada was not enforcing its regulations and treaty obligations against the use of its uranium in DU weapons. Connie Fogal, Leader of the Canadian Action Party, which passed a resolution in support of Canadian legislation outlawing DU weapons, committed to work against the use of Canadian DU in American weapons. Adriane Carr, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada likewise committed to demand enforcement of Canada¹s prohibitions against use of its uranium in DU weapons.

What path is Canada taking?

Unbeknownst to the public, the Government of Canada seems to have strayed into aiding and abetting the serious war crimes of DU-induced genocide and crimes against humanity. By contrast, British Columbia has maintained a moratorium on uranium mining since the 1970s. There is substantial community support for a permanent ban on uranium exploration and mining in BC, as the recent Uranium-free BC Forum in Castlegar suggested. The detrimental impacts of uranium exploration and mining on public health and the environment is the driving force behind the ban.

Under the guise of combating climate change, the nuclear industry, led by the Bush Administration, is now promoting nuclear power plants to the tiger economies of India, China, Japan, and South Korea. Because of ionizing radiation and the nuclear waste issue, this amounts to a low level nuclear war against these populations. NASA recently reported vast uranium deposits in Khazakhstan and Afghanistan. Khazakhstan is expected to out-produce Canada (now the world¹s top producer) in uranium production within 12 years.

One might rationally ask: Why not ban uranium exploration and mining in BC, and organize collectively to secure a uranium exploration and mining ban in Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec? The public policy reasons for the ban on uranium exploration and mining in the rest of Canada public heath and environment are equally valid throughout Canada, as they are in BC.

Let¹s sunset our Canadian uranium industry. That is a practical way to save the health of Canadians, the environment, and innocent victims worldwide.

*************

Alfred Lambremont Webre

Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd is the International Director of the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), and a Judge on the Kuala Lumpur International War Crimes Tribunal. Alfred can be reached at peace@peaceinspace.org

overview of depleted uranium by Sherwood Ross, November 2007

Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Sherwood Ross By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan. So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed." "More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991," Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine. Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California. Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, " The long- term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control." Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, "For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed." She adds, "the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive." Dr. Helen Caldicott, the prominent anti-nuclear crusader, has written: "Much of the DU is in cities such as Baghdad, where half the population of 5 million people are children who played in the burned- out tanks and on the sandy, dusty ground." "Children are 10 to 20 times more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults," Caldicott wrote. "My pediatric colleagues in Basra, where this ordnance was used in 1991, report a sevenfold increase in childhood cancer and a sevenfold increase in gross congenital abnormalities," she wrote in her book, "Nuclear Power is not the Answer"(The New Press). Caldicott goes on to say the two Gulf wars " have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people---particularly children--- are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity." Because of the extremely long half-life of uranium 238, one of the radioactive elements in the shells fired, " the food, the air, and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated," Caldicott explained. Uranium is a heavy metal that enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney, where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure or kidney cancer. It also lodges in the bones where it causes bone cancer and leukemia, and it is excreted in the semen, where it mutates genes in the sperm, leading to birth deformities. Nuclear contamination is spreading around the world, Caldicott adds, with heaviest concentrations in regions within a 1,000-mile radius of Baghdad and Afghanistan. These are, notably, northern India, southern Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Gulf emirates, and Jordan. " Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes," Moret asserts. Doug Rokke, formerly the top U.S. Army DU clean-up officer and now anti-DU crusader, says Israeli tankers fired radioactive shells during the invasion of Lebanon last year. U.S. and NATO forces also used DU ammunition in Kosovo. Rokke says he is quite ill from the effects of DU and that members of his clean-up crew have died from it. As a result of DU bombardments, Caldicott writes, "Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time." Like symptoms have been reported among infants born to U.S. service personnel that fought in the Gulf Wars. One survey of 251 returned Gulf War veterans from Mississippi made by the Veterans Administration found 67% of children born to them suffered from "severe illnesses and deformities." Some were born without brains or vital organs or with no arms, hands, or arms, or with hands attached to their shoulders. While U.S. officials deny DU ammunition is dangerous, it is a fact Gulf War veterans were the first Americans ever to fight on a radioactive battlefield, and their children apparently are the first known to display these ghastly deformities. Soldiers who survived being hit by radioactive ammunition, as well as those who fired it, are falling ill, often showing signs of radiation sickness. Of the 700,000 U.S. veterans of the first Gulf War, more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability and 11,000 are dead, published reports indicate. This is an astonishing toll from such a short conflict in which fewer than 400 U.S. soldiers were killed on the battlefield. Of course, "depleted uranium munitions were and remain another causative factor behind Gulf War Syndrome(GWS)," writes Francis Boyle, a leading American authority on international law in his book "Biowarfare and Terrorism," from Clarity Press Inc. "The Pentagon continues to deny that there is such a medical phenomenon categorized as GWS---even beyond the point where everyone knows that denial is pure propaganda and disinformation," Boyle writes. Boyle contends, "The Pentagon will never own up to the legal, economic, tortious, political, and criminal consequences of admitting the existence of GWS. So U.S. and U.K. veterans of Gulf War I as well as their afterborn children will continue to suffer and die. The same will prove true for U.S. and U.S. veterans of Bush Jr.'s Gulf War II as well as their afterborn children." Boyle said the use of DU is outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibiting poison gas. Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, writes in his "The Sorrows of Empire"(Henry Holt and Co.) that, given the abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and deformities in Iraq as well as Kosovo, the evidence points "toward a significant role for DU." By insisting on its use, Johnson adds, "the military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction." Moret calls DU "the Trojan Horse of nuclear war." She describes it as "the weapon that keeps killing." Indeed, the half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5-billion years, and as it decays it spawns other deadly radioactive by-products. Radioactive fallout from DU apparently blew far and wide. Following the initial U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 2003, DU particles traveled 2,400 miles to Great Britain in about a week, where atmospheric radiation quadrupled. But it is in the Middle East, predominantly Iraq, where the bulk of the radioactive waste has been dumped. In the early Nineties, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that 50 tons of dust from DU explosions could claim a half million lives from cancer by year 2000. Not 50 tons, but an estimated two thousand radioactive tons have been fired off in the Middle East, suggesting the possibility over time of an even higher death toll. Dr. Keith Baverstock, a World Health Organization radiation advisor, informed the media, Iraq's arid climate would increase exposure from its tiny particles as they are blown about and inhaled by the civilian population for years to come. The civilian death toll from the August, 1945, U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been put at 140,000 and 80,000, respectively. Over time, however, deaths from radiation sickness are thought to have claimed the lives of another 100,000 Japanese civilians. Sherwood Ross is a Miami, Florida-based free-lance writer who covers military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com. Ross has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and several wire services and is a contributor to national magazines.

Sherwood Ross is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Sherwood Ross