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The Antiwar Comic: Stick to Zombies
The advent of drone technology worries Tony D.-
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Electric Universe 2012—The Human Story
Electric Universe Conference to Kick Off January 6 in Las Vegas
Annual Gathering Debuts with The Human Story
Please join us in a three-day journey through the Electric Universe. Explore with us the unified underpinnings of the natural world.
Witness how horizons expand through interdisciplinary collaboration and synthesis. Discover electric patterns repeating themselves at all scales, from the tiny world of the atom to the far reaches of space. Consider as well the electricity of life and the role of frequencies and resonance in biological systems. See how electricity helped researchers penetrate the great mysteries of the past, the origins of mythic archetypes and symbols, and the roots of cultural anxiety.
We have chosen as our symbol for the conference the primordial cosmic thunderbolt: Sanskrit [vajra], Tibetan [dorje], and Japanese [kongÅ]. We did so because, as a matter of record, it is this enigmatic “weapon of the gods” that bridges ancient worlds and the leading edge of plasma science.
Join Wallace Thornhill, Donald Scott, David Talbott and a full complement of Thunderbolts Project speakers in launching a new year of the Electric Universe—an unprecedented event that you will not want to miss.
...Electric Universe Conference to Kick Off January 6 in Las Vegas Annual Gathering... more-
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Global day of action- rallying call as thousands expected to join Durban climate march
As world leaders struggle to reach agreement at the COP17 negotiations, the COP17 civil society committee (C17) is issuing a rallying call to all South Africans to join civil society, organised labour, faith-based organisations, artists and musicians in a peaceful march through Durban on Saturday 3rd December.
Ordinary people from across Africa and the World are coming together to make sure their voices are heard. Some of those most affected by the impacts of changing climate will be taking part in the march including peasant farmers from across the continent and hundreds of women from South African rural communities.
C17 Global Day of Action committee convenor Desmond D’sa: “World leaders are discussing the fate of our planet but they are far from reaching a solution to climate change. If they fail to make progress we will see drought and hunger blight our country and continent even further. We call on all South African’s to march with us this Saturday and remind our leaders they must come to a fair climate change deal that avoids runaway climate change.”
Participants are invited to gather from 8:30 am at Botha’s Garden/ King Dinuzulu Garden (near the corner of Julius Nyerere Street and Dr Pixley Kaseme Street) for the pre-march rally to begin at 9:00am. Speakers will include South African and international community representatives, Bishop Geoff Davies, Bandile Mdlalose, and C17’s Desmond D’sa.
The march will follow a route past the ICC, the site of the United Nations climate change negotiations, converging en route with faith community members (who will rally at Diakonia Centre, 20 Andrew’s Street, Durban). Special needs groups and children will join the march at Speakers Corner.
Pausing at the entrance to the ICC at about 13:00, speakers will present short speeches, before statements gathered from participating groups and organisations are collectively handed over to UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. Speakers will include Zwelinzima Vavi (representing labour), Nnimmo Bassey (representing Africa), Bishop Davies (representing faith communities), Aluwani Nemukula (representing youth) and Constance Mogale (representing women).
The GDA march will end at the Old Pavilion site (corner of OR Tambo parade and KE Masinga).
More at the linkAs world leaders struggle to reach agreement at the COP17 negotiations, the COP17... more-
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Coal study names top 20 "climate killer" banks
Financing coal is controversial, because it is the dirtiest fossil fuel and responsible for billions of tonnes of emissions of carbon dioxide. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters
Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC are among the top banks that have lent billions of euros to the coal sector – despite their much-vaunted environmental credentials, a new investigation has found.
Financing coal is controversial, because it is the dirtiest fossil fuel and responsible for billions of tonnes of emissions of carbon dioxide globally, as well as other pollutants such as soot particles and mercury.
The list of top 20 institutions that have financed coal-mining and coal-fired energy generation reads like a roll-call of the world's biggest banks, with three American banks – JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – topping the list. Between them, these three have provided at least €42bn to the coal sector since 2005.
Barclays took fifth place, having lent more than €11.5bn to big coal companies in the last seven years, while RBS came in seventh having lent or raised finance amounting to nearly €11bn over the period. HSBC just scraped into the top 20, with €4.4bn of finance.
The research was compiled by a group of NGOs, including German environmental group Urgewald, the international network BankTrack and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg. It took experts more than seven months to uncover the data, because banks do not declare it publicly – many banks do not know how much they lend or raise finance to the coal sector, or how many shares or other assets they own in coal. The figures were found by examining the public reports of the biggest coal mining and coal-fired power generation companies, and the true finance figures are likely to be much higher.
The NGOs have labelled the banks "climate killers" because their financing efforts have helped to expand coal in the past decade. Many of the banks on the list subscribe to environmental principles, such as cutting their own greenhouse gas emissions and conducting environmental impact assessments on projects they finance.
