Steve Bull's Blog, page 178
October 14, 2022
Bee Lawns: What’s all the buzz about?
Bee Lawns: What’s all the buzz about?A bee lawn is a way to benefit pollinators in our landscapes by providing additional floral resources, and often utilizes a mix of low-growing flowering plants in addition to turf species. Although flower gardens also provide flowering plants for pollinators, bee lawns can be multi-functional in their usability for recreational purposes with the added benefit of providing food for bees.
Habitat loss is one of the major factors implicated in the global declines of native bee species. Providing resources utilized by these critical pollinators can assist in mitigating this. Research through University of Minnesota has found 50 species of bees utilizing the flowers in bee lawns.
The purpose of bee lawns includes providing nutritious sources of nectar and pollen for pollinators, especially in urban environments, where these resources can often be scarce and difficult to find. Additional factors include recreational usability, and reducing inputs, e.g., irrigation, nutrients, weed control, and time spent mowing. Flowering plants suited for bee lawns have a variety of common characteristics including: low-growing and flowering heights, perennial life cycles, the ability to persist with turf species, and tolerance of mowing and foot traffic.
An important consideration is that bee lawns don’t necessarily mean weedy lawns or no-maintenance lawns, but instead require different types of management and serve different functions than traditional turfgrass lawns.
Not all bee lawns are created equal, and some work better than others.
Here are some turfgrass species that can work well for bee lawns:
Cool-season turf
A mix of fine fescues (which includes species such as: creeping red fescue, chewings fescue, hard fescue, and sheep fescue) are some of the best options for bee lawns due to reduced needs for inputs including irrigation, fertilizer, and weed controls, in addition to their compatibility with flowering plants…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel
OPEC and out
The political fallout from the OPEC+ decision to cut its oil production target by two million barrels a day – which would leave the world economy around six million barrels a day short of its pre-pandemic peak – is sufficient to push us closer to collapse. The Biden administration, who optimistically believed the President had secured a 200-million-barrel deal with the Saudis to replenish the USA’s strategic reserve, have treated the announcement as tantamount to a declaration of war. Although there is no law of physics that says oil producing states have to provide the west with cheap oil.
The decision is yet another Western own goal in an economic war that the west is clearly losing. It was the Biden administration’s decision to refuse new licenses for US domestic production which, despite depletion, could still fill the gap left by OPEC+ cuts (although the USA – like the UK – still needs to import heavy oil). It was also their decision to empty the strategic reserve, which is meant for dire emergencies, solely to keep pump prices down ahead of next month’s mid-term elections. Elections that Biden’s team may well lose, as Michael Shellenberger reminded Americans this week, the situation:
“… poses political risks for Democrats who, in the spring of 2020, killed a proposal by President Donald Trump to replenish the SPR with oil from American producers, not OPEC+ ones, and at a price of $24 a barrel, not the $80 a barrel that the Biden White House promised to OPEC+. At the time, Trump was seeking to stabilize the American oil industry after the Covid-19 pandemic massively reduced oil demand…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Since when did banks produce energy?
It takes a special kind of cynical self-interest to make people pay twice for something they already cannot afford, while claiming you are doing them a favour. This though, is the energy price relief package announced by Liz Truss yesterday. The package plays that old political card of being not quite as bad as it might otherwise have been, while still being a lot worse than it was.
Politically, the announcement confirms a great deal of what we suspected. In recent years there has been a growing belief that the Versailles-on-Thames technocracy pulls the strings and that incoming prime ministers are simply given their script on arrival in 10 Downing Street – this is born out by an energy package – drawn up by technocrats over the last six weeks – which is wholly at odds with Truss’s policy announcements during her leadership campaign. The announcement also demonstrates that despite her third-rate tribute act, Truss is no Margaret Thatcher, nor even the economic liberal that she claims… because a true libertarian – and likely Saint Margaret herself – would have allowed the energy companies to go bust rather than ignore the inflationary impact of state intervention… so now we know.
The package itself involves capping the average energy bill at £2,500 for the next two years, rather than the immediate rise to £3,549 and the anticipated rise above £6,000 in 2023. There is also a reduction on the regressive standing charge for electricity as the various green levies are removed. A reduction in VAT is also expected in future, and the national £400 bill reduction, together with the £650 for people on low incomes remains and may be extended next year.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Food security – life is changing
It seems hard to comprehend, living as we do in the twenty first century, that food security would ever be something we would need to concern ourselves with. But it’s a thing now. It’s a sign of the times when a cargo ship full of grain sailing across the Black Sea becomes a major international news story. And you’d better believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg; the impact of war, as terrible as that is, is nothing compared to the effect that climate change is going to have in terms of our food security.
