Critical Observer

CALIFORNIA LAKE DRIES OUT OVERNIGHT

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A Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents looking for answers. While a $3.5 million drought safety net at Folsom Lake finishes, a lake in another part of the state is left high and dry. 
 
Thousands of fish lay dead in what used to be Mountain Meadows reservoir also known as Walker Lake, a popular fishing hole just west of Susanville. 
 
“Everywhere that you see that’s wet, there was water,” said resident Eddie Bauer. 
 
Residents say people were fishing on the lake last Saturday, but it drained like a bathtub overnight. Bauer has lived near this lake his entire life. This is the first time he’s ever seen it run dry. He and other residents want answers. 
 
Pacific Gas & Electric Company owns the rights to the water and uses it for hydroelectric power. 
It’s the situation we worked hard to avoid but the reality is we’re in a very serious drought, there’s also concerns for the fish downstream,” said spokesman Paul Moreno. 
 
Bauer says there should’ve been at least two weeks of water left and that would’ve given PG&E enough time to relocate the fish. 
 
“This makes me feel like they didn’t want to do a fish rescue and that it was easier to open that sucker up Saturday night,” Bauer said. 
 
PG&E officials say nobody opened the dam up and the water simply ran out. 
 
No matter who’s to blame, residents here worry, this could happen in other areas of the state. 
 
“The reservoirs are all continuing to be far below normal,” said Doug Carlson with the Department of Water Resources. 
 
He says there’s no question water concerns are still a serious issue across the state. 
 
“We are reliant upon rainfall to fill those lakes of course and until we get more rain we’re not likely to see any appreciable increase in the reservoir levels,” he said. 
 
At Folsom Lake, workers are finishing work on floating barges that would pump water to the city of Folsom and the prison if the lake gets too low for the water to flow through an intake valve. An insurance policy that may be put into use soon.

CALIFORNIA LAKE DRIES OUT OVERNIGHT

A Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents looking for answers. While a $3.5 mill...

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CHEMICALS TURN MALE FISH INTO FEMALES IN RIVER WATER

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Male fish are becoming hermaphroditic due to environmental insults (such as chemicals in the water), says participants in a new study from North Carolina State University not yet published. Where they once had the usual testes containing abundant sperm that made them suitable for reproduction, male fish now may have testes that contain eggs, and their ability to reproduce has become questionable. 
 
What is causing such an unnatural occurrence? Powerful endocrine disrupters known as xenoestrogens are the culprit, according to the study authors. These are estrogens similar in structure to the estrogens made in the body of the female of the species, but in males as well as females, they function as hormone disruptors. Xenoestrogens have become ubiquitous in the environment. They come from things man-made, including pollution, pesticides, and plastics. 
 
Black bass and sunfish, commonly found in the fresh waters of North Carolina, were studied by the researchers, who had tested 20 streams and rivers containing xenoestrogens during the 2012 spawning season and detected 135 types of them. They found that 60% of the black bass tested had eggs in their testes, as did 10% of the sunfish they evaluated. Forty-three of the xenoestrogen types the team documented in 2012 were found in these fish. [1] 
 
The study is troubling because past studies have shown that male fish with eggs in their testes have displayed reduced sperm count and infertility. 
 
“Males guard the nest, create spawning nests for young, and guard fertilized eggs, said Crystal Lee Pow, a PhD student at North Carolina State who was one of the investigators. “Males are crucial for hatching success, and their behavior could be altered by exposure to contaminants and the presence of the intersex condition.” 
 
Why were so many of the black bass affected? Dana Kolpin, from the U.S. Geological Survey, noted that not all species are impacted in the same manner. 
 
Are Xenoestrogens a Threat to Humans? 
 
In both men and women, the role of hormones in the body is communication. Their release sends a chemical message to body components telling them what to do to maintain health and homeostasis. Chemicals from the environment can mimic our natural hormones, dock into the receptors the body has for them, and alter this communication. Organs involved with reproduction are especially vulnerable to receiving altered messages, and so are the immune and neurological systems. 
 
Estrogen has many roles in the bodies of both men and women, such as building healthy bone, powering cognition, and enabling reproduction, but men need only a fraction of the estrogen that women do. Getting too much can tip the scales toward femininity, and such things as the development of man-breasts. 
 
