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Australia's drought linked to global warming
by Madeleine Coorey
Fri Apr 20, 12:26 PM ET
SYDNEY (AFP) - An unprecedented drought that has withered Australia's major food production zone could be a taste of things to come as global warming ramps up, experts said Friday.
Prime Minister John Howard said the six-year drought was so extreme Australia may have to import food while fears are mounting that supermarket prices will skyrocket if no rains fall within the next few weeks.
"The best thing that people could do is to pray for rain, and I mean that," Howard told public radio.
The prime minister has refused to blame the "unprecedentedly dangerous" crisis directly on climate change.
But scientists said the link between climate change and the drying up of rivers in the vast Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's prime agricultural region, was strengthening.
"You can't say that definitively, but I guess on the balance of evidence from southern Australia, rainfall patterns appear to have shifted," Adelaide University's professor of natural resources science Wayne Meyer said.
"There's no question about the evidence in terms of increased temperature. We have seen this persistent increase in temperature over the last 30 or 50 years. All the projections are that that will continue."
Meyer said Australia, with its warm climate, vast deserts and lack of mountains, would be one of the first countries in the world to be hit by the hardships caused by global warming.
"We are the ones that are going to be at the forefront because we're less buffered," he told AFP.
On Thursday, Howard warned that farmers along the Murray-Darling region would lose all their irrigation water if rains do not fall by June.
The Murray-Darling river system in southeastern Australia covers more than one million square kilometres (386,000 square miles), including most of New South Wales state and large parts of Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
Containing 72 percent of Australia's irrigated crops and pastures and much of the nation's grape crop, it is regarded as the country's food basket.
Farmers say that unless drenching rains fall within weeks, the drought will devastate grape, citrus, stonefruit and apple production, cripple the wine industry and see food prices soar.
"Well, we'll never prove it's climate change until after the event but a lot of farmers have said this drought has the fingerprints of climate change all over it," the government's Murray-Darling Basin Commission chief Wendy Craik said.
As the country debates further water restrictions for major cities, building desalination plants to provide fresh water, and even transplanting farms to the tropical north, the opposition has attacked the government for its previous climate change scepticism.
"It's not the Howard government's fault in itself. I mean Mr. Howard can't make it rain, I understand that," Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"But for half a decade or more the government has been in a state of denial on climate change and water."
Environmental historian Daniel Connell said it was irrelevant whether the current water shortage was a result of the drought or global warming -- cultural change was now needed to ensure water was used more efficiently.
"This is an indication of what's going to happen in the future," the Australian National University academic told AFP.
"These are the sorts of conditions we need to be able to manage. Society has got to change its attitude to water and how it uses water."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070420/sc_afp/australiaclimate_070420140634
My own parents who scorned my concerns back then, but eventually said I was prophetic. ; )
lol... funny how pir parents who teach us to think for ourselves are, in the beginning at least, dismayed when we do... but later appreciate it :)
They will forego their medical benefits. Apparently we're running out of money to pay the medical bills for our brave military.
that should never happen. this must be a top priority... it's a cost of the war and if we couldn't afford it, then that's just another reason we should not be there another day.
It's been a problem going back long before. I had a friend who was very young in WWII, in the Navy and after the war was stationed in south pacific near nuclear testing sites. The VA never acknowledged that was responsible for his leukemia which he died of during the 70s.
I'm just sick of those saying we should support the troops and then don't acknowledge the failure of THIS administration (can't do anything about past admins) and demand vets receive top notch medical treatment and support when they get home after serving.
local news video...
I personally talked to someone featured in this video and she said it took nearly three years to make some progress and get vets who were in the first waves the care they need.
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_102210720.html
the Bush administration is a digusting DISGRACE
would be great!
there were the top two pics on DFA survey to get us out of the war
Ex-generals: Global warming threatens U.S. security
POSTED: 10:27 a.m. EDT, April 15, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and the U.S. likely will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report.
The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts.
"Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former U.S. Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan told Associated Press Radio. "Everybody needs to start paying attention to what's going on. I don't think this is a particularly hard sell in the Pentagon. ... We're paying attention to what those security implications are."
Gen. Anthony "Tony" Zinni, President Bush's former Middle East envoy, says in the report: "It's not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism."
The report was issued by the Alexandria, Virginia-based, national security think-tank The CNA Corporation and was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals. They warn of a future of rampant disease, water shortages and flooding that will make already dicey areas -- such as the Middle East, Asia and Africa -- even worse.
"Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies," the report says. "The U.S. will be drawn more frequently into these situations."
Joining calls already made by scientists and environmental activists, the retired U.S. military leaders call on the U.S. government to make major cuts in emissions of gases that cause global warming.
The Bush administration has declined mandatory emission cuts in favor of voluntary methods. Other nations have committed to required reductions that kick in within a few years.
"We will pay for this one way or another," writes Zinni, former commander of U.S. Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."
Top climate scientists said the report makes sense and increased national security risk is a legitimate global warming side-effect.
The report is "pretty impressive," but may be too alarmist because it may take longer than 30 years for some of these things to happen, said Stanford scientist Terry Root, a co-author of this month's international scientific report on the effects of global warming on life on Earth.
But the instability will happen sometime, Root agreed.
"We're going to have a war over water," Root said. "There's just not going to be enough water around for us to have for us to need to live with and to provide for the natural environment."
University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said the military officers were smart to highlight the issue of refugees who flee unstable areas because of global warming.
"There will be tens of millions of people migrating, where are we going to put them?" Weaver said.
Weaver said that over the past years, scientists, who by nature are cautious, have been attacked by conservative activists when warning about climate change. This shows that it's not a liberal-conservative issue, Weaver said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/15/warming.military.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
It's management greed that destroyed American industry.
exactly. our execs get 300 times the salary of the average worker rather than 30 times... and people blame worker compensation... what a con job.
yeah, how horrible... showing respect for others traditions
this whole thing of demonizing a whole people, culture to justify killing them is what is disgusting
I've been programming since 1981 where I started programming on IBM mainframes in COBOL. For some shops, it was a big deal for others it was not. Alot of the older legacy code in COBOL was really crap spaghetti code and it took alot of work and planning to identify it all and fix it. When you have 30,000 lines of spaghetti code (just one example program) that was mangle over many years by many mediocre programmers, it can be a nightmare untangling it.
At the time of Y2K I was manager of development for a small software developer and also send out compliance letters. Fortunately, the product that I was working on then had to do with mortgages so there had been some foresight in using a four digit year which is the real fix. What you did will work, but isn't the best solution and doesn't work for all applications where historical data prior to 1988 might be valid.
I will agree the crisis was overblown by some, but my point stands. There would have been alot of fairly large problems, particularly in the financial world without having addressed the problem ahead of time.
[added] p.s. There was a lot of demand for COBOL programmers in the years just prior to Y2K and so much so I could have made a fabulous salary during that period working on those projects if I hadn't been happy where I was.
Army sending units back to Iraq early
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
<< Bush running our troops into the ground :( >>
WASHINGTON - For just the second time since the war began, the Army is sending large units back to Iraq without giving them at least a year at home, defense officials said Monday.
The move signaled how stretched the U.S. fighting force has become.
A combat brigade from New York and a Texas headquarters unit will return to Iraq this summer in order to maintain through August the military buildup President Bush announced earlier this year. Overall, the Pentagon announced, 7,000 troops will be going to Iraq in the coming months as part of the effort to keep 20 brigades in the country to help bolster the Baghdad security plan. A brigade is roughly 3,000 soldiers.
The Army will try not to shorten the troops' U.S. time, "but in this case we had to," said a senior Army official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "Obviously right now the Army is stretched," the official said.
The 4th Infantry Division headquarters unit from Fort Hood, Texas, will return to Iraq after a little more than seven months at home — the largest departure to date from the Army's goal of giving units at least a year's rest after every year deployed. The 1st Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Ft. Drum, N.Y., will go back to Iraq after just 10 1/2 months at home.
The only other major unit to spend less than one year at home was the Georgia-based 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, which returned to Iraq 48 days short of a year and is there now, according to the Army.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman acknowledged that the Texas unit's 81 day shortfall in rest time, "is not insignificant."
"There's only so many division headquarters," he said. "It reflects that this is a military that is in conflict. We're obviously using a significant portion of the combat units of the force. And it's a reflection of the realities that exist right now."
Whitman said the latest deployment orders released Monday would also require the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division Headquarters unit to stay in Iraq for about 46 days longer than its planned year.
Defense officials and military leaders disagreed last week over how long it will take to determine if the latest buildup — which added five brigades to what had been a fairly consistent level of 15 brigades in Iraq — is working.
