tagged w/ Climate Change
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Chut Wutty, a dedicated Cambodian activist, was shot dead at an illegal logging site by military police, on Thursday. At the time Wutty was driving with two journalists, who wrote a shocking eyewitness account of his death, revealing that he was physically and verbally abused, then shot whilst trying to drive away, and left to die. His death reveals the brutal power of logging syndicates and companies, which are looting the country’s natural wealth, and employing the military to silence their opponents.
Wutty was the director of the Natural Resources Protection Group. He was the most vociferous activist speaking out against illegal logging, particularly active in the Cardamom mountains and in Prey Lang forest. He played a major role supporting the Prey Lang Network, a grassroots forest protection movement that spans four provinces.
Local authorities and officials offer little support in the fight against illegal logging. As Wutty explained, “civil servants, in their uniform, have not performed their role according to their mandate. The only role they play is facilitating business deals to make personal profit. With this they earn from more than one source. First, they get their salary from government, second, they get direct income from selling timber, and third, they make money facilitating business deals.”
“I understand that wealth is important and I want to be wealthy as well. But I also want to see people live with freedom, to be able to maintain their culture, their traditions, to be able to pursue their own life style.”
Deforestation in Cambodia is driven by a juggernaut of powerful interests. Collusion between officials, concessionaires, logging syndicates and the military creates a powerful front. The number of land concessions in Cambodia is rapidly increasing: rubber, mining and dams are major causes of large-scale deforestation. Despite losing out on valuable timber revenue from illegal logging in concession areas, the Cambodian government aims to expand rubber plantations to 400,000 hectares by 2020. Forest dependent communities face losing their land and independence, becoming poorly paid laborers in plantations owned by the wealthy.
Few activists or NGOs have the courage to voice their concerns about this widespread dispossession. Wutty was perfectly aware of the risks he was taking but he was determined to speak out. Sitting next to him as the military approached at the Prey Lang protest in November, Wutty was composed. "They are coming to catch me; should I run away? But where to go?" He looked around for a second, then mildly commented, "Well, I'd like to see what they do."
On Thursday, Wutty’s death showed just how far those people would go in the face of his courageous and untiring dedication to stop the destruction of Cambodia's forests. It is a triumph that he kept pursuing justice in the face of threats and violence.
The question now is, who sent the soldiers to apprehend Wutty?
Human rights groups have launched inquiries pursuing precisely this question. Cambodian Centre for Human Rights president Ou Virak said yesterday that his organization had strong leads on which company asked the military police to stop Chut Wutty.
Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0502-chut-wutty-oped.html#ixzz1tkKKo753
More at the linkChut Wutty, a dedicated Cambodian activist, was shot dead at an illegal logging site... more
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Permafrost zones extend over 50% of Canada's land area. Warming or thawing of permafrost due to climate change could significantly impact existing infrastructure and future development in Canada's north.
Researchers Jennifer Throop and Antoni Lewkowicz at the University of Ottawa, along with Sharon Smith with the Geological Survey of Canada, have published a new study, part of an upcoming special issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (CJES), that provides one of the first summaries of climate and ground temperature relations across northern Canada.
Dr. Christopher Burn, Editor of the CJES special issue on fundamental and applied research on permafrost in Canada, says the study by Throop, Lewkowicz, and Smith is unusual because it presents data on permafrost throughout Canada's three northern territories.
Most previous reports have concentrated on restricted regions within the North, but this paper presents conditions at the continental scale. This summary shows the factors that govern the response of permafrost to climate change, and indicates how the emphasis on snow conditions, soil moisture conditions, and surface peat and moss varies across the North.
"This important research gives strategic assistance in projecting how permafrost may change with the climate, as it pinpoints important characteristics, and demonstrates how these vary from place to place," says Burn.
"The response of permafrost to climate change is a critical factor Canadians must anticipate if our northern infrastructure is to be adapted to thawing ground."Permafrost zones extend over 50% of Canada's land area. Warming or thawing of... more
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Southern England and Wales were on high flood alert Tuesday, with thousands of homes at risk from a deluge that has killed one person after Britain's wettest April in over 100 years.
Rivers were being closely monitored as flood defences held back muddy water from over 25,000 homes, the Environment Agency said. A total of 40 warnings of expected flooding and 152 alerts for possible floods were in place Tuesday.
"There is still a risk of flooding across many parts of England and Wales with particular focus on Somerset, Dorset and Devon," the agency said Monday evening, ahead of a night of thunder and heavy showers.
Forecasters the Met Office said Tuesday that heavy rain was starting to ease but "there will still be a good deal of standing water and a continued risk of localised flooding since river levels remain high".
Provisional Met Office data showed the past month has been the wettest April since records began in 1910. Figures to April 29 showed 121.8mm (4.8 inches) of rain fell on average, almost double the long-term average for April of 69.6mm.
A man and his dog were killed as they tried to cross a flooded ford in Hampshire, in southeast England, on Monday, while in Northamptonshire in central England, 1,000 holidaymakers were evacuated from a caravan park.
