Do Mexico’s Cartels Have WMDs?

From here:


Business has never been better for Mexico’s criminal syndicates.

Organized crime in Mexico and Central America has long played a dominant role in destabilizing the region while contributing to a host of social issues within the United States where one of their largest groups of clientele is located. But more recent events show that the cartels are gaining a previously unheard of boldness, potentially achieving the ability to create WMDs and expanding their control of Mexico’s economy and government while violence escalates within the country.

The threat of cartel-handled nuclear or biological weapons in particular is a grave threat to not only the Mexican government, but also the United States. With a migrant crisis due to looming unrest in South America becoming likely, possession of such weapons will give organized criminal groups a powerful bargaining chip.

I. Increasing Aggression And Acquisition Of Nuclear Materials

Heavy competition between various cartels has contributed to a murder rate that hit an all time high in 2017. Spikes in violence are due to a number of factors, such as removal of certain leadership figures like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and a spike in migration and unrest due to a growing “Latin Spring” in parts of Central and South America. The expected surge of refugees from countries such as Venezuela means that criminal groups are likely posturing themselves to control the routes that those fleeing conflict will take as they attempt to enter the United States.

Cartels have also been involved with a number of daring robberies where radioactive materials were stolen. In February and July 2018, Mexican authorities reported thefts of radioactive materials and placed multiple states on alert. These reports were followed by revelations on July 16, 2018 from the Center for Public Integrity that an unknown amount of Plutonium-239 and Cesium-137 had been stolen out of the vehicle of two US Department of Energy employees in Texas the previous year. The materials have not yet been recovered and neither the San Antonio police or the FBI disclosed the incident to the public. It takes only 7 pounds of plutonium to build a functioning nuclear warhead, and much less to combine with conventional explosives for the purpose of creating a dirty bomb. Moving these materials across the southern US border is not prohibitively difficult due to the number of federal employees who are controlled by cartel groups and would be unable to easily tell the difference between drugs and WMDs being moved cross-border.

The danger of WMDs in the hands of Mexican criminal enterprises is twofold. Primarily because they give these organizations serious leverage over the government in Mexico and the United States, but also because the cartels’ international contacts mean that these materials can be distributed worldwide to a variety of groups.

II. International Reach

International connections offer the cartels the opportunity not only to distribute nuclear and biological agents to other groups, but also to acquire more of these materials. International terror networks such as Al Qaeda and ISIS have long had ties to Central and Southern cartel groups through their involvement with the human and drug trafficking trades making the transport of weapons, operatives and materials across the Atlantic an easy process.

Reports claiming that weapons used in the 2015 Paris terror attacks were traced to one of the illegal weapons sales that occurred during Operation Fast and Furious further show the ability of Mexican transnational criminal groups to move not just drugs, but other products across the globe. Al Qaeda operatives have for years bragged that they are able to acquire the services of scientists, chemists and nuclear physicists. With international trade between organized criminals and terror groups becoming so fluid, the idea that the cartels would be able to employ individuals with these specialist skills are hardly far fetched. Claims have also emerged in October 2017 that far left groups from the US and Europe were meeting with members of ISIS and Al Qaeda with the intent of gaining bomb-making know-how in addition to materials needed for chemical and gas weapons. This indicates the alarming likelihood that trafficking groups could be helping to distribute nuclear, biological or chemical materials to Islamist and leftist groups abroad in areas such as the European Union and United States.

Another potential source of nuclear materials is through Russian organized crime networks who are known to deal with both the cartels and Islamic terror groups. Starting first with the Colombian traffickers before establishing economic relationships with their Mexican counterparts, this trade created a new market for cocaine and heroin coming from Central and South America while in return providing a fresh source of weapons and other munitions. This relationship would also allow cartels the opportunity to acquire nuclear material from Russian connected smuggling groups, who are known to have been seeking out ISIS representatives with the intention of selling them WMDs.

The cartels have also established ties with Asian organized crime groups who act as foreign policy agents for the government of China. In 2014, the South China Morning Post reported that Hong Kong based triads 14K and Sun Yee On were engaging with the Sinaloa cartel to provide them with precursor materials needed to produce methamphetamine. In return, Mexican syndicates have been utilizing Hong Kong banks and shell companies to launder money earned from sales of illicit goods. Human smuggling of Chinese nationals into the United States has boomed due to what law enforcement officials say is an “alliance between Chinese and Latin American smuggling rings.”