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the military's chief spokesman in Iraq, said commanders won't know until at least autumn when they can begin to bring troop levels back down. A day later Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a congressional committee that he was disturbed to hear that comment, and he said commanders should be able to make the evaluation by summer.
So far two of the five Army brigades planned for the buildup are in Baghdad, and a third is moving in now. All five will be there in June.
The Army's stated goal is to give active-duty soldiers two years at home between overseas combat tours. But that has been largely impossible because the Army does not have enough brigades to meet the demands of simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latest buildup increased the demands, but until recently the Army had been able to give units at least a year break.
Military leaders say the 12 months are needed so the units can rest and then become adequately trained and equipped to go back.
Throughout the war, some smaller, more specialized units have had to deploy without 12 months rest. The Pentagon is currently developing a policy that would provide additional pay to units that don't get the year break.
Other deployments announced Monday include:
• The 18th Airborne Corps Headquarters unit, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., will go to Iraq in November
• The 1st Armored Division Headquarters, based in Wiesbaden, Germany, will go in August
In addition to the 7,000 newly announced deployments, Whitman said about 2,000 military police have gotten their orders to go to Iraq. Gates announced last month that commanders requested about 2,200 military police. About 200 were already there and had their tours extended to meet the request, according to the Army.
Also, the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, which is currently in Iraq, will serve a full year there and return home in January 2008 rather than in September as originally planned.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070403/ap_on_re_us/us_iraq_troops;_ylt=AoZRFqo3.V4iEkY1LMHtSeIDW7oF
High court rebukes Bush on car pollution
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration Monday for its inaction on global warming in a decision that could lead to more fuel-efficient cars as early as next year.
The court, in a 5-4 ruling in its first case on climate change, declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under the landmark environment law, and the "laundry list" of reasons it has given for declining to do so are insufficient, the court said.
"A reduction in domestic emissions would slow the pace of global emissions increases, no matter what happens elsewhere," Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion. "EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change."
The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first case on the subject, with many Republicans as well as Democrats now pressing for action. However, the administration has argued for a voluntary approach rather than new regulation.
The reasoning in the court's ruling also appears to apply to EPA's decision not to impose controls on global warming pollution from power plants, a decision that has been challenged separately in court, several environmental lawyers said.
In the short term, the decision boosts California's and 11 other states' prospects for gaining EPA approval of their own program to limit tailpipe emissions, beginning with the 2009 model year. Those cars begin appearing in showrooms next year. Emission limits would become stricter each year until 2016.
Automobile makers have said stricter emission limits would be accomplished by increasing fuel-economy standards.
Reacting to the court ruling, the automakers called for an economy-wide approach to global warming, cautioning that no single industry could bear the burden alone.
Monday's ruling also improved the odds that Congress would take action on comprehensive legislation to reduce global warming, said business groups, environmental advocates and lawmakers. Several measures already have been introduced.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (news, bio, voting record), D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee urged President Bush "to work with Congress to enact a mandatory cap-and-trade proposal and other programs to reduce our nation's greenhouse gas emissions."
EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said the agency is studying the court's ruling.
In the meantime, she defended EPA's voluntary partnerships to reduce emissions. "These national and international voluntary programs are helping achieve reductions now while saving millions of dollars, as well as providing clean, affordable energy," Wood said.
Ann R. Klee, who was general counsel at the EPA from 2004 through mid-2006, said the Bush administration's "options are now considerably more limited." She said EPA could still decide not to regulate carbon dioxide, but only if it also concluded that such emissions do not contribute to climate change or endanger public health and welfare.
That's an argument that could be difficult to make given the widespread view among climate scientists that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the principal heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas that, if not contained, will lead to significant warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.
Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars.
In handing an almost-total victory to Massachusetts, 11 other states, three cities and 13 environmental groups that sued the EPA, the court adopted many of their concerns and their belief that taking even limited action concerning new American cars and trucks is better than doing nothing.
The court's four conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — dissented.
"In many ways, the debate has moved beyond this," said Chris Miller, director of the global warming campaign for Greenpeace, one of the environmental groups that sued the EPA. "All the front-runners in the 2008 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Republicans, even the business community, are much further along on this than the Bush administration is."
Democrats took control of Congress last November. The world's leading climate scientists reported in February that global warming is "very likely" to be caused by man and is so severe that it will continue for centuries. Former Vice President Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" — making the case for quick action on climate change — won an Oscar. Business leaders are saying they are increasingly open to congressional action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, of which carbon dioxide is the largest.