Despite the downpour, large parts of Britain remain officially in drought after two dry winters, with householders under instructions to save water where they can.Southern England and Wales were on high flood alert Tuesday, with thousands of homes... more
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From 2011: KABUL: Afghan lawmakers on Saturday approved the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas agreement, Afghan television ToloNews reported.
The Afghan parliament’s International Liaison Commission said the agreement will act as a boost for the Afghan economy and the gas flow would help to strengthen relations between the countries involved in the project.
About 7,000 personnel will be assigned to ensure security to the project in Afghanistan, said Muhammad Anwar Akbari, a member of the commission.
Afghanistan will receive 1.2 billion cubic metres of natural gas once the project is completed.
Akbari said that this would rise to over five billion cubic metres within five years.
The cost of the project is estimated at around $7.8 billion, said Akbari. Construction work, with the help of an American firm, will begin by 2012 and is expected to be completed by 2014, he added.
More at the linkFrom 2011: KABUL: Afghan lawmakers on Saturday approved the... more
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Moscow sweltered in unseasonable heat on Sunday, with temperatures of nearly 29 degrees Celsius (84.2 Fahrenheit), a record for April since data collection began 130 years ago, authorities said.
"At 4:00 p.m. (1200 GMT), the temperature reached 28.6 degrees Celsius, an absolute record for the month of April," an official from the Russian capital's weather service told the Interfax news agency.
"The previous record for the month goes back to April 24, 1950, with 28 degrees," he added.
The mercury had already climbed to 26.3 degrees on Saturday.
Several central and eastern European countries recorded unseasonably high temperatures on Saturday, with a record 32 degrees recorded in northern Austria.Moscow sweltered in unseasonable heat on Sunday, with temperatures of nearly 29... more
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EARTH: The Operators' Manual
An operators' manual helps keep your car or computer running at peak performance. Earth science can do the same for the planet. Join host Richard Alley – registered Republican, geologist, former oil company employee and expert on climate change and renewable energy — on a high-definition trip around the globe to learn the story of Earth's climate history and our relationship with fossil fuels. In Spain, Brazil, China and Texas, as well as at the U.S. Army's Fort Irwin and the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton, a diverse cast of Earth "operators" are proving that when the Earth's bounty meets human ingenuity, there are many reasons to be optimistic about our energy future. As Alley says, if enough of us get involved, "we can avoid climate catastrophes, improve energy security, and make millions of good jobs."EARTH: The Operators' Manual
An operators' manual helps keep your car or... more
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Forecasters have warned of property damage, traffic disruption and power cuts as storms and even the odd tornado batter the country.
But while the Environment Agency had 13 flood warnings and 42 flood alerts in place last night, it said many areas would remain in drought for the foreseeable future because groundwater levels were still extremely low. Householders faced the bizarre situation of being at risk of flooding while at the same time being urged to save water.
Homes and businesses in York city centre were flooded on Friday, and roads and farmland in many areas were submerged as an inch of rain fell.
Trains were cancelled and delayed in West Yorkshire, while beach huts in Seaton, Devon, were destroyed in gales.
There could be worse to come tonight as another powerful storm moves in. The Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for the whole of the South tomorrow. Flooding and 70mph winds could bring down trees and power lines, close bridges and disrupt ferry services. Snow could fall on high ground and there could be more tornadoes, after two destroyed properties in Warwickshire and Essex this week.
The unsettled weather coming in from the Atlantic is likely to last well into May, although it will be fairly warm in the spells of sunshine between the showers.
Sarah Holland, of the Met Office, said: “Sunday will be very wet, very windy and very unpleasant, with the risk of localised flooding and falling trees.
“People need to be aware of this. We’re monitoring the level of the alert and there is a chance this warning may be upgraded.”
It could turn out to be the wettest April on record. Some 97mm (3.8in) of rain has been recorded so far this month — 139 per cent of the average. The record, set in 2000, is 120.3mm.
The Environment Agency said recent rain had helped to push up soil moisture levels in the South East and East Anglia. River flows have increased and most are now normal or higher, although six are still below normal.
However, aquifers and water stored underground remain low because the rain is running off dry soil or being sucked up by plants. Groundwater levels remain lower than in the 1976 drought in the South and East, the agency said.
Of 27 groundwater measuring sites in England and Wales, 14 were exceptionally low — up from 13 last week after levels fell at Ampney Crucis, Glos. Seven sites were notably low. Just four were normal or higher, all in the North West.
Polly Chancellor, the national drought co-ordinator, said: “The rain boosts farmers and gardeners and delays water companies applying for further drought permits.
“But dry soils mean most rain is either soaked up or runs off, causing flooding. Most rain is not reaching down far enough to top up groundwater, which is what we really need to make a difference to the drought. So it is still important we all continue to use water wisely.”Forecasters have warned of property damage, traffic disruption and power cuts as... more
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Climate scientists have been saying for years that one of the many downsides of a warming planet is that both droughts and torrential rains are both likely to get worse. That’s what climate models predict, and that’s what observers have noted, most recently in the IPCC’s report on extreme weather, released last month. It makes physical sense, too. A warmer atmosphere can absorb more water vapor, and what goes up must come down — and thanks to prevailing winds, it won’t come down in the same place.