Disobedient Media reported in 2017 that the 14K triad was working with local affiliates on the American West Coast to push out pro-Taiwanese criminal interests and consolidate control. A 1997 expose by The New Republic showed that the 14K triad operates as a foreign policy proxy for elements of the Chinese Communist Party.

III. Close Ties To Current Mexican Government

Despite the fact that Mexico’s incoming President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is seen as a populist and fresh change from Mexico’s elite class his party has known ties to criminal organizations. AMLO has directly advocated a number of policies that will drastically improve rather than hamper the position of the cartels. Obrador’s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has been described as a “trojan horse” by observers for many years. In 2011 leaked audio recordings revealed that PRD candidate for governor of Michoacan Silvano Aureoles had received $2 million from the Knights Templar cartel. In November 2014, the former mayor of Iguala, Mexico, José Luis Abarca, was arrested and subsequently charged in connection to the kidnapping and murder of 43 Mexican students by the Beltrán Leyva cartel.  Abarca, who ordered municipal police to hand the students over to cartel members, was also a PRD member.

AMLO has caused outrage during his campaign by floating the idea of offering amnesty for drug trafficking leadership. He is a member of the Foro de Sâo Paulo, whose members includes states such as Venezuela where the government engages in direct collaboration with trafficking groups like the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital or PCC). Economic reforms touted by Obrador also have the convenient effect of assisting cartel business interests. On August 28, 2018, Reuters reported that a document drafted by advisors to Obrador outlined a plan to close off Mexico’s oil and gas reserves to international companies indefinitely. Mexican oil companies such as Pemex report losing over a billion dollars a year to cartel interests, meaning that government attempts to hedge foreign groups out of the oil industry will result in greater control by organized crime over these important business interests.

A government that is firmly in the pocket of criminals alone would give Mexican trafficking syndicates the leverage they need to remain the supplier of 90 to 94% of all heroin consumed in the United States. With weapons of mass destruction in their possession, they could not only dominate Mexico but threaten the United States as well, particularly as relations between the two states have come increasingly to loggerheads over President Donald Trump’s policies concerning immigration, illegal trafficking and border security. Taking adequate measures to degrade the capabilities of the cartels is essential to improve Mexico’s anti-crime operations and ensure US national security.

Global Crash Still On Course

From Brandon Smith at Bob Livingston's  Personal Liberty Alerts

The crazy events of the past month and what they mean for 2020

In a world without constant manipulation and disinformation most economic and geopolitical events would happen spontaneously and randomly. Things would be more unexpected, but at least they would make life fascinating and interesting. Unfortunately, this is not the world we live in. Our world is highly micro-managed by global elites with a rather broad if not clichéd agenda. This makes most events highly predictable, as each event services a singular end game.

The only aspect of our system that is not predictable is timing. In the liberty movement we can predict with relative certainty future trends and where they are headed, but one thing we have to consider is that the more effective we are at exposing the plans of the globalists the more they will attempt to either stall or expedite the timing of their agenda in the hopes of encouraging doubt and uncertainty.

Pyschopathic people are obsessed with the concept of surprise. They love to ambush. They hate when their carefully crafted schemes are made obvious by intelligent observation, because they operate on the assumption that they are always the smartest people in the room. In military lingo, this is called being inside someone's OODA Loop; which means always being a step ahead of the planning and foresight of those you want to conquer. Psychopaths are always desperately angling to achieve this constant state of superiority.

(Yes, Brandon - they always want to attack first, to keep their intended victims off-balance and on the defensive 'back foot' forever)!

;-)

Of course, the problem for these personality types is that they have very little imagination or ingenuity and are often robotic in their responses and strategies. Understand one psychopath and you essentially understand them all. Once again, as long as you know what they want, they become predictable. The only way for them to surprise us is by changing what they want, and they aren't going to do that. All they will do is delay or distract.


2019 might have seemed like a roller coaster year to many, but most of it was a simply a succession of engineered distractions and slight changes in timing to throw analysts off the scent of the globalist agenda. Finally, in the past month we have seen certain plans culminate into events some of us always expected. Let's examine some of these events and what they mean for 2020...