If high estrogen goes on long enough, prostate and testicular cancer can develop. As you can probably see, xenoestrogens are particularly hard on men because they increase estrogen exponentially, and can lead to the development of more estrogen receptors. 
 
Women don’t get a free pass either. Xenoestrogens do not biodegrade, and they are stored in fat cells. This means that when a body is being assaulted by xenoestrogens docking in its estrogen receptors, the message is sent to to make more fat so it has a place to put them. 
 
Another outcome of xenoestrogens may be breast cancer, because they have no balancing hormones as the estrogen naturally produced in the body does. This allows it to stimulate breast cells unabated. Women exhibiting xenoestrogens have breasts that are more dense in nature, a marker of breast cancer risk. 
 
Prolonged exposure to xenoestrogens has also been indicated in other conditions, such as infertility, endometriosis, early onset of puberty, miscarriages, and diabetes. 
 
The Women in Balance Institute, a part of National College of Natural Medicine has compiled a list of the most potent xenoestrogens and guidelines to use for reducing exposure. Be sure to check it out here. 
 
This article originally appeared at Natural Society.

CHEMICALS TURN MALE FISH INTO FEMALES IN RIVER WATER

Male fish are becoming hermaphroditic due to environmental insults (such as chemicals in the water), says participants in a new study fro...