The court had three questions before it.
_Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?
_Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?
_Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?
The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.
The majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.
In his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.
The court should simply recognize that dealing with the complaints spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.
He said his position "involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem."
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a separate dissent, said the court should not substitute its judgment in place of the EPA's, "no matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake."
Whatever else comes of the decision, "this administration's legal strategy for doing nothing has been repudiated," said David Doniger, counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group involved in the case.
Other states that have adopted California's standards on emissions of greenhouse gases are: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
The case is Massachusetts v. EPA, 05-1120.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070403/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_greenhouse_gases;_ylt=AhsaNHoJbma1.08AGrkA...
if the Y2K hadn't been made a prominent issue years before then the preparations would not have been made to avert problems they would have occurred. We have the opportunity to avert disaster with global warming by studying the issue and addressing the problems now. Can you image if they started thinking about Y2K after things started to fall apart? WOuld have been too late.
I have experienced that as well. If you stick to the topic it's easier to let that just bounce off you.
yes, exactly. They've been conditioned to accept whatever authorities say without question.
great news!
Government must deal with greenhouse gases: US Supreme Court
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency must consider greenhouse gases as pollutants, in a blow to the White House.
"Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of 'air pollutant' we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles," the court ruled.
Led by Massachusetts, a dozen states along with several US cities and environmental groups went to the courts to determine whether the agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide emissions.
"The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized," said judge John Paul Stevens as the ruling was carried by five votes in favor to four against.
The Republican administration of US President George W. Bush has fiercely opposed any imposition of binding greenhouse limits on the nation's industry.
Environmentalists have alleged that since Bush came to office in 2001 his administration has ignored and tried to hide looming evidence of global warming and the key role of human activity in climate change.
As the issue has come to the fore in the US, the White House earlier this year issued a rare open letter defending Bush's record on climate change, rejecting criticisms that he has only recently awakened to the problem.
Monday's ruling was immediately hailed by environmental campaigners which has been fighting for greater regulations in a nation which accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
"It is a watershed moment in the fight against global warming," said Josh Dorner, spokesman for the Sierra Club environmental group.
"This is a total repudiation of the refusal of the Bush administration to use the authority he has to meet the challenge posed by global warming.
It also "sends a clear signal to the market that the future lies not in dirty, outdated technology of yesterday, but in clean energy solutions of tomorrow like wind, solar," he added.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070402/ts_alt_afp/usjusticeenvironment
...or that those who pull the string have made FOR the rest of humanity, put us at peril.
and those who pull the strings and are STILL working hard to cover up the problem.
LOL
I'm definitely not a morning person.
yes, it always amazes me the warped sense of importance... someone who lied about being unfaithful to his wife vs someone who's lies are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands.
Sydney blacks out for global warming
By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
Sat Mar 31, 10:33 PM ET
SYDNEY, Australia - The Sydney Opera House's gleaming white-shelled roof was darkened Saturday night along with much of the rest of Australia's largest city, which switched off the lights to register concern about global warming.
The arch of Sydney's other iconic structure, the harbor bridge, was also blacked out, along with dozens of skyscrapers and countless homes in the 4 million-strong city, in an hour-long gesture organizers said they hoped would be adopted as an annual event by cities around the world.
Mayor Clover Moore, whose officials shut down all nonessential lights on city-owned buildings, said Sydney was "asking people to think about what action they can take to fight global warming."
Restaurants throughout the city held candlelit dinners, and families gathered in public places to take part in a countdown to lights out, sending up a cheer as lights started blinking off at 7:30 p.m.
Buildings went dark one by one. Some floors in city skyscrapers remained lit, and security and street lights, those at commercial port operations and at a sports stadium, stayed on.
"It's an hour of active, thoughtful darkness, a celebration of our awakening to climate change action," said Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, who attended a harborside function to watch the event.
While downtown was significantly darker than normal, the overall effect, as seen in television footage from overhead helicopters, was that the city's patchwork of millions of tiny lights had thinned, not disappeared.
"We were expecting a big difference straight away, but it was just a little bit," said Sonja Schollen, who took sons Harry and James to a park to watch the skyline, joining dozens of other families. Children waved glo-sticks and sparklers while parents picnicked and sipped wine.