The idea of changes to the so-called hydrologic cycle, in short, hangs together pretty well. According to a new paper just published in Science, however, the picture is flawed in one important and disturbing way. Based on measurements gathered around the world from 1950-2000, a team of researchers from Australia and the U.S. has concluded that the hydrologic cycle is indeed changing. Wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier. But it’s happening about twice as fast as anyone thought, and that could mean big trouble for places like Australia, which has already been experiencing crushing drought in recent years.
More than 3,000 robotic profiling floats provide crucial information on upper layers of the world's ocean currents. Credit: Alicia Navidad/CSIRO.
The reason for this disconnect between expectation and reality is that the easiest place to collect rainfall data is on land, where scientists and rain gauges are located. About 71 percent of the world is covered in ocean, however. “Most of the action, however, takes place over the sea,” lead author Paul Durack, a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a telephone interview. In order to get a more comprehensive look at how water is exchanged between the surface and the atmosphere, that’s where Durack and his colleagues went to look.
Nobody has rainfall data from the ocean, so Durack and his collaborators looked instead at salinity — that is, saltiness — in ocean waters. The reasoning is straightforward enough. When water evaporates from the surface of the ocean, it leaves the salt behind. That makes increased saltiness a good proxy for drought. When fresh water rains back down on the ocean, it dilutes the seawater, so decreased saltiness is the equivalent of a land-based flood.
Fortunately, as the scientists make clear, research ships have been taking salinity measurements for decades in most of the planet’s ocean basins, so it’s possible to see where and how fast salinity has been changing. And it turns out that the saltiness has been increasing, especially in the waters surrounding Australia, southern Africa and western South America — all places where drought has increased as well.
The climate models weren’t really wrong, Durack hastened to add. “They’re accurately capturing the spatial patterns in hydrologic changes, and they’ve got the basic physics right. They’re just providing very conservative estimates of how big the changes are, and now we’re starting to understand that.”
More at the linkClimate scientists have been saying for years that one of the many downsides of a... more
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The cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the past 50 years has intensified at twice the rate predicted by climate change models, according to a report by US and Australian scientists of ocean salt levels.
The increase in the rate at which the atmosphere moves water from dry spots to wet spots means the world’s dry areas, like Australia, have been getting drier, while wet regions have been getting wetter.
In a paper published today in the journal Science, researchers from CSIRO and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, report that the “rich get richer” effect in the water cycle marks a clear fingerprint of climate change.
By looking at ocean salinity levels collected by 3,500 robot buoys, known as Argo, the researchers were able to determine which parts of the ocean experienced more rain fall than water evaporation – or vice versa. They found salty areas had been getting saltier and fresh areas fresher. The water cycle had strengthened by 4% between 1950 and 2000 – twice the rate forecast by global climate models.
What happened at sea also applied to land, said Richard Matear, of CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship, because “the ocean … stores 97% of the world’s water, receives 80% of all surface rainfall and has absorbed 90% of the Earth’s energy increase associated with past atmospheric warming.
“Warming of the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere is expected to strengthen the water cycle largely driven by the ability of warmer air to hold and redistribute more moisture.”
Lead author Paul Durack, a post-doctoral fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said “salinity shifts in the ocean confirm climate and the global water cycle have changed.
“These changes suggest that arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions have become wetter in response to observed global warming."
The researchers estimated the water cycle could accelerate by 24% by the end of the century, posing a threat to the supply of freshwater in parts of the world.
Dr Susan Wijffels, co-chair of the global Argo project and a co-author on the study, said that although Australia would continue to experience periodic El Nino and La Nina dry and wet spells, there would be “an underlying, long-term change of the background”.
Australia was stuck in the middle of oceanic regions dominated by evaporation, so droughts would become more severe.
“The base climate is going to be drifting … the dry areas are going to become even more water stressed and the wet regions will probably become wetter.”
By Justin Norrie, Editor | 27 April 2012The cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the past 50 years has intensified at twice... more
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Royal Society study yields unsurprising results, Ecoscience co-author calls for “move to population shrinkage as humanely and as rapidly as possible”
The Royal Society, an organisation made up of renowned eco-fascists and depopulation fanatics, has released a “major report” calling for the “stabilization” of global population and reductions in consumption in developed countries.
The report is the unsurprising result of a 21 month “objective” study on human population growth and its implications for social and economic development.
“The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future”, the report reads.
The report also claims that developing countries will have to build the equivalent of a city of a million people every five days from now to 2050 in order to cope with the rate of population increase .
“In material terms it will be necessary for most developed countries to abstain from certain sorts of consumption, such as CO2,” said Jules Pretty who was on the Royal Society working group.
The study argues that there should be a demand to “reduce fertility” in poorer nations, particularly in Africa.