Heffa Schücking of Urgewald said: "We chose to look into coal financing as coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of man-made carbon dioxide emissions and the major culprit in climate change. In spite of the fact that climate change is already having impacts on the most vulnerable societies, there is an abundance of plans to build new coal-fired power plants."
Shücking said shareholders in the listed banks should be concerned, because financing dirty fuels was increasingly risky in the face of the growing threat of climate change, and increasing moves to limit greenhouse gas emissions under national regulations.
She added: "If banks provide money for these projects, they will wreck all attempts to limit global warming to 2C [which scientists regard as the limit of safety]."
The figures include bank lending to coal companies, equity financing raising for the companies, and other sources of financing such as bond issues, as well as coal assets owned by the banks – including physical assets such as coal mines or power plants, and shares in coal companies. The researchers examined the annual reports of coal companies making up 44% of global coal production, and 51% of global coal-fired energy generation, between 2005 and September 2011.
Several banks told the Guardian they did not track how much they lent to the coal sector, and that such lending did not affect their environmental commitments.
RBS said: "Since 2006, RBS has lent more money to wind power projects than to any other type of energy project. Just as society as a whole has to make a transition to renewable energy sources, so will the banks that fund energy production. RBS has been one of the most active banks in the world in funding renewable energy so we are at the forefront of helping finance that transition."
Mary Church, campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Since the bailout in 2008, it's taxpayers' money that RBS has been investing in this devastating industry."
The top 20 'climate killer' banks
1 JPMorgan Chase
2 Citi
3 Bank of America
4 Morgan Stanley
5 Barclays
6 Deutsche Bank
7 Royal Bank of Scotland
8 BNP Paribas
9 Credit Suisse
10 UBS
11 Goldman Sachs
12 Bank of China
13 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
14 Crédit Agricole / Calyon
15 UniCredit / HVB
16 China Construction Bank
17 Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
18 Société Générale
19 Wells Fargo
20 HSBC
• Data provided by Profundo
More at the linkFinancing coal is controversial, because it is the dirtiest fossil fuel and... more-
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Coalition calls on U.S. politicians to address their moral obligation to climate change
A broad coalition of civic leaders, elected officials, and labor, environmental and social activists launched a campaign Wednesday aimed at convincing U.S. politicians that they should curb greenhouse gas emissions for moral and ethical reasons.
The Climate Ethics Campaign — which kicked off with a Capitol Hill news conference headlining Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) — comes as negotiators are struggling to make progress at U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa.
“We believe it’s time to talk about our moral obligation to prevent the human suffering created by climate change, to safeguard the poor and most vulnerable communities from harm they did not create, and to protect the natural environment that is the source of all life,” said campaign coordinator Bob Doppelt, executive director of the Resource Innovation Group, a nonprofit association affiliated with Willamette University.
But the call also comes at a moment when Congress has shown little appetite for tackling the issue of global warming. There is no serious drive to pass a cap on greenhouse gas emissions or a more-modest federal renewable energy standard.
The climate talks are the first in years with not a single member of Congress attending. Only a handful of congressional aides are making the trip.
More at the linkA broad coalition of civic leaders, elected officials, and labor, environmental and... more-
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Occupy movement calls for climate justice at COP 17, Durban-Updates
Take note US law enforcement: no pepper spray, no raids, no beatings.
This is it. This is the crux of the global economic and environmental crises we face and this was the place to take it. It is always the 1% that is heard even at these conferences above the voices of the poor, the indigenous peoples and those in this world who are being disproportionately affected most by climate change. It is our time now. Failure here is a failure of and for humanity, our water, our land, other species and our economies. The science is indisputable. The effects to water, agriculture and social structure are now a reality and becoming more severe. It is time to put humanity first.
Occupy climate justice.Take note US law enforcement: no pepper spray, no raids, no beatings. This is it.... more-
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Amazon trees march in Durban for climate justice
A bill proposing a complete overhaul of the current Forest Code in Brazil was approved by the lower House of Congress last May. The text has now been sent back for a final vote - to be completed in the coming days - and then it will go to Dilma for presidential signature before final approval.
The changes in the forest code would open the Amazon up for dangerous deforestation.
If confirmed by Dilma, the new law will also compromise the international agreements Lula signed during the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, in December of 2009, committing Brazil to ambitious CO2 emissions reduction targets.A bill proposing a complete overhaul of the current Forest Code in Brazil was approved... more-
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Somalia: Where famine is a crime
http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam Osman’s mother uses to flick away flies says her youngest son suffers from acute malnutrition and the measles. A chest X-ray will soon reveal he also has tuberculosis.
When he arrived at Mogadishu's Benadir Hospital, 3-year-old Abdisalam weighed only 14 pounds. Each laborious breath made his tiny rib cage stick out even farther.
He lies beside his mother, unable to cry; all his energy reserved for his weak gasps.
“A 50-50 chance,” says Dr. Shafie Mohamed Jimale, gently touching the little boy’s emaciated arm. The 30-year-old Somali pediatrician, trained in Sudan, became a father two months earlier; his son was born at the height of the famine that is mainly killing children.