"It was quite sweet, actually, because the kids started chanting `turn them out, turn them out.' You can see now the city's a bit dimmer," she said toward the end of the hour.
Organizers hope Saturday's event — which about 2,000 businesses and more than 60,000 individuals signed up for online — will get people to think about regularly switching off nonessential lights, powering down computers and other simple measures they say could cut Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent this year.
The amount of power saved by Saturday's event was not immediately known. But Greg Bourne, chief executive of World Wildlife Fund Australia and one of the architects of the event, said Sydney's power supplier Energy Australia had estimated it could be 5 percent of normal usage on a night of similar conditions.
"It's absolutely fantastic, there's a mood of enthusiasm and hopefulness and action," Bourne said. "I have never seen Sydney's skyline look so dark."
Research by the University of New South Wales published last week found Sydney residents have bad energy conservation habits, often leaving heaters and air conditioners running in empty rooms.
Leaked excerpts published in Australian media last week said average temperatures in the country could rise 6.7 degrees by 2080, making worse wildfires, floods, drought and storms. The Great Barrier Reef is already under threat from increased coral bleaching, the report says.
Australia, a nation of around 21 million people, is ranked as the world's worst greenhouse gas emitter per capita, largely because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired power stations.
Global warming has emerged this year as a mainstream political issue in Australia, and Prime Minister John Howard's government has announced initiatives such as the phased withdrawal from sale of energy-inefficient incandescent bulbs to blunt criticism of his refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol.
Sydney is not the first place to cut the lights for conservation. In February, Paris and other parts of France dimmed the lights for five minutes in a similar gesture, which also took hold in Rome and Athens.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070401/ap_on_re_au_an/australia_blackout;_ylt=Agxd20.kduJMnxzfztW5V2siA...
UK greenhouse emissions show rise
High gas prices were a key factor behind the emissions rise
The UK's carbon emissions rose by 1.25% last year, according to provisional government data, but Britain remains on course to meet its Kyoto Protocol goal.
The main reason was a move from gas to coal for electricity generation.
Emissions of all greenhouse gases in the Kyoto deal were up about 0.5%, but are still below the target of a 12.5% cut from 1990 by the period 2008-2012.
Environmental groups say the rise shows Britain is making no real progress on cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
And Environment Secretary David Miliband said it demonstrated the need for increased action on climate change.
Despite the rhetoric, the UK has made no real progress in cutting carbon emissions under Tony Blair's leadership
Mike Childs, FoE
The UK produced total greenhouse emissions equivalent to 658.10 million tonnes of CO2 last year. This was down about 15% from the 1990 figure of 775.20 million tonnes.
Carbon dioxide output rose from 544.2 million tonnes in 2005 to 560.6 million tonnes in 2006, a significant rise compared to previous years.
Click here for a graph of UK emissions
The nation's CO2 output is now only 5.25% below the 1990 figure which is used as the baseline for the main Kyoto Protocol gases.
'Grim reading'
"The figures make grim reading, and show that despite the rhetoric the UK has made no real progress in cutting carbon emissions under Tony Blair's leadership," commented Mike Childs, campaigns director with Friends of the Earth UK.
Generating companies switched to more coal during 2006
Mr Miliband described the figures as "worrying".
"While these figures are provisional, they underline why concerted effort to tackle climate change, both from government and wider society, is absolutely critical," he said.
The government admitted last year that it would fail to meet its unilateral target, set before the 1997 general election, of cutting CO2 emissions by 20% between 1990 and 2010.
Instead, it said existing policies would yield a 15-18% cut over the same period, which Mr Childs described as "fanciful".
"The government dreams up estimates of what its policies can deliver without any external scrutiny; and as soon as there is any external scrutiny, they turn out to be dreams," he told the BBC News website.
Friends of the Earth is one of a number of groups lobbying for the government to adopt annual targets for carbon cuts. The recent Climate Change Bill discarded this option in favour of five-yearly targets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6506223.stm
Global warming could bring hunger, melt Himalayas
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Sun Apr 1, 6:33 AM ET
OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming could cause more hunger in Africa and melt most Himalayan glaciers by the 2030s, according to a draft U.N. report due on Friday which also warns that the poorest nations are likely to suffer most.