The big fat trade deal farce

Since the trade war between the U.S. and China began I have been warning that all is not what it seems, and that the trade war is not meant to be won, only perpetuated for as long as possible. The endless cycle of "deal" announcements followed by deal fallout followed by renewed deal optimism has conditioned the public to assume that all market movements and the economy at large is tied to the success or failure of Trump's trade war. This is exactly what the establishment wants.

If the masses are focused on the trade war, they might completely forget about the enormous financial bubble that central banks like the Federal Reserve created through nearly 10 years of stimulus. They might also completely forget that the Fed deliberately popped that bubble in 2018 using fiscal tightening policies and removing liquidity from the system. Now, the avalanche has started, and it appears that the Fed has no intention of stopping it (but we will get to that in a moment).

So, as long as the Everything Bubble is imploding, the elites need a distraction of some kind as well as a scapegoat.

The latest "Phase 1" trade deal announcement this month was an epic disappointment to almost everyone who thought that maybe Donald Trump was fighting the good fight or working toward a legitimate diplomatic compromise with China. Finally, people are beginning to understand that the trade war is Kabuki theater, and nothing more.

As it stands, the Phase 1 agreement is not an agreement at all. Last time I checked, in diplomacy, business and sales, the goal is always to get agreements in writing as quickly as possible along with some assurances that the deal will be honored. Verbal agreements and half measures are a recipe for disaster. Phase 1 is designed to fail.

Phase 1 will not be put in writing and signed, at least, not by Trump or Xi. The details are still murky, tariffs are not being rolled back in any meaningful way, and China's promise to quadruple their agricultural purchases from the U.S. in 2020 is unlikely to be fulfilled. China has already diversified their food purchases to Russia, South America, etc. To quadruple their purchases from the U.S. would mean abandoning all the work they put in to build new supply lines outside the U.S. market. This is not going to happen.

Will Chinese farm purchases increase? Yes, but only for a short period of time and not to the level of the agreement. This means that the Phase 1 deal has a built-in mechanism for collapse, as it relies heavily on China following through with a requirement they can't or won't honor. I give it a month or two before hostilities between the U.S. and China surface once again.

North Korea nuke talks collapse

In in my article 'Syria And Iran Prove There's No Chance For North Korean Peace', published in May 2018 after the initial nuke deal hype, I argued that:

"North Korea will of course refuse disarmament. The establishment will push harder, causing North Korea to pull back from the talks, to reschedule talks multiple times or to abandon talks altogether. Then, the establishment will say North Korea is not serious about peace, therefore, the force of action may be justified. They will say they gave North Korea a chance to do things the easy way, but now the hard way is necessary... North Korean missile tests will continue, and new nuke facilities will open. Trump will call for the kinetic termination of such sites."

In December the denuclearization talks with North Korea have collapsed. North Korea has indicated they have no intention of continuing, and the initial deal itself is being exposed as the fraudulent nothing-burger it always was. Like the China trade deal, the North Korean talks are designed to fail. China will not quadruple its agricultural purchases from the U.S. for any meaningful length of time, and North Korea will never voluntarily denuke.

The timing of this implosion in progress with North Korea is rather interesting, as it coincided almost exactly with the weak trade deal with China. If the U.S. government sticking its nose into the Hong Kong protests has the potential to derail trade talks, then the U.S. getting aggressive with North Korea would be a veritable powder keg. I see tensions with North Korea as an extension of tensions with China, as North Korea is essentially a satellite state of China. If the globalists want to accelerate the trade war in 2020, all they have to do is ratchet up the saber rattling with North Korea. I believe this was always the intent; the elites merely put the plan on pause.

Brexit now on the fast track

I have a love/hate relationship with the proceedings of the Brexit movement. I understand that the movement itself is mostly grassroots and is legitimate. I also understand that the European Union is a monstrosity that should be broken apart. Finally, I am a longtime champion of national sovereignty, and if the majority of British people want it, then they should get it.

However, the story of Brexit is not as simple as this. As with my prediction that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election, I also correctly predicted that the Brexit vote would succeed. I predicted these events based on the tides of change in public perception and the rise of conservative ideals, but also on the reality that the globalists would allow these events to occur because they ultimately benefit.