The Royal Society has also conducted extensive research into geoengineering the planet to manipulate its climate, and continually lobbies the government to divert funding into the area. The UK government recently published a lengthy report on geoengineering, drawing heavily on Royal Society research. The report proposed methods including spraying sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling effect produced by volcanic eruptions, as well as placing mirrors in space to reflect the Sun’s rays away from the Earth, a technique known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM).
The same talking points raised by the Society have been re-iterated again and again by public policy groups and environmentalists, as well as the most influential scientists in the US government.
While you and I may think the notions of sterilization and depopulation could never be accepted by the public, those very concepts are now being embraced and popularized as the way forward for humanity.
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
April 27, 2012
so many links to official reports and documentation...Depopulation may be trendy for those who think its' cute to kill 3rd world brown children, but guess what, they're pumping your kids up with the same vaccines, your drinking the same water, your eating the same genetically modified garbage. So all you hipster yuppies out there better wake up...they're killing you too.Royal Society study yields unsurprising results, Ecoscience co-author calls for... more
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Climate Progress | April 27, 2012
Recently, the editorial board of the Washington Post asked if the world can fight global warming without nuclear power, looking to Germany and Japan for the answer.
Both countries are known for a nuclear shutdown path. In Japan, only one of the 54 nuclear reactors currently remains in operation. Germany has closed eights reactors following the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima in March 2011 and the remaining nine are scheduled to be closed by 2022.
That obviously must lead to rising emissions, the Post claims. Germany’s “electricity sector emits more carbon than it must after eight reactors shut down last year.”
If you look at the most recent emissions data, however, the opposite is happening. Germany reduced its carbon emissions in 2011 by 2.1 percent despite the nuclear phase out. How can that be?
The cut in greenhouse gases was mainly reached due to an accelerated transition to renewable energies and a warm winter. In addition, the EU emissions trading system capped all emissions from the power sector. While eight nuclear power plants were shut down, solar power output increased by 60 percent. In 2011 alone, 7.5 gigawatts of solar were installed. By the end of last year, renewable energies provided more than 20 percent of overall electricity.
The Washington Post refers to critics of this transition who “reasonably predict that the country will instead rely on electricity imports from neighbors running old, reliable coal, gas and, yes, nuclear plants for years to come.”
So this means Germany would import electricity from neighboring countries, such as France, Poland, and the Czech Republic? It’s true, depending on time of day and year, that Germany imports electricity. However, even after shutting its eight oldest nuclear power plants, Germany is still a net exporter of electricity.
In 2011, Germany exported 6 TWh more than it imported, according to the industry federation German Association of Energy and Water Industries BDEW. Countries like Poland and the Czech Republic are not as concerned about providing electricity to Germany. On the contrary, they are mainly concerned about wind and solar power surges from Germany offsetting their own production of fossil and nuclear power. Additionally, German electricity exports to Europe’s nuclear power house France actually increased in 2011.
What does this tell us? The nuclear phase-out does not conflict with efforts to fight climate change. You can reduce emissions while shutting down nuclear power. And you can still supply industry and consumers with enough power.
By the end of 2011, Germany had reduced its CO2 emissions by more than 23 percent compared to 1990 levels, overshooting its Kyoto target. In addition, the country has build up a competitive renewable energy industry providing thousands of new jobs, even as competitors like China enter the game and catch up fast. In Germany, fighting climate change and phasing out nuclear power are two sides of the same coin.
Instead of repeating myths about Germany’s nuclear phase-out, the editorial board of the Washington Post would do better by looking at the facts. It would also help to expand the article’s narrow focus to include a question about whether nuclear is even the most cost-effective or safe option to fight climate change. It is not, says even the Economist.
A vast majority of Germans have made up their minds on the need to phase out nuclear. And what happens in Germany will be a major indicator for other countries. As Paul Hockenos, an American living in Berlin, concludes in the European Energy Review: “Whatever the case, Germans aren’t the only ones waiting for a more pro-active policy. The world is watching Germany’s Energiewende.”
Let’s see where the Germans can go with their energy transition.
– Arne Jungjohann is Program Director Environment for the Heinrich-Boell Foundation.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/27/472713/germany-fighting-climate-change-and-phasing-out-nuclear-power-are-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/Climate Progress | April 27, 2012
Recently, the editorial board of the Washington... more
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Happy Earth Day, everybody! Just when we thought our faith in the drunkards had been restored, we spotted this disaster area left behind after throngs of Marina District revelers took their overconsumption outdoors yesterday afternoon. After a brief stop at the Marina Dateway, where the neighborhood grocery store was experiencing a run on domestic beer and ladies were overheard discussing the caloric content of various vodkas, we found this scene on the grass at Fort Mason around 7 p.m. Saturday evening.
What looked something like this during the afternoon, by sunset looked like a good place to catch Hepatitis. That's also when the seagulls started swooping in, probably looking for beer can rings to choke themselves to death with. (Because of how disappointed in humanity they were.)
Not to get all hippie-preachy or anything, but this is kind of an offensive amount of trash, right? Do normal and reasonable human beings not look at that mess and say, "...maybe we ought to like, I don't know? Take some of this trash with us? To a trash can?" or "Maybe we should bring that coffee table back home?" We've seen our share of litter-y days in Dolores Park and some embarrassing trash pileups in Golden Gate Park, but leaving actual pieces of living room furniture is a whole new level of prickish park use.
more at link...