The U.N. climate panel, giving the most authoritative study on the regional impact of climate change since 2001, also predicts more heatwaves in countries such as the United States, and damages corals including Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
"We are talking about a potentially catastrophic set of developments," Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, said of the likely impact of rising temperatures, widely blamed on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
"Even a half meter (20 inch) rise in sea levels would have catastrophic effects in Bangladesh and some island states," he told Reuters.
Scientists and officials from more than 100 countries meet in Belgium from Monday to review and approve a 21-page summary for policymakers in the report amid disputes on some findings, including on how far rising temperatures may contribute to spreading disease.
Among the gloomy forecasts, the report predicts that glaciers in the Himalayas, the world's highest mountain range, will melt away, affecting hundreds of millions of people.
"If current warming rates are maintained, Himalayan glaciers could decay at very rapid rates, shrinking from the present 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2030s," according to a draft technical summary.
And disruptions are likely to be felt hardest in poor nations, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where millions more could go hungry because of damage to farming and water supplies.
BENEFITS
Still, some nations will see some benefits, according to the draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which draws on work by 2,500 scientists.
Global farm potential might increase with a rise of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in temperatures, before sinking worldwide, it says. Crops might grow better in nations far from the tropics such as Canada, Russia, New Zealand or Scandinavia.
But warming will hit rich nations in other ways. The Mediterranean region might become arid. In the United States, rising seas and storm surges could "severely affect transportation along the Gulf, Atlantic and Northern coasts," it says.
The United Nations reckons the report, together with one in February that concluded it was more than 90 percent likely that recent warming had a predominantly human cause, will add pressure on governments to do more to head off damaging change.
"We've passed the tipping point," Steiner said, adding that the public, governments and businesses seemed convinced that global warming was a major threat and not some vague theory about which scientists disagreed.
"It's no longer about whether (climate change) is happening but about how we deal with it," he said.
Even so, talks on a global treaty to extend the Kyoto Protocol on restricting greenhouse gases after 2012 are stalled. Of the world's top emitters -- the United States, China, Russia and India -- only Russia is bound by caps under Kyoto.
Talks in Brussels are likely to last long and late, according to James McCarthy, professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University who was co-chair the last time the IPCC made a similar report in 2001.
He predicted disagreements would be overcome. "I think it would be very unlikely that final agreement would not be reached in Brussels," he said. "It would be unprecedented."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070401/sc_nm/globalwarming_dc_1
I'm only surprised we haven't seen more of this.
go Rosie! Good hard questions. So glad the majority of the audience had a clue unlike the blond (don't know who she is... don't need to know, she was completely clueless ).
Straight from the horses mouth...
DFA has been making available short videos from some of the candidates so they can tell us directly where they stand on certain issues. Great place to get info straight from the horses mouth...
here's a couple examples
http://www.dfalink.com/richardson.php
http://www.dfalink.com/obama.php
can't find the link to the one from John Edwards, but that was a good one as well.
Giuliani Acknowledges Mistake Over Kerik
<< I'm not a Giuliani fan... more reason to not be >>
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 30, 2007
Filed at 10:41 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani acknowledged again Friday that he made a mistake when he recommended Bernard Kerik to be the nation's homeland security chief.
The acknowledgment followed a report in The New York Times that the former New York City mayor was warned about Kerik's relationship with a company with suspected ties to organized crime even before Giuliani appointed Kerik as New York City police commissioner.
Giuliani told a Bronx grand jury last year that his former chief investigator recalled briefing him on Kerik's relationship with the company, Interstate Industrial Corp., before Kerik's appointment.
But Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 GOP nomination, also told the grand jury he did not remember the briefing, the newspaper reported.
''The Mayor has said repeatedly it was a mistake to recommend Mr. Kerik for DHS. He cooperated fully with the grand jury,'' Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, said in a statement to The Associated Press.
A spokeswoman for Giuliani declined to explain why Giuliani appointed Kerik police commissioner despite having information about Kerik's relationship with Interstate Industrial.
Giuliani had previously said he hadn't been told about Kerik's ties to Interstate Industrial before he named Kerik police commissioner and, later, backed his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to become the nation's homeland security chief, the newspaper reported. The company has denied having ties to organized crime.
Once nominated by President Bush to head the Homeland Security Department, Kerik pleaded guilty last June to a misdemeanor charge of accepting a gift from Interstate Industrial, which was seeking city work.
Kerik acknowledged accepting $165,000 in renovations on his Bronx apartment from the company. But he never explicitly admitted that his efforts on the company's behalf were tied to the work on his home.
