GreenWatch

B. McPherson The 7.7 earthquake off the BC coast on Saturday night raises new questions about the safety of bringing more supertankers to Kitimat. Enbridge Corporation is in the process of trying to get approval for a twinned pipeline through BC for its Tar Sands bitumen. When the earthquake hit the islands of Haida Gwai (Queen Charlotte Islands) there was little damage done and no fatalities. The islands are sparsely populated which helped lower the danger. The massive earthquake shook the ground hundreds of miles away in Alberta. We usually see a tsunami accompany such a large land slip. Destructive tsunamis hitting the coast of Japan in 2011 showed the world the destructive power of the ocean. The BC earthquake generated tsunami warnings and alerts, but generated only small waves along the coast and Hawaii. The coast of British Columbia is the most active in N. America and part of the Ring of Fire that circles the Pacific Ocean. This is the area that Enbridge wi...

By B. McPherson The catastrophe that hit Japan this last March continues. The combination of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation has made 2011 a most deadly year for the Japanese. New figures being released show that the radiation release from nuclear plant Fukushima Daiichi was probably twice as high as initially thought. Apparently, the Japanese government failed to measure the amount of radioactive particles that were released into and over the ocean, only taking into consideration that which fell on the surrounding land. “ Andreas Stohl, of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, said measurements taken from a global network of sensors showed that the plant had released 36,000 terabecquerels of caesium-137 between 11 March and 20 April. ” The Guardian UK New figures being made public show that there was a massive release of cesium 137 into the ocean. This element is radioactive and takes 30 years for half of it to decay to a non-radioactive substance. This constitutes ...