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Oil Prices & Energy Crisis

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvpULz8AmKP5EzEzL1R8M77zgGmByg6IYZCnLTpA33ZaIdQHXW-C3EPZvygXCFv9kkEYUG1FCIYFIRObMFcGVTsZSESUHvPZzpxwD7ScMSTJjBg-y7Vbj6_3oKBYcKI_BNKekJpg4I6Os/s1600-h/Gas_Prices.512.512.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213249194075655618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvpULz8AmKP5EzEzL1R8M77zgGmByg6IYZCnLTpA33ZaIdQHXW-C3EPZvygXCFv9kkEYUG1FCIYFIRObMFcGVTsZSESUHvPZzpxwD7ScMSTJjBg-y7Vbj6_3oKBYcKI_BNKekJpg4I6Os/s200/Gas_Prices.512.512.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a>This whole gas issue is getting out hand these days. There a lot of moaning and groaning going on in the States about the current condition of the price of gasoline. If you keep in mind that in the UK they are paying what would equate to $9 per gallon and in Turkey to $11 per gallon, the American situation does not seem as bad. (To our readers overseas drop us a comment and let us know what your prices are like.) So for the second day in a row gas prices reportedly dropped and there is some speculation about what this means. In lue of the gas price trends of previous years, and the fact that overall it went up 7.4% since last month, the only conclusion that I can draw from this is that this means nothing. In fact the average price of gasoline in America went from $4.080 to $4.075 per gallon in the last two days (diesel only one tenth of a cent, that's $.001) Holy shit! That a savings (if the price was at a plateau) of a half a cent, which in a year would probably equate to what? I'm not gonna put in the work to do this calculation because everyone's driving habits are different but I would have to assume it would be a around fucking dollar or two, give or take, so.. [fart sound]. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEsG8tzg0RdoFGqp2OHlv5wOqY5HiEvkFOnzUXMbdfv_PfvyVAnC0M1KovaqOQthy2DBLaZT55GajH8XQ29WXIe0OEf4aeh8ZqMXLmzRge5cnY98WbWC4RDfIIrX6Ga3wYKri-1wdyEk/s1600-h/art.platform.gi.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213249349781118098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEsG8tzg0RdoFGqp2OHlv5wOqY5HiEvkFOnzUXMbdfv_PfvyVAnC0M1KovaqOQthy2DBLaZT55GajH8XQ29WXIe0OEf4aeh8ZqMXLmzRge5cnY98WbWC4RDfIIrX6Ga3wYKri-1wdyEk/s200/art.platform.gi.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a>Bush and the congress are pushing to lift the ban on offshore drilling. Bush also renewed his demand that Congress allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, clear the way for more refineries and encourage efforts to recover oil from shale in areas such as the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. But how can you be surprised? The Bush administration seems to be good at fucking up things that never needed to be fucked with in the first place. The administration also claims that oil drilling projects manned by Cuba with support from china (oil reserves that stretch from Cuba to Florida), very possibly might begin in the next few years and that we should not let them dip their fingers into our honey. That (one of the few things this administration peddled) I can agree with. It's a little unnerving having an economic steroid growth machine like China investing in their interests off our shores. If China does begin setting this up we need to intercept<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJxbhtI-VzHi7NTvTUVarTXoGiPKrmkPrPKO45fS0y_lnLDuSzyo9YIpS_SorZ_X6zi8T-c25jEn1T4n8Ohr7JMTK7R67hQI3Cb37ahvqbvt4OT55vO3h2lwQVMZoATVDB4TnjajFQLjA/s1600-h/vehicle_exhaust_3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213251215644291282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJxbhtI-VzHi7NTvTUVarTXoGiPKrmkPrPKO45fS0y_lnLDuSzyo9YIpS_SorZ_X6zi8T-c25jEn1T4n8Ohr7JMTK7R67hQI3Cb37ahvqbvt4OT55vO3h2lwQVMZoATVDB4TnjajFQLjA/s200/vehicle_exhaust_3.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a> their hail mary pass for oil and run it back for a touchdown figuratively speaking. If they plan to create more environmental damage in those waters, then we as American should play our role and do it first. However drilling in the Alaskan reserves is banned for a reason. I don't know if the Bush administration got the memo (you certainly can't tell by their actions) but aren't we supposed to be decreasing our demand for oil and saving the environment rather than increasing demand and continuing to further damage the environment and further saturating our atmosphere with hydrocarbons? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnviuh0fA156O6ZohjVfr63kR7xgijnUGBvAgbcl8rg8uvLA6Uj4xf_oTeaC-Vc8egnZpB_czhdfP11FKkY8GP5LvtoQP6ia9TzHx39sOJjzotnOHtDojbJ07eln6U02BsWvno_CSkK8/s1600-h/georgebush.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213252960733701778" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnviuh0fA156O6ZohjVfr63kR7xgijnUGBvAgbcl8rg8uvLA6Uj4xf_oTeaC-Vc8egnZpB_czhdfP11FKkY8GP5LvtoQP6ia9TzHx39sOJjzotnOHtDojbJ07eln6U02BsWvno_CSkK8/s200/georgebush.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a>Yea the gas prices are higher than they were in a long time but I wouldn't call it an energy crisis, however I will admit the situation is quite unfavorable. In any event too much complaining about the situation is making the Bush administration panic and make dumb decisions (we all know how well they plan under pressure.) Everyone know this can be a lot worse. A lot of people are complaining that driving is getting too expensive and/or that some people are not able to afford something that they once took for granted. On another note, not everyone needs to drive, and some that need, shouldn't be behind the goddamn wheel. There are <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPd6Ds2uDXt2ap86HZ5d7M2XZ5RbnmHeqa2ulG3M-QHvuufqYky-6_3MpVTw9fUhj4TPygx_6T_W1dQFpTEoMyF-7raYm-2kXPpFPD54T12_JcVzm4-RrcBAJ4RVoxOxdGOA3NReHtfGY/s1600-h/bandar_bush.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213253332417391490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPd6Ds2uDXt2ap86HZ5d7M2XZ5RbnmHeqa2ulG3M-QHvuufqYky-6_3MpVTw9fUhj4TPygx_6T_W1dQFpTEoMyF-7raYm-2kXPpFPD54T12_JcVzm4-RrcBAJ4RVoxOxdGOA3NReHtfGY/s200/bandar_bush.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a>plenty of retards, assholes and maniacs on the road today (Well, maybe not maniacs. Maniacs usually speed.) So to take a few drivers off the road would be good for traffic! Wouldn't it? Think about it, the people that are cheap on gas are probably cheap on everything. Those are the same people that move slow on the highways because they are scared shitless of having to pay a speeding ticket. The solution is simple, if you don't like the price, take the fucking bus. One less driver on the road and one step closer to a cleaner planet. If the Bush administration put as much time, money and effort into renewable energy as they did into pointless wars we would be better off. Instead they treat renewable energy like the hunt for Bin Laden... [fart sound]

Oil Prices & Energy Crisis

This whole gas issue is getting out hand these days. There a lot of moaning and groaning going on in the States about the current condition ...

Read Article »