This is not to say that the globalists are omnipresent and control everything; that is not my argument. I continue to believe that the rise in conservative sentiment in the public is largely due to over a decade of effort on the part of the liberty movement spreading the word and fighting back against establishment propaganda. That said, anyone who thinks any voting system today is not completely dominated by the establishment is delusional, to say the least.

I predicted the Trump and Brexit wins based in the theory that the elites would simply step back and not interfere with the vote. That they would allow the obvious proliferation of conservativism to run its course, for a little while. Why? Because by triggering the first stages of the crash of the Everything Bubble in 2018, they will soon need someone to take the blame. Why wouldn't the globalists set up their ideological enemies as the cause of an economic crash that they created?

So far, my theory continues to prove correct. The trade war is unequivocally tied to the performance of the economy in the minds of the masses, and the mainstream media has made sure that this is the case through steady propaganda. Trump has attached the market bubble to himself by endlessly Tweeting about how he is personally responsible for the performance of markets, even though during his campaign he said that the markets were a huge bubble that he didn't want to inherit. And now, all eyes are on the Brexit as the conservatives under Boris Johnson now have a mandate to force through the Brexit while the mainstream predicts economic disaster.

At the beginning of this year I predicted that the Brexit would ultimately end with a 'No Deal' event. I continue to believe this will be the outcome, because it is the most beneficial to the globalists. With a No Deal and a abrupt break from the EU, the elites can accelerate the crash of the economic bubble in Europe and the U.K. while sticking "populist" movements with the blame and the consequences.

Now, Johnson's conservative majority assures the Brexit will be finalized, and I see no indication that the EU will agree to a diplomatic separation.

The EU will claim they can't support any deal from the U.K. because Brexit "puts the global economy at risk." Brexit will happen anyway, and then the current bubble collapse in Europe will hit main street hard.

Repo market crisis looms

The Federal Reserve's odd policy behavior over the past few years only makes sense if the central bank is trying to create financial crash conditions in a way that is subtle but powerful. The initial rate hikes and balance sheet cuts into economic weakness and stimulus addiction set the stage for the crash in fundamentals that is happening now. The only question left is, when will they allow markets to crash?

We may have some indication this December as to the pace of the crash in the Fed's overnight repo purchases and liquidity injections. As I noted in my article 'The Fed's Liquidity Injections Are Too Little Too Late — But That Was Always The Plan...', published in October:

"The Fed launched asset purchases to make it look like they care about trying to fix the problem. However, the Fed's repo stimulus and balance sheet increases are not enough to make any difference. Calling Fed repo actions "Not-QE" is a funny means of pointing out that the Fed is not being straightforward about its intentions, but when comparing current repo loans and asset purchases to an event like TARP back in 2008, which by itself injected over $16 Trillion in liquidity into the financial system (no audit of the other QE programs has yet been undertaken), the current stimulus is nothing but a drop in the ocean."

The creator of the Fed's repo loan structure, Zoltan Pozsar, said the same thing this past week. He argues that an unprecedented crisis in repo markets looms at the end of this month with loans coming due and many banks holding the wrong type of collateral to trade for more cash from the Fed. I suspect that Pozsar's prediction may be a little early and that the repo crisis will move slower than he expects, but not much slower. The former fed employee argues that the Fed must unleash TRUE QE4, with massive amounts of liquidity behind it in order to stave off the market collapse that is set to occur. I predict that the Fed will not do this, at least not at levels needed to make much of a difference.


The Everything Bubble is imploding in the background while the events listed above provide distraction. If the central banks really intend to kick the can on the crash, then they will have to inject tens of trillions of dollars into the global system in the next few months. If they do not, then we should expect crash effects to hit the wider public even harder in 2020.

To truth and knowledge,

Brandon Smith                                                                                                                           

Gender Dysphoria Explained At Last

From here:

The biggest Western fuck-up disaster since the Romans drank from lead pipes!

And if makes me wonder if it isn't a case of deliberate sabotage, too?

Humans are being exposed to 44 TIMES more infertility-causing and cancer-linked 'gender bending' chemicals than first thought

• BPAs are toxins found in plastics, including water bottles and have been linked to disruption in the production of eggs and sperm 
• The FDA says the levels in widely used products are generally 'safe'
• However, the agency banned the use of these chemicals in baby bottles and sippy cups in 2012 
• Now Washington State University research devised a new 'direct' way of testing human exposures to the chemicals 
• They found they exceed the FDA's 'safe' levels by as much as 44-fold 

By MIA DE GRAAF HEALTH EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and NATALIE RAHHAL DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 18:59 EST, 5 December 2019 | UPDATED: 20:42 EST, 5 December 2019

Humans are exposed to far more hormone-disrupting chemicals than previously thought, according to a new study. 