Just another example of how hypocritical, ignorant and brainwashed these global warming clowns are. They know nothing about science, climate or the environment. Pathetic.Happy Earth Day, everybody! Just when we thought our faith in the drunkards had been... more
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This week, students from four Christian colleges went to the White House for a briefing with officials from the EPA and the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Their message: Climate change and clean air is a driver of their votes.
“We want to tell the White House that creation care is a swing vote for many Evangelicals,” said Chelsea Watkins, a young coordinator of the demonstration from Houston, TX.
At the gathering, students joined young environmental advocates, NGOs, and faith leaders in unveiling a giant quilted topographic map of the United States, sewn together from recycled clothes donated from around the country. Many also donned shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Green the Golden Rule.”
“You can’t remove the topsoil or destroy the watershed and love your neighbor. It doesn’t compute,” said Tyler Amy, coordinator of Renewal, a youth-minded sustainability-focused group that brought students together for the day of advocacy.
“If [Congress] is not listening to the EPA, maybe they’ll listen to us,” said Amy. “That’s the beauty of our democracy. Young people can make a difference.”
Officials agreed. “We all care about stewardship,” said Drew Elons, Director of Outreach and Public Relations for the EPA. “Destructive environmental practices cause massive public health concerns, and health affects education and the economy – for many of us, these things translate into moral issues.”
But some students also had tough questions for the government. Tess Beckwith, a senior at Eastern College in Philadelphia, pointedly asked the National Manager of EnergySTAR whether the White House itself met qualifications to be EnergySTAR certified, to which he had no answer. “I just want change to be genuine,” said Beckwith later. “If we’re going to fix things we have to start at home, and [the White House] is a major building in the US.”
The question reflected the sincerity of the group gathered, which collectively voiced support for the EPA and the need to make climate change a campaign issue in 2012.
Deb Fikes, Executive Advisor for the World Evangelical Alliance and a coordinator of the event, expressed regret on behalf of her generation and offered encouragement to the young people gathered. “I am grieved by my generation of Christians,” she said from the podium. “We haven’t been doing what we need to be doing. … What are school textbooks going to say about what we did in our lifetime to make a difference? You here are going to write that chapter.”
From here, Fikes will escort the quilted map to Dallas Baptist University and to colleges around the country. The map is designed to be interactive and will feature energy sources for each new region visited. The creative and unconventional idea, says map creator Hannah Kim, will invite people to connect and start “thinking outside the box.”
The briefing was coordinated as a symbolic action by the World Evangelical Alliance and the religious network Christians for Environmental Stewardship. This was the second of several days of action on environmental issues organized by the faith community during Earth Week.
Catherine Woodiwiss is a Special Assistant with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.This week, students from four Christian colleges went to the White House for a... more
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"James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.
Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.
He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”
However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far."
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.""James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental... more
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The Great Global Warming Swindle swindle.
Published on Apr 18, 2012 by practicepants
Very well done!The Great Global Warming Swindle swindle.
Published on Apr 18, 2012 by practicepants... more
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In another stark warning about the dangers of Arctic Ocean drilling, the German bank WestLB announced on Friday that it would not provide financing to any offshore oil or gas drilling in the region. The company’s sustainability manager said the “risks and costs are simply too high.”
The decision was made just a week after insurance giant Lloyd’s of London issued a report concluding that offshore drilling in the Arctic would “constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk” and urged companies to “think carefully about the consequences of action” before exploring for oil in the region.
Dustin Neuneyer, sustainability manager at the corporate and investment bank WestLB, explained the decision to Environmental Finance:
“The further you get into the icy regions, the more expensive everything gets and there are risks that are hard to manage.… There are projects that are evidently unsustainable in an encompassing sense. For WestLB, the risks and costs are simply too high.”
The bank’s new eight-point policy on offshore drilling lays out specific criteria for the projects and companies that are eligible for financing — excluding any exploration or production activities in areas where the average temperature for the warmest month is below 10°C (50° F). Additionally, the policy’s criteria — which are binding for any company seeking a loan — require companies to use the best available technology, abide by the highest technical safety standards, and show that activities are validated by an independent third party.
The concerns raised by Lloyd’s of London and WestLB come as Royal Dutch Shell prepares to drill in Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska this summer. The recommendations of these institutions echo those in the recent Center for American Progress report, Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic.
The dearth of supporting infrastructure throughout Alaska’s North Slope — including ports, roads, railroads, and permanent Coast Guard facilities — coupled with the lack of sound science and extremely volatile conditions make any potential offshore operations precarious at best. The remote location, harsh and unpredictable conditions, and absence of proven clean-up technologies designed for Arctic conditions would make large-scale response efforts nearly impossible.
Those factors represent a cost and risk WestLB isn’t willing to shoulder.