There is no evidence that Giuliani knew about the apartment renovation before appointing Kerik as police commissioner. But a top investigator who briefed Giuliani in 2000 knew that Kerik's brother and a close friend were working for an affiliate of Interstate Industrial, the Times reported, citing a transcript of Giuliani's sworn testimony last year to a grand jury investigating Kerik.
A prosecutor told Giuliani that Kerik had informed investigators about his brother's and friend's work for the company. The prosecutor also said Kerik, then the city's correction commissioner, told investigators he had tried to help the company as it vied for a city license to run a waste transfer station on Staten Island, according to the newspaper.
City officials refused to license the company in part because the transfer station was bought from two organized crime figures in 1996.
Giuliani testified that he had no specific recollection of the 2000 briefing or briefings, part of a background investigation before Kerik's appointment as police commissioner.
He noted that investigators cleared Kerik for the post, saying that might have been a reason why he could not recall the briefing or briefings.
''We may have filed it away somewhere that it wasn't as significant,'' he testified.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Giuliani-Kerik.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Yeah!
Bush, the oppositie of Teddy Roosevelt...
<< from an email. Wish I could remember who use to say he was like Teddy... not even close in almost every way, particularly on the environment >>
Like many Americans, I am greatly disturbed by the President’s renewed efforts to sell 273,000 acres of national forest lands, his shortsighted solution to secure funding for rural schools. This proposal would strike at the heart of California’s natural heritage, since more than 65,000 acres – 24 percent of all lands that would be sold – are in California.
A review of these California lands shows that roadless areas and wild and scenic rivers would be put up for sale – hardly mere “parcels” of land that do not meet our Forest Service “needs,” as the Department of Agriculture has claimed.
I believe we can find alternative ways to fund our rural schools while continuing to preserve our public lands. That is why I am an original co-sponsor of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Reauthorization Act of 2007 (S.380). This bill would provide funding to rural forest counties to help finance schools and roads - without having to sell off any federal forest land. I am pleased that the Senate recently passed similar legislation as an amendment to the 2007 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill. This amendment would provide about $5 billion for rural schools over the next five years, including $283 million for California’s rural counties. Based on this success, I am confident that we can pass S.380 in the 110th Congress.
Creating a misleading choice between our priceless natural heritage and our rural public schools is irresponsible, and the Bush Administration is clearly derelict in its duty to be a sound steward of our national lands. I will do everything I can to see that California’s precious national forests are protected as a resource for generations to come.
Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator
Yes, regardless of which party... someone trustworthy would be a key attribute and refreshing change. Having a brain would be nice too.
Obama on Iraq including time line of his steady opposition
http://www.dfalink.com/obama.php
Gonzales needs to go... but Bush will just appoint another incompetant and/or liar in his place.
and there have been so many incidences of that type from this admin it's hard to keep track of them all
Where the disinformation comes from...
March 28, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Sometimes you read something about this administration that is just so shameful it takes your breath away. For me, that was the March 20 article in this paper detailing how a House committee had just released documents showing “hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.”
The official, Philip A. Cooney, left government in 2005, after his shenanigans were exposed in The Times, and was immediately hired by, of course, Exxon Mobil. Before joining the White House, he was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil industry lobby arm.
...
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=18282635
and I hope to prevent another one
Call/Write is good advice.
I'm about half cash right now the rest in gold stocks.
yes, unfortunately.
and I'm very concerned about the build up at the Iranian border... Bush has been looking for an excuse to expand his war.
Senate Supports a Pullout Date in Iraq War Bill
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE
Published: March 28, 2007
<< best news I've seen yet! >>
WASHINGTON, March 27 — The Senate went on record for the first time on Tuesday in favor of a withdrawal date from Iraq, with Democrats marshaling the votes they needed to deliver a forceful rebuke to President Bush’s war policy.
“When it comes to the war in Iraq, the American people have spoken, the House and Senate have spoken,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “Now, we hope the president is listening.”
Senators still must vote on the overall legislation this week, and then their bill must be reconciled with a House measure passed Friday. The House voted 218 to 212 for a binding measure requiring the president to bring most American combat troops home from Iraq by September 2008.
A few minutes after the vote on Tuesday in the Senate, the White House repeated its vow to veto any legislation containing a withdrawal date. The Senate action increases the likelihood that Congress and Mr. Bush will engage in a confrontation over the financing of the war.