Patricia Hunt, the researcher at Washington State University who first discovered that BPA, a dangerous toxin in plastics, can cause cancer and other diseases and disorders, has now developed a more accurate method of measuring it. 

In a study published today, Dr Hunt reveals the new tool shows the 'safe' limit of BPA stipulated by the US Food and Drug Administration is flawed.

In fact, it is 44 times higher than what Dr Hunt considers safe.  

'This study raises serious concerns about whether we've been careful enough about the safety of this chemical,' Dr Hunt, a corresponding author on the paper, said. 

'What it comes down to is that the conclusions federal agencies have come to about how to regulate BPA may have been based on inaccurate measurements.'

The amount of BPA the FDA considers acceptable varies based on the product. 

Broadly, it claims that the chemicals are 'safe' and that people are exposed to such low doses of them that they're not considered toxic. 

However, in 2012, it amended its regulations and banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups. 

Methodology used by the FDA to establish what is or isn't 'safe' has been subject to scrutiny from a number of scientists. Dr Hunt has led that charge. 

She discovered the way that the BPAs - sometimes referred to as 'gender-bending chemicals - interfered with the production of sperm, eggs, and male and female chromosomes. 

Dr Hunt has long acknowledged that measuring humans' exposure to BPAs is difficult - but argues that that is all the more reason to air on the side of caution. 

So, in her latest work, she developed a new way to test just how much BPA people are exposed to and internalizing. 

According to Dr Hunt and her colleagues, most studies attempting to measure the amount of BPA in human urine have done so by putting BPA metabolites - compounds generated as the chemicals pass through the body - into a snail-based enzyme solution that is supposed to turn the compounds back to BPA itself. 

This is an 'indirect' measure, according to the study, published in the journal, The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. 

Instead, she and her team devised a way to assess the metabolites themselves - directly. 

What they found was alarming. 

Not only was the disparity between the indirect measure and their 'direct' on as wide as 44-fold, the higher the level of BPA, the greater the gulf between their measure and the one used by the FDA was. 

'I hope this study will bring attention to the methodology used to measure BPA, and that other experts and labs will take a closer look at and assess independently what is happening,' said the study's first author, Roy Gerona.    

WHAT ARE THE CHEMICALS PARABENS, BPA AND TRICLOSAN?

What are parabens?

Parabens are hormone-disrupting chemicals, which are used as preservatives in skincare, cosmetics and hair products.

They mimic oestrogen and may cause cancer, weight gain and reduced muscle mass. 

What is BPA?

The so-called 'gender-bending' chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) is added to receipts to make their writing appear darker without using ink.

It reacts with oestrogen and thyroid-hormone receptors, and has been linked to infertility, autism, ADHD, obesity, type 2 diabetes, premature births and early onset of puberty.

Health fears prompted BPA to be replaced with its 'healthier alternative' Bisphenol S (BPS), however, evidence suggests BPS disrupts babies' development in the womb.

Exposure to BPA, which is also found in the lining of canned foods, also causes the same inflammation and gut bacteria changes in mice that occur in Crohn's and ulcerative colitis patients. 

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned BPA from baby bottles, while The European Commission prohibits the chemical from being added to receipts from 2020. 

What is triclosan?

Triclosan, a chemical added to personal-care products to prevent bacterial contamination, has been linked to reduced heart health and an underactive thyroid.

It is added to antibacterial soaps, body washes, toothpastes and cosmetics, as well as some clothing, furniture and toys. 

Triclosan also stops infections responding to antibiotics, which may contribute towards the resistance crisis.

The chemical was banned in soaps in the US two years ago. No such ban exists in the UK.

The FDA declared antibacterial soaps containing triclosan are no more effective than hot water and regular cleansers at killing bugs. 

Meet Reed College's Morgan Vague, Destroyer Of Worlds

From here and here and here:

Reed admins, better prepare those golden parachutes now, and also be prepared to have your institution sued back to the stone-age, not to mention to go down in infamy as the mindless twerps who heedlessly destroyed the whole civilized world.