The stakes are high for Royal Dutch Shell, which after spending nearly five years and $4 billion, will likely soon receive the necessary permits for exploratory drilling in the remote Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. And other oil giants aren’t far behind — Exxon and ConocoPhillips are aiming to start offshore operations in the pristine Arctic Ocean by 2013.
WestLB might be the first bank to explicitly refuse financing for offshore drilling in the Arctic, but they may not be alone for long. “Other banks contacted us and are very interested in this approach and policy,” Neuneyer told Environmental Finance.
How many influential corporate voices will have to raise concerns before someone hits the pause button on Arctic Ocean drilling?
by Kiley KrohIn another stark warning about the dangers of Arctic Ocean drilling, the German bank... more
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I’m a moderate Republican — a fan of small government, light regulation and market solutions. A serial entrepreneur, I founded companies that invented 3-D television weather graphics and the first app on a cell phone. I’m a Penn State meteorologist. My day-job since 1979: tracking weather for TV news.
If you know anything about American politics these days, and follow the climate war at all, you might anticipate with some confidence that I agree global warming is a hoax. That’s a shame, and I hope it changes soon.
In the 1980s I was skeptical that an upward blip in global temperatures was the result of manmade gases. Then the blips persisted. By the mid-90s I began to see them as unsettling changes. The weather was becoming erratic and even more unpredictable than usual. Storms were more frequent and intense. Curious, I began including climate statistics in daily TV weather segments, like annual trends in flash-flooding, hail, summer humidity, fewer subzero nights and decreased snowfall.
Mixing climate and weather was a problem in local TV news, with its reliance on Q-scores and market research. Finally, in 2008 I lost my job in local TV. I continued to write a daily column for the Star Tribune. Mixing climate news in with weather reports made me a lightning rod for skeptics there, too. The flame-mail was relentless. “Stop proselytizing, you crazy liberal – climb back under your rock!” wrote one reader. That’s one of the tamer, more family-friendly messages I’ve received.
I don’t take speaking out on this topic lightly. My father escaped a communist regime in East Germany, moved to the U.S. and became a Republican. He taught me to never take my freedom for granted. He taught me “actions have consequences.” That’s true of nations as it is of individuals. It is sheer lunacy to pretend that releasing 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year won’t come back to bite us.
Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get, the saying goes. Climate is the weather over a long period of time — 15 or 30 years. We’ve pushed the bell curve of ‘average weather’ in a new and more extreme direction. There are simply too many coincidences not to take this seriously.
Climate science shows that over a long period of time, the statistics have changed. Things that used to happen a lot, like consistent winter snow cover, are happening less reliably. Things that happened every now and then, like droughts and wildfires, are happening more reliably. And things that almost never happened — such as the 15,000 new U.S. temperature records in March — sometimes now do occur. And they can’t be explained with purely meteorological reasoning.
The changes we’re seeing, far more than I can list here, seem like an accumulation of coincidences. Pieced together, reveal the full puzzle: There’s more heat and moisture in the atmosphere, and our emissions are largely responsible for keeping it there.
The millennium’s first decade was the warmest on record and included nine of the 10 hottest years. Greenhouse gas levels are at their highest in 800,000 years. Less heat is escaping the top of the atmosphere in the wavelengths of greenhouse gases. For the first time, scientists have recorded both hemispheres are warming – and the global temperature spike can’t be linked to an astronomical trigger, such as solar variability. Great Lakes peak ice has seen a 71 percent drop since 1973. Winters are shorter. Lakes melt earlier. Plants are moving north.
Worldwide, 95% of land-based glaciers are losing mass. September Arctic sea ice has lost 10 percent of its area every decade. Sea levels are rising. Oceans are 30 percent more acidic. Flooding and extreme storms are spiking in frequency and intensity. Last winter was the 4th warmest on record, despite the cooling influence of a La Nina phase in the Pacific.
Extremes are becoming more extreme. And none of it has anything to do with Al Gore.
During a 2007 homecoming banquet for Iraqi war vets I asked my personal hero, Senator John McCain, if he thought this could all be some cosmic coincidence. He rolled his eyes. “Paul, I just returned from the Yukon, where a village elder presented me with a tomahawk that had just melted out of the permafrost. The answer is no.”
How did so much of the Republican Party enter perpetual denial? We’ve turned climate science into a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. To pretend that heat-trapping gases can be waved away with a nod and a smirk is political fairytale. No harm. No foul. Keep drilling.
I’m a Christian and ultimately come to Christ through faith. With climate change no faith is required. There is a large and growing body of evidence. The way nature works applies the same to Republican and Democrat, Christian and Muslim, animal, tree and stone.
Why do people who profess to love and follow God roll their eyes? Luke 16:2 says “Man has been appointed as a steward for the management of God’s property, and ultimately he will give account for his stewardship.”
It’s a message that my father put succinctly: Actions have consequences.