One thing that we really must be doing, both in terms of preventing the worst-case scenario of climate change and also helping us cope with the inevitable food security troubles we will face in the future, is to create resilient local food economies. And for qualification of that statement, should it be required, simply cast your mind back to the lockdown in March 2020 and remember how local food enterprises up and down the country not only continued to supply their customers, but quickly scaled up to meet the surge in demand, while supermarket shelves were bare for weeks.
Such local food economies would be characterised by an abundance of independent food enterprises: farmers and market gardeners who grow food specially for the local market, artisanal processing businesses who lovingly add value to locally grown food, and independent shops and restaurants which sell local food. And more to the point, when a local food system has taken root, it is possible to coordinate the supply-chain between these local enterprises according to ‘circular economy’ principles, and dramatically reduce the environmental impact of food in comparison to the industrialised system currently in place.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Europe’s Fuel Supply Fears Worsen As Major Refinery Malfunctions
The biggest refinery in Europe, Shell’s Pernis in the Netherlands, suffered a malfunction late on Wednesday, which could exacerbate an already worsening fuel supply situation in northwest Europe due to the strikes in France.
Shell Pernis said late on Wednesday that “Due to a malfunction on one of our installations, we are forced to flare.”
Shell is investigating the cause of the malfunction and is doing everything it can to solve the problem as soon as possible, and to limit the nuisance for the residents in the vicinity of the refinery near Rotterdam, the company said.
Governments have been informed about the malfunction at Europe’s largest refinery, Shell said in a statement carried by Bloomberg, but didn’t go into details about potential losses of fuel supply.
Fuel supply is already tight in Europe amid an ongoing strike at most of France’s refineries, and if the Dutch refinery malfunction leads to further supply losses, the European diesel market will find itself even shorter on supply, less than four months before the EU embargo on imports of Russian fuels by sea.
France’s fuel distribution continues to be disrupted by the ongoing strikes at refineries, with no end in sight to the industrial action that has left more than 60% of French refining capacity offline. Earlier this week, France said that it would requisition essential workers to staff Exxon’s French oil depot, and threatened to do the same for Total’s French refineries if talks failed to progress. But workers at Total’s Donges refinery decided on Tuesday to strike beginning on Wednesday, French union CGT said.
French ministers said today that TotalEnergies should raise the salaries of the workers, who have been on strike for two weeks now.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
“This Is A Perfect Storm” – EU Leader Warns Of “Black Swans” Everywhere, Says ‘Propaganda Is Our Battlefield’
“This is a perfect storm,” exclaims European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell in his opening speech to EU Ambassadors this week.
Having noted previously his warnings to The Fed that it is “bringing us to a world recession,” Borrell went considerably further in a surprisingly frank and plain-speaking address.
He began by warning that “the world we are facing is a world of radical uncertainty.”
The speed and scope of change is exceptional. We should not try to deny it. We should not try to resist it. It would be a futile effort. We have to accept it and to adapt [to] it, prioritising flexibility and resilience.
But uncertainty is the rule. Events that one could imagine that they will never happen, they are happening one after the other.
At this pace, the black swan will be the majority. It will not be white swans – all of them will be black – because one after the other, things have happened that had a very low probability of happening, nevertheless they happened, and they had a strong impact and certainly they happened.
The EC VP then goes on to try and summarize the extent of the European crisis and how they got there, admitting that they were entirely dependent on China (trade), Russia (energy), and US (security)…
I think that we Europeans are facing a situation in which we suffer the consequences of a process that has been lasting for years in which we have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security. This is a sentence to provide the headline, and I am taking that from Olivier Schmitt, who has been developing this thesis – I think – quite well.
Our prosperity has been based on cheap energy coming from Russia.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Are We on the Verge of World War 3? Here Are Some Facts We Know for Sure.
Sometimes it is best to take a step back and look at the facts that we know without a doubt so that we can then take a look at the bigger picture. Within the context of World War 3, here is a bit of what we have seen.
Draw your own conclusions.
Does Washington’s opinion here matter?
Out of the blue, New York City recently released a PSA instructing New Yorkers on what they needed to do in order to survive a nuclear strike on American soil. This hasn’t been done since the Cold War. If you want information about nuclear survival that isn’t glossed over by the government, you should check out our live nuclear survival webinar that is coming up with Army Ranger NBC Specialist Chuck Hudson. Go here to learn more.
The United States is now stockpiling anti-radiation medicine. Washington recently ordered $290 million worth of the drug Nplate, a drug used to treat “blood cell injuries that accompany acute radiation syndrome in adult and pediatric patients (ARS).”
Biden recently said that Putin was “not joking” about a potential Russian attack with “tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.” Anybody who has read Soviet defector Ken Alibek’s Biohazard is well-familiar with what some of these biological weapons are.