Many of his patients have died. About 50-50.
When Somalia’s famine was declared in July there were emergency calls for help and shocking statistics: 29,000 children had died in the worst drought in 60 years.
A global relief effort has helped save some. Last Friday, the United Nations Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit downgraded famine declarations for three southern regions, thanks to the rains that have finally come and emergency food aid.
But the UN warns that 250,000 are at risk as cholera, malaria and other diseases spread through crowded hospitals and camps. Tens of thousands of others still face starvation.
This famine should not have come as a shock. And if its roots are not understood and the world looks away again, Somalia’s cycle of despair — corruption, starvation, war, death — will continue, dragging children like Abdisalam into its abyss.
So what caused the famine?
Back-to-back droughts killed the livestock and destroyed the farms throughout the Horn of Africa, like the one Abdisalam’s family tended.
The southern region of the country is also warring with Al Shabab, the militant Islamic group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, and starved its own people by blocking outside foreign aid.
These are the easy answers.
These are the hard ones: Somalia’s rampant and criminal government-corruption; a war on terror at the expense of aid; and a lucrative crisis industry that spends millions that Somalis will never see.
This is why this country has topped Foreign Policy’s index of failed states for the last three years and why a drought that affected the entire Horn of Africa became a famine only in Somalia.
The scope of the tragedy is overwhelming. Last Friday’s UN announcement on easing famine conditions did not include Mogadishu. The city remains a famine zone.
Tents made of sticks and cloth, pitched between dilapidated buildings, house the starving and desperate. The sea of people in the camps ripples endlessly. It is difficult to get an accurate estimate, but it is believed that more than 100,000 have arrived since July.
Water is still scarce and largely contaminated. Mounds of human feces dot walkways between the shelters. Security is a problem. Rapes and abuses have been reported. Few foreign aid groups have come, with the exception of the Turks, who have taken over a large region of the city now called “Little Istanbul.”
Across the street from Tarabunka, a sprawling camp of more than 16,000, the graveyard is already near capacity. Ali Kafi, one of the farmers-turned-gravediggers, says he hunts untouched patches of red earth to find burial plots. Before 10 on one October morning, three babies and a young woman, nine-months pregnant, were buried. It was a typical day.
The good news for Mogadishu is that there are few visible remnants of the Shabab, which has waged war against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for nearly three years.
Weakened themselves by the famine and claiming to withdraw for “tactical” purposes, hundreds of Shabab fighters abruptly left the capital this summer.
This is why Abdisalam’s family trekked here from the south, believing there would be help in Mogadishu from the TFG, the UN-backed parliament of 550, propped up by a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force of Burundian and Ugandan soldiers.
The TFG had an opportunity to repair its badly damaged reputation and make the famine a priority. That didn’t happen.
As people began to starve earlier this year, the country’s president and its parliamentary speaker — President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Speaker Hassan Sharif, who are known as the “Two Sharifs” — were locked in a dispute, trying to shore up political support as they debated at conferences in Djibouti, Kenya or Uganda.
“They say the fish starts rotting from the head,” says Abdi Rashid, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “At the height of the famine, there was a president who was busy holding meetings with clan elders, not talking about the famine, but about the struggle with the speaker of parliament.”
But the “Two Sharifs” are not the only members of the TFG accused of political gamesmanship or corruption.
One senior TFG official says he is disgusted with his government’s continued focus on politics and power.
“What are we doing?” he asks. “People are dying and we’re focusing on passing a road map?”
snip
Still, there is confusion, says Joe Belliveau, operations manager in Somalia for Médecins Sans Frontières. “The bottom line is that it certainly does not encourage humanitarian action,” Belliveau says. “It’s fine to say that these conditions are lifted and maybe that will help in the short term, but the fact that those laws are on the books remains a major deterrent.”
Abdisalam is defying the odds that have conspired against him — the war against the Shabab, corruption, ineffective aid groups and a famine that the world failed to stop but is now trying to ease.
The nutrition supplements provided by the hospital have made him stronger and TB medication has calmed his breathing.
“He’s a fighter,” said Jimale, the doctor who has volunteered at the city-run Benadir Hospital for the last two years.
Abdisalam was discharged from the hospital three weeks ago and Jimale said the little boy’s odds of survival had increased to more than 80 per cent.
But Abdisalam and his family haven’t returned home. The rains may have come and eased the drought, but a Kenyan-led offensive to fight the Shabab has left the region war torn again.
Abdisalam now lives in one of the camps, just one of thousands getting by, waiting for help.http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video) —The medical chart Abdisalam... more-
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Study: Arctic ice melting "unprecedented" in past 1450 years
Recent arctic sea ice loss is 'unprecedented' over the past 1,450 years, concludes a reconstruction of ice records published in the journal Nature.
The study, which was led by Christophe Kinnard of Chile's Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas, used terrestrial proxies including ice cores, lake sediments, tree ring data, and historical sea ice observations from the Arctic region to reconstruct past summer sea ice extent, the period when Arctic sea ice is at its minimum. They conclude that "both the duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years" and blame higher Atlantic water temperatures, which they link to human-caused climate change, for the trend.