Paul Douglas is a Twin Cities meteorologist and the founder of five companies, including WeatherNation TV, a new 24-hour weather channel. This piece was originally published at Bloomberg Businessweek and was reprinted with permission from the author.I’m a moderate Republican — a fan of small government, light regulation... more
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Through all of the Earth Days I have seen, I have discovered that the environment is about so much more than planting flowers. It is about a love that goes so deep for all that keeps us alive. It is about respecting and working with nature and seeing the interconnections of all species and the biosphere. It is about us remembering every day the effect our actions have on limiting our Earth's ability to sustain us and working in ways that make amends for those actions so our children will be able to have a thriving planet where that connection is primary to them. It is about who we are and why we are here.
The indigenous peoples of our world are the true holders of the secrets of that connection. Through them we see the personification of that respect and the fruits of the Earth they have shared in without avarice. Their wisdom is now crucial as we see our Earth becoming sicker from our pollution, our war and our hate. For many years they have predicted what is now taking place regarding where the greed and arrogance of humanity woud take us and yet their voices are silenced and their land, water, and cultures sacrificed for a false choice.
So in commemoration of Earth Day, I would hope people would become aware and take action against the global assault by corporations (Monsanto, DOW Chemical, Shell, BP, Rio Tinto as examples) and governments on the Indigenous peoples of our globe, even and particularly in our own country and the Amazon regarding water, agriculture, land and the oil that once sucked out of Earth tilts its balance and ours. Their wisdom of this Earth and how to work in harmony with nature is what we should now be seeking out as it is wisdom that can save our species from self destruction. I remember and salute them on Earth Day and pledge to stand with them in this fight for Earth democracy and climate justice.Through all of the Earth Days I have seen, I have discovered that the environment is... more
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Following a vote in its Senate on Thursday evening, Mexico is poised to become just the second country in the world to enshrine long-term climate targets into national legislation.
The margin of the vote was huge - 78-0 - indicating that all political parties have found common ground on this issue.
Now all that's needed is the signature of President Felipe Calderon, which is expected to materialise next week.
The bill enshrines a number of measures in law, including:
30% reduction in emission growth measured against a "business as usual" pathway by 2020, and 50% by 2050
35% of energy to come from renewable sources by 2024
obligation for government agencies to use renewables
establishment of a national mechanism for reporting on emissions in various sectors
The targets look pretty demanding at first sight - especially for a country where the population is growing and the economy expanding, and where oil makes a significant contribution to the national coffers.
So why is it taking steps that to the eyes of many will probably look like economic suicide?
Tlajomulco, on the outskirts of Guadalajara, recently saw a major oil pipeline fire
I had a chance to ask three Mexican parliamentarians recently when they came to London to look at how the UK, the first country in the world with this sort of national legislation, is doing it.
The views of Eric Luis Rubio Barthell, Nicolas Bellizia Aboaf and Porfirio Munoz Ledo were quite diverse - perhaps not surprising, as they come from different political parties.
"Mexico has a long tradition in multilateral politics," said Mr Munoz Ledo, a founder member of the centre-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) who now chairs the Foreign Affairs Commission.
That tradition re-asserted itself at the UN climate summit in Cancun in 2010, he said - and "this legislation is a strong commitment coming out of Cancun" to reflect that international commitment on climate change in national legislation.
For Mr Bellizia Aboaf, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which despite its name is considered more of a centrist party these days, it was more about practical issues.
"My state of Tabasco has suffered quite heavily the consequences of climate change," he said.
Low-lying Tabasco has traditionally suffered from flooding but the events of 2007, when water covered 80% of the state, were especially severe.
Yet Tabasco also has nearly 1,000 oil and gas wells in operation - a microcosm of Mexico in general, which is the sixth largest oil exporter in the world.
Traditionally, big hydrocarbon-producing countries have fought tooth and nail against action on climate change; and Mr Rubio Barthell, also of the PRI, said Middle Eastern oil-exporting countries have repeatedly asked Mexico to take this stance too.
But as the country has developed, oil and gas have become progressively less important to the economy as a whole.
That's why a more green economic vision makes sense for a number of politicians.
"I personally think this climate change topic should be an economic and energy issue, not an ecological issue, though I recognise that opinions are divided on this," said Mr Rubio Barthell.
And for Mr Munoz Ledo, the transition implied by a 35% renewable energy target is necessary and absolutely achievable.
The 2010 summit in Cancun put the UN climate convention's journey back on the road
"Mexico is aware this is the end of the oil era, so we need to implement this fiscal reform - and if we go through it, we'll be able to do without this oil," he said.
Solar energy, hydro-electricity, geothermal, biofuels and nuclear are options that are going to be explored.
The irony is, of course, that Mexico has traditionally been a younger and poorer cousin of the giant to its north, the United States, which has repeatedly declined to establish legislation of anything like this strength, citing impacts on economic growth.
"Power for the US is based on the army and energy and oil," Mr Munoz Ledo said.
"In 1989 you had [George] Bush senior coming into office from an oil background; if you go through Clinton and Obama, they serve the oil interest first.
"We're talking about the politics of neo-liberalism here which is based on oil interests and indebtedness - this is why so many in the US don't accept climate change, even though it's based on scientific evidence."
More at the linkFollowing a vote in its Senate on Thursday evening, Mexico is poised to become just... more
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by Ted Rall
The President's progressive critics blame him for continuing and expanding upon his Republican predecessor's policies. His supporters point to the obstructionist, Republican-controlled Congress. What can Obama do? He's being stymied at every turn.