Does the market speak?
Potassium iodide pills are out of stock just about everywhere you check now.
Sales of gas masks, Geiger counters, and dosimeters have absolutely exploded.
Russian nuclear doctrine is worth learning about.
Russian nuclear doctrine permits Russia to make a first strike provided the Kremlin believes they have faced an “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Urban Survival vs. Rural Survival: A WARNING from Selco About Your Plans
Urban survival vs. rural survival is a near-constant debate in preparedness circles. Those who live on acreage sometimes scoff at those who live in cities for reasons of business, education, or families. Those who live in the cities feel obligated to defend their choices. The truth of the matter is that there IS no perfect plan, and even if you had one, SHTF might have other ideas. You need both skillsets to survive, as Selco teaches. In this reality check, Selco explains how even the best survival plans can go horribly wrong when the SHTF. ~ Daisy
Co-Author of SHTF Survival Boot Camp and SHTF Survival Bootcamp Online Course
I write almost always about urban survival because of a few simple reasons:
I survived SHTF in an urban environment, so I write about it from my own experience.The majority of us actually live in urban settings, so there is a reason why we need to pay more attention to preparing for urban survival.Most of us who live in urban settings have a plan (me too) to bug out to some kind of rural setting in order to have a better chance of survival. But the sad truth is that a lot of us will fail to bug out on time because of numerous reasons.As a result, a number of us who have a good BOL in a rural setting will still end up surviving in an urban area.
Generally, I think it is much better to be out of the urban area when SHTF. But we don’t always get what we want no matter how good our plan. That is why you must learn about not only rural or wilderness survival, but also urban survival. I talk about all of these in my book.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
10 Ways to use comfrey, a powerful healing herb
(Natural News) Comfrey, or gum plant, is a medicinal herb that can be used as an astringent, anti-inflammatory or anti-rheumatic agent. It can also be used to treat wounds, bites, stings, rashes and other conditions. Not only does it speed up recovery on the surface level, but it also penetrates into the tissues to speed the healing of sprains, strains and even broken bones.
Comfrey is a nutrient accumulator. The roots of the comfrey plant reach far into the earth to pull up minerals, and it is known to be a good source of calcium, manganese, potassium, vitamin A and vitamin C. (Related: How to grow and use comfrey for gardening and medicine.)
Using comfrey for healing
As Oil
You can boil comfrey in a pan and heat it on low until the oil takes the color of the herbs. This will take about thirty minutes to an hour. You can then strain the herbs and bottle the oil. While it can be stored at room temperature, comfrey oil will last longer when kept in a cool place.
You can apply the oil liberally to aches, pains, and other areas when desired. Use a roller bottle to use the oil without getting your hands messy.
As Decoction
Use 1-3 teaspoons of dried comfrey root for every cup of water. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for up ten to fifteen minutes. Drink this concoction up to three times a day, or gargle it to treat infections, dry mouth, sore throat and bleeding gums.
As tea or water infusion
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Prepper medicine: How to use sage, a versatile healing herb
(Natural News) Sage is a flavorful herb that’s often used during Thanksgiving to season turkey and homemade stuffing.
The herb may be popular as a culinary seasoning for holiday recipes, but you also need to learn the medicinal uses of sage before SHTF. (h/t to TheSurvivalMom.com)
Sage: A versatile herb for your home garden
Sage belongs to the mint family. While there are many varieties, the one you’re probably most familiar with is the one used for cooking, Salvia officinalis.
Sage is very aromatic and using it gives your dishes an earthy, warm quality. The herb can be used fresh, dry, rubbed, and ground. (Related: 10 Ways to use comfrey, a powerful healing herb.)
While the modern use of sage usually involves savory dishes, sage has been valued for its health benefits for thousands of years.
The ancient Greeks and Chinese used varieties of sage to address different health issues. Native Americans used sage for meditation, protection and relaxation.
Common garden sage, the variety you often use for cooking, is also used for broader health purposes as recently as the late 1800s by early doctors like Physiomedicalists in the United States.
Traditionally, sage has been used to address minor discomforts like bloating and gas after eating a fatty meal to more serious health problems like typhoid fever and tuberculosis.
Sage health benefitsSage is full of vitamins and minerals. One teaspoon (0.7 grams) of ground sage contains only two calories, 0.1 grams of fat and protein and 0.4 grams of carbs.
The same serving also contains:
Vitamin K –10 percent of the reference daily intake (RDI)Iron – 1.1 percent of the RDIVitamin B6 – 1.1 percent of the RDICalcium – One percent of the RDIManganese – One percent of the RDI…click on the above link to read the rest…