The outcome of the Senate vote took both parties by surprise. Republicans were stung by the defection of Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has not supported a timetable for withdrawal before although he is his party’s most outspoken critic of the war in Congress.
“There will not be a military solution to Iraq,” Mr. Hagel declared. “Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. It doesn’t belong to the United States. Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost.”
The Democrats also gained the vote of Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, who voted against a withdrawal date just two weeks ago.
“People want our troops home,” Mr. Nelson said.
The two other senators who crossed party lines were Gordon H. Smith, an Oregon Republican, who supported the withdrawal date, and Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, who opposed the plan. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, voted with the Republicans.
The Senate vote was seen as a victory for Democrats, if only because Republicans had already agreed not to stand in the way of the legislation by mounting a filibuster that requires 60 votes to pass a bill. Republican leaders said they preferred to allow Mr. Bush to veto the bill, rather than use procedural maneuvers to block the measure, which would provide $122 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The impassioned debate on Tuesday illustrated that majorities in each party remained hardened in their views. Vice President Dick Cheney, who also serves as president of the Senate, arrived in the Capitol a few minutes before 5 p.m. to be on hand in the event of a tie. Two senators were not present: Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, and Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, who is in rehabilitation after a brain hemorrhage.
As the debate opened Tuesday, several Republicans spoke forcefully against the notion of setting a specific date — even a nonbinding one — to get troops out of Iraq. Several Republican senators argued that the Congressional debate over Iraq has failed to factor in new developments in the country, where military commanders report signs of progress.
“This bill should be named the Date Certain for Surrender Act,” said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. “A second-year cadet at West Point could tell you that if you announce when the end will be, it’s a recipe for defeat.”
Mr. McCain, who had planned to be away from the Capitol on Tuesday campaigning for his presidential bid, turned to a large map of Iraq positioned next to him on an easel as he made his argument. He pointed to areas around the country where Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander, has reported some success in his new military plan.
“We cannot give up,” Mr. McCain said, “just as we are starting to turn things around in Iraq.”
The Senate action on Tuesday alters the dynamics of eventual negotiations between the House and Senate to reconcile their different approaches.
Had Republicans prevailed, the Senate bill would have had no timetable, while the House version required a withdrawal no later than Sept. 1, 2008. Democratic leaders were considering whether they should eliminate the timeline entirely before sending the measure to Mr. Bush, but with both chambers approving a time frame, it is now almost certain a final measure will include some requirements for withdrawal.
Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, said the president was “disappointed that the Senate continues down a path with a bill that he will veto and has no chance of becoming law.” She said Congress should allow General Petraeus’s mission to succeed “by providing our troops the funding they need — not by mandating failure.”
But Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a war critic since the conflict began four years ago, said the combination of the House and Senate votes was momentous. He said it showed how far the Democratic Congress had come toward removing troops since the beginning of the year, adding that political and policy momentum was on their side.
“Rather than continuing to defy the will of the American people and Congress by threatening to veto this legislation,” Mr. Kennedy said, “President Bush should put the Iraqis on notice.”
Three more Republicans who have expressed serious reservations about the course of the war — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John W. Warner of Virginia — sided with their colleagues in trying to strip the timetable from the spending legislation. All three senators are facing tough re-election fights next year.
Ms. Collins said she was more troubled by the requirement that the administration begin removing troops within 120 days of the legislation rather than the March 2008 deadline for having most of the military out.
“I don’t think it is wise to have an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq,” said Ms. Collins, who said she was willing to wait until August to see if the continuing troop increase improves conditions there. “This doesn’t mean I support an unending commitment of our troops in Iraq. I don’t.”
Mr. Coleman said he believed that the Democratic plan was intended to score political points and that establishing such a public timeline for getting out of Iraq was militarily ill-advised.
Mr. Warner, who has criticized the administration’s conduct of the war, said he remained committed to changing policy in Iraq, but not by imposing Congressional timetables on American troops.
“It would be the bugle of retreat,” Mr. Warner said. “It would be echoed and repeated from every minaret through Iraq: the coalition forces have decided to take the first step backward. We cannot send that message. Not at this time.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/washington/28cong.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
yes, another good example. And also comes to mind is the shenanigans at the FDA for the benefit of big pharm
yes, a good example of that.
And even worse the loosing of regulations around mercury and other pollutants.