Comparison between reconstructed late-summer Arctic ice extent and other Arctic sea ice, climate and oceanic proxy records. a, 40-year smoothed reconstructed late-summer Arctic sea ice extent. b, Chukchi Sea ice cover. c, Fram Strait sea ice cover. d, Normalized IP25 flux in the BASICC-8 sediment core, a proxy for springtime sea ice occurrence in the western Barents Sea. f, Reconstructed Arctic surface air temperature anomalies. Caption and image adapted from Kinnard et al 2011. Click image to enlarge.
"These results reinforce the assertion that sea ice is an active component of Arctic climate variability and that the recent decrease in summer Arctic sea ice is consistent with anthropogenically forced warming," the authors write.
This year summer sea ice levels fell to the second-lowest extent since record-keeping began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The lowest-ever extent occurred in 2007.
Predictions range widely, but many experts expect the Arctic to be free of sea ice entirely within a few decades. By almost all standards, however, sea ice is disappearing faster than expected, partly a consequence of a positive feedback loop triggered by retreating ice. Sea ice typically helps cool the Arctic by reflecting sunlight back into space. But when sea ice melts, the dark areas of open water absorb the sun's radiation, warming the region and worsening melting.
Environmentalists are concerned that the loss of summer sea ice could have dramatic implications for wildlife -- like polar bear and walrus -- that depend on pack ice for feeding.
The loss of sea ice is also driving more exploitative industries, such as gas and oil, into once untouchable regions; however burning the fossil fuels lying beneath the Arctic will only worsen climate change, and thereby exacerbate ice loss in the Arctic.
CITATION: Christophe Kinnard, Christian M. Zdanowicz, David A. Fisher, Elisabeth Isaksson, Anne de Vernal & Lonnie G. Thompson. Reconstructed changes in Arctic sea ice over the past 1,450 years. 24 November Nature Vol 479 509-512
Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1124-sea_ice_record.html#ixzz1egityp18Recent arctic sea ice loss is 'unprecedented' over the past 1,450 years,... more-
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Indian athletes threaten to boycott London 2012 olympics over DOW sponsorship
The Indian Olympic Association may boycott the London Olympics in protest at Dow Chemical's involvement as a sponsor after a group of India's current and former Olympians organised a petition calling for athletes not to travel to London.
"We feel that it will be against the basic principles of the Olympics charter to partner with Dow Chemical, which is responsible for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal," the athletes wrote in a petition sent to the Indian government.
Dow, which will create the £7m wrap around the Olympic Stadium, has links to Union Carbide Corporation, the firm responsible for the Bhopal gas disaster in 1984 that led to thousands of deaths at the time and which many campaigners believe is still affecting the health of people in the area.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan, a minister in the Bhopal region, has backed the athletes' firm stance and demanded in a letter to India's sports minister, Ajay Maken, that the government support a boycott if Dow's sponsorship continues.
V K Malhotra, the acting president of the Indian Olympic Association, said a meeting was scheduled in 10 days' time in which the matter would be discussed after first hearing the response of the government to the petition.
The Indian government is still pursuing a further £1.1bn from Dow for victims after Union Carbide paid £300m as compensation.
Talk of a boycott will put more pressure on the London 2012 Organising Committee, which has defended the deal with Dow, despite protests from campaign groups and MPs who claim it has outstanding liabilities relating to the disaster.
The London 2012 chairman, Lord Coe, said: "I am satisfied that the ownership, operation and the involvement either at the time of the disaster or at the final settlement was not the responsibility of Dow."
More at the linkThe Indian Olympic Association may boycott the London Olympics in protest at Dow... more-
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EPA displays erectile dysfunction regarding delays on carbon limits on oil refineries as CO2 emissions climb
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, struggling with an ambitious agenda on clean air regulations, said it will delay proposing the country's first-ever greenhouse gas limits on oil refineries.
The delay is the latest setback for the agency's new raft of clean air rules on everything from smog to mercury pollution that are heavily opposed by industry.
The EPA had been required to propose the rules on refineries by mid-December, as part of a court settlement with states and environmental groups.
"EPA expects to need more time to complete work on greenhouse gas pollution standards for oil refineries," a spokeswoman for the agency said. The EPA is working with the litigants to develop a new schedule to replace the current mid-December date for a rule proposal, she added.
The EPA made the comments after sources on both sides of the issue told Reuters the agency would not make the deadline.
The EPA has not told refiners exactly how it plans to cut emissions, and that figuring out how to do so is taking additional time, an oil industry source said.
"How they are going to regulate greenhouse gases, they are not sharing that with us," the source said.
The petroleum industry says it is more difficult to cut emissions from refineries than it is from power plants, the EPA's top target of emissions. Many power utilities can switch from coal, which emits large amounts of carbon dioxide when burned, to burning cleaner natural gas. Refineries, however, mostly already run on natural gas, they argue.
