Arctic May Have Been Saved by Fall of Soviet Union

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Guardian-LV

Kimberly Ruble

The Arctic may have been saved by the fall of the Soviet Union. An intercontinental research team, which was made up of individuals from the United States, Russia and Canada have astonished the scientific world with revealing just such a theory. They have toppled earlier assumptions that high levels of mercury in both the European Arctic and North America meant those same levels would also be found near the top of the world. However, the team learned that mercury concentrations in fish are very much lower than what was expected in most of the Arctic and that the economic deterioration of the former Soviet Union just might be responsible.

Leandro Castello, who is an assistant professor of fish and wildlife at the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, stated that it may be that the financial decline of the former Soviet Union, which went belly up back in 1991, appears to have been good for the Arctic environment over on that side of the world. Castello is also one of the lead authors of a research study which has been recently published in the journal of Environmental Science & Technology.

The majority of mercury in the atmosphere comes from ore processing and mining. This is what a United Nations Environmental Program study says. Under particular water conditions, mercury is changed over to a certain type which is then absorbed by living creatures such as fish.

Since the Industrial Revolution occurred, atmospheric mercury started to rise in North America and Europe until the 1970’s. After that, it started to slack off due to emissions controls. Now Asia leads the world in mercury levels in the atmosphere.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/arctic-may-have-been-saved-by-fall-of-soviet-union/

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[Indi Guy]

1. Conservatives can give Ronnie the credit...

...for backing the Osama and the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan -- which broke the back of the Soviet economy, forcing the breakup of the USSR.

Those "freedom fighters" did more for the world than one might imagine.

[mikekohr]

2. The USSR was a slow moving train wreck that went over the cliff when G.H.W. Bush was president

They can give Reagan credit. But he does not deserve it.

[alfredo]

4. I was told by a long time intel officer back in the 60's that

The Soviet Union was going to collapse. All we needed to do was be patient. They weren't putting any money into infrastructure or factory updates. Their roads and bridges were in bad repair, and there was no political will to fix them. Roads and bridges are essential for fighting a war.

They were very far behind in computer power, and their weapons, though powerful, were low tech. They only had the resources for two months of sustained battle. They were a paper tiger.

If the Pentagon and the CIA we're truthful, their budgets would be cut. They pumped up the Threat to keep the dollars flowing.

[Treant]

5. That first paragraph

resembles the United States today.

The second one, not so much.

[alfredo]

7. Glad you picked up on that.

[SoapBox]

11. I was gonna note the same.

[alfredo]

12. Conservatives never learn the right lessons.

[Indi Guy]

9. I gave Ronnie credit for backing Osama...

...and should have posted my

[enuffs_enuffs]

3. if ur gonna lay the fall at saint ronnies feet...

same goes for our current state of endless war.

[alfredo]

6. That was one thing the Neo cons borrowed from Trotsky.

Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2013, 10:43 PM - Edit history (1)

Remember, the father of the neocons was a Trotskyite. Look up Irving Kristol.

Iraq was easy to pull out because it appeared they had a chance of stability. Afghanistan is a different beast all together. They are very fragmented, and ungovernable. The best we can hope for is to degrade the Taliban to the point where the other factions can hold their own against the Taliban. Afghanistan has a dangerous wild card on their border, Pakistan. They are much more dangerous than Iran because they are unpredictable.

Iran's religious leaders are more pragmatic. They know when to back off on the saber rattling. Now Iraq is Iran's problem, not ours. I hope they have fun trying to contain the Sunni and the Kurds

[calimary]

8. Any relation to bill kristol?

[alfredo]

10. William Kristol's father.

[calimary]

13. Aha! I was afraid of that.

So he's the son of a Trotskyite, 'eh? Pretty funny!!! Wonder how many others in the wrong-wing know that?

[alfredo]

14. Trotsky and Stalin didn't exchange Christmas cards, and that might have been Irving's

main beef with the Kremlin.

[pretzel4gore]

15. maybe, but consider what USSR was up against...

poor old USSR, born in bloody revolution in 1917, it died in 1991, 74 years old. It was a 'work in progress' at best- after all, most people are instinctively rightwingers and trying to make a leftwing system work is hardly possible- even using brute force, which was Stalin's only hope if he wanted to save the Revolution. Despite all the problems, and that included whole scale infiltration of the USSR gov and institutions by rightwing secret agencies such as the brits, French, swedes, usa and so on -who forged $ billions of Rubles as part of its 'war on the Revolution' and bribed entire swaths of the Soviet (Workers) society, all the while leaking this info to CHEKA about who it was taking bribes etc; all of which resulted in purge after purge (lol) after purge....hahaha...well, in the end we won, and the Revolution is over. Fini. Still, the USSR did develop nuke weapons in time to save itself from Soviet cities becoming another 'Hiroshima' ...It also put men in space and build ICBM to stop first strike by the Nazis, I mean the west, lol.....it build ice dams throughout Siberia (see Farley Mowat's book 'Siber') due to lack of concrete, and it opened up the Northeast Passage , which we still haven't been able to do (the Soviets basically built town and villages right across the north- they had teams of 'housewife' helicopter pilots available 24/7 who by the 1970's were helping move hundreds of ships through NE passage. Of course, most people only believe the anti Soviet story we've been force fed for generations. The Revolution if it succeed meant the 1 per center would lose control and that was big no-no, agreed? (see foxnews) and we like the way things are, with no more Revolution threatening us! We pump 100 million tonnes carbon EVERYDAY into the earth atmosphere, w/out too much leftist complaining, and our gov puts $85 billion a month propping up the NY stock market, and we overlook the fact that the USSR LOST 20 million people and 1/3rd of its economy in WW2 (and that was AFTER making the ugly deal with hitler ie the Nazi-Soviet pact!) yet we was able to turn USSR into evil empire just by saying so again and again that they WANT TO RULE THE WORLD despite fact the USSR was hideously mangled and could barely afford to fix itself LOL!
Someday the scope of this disaster will seep into public awareness. I think some people are already seeing glimpses of it, see Edward Snowden and the NSA monitoring of private communications