Must-See Video Reveals What’s at Risk With Canada’s Northern Gateway Tar Sands Pipeline

Must-See Video Reveals What’s at Risk With Canada’s Northern Gateway Tar Sands Pipeline:

Protests Increase Against Canada’s Alternative to Keystone XL

Photo: Ian McAllister

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is currently visiting China to forge alliances and open up the Asian market for Canada’s environmentally-disastrous tar sands crude.

Harper may be making friends in China. But he’s certainly not making any friends in the environmental and conservation communities in the U.S. or Canada.

As Americans fight an increasingly intense political battle over the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Canadian groups are stepping up their opposition to a proposed domestic pipeline that they say would destroy pristine wilderness and jeopardize the way of life of First Nations living in the path of the project.

This past weekend saw a new round of protests in British Columbia against the Northern Gateway project, a proposed 731-mile pipeline that would transport crude from a terminal near Alberta’s tar sands to the Douglas Channel — located in a sensitive rainforest — for export to China and other countries.

More than 1,000 people gathered in Prince Rupert, British Columbia to voice their deep concerns about the project. The demonstration was organized by First Nations and featured a variety of local politicians who said that the protests were “bringing people together” to protect British Columbia’s environment.

The groups were demonstrating against both the pipeline and the proposed shipping route that would allow hundreds of massive oil tankers to travel a treacherous path through pristine wilderness.

The Natural Resources Defense Council released a report last fall detailing the route:

At Kitimat, a tank farm at the edge of the water would facilitate the transfer of oil to holding tanks and then into large oil supertankers. These supertankers would then traverse 185 kilometres of inner coastal waters, including the Douglas Channel, before reaching open ocean in the unpredictably dangerous Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound, and Dixon Entrance. There is a reason that large oil supertankers have not used these waters in the past: the route poses many navigational challenges for large vessels, even under ideal conditions.

…To export tar sands oil, supertankers called “Very Large Crude Carriers” (VLCCs), with a capacity of 2.2 million barrels of oil (320,000 tonnes), would be required on a much more frequent basis. There is already strong opposition to large oil tanker traffic in coastal waters among local citizens, First Nation communities, and organizations concerned about the potential impacts of an oil spill in the ecologically sensitive marine habitats of the coast.

The people of the Gitga’at First Nation who live in the area have expressed deep concerns about the shipping route. In 2006, a ferry transporting 101 people ran off course and sank while sailing these inner coastal waters, killing two people. The vessel was only a fraction of the size of the supertankers that would be carrying crude:

[Bob Hill, a treaty coordinator and negotiator for the Gitga’at] noted it was Gitga’at residents of Hartley Bay who rescued passengers off the B.C. ferry Queen of the North when it sank in 2006.

“And it’s an example of what a small community is faced with in regards to tanker traffic — and the Queen of the North is minute compared to the size of the tankers they’re talking about.”

Hill said the view of the Gitga’at is, “No matter how careful we are in improving technology, and the safety concerns we have, there’s always that chance that human error will enter the equation and do the damage to the environment.”

With the fate of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline uncertain in the U.S., the Canadian government is looking to increase exports of carbon-spewing tar sands crude in other ways — and the Northern Gateway pipeline is key to that strategy. But the project has been in the works for almost six years and continues to face long delays because of extended environmental reviews and a strong opposition movement.

If the tar sands opposition movement continues to expand like it did in the U.S. last year, then Northern Gateway may suffer the same fate as Keystone XL.

So what would the Northern Gateway project mean for British Columbia’s rainforest? Watch the amazing documentary below, called “Spoil,” to get a sense for the consequences. In the film, the International League of Conservation Photographers spreads out across the BC rainforest documenting the unique wildlife and the special relationship the Gitga’at First Nation has with the land.

The film is 45 minutes long, so be sure to make time to watch the whole thing:

SPOIL from EP Films on Vimeo.

Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down

Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down:

The Tribler BitTorrent client is no newcomer to the BitTorrent scene. It has been in development for more than 5 years and has delivered many innovative features, which have mostly been ignored by the masses.

Today, however, Tribler is more relevant than ever before.

Developed by a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology, the main goal is to come up with a robust implementation of BitTorrent that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, Tribler is designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.

“Our key scientific quest is facilitating unbounded information sharing,” Tribler leader Dr. Pouwelse tells TorrentFreak.

“We simply don’t like unreliable servers. With Tribler we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search portals.”

So how does it work?

Like many other BitTorrent clients, Tribler has a search box at the top of the application. However, the search results that appear when users type in a keyword don’t come from a central index. Instead, they come directly from other peers.

Tribler’s decentralized search results

Downloading a torrent is also totally decentralized. When a user clicks on one of the search results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue downloading when a central tracker goes down.

The same is true for spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses crowd-sourcing to keep the network clean. Content is verified by user generated “channels”, which can be “liked” by others. When more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in the search results.

The latest addition to Tribler is a Wikipedia-style editing system dubbed “Open2Edit,” where users have the option to edit names and descriptions of torrents in public channels. All without a central server, totally decentralized.

open2Edit

According to Dr. Pouwelse, Tribler is fully capable of resisting any pressure from outside, and it will still work when all torrent sites and trackers are gone. It simply can’t be shutdown, blocked or censored, whatever laws politicians may come up with.