The first problem with the it's-the-GOP's-fault defense is that it asks voters to suffer short-term memory loss. In 2009, you probably recall, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. By a sizeable majority. They even had a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. His approval ratings were through the roof; even many Republicans who had voted against him took a liking to him. The media, in his pocket, wondered aloud whether the Republican Party could ever recover. "Rarely, if ever, has a President entered office with so much political wind at his back," Tim Carney wrote for the Evans-Novak Political Report shortly after the inauguration.
If Obama had wanted to pursue a progressive agenda—banning foreclosures, jailing bankers, closing Guantánamo, stopping the wars, pushing for the public option he promised in his healthcare plan—he could have. He had ample political capital, yet chose not to spend it.
Now that Congress is controlled by a Republican Party in thrall to its radical-right Tea Party faction, it is indeed true that Obama can't get routine judicial appointments approved, much less navigate the passage of legislation. Oh-so-conveniently, Obama has turned into a liberal-come-lately. Where was his proposed Buffett Rule (which would require millionaires with huge investment income to pay the same percentage rate as middle-class families) in 2009, when it might have stood a chance of passage?
Team Obama's attempt to shore up his liberal base also falls short on the facts. Progressives were shocked by the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling, along party lines, that legalized strip-searches and body cavity rapes by police and private security firms who detain people suspected of any crime, even minor traffic infractions.
"What virtually none of this…commentary mentioned," reported Glenn Greenwald in Salon, "was that that the Obama DOJ [Department of Justice] formally urged Court to reach the conclusion it reached…this is yet another case, in a long line, where the Obama administration was able to have its preferred policies judicially endorsed by getting right-wing judges to embrace them."
"Liberals don't blame Obama for not winning. They blame him for not trying. When he does crazy things like authorizing the assassinations of U.S. citizens without trial, progressives have to ask themselves: Is this guy kowtowing to the Right? Or is he one of them?"
No wonder Obama stayed mum.
Which brings us to the biggest, yet least discussed, flaw in the attempt to pin Obama's inaction on the heads of Congressional Republicans: the bully pulpit.
Whether Donald Trump likes it or not, Barack Obama is still president. If he calls a press conference to call attention to an issue, odds are that reporters will show up. But he's not walking tall or even talking big.
Responding to fall 2011 polls that indicated softening support among the younger and more liberal voters who form the Democratic base, Obama's reelection strategists began rolling out speeches inflected with Occupy-inspired rhetoric about class warfare and trying to make sure all Americans "get a fair shot." But that's all it is: talk. And small talk at that.
Instead of introducing major legislation, the White House plans to spend 2012 issuing presidential orders about symbolic, minor issues.
Repeating Clinton-era triangulation and micro-mini issues doesn't look like a smart reelection strategy. The Associated Press reported: "Obama's election year retreat from legislative fights means this term will end without significant progress on two of his 2008 campaign promises: comprehensive immigration reform and closing the military prison for terrorist suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Piecemeal presidential directives are unlikely to make a sizeable dent in the nation's 8.6 percent unemployment rate or lead to significant improvements in the economy, the top concern for many voters and the issue on which Republican candidates are most likely to criticize Obama. In focusing on small-bore executive actions rather than ambitious legislation, the president risks appearing to be putting election-year strategy ahead of economic action at a time when millions of Americans are still out of work."
Of course, Obama may prevail. Romney is an extraordinarily weak opponent.
For progressives and leftists, however, the main point is that Obama never tries to move the mainstream of ideological discourse to the left.
Obama has been mostly silent on the biggest issue of our time, income inequality and the rapid growth of the American underclass. He hasn't said much about the environment or climate change, the most serious problem we face—and one for which the U.S. bears a disproportionate share of the blame. Even on issues where he was blocked by Congress, such as when Republicans prohibited the use of public funds to transport Gitmo detainees to the U.S. for trials, he zipped his lips.
It isn't hard to imagine a president launching media-friendly crusades against poverty or global warming. FDR and LBJ did it, touring the country, appointing high-profile commissions and inviting prominent guests to the White House to draw attention to issues they cared about.
In 2010, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez invited flood victims to move into his presidential palace. Seven years after Katrina, Gulf Coast residents are still waiting for help. What if Obama opened up the Lincoln Bedroom to a homeless family? The media couldn't ignore a PR stunt like that.
Obama has mostly shunned the time-honored strategy of trapping your opposition by forcing them vote against your popular ideas. In 2009, for example, it would have been smarter politics—and better governance—to push for real socialized medicine, or at least ObamaCare with the public option he promised. He would either have wound up with a dazzling triumph, or a glorious defeat.
Liberals don't blame Obama for not winning. They blame him for not trying. When he does crazy things like authorizing the assassinations of U.S. citizens without trial, progressives have to ask themselves: Is this guy kowtowing to the Right? Or is he one of them?
~~~~~by Ted Rall
The President's progressive critics blame him for continuing and... more
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