Tough rules on greenhouse gas emissions could add expenses to companies including Exxon Mobil Corp, Valero Energy Corp, and ConocoPhillips.
But refiners can easily cut emissions -- and save money, a source with one of the litigants said. They can do so by replacing inefficient boilers, installing better valves to reduce leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and by generating power with "waste heat" given off at the plants.
The delays on greenhouse gas plans come after President Barack Obama forced the EPA in September to delay new limits on smog emissions until 2013, saying it was part of an effort to reduce regulatory burdens on business.
That decision came as Republicans in the House of Representatives complained about EPA's raft of new clean air regulations, saying they would kill jobs and add expenses to businesses as they struggle with the weak economy.
RECORD EMISSIONS
The delay comes as time may be running out for world efforts to control global warming emissions. Concentrations of carbon dioxide and two other greenhouse gases reached record levels last year and will linger in the atmosphere for decades, even if the world halts output of the gases today, the World Meteorological Organization, the U.N.'s weather agency, said on Monday.
The United States is sticking with Obama's pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. But a comprehensive energy and climate bill failed in the Senate last year, leaving emissions control largely to agencies including the EPA and the Department of Transportation. Last week those agencies proposed doubling auto fuel efficiency.
Meanwhile, U.S. CO2 emissions from energy sources last year rose nearly 4 percent as factories ran harder and as consumers boosted air conditioning during the hot summer.
The EPA has also delayed proposing a plan on reducing emissions from power plants, which are the country's single largest source of emissions blamed for warming the planet.
Those rules were initially delayed in June and again in September. Last week Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, said the plan on power plants would be rolled out early next year.
It was unclear if the EPA would also miss the deadline to finalize the rules on refineries by mid-November, 2012.
More at the linkThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, struggling with an ambitious agenda on clean... more-
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Doubtmongering: An interview with Dr. Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes found herself under attack in 2004, when she called attention to the scientific consensus on climate change. Her search for those behind the broadside led her to document the evolution of doubt-mongering.
Climate Query For Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes is a science historian, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Erik Conway) of Merchants of Doubt, a book that examined how a handful of scientists obscure the facts on a range of issues, including tobacco use and climate change. Her seminal paper in the journal Science, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," challenged - back in 2004 - the notion that climate change science was uncertain. Her work has documented the spread of doubt-mongering from an industry practice to a political strategy.
Oreskes did her undergraduate work at the Royal School of Mines in London and received her graduate degree from Stanford University. With her husband, Ken Belitz, and daughter, Clara, the family lives in San Diego. Her older daughter, Hannah, attends Stanford.
Somewhere between your undergraduate and graduate degrees, you became interested in the history of science. What drew you to that field?
I was always interested in the human side of science, especially why people disagreed about evidence, and the strong - yet divergent - opinions that my professors had about what constitutes good science. Beyond that, it is a long story.
What attracted you to the climate change deniers?
I fell into this. I was working on the history of oceanography, and came across the work of Roger Revelle, Dave Keeling and others who'd been working on climate change since the 1950s. I came to understand that the scientific basis for understanding anthropogenic climate change was much firmer than most people knew. That led to my 2004 work, which led to me being attacked. So we started digging and found direct links to the tobacco industry.
Science is not sufficient to solve this problem, but it is necessary.
How do most mainstream scientists view this contrary viewpoint from their colleagues?
They are thoroughly appalled. Because it isn't a "contrary viewpoint," in the sense that the scientific evidence is contradictory or incomplete, or that our theories are inadequate to explain the observations. This is not the case, this is not a scientific debate.
Is the need to expose deniers that important in the policy world? Aren't other issues - such as economics and energy - far more important?
If we didn't have the science, we wouldn't know the cause. We wouldn't know that we have to control greenhouse gas emissions, and we could just burn coal. It is science that revealed the problem, science that pinpoints its cause, and science (that) tells us what kinds of interventions will be efficacious. Science is not sufficient to solve this problem, but it is necessary.
Are you frustrated by the continuing debate over the reality of climate change?
Yes, because some people are now saying, we should just accept that climate change is happening and not worry about the cause. Climate change is caused by greenhouse gases and that is why we need to do something about them. So it's time we rolled up our sleeves and got to work doing what we know in our hearts we need to do.
More at the linkNaomi Oreskes found herself under attack in 2004, when she called attention to the... more-
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Himalayan nations agree on climate adaptation plan
India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were part of the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas held in Bhutan's capital Thimphu on Saturday. They agreed to cooperate on energy, water, food and biodiversity issues.
"The success of our initiative will not only have direct and immediate benefits for our own people, but we could be setting a worthy precedent for other countries that share similar conditions," Bhutan's Prime Minister Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y. Thinley said according to a press statement released late Saturday.
Pakistan, China and Afghanistan were absent from the summit but organizers downplayed that, saying that the summit was focused on securing ecosystems, endangered species,and food and water sources for only the Himalayas' eastern part.