Just THINK: when you invent something that reduces plastics to goo - it will do the same thing to ALL petroleum derivatives such as - airplane fuel. So when your cars won't start in the winter, diesel generators can't provide electricity to states and cities, and planes fall from the skies, you can keep on praising this moron for "saving the planet," just like Saint Greta.

Morgan Vague ’18

Non-trad bio major developed a strain of bacteria that can actually eat plastic bottles.

September 1, 2018

• 
  
• 
  

Hometown: Houston, Texas

Thesis adviser: Prof. Jay Mellies [biology 1999–]

Thesis: Plastic Pollution and Bacterial Solutions.

What it's about: I gathered soil samples from polluted sites in Texas and isolated three novel bacterial consortia with the ability to colonize and degrade PET plastic (the big bad plastic used for bottled water).

What it’s really about: Plastic-eating bacteria and how we can use them to combat plastic pollution!

First day of class: I was both excited and terrified.

Cool stuff: Every biology class I ever took, including intro! Spanish and German House conversation groups, climbing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Student groups/clubs/activities: Women’s rugby, Reed Mixed Martial Arts club.

Obstacles I have overcome:  I transferred to Reed from Houston Community College and entered as a nontraditional 22-year-old freshman. My hands shake but I can still do dissections and load protein gels with the best of them.

Influential book: One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick. Lt. Fick’s biography taught me valuable lessons about leadership and keeping a cool head during the most pressure-filled situations, which served me well during my time at Reed.

Concept that blew my mind: Microbiological evolution and gene expression. It’s a really beautiful, awe-inspiring, and terrifying topic!

Favorite professors: In Microbiology, Immunology, and the Human Microbiome, Prof. Jay Mellies is so enthusiastic and approachable about his subject. His classes literally changed my life and set me on my current research path. Prof. Iliana Alcántar [Spanish 2007–17] is hilarious, passionate, and she uses a blend of music, media, and modern authors to bring the subject to life. Even though I never took a proper class with Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology 2012–], she always makes time to talk me through and offer advice on my experiments. Prof. Suzy Renn [biology 2006–] helped me navigate the bio major path.

How Reed changed me: I never thought I’d major in a STEM field or pursue research, and I blame intro bio for planting the wonderful science seed in my head.

Awards, fellowships, grants: Financial Services Fellowship, faculty commendation for junior qual performance, commendations for academic performance: 2016, 2017, 2018, Stafford Post-Bac Fellowship Award; Betty Liu Summer Research Fellowship.

Desired superpower: Flight.

Actual superpower: Wastebasket-ball.

Pet peeve: Mean people.

What’s next: Medical school or graduate school.

From THE OREGONIAN:

Reed senior makes 'watershed' discovery of potential pollution-fighting bacteria

Updated Jan 30, 2019;Posted Jun 19, 2018

Microscopic bacteria are seen forming colonies on polyethylene terephthalate. (Courtesy/Claudia S. Lopez/OHSU)

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By Kale Williams | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Morgan Vague was speechless when she looked through the microscope.

For weeks the Reed College senior, who majored in biology, had been diligently checking her specimens hoping that she would see progress. On a Monday afternoon late last year, she saw it.

Three types of bacteria she had isolated and bred in the lab were beginning to consume one of the most ubiquitous pollutants out there, polyethylene terephthalate.

"I got really quiet," Vague said of the day she made the discovery, "and then I squealed a little bit. And then I called my mom."

Polyethylene terephthalates, commonly known as PET, is in a ton of consumer goods, from plastic bottles to clothes to food packaging. The material takes decades, if not longer, to degrade in the environment and is a significant contributor to pollution worldwide, especially in the ocean where some so-called "garbage patches" have reached gargantuan proportions.

That's what led Vague to start researching ways to combat the scourge of PET pollution. A native of Houston, Texas, she collected samples of soil, sand and water from around Galveston Bay, near her hometown, which she knew were heavily polluted with petroleum. She was working off the theory that, in places with high levels of petroleum pollution, there were likely to be microbes that had evolved to consume it.