“The only way to take it down is to take The Internet down.” Pouwelse told us.

One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders.

“Together with software bugs and a code cleanup, that is now our last known weakness,” says Pouwelse.

While the Tribler client only has a few thousand users at the moment, for avid file-sharers it must be a relief to know that it’s out there. No matter what crazy laws may pass in the future, people will always be able to share.

Those who want to give it a spin are welcome download Tribler here. It’s completely Open Source and with a version for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Source: Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down

What 7 Billion People Means?

What 7 Billion People Means?:

Just in the past few weeks the Earth’s population surpassed 7 Billion people. While that may seem like a lot, it is hard to comprehend the true meaning of it. Here is an interesting infographic on just that!

Click image for a larger version

Why Europe's Crisis is Everyone's Problem - ETF Guide

Why Europe's Crisis is Everyone's Problem - ETF Guide

Europe’s financial crisis has escalated from a regional problem into a global one.

Banking and financial institutions in the region are at grave risk because of their exposure to toxic sovereign debt.

In turn, investors around the world are at risk because of their exposure to Europe’s financial system.

How big are Europe’s problems? What will be the global effects? And what’s the proper investment strategy for dealing with it? ....

Markets Indicate Greek Default is Imminent

Markets Indicate Greek Default is Imminent: The second bailout package for Greece is increasingly being challanged while the fiscal situation in Greece is become more dire. Without the current bailout money, Greece will default on its debt soon -- probably this fall. This will only be a respite from the inevitable however since the mathematics of the situation indicates a default no matter what.

Time Machines

Time Machines: [Revised entry by John Earman and Christian Wüthrich on October 7, 2010.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, figure1.html, notes.html]
Recent years have seen a growing consensus in the philosophical community that the grandfather paradox and similar logical puzzles do not preclude the possibility of time travel scenarios that utilize spacetimes containing closed timelike curves. At the same time, physicists, who for half a century acknowledged that the general theory of relativity is compatible with such spacetimes, have...

How to Make a Composting Toilet

How to Make a Composting Toilet:

As my husband and I began mapping out the interior of our rustic shed-turned-cabin in Montana, he knew we wouldn’t have plumbing, and I knew I didn’t want to deal with chemicals or smells. With two small children and weather that can range from -20 to 85-degrees Fahrenheit, we also didn’t want to deal with schlepping outside for potty breaks. Building our own humanure toilet turned out to be our perfect solution.

With only 12'x20' of living space, our low-profile toilet is tucked in a quiet corner behind the door

We get quite a few jokes from friends and family about our “lovey loo,” but I would take our lovely-loo over a honey bucket any day! It’s a bucket inside a wood box, and we cover – um – the deposits with sawdust. it has a real toilet seat on it for looks and comfort, but it is what it is, and it works very well.

Recycled red outhouse behind The Shabin always stinks!

I’m a city girl with a flushing toilet, and if our composting toilet had ever started to stink or had drawn bugs, I would have buried the whole mess and put up an outhouse last year! In fact, we did install an outhouse on our last trip and I hate it! Within one day of putting the outhouse to regular use, it stunk to high heaven and was full of flies even though we continuously tossed lime into it. So pardon me if I prefer my little lovey-loo over in the cabin’s quiet corner. Privacy is highly overrated anyway, or so I tell myself … before swearing that we must purchase a curtain next time we’re in town!

After emptying and rinsing the bucket, start with a layer of wood shavings or other dry debris.

I’m not sure why wood shavings and leaf debris work so well to cover the smell, but I would emphasize that new shavings don’t work well. We take our composting debris from the wood pile, and perhaps the older debris has more microbes? We keep the shavings in a basket next to the lovely loo, and we do put toilet paper in with the leavings. Every “deposit” is covered with about an inch of dry compost. I would not recommend using kitchen scraps.

The lysol is not for smell, but it is an option for disinfecting the bucket after it's been emptied and rinsed. After bouts of sickness, extra disinfecting is required.

To make your own, build a wooden box around a bucket. Create a removable lid with or without a toilet seat attached. Know where you’ll be burying or composing your deposits. We bury ours deep out in the fields where the tractors will till it under the following season, while some build a separate compost pile, covering it with straw and claiming that humanure is usable after one year. As long as fresh waste is kept away from human consumables and out of reach of small pets and children, it is an eco-friendly and smell-free means of living comfortably off-grid.

Bethany Learn lives in Oregon with her husband and two small children. She has a degree in Exercise & Sport Science from OSU, and she is the founder and main instructor behind Fit2B.US which features wholesome home workout videos for the whole family. Fit2B Studio and her blog “Fit2Bmama” are rapidly gaining popularity, and she enjoys a wide following on Twitter and Facebook, and she has been a guest on Get Fit Now Radio & The Organic View. Bethany also heads up the MOMS group at her church and operates a resource site for aspiring writers called Ready to Publish. Bethany’s hobbies include editing, reading, dragon boats with the Castaways, crocheting rag rugs out of recycled shirts, and fixing up “The Shabin,” which is a rustic little shabby shed that she and her husband are converting into an off-grid, sustainable cabin on family land in Montana.