The summit called for action amid the international community's inability to agree on limiting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global climate change. The next round of U.N. climate talks begin in Durban, South Africa Nov. 28, but the expectations of any breakthrough there are limited.
As part of the declaration the four nations agreed to work together to increase access to "affordable and reliable" clean energy resources and technology through a regional knowledge sharing mechanism, a press statement from the World Wildlife Fund said.
The draft of the declaration was not immediately available Sunday.
The most contentious part of the talks dealt with water security, according to the WWF release, but the four nations did agree to work together on ecosystem and disaster management, sharing their knowledge in water use efficiency.
Regional tensions have long prevented Himalayan cooperation, including basic research in the world's largest block of glaciers outside the polar regions, and accounting for 40 percent of the world's fresh water.
There was also consensus on food security and securing livelihoods and the deal covers way to adapt and improve food production and help vulnerable communities get better access to nutritious food.
"These kinds of regional initiatives are really needed," said Liisa Rohweder, CEO of WWF Finland, adding the summit was a good lead to follow for the Durban meeting.India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were part of the Climate Summit for a Living... more-
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IPCC Extreme Weather Report Is Another Blown Chance to Explain the Catastrophes Coming If We Keep Doing Nothing
Fortunately, the public already understands that global warming makes extreme weather more severe, as new polling reveals:
September polling by ecoAmerica found that 57% of Americans already understand “If we don’t do something about climate change now, we can end up having our farmland turned to desert.” Duh:
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is coming out Friday with its umpteenth watered down report on climate science, in this case on extreme weather. The thing to remember about IPCC reports is that pretty much everyone involved has to sign off on every word, so it is inevitably a least common denominator document.
The actual scientific literature from 2011 is far more useful than this report — see “Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming” and “NOAA Study Finds Human-Caused Climate Change Already a Major Factor in More Frequent Mediterranean Droughts.” I will provide the links to as many recent studies as possible in this post.
Indeed we already know from a major 2011 study that “human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.” As predicted, the warming has put more water vapor in the air, making deluges more intense. Climatologist Kevin Trenberth explains:
There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms,
Obviously, since it’s getting hotter, we’re worsening extreme heat waves — both in intensity and duration and scale (the area the heat wave covers). For the same reason, we know humans are making droughts worse — in intensity, duration, and scale. The earlier snow melts also makes summer droughts worse.
Actual observations reveal that since 1950, the global percentage of dry areas has increased by about 1.74% of global land area per decade (see here). Heck, our best scientists are already using global warming to help them predict dangerous extreme weather (see “USGS Expert Explains How Global Warming Likely Contributes to East Africa’s Brutal Drought“).
The reinsurance industry understands all this (see Munich Re: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”).
Again, much if not most of the public appear to have a better sense of what’s happening right now than you’ll find in the summaries of a typical IPCC report, to go by Yale’s 2011 polling and the September poll from ecoAmerica quoted at the top, which also found:
69% of Americans Know “Weather Conditions (Such as Heat Waves and Droughts) Are Made Worse by Climate Change”
The American public can’t miss the extreme weather because it is everywhere now and increasingly off the charts (see “A New Record: 14 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters in 2011“) and links below.
Of course, what’s to come is the real issue, since we still have control over that. We’re facing 5 to 10 times the warming this century that we’ve seen in the past half century.
Unfortunately, the IPCC continues to conflate uncertainty in future emissions of greenhouse gases with uncertainty in the climate’s sensitivity to those emissions. This means they present a very large range of possible overall impacts — and that allows the deniers to trumpet the low range with their powerful fossil-fuel-funded megaphone and induces the media to provide “balance” in their stories between the mid-range and the low range.
The reality is we are on the highest emissions trends (see “Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010 means “levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago”). And the latest science and observation points towards the high end of the climate’s sensitivity (see Journal of Climate: New cloud feedback results “provide support for the high end of current estimates of global climate sensitivity”).
Most climate scientists know what is coming if we don’t act quickly– and more and more are shedding their reticence to speak out, even if that is not yet reflected in bland, least-common-denominator IPCC reports (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization”).
And as long as the deniers, inactivists and climate ignorati rule the debate, inaction is assured, which means that we are risking extreme weather beyond imagination, extreme events on top of an average warming this century that could hit 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 25°F in the Arctic:
More at the linkFortunately, the public already understands that global warming makes extreme weather... more-
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A simple story of humanity
A friend of mine who has just been laid off helped another poor guy who is in even worse shape, even as I whined about how bad we have it.
We need to help each other any way we can.A friend of mine who has just been laid off helped another poor guy who is in even... more-
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We must reclaim our humanity to save our planet/water
The state of water in our world currently is endangered. Pollution, privatization, waste, climate change effects and lack of attention to this most crucial life crisis is bringing us to the brink as a species. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. In trying to assess in my own mind why something so basic and necessary to our lives is given such little attention it is frustrating to say the least. Especially in this age of technology when we see through our modems and other devices so much more information than ever before being shared on this and so many other global crises.
When you look at the world as a whole and realize that 3/4 of it live in poverty and that the majority of those areas also do not have access to potable water/sanitation, the corrolation is obvious. Yet, we as a species even in the 21st century are failing at even providing the basic necessities of life to ourselves and others. Why? Why is water so unimportant to so many even though they know they cannot live without it? Is it ignorance? Arrogance? Or is it because there are those who have been made to believe that we will always have what we need because money can buy you anything even at the expense of taking it from others.
Just look at the levels of pollution in our global waterways. Industry and nitrogen fertilizer rich agriculture alone have managed to kill some of the major river systems of the world and made dead zones devoid of the oxygen marinelife needs to survive. The burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other destructive land uses (fracking, tarsands extraction, strip mining, mountain top removal) are culminating to push our atmosphere and water to the tipping point. We are now seeing more extreme events (storms, floods, droughts) around the world which are the results of human forcings on the natural cycles of the planet to the point where we have actually affected the hydrologic cycle. And this is now being touted as the "new normal."
This has already resulted in billions of dollars of lost agriculture to the world, most recently in Thailand where much of their rice crop has been destroyed from unprecedented floods that are also happening globally simultaneously, as well as extreme droughts on both sides of the world. This then has a domino effect regarding food prices and the ability to live. And with predictions of these events (extreme floods and droughts) becoming more severe with rainfall patterns changing, the entire way the world grows food is being challenged. And in the process more fall into poverty, illness, war and hopelessness as those with more green paper think it buys them rights to the resources of Earth that belong to all mankind.
So for me there can only be one main reason why this has happened. We have strayed from our humanity. We have allowed materialistic manmade forces to infiltrate our consciousness and perceptions of life on this Earth and those skewed perceptions are now killing us and in the process destroying this Earth for future generations.
And it is the hope of changing those perceptions and bringing a paradigm shift in thinking that is now bringing people out into the streets worldwide calling for justice and equality. Calling for accountability for those who have stripped this Earth of all that was once good in exchange for a world of their making that can sustain no one, not even themselves. The false illusion of money's worth in comparison to the limitless value of this Earth coupled with delusions of grandeur built on sand in failing to understand the true meaning of humanity and its true purpose must now be challenged. And that right now is the hope we have as a species... awareness, awakening, gnosis.
The inate instinct that tells us as humans that we are one with this planet and that to destroy her destroys us. This is the lesson we must learn. This is the perception we must impart to others. We are at the brink, but we don't have to go over. There are ways to heal her and ourselves. We can join globally with likeminded individuals who know the stakes and make this shift happen with our thoughts and our actions. We can reclaim our humanity and in the process save ourselves. It won't be easy. However, the alternative is simply not an option.
Water is life, it is our life, it is the blood of Earth.
And it is worth fighting for.The state of water in our world currently is endangered. Pollution, privatization,... more-
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2010: Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases
The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That's an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.
It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.
Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.
"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."
Boden said that in 2010 people were traveling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.
India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010.
"The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said Thursday. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."
In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.
Even though global warming skeptics have attacked the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.
Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme."
"Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."
More at the linkThe global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on... more-
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The GREATEST Speech Ever Made by Charlie Chaplin (VIDEO)
One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin.One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by... more-
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Developing countries doing more to check emissions than rich ones: report
New Delhi: Developing countries have pledged greater levels of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions than the rich nations despite the developed world being responsible for a large part of the historical emissions.
This conclusion by the Stockholm Environment Institute has stirred debate about how far India would now be willing to go with the US and Europe lagging behind on substantial actions to prevent climate change but asking for greater commitments from the developing world.
"There is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges," a report by the institute said.
Countries provided these pledges under the Copenhagen Accord with developing countries such as India pledging to take actions to reduce emissions voluntarily despite not being required to do so under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The SEI report is based on four detailed studies from different reputed institutions including UNEP and McKinsey and Company.
The four independent studies used different parameters and assumptions to bring the different kinds of pledges into a comparable format and all four came to the same conclusion though the difference between promised goals of the rich and developing countries varied.
The authors of the SEI report concluded that unless the UN accounting system shut the loopholes, the rich countries would be able to meet their pledges "with very little actual mitigation, and possibly with none at all".
It also noted that the rich countries had not decoupled their consumption patterns from emissions but rather they had shifted many of those emissions to developing countries. In other words, the fossil-fuel driven consumption levels of the rich countries have not reduced over time and the actions taken by them to reduce emissions have been only those which brought net-benefit to their economies.
The report said the developed countries held three-quarters of the world's GDP and were responsible for 75% of the historical emissions. "It seems self-evident that the developed world should take responsibility for much more mitigation effort than the developing world, and that this effort must have both a domestic and an international dimension," it said.
"The developed world must raise their level of ambition to the levels demanded by science and equity. And, of course, they must fulfill those ambitions through actual mitigation, not through accounting loopholes," it added.
The report noted that even after the rich countries agreed to do so, it would still require actions by the developing world to prevent dangerous climate change.New Delhi: Developing countries have pledged greater levels of reduction of greenhouse... more-
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The ethical dimension of tackling climate change
The global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing to take action to rein in carbon emissions, the current generation is spreading the costs of its behavior far into the future. Why should people in the future pay to clean up our mess?
by stephen gardiner
Sometimes the best way to make progress on a problem is to get clearer on what that problem is. Arguably, the biggest issue facing humanity at the moment is the looming global environmental crisis. Here, the problem is not that we are unaware that trouble is coming. After all, the basic science is both well known and continually being reiterated in major national and international reports. Rather, the core problem is that thus far effective action seems beyond us. We seem at best paralyzed, and at worst indifferent. Put starkly, there seems little place within our grand institutions and busy lives for what may turn out to be the defining issue of our generation.
Why? In my view, at the heart of the matter is the fact that humanity is in the grip of a profound ethical challenge that our current institutions and theories are ill-equipped to meet.
Sebastian Junger’s book The Perfect Storm tells the story of a fishing boat caught at sea during the rare convergence of three independently powerful storms. Similarly, the global crisis of climate change brings together three major challenges to ethical action — and in a mutually reinforcing way. It is genuinely global, profoundly intergenerational, and occurs in a setting where we lack robust theory and institutions to guide us. Neglect of this perfect moral storm leads us to underestimate the climate problem and fail to appreciate the wider implications in predictable ways.
Conventional wisdom identifies climate change as primarily a global problem. Wherever they originate, emissions of the main greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) quickly become mixed in the atmosphere, affecting climate Those least responsible for past emissions are likely to suffer the most serious impacts.everywhere. According to the standard analysis, this makes climate change a traditional “tragedy of the commons,” played out between nation states that represent the interests of their citizens in perpetuity. In Garrett Hardin’s tragedy, each herdsman prefers the collective outcome where none over-consume — so that the commons is not overburdened. Nevertheless, when acting individually each prefers to over-consume himself, no matter what the others do — with ruinous results for all.
In climate change, we are often told, states reason in the same way. Each prefers the collective outcome where none over-consume with carbon emissions — so that dangerous climate change is avoided. Yet, when acting individually, each prefers to over-consume, no matter what the others do — so overconsumption is rife. In both cases, then, we are led to an outcome that no one wants, and which is severe enough to seem tragic.
Unfortunately, this traditional model is at best dangerously incomplete. To begin with, it ignores one central spatial aspect of the climate problem. Those least responsible for past emissions are likely to suffer the most serious impacts (at least in the short- to medium-term). This is partly because the poorer nations are disproportionately located in more climate-sensitive regions, but it is also because, being poor, they lack the resources available to the rich to address negative impacts. Since it ignores this basic problem of fairness, the traditional model underestimates the nature of the relevant “tragedy.”
Even more importantly, the traditional model obscures the temporal aspect of the perfect moral storm. Once emitted, a substantial proportion of climate emissions typically remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and some persist for tens — even hundreds — of thousands. This means that the current generation takes benefits now, but spreads the costs of its behavior far into the future.
Worse, many of these benefits are comparatively modest (e.g., those of bigger and more powerful vehicles), and many of the projected costs are severe, even catastrophic (e.g., severe flooding and famine). Worse still, the problem is iterated: The same temptation to take modest benefits now even Most victims of climate change cannot hold us to account, being very poor, not yet born, or nonhuman.in the face of severe costs to the future is repeated for subsequent generations as they come to hold the reins of power. Hence, there are cumulative impacts further in the future. Worst of all, such impacts may eventually provoke the equivalent of an intergenerational arms race. Perhaps some future generations will face such appalling environmental conditions that they are entitled to emit more in self-defense, even foreseeing that this behavior makes matters even worse for their successors. And so it goes on.
The third storm exacerbates the situation. Climate change brings together many areas in which our best theories are far from robust, such as intergenerational ethics, global justice, scientific uncertainty, and humanity’s relationship to nature. The problem here is not that we do not have any guidance at all. For example, the idea that imposing catastrophe on the future for the sake of our own modest benefits is not a defensible way to behave is a relatively secure basic ethical intuition. Rather, the problem is that it is difficult to move beyond those basic intuitions to deal with the details, and we are too easily distracted by counterarguments, especially from theories that have merits in other contexts, but fail to take the future seriously enough.
For example, some influential economists claim the current generation is justified in moving slowly on climate change because future people will be richer due to economic growth, and so should pay more. But are we entitled to assume that the future will be richer even in a climate catastrophe? And even if they are, why should they pay to clean up our mess?
More at the link
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The decisions we all make now have an effect on future generations. To leave this world this way for future generations is a moral crime.The environmental debt we leave our children is even more heinous a crime than the economic debt we leave them. I will never understand the mindset of the quick fix.
http://cugh.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/climate-change.jpgThe global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing... more-
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