She snuck the samples back to Portland in her carry-on luggage and began isolating individual microbes to see if they produced lipase, a chemical that breaks down plastic into material that can be consumed by bacteria. Of the roughly 300 she had, 20 had the ability to produce the important material.

She picked the three with the highest lipase-producing potential and gave them polyethylene terephthalate as their only option to eat.

All three — Pseudomonas putida, Bacillus cereus and another unknown strain Vague is calling Pseudomonas morganensis, as she appears to be the first researcher to identify it — began feasting on the plastic. It was a novel discovery, especially for an undergraduate, said Jay Mellies, a biology professor at Reed and Vague's supervisor on her thesis project.

"This is a watershed moment," he said.

Mellies pointed out that the bacteria Vague isolated occurred naturally, so there's no risk of them getting loose and consuming plastics they aren't supposed to. He also noted that a lot of research still needed to be done before they could be deployed to start eating pollutants outside of a lab.

Over the summer, Vague said she'd be looking into ways to speed up the process and see if it could be scaled up to meet industrial needs, while also looking into graduate school applications. Still, her discovery marks a high point in her time at Reed.

"To go through this long, arduous process and then to see something novel," she said. "It was so exciting."

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048

@sfkale

100 scientific papers: CO2 has minuscule effect on climate

From here:

Within the past few years, more than 50 papers have been added to a compilation of scientific studies that refute the primary claim of climate-change activists that CO2 causes global warming.

The papers compiled by the NoTricksZone website, now numbering 106, find that CO2 has a minuscule effect on climate.

Words such as "negligible" are used to describe CO2's effect on the climate.

A 2019 paper, for example, noted that the "enhancement of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to the increase in the atmospheric greenhouse gases is often considered as responsible for global warming."

TRENDING: IG report indicates James Comey lied about Steele dossier

But the analysis by Costas Varotsos and M.N. Efstathiou of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens "did not show a consistent warming with gradual increase (in CO2) in low to high latitudes in both hemispheres, as it should be from the global warming theory."

"Based on these results and bearing in mind that the climate system is complicated and complex with the existing uncertainties in the climate predictions, it is not possible to reliably support the view of the presence of global warming in the sense of an enhanced greenhouse effect due to human activities," the researchers write.

WND reported in September an MIT-trained scientist who has specialized for nearly 25 years in abnormal weather and climate change published a book explaining why he believes the data underpinning global-warming science are unreliable.

Mototaka Nakamura

Mototaka Nakamura, who earned a doctorate of science from MIT, has conducted his work at prestigious institutions such as MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and Duke University, reported the website Electroverse.

In his book "The Global Warming Hypothesis is an Unproven Hypothesis," Nakamura explained why global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on "untrustworthy data."

"Before full planet surface observation by satellite began in 1980, only a small part of the Earth had been observed for temperatures with only a certain amount of accuracy and frequency," he says. "Across the globe, only North America and Western Europe have trustworthy temperature data dating back to the 19th century."

Earlier in September, a group of 500 scientists and professionals in climate science wrote a letter to the United Nations contending there is no climate crisis and that spending trillions on the issue is "cruel and imprudent."

They urged the U.N. to "follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation."

Testing 'regarded as heresy'

Electroverse noted that today's "global warming science" is built on the work of a few climate modelers who claim to have demonstrated that human-derived CO2 emissions are the cause of recently rising temperatures "and have then simply projected that warming forward."

"Every climate researcher thereafter has taken the results of these original models as a given, and we're even at the stage now where merely testing their validity is regarded as heresy."

Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT who has published more than 200 scientific papers, says in a video produced by PragerU "it seems that the less the climate changes, the louder the voices of the climate alarmists get."

He pointed out that the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, admitted in its 2007 paper that the "long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."

The truth is, the professor said, that climate-change scientists and "skeptics" in the scientific community agree that the climate is always changing and that over the past two centuries, the global mean temperature has increased slightly and erratically by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, why are so many people panic-stricken, including some who are warning the world has only 12 years left to save itself?

He points to politicians, activists and media.

"Global warming provides them, more than any other issue, with the things they most want," he said.

For politicians, it's power and money. For activists, it's money for their organizations and "confirmation of their near-religious devotion to the idea that man is a destructive force acting upon nature."

For the media, Lindzen says, it's ideology, money and headlines.

"Doomsday scenarios sell."

See the PragerU video: