March 2007
Monthly Archive
March 3, 2007
Like it or not, our global economy relies on shipping to transport goods and materials around the planet. There has been a lot of attention lately to the greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry but now we’re learning that shipping produces twice as much GHG as air traffic. It’s not covered under the Kyoto protocol or any other legislation either and it’s expected to increase by as much as 75% in the coming 15 years.
Researchers from the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Germany used data from the oil company, BP, which owns 50 tankers. They found that annual GHG emissions from shipping currently reach upward of 800 million tonnes.
The global shipping fleet now has about 70,000 ships with orders outstanding for an additional 20,000 vessels.
March 3, 2007
This is what the Frat Boy calls environmental progress. A leaked government report predicts that, under George Bush’s “intensity reduction” programme, US greenhouse gas emissions will increase in the coming decade just as much as they have in the past ten years.
Naturally the White House, in its increasingly delusional manner, claims this will be a real achievement. White House environmental spokesman, Kristen A. Hellmer, said on Friday, “The Climate Action Report will show that the president’s portfolio of actions addressing climate change and his unparalleled financial commitments are working.”
In the period 2002-2112, total US GHG emissions are expected to increase 11 per cent, compared to an 11.2 per cent increase in the previous ten years.
Ms. Hellmer said Mr. Bush remained satisfied with voluntary measures to slow emissions.
Naturally Bush is not without supporters such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute which applauds the current regime for its success. Myron Ebell, who directs climate and energy policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group aligned with industries fighting curbs on greenhouse gases, said Mr. Bush was right to acknowledge the inevitability of growing emissions in a country with a growing population and economy.
The Bush booster, CEI is just about what you would expect from what we’ve seen from these right-wing nutjob think tanks. Here’s just part of the summary of the Competitive Enterprise Institute from Sourcewatch.org:
“CEI’s
Michelle Malkin and
Michael Fumento published “Rachel’s Folly,” which claims that dioxin is good for you.
[6] CEI’s
Jonathan Tolman (who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science), published a study that month titled “Nature’s Hormone Factory,” claiming that naturally-occurring chemicals produced by plants and other living organisms are as dangerous as industrial chemicals.
[7] In December of that year, CEI submitted comments opposing the EPA’s proposed air quality rule to limit particulate emissions, claiming that “the EPA has failed to consider whether the proposed standard may actually increase mortality due to reductions in disposable income that compliance efforts may produce. … At all times regulation imposes costs that mean less real income to individuals for alternative expenditure. That deprivation of real income itself has adverse health effects, in the form of poorer diet, more heart attacks, more suicides.”
I guess if dioxins are good for you then greenhouse gas emissions must be positively splendid. It’s remarkable that the media still parrot the garbage these bogus “think tanks” spew out, especially without revealing just how pernicious these groups are.
Not suprisingly, our very own Furious Leader, Harpo, also favours “intensity based” targets just like his American Idol.
March 2, 2007
Der Spiegel has got the scoop on the next IPCC report due out in April. The German news mag has obtained a copy of the report. Here are some of the highlights from Spiegel online:
“The main conclusion of the report is that climate change is already having a profound effect on all the continents and on many of the Earth’s ecosystems. The draft presents a long list of evidence:
Glacial lakes are increasing in both size and number, potentially leading to deadly floods
Permafrost in mountainous regions and at high latitudes is warming increasing the danger of land slides.
As the temperature of rivers and lakes rises, their thermal stratification and water quality is changing.
River currents, affected by melting glaciers and ice, are speeding up during the spring.
Springtime is starting earlier, causing plants to bloom earlier and changing the migrations of birds.
Many plants and animals are expanding their habitats into mountainous regions and higher latitudes that are becoming milder.
The authors of the report have sifted through some 30,000 data sets from more than 70 international studies documenting changes to water circulation, to cryospheres (ice zones), as well as to flora and fauna over a period of at least 20 years.
Many natural resources are likely to fall victim to climate change according to the IPCC draft report:
Some 20 to 30 percent of all species face a “high risk of extinction” should average global temperatures rise another 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius from their 1990 levels. That could happen by 2050, the report warns.
Coral reefs are “likely to undergo strong declines.”
Salt marshes and mangrove forests could disappear as sea levels rise.
Tropical rainforests will be replaced by savanna in those regions where groundwater decreases.
Migratory birds and mammals will suffer as vegetation zones in the Artic shift.
The IPCC expects the following world regions to suffer the most due to climate change:
The Arctic due to the greatest relative warming
Small island states in the Pacific as sea levels rise
Africa south of the Sahel zone due to drought
Densely populated river deltas in Asia amid flooding
This list alone makes abundantly clear that mankind will not escape these changes unscathed.
The UN climate panel expects “increasing deaths, injuries and illness from heat waves, floods, storms, forest fires and droughts.” The draft summary for policymakers details “heat-related mortality” especially in Europe and Asia.
Several hundred million people in densely populated coastal regions — particularly river deltas in Asia — are threatened by rising sea levels and the increasing risk of flooding. More than one-sixth of the world’s population lives in areas affected by water sources from glaciers and snow pack that will “very likely” disappear, according to the report.
The climate experts detail the potential consequences for most of the world including Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, polar regions and small Pacific islands. For the most part, global warming will have negative effects for both humans and the environment across much of the planet. The positive aspects — such as better agricultural and forestry yields in northern Europe — will be more than outweighed by the threats presented by rising temperatures and the perils that accompany them.
The draft also makes clear just how strongly the authors stand behind their forecasts. Most of their conclusions belong to category two, which means the researchers back them with “strong certainty.” Some are even designated “very strong certainty,” including the example that North America will be hit by stronger forest fires and heat waves in large cities, as well as the assumption that climate change poses the biggest risk to small island states.
The experts apparently do not have concerns about the planet’s food production capabilities. Conditions for agriculture are likely to improve in higher latitudes, leading to greater global yields overall. However, numerous developing countries are likely to be hit by greater periods of drought at the same time — thus threatening their populations with hunger. The climate panel expects yields in the north and deep south only to begin to sink once temperatures rise by more than three degrees Celsius. Overall, they put “average trust” in their predictions about food production.
Rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere will at first help the plant world. Vegetation growth will be stronger and the planet will become greener. The absorption of CO2 by plant life will to a certain extent work against climate change, but not forever. “In the second half of the century terrestrial ecosystems will become a source of carbon which will then accelerate climate change,” the IPCC report warns.
Although the inhabitants of poorer, developing nations are likely to suffer the most from climate change, the IPCC report makes clear that richer industrial nations such as the United States are also at risk. North America, the report cautions, is hardly prepared for the “growing risks and economic losses caused by rising seas, storms and floods.”
The IPCC report also explicitly details the threat posed by tropical storms. Climate change is expected to increase the number of strong hurricanes leading to the concern that insurance companies might refuse to cover damages in regions threatened by such storms like New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf of Mexico.
According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE at the end of February, the climate panel will demand radical changes and massive investment against global warming in the third part of the IPCC report expected to be released in May in Bangkok. Some $16 billion (€12.1 billion) will be required by 2030 and humanity only has until 2020 to turn back the trend.
March 2, 2007
I found this article at Haaretz.com, a liberal Israeli newspaper. It’s really something to think about:
Five of the following are reasonable. Five are not.
This is a reflection, if nothing else, of the duality of leftist criticism of Israel. There are leftists whose critiques are clear-eyed, factually valid, morally on point. And then there are those for whom Israel represents a blood-boiling factory of evil, an entity whose very existence is an affront, an abomination. Those who are convinced, and seek to convince the world, that the Jewish state should cease to exist.
“Why does the left hate Israel? Here are five good reasons:
1. Because Israel’s policies are frequently marked by gratuitous humiliation of and disdain for the Palestinians.
2. Because Israelis can live with this. If the policies hinted at in 1. above are associated with a status quo which Israelis find tolerably calm and Palestinians find unbearable, even lethal, Israel’s leaders often view this as a viable and even optimal outcome.
3. Because Israel, in practice, values settlements more than it values social justice.The right will tell you that there is no contradiction between settlements and social justice. Which would be true if there were no Palestinians, and if the Palestinians did not view the land occupied by settlements as theirs, historically, legally, and morally. And which would be true if the same consideration offered settlers in fixing the route of the West Bank fence were applied to Palestinians, that is, were farmers not cut off from their fields, pupils from their schools, and close relatives from one another.
The right will tell you that the settlements are no obstacle to peace. But that same right will also argue that the settlements are the only real bulwark between the Palestinians and an independent Palestine.
4. Because Israel, even in withdrawing from Gaza, has left it to die. It is not lost on leftists that many Israelis reap a distinct satisfaction from the Palestinians’ inability to help themselves, govern themselves, save themselves. Leftists may note that Israel has done everything in its power to convince the world to deny much-needed aid to a democratically elected government, and that Israel has not acted as a neighbor whose primary concern is an eventual peace.
5. Because of the propensity of Israel’s leaders to demonstrate arrogance, claim a monopoly on the moral high ground, set non-negotiable demands to which Palestinian politicians cannot agree, then condemn Palestinians for intransigence.
Here, then, are five bad reasons:
1. The Palestinian cause is inherently progressive.As currently constituted, Palestinian governance is marked by institutional graft, widespread human rights violations, curbs on press freedoms, tribalism, blood feuds, murders of women on the basis of contentions of preservation of family honor, and celebration of the targeting and killing of non-combatants as a legitimate form of resistance to occupation.
2. Israel remains the sole root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the reason it remains unresolved.As root causes go, both sides have demonstrated profound intransigence, both sides have violated agreements with abandon, both sides suffer from extremists whose power to destroy a peace process far outweighs their proportion of the population.In addition, the contention that Israel is solely responsible suggests that the solution of the Mideast conflict is the dissolution of Israel.
This brings us to:3.
Israel is a Jewish state.For a vocal minority of leftists, this fact alone – coupled with the following two arguments – is enough to call into serious question Israel’s right to exist. This argument, which holds that the formally Jewish nature of the state enshrines an unconscionable level of racism, dovetails with:
5. Israel’s actions are comparable to those of Nazi Germany.This contention may be the genuine litmus test for anti-Semitism on the left. In the end, the compulsion to accuse Israel of genocide, while turning a blind eye to wholesale slaughter in Darfur and elsewhere, tends to say a great deal more about the accuser than the accused. “
Haaretz is a welcome voice of moderation. It recognizes that others can criticize Israeli policies and actions without being anti-semitic just as some critics truly are anti-semites.
March 2, 2007
More revelations from Syed Saleem Shahzad in today’s Asia Times. He claims al-Qaeda is moving shop, from the Afghan/Pakistan region to Iraq.
“According to people familiar with al-Qaeda’s thinking who spoke to Asia Times Online, Osama bin Laden’s deputy and the group’s ideologue, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, sees potential for the group to capitalize on a possible US war over Iran. Relocating the al-Qaeda leadership from the Afghan-Pakistani border areas would put it closer to this new “epicenter”.
“In addition, the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban has cooled after the Taliban’s decision to strike a deal with Pakistan over support for the insurgency in southwestern Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda refuses to deal with any state, including Islamabad.
“The al-Qaeda leadership is biding its time, banking on sufficient chaos in Iran and Iraq for it to move to the Middle East, according to Asia Times Online interactions with various sources.”
It’s likely that this is indeed what Shahzad has been told by his al-Qaeda contacts but there’s no way of knowing whether it’s true. What I’d like to know is whether al-Qaeda is too busy packing up for the move to take a role in the Taliban’s spring offensive this year.
March 2, 2007
In his NYT column today, Thomas Friedman threw in the following translation of a poem by a Saudi:
“When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner — you know that you are in an Arab country.
When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.
When religion has control over science — you can be sure that you are in an Arab country.
When clerics are referred to as “scholars” — don’t be astonished, you are in an Arab country.
When you see the ruler transformed into a demigod who never dies or relinquishes his power, and nobody is permitted to criticize — do not be too upset, you are in an Arab country.
When you find that the large majority of people oppose freedom and find joy in slavery — do not be too distressed, you are in an Arab country.
When you hear the clerics saying that democracy is heresy, but seizing every opportunity provided by democracy to grab high positions — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.
…
When you discover that a woman is worth half of what a man is worth, or less — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. …
When land is more important than human beings — you are in an Arab country. …
When fear constantly lives in the eyes of the people — you can be certain you are in an Arab country.”
I expect these are valid criticisms of today’s Arab way of life but as I went through this list I began to wonder if some of these didn’t fit the lives of the fundamentalist Christian right:
– People living in the past with all the trappings of modernity
– When religion has control over science
– When clerics are referred to as “scholars”
– Rulers transformed into demi-gods who never die or relinquish their power
– Clerics who say [secular] democracy is heresy yet seize every opportunity provided by
democracy to grab political power
– Where a woman is subordinated to a man.
I think a lot of this wisdom isn’t confined to the Arab world at all but is rooted in religious fundamentalist extremism of any faith.
March 2, 2007
Just so long as those pesky little countries don’t get any big ideas.
Lawrence Livermore has won out over the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the competition to design and build America’s new and improved, next generation of nuclear weapons.
The new nukes will be the first new nuclear weapons for the US in twenty years.
March 2, 2007
Writing today in the International Herald Tribune, Peter Charles Choharis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, calls for a new American mission for Iraq:
“The recently issued National Intelligence Estimate predicts that in the next 12 to 18 months, the security situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to last year, when tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed monthly and many more fled. According to the report, “sustained mass sectarian killings,” assassinations of key religious or political leaders or “a complete Sunni defection from the government” could trigger a total collapse.
“No one in the Bush administration or among the Democrats disputes the forecast. They are ignoring it.
“President George W. Bush is sending tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into Iraq. Most Democrats want to withdraw troops (some immediately) and let the Iraqi army and police secure the country, even though the National Intelligence Estimate says Iraqi security forces are not likely to be capable of that in the next 12- 18 months.
“Both President Bush and the Democrats demand that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government make tough political choices, even though the Parliament has regularly lacked a quorum because members are too frightened to attend.
“Neither the administration nor the Democrats are planning for a worst-case scenario.
“If Iraq collapses, the United States must have in place detailed plans and budgets to secure safe havens for Iraqi noncombatants; to configure a troop deployment capable of responding to mass migrations; to stockpile food, shelters and medicine for masses of internally displaced civilians, and to vastly expand the paltry $35 million spent last year on Iraqi refugee assistance.
“Beyond legal and moral reasons, America has strong strategic interests in preventing a humanitarian disaster. Abandoning Iraq could create failed states that fund and protect terrorists. Regional wars could erupt as Saudi Arabia and others intervene to protect Sunnis while Iran does the same for Shiites, or as Turkey moves against Iraq’s Kurds, and the entire region scrambles for Iraq’s oil. Millions of Iraqis would try to flee to America, Europe and elsewhere in the Middle East.
“The Bush administration contends that “failure is not an option” in Iraq. If humanitarian relief becomes part of our mission, then no matter what happens in Iraq, the United States can still achieve victory.”
March 2, 2007
It’s a scenario we’ve seen played out time and again over the last five years. Some US official shows up in Pakistan complaining loudly about Islamabad’s failure to crack down on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Then, within a day or two, Pakistan announces the arrest of one or maybe two of the terrorists. But then what?
Just what does Pakistan do with the Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives it captures? Are they interrogated, Pakistani style? Are they charged with some sort of crime and, if so, what? Do they stand trial? Do they go to prison? Or, are they detained for a while and then set free out the back door?
It’s been pretty well established that: 1) Musharraf holds power at the suffrance of Islamists; 2) his military intelligence service is both powerful and continues to support the Taliban; 3) Pakistan always seems to be dragging its heels on capturing the bad guys; and 4) Pakistan continues to allow the Taliban and al-Qaeda to operate pretty freely in Waziristan.
With this track record, I’d really love to know just what Mushy does with these guys once the cameras are turned off.
March 2, 2007
George Cheney-Bush’s pants are about to burst into flames. That accounts for the White House’s sudden retreat from its years of claims that North Korea had an advanced uranium enrichment programme.
As the New York Times points out, it’s the US, not N. Korea, that may have some explaining to do when UN nuclear inspectors return to Pyongyang.
“…we suspect that this week’s confessions of doubt about North Korea had less to do with a sudden burst of candor than the fact that Pyongyang has agreed to readmit nuclear inspectors — who probably won’t be able to find the active uranium enrichment program the administration has been alleging for more than four years. Add to that the White House’s eagerness for a diplomatic win in these bleak times — and its insistence that a nuclear deal cannot go ahead if the North is believed to be hiding things — and you understand why the White House might find this truth so convenient.
“Late may be better than never, but it isn’t nearly enough to make up for the damage caused. And we haven’t even raised the issue of Iraq and its long-gone weapons.
“Let’s be clear. The North Koreans had and have an illicit nuclear arms program. They tested a device from their plutonium-based program last October. And Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has admitted that North Korea bought some 20 centrifuges — useful only for enriching uranium — from Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear black market.
“The problem is that the Bush administration eagerly spun those 20 centrifuges into an industrial-scale enrichment program, and then used it as an excuse to scuttle a Clinton-era deal to close down the North’s plutonium-based weapons program. Four years later, the North set off that test.”
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